WikipediaOS/Social filtering

Hypothesis

Against attacks and vandalism mainly, but also destructive or negative inputs, some tools and roles protect projects from certain type of users and its intentions.

Votes/comments

•  Comment I wonder if Deletionism in Wikipedia can be understood as a consequence of social filtering here. Also if it has a clear parallelism with Open Source development processes --Esenabre 14:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
•  Comment The conflict between deletionism and inclusionism on Wikipedia grew out of a structural deficiency. Wiki theory would have suggested pure wiki deletion, and even better devices can be and have been suggested. The Wikipedia concept was of a flat encyclopedia, not hierarchically organized, with a page on each "subject." Notability is not an absolute, it is relative and time-bound and varies with the population. Some Wikipedia users held other populations ("fans") as inferior in some way (hence "fancruft"), but if the topic of Wikipedia is "all human knowledge," the knowledge of fans is certainly human. "All human knowledge" was glossed to mean "all verifiable human knowledge," and then "verifiable" was defined to exclude the most ancient method of verification: testimony. This probably resulted from a desire to imitate standard encyclopedias. However, the early Wikipedians deprecated clear guidelines, partly because developing those guidelines was too much work, and too controversial. So, instead, every decision was made ad-hoc, resulting in massive unpredictability, which results in massive inefficiency. I saw two dozen AfDs filed over national organizations affiliated with the main international amateur radio association. All but one closed with Keep, though not after some contentious process. I attempted to edit the guideline to establish the keep principle, but that was resisted because (1) those working on the guideline didn't agree with the community in general, (2) they were afraid that wikilawyers would then extend the guideline to other topics by analogy, and (3) there is massive distrust of "instruction creep." Instruction creep, though, on a wiki, is only a problem under certain conditions.

Pure social decision-making breaks down when decisions become complex and require depth of knowledge, and particularly where controversy is involved. Structure is needed, and wikis incorporated a belief, to a degree, that structure was dispensable, a useless hindrance, thus tossing out millenia of human experience. Oops! To me, the trick is to develop structure that uses and enhances social decision-making (it's been called an "adhocracy") while overlaying it with structure that provides efficiency and fairness. In real world societies, some decisions are made ad-hoc, by individuals, and some involve social structure. Tossing out clear guidelines ("laws") tossed out predictability, so a user might spend dozens of hours developing a page on their Favorite Topic, and then it's deleted in a flash sometimes ("speedy deletion") and if they even know how to appeal this - they usually don't -- it is again deleted because a few deletionists jump in with their opinion that the topic is Not Notable. Because it isn't, to them.

Wikipedia developed a black and white result from a gray category, notability. Guaranteed to produce endless controversy, and thus waste of time and editor burnout. Instead, WP could have developed, and could still develop, namespaces for categories of notability and verifiability, all the way down to what I've called junkyard space, where non-verifiable "junk" is moved. The Wikipedia problem is complex, but if there were, say, five grades of notability, the top grade being pretty much what you would see in a standard encyclopedia, and the bottom grade being the junkyard, ("recycling!"), with a user interface that allows just seeing the most verified, stable information at the top level, if that's what the reader wants, "deletion" becomes rather what might be an ordinary editorial decision, perhaps protected if and only if there is controvery. It isn't deletion, just as it isn't really deletion in MediaWiki software, it is merely hidden. In this scheme, what is now "deletion" would be "demotion," and possibly a minor demotion at that. How many times I saw a topic that I knew was, as to human knowledge, notable and verifiable, by the same means as with traditional encyclopedias -- they consult experts! -- deleted because a majority of users thought it didn't meet standards and an admin agreed with them. Toss of the dice!

Wikipedia enshrined rolling boulders back up the hill, with others pushing them down. Sooner or later, sane people drop out of such activity. --Abd 14:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

•  Comment did not read above, just short feedback I had while reading: since w:Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions was introduced in German Wikipedia, I tend to edit there more often than in en.WP. I find it better to invest my time there. Though e.g. I do not like this for WV. Though I see the danger that introducing tools can also lead to bordering out people. Imagine wrong people coming into control of it :-( ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat 18:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

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References

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