User talk:Elonka/WikiDots proposal

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[edit] Wikidots for the Wikidotty?

A "difficult' (unstable, immature) user can be identified by reading about 3 sentences of anything he/she has written, or by checking the user's contributions or block log. That's not really what you are proposing. No editor engages with another who is difficult without know this is so almost immediately. That's how problem users get to AN/I, after all, where something can be done, if the assessment is verified. If the engagement lasts for "hours", it is because both parties wish (for whatever perverse reason) to continue, not because the "white hats" don't recognize the "black hats". If the hats are just varied shades of grey, as is often the case, then the "wikidotting" will be completely contentious, unless it is completely secret. (It will also be contentious even if the hats are clearly designated in the mind of the user doing the dotting. Who is likley to agree with anything other than a "white" or a "green"?) If you have stated who is going to make the decisions about the categories, I missed it. I can't think who the community would accept as the designators. What's a difficult editor to one person is an important voice to another. The categorization would be especially contentious where there are consequences to being designated, such as having your opinion overlooked. Just because someone is a Red Dot would not necessarily mean that he/she could not have a very good idea or significant comment. You do say things about "dealing with" problem editors in a timely fashion. What form would "dealing with" them take that wouldn't have to go to WP:RFC or WP:AN/I? The faster the "penalty" can be applied, the more contentious will be the initial designation. This may just be sour grapes from me, of course. Under your system, I'd likely get a yellow dot, so you could officially ignore me (which you can do, unofficially, anyway) should you choose. I was a fervid collector of merit badges as a child, but my interest in courting public judgement evaporated by about age 16. Do you really think that the professional, serious editors of Wikipedia, who are its stable base of writers and researchers, are going to want to play this game? Bielle (talk) 22:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I do agree that having qualitative ratings could be problematic, but so far the proposal is focusing on quantitative ratings that don't require a judgment call. For example: Are they or are they not under ArbCom sanctions; Did they or did they not get blocked recently; Did they or did they not receive warnings? etc.

Where I think it would be really useful, is for Vandal patrollers, and admins closing AfD discussions and the like. Yes, when dealing directly with a problem editor, their behavior becomes obvious, but it's also a problem when dealing casually with a problem editor, where there just isn't time to research each name on a list. That's where I think this rating system would be useful, even if it was just something that was worked into a "hover over" system such as with one of the existing Javascript tools. --Elonka 19:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Even apparently simple quantitative measures can be both misleading and open to misuse. I can make 100 Mainspace edits in a day, not even tiring my fingers, if numbers are all that matter. So can any vandal, and so would any "vandal" of the sort you describe, the one who can argue for hours. (We won't make this be WP:BEANS.) In order to make an assessment of whether my 100 Mainspace edits are equal to yours, for example, some person would have to examine them and make a qualitative assessment. It is also true that some user who makes vandal moves or is a "difficult' user in one subject area is a perfectly reasonably and useful editor in others. If these people are commenting on an AFD, for example, in one of their "good" areas, why should they their vote be discounted? It is also true that such an individual may be justified in opposition, even in an area where he/she has an awkward history. Many people are warned or even blocked inappropriately. Who is going to be watching for a change in status, as the minute the user thinks it is justified, he/she will be all over whatever monitoring system is developed, and fast? And, if the wikidotting is only to be visible to a chosen few (like admins, for example), the howling from the masses will be heard on the moon.

This system feels more like an increase in an "us" and "them" attitude, creating classes of users. Someone who has been ill for three months but has a long and exceptional positive, prior history, does he/she have to earn his/her way back? And, once again, I ask you: who decides, who maintains and who oversees? Who has the time?

In your recent RFA, my only objection was to the fact that there is always a lot of controversy floating about you, and I don't think this kind of drama is what the encyclopedia needs. The nature of the 3 RFAs alone are evidence of the drama. I didn't say that you caused the drama, because there was nothing that clearly said to me that you did. Whatever else may be true of you, you are far too intelligent, and experienced in the ways of Wiki users, to underestimate the sky-high level of drama the Wikidotting proposal will cause. I am just a sometime helper on the Ref Desks, a editor of egregious errors in articles I read and a commentator, though not, I hope, a shit-disturber, in some areas of policy and maintenance. May I suggest that you ask a number of your fellow admins, and perhaps, even some you know will disgaree with you just because you are you and they are they, to get a feel for the likely community reaction before you seed the general storm clouds that hover over WP? With respect, Bielle (talk) 20:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the definitions of mainspace editing need some tweaking, as there's definitely a possibility of gaming. Perhaps that particular criterion should be removed for now, or we could modify the % up or down?

