On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
I think there are things we can do in software to help
de-escalate
this conflict between established editors and new editors.
One thing we can do is to reduce the sense of urgency. Further
deployment of FlaggedRevs (pending changes) is the obvious way to do
this. By hiding recent edits, admins can deal with bad edits in their
own time, rather reacting in the heat of the moment.
Another thing we could do is to improve the means of communication.
Better communication often helps to de-escalate a conflict.
We could replace the terrible user talk page interface with an
easy-to-use real-time messaging framework. We could integrate polite
template responses with the UI. And we could provide a centralised
forum-like view of such messages, to encourage mediators to review and
de-escalate emotion-charged conversations.
We could also try to work out ways to make adminship less important.
If protection, blocking, and deletion could be made less necessary and
important in day-to-day editing, that would reduce the importance of
admins and reduce the difference between established and new
contributors. You could often make do with much "softer" versions of
these three things, which could be given out much more liberally.
For instance, to replace blocking, you could have a system whereby any
reasonably established editor (> X edits/Y days) can place another
editor or IP address in moderation, so that their edits have to be
approved before going live, in Flagged Revs style. As with blocking,
any established editor could also reverse such a block. Abuse would
thus be easily reversed and fairly harmless (since the edits could go
through automatically when it's lifted, barring conflicts). Sysops
would only be necessary if people with established accounts abuse
their rights.
Likewise, most deletion doesn't really need to make anything private.
Reasonably established editors could be given the right to soft-delete
a page such that any other such editor could read or undelete it.
This would be fine for the vast majority of deletions, like vanity
pages and spam. Sysops would only have to get involved for copyright
infringement, privacy issues, and so on.
As for protection, we already have Flagged Revs. Lower levels of
flagging should be imposable by people other than sysops, and since
those largely supersede semiprotection, sysops would again only be
needed to adjudicate disputes between established editors (like
full-protecting an edit-warred page). Obviously, all these rights
would be revocable by sysops in the event of abuse.
Unfortunately, I don't think that technical solutions are going to fix
the problem on enwiki. I think the only thing that will do it is if
Wikimedia adopts more explicit policies about creating a friendly
editing environment, and enforces them in the same vein as it does
copyright policies. But that's easier said than done for a number of
reasons.