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The WikiWay: Adopt-a-Vandal

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A week or two after David Ornstein released FlexWiki to SourceForge, Mike Gunderloy reflects on the issue (or is it a non-issue?) of WikiVandalism.

[Mike Gundleroy]  "...the news of FlexWiki's relicensing was picked up by the "News for Nerds" Web site Slashdot, which is a perennial home for Microsoft-bashing. Along with the comments that trolls posted over on Slashdot itself ("make microsoft bob open source") some bright (if that's the word I'm looking for) realized that they could go over to the FlexWiki Web site itself and edit away.

And so they did. Within an hour after the Slashdot story was posted, pages on the FlexWiki site began to be littered with ads for Mozilla Firefox, scatalogical comments about Microsoft, warnings that FlexWiki was the product of some evil plot, and so on. It's a pity that there are people who view this sort of vandalism as the best way to promote open source, which (in my opinion) is a sensible path for much software. But surely the massed hordes of Slashdot could overwhelm the beleaguered wiki maintainers?

Actually, no. For all that it's a simple idea, the design of the original wiki (which has propagated forwards into other versions) is remarkably well thought out. Two key decisions make it very hard to effectively vandalize a wiki. First, there's a "Recent Changes" page that makes it easy for anyone to monitor, in near real time, which pages are being edited. Second, every page comes with a "Restore Version" button. In one click you can undo an annoying edit that took someone ten minutes to compose. The forces of entropy have a decided upper hand in wikiland.

When I checked back after a few hours, the trolls and vandals had given up, and the FlexWiki site was none the worse for wear. Nor is this an isolated incident in the history of wikis. As long as there's some critical mass of interested people, vandals and spammers tend to get discouraged and move on. That's a pretty impressive testimony to the basic wiki design."

Personally, I hope that a few of the /. vandals stick around, download the FlexWiki sources, and become good FlexWikiZens. My Wiki is your Wiki. That's the WikiWay.

When Mike writes that it is "very hard to vandalize a wiki", he misspeaks. It is EASY to vandalize a Wiki. Most Wiki users, including me, prefer it that way. However, he hits the nail on the head when he writes, "As long as there's some critical mass of interested people, vandals and spammers tend to get discouraged and move on."

But I think there's more to it than that. Why do WikiSpammers and WikiVandals desist? Does your house get egged by the neigborhood punks every night? Probably not.

The Bored By a Billion Easy Targets Theory:

In a future time, there will be so many wikis, so much opportunity to vandalize them, so little incentive to do so, and so many ways to get foiled and frustrated that it will not be an issue of any importance.

WikiVandalism is only fun for about 2.5 seconds. When gritty WikiZens like Jonathan Hardwick resist WikiVandals actively, as occurred in this case, the vandals have fun for about 10 seconds longer. But somewhere around 14.2 seconds, at least if they're like me, a little voice in the back of every WikiVandal's head starts to whisper words like IP blocking, doS, honeypot, and conspiracy theory. A quick analysis of the risks (negligible but real) weighed against the rewards (practically none) ensues and WikiVandalism ceases to seem as fun as other juvenille pranks like unplugging their roommate's computer or trying to flush a roll of toilet paper down the dormitory toilet.

Most community Web sites rely on technology to restrict the actions of community members. Elaborate schemes have been designed to moderate postings (such as ./ and KuroShin) or to establish a trust metric for community members to rate each other (such as AdvoGato).

Wiki works better because it relies on community rather than technology to police itself. If someone comes along and deletes text or posts spam, someone else can just as easily fix the problem. Since an open environment encourages participation and a strong sense of community, the ratio of fixers to breakers tends to be very high, so the wiki stays stable.

There are technological protections, too -- they're just less obtrusive than having to "log in" or "rate" something. Most wikis store old versions of each page for at least a short period of time, allowing damage to be easily recovered. Many wikis provide a means to limit how quickly someone may edit a large number of pages. Some wikis also provide a means to lock out particularly abusive visitors without disturbing other visitors. Still other Wikis have server-side spam profiling services like this one from IBM.

An active WikiWiki is a society unto itself. Like most societies, the greatest threat to the continued existence of the society comes from within, not from without... WikiWar: "Don't think of it as a war between people. Think of it as battling thoughts within Wiki's mind. -- FalkBruegmann "

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