Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed automated software evaluation of Wikipedia contributors. only users with high score will be able to get lised in RfA. Please comment & criticise.
The current RfA (Requests for adminship) process cannot serve Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia is now a very popular big site and I am afraid the RfA process we are using can only support small communities.
Currently 1 user who had less than 100 edits is nominated. Another user with about 200 edits requests adminship.
In the past, a user who acted in the "politician's way" requested to become an admin numerous times: make me admin and I will do this and that... Of course the request was ridiculous and nobody was taking him seriously.
Also, on January 12, 2004, a user was nominated for adminship. A developer promoted the user to administrator just 21 minutes after the nomination, even before the response of the nominated user (a nominated user has to respond in order to accept or reject the adminship). Although everyone, including me, supported the nomination (after he was made an admin!), and the admin is now good and valuable to the project, I think the quick developer's action was unnecessary. I say this, not in order to rise an issue with the developer (who is useful and valuable to the project) but only to show that the RfA process has "holes".
The current RfA ineffectivity has been demonstrated many times.
One of the main problems of the current RfA system is that everyone can nominate any person, many times not for Wikipedia's good but only for personal reasons etc. Uneducated nominations/requests are also common and waste our time.
To put it in one sentence: It is very easy for someone to nominate a user for adminship, or even request it.
I think RfA should be more difficult, so that whenever someone is listed on it, it will be more or less sure that he/she is already wanted or trusted by the community up to some degree.
Requests could be go away. Personally, I prefer nominations. Or, the policy and the system could be formulated in such a way that it would be more difficult for someone to request adminship, than to be nominated for it.
A semi-automated software system for user evaluation may be needed, IMO. Just like most auction sites (eBay etc): Other users will evaluate a user's edits.
The system will work like this: In Page history, or in the version differences page, we could have three option boxes, one textbox and one button, all under the caption "Evaluate this user's edit". The option boxes will read: 1. Positive, 2. Neutral, 3. Negative. It will be required for the evaluator to write a summary in the textbox and justify his/her evaluation. When the user presses the button, the system will record the evaluation in the user's evaluation log. These logs will be public (accessible via the user's page), and updated/maintained by the software.
Because abuse is possible, we can have evaluation moderators. When a new evaluation is submitted, it will not be written in the user's log until a moderator aproves it. The log will refer to the particular edit and article an evaluation was about, and it will keep some statistics, such as how many different users made a positive or negative evaluation. Evaluations which were not approved by the moderators will be kept in a separate log but not counted in the "official" user's score.
The user's score will be calculated by software from data gathered from the evaluation log. I suggest the score's algorithm to pay more "attention" on recent evaluations. For example, evaluations one year old can be multiplied by 0.5, evaluations 6 months old by 0.75, while the evaluations from the past 2-3 weeks will be multiplied by 1.5. Also, evaluations from evaluators with a high score will count more in the final user's score (for example, multiplied by 1.33). The number of user's edits will be taken into account, too: The higher edits, the higher the score. So the score is not simply the number of positive evaluations, but it is based on more complex analysis and considerations.
***the algorithm which calculates the score should be published in wikipedia, written in simple pseudocode so that non-developers will be able to understand it***
I suggest that the moderators should be appointed directly by Jimbo.
There will be a page called "Great contributors" maintained by software. In this page only users with a high score will be listed.
In RfA, a user may be nominated for adminship *only* and *only* iff: a) he or she is listed in the "Great contributors" page, AND b) the user has made at least 500 edits. Otherwise, the nomination will be automatically rejected.
I do not think users with less than 500 edits should be even considered in RfA.
I ask for comments and criticism on these ideas. Also, please, suggest your own ideas and propose the changes you would like to see in RfA. I hope we can built a better and more efficient RfA system.
--Optim
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The basic thing wrong with all this is the illusion that sysops have a lot of power. They don't and failures in some respect have few negative consequences.
Fred
From: Optim optim81@yahoo.co.uk Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 13:35:22 -0800 (PST) To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfA
Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed automated software evaluation of Wikipedia contributors. only users with high score will be able to get lised in RfA. Please comment & criticise.
The current RfA (Requests for adminship) process cannot serve Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia is now a very popular big site and I am afraid the RfA process we are using can only support small communities.
Currently 1 user who had less than 100 edits is nominated. Another user with about 200 edits requests adminship.
In the past, a user who acted in the "politician's way" requested to become an admin numerous times: make me admin and I will do this and that... Of course the request was ridiculous and nobody was taking him seriously.
