[Foundation-l] breaking English Wikipedia apart

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 12:35 PM, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> During the strategy taskforce, the quality team came to two conclusions that
> are similar to some ideas in this thread, but avoid the issues mentioned.

[snip]

First, let me apologize beforehand for sounding too cynical, but I
have many years of experience with Wikipedia, and I have seen many
attempts to deal with trolls, POV pushers and otherwise substandard
editors (I even initiated one or two myself), and I have not seen a
sign of any of them actually working.

> The other thing we thought was that there is benefit in recognizing editors
> whom the community agrees are competent, edit well sourced neutral good
> quality material, and act well, across the board.  If that's what we want
> then let's find ways to develop and encourage it.  At the moment adminship
> is granted following a searching process but there is no equivalent for
> editors who seek recognition as competent and consistently good quality
> editors.  If there were some way to communally recognize such users (call
> them "proven editors" lacking a better term) it would have some immense
> advantages.  Right now every editor who is autoconfirmed but doesn't write
> FA's is pretty much in the same category of editorship. Newcomers can't
> distinguish those who edit well and those not shown to edit well.

Why would a newcomer be supposed to care about that? Does it matter
whether my article gets edited by a 'good' editor or by a 'bad'
editor? Am I supposed to revert a bad editor but leave a good editor
alone if he makes the same edit? Or should I better leave the edits of
the bad editor alone, because he's probably a troll who will chase me
away if I revert him?

Even more so - the 'bad' editor may be an excellent editor who just
has not yet had the time to prove him- or herself.

> The aim is to make recognition of this kind very widespread within the
> community and to actively coach and encourage uptake and success -- a
> recognition routinely won by many editors who have been active for over a
> year or so.  It means that one can see easily in an article history which
> edits were made by users the community recognizes as proven editors and one
> can focus on other edits for issues. It encourages holders to act to the
> standards expected and encourages others to seek that recognition for
> themselves, and therefore to learn to be better editors.  In edit wars it
> provides a bias towards endorsement of probably better edits.

Actually, no it doesn't. The way to behave in an edit war to avoid
being singled out as a bad editor is to stay away from it. Is that the
way we want our editors to act? Be afraid to revert, not because they
might be wrong, but because there might be people who think they're
wrong?

> In the case of
> massively disputed topics such as ethnic wars it provides a dispute
> resolution tool - editing might be restricted for a time to those editors
> considered "proven" by the community.

Currently such pages tend to be locked to all but admins. That doesn't
work either - people just keep on their fighting on the talk page
until someone gives up, after which the page is unlocked and their
opponent can declare their victory on the page. Or the fight simply
moves to the next page.

> Finally it is egalitarian (or at least
> as much so as anything on the wikis) -- it is a recognition anyone can
> achieve from the community by editing and behaving well, and anyone can lose
> by editing or behaving to a visibly poor standard. It carries no formal
> powers, but by peer pressure alone encourages improvement generally.

So we are supposed to add a load of work to the editors' workload in
judging the edits of prospective proven editors, but then don't even
make that choice have any real effect? I don't feel safe in voting for
someone to be considered a 'good' editor in this sense unless first
checking a few hundred of their edits. And definitely in the beginning
there will be several such applicants per week, certainly if we are
going to make this something for 'everyone' to aim for. Either that,
or having the title will be as much a sign of being interested in the
title as it is of being a 'good' editor.

Again, forgive me if I sound too cynical, but I do get the feeling
that such a system might well be a nice thing to have, but would be as
effective in promoting good editing behaviour as a Barnstar.


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com