Editing Encyclopedia:Historical archive/Policy/Approval mechanism (section)

===[[Meta:Legion of Trolls|Legion of Trolls]] proposal===

Trolls are not here to ''approve'', and usually reject views of ''experts'' who must be certified by someone trolls grumble about.  So one would expect them to be disgruntled by definition about such a mechanism.  However, paradoxically, almost all trolls think they apply ''clear and reasonably stringent standards''.
The problem is that each troll has his own standards, unlike those of others!

That said, there is much to agree on:  the mechanism itself must be genuinely easy to use, nothing slow and rigorous is of any value, the progress of Wikipedia and its proven process should not be impeded, and the results of the approval can be ignored.  Where trolls would disagree is that verifying the expert's credentials are of any value.  Any such mechanism can be exploited, as trolls know full well, often being experts at forging new identities and the deliberate disruption of any credentialing mechanism. 

One might ignore this, and the trolls, but, it remains that what goes on at Wikipedia is largely a process not of approval but of ''impulse'' and then ''disapproval''.  As with [[morality]] and [[diplomacy]], we move from systems of informal to [[formal disapproval]].  Today, even our [[reality game show]]s demonstrate the broad utility of this approach, with [[disapproval voting]] of uninteresting or unwanted or undesired candidates a well-understood paradigm.

So, imagine an entirely different way to achieve the "desirements", one that is a natural extension of Wikipedia's present process of attempt (stubs, slanted first passes, public domain documents, broad rewrites of external texts) and disapproval (reverts, neutralizing, link adds, rewrites, [[NPOV dispute]] and deletions).  Rather than something new (trolls hate what is new) and unproven that will simply repeat all the mistakes of academia.  Imagine a mechanism that

* Begins with all approved, and makes it possible to broaden or narrow the selection of approvers (e.g., one person might only wish authors who have phd's, another would allow for anyone who has made an effort to approve any articles) for each reader, or supported class of reader, simply by disapproving editors.
* Allows for extracting topic-oriented sets (e.g., in order to produce an "Encyclopedia of Music") relying on [[metadata]] that is specific to each such supported class of reader, not part of the Wikipedia as a whole
* Exploits ongoing feedback ("I don't care about this." or "I don't understand this.") to adjust the list of articles of interest.  Each user can begin from some class (like [http://simple.wikipedia.com Simple-English]-only readers), and adjust if they like.
* Potentially, exploits more feedback on authors ("I can't believe this." or "I find this irrelevant.") to adjust also the list of disapproved authors/editors.
* Credits each [[m:troll|troll]] who has driven off a disapproved author or editor.  OK, that's a joke, but what do you expect, I'm a troll neh neh neh...

By embracing and extending and formalizing the disapproval, boredom and disdain that all naturally feel as a part of [[misanthropy]], we can arrive at a pure and effective knowledge resource.  One that rarely tells us what we don't care about.  And, potentially, one that can let us avoid those who we find untruthful.