I agree with Erik's idea.

And on Recent Changes in the same way we have "hide logged in users" (&hideliu=1) which only lists changes by anonymous users, we could have "hide flagged edits" (&hideflagged=1) (or some other wording) to only list edits which have not yet been flagged as being non-vandalism by someone else. Using both in combination (&hideliu=1&hideflagged=1) would work well, and would be like a collaborative "check for vandalism" to-do list. With a hundred people, say, checking for vandalism, each of them would only have to check 1% of the edits, instead of 100% as it is now. And they could get back to spending more time authoring their own edits.

And for logged in users who are vandalizing, it is important that the person who did the edit cannot also mark it as flagged. Anyone who flags vandalism as non-vandalism would be considered liable for the change themselves. e.g. to catch a person who anonymously vandalizes, them logs on and flags their edit as non-vandalism. (Although it would help if the software could detect that the IP address is still the same, even though they are logged in, and hence prevent the flagging in the first place.)

Alternative suggestion for UI is a single link or button on the diff screen labeled: Flag as not vandalism or just a single word like endorse, concur, ratify, approve, countersign, corroborate, warrant, authenticate, verify or equivalent my thesaurus got a bit of a workout :) which then changes to Verified by Foo

And Recent Changes would have "hide verified edits" (&hideverified=1) or whatever. "Flag" is much too generic a term.

Michael Richards

-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of Erik Moeller Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 4:33 PM To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Mark questionable modifications

Guillaume-

Some wikipedians would like to have an automatic detection of "questionable modifications". Questionable modifications, mean, modifications that have a great chance to be a rookie's test or a vandalism. This automatic detection may be done by check, for example:

I'm against that particular solution because I think it would produce too much visual clutter and false positives. However, one thing that I would like to see, and will implement myself sooner or later if nobody else does it, is a way to quickly "flag" edits as being OK, that is, non-vandalism. Implementation wise, it would be a little box on the diff screen:

________________________________ [ I have checked this edit, | | and it is not [[vandalism]]. | | _____ _______ | | | OK! | | Edit! | | | ----- ------- | --------------------------------

Possibly only for edits made by anonymous users or those with no user page.

Once an edit is flagged, it would just get a little extra C or X in the Recent changes table. The box would not appear for subsequent diffs. Instead it would be nice to show something like ________________________________________________ | This edit has been flagged as non-vandalism by | | User:Foo | ------------------------------------------------

So if someone abuses the flagging privilege, they can be dealt with in some way.

The point is, of course, to avoid having to keep diffing the same pages for vandalism. It wouldn't work for new pages because those have no diffs, but new pages should probably be looked at by multiple people anyway.

Regards,

Erik