Benefits of having "trusted / high quality" user recognition
I like both these points (Randomran, Piotrus).
- The concept would need an effective removal process that's hard to game and less easily used/abused.
- Note some people will be prepared to build up a 3 month track record to "get into" a topic this way. But - if removal is fair and easy, this isn't a problem - it's like IP block exemption that way - takes time and effort to get it, and it's easy to lose if abused. It doesn't need to be perfect, and the odd gamer or exception isn't a problem either. It's enough if it cuts the problem right down, and those users who do evade are then easy to deal with because it's very few, and because most other users on the topic are good balanced users who'll handle it quite properly, not edit war or dramatize. So it's "self repairing".
- To address Piotrus' technicality, "trust" in this sense includes appropriate recognition and self management where they have COI or other problems/strong views. Anyone can be nice and neutral on an article they don't care about. This idea implies good (reliable, trustworthy) editorship on articles the user does care about too.
I'm fine with self-selection after a while. But it encourages divergence between "trusted content editors" and "all editors". Maybe look at enwiki Mediation Committee for a better way - section for mediators to comment, section for anyone else to comment, and set criteria for acceptance/veto.
So for example it might need a user to fill a template of evidence on their editing, and get >= 50% at community feedback from editors with > 100 mainspace edits, plus >= 75% from at least 10 trusted content editors. We want to encourage mass involvement and good standards, so keep it based on pre-defined data and agreed percentages and acceptance/veto criteria. I'll work on this a bit.
How about becoming a trusted editor automatically after having written 1 FA / 5 GA / 50 DYKs? No need for community voting, just show quality content that was recognized by others (FAreviewrs/GAreviewrs/DYKreviewers). In addition, the trusted editor would be trusted only for content areas recognized by appopriate WikiProject tags in content he has created. The approval procedure could be held on a given WikiProject talk pages (and perhaps centralised via transclusion to a more general forum), and the voting should be open to members of that WikiProject as well as all other trusted editors. As such, the approval would be discussed by experts (specific and general), with little chance of the status being disrupted by wikipolitics or trolls. --Piotrus 22:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
No. Writing X many of this that or the other doesn't necessarily correlate to trust in editorial approach generally. It doesn't evidence appropriate neutrality on pet subjects, nor talk page discussion approaches. Nor is the reverse true; not writing these doesn't in any way deny trust. I'd take high level content as evidence, but other stuff counts under "trust". I'll try to write up a brief idea on this in a bit.
FT2 is right that some of these processes are a little too vulnerable to whims and personal opinion. The reason that FA's are great is because they're the only status that's given by consensus. I've actually seen apparent GA's try for FA and get slammed hard, with people arguing they should be demoted.
Not to say that FA should be the only way to tell if an editor understands quality. But going with other measures could make it possible for a faction to pump up the credentials of their own narrow-minded editors.
I like the overall feel of this. I think we can work out details of what percentages are appropriate. Can someone tag this as something we want to further refine?