Ray Saintonge wrote:
In eBay you can only give feedback if you are directly
involved in the
transaction. There is no such thing as third-party feedback.
That's true. Of course, their model was only a jumping off point for
my musings, because we have nothing directly similar to a
'transaction'.
The eBay statistical norm for feedback ratings would
appear to be in
high 90s%. Abstentions are not and perhaps cannot be counted. If this
kind of thing were implemented, I suspect that the statitical norm for
us would be a lot lower
That might be true. Of course, Ebay numbers show a survival bias --
people with bad numbers are wise to simply ditch the besmirched
account and start a new one.
We'd likely
see perfect positive ratings for people like Michael
Hardy, who keeps his nose to the grindstone editing topics that aren't
controversial, and who stays out of internal politics almost
completely as far as I know.
People like this don't get noticed. That's the one thing that may tend
to keep their ratings low.
Their number of ratings might be low, but their percentage would
presumably be high. This is actually fairly important, because right
now, we have a lot of really wonderful contributors who aren't
"famous" with the "in group" because we're all here talking to
each
other while they mostly just ignore us and write. :-)
It'd be nice to be able to find and recognize people who have, say, 7
positive ratings and no negative ratings, even though they aren't
"famous".
eBay feedback never expires, but it is aged. If a
person has had a
period of significant negative feedback one can see whether it is recent
or more than a year ago. It is also important that the person giving
the feedback is identified. The person receiving negative feedback then
hs the opportunity to reply to the feedback, and perhaps give negative
feedback in return.
Yes, I do agree with this. Anonymous negative feedback would just
encourage bad behavior. If you're going to say something bad about
someone, or abstain from saying something good, you (or at least your
online persona) should stand behind the remarks.
2. Difficult
to game -- it is NOT automated, so there's no way to
game the system by engaging in repetitive actions to score points.
I think that it would NEED to be automated to work. We already track
the number of edits that a person has made. Perhaps the number of
reverts that a person receives could be an automated negative. This
could quickly put our problem people into an overall negative rating.
It will also have a negative effect on the people who clean up the
messes, but at the same time it could be an incentive to them to find
more conciliatory approaches when dealing with problems. Those who
perpetually revert without discussion will soon find their ratings go down.
Well, this is where we run into my opposition to automation. *People*
can quite easily look at the history of some situation and discern
what's going on, and judge accordingly. That's the wiki way, to trust
people to be able to make good judgments.
Automated negatives or positives just encourage certain kinds of rote
behavior or non-behavior. If I'm penalized for reverting, and the
computer is counting reverts, then I don't revert anymore, I just
"almost revert" by reverting but changing one irrelevant word.
That's the sort of useless "game" that I think can be a real energy
waster.
3. Easy for
end users -- no complex system of approving or
disapproving of individual edits. You can just give someone a smile
or a frown, as you wish, when you wish, or not.
How often?
Whenever you feel like it. Or not. As for the user interface, what I
had in mind was that whenever you visit a person's User page, there's
a link there to leave feedback. Then there's a dropdown box with
"positive" and "negative" and a line where you can leave a short
comment.
I've not had any particular problem with 172,
although he can be
confrontational, and with overall political sympathies that are closer
to mine than Jimbo's. I've seen a lot on the list lately about 168.
I'm even wondering whether Jimbo said 172 when he really meant 168.
Oh, darn, yes. I think I did make this mistake.
Probably the biggest downside is the practical one.
Even on eBay people
need to be constantly encouraged to leave feedback, and still often
don't. Implementing this will mean a lot of extra work for everybody
Philosophically and theoretically I do not oppose such schemes. My only
reservation is that it won't work.
Maybe it wouldn't be all that much work. Or maybe it would, I'm not
sure.
--Jimbo