User:John Broughton/Initiatives/Wikipedia 2.0

Please do not edit this page (very minor copyedits excepted). Comments are welcome at User talk:John Broughton/Wikipedia 2.0

• This page outlines proposed changes.
• Reasoning for the proposed changes can be found at /Rationale
• Notes about what others have said can be found at User:John Broughton/Wikipedia improvements - proposals and comments elsewhere

Concepts

Types of change

There are two types of changes - incremental and radical. The first is easier to do, and more limited; the second more difficult, and can have a higher payoff. Sometimes there is no way to fundamentally fix something without a radical change.

Tools

1. wizards (On 4/24/07, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote: I just saw that the JavaScript wizards at Wikimedia Commons came up with an impressive new tool - if you look at an image description page, you will now see "Nominate for deletion" link in the bottom right corner. If you follow that link and give a deletion reason, everything - the tagging of the image, the listing on the Deletion requests page, and the notification of the uploader - is done automatically using JavaScript.)
2. more transclusion (XfDs) and collapsible navigation
3. automation via bots and elsewise (for example, User:Uncle G's 'bot, which do a lot of the grunt work on transcluding AfDs, MfDs, etc. (and should do more)
4. clear instructions:
   1. tags/templates, which link to a page that explains how to fix
      1. wikilinks to disambiguation pages
      2. dead external links
      3. external links that violate WP:EL
5. Q&A subpages for wikipedia policies and guidelines, to preserve information (essentially, supplemental refactoring)
6. Welcome+ bot for new editors
7. Classes, including

These changes are INCREMENTAL, have PRECEDENT, and DON'T REQUIRE PROGRAMMING CHANGES. [Possible exception: #2 - but still, Articles for Creation really ought to work like RfAs; see also Deletion Review for something that seems to work much better.] - 16:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

• New articles that should not have been added.
• Moves that should not have been made.
• Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced information
• Link rot
• Vandalism (direct damage and the time and energy to fight it).
• Too many screens, keystrokes, and complicated processes for things other than editing articles (for example, proposing an article for deletion; reporting vandalism)
• Article talk pages where chronology and authorship is difficult or impossible to understand.

Changes

Increasing the entry price for registered users

Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Registered users should be held to a higher standard.

Metafilter.com has the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any non-moderated community site, I believe. Wikipedia should have the same approach: a $5 donation for a registered name, and an email address for confirming registration. If you're blocked, you need to pay another $5 if you want a registered username. If you lose your email account and forget your password, you need to pay another $5.

Eliminating stubs

Policy change

• New articles that are stubs are no longer accepted in mainspace. Instead, they belong in user space as a subpage.
• Existing stubs are similarly not allowed; they will be moved to user space, generally to the author who created the article, if recent and minimal edits by others; otherwise to an editor willing to adopt; if none, to the userspace of the author who created as a default.

Implementation

• Option 1 (incremental): rely on registered editors to move new articles that are stubs to user space (new article patrol, move patrol in particular would be important as monitoring groups)
• Option 2 (radical): No editors can directly create new articles in mainspace. New articles must be moved from user space to mainspace, and new editors have a much longer waiting period before they get this privilege.

Moves can be done only by more established, registered users

Policy

• New users must wait 90 days after registering, and must have a minimum of 500 edits before getting move privileges
• Users without move privileges (anon IP and newly registered users) can place a "requested move" template on talk pages, similar to a merge template, to propose a move

Implementation

• The software in place already allows parameters for move privileges to be changed
• It would be useful to have a bot that identifies proposed moves for pages that are marked as part of a WikiProject, and posts a message on the talk page of that project that a move has been proposed for a given article.

Mandating sources

Edits can be characterized in several ways:

• Revert, or removal of content, possibly with minor copyediting
• Copyediting only
• Adding information, possibly with minor copyediting (requires sources)
• Large rewrite (requires sources for added information)

Having R,C,A, and L as a mandatory choice (pull-down/radio buttons), would force an emphasis on sourcing through one simple rule change - doing an "A" without adding sources is authorization for an automatic revert by another editor, and mislabeling an unsourced A as a "C" is grounds for a warning, as well as a revert.

