<CPOV> Kafka and Orwell join forces on Wikipedia

[R.Stuart Geiger]

Oh edit filter, trying to make my precious bots irrelevant by finally
embedding 'anti-vandalism' into the platform itself.  It's really
interesting because the filter actually disallows edits instead of
retroactively reverting them, making it a qualitatively different kind of
social actor than a bot.  Bots still work within the "anyone can edit"
logic, even though they are the ultimate expression of its consequences: you
*can* do anything you want, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way.
 But is a bot who immediately reverses every edit containing a certain
pattern all that different from an edit filter rule which makes it
impossible to make such an edit?

Of course, there is a major difference in how they are created -- bots are
notorious black boxes, often running on code that cannot be viewed, much
less changed by even those with root access to the Wikimedia server farms.
 Any admin who knows regex can read and write these rules, though as Peter
points out, the process is still opaque.  And the user experience is
certainly different, as you're actually told that your edit is not allowed,
while with a bot you may not even know that such an event has happened.

Stuart

On May 17, 2011 10:38 PM, "nathaniel tkacz" <nathanieltkacz at gmail.com>
wrote:
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