Citizendium Blog

May 17, 2007

20 Comments »

1. 

   “Rules cannot be enforced without effective punishment. (From the definition of “enforcement.”)”

   This doesn’t follow — I think you mean to say “restraint” instead of “punishment” (also in the rule above it).

   You can enforce rules with restraint just fine without punishment. Enforcement is only the implementation of rules, not a particular implementation.

   You really need to solidify your argument that enforcement requires knowing identity. There are a number of ways to make sure rules are followed without reference to identity, including screening by a set of people who are trusted. That you have identified editors is enough to create rules upon your content. Identifying authors is not really necessary unless you want to have specific privileges that become eliminated based on identity.

   Wikipedia insists that self-correction is done through peer review — and that the content of what is contributed is more important than who contributed it. By defining most if not the vast majority of their rules in terms of content and not identity, they really do have rules that require no knowledge of identity.

   I hope I’ve made clear why I’m just not buying your line of reasoning.

   Seth

   Comment by Seth A Woolley — May 17, 2007 @ 9:00 am

2. 

   In real world politics, proof of identity, either through peer identification, electronic or other forms of acceptable identity, such as a driving licence, a national identity card etc, has become an increasing necessity to preserve the “fairness”, or the “democratic” part about elections. Given that, I see no impediment to proof of identity being the first checkpoint. Looking into the future, I suspect the IP6 system can and will provide a permanent identity marker to all individual users of the net. While, of course, nothing is fool proof, assigning a permanent IP6 serial, called through trusted keychain or a similar mechanism, will prevent sockpuppetry.

   Comment by Aruna Kulatunga — May 17, 2007 @ 9:21 am

3. 

   I wonder what Larry’s discussion looks like if he were to add

   Face = A unique tag, uniquely associated with an Identity, that may
   display zero or more of the facts associated with the Identity, but
   whose association with an Identiy (if it is different from the real
   name associated with the identity) is known only to a select-but-known
   group of Identities called FaceMakers.

   That would seem to allow a Face to be used instead of an Identity in
   Larry’s discussion below, but would *also* accomodate the occasional
   case where an Identity wishes to suppress some of the facts associated
   with the Identity. Voting (and so on) would then be by Face, not by
   Identity?

   Comment by Peter Ingerman — May 17, 2007 @ 10:00 am

4. 

   Even if you’ve established a need for verifiability, there’s no reason identities have to be public to be verifiable. For example, there could be an identity taskforce who made sure that each account had exactly one identity and each identity had no more than one account, but this information could be kept private (from the other voters, and even from “the organizers”). That would protect democracy just as well as your proposal, while still providing anonymity (or pseudonymity).

   The same is true for the second argument. Anonymity could be revoked as part of punishment in some cases, but this is probably an unnecessary refinement; the constabulary could easily punish an anonymous user, and the identity taskforce would ensure that if that same user tried to register a different anonymous account the attempt would be blocked (or the punishment would be transfered).

   So, identities can be hidden from normal users/voters, project organizers, and constabulary so long as there’s a taskforce that can verify real identities, and therefore vouch for uniqueness.

   Of course that would be open to abuse by the taskforce (e.g., they could blackmail a user by threatening to reveal her identity, or they could lie and claim, or deny, proof of sockpuppetry)–but any democratic provision is open to abuse, often worse than this. Surely an untrustworthy constabulary would be far worse than an untrustworthy identity taskforce. For that matter, whoever’s in charge of, e.g., a credit card verification system could steal money.

   In fact, I’m not sure that you’ve established (or, for that matter, that it’s true) that perfect verifiability is necessary. A system that has a “pretty good” chance of detecting sockpuppetry and a “pretty good” chance of assigning appropriate punishment may be a “pretty good” system in practice. The fact that a small number of sock puppets will escape verification and therefore subvert the system is not necessarily a fatal flaw–especially compared to the far more likely fact that rule-breakers will be unnoticed in the first place. This is how most people escape consequences in the real world.

