[Wikipedia-l] An Approval Process (Proposal)

[Magnus Manske]

David Levinson wrote:

> Allow logged in users to approve any version of an article. Logged in 
> users could also disapprove any or  every version of an article.  
> Articles would be scored based on number of users who approved 
> (weighted?) - number of users who disapproved (weighted?).  The article 
> with the highest approval rating would be the released (approved) 
> article.  This would be displayed somewhere distinct from the working 
> wikipedia (e.g. sifter.wikipedia.org, or something similar).

Great, but IMHO we don't need a counting/voting. After all, articles on 
wikipedia are not three-versions-in-parallel. There's one article, and 
lots of old versions.
I say: Any logged-in user can approve any article with a single click, 
which is then copied to a sifter site. Software's already in place (more 
or less, and at the wrong place, but...)

> New users would be presented with Wikipedia Release edition.  They could 
> still edit the article, but it would not be released until the approvals 
> on the new article exceed the approvals on the previously released 
> article. The under-edit version from which users are working may differ 
> from the release version if approvals have not yet been found. The 
> differences would be highlighted on the edit screen.

I'd prefer having the Wikipedia Release edition (I like that!) with a 
link "view current revision" to wikipedia; *there*, you can edit if you 
want, or just read...

> Edits would of course appear in Recent Changes.  In addition, there 
> would be Recent Approvals tracking articles which recently were voted on 
> for approval.

I'm afraid that would end in a how-many-voted-and-edited-what mess.

> An edit would of course count as a vote for approval (if preferences so 
> set).
> 
> Under the article (in view mode) (for logged in users) would be  "vote 
> to approve" and "vote to disapprove" buttons. A vote to approve would 
> transfer a users vote to this version for approval and remove it from 
> previous versions. A vote to disapprove would remain even if another 
> version was disapproved.

"Approve" should do just fine. Not approving means disapproving or not 
caring. Approvals will show on the sifter RecentChanges only. That won't 
clutter the wikipedia RC, and keep the sifter RC clean. Also, no more 
code to write ;-)

> Possible weight =  1 if under 100 edits, 2 if under 200 edits, 3 if 
> under 300 edits, 4 otherwise. Alternative weighting schemes are possible 
> as well, including weight=1 for all logged in users.

What happened to "all wikipedians are equal"? ;-)

Magnus