Forum:CT:Creating a CA nomination limit

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Creating a CA nomination limit

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The result of the debate was No consensus. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 11:17, February 23, 2013 (UTC)

As you might have been aware, there has been a discussion going on in the Senate Hall as to whether or not creating a limit to the number of CA nominations one person can have at any one time should exist. The current suggestion is an 8 nom limit, which would prevent the CAN page from being overrun every so often by a stampede of nominations. 501st dogma(talk) 20:24, January 27, 2013 (UTC)

Create an 8 nomination limit for the CAN page

Support

  1. 501st dogma(talk) 20:24, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  2. I left my opinion within the SH discussion.Winterz (talk) 20:55, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  3. Exiled Jedi Oldrepublic crest (Greetings) 20:56, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  4. As stated in the Senate hall thread, I support a CAN limit. Commander Code-8 G'day, mate 21:38, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  5. Creating a CAN limit is not necessarily the way to ensure quality control in CAs. That is ultimately the job of the ECs, as well as the other reviewers. However, this system has worked well in the GAN page, so I support having it here, as well. In regards to removing the limit on GANs, basically per Winterz below. The GAN page is probably the best running review page at the moment. There are many reasons why that fact is true, but the GAN limit is one of the reasons. If we can improve the CAN by setting a limit, why would we not want to?—Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 14:31, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  6. Digi, if you think about it, that's pretty counterproductive. Quality over quantity, but the latter will appear more if there's no limit. JangFett (Talk) 14:42, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  7. I really don't mind one way or another whether this is implemented, but if the people who most regularly maintain and review the CAN page (Dogma, Winterz, EJ, Code-8) want to see this in their domain, then I say let them have it. It should be pointed out also, for the record, that the GAN limit was never a way to limit the number of nominations on the page to ease the work burden. Rather, it was, and continues to be, a way for us to help pace newer nominators for the sake of their development. It's not uncommon that we get new gung-ho writers who start out by nominating five, six, seven+ articles at once while making the same multitudes of mistakes over and over again. We try to pace them to a few nominations at a time so they get the hang of it. This isn't an issue that has gone away, and removing this safeguard would be a mistake. I don't pay as much attention to the CAN page, but I imagine it might have a similar positive effect there as a training tool as well. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 19:13, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  8. Per everything above. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 19:27, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  9. Tope raises good points. 1358 (Talk) 19:36, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  10. —Jedi Kasra ("Indeed.") 03:29, February 4, 2013 (UTC)
  11. Rokkur Shen (talk) 03:41, February 7, 2013 (UTC)
  12. Supreme Emperor (talk) 04:42, February 7, 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. We should be striving for quality articles, not against. This is completely the wrong direction to go to deal with the problem of too few editors/reviewers. — DigiFluid(Whine here) 21:30, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  2. We tried this on the FAN page and it didn't do anything. I've been to busy to be on the CAN page for a while myself, so I haven't been putting in my token votes, but if you're worried about stagnation, that's what you've got to do. The CAN page routinely fluctuates between being 40 nominations long and being empty over the course of several months, and I've always seen that as because people decide to review more often when it gets longer so we can clean out the page. By that reasoning, I think not having as many noms will make the problem worse. Additionally, quality control is not going to be helped by a limit. If people observe a waiting period of one or two days before actually nominating article in order to see it with fresh eyes—y'know, that thing you're supposed to do with any composition?—those mistakes will be caught. Being impatient is not the thing to do: follow the natural CAN cycle and start reviewing more. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 22:11, January 27, 2013 (UTC)
  3. Like Naru said, when this was tried on the FAN page, it didn't accomplish anything. The nomination queue was just as long, but the latter half of it was invisible. Users had articles that were ready to be nominated but were forced to sit on the invisible half of the queue without receiving any copy-edits or constructive criticism. If a nomination page is too long, the onus to do something about it should always be placed on the reviewers rather than the writers. Creating a limit isn't the solution. Menkooroo (talk) 02:06, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
    • Then why do we have a limit for the GAN page? I have articles sitting around waiting to be nominated as well, and they will be once I get a free spot on the page. 501st dogma(talk) 13:05, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
      • I'd support removing that limit. Menkooroo (talk) 13:34, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
        • Though this is a bit off topic, I'd support it as well. There is really no need for the limit. It's harder to pump out GANs than CANs, so there would not be as much trouble with overflow, if at all. 501st dogma(talk) 13:58, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  4. Per Naru and Menk. —MJ— Council Chambers 02:17, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  5. I haven't had any CANs lately but I have to agree with Digi. Corellian PremierJedi symbolThe Force will be with you always 15:13, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  6. Per Menk. ~SavageBOB sig 15:57, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
  7. I'm afraid this will only curb user iniciative. Like I said: nominate more reviewers. Stake black msg 16:51, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
    • You can't just nominate more reviewers. Reviewers have to show themselves worthy of the ranks. Not only that, but just because people hold a title does not mean they will review more. Promoting more people does little to solve the problem of reviewing. Limiting the number of nominations helps the current and new reviewers keep up with everything, and it lessens the chance of a group nomination of ten articles in a personal project from having all the same mistakes. I know from personal experience that when you nominate a bunch of related articles, the mistakes in one carry over into all the others, and that makes things very difficult. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 18:19, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
      • Damn, I was about to write that! Actually about that later point, I'm sure that due to recent events, Stake now comprehends it ;). Winterz (talk) 18:31, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
      • On that note, maybe—and read past this first sentence—we should lower the physical bar for what we want a prospective EC to do in order to be viewed them worthy of nomination. Currently, a lot of the people who have been put up, mainly those who weren't Wookieepedians before CAs were implemented, are those who patrol the CAN going through every single nomination. If they continued doing that after they're given a spot, we would only need two ECs. They'd both vote for the article within the first two days and it would pass. That's bad for the article, since it not only has only two or three sets of eyes looking at it, and it's bad for the reviewer because that pace is just not feasible for the long term. However, that clearly doesn't happen. Why? We all do other things on this site. People take breaks. People should take breaks after reading every CAN for months on end. What matters is how well they review when they review, so what we should stop emphasizing the quantity of articles reviewed and start looking at the quality. Not to say that they were reviewing badly. One of those is me nominating Axinal for partially for this reason, even. But we've set a precedent that reviewing every article is how you're going to get into the EC and that's not a good one for finding prospective candidates. Gaining experience and showing us they are is one thing, flooding the CAN page with EC votes from one user when we can (and do) have a varied set is another. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 22:42, January 30, 2013 (UTC)
  8. Cade Calrayn GalacticRepublicEmblem-Traced-TORkit 18:23, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
  9. IFYLOFD (Floyd's crib) 00:36, February 17, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

