I feel pretty strongly that we should not mount this slippery slope, in part because that slope will end up being a very long slope.

PerlMonks is not an all-wiki world. And it is not primarily an archive of items to be perfected.

We could update the node and add a note saying who added the link(s) and why. But that isn't much better than the person who wants the link(s) replying with the link(s). Or providing a new node that meets their desired level of perfection.

The new node could even be located in one of the several areas where PerlMonks does use collaborative improvement to try to provide "finished" material (Categorized Q+A or the site FAQlets). Then the information would also be easier to find.

Or it could go into Tutorials which is a bit of a hybrid (even more so than Cat Q+A). Each individual tutorial is owned and (we hope) maintained by the person who contributed it. If a tutorial becomes abandoned, then anyone can offer a replacement or the tutorial's ownership can be transferred to a group who can maintain it collaboratively.

Then there is the wi(l)der question of whether we should turn PerlMonks into an all-wiki world. If so, then we'd need to remove most of the current ownership restrictions as consider-vote-janitor is a heck of a load to just get a few links added and won't scale for wide-spread improvements to historical contributions.

Of course, throwing out most vestages of ownership means voting and XP don't make sense any more. And I think XP is an important part of why PerlMonks works for many (the site certainly doesn't work for all, but trying to make one site fit all is often a good way to make most find it less fitting).

The most I could see is allowing nodes to eventually become wikis, sort of like copyright (before Disney). If an account becomes abandoned (not used for some specific long period of time), then that monk's nodes become wikis that can be updated by those of sufficient level. For active members, they could donate nodes to become wikis after the node is over a certain age (like a couple of weeks). Voting on wiki'd nodes would not affect the XP of their former owner.

So it'd be an interesting and somewhat grand experiment and a bit of work.

But I don't think we should go "improving" everyone's old nodes. Janitors should restrict themselves to cleaning up messes (hazards to navigation). Feel free to /msg authors to suggest improvements (or use the other suggestions above).

- tye        

In reply to Re: Should janitors add links to posts? (how much wiki) by tye
in thread Should janitors add links to posts? by davido

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