Jimbo said:
Stirling Newberry wrote:>
In many CMS's there is the concept of a "trusted user", who has privileges to do such things, but is far from being a sysop. It might well be worth looking at a similar idea for wikipedia - which would allow such "judgment calls" to be made by users who have put the time in on wikipedia, but who aren't interested in, and do not need, full sysop privileges.
Agreed. I think this makes perfect sense. It does mean that a vandal can still force through vandalism now and again, but it is more clicks for them to do it, and anyway this option is "softer" and therefore should be tried first. The harder option of restricting 'force publication' to sysops would still be available at a later date.
I really like that idea of an intermediate user privilege level. Someone who has been around and is known after a couple of months of editing, regulars have seen and are able to make a judgement on. Newcomers less so, and conversely we should have lower expectations of newcomers and remember not to bite the newbies. This would also give more established users an incentive to keep their noses clean (though determined trolls could always use sock puppets, alas). Yes, a loss of this privilege would be an extra sanction available to rein in determined edit warriors.