Wikipedia:SelfSelection

This page is about tags that users can put in articles. For information on tags that edit filters can put on edit histories, see Wikipedia:SelSel.

The Doctrine of self-selection

The doctrine of self-selection is the embodies the idea that users who circumventing the notability policy would have to pay a penalty in work and time far in excess of what would be needed for a notable article. Policy that does not embody the self-selection doctrine will allow foreign factors to profit and eventually spoil all of Wikipedia for everyone.

The Good worker

A simplified illustration of how self-selection based on the lecture .works is seen in the job market. Employers are ready to offer a significant incentive in wages to attract good workers. While anyone may be a good workers - there is no way to tell this at hiring time. But there is a self-selecting criteria - a candidate who has an MBA from a respectable university. Getting an MBA is a good self-selecting criterion because it is both expensive to acquire and because it is difficult to acquire. Both these factors work together to ensure that bad workers will not be able to get MBA.

How first of all the cost of getting an MBA is a penalty that both future good and bad workers must pay. But the pay increase is worth this penalty alone. However good workers will ace their studies while bad workers will have to struggle and may require another year - the alternative is to get paid somewhat lower wages without the MBA. As such the MBA creates an asymmetric penalty which is not worth the extra effort.

Self Selection of Articles

Articles should self-select through policy. This means that tat the level of the article a self-selection mechanism should be operating. So that writing a featured article on say Maddona should be about Sarah Jessica Parker would be easier in terms of finding sources, collaborators, and having many readers checking facts.

This means that the brunt of the work of creating the article and of maintaining it should fall in people interested in having that article in Wikipedia. These are people who are have a vested interest or who are simply knowledgeable about the subject.

Any process that places a greater part of the work on the community will ultimately fail. (e.g. continuous updating the count of movies for an article on a porn star ).

In the CSD guideline is a policy called WP:Before. THis list a large number of task that should be done before nominating an article for speedy deletion. However, if all these are to be properly addressed no article would ever get deleted. In due course admins will only mention this policy in case where they think a CSD in undue.

now consider the life cycle of an article

1. An initial version is made.
2. A challenge of WP:N is made at WP:CSD or WP:Afd
3. The article survives it must still comply with the rest of WP:Policies.
4. Sources and facts may be added or challenged.
   1. If more facts and sources are added it will gradually improve and eventually become a featured article.
   2. If enough sources and facts are challenged it will go back to Csd or AfD and be deleted.

Self Selection of Sources

Sources introduced into articles should also self-select. It is here that some of the greatest distortion of policy take place. Norms and requirements are ignored to weed out bad sources are ignored allowing non notable articles to be introduced.

Self Selection of Editors & Admins

Editors and Admins candidates are also weeded out by policy.

• excessive use of WP:Jargon,
• the great number of places users must know where to coordinate
• technical knowledge required to contribute

contribute to a rapid decline of editors while favouring more experienced ones.

• mistakes at CSD
• missing edit summaries
• failure to work on a featured articles

and about 16 other criteria can self-select users into the Admin groups

Caveats

While self-selection is an important factor in creating and enforcing policy there could be cases where other concerns may out rank it. For example, as editors grow scarce it become even more important not to weed out potential editors and administrators early by imposing the self-selection criteria developed in the era of unbounded community growth.