This may be unpopular, but I am getting tired of all the questions to enter a space or create an account, not just in the lemmygrad-sphere, but basically every leftist space on the internet.
I wanted to create an account on ProleWiki, but to do so I need to pass an exam.
FIRST SET (please answer all 8 questions)
SECOND SET (choose 5 questions to answer)
I have already answered pretty much the same questions to get on lemmygrad and matrix. If I knew I’d be asked the same things over and over, I would have saved them from the first (or second) time I typed them all out. Mind you, lemmygrad isn’t the first place I visited/joined, so I have answered a similar set of questions probably 6-7 times in the past few years.
The biggest problem with the questions is that they don’t work. As in, they’re not going to filter out any bad actors, because people intent on joining for destructive purposes aren’t going to be deterred by a few questions they can answer with a quick google search. Bad actors will also know what answers you expect to see and write those. It’s a bit like when the US border control gives you the green form with the question “Are you a terrorist?” But the questions will turn away people like me who are simply tired of writing an exam just to create an account on a webpage.
I have always had problems with tests/exams as in I have a problem they exist and I literally have traumas from them lmao. The pressure, the uncertainty, the doubt… I mean there’s a reason people still have anxiety dreams about missing a test or not studying long after they have left school.
By all means, have questions in the signup forms, but:
Fewer questions
Two to three questions max. You don’t need theory questions, they can be googled. You don’t need LGBTQ questions, that should just be a statement “Here we respect LGBTQ people and their right to exist, use pronouns people ask, don’t discriminate, etc. violation of this rule will result in a ban, possibly permanent.” Done.
Right kinds of questions
If you want a theory/reading question ask something like: What was the book/article/work that got you into Marxism/communism and why? or What’s the most recent work of communist literature (book, article, novel, pamphlet, zine, etc.) that had an impact on you and why?
People will tell you more about themselves by actually talking about themselves rather than answering questions about theory. Not to mention it’s harder to fake being a communist when you have to give your own personal understanding of something that’s not a big issue. Asking about Palestine, DEI, culture war topics doesn’t make sense because again they can look up what you want to hear. But if someone says the most recent work they read is the Capital or Manifesto and they think everyone should be equal then that should raise a red flag (not for being wrong, but for not being genuine).
No wrong kinds of questions
There are some questions you simply shouldn’t ask as a matter of principle.
For example, you have this is number 3 of the mandatory questions for ProleWiki: “3. Have you read our principles? Comment your agreements or objections to their points.”
Since a person filling this out is only requesting an account, asking for comments on the principles may come across as you simply rejecting anyone who doesn’t agree or will want changes. This shouldn’t be a question, but a statement: “These are our principles, joining means you agree to them.” I don’t know how ProleWiki is run if there are meetings where principles are modified/added/removed or if they are set in stone. If set in stone, then it definitely makes no sense to ask.
Questions that are questions, not several questions hidden as one
Asking things is easy, but whoever wrote the questions has no respect for people’s time. This is just way too much work, people have things to do. The time spent answering questions could be spent writing an article for the wiki. There’s an idea! Instead of answering all those questions, just have a list of topics people can write a wiki article on. That wiki article is the entry form. Simple, elegant, dare I say… beautiful?
What’s there now though:
Where did you find ProleWiki from?(1) How familiar are you with it?(2) Comment what made you want to join ProleWiki(3) and what areas you are interested in contributing to.(4)
That is 4 questions.
What current of Marxist thought do you uphold? Describe as thoroughly as needed your path towards your current political perspective.
That is 2 questions, one of them an “essay question”.
Have you read our principles? Comment your agreements or objections to their points.
There are ten subheadings in the principles, with more sub-subheadings. That’s a question and an essay question. Q: 6 E: 2
What is your understanding of gender? Should Marxists support the LGBT community?
2 questions.
What is your position on Joseph Stalin(1) and Mao Zedong?(2) How would you describe their historical role?(3,4) Share any comments or critiques you have regarding them.(5)
5 questions.
What are your thoughts on China,(1) Vietnam,(2) Cuba,(3) DPRK(4) and Laos?(5) Do you believe any of these countries is socialist?(6) Why or why not?(7)
7 questions.
What is settler-colonialism,(1) are there any countries that still fit that description(2) and what should be done regarding them?(3) Further, what is to be done about the decolonization and liberation of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and immigrant groups in your country?(4)
4 questions.
What is your analysis of the situation in Palestine?(1) What do you think of the 2023 October 7 events(2) and the groups involved from both sides of the conflict?(3)
3 questions.
I count 23 regular questions and 2 essay questions. And that’s only the “8” mandatory questions.
TL;DR too many questions to get an account (like ProleWiki, lemmygrad, matrix, but other leftist spaces too). ask fewer (2-3) but more poignant questions. rules about LGBTQ and other rules that aren’t up for discussion shouldn’t be a question but a statement to be accepted or not. answering so many questions is mentally taxing/exhausting.
In regards to Lemmygrad we keep it very simple. I think the questions are the same ones you had to answer back when you made your account, with the addition of a copy-paste job meant to prevent AI (and it works great). There’s essentially 4 questions and you can keep it to one-two lines per answer because we have other systems on top of this one. On a forum like this trolls usually come out pretty quickly and get found out eventually because they keep posting. If they never post then they’re not really a troll and cause no bother.
In my experience trolls and other bad actors actually don’t bother trying to infiltrate the questions, they answer earnestly. Most of the rejections on lemmygrad are bots and people who wouldn’t fit in here, so we direct them to an instance that would be better for them.
I can also shed light on the ProleWiki vetting since I’m involved in fashioning it. We start from the premise that if you are going to be writing long articles on an encyclopedia, then you would be more likely to answer a longer vetting form. Experience tells us that our premise is not entirely wrong for two reasons:
This leads us to believe the barrier to entry is somewhere else and that the vetting form doesn’t factor in all that much.
The questions are designed to tell us a lot about the prospective editor, there’s a need to prevent bots which is a huge problem on Mediawiki, but we also need to make sure new editors are knowledgeable in all topics, i.e. that they are marxists. We want to be sure our editors won’t publish wrong or controversial information based on vibes. Once you get an account you can edit any page, so it’s totally possible that your area of expertise is in economics and you don’t know a lot about philosophy for example, but it works on the honor system and you promise to yourself you won’t edit philosophy pages. If we didn’t ask questions about philosophy we would never know that.
I agree with having people talk about themselves, but I don’t think one necessarily needs open-ended questions for that. What I find with that type of question is that people usually keep it short instead, which ends up providing very little information about them. When evaluating an account request on ProleWiki we normally only have their answers to go with and nothing else. If something is not made explicit in the answers, then we won’t know about that thing, so we need to encourage answers to be exhaustive.
The goal of this exhaustive process is not to gatekeep people but to make sure they have the knowledge required to become autonomous editors basically.
You were also wondering about the Principles. We have edited the principles to reflect editor commentary, e.g. wording or when we see the same point of confusion arise across different account requests. It allows us to see how people interpret our principles and we can also talk to them about that. There’s major disagreements that lead to a request being denied, and then there’s minor disagreements that arise from a reading misunderstanding (we can correct that by talking to the editor afterwards), or that as long as you agree not to reflect that disagreement in your edits is fine to live along with. If the question was simply “repeat that you agree to our principles and will not break them” we would be losing that self-crit component and might also be losing out on some requests because they feel a major disagreement that is actually only minor after we’re able to talk with them about it.
It’s a lengthy process but by our estimations it takes around 45 minutes on average to go through. This is a lot of time for some people and very little for others, but we are mindful of how long the process takes (along with how people discover it and how we can improve all of that package). The website doesn’t save it I think, which is something I’d like it to do, and I also think there’s too much text before the questions proper, but you should be able to copy the questions to Word, answer them at your pace there, and paste back into the PW form when you’re done. That way you don’t have to answer them all in one sitting.
edit: I wanted to add this but forgot. I like the idea of giving people one page to edit to see how they write etc. This is doable through the newish anon edits feature we rolled out some time back. But we might run into the same problem that this only tells us one facet of the prospective editor. But it’s something I can definitely see us explore eventually.
That’s my point. Why should I (or anyone else for that matter) have to answer them again? Maybe there should be a way for people with lemmygrad accounts to skip the questions?
Then the application form should be to write a wiki article for something that doesn’t have one yet, you could have a list of them and people just pick one. It’d be taking down two brids with one stone, you’d see how well they write + how they write, it’s easy to tell whether someone has a marxist outlook or not.
Yeah, that’s how I normally do it.
I didn’t know about that. I guess the changes have to be approved first?
Yeah, anons can edit main wiki pages and the edits go into a moderation queue where trusted editors can approve or reject. It’s quite new, I think from some time this summer?
Certainly, but like I explained in my previous comment once editors get access they can write about anything they want and we kinda have to trust that they know what they’re talking about, or spend time and effort patrolling all their edits and discussing if it’s factual or not and if we should remove or not. We need to know as much as we can about them which involves all sorts of topics.
I meant specifically the Lemmygrad questions, sorry for the confusion. The Lemmygrad vetting questions haven’t changed since we first started account vetting actually, except for the anti-AI question that’s a copy and paste task. ProleWiki is completely independent from Lemmygrad as a project and while we can use someone’s Lemmygrad profile (or other profiles) to help expedite their account request if they tell us the info, they still have to answer the questions at this time. It’s not that easy to change the PW vetting or any other system we have there as decisions are made collectively with the editorship, so almost everything takes a while to discuss and implement.
I wanted an account so I could edit/expand an existing page in particular, I’ll do that first.
Yes, that is true. In that way it makes sense.
Note that anon edits log your IP address, unfortunately we can’t change that so I recommend a VPN or similar if you want. All claims also need to be sourced except for stuff that we can reasonably expect people won’t bother checking (such as dates of birth, nationality or full names).
Good point. Thanks.