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World177 | 2 years ago
I think you're right in that it's so far not been necessary to use blockchain based identities. Though, I think blockchain based identities are objectively better. In implementation, it doesn't have to be a random person, it could be anyone or any organization that could endorse changes.
> I'm not sure how a wholly external PKI could be any help in "endorsing" edits. A user's ETH wallet has no relation to their reputation or trustworthiness on WMF sites.
Ethereum based identities are easy to remember and harder to censor. If Wikipedia wants to censor someone currently, they can just remove the system they have implemented. The solution offered provides an external system that provides a way to determine if someone did something even if Wikipedia tries to hide it later. (with the certainty that also backs billions of dollars in value on Ethereum)
bawolff|2 years ago
No it doesn't.
This system is signing the revision id number (im assuming based on the video). There is not neccessary any connection between the signer and the revision id. There is no way to verify if the revision id was ever valid (typically revision ids are sequentially increasing numbers but there are edge cases where that is not true. And i dont mean censoring edge cases, although there are systems on wikipedia where pages can be deleted or revisions hidden)
So what does this system actually prove? That someone at a specific point in time signed an integer. Maybe that integer corrdsponds to a edit they like, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they never read the edit. Maybe the edit never existed.
This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it.
I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number.
NoZebra120vClip|2 years ago
Or you could, you know, get involved in the WP community and become an Administrator, and then you would actually have access to see those deleted edits and files without hindrance.
This whole bit seems to be some kind of hedge against Wikidata oversighters becoming evil and "covering up" some misdeeds or truths by abusing their powers to delete and suppress edits. While anything could happen, and I grant that this is a temptation to anyone, "signing an integer" as is proposed, with a completely unrelated identity in a completely unrelated PKI, is going to be utterly pointless and won't produce the accountability they seem to seek.
Also, if this signature isn't recorded on the blonkchain, then where is it going to be recorded? Wikidata ain't holding it for you. You've got to put it somewhere. Are you going to use IPFS or Dropbox or something?
World177|2 years ago
I wasn't really paying attention to the implementation, but just what is easily possible. It would be simple to sign the full edit and provide that to other people without ever storing it on chain. It's also possible to create a contract that serves for domains of an organization to sign messages, etc.
> This whole thing is seriously stupid. It is a non-solution to a non-problem. The problem they are trying to solve doesn't exist and even if it did this wouldn't fix it.
I think this a valid. I actually do think blockchains solve identity well through domains, though, with endorsements, there's already seemingly good trust to the accuracy of identity on social media platforms. As an example, there's not usually a question to whether Elon Musk was the person who made a Tweet endorsing something as true.
> I mean hell, at the very least you think they would sign a hash of the edit instead of just an id number.
With most blockchain based stuff, it seems like projects are frequently made without much consideration.
xinbenlv|2 years ago
OP: that's totally true, bawolff@. Our intention was to show case the signing part End-to-end workflow prototype. In real production one could be signing for a diff patch, or a full update.