[Foundation-l] Voting suffrage criteria (established members should be able to vote)

[Dan Rosenthal]

And you are quoting exactly my point. Anyone CAN gain the suffrage
requirements with just a few hours on a wiki, meaning that they don't really
do anything to keep out the people they are intended to keep out, but there
is anectodal evidence that they ARE keeping out people we want to vote.

My point with the example about commons, was that it is easy for someone to
get those 600 edits very quickly, but it requires a knowledge of our tools
and how to work the system already. The average contributor who doesn't meet
the suffrage requirement, but wants to vote may not know how to get those
edits, and may get discouraged. Someone who wants to game the system,
however, already knows the best ways to do so because they are generally
part of our "internal community".

I think the more effective way of keeping the system's integrity is by
increasing the number of legitimate users with suffrage, not by excluding
potential gaming (notice, we can't even guarantee that we're actually
succeeding at that) that simultaneously hurts legitimate users.

-Dan



On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:57 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 1:41 AM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> 600 edits is simple.  It equates to about 10 hours worth of copy and
> >> pasting on English Wikisource; a task any novice could do.  The same
> >> can be achieved in a few hours with AWB on Wikipedia (although the
> >> tasks to perform are a bit harder to find these day on English
> >> Wikipedia), or a few days on New page patrol.  On Commons,
> >> [[Category:Media needing categories as of 18 November 2007]] has 425
> >> images, which could be mostly cleared with a few hours using the
> >> HotCat Gadget.
>
> > Again why editcount-itis is bad.
>
> The suffrage requirement was 600 edits, and 50 in three months.  That
> is not a reasonable example of editcount-itis.
>
> > I have around 100 photos in my aperture
> > library that are marked 3 stars or higher. If I upload them all to my
> flickr
> > account and then use flickr tool to upload them to commons, then for each
> > photo make separate edits for categories, description, data, etc.... you
> > could have 600 edits in a couple of hours.
>
> Most users start off doing these tasks the laborious way.
> That you can uploading 100 images with a few strokes of your wand
> doesn't mean you should obtain suffrage after only 10 minutes effort.
>
> The 600 edits is a simple requirement to ensure that a person is still
> active in a project.  It keeps the voting community grounded in doing
> something useful.
>
> > You can take 3 or 4 pages, and
> > make 20 edits to them screwing around with small stuff, moving spaces
> > around, adding individual words or categories, instead of doing it all in
> > bulk.
>
> Maybe, however on many wikis that would swiftly result in guidance,
> followed by stern warnings, blocks and/or questions in peoples minds.
>
> > In short, edit count suffrage requirements, in theory at least, exclude
> > legitimate voters, while not excluding people who want to game the
> system.
>
> As I explained, anyone can meet the suffrage requirements by simply
> accepting them as they are, and putting in a few hours on a single
> wiki.  Legitimate voters are those who actually do some real content
> creation.  Even our sysadmins could easily attain this edit
> requirement without issue by contributing to our computer software and
> operating system wikibooks. (I mention them as they were a class of
> extraordinary people mentioned in foundation-l suffrage discussions
> before this years election period)
>
> Rather than devoting resources to increase flexibility of who should
> have suffrage, I would rather the time is spent on excluding the
> likelihood of the system being gamed.  Any gaming going on with a 600
> edit requirement is likely affecting a real wiki somewhere.  If
> someone is voting twice in board elections, they will likely be voting
> twice in other issues.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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-- 
Dan Rosenthal