Tracking (was: [WikiEN-l] 142)

Fri Feb 28 14:35:10 UTC 2003

I think what Jimmy just wrote amounts to a new policy -- or a 
fresh reformulation of something I always felt was either 
policy or a "feature" of our wiki software.

Some wiki boards don't track who changes what, and they don't 
have a problem with it. They have a low edit volume and high 
readership rate, so any nonsense gets weeded out quickly.

But our wiki is the world's largest, and the ratio of reads to
 writes isn't as high as it used to be. We _need_ user 
tracking.

If I see one bogus edit, like "Hi I am Johnny and I love that 
cutie Mary from English class" replacing the [[William 
Shakespeare]] article, I want to be able to click on the "User
Contributions" link and see what other damage this graffiti 
artist has done. I'll revert everything and list the IP or 
username on a page where sysops and other interested parties 
can see it.

Also, if someone has really bad spelling or grammar skills, or
goes on a POV rampage or even (*happy sigh*) writes brilliant
prose, I want to be able to see more of their work.

Being able to know who does what is important around here, and 
maybe we should make that clear in the policy pages.

Uncle Ed, aka Ed Poor