On 06/08/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
The most exciting ones I can think of:
#We can scrap the 'newest 1%' part of semi-protection. Instead of waiting 4 days, write 4 articles! #We can scrap editcountitis - this reputation metric may still not be ideal, but I suspect the metric will reflect the value of one's contributions *a heckuva* lot better than # of edits.
These two, and a few others, get into the problem that - as currently implemented - the value of the metric is concealed. In order to use a lot of these implementations we;d have to make a concious decision to publicise that value, which just gives something new to game.
The first could be done without publicising the value, but it does lead to two negative effects:
a) it's possible for someone to "go down" a grade in our trust system, which isn't currently possible and has interesting implications
b) people don't know where they stand, and we can't tell them where they stand or exactly how to improve. It's a complex model - as things stand now, we can just say "wait a few days", and even when it was the irregular newest-1% we could still say "oh, three or four days, should be okay". However, it's going to muddy the waters a lot if we have to say "make some substantive contributions and hope the computer likes the look of you"...