Fundamental reform of Wikipedia, ideas wanted Options

[A Horse With No Name]

2. Eliminate RfA and RfB and put in a standardized exam, not unlike a civil service exam, where people are judged based on understanding of policy and guidelines and not on irrelevant stuff.

That would be meaningful if there were some correlation between understanding policy and actually following it...

You could say the same thing about any civil servant.

[CharlotteWebb]

2. Eliminate RfA and RfB and put in a standardized exam, not unlike a civil service exam, where people are judged based on understanding of policy and guidelines and not on irrelevant stuff.

That would be meaningful if there were some correlation between understanding policy and actually following it...

You could say the same thing about any civil servant.

Is the candidate's likelihood of following policy "irrelevant stuff"? I'm sure I could argue either way on that, but I'd just like to make sure we're on the same page.

[Kelly Martin]

2. Eliminate RfA and RfB and put in a standardized exam, not unlike a civil service exam, where people are judged based on understanding of policy and guidelines and not on irrelevant stuff. The exam would be reviewed by an impartial panel who would only know the applicant by a code number, thus avoiding personality clashes.

You'd just get everyone using cheat sheets. I'm a VE for amateur radio and if we didn't make people come into our test sites and take the test in person in front of us as proctors, I guarantee you that people would just take the test online with a copy of the answer key and everyone would always score 100%.

[GlassBeadGame]

Wales gives you complete charge, and you have three fundamental reforms that you are allowed to implement.

What would those be? And what are the problems or abuses that each are supposed to address?

Sell the damn thing to Rupert Murdoch and retire to Bimini.

If that is not possible, Plan B:

1. Require paid registration -- no IP editing, you need an account. Registration would be renewed annually.

2. Eliminate RfA and RfB and put in a standardized exam, not unlike a civil service exam, where people are judged based on understanding of policy and guidelines and not on irrelevant stuff. The exam would be reviewed by an impartial panel who would only know the applicant by a code number, thus avoiding personality clashes.

3. All new articles would be subject to review prior to going online.

4. All new edits would reviewed on a set cycle -- hourly, twice or thrice or day, whatever. No new editing would be automatic.

5. Eliminate editor Talk Pages. All conversation relating to articles and contents will be on the Talk Page related to the article or to the WikiProject(s) connected to the article.

6. Eliminate AN and AN/I as it exists -- anyone with a complaint or concern would send an e-mail to an admin forum, where the first free admin would review the cases as they come in.

7. Rewrite blocking policy so offenses and matching punishment are clearly spelled out and are not subject to admin whims.

8. Get rid of that damn ugly jigsaw globe logo and get something sexier.

Well at least Kelly proposes some non-trivial changes.

[RMHED]

I guarantee you that people would just take the test online with a copy of the answer key and everyone would always score 100%.

An exam that one cannot fail, and that would be a bad thing?

But what a self-esteem boosting marvel they are.

We already have these in the UK, they're called GCSE' s and A levels.

[A Horse With No Name]

Is the candidate's likelihood of following policy "irrelevant stuff"? I'm sure I could argue either way on that, but I'd just like to make sure we're on the same page.

No, "irrelevant stuff" means the junk that sinks RfA: picking apart someone's personality, age, off-Wiki playtime, perceived maturity and civility, etc. Focus on policy knowledge and understanding, not on whether Mr. X is a big mouthed baby or Mr. Y is three years too young to drink alcohol.

You'd just get everyone using cheat sheets. I'm a VE for amateur radio and if we didn't make people come into our test sites and take the test in person in front of us as proctors, I guarantee you that people would just take the test online with a copy of the answer key and everyone would always score 100%.

Years ago, when AOL was the big thing in the USA, there was an admin-style ranking for chat rooms called Guides. The Guides had the power to remove someone from a chat for being vulgar or noisy or whatever, and if you got three removals you were banned from the chat rooms.

To become a Guide, you took the test online in front of a Guide. If you answered the questions correctly, I believe you could move on to a probationary period.

I would think that could work with the Admin corps.

Well at least Kelly proposes some non-trivial changes.

So sue me...I'm a horse, damn it, not an Oxford professor.

[Kelly Martin]

I'd personally do away with RfA entirely; administrators would be appointed by an elected "administration committee" which itself is elected by secret ballot. I'd also recommend assigning different administrators different duty areas depending on competency and skills, possibly even breaking up the rights bundle accordingly.

I didn't address the content side in my earlier suggestions. Changes to deal with content issues would necessarily include:

• Multiple parallel articles on the same topic. NPOV is fundamentally unworkable; the myth of "one truth, one article" is one of Jimmy's most toxicly stupid juvenile fantasies.
• Some sort of prepublication review, at least on "controversial" topics including all biographies of living or recently deceased individuals. No article content edit sees the light of day without at least two sets of eyes on it, and at least one of those sets of eyes will be identified by a verified real name.
• Named, identified, and verified subject-matter experts responsible for first-order content dispute resolution within those topic areas.

[Law]

Come to think of it, I think of WP like I do the Internal Revenue Code. I would take the site down, and completely rebuild every facet of it. In short, the more I think of it, the more I consider WP to be a car that is totaled by an insurance company. Sure it could theoretically be rebuilt, but sometimes the cost is too great. Just let it rot and get another one.

This would be the 'totally destroy Wikipedia' option, then, Law?