In terms of an AfD discussion, I don't think that a red-dot's opinion should necessarily be discounted, but I do think it would be a useful tool to a reviewing admin, that a red-dot's opinion might need more scrutiny. Whereas a green-dot's opinion could just be accepted as-is, without requiring more work on the part of the admin.

Regarding inactivity, I do think that again, a reviewing admin would find the information useful, to know that one user's comment was from a user who was participating on Wikipedia on a daily basis, whereas another user hadn't been on Wikipedia at all for months, and was just popping in to participate in an AfD. The dot system would effectively be a shorthand method of doublechecking a user's standing, without requiring that the admin check themselves to see if the user was active or not.

Regarding my RfA, you're right that there was drama, but I see the cause of the drama as different than you might.  :) I do a lot of work on Wikipedia, and yes, have definitely run into many disputes. In the vast majority of those disputes, I think we resolve them very rapidly and peacefully, and I can point to many comments that I've gotten from other users, about how pleased they were to engage with a thoughtful editor in a dispute, and how it made the editing process much more pleasant. In a minority of other cases, I have run into more intractable disputes, with users that seemed to be more, well, "conflict-junkies". You are absolutely correct that after a few back and forth messages, it became obvious to me that I was dealing with someone who wasn't all there. So the question then becomes: Do I still try to protect Wikipedia? Or do I say, "I'm not dealing with a good faith editor here, I'm just going to remove these pages from my watchlist and move on." I think that many good editors on Wikipedia do follow the, "Walk away" pattern, simply because it's so time-consuming and emotionally-exhausting to deal with a "bad" editor. They effectively wash their hands of it and say, "I'll let someone else deal with the problem." Well, I'm the kind of the person that often says, "I'm not gonna pass the buck, I'm going to deal with the problem." So yes, that often results in drama.  ;) But it doesn't mean I *like* drama. It just means that I'm not going to shy away from it. I think that if you take a look at the largest dramas that I've been involved with, you'll often see that the editors that I was tangling with were not "good faith" editors with whom we had a simple disagreement -- usually the biggest drama was around certain bad faith editors who were specialists at creating drama, intimidating admins, avoiding sanctions, and weaseling their way through Wikipedia policies. And the more that I didn't succumb to their tactics, the more that they increased the drama level.  :)

Where the problem comes in though (and another of the reasons that I think this WikiDot system would be useful), is where third-party editors are trying to sort out who's in the right and who's in the wrong. Since they don't have the benefit of experience on looking at the dispute, they can't tell good editors from bad, and the problem is often exacerbated by the fact that the "bad" editors are really good at throwing up huge smoke clouds to make things even more confusing. However, a WikiDot system could make those kinds of situations much easier to parse. You might see a Green-Dot editor, trying to hold their own against a batch of Red-Dots, and the situation can become much easier to understand. Which will lessen the power of the Red-Dot editors.

One problem on Wikipedia today, is that there might be a bona-fide Red-Dot editor, under ArbCom sanctions, but there's no easy way to tell that they're under sanctions. And they use that confusion, to continue disrupting Wikipedia for as long as possible. Whereas, if other editors could tell that they were dealing with an under-sanction Red-Dot, they have better tools to identify problem editors, and deal with them in a more effective manner.  :) --Elonka 20:52, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the thoughtful answer. I do know what time it takes to write one. I have noticed, however, that my key questions about who controls the dots, who monitors them, who deals with perceived abuses of them and errors in assigning them have not been answered. This could turn out to be like an RFA only involving every one of the 2 million registered users.

You have certainly been involved with a lot of projects, many of which are, by their very nature, going to arouse passions. The sheer volume will also mean that you will see more conflict than most users. Not all conflict involves drama, of course, and many conflicts have good consequences. Drama rarely shows anyone in a good light. Your dramas started with your opening days, on the Elonka Dunin article and on the Dunin family archives. You are famous for it. I wasn't poking around Wikipedia more than a few weeks before I can across a user page (and whose it was I cannot remember) that had, as one of its lists: "Pages I am watching for my friend Elonka". "That's interesting," thought I. "I wonder why Elonka can't watch for herself?" And so I wandered about, finding Elonka in many places.

