Wikipedia & Tor

[Paul Syverson]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 07:54:14PM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Paul Syverson wrote:
> > (1) Tor is set up and managed so Wikipedia can easily recognize
> >     stuff coming through Tor.
> > 
> > (2) Wikipedia doesn't have a lot of human or other resources available
> >     to check these posts for what it considers abuse. (Relates to Nick's
> >     points.)
> 
> We actually do have a huge amount of human resources, this is our great
> strength.

Great. Mostly I didn't want to just presume lots of resources from
you for a solution. 

How much you have available is really orthogonal to my points though,
one of which was that this puts you in control of the resources you
want to devote to it.  I was also raising a point not about the abuse
you now face but about the potential abuse (overuse of the human
resource by people frustrated that they can't attack your entries) you
might face if you implemented the suggestion, and how that isn't
necessarily a problem.

>  But our value judgment to date (not made by me directly, by
> the way, but by admins getting their hands dirty in the day to day work)
> is that Tor servers just aren't worth it.
> 

I want to emphasize a central aspect of my suggestion: The goal is not
just to provide a filter for abusive posts, it's to change incentives.
We can't know for sure without running the experiment, but my guess is
that if abusive posts through Tor never succeed (OK perhaps virtually
never), and if the process of posting through Tor informs posters of
that fact, then Tor will become worth it for your admins. The abusers
will disappear or greatly diminish because they will know from being
warned, and if necessary from experience, that their attempts will
fail. Posts through Tor will then mostly have value (in the sense of
not being abusive in the ways that prompted this discussion.)

Yes, I know (and I'm sure Jimmy knows) that this won't solve the
longterm underlying issues. Abusive posters will just move on to
another avenue than Tor. But I think it will be a quick, cheap, and
big win for both Tor and Wikipedia.

1. It remains completely anonymous.

2. It doesn't require proofs of work, pseudonyms, authentication,
etc. (OK you might want to put in captchas or something to prevent
automated consumption of Wikipedia resources.)

Yes, as Marc Abel suggested you could implement passwords, pseudonyms,
or hell ZKPs.  But this is stepping onto the slippery slope of trying
to solve the more longterm problem that using IP addresses in the way
Wikipedia does is a temporarily useful kludge. (Kludges are great, but
function creep is dangerous and can make for bigger problems in the
long run.)

3. Wikipedia can put as much or as little resources as they want into
it. If my guess is right, the resources needed should be small. If I'm
wrong (about the abusers diminishing), then it would take a lot of
resources to filter the abusive stuff. But if wikipedia devotes a
minimum of resources, we're still better off than the status quo at
relatively low cost. And this allows patience in case it be a change
that takes a long time to manifest. If in the end, it is deemed simply
not to work, it will still have been a worthwhile and relatively
low-cost experiment.

> > I think this is simple, both conceptually and to implement;
> > it might work;  and it's an improvement over the status quo.
> 
> Putting Tor users into a "soft block" mode is a reasonable thing to do,
> but I'll have to think about how we might want to do it.
> 

Great. It is an imperfect solution in the best spirit of onion routing.
Cf. Nick's wonderful footnote {2} in his message. I'll be glad to
talk with you about how we might pursue that.

aloha,
Paul


P.S. I remain against the expanded use of `spam' beyond email bulk
sending of unwanted commercial(whatever that means) messages, except
perhaps metaphorically. Sooner or later I will probably lose, and even
conservative dictionaries will change. (So far even the liberal ones
mostly agree with me, but not---big surprise---Wikipedia.) Such is the
nature of language, but that doesn't change the value of resisting.

Note that even under this expanded use of the term, the types of abuse
we've been discussing are not spam since they are not bulk: they are
posted one at a time by the abuser. If even that part of the meaning
is gone, somebody should update the Wikipedia entry for
`spam'. (That's meant to be ironic.  I sincerely hope it is not
updated in that way.)