   Also, consider the meat puppet problem; how will identity verification help that? If two users are husband and wife and they vote the same way 2 minutes apart, is that valid? (That was one of the major arguments against the 19th Amendment, of course.)

   Returning to the unspoken perfection postulate: If identity verification is always possible–but not necessary–that may be sufficient. Assume that Wikipedia had a perfect “checkuser” system (which is probably impossible, but let’s start by assuming it). The question then becomes whether you need to use it on all users at all times to verify identity, or whether it’s sufficient to do so only when there’s serious and well-founded debate about sockpuppetry (more or less the current WP policy), or maybe whenever the question is brought up at all in good faith, or when certain automatic flags are triggered (e.g., two users in the same dynamic IP block edit the same article, or two different users revert an identical change), or maybe just randomly. Would one of these be “good enough”? Would it be better in any way?

   There’s some argument to be made that the simpler the process (and public verification of everyone is as simple as it gets), the less likely abuse is, and the more likely users are to conform to policy. But that’s an argument that has to be made, and weighed.

   The real problem, I think, is not that the mechanisms aren’t perfect. In the real world, identity verification is a relatively minor problem; very few people get away with speeding because they were pulled over and the officer couldn’t identify them, or because they were photographed and the photograph is indistinct, while huge numbers of people (the vast majority of all drivers, in fact) get away with it because of insufficient enforcement in the first place. And the real root problem is, I think, in the parenthetical aside: the vast majority of people, in all real-life polities, are rule-breakers.

   What’s the percentage of American citizens who have parked 61 minutes in a 60-minute zone? Driven 66mph on a 65 freeway? Smoked marijuana? Miscalculated (or intentionally cheated or questionably-intentionally fudged) their tax returns? I’d guess it’s at least a majority in all of these cases.

   Do we expect the same to be true in an online polity like Citizendium? If so, then we have to deal with that problem. If not, then we have to consider why, and what implications this has–in what other ways is Citizendium not like a real-life polity, and how should this affect policies?

   Finally, I certainly understand the attempt to find out what’s wrong with Wikipedia, but are you certain that it’s a technical/procedural problem in the first place? Does their checkuser system work poorly because it’s a bad idea? Or it could it be a good idea, unfortunately undercut by Wikipedia’s interface with the outside world (the open invititation to edit anonymously) actively inviting abuse? Or by internal cultural flaws (the insularity, cult of personality, ad-hoc but deep hierarchy, etc.)? Or maybe just because it was added too late, after years or admins judging identity questions based on individual intuitions?

   Establishing that Wikipedia is broken in various ways is easy; that doesn’t mean that any possible explanation for why it’s broken in each way is automatically right.

   I’m not sure what I’d propose. In fact, I think the idea of a public-real-name project like Citizendium is at the very least a good experiment (or I wouldn’t have signed up), and may be the right answer. I just don’t think you’ve proven that yet.

   Comment by Andrew Barnert — May 17, 2007 @ 10:04 am

5. 

   Aruna, I have static IPs in IPV4-space and that doesn’t prevent me from performing sockpuppetry. I don’t see how IPV6’s larger allocation space or even address portability will help prevent IP masquerading. Address portability only helps people to choose not to masquerade — there’s not technical reason it’s not possible in IPV6.

   Comment by Seth A Woolley — May 17, 2007 @ 10:25 am

6. 

   I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I am by no means an expert at all! I just follow the “industry”. In terms of rules and policies - in life I am not a fan of strict guidlines, in general, however, with “consumer generated content” there needs to be some sort of guidlines, I think. It all comes back to credibility. How do you know if what you are reading is credible? Will we ever know? And who defines credible? Alexa? Compete.com? Really. I know it may be elementary, but will we ever be able to put any structure to this? A couple of years ago, PubSub tried to put “structured blogging” in place. It could have worked. David Pogue had a blog post last week (Friday?) about Web2.0 and he said that we are only scratching the surface. I think that is true. There is so much more out there and those who make a stand now, and institute the structure, are those that will make money.

   Comment by Becki — May 17, 2007 @ 5:29 pm

7. 

   [...] Citizendum, Larry Sanger, New Media, Blogs — becki325 @ 1:34 am Larry Sanger (Citizendum) posted this today. UGH. Guidelines and policies.  If you know me, you know I love rules and I stick to them, [...]

   Pingback by Rules? Guidelines? « PR, Babies and All The Rest — May 17, 2007 @ 5:36 pm

8. 

   Seth has already pointed out the unsoundness of your second argument. I’m not sure about the soundness of the first.

   What do you mean by “democratic”? Do you mean simply “fair”, as 5 suggests? Or “one vote per person”, as 1 suggests? These two meanings are mutually exclusive (for some definitions of “fair”), as was shown by Kenneth Arrow. See http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~seppley/Arrow’s%20Impossibility%20Theorem%20for%20Social%20Choice%20Methods.htm . Most real-life democratic systems fail to satisfy the criterion for Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives; that is, they allow the collective preference of A over B to be reversed by the nomination of a third alternative, C. Possibly the most famous substitution for A, B, and C is Bush, Clinton, and Perot. A more recent (possible) example is that of Gore, Bush, and Nader.

   I’m not saying that there aren’t any almost-fair democratic systems, but the main point of this comment is to ask the question: what do you mean by “democratic”? (Secondarily, why do you think that definition describes a good thing to achieve?)

   Tim

   Comment by Tim McKenzie — May 17, 2007 @ 5:46 pm

9. 

   I’m concerned that by reacting to abuse of Wikipedia because there are no real names, we are going to unintentionally open ourselves up to a bunch of more insidious and damaging abuse because we *do* require a link to a real name. So instead of sockpuppets on wikipedia, we may unintentionally be encouraging password hijacking, or worse full blown identity theft on Citizendium. Both of these are crimes that *can* be prosecuted, but in what jurisdiction? All we may know is that a hijacked computer in Estonia logged into Dr. X’s citizendium account while he was on sabbatical in Eastern Europe. For sophisticated attacks, we will never find the perpetrator, and for less sophisticated attacks, do we really want to be invoking potentially repressive legal regimes into action against someone we only suspect may have stolen a password?

   In fact, by requiring real names, we expose citizendium contributors to real-world risk, as there is a direct link between an article, and the physical whereabouts of that person. I’ll bring up repressive legal regimes again and ask why shouldn’t we allow identities that are NOT linked to a real name. If there is an article on the environmental consequences of farming practices in China, the best experts on the subject may have very good reason not to use a real name. We have researchers in the United States who do not feel comfortable, or are not allowed to use a real name by condition of their employer. One case of this would be computer chip manufacturing technology. The real experts in this field all work in industry, and would not be allowed by non-disclosure agreements to use their real name. Employers and managers in fields like this can and do support *informal* disclosure of some types of information, but it can not come out in any officially sanctioned form. This can’t happen if real names are a requirement.

   I’m not proposing we get rid of real names.. they *are* a good indicator of identity.. but if we are talking about the philosophy of identity, there are ways of having an identity that does not involve a real name that still allow democratic, or maybe more specifically in citizendium’s case, meritocratic polity.

   I suppose the fundamental issue is more that an identity has a cost to obtain… it just so happens that you only get one real-name identity, so the cost is arbitrarily high, *if* you follow the law. If you don’t follow the law, or don’t have appropriate law to follow, real-name identities can easily be bought and sold.

   What I think we should really be concerned about is not real names, but the mapping of reputation to identity. But then we are not really talking about the classic idea of democracy, i.e. one person one vote. I don’t know that citizendium should aspire to be a democracy either.. we should be a meritocracy, where an identity of merit (aka, good reputation AND expertise in an area) has a larger vote than an identity which has not *yet* proven to be of merit.

   Comment by Troy Benjegerdes — May 17, 2007 @ 9:21 pm

10. 

    I really do not understand why someone would want to publish anonymously. Even if you live in China you can describe something that is verifiably true without danger. And if it is not verifiable then surely it is just gossip and has no place in a discussion of actualities.