It is not a matter of who is right or who is wrong in these dramas, though it is true that those in opposition to you all tend to talk themselves round in circles. It is simply that the drama is there. As a consequence, everything you do on Wikipedia is likely to attract those who like drama; any proposal you make will bring the passionate, the embittered and the vengeful out of the woodwork, along with the good and sensible editors, and the occasional flake who provides comic relief. Add to all this history, a proposal that strikes at the heart of a strongly held (however inaccurately) belief that all usera are equal, even the unregistered ones (well, almost equal, except for maybe Essjay and . . .) and you have instant drama. I'd be astonished if you did not both know this and plan to use it in some way. However, whatever your motives, I still think you would do well to seek a lot of opinions before you take this public. I, for one, would not like to have you hover a cautionary light over my words. Bielle (talk) 23:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, and I too appreciate that you're taking the time to offer heartfelt opinions. You're actually one of the best people to be reviewing the proposal, by the sheer fact that you disagree with me. So I hope that we can keep talking, with mutual respect, towards finding a genuine consensus. If I'm missing any of your questions, it's not that I'm avoiding them, it's just that I'm trying to keep my answers relatively short!  :)

As for who controls the dots, that will really depend on how the system gets implemented. I'm thinking that it should start with this proposal page, and a few individual editors who are interested in the system (such as yourself, though I am as yet unclear as to how you found this page) can critique it and we can try to come up with something that makes sense. After the initial reviewers, I can widen the announcement, such as posting about it at the Village Pump to get more opinions. After that, I'll probably propose it to the developers of Popups or Twinkle, to see about incorporating it into one of the existing Javascript tools.

As for "Pages I am watching for Elonka", that was probably at User:Matt57. Whose contribs you are welcome to check for yourself, though let me know if you'd like a few choice diffs.  :)

My reasons for creating this proposal, are that I've been giving a lot of thought to the community system on Wikipedia, and identifying its strengths and weaknesses. One of the biggest problems on Wikipedia right now, is that griefers are gaining more and more power over the "good" editors. I'd like to see what can be done to better empower the good editors. Yes, there will be plenty of "grey area" definitions, but ultimately I feel that the idea is sound. Will it cause drama to get this idea implemented? Probably. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.  :)

I'm very open to further tweaking the guidelines here. So I ask you, in your own dealings with other users, what informal criteria do you use to tell a good editor from a bad one? Who do you regard with the most respect, and what ways can we quantify those criteria, to help save you time if you are dealing with a large number of editors? And where are you most concerned that you might be regarded as a yellow-dot instead of a green? --Elonka 00:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Parts of Real Life are calling so, with your permission, I will speak to a couple of things now, and return to the rest later.

As to how I found this page, the story is both as simple and as complex as is why I might be reading about Singularity when I know nothing about physics or Oblate (religion) when I hold no religious views. It starts out with seeing something somewhere on the site -your name at AN/I, in this case- with thinking that I hadn't "seen" you around anywhere in a week or so, with wondering where you had disappeared to -"out of sight" in my small Wiki world, at any rate-, going to your user page and pressing "User Contributions", noting from a week-long date gap that you had been away and that one of the first things you worked on upon your return was a proposal intriguingly called "WikiDots." So I looked to see what could demand your immediate attention as a newly minted admin who appeared to have been away for a week. If you want to keep this proposal quiet for a time, I suggest you change the title to something completely innocuous; "Wikidots" is likely to catch a lot of eyes.

The user with the "List I am watching for my friend Elonka" was, I think, on the page of a friend of yours. I wish I remembered more, but the distinct impression I came away with was that this person was watching on your behalf, doing you a favour, prepared to step in and do your bidding, though the last may be a bit stronger than what I thought at the time. I doubt, thus, it was User:Matt57. Bielle (talk) 01:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of any of my WikiFriends with such a list, that keeps it for positive reasons. If you do recall where you saw it, I would be very interested in seeing it.

As for my absence, the answer is simple: Christmas.  :) I was out of town for the holidays, visiting family. I didn't have much internet access while I was gone, but I did spend a lot of time while in airports and on long flights, thinking hard about Wikipedia, and what I could do to make it better. One of the ideas I came up with was WikiDots. So when I got back online, one of the first things I wanted to do was to write it down, before I got sucked into other activities and it slipped my mind.  :) For example, I still haven't even finished all my thank you notes from my RfA! --Elonka 02:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

(re-set outdent) This is the second time I have typed this. I started coughing when the mouse was in my hand, and I clicked somewhere off the writing space. Two paragraphs, gone!

First, I apologise if I gave the impression that you needed to explain why you were away for a week. It is none of my business. (As an aside, I travel with a laptop just for airports and long flights and the like. Somehow I can concentrate on the screen better than I can on a book, and I am much less likely to leave the computer behind than a paperback. Most flights and airports now have Internet access.)

