Wikipedia talk:Version System sketch

message: *I'm curious to see whose proposal you shall bravely and unselfishly defend. I personally like the status quo just fine. Fernando Rizo T/C 02:34, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

message: Geogre, "your" proposed system is elegant and would certainly address many of the major concerns about VfD quite capably. My problem with it is best illustrated with that most cherished element of rhetoric, the hypothetical situation. I intend, like Kurosawa's Rashōmon, to present you with two parallel yet slightly different situations.  (that was just too much damn work - FR)
Okay, look. Right now, any given stranger has some control over the content of an article. If someone makes a bad-faith edit, I can almost instantaneously recognize this and revert it. If you give a stranger the ability to make a bad faith subjective judgement of an article, I can do nothing. If a kid wants to wander around through the Wikipedia voting '5' on every article or voting '1' on every stub, how do we stop that? Granted, one kid is not a problem, but a a whole Counter-strike clan of kids is. Or the GNAA. A clan's worth of kids is easy to discern on VfD: figure out who signed up when and who's got too few edits. With the new system, this is much more difficult. Fernando Rizo T/C 20:15, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I absolutely agree.  That's why quorum has to be in place.  Even then, it's the weakest part, IMO.  Geogre 21:51, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Relative merit:  As much as army votes are a problem with this system, they are a much more serious threat with "category-based systems" and others that invite edit-warring.  This system's quorum is not a panacea, but it's at least a defense.  Also, this system does not abolish VfD or CSD, does not expand nor restrict admin powers.  It addresses scale, however, and democratizes VfD.  Geogre 16:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  My concern 

message: #This looks like Kuro5hin's comment rating system.
#The ratings look reversed (lower is good and higher is bad is counterintuitive).
--cesarb 01:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some comments 

message: *Seems to require more effort than what we have now, not less.
*Invites vandalism. I think we can be confident that George W. Bush would reach the rating required for speedy deletion in no time. 
*As mentioned above the lower is better system is the wrong way round. 
Osomec 21:22, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Don't like it at all

message: As a developer I can say this would be pathetically easy to game by the use of bots.  The gains to be made from gaming, and the losses to be made from not counter-gaming, are so high that I predict that, if we ever adopted this, we'd be spending lots of time in fire-fights just dealing with the sheer volume of bot work on Wikipedia.  I myself would be tempted to write a watch bot which would spot deletion candidates in my list of important articles and carefully feed in positive votes at a rate just fast enough to save them without being detected.
There really is nothing wrong with VfD as it stands.  It brings human judgement to bear on a problem that requires it, and it encourages and rewards lightning-fast research and cleanup.  In fact, it's the most efficient cleanup forum we have.  And it's relatively hard to game.  And the best thing about VfD is that it's self-limiting.  As it fills up, people moan about it not working any more and stop listing stuff for deletion.  Perfect.  --Tony SidawayTalk 17:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless the system also included some measure of editors' edit contributions (further increasing complexity) it wouldn't work, for being too easily gamed. And if it did include something like that, edit contributions would themselves be subject to gaming to increase scores - and that's probably an insoluble problem (or else far worse than the disease). Rd232 23:14, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

text: And that's the goal, is it?  To stop things from being deleted, even when they violate policy?  Geogre 15:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

text: I think the point being made may have been that articles were listed at a manageable rate, not 400 at a time. In that way the existing system is better than the proposed. Mark Lewis 23:30, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Not sure what Geogre is saying above.  The self-regulation of VfD by the reduction in the number of nominations as it reaches saturation, if it happens, won't be a violation of policy.  And I'm sure that it will happen. --Tony SidawayTalk 19:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Too easily gamed

message: Automated scoring would be a huge help in turning Wikipedia into the reputable instrument I would like it to be. I'm entranced by the idea of a Professional Wikipedia. But I'm unclear as to how it will reduce the load on VfD. If, as you say, VfD will not go away, that means that in addition to the articles being placed on VfD by editors, there will now be those automatically placed on the agenda. 
I support the idea of quorum. I have felt for some time that there needs to be a suitable combination of votes and time before consensus can be clearly said to have been met. While it may not be immune to Tony's votebot, it is also true that the intersection between those who are fervent inclusionists and those who can program a bot is quite small. 
Thanks for your hard work, Geogre!
Denni☯ 03:08, 2005 August 11 (UTC)
:Thanks, Denni!  You're right: it wouldn't cut down on VfD load at all.  In fact, it would increase it.  Really, though, Kim (and others) keep saying that VFD doesn't scale.  Well, it doesn't.  Ok.  But, of course, if it does scale, it gets huge.  Now, some of these people want a "blanking" solution (horrible idea, IMO), others want a kind of modding solution (otherwise known, to me anyway, as "Everything2").  To me, neither of these does a blinkin' thing to reduce VfD load, either.  They abolish the VfD page so that people don't argue with each other any more, but I fail to see how that's any improvement whatever.  Increasing blind action seems like a bad thing.  As for whether or not this version system can someday lessen VfD load, it can, but only if there were scores that executed administrative decisions and did replace VfD.  To me, that's possible, but I would want to see the system in place, working, and relatively bullet proof before I'd ever vote for it.  Folks should understand that we're never going to do anything if we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and, in fact, things getting worse and worse is precisely what some people want, as it brings the community ever-closer to wanting to scap deletion altogether (which is the stated and implicit aim of several now).  To me, the issue has never been deletion or inclusion, but standards.  If we will not have standards for admission (and we don't), and if standards for inclusion inevitably mobilize armies to oppose them, then the least we can do is have a standard that applies externally to the thing to be a caveat lector.  Geogre 16:09, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A good starting point