Good questions. Here's my personal view:
> So apparently all the press reporting is wrong. What's the real story?
The press story (particularly in Britain) seems to be along the lines of: "Wikipedia, founded on open editing has been forced to restrict editing as their model has failed"
This is exaggerated, grossly misleading and unduly negative but probably has a grain of truth at the centre. Bit like press reporting in general then :) Here's what I've been saying in response:
- Wikipedia has been a phenomenal success - 4th most visited website, number 1 source for knowledge online, 3m articles, close to 5m images on Wikimedia Commons, partnerships with museums, art galleries, libraries, governments around the world
- This success is partly down to the early adoption of this principle of openness - the idea that "anyone can edit". We have no intention of abandoning this principle
- However, with success comes responsibility, particularly when you have articles on living people and misinformation in those articles with the potential to cause harm.
- Flagged revisions is a new tool that helps us manage this risk of harm. It allows people to edit but doesn't show that edit to the world until it has passed review.
- Patrolled revisions allows users to choose whether to read the latest version of an article or the latest reviewed edit
- Some people have been saying that flagged revisions will make Wikipedia more open where previously protected or semi-protected pages are changed to flagged revisions. As I've said before, I'm not entirely comfortable with the argument because although it will probably be true in some cases, the net effect will be outweighed by the articles that are currently unprotected moving to flagged. Hence Wikipedia as a whole will become less open.
- The German Wikipedia has run flagged revisions for a year now, and they're still alive and kicking
- This is, of course, a trial, and many of the details have yet to be decided which will be done by community discussion. The New York Times sniffed out a story from a relatively minor technical announcement, which has then spread around the media.
- Generally if you've been following developments on wiki and you read something in the press which is different from your understanding of flagged revisions, your understanding is probably correct. Remember - you're the expert compared to them!
> 1) Is this going to apply to every page?
No. People have been talking about all living person articles, although the community may of course decide to roll it out to all articles in the future, or indeed have it more restricted. The German Wikipedia applies in to every page.
> 2) Who gets to flag a revision?
Members of the user group "Reviewer". All Admins will automatically be given reviewer status and all other users will be able to apply for it at [[WP:Request for permissions]]; like rollback there will be a presumed threshold of number of edits and time since account was opened. An initial poll rejected the idea of autopromotion, but I notice this issue has been reopened because "only" 50 people participated in that discussion.
See [[Wikipedia:Reviewers]] for more information.
> Can you flag your own revisions?
I think at the moment the idea was yes.
> 3) What's the interface like? How many clicks?
Don't know. The Trial will clarify a lot of these things so we can see it working in practice.
> 4) Is there any automatic flagging?
I think the idea was all entries with [[Category:Living persons]] would be automatically flagged.
> 5) Are you supposed to "check" an entire article prior to flagging it?
No - I understand it's just the edit(s) since it was last flagged.
> How confident are you meant to be?
There's a "working draft" at [[Wikipedia:Reviewing guideline]] which says you can pass an edit if it doesn't contain any vandalism, patent nonsense, copyvios, legal threats, personal attacks or libel. Basically, this is a high level review, not intended to go into the details that you might get on a talk page.
> 6) What will encourage flaggers to actually bother flagging articles?
The encouragement will be for people who support the whole idea and want to give it the commitment to make it work. It's a bit like asking what makes admins respond to an {{editrequested}} tag on a protected article.
> 7) What will encourage non-flaggers to actually bother editing articles when they don't have any instant gratification?
Their edits will still contribute, there will just be a delay in seeing it. There is, however, a big risk that people will be discouraged from editing. It will certainly discourage edits that don't pass review!
> 8) Which view will long time editors see by default? Stable (flagged)
> or non-flagged version?
Under "flagged protection" anonymous readers see the last flagged edit and registered readers see the last edit even if it hasn't been flagged.
Under "patrolled revisions" everyone can see every version but you if you are seeing an unpatrolled version you are also linked to the last patrolled version.
See [[WP:Flagged protection]] and [[WP:Patrolled revisions]]
> 9) Can non-logged in editors see non-flagged versions?
as above
> 10) Will this destroy Wikipedia?
Wikipedia needs to continue recruiting new contributors in order to keep its current success. This has already been identified as a problem and flagged revisions may make this worse. We need to address this risk.
> 11) Will this improve Wikipedia?
Misinformation in Wikipedia at the moment can cause harm, particularly where it concerns living people. Flagged revisions should reduce this risk and that will improve Wikipedia.
Andrew
So apparently all the press reporting is wrong. What's the real story?
For some reason, I've never actually come across these flagged
revisions, partly because they always seemed to be happening "in the
future some time". What's the policy going to be?
So, quick questions:
1) Is this going to apply to every page?
2) Who gets to flag a revision? Can you flag your own reivsions?
3) What's the interface like? How many clicks?
4) Is there any automatic flagging?
5) Are you supposed to "check" an entire article prior to flagging it?
How confident are you meant to be?
6) What will encourage flaggers to actually bother flagging articles?
7) What will encourage non-flaggers to actually bother editing
articles when they don't have any instant gratification?
8) Which view will long time editors see by default? Stable (flagged)
or non-flagged version?
9) Can non-logged in editors see non-flagged versions?
10) Will this destroy Wikipedia?
11) Will this improve Wikipedia?
Steve
2009/8/25 Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net>:
> The latest estimate is 2 weeks time, or probably a bit later. A trial
> of it on a test wiki started today.
And this is the proposal that's being tried:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_rev…
So, two months of it live to see how this runs?
Another thought: this is actually more open than just locking the article. :-)
- d.
http://www.last.fm/music/Zombie+Girl/+wikihttp://www.last.fm/music/Zombie+Girl/+wiki/history
The artist bios on last.fm typically start from the Wikipedia article
and then the users can hack away at it.
License is listed at the bottom, no links back to Wikipedia though.
Interesting and could be useful for pumping up our own articles with
their information. Link back when appropriate is all they ned.
- d.
I'm on BBC Radio 2 Chris Evans for a three-minute segment around
5:30ish (plus or minus who knows what) and Sky News around 7:15pm.
(Black shirt, no tie ;-) )
- d.
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net>
> Date: 26 August 2009 15:48:12 BDT
> To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Flagged revisions interview on BBC Radio 2, ~5.30pm BST today
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'll be doing a short (3 minute) interview on the Chris Evans
> Drivetime show on BBC Radio 2, at around 5.30pm today, on flagged
> revisions.
>
> I've just talked to them on the phone, and given them a brief
> overview of the situation, so hopefully things will go fairly
> smoothly...
>
> Mike
Thanks for the figure - not bad estimate, considering it was off the top of my head :)
I would add not all living people are in that category, so this is probably an underestimate.
I still wouldn't call 13% "a small percentage".
----- "Carcharoth" <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: "Carcharoth" <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, 26 August, 2009 11:10:43 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blog post on FlaggedRevs
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Andrew
> Turvey<andrewrturvey(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is contradictory. BLP articles make up a significant proportion of all articles (something like 25% off the top of my head) so if you do it for all BLP articles you are not doing it "in a small percentage of cases"
>
> <snip>
>
> Off the top of your head? :-)
>
> I think (referring to the top of my head) that the 25% (more like
> somewhere between 20 and 25%) is for the number of biographical
> articles (i.e. both living and dead and long-dead people). The BLP
> figure is easily calculated though.
>
> 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people
>
> 400,653 BLP articles (as of 26/08/2009)
>
> 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
>
> 3,012,053 content articles (as of 26/08/2009)
>
> Hence the BLP percentage is 13.3%.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Very useful - thanks
Couple of points:
"Only in a small percentage of cases, we would require changes to be patrolled before becoming the default view for readers. The proposal is to do so initially in the case of biographies of living people"
This is contradictory. BLP articles make up a significant proportion of all articles (something like 25% off the top of my head) so if you do it for all BLP articles you are not doing it "in a small percentage of cases"
"If the proposed model works as intended, it will actually allow us to open up many articles for editing which are currently protected from being edited."
This has been mentioned before and although it seems like a good line, I'm not sure it holds water. Let me put it like this:
At the moment we have ~3m articles of which, say, 700 are fully protected and about 1300 are semi protected. What do we expect this is going to look like in a couple of years' time? My guess is something like this:
Fully protected - maybe 600?
Semi protected - maybe 700?
Page protection - maybe 100,000?
There are plenty of editors who are pushing page protection for all ~700k BLP articles and some who want it, like WP-DE, on everything. Whatever happens, it will be significantly more than the current 2k that's protected.
Hence although it might slightly reduce the number of protected articles, overall the impact will be a restriction on the openness of editing. So although the media have massively exaggerated the impact, the story they're reporting is essentially correct.
Personally, I think a better line is to focus on minimising the risk of harm to living people and balancing this with the openness.
Andrew
----- "Erik Moeller" <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> From: "Erik Moeller" <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, 26 August, 2009 04:01:21 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog post on FlaggedRevs
>
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/26/a-quick-update-on-flagged-revisions/
>
> Please reference if there's any further confusion about this.
>
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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