To get back to the dots and the griefmakers on Wikipedia . . . The green, white and yellow dots are just a smokescreen in that there is nothing really significant about them that time almost by itself won't take care of. The red dots, however, are the point of your system if I am reading your rationale correctly. The red dots will also be the truly problematic ones. There are some clear "black hats (BHs)", but they are usually obvious vandal strangers, or community agreed BHs (or sockpuppets/meatpuppets of community agreed BHs). Once identified (either by current due process or by checkuser following on behaviour patterns) they are dealt with (blocked or banned) quite swiftly, sometimes within minutes. I believe that the ones you want to label with red dots are those who may have been sanctioned, but against whom the community, for whatever reason, has not acted to block or ban. Your proposal adds a punishment to being warned or blocked or sanctioned, a punishment of no longer being taken seriously (or "as seriously", if you prefer). Now, according to everything I read, WP doesn't do punishment; it protects, and when the "cost" of protecting gets too high, it blocks or bans as a matter of prevention. Your system is not about prevention or protection any more. (And you won't embarrass me or yourself by trying to convince me, please, that any BH is going to be so hurt by the red-dot designation, that he/she will thus mend his/her foolish ways, will you?) Are there users who game the system? Oh, absolutely. (You are as good a wikilawyer as any other when it suits your purposes, and, had I your exposure and experience, I might be doing the same.) It is a human failing, to try and squirm our way around the rules, to take up the best position, and, in the current North Amerucan culture, to take little or no responsibility for keeping to the accepted rules of the community. I go back to one of my opening objections: who makes the decisions? If you look at an (in)famous user like Giano, for example, who has had countless warning and blocks, all lasting at most an hour or two, more arguments and more drama than almost anyone else I have come across, is he a WH or a BH? It depends, and this is where any absolute or quantitative measure fails: he is a knight in shining armour to some, a writer of excellence to others and a colosal nuisance to still others; and then there is the group that agrees he is all three at once.

I reitererate: against the possible value of a slightly quicker assessment of the nuts, the loons and the fragile, the chip-on-shoulders, the sexual predators, the stalkers and the my-country-right-or-wrongs, the wikilawyers, the wikivandals and the wiki-whacky, I set the interminable arguing about who deserves to be red-dotted and who gets to have a say in it and "quis custodes custodiet", and the dots lose. There are enough rules and enough bases on which to have people be blocked or banned for the behaviours you are concerned about. There is even agreement that people have behaved badly, have broken the rules and "something should be done about it" but almost no one will stand up and follow the rules. If I may suggest, turn your considerable intelligence to the problem of the non-compliant founder, bureaucrat, admin and user. Start from the top, persuade the powers-that-be that they have to set the example, and that the rest will be a relative piece of cake to administer once they do. Now there's a worthy project for you! If you are going to attract drama, do it in a big way.

You have been very patient. Now it is time for sleeping. Bielle (talk) 05:01, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say. Where I disagree though:

• I do think that an awareness of a rating system, will help improve the behavior of some (not all) borderline users.
• Not all Red-Dots are immediately blocked. Just look at a list of everyone under ArbCom sanctions, who is still wandering around Wikipedia and causing problems.
• Though it's possible that someone might be causing problems in one area, while being a productive user in others, I think that's the exception rather than the norm. In my experience, when a user is causing problems in one area, they are probably causing problems in multiple areas. So if they are identified as a problem case in one area, it would be useful to editors in other areas to be aware of those problems.
• Regarding Giano, no system is going to perfectly address 100% of cases. But I'd be really happy with a system that addressed 98%+  :)
• As for who decides who is or isn't red-dotted, I'd like to start with a core set of values that pretty much everyone can agree with. I think the current proposal does that. Red dots are those users who have recent unreversed blocks, or who are under ArbCom sanctions. It is my belief that those are simple quantitative undisputable criteria. Further, any user or admin, doing some due diligence, could determine this for themselves (though it might take a half-hour of digging). The advantage to the Red Dot system, is that it speeds up this process. It puts a tool in the hands of the good editors, to prevent time-wasting by the bad editors.

