Recruiting editors
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The ideal Wikipedia board would also ideally be involved in recruiting editors who could at least settle questions of ethics in reporting, etc..
But, we have got along without any formal editor or powers other than those of the IP Death Squad for nearly a year now, and some think no such powers are necessary. What do you think? What does it mean to recruit and train editors? What powers should they have? Should they for instance have a veto over powers of a sysop?
Open discussion - what do you think?
See also Wikipedia needs editors
right now, nothing...but I'm pondering...
This seems like politics of ideas. In a sense it is the "political theory" question, but of how to select ideas rather than people. I have made some progress with E-Consensus [en.wikipedia.com/wiki/E-Consensus] Which is about the principles of coordinate inclusions and organize alterntive drafts of an evolving open document like wikipedia with voting. One principle is to simply list most sailent material at the top of a page. It sounds simple but that can be voted on. It seems a profound subject and one which is so new as to be not well understood.
The interesting question seems to be how organizations can make better decisions --especially with an eye toward not making bad ones. One principle is to favor inclusion but in different drafts witht the popular draft on top. Yet the organizing of such inclusions is also a matter of resources and interest. It is dificult to expect the browsing public to take an interest and vote on pages simply because most of the net is not that way. Therefore it becomes a kind of wikicomittiee
I generally prefer letting a system grow by interest rather than recruiting people to fill a job. And I also particularly favor a open or distributed and automated power structre --if it can be better defined. It is fine to have an IPSquad for a limited set of goals but with size and an aim toward maximizing the resource it may require more than an in-group. What is the selection criteria?
The job seems to be maintaining formating of the work. Perhaps the way to insure better formatting, concice articles and organization is to constrain the structure and process by which things are added. But how?
I was pleasantly suprized to return to wikipedia after doing some work on this and found the [edit] item (related to my work) to the right of sections. This "sectioning" provides a "divide and conquor" approach in voting systems.
Yes, the wikipedia desperately needs editors. Perhaps they must pass a test, and are held to a standard, but there needs to be an official who has the final say in any NPOV or reference (or other monor) dispute, until a quarum can be formed to judge the matter publically (assuming it is important enough to go that far, which can be determined by votes).
- At a much lower level, something like the Anti-vandalism ideas might also help. I don't think it's practical to have a 'dictator' or a 'group of dictators' that can have last word in pov debates. Having those debates in a non-public version of a page might help a bit. An agreed wikipedia 'pov' document might help as well. -- Gwicke 16:22, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- I only want "page editor-in-cheifs" w checks and balances, people who can defy concencus only until the matter is able to be brought to arbitration (or whatever other process is decided on). as for a wiki-pov... there already is one (atheism, communism, anarchism, postmodernism... need I go on?) but I certainly don't want it made official! that would throw the whole "were an objective encyclopedia" thing right out the window. I think NPOV is about as POV as we should get... ;) JackLynch 09:01, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Did I misread what you ment about "POV document"? you may want to explain that (maybe write one?) JackLynch 09:12, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- I only want "page editor-in-cheifs" w checks and balances, people who can defy concencus only until the matter is able to be brought to arbitration (or whatever other process is decided on). as for a wiki-pov... there already is one (atheism, communism, anarchism, postmodernism... need I go on?) but I certainly don't want it made official! that would throw the whole "were an objective encyclopedia" thing right out the window. I think NPOV is about as POV as we should get... ;) JackLynch 09:01, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- The 'N' in NPOV is what the discusion is often about- it will always be an approximation. Getting close to it will always involve discussions, often heated ones. What i meant with a 'pov doc' was just good examples for this. Some rules / protection mechanism can help to provide the framework for a productive outcome of these discussions, but i don't think special editors can. Some more newbie-friendly documentation might be enough. -- Gwicke 14:11, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)