I do not see how this limit could be any bothersome to certain people. 8 is certainly a not very limited number and one who posts over that number is likely rushing through most of them and I'm saying this as I was one of such examples (another being Cade :p). A small number of articles can be easily controlled by the said nominator, allowing him to spend more time in each of the articles and working on them properly. But instead as there is no limit anyone is free to just start "shooting" them onto the queue page without due attention. Same applies to reviewers as they will be spared the effort of going through 20 low-quality nominations from the same person. Also, worth mentioning that if new and less experienced users nominate a considerable amount of CANs each objection (certainly many) will have to apply to the whole lot of the noms as mistakes will be repeated. Plus, all of these are avoided in tha GAN section thanks to the limit. Winterz (talk) 13:51, January 28, 2013 (UTC)

  • For starters, it's bothersome because it won't solve the problems you're citing here. If this is your big justification for this, the only way a problem with a user doing that is going be really settled is doing something you're probably doing already, but no fine point can be place upon it: the answer to your problem is talking, whether they're putting out eight bad noms in a row or twenty. If someone is consistently "shooting" out low-quality nominations to the CAN page, where the length should make finding small mistakes like grammar rudimentary, then tell them they're doing it consistently and tell them to take some time off to look at everything they're doing. Tell them about your personal process: I generally take two days before I nom anything, myself. I catch mistakes, though linking has been a problem for me lately—I'll figure that out. How do I know I need to figure that out? People told me. If they're not given a talking to, they will keep making the same mistakes. Especially if they're doing twenty at a time, which I'm chalking up to hyperbole on your part. Setting up a rule to avoid telling the person they're screwing up—something you're not going to avoid this way anyway—or as an attempt to make them keep themselves from screwing up that will be in vain is not constructive to them. If you really want to deal with this problem you have, again speaking up would be the first thing, a second thing could be instituting a week-long CAN time-out for "problem children." Maybe assigning an EC mentor to look over their noms before they put them on the page for every one else would be another. Maybe not even EC. I'd volunteer gladly. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 23:05, January 30, 2013 (UTC)
    • Naru, the point I pictured in my original comment is simple. Limit brings/enhances/improves control, and that you just can't refute. Alcohol legal consumption limited until a certain coming of age will not necessarily prevent illegal consumption but it still will lower the probability of it being consumed in abusive quantities by such individuals. The solutions we all presented here have all downsides yes, and lack perfection, but regardless, they are still solutions that will improve that matter at hand. You, however, seem to refute all these solutions because they do not excell, yet you bring no better option to the table. Naru, I understand you hold the largest number of CAs but as you've been away from the CAN board for a while, while me, Dogma, EJ, CC8, etc (All very active there and all of us support this idea), see what it is going through and understand that it needs some certain improvement and sense of control, to benefit in quality of articles or would you disagree (considering an equal number of resources) that 2 or 3 articles being worked simultaneously would achieve a better level of quality than 400 articles in the same situation, regardless of the user being experienced or not? My regards. Winterz (talk) 03:06, February 1, 2013 (UTC)
      • Actually, I can refute that. Sorry I couldn't respond earlier. I've been swamped. Myneyrsh may even lose its status because of it. *g* Anyway, enforcing a limit on quantity will not translate to an increase in quality for CAs, nor will it fix the problem of bad nominations. It's not designed to do that, since it restricts all nominations, not just bad ones, and it does not tell users you want to slow down why it was put in place. People who come in after the rule is implemented hypothetically would have no idea that it waws meant to stop them from churning out swatches after swatches of bad nominations. More than that, in the context of writing articles, quality and quanitity work on completely different metrics in the long term, meaning the instances when writers take their time and write responsibly like we expect them to. It is the expectation of Wookieepedia that its editors write this way by default. In the short term, yes, writing forty articles in a day and shoving them on the CAN within hours is a bad idea. It just doesn't work; the quality of a person's writing just can't hold up to that. But that's not what usually happens, because we're not idiots with the mental stamina of Iron Man runners. Let's give the hyperbole so ubiquitous on this page a break for a second and talk plausibly. Why the people who are prolific CAN writers can do what we do (I'll loosely cast myself with them for the moment, despite burnout and life) is because we are responsible about it. We have reasonable writing processes and habits. We work on a reasonable number of articles at a time, nowhere near bloated figures like 400, and we give each article enough attention and time that we catch most of what needs catching. That comes from experience and actually learning from when people tell you you're screwing up, and a smart problem child capable of that could correlate the the number of articles you wrote that day with the frequency of objections each received. That's what I did, way back; problem children can realize they're screwing up if given a chance to think about it on their own. Nowadays, I do not nominate articles the day that I initially write them. Ever. This is because I've learned that it's imperative that I give myself time off from it so I can pick out flaws later. I try to work carefully and meticulously, something I know I share with others. Someone who would nominate a shitload of articles they just wrote—someone who would dare make a large number of glaring, major grammatical errors in something under 250 words long—someone who would just plop something that got too long to be a CA on the GAN page without reading it through at least one more time is not taking it seriously and is not being responsible. You cannot create a rule to make people behave responsibly. An arbitrary number of simultaneous noms that cannot be exceeded, to a person who would behave as I've described above, is only a limit to the number that they can do at a time. It will not keep them from spamming eight poor noms. A nom limit wouldn't create any new sense of control, it would just slow the flow of both bad noms and the good ones. Does it really matter if the noms of chronically irresponsible writers sit on their personal, invisible queues or on the nom page itself? Absolutely not. The kind of writer you complain about simply sees a nomination as finished, not comprehensive. They will just throw on the next bad nom when one of theirs passes or fails, probably without even taking advantage of the waiting time to look it over again before actually nominating it. Hell, I still look over my old status articles from time to time to see if there's something I can do to polish them. ¶
      • You do not have a mechanical issue on your hands here: you have a problem with a certain type of person. I do not see your approach as beneficial to them—and that's what we want at the end of the day: to help them benefit themselves and the site by becoming better writers—or to the majority of us, those who aren't screwing up. Having a crapton of bad nominations on the page would be good for them, because it would let them experience what being bogged down with negative (yet constructive) criticism is like, giving them more opportunities to learn and having that practice bite them in the ass. Human beings don't tend to like criticism. Those who can take it and become better writers because of it can stay, and the ones that burn out and say "screw you guys, you just don't appreciate me" can leave. Good riddance. We should treat them like we want them to become great, not punish them(without telling them it's punishing them) for opening themselves up to learning lessons in painful ways, even if them learning these means we have to read through crap they wrote. We've pretty much been doing that for years anyway, the first batches of noms from new people are almost universally poor. The CAN may just be accelerating it because the word limit is lower. In any case, that last bit might imply to you that I think we should do nothing, and that's not the case. You have a legitimate gripe here, the acceleration of people churning out crap, but your proposed solution just will not be a step to fixing it because it's a rule against nominating a bunch of articles at a time, not a rule against nominating a bunch of bad articles at one time (we shouldn't have one of those either; that's just the actual "fix" your proposed rule is missing). I do have a better option, the one I proposed in my previous post. I initially thought of it as a spur-of-the-moment alternative, but I think it could work very well now that I've reflected on it for a little while. A blanket article number limit would not work, but giving someone a mandatory reprieve from article nominating so they can be mentored directly might. It's just a vague idea right now, but it would get the bad nominators off the page (which does what you want), and it would give them the opportunity to be talked to directly about what they can do to to clean up their act. Better, we can do it in the context of us wanting to help them (something people like), not restrict them(something people rebel against). Actually, now that I write this out, it would probably be pretty good for our image as an impenetrable, mean community if we had a procedure that gave a direct line from a seasoned veteran writers to greenhorns for tip sharing and assistance. Not mandatory, of course, but would anyone else out there volunteer? NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 00:18, February 17, 2013 (UTC)

May I suggest a compromise? We could have a one month trial period, and see how the limit works out. At the end of the period, we could vote again to keep it up, or remove it, depending how things went. 501st dogma(talk) 22:55, January 31, 2013 (UTC)

  • There's not really an objective way to test probationally whether it's working after a month or not. The people who want it will necessarily see a decrease in the number of bad noms that reach the page at one time—though that's because they'll be postponed for nomming later, polished with the extra time or not—and the people who don't want it and are prolific CA writers will see their personal queues fill out past eight relatively quickly. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 00:12, February 1, 2013 (UTC)
    • Then what is an objective way? 501st dogma(talk) 00:57, February 1, 2013 (UTC)
      • No clue. It's not that we couldn't do that, it's just that people can see and take what they want to see and take out of the experiment. Fewer bad noms? Yea side: "This was a triumph." Nay side: "Of course there are going to be fewer if you funnel the bad ones and the good ones." Someone gets bogged down by the limit? Nay side: "This was a failure." Yea side: "Just make the sacrifice. It's for the article's benefit." Nobody—good nominator or bad nominator—get bogged down? Pro side calls it proof that there was no problem with enacting the rule, the nay side says there was no point to the rule in the first place. Of course, I'm generalizing here, and I may be coloring the opinions of the others with my own steadfast attitude. If people want a trial period, we can vote to give it a shot. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 02:26, February 1, 2013 (UTC)

So, does this thing pass, or not? How much of a majority is required? 501st dogma(talk) 00:18, February 7, 2013 (UTC)

  • Check out Wookieepedia:Consensus: Consensus track threads with 10-16 voters will need a 3 to 1 ratio of votes for passage; consensus track threads with 17 to 24 voters will need a 5 to 2 ratio of votes for passage; consensus track threads with more than 25 votes can be passed by a 2:1 ratio of votes/opinions posted on the thread. This CT currently has eighteen voters, and since eight voted "Oppose," there would need to be 2.5x that for the CT to pass. That would be twenty in favour, although that would bring the total number of voters to >25, in which case only a 2:1 ratio would be needed. So, anyway, it's currently at no consensus. Menkooroo (talk) 00:37, February 7, 2013 (UTC)