Overhaul the FA system (mainly the voting aspect)?

LeftyGreenMario

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The reason I didn't start a proposal on this is that it's a pretty dang radical change and I'd like some suggestions, thoughts, and refinements before I go ahead. I would also like to have some background knowledge if suggestions pertaining to this has been made in the distant past.

Okay then...

I had a conversation with Tsunami about this, after the Mario Kart 8 nomination where Tsunami, BabyLuigi64, and Boo476 complained about fan votes. I've done this in the past, too, but I eventually resorted to the "fan votes are worthless" argument, which works. But I started delving deeper into the problem and now... this... thing I'm proposing.

The Featured Article system itself is going by all right, I guess, but the voting aspect of it, I find it unproductive.

The voting system isn't useful compared to, say, proposals. Votes are little substance; support vote requirements are pure quantity while oppose votes are structured in a way that only one is essential to keeping an article from featured. Any "per all" votes are wholly worthless unlike in proposals, unless you're voting to remove an oppose vote, but it's the voting itself that's the problem. Also, while it's only a minor problem, we have a number of uninformed editors simply logging in and casting a support fanvote, who think 500 supports feature an article, thus bumping the nomination. This is also another problem with the voting; once a valid oppose vote is there, support votes are just fluff. And additional opposing "per all/asshole who made oppose" votes.

A lot of editors have trouble with fans logging in only to vote for their character to be a featured article. We had several proposals about dealing with fan votes. The vast majority of them failed because of the above reasons. Despite this, fan votes continue being a problem, so this lead me to instead reexamine the entire voting-to-FA thing.

I think we should scrap the voting system in favor of a simple editor consensus, with a staff member approving it. Once this has reached, then we can wait one week until the article is then featured. The advantages of an editor consensus is that it encourages discussion and prevents such fan votes. It's essentially an FA nomination page with only comments, with maybe pointers for those opposing or supporting the nomination. It's going to follow the same deadlines, the archiving, the one-week-after-requirements-are-met thing; it's just without the voting and all. The quantity of editors being the consensus might be... maybe 4 or 5. Oh, it also doesn't have to be unanimous, but ultimately, a staff member (who is supposed to have good judgement, with extra editing tools and all) can decide if the consensus has been met.

One possible disadvantage is actually getting editors to be involved in the discussion, although it's already a prevalent problem in the current voting system anyway. But it's still my biggest fear, that the new system may end up having less articles featured because it requires a bit more effort. Maybe. Although those that already comment and vote frequently in the Featured Articles system probably wouldn't mind the change. I hope.

So yeah, again, it's a pretty radical change, but I'd like to see if anyone has comments and all. ^-^
 
I definitely agree that the current voting system is problematic (especially when people make accounts just to vote in support, we seriously don't have any rules against non-autoconfirmed?), and I think that having nothing but a discussion is essentially what's already in place, minus all the superficiality, though I think having a non-unanimous vote is something that should be elaborated on. Is it a pass-by-three margin like the proposals, or do the supporting editors simply have to present a stronger case than the opposing editors (besides the ambiguous "maybe 4 or 5" editors)? Will the staff member be there to recognize that there's a majority (in which case, why bother), or are they supposed to decide if the article is ready to be featured (in which case, they'd be acting like nothing more than another editor contributing to the discussion)? These are some points that could be discussed.
 
Shulk said:
I definitely agree that the current voting system is problematic (especially when people make accounts just to vote in support, we seriously don't have any rules against non-autoconfirmed?), and I think that having nothing but a discussion is essentially what's already in place, minus all the superficiality, though I think having a non-unanimous vote is something that should be elaborated on. Is it a pass-by-three margin like the proposals, or do the supporting editors simply have to present a stronger case than the opposing editors (besides the ambiguous "maybe 4 or 5" editors)? Will the staff member be there to recognize that there's a majority (in which case, why bother), or are they supposed to decide if the article is ready to be featured (in which case, they'd be acting like nothing more than another editor contributing to the discussion)? These are some points that could be discussed.
It's not really a pass-by-three margin; What's considered an editorial consensus wouldn't be as clear cut, but just think like this: how are editorial consensuses determined in the wiki? Or here? It's usually around three or more people agreeing, but if there's one person with a valid complaint, then the person's complaint should be discussed until the complaint is satisfied. Hence, consensus being reached. There might be cases where the person making the complaint simply does not respond anymore or something like that, and once other people agree that the complaint is fixed or invalid, it can be safely ignored. So, in that sense, it's like voting to remove an oppose vote.

The staff member doesn't necessarily have to participate in the discussion; all this user needs to do is to determine the consensus and green light the article (similar to adding information to the pass parameter once the 5th support vote is reached), and we all wait for a week for the article to be featured.

One more point: if the staff member is the one actually nominating the article, I suppose another staff member has to greenlight the nomination.

There might be disagreements on what constitutes a consensus, but our voting system kind of defines what "consensus" is: no oppose votes.
 
