Benefits of having "trusted / high quality" user recognition

Framing is important, so I support the "senior editor" name.

ArbCom doesn't have time to deal with that stuff; instead, how about we make all editors who have written 2+ FAs "senior"?

I think that's a good place to start. Simple, objective, hard to game, but achievable within 6 months to a year if you want it.

Urgh. No.

Good content writers may or may not be good at interacting and working with other users, may not be good in other topic areas, and so on. It has its fair proportion of users who couldn't meet the kind of role we're talking about, though.

I'd suggest if anything this:

• Users will be assessed on trust in their editorship. They must submit a portfolio of significant experiences and skills covering:

• Basic and peer reviewed article writing - typically at least 10 non-stub articles and 1 GA/FA.
• Specific editor skills - responded on at least 120 noticeboard issues spread across the major noticeboards including FRINGE, RS, NPOV, BLP/N; COI/N; EDITWAR/WQA, content RFC/3O, xFD (including at least one "rescued" AFD), plus basic template skills.
• Peer review skills - typically at least 5 GA and 2 FA reviews
• Collaboration skills - significant active involvement in a Wikiproject for at least 2 months, or equivalent.
• Editor dispute skills - addressing 10 or more disputes with a mix of amicable and hostile/improper editorship.
• Your own showcase - at least 3 items (not otherwise used here) that showcase your interests and abilities in any wiki area. These could be unusual or interesting content or editorial matters, media work, admin or patrolling, or any other area - your choice!

• Users wishing to object must show diffs that clearly evidence any of the following in the last 9 months:

• Two or more instances of clear poor judgement (not just legitimate disagreement) related to NPOV, OR, CITE, V, RS, or COPYRIGHT.
• Two or more clear demonstrations of personal attack, attacking a person not the evidence, a thread in which the user fillibusted "gamed" edit warred or obstructed consensus in an unreasonable manner, or threats.
• A history of poor xFD or other content process contribution
• A pattern of undue serious incivility covering at least 5 instances.
• Evidence that the portfolio grossly misrepresents their content editorship.
• Any blocks or other formal warnings or sanctions by an administrator.
• Gross bad faith, breach of trust, deception, or any access removal related to poor conduct (including but not limited to puppetry, faked content or citations, concealed POV warring, conspiracy to disrupt the wiki, and the like) - without time restriction.

• Any diffs should be self evident, with minimal context or explanation, and clearly show the behavior concerned.

• Claims (portfolio or concern) not evidenced as above are disqualified except in exceptional circumstances.

That allows users a rough criterion for "evidence that should be publicly shown".

It's not even that demanding - 10 basic articles, one decent peer-reviewed article, half a dozen peer reviews, a couple of days work on noticeboards (to show specific areas), and some dispute resolution and collaboration.

I don't like being prescriptive, I think it's gameable, but it's still better than 1 - 2 FAs. It'd probably work.

I'm not against formalizing the status of quality users (the German wiki has already experimented with something like that in the form of 'quality revisions', revisions that can be flagged by experts only). However a user that is an expert in Indian cooking isn't an expert in quantum physics, for example. The most it would give us is a very general indication if we can assume good faith in a certain contributor.

The essence of wiki working is, that certain approaches are key. Approaches (or their lack) aren't the same as expertize (or its lack).

If given the choice of an expert who could not show good editorial approaches, or a good editor with the right approaches who lacked specific topic expertize, then for this project, choose the latter, not the expert. Why? Many reasons:

• The expert (in such a scenario) may have his own foibles and bias, or unwillingness to hear others, or non-neutral stance
• The expert doesn't know how to collaborate, or work with others in a mass edited project. As a liability he may drive others off and absorb immense time and harm the communal fabric. We get one perfect article (only we don't know if it's biased because every community dialog about it descends into argument and name calling) and not a lot more.
• The non-expert with good approaches will listen to others, consider the views, research them and check the details. They may not know, but they know how to examine others' work and check facts. They foster others to work with them and as a community the work gets done to a high standard even so.

Part of Wikipedia is that although we want high quality, we aren't a cutting edge academic source. We'd like to have some of that, but it's not (as I understand it) our actual core goal.

If we're assessing what kind of editor can be broadly trusted to work on all kinds of difficult articles unsupervized and do so in a proper way (as this thread considers), then the qualities I've outlined will get you that person, and fairly high quality (though not cutting edge) writing. A PhD won't.

$0.02 :)

I agree, but let's not call them 'experts' when in fact they're rather 'good editors'. I like the idea to create some kind of special user status whenever an editor reaches the requirements you mentioned (06:09, 27 November 2009). What do you think about quality revisions though? It's also a way of showing the reader how the best editors rate the quality of an article.

I don't necessarily see it as better, but I am not opposing making this more complex (still, I like KISS...). Anyway, regarding opposing, I would strongly suggest taking editors activity into consideration. In other words: editors who are very active and have edited for a long, long time (and logically, would be likely to be good or trusted editors) also are more likely to have enemies, or at least, more "exception-to-the-rule" dirt that can be brought up against them (lookie, warning from 2006, PA from 2007, ArbCom from 2008...etc.). As such I'd suggest that any assuming the editor applying has been reasonably active in the past 6 months, examples (diffs) of poor judgment should be not older than that period. --Piotrus 05:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

1. My own view is that most "professions" have some kind of "continuing professional development" post initial qualification. While wiki isn't a "qualification", we could well ask "what are we offering to users to stretch their skills and as a means of self evaluation and development as editors". Something like this, a "recognized wiki-editor qualification", would be good for the ethos that way too.
2. Piotrus - the "reasons to object" were crafted as requiring both specific types of bad activity or judgment to be shown via evidence alone, within a time limit of the last 9 months, as drafted. With luck that solves your concern?