2009/9/28 Sue Gardner <susanpgardner(a)gmail.com>om>:
Greg, I really don't want to reply to the
specifics of this conversation -- Brion and Erik and others are much more deeply involved,
and therefore better situated to respond.
But I will say this: I know some people have speculated, or asked, if the Wikimedia
Foundation is deliberately holding up implementation of FlaggedRevs in English Wikipedia,
because the staff doesn't want it, or thinks it's a bad idea. For the record: we
are not.
I personally am worried that an aggressive deployment of FlaggedRevs may act as a barrier
to new participants. The statistics for new editors on the German Wikipedia seem to
suggest that their implementation has in fact caused a decline in new editors. I find
that worrying. But I realize that 1) there may be other factors at play on the German
Wikipedia, affecting participation, that are unrelated to FlaggedRevs,
I was looking at those stats just a couple of days ago and it seems
the decline started a month *before* the implementation of FlaggedRevs
on dewiki, so it would seem to be due to something else. (Unless there
is some error in my data.)