On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: It's only worth sharing if people think my opinion is worth something (i.e. if I rate highly enough on various "webs of trust" myself), so you'd end up with endless intersecting webs, each one trying to provide support for some other. This *is* the way it works in people's minds, to be sure, but trying to formalize it would be hopeless. And what happens when someone suddenly surprises me or let's me down? Do I have to remove him from some list? Inform others who've copied my list that X has fallen from favor? Exactly, at which point it becomes useless.

On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: A kind of "rate this user" thing, as on e-bay? It's interesting. Just thinking off the top of my head -- would it discourage people from getting involved in disputes, or from taking up unpopular positions? If only 10 people have made positive statements about me, and I can see that if I toe the party line on [[Islam]], maybe another few people will say nice things about me, how likely am I to insist that popular editor A cite his sources? In other words, would being liked become more important than editing courageously? Or rather (because it probably is more important at the moment), would that priority become formalized? Sarah

On 3/11/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think we already know the answer to thiis question.

On 11/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: "That is not dead which can eternal lie And with strange aeons, even death may die." -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

I work with some of the de.wiki editors on plants, and they're always a bit surprised at how scattered we are at en.wiki for all the articles we have, and they just seem to have far fewer outliers in every area than we have on en.wiki. Heck, they can even get away with common names instead of scientific names for organisms. This isn't just a function of the homogeneity of the language in the area, because it is not homogeneous, there are as many regions, hundreds of years (thousands in their case) of settlements, disturbances, migrations, wars, and interlopers that impacted the language as much as English--it's that de.wiki is different from en.wiki. Different in a way that apparently allows something like formalized common names and confidence networks to work for them. In essence it *is* a popularity contest as Sarah suggests. I have no interest in learning how to expand my popularity or add others to my list. Popularity contests among editors and administrators already make for problems, especially in all the nationalistic brouhahas. Also, the more things like this, user boxes, confidence networks that en.wiki has, the more ways to distinguish an ordinary editor from every one else, an editor who justs drops in sometimes to edit from the masses who spend chunks of time every day editing, the more en.wiki becomes a stratified society. Less ways to stratify editors is better than more ways, imo. Also en.wiki already informally does this, as others have pointed out. I know who to ask to edit an article, who not to ask, what editors I can ignore when they do edits on my watch list, what editors I can't ignore. Other editors send people to me with questions or issues, people ask me to settle disputes on certain issues, and I know what editors I can go to for the same thing. It takes a lot of time to learn this about other editors, formalizing it, I believe, might remove this necessary time and put new editors into doing it sooner than they really can do it. I loved realizing a few weeks ago that I could and should ask my favorite pop teen editor to work on an article about an african surgeon. I liked it when an editor I barely work with copied a new editor's post to my talk page, knowing I could answer the questions in it. Some things take time. Starting out with a network for editors to fill out, assign people to, will wind up like user boxes--a gadget, rather than a community building tool. New editors will spend an incredible amount of time on it, without any real understanding, without really gaining any insight into how wikipedia works, how the community works, without really becoming a part of their networks. It will consume time and energy that could be spent really becoming part of the existing networks. En.wiki just isn't that big on formalizing things, also, so implementing it probably would not occur. KP On 3/11/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: