[Wikipedia-l] 'Old Hands' -- spreading the power around

[Daniel Mayer]

Jimbo wrote:

>1. Not-logged-in -- you can edit pages, etc., 
>but you're penalized in some minor respects.  
>The reason for this is that it's more productive
>for people to choose a consistent identity, 
>rather than possibly having a different ip 
>number every day.  And if you remember '24',
>it's a pain to have to refer to someone by a number.
>
>2.  Logged-in -- you can do anything that's not 
>'royally destructive', i.e. anything that's not 
>irreversible, EXCEPT edit some protected pages.  
>Again, we like to keep the number of protected 
>pages to a low level to just dissuade some of 
>the more annoying and lame vandalism attempts, 
>like putting spurting penis pictures on the homepage.
>
>3.  Old-hand/sysop -- should be granted in 
>an apolitical manner based on being essentially 
>"legit" -- sysops should be able to do a tiny
>number of destructive (irreversible) things, 
>IF we need to have those abilities for some 
>reason.  (For example, some kinds of deletes do
>need to be irreversible for legal reasons.)  
>This status should be granted more or less 
>automatically, and whatever privileges it give 
>should, by strong social custom, NEVER be used 
>"in anger", i.e. to "pull rank to win an argument".  
>There are only technical reasons to even have 
>such a status.

Perhaps I should expose my ulterior motive -- I want
to see an 'old hand' status established so that a
framework will be in place so that we can begin the
process of phasing-out "sysop" status -- maybe
entirely. This would be done by porting function after
function to 'old hands' as these functions become non-
irreversible and coded procedures are established to
handle these functions in the wiki way. Let me
explain: 

The move feature used to be buggy, so it was limited
to a select few people for practical reasons. It isn't
buggy now so I would like to see this feature be
usable by anyone with an account older than 30 days
and who has edited more than 30 pages in the article
namespace (LDCs idea of having a valid email address
seems like a good additional requirement). The only
reason to have the 30/30 (or whatever) requirement is
because there is a bit of a learning curve about how
to use Wikipedia and what our policies and guidelines
are with article naming. And if somebody has been
around for more than 30 days and has edited more than
30 articles without running into serious trouble I
think it is reasonable to also allow them to edit the
main page and any policy pages that are protected
(actual policy changes would have to be done through
this list or its successor though). 

Blocking IPs could eventually be ported to 'old hand'
too. Here is one possible way to do that: There could
be a warning feature, similar to some instant
messaging programs, where if a person is warned by
several 'old hands' within a certain amount of time
they will be blocked from editing for an amount of
time commensurate with the number and frequency of
warnings (there could be anti-warning function too to
negate unfair warnings -- all this should also be
logged). In this way Wikipedia will be watched 24
hours a day instead of being exposed at certain times
of day when sysops are not around. As it is, one sysop
blocks an IP which is highly personal to the person
being blocked -- thus potentially dangerous if the
blocked person is deranged and motivated. Even though
I don't use my real name in Wikipedia, I use it here.
It would be easy for any deranged maniac to find out
where I work starting with that information. I don't
like this situation.  

Deletion, protection and promotion/demotion to from
user/'old hand' status could similarly be eventually
ported as these features become non-irreversible
and/or methods are developed for their collective use.
The above is just a set of initial ideas on how things
/might/ proceed. The details can be worked out for
each sysop feature as it is ported to 'old hands'. 

In this way Wikipedia would be self-healing and
self-maintaining without having to have users of rare
and special rank. 

I don't like being a cop and I don't like the fact
that we even have a quasi-Cabal -- that's why I want
to phase it out by eventually allowing the majority of
active, logged-in users to collectively perform
sysop-like functions (spreading the power around). But
this should be a slow process so that we can develop
procedures on how to perform sysop functions in a more
open and dare I say democratic manor that will not
hamper our success in the wiki way. 

--mav 


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