final five recommendations

Based on our prior discussion, we narrowed down our list of potential recommendations to six. The great news is we now have five recommendations that are presentable to the foundation. We don't have a lot of time to improve them further, but I'm re-assured that submitting them to the foundation will be the start of a dialog.

There's a consensus that two of them are particularly important (although maybe we need more feedback to pin down the final details):

• Task force/Recommendations/Community health 1 (Volunteer recognition)
• Task force/Recommendations/Community health 7 (Decision-making and dispute resolution)

There are another three that need more discussion.

• Task force/Recommendations/Community health 4 (Social features)
• Task force/Recommendations/Community health 5 (Easier tools)
• Task force/Recommendations/Community health 6 (Organizational roles: mostly focuses on senior editors, mentors, administrators and new users)

There's a significant overlap between all of the recommendations, but they all have a slightly different focus. I see the overlap as a good thing: it reinforces good ideas, so that the foundation is less likely to ignore them.

We don't have much time left. But before we scramble through the finish line, I just want to thank and congratulate everyone. I'm really pleased with the ideas and dialog that everyone contributed, and hopefully these final recommendations reflect that.

+1

This team has been absolutely fantastic. Please accept my sincere thanks on behalf of everyone involved with the project.

It isn't over yet - now comes the fun part.  :-)

Philippe

That would do for me but it will need much more fine tuning but the essential is there.

@Randomran You know my "not much impressed" stance toward FA makers. "Senior editor" qualifying with equivalent experience part will need more development and certainly have to make it into the final cut. FA makers have already the lion share in recognition and fame. Now if the "senior editor" can be used for recognition of the others Experienced & Quality contents makers then the better.

Re: Senior editors...

I'm definitely interested in "equivalent experience" too. I'm curious to see what ideas other people have to offer.

Completing a few FAs is a pretty high standard. So I couldn't imagine building a consensus for a more "impressive" standard than that. But my thinking was that completing GAs or A-class articles would be an equivalent, as would making a strong effort to save an article at a featured article review. Just that FAs are one of the only accomplishments that are awarded by consensus, and it was important to create a simple standard for "senior editor" that reflects community ideals without becoming a political contest (see RFA). Qualifying by approval of the community was added as a "catch all" to cover other reputable editors, but there's a lot of demand to avoid that kind of vote.

In my mind, it wouldn't be terrible if an experienced editor without any FAs were suddenly motivated to spend a few days building one. If they really understand verifiability and neutrality and so on, it wouldn't be particularly hard to do. But yeah, this idea is something we need to work on.

If you look at FAC, the process has a backlog. Many of the problems with promoting articles are due to copyediting type problems, image issues (Fair use problems and such), and other issues that are not necessarily related to core policy about neutrality or verifiability. Also, we have disputes on English Wikipedia between editors about FA and GA that cause people to leave Wikipedia. So, I'm not sure that the new status would resolve the problem. It might intensify them.

But that aside, I support the new role as long as we broaden the criteria to include more people that contribute to adding quality content. Like on Wikinews where they have editor as a status. Maybe make Senior Editor a role above novice editor. But I'm not sure that it needs to be exclusive to people that write FA. That is a very limited group and would cause massive problems if everyone tried to have their articles go through the FA process.

The backlog is a significant issue. But we can tackle it, if we discuss it. If we get more people involved in FAs, it's possible we could actually reduce the backlog. (e.g.: by requesting that people who nominate featured articles also participate in other FA nominations)

The challenge with "senior editors" is we want the status to be granted by consensus. WikiNews currently does a simple vote on each nominee, but Sue Gardner cautioned us against that. On larger projects like Wikipedia, the politics of RFA have gotten ugly, and senior editors shouldn't be a political position. Featured Articles are one of the few ways we can measure the quality of a contribution that still reflects consensus. Yeah, I'm sure there are FA discussions that get controversial, but I can't envision a standard for "senior editors" that somehow reflects consensus while avoiding controversy. Where you find consensus-building, you find at least some controversy.

We can definitely lower/change the bar for "senior editors", but the standard would have to:

1. Reflect community consensus about reputation/quality
2. Avoid some kind of political vote on nominees (although nominees could volunteer to undergo a vote if they are an exceptional case)

I think we agree this is an issue, so let's see what suggestions people have.

Reposting an expanded version of what i posted in the Wikipedia quality discussion.

1. Understanding of Verifiability, Neutral PoV & No Original Research
2. Contribution to GA/FL/FA and/or GA/FL/FA rescue
3. Collaborative works, can play nice with others editors and find compromise
4. Knowledgeable in Wikipedia inner-process (Notice board, request protection, sock investigation, etc...)
5. Understanding of the inherent Systemic Bias and its own personal biases
6. Ability to admit its own mistakes and apologize

FA won't make you a senior editor as some FA makers showed lack of judgment and will to reach compromise. The English ArbCom know a few of them :p

Another concerning point is "senior editors" subtly trying to spread their wikipedia vision on new editors unaware that other visions exist. Can we trust a notable deletionist multi FA/FL/GA editor to offer neutral guidance to new editors?

