User talk:Hammersoft
Thanks.
Hi, Thanks for alerting me with the copyrighted image in my user page. i have removed that. Doctor muthu's muthu wanna talk ? 04:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I thank you as well. I have removed my image too. GO STAR TREK! (I know, that was random...) - Robodude2000 (talk) 19:28, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
- Fascinating! :) --Hammersoft (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Hammersoft Talk News: Consensus is a popularity contest
 | Prior editions of Hammersoft Talk News are available. |
There was an interesting article this week in The Signpost titled "How social ties influence admin votes". Substantial research was done, analyzing more than a million interactions between pairs of users and any effect such pairings had on outcomes of RfAs. The short of it is this; RfA is a popularity contest. OMG!?! WTF!?! NWIH!!! Gee, are you surprised?
If you think this is isolated to RfA, stop taking your qualudes. The drama boards (read; the various noticeboards) are ripe with the stinking stench of clique dominated popularity influenced agreement. It doesn't take months of research to reach this conclusion. You see an issue that a friend of yours is involved in, you're more likely to take your friend's side in a debate. There's a multitude of reasons for this behavior. There is an 'in' crowd at the drama boards. Just a peek under that cloak of nicety is a harsh reality; 3/4ths of all edits to WP:AN/I are made by just 10% of the editors there.
The result of this is a mass contradiction in Wikipedia. We were established on the highly egalitarian ground that all editors in good standing are equal. Yet, the drama boards are anything but equal. It's like all the worst nightmares from our teenage years. Don't belong to the 'in' crowd? You're screwed.
That is NOT what our purpose is here. Those of you reading, I encourage you to stand on your own. Don't lockstep with someone else just because they're your 'friend'. Do the right thing, and stand up for what is right. What is popular is not always right. What is right is not always popular. You can aspire to a higher purpose here. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thumbs up! Eric Cable | Talk 14:20, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- This just hits the nail on the head. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 16:06, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Is this really that surprising? I think it's human nature. Humans are programmed to behave certain ways in social situations, including developing different levels of trust for people with whom they become familiar. Once you have some extended interaction with someone (assuming that interaction is mostly positive), then you can get a good idea of who this person is, how they behave, and how much you trust that they share your goals for the project. Therefore, you would be much more likely to support an RfA nomination (or agree with them on the drama boards, etc.) for someone that for someone that you trust, or someone with whom you have developed some minimal level of a relationship (as compared to how much you would support a complete stranger about whom you know nothing). Calling it a "popularity contest" or a "beauty pageant" is one way to look at it, the other way to look at it is: "this person has interacted with a lot of editors, and those editors interpreted their interactions as a sign that this person can be trusted". —SW— chatter 17:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- It's the abdication of thought. If there are 10 threads featuring "John Doe" commenting on the thread in opposition of something, and you trust John Doe, are you therefore going to trust John Doe and voice opposition too? Are you now just a clone of John Doe? We can do better than that. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:01, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- I don't see the big deal. It's not the abdication of thought, it's just a normal part of the human thought/decision-making process. If we're evaluating a comment by a user whose opinion we trust and respect, we naturally take a shortcut in our thought process and say "well, he's been right about this kind of stuff in the past, so I'm going to add a few confidence points to my decision that his comments are well-informed". To not do this would be idiotic. The brain is just a sophisticated pattern detector. If we see someone make 100 well-informed, educated statements in a row, it would be a waste of time to not assume that his 101st comment is probably going to be at the same level. This doesn't mean that we have to blindly assume that everything that he says is gospel, but we can have an additional level of confidence in his comments. Do you not trust the things that your mother and father tell you more than something a strange tells you? Is parenthood/childhood just a popularity contest? —SW— soliloquize 18:25, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- If you take that shortcut, you're not evaluating the situation on its own merits. Instead, you're abdicating responsibility of reading and understanding the situation and coming to your own conclusion. No user here decides for me what is right and wrong, all the way up through ArbCom and Jimbo. You can aspire to that too, rather than just assuming they're right and voicing agreement with them because they spoke it. The least you can do is if you are not prepared to familiarize yourself with a subject, is to not comment at all. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- While it might be true that you're not evaluating the situation on its own merits, it's not necessarily true (and it would be an assumption of bad faith to assume that it is true). Your trust/respect of the user who is commenting is one of the merits on which you are evaluating the situation. I agree that if it's the only merit on which you're evaluating, then that's a problem, but in practice I think you'll find it very difficult to find anyone who operates at either extreme (i.e. someone who evaluates a comment based solely on the user who said it, or someone whose evaluation of someone's comments is not based in any way on who the user is who said it). —SW— express 19:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- And what I'm pointing out is that the study found in WP:RFA, there's an awful lot of the former, and not very much of the latter. I think that is also quite true at the drama boards. I believe we can do better. That's what I was asking the readers to strive for. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Not to drag out this conversation any longer than it needs to be, but I don't see anything in that study which suggests that people are blindly supporting an RfA candidate when they see that another influential editor has supported the RfA. It only shows that an influential voter influences their decision to support/participate in the RfA to some (undefined) degree, which is remarkably unsurprising to me. On the contrary, I frankly find that jumping on the whole "RfA is a popularity contest" bandwagon is just an unoriginal parroting of remarks made previously... perhaps by someone who is influential to you?
Cheers. —SW— confabulate 20:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- I disagree. But, if it's of any consolation to you, you're wholly uninfluential to me, even if you do change your sig at the drop of a hat :) --Hammersoft (talk) 20:22, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Not to drag out this conversation any longer than it needs to be, but I don't see anything in that study which suggests that people are blindly supporting an RfA candidate when they see that another influential editor has supported the RfA. It only shows that an influential voter influences their decision to support/participate in the RfA to some (undefined) degree, which is remarkably unsurprising to me. On the contrary, I frankly find that jumping on the whole "RfA is a popularity contest" bandwagon is just an unoriginal parroting of remarks made previously... perhaps by someone who is influential to you?
- Is this really that surprising? I think it's human nature. Humans are programmed to behave certain ways in social situations, including developing different levels of trust for people with whom they become familiar. Once you have some extended interaction with someone (assuming that interaction is mostly positive), then you can get a good idea of who this person is, how they behave, and how much you trust that they share your goals for the project. Therefore, you would be much more likely to support an RfA nomination (or agree with them on the drama boards, etc.) for someone that for someone that you trust, or someone with whom you have developed some minimal level of a relationship (as compared to how much you would support a complete stranger about whom you know nothing). Calling it a "popularity contest" or a "beauty pageant" is one way to look at it, the other way to look at it is: "this person has interacted with a lot of editors, and those editors interpreted their interactions as a sign that this person can be trusted". —SW— chatter 17:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
