As a long-time cross-platform user, I have been checking user rights for years. These
flag systems have strong differences among platforms.
They originate from lack of perspective, sometimes.. some long-time users have no interest
in analyzing them, there is a lack of literacy about flag systems that is quite critical
due to language barrier or limited interest in metrics. Such users often do not grasp
differences of similar names in different scenarios. I have witnessed long-time users who
"dominate" many of these local discussions mixing up concepts... when you have
no strong clue how validation of whole page version, single edit or users' edit
actually work, or can work... and how different or specific namespaces can also exist with
different protection rights, you just follow some long-term local "prejudice"
that are more or less different among platforms. Or simply, that some very active users
like or dislike.
Personally, I am in favor of a standard universal autoconfirmed flag and more flexible
project-oriented autopatrolled flag (that is, mostly manually given) or "extended
autoconfirmed" flag (that is, mostly based on automatic metrics) adapted to a
specific platform. Please notice how I am trying to use reasonable definitions from
different local scenarios, but they are not really defined anywhere IMHO.
For the universal autoconfirmed flag, the 4 days and 10 edits threshold are IMHO correct
for a "limbo" before getting some basic user right. it's practical to have
them always like that by default. I enter with the SUL system with my account on a new
platform, and by default I know to get that metric for some basic functionalities. 4 days
is "a little bit more than a week end" or "half a week" for example,
not too long or not too short.
A.
Il lunedì 4 ottobre 2021, 18:11:03 CEST, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> ha
scritto:
There's no evidence behind the majority of policies of any Wikimedia project, so I
don't think that's really an expectation.
As to enwiki, it appears that the 4-day threshold was in place well before 2008, but the
10-edit threshold was added in 2008:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_Proposal/Poll
The related "bugzilla" (now phabricator) ticket is here:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T16191
It was pretty clearly the position of Brion, the lead developer at the time, that even
making the change from 0 to 10 edits would be essentially inconsequential; however, he did
make that change. (Most of that ticket is an argument that the Enwiki community wanted a
7 day/20 edit threshold, and complaining that it wasn't applied.) My sense is that
adding the edit requirements actually did make a difference, although not really because
it resulted in vandalism/trolling accounts being left unused. It made them easier to
spot. I believe they also reduced the move vandalism that we were experiencing at a
ridiculous rate at the time.
I'm sure you'd be able to find similar discussions at other projects; I just
remember this one because I participated in it.
Risker/Anne
On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 at 06:19, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
I've been involved in this lengthy circular debate: What should be the autoconfirmed
age and article count in the Hebrew Wikipedia? See
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T243076 if you curious about this particular one, but
I'd love to ask a more global question:
How were these numbers calculated originally?
For the account age, the default is four days, or five or seven days for a few wikis.
For the edit count, the default is zero, but several wikis have 5, 10, 25, or 50.
(See
https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php and search
for "wgAutoConfirmAge" and "wgAutoConfirmCount".)
Some wikis have groups, usually called "extended confirmed", and with higher
counts; for example, 500 edits in English and some other languages (search for
wmgAutopromoteOnceonEdit on the same page).
So, how did the people arrive at these numbers? Why is it four days by default? Is it all
just intuition and guesses, or was there any research behind it?
Is it *good* that four days is the default for everyone, until someone bothers to update
it (most wikis don't)? Or is it just a coincidence that was defined for a certain wiki
and applied elsewhere? And when it's updated, why is it updated to one number and not
some other?
While I am an ardent supporter of the "anyone can edit" principle, it makes
general sense to have some restrictions based on edit count, account age, and perhaps
other parameters. But HOW are they calculated? Would it make sense to anyone to start
making some calculations around it and optimize the number for wikis of different sizes?
I'd imagine that there could be a calculation that says "in a given wiki, the
chance of being reverted or blocked goes down after X days and X edits", and this
number is probably different for every wiki (maybe there already is such a calculation
somewhere). This could possibly be a starting point for a good calculation of a threshold;
it wouldn't be perfect, because in some wikis it can perpetuate community practices
which may be biased against new editors, but at least it's based on data and not on
guesses.
In the English Wikipedia 2016 discussion[1] about adding the "extended
confirmed" group, I found one comment, by User:Opabinia regalis, which corresponds to
my thinking on the topic: "The thresholds being used for these restrictions are
essentially arbitrary, and we don't have a strong evidence base yet that they are
well-chosen."
Perhaps after twenty years we could start actually calculating these thresholds, and not
just come up with arbitrary numbers? Or is there really no demand for smart and
research-based decisions about these thresholds?
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_12…
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore_______________________________________________
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