Also, on January 12, 2004, a user was nominated for adminship. A developer promoted the user to administrator just 21 minutes after the nomination, even before the response of the nominated user (a nominated user has to respond in order to accept or reject the adminship). Although everyone, including me, supported the nomination (after he was made an admin!), and the admin is now good and valuable to the project, I think the quick developer's action was unnecessary. I say this, not in order to rise an issue with the developer (who is useful and valuable to the project) but only to show that the RfA process has "holes".
The current RfA ineffectivity has been demonstrated many times.
One of the main problems of the current RfA system is that everyone can nominate any person, many times not for Wikipedia's good but only for personal reasons etc. Uneducated nominations/requests are also common and waste our time.
To put it in one sentence: It is very easy for someone to nominate a user for adminship, or even request it.
I think RfA should be more difficult, so that whenever someone is listed on it, it will be more or less sure that he/she is already wanted or trusted by the community up to some degree.
Requests could be go away. Personally, I prefer nominations. Or, the policy and the system could be formulated in such a way that it would be more difficult for someone to request adminship, than to be nominated for it.
A semi-automated software system for user evaluation may be needed, IMO. Just like most auction sites (eBay etc): Other users will evaluate a user's edits.
The system will work like this: In Page history, or in the version differences page, we could have three option boxes, one textbox and one button, all under the caption "Evaluate this user's edit". The option boxes will read: 1. Positive, 2. Neutral, 3. Negative. It will be required for the evaluator to write a summary in the textbox and justify his/her evaluation. When the user presses the button, the system will record the evaluation in the user's evaluation log. These logs will be public (accessible via the user's page), and updated/maintained by the software.
Because abuse is possible, we can have evaluation moderators. When a new evaluation is submitted, it will not be written in the user's log until a moderator aproves it. The log will refer to the particular edit and article an evaluation was about, and it will keep some statistics, such as how many different users made a positive or negative evaluation. Evaluations which were not approved by the moderators will be kept in a separate log but not counted in the "official" user's score.
The user's score will be calculated by software from data gathered from the evaluation log. I suggest the score's algorithm to pay more "attention" on recent evaluations. For example, evaluations one year old can be multiplied by 0.5, evaluations 6 months old by 0.75, while the evaluations from the past 2-3 weeks will be multiplied by 1.5. Also, evaluations from evaluators with a high score will count more in the final user's score (for example, multiplied by 1.33). The number of user's edits will be taken into account, too: The higher edits, the higher the score. So the score is not simply the number of positive evaluations, but it is based on more complex analysis and considerations.
***the algorithm which calculates the score should be published in wikipedia, written in simple pseudocode so that non-developers will be able to understand it***
I suggest that the moderators should be appointed directly by Jimbo.
There will be a page called "Great contributors" maintained by software. In this page only users with a high score will be listed.
In RfA, a user may be nominated for adminship *only* and *only* iff: a) he or she is listed in the "Great contributors" page, AND b) the user has made at least 500 edits. Otherwise, the nomination will be automatically rejected.
I do not think users with less than 500 edits should be even considered in RfA.
I ask for comments and criticism on these ideas. Also, please, suggest your own ideas and propose the changes you would like to see in RfA. I hope we can built a better and more efficient RfA system.
--Optim
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Discussed on French Wikipedia:
Some wikipedians would like to have an automatic detection of "questionable modifications". Questionable modifications, mean, modifications that have a great chance to be a rookie's test or a vandalism. This automatic detection may be done by check, for example:
* Article size reduction limit (or %): someone replace an article by "I rule Wikipedia!" or cut half the article.
* Minimal size of new article: someone create an article with only "Hello world!".
* Length of words or letters repetition in small articles: "yyyyyyyyyyyyyfffffffffff".
There are many other criteria that can define "questionable modifications", but this can handle a lot of case we run up against. Those questionable modifications may be displayed in RC (for sysop or for all) with a different mark (color, bold, italic or any visible marker). The goal is to give information on witch articles have to be checked.
Aoineko
Some wikipedians would like to have an automatic detection of "questionable modifications". Questionable modifications, mean, modifications that have a great chance to be a rookie's test or a vandalism. This automatic detection may be done by check, for example:
We have discussed the same on the german language Wikipedia some time ago (we even collected those "keyboard tests" to do a (visual) pattern analysis) and in the end, the idea was dropped more or less: Most of the vandalism edits in existing articles don't follow that behaviour, and new articles are checked anyway "by hand" for formatting and so on. The percentange of "bad" edits that one could possibly find out with such a mechanism is so small, that it is unlikely to justify the programming effort.
Uli
Optim said:
Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed...
Your system sounds like it will produce a lot of extra work not directly related to adding content to articles. It could arguably be labelled as adding extra layers of bureaucracy. And I'm really not sure that if this system were implemented that some goodness rating being produced by an algorithm would be more useful than the present system of 10-15 people skimming through the nominee's contributions and using their eyes/brain to form an opinion.
