I generally think this is a good idea. I'm not sure exactly how the system should work, but I propose something like adding 1 Karma Point (KP) for signing up with a username, and one more for every day you connect to the wikipedia after that (with the same username), and 2 KP for each day in which you've edited an existing article, and 3 Karma points for each day you add a new article. Once you get up to 60 KP, you have basic privileges (Editing the home page and the like). Once you have or so 100 KP you can block an IP address, user ID#, or user alias temporarily (24 hours). Once you have 200+ KP you can mark an article for deletion. The article is not deleted for 24 hours, and is clearly displayed as MARKED FOR DELETION on the recent changes log if you have at least 150 KP. Anybody with level 1 privileges can then check a "don't delete this" box on the article, and it will be unmarked for deletion. I would recommend that the edit this page link just not appear unless you have privileges to edit that page. I don't think that the above is exactly how we should do it, but I wanted to through out some specifics because the "devil is in the details." The idea may be fine, but the implementation could easily bring up real problems... That said, I think Michel Clasquin brings up several interesting points. If you want to follow Michel Clasquin's suggestion that we also lock down the pages linked from the main page, I'd recommend that those pages be locked only for those with 4 or less KP, which means if you're logged in, and you created an article you can add a link to it from the appropriate portal page, since you have 1 KP for signing up, and 3 for adding an article. We can use Magnus's "watch this page" functionality to keep track of these changes. And if he adds the e-mail update feature, people can just assign themselves to keeping up on those pages. I would actually recommend that there be a field in the data base which assigns the level of restriction on a page, so an administrator (or potentially anybody with a high enough KP) adjust the threshold for that page. This would be useful if the there were repeated problems with a specific portal page. As far as who assigns Cabal status, I think it absolutely has to be automatically assigned (of course the administrators can manually edit the assignments if they feel the need). If there are persistent vandals, other Cabal members can temporarily ban their IP, and/or administrators can manually bump down their KP. As far as how to get the thing started, we could automatically generate some KP numbers for users by mining existing history data (Say you get a KP for every 5 or 10 page edits you've logged), or we could follow Jimmy Wales's suggestion that we implement the KP log for long enough for some people to gain privileges before marking any pages as requiring privileges to edit, either way should work. Anyway, more food for thought. Yours Mark -----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales@bomis.com] Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 3:23 PM To: wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for the new software Let me raise a potentially delicate social issue. :-) One of the wonderful things about the wiki software, and something that has served us very well so far, is that it is totally wide open. I suspect that any significant deviation from that would kill the magic of the process. On the other hand, we really are moving into uncharted territory. Wikipedia is already, as far as I know, the most active and heavily trafficked wiki to ever exist. It seems a virtual certainty that the wide open model will start to show some strain (primarily from vandalism) as we move forward. (Even now, we see "only" about 5,000 unique visitors a day. Imagine when that it 50,000 or 150,000. Or more.) I have this idea that there should be in the software some concept of "old timer" or "karma points". This would empower some shadowy mysterious elite group of us to do things that might not be possible for newbies. Editing the homepage for example. We already had one instance of very ugly graffiti posted there (a pornographic cartoon). Some principles that we should use if/when we move in that direction: 1. Cabal membership is available to anyone who puts in time -- there should be no ability by the part of existing cabal members to blackball anyone. The reason for this principle is that we don't want there to be a temptation to ideological blackballing. Anyone who shows up and sticks around for a couple of weeks can be trusted enough to give total freedom. 2. Cabal membership should not give anyone any super powers, just a handful of little things, like locking and unlocking the HomePage, or placing a temporary block on an IP address or UserID. 3. Newcomers should not have to know or realize that they are restricted in any way from doing things that some old timers can do. We should always leave things as open as possible, not requiring login, registration, etc. 3. Of course, as owner of the physical machine where Wikipedia is located, I always retain absolute dictatorial power over everything, if necessary. So if someone gets cabal membership and uses it to vandalize, I could revoke the status unilaterally. Basically, I think we always want to make a distinction between true vandalism and mere un-encyclopedic behavior. We want to develop little tools and tricks to help us block true vandalism, while keeping things totally open for people to *work for consensus* on article content. The "New Age" debate was good and healthy, and never rose to the level of vandalism. -- ************************************************* * http://www.wikipedia.com/ * * You can edit this page right now! * ************************************************* [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l