Brian, I think we may be talking past each other. I'm Mr. Socio-technical systems. I thought what was being requested was a way to detect bots.
I maintain my own bots, work extensively with product teams, and have a deep and abiding familiarity with the complexity of designing effective tools for WIkipedia. - J On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 4:14 AM bawolff <[email protected]> wrote: > I actually meant a different type of maintenance. > > Maintaining the encyclopedia (and other wiki projects) is of course an > activity that needs software support. > > But software is also something that needs maintenance. Technology, > standards, circumstances change over time. Software left alone will > "bitrot" over time. A long term technical strategy to do anything needs to > account for that, plan for that. One off feature development does not. > Democratically directed one-off feature development accounts for that even > less. > > In response to Johnathan: > So lets say that ORES/magic AI detects something is a bot. Then what? > That's a small part of the picture. In fact you don't even need AI to do > this, plenty of the vandal bots have generic programming language > user-agents (AI could of course be useful for long-tail here, but there's > much simpler stuff to start off with). Do we expose this to abusefilter > somehow? Do we add a tag to mark it in RC/watchlist? Do we block it? Do we > rate limit it? What amount of false positives are acceptable? What is the > UI for all this? To what extent is this hard coded, and to what extent do > communities control the feature? etc > > We don't need products to detect bots. Making products to detect bots is > easy. We need product managers to come up with socio-technical systems that > make sense in our special context. > > -- > Brian > > On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 8:36 PM Pine W <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Since we're discussing how the Tech Wishlist works then I will comment > on a > > few points specifically regarding that wishlist. > > > > 1. A gentle correction: the recommendations are ranked by vote, not by > > consensus. This has pros and cons. > > > > 2a. If memory serves me correctly, the wishlist process was designed by > WMF > > rather than designed by community consensus. I may be wrong about this, > but > > in my search of historical records I have not found evidence to the > > contrary. I think that redesigning the process would be worth > considering, > > and I hope that a redesign would help to account for the types of needs > > that bawolff described in his second paragraph. > > > > 2b.. I think that it's an overstatement to say that "nobody ever votes > for > > maintenance until its way too late and everything is about to explode". I > > think that many non-WMF people are aware of our backlogs, the endless > > requests for help and conflict resolution, and the many challenges of > > maintaining what we have with the current population of skilled and good > > faith non-WMF people. However, I have the impression that there is a > common > > *tendency* among humans in general to chase shiny new features instead of > > doing mostly thankless work, and I agree that the tech wishlist is > unlikely > > even in a redesigned form to be well suited for long term planning. I > think > > that WMF's strategy process may be a better way to plan for the long > term, > > including for maintenance activities that are mostly thankless and do not > > necessarily correlate with increasing someone's personal power, making > > their resume look better, or having fun. Fortunately the volunteer > > mentality of many non-WMF people means that we do have people who are > > willing to do mostly thankless, mundane, and/or stressful work, and I > think > > that some of us feel that our work is important for maintaining the > > encyclopedia even when we do not enjoy it, but we have a finite supply of > > time from such people. > > > > Pine > > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)> _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