Oh, hey, an old idea to revisit? Sure, why not.

At the moment, I'm actually not feeling like fan votes are much of a problem. They most certainly were in the past, but we have a fixed timeline in place now, so bumping isn't an issue at all(if anything, I'm wondering why the bit about warnings over bumping is still in the FA process guidelines), and any opposes could stop one. If anything, I'd say it's opposes that may be problematic-if the admins don't happen to be paying much mind to FA proposals, they can't be removed at all(although I'm not alleging that's the case).

That said though, this is a pretty interesting idea, and I think I might like to see where it goes.
 
Tuxedo Ridley said:
Oh, hey, an old idea to revisit? Sure, why not.

At the moment, I'm actually not feeling like fan votes are much of a problem. They most certainly were in the past, but we have a fixed timeline in place now, so bumping isn't an issue at all(if anything, I'm wondering why the bit about warnings over bumping is still in the FA process guidelines), and any opposes could stop one. If anything, I'd say it's opposes that may be problematic-if the admins don't happen to be paying much mind to FA proposals, they can't be removed at all(although I'm not alleging that's the case).

That said though, this is a pretty interesting idea, and I think I might like to see where it goes.
Fan votes aren't a problem, but you get users again and again complaining about fan votes. I am tempted to stick to old arguments, but I reexamined the entire system instead to see why this issue keeps cropping up.

The opposes are a big problem since it's sorely dependent on the admins, and since few admins actually participate in the process (it's an observation, don't ban me ;|) and we actually got some nominations that failed to succeed because it was lacking one admin vote to remove the oppose vote.

Maybe rather than admins we just get some trusted and active users of the FA process to overlook it rather than admins so it can pass through swimmingly. Just check who makes quality comments and nominations frequently in the nomination pages and you'll have a good general idea.

Maybe.
 
Yeah, if there's a big issue in the FA process, it's that oppose removal rule. That could be a possible solution, I suppose.
 
What, my overall proposal?
 
Thing is there is one admin who cares about the FA system: me. I keep up to date with them, and if I see a vote that's problematic I'm happy to help remove it.

Thing is with "trustworthy members", people have to agree who qualifies and I'm sure there will be a lot of conflicting views over it.
 
No, I was referring to the idea of changing "admins" to "active/trusted users", though there'd probably be a lot of argument over the definition of "trusted". The overall proposal is still a pretty interesting idea though, and given the FA section is pretty dead at the moment as it is I don't think anyone's going to complain about the possibility of reducing activity. And if people will still consider fan votes a problem given the changes made to counter them, the overall proposal would counter both issues...
 
I don't see how the fan votes are an issue at all. One meaningful oppose ends them on an FA nomination, and they're removed on sight if in an oppose.

The proposed idea could work, but I don't think there are many people who care enough to go through and nitpick the entire article to see if it's up to standard.
 
Uncle Deadly said:
Thing is there is one admin who cares about the FA system: me. I keep up to date with them, and if I see a vote that's problematic I'm happy to help remove it.

Thing is with "trustworthy members", people have to agree who qualifies and I'm sure there will be a lot of conflicting views over it.
Yeah, that's true. I'd say you're the most active admin of the FA system, actually, but I'd like it if the system wasn't dependent on only one demoted user admin. I don't want to force other admins to be interested, but rather, we should really amend the vote-removal rule somehow.

"A lot of argument over the definition of 'trusted'?" There shouldn't be, just as long as the trusted user in question has good judgement. You, Vommack, for example, I would consider a trusted user. Time Turner is another. Same thing for Tsunami. Or Ashley and Red. I don't know, all are at least semi-active users that have voted several times in the FA system and they generally provide good reasons for voting or good comments.

Uncle Deadly said:
I don't see how the fan votes are an issue at all. One meaningful oppose ends them on an FA nomination, and they're removed on sight if in an oppose.

The proposed idea could work, but I don't think there are many people who care enough to go through and nitpick the entire article to see if it's up to standard.
And that's the problem, fan votes are worthless and we should streamline the process which minimizes the space for unnecessary fanvotes as much as possible, as I'm proposing above. And voting by itself is pretty worthless too, just look at popular articles like Super Mario World getting 50 fan support votes.

The current process also requires people to nitpick the article to be up to standard, I don't see how this is different other than addressing how worthless votes in general are, but I'm worried if it creates new problems.
 
Mario Party X said:
Uncle Deadly said:
The proposed idea could work, but I don't think there are many people who care enough to go through and nitpick the entire article to see if it's up to standard.
The current process also requires people to nitpick the article to be up to standard, I don't see how this is different other than addressing how worthless votes in general are, but I'm worried if it creates new problems.
I'm aware of the current need for nitpicking, but usually when someone nominates an article there's a mountain of text for why it should be featured, this probably just makes other users support rather than them also going through with a fine comb. My fear is that there aren't enough people who'd be willing to debate on it in that way.
 
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