User talk:Odd Starter/Suggestions

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This implementation is built around several assumptions:

  1. One of the major reasons why the current Suggestions Implementation is crufting so badly is because there is no real established procedure for Suggestion removal, thus Suggestions simply aren't being removed at a sensible rate.
  2. "Moderation" of the Suggestions system should be able to be performed by any user.
  3. The Moderation protocols of the Suggestions system should thus be simple in scope and easy to follow.
  4. Suggestions should be as decontextualised as possible - the Timestamp only rule is there to ensure that Suggestions are dealt with as independent entities, not as extensions of another user.
  5. Suggestions should be dealt with as independent entities - By entirely separating the Suggestions, each Suggestion can be looked at out of context from other Suggestions. There is no sense of "building up a skill tree", or "We shouldn't, since we have so many other skills that boost that" - each Suggestion can be looked at on it's own merits. This is also the reason why Suggestions are removed from the page after voting - to further ensure that suggestions remain independent entities
  6. To prevent edit wars, removal protocols should be entirely transparent.
  7. Creating suggestions should have a small barrier to entry - Enforcing suggestion formats (through use of the Suggestion template) should ensure that users making suggestions will have to put at least some thought into their suggestions, if only to ensure they are presentable.
  8. The more separation between the suggestions and their voting there is, the more difficult the system will be to work by normal users. By placing voting right out with the suggestion, there should be no ambiguity as to where the voting needs to take place, thus the barrier to voting should be minimised.
  9. Voting, if it is to be workable, needs to be extreme - one must decide, if they are to vote, Yay or Nay. Providing any other option is likely to dilute the voting process, and "muddy the waters" within the voting system. Also, the voting outcomes must leave no margin for ambiguity - there is win or lose, there is no ambiguous result.

Feel free to discuss the implementation or the assumptions here. Note that this system makes no assumptions on the quality or otherwise of the suggestions posted, and makes no inherant value judgements on any suggestion in the system. All value judgements are solely in the hands of the users of the implementation. In theory, those who jump at every "kewl" suggestion, and those who pounce on every "non-genre" suggestion should cancel each other out for the most part, leaving most unworkable suggestions to become Peer Rejected.

In effect, I'm expecting the nutbags on both sides to balance out the general voting system.

I see this as a good idea, particularly the suggestion template - which should prevent n00bs flooding the page and make them think about their proposal. I have some concerns about the voting (someone could create 5 or 6 accounts to vote his/her own super-duper suggestion, or vandalise others), but it's the beauty and the downside of the wiki. I'll try and think about some improvements, but a good proposal overall. --Seagull Flock 14:20, 27 Oct 2005 (BST)
You cannot legislate for people who cheat, since by definition they're circumventing your legislation. However, I suspect that Sock Puppet voting will happen rarely, as a rule - It's just too easy to be caught out, since all it takes is one admin to spot the identical IPs. -- Odd Starter 14:55, 27 Oct 2005 (BST)
Don't underestimate the power of free dial-up connections and open proxies :) But good point anyway. --Seagull Flock 15:01, 27 Oct 2005 (BST)
In the end, cheating won't really matter anyway, no matter how skillfully done. If someone were to propose the class "kryptonian" with the starting skill "skin of steel - completely immune to all attacks" and it got a thousand "yay" votes, it'd still never be implemented. Kevan's got the ultimate veto power, after all, and these are only suggestions, not demands. And with the suggestion template to keep things tidy, a few insane "peer accepted" suggestions wouldn't make the page unreadable either. --Goeds 16:55, 2 Nov 2005 (GMT)

I like how this whole concept came out. Just have one question. Is there a way to indent the suggestions? Like, for instance, when suggesting skills, it is useful to display them as a tree. Monstah 17:34, 3 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Bulleting(start line with *) still works within a template, as does line indention(start line with :). I'd suggest adding your tree within the Description field, though. --Raelin 20:50, 3 Nov 2005 (GMT)

My concern is the page will rapidly get huge unless a very constant watch is kept on it. I mean, look at it now with only two suggestions. What happens when there's 30 or 40? --Kwil 21:11, 4 Nov 2005 (GMT)

One of the goals of the page is to make it much easier for regular users to moderate it. I do understand that it's goint to get huge, but as long stuff's removed from it on a timely basis, there should be no issue. The size may remain rather large, but the massive cruft we had previous should be prevented.
In short, yes, you're right, but it shouldn't be that much of a problem. The goal was not to reduce the page's size but to fix the system so it worked. Regardless of the system we use, we're probably always going to have problems with size, this system lets us manage the suggestions much easier, however. -- Odd Starter 23:11, 4 Nov 2005 (GMT)

I'm not sure if it's been clarified elsewhere, but I think the current rejection system is pretty good (3 unopposed kills reject a suggestion.) To expand on this: 3 more kills than keeps should cause rejection, and 3 more keeps than kills should cause acceptance. Does this sound okay?--Milo 20:16, 5 Nov 2005 (GMT)

No. Who knows how long it'll take to accrue that amount of overvote? We want to get the maximum turnover of Suggestions, since we're not wanting suggestions to stay on the page. Yes, this means that some Suggestions will scrape through with a single vote in their favour. That means that the peers accepted it, since clearly noone else thought particularly strongly about the idea. If it got no votes at all, it's peer rejected anyway. -- Odd Starter 02:47, 6 Nov 2005 (GMT)
I think that's fair. Though I really do think we should be able to keep the Change votes. If the majority of the votes are change, or have a change clause in them we can move them to a seperate page/the talk page where skills that warrant resuggestion are listed. --Raelin 20:45, 5 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Again I note - Remember that one of the major reasons the Suggestions Page crufted so badly was because there was no established way of pushing stuff off the page. We can't allow Change votes because doing so makes an ambiguous statement about what to do with it. Does this mean, at the end of the vote, we have to put it up in a changed form? (thus bypassing Peer Rejection?). If people reject a Suggestion, there is nothing that states that they cannot make some substantial changes and resubmit the idea. -- Odd Starter 02:47, 6 Nov 2005 (GMT)
Though that raises the question: What do we do when there's no three vote majority and the voting period is up? --Raelin 20:49, 5 Nov 2005 (GMT)
This is the important question. Overmajority systems have this problem. If we're going to time-base this (and I think it's the only reasonable system to do it with) we have to go with Simple Majority, or else it will be ambiguous as to what's supposed to happen to the suggestion, and the system will cruft up since noone knows where to put these suggestions. -- Odd Starter 02:47, 6 Nov 2005 (GMT)