Forum:Preventing cabal editing

I read your page about our desire to stop editing cabals from blocking any new activity that doesn't fit with their point of view. I still don't understand exactly what it is that we're going to do to prevent editing cabals from forming. You need to quantify exactly what constitutes cabal editing. Simply saying "let people post what they want in the face of overwhelming opposition" is just going to be a doorway for all sorts of loonies to post their garbage by saying "Oh look! I'm being harassed by an editing cabal!" And you can't just tell people not to be part of editing cabals because they believe themselves to be defending the wiki from lunacy. DondreKhan (talk) 01:13, 23 May 2014 (EDT)
 * It's a very difficult problem for that exact reason. Simply targeting any group of editors who persistently refute ramblings of crack users as being members of an editing cabal is just going to create an open door wherein revisionists simply need to get their contributions rejected in order to get their opponents taken out of the picture on the grounds that they are part of an editing cabal.  I have an idea that greatly restricting adminship will at least prevent them from getting banned outright.  A requirement of proving wiki cabal activity should be rejection of information attributed to reputable sources.  If a user's contributions are rejected persistently yet their sources stand up to scrutiny and are reputable and not based on fringe theories, then I would say that the rejection was the result of cabal editing.  The loonies who are going to try to insert nonsense about the Civil War probably aren't going to be able to provide reputable sources for their ideas simply because none will exist.  Lieutenant S. Reznov (talk) 16:17, 23 May 2014 (EDT)
 * Typically, a cabal forms or can flourish when there is a strong motive to slant the topic matter in a particular direction (which can be easily defeated by keeping the wiki topic matter as objective as possible), there is a lax enforcement against such cabals (Flagged Revisions largely defeats any cabals from being able to make considerable headway), or the wiki is of such stature that it would attract large groups of like minded people attempting to insert an ideological slant (Wikipedia fights this problem quite a bit due to its prominence). At the moment, this wiki is not in any danger of a cabal forming, so merely writing some concise rules about how this wiki has an emphasis on objective, peer reviewed history writing and does not allow POV pushing would be a good start to prevent this problem from ever arising. Arcane (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2014 (EDT)
 * I think that Flagged Revisions would prevent editing cabals from having their way insofar as they wouldn't be able to remove users' contributions without approval and they might be disinclined to edit warring to remove content if approval is required before it appears to readers. Cabals would be a serious problem if the reviewers ever became part of them, which is something that they could do completely unintentionally.  I agree that a strong emphasis on peer review and reliable sources with a focus on reliability, reputability, and lack of fringe theories would go along way toward preventing ideological slant.  There is still a possibility that users might cherry pick sources to support a particular slant, but this could be defeated by making sure that users who supply reliable sources offering a counter opinion are able to do so.  In the end, I think that having admins who will ensure that any properly supported material can be added will prevent cabals from running a particular POV.  Users should also be resistant to the concern troll tactic that revisionists use of claiming to just wanting to restore balance and remove bias.  Holocaust deniers take a far more insidious moral high ground approach where they try to portray their opponents as supporting mass atrocities against Germans.  Having a metaspace essay on those tactics should help.  I don't recommend writing policies about Neo Nazis for the time being, as we're already specialized in World War II, and I don't want this turning into the Nazis Wiki, which happened to the History channel until it turned into the aliens channel.  DondreKhan once pointed out that saying the word Nazi is "like using the N-word."  I wouldn't avoid Nazi related historical subjects over it, but writing policies about them when they haven't even shown up is going to look like fighting them simply for the sake of fighting them.  Lieutenant S. Reznov (talk) 17:34, 23 May 2014 (EDT)