--Elonka 16:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Just three quick points: (1) By excluding the admins and bureaucrats -even if under sanctions?-, by giving them an automatic green dot, you have created another area ripe for high drama. Have you not noticed the number of admins whose actions are not supported even by their peers, never mind other users? (2) Warnings, and even blocks, often go on and off quite quickly. Such changes will, just in themselves, attract drama and its advocates; and (3) the system will be unreadable to the colour blind. The system puts a tool in the hands of those who like to think in boxes to give them an iron-clad reason to ignore AGF. I am not overlooking the fact that this may be one of your objectives: the thin edge of the wedge that gets AGF, so often the hiding place of scoundrels, first undercut and then eliminated. Bielle (talk) 17:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Bielle, I'm noticing in that every single one of your messages, you have included some sort of personal attack at me. Just to be clear here, are you accusing me of creating this proposal in bad faith? Is it your impression that I've created this proposal as some kind of attempt to heighten drama? Because I assure you, that is not the case. As for color-blind users, that is a valid objection, though an extremely minor one. It could be easily addressed by adding a word or pattern or special outline to the dots. --Elonka 17:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I have re-read everything above. Except for what I thought was a "tongue-in-cheek" reference to "wikilawyering" in which I included myself and most of human kind, I am not seeing a personal attack. I certainly intended no personal attack. Perhaps I misunderstand the policy. (If you indicate what you consider to be attacks, I will rewrite anything to remove any concerns you have, or I will remove everything I have written, without further comment or complaint.) That I do question if the whole of your motivation is clearly set out on the proposal page has been front and centre since my opening remarks, and I apologise for poor writing skills if that has only become clear with the weight of words.

Please note, though, that I am not, in any way, suggesting that you have motivations that are meant to be harmful to Wikipedia. Quite the contrary! I believe that your long editing history and your drive to become an admin are all based on the best of objectives. Even if (note the "if"; I hate the shouting aspect of capital letters, otherwise, I would use them here) your underlying motivation were to be the eventual elimination AGF, as a possible example I mentioned above, you would be doing so believing that AGF had outlived its usefulness to WP, and that it is now a stumbling block to getting the "griefmakers" out of the community. There is a reasonable argument to that as the "hiding place of scoundrels" as I noted above.) And, no, I don't believe that you have created this propsal for the purpose of heightening drama. I do believe, however, that one of the "unintended consequences" (to use a bit of current cant that holds a useful concept) of what happens around you is high drama. As this is a proposal that, in my view, will result in high drama, I was, I thought, bringing that to your attention as a distinct possibility before you presented the proposal to the community at large. It is possible that you don't agree that high drama will ensue; this is a view that I have dismissed because of both your intelligence and experience here on WP. Having dismissed it, I then am given to wonder what is so important about red-dotting a few trouble-makers that is worth the cost to communtity harmony of the high drama? If that kind of querying is a personal attack, then I repreat, please, feel free to delete everything I have said. And, of course, I may be entirely wrong: about the drama, about motivation and about the nature of the WP community. It wouldn't be the first time, and thus, after decades of practice, I give excellent apology. Bielle (talk) 19:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Section break

Fair enough, and no, I don't feel that you need to change any of your previous posts.  :) To help clarify though:

• My day job is as a manager of online communities. I have been doing this for nearly 20 years now.
• I have seen the growth and decline, the entire "Growth cycle" of many other communities on the web
• It has pained me, since my early days on Wikipedia, to see Wikipedia repeating many of the same mistakes that other online communities have made. I wish that Wikipedia could better learn from the mistakes of others, rather than having to insist on re-making all its own mistakes
• Having said the above though, I also have to say that Wikipedia does have some key differences from other online communities
  • Wikipedia has no centralized authority structure. The decisions are (usually) made as group decisions, rather than command decisions from a leader
  • Wikipedia has a very low barrier to entry. Users don't need approval to enter, they can just show up
  • Wikipedia has no identity checks. Users can just show up and pretty much pretend to be whoever they want
• One of the hardest things for me to get my head around, as a new editor, was the "consensus" system.
• Another thing that was difficult for me to comprehend, was Wikipedia's tolerance for vandals. I saw many users who, if they would have been present in my own online communities, would have been permanently blocked in a rapid fashion. Yet on Wikipedia, these vandals were not only given chance after chance, but also by their very actions, were frequently antagonizing away good editors. This made no sense to me.
• As I have learned the "wiki way", I have been thinking hard about all of the above points. Basically, it has been a puzzle to solve.  :) The problem to be addressed, was how to lessen the power of the bad editors, and increase the power of the good editors. But the problem was not only how to come up with a solution, but also how to implement that solution, because of the "group decision-making" process. In other words, how could a system be implemented to deal with the bad editors, when those very bad editors would fight tooth and nail to keep the system from being implemented?
• The solution that I have come up with (so far) is this WikiDots system. I think that at its core, it's a good plan:
  • It will help easily identify bad editors
  • It will help empower good editors
  • It will decrease the time-suck that is imposed on good editors, as they try to deal with bad editors
  • Once good editors are more easily identified, I think it will help in many other systems on Wikipedia, where the good faith editors are often overwhelmed by the bad-faith ones
  • Once there is a clear mechanism to identify good editors, I think many editors will be incentivized to achieve that "good editor" status, and to keep their record clean. Which I think will benefit both them, and other editors, and Wikipedia as a whole.
• I anticipate that the bad-faith editors who have been hiding in the cracks of the Wikipedia systems, will absolutely hate this WikiDots system. Because it will remove some of their hiding places. So I fully anticipate that there will be drama, and complaints, and attacks. But I still think the Dots system is a good idea, and that it's worth the drama of implementation, towards the longterm goal of a smoother-functioning community.
• As Wikipedia grows, there will be more users under sanctions and editing restrictions. It's too time-consuming for any single admin or other good-faith editor to be able to keep track of all the users under sanctions. But having a WikiDot system will make it simple for them to do a spot-check.
• I do not want to dismantle AGF. I think AGF is great and should continue. But note that even at the top of WP:AGF it says, "Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it." All the WikiDot system will do, is identify those users for whom there is some "strong evidence."

