On Thursday 23 May 2002 12:01 pm, Axel wrote:

That said, here's my minimalistic suggestion: everything works exactly as it does now, except that every page gets two additional links: "View last reviewed version of this article" and "I have reviewed this version of the article and I think it is ok". The history of every article would record who has reviewed which version of the article and when.

The set of all "last reviewed versions" could then be seen as the "stable" Wikipedia and could be pressed on CD. This would at least guard against vandalism, stupid jokes and blatant propaganda and advertising that sometimes gets through.

Cool! What a fantastic idea!. I also like the idea of having two versions of an article; but I would simply call them Reviewed and Development. The reviewed one would be a static page that could be replaced with the Development (editable) version of an article whenever a certain number of reviewers give it the OK. It also would be most excellent to have an even higher level of review called "Peer Review" that would be performed by somebody with a related college degree.

This level of review would be roughly analogous to what Nupedia had (has?) set-up but should done in a better way. But then the devil is in the details here and we may need to temporarily freeze an article while it is being peer reviewed so the expert can fix any glitches, submit the article as peer reviewed and reopen the development version back to the masses (the reviewer(s) should only have a very limited amount of time to review/fix the article while the development version is locked). This might be a messy thing to do in practice though and we should discuss this at length in order to work out the details if we decide to do this at all.

So potentially we might have three versions of an article; one which is world editable, one which was voted to be OK by users, and one that was tweaked and made to conform to higher Nupedia-like standards.

The only issue is: who is allowed to review articles? The pragmatic answer would be: all sysops.

Somewhat disagree: I tend to agree with Chuck's previous comment here in that I think we should open this up to anybody who has been a user for over 3 months. I would add though that exceptions should be made for anybody who has edited a reasonable set number of articles and who has the backing of at least one sysop. We could update the software to give these user's special <i>additional</i> rights automatically after three months and/or after they edit more than a set number of articles (thus making them then eligible for sysop promotion). We could then call these users "trusted hands" (which is already in the wikiware code -- but a "trusted hand" doesn't have any more rights than a regular user does in the current set up -- correct me if I am wrong Brion).

It would also be nice for a sysop to have the ability to "reset the clock" as Chuck proposed for anybody who doesn't follow established policy after being warned. The warning process could be started by a posting a message on a special page by at least one person with "trusted hand" or greater status. These warnings shouldn't do anything other than inform the user that "they have been warned" with a reason why (there could be an automatic temporary suspension of "trusted hand" status by being warned -- but I'm not sure if I like that idea). These warnings could also automatically expire after a set amount of time and/or number of edits unless somebody else renews the warning. In addition, a "trusted hand" or sysop should be able to remove the warnings if a mistake had been made. If the user doesn't get his or her act together during the warning period, a sysop could then reset the user's clock (which should have to be a <i>different</i> person than the one starting the warning process).

Blatant trolling or VANDALISM could also be logged on these warning pages. The warner could choose from a checklist of options when warning the warnee. Such a list might include these options: Introduced bias, Rambling contributions, Falsification of facts, Nonsensical/inappropriate contributions, Introduction of propaganda, Sloppiness, Violation of naming conventions or VANDALISM. If VANDALISM is selected then in addition to the warning page a VANDALISM in PROGRESS page can also be displayed on RecentChanges with the "contributions of" the warnee automatically placed on that page.

There should, however, be some safeguards to help ensure that honest mistakes by contributors are not used as the basis to warn a person (perhaps have a silent first warning that only the warner and warnee know of... but then how would you make that work?) . I'm concerned that such a system might be used too much and contributors might think twice about hitting the save button. If misused, such a system could have negative effects on the number and extent of contributions wikipedia receives. So, if something like this is deemed necessary, then great care must be taken to minimize possible negative side-effects. But something similar to this will probably be needed in the coming years as the number of active contributors becomes larger than anyone (including users like me who contribute at least 3-4 hours a day on average) is able to keep track of.

A code of honor is probably in order, saying that no sysop should review an article that they themselves substantially contributed to.

In principle this might be a good idea but in practice I don't think this would work with the size of our current contributor-base (not to mention sysop-base). As it is right now in many cases the people with the greatest knowledge and ability to review an article have already significantly contributed to it.

The "honor system" set-up may work after a few more years when wikipedia has literally thousands of people contributing daily and has close to 100,000 articles (which is an arbitrary goal BTW -- I doubt we will all stop submitting new articles when the project is "complete"). Then we could reasonably expect that there would be enough "trusted hands" with sufficient knowledge of the subject <i>and</i> who had not already contributed much to the article to be able to vote it up or down.

Given all that -- I do have reservations that the power to warn and reset the clocks of users may be abused and this could change the character of wikipedia and discourage contributions. However, given that IP banning hasn't <yet> been abused by any sysops I have hope that such a system might just work.

If we could somehow ensure that we have reasonably competent reviewers then Wikipedia could then (eventually) become what Nupedia was not able to be: an extensive, trusted and useful source of human knowledge. We are almost at the extensive stage -- Should we work on a framework for establishing reasonable trust and therefore usefullness of our articles? I vote for yes.

Just my 1.5 cents

maveric149