[Theforum] assigning editing privilege

[Elfur Logadottir]

  From: "Warden, Matt" <mwarden at mattwarden.com>

| should this be on theforum? go ahead and move it if you think so...

moving this to theforum, since the discussion is evolving and i'd really
like some other people's input on the content.

some context:
We're talking about the method of deciding who get's to have privilege 3
(and thus gets to edit articles etc.).
Matt and I agree that the basic summary of the structure is as follows:
"theforum is open to everyone and published on leo, while a subsection of
theforum has the administrational privilege after showing enough enthusiasm
for the community."

but there's still the question about how the subsection part is maintained
(added too, removed from etc), as opposed to it being the whole of theforum

Matt suggested the following structure

| >[from the archive]
| >1. Joe User volunteers to edit an article.
| >2. We say: go for it (if no one else has already taken it)
| >3a. He does a good job and we all pat him on the back.
| >3b. He does an ok job; someone else makes a few more edits; Joe learns
| >the
| >ropes and does better next time.
| >3c. Joe is an asshole and deletes the article. We restore it from backup
| >and let someone else edit it. Only thing hurt is a day or so lost
editing
| >time.
| >[/from the archive]

to which i replied and matt replied to again (my comments are preceded by
'|>' while matt's only by '|' - and finally i'm replying to his comments -
yet again inbetween :)

so there's the history, let's get to the comments ...

| >1. ok.
| >2. how? how do we let him go for it?
|
| update users set userpriv=3 where who='elfur';

i know as much, matt, i was rather asking if some newbie who just joined
the list this morning volunteered ... is it as easy as an update query? and
since he has to ask, is his update query permanent from that moment? is
that really a subsection of theforum, doesn't that mean that basically the
whole theforum list has priv=3 ??


|
| >- is there a special allowance to edit, valid for that day or?
| >do we always let everyone go for it?
|
| everyone. article locking would be nice.

again, if you always let everyone have the priv=3 level when they ask for
it, why don't you just include it in the subscription for theforum list?
how do you really secure a subsection this way?

|
| >- can anyone just go and edit?
|
| if they check it out from some locking mechanism and also have a priv>=3,
| i guess so.

again, this is not a subsection of theforum.

| >- if not, when do they get the privilege ...
|
| when they ask.

i know i don't have to say it one more time ... :)

| >3 who's monitoring joe's work?
|
| Anyone.

anyone who? anyone with priv=3 or ??

| >a. who decides if his job is a good job
| >b. or an ok job?
| >c. or if he's being an asshole?
|
| Er... it's not so much that. It's just catching other mistakes (or
| recovering a deleted article body from archive) that were missed by Joe.

but what if he really does a lousy job? what if he changes some parts of
the article in some way (not talking malice here, but rather accidental or
igonrance) does the one monitoring his job have to read the original
article and compare it to the one that joe has worked on?

| When Joe sees another Article Update notification where another person,
| possibly more seasoned, added target="_new" to external links, he'll
| probably remember to do that next time.

sure

| if there aren't any other mistakes or edits to be made, then I guess he
| did a good job.

but he edited the code in the php tutorial and now it doesn't work (or not
as well or something). is the monitoring person supposed to look out for
that as well.

| >isn't it just easier to allow joe to participate in discussion on
| >theforum list and that way showing his enthusiasm for the community.
that
| >way, when he volunteers to edit an article, he's added to the admin
group
| >and no one really needs to monitor if he's doing a bad/ok/good job at
it?
|
| ?
|
| We monitor each other's job here on admin. I edited that survey article
| and caught one or two grammar issues. You edited it as well and caught
| others that I missed.
|
| Same thing, really.

no absolutely not, we monitor each other's job - yes - but we have a
certain basis of trust ... in the aspect that we know that none of us would
go about editing the code ... we have developed through practice some
ground rules (albeit some are still vague).

so there's a big difference of me monitoring joe user who i know nothing
about and i don't trust and i don't know his motives ... and you monitoring
me for english grammar.

| or did I not answer your question?

yes, but in my opinion your logic doesn't hold strong enough for me to
accept that as our method.

thanks
elfur