I don't think that there's much wrong with RfA and I agree with Fred that there's too much of a conception that being a sysop is a Big Deal.
In one of the cases you mention, of user Metasquares being nominated after less than 100 edits, people have roundly rejected the nomination by c-prompt even though c-prompt knows the guy in the real world and vouches that he's trustworthy. Personally I'm all for trusting c-prompt, what happened to good faith in people and our motto of being bold? If in the (unlikely) event that things go wrong then so be it, it's not like things haven't gone wrong before.
Just my thoughts,
Andrew (Ams80)
--- Andrew Smith wikipediablah@hotmail.com wrote:
adding extra layers of bureaucracy.
yes, it is bureaucracy. This is good and bad at the same time :/
I think Wikipedia will need more bureucracy as its population rises. Maybe a new RfA is not needed at the exact moment, but I like to get prepared for the future.
10-15 people skimming through the nominee's contributions and using their eyes/brain to form an opinion.
the software system (although I generally dislike software automation) is an attempt to evaluate users in a more impersonal way, without much individual judgement.
In one of the cases you mention, of user Metasquares being nominated after less than 100 edits
I personally think that this user will make a good admin, but I find it impossible to support someone with less than 500 edits.
One reason is: I find inactive sysop accounts to be a security hole in the system. A user with 500 edits is more likely to stay in the project than a user with 100 edits. If a user with 100 edits gets sysop privileges and then he/she becomes inactive, we will have a new inactive admin, thus a new potential security hole :/
Just my thoughts,
Andrew (Ams80)
Thank you very much! don't hesitate to criticise, criticism is good & useful.
--Optim
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Sorry to say this,
but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal last week (about user names) all sound the same for me: we are big, so we need more bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points of wikipedia -- so to say -- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a fairly big community with a fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics, politics and organisational overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy united with more or less the same goal as long as it isn't necessary? And wouldn't it be better to introduce rules, scores and regulation at the moment they become necessary, but not early, creating something like self-fulfing prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a bureaucratic organisation, it will start to become one.
Regards,
Till __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . .
thank you for the comments.
yes the two proposals were based on the same rationale.
it may needn't be implemented now, but we can keep the ideas for the future, like a think tank.
a consideration is that large communities have higher diversity indices. A high diversity index brings disagreements, wikistress, forks, etc. Bureaucracy, in max weber's style, may be used to control the negative effects of a high diversity index. however, NPOV can only be achieved with a high diversity index.
The best way for minimising the negative outcomes of diversity is to have a spirit of Fellowship, fraternity, cooperation and [[WikiLove]].
Bureaucracies and policies should me implemented only when Fraternity and WikiLove seem impossible to work.
Can we have a spirit of Fraternity & cooperation, as our population grows quickly? I hope so! how do u think?
--Optim
--- Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .
Sorry to say this,
but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal last week (about user names) all sound the same for me: we are big, so we need more bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points of wikipedia -- so to say -- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a fairly big community with a fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics, politics and organisational overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy united with more or less the same goal as long as it isn't necessary? And wouldn't it be better to introduce rules, scores and regulation at the moment they become necessary, but not early, creating something like self-fulfing prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a bureaucratic organisation, it will start to become one.
Regards,
Till __ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . . _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Till Westermayer wrote:
Sorry to say this,
but the RfA proposal as well as your proposal last week (about user names) all sound the same for me: we are big, so we need more bureaucracy. One of the unique selling points of wikipedia -- so to say -- is in my eyes that wikipedia works as a fairly big community with a fairly low amount of rules, bureaucratics, politics and organisational overhead. Why change this more or less anarchy united with more or less the same goal as long as it isn't necessary? And wouldn't it be better to introduce rules, scores and regulation at the moment they become necessary, but not early, creating something like self-fulfing prophecies? If you treat wikipedia as a bureaucratic organisation, it will start to become one.
No need to be sorry, I agree A lot of the rule making that goes on is based on trying to anticipate problems that may never happen. Then despite the fact that these problems never happen we are stuck with a lot of rules that some feel should be applied at all times. Some people feel very secure when there are a lot of rules; it saves them from the responsibility of using common sense. Sometimes I feel that our most valuable rule is, "Ignore all rules."
Ec
Hello,
Could you please hold this (and all further) discussions about policies on en.wikipedia.org in the appropriate list, i.e. wikien-l?
Optim wrote:
Summary: Current RfA ineffective. Proposed automated software evaluation of Wikipedia contributors.
My 2 cents: too complicated. better use human judgement.
greetings, elian
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