--Elonka 20:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

In short, then, if I read your explanation correctly, you do agree there will be drama and you believe the drama is not too high a price to pay if your proposal succeeds. (Just something to think about: will it have been worth the price if it fails?) I don't agree with you, about either the proposal or the price, but that is neither here nor there. We have each done our best to be persuasive and neither has succeeded. I would like you to consider that it will not only be "bad-faith editors" who will object to your system. You will do WP, and yourself, a disservice if you make even a mental "red-dot" against everyone who does so. (That there will be 'bad-faith responses" is assured by the very nature of WP, though, if history is any guide, not all of them will be on the "object" side. There are those who "support" en bloc, which is just as big a failing, in my view, whatever side I am on.) Bielle (talk) 22:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not trying to push the proposal through over objections, I'm trying to find a compromise version of the proposal which most people will agree with. So let me try and ask you this from a different direction. How do you yourself judge whether or not you are dealing with a "bad faith" editor? Can you think of any criteria which are quantifiable? Don't you agree that it's useful to be able to quickly tell whether or not a given editor is under ArbCom sanctions? --Elonka 23:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

To change the order of your questions: almost anything quantifiable about human behaviour is, to me, uninteresting at best, and misleading at worst. I seldom think in terms of numbers, weights and measures, so I am not going to be of much use to you. (After all, I think I made it clear that the principles on which you base your proposal are not what i see as being appropriate; I have made no attempt to comment on the measurement basis at all.)

As to how I assess "bad faith", that comes down to what I perceive is the motive behind the editing. And that would be next to impossible to quantify. I can give you a few "for instances", however. Setting aside the clear vandals of the "X is a faggot" school of editing, who is left? Well, there are the "give me an argument, any argument" folks and the "please, let me make a change, any change" group. Once they have been warned, then they edit in bad faith, in my view. Stalkers edit in bad faith as do fans (who are just stalkers with a benign intent, after all). Editors who knowingly ask questions in forbidden areas on the Ref Desks, or who soapbox or write diatribes may be called trolls, but that is just another form of bad-faith editing to me. What is not always, or even usually bad faith to me, even though it consitutes by far the greatest burden on time, energy and admin resources are what User:Moreschi refers to as "The Plague". If you have read his essay on the plague that is nationalism, then it will mean something to you if I say that I agree with him that most of the troubles (bad pun there) on WP are the result of nationalism and, in many cases, its partner in chaos, religion. I would go further and say that the roots of most of humanities' troubles outside of WP rest there, too. In most of the specific cases I have read, however, I wouldn't designate editors on either side as bad-faith editors. With some exceptions, each person believes passionately in his/her point of view and frequently genuinely cannot accept that any source that does not support his/her point of view could possibly be accurate. Similar analogies apply to the the nature vs nurture arguments, the science vs faith or science vs other science dog fights, and the I-am-notable or my-band-is-notable vs the no-you (they)-are-not arenas. So, if the most tendentious editors are not necessarily editing in bad faith, what small point is there in counting the rest? (Yes, I do realize that my point of view on this is not likely to be supported by concensus.)

The previous paragraph answers your question about my view of the importance of identifying quickly those under sanctions, but to be clear: no, I don't think it is important. Almost without exception, these are editors who operate in a very restricted area and have well-publicized views. A quick link to the Sanctions' page will tell you who's involved, if any are. You are unlikely to find the crowd from "The Troubles", for example, making a concerted run on an AfD on Mountainbiking, or a new Indie band in New Zealand. If one individual so sanctioned does appear at the AfD, of what moment is his/her sanction in an ArbCom case about an entirely unrelated subject?