    In my introduction to myself I said I dislike censorship. I now realize I loathe anonymity almost as much. It is only permissible when used creatively; to hurt or wound. In fact it is the coward’s way out.

    However, we now come to the real reason why I am here. When you begin reading Larry Sanger’s piece, right at the top there, you find the word ‘may’ used in both rules 1 and 2, but it is not clear till the end that ‘may’ means ‘is not barred from’ or even ‘most likely will’ in this context. There is a suggestion of encouragement, which was not intended. I suggest substitution of ‘might’. In a set of rules there should ne no possibility of ambiguity.

    Comment by Eddie Philpott-Kent — May 18, 2007 @ 2:19 am

11. 

    Larry, that is a superb analysis, and except for one tangential quibble, I agree in all respects.

    I would go so far as to say, however, that by “democratization” people really *do* mean anarchy: their ideal of “rule by the people” is that each person can rule. Kind of like the race of Cyclops described in Homer’s Odyssey (each could make his own law). The problem of anarchy is that it facilitates bullying.

    My “quibble” is that to limited extent, identities such as “Eloquence” or even “User:172″ can be built up and established by long familiarity. A person with a certain nickname which YOU can remember, and associate with what they’ve said and done, can become know to YOU even if you don’t know them as Charlie Parker, 123 Main St., Provo, Utah. If they get themselves banned, they could reincarnate themselves and go to the trouble of establishing a new identity. Only this time, they can profit from the lessons of the misdeeds that got them banned.

    However, it is a rare dog who can learn new tricks like this. So my quibble is no more than a quibble.

    For a massive online collaboration such as Wikipedia has been trying (and you are trying anew), in many cases we must demand more accountability. For anything but the most trivial or easily checked topics (such as geography and sports), we need more than just anonymity; we need a persona. For more important topics - and this is where Citizendium intends to focus I presume, nicknames are not enough. With a few exceptions that must be known to the editor in chief, the writing community needs to know who their fellow writers are.

    Reputation carries weight. There’s no getting around that. If Michael Mann logs in and wants to write about the Medieval Warm Period, his reputation will precede him. He’s not an “authority” but actually someone accused of scientific fraud. He shouldn’t be allowed to contribute under a nickname, because we need to know that we can’t trust him to reveal data which contradicts his POV.

    To make an objective article, or at least a balanced or neutral one, we need to be clear what POV each contributor espouses. I am completely open about siding with the “natural cycles” theory of Fred Singer. Mann and Connolley, if they log in, have a track record of bias against natural cycles.

    Anyone who is a POV supporter needs an Editor above him to ensure that he “plays fair”. Readers would expect no less.

    Indeed, we may have to make a special policy for scientific controversies - which goes beyond or is an extension of “NPOV”. Something like, Any claim to be “science” must adhere to the [[scientific method]] by (1) showing how the theory is related to actual observations and (2) specifying at least one derived hypothesis which could possibly be falsified by the discovery of facts which contradict it. Claims which do not fit this schema would simply be treated the same as political or historical claims: “he said vs. she said”.

    Ed Poor

    Comment by Ed Poor — May 18, 2007 @ 10:42 am

12. 

    ‘For voting and the democratic process of discussion to be fair, each person’s vote, and voice, must count for just one. (Postulate/definition of “fairness.”)’

    This doesn’t require true names, and in a democratic system it is often preferrable to use a pseudonym. The trick is to make sure that each person gets one and only one name.

    By using pseudonymity, as opposed to anonymity, the tension between democracy and meritocracy is eliminated. Persons can demonstrate their experise under their pseudonym. The technology for securely transferring reputations from one name to another is also available. See the first reference here:

    http://dss.secureid.org/stories/storyReader14

    dss

    Comment by David Stodolsky — May 19, 2007 @ 4:19 am

13. 

    Seth A Woolley:

    “‘Rules cannot be enforced without effective punishment. (From the definition of “enforcement.”)’

    “This doesn’t follow — I think you mean to say “restraint” instead of “punishment” (also in the rule above it).”