Especially with the comparison to the Internal Revenue Code, I'm not sure what the "completely rebuild" and "get another one" parts are about.

Haha. Well, I would say that the IRC would have to be rebuilt in a comprehensible way. I'm not sure a country does well when no taxes are collected.

@PD - I know where you are going with this I'd only destroy it with permission, as I assume is part of this hypothetical. I get your point and it is well-taken.

[KD Tries Again]

[*]Multiple parallel articles on the same topic. NPOV is fundamentally unworkable; the myth of "one truth, one article" is one of Jimmy's most toxicly stupid juvenile fantasies.

I think the idea that a statement is either true or false predates Wikipedia. This suggestion doesn't appeal.

[A Horse With No Name]

@PD - I know where you are going with this I'd only destroy it with permission, as I assume is part of this hypothetical. I get your point and it is well-taken.

Can you fill in the less-savvy members of the community on Petey's point, please?

[anthony]

This needs to be split out to another thread, but...

Well, I would say that the IRC would have to be rebuilt in a comprehensible way.

Simply defining "taxable income" in a way that doesn't contain any unintended consequences and doesn't contain any loopholes is, well, impossible. Granted, you could simplify some little things, but for the most part the IRC isn't even the complicated part - it's the treasury regulations, the revenue rulings, and the court cases which interpret the IRC where things get most complicated. The IRC could simply say "There is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax of 25%" and you'd still have the vast majority of the complications deriving from the interpretation of that rule.

As an aside, the so called "Fair Tax" suffers from the same problems as the income tax, because it doesn't tax items purchased for use in business.

[Kelly Martin]

That's not so difficult. I work with experts a lot and they dont' find such consensus difficult. The problem is the selection bias of the people discussing the truth on Wikipedia. Let's take the belief that the moon landings were faked. There really is a group of editors on Wikipedia who have that belief. You have to be really quite deranged to be such a person. On the other side you have the people who oppose them. Again, you have to be quite disturbed to do this. Any reasonable normal person would see that there is abolutely no point in getting into such a dispute with such a person in the first place. So there you have it.

Yes, this is precisely the problem with the proposal. One ends up with one article saying Obama was born in the United States, and another that he was born on Mars (or in Kenya, or wherever), and I am just not sure that's either workable or desirable.

Wikipedia's current structure forces editors to get into disputes with people who believe Obama was born on Mars. Wikipedia policy holds that complete nutcases have exactly as much right and standing to assert truth as the most rational and knowledgeable experts on a topic. At least with a multiple-article approach, the nutcases can write their version of "truth" on their own article branches, where they will presumably receive low trust rankings relative to those written by more rational people, and thus attract only the attention of people who enjoy looking at crazy nonsense. Such a system would require trust metrics (and probably also meta-trust metrics) to be effective, but such systems already exist and could be adapted to this purpose.

[anthony]

Wikipedia's current structure forces editors to get into disputes with people who believe Obama was born on Mars. Wikipedia policy holds that complete nutcases have exactly as much right and standing to assert truth as the most rational and knowledgeable experts on a topic. At least with a multiple-article approach, the nutcases can write their version of "truth" on their own article branches, where they will presumably receive low trust rankings relative to those written by more rational people, and thus attract only the attention of people who enjoy looking at crazy nonsense. Such a system would require trust metrics (and probably also meta-trust metrics) to be effective, but such systems already exist and could be adapted to this purpose.

It'd be better than the current system. But why not just ban the nutcases (without subjecting hundreds of rational people to a 6-month arb com proceeding)?

[KD Tries Again]

Or just ban their content? What's the merit in hosting such articles?

[Grep]

But why not just ban the nutcases (without subjecting hundreds of rational people to a 6-month arb com proceeding)?

Because they're already running the asylum?

[Moulton]

Nutcases actually have more standing than experts, since experts are liable to WP:COI.

[anthony]

But why not just ban the nutcases (without subjecting hundreds of rational people to a 6-month arb com proceeding)?

Because they're already running the asylum?

Which brings us back to my initial answer. Wales can't give me complete charge, because Wales doesn't have complete charge.

Addendum: He could probably get away with banning nutcases, though.

This post has been edited by anthony: Mon 14th September 2009, 9:27pm

[Kelly Martin]

Or just ban their content? What's the merit in hosting such articles?

If you ban their content, they'll work endlessly to insert it into other people's content. If you let them have their little page (which, because of trust metrics, only them and their buds will see), you may actually have less conflict then you would have otherwise.

[EricBarbour]

sorry, however........

Lots of people offered the same basic ideas, so they must have some validity:
remove or protect BLPs, flagged revs, clear out admin deadwood, and implement
a trusted-user system.

However, the original post said:

Wales gives you complete charge, and you have three fundamental reforms that you are allowed to implement.

And no one offered the most obvious first "fix" for Wikipedia's problems:
get rid of Wales.

[victim of censorship]

sorry, however........

Lots of people offered the same basic ideas, so they must have some validity:
remove or protect BLPs, flagged revs, clear out admin deadwood, and implement
a trusted-user system.

However, the original post said:

Wales gives you complete charge, and you have three fundamental reforms that you are allowed to implement.

And no one offered the most obvious first "fix" for Wikipedia's problems:
get rid of Wales.

First reform: Purge the servers, sell the IT equipment.

Second reform: Sell the domain name "Wikipedia".

Third reform: Take the monies realized from the first two "reforms" and give it to some inner city library in need of real books.