There are two other groups I have not mentioned, who also are the focal points for a lot of grief. First, WP attracts a lot of truly disturbed people with egos too fragile for the slightest breath of criticism, and with agendas untrackable in real time or real space. They seem to require an intense amount of attention, of placation and of assistance. They are like the nationalists in intensity, but are frequently not rational under any known belief system. Those tormented souls I think we just endure. There are not enough of them in any one area that they can skew much and I have no idea how any one of them would react to being dotted with any colour.

The last group is often editing in bad-faith. For want of a good catch-all term, I will call its members the Hormone Driven. An HD has to be right, has to be seen to be, acknowledged to be, right. The corollary is that the HD cannot be wrong, does not apologize, does not care what anyone else thinks unless that anyone else agrees. The HD sulks, intermittently vandalizes, though never to the point of a block or ban, has WP:IAR tatooed on its feeble bicep, thinks being an admin would be cool, but accepts the judgement of no admin. The HD is often young, though by no means are all the young HD. The saddest HDs are those whose bodies are not young, but whose brains are stuck on "You can't tell me what to do", and some of them are admins.

That's a lot of writing and reading. Feel free to delete it at any stage. It begins to have the whiff of "rant" about it, and that is not a burden I intended to give you. I doubt there is anything useful for you in it, but it was almost as good as therapy for me to look at how I see editing attitudes on WP. For that, even in disagreeing with your proposal, I thank you. Bielle (talk) 02:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the thoughtful comments, truly. They have given me a lot to think about. I definitely agree with some of your categories. Where I still disagree somewhat, is on the usefulness of identifying the problematic editors. To use your analogy, it is my opinion that if someone is being rabidly nationalistic in one part of Wikipedia, that they should lose privileges in other parts, even if their behavior is much better in the other subject area. Sort of like if a cop pulls someone over for drunk driving at night, and the person loses their license, even though they may be a perfectly capable driver in the light of day. What a green dot would show, is that an editor is always thoughtful and civil, and that therefore their opinion should be given more weight, wherever that editor is participating. And speaking for myself, if I'm dealing with a bunch of names that I don't know, in any subject area, I would find a preliminary rating system enormously useful.

Here's another way the system would be useful. I'm currently mentoring, with limited success, a celebrity who is upset about the state of his biography on Wikipedia. To the celebrity, he sees a lot of names posting on his talkpage, and he can't tell who are the "real" editors and who are the trolls. To him, everyone speaks with the same weight, and he lashes out at everyone because of his confusion. Whereas, if we had a dot system, things would make more sense to him, and to other casual visitors. The Dots could be a kind of "uniform" or badge of authority that newcomers could see, and quickly know if they were dealing with a random troublemaker, or someone who had earned respect within the Wikipedia community. Further, the "badge" of a Green Dot would be a carrot that other users would seek to obtain, even some of those hormonal ones that you referred to. It would be the "merit badge" that some of them crave. And at the same time, it would also be easier to tell who the rolemodels should be. In any online community, the newer members will naturally look to the existing members, to learn the standards of behavior. Right now, the newer members can't often tell who they should be emulating. But if the WikiDots system were implemented, you can bet that the newer members would work hard to emulate the behavior of the Green Dot authority figures. Further, they would pay much less attention to the bad behavior of the Red Dots. The system would be useful not just for identification, but also for generational improvement in behavior as a whole, and then I think we would all benefit.  :) --Elonka 00:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Are the trolls you mention above, the ones bothering the celebrity, currently under sanctions? I ask because, unless your celebrity is an Armenian historian or an editor of Irish articles, most of the current list of sanctioned editors are not likely to be interested in him. Thus, no red dots and no way of telling the white hats from the black hats except the way all of us do, by reading what they write. Of course, if you are intending the "red dots" to be expanded beyond merely those currently sanctioned or under warnings, then we will have to wait and see what the criteria may be. I don't think the drunk-driving analogy works. The drunk driver is kept off the road because he cannot be counted on to drive sober and the next check (if he doesn't lose his licence now) may be at the roadside death or maiming of some innocent. First, nobody dies from what happens on Wikipedia, however embarrassing the review of a late-night comment might be in the sober light of dawn. This is a significant distinction. There are also no "innocents" to even be injured in any meaningful way; if you don't like the arguing, then just get away from the article. Wikidotting is a symptom of taking much too seriously what is, after all, not real life.

