Okay, this is about the 100 time I’ve seen articles like this
or edits like this
which is done by an annon user. They should not be able to write or edit articles! More than 4/5 top the times, their spam or not good for wikiHow. They should not be allowed to edit or make articles and newbies (like less than 2 months on wikiHow), shouldn’t be able to make articles either (but should be able to make edits and so on).
Each day, I see more and more spam and vandalism from annons or newbies. It’s not good.
What do you think, @JayneG
, @anon74718567
, and others?
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My first edits here were typo corrections - as an anon. I’ve also actually seen some pretty good articles from anonymous contributors and some anons who stepped in to fix some pretty notable errors that the rest of us had missed. And a good chunk of anons who are blanking pages or vandalizing are actually just testing out the editing software and stop after one edit or after a {{test}} template.
We want to keep wikiHow open to anyone, assume good faith, and encourage people to join us in our Mission of teaching anyone how to do anything. If we block off anons from helping us, we can’t achieve that goal. Instead, we allow anons to edit and will block or protect pages as needed to prevent disruption to the wiki. It’s a whole lot friendlier than just saying “no, you don’t have an account, so you can’t edit”
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Some users here are anonymous users. And this happens some times (or sometimes many), but there are anons which do good edits too. If they can’t write or edit, it will be like we’re removing a part of wikiHow. And I think we use patrol to revert vandalism and spam, so I don’t think this rule is needed to be applied
But this is only my perspective.
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As a wiki, what we do is allow anyone to edit, and I don’t think there are (or should be) any plans to change that. I was an anon for years before I made an account, and I just enjoyed spellchecking, approving questions, and doing anything I could to help. I’ve also seen some newbies and anons make some great edits and start amazing new articles, and I’d hate for that privilege to be taken away from them.
We do get some vandalism from anons and newbies (and that’s to be expected; happens on all sorts of wikis), but I think letting them edit and write articles is what makes wikiHow wikiHow. Our articles aren’t written by one person or staff team - they’re written and edited by our vast community, and that community includes our newer users and our anonymous users, too.
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My first edit was as an anon. I will probably never forget logging onto my family’s computer, browsing the web for a while, stumbling onto wikiHow and making my first edit. That was in late 2017, but I haven’t forgotten it.
Sure, some people are out to do more harm than good. But everything is reversible, and like Alex mentioned, pages can be protected or, if they are newly-created spam, can be deleted. I bet a lot of good-faith anons would be highly discouraged if an account was required to edit anything.
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Eric
6
From wikiHow:Anonymous
:
At wikiHow, we allow anyoneto edit our site, including anonymous editors who don’t want to create an account
.
Why?Simply because we believe that inviting more people to share knowledge will help us create a larger, higher quality how-to manual
. Yes, anonymous editors are more likely to vandalize articles than trusted and authenticated community members, but these sort of nonsense edits are quickly removed during recent changes patrol
. By extending trust to everyone, we have found that the vast majority of anonymous people want to help and do their best to make good faith edits. In fact, some of our most popular articles such as how to Get Six Pack Abs
, Lose Weight Fast
, Survive a Freestyle Rap Battle
, Tie a Tie
and Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night
were started by anonymous authors.
So cheers to you, anonymous editor! Thanks for sharing your knowledge here.
You may also enjoy wikiHow:Open
.
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@Artsy_Koala
It’s always good to share your ideas about how to make wikiHow better, but I think that it’s clear that this proposal is not going to be implemented. So thank you for sharing your idea, and I hope that you will share any other that you have.
Because it’s clear that this proposal is not going to be implemented, I would recommend closing this thread. I have personal experience in receiving some very severe backlash to my proposals, and I can tell you from experience that it is certainly not fun at all, and it is also depressing to repeatedly get very long and sometimes unforgiving comments opposing the idea, so I think that it’s best to close it now, since clearly nothing productive will come from any future comments.
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I don’t feel that the discussion here is unproductive, R2. This kind of thread comes up every now and again - where we get an editor who makes a proposal to stop vandalism or other “bad” edits from getting through, which is clearly well-intentioned, and just doesn’t mesh with our community values for whatever reason. It gives the community an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind why we do things the way we do, which can be a good learning experience for newer or younger editors and reinforces how we want to treat people. Repeatedly hearing “no” on a suggestion can be disheartening, but I don’t feel like this would be genuinely harsh or discouraging.
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It’s not just anons and newbies that vandalize or create bad articles. A user with a decent reputation and a one-month old account could end up vandalizing. And plus, since this is a wiki, everything’s reversible, as we have patrollers, admins, and other contributors. If push comes to shove, admins can issue blocks, which is part of their responsibility. Newbies and anons can also end up contributing to the site in positive ways, and the fact that a user can’t edit because they don’t want an account can be immensely discouraging. This would indubitably cause more harm than good.
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That’s just what I think from my experience. One time a New Article Booster very forcibly and rudely implied that I was trying to pull one over on the community and forcibly impose one of my proposals, which was untrue (and actually isn’t possible). And this wasn’t a one off thing, I can provide multiple examples of these types of comments. I don’t want to put anybody on the spotlight, so I won’t say who, but I have personally received some very rude and nonconstructive reply’s to proposals that go beyond just saying no, and are actual personal attacks. So that’s why I think that threads where the proposal has been rejected should be closed. It helps prevent these types of comments.
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Eric
11
R2, please make sure to reach out to Jayne or another admin if you encounter this sort of experience again. We want to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to share their viewpoints and feels welcome to propose changes or float ideas. Feedback and responses are encouraged, but personal attacks certainly are not. I’m sorry that you’ve experienced this — let’s help make sure nobody else has the same experience going forward.
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Exactly. Most of us started out here as anons, messed around a bit and decided to create an account later on. The first time I contributed to wikiHow, it was as an anon approving questions, and to me, that’s one of the many things I love about wikiHow: anyone can help improve it, even if they don’t have experience.
And just because someone’s a registered user, doesn’t mean they won’t still vandalise. It makes it a lot easier to hold them accountable, sure, but some people will still do it.
Also…
Ok, the first
one, is kinda brilliant, but the second… eh, it’s just pure vandalism.
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I agree with what @Artsy_Koala
said. There are just so many terrible edits ranging from “eat yuor owwn poop lol” to rude and offensive things placed on random pages, making it more work for the patrollers. IMO most of the bad “tips” and articles are written by annons. I don’t think we should ban newbies and annons from editing, but we should at least protect the FA’s and controversial articles from annons and newbies.
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Yeah, I came across this edit from an anonymous user
this morning. Warning: language
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Yeah, but that because your awesome.
Yeah, I think it should be like a trust level thing as well though. We should protect featured articles from anonymous users at least until we know they’re trustworthy, IMHO.
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Yeah on Wikipedia, articles about Joe Biden or Donald Trump/Duck (AKA the Oompa Loompa), not many can edit them (not even me and I’ve been on there for about 3 months) and other articles (like about a dog breed or supply or something) can be edited. It’s to prevent vandalism.
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We actually have a tag that if a new user edits a FA it will get flagged.
I see were your coming from Artsy. If we implement this it would discourage many new users. I am going to have to agree with R2 this is unlikely to get implemented.
wikiPedia gets a hell of alot more traffic than we do that is why they do that.
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It could use some grammar and spelling improvements, by otherwise pretty funny
#NotEndorsing
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But how can anons prove that they’re trustworthy if we don’t allow them to edit in the first place? A lot of our readership is on featured articles and otherwise popular topics - I think my very first visit to wikiHow was when I was 12 and was looking up how to tell if a guy likes you, which has been a FA at some point (and I want to say my typo fixes were on one of the crush topics as well). A lot of our readership, which is primarily logged-out users, is on the FAs as well, because they’re on the home page. Sure, maybe I was just “awesome”, but there’s a lot of other anons who are awesome too. And really, even the ones who make less than positive edits tend to be harmless - it’s easily reverted in RCP (and edits don’t show up to signed-out users until they’re patrolled, which is another buffer that protects us), and a {{test}} or {{blank}} usually shows that there’s actual humans behind this website and they often stop or get bored. I’ve even seen anons message people or the Help Team page saying that they were testing out the editing software and accidentally removed most of the article and don’t know how to put it back. Sure, it’s not an edit that helps the page, but it was still made in good faith.
In general, we also want to give people trust at first rather than making them earn it - that’s why every registered user gets access to RCP, and they only get patrol-blocked if they’re making too many mistakes with the tool. It’s also why we avoid protecting pages unless really necessary to prevent vandalism. Our method is more of “they need to show they can’t use it for whatever reason before we remove it” rather than “you need to earn it” (with the exception of elevated user rights like NAB, but that’s more because you need to know wikiHow’s policies in order to work well in the role).
Also, with regards to Wikipedia’s protections policies, Quo’s right about the larger amount of driveby vandals, but the other thing with Wikipedia is that they have far stricter policies regarding accuracy. People have threatened to sue Wikipedia over misinformation in their or their company’s biographies, and they don’t have a tool like RCP, so they use strict policies and page protections to protect themselves from potential liability (it’s very easy to miss an edit in the RC feed there). And in general, we don’t want
to be like Wikipedia, because they’re a lot less friendly and we pride ourselves on trying to be a community rather than simply a bunch of people who happen to be working on the same site. If we’re modeling our policies or behaviors after Wikipedia, something’s gone wrong.
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