On 31/03/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 3/30/07, Kelly Martin
<kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
* A mapping of categories onto Subject Working
Groups needs to be
established. Each Subject Working Group is responsible for the
maintenance of all articles which are categorized within categories
assigned to that SWG. (If an article is within the scope of multiple
SWGs, an arbitration process, with both automated and deliberative
components, will determine which SWG will be primarily responsible for
it.)
And *why* exactly would we need this all-pervading bureaucracy? Who
cares which group is "primarily" responsible for the article? You're
confusing the idea of the SWG as a place to ask for help with the
article with that of the SWG as a place to excercise control over it;
unless the primary group is to be given some unique function relative
to the non-primary ones, knowing which one it happens to be is
useless.
(You do realize that virtually every article will be in such an
intersected scope, if only because subject-oriented groups are
orthogonal to country-oriented ones, yes?)
I think bureaucracy is the wrong word. The idea is to impose a
radically different, prescriptive structure onto Wikipedia to ensure
that all articles are managed and brought to a particular standard.
Where bureaucracy suggests evolutionary build up of layers of
redundancy, this system would, ideally, be technical and streamlined.
This technicality would eliminate the need for bureaucratic layers.
Take a look at [[OTRS]] if you aren't familiar with how this system
could work. I think the demonstration that such formalised, technical
collaboration models work is demonstrated by [[Distributed
Proofreaders]]. Contributors are given small, finite tasks to perform
(eg. proofreading is broken down into a series of tasks - each task
being to proof read a single page. Contributors, are asked to compare
a page of text which has been processed by OCR to the original scan.
There are three layers of proofreading, so each page is proofread
three times by different users. Users are free to contribute as much
or as little as they like. Compare this to hypothetical WikiProofread
where users are presented with large pages of text and are expected to
proofread this text in no formalised fashion. Since the task is not
broken down and fed to contributors, it seems insurmountable and very
little work gets done.
The SWG would not see a list of articles which need to be fixed up in
a number of ways as they currently do (making the task seem
insurmountable and the achievements seem minimal). What needs to be
done would be broken down into easily-manageable discrete tasks which
will effectively be ticked off as each is fulfilled. This system would
ensure an observable progress and give the contributors a sense of
achievement. The SWG would therefore have a series of discrete tasks
to perform.
* Editors,
most of whose edits are made to articles categorized within
a specific SWG, will be identified and asked to form a SWG (or
formalize an existing informal one).
Who would be doing the asking, and what would they do if the editors
refuse? Keep in mind that they *are* volunteers.
Bots and scripts could associate particular users with SWGs based on
their recent edit history and send them a request to join.
* SWGs will
have the responsibility to ensure that all articles within
their ambit are properly sourced, cleaned up, etc.
* Any article which remains unsourced for one month will be deleted.
A bot will detect unsourced articles and notify the responsible SWG of
the article and the need to source it.
So, basically, mass deletions of hundreds of thousands of articles.
(The groups will not, in general, have either the manpower or the
motivation to really fix any substantial portion of what's unsourced.
The only result you're likely to see is that editors will start
pasting in references -- *any* references -- in an attempt to avoid
having the articles deleted.)
This hasn't occurred under the organic system where a lot of pressure
is on to verify with references, why would it occur under this system?
There are
already a lot of SWGs on Wikipedia, with varying degrees of
organization; many WikiProjects qualify as such. However, both the
automation and the sense of group responsibility is not currently
present, and needs to be cultivated. We need these people to feel
personally responsible for the quality of all of the articles in their
SWG.
And how, precisely, are you intending to do that? Rounding up the
WikiProjects and telling them that they're doomed unless they source
all their articles is going to be extremely counterproductive; faced
with a negative motivational strategy, the volunteer editors will
simply leave.
I don't think introducing a new system is equivalent to "rounding up
WikiProjects and telling them they're doomed unless they source the
articles". WikiProjects will be identified as existing SWGs and the
contributors will be asked to join the SWG.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)