[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2

[Nathan]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Alex <mrzmanwiki at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> How is it not a compromise? Its a version that most of the supporters
> still support and that many of the opposers now support. Compromise
> involves both sides making concessions, not repeatedly proposing the
> same thing in hopes of a different outcome. So far it has far more
> community support than the previous proposed version (which had what?
> 60% support?).
>
> I'm getting really mad at the people opposing every version of
> FlaggedRevs that doesn't provide some ultimate level of protection for
> BLPs. If you want something that helps BLPs, PROPOSE SOMETHING! Sitting
> around and opposing everything in favor of some non-existent system is
> unhelpful and basically saying that articles are worthless unless they
> are BLPs. The proposed system can potentially help some articles, while
> this un-proposed system that will be a magic bullet for the BLP problem
> currently helps nothing, because it doesn't exist.
>
> I agree that patrolled revisions have a high likelihood of failing. Its
> too bad we aren't proposing to use it as a trial instead, so if they
> don't work, we can come up with a different system. Oh, wait...
>
> If FlaggedProtection results in a manageable system, then we can
> consider expanding it to more articles than the current policy would
> allow. Enwiki is big and slow; expecting it to do some massive, visible
> change over hundreds of thousands of articles all at once is rather
> unrealistic. Several months ago, I told Erik on this list that enwiki
> would never be able to get consensus for FR, it looks like I'm wrong
> about that. Perhaps there's some hope left after all.
>
>
What you're mostly seeing is people who supported the last poll agreeing
because anything is better than nothing, and some people who opposed the
last poll supporting because this one clearly has no teeth.

More importantly, the most obvious thing this poll has demonstrated so far
is that it has not been widely discussed or publicized. To go from
discussion to closing the poll in a couple of weeks, where only the last
couple of days see a watchlist notice, is more than a bit ridiculous.

I'm far from being a serial opposer of FR or proposals to improve protection
of BLPs. I supported the last poll. If this poll simply didn't go far
enough, but had some improvement built in, then I'd support it. But
implementing patrolled revisions particularly, and the flawed conception of
flagged protection, is not just a very minor improvement but in fact
counterproductive. The drudgework, minus any benefit, will actively turn
people against FlaggedRevisions in its useful form.

So its not a compromise because it guts FR's value and its intended impact
on BLPs, without addressing any of the concerns related to bureaucracy or
backlogs that opposers have raised.

Necessarily this conversation is taking place on two lists, so if anyone
feels like they are missing part of it you might check WikiEn-l for the
rest.

Nathan