Jimbo wrote:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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