[WikiEN-l] One-sentence explanation of pending changes

[Andrew Gray]

On 8 June 2010 22:01, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> A coupla years ago we had 200 protected pages and 800 semi-protected
> pages. What are current numbers?

In mainspace, "a few thousand", all told, I think. Probably over our
2k limit but not by an order of magnitude.

> (Having the protected pages go PC would be a big win for all, and I
> include [[Main Page]] in that. Just imagine being able to tell the
> press: "The Main Page isn't locked any more." Of course, the templates
> that make it up still will be ...)

It'd be a bit gimmicky, no?

I can't imagine any change that'll not be immediately reverted or
ignored. There's no actual content there; it's been edited nine times
this year and four of those were errors-and-self-reverts.

Pending-changes won't be appropriate for all fully protected pages,
either, of course. For example, it'll quite likely prove unmanageable
with those which are protected due to sheer volume of editing - I
can't be sure of this until it's implemented, of course, but I suspect
on an individual basis we'd get overwhelmed quite a bit there trying
to separate out the good diffs and the vandalism to get a stable
improved version.

On the other hand, that's only a very small fraction of protections. I
can't immediately think of any others - now we can selectively delete
revisions easily, the cases where a page is locked to deal with a
particularly focused abuser should lend themselves quite well to this.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk