Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Wiki Meritocracy

The AUSCD Slate GO has revealed themselves on Facebook today. My pal, Joseph Bleckman, is an administrator of the group. Nice to see that he is moving up in the world. I had speculated that they had a secret group and now I find myself fascinated by the way they wish to pitch themselves. Normally I would put their information on the Davis Wiki but I feel rather lazy at the moment. Hopefully Joe can do it, or else GO will never be updated.

The Redding Wiki is almost at 100 pages but it is a slow development as there are only 8 active editors, and half of them just want to complain against me. I will be making some phone calls to Redding institutions for advice, assistance, and a heads up tomorrow.

I have decided to make some political reforms for the Wiki. It will be an Imperial Meritocracy where those who contribute the most have the most say. Whenever an administrator feels that a vote is needed on an edit or subject the Redding Wiki Council would have a say in how events unfold. In other words every person will become a "party" of sort where somone could have 99% of the vote or 1% of the vote. This is an improvement from the Davis Wiki in that some ten edit punk won't be able to vote to ban me and have it say much. Under this new voting system a 10 edit person would have less than 1% of the vote. Also, the relative power difference of the editor in the real world won't have any affect on the decision making abilities of the Wiki. Also, it allows for ten small editors to attack a strong editor such as myself and the stronger editor could outvote the ten smaller editors. This works under the theory that not all editors are equal and it works under the idea of earned power instead of democracy. This is how a company would work, how a company would vote. I hope to hold elections soon, the 20th of September is my goal.

As to the argument that this will give incentive for Wiki editors to basically spam their way to the top, it's not realisitic. I still have administrative powers even if I only have 1% voting power. Also I decide what is to be voted on or needs to be discussed by the council; basically I control the agenda. The page worth is higher than the edit worth, so someone will advance quicker by making pages. There are still ways to get around the system of course and I have already considered the various ways it could be accomplished. However, someone who tries to advance themselves in such a way could be excluded from the election or outright banned. Even if an editor manages to get high amounts of power in edit counts they would still have the equivalent power of the Russian Parliament. This could very well change as the highest editors become established. A spammer like Laabs will never outnumber a true editor, under both systems I had come up with he would have had less than 5%.


I had my first clash on NPOV on a restaurant. It was an interesting discussion, I hope to avoid the chaotic situation currenly found on Dos Cayotes. I am not sure exactly how I will be able to protect businesses but also give real people the freedom to say what they want. However, I side with Amy Lee in the discussion, but I suppose the solution is to make sure all commentors use their real name. There have been other management problems such as Carlos' affinity for putting Bob Dylan quotes everywhere. I don't think he's taking this project seriously, or he may be testing my resolve. I will revert a page regardless of the person.

Two Davis Wiki editors I had banned are now allowed to make edits once more. There were a lot of reasons as to why I changed my mind but a lot has to do with the fact that they bothered to contact me. Since I have un-banned them I have banned two more to take their place so I am not bowing to any type of pressure. Normally I would have put Brent Laabs' second account manifestation ban to a vote, but elections have not been held.

I will be going to Chico soon to talk with some Redding residents who I went to high school with. They may have some interest in editing the Redding Wiki. It seems like it takes a special person to actually work on a Wiki.

1 comment:

pxl said...

you're a power freak.
way to take a cool concept like wiki and pervert it.