I don't mean to be pushy, but I haven't seen any responses to my idea,
and I want to make sure people have seen it, since it contains some
elements others haven't brought up. So here it is again; comments are
greatly appreciated. :)
Peter
---
On Feb 16, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> As has already been said, eBay doesn't have this problem because in
>> order to leave feedback you have to enter a transaction with the other
>> user. Edits don't make a good analogy because it's not a transaction
>> between two users who can then rate each other.
>
> Right, I agree that edits are not a good analogy to transactions. We
> don't really have anything quite like a transaction.
So how's this: each user gets one "opinion" of each other user. The
opinions can be changed at any time. An opinion is positive, negative,
or neutral. The individual opinions are private, and accessible only
by the users who hold them. This encourages honesty and avoids flame
wars. Each user has a reputation rating based on other users' opinions
of them. Opinions are weighted: opinions held by users with higher
reputations have greater influence.
As a completely separate piece, I don't think that ratings, whatever
form they take, should be used to enforce limitations automatically.
These just seems too dangerous and un-wiki-like
Peter
-- ---<>--- --
A house without walls cannot fall.
Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
-- ---<>--- --
Jimbo wrote:
>So, hmm, why did I want to do it that way in the first place?
>Well, a "summed up" score could be really handy for certain
>types of decision making. It could provide people with
>feedback on their overall behavior.
The 'web of trust' scheme that I proposed could be extended in the future to do
that (if a lot of users with high scores trust you and trust your judgment,
then you get a larger score). But we would first need to develop a way to
greatly reduce sock puppet-type abuse. In the meantime, it could be used to
help filter RC for those who set up their own webs of trust.
>I like your idea a lot.
Thanks!
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
Brion wrote:
>On the contrary it's very easy to game: create a bunch of
>sock puppet accounts to give each other feedback. On E-Bay
>you'd have to go to the trouble of faking some auctions to
>yourself, but nothere...
Yes - that would be bad. Here is a simple solution that goes along with what I
thought trust metrics would do:
There are a bunch of people I trust on Wikipedia - I never check their edits
for vandalism, bad edits, or overt POV because, in my experience, they have
very rarely if ever done any of those things. There are others who I trust in
the same way expect in some categories and on particular articles. And then
there are the people who I don't trust at all.
What I would like is the ability to say that I trust user x. Presto! Edits by
user x are either no longer displayed in a special recent changes list that
only I can see or their edits are turned into small gray text on my regular RC
list (I like this second option better). Once a category system is up and
running I would like to refine that for some users (who I do not trust only
when they edit certain categories of articles). I would also like the ability
to explicitly say that I don't trust somebody - their edits on RC would be
bolded.
Then to create a web of trust I would like to tell MediaWiki that I trust the
opinions of user x. Presto! Any edits by a user on user x's white list will be
either removed from my special RC list or made small and grayed out on my
regular RC list (and watchlist for that matter).
That would prevent any incentive to create sock puppets since my selections
only affect what *I* see and what the people who trust my judgment see (if they
set their preferences accordingly).
-- mav
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I am not advocating anything in this post, I'm just sharing some of my
>thoughts over the past few days.
>
I'm glad you're not advocating anything, and I trust that constitutes
permission to shoot these ideas down before they get off the ground
(just kidding - I'm glad to see it articulated, although I disagree with
the approach).
Anyway, I'm not sure the eBay model improves much on what we have now,
or even on Slashdot karma. It's fairly simplified, and the reason it
works reasonably well is because it addresses a simple question - "If I
make a contract with this person I've never met, can he/she be relied on
to send me money or merchandise?" That's a straightforward question, and
eBay feedback provides just enough information to make that decision.
Our user reputation issues, much like Slashdot, are more complex, and I
don't think they should be approached by implementing metrics. If
Slashdot's system is broken, I would venture that it's partly because
they oversimplified it. The simplicity of voting somebody's feedback up
or down is appealing, but leaves behind little useful information for
others.
I also don't think the eBay model translates to Wikipedia. There's less
incentive to give positive feedback, and a bigger crowd willing to give
negative feedback. Also, without transaction-based limitations, you have
less restriction on the negativity. I would expect many users that you
or I might consider very positive contributors to have *negative*
reputations, unless we set the zero-point so low as to make the system
meaningless. I consider this probable even if we devise a way to weight
the scores. But basically, I have concerns about generating any kind of
reputation score, because it provides no context for the feedback that
went into it.
>Some possible downsides, and there are many...
>
>2. People might be dissuaded from taking controversial and brave
>stands, if it's going to get them some negative feedback.
>
>
I think this is a huge problem for any kind of formalized feedback
system, especially given the purposes of Wikipedia. Wikipedia could turn
into a place where the content is largely a tasteless, watery gruel
because everyone is on pins and needles to avoid provoking negative
responses. In my opinion, using oversimplified feedback is a terrible
way to promote NPOV. Neutrality can be achieved by addressing
controversial issues and finding a balanced way to present them; it
can't be achieved by avoiding the controversy altogether.
