Erik Moeller wrote:
Check the link color. If it's a new user, the user page and/or talk page link is likely to be red (non-existent). We should store the user creation date in the user table and provide that information on the user page, though.
Many of these don't stay red for long since I greet users and create blank user pages for them usually within 48 hours of them appearing on Recent Changes.
<dreaming> It would be very nice to have a manual 'Watch this user' option that would work similarly to 'Watch this page'. Then it would be possible to flag troublesome users. The user name/IP of a flagged user would show up bold on Recent Changes. It would also be neat to be able (via a user preference) to automatically have new users flagged in Recent Changes (maybe even be able to customize the "newbiness" threshold similar to the way the stub detector works - there could also be a timeout whereby if a user or IP hasn't made an edit in x months then they are considered to be a newbie again).
We could even have an 'Ignore this user' option where ignored users and their edits would not be shown in RC. But I am a bit uncomfortable with that idea. </dreaming>
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma Added many events to [[February 4]]; updated all year pages and many other articles linked from there.
Many of these don't stay red for long since I greet users and create blank user pages for them usually within 48 hours of them appearing on Recent Changes.
I don't understand why you create blank user pages. This was necessary previously to get to the talk page and contributions listing, but this is no longer the case.
If the red is too annoying, maybe we should use a less bright red, or red on a grey background.
It would be very nice to have a manual 'Watch this user' option that would work similarly to 'Watch this page'. Then it would be possible to flag troublesome users.
Even better, build a web of trust. You can add users to your trusted user list; any user trusted by those users is also somewhat trusted by you, and so on. You can thus calculate sophisticated trust metrics, which can be used to quickly propagate information about users. You could set the thresholds for users that should be highlighted or hidden (perhaps only displayed in a smaller font, I am not comfortable with completely hiding users).
The tricky part here is mostly the user interface. Getting trust controls right has been the main challenge of any attempt to build webs of trust. But if we get it right, it could be a very effective mechanism that would almost automatically lead to collaborative mentoring efforts, just in order to get untrusted users trusted and, thus, no longer highlighted.
Such a trust infrastructure can also be built upon for certification and ratings.
Regards,
Erik
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org