Because Cunctator would forward it to wikipedia-l anyway, I'm posting this here directly instead of to wikitech-l (help! he's conditioning me!). There is a discussion on [[Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view]] about whether this particular page should be protected or not. Actually nobody seems to argue strongly that it should be protected, but right now it still is.
Brion has brought up an idea from the good folks at MeatballWiki: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FileReplacement
The gist of it, as I think it *should* be implemented, is this:
1) Protected pages have a link called "Editable copy" or something similar. This is simply a copy of the page, perhaps with some flag in the database or a modifier in the page title like "(COPY)".
2) This page can be edited freely. After every edit, a timer is reset. The timer counts down to, say, 2 hours (we may want to define this on a per- site or per-page basis). Once the time has elapsed, the original version of the page is replaced with the COPY.
Because the timer is reset any time someone edits the page, regular users can prevent the page from being substituted with vandalism if no sysop is near. Similarly, edit wars are given time to "cool" before the page in question changes.
3) Sysops have the additional privileges of being able to directly replace the original page with the COPY (so as to say, "this version is good, gimme this NOW"), and of course, of being able to edit the original page directly.
Using this system we could get rid of traditional page protection for all pages, including [[Main Page]] and the sensitive policy pages. As an added feature, we could wipe the history of the COPY whenever it is copied; this would save some disk space when we use this mechanism to prevent edit wars (every "revert" is a full copy of the page in the DB).
The Main Page of all language wikis would benefit greatly from this, as it could now be updated by everyone without the risk of the goat-man suddenly appearing on our frontpage.
What do you think? With the possible exception of the timer part, I believe this would be relatively simple to implement.
Regards,
Erik
erik_moeller=Mmb7MZpHnFY@public.gmane.org (Erik Moeller) wrote in news:8dOHqdUCpVB@erik_moeller:
[cut]
Using this system we could get rid of traditional page protection for all pages, including [[Main Page]] and the sensitive policy pages. As
Not all Wikipedias protect there main page.
[cut]
What do you think? With the possible exception of the timer part, I believe this would be relatively simple to implement.
Very good idea. Something like this can also be usefull to reduce vandalism by anonymous users. But that is mayby for when there is more vandalism. At least, vandalism is not yet a problem on my wikipedia.
At 10:37 PM 07/01/03 +0000, Giskart wrote:
Very good idea. Something like this can also be usefull to reduce vandalism by anonymous users. But that is mayby for when there is more vandalism. At least, vandalism is not yet a problem on my wikipedia.
It would also save me from the embarrassment of realizing, minutes after clicking "save page", that there's a typo or other silly mistake that I need to go back and fix. In those minutes there could be dozens of people reading the page and imagining what a twit I must be to make those silly mistakes! :)
Seriously, though, I think this is a good idea too. A lag of an hour or two before an edit becomes "official" is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and it may make Wikipedia look a little less unreliable to some of the doubters.
(Catching up)
Erik Moeller wrote:
- Protected pages have a link called "Editable copy" or something
similar. This is simply a copy of the page, perhaps with some flag in the database or a modifier in the page title like "(COPY)".
- This page can be edited freely. After every edit, a timer is reset. The
timer counts down to, say, 2 hours (we may want to define this on a per- site or per-page basis). Once the time has elapsed, the original version of the page is replaced with the COPY.
Because the timer is reset any time someone edits the page, regular users can prevent the page from being substituted with vandalism if no sysop is near. Similarly, edit wars are given time to "cool" before the page in question changes.
- Sysops have the additional privileges of being able to directly replace
the original page with the COPY (so as to say, "this version is good, gimme this NOW"), and of course, of being able to edit the original page directly.
This is cute and all, but it seems like a lot of new complexity for no really important purpose.
The Main Page of all language wikis would benefit greatly from this, as it could now be updated by everyone without the risk of the goat-man suddenly appearing on our frontpage.
Well, this would be nice, I admit. But sysop status is handed out freely for the asking, for the most part, so I'm not sure if the benefit is really all that great.
--Jimbo
This is cute and all, but it seems like a lot of new complexity for no really important purpose.
Not complex, really. 1) Add copy namespace 2) Change "protected page" link to "Edit copy" 3) Add notice about page replacement 4) Implement
Making more people sysops is not a good solution. Some people do not want to be sysops because of the responsibility, others do not know about the sysop/user distinction and just want to make a quick fix to a protected page. With an increased number of sysops, the likelihood of abuse (the most obvious being banning and protecting pages unnecessarily, both of which has happened) obviously increases. Also, you get more and more of a power hierarchy, which is very un-wiki.
The protected page change would have no disadvantages I can see.
Regards,
Erik
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The Main Page of all language wikis would benefit greatly from this, as it could now be updated by everyone without the risk of the goat-man suddenly appearing on our frontpage.
Well, this would be nice, I admit. But sysop status is handed out freely for the asking, for the most part, so I'm not sure if the benefit is really all that great.
Then apparently you haven't been following the Swedish mess. ;)
The fundamental problem with our current sysop model is that promotion and demotion of sysops rests with Jimbo, the owner, and myself, one of the software maintainers.
Jimbo has very little contact with the non-English wikis, and I am directly active in only a couple; as such we can't easily monitor abuse of sysop privs or find trustworthy people who should be sysops. An edit war goes on and we just don't _know_ who's at fault, who can be trusted to calm down, or who's just going to keep trolling.
Related to this is the absent maintainer bottleneck; if the sysops *aren't around*, changes don't get made to protected pages. If Jimbo and I *aren't around*, new sysop requests don't get filled, and changes don't get made to protected pages.
Automatic replacement of an edit copy means that users can still get stuff done without constantly petitioning a small number of god-kings; instead, the god-kings' responsibility becomes the much smaller task of watching for _problematic_ edits and canceling them before they take effect... and that can be done by the rest of the users, too, so things keep running if every sysop and developer is hit by a bus simultaneously with no plans for succession.
We have the same problem with updates to the interface translation files, which currently wait on me to fix them up and put them online (and if necessary set up and convert the wiki). It's slow, it's prone to delays, and it's damned aggravating for everyone involved. Frankly, it's a kludge and it's un-wiki... the wiki way would be much better served by user-editable stuff at all levels.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
O.k., I'm convinced. :-)
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The Main Page of all language wikis would benefit greatly from this, as it could now be updated by everyone without the risk of the goat-man suddenly appearing on our frontpage.
Well, this would be nice, I admit. But sysop status is handed out freely for the asking, for the most part, so I'm not sure if the benefit is really all that great.
Then apparently you haven't been following the Swedish mess. ;)
The fundamental problem with our current sysop model is that promotion and demotion of sysops rests with Jimbo, the owner, and myself, one of the software maintainers.
Jimbo has very little contact with the non-English wikis, and I am directly active in only a couple; as such we can't easily monitor abuse of sysop privs or find trustworthy people who should be sysops. An edit war goes on and we just don't _know_ who's at fault, who can be trusted to calm down, or who's just going to keep trolling.
Related to this is the absent maintainer bottleneck; if the sysops *aren't around*, changes don't get made to protected pages. If Jimbo and I *aren't around*, new sysop requests don't get filled, and changes don't get made to protected pages.
Automatic replacement of an edit copy means that users can still get stuff done without constantly petitioning a small number of god-kings; instead, the god-kings' responsibility becomes the much smaller task of watching for _problematic_ edits and canceling them before they take effect... and that can be done by the rest of the users, too, so things keep running if every sysop and developer is hit by a bus simultaneously with no plans for succession.
We have the same problem with updates to the interface translation files, which currently wait on me to fix them up and put them online (and if necessary set up and convert the wiki). It's slow, it's prone to delays, and it's damned aggravating for everyone involved. Frankly, it's a kludge and it's un-wiki... the wiki way would be much better served by user-editable stuff at all levels.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Brion Vibber wrote:
We have the same problem with updates to the interface translation files, which currently wait on me to fix them up and put them online (and if necessary set up and convert the wiki).
I'd love to help with the French ones but I can't work out how to commit my changes to the CVS repository :(
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