I don't believe the system is broken. At most, maybe we need a little
more informational material in the Wikipedia namespace. Specifically,
something that presents ideas of how to find out information about any
given user, so people can assess that user's reputation for themselves.
We have user pages and user talk pages. People can check the links to a
user page for posts the user has signed. People can check user
contributions, and a few diff-checks of a user's more substantial
contributions can give anyone a perspective on the quality of that
user's edits. It's a little work, but if knowing more about another user
is worth it to you, it should be worth putting forth the effort.
I also think even an experiment can be dangerous, because really,
there's no such thing as an experiment here. The only way to set one up
is by getting the community involved with it, and nobody will
participate if they don't see the results. Once they see results, some
people will insist on using those results, even if we *know* that the
information is misleading. And the only way to stop the experiment would
be for Jimbo to make a very divisive decision to stop it. As a
prediction, I believe an experiment would end up as one of two things:
largely unutilized, like WikiMoney accounts, or dysfunctional like Slashdot.
--Michael Snow
"Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com> schrieb:
> Giving permission to Wikipedia only won't satisfy Wikipedia's GFDL
> requirements for 3rd-party redistribution, so we'll have to remove any
> such images.
Then again, reality is that we don't. We don't even remove images of
which it is very likely that we are not allowed to either use or
redistribute them. Someone uploads, and we keep it. Someone doubts,
someone else mumbles 'fair use', and we keep it. I would favor removing
all images of which the origin is not clear, except when they are old
enough that copyright can be assumed to have been expired.
Andre Engels
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> Another idea: a system where you can rate users, but the results are
> not shown directly. Instead, a score for the articles a user worked on
> is calculated. the results are printed on the article page, such that
> you can see: on this article worked people with a very high (or low)
> rating.
Why not just rate the articles directly, instead of the users? I would
be much more comfortable with this kind of system. It's less vulnerable
to the kind of personal animosity that promotes negative feedback wars.
And suppose you want to consider the relative value of individual
contributors to an article, as Delirium suggested. If the ratings are
preserved and tracked on the page history, you could see whether a
user's contributions generally improved the ratings or not. That's
actually better information than you could get from giving ratings to
users. A user could have a great rating, but not necessarily be the best
informed on that particular subject.
It could be like some companies set up help pages, something along the
lines of, "Please rate this article: How useful was the information to
you?" Has the idea of rating articles been discussed before? It could
also provide additional information for selecting featured articles.
--Michael Snow
I had very good holidays, in a white and blue country, which seduced me
for its beauty and silence. It was real good.
Now, I come back. I see a horrible number of fights.
I saw a user I strongly did not want to be made sysop, was made sysop
during my not being there.
I see that at least 2 french web sites are quietly violating our copyright
I see Anthony fork
I see some people feel like stopping contributing if such things are
done with our collective work
It is not because we work together, because our work benefit of the
collective, that we individuals are no-ones.
I see Alex756 left, probably because some here did confuse attacking the
bearer of bad news, from the one responsable of bad news
I wonder if people think it is better now that we have no lawyer and
reasonable man to help us
I wonder how serious it is to desperate good people so much that they
loose courage. And give up.
I wonder if some people feel proud, or pained, or sad, or feel a tiny
bit of compassion.
I saw as well that 168 was unsysoped. I wonder if it is even worth to
propose my help now between Mav and him.
I know one thing. When I disagreed with RK, two people jumped in to
help; I knew none of them then. But they soothed the conflict. And we
got out of it decently.
Will the unsysoping of 168 solve the issue he has with Lir ?
To me, it looks like we always forget to thank those who did good
things, but very well remember to spank the ones who appeared to have
failed, while they tried to make a point.
And what do we do now ?
Yes, I had good holidays :-)
> I also think even an experiment can be dangerous, because really,
> there's no such thing as an experiment here. [ ]
> And the only way to stop the experiment would
> be for Jimbo to make a very divisive decision to stop it.
Suggestions:
The experiment could run on meta. I expect less people will get emotionally
attached there, given the nature of its content.
Perhaps a more refined scheme might lessen the confusion about what a
person's rating is based on. People might want to compliment one another for
sheer number of contributions, reliability of content/factual knowledge,
courtesy/diplomatic efforts. An expert who writes only highly valued
articles in his/her particular field of knowledge might score low on
etiquette.
Doubts:
I'm not sure whether it will work (ref wikimoney) or whether it is a good
idea anyway. It might lead to a meritocracy where people with a high rating
throw their high wikistatus into an argument, or may even unintentionally
intimidate others with a different opinion, where now the merit of each edit
is judged on its own.
