[Wikinews-l] Flagged Revisions - What are we going to do?

[Paul Williams]

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So, I think it's time to bring this up. I'm doing it on the mailing
list because it encourages a more detailed response than on-wiki, and
those who really care will be able to respond. For those who worry
that i'm taking Wiki issues off-wiki, please don't, this is a
discussion phase, and I fully intend to publicise any changes on-wiki
where we will obtain consensus before moving onwards.

I think that Flagged Revisions could potentially be a good thing for
Wikinews. It would give us both greater control and greater
credibility in the eyes of our readers. Not only can everyone edit,
but there is a form of "checking" beforehand - that leaves us open to
anyone's contributions whilst stil being able to easily maintain a
credible news source that conforms to all our guidelines.

I believe that the "Patrolling" configuration will work well for us.
Here's the definition, verbatim, from the announcement by Erik:

In the Patrolling Configuration, any user who has been registered for
more than 21 days and has made at least 150 edits will be
automatically given the permission to patrol changes for vandalism.
Only changes made by users who are not permitted to patrol changes
need to be patrolled.

In addition, sysops will be given the permission to flag versions of
"featured articles" in accordance with existing nomination processes.
(In other words, this gives you the ability to identify specific
_versions_ of an article as "featured", rather than the article as a
whole.) Finally, sysops will be permitted to define on a per-page
basis that changes need to be patrolled before being visible to
unregistered readers. This is an alternative to semi-protection; it
doesn't make sense to use both on a given page.

The use of these features is subject to policies that your wiki
community will need to develop. They should be used carefully until
such a policy is in place.
This means that we can stabilise articles on-publish (by marking them
as "patrol required"), whilst still allowing anyone to make changes.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Custom configurations? Please reply. Let's keep
this as constructive as possible.

- --
~ Paul Williams

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