On Feb 6, 2005, at 6:21 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
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Once upon a time :-) I wrote a wikipedia mode that would display wiki
pages (no edit), and when hitting a non-existing link as a logged-in
user, one would get a framed (evil!) page with the matching wikipedia
page, a small header showing an "import" button. "Import" would copy
the
wikipedia text to that wiki. It even did automatic image imports.
What is already happening is that Wikipedia is moving to a system of
experts, only they are experts not in any particular subject, but in
the ability to get wikiprivs such as admin status, telling editors to
cool down and forcing some kind of consensus. The reasons for this are
simple to outine. First, most people don't apply abstract rules such as
NPOV, no original research or encyclopediac. They apply simple social
rules: namely three reverts and don't say anything bad about someone.
Which means that many revert wars really start on talk pages open with
crypto-insults - the "fourth person derogatory" - attacks on "those
people who are ignorant about my POV".
The first wave response then isn't to negotiate - because telling an
idiotic jerk who has a thinly sourced POV to push that he is an idiotic
jerk with a thinly sourced POV counts "against" the editor who said it.
Since we've outlawed truth, the level of wikistress rises, and
eventually one side or the other tries the simple mobocracy road. Why
get someone who disagrees with you to agree with you, when all you
really need to do is get someone who agrees with you to agree with you
and vote the other person down. Since the sample size is small, and the
methodology one of agreement, there's no assurance of converging on
anything other than polarization.
At some point a revert war breaks out, because one side thinks it has
enough of a numerical advantage, and someone with admin powers comes
in, issues a bunch of warnings to everyone, the way a principle blames
every kid in a school fight, and the consensus is forced, sometimes
with the admin taking over the role of chairing the article. Depending
on the admin, this can slant the article significantly or not.
This road is the path of least resistance because at almost every step
of the way, the dominant strategy of equal "normal" editors is to
betray discussion. Since mechanisms such as mediation, RFC and
arbitrarion are slow, and generally only draw admin attention, it will
continue along these lines.
My suggestion on this matter would be to speed this process. First by
making the 3 revert rule apply to content not individuals. No more than
three reverts of a particular section, regardless of how many editors
on each side. We create a category "reverting articles", which the
person who reverts the article for a second time in a particular
direction must add as a tag - short and sweet - and then a category
"revert limit" articles. People interested in preventing revert wars,
of which there are a number, can then simply read the list, and get
involved. It won't help if they are simply members of a particular POV,
since the limit is by number.
We can even create subcategories for why there was a reversion. This
makes disputes less visible, and means that formal mechanisms are for
when there is some clear conflict which requires larger comment. It is
only slightly slower than simple reversion (one must type in a tag),
but much faster than RFC.