Original source: Wikimedia Ethics/Ethical Breaching Experiments
Version of 2010-03-03T23:02:19 (source: Wikimedia data dump)
page started by Privatemusings: examples of breaching experiments from wikimedia projects
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
this area is brand new, and under development in January 2010
On this page we discuss, brainstorm, and possibly execute ethical breaching experiments - in particular whether or not such things are possible, and if so, how they might be designed and executed to best inform policy and practice on WMF projects.
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* Privatemusings 00:47, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Please have a go at your own definition below;
Ethical Breaching Experiment: An experiment which causes no harm in its execution, whilst yielding results useful for the greater good, or which inspire positive change, but which uses methods which may violate the letter or spirit of the guildeline "Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point" Privatemusings 00:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
''I have two lovely fake biographies on Wikipedia that have been there over 6 months. They've both been edited by other people, and contain fairly outlandish statements that anyone with an internet connection should know to be false. If they ever get removed, I'll write it all up at On Wikipedia, but they may perhaps remain forever and gradually become a part of history.''
''Plausible-sounding but fictitious references exist in Little Roger and the Goosebumps, but no effort has been made to remove them''
''This article on the Himalayan Panda was created on April Fools Day and lasted nearly 6 months before it was deleted. The reference and external link seemed to support it if you didn't read them carefully. It still lives on in a similar form on Persianne's user page. ''
Suggestions from Gomi (link)
1) Add citations to plausible-sounding but fictitious references to BLPs and/or health/medical articles. Inserting no actual defamation or misinformation, but supporting statements with fake references will show how open to abuse the Wiki model is;
2) Create articles on non-existent people and companies. This will be difficult, but if carefully checked to be non-existent, the harm done here is minimal;
3) Create fake articles on (non-existent) latin-named plants and animals, similar to #2, above;
Please head to the planning page for more information. (here is a copy of the planning page)
If an organization is so dysfunctional in correcting its defects that people are driven to perform "breaching experiments", then is there really any reason to hope that "breaching experiments" could lead to positive outcomes? If an organization cannot correct its problems through conventional means, then won't attempts to use unconventional means simply be crushed/ignored by the people in the organization who already prevent conventional methods from correcting existing problems?
The original Wikiversity page was deleted on 12 March 2010
The page was given a new name (The Ethics of Breaching Experiments) and deleted again on 15 March 2010.
See also: related events