On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 1:09 PM, John
<phoenixoverride(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Issues arise in the fact that malicious editors
can abuse it after the
initial review has been done. Or you can run into cases where offensive
material is added attacking another editor, so editor B reports the issue
and before anyone has a chance to review it editor A changes it back to
something innocent. (rinse repeat for a while before A finally gets
blocked, but meanwhile B is taking the brunt of abuse until an admin
catches on) and there is no way of proving what an edit was at any given
time.
The biggest thing that you need to realize is that regardless of the
intent
of something, it will be abused, how and to what
degree can be
controlled.
Given that just about everything in mediawiki has
a paper trail,
(mediawiki
keeps logs for all actions, some are just not
visible without specific
rights) introducing a feature that doesnt is not a good idea.
I don't think anyone is unaware of the potential for abuse, but that is not
a strong argument against allowing any form of editing edit summaries. A
simple limit would take care of most forms of abuse - either limit it to
trusted users (e.g. oversight), or permit it only on blank edit summaries
and only by the original user. You can even restrict it to a single change,
and then the use case would be: "Oops, I forgot to include an edit summary,
rather than adding a new revision or leaving it blank I'll just go add it
now."
Sure, and I think a restriction system would make sense, but **even so**,
there should be at the very least a full log, and ideally a complete
history. "Trust but verify" and all that.
Also, if you have an issue with users too often failing to give an edit
summary, there's a preference that nags them to fix it before saving.
J.
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester