Grants talk:IdeaLab/Reduce attack pages which get picked up by other sites

Is this on point?

I like the idea, but I have to ask: is it relevant to the campaign? As I understand it, the purpose of the campaign is to reduce on-wiki harassment. This seems to be aimed at reducing the use of Wikipedia for off-wiki harassment. Those are different.

The last campaign I was involved in had a problem with people proposing ideas which weren't related to the topic at hand. You seem like a sharp fellow, so I think if you focused on the purpose of the campaign you might do some good (although develop this idea too). Dingsuntil (talk) 11:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not in charge of the Internet

We have mechanisms in place already for dealing with attack pages. Searching for attack pages is a lot of thankless, unpleasant work going through a bunch of garbage. There's no real solution to it beyond what we already have.

If some external site engages in harassment, Wikipedia has zero power to stop them. We're not in charge of the Internet, and it isn't our place to be an army - nor is it desirable. There's nothing we can do to stop other people from engaging in harassment off-site. The Wikipedia scraping sites are their own thing. Titanium Dragon (talk) 07:47, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually NoIndex is a real solution. If a mirror site scrapes and copies an attack page that was only NoIndex on our site then they would be vulnerable to criticism. WereSpielChequers (talk) 06:48, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

There is likely to be a feedback effect to wikipedia: if the attack pages are scraped and repeated by other sites, then that provides an incentive to the attackers to build attack pages within wikipedia. "Yay! Wikipedia is vulnerable! This is fun!" (or whatever). It is our problem, folks, and we should try to reduce it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

• @Titanium Dragon: No-index is entirely within our control. If other sites are scraping us and ignoring no-index then it's their fault. But at the moment, they can claim we didn't use reasonable measures to warn their scripts. On the flip side, some websites will continue to scrap us regardless because their goal is to capture deleted material.--TParis (talk) 19:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Need to test if no-index works

Assuming you don't agree that this is off-topic, or just want my comments:

You need to run a test to see if no-index/robots.txt/whatever actually works. What Wikipedia mirror sites are there, and do they obey no-index? You'd probably need to get some kind of special administrative permission to create a new article which wouldn't be subject to deletion and would be marked no-index. Then see which mirror sites pick it up (and what their traffic levels are; it may be that no significant mirror disobeys it).

For that matter, it'd be good to know how quickly on average the various mirrors pick up new content on average, and how quickly shitty new articles get deleted on average. Then you know how much of a problem you have. Dingsuntil (talk) 11:37, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

DMCA?

in regards to your suggestion, is any part of this something we could conceivably do under the terms of the DMCA? I know its been used to turn Youtube in a graveyard of god-damned ads and musicless videos, and I am not sure how exactly it would apply to Wikipedia (copy left and copy right are different beasts), but I've never thought about this before so I am interested to see if you have considered this angle of attack. TomStar81 (talk) 05:11, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

• It isn't Wikipedia's job to police the Internet; Wikipedia getting involved in legal disputes with third-party sites is undesirable and a distraction. In any case, given that Wikipedia deleted the information in question, which never should have been on Wikipedia in the first place, and which was originated by some troll, it seems like the whole thing is going to create legal questions which might not have clear answers. Additionally, if the information is fact or opinion, any sort of action on Wikipedia's part would probably go against our core principles anyway. We don't have any place promulgating attack pages, but trying to stop people from spreading true information or opinions on the Internet is not something Wikipedia should be doing. If the content is maliciously false, then the proper course of action is notifying the host, followed by a lawsuit if they fail to remove the libelous material. Titanium Dragon (talk) 07:53, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

• but if it was on Wikipedia for a non-negligible amount of time, then Wikipedia could be dragged into that lawsuit. This proposal is protective for wikipedia itself. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:47, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

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