Well i said already plenty enough about "senior editors" and how much i'm not uber fan of them due to their probable inability to live up to our expectations. Let's community try them but for my part i fear that out laziness and bureaucratic handling people will make the FA maker = "senior editor" shortcut in their minds.

It might be more useful to continue this conversation here:

[[1]]

I included the noticeboard idea, because that's tactile. I agree with the others in spirit... but implementation is tricky. I think FAs and noticeboards cover a lot of them though, with a check on people who have been sanctioned for bad conduct in the past.

I have some thoughts/concerns about "volunteer recognition":

• What is the appropriate entity to grant "formal" recognition? We have a board and staff, but their role is to support the content creation and editorial activities of the volunteer community, not to judge it; that's pretty fundamental to how Wikimedia works. We have chapters, but I would think those have a similar role. We have WikiProjects in various states of organization and activity. The WikiProject I know of has a "collaboration of the week"; it's run by one volunteer, and he gives out a "thumbs-up" to one editor every week, thanking them for "leading the way" on the collaboration. In short, my view is that it's entirely appropriate to have WikiProjects giving out awards, but I'm concerned about the legal entities getting into that realm. So, a question I'd like to explore would be "how can we encourage/support WikiProjects and similar groups to develop and sustain formal volunteer recognition programs?"
• How are volunteers selected? For both the recognizing body and the volunteer body, I think it would be important to have a common understanding of how volunteers are selected. Two reasons": (1) it should be fair, so that a hard-working volunteer feels they have a reasonable chance of earning the recognition; and (2) it should be rigorous, to avoid embarrassment to the granting entity. (Imagine this: An award is given out to an anonymous editor, or an editor who was not thoroughly vetted, who wrote an FA biography of a politician. Later, either privately or publicly, it becomes known that the editor was the chair of that politician's fundraising committee.)

Several of you have been discussing the criteria, and I think that's a good discussion to have, too -- I would want to think about edits to a topic area, as well. For instance, creating high-quality stubs for the CEO's of all Fortune 500 companies, or uploading photos of all former heads of state in Europe, or taking photos of all significant buildings that have Wikipedia articles in a certain city. Also, volunteers who exercise leadership in their community, even though they may not be writing an article themselves; those who reach out to museums or educators, for instance.

Those are both really good questions. I think the recommendation was aimed at a more general level than that. First, we should do it. Second, there are a lot of smart ways to do it that work well with Wikipedia. That's the extent of what we have in the recommendation right now.

Selecting who should be awarded goes hand in hand with figuring out who should select/grant the award. I suppose there is a very communitarian approach, where we trust a group of editors, but then there are risks of cabals. There is also a more objective approach, where we focus on quantifiable successes, but then we risk ignoring important qualitative factors. An editor who did all the requisite edits, but turns out to be a jerk. Or an editor who fell short of the metrics, but is respected by the whole community.

Randomran, thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm getting a clearer picture of what is and isn't the goal here, from your words and from reviewing the text again.

I think one of the things that contributed to my confusion is the way that Jayne Cravens' recommendations are presented. Her recommendations are not said to be this group's recommendations, but in the absence of some careful introductory text about how this group does regard the recommendations, I believe that is the natural assumption.

Her recommendations are much more specific than the "general level" you suggest; and furthermore, while I do not doubt that they are informed by "…experience regarding communications, community/volunteer involvement, and capacity-building for nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations/civil society, government-based community programs, and corporate philanthropy programs," they do not appear to reflect a very sophisticated understanding of how Wikimedia or its various sub-cultures and authoritative bodies operate. As any consultant will agree, general or preliminary recommendations are a very different thing the kind of recommendation that results from an in-depth client needs assessment and analysis.

So, I would suggest that we focus some attention on how her recommendations are introduced, lest we give the impression that merely implementing her specific recommendations is our general, strategic recommendation.

Yeah, I think Jayne Cravens did a fantastic job explaining what other not-for-profit organizations do. But we haven't really taken a strong position about which ones Wikimedia should focus on, and which are the most compatible with the community culture we have now.

For what it's worth, we have had very specific suggestions from the community here:

Category:Proposals for editor awards or rewards

We may want to pick out the best handful, and use them to build up some kind of ideal reward system.

In keeping with the desire for this recommendation to be a general framework/strategy, I think it might be good to put recommendations reflecting general non-profit expertise (like Cravens') and recommendations reflecting deep familiarity with the Wikimedia universe (like those from the community) in a separat, linked document (or an appendix). Then, we could focus in the main document on making a general recommendation for how such specific recommendations should be handled. What do you think of that?

That seems to make sense to me. I'd like to use the "general non-profit expertise" as supporting material -- proof that other people do it and it's a good idea. But it should all be used to support the best few recommendations from the community (which we should refine to make better).

I think the best place to start is to flag a few of the best rewards in that category. Are there any of them that you particularly like?

(Note: a new thread has been started on volunteer recognition, asking for something a bit more specific.)