I would be all for your rotating moderators proposal except for one thing; the user RK. He has an incredible number of "edits" to his name, but with his style of trying to (not) work with people, giving him moderatorship would be like handing a flame-thrower to a psychopath in a crowded subway station. I agree with Ed, Isis, and others that "Throbbing Monster Cock" isn't an appropriate name for the Wiki, even though it is a good joke when you see the picture of the chicken. I think Ed, and many others would be great with "moderator" powers. But I worry that with powers come the power-hungry, drawn like moths to a flame. I'd rather put up with some inconvenience now, than suffer when the power-hungry finally manage to weasel their way into positions of power sometime down the road. Lir is a nuisance, and I'm not sure what the solution to her is. She seems to honestly try to contribute, but she just doesn't know how an encyclopedia should go, and what things are appropriate to put in, and what things are better left out. Her articles on Sumer and "Wealth of the Nations" are good examples. The problem is she is so prolific; she overwhelms the small number of editors who are available to "fix" her modifications. How do we know she isn't a saboteur sent from the Encyclopedia Britannica to mess up the Wikipedia? She has lowered the tone and credibility of an incredible number of our articles. But I find it hard to recommend any specific action against her; there are those who violently disagree with my edits on some religious topics on the Wikipedia, and if Lir is acted against, how much longer until they demand that I be limited, merely because of my holding a different POV from the majority? I sincerely want the Wikipedia to be the best it can be; and my intimate knowledge of some of the topics I edit *is* at odds with what many people believe; what will protect me from mob rule, when the mob considers my NPOV to be straight-up false propaganda? The one thing I can say is I agree that clarification and codification of our cultural policies are always appropriate. Our Debian "policy" document now runs many pages in length, but it lets all of us work smoothly and harmoniously together, despite being 1000 strong. Jonathan On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 02:33:29PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote: -- Geek House Productions, Ltd. Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting, QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation, General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998 Phone: 604-435-1205 Email: djw(a)reactor-core.org Webpage: http://reactor-core.org Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2

Larry, good idea. I presume you wrote this before reading my response to your last mail, so here are my additions. OTHER: I see two possible problems: a problem of simple, easy to discern vandalism and nonsense on the one hand and not so simple to evaluate violations of group policy on the other hand. I submit that vandalism is a significant and possibly growing problem that is not properly addressed, because, while it's simple to solve, too few people are involved in its solution (too few sysops), but increasing their number also increases the risks of abuse and error. The current administration is therefore not scalable. I do consider the problem of regular users who break rules significant, but not urgent, and believe that our policy needs to focus on rehabilitation. I further submit that we do, in fact, need a decision process to decide which policies we want to enforce against regular users and how much leeway we want to give them, i.e. to which extent we want to rely on "soft security". OTHER: The Open Voting Option: Users can create two types of polls, inquiry polls (non binding) and policy polls (binding, with enforcement). Only a smaller group of users (still larger than the current admin group) can create policy polls, but the same group of users (e.g. everyone with >=n contributions) can vote in both types of polls. Policy polls can contain only specific types of options: ban user X, delete page Y, etc., but still follow the same discussion/voting principle. Polls get their own namespace, and on the page where the poll is, users can also provide arguments for or against the different options. So I would go to [[Poll:Ban Lir]] and could see the different opinions and vote on them. PRO CONTRA Lir has made many silly Lir has made xx valuable contributions and can't contributions and is trying be trusted to improve her behavior VOTE Yes [ ] No [ ] Don't care [ ] More info needed [ ] .. other standard options for policy polls? .. Inquiry polls would allow the options to be defined freely and primarily be used to gather opinions in less extreme conflicts among reasonable persons. As voting styles, both first-past-the-post (winner takes all) and preferential voting are reasonably simple and should be supported, policy polls work better with fpp voting (clearly distinct options). Recently added polls would be listed on a separate page like Recent_changes. The poll would be closed after a given timespan, defined by the person who creates it. For policy polls, depending on the type of action, we could set different threshold for whether we want to take it, e.g. banning an anon user should be easier than banning a signed in user. Minimum number of votes may be necessary, but not too high. Possible problems: - we need to develop effective ways to deal with vote flooding in the long term (the system can be designed to repel basic attacks) - ?? Regards, Erik