    No, I meant punishment. Enforcement of rules can’t happen without the threat of some punishment hanging over the heads of the people who are supposed to be following the rules; that’s what enforcement is. Granted, it is possible to restrain people from ever breaking a rule in the first place, but in that case, presumably there is no need for the rule in the first place; and in any case, the restraint makes rules enforcement unnecessary. As long as rules enforcement is necessary, it requires the threat of punishment.

    “There are a number of ways to make sure rules are followed without reference to identity, including screening by a set of people who are trusted.”

    There is a difference between a commonly-used practice or standard, and a rule. Sure, there are ways to make an anonymous group follow certain practices voluntarily–but not consistently. As anyone who has ever managed an ordinary mailing list, forum, wiki, or other similar social software knows, eventually people will come along and make a big nuisance of themselves, often deliberately. Unless there is a regular, justifiable way to put such people in check–in other words, a rule and a way to enforce it–you’ll just have to undo the abuse (if your software allows it), and in any case suffer the consequences. And one of the consequences is that you can’t have a polity, because the fundamental policies defining your polity can’t be enforced.

    “That you have identified editors is enough to create rules upon your content. Identifying authors is not really necessary unless you want to have specific privileges that become eliminated based on identity.”

    Well, in order to enforce a rule, you must remove some privilege; if you don’t know who an author is, you essentially allow the author to run amuck, not necessarily under a given identity, but under new ones.

    “Wikipedia insists that self-correction is done through peer review — and that the content of what is contributed is more important than who contributed it. By defining most if not the vast majority of their rules in terms of content and not identity, they really do have rules that require no knowledge of identity.”

    This doesn’t make much sense: “self-correction is done through peer review”? If your peers are correcting you, it’s not self-correction. And in any case, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with this misuse of the phrase “peer review,” as if Wikipedians were academic journal reviewers. I wrote about this a long time ago on the Meta-Wiki (yet another Wikipedia component I started and named, by the way).

    “By defining most if not the vast majority of their rules in terms of content and not identity”–this is confused. We might say that all rules have at least two components: a behavior to be ordered or forbidden, and a class of person said to be thus ordered or forbidden. The point of having a rule forbidding some action is precisely to forbid someone from taking the action. If you can’t identify who has done the action, you can ban the user account, you can undo the damage, and you might be able to change the software so that compliance is no longer voluntary, but what you can’t do is to prevent that same person from repeating the offense.

    Wikipedia struggles mightily to adhere to rules, but it ultimately fails precisely because sockpuppetry allows uncorrectable people to stay on as long as they damn well please–as anyone familiar with Wikipedia knows very well. Wikipedia acts as an anarchical mob, not as a polity.

    Comment by Larry Sanger — May 19, 2007 @ 7:12 am

14. 

    Aruna Kulatunga said:
    “In real world politics, proof of identity, either through peer identification, electronic or other forms of acceptable identity, such as a driving licence, a national identity card etc, has become an increasing necessity to preserve the “fairness”, or the “democratic” part about elections. Given that, I see no impediment to proof of identity being the first checkpoint. Looking into the future, I suspect the IP6 system can and will provide a permanent identity marker to all individual users of the net.”

    Gee, I hope not. I think identity is necessary for democratic polity, but that doesn’t mean I’m not in favor of anonymity online. Those communities just can’t be democratic polities, that’s all! Anonymity online is itself a positive innovation of modern society, on my view.

    Comment by Larry Sanger — May 19, 2007 @ 7:20 am

15. 

    Peter Ingerman and Andrew Barnert both make the point that my arguments don’t require that identities have to be publicly known. I concede the point. I even hinted at it myself — look at the parenthetical bit: “So, on either argument, knowing identities is necessary for a democratic polity. That’s the philosophical argument for using real names and against anonymity (and pseudonymity of the sort where even the organizers don’t know a participant’s identity).” This actually is why CZ allows pseudonyms (if the constabulary is convinced that a person has a good reason for one); but we still know who the people with pseudonyms are (there are only a very few in CZ).

    I agree that we need separate arguments for making real names public — but we’ve got them.

