User talk:Matt Lewis/Archive 3

Core Contest

Hi Matt Lewis, I mostly agree with your essay on core contest, though it was long-winded for my taste. Please help me to place the opposing view on the project page. See the comment 2 above yours on the discussion page. Bensaccount (talk) 22:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Guideline question

Here are the answers to the questions I would give:

1. If the editor is involved in the article's daily editing processes it is much less likely that he will be appeased by superficial edits that increase the wordiness or truthiness of the article, because if he bothers to edit regularly it means he probably cares about the topic. There is still a chance that he will be a biased judge, but his bias will be apparent to all the people who edit the article. Therefore I would say there is no problem in such a case.
2. If the edits are assumed to be of lower quality it basically means they will be more closely watched.
3. The guideline should be followed by all users the same way other guidelines are followed.
4. The reason would be to limit the flawed results that come from appeasement of judges not actively engaged in the creation, editing, or discussion of the articles. Such flaws could be indifference, superficiality, bias, vagueness, etc.
5. The main achievement would be that when there is an edit conflict between a regular user and one who admits to editing to appease Mcdonalds, the former user should automatically get his version. This will ensure that the article is written by users who actually care about the subject. If the user who is editing for McDonalds also cares he will not admit to editing for McDonalds, and his edits will be evaluated solely on inherent value. If he is unable to hide his motives (for whatever reason), he should have to give up appeasing his judge to receive equal footing.

What do you think?

Bensaccount 22:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I’m personally going to sleep on this. My advice is not to let them rush us, what do you think? They’ve got nothing to say have they – they are just waiting for us to comment, so they can counter every point we make. Personally I think that guys last ‘Proposed blah blah’ heading should be totally ignored – any kind of reply by you will get a counter response by him, however rational you are. It was written purely to wind you up. You need to start on your own footing, not his ignorant one. Maybe we could even start afresh on a guideline talk page, offering people a link. I've said all I want to say on the competition page now. --Matt Lewis 22:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I might have been over the top with the negative comments - he apologised anyway, allowing that it takes time to work something out.

I've been looking at Wikipedia's policies etc and reading the arguments again. I still haven't settled it in my head, but I'm getting your drift. Proposing a guideline certainly looks like it's the way to go. The competition talk page is the perfect place to promote it - as all sides were present, which is important in campaigning, I'm reading. Around 15 people on 'our side' have currently made comments - I've not counted the opposing views - it was more of course, but it is the competition's talk page after all! Still, 15's a good figure to promote to - hopefully most of them will have the page in their watchlist, having contributed. It would be interesting to see how far the Veropedia people can go in a guideline proposal page, or even in a vote! --Matt Lewis 22:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)