lcrocker(a)nupedia.com wrote:
If we want to give "reliable" users
privileges that we don't
immediately give to everyone, that's great. But just give them--
don't build a whole system of automating it, just give them to those
who ask, and who have earned them. I would far rather that flag be
set by a real human being exercising judgment than by some
meaningless process.
I understand what you are saying, but
1. one of the goals here is to create a system which avoids even the
appearance of favoritism or bias. The process of "earning" the
privileges should leave little or no discretion to the owners of
the project...
2. The "privileges" under consideration are really quite small. For
the most part, the concept is to protect the most highly
trafficked pages from sheer malicious vandalism. So to "earn" the
privilege should be quite easy -- you basically just have to be
around for a few days and not be malicious. Even people who we
don't like should be allowed to edit pretty much anything, as long
as they aren't being malicious and are willing to ultimately go
along with community consensus.
-----
The only reason to even bring this up is that there have recently been
some initial incidents of true vandalism. Someone put a pornographic
cartoon on the homepage of the site one night. Another person has
been going through writing "fart" on various pages. I don't think
anyone (even The Cunctator, who has been reluctant to endorse any form
of protection out of fear of a cabal) regards these acts as merely
legitimate differences of opinion.
It is possible -- but unlikely, I think -- that someday we will have a
big huge argument between two or more legitimate participants, an
argument which degenerates into massive delete wars or edit wars.
We've seen something similar between a couple of otherwise legitimate
people lately, although it ended (badly) within the space of an hour.
SOMEDAY, we may have to find a way to deal with a problem like that.
But for now, we're just interested in tightening things up *just the
tiniest amount* on *just the most likely pages for vandalism*.
--
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