On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Brandon Harris
<bharris@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 2/9/11 11:20 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
> Pretty clear problem I can see wi' this - users can be controversial,
> yet useful. If you want article writing help, or an example to follow in
> writing content, Malleus Fatuorum (on en-wiki) is a great one. That
> doesn't mean he's a popular one. I fear this could lead to the idea that
> being popular is more important than being competent.
The idea that such a system could be gameable is one that I've been
spending a lot of time thinking about.
There are several thoughts I have on the matter.
The most important one comes from the fact that Wikipedia has only one
"status" to aspire to: Administrator.
If you don't want to become a wiki-janitor, well. We've got nothing for
you. There is no other status.
But what if we *did* have other statuses? Ones that didn't necessarily
have janitorial powers, ones that were awarded by the community?
Something like "Recognized Newbie Ambassador" for people who want to be
helpful to new users, or "Featured Editor" for those who spend a lot of
time editing, or a "Recognized Researcher," for those who don't know
from copy-editing but are ninjas at locating references?
In much the same way that users are nominated to become administrators,
they could be nominated to those positions. And their reputation
"karma" (or whatever) can be used as *evidence* for the nomination
(rather than having it be automatically granted).
Wikipedia has a crazy-powerful brand status. Imagine a day when you're
at a random party and someone introduces themselves and tries to impress
you not for being a "software engineer" but because they're an Editor
Fellow for Wikipedia? Something to take pride in that is officially
recognized by the community.
On Wikipedia, reputation *cannot* become a "currency" (even though I
used that term). It's like the music business: it's not "what have you
ever done for me" it's "what have you done for me lately?" Soft
expiration of the system would likely be required, and there would have
to be controls to handle obvious gaming, but those are implementation
details and we should think high-level.