Wikipedia talk:Service awards

Why?

In a unorganized organization (organized unorganization?) such as Wikipedia, moral authority is important. Senior editor badges:

Give a bit of formal recognition to editors who have worked long and hard.
Allows other editors to see at once that they are dealing with a very experienced editor, and (hopefully) give that person's comments a bit of extra weight.
If the "no administrators" option is used, it gives editors something to work toward besides administratorship (which, in theory, should not be status symbol but which is in fact a Very Big Deal). The fact that administratorship is a Very Big Deal warps the RfA process and skews the ranks of aministrators to include people who aren't necessarily suited. The senior editor badges are just badges, but pace Napoleon, men will strive quite a lot for a bit of ribbon.
If, on the hand, the "stable articles" option is used instead, obviously senior editors would peform a necessary function.Herostratus 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wait a minute... there's no vetting?

Right. Of course, a few people who achive senior editorship might be bad or disruptive editors, but, really, how many bad or distruptive editors get 10,000 edits? There are a few Nobel Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Medal of Freedom winners, Legion of Honor winners, and what have you that are undeserving. But not many, and we know who they are and can discount them commensurately.

And yes, senior editorship can never be taken away, even if an editor is banned for life (although it wouldn't mean much then, would it?). After all, even Benedict Arnold has a monument at Saratoga, and properly so, notwithstanding his later activities.

In other words, it is completely removed from politics. Herostratus 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the stable articles variation is adopted, how will the bit be set?

Well, once the backlog is cleared, this should not be an onerous task - editors achieving the requirements could contact a bureacrat, who would check their edit history and set the bit; not very many would likely be achieving the requirements in a given time period.Herostratus 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But doesn't that mean that bad or disruptive senior editors could mess up stable articles?

Yes, of course. But among the editors with 10,000+ editrs, the great majority would be good editors, and it ought to be easy to overwhelm the rare bad editor with sheer numbers.Herostratus 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Won't this encourage editcountitis?

I suppose so, yes. Still, you can't get to 10,000 edits/two years without doing some serious good work and learning a lot. Well, I suppose you could, if you really set your mind to making 10,000 spelling corrections or whatever (which would still be very useful), but how many people would do that? Anyone could see that that's what they'd done, so how useful would senior editorship be to them anyway. If it gets people to want to build up their edit counts that high, that's a good thing, isn't it? And anyway, it's all worth it to remove the entire process complely from politics.Herostratus 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]