Improving external links

• Bot to convert embedded links to footnotes in cases where an article has no references/footnotes, and possibly to convert in articles where there is clearly a references/footnote section
• Bot to improve references/footnotes when information is available (PubMed, ISBN, Washington Post [metadata], etc.)
• Bot to tag dead external links (in progress?)
• Bot to fix dead external links using archive.org

Reducing vandalism

Increased semi-protection

• Semi-protection of Main Page article
• Semi-protection of featured articles
• Semi-protection of most popular 100 (1000?) articles
• Semi-protection of all namespaces but mainspace, talkspace, user space, and user talk space, except for a handful of pages like Wikipedia:Help desk and WP:AN/I where anonymous IP editors can ask questions and identify problems.

Increased semi-protection needs to accompanied by a robust system for anonymous editors to suggest changes to semi-protected articles

No editing of entire pages by anonymous IP editors

Anonymous IP editors can only edit one section at a time.

Stable versions

Stable versions (German Wikipedia is testing) is an alternative to increased semi-protection, assuming that non-trusted edits are not visible until viewed by a trusted editor. (If registered accounts need to pay $5 to be activated, then "trusted" and "registered" might be close to synonymous.

Admins

Number of

Change procedures to get more admins:

• Apprenticeship/mentoring/trial adminship
• Voter suffrage (buys a year or two of time)

Monitoring behavior

• Editors need a place to post complaints where they can feel that complaints are seriously addressed. That is not page that is open to anyone commenting, and it's not a page where an admin can remove a posting that he/she feels is inappropriate, regardless of reason.
• There should be an initial review of each complaint by three randomly chosen admins who (a) don't recuse themselves because of prior knowledge or closeness to the admin in question, and (b) are available.
• The purpose of the initial review is to see whether any part of the complaint is merited. The accused admin will have a chance to acknowledge mistakes and apologize before the review formally begins.
• If the initial review finds a serious problem (acknowledged or not) or what appears to be a lesser problem which the admin refuses to acknowledge, the matter is referred to the committee of bureaucrats, who will investigate further, negotiate with the admin regarding acceptable measures to right the matter and prevent further occurrences; issue censure in the case of minor errors which the admin refuses to acknowledge, and refer serious cases to ArbComm. The committee has the power to temporarily desysop an admin until ArbComm has ruled.

Handling disputes

• Split admin processes in two: simple WP:AIV and complex; combine all other cases into a single page
• Handle cases posted at "non-simple" page completely differently
  • One admin takes a case, and moves it to a new page that is full protected (i.e., only admins can edit)
  • Triage - easy, medium, hard. Easy, dispose of immediately (e.g., problem username, ref to WP:RFC/U; hard, make a post asking for help from other admins; medium, handle alone. Goal is to issue warnings and formal blocks to users within two hours).
  • If the matter is a content dispute, the admin "locks down" the page(s) being argued about, including the talk pages, and notifies participants that the matter is being reviewed.
  • If the problem is primarily user behavior, admin temporarily blocks those users who have clearly demonstrated disruptive behavior (page vandalism, excessive tagging, personal attacks) and notifies user that behavior is being assessed.
  • Admin has ability to administer full range of measures that ArbComm has - e.g., to temporarily or permanently forbid editing of article(s) by a disruptive editor
  • Blocks and bans must be reviewed and confirmed by two other admins before block can be over 24 hours or ban is effective)
  • Admin review page should either be permanently protected subpage of article talk page or have an link from the article talk page to the subpage similar to an AfD notice.
  • In cases of very bitterly contested content disputes, admin will force mediation; failure to agree to mediation, or to participate constructively, equals being banned from editing that article.
  • The Mediation Committee may forbid further editing of an article by an editor; this is binding. Such a decision may be appealed to ArbComm.

Deleted articles

Move to "Morgue" namespace; adding " - 1", " - 2", etc. to title; articles are only readable by registered users; articles are fully protected, including move-protected. (For further discussion, see this article in CIO magazine. 09:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)