Something about this proposal still does not smell right. If it is bot-run, it is subject to all the usual bot problems. (I am sure you are aware that bots, in general, are not, as they say, "in good odour" at the moment. with special reference to Betacommand Bot.) If it is admin run or bureaucrat run, it adds a whole other set of things to be reported, reviewed, revised, repaired, reverted and reviled. It is another level of bureaucracy and completely against the spirit, if not the letter, of "no instruction creep", though I realize it is not an instruction, per se. If you proceed, I predict a huge uproar, in which you will see some quite astonishing temporary alliances. The worst of the worst will be allied with the best of the best; the latter because the proposal is fundamentally anit-wiki and the former, well, who wants to be the bad guy about everything? (Except for convicted paedophiles, who seems to be watched for everything forever, even an excon only has to worry about continuing special scrutiny in the area for which he did his time.)

You may be right about a few the HD group looking for that badge, but not everyone is stuck in that emotional range. (You have a risk that the red dot may become a bad boy's badge of (dis)honour, too.) This is the only place on Wikipedia where I would say, given everything I have presented, and considering carefully all of your arguments, I still don't like it.

I have enjoyed the exchanges, however, and appreciate the time you have taken. Bielle (talk) 04:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

In the case of the celebrity that I am talking about, the dots would show up rapidly. He is a magnet for POV-pushing by SPAs. Some of them get blocked, some of them create sockpuppets. But the advantage of the WikiDot system, is that both would show up. Those that had been recently blocked would be red-dots. Those that were new would be white-dots. Those that were doing nothing to but complaining at talkpages, would be yellow-dots. Leaving the Green Dots as the ones that should be listened to. --Elonka 17:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Enjoy your green-dot world. I can understand the attraction in knowing, at sight, who should be listened to and who should be completely ignored. It saves a lot of time that might be otherwise wasted thinking about it. That kind of "received knowledge" is what fundamtentalists of all stripes promote, and what bureaucrats love. The Catholic Church used to do that, didn't it; it may still do, for all I know. China tries and Burma prety well succeeds. That some of the people they see as unregenerate black hats are the whitest of white to us is not a problem to them; but it is a problem for us. I am sure you will be thinking, "but the community decides the standards for the community". While true, this proposal will, by its very implementation, change the nature of Wikipedia. Such a change may be inevitable. I, for one, will be sorry to have it happen. And, because I am not likely to be able to, or want to, keep to your editing target, I shall decline to make any careful considerations either in exchanges with someone like you, which may have some value in the long run for the encyclopedia, or on the Ref Desk. It would all be a complete waste of time, after all, as we "yellow dots", who are not "up to the standard" on editing are as bad, in your scenario, as those who have received blocks and/or warnings for actively making problems, and thus cannot be trusted to speak either wisely or in the interests of the community. I suspect if our voices are to be dismissed in discussions, then they they will not be given much credence in article space soon after. Well, it has been fun for a few months. I shall now wait to see how the community responds to the actual form of the proposal when it comes. Sadly, Bielle (talk) 18:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused, what makes you think you'd be a yellow dot? You're thoughtful, articulate, you're willing to discuss rather than edit-war, you're active on Wikipedia, you do lots of work on articles and in Wikipedia-space, you have no blocks, and I see no history of warnings on your talkpage. I see you as a good user, and someone whose opinion should be given weight. Why do you think you would be rated otherwise? --Elonka 21:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for "thoughtful and articulate”; they are certainly attributes towards which I strive, though not always with success. What I don't have is "lots of work on articles"; my Mainspace edits do not even qualify me for most elections. Much of the time I would fail:

· Active: At least 10 article edits over the last 30 days

· Constructive participants: More than 50% of their edits in last 30 days are to articles, as opposed to talkpages

I spent a business lifetime editing, and teaching, and the thought of doing more in my retirement gags me. I do work on the Ref Desks, not as an expert in any academic field, but as an individual with a wide range of experience across the world and across many disciplines. Doing article work just to maintain a status level is of no interest to me. If I were to qualify for a green dot on any given day, it would be certainly fortuitous, although possibly also serendipitous.

This approach, of editing for the sake of an edit count, appears to run counter to “Wikipedia is not an anti-leech community. Users should not criticize others on not devoting time to edit.” Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. It’s not that you have set standards at levels hard to achieve, but it is, to use a phrase I used above in a different context, the “thin edge of the wedge” of counting edits A yellow dot is, arguably, a very visible criticism of the amount of time spent editing, especially with time-related standards (10 days, thirty days). I appreciate that you are trying to “bring me into the fold” as it were, but I illustrate one of the weaknesses of the system. Whenever counting is the analytical method, and there is more than one aspect to be counted, there will be those who pass one aspect and fail another. (Your new Bot will be very busy checking all countable aspects of all 10,000 active users every, what, day? change in user-contribution page? month?) Bielle (talk) 03:27, 13 January 2008 (UTC)