On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.comragesoss%2Bwikipedia@gmail.com
wrote:
No, the current proposal is a conservative starting point. It is a proposal to a) get Flagged Revisions turned on and b) give the community a chance to see what it's like to use flagging in live content situation.
The proposal is designed so that the scope of flagging can be adjusted easily through policy, rather than software, changes. If the community agrees, after testing out flagged protection for the trial period, that more articles should be protected (say, all BLPs), then all it requires is consensus to change the scope of protection policy. Support probably exists to use flagging more aggressively in the future, but most editors want to take it one step at a time (or are willing to go slowly for the sake of others who want to take it one step at a time).
I think this is an overly optimistic view of the post-poll future. First, your (b) benefit falls down because what the community will see is a process that takes a lot of work and provides no true improvement. Second, your assumption that future adjustments will be made "easily through policy" is extraordinarily optimistic - since when are policy alterations requiring significant changes to an extension easily made?
What happens when the 2 month trial expires? Another big poll on whether it should be extended, modified, or left in the dustbin of Wikipedia history? You should be able to predict all the oppose arguments on that next poll - its bureaucratic, it doesn't fit in with "anyone can edit", etc. Add one more - no obvious benefit to justify the big backlog of unpatrolled revisions, which *will happen* if for no other reason than patrolling revisions seems to achieve very little. The first two reasons for opposition torpedoed the first poll, and this poll offers little improvement against those largely ideological positions. Add in the third, and the chances of a superior and further implementation of FR someday down the line drop dramatically.
Nathan