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
2009/8/27 Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com:
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?
I was trying to answer this myself last night, so here's my best attempt :-)
So, quick questions:
- Is this going to apply to every page?
No. It's effectively a new form of protection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection#Description
...so basically, any page that might get semi-protected might get this. The original idea of "use this for BLPs" , to my surprise, doesn't seem to be very much in force; it's not going to be blanket-applied to those 400,000 articles, as far as I can tell.
There's also a *second* system going in, applied to all pages - patrolled revisions - which is essentially a passive monitoring mechanism and won't in any way affect what version readers see. I'll concentrate only on flagged protection here, since it seems to be the contentious one!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Patrolled_revisions
- Who gets to flag a revision? Can you flag your own reivsions?
Users in the "reviewer" usergroup, which will initially be all admins but can be given out to others; there'll no doubt be a process for this. I believe if you can flag you can flag your own edits - it may be that they're done automatically, I'm not clear on this.
- What's the interface like? How many clicks?
Don't know, but a testing version is being set up.
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- Is there any automatic flagging?
See #2; not sure.
- Are you supposed to "check" an entire article prior to flagging it?
The idea is you check everything since the last reviewed edit; ie, "check since last known good version".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reviewing_guideline
For "fully protected" pages, changes should only be approved if there's consensus for them, or if it's trivial; for "semi-protected" pages, just so long as the edit's not crap.
How confident are you meant to be?
How confident are you about rolling back edits today? ;-)
- What will encourage flaggers to actually bother flagging articles?
This, I don't know. Protected articles usually have someone who's protected them; it could be we'll find that if you protect an article, there's an assumption it's your job to make sure there's no flagging backlog - a name and shame policy. ;-)
Alternatively, if this gets incorporated into one of the automatic editing tools - which it probably will, in time - we'll no doubt be able to tap into the broad pool of automated-editing "vandal fighters" etc.
I suspect it'll backlog early and then improve over time, since once 'reviewer' is spread broadly enough - say, to a couple of times the current admin pool, four thousand of our current ten or fifteen thousand active users - then most flag-protected articles will be edited regularly by them in the normal run of things, too. If *anyone* with reviewer rights is currently working with an article, chances are it'll get frequently reviewed - because they want their edits to show up as much as anyone.
- What will encourage non-flaggers to actually bother editing
articles when they don't have any instant gratification?
The cynic in me says they won't realise they don't get instant gratification until after they've edited it ;-). More practically, flagged protection will cover a few thousand pages - at worst, we're still talking less than one percent of pages. Many contributors won't encounter a flag-protected page from one month to the next.
I think it'll annoy some people a bit, and it'll *really* annoy some people who want to be really annoyed about it, but after two months people'll assume this is the way protection has always been.
- Which view will long time editors see by default? Stable (flagged)
or non-flagged version?
I am not sure, but they'll be trivially able to switch between them - have a look at a dewiki page, with its little button in the top right - and they'll always *edit* the most recent (non-flagged) version.
- Can non-logged in editors see non-flagged versions?
So I am informed, but they have to go looking for them - it's like old history versions now.
- Will this destroy Wikipedia?
- Will this improve Wikipedia?
"Answer hazy, ask again later". I suspect in the long run it won't do much difference, but it'll be *blamed* (or credited) for any enormous turnarounds; someone I was talking to was swearing blind it destroyed dewiki, caused a catastrophic collapse in the number of IP editors, but on examining the statistics that actually happened six months earlier!
If any of this is wrong, please let me know; I've tried to double-check my details, but I'm not 100% confident I've interpreted it all accurately.