

Ask HN: Best practices for community-edited site - matt1

I'm brainstorming an idea for a site that relies on contributions and edits from the internet community for content.<p>On one end of the spectrum you enable anyone to edit the page without any controls in place for moderation and for undoing garbage edits. On the other end of the spectrum you don't let anyone edit anything except for their own content (which isn't even collaborative editing).<p>I'm interesting in the middle ground.<p>Wikipedia, for example, lets anyone edit most of the pages (some are locked), and there are extensive revision controls in place and tools for limiting and blocking IP addresses.<p>With DotSpot, you sign up for an account and can then comment on webpages. Other people can edit your comments, after you've granted them permission.<p>And from what I understand about Mahalo, each page has a single editor that is in charge of its content.<p>My goal is to make it easy for people to edit and add to the site, but I also want to make it as difficult as possible for someone with 4chan-like resources to cause trouble.<p>What else is there? Any recommendations?
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jacquesm
We do this on daz.com, and use a single check on edits, users with more karma
check up on users with less, people can not verify edits from within the same
class 'A' address as the original edit.

So far so good, in quite a few years of operation not a single deliberate act
of vandalism. It's slowly getting larger and more complete.

By opening the floodgates I'm sure the number of edits would explode but so
would the spam problem. We're not in a hurry.

~~~
matt1
From daz's FAQ: _After several positive edits you will reach a level in which
you can also upload pictures, add reviews or even add samples._

Who decides what is a positive edit? I'm assuming you started off with a few
people who approved contributions and as the new people earned points, you
granted them the ability to decide for future edits, yes?

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, exactly. It's a tiered system, we started off by giving a few trusted
people 'level 2' and little by little it grew.

We didn't want to babysit the thing all the time.

