[WikiEN-l] New policy on edit conficts (Re:Martin)
Ray Saintonge
saintonge at telus.net
Fri Dec 5 22:24:11 UTC 2003
Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Adam is right of course. I don't know who he is quoting, and maybe
>> that was only a joke, but sysop is always and everywhere supposed to
>> be a purely technical matter, not a position of authority and power of
>> any kind.
>>
>> I think maybe I need to say that a lot more often, eh?
>>
>> And maybe we need to focus on what technical changes could be made to
>> reduce
>> the differences between sysops and ordinary signed-in-users.
>
> This will probably be opposed by those who'll see it as just another
> step into hierarchical organization, but I think it might be a good
> idea to create a new, more-inclusive class of users, that has
> authoritative significance but no technical powers. Basically any
> user who has been here for some period of time (maybe 2-3 weeks or
> so), and shown him/herself to be editing in good faith. As we get
> bigger, I think there will be a lot more "fake" users trying to
> influence things, so restricting things like policy formation and
> votes to "real" users in some sort of formal way might be a good
> idea. I'd envision it being very easy to gain this status: even
> someone who's invovled in lots of edit wars should be considered a
> "real user", so long as they aren't purely a troll or vandal, or
> someone who just signed up 3 hours ago.
>
> This might actually have the effect of reducing the hierarchy
> somewhat, because right now sysops are a sort of de facto group of
> "trusted users", since the only defined groups we have are "sysops",
> "logged-in users", and "anonymous users". Sysops are too small a
> group, and logged-in users are too big a group (anyone can create 100
> accounts if they wish). Making a larger group of trusted users
> without technical powers would reduce sysops to being just a subset of
> that group with additional technical powers, but no additional powers
> of any other sort.
I'd like to see statistics about how many users create multiple ID's for
the purpose of mischief. When a vote or policy making takes place, how
much influence do these newbies have now. If a newbie's opinion is
overly naïve it will stand out like a sore thumb and be ignored. On
voting, I don't think that most newbies feel confident enough to
participate, and those who do will not be in significant numbers.
Reducing hierarchy by adding another level of hierarchy doesn't make
sense. I don't support the proposal. It's trying to solve an imagined
problem, not a real one.
Ec
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