senior editors and baseline quality

Yeah, I think anything that's an election is a bad idea. Either you have some kind of open election process, in which case senior editors become about popularity. Or you do it like you suggested, where only a few people have voting rights, in which case it will be very exclusive. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that the community will buy into that.

Much more palatable is to come up with some objective milestone. Something that any highly competent editor would be able to earn, and that would be difficult to game for editors who "don't get it".

(I don't think we could make it impossible to game. But we could make it hard. And then use a review process to deal with the rest of the problem cases.)

I did not say it was a very palatable idea, all I said was that it was the approach that would be most likely to achieve the desired results.

Basically there appear to be the following methods of selecting:

1. open election
2. a test to be filled in
3. a number of edits to be made
4. the human eye

As you pointed out open election will tend to be about popularity. It will be impossible to design a test that checks for anything but smartness and knowledge (a willingness to cheat will help pass the test). Obviously it is not hard at all to run up 10.000 edits or so without adding even a bit of content or showing anything but a drive to make edits.

As what we want is proven commitment to core values (plus proven ability), there is no substitute for the human eye (also basic to the whole idea of Wikipedia as opposed to something that is gathered by a bot or algorithm), the best way to check for the qualities wanted are other senior editors (it takes one to know one); second best would be to accept one of the existing mechanisms for checking for ability, that is having written FA-articles (plus perhaps a bit more). This is less than ideal, but better than anything else I have seen suggested. - Brya 04:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, a lot of paths keep leading us back through FA. Yeah, featured articles involve a "vote" too. But you're judging content, not people. And the content is being judged up against some pretty well-defined criteria. I'd say that featured articles are one of our most reliable standards, and you'd be hard pressed to find something more consistent on the Wikimedia projects.

If someone has a few featured articles, they probably have a strong understanding of neutrality, verifiability, research, writing...

The only thing missing is whether that editor is disruptive or collaborative. I mean, a featured article is a couple of weeks of work, and anyone can play nice to get a few FAs under their belt. But then I think the best way to deal with this is to look for people who have previously been blocked or sanctioned, and have some kind of extra check to see if their behavior has improved.

As I said, it is less than ideal, but better than anything else I have seen suggested. I am very hesitant about blocking: somebody on this Wiki said that if you have never been blocked you are proven never to have stuck your neck out (you just do not care). And to some extent this is true, you can easily be blocked for the best of reasons: that is the way the system works.

What is wanted is proven commitment to core values; and at least somebody who has written a FA will have been exposed to them and is almost certain to have given them some thought. That does not equate to commitment, but it is at least something. - Brya 05:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Also true: a lot of blocked users have stuck their neck out and paid for it, and then learned their lesson. That said, I think a block is a red flag. There ought to be a review process for editors who have such a red flag.

I just do not see any route except for elections, with may be some suffrage and some preconditions. Everything else is unstable against fraud.

Yes, elections is where it is likely going to end up. But it probably also is one of the worst possible scenarios (number of edits would be worse), leading to more-of-the-same. In that case what already is going well will keep going well; what is going badly will get worse; and where there is great controversy things will remain deadlocked. Popularity is not much of a way to establish the degree of commitment to core values (I have seen an editor who lived and breathed an excentric PoV, to whom NOR-violations were as common as pie, etc, etc make admin by a landslide). I don't believe elected senior editors will do much good. - Brya 05:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Fine, but what other options do we have? Appointment by arbcom would be fine, but takes too much effort, this is not what arbcom has been elected for. I agree that counting # of edits is even worse.

I think the best we can do is to have a system like this:

• A fast track for volunteers who have met some objective criteria that actually shows an understanding of quality
• An election for volunteers who meet that objective criteria, but have been blocked (e.g.: they qualify, but need to explain themselves)
• An election for volunteers who haven't met that objective criteria, but feel they have done enough other good work to skip it

The fast track is key. It avoids the popularity contest and the politics. I don't think we can eliminate the need to have the community double-check certain editors, but maybe we can use it for specific cases.

That looks like a way to combine all the weak points? I am not sure what these "objective criteria that actually shows an understanding of quality" could be. Anything that can establish a commitment-to-core-values will by definition be subjective. What would be possible is to include some of the existing (subjective) tests such as the FA-procedure.

I guess that a workable process to guarantee a minimum of what is wanted would be to require an editor to have written an FA-article and start the vetting procedure from there. - Brya 06:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, in my opinion, if we want to avoid the popularity contest, we should just PROHIBIT these stupid votes "Support" without any explanations. Only the vote "Support for the following reason: " (for instance, the editor, did not participate in edit warring, has not been blocked for disruptive behavior etc). And then make a suffrage of 500? edits in the main space (I believe a FA is too much).

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. FA's focus on the editor's contributions, rather than the editor's personality. And we'd reserve the vote to include exceptionally good editors without FAs, or bad editors who have FAs but have been blocked in the past for being jerks.

A number of edits is meaningless. I have seen editors put in 10.000 edits without adding a iota of content. Writing a FA is not meaningless, thus it is a usable criterium. It is less than ideal, somebody could be very suitable without having written an FA, and not everybody who wrote one will have all the desired qualities. Still, it does not look like too much to ask, that any candidate wrote at least a FA. - Brya 05:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

How would you define "wrote"? Our articles are written by many people. That criteria is subjective and open to being gamed.

I would not define "wrote". Firstly a strict definition is likely impossible, as probably no FA is 100% the work of a single editor, but most FA's are mainly the result of a single editor's effort.

Secondly, it is mostly irrelevant as in my view writing a FA is by itself not sufficient to qualify for senior editor. It is sort of a minimum to be up for consideration: I would like to see extra requirements added. - Brya 04:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There would still need to be some sort of approval process, managed by bureaucrats. And part of that approval process would be showing that you've been a major contributor to however many FAs. Maybe by having someone who worked on the article nominate you, or maybe by providing some "diffs".

And then there would be a recall process for anyone who was deceitful, and became a senior editor by lying about their contributions to a FA.

All that would make it very unlikely that someone could game the FA standard.

The lesson that Wikipedia is an uncaring and capricious bureaucracy? It is equally possible to argue that nobody should become a senior editor if he has not been blocked for standing up for something he believed in (he is a whimp). Arguing abstracts won't lead to much. - Brya 05:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)