User talk:Crazyeddie/Districting

First impressions

The termanology is a real turn-off, IMPO. We are not a country - we don't own land, we don't make rules that apply to living human beings physical existence - therefore, we don't need or have a government, democratic or otherwise. I think using the project/company metaphor is a much better idea. Now, as for the specifics of the ideas, rather than the terminology. The biggest idea in here is the concept of Moderators. Where did that come from? I didn't think we had any Moderators. Also, it is mentioned that pages in a "district" would be in some way controlled by the officials of the district - admitting the existance of formal control would be a big change, and seems rather unwiki-like, esspecially when clothed in the language of a physical government with temporal power. You're biting off a rather large bite here. I suggest you rephrase the language to use project rather than goverment metaphors and ask again. Good luck! JesseW 23:08, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not much of a salesman. The Moderator bit was just a mixup in terminology. What I call Moderators are called Administrators or Sysops here in the Wikipedia. This is confusing to me, because I would use those terms to describe what Wikipedia calls developers.

"Formal control" is a bit strong of a word for what I had in mind. I would think "policing" or "monitoring" would be a better term. All contributors already do this, admins more than others. All I had in mind was dividing the Wikipedia up into smaller, easier to manage, sections, and then encourage contributors who are the most likely to understand the subject matter to monitor the pages for errors and vandalism. I probably could have put it better. At any rate, I think I'll remove that portion of the proposal, along with anything else not directly related to the central thesis. If these spinoff uses of the districting concept are as obvious as I think they are, then others will implement the idea without the need for my intervention. If the spinoffs aren't that obvious, then I can put the matter before the Legislature - if and when it comes about. Either way, no need to add more points of debate to what is already going to be a controversial proposal.

I've been trying to find some quote - something to the effect that in certain circumstances, community is indistinguishable from government. Regardless, I shouldn't assume everybody believes that. I'll rewrite the intro, using the idea that the Wikipedia is a benevolent dictatorship like a normal open source programming project. From there, I'll work to this idea.

I'll also limit the mandate of the Legislature to a narrow field, namely, to give community approval for potentially disruptive changes to the underlying software of the Wikipedia. For example, VfD reform, spellchecking, and things like this proposal. If the idea works for that, then that mandate might be expanded, with the blessing of the Community, the Legislature, and Jimbo.

Once I get a polished final draft, how would you recommend I go about getting approval/consensus for the idea? crazyeddie 22:22, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No worries on the terminology mixup. "Administrators" is not a great word for the job, anyway (some prefer "custodian" or "janitor").

Regarding the revised idea, I agree that you should keep it as stremelined as possible, and that if the expansions make sense to the community, they'll happen. In fact, I think you should divide it into two ideas:

1. dividing article pages into "districts" (or, in my terms: "interest areas") and providing a place for people to publically announce they are focusing on those pages.
2. vesting elective power in those groups (the "place for people to...") in order to elect a body with the combination powers of the Arbitration Comittiee, VfD and RfA.

I think the first proposal won't meet with too much objections, although I may be wrong, but I think the second, especially if combined with the first, will generate a lot of objection.

As for where to go to get consensus, look a the proposal for Preliminary Deletion, look at the Survey's pages, start a discussion on the village pump, of course. Things like that. JesseW 03:18, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's more or less my plan. This isn't the first mad idea I've tried to get implemented, so I'm going to try to slowly build support for the idea. My plan to implement it: Firstly, I'm going to try to recruit a few supporters. This will hopefully help build consensus later when I go "public". Also, that will help get the kinks in both the idea and the presentation worked out. (Hopefully you're supporter number 1. I'm going to try for 10.)

Then I'll put the entire plan, both parts 1 and 2, on the proposal, policy, and technical forums, in order. That might be a bit much, but this is a pretty radical idea and needs as much debugging as possible. Doing it that way will make part #1 more controversial, but it will help lay the groundwork for building a consensus for #2. (Actually, I think Birds-of-a-feather idea isn't controversial enough - it would be hard to get a developer's attention long enough to get the work done! I think the Representative districts will end up a bit large for my liking, if so, I think I'll try to get smaller BOAF groups formed, after I get done with the Legislature idea.)

Assuming I haven't found one already by that point, my next job would be to find someone able and willing to implement part #1. That part's non-controversial enough not to need further consensus gathering, at least IMO. Getting the actual work out of the way will clear a major hurdle for getting consensus. After districting is set up and debugged, I would then try to get consensus for part #2, starting from the Village Pump and probably winding up in that survey area. It would be nice to get Jimbo's rubber stamp also.

I think I'll keep the proposed Legislature focused on approving possibly messy software changes. IMO, that's the area where the need for representative government is the greatest. If it's a success there, then I think it will naturally take over other roles. I'll also try to keep the proposed plan as streamlined as possible. Unfortunately, I think my revised intro will be considerably longer. crazyeddie 07:18, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Incidently, any idea what the "population" of en.wikipedia is? Assume a "person" as being roughly defined as "non-bot, non-banned login with activity in the last 30 days". I was also wonder how many of those have over 100 edits. crazyeddie 07:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)