Decisions at Wikipedia are not based a vote. The majority support Pending Changes and insufficient reasons have been put forwards by those who wish to see it quashed. I would like to thank Erik Moeller for the difficult discussion he has made. It is impossible to make everyone happy sometimes.
I support PC for a number of reasons including.
1) Concerns are voiced both by academia and our readership regarding Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses some of these concerns. Thus there is a good chance that "pending changes" will not only increase our readership but the number of people who edit. No one wants to put in the work to create something good or excellent just to have it vandalized and left un-repaired.
2) Vandals like to see their work go "live". Pending changes stops this and will thus potentially decrease the entire volume of vandalism. Most vandals will not be willing to pit in the effort to get around these measures.
3) We will have a tool to allow the world to seamlessly contribute to a greater part of Wikipedia. Instead of semi protecting some pages ( and thus making it difficult for IPs to contribution ) we can use PC to make Wikipedia more open per our founding principles.
On 28 September 2010 23:37, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Decisions at Wikipedia are not based a vote. The majority support Pending Changes and insufficient reasons have been put forwards by those who wish to see it quashed. I would like to thank Erik Moeller for the difficult discussion he has made. It is impossible to make everyone happy sometimes.
I support PC for a number of reasons including.
- Concerns are voiced both by academia and our readership regarding
Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses some of these concerns. Thus there is a good chance that "pending changes" will not only increase our readership but the number of people who edit. No one wants to put in the work to create something good or excellent just to have it vandalized and left un-repaired.
- Vandals like to see their work go "live". Pending changes stops
this and will thus potentially decrease the entire volume of vandalism. Most vandals will not be willing to pit in the effort to get around these measures.
We had to destroy the wiki in order to save it.
We've probably got one of the best reader:complaints about accuracy ratio going for any widely read work. The complaints from academia are not addressed by PC and the only project that does address them (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) has fewer than 2K entries.
There is little evidence that people who were genuinely going to edit are put off by vandalism. New editors also like to see their work go live take that away and you lose their effort.
But then we had to destroy the wiki in order to save it.
- We will have a tool to allow the world to seamlessly contribute to
a greater part of Wikipedia. Instead of semi protecting some pages ( and thus making it difficult for IPs to contribution ) we can use PC to make Wikipedia more open per our founding principles.
One of the relatively few conclusions anyone has managed to draw from the trial is that PC as a replacement for semi protect doesn't really work.
Additionally if it was actually seamless it wouldn't impact vandalism.
On 28 September 2010 23:37, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Decisions at Wikipedia are not based a vote. The majority support Pending Changes and insufficient reasons have been put forwards by those who wish to see it quashed. I would like to thank Erik Moeller for the difficult discussion he has made. It is impossible to make everyone happy sometimes.
"Difficult discussion" seems like an appropriate Freudian slip, though it's probably fairer to thank Jimbo for that.
Yes, it's well established that decisions aren't based on votes, which is why there's been such a hostile reaction to the forcing of a majority poll. And remember this isn't about "quashing" pending changes, it's about whether it should be left enabled in its current state. Many very experienced users, including those who were heavily involved in the trial and support pending changes, have raised serious concerns about the usability and effectiveness. There must be some validity to those, or why is the Foundation ploughing more time and resources into further development?
Of course one problem with a strictly numerical poll like this, is that those concerns carry as much weight as a plain "keep" vote with no rationale.
Pete / the wub
On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 16:37, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
I support PC for a number of reasons including.
- Concerns are voiced both by academia and our readership regarding
Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses some of these concerns.
James, we don't want to cater to the academic community, but to everyone, and seeing our edits go live immediately was the thing that made Wikipedia very attractive, its strength and its weakness. We should need a very clear consensus to change that, and the polls so far have not shown a strong consensus.
This isn't Nupedia or Citizendium, and any attempt to nudge us in that direction, which is what PC is, has the potential to damage us.
Sarah
German Wikipedia has had pending changes implemented *globally*, in all articles, for several years now. Unlike en:WP, where numbers of active editors have dropped significantly since 2007, numbers of active editors in de:WP have remained stable:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
There may well be cultural differences, reflected in the greater support the pending changes concept has gained in the de:WP community in general, but it is still a striking result.
A.
--- On Wed, 29/9/10, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
From: SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, 29 September, 2010, 20:55 On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 16:37, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
I support PC for a number of reasons including.
- Concerns are voiced both by academia and our
readership regarding
Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses
some of these
concerns.
James, we don't want to cater to the academic community, but to everyone, and seeing our edits go live immediately was the thing that made Wikipedia very attractive, its strength and its weakness. We should need a very clear consensus to change that, and the polls so far have not shown a strong consensus.
This isn't Nupedia or Citizendium, and any attempt to nudge us in that direction, which is what PC is, has the potential to damage us.
Sarah
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 15:23, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
German Wikipedia has had pending changes implemented *globally*, in all articles, for several years now. Unlike en:WP, where numbers of active editors have dropped significantly since 2007, numbers of active editors in de:WP have remained stable:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
The stats on that page are pretty confusing, Andreas. Could you say here what the relative figures are?
Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
German Wikipedia has had pending changes implemented
*globally*, in all articles, for several years now. Unlike en:WP, where numbers of active editors have dropped significantly since 2007, numbers of active editors in de:WP have remained stable:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
The stats on that page are pretty confusing, Andreas. Could you say here what the relative figures are?
According to the tables, the number of en:WP editors with >100 edits/month stood at 5,151 in April 2007, and was down to 3,868 in August 2010.
de:WP had 1,027 in April 2007, and 1,075 in August 2010.
Andreas
If PC is what the german wiki has been using for some time, i think i support its usage. Allthough it wont stop vandalism, it expect it does greatly reduce it, allowing the volunteers to spend their time in a more useful way. Imho it is working pretty well on the german wiki. The first time i felt insulted when my changes were not live right away (i had less than 300 edits), but they were qucikly approved and now they are live immediately.
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 12:37 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Decisions at Wikipedia are not based a vote. The majority support Pending Changes and insufficient reasons have been put forwards by those who wish to see it quashed. I would like to thank Erik Moeller for the difficult discussion he has made. It is impossible to make everyone happy sometimes.
I support PC for a number of reasons including.
- Concerns are voiced both by academia and our readership regarding
Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses some of these concerns. Thus there is a good chance that "pending changes" will not only increase our readership but the number of people who edit. No one wants to put in the work to create something good or excellent just to have it vandalized and left un-repaired.
- Vandals like to see their work go "live". Pending changes stops
this and will thus potentially decrease the entire volume of vandalism. Most vandals will not be willing to pit in the effort to get around these measures.
- We will have a tool to allow the world to seamlessly contribute to
a greater part of Wikipedia. Instead of semi protecting some pages ( and thus making it difficult for IPs to contribution ) we can use PC to make Wikipedia more open per our founding principles.
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
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