Moderation/Approval/Voting system

[Jason Pincin <chardros@linuxkb.org>]

Here's something else Aaron and I were discussing on IRC the other night
(I'm tellin ya - IRC is the place to be!)  and I want to bring it to the
light of the list as I continue discussion on this topic.

We were discussing the fact that all changes to the category system,
articles, etc should go through some kind of moderation/voting system.
We've talked about this extensively as a group with respect to articles,
etc. but I don't think everyone has given it much thought for other
changes, etc.

Our focus was category (KB-Container) administration, updates, and
maintenance.  It's obvious that everyone will have different thoughts on
how the categories should be laid out... how they should be constructed,
etc.  I know there are movments underway to give documentation fixed
categories, etc. on lists like ode... but none of that will be ready in
time.  We need a way to capture mass mentatlity, and align the tree
structure according to that... and give many people voices... thus
hopefully making the majority of people happy.

In pursuit of this we began talking about the voting system.  I've given a
good deal of thought to this before... but last evenings conversation
stirred it up again.  Basicly we said you have two types of people.
Admins and voters.  There's no need to have any kind of special system to
trak who is which, the code to handle all this is already in place with
the permission system.  If your a voter you have the permission to vote on
select categories... if your an admin, you have the ability to perform
actions without others voting on it.  So far so good.  Now, in light of
that - the object should be to eliminate as many "admins" as possible by
introducing an excellent voting system that allows group decisions without
hindering the evolution of the site at all.  I've given more thought to
this and wanted to continue the topic with everyone.

Basicly, to become a voter you just have to say... "Hey!  I'd like to help
maintain category X".  Of course we won't be doling out voter perms to
everyone at the KB-Root level.  People can start out by helping to
maintain how categories are handled within the "Web" category of
something.  Any voter can suggest that an action be taken.  For example...
moving some group of articles or something under the "Apache" app.
(Warning Aaron - CmdSchedule comes into play here :))  At that time a
VoteTally command is scheduled to go off in the future... like 48 hrs from
now or something.  The time is dependant on the action suggested.  Now -
Anyone that can vote at that level is made aware of the vote that is going
on any time they log into the system... and can vote whether it should be
taken or not.  Along with that vote they will be given the option to say
WHY they feel the way they do.  Now any time you vote you should be able
to peruse other people opinions, and see these comments.  And then form
your own opinion and vote.  Along with this... if you feel so obligated
you can say - "Hey, this guy is very level headed, and made a good point,
he's very deserving of his voter status"... or the opposite.  All such
"Reasons for voting" would be posted for all to see as Anonymous... the
system will track who really posted them.  Hopefully this will eliminate
any retarded polotics that could evolve such as "Oh... I like him so I'll
vote for him".  And if you vote for or against someone's reason that's
anonymous too... but the system tracks all your votes based on your login
(Anonymous cannot vote on such things as sys-admin) and will only let you
vote once.  Now... when the VoteTally event finally fires off, it will
tally the number of votes placed, and see if the majority of those voted
yes.  If so, the change takes place.  If you don't cvote, you don't count
against the tally... this will keep in-active voters from stagnating
progress.

The benefits of all this are three fold.  1) It gives us an awsome
moderation/voting system which all changes pass through, hopefully leaving
only good changes take place.  2) It allows us to go without a lot of
Power Users who in and of themselves can change anything they want.  Give
the power to everyone.  Make it a group effort.  3) By people being able
to vote that others were good or bad in there reasoning it gives us a
system to judge how people are wielding there abilities.  We can use this
to take the ability away, or to "promote" really good people to higher
levels in the tree... thus having a greater influence on over-all tree
design.

All of this leads to community control of the resources we have created
and given... which is what I think we all want.  Of course we'll continue
to have SOME "admins" who can correct things if the system should ever
fail... but I think overall this would be an excellent step.  Things this
require:

Web moderation system (on my list for pre-go-live - not really that
hard... see previous Conference Email for dates)

A table to track change-requests along with who voted on what, and there
reasons.  (Again - not that difficult...)

CmdSchedule - This is a little more big of a deal.  In the meantime
(before this is done) we can probably work around it.  

The voting system does not have to be ready for go-live.  I'm bringing it
up because I htink it's worthy od discussion... and I'll be building my
moderation pages along with anyone who assists with them with this in
mind.  We need the moderation pages for articles, questions, answers, etc
anyway - to control anything that anonymous users can post - so that we
don't have weenies posting cruft on our pages and making us look bad.
I've had many discussions with Dan on this topic, and we're on the same
page.

But I think we should start talking about the above material now - the
quicker we get it in place the better... but it should not interfere with
activites we have deemed crucial for go-live.

Enuf rambling from me.  Give us your thoughts on this.  

-- 
Jason Pincin
Linux Knowledge Base Project Leader (http://www.linuxkb.org)
http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~chardros