On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 1:50 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Aka hacked up a nice script that shows how many pages have been "sighted" (basic vandalism check) on the German Wikipedia: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english
Given that FlaggedRevs has just been live for a day or so, a review rate of 4.41% is quite impressive!
Wait now. When FlaggedRevs was first mentioned, the press started to announce that censorship was being planned for Wikipedia. This was countered with the explanation that flagging was a more open regime than page locking. We no longer have to lock pages on controversial topics, because we can allow free editing as long as the non-logged-in majority gets to see the flagged/approved version.
Is it really "impressive" to have this new "soft locking" mechanism applied to a large number of pages? Wouldn't it be better to show how few pages were in need of this protection? And at the same time, to mention how many previously locked pages have now been unlocked in the name of increased openness?
Yes, I certainly would support removing as much protection/locking as possible from articles where a flagged revision is presented as the default.
I think Lars calls FlaggedRevs "soft locking" and doesn't want to apply it on a large scale.
IMHO FlaggedRevs are much different from protection/locking. The purpose of FlaggedRevs is to present the uninitiated audience with a vandalism-free Wikipedia. Applying FlaggedRevs to only a few pages will not achieve that.
Magnus