On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Sage Ross
<ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com<ragesoss%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