    Andrew went on to say: “In fact, I’m not sure that you’ve established (or, for that matter, that it’s true) that perfect verifiability is necessary. A system that has a “pretty good” chance of detecting sockpuppetry and a “pretty good” chance of assigning appropriate punishment may be a “pretty good” system in practice. The fact that a small number of sock puppets will escape verification and therefore subvert the system is not necessarily a fatal flaw…”

    I am not sure that my arguments require “perfect verifiability,” either, which is a good thing, because CZ doesn’t have perfect verifiability, just “pretty good for practical purposes” verifiability. What the existence of a democratic polity does require, however, is that we confirm identities reasonably well.

    Andrew also said: “What’s the percentage of American citizens who have parked 61 minutes in a 60-minute zone? Driven 66mph on a 65 freeway? Smoked marijuana? Miscalculated (or intentionally cheated or questionably-intentionally fudged) their tax returns? I’d guess it’s at least a majority in all of these cases.”

    Point well taken, but the point is that rules, to exist, have to be enforceable. Even if they are imperfectly enforced, rules against speeding are nevertheless enforceable–unlike, say, the old laws against certain sexual practices, after modern mores made it politically impossible to enforce them.

    Andrew once more: “Finally, I certainly understand the attempt to find out what’s wrong with Wikipedia, but are you certain that it’s a technical/procedural problem in the first place? Does their checkuser system work poorly because it’s a bad idea? Or it could it be a good idea, unfortunately undercut by Wikipedia’s interface with the outside world (the open invititation to edit anonymously) actively inviting abuse? Or by internal cultural flaws (the insularity, cult of personality, ad-hoc but deep hierarchy, etc.)? Or maybe just because it was added too late, after years or admins judging identity questions based on individual intuitions?”

    Well, I wasn’t trying to explain everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia, but only its governance problems (and doing that, by the way, wasn’t my main purpose in any case), and I admit that I gave only a partial explanation of those. After all, back when I was involved, there were several people who broke the rules on a very regular basis and did so using their own names–or, we knew who they were, anyway. But we didn’t decide that, yes, it really was necessary to ban people sometimes in order to enforce rules, until relatively late in the game (toward the end of 2001). Consequently, as I explained in my memoir, it was as if we didn’t have any rules at all. That’s partly my fault, I’m afraid…

    Comment by Larry Sanger — May 19, 2007 @ 7:59 am

16. 

    Larry Sanger said, “I agree that we need separate arguments for making real names public — but we’ve got them.” I’d like to see those arguments. (This isn’t a challenge; I’m genuinely interested. As I said, I can imagine good arguments in both directions, and the question is fun to think about as well as useful.) Any links?

    “Even if they are imperfectly enforced, rules against speeding are nevertheless enforceable.” But how imperfectly? There’s a difference between “a small number of criminals occasionally get off” and “almost everyone breaks the law habitually and only a small fraction of them are caught.”

    In this case, the law has not had its intended effect: the flow of traffic on American freeways is not 55mph. Meanwhile, we have everything from wasted fuel to accidents caused by people slamming on the brakes every time they see a cop. We have a thriving trade in radar detectors and other devices designed specifically to circumvent the law. We have made the vast majority of the country into habitual lawbreakers, which has an obvious effect on people’s respect for the law. We waste valuable police effort. And finally, being so haphazardly enforced makes these laws easily open to abuse–and, in fact, minorities, people in flashy cars, drivers in certain jurisdictions, etc. are generally much more likely to get pulled over for the exact same crime.

    “… unlike, say, the old laws against certain sexual practices, after modern mores made it politically impossible to enforce them.” Is this really how we want laws to be changed? Look at the drug laws, which are currently on the borderline of the public will. The majority of people are criminals, there are jurisdictional battles around issues like San Francisco’s marijuana growing clubs, the laws are enforced unfairly, etc. Is this the model we want to follow?

