[WikiEN-l] So, what is the deal with flagged revisions?

[Andrew Turvey]

Good questions. Here's my personal view: 

> So apparently all the press reporting is wrong. What's the real story? 

The press story (particularly in Britain) seems to be along the lines of: "Wikipedia, founded on open editing has been forced to restrict editing as their model has failed" 

This is exaggerated, grossly misleading and unduly negative but probably has a grain of truth at the centre. Bit like press reporting in general then :) Here's what I've been saying in response: 

- Wikipedia has been a phenomenal success - 4th most visited website, number 1 source for knowledge online, 3m articles, close to 5m images on Wikimedia Commons, partnerships with museums, art galleries, libraries, governments around the world 

- This success is partly down to the early adoption of this principle of openness - the idea that "anyone can edit". We have no intention of abandoning this principle

- However, with success comes responsibility, particularly when you have articles on living people and misinformation in those articles with the potential to cause harm. 

- Flagged revisions is a new tool that helps us manage this risk of harm. It allows people to edit but doesn't show that edit to the world until it has passed review. 

- Patrolled revisions allows users to choose whether to read the latest version of an article or the latest reviewed edit

- Some people have been saying that flagged revisions will make Wikipedia more open where previously protected or semi-protected pages are changed to flagged revisions. As I've said before, I'm not entirely comfortable with the argument because although it will probably be true in some cases, the net effect will be outweighed by the articles that are currently unprotected moving to flagged. Hence Wikipedia as a whole will become less open.

- The German Wikipedia has run flagged revisions for a year now, and they're still alive and kicking

- This is, of course, a trial, and many of the details have yet to be decided which will be done by community discussion. The New York Times sniffed out a story from a relatively minor technical announcement, which has then spread around the media.

- Generally if you've been following developments on wiki and you read something in the press which is different from your understanding of flagged revisions, your understanding is probably correct. Remember - you're the expert compared to them!

> 1) Is this going to apply to every page? 

No. People have been talking about all living person articles, although the community may of course decide to roll it out to all articles in the future, or indeed have it more restricted. The German Wikipedia applies in to every page.

> 2) Who gets to flag a revision? 

Members of the user group "Reviewer". All Admins will automatically be given reviewer status and all other users will be able to apply for it at [[WP:Request for permissions]]; like rollback there will be a presumed threshold of number of edits and time since account was opened. An initial poll rejected the idea of autopromotion, but I notice this issue has been reopened because "only" 50 people participated in that discussion.

See [[Wikipedia:Reviewers]] for more information.

> Can you flag your own revisions? 

I think at the moment the idea was yes.

> 3) What's the interface like? How many clicks? 

Don't know. The Trial will clarify a lot of these things so we can see it working in practice.

> 4) Is there any automatic flagging? 

I think the idea was all entries with [[Category:Living persons]] would be automatically flagged.

> 5) Are you supposed to "check" an entire article prior to flagging it? 

No - I understand it's just the edit(s) since it was last flagged.

> How confident are you meant to be? 

There's a "working draft" at [[Wikipedia:Reviewing guideline]] which says you can pass an edit if it doesn't contain any vandalism, patent nonsense, copyvios, legal threats, personal attacks or libel. Basically, this is a high level review, not intended to go into the details that you might get on a talk page.

> 6) What will encourage flaggers to actually bother flagging articles?

The encouragement will be for people who support the whole idea and want to give it the commitment to make it work. It's a bit like asking what makes admins respond to an {{editrequested}} tag on a protected article.

> 7) What will encourage non-flaggers to actually bother editing articles when they don't have any instant gratification? 

Their edits will still contribute, there will just be a delay in seeing it. There is, however, a big risk that people will be discouraged from editing. It will certainly discourage edits that don't pass review!
 
> 8) Which view will long time editors see by default? Stable (flagged) 
> or non-flagged version? 

Under "flagged protection" anonymous readers see the last flagged edit and registered readers see the last edit even if it hasn't been flagged.

Under "patrolled revisions" everyone can see every version but you if you are seeing an unpatrolled version you are also linked to the last patrolled version.

See [[WP:Flagged protection]] and [[WP:Patrolled revisions]] 

> 9) Can non-logged in editors see non-flagged versions? 

as above

> 10) Will this destroy Wikipedia? 

Wikipedia needs to continue recruiting new contributors in order to keep its current success. This has already been identified as a problem and flagged revisions may make this worse. We need to address this risk.

> 11) Will this improve Wikipedia? 

Misinformation in Wikipedia at the moment can cause harm, particularly where it concerns living people. Flagged revisions should reduce this risk and that will improve Wikipedia. 

Andrew