[Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[John Vandenberg]

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Rob Lanphier <robla at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As William alluded to, a bunch of us have been studying the user interface
> for Flagged Protections and figuring out how to make it more intuitive.
>
> In trying to solve the user interface problems as well as generally figuring
> out how we're going to talk about this feature to the world at large, it
> became clear that the name "Flagged Protections" doesn't adequately describe
> the technology as it looks to readers and editors. It's a tough name to work
> with. This iteration of the technology is very different from the German
> implementation, and there's no "flagging" in the proposed configuration.
> Additionally, "protection" in our world implies "no editing" whereas this
> feature actually opens up pages currently protected so that everyone can
> edit.
>
> So, we would like to make a change to the name of the "Flagged Protections"
> feature prior to deploying it to en.wikipedia.org. Under the hood, we would
> still be using the "FlaggedRevs" extension (no change there), but the name
> that we talk about in the user-visible portions of the site and
> documentation would be something new.

This is still the same extension which is, and will be, used on many
wikis, not just the German Wikipedia.  The horse has bolted;
discussion about revising terminology should be held on meta, and the
projects already using this extension should be engaged.

Also, the English Wikipedia implementation of it will likely change
over time, so I don't think it is a good idea to create new
terminology which is based on this initial en.wp confuguration.  I
agree with Greg: if you are going to give this feature a new name,
don't attach a lot of meaning to the new name, as it will probably
underwhelm, and be confusing after a few configuration or code
changes.  Using a simple word from a dead or obscure language is a
sensible approach.

Rather than invent terminology, outward communications should be about
this new feature being just another tool to improve for our existing
"Patrolling" processes (which is a simple term already used for New
Page Patrolling, RecentChanges Patrolling, etc).

Editors and media wanting to delve deeper than the high level
processes are going to be talking tech, which means referring to it as
FlaggedRevs.

--
John Vandenberg