Forum:Proxies?

Forums: Index > Rating Committee > Proxies?

After stumbling across a 4e article on the list of rated pages, it occurred to me that it will probably never get more than a few favors; most of us are not terribly familiar with 4e. What does everyone think of a RC member asking for a volunteer to serve as a proxy (subject to the Rater's approval) on a given article when the Rater feel they lack the knowledge to rate it? --DanielDraco 14:35, January 22, 2010 (UTC)

We really need a more comprehensive overhaul of the RC. Surgo 15:22, January 22, 2010 (UTC)

We definately need a solution to the whole 4e rating issue... So far, the Arachonomicon has only had one rating (is that the 4e article you mean?), and I am fairly sure that it will be the same for all other 4e articles. The only thing is, I can't think of a solution; there certainly aren't enough regular 4e contributors for a second comitee, and the proxy idea could lead to one or two people rating the sam article several times for a lack of enough proxies. --  Sam Kay   talk    contribs    email   12:02, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

The problem with the 4e articles is pretty bad, but I think it's bigger than that even. The raters that we have tend to be distracted with writing their own stuff or working on site background or just not present as often as they thought they would be back when this was first discussed. I'm actually in favor of just dumping the RC entirely and letting any registered user favor stuff, we have regular contributors who are not on the committee and don't get to help boost material on the wiki as a result. I don't see what having the ratings restricted to a small group of increasingly busy people does to help us remain credible that tagging articles with raters and balance doesn't. So, since I think the issue mentioned here is bigger than discussed and potentially intractable, let's just open it up and let our active users rate stuff. The Rated By property on the article page will still let other users find material rated by and supported by particular individuals, and that in combination with balance levels should let people find material that they can trust to be reviewed / balanced in a consistent way. - TarkisFlux 20:13, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

That's definitely worth a try; this RC thing isn't working as well as we expected, because we're not all rating the same articles and they therefore rarely get higher than bronze. If we were to start casting our two cents to what others have rated (I, for example, have thus far only rated things that others have already rated), then it might work. Failing that, opening it to all users may work better, perhaps reassigning the RC to the duty of making sure that ratings are well-thought-out and not simply "ur class sux lol". --DanielDraco 21:09, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

I am strongly against this, I dunno, this jury duty setup has on flaw, what if the people selected for rating don't have a good enough understanding of the rules to spot a fatal flaw in the design of a page, or what if they simply can't put aside a personal bias against a certain type of material. I for one despise tome material and I might rate a tome feat badly despite its great design simply because I can't see past it being a Tome feat. I think instead that RC members should get messages suggesting that they rate page so and so, maybe stopping after they rate three or more pages, that way they would remember to get things done. Or maybe we should just find new raters if the current ones are too busy.--ThirdEmperor 02:26, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

My idea was to just let anyone with a gold-rated article rate shit. Surgo 02:35, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

@TE: The thing is that people are lazy, and without an incentive to do something, they rarely do it. There's little-to-no incentive in favoring articles, so people don't really do it much, whether they're busy or not. --Ghostwheel 02:43, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Don't kill me for this but if you need incentive I'm sure we could rig something up to stop you guys from editing anything until you rate something each day. Oh, and problem with Surgo's idea is that pretty everyone who has a gold rated article is already on the committee.--ThirdEmperor 03:04, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

No, no, no. A reward for rating is not the same thing as a punishment for not rating. Surgo 03:33, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

All right, that was partly a joke, although we should think of a way to get people to rate stuff, I for one work best when I've got no other choice, maybe you have to rate X articles or you lose RC status? But that's pretty close to my last one, maybe alternating rating duty among people who are agreed upon as reliable and knowledgeable?--ThirdEmperor 04:23, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

@3E - You can't actually rate things badly in our setup. The worst you can do is rate it a 0, which is only an official stand on not rating it at all, which is basically what's happening right now anyway. So even if you hate Tome stuff you can't actually hurt it's ratings. And Surgo's idea isn't bad because it keeps the same committee members (I'd be out, but I'm thinking about leaving anyway so I can do site crap / article cleanup and my own stuff without guilt) since it also opens the door for basically infinity more. So even if half of those people aren't moving things forward, the other half can bring an article up to gold to bring more active people onboard. Which doesn't sound like a bad way to go at all.

I've also tweaked the RC Favor template to accept ratings without reasons, which should take some of the work out of giving approval to an article. It should probably be avoided early in the rating process, but it makes parroting what everyone has already said more convenient (and thus we might get some more ratings out of people). Also, we should absolutely stop pulling articles from the favor list after they hit 3 ratings. I don't remember who started doing that, but it was a terrible plan. - TarkisFlux 05:09, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Fair enuff, but I officially reserve the right to say I told you so if this goofs up.--ThirdEmperor 05:17, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Wow, lots of discussion here overnight. There are two things said which I want to vehemently say are terrible ideas.

Firstly: if you cannot get past your own predisposed notions of what the best balance point is (e.g. by being unwilling to give tome material a good rating, even though it hits its high wizard target), then you should not be on the rating committee. Our job is to judge on how well-written it is and how well it hits its target, not how well it hits our own preferred target.

Secondly: restricting rating rights to only users with gold articles excludes those of us who are better at examining work than creating it; some are meant to be critics, not writers. --DanielDraco 23:22, February 1, 2010 (UTC)