[Wikipedia-l] Tokerboy weighs in

Mon Nov 11 19:52:48 UTC 2002

Tokerboy
:Ed Poor

I originally only wanted to respond to two posts. 
First of all, I like the Cunctster being a prick--he's
a vaccine against groupthink because no decision will
ever be unanimous as long as he is here--makes me
wonder if that's his goal.  Many CEOs and team leaders
and the like secretly designate one board/team member
to disagree on every decision, because otherwise
groups tend to accept the first even remotely viable
option presented.

With that said, he can be a cock.  (a throbbing,
monster one, even)

:I might be an anarchist, but if I see a gang of kids
:going down the 
:street, methodically knocking out car windshields
:with baseball bats -- 
:I'm calling the cops. And I want them to have
:handcuffs, mace and guns. 
:Sometimes having a police force is the lesser of two
:evils.

Bad vandals destroy cars, property and occasionally
people, but a corrupt police force doesn't stop any of
this and tears apart the community.  The best solution
is to have the community oversee the police force.

:Now, I'm not dismissing the risk that "law and order"
:can turn into 
:fascism. Hitler is ever on my mind. But have you ever
:lived in a 
:gang-controlled neighborhood? 

I've lived in several, and it depends on the gang and
the city.  In Baltimore, for example, gangs are indeed
dangerous and to be stayed away from.  In Richmond,
organized crime gangs exist, and fight with each
other, but generally leave others alone.  In some
cities, some gangs have done more to help the local
community than governmental programs.  The Mafia is
the same way.

Anyway, we're not discussing organized crime here, but
I think it's a valid analogy.  My solution is below.

:With no legitimate authority, mob rule develops. With
:excessive 
:authority, dictatorship ensues. What are we to do?

I know exactly what to do, and everybody who disagrees
with me is clearly wrong and should go live in the
desert for forty years and forty nights and ponder the
depths of your wrongossity and incorrectitude.

I think we should divide the controversial powers up. 
Currently sysop status is not difficult to achieve;
that's fine and wonderful since it means more people
to delete silly vandalism and ban such IPs.  I propose
separating this from the position of moderator.  I
don't know if we need/it's possible to do this through
the software, but I think it would work anyway.

Sysop: delete obviously vandalized articles, delete
pages to make way for a move, ban anonymous IPs if
necessary.  If there is _any doubt_ as to whether a
change should be considered vandalism, refer the
matter to a moderator.
Moderator: powers of sysop above, but intervenes in
edit wars and disagreements if a user or sysop asks
(or if the moderator simply sees one developing).  The
moderator tries to get the situation cooled down, and
the argument resolved in one way or another.  I'd say
the standard for freezing an article is 1: if an
actual edit war has erupted and 2: the article should
be frozen at the state it was before the war, or with
no text at all and a reference to the talk page.  I'd
also suggest allowing both sides to write an article
(or a section) from their POV, and then having one or
more moderators combine the two.

If someone does not agree with the moderator's
decision, some sort of court should be established
where a user can complain about a moderator's actions,
and other moderators and/or sysops can discuss the
decision and whether or not it was justified.

Moderators should be chosen through some sort of
anonymous nomination system.  Any signed-in user can
nominate another user and when a person has been
nominated five times (by different users), he can be
made a moderator.  Alternatively, perhaps a person
must be a sysop for a month or two before becoming a
moderator.

I think regardless of the merit of what I propose
above, I do believe we should have a Bill of Rights of
sorts for users without any special status (i.e. not
even signed in) to more effectively guarantee that
abuse will not occur.

1:Users have the right to edit any page, except for
specifically protected ones or articles temporarily
frozen because an edit war was developing
2:Users have the right to access a forum to complain
of abuse of power

Those are the only two I can think of right now.  I
have a good bit of experience in trying to spread out
too little power among too many people, which is the
problem we're having now, in one of my old jobs.  The
reason this is occuring is because sysops have two
roles: general maintenance and moderation.  The power
for general maintenance should be spread out, because
if the basic rule that only clearcut vandalism and
nonsense can be deleted is followed, this can only
help the wikipedia grow.  I think that in 99% of
cases, a sysop ruling to delete a page/ban an IP
(currently) is simply because of vandalism.  It's the
minority of cases where judgement, and potential abuse
of power, comes into play.  If 99% of the problems is
one discrete type, then 99% of the enforcement power
should be directed towards those problems, and the
other 1% where judgement comes into play should be
considered separately, because it is a separate
problem.

Tokerboy

PS: It has been decided that we will, one way or
another, upload fair use material like album covers,
right?  I should continue to upload such things as
needed, right?  I didn't mean to raise a ruckus,
brouhaha or shenanigans--I was just fed up trying to
describe psychedelic album covers ("There's a woman...
probably... with much... bizareness around her, and a
star... or maybe it's a koala bear") and I saw others
uploading video covers.

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