[WikiEN-l] New policy on edit conficts (Re:Martin)

[Ray Saintonge]

Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Adam is right of course.  I don't know who he is quoting, and maybe
>> that was only a joke, but sysop is always and everywhere supposed to
>> be a purely technical matter, not a position of authority and power of
>> any kind.
>>
>> I think maybe I need to say that a lot more often, eh?
>>
>> And maybe we need to focus on what technical changes could be made to 
>> reduce
>> the differences between sysops and ordinary signed-in-users.
>
> This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another 
> step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good 
> idea to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has 
> authoritative significance but no technical powers.  Basically any 
> user who has been here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or 
> so), and shown him/herself to be editing in good faith.  As we get 
> bigger, I think there will be a lot more "fake" users trying to 
> influence things, so restricting things like policy formation and 
> votes to "real" users in some sort of formal way might be a good 
> idea.  I'd envision it being very easy to gain this status: even 
> someone who's invovled in lots of edit wars should be considered a 
> "real user", so long as they aren't purely a troll or vandal, or 
> someone who just signed up 3 hours ago.
>
> This might actually have the effect of reducing the hierarchy 
> somewhat, because right now sysops are a sort of de facto group of 
> "trusted users", since the only defined groups we have are "sysops", 
> "logged-in users", and "anonymous users".  Sysops are too small a 
> group, and logged-in users are too big a group (anyone can create 100 
> accounts if they wish).  Making a larger group of trusted users 
> without technical powers would reduce sysops to being just a subset of 
> that group with additional technical powers, but no additional powers 
> of any other sort. 

I'd like to see statistics about how many users create multiple ID's for 
the purpose of mischief.  When a vote or policy making takes place, how 
much influence do these newbies have now.  If a newbie's opinion is 
overly naïve it will stand out like a sore thumb and be ignored.  On 
voting, I don't think that most newbies feel confident enough to 
participate, and those who do will not be in significant numbers. 
 Reducing hierarchy by adding another level of hierarchy doesn't make 
sense.  I don't support the proposal.  It's trying to solve an imagined 
problem, not a real one.

Ec