[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes: first press

[Risker]

On 15 June 2010 04:54, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> wrote:

>
> On 15 Jun 2010, at 00:39, Risker wrote:
>
> > On 14 June 2010 19:22, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedia_to_loosen_controls_tonight.php
> >>
> >> Spotted by Nihiltres.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > <groan>
> > The George Bush page is not going to be part of this trial, because there
> is
> > no reasonable chance that the tiny, tiny percentage of useful edits will
> > make up for all the vandalism and BLP violations that will be added. That
> > was possibly the one thing that everyone working on the encyclopedia end
> of
> > the trial came to agreement on very quickly.
>
> Interesting - really? I was really hoping to see this tried to see whether
> it could work on such an article. Can you link me to the discussion about
> this, please?
>
> From a media contact point of view: one of the first things the media want
> are examples where it will be used, which is somewhat of a difficult
> question to answer when a) the community hasn't made its mind up, and b)
> even if it has, the community can change its mind at any time. ;-)
>

I'm actually becoming increasingly concerned that the notion that the
[[George W. Bush]] article would be unlocked has to be coming from somewhere
within the organization, since it's being repeated in every single article
in the press.  This is not a good sign.

The objective of this trial isn't to give us good press, it's to persuade
the community that this is a useful and viable tool.  Sticking it onto an
article that will probably get more vandalism in an hour than all the rest
of the pending changes articles put together will get in a week is hardly
the way to persuade the community that it's a good investment of volunteer
time and energy.  This extension isn't being sold to the world at large,
it's being sold to the community that will have to work with it.

The current planned queue for implementation can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Queue

There are plenty of good sound bites in just the first couple of days (World
War I and II, Ronald McDonald, Winston Churchill, Rush Limbaugh) that would
have made do quite nicely.

Risker/Anne