[WikiEN-l] "Software Weighs Wikipedians' Trustworthiness"

[Andrew Gray]

On 06/08/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The most exciting ones I can think of:
>
> #We can scrap the 'newest 1%' part of semi-protection. Instead of waiting
> 4 days, write 4 articles!
> #We can scrap editcountitis - this reputation metric may still not be ideal,
> but I suspect the metric will reflect the value of one's contributions *a
> heckuva* lot better than # of edits.

These two, and a few others, get into the problem that - as currently
implemented - the value of the metric is concealed. In order to use a
lot of these implementations we;d have to make a concious decision to
publicise that value, which just gives something new to game.

The first could be done without publicising the value, but it does
lead to two negative effects:

a) it's possible for someone to "go down" a grade in our trust system,
which isn't currently possible and has interesting implications

b) people don't know where they stand, and we can't tell them where
they stand or exactly how to improve. It's a complex model - as things
stand now, we can just say "wait a few days", and even when it was the
irregular newest-1% we could still say "oh, three or four days, should
be okay". However, it's going to muddy the waters a lot if we have to
say "make some substantive contributions and hope the computer likes
the look of you"...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk