Wikipedia talk:Delegable proxy/Archive 1

Archive 1

Multiple accounts = one user

User:Sarsaparilla, User:Ron Duvall, and User:Absidy are three separate accounts used by the same person. Darkspots (talk) 13:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Alternates / proxy ranking

Should we allow users to pick alternate proxies? E.g., A selects B as 1st choice and C as 2nd choice. If neither A nor B vote, then C casts votes for A and C. If neither A, B, nor C votes, then B's proxy casts votes for A and B. I think this increases the robustness of the system and allows greater choice on the part of the user. Sarsaparilla (talk) 21:59, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Issue independence

I removed this text from the essay:

In one possible implementation, ranked proxies can be established by a user selecting a primary proxy, a secondary proxy, and so on. If the primary proxy does not participate in a discussion, then the user's vote can be cast by the secondary proxy. If the secondary proxy does not participate either, then the user's vote can be cast by a tertiary proxy, if there is one; and if not, then by someone in the primary proxy's proxy chain, or his secondary proxy's proxy chain, etc. This system, if combined with single-purpose accounts, could be used to implement issue independence in which different proxies cast votes on different issues. For instance, Ms. Gargamella might create two accounts, Ms. Gargamella the Geologist and Ms. Gargamella the Inclusionist. If Mr. User trusts Ms. Gargamella's views on geology-related articles but doesn't like her overall inclusionist philosophy, he might select Ms. Gargamella the Geologist as his primary proxy and Mr. Deletionist as his secondary proxy. Ms. Gargamella the Geologist would only cast votes on geology-related articles; on all other issues, Mr. User's vote would be cast by Mr. Deletionist.

I think this type of system would be über-cool, but maybe it's too complicated to try to introduce all at once? What do you think? Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:49, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd say, keep it simple. Further, a ranked system like that obscures the return path. Would I accept a secondary proxy? Probably not. In a Free Association, I don't really gain anything by accepting a proxy; my power as "representative" is subject to revocation at any time, it only is actually effective to the extent that I can lead my clients. I don't want weak clients, who are going to argue with me on everything, who are going to complain about this or that action (which is quite different from asking why I did something). Indeed, I don't need clients at all. I present arguments, my arguments are the same no matter how many clients I have. And, remember, it's arguments that count, isn't it? However, my guess is that, if we had a system, I'd have a few clients and they would have a few cliens and there is no telling how deep it would go. Not everybody recognizes what I'm doing; indeed, few do, nor do I expect them to. What I want as a number of direct clients is only the number that I can effectively communicate with. If I had a thousand clients, each trying to influence me to vote their way, I'd go nuts. (Actually, not, I'd just withdraw my acceptance from more than a few, and I might recommend someone else to them, who might be a client of mine -- or not. DP (delegable proxy) is designed to distribute communications load.)

The single-proxy idea is tremendously powerful. I'm not at all convinced that adding the enormous complication of ranked proxies adds anything, and it dilutes the expression of trust. I trust the person to represent me, but not to make a good choice in delegating that? Note that when we elect public representatives, the fact is that they delegate most of their work to staff, whom they have chosen as trustworthy. Delegation is already a major part of existing system; DP is just a way of setting up the delegation in an extremely simple fashion.

There is, however, a very simple way to have special issue proxies: a special proxy list. Anyone can set one up, presumably for use in some narrow context. If a user does not use it, the general proxy stands. But, say, with Voting systems articles, I might name someone I specially trust in that area. The point is to not add any complication that a user *must* handle. One proxy assignment covers it all; but then, if the user wants to go to the trouble, a special proxy list can be used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 04:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Green-Armytage's proposal

Of course, Green-Armytage proposed that proxy ranking be used for cases in which a proxy loop goes all the way back around to the original user. See http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/vm/proxy.htm#loops .

Ranked proxy lists can be used to resolve loops. One possible rule is as follows: "A vote shouldn't travel the same proxy path twice." Given the above case, A's vote has traveled the path A-->B, then the path B-->C, and then the path C-->A. Therefore, according to this rule, once A's vote returns to A, it should not once again travel the path from A to B. Instead, it should travel to the next proxy as ranked on A's proxy list. The proxy path rule is not very important, since such loops are not an especially daunting problem. Other rules are possible, for example "a vote shouldn't be assigned to the same person twice," in which case A's vote would be transferred to C's second proxy rather than being assigned to A once again.

Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

For reasons I've stated elsewhere, I'd prefer to leave possible complications up to those facing them. The basic proxy system should probably handle most situations. It's fail-safe in a Free Association context, where votes aren't moving power, they are merely advising. So if a loop causes some set of users not to be represented, first of all, it's possible to set up systems to notify those users (but this is way ahead of where we are, in a Wikipedia system), and, secondly, the overall statistics show unrepresented users. It is *not* essential that all users be represented, it is merely desirable. Notice that Green-Armytage mentions that there are many ways of doing it. What I say is, one step at a time. It is possible that ranked proxies could be of some use, but I don't like the diluted responsibility. Part of a proxy's job is to notify the client if there is something that the proxy thinks should require the client's attention. Which proxy is responsible for notifying the client?

When we get down to details, and see it operating, we will find many quirks that will need to be addressed. But getting to that position is quite hard enough without adding lots of bells and whistles in advance. What happens if we simply set up a proxy table? We need to find out!

But as to Green's idea, I would see that, if there is a loop absence, first all the proxies would be assigned according to the next rank. If there is no next rank, however, the existing proxy remains effective, so it is enough if one member of the loop has used another rank. This could solve certain problems that I have previously considered. The way I would technically handle it is with a different alternate proxy table, and this, again, leaves analysts free to use it or not, and they can actually do both. (We got this result using the primary proxy table, and it shifted this much using a secondary table -- which would only represent broader participation, it would change no votes cast in the first "round.") But -- we don't need to figure all of this out in advance.

It's very important to repeat that analysis isn't a central tool, in essence. It is something that anyone who wants to be advised does. (Sure, people can do it as part of *their* personal advice, but the point is that analysis is not centrally *controlled*, which allows it to be totally flexible and not particularly vulnerable to, say, manipulation by sock puppets, as would any fixed system with automated analysis and the raw data not visible. Minguo.info, I think, has such a system, I'm not sure. (We have recommended that the proxy table always be a public document, but some really want this to be secret. I wouldn't trust it, in the long run. Open access is a tremendous protection: anyone can verify that the proxy list is true for themselves and anyone they care to check it regarding, and anyone can use it for analysis in whatever way they choose.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 04:31, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Expiration

Should proxies expire after a certain time? What about when users go inactive for long periods (e.g. several years), but someone is continuing to vote on their behalf? Sarsaparilla (talk) 22:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

It is up to whoever is analyzing the results. A past placement of trust is still a placement of trust. Please, stop referring to this as "voting on their behalf." It creates a host of impressions that aren't accurate. Proxy expansions are a means of estimating a broader consensus, balancing out participation bias.

When we have a proxy table with old proxies on it, we can consider how they might be handled, but, frankly, I'm not sure we should centrally interfere. One more piece of bureaucracy, something centrally imposed. However ... an account which has not edited.... we do need to be able to compile such statistics; I would, in fact, want to discount such (but it's simple: ask proxies to ping their client to verify: ask the client to confirm the proxy on the table.)

The table the way I would do it is not quite what Sarsaparilla set up. If a sig is put in the field by the editor, it would have with it the date of the action. So anyone taking that table and analyzing it would have date fields to use if they want. I'd certainly discount inactive accounts, but the period is up to me, if I'm the one who needs guidance. --Abd (talk) 04:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Templates

I'm working on some templates. After you designate me as proxy, you can slap this on your user page: User:Sarsaparilla/Proxy Of course, the downside to this template is that it looks a lot like the sockpuppet template. Hmm, does anyone have a better graphic to use? Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

might work better. MBisanz ^talk 05:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC) or

Done! Sarsaparilla (talk) 06:06, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Look, this will simply irritate people opposed to the idea. A simple table, which can be copied elsewhere for security, will do the job. Sure, if the numbers get really large, having it as a template would be one way of doing it, but .... the information actually flows in another direction, to use the proxy table, you start with a list of those who actually voted, and strike those records from the proxy table. Then the proxies in the proxy table are examined, and, if any matches are found with the list of those who voted, those records are added to the list of those who voted. And this is then done recursively until a pass finds no more votes.

Want to use secondary proxies? Run the procedure again, looking at the secondary proxies....

Anyway the point is that we need a list organized by member, not by proxy. Knowing how many people a proxy represents, if nobody else votes, can be useful in some contexts, but I don't see it immediately on Wikipedia. It's also not predictable until all the votes are in.... What if all my clients vote? Would I be upset? (Not!).

(Proxy rank has been proposed as a means of determining participation rights for a deliberative body, to deal with the noise problem. What happens on Wikipedia when some question really fires up the base? It gets pretty chaotic! It can become really difficult to vote, with edit conflict after edit conflict. Proxy systems, if significant numbers of members start to use them, could make all this much more orderly. If I have a proxy, I look at contribs for my proxy, and I'll immediately see if a vote was cast. I also can know, with a single proxy list, the whole chain of proxies. From the top, a DP hierarchy is a fractal, inordinately complex. But from the point of view of the user at the bottom, it is a single chain proceeding linearly, and, generally, looping back to itself at one point.

(Add secondary proxies and the whole picture becomes so complex that I can't visualize it. Do I have to check secondary proxies as well?)

What proxies will do is to make "me too" votes unnecessary. That's really the main effect as far as voting is concerned. Have a new argument to present that isn't already there. Vote and give the argument. Also vote if your opinion is different from that of your proxy or the one representing you indirectly. But most people aren't going to pay attention to most decisions. That is why it is far more efficient than polling everyone; polls generally produce decreasing returns as voters get tired of all the questions. DP polls, however, allow flexible representation by persons interested in the topic, in theory configuring the representation to fit the immediate problem. And there are many details to be worked out, but I don't see any of them as requiring centralized systems beyond a shared proxy table. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 04:58, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Userbox

There is also this userbox: {{User:Sarsaparilla/Delegable proxy}}

This user supports delegable proxy.

Sarsaparilla (talk) 06:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Very Bad Idea

This is a Very Bad Idea. Whenever we have a !vote, we rely on knowing who is voting, and their reasoning, but also that the sample of people discussing is representative of the community (since we could never have every single user comment). By allowing someone to !vote via proxy you skew the sample in a non-random way. Additionally, verifying proxy !voting would create an enormous burden in cases where it matters. A thoroughly terrible idea, I'm sorry to say. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

To make sure we're talking about the same thing, let me state my understanding of a couple terms. Skew refers to a non-representative distribution or distortion in a positive or negative direction. Distortion means an alteration for the worse.

Two problems that delegable proxy is intended to address are random fluctuations in participation which make debate outcomes unpredictable; and participation bias (resulting partly from opportunity cost) which skews discussion outcomes in a non-random way. Most debates include both of these distorting influences. The small sample size of some debates would make even a hypothetical random distribution unreliable. Deletion debates, for instance, are like a town meeting discussion in which less than 1% of the electorate shows up. Most jurisdictions have scrapped the town meeting system for the very reason that most citizens do not have time to adequately delve into the issues, rendering it vulnerable to slick campaigns and get out the vote efforts which affect the outcome. I favor initiative and referendum in the political realm, but it's undeniable that the number and complexity of measures that appears on the ballot confuses some voters, who may be inclined to abstain or to cast an ill-informed vote. Similarly, there are many articles on Wikipedia which involve arcane issues not easily comprehended without substantial investment of time, and when non-experts get involved, the decisions are often faulty. We have adopted Wikipedia:Canvassing#Forum_shopping in an effort to curb the worst abuses under the current system. The corporate world's solution to the low-turnout problem is proxy voting.

Depending on the implementation, technology might simplify the verification task to the point where the time saved by using proxies exceeds the time expended in verification. However, saving time is only one of the purposes of this system; perhaps more important is improving representational faithfulness and the integrity of the system.

If there is substantial participation bias in who participates in the proxy system, then yes, it could skew the results in an undesirable way. I say, let's try the experiment and if it proves a failure, then we can scrap it. But I think the literature on liquid democracy/delegable proxy suggests that it could work quite well for Wikipedia. It is used by the election methods interest group. Abd, can you provide us with some information on how DP has worked there and how it could be applied to Wikipedia? I'm going to post your message from the Wikipedia mailing list here, for readers' reference. Sarsaparilla (talk) 18:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I certainly welcome the opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings. User:Sarsaparilla started this page to begin discussing the concepts, and they are not maturely presented, i.e., it is very, very easy to misunderstand what I would propose for Wikipedia, from the suggested implementations found here. User:Mike.lifeguard raises objections that are, indeed, quite obvious, if common assumptions are made. Let me address them, one at a time:

This is a Very Bad Idea. What's "this"? What "power" would it have, what would a "proxy vote" mean? "We don't vote," is very commonly said. In order to understand the proposal, all of these must be considered. Indeed, I do not propose that there be any formal effect from proxy "votes" at all, which disposes, just by itself, of the thrust of this objection, while raising another one, "If there is no formal effect, WTF in the way of good could this accomplish?" Separate question. One question at a time!

Whenever we have a !vote, we rely on knowing who is voting, and their reasoning, but also that the sample of people discussing is representative of the community (since we could never have every single user comment).

Yes; however, we have no means, currently, of verifying that those voting are a fair sample of the community. How could we know? We could poll the community, choosing users at random. But that would violate a number of traditions here, and it would create a new security problem, the old "who watches the watchers" problem. If someone could manipulate the supposedly "random" choice process, they could skew the outcome in a desired manner. Nevertheless, Warren Smith claims that the technical problem could be solved, with his proposal for DDJ: Direct Democracy by Jury. Citizens would be randomly chosen to serve on a Jury which would make legislative decisions. But this isn't what I have in mind, which is far, far simpler.

Currently, we know who is voting, and we, often, do some kind of analysis on the votes. For example, signs of sock puppetry are considered, and other characteristics of those voting. In fact, a closing administrator may use any standard he or she chooses. And this is the key: Votes on Wikipedia don't control bleep. They advise a servant, who uses his or her judgement. I would not change this at all, it's perfect. (And, on the other hand, the community, if it doesn't like what a closing administrator did, can easily undo it. So this seemingly arbitrary decision-making process that depends on the judgment of a single person is far safer and more efficient than it might seem to outsiders. Someone who knows that and who sees, in its current state of proposal -- which is very, very primitively expressed -- can easily think that we'd be dumping what they know, in fact, works well. Usually. It is when it does not work that there can arise some serious problems, and the process can waste a huge amount of editor time.

By allowing someone to !vote via proxy you skew the sample in a non-random way. Additionally, verifying proxy !voting would create an enormous burden in cases where it matters. A thoroughly terrible idea, I'm sorry to say.

Don't be sorry! Indeed, most people won't get so far as to criticize the idea. By taking the time to do that, this user is far ahead of the crowd. Now as to what he said:

First of all, there are no "proxy votes." There are only votes, cast by identified users, as there are now. But something else exists: a proxy table. No closing administrator is obligated to use it, at least not until and unless some community consensus appears to that effect, which is not a proposal I am making. Rather, any user may use the proxy table to "expand" a vote. The user may use the proxy table for standard, single-level proxy, but it will be far more useful to consider proxies as delegable. To understand how this would function to more accurately estimate overall consensus will take some extended discussion, I expect, very few will get it on sight. (A few do, they are quite rare, and some very, very bright people don't get it at first. Quite simply, this whole concept flies in the face of what we expect from organizational hierarchies.)

Some try to make the system complex, and, indeed, people will work out refinements that do that, such as single-issue proxies (on Wikipedia, these could be "article proxies," set up by any user adding a proxy table to an article, i.e., ArticleName/Proxy List). Again, the use of a proxy list is totally voluntary. Who uses it? Anyone who wants to better estimate the consensus that will appear if push comes to shove.

Here is how it might work: there is some dispute among the editors of an article, and, from, say, an RFC, there are three editors on one side and one on the other. What is the "consensus"? In strict terms, as often found in certain organizations, there is no consensus unless everyone signs on, and, indeed, the goal for articles is that this happen. But, as we all know, it does not necessarily happen immediately, if ever. There are some editors who simply won't compromise or accept what everyone else needs in order to be satisfied.

Now, I'm actually in such a situation, with an article that I work on all the time. There was an RFC put up basically challenging the position I had been taking on the article. Against me, almost alone except for occasional edits by occasional editors, were regular participants: a paid consultant for the organization promoting the topic of the article, a long-time Wikipedia user who lists himself as "associated" with that same organization -- but is not paid or an officer, as far as I know, and ... a user who was just revealed to be one more sock puppet of James Salsman, who has been an activist for that same organization. And then there is me, regularly attacked as an "anti" activist, though I have no formal affiliations. What's the consensus?

I'd claim there isn't any. Now, suppose there is a proxy table, and suppose that, from it, we can determine that I, directly or indirectly, represent a thousand Wikipedia editors, and they, collectively, represent a handful. The picture changes.

But this binds nobody. It is just a method of estimating consensus, by weighting the comments of participants. This can be used by someone making a decision. I can tell you that I'd use it myself to decide when to give up, and when not to give up, when to stand "my" ground -- which would be the ground of the community, quite likely, if I were indeed so widely trusted -- and when to accept that the community would not support me.

This kind of system actually creates a strong incentive to find consensus. Suppose that a conflict arises between two factions that, when we do proxy analysis, turn out to be more or less matched. If these factions actively dispute with each other, a great deal of heat can be generated, and not much light. In politics, you'd have two parties each spending great effort in order to produce an unpredictable outcome. There is economic incentive to find compromise, and the greater the degree to which consensus can be found, the more efficient the process. If a heavy consensus can be found, the result is a pushover, and this could be known and predicted in advance.

(This doesn't really work with "political parties," because they are generally set up and structured to see "victory" rather than, specifically, improvements to public policy. In fact, if a candidate from an opposing party changes his or her position to make a compromise, they will call this candidate a "flip-flopper." How dare they try to steal our supporters? Rather, I'd expect it to work with nonpartisan caucuses that want some *result* rather than an identified factional victory giving them power over others. I've often used Pro-Life and Right to Choose caucuses as examples. They may argue until the cows come home on where life starts, but there *are* issues on which they can come together, in theory, except that the political system associates issues together, so Pro-Life people, sometimes, end up having, in order to get what they want on that, voting for someone who is Pro-War. Or vice-versa. Delegable proxy systems, for various reasons, I expect, allow issue independence, because they do not depend on "officers." The power remains decentralized.)

But none of this is binding on anyone. I use the term "caucus" to refer to a group of people connected in some way by opinion, and seeking to act collectively. We call a proxy plus the proxy's "constituents" -- including indirect constituents -- a "natural caucus," which is defined by the single proxy "leading" it. (All the concepts of leadership are turned on their heads by delegable proxy, which is why I put the term in quotes. A proxy has no control over the clients, and does not bind the clients in any way. Indeed, the only power that the proxy has is to advise, and this will come out in more detail in specific proposals.)

Proxy expansions are used, generally, by two kinds of people (plus there are other applications I won't immediately address). First would be a person who needs to make a decision. In, say, an AfD, the closing administrator, in theory, is supposed to disregard the vote count, it is supposed to be a matter of the cogency of the arguments. However, if this were purely the case, and I were a closing administrator, I would delete from the page all votes of the form "per nom," or "per "username." These are pure votes, they add no argument at all. Would this be legitimate?

I'd think not. We *do* consider votes. An isolated opinion is not the same as one expressed or confirmed by many people. With proxy table in place, we set up a different method of considering "votes," which is a weighting of participant votes by a measure of how widely they are trusted.

Ah, what about sock puppets? Well, the closing adminstrator can use whatever tools he or she chooses to consider the vote weighting. For starters, an adminstrator who thinks this whole idea is bunk is completely free to disregard it. The risk? Well, if a proxy expansion shows something different than the basic vote count, and the administrator disregards it, and it is accurate, the decision is quite likely to be reversed. Is it canvassing to widely discuss the outcome of an AfD after it has closed?

The details of how all this will play out are not specified, and they don't need to be. Users and administrators and others who might be able to save themselves a lot of time and effort by being able to estimate consensus more accurately will figure out how to do it. For example, when we start dealing with large expanded vote counts, anyone can set up a tool to do an expansion that disregards all accounts registered after a certain date. Or that excludes a specific list of users considered by the analyst to be unreliable editors. In fact, all this already happens when administrators look at who has voted and the implications, only without the formal support of a proxy table.

A proxy table costs nothing. It take extremely little effort to set one up, and little effort to use it. (Tools are being developed that can take a user list and a proxy table and determine the expanded vote from a list of users and votes, but this can be done by hand, quite easily.) What a nomination of proxy means is "I generally trust this user to make a decent decision where I cannot myself participate," and, if it is delegable proxy, the decision of what proxy to name is include in that which is generally trusted. There is no assumption of specific agreement. However, in a proxy expansion, if the "client" has voted, and that client's proxy also votes, the client and all those who are represented by the client are not included in the proxy's vote total. In other words, if a client votes, it effectively, for that vote, cancels the proxy. Further, a client may revoke the proxy at any time. Here, with what we have now, it would simply be a matter of editing the proxy table to change the proxy assignment.

We also suggest that proxies be accepted before they are considered effective. Generally, I would place on a proxy table the assumption that, if you name someone as your proxy, you are giving that person permission to communicate with you, on your talk page, by email, or by other means (which can be removed as an assumption by some specific limitation -- but if there is a limitation, and I were using the table, I might disregard the proxy. I want proxies to represent actual relationships of trust and rapport.) Conversely, and this is very important when the scale gets very large, accepting a proxy is likewise permission to communicate directly.

Delegable Proxy will work best when direct client/proxy relationships are relatively few, i.e., we don't have single proxies directly representing many thousands of users. Some systems proposed limit the number of direct proxies, though I wouldn't do that. Nevertheless, I might discount the votes of such proxies in my own analysis of votes, because I would not trust that there is sufficient rapport between the proxy and all those clients that he or she would be able to bring them along if needed.

Proxy trees create automatic phone trees that can be used for rapid and broad communication in emergencies. It is not just that the proxy, in some sense, represents the clients, it is that the clients are quite likely influenceable by the proxy. If this were being used for actual direct decision-making, there would be lots of hazards that would have to be addressed. But it is not. It is being used as an advisory network, self-created, bottom-up, requiring no bureaucracy, elections, or rigamarole. Use it or don't. Nobody loses anything by not naming a proxy, except perhaps efficiency. --Abd (talk) 04:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Nomenclature ("voting")

Should we call it something else besides "voting"? I.e., rather than saying, "x has the authority to cast votes on behalf of this user in Wikipedia discussions," should we say that x has the authority to "represent" or "speak on behalf of" this user? I can see that the word "vote" is raising red flags with some users. Sarsaparilla (talk) 19:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No authority to cast votes, period. This is a way of running an analysis of votes weighted by proxy assignments. The voters vote for themselves, not for their clients. However, an analyst, with a need or desire to know, may use the proxy assignments as a way of estimating how broadly the user is trusted, and thus to, to some extent, deskew poll results.

As soon as we say that the proxy is voting for the user, we then create a picture of decisions being made by "vote." Wrong picture, at least here. No, the system is the same as now, formally. --Abd (talk) 05:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

What is an accurate but concise way to describe it? I think the project page is in need of a rewrite to replace all the references to votes with some other terminology. Sarsaparilla (talk) 17:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

User talk:The Community

There is also a discussion going on at User talk:The Community. Sarsaparilla (talk) 19:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That account was set up to be a servant of "the community," specifically of those who participate in any rcommendations it makes through this process. That is, an open poll might be held, and the servant using the account The Community, serving as the secretary of this "meeting," would report the results. And might also unlock the doors before the meeting and make the coffee and put out the chairs, then stay to make sure it is all put away after the meeting, the lights turned out and the doors locked. It's a highly-sought after position in 12-step programs because people know they will benefit through the service, but not so highly-sought after that I have ever seen any contention over it. Somebody volunteers and everyone else says, "Fine." And if he or she fails to perform, someone else does it. "Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern." --Abd (talk) 05:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

User talk:The Community may be used for formal process for the community of users who add their names to the proxy table, whether or not they assign a proxy. To remind readers, The Community is a sock puppet of mine, created as a half-joke that just might turn out to be useful. ("It is now possible to block The Community, that really troublesome user who often ignores policy such as WP:RS all the time.") (It's my sock, but I'm pledged to only use the account as a servant of the community consensus, "the community" being defined as all those participating in any poll on a proposal, whether directly or by proxy, and never disruptively. Once we get the proxy table going, and we have a few users who have named proxies, we might start exploring what deliberative process might look like in that userspace. My concept is to use the centuries of accumulated experience with deliberative process for something that will look like decision-making there, though it won't be binding, it will only be advisory. The user page may be edited by anyone, but it's possible that the community of users participating there may decided on standards for what remains; this is taking advantage of the rules that allow unrestricted removal of text from user Talk pages by the user. Thus it becomes possible, in that space, to have a boiled down transcript that actually is, for example, limited to a series of arguments without redundancies, formal closure of debate, and a poll that is only votes; and delegable proxy would mean that this could represent a large number of users with only a few actually writing, the rest watching -- or even waiting to be pinged, i.e., doing something else entirely -- and ... I won't go into further detail now; there has been some experimentation with this elsewhere. What it would produce might be something like an ArbComm record: a proposal, seconded and noted as ready for discussion, presentation of arguments becoming a coherent list of arguments (or "findings" or principles applied) without redundancies and irrelevancies, intermediate process such as amendments with polls on amendments (probably simple majority routine for amendments, since some sort of process decision must be made) then measurement of consensus regarding each argument as well as an overall conclusion. I'd like to see how it works here. This will be a way down the road, but we could do something useful with this, with, I think, less than 100 users having named proxies, and a relatively small number actually participating. And then we can look at what is working about delegable proxy and what is not, and see if we can tweak it to make it work better. --Abd (talk) 23:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It could be implemented now

Another interesting aspect of using delegable proxy is that there could be the equivalent of one-time proxies taking place on an impromptu basis. For instance, suppose that I am the proxy of 5 users in a deletion discussion with two people who each are proxies for about 500 users. I make a really insightful argument for keeping the article, and they both vote "Keep, per Sarsaparilla." The votes of the users who appointed those proxies have basically been redirected toward my position, even though I was not their official proxy or even their proxy's proxy, according to the proxy table. In this sense, the proxies are not just delegable on a permanent basis, formalized through listings in the proxy table, but the delegation can also take place spontaneously on an ad hoc basis. Wikipedia's flexibility makes it well-suited for this system, in my opinion; the only hindrances I can see are technological, and of course inertia and cautiousness of the community toward adopting major changes in processes and structures.

A proxy system could be set up now, in which one programmed a script to check another user's contributions and automatically vote "Keep per x" or "Delete per x" or even "Agree with x," as the context and the user's particular action may warrant. It probably wouldn't be too hard to program, and one could leave it running when they went on vacation or whatnot. The bot policy states that such processes require approval before they can be run. But is there any reliable way to detect and enforce it in this situation, without running the risk of false accusations? Given that implementing proxies through scripts or even manually checking another user's contributions and adding "me toos" to discussions is already possible, why not streamline the process by using proxy tables and automated methods of tabulating the proxies based on those tables? Sarsaparilla (talk) 21:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:NOT a democracy

So delegating votes doesn't have any meaning.

I'm also worried about party-formation in that kind of situation. It could be extremely disenfranchising. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

One person cannot carry out the examination and deliberation of a hundred

...and it's silly for us to pretend that one can.

• The proponent of this proposal has said it will be useful in dealing with "gray area[s]", where "subjective" decisions about notability are called for. The contentious cases are the ones where the most eyes are called for, not the fewest.

• Discussions about deletion (for example) would no longer be about making sound arguments, but about trying to persuade a small number of elite proxy holders.

• The effect of interpersonal conflicts between large proxy holders would be magnified. Outcomes of AfDs would be distorted in cases where a large proxy holder has an unrelated personal anomosity towards a particular voter or nominator.

I offer a hypothetical case to illustrate the effect of fallible proxies.

A single editor can from time to time make errors about the notability or appropriateness of an article (again using an AfD as an example). For the sake of argument, assume that 95% of the time an editor will make the 'right' call. The remaining 5% of the time, they screw up a Google search, misunderstand the nominator's argument, misread policy, think the article is about a different topic, etc.

Consider a proxy holder that represents twenty 'voters'. Under the current system, about nineteen of those twenty will vote 'correctly' on any given AfD. Since one of the purposes of this proposal is to increase effective participation, it could be argued that all twenty wouldn't normally participate. If we instead assume that only five of those twenty actually vote on any given AfD, there is a better than 97% chance that four or more will vote 'correctly', and a roughly 0.1% chance a majority will arrive at the 'wrong' conclusion. In this same hypothetical case, the single proxy holder screws up 5% of the time.

This neglects 'network' effects caused by interactions between voters. More eyes on the problem means more editors who are going to point out the glaring errors (typos, confusion with similarly-titled topics, etc.). The more participants actually present at a discussion, the less likely such errors are to be left standing. Even if an early editor makes an error and fails to withdraw his vote, both later voters and the closing admin will be able to take the newer, corrected information into account. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

One could make the same argument about corporations. Suppose each shareholder has an equal chance – say, 95% – of making a good decision on any given vote. In this case, executing a proxy delegating voting rights for 20 shares to a single shareholder would create a greater chance of a bad decision because smaller sample sizes are more susceptible to random deviations. Mathematically, in this situation, as the number of voters approaches infinity, the percentage of shares being voted for a "good" decision will approach 95% in accordance with the law of large numbers.

However, the idea behind a proxy system is that people choose proxies whose chance of making a good decision is sufficiently high that it overcomes the disadvantages of not voting one's own shares oneself. A relationship of trust exists with that proxy, and the proxy, knowing the consequences if he makes a bad decision, has an incentive to be careful. It is more efficient, and results in better decisions, for a proxy to invest an hour in studying a proposal than for 20 shareholders to invest 3 minutes apiece. Many people under the current Wikipedia decision-making system take only a cursory look at the content before voting.

Let us look at another example of delegated decision-making on Wikipedia. We elected twelve ArbCom members who we believe are sufficiently trustworthy and capable of making decisions on complex cases. If all Wikipedians had equal ability and time to analyze these cases and render good judgments, then it would be a mistake to entrust these decisions to a group of twelve, because statistics would indicate they would have a greater-than-average chance of messing up than a larger group. Indeed, statisticians typically consider a sample size of at least 30 to be necessary to produce reliable results. See [1] You say above, "The contentious cases are the ones where the most eyes are called for, not the fewest." Could not the same be said about ArbCom cases? Yet, although any editor is allowed to provide input (as editors would continue to do under delegable proxy) we do not subject ArbCom decisions to community consensus. The reason we don't have many problems with people focusing on persuading ArbCom members rather than on the merits of the cases, or with interpersonal issues between ArbCom members, is that the members of this group have been chosen for integrity and other characteristics that would reduce the likelihood of such things happening. The same would occur with proxies. Sarsaparilla (talk) 18:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem with many eyes is if we have more than Dunbar's number*2 number of eyes.

On the other tentacle, wouldn't delegates be elected based on popularity? --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you please explain what you mean by those two sentences? It's not altogether clear to me. 71.63.91.68 (talk) 01:21, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Past a certain number of people, discussion of actions becomes fairly random, and you can't actually reach a decision.

So from that point of view, it might be a good idea to have delegates.

On the other hand, the problem with having delegates is that eventually people might decide to "elect" delegates based purely on popularity, as opposed to how sane their ideas are.

Does that make a bit more sense? Else I can expand more if you like.--Kim Bruning (talk) 02:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

That already happens in representative systems. People vote for candidates based on their hair, clothes, mannerisms, etc. See http://www.jibjab.com/view/221737 . However, it was recognized long ago that despite this drawback, it was still better to elect decisionmakers rather than try to make all the decisions ourselves. Delegable proxy, in general, could be regarded a middle ground between the two systems, although on Wikipedia it would probably just be an enhancement of our current system, providing a bit more information to closing admins as opposed to being binding. Sarsaparilla (talk) 17:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

It has been stated that with modern information systems, electing decisionmakers need no longer be a necessity. --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:24, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Who stated that? Given time restraints, it's inevitable that once the decisionmaking workload reaches a certain point, we will be delegating some of it, or else abstaining or basing decisions on cursory examination. However, we need not pool our votes with others to choose someone to represent both the majority and the dissidents. Each person can choose their own representative in a proxy system. In that sense, elections can be dispensed with. I would consider voting based on some sort of advisory system (e.g. a proxy firm) to be, in some cases, almost equivalent to delegating the decisionmaking. It's like how supreme court justices delegate a lot of decisions to their clerks. Sarsaparilla (talk) 17:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. You're redistributing workload. That makes sense.

Originally, the wiki (serendipitously) distributed workload, and kept it fairly low for each participant, as only a small number of editors participate on each page. Some of the systems developed early on (such as articles for deletion) accidentally subverted the wiki-model, and thus do not scale so well. Would you be able to consider wiki-model based distribution of workload? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

What is "wiki-model based distribution of workload"? Ron Duvall (talk) 21:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Delegable proxy is designed to distribute communications load. The objection re popularity is a common one; the classic name I've given it is the Clint Eastwood effect. I don't know why I chose Clint Eastwood. Maybe because he was elected mayor of Pebble Beach, California. While there is no way to predict, at this time, exactly how users will behave in naming proxies, a key aspect of the system as proposed is that it invites some kind of direct communication between the client and proxy. This places a kind of natural limit on the number of direct proxies that a proxy might accept. (Direct proxies are what are shown in the Proxy Table). If you can handle the traffic with all your clients, fine, you don't have too many proxies. If not, are they going to be happy with you as a proxy? I wouldn't name Clint Eastwood, regardless of his politics, because I don't think he'd have time to communicate sufficiently with me that I'd gain any advantage by naming him. Proxies are a link between an "ordinary user" and some more rarified virtual layer of knowledgeable, actively participating, and influential users. In the European implementations of Delegable proxy, Mikael Nordfors told me, he avoided the word "proxy" because he didn't like the business implications -- and he preferred to emphasize the aspect of "advisor." (see Nornian Democracy). I can choose Clint Eastwood as my advisor. Fine. How much advice does he give me that is based on knowing who I am and what I think? Will he answer my Talk messages, my email, my phone calls? If I am one of a few direct proxies, sure. If not, not. If I want to get an idea to Clint Eastwood, I'll probably have to find a client of his, direct or indirect, who is willing to listen to me. Or I can name my own proxy, who is participating directly or indirectly at Mr. Eastwood's "level." I.e., there is a forum where Eastwood is going to actively participate. The latter is probably easier. Users will name proxies with whom they are congenial, with whom they have some kind of rapport. There will be traffic between them, both on-wiki and probably off-wiki. Bruning is correct, AfD did not distribute the load equitably and efficiently, and DP might be able to rebalance it. But my own opinion is that deletion is the wrong response to non-encyclopedic articles, and the following is why, not that this is terribly relevant here.

The basic reasons for deletion boil down to lack of notability or impossibility (or possibly failure of) verification. Unverifiability is not a definable characteristic; we may think that something is unverifiable today and tomorrow -- poof! the whole world knows what happened privately between a President and an intern, verified as a matter of law. Notability is not only subjective unless reduced to a pile of rather arbitrary rules, it is subject to severe cultural bias. Why are topics of interest to N fans less notable than topics of interest to N scientists? I'm not trying to answer these questions, I am only pointing out that the standards for deletion are such as to create endless debate, unless the rules become increasingly detailed and rigid, with teeth for frivolous debate. It is a highly inefficient path to take. Storage space is much cheaper, and deleted articles generally take up as much space "deleted" as not. The argument that does make some sense, that we should discourage users from abusing Wikipedia by making it into personal web space, has a real problem: punishing these users by disappearing their material also punishes users who contribute articles in good faith, and who frequently don't log in often enough to see speedy deletion, PROD tags, or AfDs. And the encyclopedia loses a penumbra of material that might actually be of use someday, plus it loses rapport with those users. And those users often include experts, who sometimes go away with an idea that Wikipedia is a wild and wooly place where they are not welcome. Rather, the solution to the deletion problem, as I see it, involves creating article hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy is something much more reliable than Wikipedia today: verified, reliable articles, probably better verified than routine standards for print publications. Below that is the workspace, where there are many more articles, being worked on, including working versions of all the articles in the verified space. Below that is what has been proposed as a Trash namespace; I don't like the name, and what is in Trash isn't necessarily "trash," however, it has been considered insufficiently notable or insufficiently verifiable to be in the mainspace. Articles that live in Trash for a long time might actually get deleted, that is really a developer decision, but I'd make it a long time indeed. However, where an article lives is an ordinary editorial decision. Any editor could move an article from main into trash or vice-versa, subject to all the same rules and procedures that already exist for edits. Because it's not so drastic, the last-ditch efforts of editors to save their important article -- or to save them for others -- becomes much less of a problem, likewise all the deletionists can simply do what they love: toss in the Trash. Whatever pulls your chain. It distributes the load, and requires no admin intervention unless there are disputes. As already happens with content or redirections, which have similar effect, from an ordinary reader point of view, to deletion, but requires no special process.

As to moving articles from mainspace into verified space, that's another process; it might not actually be a separate space, but a variation in article name. As one way we could get there (quickly), with a process that satisfies any admin that an article has been thoroughly verified, all the sources examined, etc. (perhaps it is simply that it reaches GA status), a page is created for the verified article which consists solely of the transclusion of the checked version from the article history. Ideally, and eventually, these articles would be what users see first, if they exist. If not, they would see the working article, with a notice at the top about not being checked and verified, inviting them to fix any problems they see. The verified pages would be protected. Verified article pages might also have a note that points to the working article, where users are invited to improve the article. Existing process is really adequate for all of this, and, with good procedures to feed information to administrators from users who think that an article version is ready to be considered verified, the admin part of the task could be very easy and efficient. --Abd (talk) 00:26, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Ways to game the system

Off the top of my head, I can think of several ways for this system to be gamed.

Consider:

1. Alice starts editing Wikipedia in January.
2. Alice delegates her votes to Bob, a sockpuppet Alice creates in February.
3. Alice stops editing as Alice, and continues to edit as Bob (who now votes with twice the weight).
4. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In a year, Alice/Bob/Carol/Dave/etc. have a dozen votes via proxy.

Consider:

1. Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave join Wikipedia because they've heard about the YugiMonCruftWars deletion debate on CruftWarsForum.
2. Instead of showing up as obvious single-purpose accounts at AfD, A, B, C, and D delegate their proxies to long-time editor Xerxes. A, B, C, and D may make a few edits to bolster their credentials.
3. Xerxes votes as their proxy.
4. A, B, C, and D leave Wikipedia shortly thereafter.
5. Xerxes continues to vote as their proxy.

A savvy editor could easily accumulate proxy votes in this way over multiple AfDs. A particularly savvy editor could deliberately post calls to arms on external forums.

Consider:

1. Wally decides that proxies are a silly notion, and offers to cast votes to counter any proxy votes on an issue.
2. Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave agree, and give Wally their proxies.
3. Proxies cancel out at whatever 'vote' is taking place.
4. Admin closing the discussion is back to square one—making a close based on the weight of arguments, rather than weight of numbers.

Much more seriously pathological outcomes are possible if you start having proxy wars between a group of (say) absolute inclusionists and absolute deletionists.

No doubt a moderately determined individual could find numerous other ways to subtly (or not-so-subtly) manipulate and undermine proxies. God help us all if anyone even things of taking them seriously for the purposes of RfA. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Basic principle of Robert's Rules: don't debate a thing unless it has been specifically proposed and seconded in that exact form. At this point, what normally happens is that people imagine what the proposal is, and argue about it, so they are arguing against their own imaginations. Brainstorming turns this around. Suppose what has been said before has a great idea behind it, but details are wrong? Is there a way to imagine this so that it will work?

I say there is. But I can't write now, gotta go.

So, for the moment, I suggest, instead of thinking about what obviously won't work, think about what might work. That's what I did, twenty years ago. You just might independently invent it! Hint: take the distributed decision-making process of Wikipedia, and add a proxy table that users can edit to show their proxy, and the proxy can edit to show acceptance. *Nothing* said about how this is used. Now, how could it be used? There are obvious problems, but even by thinking about those problems, and being explicit about them, and especially if you think about how those problems could be solved -- or even bypassed to make them moot -- you are way ahead of most people. Most people are simply convinced that nothing can solve the problem of scale in democracy, so there is no use even thinking about it.

And, of course, this is why the problem is not solved! So how to deal with this situation. What if we do figure out how this might work, how do we get from here to there? I'll tell you my answer. We are already there. Nothing is stopping us from doing it except our lack of understanding of it, plus, for those few who do understand, a persistent belief that it is impossible to change the way people think. It's quite possible, one just has to know how to do it -- and the changes must be fueled by human nature, for we are naturally resistant to most change, for very good reasons. Essentially, the change agent is merely a catalyst, the energy comes from the people themselves.

So, what in the world am I talking about? Believe me, I do know what I'm talking about, but my experience is that if I try to explain it all at once, and in particular to people who have not considered the underlying problems and who have not struggled a bit with solutions, I'll be wasting a lot of keystrokes. Been there, done that, over and over again. I accomplished what needed to be done at that stage; this is now the second stage, where it must get easier or it won't work. I'll be watching and writing as I have time. I'm really not trying to be mysterious; search for "abdlomax delegable proxy" on google and you'll find a lot. "FA/DP" might return some good hits as well. The ideas have other names, but ... enough for now. --Abd (talk) 18:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Why do we need this?

We already use delegable proxy. The users who actually participate in any discussion are already fully empowered to represent the community and every individual in the community. They are already delegated the community's proxy. Similarly, every admin has the community's proxy. Not participating in a discussion acts as a grant of proxy power to the participants, giving them authority to represent one, as full as any formal document. Why are any further formalities needed? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 07:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed! So we could change the contents under this title to explain that? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, let me try an example. Suppose there are 1,000 users, consisting of 500 inclusionists and 500 deletionists. The inclusionists spend most of their time writing articles, while the deletionists spend most of their time doing maintenance work such as checking Recent Changes, perusing the AfDs, etc. By the nature of the kind of work they gravitate toward, there will be some participation bias in the deletion debates. Application of deletion policy will tend to lean in the deletionist direction.

Suppose we have delegable proxy. Inclusionists could organize to make their voices heard without having to spend too much time in the AfDs. Three of them could form a proxy loop, with A appointing B, B appointing C, and C appointing A. In the event that only one of them showed up at a deletion debate, that person could speak on behalf of them all. Or to be more precise, the closing admin could see that the member of that group is at the head of a proxy chain of three people. There are ways to automate this, similarly to how we automate RfA analysis. It would just be an additional tool for figuring out, what is the real level of consensus here?

We can say all day that deletion debates are not a vote. Does anyone really think that a debate with 20 deletes and 2 keeps is going to be closed as keep on the basis of the keep arguments being particularly cogent? It might happen in the event of a blatant factual error on the part of the 20, but it's unlikely to happen in borderline cases dealing with notability or other semi-subjective deletion criteria. And notability is a big issue of contention on Wikipedia, with the borderline cases constantly redefining the standards of what we can and can't keep here.

Delegable proxy helps level the playing field between those who invest large amounts of time in certain debates and those who don't. Arguably, it is the fault of those who don't participate directly in those debates that they don't influence the result. But it would be undesirable for everyone to spend a lot of time at AfD, MfD, policy debates, etc. Some people have different strengths and could be more productively involved elsewhere. Nonetheless, their views should still be represented, in a way that accurately reflects the number of people favoring a certain viewpoint (in this case, by editors choosing proxies who generally share their wikiphilosophies).

Of course, if someone sees their proxy totally blowing a lot of decisions, they can pick a different proxy at any time, and that serves as a safeguard. By contrast, if I see the deletionists totally blowing a lot of decisions, I can intervene by getting involved in more deletion debates, but do I really want to spend a lot of time on that if my strength is crystalline geometry article creation, or bot coding, or some other skill shared by a smaller subset of users? That would be like a nuclear physicist who owns 10 shares of IBM stock being told, "If you want your interests to be represented, come to the shareholder meetings." That would be an effective way to make his voice heard, but is that the best use of his time? It would make more sense for him to select a proxy (or have his investment manager select one), and go on his merry way, unlocking the secrets of the atom.

As my economics teacher used to say, "We do what we do best and exchange for the rest." 71.63.91.68 (talk) 02:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

"Rejected" tag

Isn't it a bit early to place the "rejected" tag on this article? This is a complex subject, discussion is still in early stages, and in my opinion we shouldn't discourage it by saying the decision has been made. As Abd remarked in reference to the disadvantages of basing decisions on early votes: "Some very good ideas seem to be flawed at first glance. So they could get a lot of negative votes. And then they become relatively invisible. The few who read them closely enough to understand them and see the value can’t overcome the inertia of the rest." 71.63.91.68 (talk) 02:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines, "A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period." I still think the tag is premature, but the solution seems to be a rewrite of the proposal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.91.68 (talk) 12:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I think earlier discussion (misc. for deletion discussions on Esperanza and the Association of Members Advocates) tends to reject the course that is being taken here on the talk page right now. A rewrite as per Shirahadasha, on the other hand, is likely to be accepted, as it would be a descriptive view of how wikipedia works. So if you do decide to try that rewrite, you can probably remove the rejected tag off of that version without much objection.

My personal reasoning for placing a rejected tag is that I support the consensus system, as it has worked well for wikipedia for many years now; at the same time I am most strongly opposed to converting to a representative system, as I believe this will lead to party formation and the inability to have all sides be heard (wasn't there a warning about that contingency in one of the federalist papers? I should read them through at some point.) This is arguably only a minor problem if you want to create a directional policy for a nation, but becomes somewhat more problematic if your goal is to achieve a balanced Neutral Point Of View in an encyclopedia project. Also, the wiki-structure lends itself more to working on a consensus basis (the reasons for which are too numerous to fit in this margin).

--Kim Bruning (talk) 13:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC) Ideally, a person should take an action that (A) Is most likely to gain consensus and (B) Also reflects their own views. Hence the 2 part answer. I'm not certain wikipedia guidance pages are entirely clear on why this must be so, perhaps we need to write some more "consequences of guidance" pages.

As I understand it, delegable proxy would support and use the existing system, it is not a replacement for it, it is not being proposed that a "representative system" be created in a formal sense. This is truly important to realize. For example, an AfD if we have some level of implementation of delegable proxy would look *exactly* the same as it looks now. And the results might be exactly the same, *or* a closing administrator might refer to proxy analysis in judging the level of consensus obtained. Whether or not dp analysis is relevant is entirely up to the servant making the decision. There is far more that could be said about this, to be sure, it will take time for it to be said. But this is definitely not a proposal to take what is working and toss it out in favor of some untried scheme. The only way to block this, I will note, is to prohibit editors from freely communicating with each other; efforts to stop this through deletion process will simply force the structures off of Wikipedia, at the same time drawing attention to the project. In other words, if one wants to make this happen quickly, try to prevent it. The existing system works, and, in my opinion, works well enough that it will move to the next stage in its evolution.

The fact that DP might be used to create a representative body should not be confuse with the core of this proposal. My own opinion is that if we have DP, for Wikipedia, we don't need a formal body, the existing structures will work quite well (the current formal body is the Foundation board, advised by the membership and by ArbComm.) What will happen, though, is that existing process will become more stable and less subject to the vagaries of participation bias.

A word on participation bias. PB is functional. That is, it works to improve the quality of decisions, when the scale is small, through a kind of ad hoc Range voting. Care much about the outcome, you participate, don't care, you don't, and some relatively neutral parties participate sometimes. Problem is, particularly as the scale becomes large and the target more tempting, those with strong motivations hostile to the intentions of the project may start to have undue influence. They are motivated, and sometimes they are disciplined. I've already seen how this problem is serious, though most of the project isn't yet much affected. It will grow. DP will lend stability to the expression of community consensus, without establishing bureaucracies, offices and officers, and the rest that was the primary objection to Esperanza and AMA. It is, in my view, fail-safe. It either serves to measure consensus or it does not; at certain points, it may be tested, there are fairly easy tests that can arise and that would, among other things, measure the undue influence of sock puppets. In the end, though, it is part of a job of someone serving the community to determine whether or not, and how, the community has advised the servant. If the servant seriously errs in this and refuses to accept collective advice, there is plenty of existing process to deal with the problem.

What we have works. It worked well on a relatively small scale, and it has managed to, so far, deal with increasing scale. But what I've seen over the last few years is a decline in article quality in certain areas, and, it appears, this is coming from wars between various POV factions; I won't detail the mechanisms, but, if the problem is not addressed, making the expression of true consensus far more efficient, it will eventually destroy this project, for reasons I have detailed elsewhere. Fortunately, in my view, we get to keep what we have, we merely need something in addition, something very light and efficient, that does not waste editor time. If it starts to see widespread adoption, you will see even contentious AfDs and the like become much more cogent and clear, the arguments presented actually being most of what is visible; with continuing increase in scale, some additional structure may be necessary, information theory requires it, but that is not a problem we need to resolve now. DP, though, will allow us to prepare for it, and to decide how to do it without doing damage to our most valuable traditions.

--Abd (talk) 19:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

What we currently have works and continues to operate on a massive scale, despite attempts by several people to "improve" it. :-P The correct approach on a system like AFD is to recognize that it is a hard-to-scale mess, declare it deprecated and "will-not-fix", and shift over to its scalable replacement (like WP:PROD). An example of where this actually has already occurred is where The association of members advocates was replaced by Editor assistance on very short notice. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Note also that your description of how wikimedia and wikipedia are structured is incorrect. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you referring to the fact that Arbcom does not really advise the wikimedia board, but pretty much does its own thing? Ron Duvall (talk) 03:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Arbcom and Board have very little in common, yes. Also, the foundation has no current membership. --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Right, the bylaws say "The Foundation does not have members." On the other hand, they also say, "The majority of the Board shall be elected or appointed from within the community. 'Community' as used in the Bylaws, shall be defined by the Board, consistent with the mission statement." De facto, it seems like we have some loose-defined quasi-membership thing going on. See also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Community . Ron Duvall (talk) 17:13, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo's comments

They are available here: See User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_32#all_sides_can_agree_in_principle_to_an_orderly_process_of_making_a_determination_of_what_to_do 71.63.91.68 (talk) 04:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

excellent idea

This is an excellent idea. I have been pushing for a an English language wikipedia house of representatives for some time now, but those with the power seem to prefer not to promote democracy . We can form groups, associating, etc. Our right to associate can not be "rejected". However, the valuation of a !vote as standing for more than that !voter is something we must let develop naturally and not push for automatic acceptance of it. There are real problems of people having multiple accounts, so no system of automatically adding up accounts will work. This needs to be allowed to grow and find acceptance through being useful and believable; not being forced down anyone's throat. WAS 4.250 (talk) 04:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think the proposal is in need of a rewrite to reflect the clarifications Abd made above; and also some examples of how it would be helpful might be in order. What do you think of the deletionist/inclusionist example above? Could an example be come up with that wouldn't be biased against a particular factions of Wikipedians? In reference to not forcing it down people's throats – maybe the article should avoid, then, the language about giving people the "authority" to speak on one's behalf, and simply describe it in terms of providing information that can be useful to closing admins. If the idea catches on, modifications can evolve later. 71.63.91.68 (talk) 04:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

What I was, as far as I know, the first to propose was a combination of delegable proxy with what I call Free Association traditions, taking from the operating traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, which were, in my view, the most important factor in the massive success of AA. Many people in AA have thought, over the more than sixty years since it was founded, that there was something in those traditions for the world, but, as far as I know, nobody figured out how it might be done.

The key is in separating the function of intelligence (advice, recommendation, knowledge) from control (the executive, control over individual actions and concentrated power -- property, specifically). An FA cannot, by tradition, own more property than necessary for its basic functions, which, by design, are very light. AA meetings are supported by very small contributions tossed in the basket at meetings, and they are used to pay rent and buy publications, typically for free distribution or by donation. The contributions are entirely voluntary, there is no disapproval of those who don't contribute. But almost nobody fails to toss something in, and it is almost always enough. Meetings don't accept free meeting space, generally, and they don't accept large donations. If they accumulate funds not needed for a few month's worth of expenses, they will generally pass it on to intergroup for intergroup expenses and intergroup will pass on what they don't need to the national office. Quite simply, they don't have financial problems, ever.

Central decisions in AA are either about the office operation, those decisions being made entirely by AAWS, Inc, as members don't really care about that, or about publication content or recommendations back to meetings over policy issues. There is a delegate conference, each delegate elected either by supermajority from areas (2/3 vote necessary) or, if, after so many ballots, a 2/3 majority cannnot be obtained, by lot fro the top two candidates. The theory of this is that it does provide for some minority representation. Due to the nature of the organization and the kinds of decisions that need to be made, this works very well.

But if we really want to accurately and efficiently measure consensus, we need something more efficient and more representative. That's delegable proxy.

So the community uses DP to estimate consensus. These estimates are made by anyone, using a proxy table, and additional analysis as determined appropriate by the one doing the analysis, most notably by someone who needs to make a decision, such as an administrator closing some decision-making process.

We don't have DP in place (all it takes, though, is a proxy table, and if not many members assign proxies, no harm, it simply isn't measuring as broad a community), but other forms of vote analysis can be done.

With my current RfA, almost certainly likely to close in "failure," I plan to take the results and anaylze (and report) them in various ways. For example for every voter, I could take the edit count and weight the votes according to that. I could look at only administrator votes, or only non-admin votes, or time since registration. Each of these analyses would generate some different perspective on what happened. Using this for *decision*, through some fixed rule, would be impossibly chaotic (though it's possible that after substantial history of use, standards could develop that could make it possible -- but then it becomes vulnerable to new forms of manipulation, long-term sleeper sock puppets, etc.), but as "advice," there is no problem.

The responsibility for the decision remains quite the same as it is now. I'm not doing the vote analysis to try to claim that the result should be different, as Sarsaparilla knows, I'm quite unattached to the outcome, and starting some dispute would be the last thing I'd want. I'm doing it just to see how it looks. In particular, edit count weighting, I expect will be interesting. But voluntarily chosen proxy weighting, considering proxies delegable, would be the most interesting of all, by itself, but also very interesting if combined with edit count. (I.e., each individual vote, whether direct or by proxy, would be weighted by an edit count).

(The RfA is running close to 50-50 support-oppose, after the sock-puppet-solicited votes are subtracted. I'm being accused of thinking that it's supposed to be "majority vote," which is preposterous, I know the guidelines and traditions, but I expressed satisfaction at the support being that high, considering my low edit count and my rather pugnacious history (as it would be seen, all too easily). But that's the kind of stuff I've faced over the few months I've been active here, and I'm utterly unsurprised. Little do they know that I'm smuggling donkeys. I'll tell the story if asked, or someone else can if they know it. gotta get to bed.)

Now, as to a "legislature," the question is whether or not it should be delegable proxy or Asset Voting. Asset Voting was invented, turns out, by Lewis Carroll in the 19th century.... Asset is used to create peer assemblies, where every member has the same voting power. It can be combined with DP to make it more flexible, and it is entirely possible to combine it with direct democracy. The problem with direct democracy is that if the people actually participate on a large scale, the noise makes it impossible to function. So what Asset (or DP) would do is to create a representative class that represents the entire group in deliberation. Voting remains open to everyone, but ... whoever doesn't directly vote, if they have a representative, the representative's vote counts for them. In Asset, it's possible that someone chooses a representative, and the representative they choose can't get a seat in the assmbly, due to lack of available compromises or intransigence of those holding the votes (but not enough votes individually to gain a seat). With Delegable Proxy, because of the variable voting power, the proportionality of representation becomes almost perfect. These things have been worked on for years, there are a lot of details that could be explained or proposed.

Summary: DP creates, all by itself, a representative hierarchy. That hierarchy can, if it is decided to do so, elect a peer assembly, or a proxy assembly; both of them can be almost fully representative. In a peer assembly, every member may address the assembly. In a DP assembly, the assembly sets rules for floor access, which might be representing a certain number of members. Beause of the variability, and with a fixed assembly size (chosen for efficiency in finding consensus), more people can be represented by members with a "seat," i.e., the right to address, with DP rather than Asset.

Yes, this is another new discovery: the possibility of separating, for an assembly, the right to vote and the right to participate directly in deliberation. The problem of scale in democracy has only involved, really, the last problem, it would always have been possible to have substantial votes be open to every elector. Wikipedia process is completely open, but mixes deliberation and voting; really, the two should be separated. Votes are votes, and evidence and arguments are evidence and arguments. ArbComm functions that way. (Though small comments are often made with votes). --Abd (talk) 05:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, our right of association can be rejected, or at least the "community" can try. See Esperanza and WP:AMA. In both cases the right of members to freely associate was rather violently rejected by "consensus." Not only non-democratic, but also a dicatorship of the "majority." Repressive,with little expressed justification that made sense. So ... the proxy table can be here on Wikipedia, initially, but it should also be copied elsewhere. And the basic rule that I would make for the proxy table is that naming a proxy there is granting consent for the proxy to contact the client, and accepting is granting consent for the client to directly contact the proxy, with both contacts being, preferably, off-wiki (at least they should know each other's email addresses and preferably phone numbers as well). This is one measure that would be taken, among other things, to dampen enthusiasm for collecting large numbers of proxies (do you really want to give 10,000 people your phone number?). This would, then, make the system robust, unable to be disrupted by deletion of the tools that structure it. The key to DP is the communications structure itself, not vote-counting, which is merely one application. --Abd (talk) 05:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Because it has come up, what is being proposed here isn't Esperanza or AMA, nor is it really like them, in my opinion. The sole resemblance is that all three ideas involve the free association of Wikipedia editors, but both Esperanza and AMA were rejected on the basis of inefficient bureaucracies or cumbersome process (as far as what was stated in the deletion discussions). This proposal sets up no bureaucracy at all, and process isn't a part of the proposal itself, though process using it might arise if the community or individuals in the community, such as closing administrators, start to use the very simple information generated. So the attempt to apply precedent from those rejections to this idea is misdirected. The community has not considered this idea, at all. --Abd (talk) 15:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Rejecting very firmly

I would like to take the floor and thank the honorable gentleperson Abd for providing a long list of reasons to reject this concept, to draw and quarter it, burn it at the stake, and finally bury it. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Is the honorable editor making a specific proposal? A reference to a list of reasons is not a proposal. --Abd (talk) 14:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

An editor has placed a rejected tag on the project page. No proposal has been specifically formed, yet, this page is intended to be used to form a proposal, if an appropriate one can be found worth proposing. As there has been no specific proposal, as yet, it is patently ridiculous to assert, by the placement of a tag, that it has been rejected. It is not proper for any user to claim that a community consensus has formed, based solely on the editor's personal opinion regarding a proposal, in the presence of significant objection, and due process for the consideration of the community. The editor is urged to refrain from edit-warring over this, but to follow WP:DR if there is any actual dispute. I am reverting the tag placement pending consensus. --Abd (talk) 15:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

If the tag gets placed again, I would recommend leaving it there pending a complete revision of the page which will present the idea in a more palatable form. When the revision is posted, it may be desirable to preface the page with a "brainstorming" tag similar to this. The idea would be to clarify that we are still in a stage of developing an acceptable proposal within the broader realm of delegable proxy concepts, rather than approving/rejecting a specific implementation. There used to be a {{brainstorming}} template, but it was merged into {{proposed}}, the idea being that the process of developing and approving/rejecting proposals could take place simultaneously, as opposed to how it works in a deliberative assembly, where there is a period in which a motion is open to debate and amendment, followed by statement of the question in its final form, and then a vote of the assembly on whether to adopt it. Here, we've merged all those stages into one, which is perhaps inevitable in a system where people typically float in, make a comment, and then leave, as opposed to staying here for the duration of the discussion, as occurs in business meetings. Anyway, the purpose of a brainstorming tag would be to say, Please hold off on closing this debate, because the idea is still a work in progress, and if the users reject it, we would like to be given a little time to reformulate it. After a reasonable amount of time, if no significant changes are made to the proposal, then it could be closed. This would be similar to the two-step process in which articles are first placed at Wikipedia:Featured Article Review and then Wikipedia:Featured Article Removal Candidates. Ron Duvall (talk) 16:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Right. The basic proposal is very, very simple: a proxy table, and what the current project page has is more complicated than I'd say at this time. How the table would actually be used is really a different matter, and, with the wikisystem, is a matter for the individual discretion of those who wish to judge consensus. As I have time, I'll work on the table format, which should be substantially different from what is the current draft. (But it will be the same basic idea: user handle, proxy handle, acceptance (or decline), notes, plus some other possible optional fields, I'll look at other tables that have been created elsewhere.) As to the tag, I have no intention whatever to edit war over it. I've reverted it out once, as is my right, given there has been no discussion of substance. More than that ... not me, someone else will or won't; if I'm not happy with the result, there is dispute resolution, which I've never initiated before, as was a factor in my RfA. One step at a time, I'm in no hurry.--Abd (talk) 17:55, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Proxy tables cannot form consensus. Nor do I believe that they can reliably show that it exists, as far as I'm aware. --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Belief based on lack of experience and imagination can be quite a limiting thing. Consensus is discovered by people communicating; a proxy table shows linkages of people documenting relatinships of trust. The table itself doesn't form consensus; rather, it can be used to estimate it, if the community using the table has developed certain traditions. The question is not whether they can reliably prove consensus, but rather whether or not a proxy table used to expand a vote will proved a more accurate measure of consensus than the raw vote, other things being equal. Proxies, in addition, can and will communicate directly with their clients; so if a consensus is found at some "meeting," the proxy may report it back to clients (or, here, simply point them to it.) The proxies lead consensus, by negotiating it in small groups.

As I see it, if we do get a proxy system going, the present contradiction of "we don't vote," combined with processes where we obviously do vote, with nice formatting that counts them for us, may fade: that is, there will indeed be more focus on arguments rather than vote count in the discussion. But I don't really know what will happen, what I'm confident of is that it will do no harm. The protection is the wikipedia system of responsible servants making decisions based on arguments, with vote counts being a rough confirmation that the admin isn't swinging widely from the community.

I have generally proposed keeping the system very, very simple, but many writers have wanted to see "issue proxies," i.e., "I want Jim to be my proxy in general, but Amy to be my proxy in such and such a special issue." The solution I settled on is consistent with general FA/DP concepts of keeping the basics simple, and getting more complex only precisely where that is need. The model FA, Alcoholics Anonymous, functions on a small-meeting level, where total consensus is highly valued. The analogy here is the article, which is a "meeting" of editors. And so those editors who have an interest in the article, perhaps they worked on it for a time, could use a special article proxy list. With one article, I found myself surrounded by editors with what I saw as a political POV. And, in fact, they were all affliated in some way or other with a specific political organization. There were several RFCs over the content, claiming that this lone maverick -- me -- was bucking consensus. However, I knew that the article clique was warped by participation bias, and, in almost every case, what did settle considered what I was bringing to the table, even though there was great struggle against it. I represented a whole class of editors who would have agreed with me, if they were there. But I didn't recruit them, nor should I. Over time, however, many of these editors have visited the article. The watchlist system is very good for bringing the focus of editors back to an article when it needs it, but heavy contention on an article can generate a great deal of traffic. The key to this isn't the proxy table, it is the proxy network it documents. Nothing changes about the formal process; proxies don't, in the system I propose, vote for others. They vote their own best judgment, and proxy tables can be used to estimate consensus in situations like that which I described. If the situation is, on the face of it, 3 editors on one side and 1 on the other, that looks one way; but if we take a proxy expansion, it might look different. It could be a hundred editors to one, and if these were solid editors, it would be obvious that the one is isolated. But that doesn't mean that the "hundred" can claim to be the community, such that policy could be disregarded to favor their own POV. On the other hand, if I were the one editor, I'd properly be a bit restrained. But what if I thought that, say, the hundred were mostly sock puppets? It's up to me if I accept this as a sign of community consensus, or if I don't. But if I don't, and it was real, I might find negative voters in an RfD or Arbitration to be coming out of the woodwork. On the other hand, it could be three against a hundred, i.e., in the other direction.

More likely, what we would see with an article like the one I had in mind, we'd see maybe two or more to one on the side other than mine, if the group is broad, not expert, and better than two to one in the other direction if the group is experts. And networks of experts could efficiently bring in sourced material; this will take, I expect, off-wiki tools, mailing lists are quite good for connecting large groups.

Proxy tables are definitely not going to form consensus if they are never tried! The reason to try it first on an article level is that this is a small group to start, and it may be possible, therefore, to get a greater percentage participation. Ultimately, with a proxy system, it might be practical to start considering actual quorum requirements for certain kinds of decisions; but that is way down the road. More easily reached would be a statistic considered with votes: what percentage of active editors has participated in some judgement, directly and indirectly, in addition to what votes were Yes and which were No.

So: any editor could set up a proxy table for an article of interest to the editor, and use it. It is very important that these tables not be used to set up binding conclusions: that's where the tables would become attractive targets for sock puppets. The fantasy above about legions of sock puppets isn't realistic, though, because analysts might already want to deprecate votes based on various standards like edit count, age of the account, and time since the most recent edit. However, genuine editors who are merely absent for a while might actually be brought back in when needed. I expect that, generally, proxies will have the phone numbers and direct email addresses of clients.

--Abd (talk) 08:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

You write very large blocks of text, and it takes a great deal of time and effort to distill a take-home-message from it. Please only state your core points. It is gratifying to know that you have considered details, but if I need to know such details, I shall certainly ask for them. I shall only respond to one thread here.

Are you proposing that votes be held over article content? --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Example given

The page has been rewritten, and a (made-up) example provided to show how a proxy expansion might work. While it illustrates proxy chains, loops, and the effect of both a user and their proxy participating in a debate, it is not really designed to illustrate the usefulness of the system. Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve it? Thanks, Ron Duvall (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

So the proposal is only to do with the deletion system? --Kim Bruning (talk) 04:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, once the proxy table begins to fill up, we can use it for pretty much anything that the community will allow. Jimbo suggested experimenting with a shadow policy body. I do think there should be a period of experimentation first until people gain confidence that delegable proxy produces reliable results. I was thinking that at first, we might try polling users to ask if they agree or disagree with what their proxy said on their behalf in a certain discussion. Abd, any other suggestions for testing it?

An interesting aspect is that it could make it harder for people to misbehave on the wiki. With more legitimate users weighing in on debates via their proxies, to compete with them, users with sockpuppets/meatpuppets might try to form networks of proxies. And if you catch one of them, you can begin looking at who they're connected with. On the other hand, if there are a lot of users on one side representing just themselves, that could also be a sign of something strange going on. All in all, it could allow for some very interesting analyses of relationships among users.

We'll see how it works. I'm ready to sign up. Ron Duvall (talk) 05:57, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Empirical evidence shows that voting on policies is not an effective approach on en.wikipedia. I am not sure that even a superior variant of a proven ineffective process will lift it up to a level that would allow it to compete with proven effective best practices, because it would still be based on the same flawed premises.

Some of the areas you claim this system might be effective for are misidentified as using voting. This is not correct. For less than trivial situations, it is always possible to "break out" of the poll-like structure, and hold a different type of discussion entirely, as required. While it may be possible to enhance the quality of the poll structure when/while we use it, we should be extremely careful not to undermine the actual underlying consensus system. --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:50, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

True, policy debates and so on are subject to creative suggestions which can branch off into separate discussions, ultimately leading to a better consensus than if we said, "This is the proposal; vote yes or no." However, some discussions don't lend themselves easily to creative solutions. For instance, the outcome of an RfA can only be to promote or not to promote, and an AfD also has a limited number of options. That is why those debates look so much like polls. An example of a policy proposal that eventually had to come down to a poll was Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles. There are a lot of creative options for expanding deleted article viewing beyond admins, and they have been presented (e.g. Wikipedia:Trash namespace, etc.) It was useful to present those options, so that the community could take them into consideration before deciding the basic question of whether we wanted to allow viewing of deleted articles. Ultimately, though, we couldn't reach consensus one way or the other on that specific question, and it had to come down to a poll. It would be interesting to see what the proxy expansion for that poll would have been, though. Ron Duvall (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it's not just for deletion, and that may not be the most important first application. However, I think it would be better to have, with AfDs, a few voters from, generally, deletionist and inclusionist perspectives, plus editors with a special interest in the field of the article. You know, there is this constant paradox, votes don't matter, we don't vote, but people who want to win an argument will work to bring in favorable opinion. Once one voter can effectively represent many, the participation will reduce in number but increase in quality, I expect. I'd like to work on AfD process; I'd like to see the closing administrator address the arguments; I've seen contentious AfDs where many specific issues were raised, reliable sources were found such that some aspects of the article topic could be verified, but the decision was delete and that was it. "Result was delete." According to which arguments and neglecting or rejecting which arguments. I'd like to see an AfD resemble, more, an Arbitration, though with less formality. How about a virtual "article" on the topic of an articles notability and propriety; i.e., an NPOV examination of the arguments, and the goal of the participants would be to agree on that article. Then the decision is made based on a consensus document. If no consensus can be found, that too can be reported. This might be a shift in attitude, there would be something for dellies and inkies to collaborate on. And keeping the group small is what DP might assist with. (But nobody would be excluded; the possibilities of exclusion of individuals is something that could come up if the scale is much larger, or if we really do try to generate active and immediate wikiwide consensus. But that isn't what we are proposing now, at all. --Abd (talk) 08:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If you have seen such AFD discussions go wrong, then clearly the closing admin was on crack. :-P We could do a better job in educating admins. If reliable sources are found, then that is an overriding argument, and the article should be kept.

On the other hand, due to hard work, it is now possible to ignore AFD most of the time. (You only still need to participate when someone comes along and tries to AFD delete something you were working on ). As you have noticed, AFD does not scale, that is why we now have replacement systems, such as WP:PROD.

I am unsure why we should invest in improving a system that should essentially be dropped. Can't we better work on shutting out the remaining cases where AFD still need to be used?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 10:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

From the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion, it seems like although we're going to merge the prod and AfD processes into one, the new prod will still bear some resemblance to AfD debates in contentious cases. So, proxy expansions could still be used in those cases. I'm not saying it's always going to be useful, though. Ron Duvall (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Proxy loops as communication networks

I was about to add this text:

Interlocking proxy chains and loops can also function as communication networks. It would not be a violation of canvassing prohibitions for you to contact someone else in your proxy loop about an AfD, for instance, because whether one person in that group participates or you all do, the proxy expansion will show the same number of participants from your group.

However, suppose there is a proxy loop that looks like this: A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G -> A. A and G are on opposite sides of a deletion debate, and no one else in the loop participates. Is it okay for A to give a friendly notice to F about the debate, in hopes of influencing him to weigh in on his side and count for B, C, D, E, and F? Ron Duvall (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Lots of issues will come up, if this actually gets used enough to be efficient. This structure will itself take care of this problem. To understand how that would work, we need to realize, first of all, that such large loops aren't very likely unless at least one of the members of this loop is a high-level proxy. What would happen would depend on the relative position of A and F.

In a mature, large-scale DP system, F has not (from what we know) given consent to A to communicate directly with F, so this would be outside what has been consented to, and if it happened on-wiki, it would be offensive. The way a proxy system works is through filtering. If A has a problem with how G is voting, and note that G has trusted A and A has accepted. So A could, quite properly, ask G to inform F, or otherwise to consider his or her vote. G, however, may decline, because part of G's function is to protect clients from noise. A's proper channel is through B. If B agrees with A, B can not only vote with A, B can then contact C, etc.

The proxies act as filters. Very, very important to understand. A "disturbance" does not propagate unless some actual damage is being done, in which case it will rapidly propagate until G's vote becomes isolated. Yes, for this to work, there will need to be some bypasses, most likely mailing lists. And that's beyond what I'lll write about today, except to say that the highest-level proxy in this chain will probably have a mailing list, and some of the clients, if they are high-level as well, will likewise have lists. They choose who they trust sufficiently to allow them to subscribe to the list. Suppose it happens that A is the highest-level proxy (they are only all equal if none of the members have received any other proxies, and such a long loop is extraordinarily unlikely in that case). A would have a mailing list, and certainly any relatively-high level proxies would likewise. So the action A takes to communicate with the whole caucus could be very, very efficient, and G's voting power, other than as his or her own, could vanish in hours.

But only if the proxies receiving the message agreed with A. If A is low-level, A's attempt to intervene could, itself, receive a negative response rapidly. And the rejection of it would be coming from a user that A trusts, directly or indirectly.

It's efficient. Someday I'll write more about the history of the idea, but efficiency was very high on the initial considerations. How does a society remain open to new ideas but not waste time considering every cockamamie proposal?

--Abd (talk) 17:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Cliques

I copied the clique-related content from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Wikipedia:Delegable_proxy. Ron Duvall (talk) 23:43, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Abbreviations

Anyone have any ideas for an abbreviation for this page? WP:DP, WP:DEL, and WP:PROXY are taken. Ron Duvall (talk) 03:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Glad to see you took care of that. Appellations are important – if they didn't matter, we would not have named an American mountain range after them! 71.63.91.68 (talk) 16:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Terrible

This idea is so full of problems I find it almost difficult to even speak about. It emphasizes voting in an inappropriate way. It encourages us to consider the absent opinions of uninformed people as equal or more important than the opinions of the informed. "Per nom" votes are votes but at least they're made by people who have bothered to investigate the issue themselves and come to a conclusion, and are therefore vastly preferable to any sort of strength-of-opinion through proxy. Also there are major bias problems - I can't imagine I would ever designate a proxy myself, as I don't know of anyone whose opinions always coincide with mine. And a lot of people will be anti-voting and think the whole idea is bunk, and therefore these proxy tables will be all skewed because they'll be made up of only people who think the proxy tables are a good idea... and a significant number of those, I'm sure, would be trying to build a deceptive appearance of influence. Sockpuppetry aside there are loads of ways to game the system. For instance, what if someone designates me as a proxy and a couple weeks later stops editing Wikipedia. Why should their opinion matter at all -- they aren't even part of the community anymore. What about small groups of POV pushers who form proxy loops, and therefore look like trusted members of the community when they're really fringe members? Basically this proposes a numerical reputation system, and then posits that the reputation of people matter. I would no longer trust any administrator if they felt that the reputation of the participants in a close debate mattered enough to determine the outcome. Please, let's have this bad idea rejected and buried as quickly as possible. Mangojuice^talk 06:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

How does it emphasize voting in an inappropriate way? It would not disturb the typical process of having multiple parallel discussions on different aspects and variations of proposals going on at the same time, and the proxy expansions would not override clear facts or policy, any more than current discussions do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ron Duvall (talk • contribs) 07:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It encourages people to designate a proxy instead of visiting debates themselves and taking the bother to interpret policy, look at the article, and come to an informed decision. It also puts an undue burden on those debating against others in a debate -- if there were really ten people participating, they would all be people who could potentially change their minds when a good argument is presented... but if there's only one proxy there, this property is lost. Plus, let's face it, this whole thing is about making sure people who don't come to the debates get their "votes" in, as best as that can be arranged, which totally emphasizes the wrong thing. Votes count, but we should always stress first that these debates aren't votes, and this does the opposite. Mangojuice^talk 15:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Although it's counterintuitive, I think we should consider the absent opinions of the uninformed. Consider the analogy of a corporation – if you have shares in a bunch of different corporations, you don't have time to become informed on all the different corporate governance issues. Suppose you're Michael Jordan – you're too busy concentrating on basketball to focus on the latest XM/Sirius merger or whatever is going on with your stock. So, you have your investment manager execute proxies for you. The person you ultimately delegate the decisionmaking to may not participate the way you would've 100% of the time, but it's much better than not being represented at all. (-Ron Duvall)

That analogy doesn't hold up because those actually are votes. Mangojuice^talk 15:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

How does one build up a "deceptive" appearance of influence in this system? The proxy table is an open book and we know at any given time what the participation rates are. Statistics can be gathered and if it looks like a bunch of users with new accounts and low edit counts, for instance, are designating one another as proxy and forming a chain, that can be noted. That is the usual type of POV pushing, right? Someone will get a bunch of meatpuppets to start accounts and begin participating in processes? If people want to get sophisticated, they can try to manipulate edit counts by making a bunch of small edits or something, but it's going to take a lot of work, and will show up on Recent Changes and draw attention, which will then bring scrutiny on that whole proxy loop.

Let's take the scenario of someone designating you as proxy and then leaving the project. First of all, how long were they editing before they left? If they just started editing recently, that could be duly noted by the admin running the analysis. The length of time since their last significant participation in the project could also be noted. If they've been around for three years and then leave, sure, you could continue to count as their proxy for awhile. But in that case, what's a few weeks out of 156 weeks (i.e. 3 years)? About 2%. So in that case, we're dealing with about a 2% bias. Nonetheless, it's up to the admin to make sure that whatever purpose they're using that tool for, that they're still closing based on something valid, that the community will accept. And if they don't want to end up at RfC, they had better be careful. Ron Duvall (talk) 07:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

This is very unrealistic. The admins using this would never go to that much trouble to analyze the proxy table every time they want to refer to it. It's difficult enough to read everyone's argument thoroughly, check out the sources that get brought up, and investigate whether individual accounts are SPAs; now you're saying they should go through the contribution history of everyone in the table that relates to their debate. As I said above, this system is vulnerable to gaming. If we ignore that and let it work however it works, then it's a flawed system. If, on the other hand, as you suggest, people are careful to watch everyone and detect any possible misuse of the system, you're talking about an enormous amount of project-wide effort that will accomplish... what, exactly? Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Mangojuice^talk 15:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

If Mangojuice is correct, what will happen? What is harmed? The truth is that a system like this has never been tried on a large scale, as far as I know. Nobody knows how it will work or if it will work, other than as speculation, informed or otherwise. Which is why it would be totally inappropriate to put any significant effort into it. Let those who think it might work try it, and let those who don't, leave it alone, beyond making sure that there is no misrepresentation. If it starts to work (or to do harm), that can be addressed.

However, Mangojuice himself displays the problem that this possible solution addresses: a knee-jerk response, manifest in what is like a deletion vote. Quite obviously, it cannot be said that the community has accepted this idea, but neither would it be accurate to say that it has rejected it. If you think the community should actively reject the idea, MfD it. We'll see. However, would this truly be a rejection of the idea by the community, or only of that segment which follows MfDs? Without something like this in place (such as a representative assembly as is being considered in discussions with Jimbo -- and there are many ways to easily do that, including this proposal, Asset Voting, or STV methods), we don't really know what the community thinks. If this idea is rejected by a subclass, it will rapidly reform, off-wiki, and, in fact, the editor class that would need to be informed for this to happen has been efficiently selected, through the MfD. Tell, me, is it allowed for those who agreed on an MfD to comment on their Talk pages and through email? Does this violate any policy?

Mangojuice clearly doesn't understand the proposal, yet he *thinks* he does. (This is certainly common, and his response is what I'd expect from a strong majority if this idea went before the community in its present state.) This proposal, however, if accepted, doesn't change the things that he thinks it is in opposition to. Wikipedia is not a democracy in certain senses and it is in others. This doesn't change any of that. Proxy analysis, as I've suggested, is not binding, it is voluntarily used, by those who think it valuable, and not used by those who don't. Note that if an administrator neglects proxy analysis, the only way that this would be hazardous, for him and for the efficiency of the project, would be if experience had shown that the analysis was reasonably accurate, and, if the analysis indicated something contrary to what he assumed for his decision, the truth would be proven in the ensuing process, such as a deletion review, when the previously hidden consensus appears. Otherwise, remember, such matters as deletion are theoretically decided on the basis of cogency of argument, not votes. Every administrator is a judge of the arguments, and what do votes mean? If they don't mean *anything*, why do we allow them, why do we classify arguments as pro or con? Why do we number them in an RfA, and post, continually, the running vote? Why do we close a discussion per WP:SNOW, when a killer argument may not have had time to appear? If votes are irrelevant, it could be 100-1 for delete and that last participant has found and puts up a reliable source, proving that the 100 votes were based on an incorrect assumption, and an administrator would properly decide for keep. In the contrary direction, 100 inclusionists or partisans could snow with keep, and then one editor impeaches the source they were all relying upon. Doesn't happen very often with such large numbers, to be sure, the existing system works quite well, usually, though with increasing inefficiency.

Enough. It is a waste of energy to try to convince people who are not ready to understand this that it will work. Let those who understand it or who would like to see what happens if we try it, try it, let others waste their time arguing against it if they like, or, more sensibly, ignore it until and unless it becomes (1) an actual settled proposal and (2) gains enough momentum to actually pose a risk of damage. A couple of users putting their names in a proxy table certain is going to do no harm (particularly if the table contains a warning that this is for information only, it is not an agreement binding anyone, beyond what is explicitly stated -- which will not include the right to "vote" on behalf of anyone. Rather, a proxy assignment is simply an indication of general trust, or, in the case of a specific usage proxy table, of trust with respect to some specific topic.

However, in a variation on WP:GIANTDICK, were I only concerned with wikipolitical success, I'd dare you to MfD this. There would be nothing I could do myself that would be more likely to accelerate this process, which does not depend on wikipages but rather on free, uncoerced, efficient communication between editors. The existing system works in the absence of organized caucuses and, in fact, it is starting to break down because those caucuses are appearing. FA/DP organizes and rapidly creates what we call "natural caucuses," able to act coherently and efficiently on a large scale, and there are only two ways to prevent major damage: crush it, quickly: but, as they say, if you are going to shoot the king, don't miss; or join it for FAs are, by definition, open (caucuses may not be, they are simply voluntary coalitions which communicate independently of wikistructure when they need to).

Truly, Mangojuice, thanks for sharing. It's all useful.

--Abd (talk) 16:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Look, if I don't understand this proposal after having read the entire discussion page and the text of the proposal, I think the only ones to blame are those who wrote it. All you did in your above comment to further explain it, you had already explained further up the talk page and I had already read that. You talk as if this can't possibly harm anything, but it can. Here's what it can harm. (1) If implemented, and regarded as important, this would become something that admins would be expected to look into when closing a debate. That creates extra work for them, and it also means they can't ignore it (even if you, or the policy says they can) because it will become common for people to challenge closures based on this, just as it is common to challenge closures based on vote counts now. (2) If implemented but not regarded as important, all efforts to make the system happen would be wasted. (Possibly neither will apply, if this is really a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing as you seem to envision, but I simply cannot believe that Wikipedia will be so casual about it. Either it will be rare to use these or it will be rare not to, the middle ground is an unstable situation, where the decision to take proxies into account or not will be debated a thousand times in parallel.) (3) To implement this, there's a lot of overhead. Someone's got to write a bot, probably several bots to make the system feasible. The data in raw form is not so useful to people, so we've got to set up a system where it gets processed in order to really make use of it. Bots can help stop some abuse but we are simply going to need people watching because some of this is subjective judgement. (4) It's very important that there's a perception of fairness in these debates. This would damage that by making Wikipedia seem even more cliquish and cabalistic than it actually is. Along these lines also, this system would help create the perception that new users aren't valued compared to established users, which runs counter to Wikipedia's principle of openness. (5) One of the perceived benefits (to me, the only significant one) is that this would let people stop watching debates so much and worry more about the encyclopedia. But this would reduce meaningful participation in debates - fine in some cases but in others, the debate will drop below a certain critical mass where it can't be acted on anymore. And also, this benefit wouldn't pan out unless people could be confident their proxy opinions would be counted. If it's a crapshoot, or it's usually ignored, that benefit goes out the window (and it seems you are saying it SHOULD be unclear whether these proxy opinions will matter).

I would be a lot happier if this was limited to processes that are really votes and explicitly discouraged from being relevant in debates. Like you say, WP is democratic in some ways and not democratic in others. This whole idea does seem to be muddying the distinction but it doesn't have to be that way. Mangojuice^talk 22:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Presumably the statistics-gathering could be automated, using tools kinda like the one whose results are shown here. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY is not really an argument against this kind of system, it's just an aspect of WP:IAR. But delegable proxy would not produce any new rules that would need to be ignored; the whole thing is just an optional, additional source of info that an admin (and the community) could take or not take into account based on their judgment. Ron Duvall (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What I'd predict is that tools would indeed be created. The raw data is public, i.e., the proxy table and the votes in some process. Note that a primary question isn't what the votes were, but simply who participated. How many users participated directly or indirectly? The more such users, the more likely that conclusions can be properly drawn about how representative it is.

What I'd see is that there would be many such tools, allowing someone who wants good analysis to understand the implications of many different factors, very quickly. Some of these factors will emerge as important, other tools will provide analysis that isn't useful, and will fall into disuse. Indeed, it is now possible to do vote expansion, but on other bases than proxy analysis. For example, votes could be weighted by edit counts, or the count of specific kinds of edits, or by days since registration, or by variety of articles edited, or by admin status (admin status representing some kind of community trust in the person). If any one, or any specific combination of these measures, became some kind of obligation, it would be offensive. Crucial to this proposal is that it generates only advisory information, voluntarily ,with no need for changes to the present system, policies, guidelines, or procedures.

--Abd (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Fractional value of proxy votes

Kevin Baas wrote:

“ in light of the information theory perspective, proxy votes should have fractional value, because they represent degraded messages. (they have a lower probability of being accurate than a direct vote, and the weight of the vote should be proportional to the probability of it being an accurate prediction) - perhaps, like the adaptive viscosity, a sample can be used to determine the approx. probability, and this can be a multiplier on the vote weight. proxies of proxies would then cumulatively degrade. (there could, in addition, be a static coefficient proxy vote degradation multiplier that an adminstrator could set universally (or could be voted on - all of the parameters could be voted on, creating a self-tuning system.) ) ”

Of course, it would be up to the person running the analysis to decide what weight they would want to assign proxies and proxies of proxies. It could approach zero in a straight line; e.g. if your proxy participates on your behalf, it counts as 80% of what it would have been if you had participated yourself; if your proxy's proxy participates on your behalf, it counts as 60%; etc. and so on, until after five iterations it reaches zero. Or it could approach zero asymptotically, perhaps using something like double declining balance. I'm not sure how well these would scale. Any thoughts? Ron Duvall (talk) 17:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Analysis by fractional value is certainly possible. However, I would predict that it would fall into disuse, except to the degree that experience shows that the resulting picture of consensus is warped. What is often overlooked when people start considering this is that proxies will generally be influential. With proxy voting, quite likely, fewer editors will vote based on immediate impressions; rather the quality of votes (for voters who are trusted proxies) will rise, perhaps they will be based on more detailed examination of the issues. So what might be a weak prediction of consensus, defined as an immediate and shallow impression of all editors asked the question, becomes much stronger when we realize that proxies would presumably inform their clients, should it become necessary, as to why they voted as they did, and this would only fail if there were no clear basis. How strong this effect is, will depend on many factors, and, given that there is probably *some* remaining error, a mature analytical tool might incorporate a deweighting factor per proxy level involved. But given that we are not attempting to make decisions by vote, exact correctness of analysis isn't important.

However, Ron, Keep it simple.

--Abd (talk) 18:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The one large issue I have with this is that currently, wikipedia places trust in arguments made by people, rather than people themselves (People argue that even trusted people can make mistakes). You'd shift the emphasis to trusting people. So do you think that that's a good thing, and why? --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:41, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what you mean by "wikipedia places trust in arguments made by people, rather than people themselves". Perhaps giving an example would shed light on this. Ron Duvall (talk) 05:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I can understand this concern. I'd be seriously disappointed if this very important feature of Wikipedia were lost because, somehow, a delegable proxy system over-rode it, unless very substantial experience and success under trial (such as sock puppet attack) showed that it worked as well or better than current practice. The establishment of DP as an improved means of efficiently measuring community consensus would not change the responsibility of a closing administrator (or any editor considering how to act based on, say, an RFC, or even informally based on seeing how editors are arguing in article Talk) to consider the arguments rather than the people. However, if we know that an argument with which we agree, and may consider controlling, does not enjoy consensus, or, even worse, is actively rejected by a supermajority of editors, to edit according to it becomes, possibly, disruptive. The point of DP is simply to provide better information about community understanding and opinion, not to change the very important principle of individual freedom and responsibility.

DP, in fact, will probably first have an effect in the editing of individual articles, because an article special proxy list may establish a running "vote," essentially, on the depth of community support (i.e., the community of editors participating in a particular article) for individual editors, and because a few editors participating in such a list may be a significant number in context. Let me give an example that came up indirectly in my RfA. There is an editor whom I warned, several times, about editor behavior that was contrary to policy and guidelines, behavior that, if repeated, could result in block. The editor, because I was apparently involved in content dispute with him, discounted these warnings and thought them merely attempts to intimidate him. Now, suppose that proxy lists showed that I was a widely trusted editor. He might pay more attention to the warnings. In another example, in the Instant-runoff voting article, a frequent argument was made by the cabal that I was merely giving isolated, idiosyncratic, POV-pushing opinions in my article edits and in Talk. Delegable proxy might have quickly shown otherwise; without this, how would the cabal members (at least some of them quite sincere) have known otherwise, given that they did not understand the opinions and the significance of the sourced facts placed in the article. Without that kind of easy, efficient input, they would edit war over "significance" of what was being inserted, and remove sourced text, clearly (to me and to others) improving the accuracy of the article, and, assertedly, its balance. DP would, essentially, warn them regarding what they might see in an RFC. And, in fact, RFCs that they set up, while not attracting much comment (the issues were very unclearly specified, for one thing), did attract some confirming my positions. DP cannot and should not control the process or any editor, but it does give a clue as to what battles one might be likely to win and what ones might be likely to go the other way. This kind of information, historically, has resulted in peace: one does not fight battles likely to be lost. But the decision where to stand and where to set the matter aside is one which remains with each and every editor.

It should be understood that I'm generally (off-wiki) proposing DP only in the Free Association context, and Free Associations are precisely like the Wikipedia community in this aspect. Votes don't control anyone, except in a very minor way. I am not in favor of setting up DP as part of some control system. However, there is another method, very similar to DP, that could receive attention, in creating an advisory body that remains a peer assembly, i.e., every member has the same voting power, as with ArbComm. (This could, in fact, replace ArbComm elections, making it one more standing committee in a standing assembly, but, again, ideas like this are for the future and are not implied or controlled by the present proposal, which is simply to set up proxy tables, defining a standard format for them, and seeing how people use them.)

One very small step, very easy, not complicated, setting up no bureaucracy or new process, but merely -- possibly -- enhancing what already exists. Small but possibly historic.

This Wikipedia project, I suggest, should, first of all, define a standard proxy table, designing it to be efficiently created and used by editors and named proxies, and by anyone who wishes to uses it to understand the degree of trust an editor enjoys.

Later it may discuss, propose, and report on tools developed to use the table and analyze it.

And it may propose possible applications, but, I'd suggest, beyond some very simple ones that would be on the project page as proposed applications, it would report, in an NPOV fashion on actual applications that have arisen.

DP and its implications in a Free Association (like Wikipedia), it turns out, can be very difficult to understand at first, even though it is terminally simple. It runs into hosts of common assumptions about how hierarchical structures function, how organizations work, that are based on common experience that doesn't include anything formal like this. So it is very, very important to keep it very simple at first.

Set up proxy tables and see what happens. --Abd (talk) 15:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Initially an advisory mechanism, later a control mechanism

Some of the arguments against delegable proxy seem to be that if it is binding, it will be harmful; and if it is not binding, it will useless.

The intent is that this is to be an advisory system at first, and then if it works well, a future proposal can lead to its use as a control mechanism. The reason for this two-step procedure for implementing it is that, in my opinion, we simply don't have enough information yet to predict what exactly will happen when it is introduced, and whether the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks. Therefore, we need to go halfway, and then the right course of action will become evident.

Another way of saying it is that there are three major possible states in which this system can exist after the experiment begins. In the first state (which we will start out in), admins will not having the authority to use it in making decisions, because community consensus to do so will not have been established. It could eventually end up in a second state, in which some people think it's a good idea to use it, and some people don't, and we have deletion reviews and so on arguing that point. And then there could be a third state in which we have reached consensus to apply it in some way, and policies and guidelines have formed to guide admins in doing so. I do not think we would stay in the second state for very long; as Mangojuice notes, that is not very stable or desirable. We would end up either going back to the first state (and possibly shutting down the experiment) or moving ahead to the third.

I would compare the approach being taken here to many other movements for political change. An example is the proposed United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, which has faced some very similar objections. People say that to jump immediately to having a powerful, directly-elected UN Parliament is too great a step; the governments of the world will not allow it to happen all at once. So, the proponents advocate starting with a body initially comprised of delegates drawn from national parliaments, which would at first have only advisory functions. Later, we would move toward direct election of delegates, and add more powers. Of course, if, along the way, the project seemed to be becoming a disaster, we could abolish the whole thing. But people are objecting because they say that (1) the ultimate goal, an empowered UN Parliament, is a bad thing; and (2) what would exist in the intermediate stage would be of little use.

Another example is FairVote's efforts to establish proportional representation by single transferable vote. They believe that it is too great a step to jump directly to STV; people don't want to make such a radical change in one fell swoop. So, they propose IRV as an intermediate step, since IRV is just a non-proportional, single-seat version of STV. The theory is that even though IRV is not ideal, it's still a better system than what we have now (first past the post) and it will get people used to the idea of preferential voting, which will help STV's cause. There are many objections that can be made about IRV that don't apply to STV, and I've been told that in some cases, IRV might produce worse election results than FPTP. But FairVote is plowing ahead anyway because they view the ultimate goal as being the important thing.

If we end up scrapping delegable proxy, the effort put into it will be wasted in a way (although it will still be a learning experience). But I do not see what harm this experiment can do in the long term. If the results of the test suggest that delegable proxy would be beneficial, then we can make it binding; but if it seems unlikely to be beneficial, then we can scrap it. Either way, no big deal. The community will do the right thing. Unless there are strong indications that an experiment will be unhelpful, or that the risks are severe, I think it is okay to conduct it. And in this case, I don't think those strong indications are present. Ron Duvall (talk) 02:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I suggest putting minimal effort into this. The whole point of DP is that it is simple and efficient. If the effort fails, all of us should be able to look back and say, "Well, it didn't work, but I didn't break the bank -- so to speak -- promoting it." How much does it take to create a proxy table? If we have a standard format, it's a single edit, made by someone who sees a possible use. It would take less than a minute to add a proxy to it, and less than a minute to accept. DP is designed to be maximally efficient in many ways. It avoids elections, for starters. It leaves the most difficult part -- interpreting the results -- up to those who want to use the information it would generate, and that part can also be made quite efficient if people care enough. From outside work that is being done on this, I can say, though, that there are plenty of people who will consider creating tools worth the effort. It is already being done, see [http:minguo.info minguo.info] and top-politics.

I'm actually opposed, though, to setting DP up as a control mechanism, perhaps with secret proxy assignments, etc., which is what some (off-wiki) have been doing. If the proxy table is open, and if votes are open, as with Wikipedia and any Free Association, there are no security issues, no reasonable suspicion over who watches the watchers. As an advisory system, in a context which seeks consensus, it is really, really safe, and very, very difficult to corrupt. There are no control nodes. Proxy tables can be copied off-wiki by anyone. Analysis can be independently done by anyone (it isn't hard). Central tools are a convenience, not a necessity. And proxy structures where the system encourages direct communication between proxy and client will be robust and far less vulnerable to manipulation. I'd discourage proxy solicitations, beyond some kind of public notice by users that they will consider accepting proxies (which then constitutes general consent to communicate with them, notifying them of a proxy nomination).

--Abd (talk) 15:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Effect on new users

I notice the argument that it will create a perception that new users aren't valued compared to established users. Actually, isn't there already some bias in that direction? New users typically stumble around for awhile, acting in ways that that are not very influential because they don't know how to frame arguments in a way that appeals to policy; or they are overly timid because they don't want to make a mistake. But if they do have a good grasp of policy, and participate accordingly, then they are often viewed with suspicion because they might be a sockpuppet. Sometimes I have participated in policy discussions anonymously and been derisively told that the established users should have the say in what we do. And sometimes deletion debates say something like, "Looks like spam, but author is an established user."

Maybe with delegable proxy, a new user could pick a proxy early on who could speak on his behalf, represent his interests more effectively because he knows how policy and processes work, etc. There could be a list of people willing to "adopt" new users as proxies (it might sometimes happen through Wikipedia:Adopt-a-User). But people object to the idea of giving new users more influence too, so I'm not sure if there's any way to win.

Ultimately, though, if anyone cites a relevant fact or policy that clearly should settle a debate, that overrides opinions no matter who it is or whether we use delegable proxy. And if someone makes a persuasive argument, that should sway some of the other participants. Those things could continue to be equalizers. Ron Duvall (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Time for more specifics!

I moved the discussion about the proxy table that was here to Wikipedia talk:Delegable proxy/Table. Ron Duvall (talk) 22:04, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Strongly opposed

Simply put, if you want your opinion to matter in a discussion, show up and give it. This is based around the idea that a discussion with bold words == vote. The English Wikipedia only has one pure vote process, and that is the yearly ArbCom elections. Deletion debates are not a vote, the outcome is based on the strength of the opinions and through debate of the issues. The number of people with strong opinions vs those with weak opinions should matter much less than the difference in strength of those opinions. However if the argument strength is about the same, numbers do matter and in an average deletion debate with 5 or 6 users, a user who serves as a proxy for 4 other users would basically be able to determine the outcome based on his own argument because it carries the strength of 5 users. That's not how consensus works here. Mr.Z-man 05:53, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

In the example you give of a debate where "the argument strength is about the same," what exactly would be wrong with the user who serves as a proxy for four people deciding it? As far as the merits go, it's basically a coin toss anyway, so why not go with the person who represents more people. It's kinda like how in the United States, a state gets a certain number of Representatives and Electoral Votes based on how many people live in that particular state – not how many people actually show up to the polls and vote. So, say you live in a state with 10% voter turnout, and your friend lives in a state with 40% voter turnout. Your vote has four times as much power (i.e. likelihood of tipping a Congressional or Presidential race) as that of your friend's, because you are basically voting on behalf of the people in your state who didn't vote.

In other words, the system is designed to protect the interests of populous states, no matter how bad people in those populous states may be at showing up to the polls. Similarly, our system should be set up to protect the interests of populous groups that don't make it over to AfD, MfD, etc. very much. That could include some groups of very productive editors.

According to list of U.S. states by population, California has about twice the population of Florida; therefore it gets about twice as many Representatives. Suppose that California only has 10% voter turnout and Florida has 40%? That would mean that Florida has twice as many voters as California, despite the difference in total populations. In that scenario, should Florida have twice as many Representatives (and with it, twice as much power to influence decisions in the House)? No, it wouldn't be fair to do that just because Floridans are more willing to devote time to vote. But that's what your reasoning would do. Ron Duvall (talk) 06:34, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Except AFD is not a vote, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and there are no states on Wikipedia. Everyone's opinion, ideally, should be weighted the same and the outcome based on the strength of arguments. And anyway, you aren't basically voting on behalf of other people, they just aren't voting, their opinions are not being heard because they didn't vote. Mr.Z-man 06:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Four people voicing one opinion is still only one opinion. And in practice, licensed meatpuppetry is a really bad idea for a number of reasons all set out above. Guy (Help!) 18:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(ec) As has been stated on this talk page and the project page, the strength of arguments, especially where one side has facts and policy on its side, would continue to supersede numbers of people on each side, whether we have delegable proxy or not. WP:NOT#DEMOCRACY simply notes that we don't make decisions primarily on votes; it doesn't rule out voting entirely. People seem to cite WP:NOT#DEMOCRACY anytime a change is proposed that bears a resemblance to democratic governance systems, which are not necessarily problematic in and of themselves. We may not have states, but we do have groups of users with varying levels of participation in certain types of debates. By the way, if it's a case in which "the argument strength is about the same" and "numbers do matter," how is that not a vote?

You may have misinterpreted the point I was making above; in a system where the Representatives are apportioned by population, you are indeed basically voting on behalf of the people in your state who don't vote. If those non-voting residents in your state did not exist, then your influence would be less, because your state would have fewer Representatives and Electoral Votes. That is in contrast to how it is on Wikipedia, where if non-voting Wikipedians disappeared, your influence would remain the same in debates either way, because we don't take the presence of non-voting Wikipedians into account. The system we have on Wikipedia is more analogous to, say, a Governor's election or a ballot initiative. In those situations, it's irrelevant how many non-voting residents there are; all that matters is how many people vote.

Your statement above, "Everyone's opinion, ideally, should be weighted the same and the outcome based on the strength of arguments" is self-contradictory because if the outcome is based on the strength of arguments then obviously everyone's opinion was not weighted the same, but they carried different weights depending on how strong their arguments were. And in cases where the arguments have equal strength, right now, we are still not weighting "everyone's" opinion the same; just those who show up to a particular debate. And there are an awful lot of debates out there. In any other type of community (and Wikipedia is a community), we would solve that problem by having representatives to sift through all the stuff we don't have time to analyze and vote on ourselves. This system of massively-parallel debates just doesn't scale well, in that sense; it has the potential to become unrepresentative due to the participation bias, which DP could help solve, if implemented properly. Ron Duvall (talk) 07:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Even in situations that are not strictly votes, I imagine everyone I make my Delegable proxy gets some kind of extra consideration. In the case of AFD, while a well-reasoned minority should make the decision, I've seen a few closed as undecided because of a preponderance of weakly-reasoned objections, especially in complicated cases. I don't personally object to Delegable proxy, but I think it should be acknowledged that some decisions will be reasoned "User:Ron Duvall and presumably User:Edgarde who designated Ron to be Ed's proxy". / edg ☺ ☭ 07:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I also disagree with overriding the minority when the facts, policy, well-reasoned arguments, etc. are on their side. It's possible that DP could help reduce this problem of the preponderance of weakly-reasoned objections winning. It may turn out that, through analysis of how these debates would have gone had the proxy expansions been followed, we determine that the majority side in proxy expansions has a greater tendency to be on the side that is correct than the majority in the raw, non-DP vote count. If that happens, then we may consider relying more on this tool. On the other hand, DP could be equally reliable or even less reliable than the non-DP vote count. We'll see when we get there. I say, don't kill the experiment before we find out, though. Ron Duvall (talk) 07:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Going back to the apportionment argument above, another aspect of it is that U.S. states are apportioned Representatives and Electoral Votes by population partly because in the early days of the republic, everyone basically paid the same amount of tax (this was before the Sixteenth Amendment). Both the amount of taxes paid by, and representation granted to, a state was in direct proportion to the population of said state. The other thing is that back then, a lot of people couldn't/didn't vote, so it wouldn't have made sense to base a state's influence on how many people actually voted in an election. Similarly, on Wikipedia, we all "pay taxes" in that we are all contributing to the encyclopedia through the work we do here. Also similarly, we cannot all vote in every decision. Given these two things, it makes sense to apportion influence by population and not according to how often a person actually participates directly and personally in decisions on Wikipedia. Ron Duvall (talk) 12:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It really doesn't matter how the US system of elections compares to the Wikipedia system of decision making, because (1) we're not going to reform the US system here, (2) the US system is not a model for Wikipedia and (3) it shouldn't be, because the goal of the US system is to set up a democratic government, whereas the goal of the Wikipedia system is to build a free encyclopedia, and democracy is not part of the mission. The way it works now, influence is given to those who most successfully advocate for their position. You argue that influence should be given to popular opinion. The majority of Wikipedians are casual editors that aren't especially familiar with policy or principles, and who in fact very often have badly mistaken ideas about things. Why, then, should the entire populace of Wikipedia be involved in decision making they aren't good at? In fact, this is a flaw with Democracy in general, but having a democratic system means taking a principled view that the quality of the decisions is less important than the principle of allowing everyone an equal share. That fundamentally isn't true of Wikipedia: here, we embrace some democracy but only to the extent that they help us make the best encyclopedia we can, while maintaining our basic principles. And, this is policy: Wikipedia is not, and should not be, democracy. Mangojuice^talk 16:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I winced when I saw the U.S. electoral system proposed as some kind of model to imitate! It has nothing to do with what we are about here. "Democracy" is a term with variable meanings, and to say that "Wikipedia is not a democracy" only denies some of the meanings, not all. The question here is whether or not users may express some special trust for other users, or not. Does Wikipedia allow freedom of expression? No proposal is made here to require that anyone pay attention to such designations. Possible uses are suggested, but none of those uses will take place unless the person who is considering an issue looks at the proxy table and at participants, for whatever reason that person considers. Indeed, some of the initial use might be post-facto analysis of various processes, in an attempt to measure the degree of community participation in a new way. In my opinion, the first uses won't involve voting at all.

But, hey, we could argue until the cows come home about whether this is a good idea or a terrible one. There are a fair number of experienced Wikipedians who think there might be something to this, and others who, perhaps, would like to burn away every trace of it. Are we permitted to set up proxy tables? Is there any policy against it? And, most of all:

Do the naysayers have any specific proposals? Who are they trying to convince? Sure, this is Wikipedia, everyone has the right to express an opinion, considered or otherwise. But ... some expressions are disruptive. If this idea is so bad that it should not be considered or tried, there is process for that: MfD. Otherwise, I'm not planning on wasting any more time arguing against the "terrible idea" caucus. And I might not even argue in an MfD, unless my opinion is asked. I'd prefer that the structures be created on-wiki, but the principles apply just the same if they are off-wiki, and the latter would be more robust. Any structures that I'd support, off-wiki, would be open to all Wikipedia editors, this is basic to Free Association principles. But like any "meeting," they may make their own rules governing participation, just as on-wiki participation follows rules, policies and guidelines.

If editors don't want these kinds of structures to arise, the strongest course of action would be to ignore it, or attack it if it starts to do some damage. Word to the wise. --Abd (talk) 19:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

No MFD for proposals please. We mark them "rejected" instead.

Note that I am not opposed to DP per-se, and I believe that it could be very useful in some circumstances, perhaps on meta. We discourage the use of voting in the article namespace, because then you get the proverbial "voting whether 1+1=3". We've also discouraged voting in other parts of the wiki, to reduce the impression that it is acceptable. In situations where voting would be the optimal approach, DP seems like a superior system. --Kim Bruning (e/c)

I'd be happy to assist in the setup of any delegable proxy system, anywhere. Generally, my work has been what I call FA/DP, which is delegable proxy within a Free Association context, where voting is generally non-binding and is merely a means of measuring consensus, for the guidance of members, caucuses, and servants. From my point of view, any attempt to apply delegable proxy is extremely useful, because we are very short on actual applications that have attained any significant scale. Yet. However, there are some initiatives that are seeded, and that I expect to slowly grow. I'm interested in the FA context because it is generally fail-safe; attempting to apply DP within control systems must face security issues, a whole host of problems. I believe the problems are soluble, but until we know how DP functions in an advisory environment, it would seem foolish to attempt to apply it where there is control of substantial power and resources involved.

However, if my theoretical analysis is correct, advisory DP could be so effective that it does not become necessary to apply it to control systems. And this understanding proceeds from perspectives I have on what is defective about the present status quo with "organizational technology," as well as what already works. In short, if a community is wisely and efficiently advised, existing systems are quite good enough. --Abd (talk) 22:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)You should really read up on how proposals and policy formation work on Wikipedia. The "naysayers" don't have to present a counter-proposal. MFD is NOT the proper course of action for proposals you don't like, unless the proposal is so absolutely terrible that it merits total removal instead of marking as {{rejected}}. You're welcome to set things up, but until a community consenus decides its a good idea, it won't have any real effect. To get this to be a policy, it either needs to be such a good idea that everyone loves it from first suggestion or you need to try to work with the people opposed to make it more acceptable. You can't just ignore the opposition when forming consensus by brushing their opinions aside as "disruptive." Mr.Z-man 20:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the comments. There actually is no proposal for the community to decide upon at this time, there is a working project to set up a format for proxy tables and instructions for use (which means use by users who want to name a proxy). No attempt has been made to "brush aside opinions as "disruptive," beyond noting that at some point, when some of us are trying to actually work on a format, constant flack about how useless it is does become disruptive. It has not come to that point, and the negative comment here is not out of place, at least not yet. However, my point is that it's useless to argue uselessness right now. This is going to happen, unless it is actively stopped. As to the placing of a rejected tag, that's an ordinary edit, and thus subject to all the guidelines and rules for those.

Now, what is a "consensus" in project space? How is it determined? Who determines it? This is part of the question we are attempting to answer, with a little more definition and clarity. Not to change the basic principles of Wikipedia, which I fully support. However, I've been personally working for years (about twenty) on solutions to the problem of scale in "democracy," -- which, to me, is far more perfectly realized in a Wikipedia-like environment than in sovereign institutions -- and what is being proposed here is something that has deep implications. It's not correct that it won't have any real effect unless a community consensus signs on. It will have an effect, actually, when only a relatively small number of users participate; and looking only at "votes" will keep you from understanding how.

I often take a look at Contribs for participants in discussions, and I looked at those for Guy, and saw his excellent essay, hosted elsewhere, on the Durova incident, which I followed at the time with great interest. What is being proposed here is the foundation (and missing) element of a systemic solution to problems raised by that incident, among many others. To explain how and why will take the page after page of comment that I'm famous for, and then possibly endless argument and debate about that, going nowhere; it's more efficient, I'd suggest, for proposers to act and for others to watch and see what happens, given that this proposal does not set up anything that any user can't do anyway at any time. If nothing results, well, no harm done. If harm begins to appear, it can be confronted. Imagining, however, that, say, closing administrators will be so stupid as to start mindlessly considering votes instead of arguments and policies is to fail to trust the community. --Abd (talk) 22:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I missed the Durova thing, and couldn't find it in his contribs. What was that? Ron Duvall (talk) 01:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Look at his Talk page, at the top there is a link to his essay. Durova was a very good administrator who made a mistake (actually a compounded error, but really, none of it worth de-sysopping her over), but who became the focus of a huge flap on and off-wiki, with the usual massive assumptions of bad faith, belief that if something is private it must be sinister, etc., etc. Essentially, she thought she had identified a sock puppet and blocked him. She unblocked rather promptly (75 minutes?) and apologized, but ... she had used "secret evidence," and the very idea of such a thing -- though it is essential, and what is Checkuser, anyway? -- was enough to trigger the .... well, Guy says it pretty well. (Look, I have identified a series of sock puppets, and haven't yet been proven wrong, and in most cases Checkuser confirmed it. Now, the techniques I've used could be automated to some degree, and there are many powerful methods which could be used that I haven't tried and which, for the same reasons as Durova, am not about to reveal. Because if I did, then puppet masters would know better how to avoid detection. Durova simply erred, in several ways, and I've claimed that if you don't make mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough. I didn't look at the actual block message, I should have, maybe I will. If it was abusive, maybe there is more reason to be upset. But, frankly, worse stuff, driving away users, goes on all the time.... To be blocked for 75 minutes followed by an apology .... if that drives away a user, well, the user is pretty easily driven away. Much worse to work for a day on an article, go on vacation, come back and the article is gone. Where did it go? Does the user know to search for an AfD? And if it was speedy-deleted, where do they find this?--Abd (talk) 03:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's just because of the type of articles I edit, but I haven't run into too much trouble with vandals/banned users/etc. so I tend not to view getting rid of them as being a particularly urgent thing. We could use IP addresses and stuff to enforce bans, track who is doing what, etc. but to some extent it's almost good we don't have those tools, because it allows people to start over after they mess up. Wikipedia is not always forgiving of people, and sometimes you just want a fresh start; also it may be necessary to dissociate yourself from an account that you have inadvertently left clues to your real identity with. People might know that this new user is obviously experienced on Wikipedia but they can't tell exactly who it is; the community has become too big for that to work with a high enough level of reliability. There was a guy named User:The Recycling Troll awhile back who everyone kept saying was some other banned user and that was a big part of the debate on this guy until Jimbo came forth with the IP evidence which contradicted those claims. He ended up being banned on other grounds so it didn't matter in the end. Interestingly, a frequent way that people try to identify users is by saying, Hmm, this guy has a much better command of the English language than that other guy, so it must not be him. If you are good at English, you can always purposefully degrade the quality of what you write to a lower level (although theoretically you wouldn't want to, as it can make your arguments less inclined to be taken seriously when you've got a bunch of spelling mistakes, etc. Not sure if that's as true on wiki as it is in other communications). Ron Duvall (talk) 04:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Meta

Should this be moved to meta? The problem I see with that is that we are working on an English Wikipedia implementation which will need to involve users who primarily edit here (i.e. it's not something just a few people could be involved in and work successfully). Linkages between proxy tables, userpages, etc. could be problematic. Also, I think meta's audience is primarily English-speaking anyway. Are there even a lot of people who hang out there regularly? Ron Duvall (talk) 01:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

No. This is for the English Wikipedia. Somebody wants to do it on meta, fine. Do it.--Abd (talk) 03:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

A few comments on this proposal

• I didn't understand it at first, but having read through this Talk page I think I do, and it actually seems like quite a good idea. I've long thought (and argued elsewhere to this purpose) that Wikipedia should adopt a system more similar to representative democracy, with certain users elected to receive the privilige to make decisions on behalf of the community. This is a step in that direction, and so to an extent I support it.
• HOWEVER: I strongly disagree with the way the proposal has been presented up to this point, i.e. as a method for determining consensus in deletion discussions. That would be a VERY bad place to introduce such a system. Deletion discussions are meant to be discussions, not votes; any move away from that and towards a voting-based system raises all sorts of dangerous possible consequences, such as sockpuppetry on AFDs (which we get a small amount of already) and articles being Kept in flagrant opposition to policy, if enough people turned up to support them. WP:NOTAVOTE is one of the core policies of the deletion system, and one that we should never throw away.
• A useful analogy: if Wikipedia is a society, think of AFD as the law courts. They settle decisions based (ultimately) on rules, not opinion. There is a place for a system of representatives acting on behalf of proxies who have elected them; but that is in matters of governance, i.e. making new policies and disbanding old ones. That is where we need more democracy, and that is where this suggestion would be most useful. Terraxos (talk) 03:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

A more apt analogy might be to compare the development of policy here to the development of the common law. Ron Duvall (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, discussion of AfDs warps the thing. Now, the problem with AfDs is that, while supposedly it isn't about voting, the process sure looks like voting. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blood electrification (2nd nomination). There were complaints about canvassing, and canvassing means nothing if votes mean nothing. Nearly all the delete arguments were based on blood electrification being quackery, which it is. Quackery, however, is not a legitimate basis for deletion, non-notability and unverifiability would be. But verification and evidence of notability were found and presented, buried in a snow of delete votes, with mostly repetitious and irrelevant arguments. The closing administrator simply said "delete" with no explanation. Frankly, it looks to me like a whole series of editors participating in AfDs think that it is about voting, and, from the administrator action, quite possibly an administrator too.

Yes, it should not be about voting. However, if not for participation bias, community consensus could, in fact, be some kind of guide for closing administrators *in certain cases*, particularly where the boundaries of policy and guideline aren't clear. Absolutely, it would be an error to simply rely upon votes, expanded by proxy or otherwise. An administrator, properly, is responsible for the decision, and preponderance of votes would be no excuse for a decision contrary to policy.

It is in the setting and interpretation of policy in general that estimation of broader consensus would be more useful. We refer, frequently, to community consensus, but we base that on a tiny sample of the community, often warped by severe participation bias. I've elsewhere written that participation bias, under some conditions, produces better decisions, but it's unreliable, and as the scale grows, it will become more and more unreliable.

Wikipedia, in its Free Association aspect, doesn't have governance as such, even policies are merely very strong guidelines, and many policies have no teeth. (Ever see anyone get blocked for putting unsourced POV material in an article when it did not involve edit warring or ignoring specific warnings, say, with BLP?) But, yes, in terms of solidifying policy as representing a genuine consensus, we need something like DP or it may be a false consensus underlying it. Without a true consensus, the community will ignore the policies and guidelines, those are something they wrote, not that we wrote. The theory of Delegable Proxy is that it can function to seek consensus on a large scale, without elections, and without the overwhelming noise involved in direct democratic methods when there is actually broad participation. There is much more to it than that, in fact, but, rather than trying to predict it all in advance, I prefer to set up simple trials, and the no-voting principles make it relatively fail-safe. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.--Abd (talk) 05:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed; perhaps the page should be rewritten to reflect an emphasis on policy debates rather than deletion debates. What might we use as an example in the example section? Ron Duvall (talk) 01:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

That's the problem: nothing is a good example, because there are virtually no straight votes on Wikipedia. The only real votes are the Arbcom elections, which are "closed" by Jimbo directly, so if this is meant for that, take it up with Jimbo. The second best would be WP:RFA -- it's embraced as a principle that reasons matter in RFAs but in practice they are rarely important beyond the influence a good argument has on people. Mangojuice^talk 04:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

We used to take a lot of polls, e.g. Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles. I haven't seen many lately. Ron Duvall (talk) 04:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, because it's contrary to the way policy issues get decided now. See WP:PG#Proposals, for instance. Mangojuice^talk 06:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) What is a "reasonable time period"? What if a proposal, by its nature, would be for something to grow gradually? I think I'd contest a "rejected" tag for something that was -- slowly -- gaining acceptance and which has never actually been rejected, i.e., consensus did not appear either way. A proposal which has never actually been considered -- i.e, for whatever reason, never got more than token attention -- hasn't been "rejected" in the ordinary sense, it merely "has not been accepted."--Abd (talk) 04:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I can construct artificial examples showing where proxy expansions could be useful in an AfD, but it's really moot. AfD is merely one possible example, more to the point would be certain RfCs, and situations where a small group of editors will claim that a single editor is "against consensus" because he or she is interfering with their POV. DP could establish, as an example, that the single editor is actually broadly respected, which doesn't prove that the larger group is wrong, but which might cause them to be just a little more cautious and willing to negotiate consensus. Consensus is consensus, really, and ignoring any editor is dangerous, but sometimes it has to be done. If the editor to be ignored, supposedly, represents many editors as shown by a DP system, well, something is probably wrong with the judgment that this editor is out on a limb. And this doesn't necessarily involve any votes at all, it's just a matter of users looking at a proxy table and its implications.

In the outside consideration of delegable proxy theory, in a free association context, DP is considered to be a method of estimating the relative strength of caucuses. Because free associations, generally, don't take controversial positions as an association, voting is not binding, it's only advisory. But caucuses can act at any time at their own free initiative; however, if opposing caucuses are equally balanced, if they attempt to act, they will tend to cancel out each other's efforts, wasting time and resources. If they can work to seek consensus, whatever consensus they discover can be powerful, since it will have much less opposition. DP, in theory, should help them to negotiate consensus on a large scale by reducing the number of members who need actually participate in the negotiations (consensus can be extraordinarily difficult to negotiate on a very large scale, but it can be much easier when the scale is small: DP reduces the scale). It also helps measure consensus, giving caucuses information to help them decide when to act. Further, DP creates "natural caucuses," being a proxy plus all the constituents or clients of the proxy, direct and indirect. Organization without effort or overhead or bureaucracy.

As to Jimbo, we are laying the groundwork which could be used experimentally in efforts, the possibility of which have, apparently, received some attention from him. But this does not depend on him or his approval. There was a certain point in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous when the fellowship became self-governing; Bill Wilson called this "AA Comes of Age." What we are doing, here, isn't setting up a government, but it is setting up a communications mechanism that could, possibly, be used to create one, though my own opinion is that government, as such, is not necessary. AA, in fact, did not set up a government, "self-governing" really meant that they developed mechanisms for expressing a fellowship-wide consensus, which was, as we are contemplating here, only advisory. It advises the members, who are not bound by it, and it advises the board of AA World Services, Inc, which is not bound by it. But if AAWS were to seriously ignore it, the flow of voluntary contributions which sustains AAWS could easily dry up, and the structure was set up to make AAWS, deliberately, reliant on that flow, there is no capital accumulation beyond what was called a "prudent reserve," essentially enough cash to shut down gracefully if it fell apart, to fufill legal obligations that any corporation has. Essentially, it won't happen. They cooperate, with mutual respect. Usually!--Abd (talk) 05:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Are there any organizations that work that way besides AA? Ron Duvall (talk) 05:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, generally, 12-step programs other than AA adopted the same traditions: Al-Anon, Nar-anon, Debtors Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and many others. AA is huge, the others smaller, but still quite successful and stable. Many nonprofits effectively have something like this, but various "violations" of the AA traditions cause the situation to get warped. For example, if the central organization controls communication among members, if it accumulates wealth through large donations that essentially endow it, if a substantial staff is hired that then has a too-close relationship with the board, many situations easily arise that cause the institution to develop an independent existence that can continue even when members, even a majority of members, would have it move in a different direction. What made AA different was that Bill Wilson studied what made organizations fail in the long run. There had been many efforts to form temperance organizations in previous years, going well back into the 19th century. With that and the experience of the earliest years of AA, he designed the Traditions, which were accepted by consensus, to protect the unity of the organization while guaranteeing that it would not be an oppressive imposition, but rather a true unity. I could write on and on, and I won't. AA was, and remains, phenomenally successful. Very, very little money is involved, yet there are meetings in every small town in North America and many around the world. It really doesn't have any competition of any significance.

More to the point, Wikipedia has a relationship similar in many ways, between the editor community, which is like the member community in AA -- members provide almost all the "content" for AA meetings. The legal structure, AAWS, Inc., owns the copyrights to publications, running an office in New York, publishes and distributes them, and maintains a few other activities -- but it never supports local meetings, nor does it have any control at all over them, it cannot punish or expel them or individual members. The money all flows in the other direction, voluntary contributions. Bequests and other large gifts aren't accepted if over a relatively small sum (used to be $1,000, it's been raised). Publications are sold, at very low cost because there are no distributors, directly to meetings, which then resell them at cost or give them away when they have the funds for it. WikiMedia Foundation owns the domain and runs the servers for Wikipedia, but it exercises little control over editors. In theory it could, but.... that would be a huge can of worms. The editor community holds elections for ArbComm and for the Board (that's another election not mentioned above); in both cases, the elections are really advisory, voluntarily accepted at the discretion of Jimbo (for ArbComm, which is really the discretion of the board as delegated back to Jimbo), and likewise the board has the legal ability, if it so chose, to ignore the board elections conducted on Wikipedia. It won't do so, unless some need appeared, just as AAWS isn't going to ignore the board elections held at the AA World Service Conference, though it also could, legally. The World Service Conference could make a recommendation to the board, even by unanimous vote, and the board could ignore it. But they would be very unlikely to do so, and the Conference would be very unlikely to unanimously advise the board to do something that the board wasn't willing to do. Essentially, if the board ignored a legitimate consensus of the Conference, the members could take back to their groups the recommendation that they stop contributing to the national office, and, since they actually don't need the national office for much of anything -- local groups used to publish their own literature, and some still do -- they could do that. And it is highly unlikely that such a confrontation would take place. Similarly, if the WMF board were to ignore a consensus of the editors, the editors could take their editorial marbles elsewhere; collectively, they would have the resources to set up a competing encyclopedia. But, again, why? The relationship is voluntary and non-coercive. And that is how it should be.

This is why I'm far more interested in the aspect of negotiating consensus, as application for DP, than I am for "voting." I agree that "voting" is not a great idea, with some exceptions. And I won't go into them (I hear the sighs of relief.) --Abd (talk) 06:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Can DP have any potential benefits if it has extremely low participation? Like, say, less than 0.1% of the community designates proxies? Mangojuice^talk 06:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes. It benefits the people who participate. I've seen it in other applications, where only a few people have named proxies; but, having named one, I now have someone who will ping me if he thinks there is something I'd want to know about. I've seen it carry some weight in discussions where I was the only person with a certain POV, against some allied users with an opposing one. When they claimed that I was just some lone lunatic, I pointed out that, if proxies were considered, I represented a small majority. This was a Free Association, and my majority not only wasn't binding, but if I tried to shove some result down people's throats, it could evaporate quickly -- my clients would probably have voted against my position; but the point was that it kept the discussion going. I did, in fact, have the general trust of a few users, and some of them, at least, would have supported my position if they actually were called in. Otherwise, they could simply trust that I was doing well enough without them having to constantly say "me too." This was, if anyone is interested, the Election Methods Interest Group, which is, at the moment, pretty dormant -- but which I expect will start to see some action soon. This kind of FA/DP organization might lie fallow for extended periods, then come to life when a need arises. Rapidly. To the extent that people used the proxy table: I've suggested that proxies and clients should have each other's phone numbers, not to mention direct email addresses.

Something like this could grow very slowly. Or rapidly. Depends. However, there are, what, six million registered users? 0.1%, that is 6,000 users. How many users vote in, say, ArbComm elections? Suppose there were some emergency, requiring massive mop-up after some bot-assisted vandalism that managed to overpower defenses. 6000 users in a phone tree? (Proxy networks can literally be phone trees; they also can be self-validating, i.e., if proxies don't just accept random nominations from someone they don't know, but do some verification, then rapidly a large body of validated users can be established, if it is needed. What if emergency sysop powers needed to be granted to a few thousand users, who could be trusted? You'd start with a core who are already trusted (say, admins who have been named as proxies, or -- if there is some doubt -- a core of these), then they are asked to list clients they trust, etc.) DP can form rapid-response networks; I'm not suggesting that anything particular be done, even down the road, only noting that there are actually some very interesting possibilities. This is hierarchy (somewhat turned on its head), self-assembling, efficient, flexible, and very difficult to corrupt in a Free Association context. In other words, I don't want to see binding proxy actions. It is much safer if they stay as advice; advice is quite powerful enough, but isn't coercive, and leaves the very important Wikipedia traditions and protections in place and functioning.--Abd (talk) 04:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You've been emphatically asserting that this is "difficult to corrupt." I disagree completely: this is difficult to keep free of corruption, if not impossible. For instance, suppose someone claims in a debate that their opinion shouldn't be ignored because there are 50 people that have chosen him/her to be their proxy. It's possible this is genuine - 50 independent, uninterested wikipedians generally trust this user. It's also possible that this is completely bunk - 50 users trying to push a viewpoint happen to sign up on the proxy tables because they thought it was to their benefit. There might be some sockpuppets in that number, ones that abusive in any other way than that they sign up for proxies inappropriately. Or there might not even be any sockpuppets, just a skewed participation in the proxy table. Regardless, how are ordinary editors supposed to tell the difference? With a small proxy table, things are more likely to be skewed like this. So the system is the most questionable when it is the least popular, which makes its serious adoption prospects dim. Mangojuice^talk 15:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

If somebody tries to say that ("Well, I've got 50 proxies behind me!") I'm sure that you or somebody like-minded will point out the error in what they're saying. Wikipedians are accustomed to not taking stuff at face value, but investigating and digging through the details for the truth. As more flaws are pointed out, creative solutions can be found to them. I do think the whole proxy thing could take off virally if it's done right. Ron Duvall (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

We have 6 million registered accounts, but many of them have never edited, only about 5-6000 of those are active at any given time, and a large amount don't participate in meta-discussions at all, except when it directly concerns them. The most recent ArbCom election was December 2007 and you can see some numbers here. Mr.Z-man 17:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I'd glad Mangojuice posed this problem. Okay, suppose we have the situation described. An "ordinary editor" sees the claim, "My opinion should not be ignored because I represent 50 users." What does the ordinary editor do? Well, another editor could claim that right now. For the claim to have some legs, there would have to be something to back it up. So, we can assume that the editor wanting not to be ignored points to the proxy table. So OrdinaryEditor looks at it and sees the caveats right at the top: something like: this list is advisory only, proxies may be presumed to represent clients, but it is possible that clients are sock puppets, etc., and proxies, on Wikipedia, have no special privileges. For help in understanding the significance of proxies, see: Don't Be Snowed By Proxies. And then the DBSP page notes that proxy information is advisory only, users are free to disregard it if they think best, and, further, gives hints as to how to interpret a proxy situation, which includes simple methods of detecting sock puppet clients to roughly tell a genuine proxy from an artificial one. In addition, it gives pointers to how to report suspected proxy abuse (for a sock puppet to give a matched sock or the puppet master a proxy could be considered abuse of sock puppets, there is no legitimate reason to do this). Proxy assignments ordinarily involve access in short order by the proxy and the client, making Checkuser function better. More on this below. Beyond that, the page shows how an ordinary editor might join the proxy network, enlisting the aid of a friendly experienced editor. The outcome: depends. If OrdinaryEditor is wrongfully ignoring the 50-user proxy, this will come out, when, proceeding to ignore him or her, other users come out of the woodwork, or, better, when OrdinaryEditor names a proxy, and they communicate, the proxy, either while investigating the request or from direct communication, helps OrdinaryEditor to deal with the situation, using friendly advice or all the tools of dispute resolution. Remember, if OrdinaryEditor names a proxy, it would be presumably upon investigation and some sense of trust, so the new proxy has a better shot at being heard and understood than some random editor or administrator. When an administrator intervenes, there is a tendency to go away mad. Here, why you are wrong (to put it bluntly) is explained to you by your friend.

After all, *no* editor should be "ignored." So what's the alleged harm here? That OrdinaryEditor is more careful? That is not a harm, that is a benefit.

Now, as to sock puppets. This is the classic objection to Delegable Proxy in a Free Association context. (It doesn't apply to DP control systems, because these necessarily have user verification procedures.) On Wikipedia, we have post-facto systems for detecting sock puppet abuse. Now, for a sock puppet to name the puppet master, and then abuse the proxy system, is to wave a big red flag saying "I'm suspicious, check me out." One of the classic difficulties with Checkuser is that puppet master may not be known. Suppose we have an obvious sock (or at least an experienced user showing up with a new account not linked to an old one). Now, if the sock has assigned a proxy, and the proxy has accepted (would you accept a proxy from an account that looks like a sock, without knowing who the master is? -- and without making sure that there were not extra proxy assignments? I wouldn't, I'll tell you), we have a possible puppet master. And then it is fairly simple to check, even without checkuser.

There is also a very simple precaution, which would give additional information in proxy expansions in any case -- and this can be done now, without DP. When looking at a vote, what happens if you weight the vote by the number of edits for each of the voters; or, in this case, you weight the proxy count similarly? What happens if you weight the vote inversely by length of time since last edit or by edit frequency. And then, for sock detection, what correlations can be seen between times of edits for the various clients and the proxy? Each of these measures can be fooled, so to speak, but it takes increasing amounts of time and hassle for the master. And, in the end, the master gets a handful of hair, since the arguments are not improved by phony users supposedly agreeing with them. (If you are *really* a proxy, with many clients, you have the advice of many users behind you: proxy networks communicate in both directions.)

The extra analysis takes work, but if it matters to a user, it can be done, and, further, tools can easily be created that would do all these analyses automatically, on demand. And, in the end, what if OrdinaryEditor thinks all those 50 users are full of pucky, arguing some POV? The situation is reversed, should OrdinaryEditor be ignored in favor of the BigProxySmallPond editor? Remember, this is Wikipedia. It's the arguments that count, not the votes. The claim of 50 proxies, backed up by a proxy table, makes no decision, and an editor who is intimidated by it -- as distinct from thinking twice -- doesn't understand the system and has trouble currently. The proxy system would actually make it easier for this editor, not harder. (As it is, I've seen new editors quite readily intimidated by threats of sanctions or wikilawyering POV editors.)

So, yes, thanks for asking. Will it function the way I think it might? How will we know for sure if we don't try it?

We do not know how rapidly this idea will spread. It could sit, almost dormant, for quite some time. However, there are some very experienced users interested, so ... it might take off. If it reaches a certain level of usage, then there come to be questions for the community. For example, should it be recommended generally to new users to seek out and name a proxy? This is a community decision, this is not something that should be left to individual initiative. As this point, the whole proxy "proposal" is not something that requires community consent or even attention. It is purely advisory, and even what the advice means isn't specified. Caveats, as appropriate, are placed; right now the Proxy Table has a warning that proxies aren't "recognized." The nature of that notice is an ordinary editing decision; but, in fact, all ordinary editing decisions are, either informally or through dispute resolution, community decisions, if push comes to shove. As someone very interested in delegable proxy (that's actually an understatement), I have no problem at all with users being warned not to expect "recognition" of proxies. I'd go further, with warnings about possible inappropriate behavior, such as attempting to intimidate OrdinaryEditor by waving proxies. It's one thing to say "Don't discount me as someone with an idiosyncratic opinion, I represent 50 users," and quite another to say, "You don't have any rights because I represent 50 users."

No matter how many times I say it, it seems that it keeps being forgotten: we don't vote. What we do is seek consensus, we use polling as a device, sometimes, to estimate it, and proxy expansions are used at the discretion of any user who wants to have a better understanding of the significance, and ... even voting in polls is only a small part of the purpose of proxy networks. --Abd (talk) 17:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it's best if we stop trying to convince each other of anything. I understand all your arguments but I don't believe them. I think you understand mine as well as you're going to but you think your counterarguments are sufficient. I am against even trying this, because (1) I believe the perceived benefits vs. perceived costs weighs in the negative, (2) even experimenting with the system causes problems, and (3) I feel like the experiment is partly motivated by research on DP for its own sake, which I feel is inappropriate. And I'm not likely to change my mind, but if the community feels differently as a whole, so be it. Hence, I propose we simply move on; I made a post below trying to get that started. Mangojuice^talk 16:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Moving forward

Let me outline the process this proposal will go through from here, as I see it.

• Phase 0: Brainstorming. At this point, even the idea is in flux.
• Phase 1: Proposal. Once the idea has been settled on, and the initial proposal written satisfactorally, the main page becomes a {{proposal}}.
• Phase 2: Experimentation. If after an appropriate period for comment, a consensus develops that an experiment in using the system is a good idea, the actual table is opened up for experimental use.
• Phase 3: Acceptance. If consensus develops that DP is a good idea, the proposal is accepted and the main page becomes a {{guideline}}.

Notes: Until phase 2, the table should include an explicit disclaimer that the actual proxy table is not approved for any use, and exists only to illustrate the ideas at Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. Once we're past the brainstorming phase, if it ever becomes clear that consensus is against moving further forward with the proposal, the main page will be marked as {{rejected}}, and the proxy table page may retain an example but the actual table will be deleted. Does this sound reasonable? Mangojuice^talk 15:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, it sounds reasonable, but it's not my view. My view is that the proxy table exists now and anyone may use it. What is totally proper is that all the caveats be in place. Given that, however, there is no change proposed to any existing process, there is no bureaucracy set up, there is no ongoing drain on editor time or resources, and an idea like this may grow very slowly for a long time, there is no "rejection" unless a rejection is actually proposed, found, and confirmed. This is not an idea that is rejected by lack of interest, for it provides, in theory, benefits to those who participate and harms nobody who does not participate, with one exception, an exception that only exists if there starts to be broad use, in which case it would, again, not be a rejected proposal unless that is actually considered by the community. If the actual table is to be deleted, it would be appropriate to notify everyone who has edited it, normal MfD should be followed.

So: if nothing happens, nothing further should happen as an automatic consequence. "Nothing" is not a rejection; certainly anyone may place a Rejected tag on any proposal at any time -- as already happened here once --, but this is an ordinary edit, subject to all the ordinary guidelines and procedures, including the full panalopy of dispute resolution, if it is needed to resolve it. That process would, indeed, bring the proposal to the attention of the community, and we would then see, indeed, a possible rejection. I have no way to predict the outcome with any certainty; however, I can predict that if this process is followed, and the idea is rejected, the proxy network (at least some of it) will move off-wiki, and it will still perform nearly all of its function. I prefer that it be no-wiki, open, and transparent; it will then be more generally useful.

Basically, at this point, there is no proposal, there is an action, which has been done, the creation of a proxy table, plus, on another page, some speculation as to how it might possibly be useful. As with all Wikipedia pages, anyone may edit any of this, but certain kinds of edits might indeed be viewed as disruptive: for example, changing a user entry, adding it or deleting it, without the permission of the user or demonstrated community consensus. The caveats and warnings are not only subject to edit by anyone, but I would certainly defend there being a clear disclaimer there, as there is now.

No proposal has been made that the use of this Proxy table become standard procedure. That's an entirely separate matter; anyone could propose this at any time; but I'm certainly not proposing it, nor would I support it at this time, I expect. It would be a far more complex matter: how to deal with sock puppets, how much credence should be placed in it, whether or not other forms of weighting should also be used (such as various edit count measures), what kinds of votes would be considered binding, if any, etc. I'd say we are not ready to answer many of these questions.

When looking at a Proxy Table, my primary concern is my own proxy, and any further delegation of proxy. I don't really care so much, at first, what everyone else is doing. Then I'm concerned about communication paths created, once I turn my attention to what other users are doing with the table. When the participation is low, the benefit is relatively low, but it still exists, and the cost is also very low.

--Abd (talk) 16:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

You think the cost is very low of just setting this up and seeing what happens. I don't. I have sincere reservations that the community in general will agree with you, so I'm asking that we seek community input on that point. If you're right, and people generally agree with you, there's no harm in waiting until that's clear. Mangojuice^talk 16:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is my question, and it is a serious one. If you believe what you have said, and I have no problem assuming that, why are you adding to the cost of the trial by arguing against it? If it is useless, why waste editor time (and expanded by some process soliciting broad community input) arguing about whether or not to try it? As to community input at this point, anyone may ask for that at any time, however. My own opinion is that this will accelerate the implementation, but also possibly generate more heat than light, so I'm not -- much -- putting this out for community examination; in my view, if it is prematurely raised as a community issue, there is indeed a good possibility that it will be rejected due to knee-jerk responses as we have already seen. That won't stop it, it will merely cause it to move off-wiki. In any case, this is Wikipedia. I don't control what you do and you don't control what I do. Tell you what: let all those who think that this is a bad idea agree, if they can, on a proxy to watch us and make sure we don't empty the till, naming that person as a proxy on the proxy table, directly or indirectly, and then take these pages off their watchlists, letting that person stand for all of you in any of our discussions, such as what warnings or caveats should be on the Proxy Table page, and what should be on WP:PRX. This is how to use DP. The person will presumably notify you if any direct action is required; this wouldn't be canvassing, for reasons I won't explain here -- you would have instructed your proxy to notify you if your attention were needed, on or off-wiki. (If you can't agree on a proxy, of course, you can have more than one, and you can, of course, continue to participate directly if you really like wasting your time on useless dead-end endeavors.) Try it! What, exactly, have you got to lose? --Abd (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

As to "waiting" until "that's clear," I suppose that "that's clear" refers to it is clear that the community supports this idea. However, the community will have little or no basis for supporting or opposing "it" until there is some example of "it" before it to judge. Now, I've asked this before. What, exactly, is Mangojuice proposing, and what is stopping him from doing what he proposes? No consensus is needed to ask for community comment. I'm not asking for it because I think it is premature, but Mangojuice, or anyone, is free to do it. If "waiting" means waiting to use the proxy table, is he suggesting that users be prohibited from creating Proxy pages in their user space and editing the proxy table pending some community permission to do so? Surely this would be a strange new precedent!

"No harm in waiting"? At some point this proposal will come before the community, particularly if it starts being used. I don't really see what the proposal would be, exactly, at that time, though. Propose that we allow users to do what they can already do? Or ... propose that users be restricted from doing what they can presently do? Now, when it comes before the community, would it be useful to have some history for the community to see? Or not? If there is such a thing as premature consideration, waiting could indeed be harmful. My opinion is that DP is going to happen, and the question is really whether or not it happens openly, with truly open participation and visibility, or it happens off-wiki due to being "rejected" by what, if precedent is imitated, would be a very small number of users for whom the "present system" works fine, which is, in fact, circular. If it doesn't work fine for you, you don't participate, generally, leaving a sample of users with a warped opinion based, to be sure, on their personal experience. (DP is efficient which was not the case with other efforts to organize independent structures.) Bottom line, though, Mangojuice, suit yourself. Wikipedia is built by the collective actions of individual free agents, I'd be the last to try to restrict those actions.--Abd (talk) 18:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Abd -- I am not going to answer that many questions; I don't believe you really want me to. If there's really something you want me to respond to, ask me just one question at a time. I really want to keep focussed on proceeding to the next step here. You said you thought it sounded reasonable but you don't share the view. So, I'm going to make the changes necessary. In the meantime, I would like to see this move past the "brainstorming" phase. What aspects of the proposal are still in flux at this point? Can this be a {{proposal}} now? Mangojuice^talk 19:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I have no proposal to put before the community at this time. The "proposal" here was essentially -- as I saw it, not necessarily as the creator of these pages saw it -- to create a proxy table and watch what happens. We have created a table and a procedure for using it, in the sense of what fields are there and how users interact with it. We don't need consensus to watch it. If it is considered offensive in some way for this proposal to sit here, it can be moved to user space, and there is an appropriate one. However, the table itself is just a report of what is in listed user spaces.

Okay: the question: What proposal? There are two aspects here: (1) creating a proxy table and procedure which is all the structure that is needed, and then. (2), some ideas, expressed on WP:PRX as to how users might find it useful. Or might not. I don't see a question to be presented to the community at this time. In other words, the page WP:PRX might be in flux for a long time, as users find the table and use it, and as users find and describe possible applications and what did or did not work. As it is for "informational purposes," there is no policy or guideline issue at all. Later there might be proposals that involve or require community consensus. And there might be one now, if you want to make it. Clear? --Abd (talk) 20:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I think that isn't quite correct. You're creating a proxy table, rules for the proxy table, an idea of what a proxy designation and its acceptance means. I understand your idea now is that the designation and acceptance is purely an expression by the users. But it still needs to be settled what they are expressing because not all possible meanings are equivalent. Furthermore, that meaning should not be substantially changed once the table starts, because it would be putting possibly false words in the mouth of everyone who had designated a proxy up to that point. I'm going to edit the page to reflect your assessment; if I get the definition wrong in any significant way, please correct me. Mangojuice^talk 03:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with the proposed process (Brainstorming -> Proposal -> Experimentation -> Guideline) in which agreement would be needed before experimentation would begin. Rather, I suggest Brainstorming -> Experimentation -> Proposal -> Guideline. I think that once we get the technical issues sorted out, we can immediately start experimentation, and put up some type of {{experiment}} tag. And later on, when someone proposes a specific way in which these proxies should be applied on a binding/semi-binding basis, then we can put the {{proposed}} tag up. (In fact, it might not even go here; we might have a separate page(s) for the specific proposal(s), to avoid confusion with the larger, ongoing experiment.) And then if consensus is reached for specific proposal(s) they may become guidelines or policy.

I agree that we need to be careful to avoid a bait-and-switch, in which users sign up, and then we change the rules on them. That can partly be dealt with through the ability to revoke proxies; if people don't like the changes, they can take themselves off the table. Also, the nature of the system protects somewhat from serious problems – if you pick someone trustworthy as proxy, it doesn't matter incredibly much whether you give them a great degree of power or a lesser degree. Some users might also include something in the Notes field saying, "I don't care what the Table page says; what I specifically mean by this proxy is _____." I think that is the main point of the Notes field. If a really major change is made, we might have an opt-in in which, for instance, users add Binding=Yes to their proxy page if they want it to be binding.

Yesterday, I was about to say that we were ready to move ahead to the Experimentation phase, but now it looks like we may be changing to go to a comma-delimited format, so we should sort that out before going forward. I'll let Abd (or other interested person) handle that; as mentioned, I'm not in much of a mood to personally act to deprecate my own stuff at the moment. Ron Duvall (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, since you two seem determined to push on with this as an experiment despite my objections, I have brought up the issue at WP:VPP; we'll see what the community thinks. Everything that's been said in response to the WP:NOT#DEMOCRACY complaint is that this should be for information purposes only, advisory if people find it useful, et cetera, which means that the experiment is basically the same as starting to use Delegable Proxy, only without any community approval. Mangojuice^talk 00:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia

Why not give this a try over at Uncyclopedia? They are more favorable toward the whole idea of voting, and probably less likely to engage in all this pompously self-important "that's not how we do things here" stuff. Ron Duvall (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The proxy templates

The way the templates are done is nice, but there is a problem. The setup is heavily dependent upon centralized files. In theory (I'd imagine), proxy files could exist in each user's space, and a proxy table could be anywhere, including in another user's space. Using templates as part of the proxy file was very convenient for setting it all up ... but makes it vulnerable to a change in a single file, the template. The proxy tables that have been used before have been of the form:

UserName, ProxyName, Acceptance, Notes.

Literally. Comma-separated fields. Now, maybe we can have the form:

| User = Abd | Proxy = Ron Duvall | Acceptance = Yes | Notes = mushroom pizza, please

Much of the complexity has been from an effort to include, automatically, assignment date. While that's nice, it isn't the core. I prefer simplicity, as much as possible, and decentralization. If the proxy files must have a reference to a centralized template to work, possible problem down the road, if, for example, that template gets moved or deleted. Instead of having revision date and (non-working) diffs, why not just put a link to the history file for the proxy page? Someone who wants to check a proxy could find everything there. The table we have is working, thanks to all your work, but .... I'm concerned about the centralization. It is possible that a template file could be in each userspace, but.... is there a way to take a template reference and expand it to the elements, i.e., replace the template reference with the completed individual elements for display? If so, a template could be used to set up a proxy page, then it would be expanded. --Abd (talk) 02:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the Proxy file possibly should not be the source for the User name. If it is, then a user could have a listing in the proxy table that refers to a different user.... So User:UserName/Proxy indicates an intention to display a line in a proxy table, and then the two fields are all that is in the file. Obviously, I need to do some work. Drat! --Abd (talk) 02:06, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, we use a lot of subst's (i.e. we subst the Designate template, and we subst the Accept template) so the only thing remaining that we are actually transcluding to the userpage is the Row template. And the purpose of doing that is to keep some flexibility to change the table without going to people's individual userpages to do it, which would not be a scalable option. What we have now is pretty good - the templates maintain flexibility for administrative purposes, but most of the actual routine edits (to change proxies, etc.) are being made to userspace.

So, to map it out, it transcludes like this: WP:PRX/Table/Row -> User:Abd/Proxy -> WP:PRX/Table. Designate and Accept are just there to help people set up their proxy page via subst.

I think the complexity comes from trying to get that stuff to transclude from one place to the next to the next; while also validating the data in case someone messes up; and providing a reasonably pleasant and understandable user interface. I still see a few more pitfalls (e.g. people accidentally forgetting to enter a proxy name, or putting the full name (i.e. User:Abd) when only need to put Abd.) I can cause those things to generate a notification to the user of what they did wrong, although the more #if statements we throw in there, the more complex this template gets. We do have Designate set up to give a big red error message if the user fails to use subst.

Oh, and lest anyone file something to WP:SSP, let me disclose this is User:Sarsaparilla and User:Ron Duvall. 71.63.91.68 (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

One technical issue I have been trying to figure out is whether there is a field that will tell you the page that something originally transcluded from. E.g., if your proxy page comes from your userpage, e.g. User:Abd/Proxy, then the templates can figure out the user name just from the User:Abd part of it. I'm not sure Mediawiki is powerful enough to do that yet.

I see your concern about the centralization, and indeed we could just have a comma-delimited thing going on, with each user page being the base of the transclusion, i.e. it would just be User:Abd/Proxy -> WP:PRX/Table, without the need for WP:PRX/Table/Row. And indeed, we are probably going to move these templates at some point. I wonder, if we move the templates, and a redirect appears, will all those transcluding pages know where to look? One way to find out, I guess... The thing about the comma-delimited thing is that I don't know of a way we can have one page parse another, without using the kind of template transclusion setup we have now, so it's probably going to look ugly. MediaWiki has a lot of limitations, which can be overcome with Java scripts, but Wikipedia is fairly conservative about doing that because of server load issues. For instance, page caching issues were why they didn't want to fix the {{CURRENTUSER}} thing. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The other reason for using the Designate and Accept templates is in an effort to idiotproof this thing as much as possible. I'm not sure whether we will succeed at doing so, in the end... It might even make it harder than what we have now... Well, whatever, we can simplify and do the comma delimited thing if you want. Be my guest, although one downside is that this will cause the order of the fields to become important. I.e., whatever parses this (e.g. a spreadsheet) won't be looking at a setup of User = _____, Proxy = _____, as it is now. It will just look at whatever comes first, second, etc. So if we deprecate a field, for backward-compatibility sake for the people who had it set up with the old fields, we will have to have all the new people continue to put blank fields in there. E.g. Abd,,,,Ron Duvall, if there are three deprecated fields between User and Proxy. Possibly not a big deal, but something to take into account. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had to disable that feature in the Designate template that made it give a big red warning when the user fails to use subst. I'm having a lot of trouble getting things to work with nested noincludes and includeonlys. It may be necessary to use separate templates for those. However, as that stuff can get very confusing and require a lot of time and experimentation to get to work properly, I hesitate to invest much more effort in those templates unless/until we decide we are going to go with that system, as opposed to just using comma-delimited. MediaWiki, as implemented on Wikipedia, is disappointing me with its lack of power. And ultimately, I think the best way to implement this would be with Java script code through another module specially designed for proxy stuff. It could be much more secure and easier to administer and use. But it's hard to get to the point where we would be allowed to do that, without having some sort of proxy system already in place that we can point to as evidence of a need for a better system. Anyway, I have other fish to fry at the moment. Thanks for all your insightful thoughts, Abd. I'm pretty much going to leave this in your hands for now.

The centralization problem is going to be a recurring issue unless we simplify it to comma-delimited format. However, I find it hard to stomach deprecating my own work given how extensive it has been, so in a similar fashion as some admins leave it to others to delete articles they personally like, but whose sentence has been pronounced at AfD, I leave it to you to implement what you want to do with this. And so ends my lengthy dialog with myself. Ron Duvall (talk) 18:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Begin the experiment

On further reflection, I have decided that we should go forward with the experiment as-is. The problems related to centralization (such as vandalism of the Row template) are mostly theoretical and can be dealt with on an ad-hoc basis when/if they crop up. The only other rationale I can think of for avoiding centralization would be if we wanted to ensure its survival in spite of an event such as a successful MfD of this whole project. But delegable proxy could not continue to function here under such circumstances. For one thing, such an outcome would only occur if we had lots of opponents; and if an attempt were made to continue using the system through tables set up elsewhere, it would likely result in systematic deletion of individual users' proxy pages, which could be easily located through the transclusions, whether we're using the Row template or comma-delimited stuff. Moreover, the whole point is to introduce a new source of information that will let people say, "Hey, the outcome appears to be this way, but the proxy expansion says ______." If the idea is ultimately rejected, such statements wouldn't pack much of a punch.

There really is no way to buck the community's will; we will just have to prove the merits of our idea. And if the evidence goes against it, so be it. Our goal is larger than just implementing delegable proxy. We want to implement the best system, no matter what it is. And our superordinate goal above that is to improve the encyclopedia in what ways we can. So, staying focused on that, I say let us begin. The templates seem to work acceptably and look pretty enough for now; minor tweaks can be made as needed. If consensus is ultimately reached to adopt a guideline/policy implementing this system in decisionmaking, then I think we should make a case for implementing a Javascript-based solution. There is only so much we can do using the existing parser functions, magic words, etc. Eventually we will have to have specialized code if we're going to do this thing right. We might try setting something like that up on the Beyondpolitics wiki on a test basis. It would be a great way for me to hone my Java skills, and it would demonstrate our idea, allow us to debug it, and also permit us to do the work rather than waiting for developers to do so. Let me know when you have that Mediawiki set up. That in turn will probably help us make more headway when it comes time to submit a feature request, or whatever the process is. This could be fun! Absidy (talk) 00:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the setup put together here is that the proxy files can't really be used, at least not easily, by other tables, without getting complicated. The templates are centralized, and don't work with copies of the table placed in other spaces. Remember special proxies? Having proxy files be stand-alone, independent files in userspace, created by the user and watched by the user, is relatively secure against vandalism. Now, it's true, we could have protected templates ... In any case, I have a format more or less ready, and a Table format that works with it. I've dropped the date stamps; a link to proxy history should be quite enough. The proxy file is simple enough to be easily created manually (most easily edited as a copy of a sample file), and, then, a proxy table can be anywhere and proxy tables can be customized for special purposes. (For example, if a special proxy table is created, it would have explicit special proxies named in it by the user, directly, or it could have the general proxy file transcluded.) The decentralization is a general principle in working with delegable proxy: the avoidance of power nodes is one of the operating concepts. It's not a question of "bucking the community's will," though -- maybe -- there might be bucking of some oligarchy pretending that it is the community. That's not something I'd decide, nor want. FA/DP is designed to function under difficult conditions, when needed. I'd prefer to use a file format that will work under such conditions; one of the basic principles is to make proxy tables accessible to anyone for analysis (contrary to some workers on delegable proxy who want software to handle it all, invisibly, which I consider dangerous, open either to manipulation, or, just as bad, to charges of manipulation. It's the old question, who watches the watchers? and the answer is, "We do."

In any case, I'll finish up working on those files and put up a proxy table here. Templates and substitution can be used to create the user proxy files, but that's a detail.--Abd (talk) 02:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Free association?

The main argument against the need for community input is the argument that having a proxy table is nothing more than allowing users to express their free choice to associate with other editors. I see the argument, but I think it's oversimplifying in a number of ways. Specifically:

1. This is not in user space. That implies a certain level of general community approval that is currently absent here.
2. Centralization. Having a space to centralize this particular type of user association implies that to some degree, the expression of trust in another user as a delegable proxy is a legitimate one.
3. Specification. This idea suggests that the expression of an association with another editor as a proxy, and even more specifically as a delegable proxy is the correct type of this kind of expression.

Furthermore, the freedom of editors to express themselves and associate as they choose is not absolute, so discussion of it is relevant. See WP:NOT (for instance, "not a social networking site" and "does not allow unregulated free speech"), and also precedents like the deletion of Wikipedia:Esperanza, and scads of userboxes and their related categories, to cite some examples. Mangojuice^talk 05:38, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Project namespace that prohibits this page being here. If we put it in userspace, it creates the impression that this is something that pertains primarily to that user, which is not the intent here. We put all kinds of stuff in Wikipedia namespace, such as essays, etc. which don't have "general community approval." Even rejected proposals remain in Wikipedia namespace. And much of the stuff in Wikipedia namespace that currently has general community approval didn't have it when it started out; yet we did not require it to begin in someone's userspace.

A certain degree of centralization and specification are needed in order for the experiment to be workable. What do you propose be done to address your concerns? Absidy (talk) 05:50, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Stuff in project space is generally expected to make it clear what level of approval it has and how it should be taken: policy, guideline, essay, proposal, rejected, humor, et cetera. This one describes itself as "experimental" but in my view it has not been approved to be experimental. Experiments can be really damaging -- see, for instance, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vanished user. Mangojuice^talk 05:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

(That's a good example but hard to understand without a lot of reading). I've seen other experiments in the name of WP:RFA reform that are probably more germane including at least one trial that had to be redone because the community objected to the experiment so much. (And that one WAS discussed and approved before hand). Mangojuice^talk 06:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is a basic principle of law that applies in free societies: what is not prohibited is permitted. (It's actually Islamic law, but that's another story). In any case, if you think something is prohibited, like starting this thing up, i.e., a few users put proxy files in their user space and there exists one or more file collecting the proxy data through transclusion, the burden is on you to show it, either directly, by pointing to some clear policy, or through community process, WP:DR. I've seen nothing to indicate that we can't do this, that we must first have community approval. Nothing. Now, I'd written whatg is below and ran into an edit conflict, so here is what I'd written already:

Definitely interesting. Okay, "This is not in user space." Well, that's one of the very problems I've addressed. The proxy table I just put up is in user space. Entirely. The individual proxy assignments, which are the core, are in individual user space. The table can be anywhere it's needed. One place that it might be is in the user space for User:The Community or any other proposed user meeting place, and any group of editors working on, say, a wikiproject, could set up a special proxy table for their own use.

Delegable proxy is a simple consequence of the action of designating a proxy, and the core of that action is mutual trust. We already have mechanisms for expressing trust: RfAs measure community trust in a nominee. ArbComm elections measure community trust in arbiters. What DP does is to simply set up a means for that trust to be expressed on a very small scale. The "delegability" of it is actually an option, one that I think increases the value because on average it will work. The theory is that, when there is direct communication, people are reasonably good (by no means infallible!) at choosing whom to trust. It gets better with face-to-face meetings and is somewhere in between with phone contact. So, I expect, as one proceeds upward in the natural hierarchy that DP will form when there is enough participation, the trustworthiness of those holding proxies, directly and indirectly, will increase. All it takes is an average improvement for this to work, lots of mistakes can be made.

I must say that I don't find the listed, bolded points particularly intelligible. Is this the "correct type of this kind of expression"? What kind of expression? What is "this"? All we have is two sets of possible proxy file format and two different proxy table designs, but they share the same basic information: a proxy nomination and acceptance. The proxy part is the very idea, I don't see how that could be any different. The acceptance is actually optional. Someone could ignore it if they wanted to. However, if we want proxy designations to mean something more solid than some whim, I suggest acceptance be considered pretty important. It's a safeguard, of a kind, against massive collection of proxies, it makes the proxy more personal. I've often thought of limiting the number of direct clients that a proxy could serve, but I always came back to the position that it should be a free relationship, not controlled. Basic is that it is voluntarily given (or not given, nobody is obligated to name a proxy -- some DP theorists really want to see total representation so they design computer-based systems that, if you don't name a proxy, will name one for you, an example of what I consider a Really Bad Idea that misses the point). Basic is that it is revocable at any time. And basic is that, if voting is involved, the vote of a proxy (on "behalf" of the client) is always superseded by the vote of the client. But is this "correct"? Compared to what? This process has been and will remain open to community comment and participation. I haven't been out there soliciting it because I have long experience with what happens when this is done prematurely. Most people don't get the idea at first, it seems to take about a year for the possibilities to begin to seep through the layers of expectations that we have. One the other hand, it's also possible that the time has come; nevertheless, I'd like to see this start with people who are open to the idea, to see what forms. And yes, it's possible that this could terrify some people....

As to WP:NOT, none of what is proposed here violates anything there. If the Wikipedia community, however, actually tries to prevent users from freely associating with each other, well, there are a couple of natural rules. First, don't prohibit what you can't prevent and can't monitor and can't enforce. Second, if you are going to shoot the King, don't miss.

Esperanza was MfD'd because of a bureaucracy, at least that was the stated reason. It is obvious to me that something else was also going on, why was there such venom involved? Some Userboxes are deleted as offensive or divisive. For one user to say, with a file, I trust ProxyName, is hardly offensive! "Wikipedia does not allow unregulated free speech"? Absolutely correct. You can't personally attack people. You can't abuse your user space as a soapbox, though it is perfectly okay to express, within limits, your views there. In other words, it can indeed be a soapbox unless it goes beyond rather vague limits. Now, please, I asked this on the Village Pump, and I ask this here, what is the policy issue? Is there a policy that any individual initiative must receive community approval first, even though it requires no community action, if it indeed requires nothing, and participation is completely voluntary, taking nothing away from others?

Absolutely, community input and participation is welcome, this is a Wikipedia page, and its existence certainly wasn't kept secret. But what's the policy issue? I am aware of no policy that requires some kind of community acceptance to design a template or file. If the community wants to help design it, or even to prevent if from being done, it can do so. But "preventing" could be problematic if it involves interfering with the individual freedom of initiative of users, something which is, in fact, very important to the project. If there is harm expected, let that be stated, so we can examine it, and if there is disagreement as to how to proceed, there is the full process of dispute resolution available to us. If enough of us can agree on a file format, I'm assuming, we will start to use the file, and we will let other users know that they can use it. If anything needs to be in that file or in the documentation to warn users that it isn't recognized by the community, well, help to make sure it's there. We could have competing file formats, by the way. It's just a little more complicated to analyze. One thing I'm doing here is trying to come up with a format that will be of wider application, it is not designed just for Wikipedia, but for any WikiMedia application.--Abd (talk) 06:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Many experiments were begun before formal community approval arrived. Proposed deletion, for example. Absidy (talk) 06:57, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Not really. PROD started with a proposal that included an experimental period, but it didn't start right away. It was publicized widely, and by the time the experiment started, there was clear consensus behind the experiment. Mangojuice^talk 07:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the history at Wikipedia:Experiment/Results indicates that experimentation began rather soon after the proposal was made. Absidy (talk) 07:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

We're three levels too deep here. The problem is that this is a really bad idea. I object to it, and so has almost every other user besides the two of you who have commented here. It's an attempt to emphasize vote counts, to encourage votes without reasoning, to endorse the idea that actually participating in discussions/debates and understanding them is not necessary. It has all those problems and more: sockpuppetry, overhead in implementing the system, overhead in community time to learn about it, potential for gaming in myriad ways. And what does it benefit? Our decision making process works fine the way it is. There is no deficiency that has been pointed to anywhere that this would fix. This has been marked as {{rejected}} for these reasons by two different editors, and yet you want to move ahead with it, as if the idea has no relevant dissent. Just because this "could" exist using only individual self-expression doesn't mean that it should, nor does it mean we should just see what happens. Mangojuice^talk 07:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

What are you going to do about it? Absidy (talk) 07:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

They speak loudly but carry a small stick

Abd, it seems pretty obvious at this point that none of our opponents have the balls to actually do anything to stop this proposal, beyond posting a few mostly-unheeded comments at the Village Pump. Accordingly, I think we can stop wasting our time responding to them and just focus on making the project a success. Absidy (talk) 08:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, if that's your attitude, I will soon be nominating the page for deletion/rejection at WP:MFD. If you were sincere about listening to the community, you wouldn't say something like that responding to us is a "waste of time". Mangojuice^talk 13:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Generally a very effective way to kill an unworkable proposal is for the community to ignore it until the participants lose interest. We've found that when individuals come forward with an idea, their maternal instincts all too often blind them to the idea's flaws or to the community's overall response. In such a case, if polite explanation fails, it's usually not worth our time and effort to edit war over a {{rejected}} tag.

Per Mangojuice, there's always the 'tough love' approach of MfD (which for a policy proposal will almost never delete the page, but will come back with a firm {rejected} tag). I don't know that such a step is necessary yet, but I do offer my sympathy and condolences to the editors who are going to waste an awful lot of their free time setting up tables, macros, and bots that are going to ultimately be ignored – if not scorned – by admins who monitor Wikipedia's consensus-judging processes. Sorry. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Rejected tag

This idea is terrible. The only place proxies are used for voting that I know about is in corporations. Shareholders in corporations have a stake based on the amount of money they invest in the company. Wikipedia users have a stake in any given deletion discussion equal to the time that they put into that discussion, reading the article and the arguments made by other users and searching google and reading the sources they find there and writing their position. If I don't put that time into the matter at hand, I have no stake in it, and my opinion doesn't matter. Accordingly, I've marked this proposal as rejected. Darkspots (talk) 12:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia decision processes are not polls.

There is a widely help consensus that decisions on wikipedia should be based on weight of argument, rather than number of votes. See WP:Consensus and WP:DEMOCRACY. The most compelling reason for this is that we have no way of knowing who the real person behind an account is, so voting is an open invitation to sockpuppetry.

For this reason the proposal have little utility. There is very few wikipedia processes where numbers count. This argument has been raised earlier on this page and was then met with, but then it does little harm either. The objection is false, several processes on wikipedia has the appearance of beeing votes. This is a problem for us, but one we have been unable to find a way to deal with. The harm this proposal causes if it was given approval as policy is the strengthening of the appearance that these processes is votes, and that the number of people holding a certain view is the deciding factor when discussions is closed.

The purported problem that this proposal seeks to address, ie. that we have a participation bias on wikipedia. Is dealt with by the fact that no decision made is ever irrevocable. See WP:CCC. Taemyr (talk) 15:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes. That's indeed how Wikipedia compensates for some kinds of participation bias. Others, however, still exist. There are two problems not addressed by the current system. First, while it is efficient in certain ways (imagine what would happen if everyone participated in every decision, or even if everyone participated in one decision -- without voting, which is about the only way to deal with participation bias on a large scale, and which would introduce numerous other problems), it is also extraordinarily inefficient as the scale gets larger, and more and more effort is spent pushing Sisyphus's boulder back up the hill just to keep things the way they are, or to make small improvements. How much effort went into the debate over WP:Rollback? Something that would have been easy to fix if it wasn't working? What was wrong with the idea that admins could delegate the rollback tool. If WP:PRX had been in place and widely used, it would have been obvious that such delegation should be on the personal authority and responsibility of the delegating administrator, who should be able to revoke it. Distributed authority, distributed decision-making. It's actually the wiki way.

As to the second problem, there is a much more serious participation bias caused by differential levels of experience with the Wikipedia decision-making system, which has become increasingly arcane and difficult to penetrate for newcomers. My guess is that the bulk of serious edits (article creation in particular) is being done by editors who have no clue about AfD, nor about what to do when encountering editorial conflicts. In my RfA, there was vote canvassing, User:Yellowbeard. There is a serious contradiction that has become clear to me. What's wrong with canvassing? After all, if votes don't count, is there any negative consequence to a process by the multiplication of identical votes, which the closing administrator may freely disregard, as Kim Bruning showed in the closing of the MfD on this article? If canvassing results in new arguments appearing and those arguments are spurious, again, no harm. And if it results in new, cogent and controlling arguments, then canvassing has helped. A delegable proxy network, if used, could facilitate and make this efficient, because a proxy network is really an information filter. It's not voting, though it's possible to use it for such. It's a distributed information filtering and processing device. But it's going to take some years, perhaps, and probably seeing some demonstration, before most Wikipedia editors will be able to understand this. Instead, all they see is WP:NOTAVOTE.

Look, some people think there is no problem. Others think there is. What to do about that? Do we have a debate over whether or not there is a problem? I'd suggest not, actually. It's highly inefficient, and basically wrong-headed. If some people have a problem, they have a problem, and it is perfectly legitimate for them to think about and even experiment with solutions to the problem. The thinking is properly unrestricted, though apparently some really want to prevent that consideration, hence the heavy Delete vote. Get this idea ought of here, it's disruptive. The experiments are more questionable. Depends on how they are conducted. Do they create a problem or burden for those who think there is no problem? If so, then, obviously, there would be a new problem introduced by experimenting. However, again, standard Wikipedia efficient process: if it ain't broken, don't fix it. In this case, if there is no harm from some users acting in certain ways, don't prevent it on the theory that someday they might create a problem. However, in this whole affair, there was an air of "crush this before it starts." There was massive assumption of bad faith. I.e., no matter how much the proposers of this (and there were two editors, basically, contrary to claims that this was only a ring of sock puppets, and the editor who used multiple accounts did not violate sock policy and did not conduct himself in such a way as to create an impression of more support than was accurate, for any one paying attention, and, in fact, would it have mattered if there were one or two more supporters than two, but the same comments? I can't see how. The whole sock accusation was moot. The account changes did not take place out of any desire to create a show of support, I know the user and I've discussed it with him extensively by phone (after he was blocked.) We weren't voting, and, when it came to some voting in some places, there was only one vote, if that, from the whole "ring." One vote in two polls: an AfD and the MfD for this article. There was no formal RfC, which is what I'd expected would be the next step for a new proposal.

I did not seek this proposal at this time, I thought it premature, the foundation had not been laid. But, contrary to quite a bit of suspicion that floated around, Sarsaparilla was not my puppet, neither sock nor meat variety. He made his own decisions, including quite a few that I did not agree with. That's how the world improves. People with different points of view seek to cooperate and find consensus, and out of this, results can be better than either one alone could accomplish.--Abd (talk) 22:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

A bad idea

The objections to this proposal have been well stated in the various discussions above. I agree with all of them, and feel that they far outweigh any benefits. This is a very bad idea. Reject it. Blueboar (talk) 15:54, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Gamesmanship

In my opinion, this is a very bad idea. First, it is based on the false idea that votes are more important than informed consensus on Wikipedia. Moreover, it would clearly encourage gamemanship. With proxies, it's even easier to have 10 sockpuppets with the same viewpoint. You don't have to worry about constantly logging off and on different account and changing IPs. You just setup your proxies once, and get 10 times the vote permanently. If you think this is unrealistic, consider that, User:Sarsaparilla, User:Ron Duvall, and User:Absidy, the "developers" (and I use the plural with extreme reluctance) are in fact the same person. Yet, they are both listed at Wikipedia:Delegable_proxy/Table, effectively giving him 3 votes if this scheme passes. Superm401 - Talk 15:59, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

They are no longer there. At least one and possibly more relevant files have been deleted by administrative action. The current Table does not have the proxy assignments described, and because of file deletion, I can't determine what the claim above means. Below, Absidy seems to acknowledge that there were some multiple assignments as a test -- which would, at this point, have been completely legitimate; however, I have seen no edits that would indicate that; but if the files were deleted, they would not show up in Contrib histories to an ordinary user like me. I do not understand why they were deleted. From my understanding, the proxy assignments at a certain point, the last I saw the Table, were real, but the context meant that they had no significance other than as an expression of relationship. There was only one developer, who, for other reasons, changed account names. In a real usage of proxy tables, such behavior would be quite visible. (As I see it, whenever proxy analysis of a situation produced odd results, an investigation of such things as edit history would reveal the phenomena complained about here.) What I find really odd is that policy is clear, we don't vote, so what significance is there to a claim that one would get ten times the vote? I.e., right now, a real puppet master can log in with ten different accounts and vote ten times, and in a large poll, or even in some small ones, it might not be visible or detected. Now, if there were ten proxies assigned, and the puppet master votes (say), there is one vote -- and one argument -- visible, and proxy expansion is only seen by someone who cares about it, less damage is done, plus what is going on is more visible. An idiosyncratic editor is trusted by so many users? Perhaps it's time for checkuser! (And, indeed, that happened here, Absidy and I were checkusered, though there wasn't any false appearance, it is clear that we were trusting each other, and the suspicion of sock puppetry was simply ABF. What it looks like to me is that, should the experiment that was proposed here ever see wide adoption, there would be fewer direct votes and arguments, not more, making discussion and analysis simpler, not more difficult. What has been missed here -- and it was missed all through the MfD for this article -- is that no changes were proposed to !vote procedure, and, as I stated before, I'd oppose such changes. Yet respondents continued to believe, apparently, that this was about voting, period. I think this may be from the association with Proxy voting. But proxies are used for many other purposes. This was not called Wikipedia:Delegable proxy voting, but only Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. No specific use for the proxies was proposed, though some possible applications where at various points described. Not proposed, speculatively described. What was proposed -- and done -- was to create some file formats and create a test proxy table here and proxy files for two users (or more, but I never saw those, so I certainly didn't accept them, and again and again we suggested that proxies not accepted were to be disregarded. My own proxy file, the one that was linked from the Proxy table in this article space, was deleted by User:Newyorkbrad without notification to me, contrary to policy, on spurious grounds, I'll be asking him about that. That is the only proxy file that was from me, linked here. I created, also, a test file and test table in my own userspace; those are still there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 00:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Also note that I have nominated the mainspace article Delegable proxy for deletion. Superm401 - Talk 16:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Given that the AfD will probably result in Delete (an outcome I consider reasonable at this point, though redirect is more appropriatge), it might be a good idea to, instead of deleting it, move it out of article space to a subpage here, and make any references to it in this project point to that subpage. Alternatively, it can be placed in my user space -- as, effectively, an essay -- and similarly pointed to, so that the proposal here continues to make sense. (or nonsense, but at least more thoroughly explained nonsense than would be the case without that action.)

Actually, if redirect/merge is the outcome at the AfD, which is what I actually support -- but I couldn't vote there due to COI -- then no moves would be necessary; the pointer from here would be to a history page.

Any thoughts or objections? --Abd (talk) 00:24, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Abd, check it out. Your hypothesis that users would easily detect sockpuppetry-based attempted manipulation of a delegable proxy system has been confirmed by the Sarsaparilla/Ron Duvall/Absidy experiment. Reviewing the discussions in various pages, it appears all the observers discerned that those proxies were improper and to be disregarded. What shall our next experiment be? Absidy (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Wait. You were experimenting with sockpuppetry in making those accounts? See WP:POINT. Mangojuice^talk 16:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

He can't answer, as you know now. He's blocked, and not for sock puppetry. I have been unable to confirm what he did or did not do as claimed above, because user files in userspace have been deleted by admin action (why?). At the point that he wrote that, I think he had already decided to abandon Wikipedia (after almost four years as a very active editor), and "experiment" may have referred to what he is now working on off-wiki, or it may have some other referent. This whole project was an experiment, it proposed an experiment, and testing the effect of various proxy assignment patterns would have been part of that. As far as I know, he did not use multiple accounts in rotation, but only sequentially and I know enough about the reasons to know that it was not done for Sock reasons. When I last looked at the table, before the S hit the F, it showed two assignments: one from Absidy to me, and one from me to Absidy, both accepted. No others. Now, he may have added proxy assignments as Absidy to other user spaces, which would have been transparent (the intention here was to actually provide diffs for easy verification but it would have been easy without that). In an operating system, having the proxy files in userspace, created by the user, would automatically inform the user of any changes to the proxy file, and the user would have absolute authority over that file, the user could blank it without 3RR restriction. This system was actually proposed, I think, by Mangojuice, and is an aspect of this that will be useful later. Lest people jump to conclusions, "later" may be with other MediaWiki installations, which are afoot. Wikipedia is not the universe.--Abd (talk) 00:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

No, all the observers did not determine that. Some did, but enough didn't that the "experiment" in violating WP:POINT proved this policy should be rejected. Superm401 - Talk 22:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

This is really weird. This is Wikipedia. It only takes one observer to notice an illegitimate action, and it's all over for the abuser. Let me say this again. It only takes one. So, if the claims above are true, it did make the point. And since it wasn't disruption, the application of WP:POINT is, well, off the POINT. It would be disruptive if the tables were being used for something real, which doesn't make much sense if the proposal is being rejected, does it? But this whole thing was explicitly labelled as experimental. I know it's hard to keep all this in mind! --Abd (talk) 00:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Watch out!

This page was originally created by someone using a small number of sockpuppets. There was in fact very little support for this proposal at all. It is kept in the historic record as an example of manipulation. --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Kim, you got most of this right, but not the sock puppet thing. This page was created by one user, Sarsaparilla, but Sarsaparilla was abandoned as an account and that user began using Ron Duvall, consistently. While policy did not require that Ron Duvall be explicitly connected with Sarsaparilla, he should have done so, and promptly acknowledged the connection when the issue was raised. But it was already blatant, anybody who cared could have found it in minutes, and, indeed, that is what happened. Ron Duvall was also, for different reasons, abandoned and Absidy taken up; this time the connection was properly noted with account creation. Yes, it could be confusing, though depending on number of users supporting an idea when considering the idea is dicey, as you know. Indeed, it's probable that this proposal would have been a little more successful if he had not changed accounts. So the caveat is appropriate, but not the charges of sock puppetry. It was not that. I never attempted to spread news of this proposal to people I knew would be interested. Absidy did "canvass," and whether or not that was legitimate, I'll leave to future generations to decide. It was not clearly illegitimate, but he was committing wiki-suicide by administrator at that point, trying to ensure that he would not be tempted to return to editing here, and he got what he wanted, all too easily in my opinion. Major point is that this is an idea that, at this point, is only going to be understood by a few percent of people who look at it, if that. This "experiment" proved that to Absidy. I already knew it, the outcome was utterly unsurprising, predictable. Yes, you were right, in fact, about placing the Rejected tag when you did, but not procedurally correct; and, in fact, I suspect that you also knew this, because you didn't object (or any serious objection?) when I removed that tag. As I recall, you said you didn't want us to waste our time: my response was that it was our time to waste, and, please, if anyone thought this a waste of time, please don't waste time arguing against it with insistent arguments of why it was a bad idea. I knew why it was unlikely to not be accepted, and Absidy was here long enough to know what the risks were. (He's been here for about four years, much longer than I, and is intimately familiar with Wikipedia process and politics. But he's less than half my age, and impulsive. It is part of how people like him learn rapidly. Sometimes they get their fingers burnt, but I have not seen him cause actual harm.)

There is an aspect of AGF that is often missed. When someone proposes something, and obviously thinks it a good idea, to immediately claim it's a bad idea, with insistent argument, particularly before inquiring carefully about what the idea actually is, is to assume that the proposer may be well-intentioned (normal AGF) but is stupid or ignorant (subtle incivility or personal attack). In fact, like all AGF violations, it's disruptive. --Abd (talk) 00:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)