    “But we didn’t decide that, yes, it really was necessary to ban people sometimes in order to enforce rules, until relatively late in the game (toward the end of 2001). Consequently, as I explained in my memoir, it was as if we didn’t have any rules at all. That’s partly my fault, I’m afraid…” I understand wanting to make up for past mistakes–just make sure you don’t let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction and make mistakes just as big this time around.

    Also, this seems to support, rather than contradict, the possibility that Wikipedia’s current policies might actually be ok, and they only fail because they were instituted far too late (and too piecemeal), so an unworkable culture has already hardened that’s difficult to fix. If we start with overly restrictive policies and only loosen them after we’ve already built up a culture, might we not face the same kind of fate?

    Anyway, if this sounds adversarial, I didn’t intend that. My position still stands: I don’t think there is an obviously right answer, but I think CZ, with its proposed policies, is at very worst a good experiment to help determine the right answer, and may turn out to be close enough to right to succeed; at any rate, I can’t see any reason not to support it.

    Comment by Andrew Barnert — May 19, 2007 @ 3:39 pm

17. 

    Andrew–I’m not sure how to respond, because I frankly don’t know what you’re advocating. Why don’t you elaborate?

    Comment by Larry Sanger — May 19, 2007 @ 6:59 pm

18. 

    I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is just sophistry:

    “No, I meant punishment. Enforcement of rules can’t happen without the threat of some punishment hanging over the heads of the people who are supposed to be following the rules; that’s what enforcement is. Granted, it is possible to restrain people from ever breaking a rule in the first place, but in that case, presumably there is no need for the rule in the first place; and in any case, the restraint makes rules enforcement unnecessary. As long as rules enforcement is necessary, it requires the threat of punishment.”

    So, when enforcement isn’t needed, the rule isn’t needed? That’s another false assumption.

    Restraint isn’t a type of enforcement?

    I only need a simple counterexample to prove your line of thinking unsound:

    Rule: Subjects of comments may not be more than 256 characters

    Enforcement: don’t accept a posted comment with a subject of more than 256 characters. Nicely inform the user of the rule.

    Rule: The Firewall should not accept connections to port 25

    Enforcement: drop connections to port 25

    I think you are confusing two definitions of enforcement:

    1) the use of punishment to make people follow rules

    2) the things that make rules followed

    You use sense 2 to complete your argument, but when I point out that enforcement (sense 2) includes restraint which is not punishment, you say that sense 1 is the definition of enforcement, so I’m wrong — non sequitur.

    Only rules that require identity in their definition need identity for enforcement. That demolishes your second argument. I suspect you’ve fallen into the trap of anthropomorphizing the philosophy of law by defining polity in terms that must link back to punishment. The main problem is that polity has a typical context of human affairs. Ultimately what we want to improve is the store of “objective knowledge”, which is not a human affair or behavior, since it is by definition (in adjective) objective. No matter what humans do, the objective world we’re trying to catalogue will not change fundamentally. Furthermore, a democratic polity doesn’t make the information any better — then plurality or majority wins the day. I don’t think you want to intermingle expertise and democracy — they are diametrically opposed at some points, so I consider this secondary appeal to democracy a red-herring to making a better expert-driven Citizendium.

    BTW, I don’t disagree with identity validation, I just think the argument is unsound. You and wikipedia have done a Hegelian show: no identity trust to complete identity trust. I suspect the happy medium is anonymous authors, identified editors, and nothing you’ve said here shows why that’s not valid.

    Seth

    Comment by Seth A Woolley — May 22, 2007 @ 4:49 pm

19. 

    [...] means of resolution.  And if someone is ejected from the project, he’ll have another sockpuppet, registered over a month ago, ready to step in and render the disciplinary action essentially [...]

    Pingback by Citizendium Blog » Wikipedia’s latest band-aid — September 21, 2007 @ 11:17 am

20. 

    [...] of Wikipedia insiders essentially uses to deliberate about sockpuppets — something I’ve repeatedly warned is the Achilles’ heel of any collaborative system that permits pseudonymity and [...]

    Pingback by Citizendium Blog » Wikipedia’s latest governance woes — December 9, 2007 @ 10:44 am

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