I agree with the sentiment that flagged revisions would take care of this additional issue as well.
Flagged revisions also allows people, like me, who are used to working entirely online, to create drafts, then wander away for a while, then come back and add more details, until you have a publishable version. This is the way I frequently work. Flagged revs would allow that to be all in-project. Right now, I sometimes have to create drafts on some white-board at some other site, then copy and paste when I have a worked-up version. Which is needless double-work in my opinion.
Will Johnson
**************Feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Make dinner for $10 or less. (http://food.aol.com/frugal-feasts?ncid=emlcntusfood00000001)
Flagged revisions is not going to solve much more than obvious vandalism. If we flag a good proportion of article, then we will need lots of reviewers, and the level will be set at sysop of lower - the job will be tedious and done by the lazy with an eye on edit count. The problem is that subtle attempt to insert credible untruths, half-truths, or facts spun to create an imbalanced biased picture of a person will almost certainly walk through this.
Only what is obvious to the average lazy reviewer will be prevented - but what is obvious to the reviewer is not harmful, because it is also obvious to the reader. Hence, general flagging will not solve the BLP problem, it will not really even help.
We won't dent this until we start to take maintainability into consideration as well as verifiability. Sure, any individual BLPs /can/ be written in good way, but, taken together, our wiki-structure /will not/ maintain this level of BLPs without an unacceptable level of harmful articles. Eventualism does not work here - because shitty biased BLPS in the meantime are not acceptable.
We have two choices: 1) delete a large proportion of our lower notability (=less watched by knowledgable people) BLPs. OR 2) tweek the structures so that those motivated to be doing the quality control (and that includes clued readers) are able to maintain more articles.
The second option means looking at: 1) Spot banning anyone pushing negative POVs on a BLP. We should not waste resources arguing with such people. 2) Permanently semi-protecting any article where there's been a previous harmful BLP violation that's not been reverted within a few hours. These are the articles that our open editing has failed once - the subject should not be open to it again. 3) *Insisting on sourcing*. Yes, the patroler /could/ google and check the verifiability of the thing for himself. But we simply DO NOT have enough clued patroler to do this. We must put the onus on the editor giving the information to "show his working" - so that the partoler (or the casual reader) will be quicker to see any problems with the sourcing.
Why should unsourced BLPs not be tolerated? Because we cannot maintain any level of quality control as long as we keep making the checker do all the work. You want it in? You source it - otherwise NO.
doc,
I think you underestimate the number of good editors who do not want to be admins but would gladly take this on. Considering what an admin does, I can understand not wanting the distinction, but having a real role in making sure we have an acceptable content is another thing entirely. But you are certainly right that it won;'t solve the subtler problems--though I think experienced people develop a good eye for what is likely to be NPOV violations.
Option 1 above makes little sense to me, and I think to you also, because less watched does not = less notable. it just means less popular. We'll lose most of the senators. We'll keep the wrestlers. Option 2 will take a lot of tweaking. Since flagged revisions is essentially certain to be approved for a trial, why don't we wait and see how it works, as the first of the tweaks. If we change too many variables at once, we'll end up with a lot of rules that won;t really have been necessary.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 5:27 PM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Flagged revisions is not going to solve much more than obvious vandalism. If we flag a good proportion of article, then we will need lots of reviewers, and the level will be set at sysop of lower - the job will be tedious and done by the lazy with an eye on edit count. The problem is that subtle attempt to insert credible untruths, half-truths, or facts spun to create an imbalanced biased picture of a person will almost certainly walk through this.
Only what is obvious to the average lazy reviewer will be prevented - but what is obvious to the reviewer is not harmful, because it is also obvious to the reader. Hence, general flagging will not solve the BLP problem, it will not really even help.
We won't dent this until we start to take maintainability into consideration as well as verifiability. Sure, any individual BLPs /can/ be written in good way, but, taken together, our wiki-structure /will not/ maintain this level of BLPs without an unacceptable level of harmful articles. Eventualism does not work here - because shitty biased BLPS in the meantime are not acceptable.
We have two choices:
- delete a large proportion of our lower notability (=less watched by
knowledgable people) BLPs. OR 2) tweek the structures so that those motivated to be doing the quality control (and that includes clued readers) are able to maintain more articles.
The second option means looking at:
- Spot banning anyone pushing negative POVs on a BLP. We should not
waste resources arguing with such people. 2) Permanently semi-protecting any article where there's been a previous harmful BLP violation that's not been reverted within a few hours. These are the articles that our open editing has failed once - the subject should not be open to it again. 3) *Insisting on sourcing*. Yes, the patroler /could/ google and check the verifiability of the thing for himself. But we simply DO NOT have enough clued patroler to do this. We must put the onus on the editor giving the information to "show his working" - so that the partoler (or the casual reader) will be quicker to see any problems with the sourcing.
Why should unsourced BLPs not be tolerated? Because we cannot maintain any level of quality control as long as we keep making the checker do all the work. You want it in? You source it - otherwise NO.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I'm in agreement with David here. I do not want to be a policeman on behaviour, but I would certainly be interested in, and already do, patrol content changes and pass or remove spurious details. I think we all do that a bit. Being a policeman is quite a different role.
So a flagged rev backlog will only be addressed if we allow all established users to so address it, and deny the power to admins to unseat a member of the group. It should probably be automatic at a certain edit count or length of stay or something of that nature. There is absolutely no need to create any additional powers for admins, and we already have process in place to handle people who are truly disruptive to the system even though long-term participants. We don't need any more of that.
Will Johnson
-----Original Message----- From: David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 5:56 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Saying no to new unreferenced BLPs
doc,
I think you underestimate the number of good editors who do not want to be admins but would gladly take this on. Considering what an admin does, I can understand not wanting the distinction, but having a real role in making sure we have an acceptable content is another thing entirely. But you are certainly right that it won;'t solve the subtler problems--though I think experienced people develop a good e ye for what is likely to be NPOV violations.
Option 1 above makes little sense to me, and I think to you also, because less watched does not = less notable. it just means less popular. We'll lose most of the senators. We'll keep the wrestlers. Option 2 will take a lot of tweaking. Since flagged revisions is essentially certain to be approved for a trial, why don't we wait and see how it works, as the first of the tweaks. If we change too many variables at once, we'll end up with a lot of rules that won;t really have been necessary.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 5:27 PM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Flagged revisions is not going to solve much more than obvious vandalism. If we flag a good proportion of article, then we will need lots of reviewers, and the level will be set at sysop of lower - the
job
will be tedious and done by the lazy with an eye on edit count. The problem is that subtle attempt to insert credible untruths,
half-truths,
or facts spun to create an imbalanced biased picture of a person will almost certainly walk through this.
Only what is obvious to the average lazy reviewer will be prevented - but what is obvious to the reviewer is not harmful, because it is also obvious to the reader. Hence, general flagging will not solve the BLP problem, it will not really even he
lp.
We won't dent this until we start to take maintainability into consideration as well as verifiability. Sure, any individual BLPs
/can/
be written in good way, but, taken together, our wiki-structure /will not/ maintain this level of BLPs without an unacceptable level of harmful articles. Eventualism does not work here - because shitty
biased
BLPS in the meantime are not acceptable.
We have two choices:
- delete a large proportion of our lower notability (=less watched
by
knowledgable people) BLPs. OR 2) tweek the structures so that those motivated to be doing the
quality
control (and that includes clued readers) are able to maintain more articles.
The second option means looking at:
- Spot banning anyone pushing negative POVs on a BLP. We should not
waste resources arguing with such people. 2) Permanently semi-protecting any article where there's been a
previous
harmful BLP violation that's not been reverted within a few hours.
These
are the articles that our open editing has failed once - the subject should not be open to it again. 3) *Insisting on sourcing*. Yes, the patroler /could/ google and check the verifiability of the thing for himself. But we simply DO NOT have enough clued patroler to do this. We must put the onus on the editor giving the information to "show his working" - so that the partoler
(or
the casual
reader) will be quicker to see any problems with the sourcing.
Why should unsourced BLPs not be tolerated? Because we cannot maintain any level of quality control as long as we keep making the checker do all the work. You want it in? You source it - otherwise NO.
wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
I'm in agreement with David here. I do not want to be a policeman on behaviour, but I would certainly be interested in, and already do, patrol content changes and pass or remove spurious details. I think we all do that a bit. Being a policeman is quite a different role.
So a flagged rev backlog will only be addressed if we allow all established users to so address it, and deny the power to admins to unseat a member of the group. It should probably be automatic at a certain edit count or length of stay or something of that nature. There is absolutely no need to create any additional powers for admins, and we already have process in place to handle people who are truly disruptive to the system even though long-term participants. We don't need any more of that.
Will Johnson
This makes flagged no more than a tool to reduce obvious vandalism - and quite useless for protecting against real BLP harm (see my last post for reasoning).
If we have "anyone can review" then we have "any incompetent can review" and if admins can't quickly remove the reviewing right without process and paperwork then any good-faith incompetent will continue to review.
Our current vandalism RCP system regularly screws up with BLP. It reverts people who blank libels - and seldom even casts a glance at the current state of any article. You think giving these same people more work will solve the subtler BLP problem?
Again, if the bad edit is immediately obvious to the reviewer, it is also obvious to the reader - so it is not particularly damaging to the subject.
I am of the opinion that full flagging will make little or no difference to the BLP problem. (That said, it can't do much harm - so let's try it). However, the current idiotic proposal is utterly useless and conterproductive.
For far to long the flagging white elephant has been throw up as chaff to avoid any real steps on BLP harm reduction. For once, let's listen to the Germans who seem to have some useful things to teach us.
Erik, or someone who knows, can you outline all the things de.wp does differently from en.wp - and whether it has less of a problem with legitimate subject complaints?
2009/4/2 doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com:
Erik, or someone who knows, can you outline all the things de.wp does differently from en.wp - and whether it has less of a problem with legitimate subject complaints?
I'm mostly a tourist on de.wp, but my impression is that it's a combination of
- FlaggedRevs on all articles, with most recently flagged version shown by default; - generally higher notability standards than en.wp, on all types of articles; - higher requirements for IP edits; - some systematic training for OTRS volunteers to better handle BLP and other support issues.
There are three active chapter organizations, with Wikimedia Germany having hired its own dedicated staff, which helps to deal with escalating problems.
That said, there's been a significant decrease in the number of new editors per month on de.wp over the last year, more so than in other large languages. FlaggedRevs in particular can definitely be confusing for new editors, especially if you have to wait days for your edit to be approved.
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 9:07 AM, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
<snip>
Our current vandalism RCP system regularly screws up with BLP. It reverts people who blank libels - and seldom even casts a glance at the current state of any article. You think giving these same people more work will solve the subtler BLP problem?
Agreed. And even obvious problems are missed.
Have a look at the history of this article for examples where what I presume are Recent Change Patrollers saving revisions of an article that was clearly still in a vandalised state. Classic example of blind reversion that only looked at the current vandalism being removed, not the earlier history or the state the article is being reverted to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Murray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
[Something about a lighthouse.]
In case anyone is interested, a filter has been set up to detect removal of the category "Living people". That was how I came across the edit above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&wpSearchFilte...
Hopefully it can be tweaked to distinguish between removal and replacement with a death category. And then people can check edits made claiming someone has died, and make sure reliable sources have been provided for such claims.
Carcharoth
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Hopefully it can be tweaked to distinguish between removal and replacement with a death category. And then people can check edits made claiming someone has died, and make sure reliable sources have been provided for such claims.
I wrote this script a little while ago for this exact purpose:
http://toolserver.org/~samkorn/scripts/recentdeaths.php
Might be useful until you can get this filter running?
Sam
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Hopefully it can be tweaked to distinguish between removal and replacement with a death category. And then people can check edits made claiming someone has died, and make sure reliable sources have been provided for such claims.
I wrote this script a little while ago for this exact purpose:
http://toolserver.org/~samkorn/scripts/recentdeaths.php
Might be useful until you can get this filter running?
It would. Thanks. Though only if people can be found to work on the output. Logs are not that helpful unless there is a way for people to mark them (i.e. patrol them) and say "I've looked at this, best if you go and look at something that no-one has reviewed and marked as done".
Not sure if the abuse filter has been set up for patrolling or not.
Carcharoth
I did not suggest doc that "anyone can review". Review what I said again. I said that established users can review, that it should be an automatic right at a certain point and that admins cannot remove that right.
That is quite different from "anyone".
-----Original Message----- From: doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 1:07 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Saying no to new unreferenced BLPs
wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
I'm in agreement with David here. I do not want to be a policeman on behaviour, but I would certainly
be
interested in, and already do, patrol content changes and pass or remove spurious details. I think we all do that a bit. Being a policeman is quite a different role.
So a flagged rev backlog will only be addressed if we allow all established users to so address it, and deny the power to admins to unseat a member of the group. It should probably be automatic at a certain edit count or length of stay or something of that nature. There is absolutely no need to create any additional powers for
admins,
and we already have process in place to handle people who are truly disruptive to the system even though long-term participants. We
don't
need any more of that.
Will Johnson
This makes flagged no more than a tool to reduce obvious vandalism - and quite useless for protecting against real BLP harm (see my last post for reasoning).
If we have "anyone can review" then we have "any incompetent can review" and if admins can't quickly remove the reviewing right without process and paperwork then any good-faith incompetent will continue to review.
Our current vandalism RCP system regularly screws up with BLP. It reverts people who blank libels - and seldom even casts a glance at the current state of any article. You think giving these same people more work will solve the subtler BLP problem?
Again, if the bad edit is immediately obvious to the reviewer, it is also obvious to the reader - so it is not particularly damaging to the subject.
I am of the opinion that full flagging will make little or no difference to the BLP problem. (That said, it can't do much harm - so let's try it). However, the current idiotic proposal is utterly useless and conterproductive.
For far to long the flagging white elephant has been throw up as chaff to avoid any real steps on BLP harm reduction. For once, let's listen to the Germans who seem to have some useful things to teach us.
Erik, or someone who knows, can you outline all the things de.wp does differently from en.wp - and whether it has less of a problem with legitimate subject complaints?
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I did read what you said, and it is bad enough.
The notion that "anyone [with xn edits] can review", and no admin can revoke, makes the right less scrutinised that rollback - that has the effect of making the quality control utterly useless.
That someone has xn edits only means that they have not (yet) behaved in a manner to get blocked. It in no sense is equal to clue, perceptiveness, or diligence.
The problem with widespread flagging is that in order to prevent backlogs, you will be under pressure to maximise the reviewers, and give the reviewers incentives to rack up numerous reviews per minute. That is inconsistent with useful scrutiny.
wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
I did not suggest doc that "anyone can review". Review what I said again. I said that established users can review, that it should be an automatic right at a certain point and that admins cannot remove that right.
That is quite different from "anyone".
doc wrote:
That someone has xn edits only means that they have not (yet) behaved in a manner to get blocked. It in no sense is equal to clue, perceptiveness, or diligence.
Such a view would institutionalize an assumption of bad faith.
The problem with widespread flagging is that in order to prevent backlogs, you will be under pressure to maximise the reviewers, and give the reviewers incentives to rack up numerous reviews per minute. That is inconsistent with useful scrutiny.
That's a speculative view, probably not supported by any evidence.
Ec
It is premature to discuss the details when we have no actual experience. Enthusiasm can compensate for structural inadequacies, and carry us till we get the details correct. We will need to make the effort of faith a little, for it is not likely we will get things right at first, and a strong for such enthusiasm, is to avoid having to do more drastic remedies, such as deleting articles before there is a chance to get them sourced, or disallowing unregistered editors.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 2:29 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
doc wrote:
That someone has xn edits only means that they have not (yet) behaved in a manner to get blocked. It in no sense is equal to clue, perceptiveness, or diligence.
Such a view would institutionalize an assumption of bad faith.
The problem with widespread flagging is that in order to prevent backlogs, you will be under pressure to maximise the reviewers, and give the reviewers incentives to rack up numerous reviews per minute. That is inconsistent with useful scrutiny.
That's a speculative view, probably not supported by any evidence.
Ec
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Will, look at the example I provided earlier in this thread. Established editors and admins were blindly reverting vandalism and leaving an article in a state of previous vandalism. How do you begin to address that problem?
I don't want to link to the revisions in question, as the attacks are quite nasty (look at the revert I made and what it removed). Please do go and look, and you will find a whole series of Huggle edits that reverted the most recent vandalism, but still left the article in an absolutely unacceptable state. Worse, this continued for a day or two until I spotted what had been happening.
Carcharoth
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:54 AM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
I did not suggest doc that "anyone can review". Review what I said again. I said that established users can review, that it should be an automatic right at a certain point and that admins cannot remove that right.
That is quite different from "anyone".
-----Original Message----- From: doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 1:07 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Saying no to new unreferenced BLPs
wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
I'm in agreement with David here. I do not want to be a policeman on behaviour, but I would certainly
be
interested in, and already do, patrol content changes and pass or remove spurious details. I think we all do that a bit. Being a policeman is quite a different role.
So a flagged rev backlog will only be addressed if we allow all established users to so address it, and deny the power to admins to unseat a member of the group. It should probably be automatic at a certain edit count or length of stay or something of that nature. There is absolutely no need to create any additional powers for
admins,
and we already have process in place to handle people who are truly disruptive to the system even though long-term participants. We
don't
need any more of that.
Will Johnson
This makes flagged no more than a tool to reduce obvious vandalism - and quite useless for protecting against real BLP harm (see my last post for reasoning).
If we have "anyone can review" then we have "any incompetent can review" and if admins can't quickly remove the reviewing right without process and paperwork then any good-faith incompetent will continue to review.
Our current vandalism RCP system regularly screws up with BLP. It reverts people who blank libels - and seldom even casts a glance at the current state of any article. You think giving these same people more work will solve the subtler BLP problem?
Again, if the bad edit is immediately obvious to the reviewer, it is also obvious to the reader - so it is not particularly damaging to the subject.
I am of the opinion that full flagging will make little or no difference to the BLP problem. (That said, it can't do much harm - so let's try it). However, the current idiotic proposal is utterly useless and conterproductive.
For far to long the flagging white elephant has been throw up as chaff to avoid any real steps on BLP harm reduction. For once, let's listen to the Germans who seem to have some useful things to teach us.
Erik, or someone who knows, can you outline all the things de.wp does differently from en.wp - and whether it has less of a problem with legitimate subject complaints?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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doc wrote:
wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
So a flagged rev backlog will only be addressed if we allow all established users to so address it, and deny the power to admins to unseat a member of the group. It should probably be automatic at a certain edit count or length of stay or something of that nature. There is absolutely no need to create any additional powers for admins, and we already have process in place to handle people who are truly disruptive to the system even though long-term participants. We don't need any more of that.
This makes flagged no more than a tool to reduce obvious vandalism - and quite useless for protecting against real BLP harm (see my last post for reasoning).
Why should it be anything more than a tool? My support of flagged revisions has absolutely nothing to do with BLPs; I believe that it should be available for *all *substantive articles. My disappointment is that even that does not go far enough. I would expand it into a rating system that evaluates every article across a small range of different criteria. Unfortunately, for the present all it can realistically do is catch the obvious vandalism, but at least that's a start.
If we have "anyone can review" then we have "any incompetent can review" and if admins can't quickly remove the reviewing right without process and paperwork then any good-faith incompetent will continue to review.
"Anyone can review" is just as powerful as "Anyone can edit." Presuming incompetence is not a good way to encourage and retain new editors, and it is the height of arrogance to pretend the ability to make that judgement. Your arguments sound more like what might expect of admins trying to protect their prerogatives.
Our current vandalism RCP system regularly screws up with BLP. It reverts people who blank libels - and seldom even casts a glance at the current state of any article. You think giving these same people more work will solve the subtler BLP problem?
Neither will throwing out the baby with the bathwater. At the same time, I am not putting flagged revisions on a pedestal so that it can easily be shot down. Any system is only as good as the persons applying it, but that's not the fault of the tool.
Again, if the bad edit is immediately obvious to the reviewer, it is also obvious to the reader - so it is not particularly damaging to the subject.
I don't follow your reasoning on that. If someone is calling the subject an "asshole" that's pretty obvious; how would it not be damaging to the subject?
I am of the opinion that full flagging will make little or no difference to the BLP problem. (That said, it can't do much harm - so let's try it). However, the current idiotic proposal is utterly useless and conterproductive.
Amazingly, I agree with your last point, even if it is from the opposite perspective of a supporter of full flagging. You're probably also right that it will have little or no effect on the BLP problems. No military campaign succeeds through aerial bombing alone; you have to put boots on the ground. The recent proposal tries to do too much at once, perhaps in an attempt to placate the opponents of flagged revisions, but only manages to emasculate itself.
For far to long the flagging white elephant has been throw up as chaff to avoid any real steps on BLP harm reduction.
They are two different issues.
Ec