To avoid confusion and lessen the meritocratic side effects, the experiment
might be confined to the latter criterium: personal behaviour/wiki
etiquette. This is probably what Jimbo was thinking of in the first place,
since he gave potential usability for (de)sysoping as a possible benefit.
Then again, when a debate gets heated people will have stronger opinions
about each other. Will it be helpful when people resort to the statistical
equivalent of name calling? Will people with a negative account become
stigmatized, meaning their future actions will be prejudged based upon their
etiquette rating?
Erik Zachte
Why all the outrage? The primary purpose of the GFDL is to free the
content so that people can copy and modify it, specifically by
preventing downstream content-modifiers from enforcing restrictions
based on copyright law. It's not like Anthony is trying to prevent
people from copying the stuff on McFly. On McFly, he has said he
considers himself in compliance with our GFDL-related requirements. Even
if he arguably doesn't follow every detail in the GFDL, in court he
could certainly try to claim McFly satisfies a doctrine of substantial
compliance. And anyway, where's the harm? Maybe if he were trying to
pass himself off as the real thing, it would be worth pursuing more
aggressive legal measures (I still think Wikipedia trademark
registration is a more pressing issue to deal with than copyright).
Bottom line: McFly is a fork, and a pretty poor one. I know the thought
of a fork gets some people's competitive juices going, but I don't think
McFly is capable of seriously affecting Wikipedia's mind share. So far,
it hasn't even really done much to articulate a justification for
forking, it just went ahead and did it. Wikinfo/Internet-Encyclopedia at
least has a raison d'etre. And neither of them comes close to Wikipedia
in quality. So far, our history suggests that individual languages
breaking away is a more serious concern for the project.
The GFDL is not so much a weapon for us to use against people who copy
us--it's a defense for us to use if their stuff is good enough that we
want to copy it back.
--Michael Snow
Just read a rather clever idea on the German mailing list for settling the
dispute over whether the whole of wikipedia or each article is a separate
document. They have simply amended the bottom boilerplate license notice to
state that "Jeder Artikel wird einzeln unter der GNU FDL lizenziert." -
"Every article is individually licensed under the GNU FDL."
Is this a possible solution to our uncertainty?
Best,
Sascha Noyes
Copy of message:
------------
From:
Ulrich Fuchs <mail@****>
To:
"Mailingliste der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia" <wikide-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date:
Today 03:51:19 am
Tach,
aus aktuellem Anlass (siehe Wiki-Int) habe ich jetzt nochmal den Textbaustein
MediaWiki:Gnunote angepasst. Der begann früher mit "Diese Seite ist unter..",
elian hat vor ein paar Tagen in "Alle Texte...." geändert, Ich hab das jetzt
nochmal geändert in "Alle Artikel.... " und einen Satz drangeklebt:
"Jeder Artikel wird einzeln unter der GNU FDL lizenziert."
Die Seit Jahren insbesondere bei en: im Raum stehende Frage ist, ob die WP als
ganzes oder einelne Artikel unter Copyright stehen stehen und nach der GNU
FDL lizenziertz werden. Der gewichtige Unterschied ist, dass im ersteren Fall
die Nennung von fünf Wikipedia-Autoren ausreichen würde, um die ganze(!) WP
zu kopieren und unter eigenem Namen weiter zu vertreiben.
Das läuft meines Erachtens dem Geist der GNU FDL zuwider, die die "Credits" an
die Autoren ja bewusst drin hat (gemäß dem Motto: Wenn ich schon umsonst
schreibe, soll sich wenigstens kein anderer mit meinen Lorbeeren schmücken).
Bei uns kommt noch das deutsche Urheberrecht ins Spiel, das IMHO kein "joint
copyright" kennt. Weiterhin implezieren eigentlich all unsere Führungstexte
auf den Eingabeseiten, die einzelne Historie je Artikel usw., dass der Text
eine einzelne Einheit darstellt. Außerdem ist wohl gerade für's Kopieren
(bspw. als Arbeitsblatt für eine Schule) der einzelne Text interessant, nicht
die komplette WP. Wer den Aufwand treibt, die komplette WP kopieren zu
wollen, kann auch die komplette Historie mit übernehmen.
Nachdem der Text "MediaWiki:Gnunote" ziemlich entscheidend für die
Lizenzauslegung ist (ganz sauber sind wir da immer noch nicht, eigentlich
müsste der Autor einen Hinweis *in* den Text setzen), und früher auch immer
"Diese Seite...." hieß, habe ich mir die Präzisierung heute erlaubt - ich
glaube, damit auch die allgemeine Grundeinstellung der Teilnehmer hier
getroffen zu haben, wenn nicht, korrigiert mich bitte!
Uli
_______________________________________________
WikiDE-l mailing list
WikiDE-l(a)Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikide-l
------------
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc