Bah, I meant to send this here, not to just one person...
OK, in order to talk about pros vs. cons, we need to consider the uses first. Some main
tasks are:1) selected an unvandalized version (for AT, this will do "worse part"
checks and such)2) selecting a quality, fact-checked version (German Wikipedia wants
this)3) selecting a consensus version/marking featured pages4) selecting the best version
and displaying it be *default* Selecting an unvandalized versionFlagged Revisions
(pros):1) Templates and images are part of the review process, so vandalism to them will
not show for reviewed pages2) Users with review rights get the gratification of setting
the latest unvandalized/"sighted" version3) New users can look forward to
getting these rights in short order, after being considered trusted4) Edits by reviewers
can be autoreviewed if they are to a page where the stable and current are synced.5) If 4
above is not possible, a diff of the changes to the stable are shown after edit to
reviewers with a review form with the tags preselected. It shouldn't take long at all
to glance over the changes and click "review". Flagged Revisions (cons)1)
Initial review takes noticeable time for non-stub pages2) Revisions can fall out of date
if not maintained, so people clicking to see a stable version may get a really old one.
This is integrated with the RC patrolling system and with the autoreviewing/quick diffs to
help, but it is still a possibility. Article Trust(pros)1) No workload added, all
automatic. This is very nice.2) Fast and fluid since calculations for the sighted version
are done on every edit without anyone having to do anything3) Accounts for consensus, so
no rouge reviewer can easily flag garbage. Still, a "trusted" user can go rouge
and add garbage, even in several edits to bump the trust. Article Trust(cons)1) Template
and image vandalism is still a problem2) Bot and AWB edits flying through pages
automatically make the trust of large chunks of text increase3) No direct control over it
by anyone -> incentive loss Selecting a quality, fact-checked version Flagged Revisions
(pros):1) Trusted users, who have some respect for consensus as well, can directly mark
off solid revisions Flagged Revisions (cons):1) If the user goes rouge they can flag
garbage. Not as bad as rouge admins, likely rare, but something to think about...2) A
roughish user may ignore consensus and reasonable fact disputes. This could result in a
small user or cabal having a monopoly over the "best version". Good policy
standards and respect should be enforced to avoid this. Article Trust(pros):1) Nearly all
"white" pages have a good chance of being reasonable accurate2) No work
required3) Harder to form cabals/monopolies over the "best version" Article
Trust(cons):1) Again, bots and such2) You cannot edit anything without vouching for it
(bad for fixing typos) and the text around it. Either people get afraid to edit or dubious
text gets more and more "trusted"3) No one necessarily committed to having
fact-checked anything Selecting a consensus version/Marking feature pagesFlagged Revisions
(pros):1) Trusted reviewers (higher flagging rights than normal reviewers), like
bureaucrats, look at debates and see if a consensus for a community selected version
exists2) As long as the trusted reviewer acts like most "bureaucrats" on
Wikipedia and just measure consensus, it is not easy to game Flagged Revisions (cons):1)
Rouge trusted reviewer...blah...could end up at arbcom 2) Not automatic...I mean look at
how slow WP:FA stuff is... Article Trust(pros):1) It would take a lot of users to try to
edit war to push the "consensus version" around since it is automatic, and that
would just make a bunch of red text to the current revision which would cause it not to be
selected.2) Automatic, account for all edits, not just those "voting" on some
talk page3) Generally waaay faster Article Trust(cons):1) If there is consesus for a
version clearly demontrated on a talk page, a small group of editors can still edit war
over it and drop the trust. It would be nice for some trusted reviewer to be able to see
this and expediently flag it. Selecting the best version and displaying it be
*default*Flagged Revisions (pros):1) Again, template/image vandalism won't be such a
problem since those are set for each reviewed revision based on how it was when
reviewed.2) For bios of living people, we can easily and immediatly set the stable version
without having to fiddle around getting it autotrusted.3) The incentive issue again,
reviewer can set this, and editors can look forward to becoming reviewers. Flagged
Revisions (cons):1) Rouge trusted reviewer...blah...could end up at arbcom 2)
Spelling/grammar errors can get stuck if no one is around to review corrections (though
reviewers spelling fixes could be autoreviewed sometimes) Article Trust(pros):1) The
default is BY FAR the most important revision, so giving direct control over gives
incentives to form evil cabals :)2) As this is important, it helps to stay up to date with
the workload, this requires none...so that's pretty easy... Article Trust(cons):1)
Spelling/grammar errors can get stuck since it's hard to directly control2) The
"highest least trusted" and "max age" and other heurestics will be
confusing to new users. Default page selection will feel kind of randomThis is still an
imcomplete list probably...I should probably save this somewhere and build on it. Also,
for default revisions selection on page view, I am just comparing the methods of selection
by the two extensions. We could have it where Flagged Revisions does the overriding of the
default revision, but that it grabs the Article Trust "most trusted" version
rather than some reviewed one. This would just be to avoid duplicated code though.-Aaron
Schulz
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