Talk:I Was a Rat! or, The Scarlet Slippers

Also see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions.

A list of blog posts on the issue. Sdedeo (tips) 22:37, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Previous discussion

The previous discussion is here. Sorry about the mess, I really believe this will be helpful. --Merzul 19:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Splitting it into two proposals, very good decision.--Father Goose 20:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have to leave my office now, or I will have to stay all night, so I'll leave this in a rather uncompleted state. There seems to be some support for this general idea, so I guess you guys will have to clean all the inconsistencies, and so on. --Merzul 21:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Query for developers

Note that all logged-in users, even new users, are shown the most recent version irrespective of what version is tagged.

Is it not possible to set in "preferences" that flagged versions are shown instead? This has been requested several times. PaddyLeahy 09:25, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, there are already quite a few preferences, we try to avoid adding any. Voice-of-All 14:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

That does not seem like a sensible reason for denying a sensible request.--Father Goose 17:53, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Although it is not a preference I would have enabled, I still think it would be a very good idea to include it. GDonato (talk) 20:29, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It's an idea, but there are technical issues of confusion/replication of errors/bogus bug reports and the issue of adding more clutter to a cluttered up page. Adding preferences is always a last resort. It also discourages article development.Voice-of-All 02:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I doubt you'll be able to avoid adding this preference sooner or later -- a huge number of users are going to beg for it.--Father Goose 02:34, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Voice of All (and others), the reason why I suggested such a feature (and I think others have also suggested it, maybe for different reasons) may be very useful (I will leave the exact way of implementing to the developers, another way of doing it would be to use 'sighted.wikipedia.org/wikipedia/en/'), is that it could enable to see the trusted part of the wikipedia only (as in 'the reliable encyclopedia'). Pages which do not have a sighted version should be turned into redlinks at that moment. Users which have the right to sight pages could then use that to go through subjects quickly to see which pages do exist, but do not have a sighted version, and convert whole subject areas into reliable subjects (the reliability of a page also depends on the reliability of the pages a page links to.

Another advantage of such a feature would be, that it is possible to just sit back, and read a reliable encyclopedia, without having to worry about reading vandalised pages, or pages which are not up to standards. I personally would use this 'sighted wikipedia' as my reference wikipedia, while I would continue editing in the normal wikipedia. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to the simpler idea that logged-in users could choose to see the same version as external readers (but taking advantage of other custom settings available only when you are logged in). PaddyLeahy 12:39, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, it might be one of those things that seems obvious, but you end up not needing it at all. I don't think any more pages than now will be vandalized. If that is the same rate, why wouldn't users want to help revert vandalism? Do you really think there will be a lot of wikipedians that actively don't want to see problems with articles and help, even when those problems are infrequent? If you turned this proposed feature on you would constantly have to re-load the page to see the current draft, I think that would become annoying for even the users that thought they wanted it, and many would discontinue using it. Better to wait and see I think, I could be wrong :) - cohesion 01:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It is not 'not want to see problems with articles and help', it is about using the encyclopedia for what it is supposed to be, an encyclopedia. If I need some data, I don't want to worry about the ugly part, I want the data. And then it would just be nice to have a possibility to browse the trusted part of the database. For the rest I will just continue to do what I am doing now .. getting the rest up to scratch. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 02:06, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Beetstra is right. Many of us tend to forget that the billions of hits on Wikipedia are nearly all from people who want to find some (hopefully reliable) information quickly - i.e., users, not editors. Walkerma 03:07, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, but they aren't logged in. We're talking about people who are logged in. Why would someone logged in want to see an old version of a page? I'm sure this feature will eventually get added b/c people like preference creep and it's hard to stop, but I don't think many people would use it. - cohesion 04:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you only log in when you want to specifically edit, but I know I am pretty much always logged in, and I can't imagine I'm the only one. And I've read there's apparently a LOT of accounts used simply because of preference setting. With that in mind, since a lot of people would rather not read vandalized pages, why wouldn't say want to see "an old version"? Am I missing something with your statement, or do you ignorantly assume logged in = wants to edit? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 11:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

There is now a preference to do this. Voice-of-All 22:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

On that note...

Okay, so "all logged-in users, even new users, are shown the most recent version", but what do people who are not logged in see; the current version or the last tagged one. I don't like it when we pay so much attention to what logged-in people see, we also do it with date stamps. The vast majority of people reading Wikipedia will not be reading it from an account. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

"Users who are not logged in will initially see the most recent sighted version, if there is one. If no version is sighted, they see the most recent one, as happens now. Users looking at a sighted version can still choose to view the most recent version and edit it."

The above is from the first paragraph of Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions, which contains the details of the proposal. (The project page here was split into two subpages, that one and Quality versions. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 06:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Which we must not do, until de.wikipedia finds out what the consequences of that are. I have a feeling it'd really really hurt. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to offend your feelings, but do you also have some arguments in that respect? At the moment, it's the vandalism that really really hurts. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Like I've explained each time this came up, it does likely change the dynamics of how the wiki works. People won't see the latest version, so they'll have less of a tendency to reach out and fix problems, possibly. It also adds a new responsibility that needs managing. All in all, a pretty big change. It's a shiny new toy, for sure, but in this case it might be a good idea to hold back a bit, say several months, and learn from the mistakes of others first (ie, de.wikipedia). --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC) I hope Jimmys vision works over at dewiki. We'll see if that's how it pans out.

So are you saying that de.wikipedia is the testbed for en.wikipedia? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 20:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

We can learn and have learned things from the other Wikipedias. They steal from us every day; we are a little less diligent about stealing from them. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Redundant...

Now that the appropriate pages exist on meta, etc... perhaps this page is redundant? I think I will trim it down to just the essentials. --Merzul 12:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Current discussion

At Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Stable versions is coming; what standards, guidelines, and processes need to be written? Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

This is the end.

This is a phenomenally bad idea that will (possibly) spell the end of Wikipedia as we know it. This is the beginning of a members-only club, everything we swore to hate. This basically means anonymous users can't make live changes to the publicly-displayed pages. Registration is now required. You can not edit this page right now. And so forth. This is it. The end. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:42, 3 Apr 2008 (UTC)

Sighted versions, maybe. But "quality versions", while itself a mixed proposition, will be a way to offer readers a "guaranteed good" version of a page. Provided the selection process is not deeply flawed, this is definitely something we want.--Father Goose (talk) 06:54, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I might not understand the proposal completely. I should've gone to the meta page before I opened my big mouth. But the fact that this will only happen to certain selected articles should probably be mentioned here too. Equazcion •✗/C • 06:58, 3 Apr 2008 (UTC)

The selection process is wholly unspecified as yet; for the time being, flagged versions is pretty much just a technical implementation. What articles end up having a "quality" version may follow something like the Good and Featured article processes, and the path of least resistance would be to simply have those processes designate a "quality" version in the course of a review.--Father Goose (talk) 08:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

There are a few similar comments in the Village Pump thread, such as "appears to negate the whole concept of a wiki" and "wait a year". Wikipedia is an evolutionary pool of ideas, and evolution requires two things to work: change and stability. Flagged Revisions is simply a tweak, and a very important one, to the processes that promote the stability necessary for Wikipedia articles to evolve. The Germans (I know) and the Russians (I hear) are going to adopt it sooner rather than later, and it might come to Wikibooks in the near future. Let's see how it works in those contexts before we kill it off, okay? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm still on the fence here. Whether or not this works will depend largely on how it gets implemented. If we're not very careful then yeah this will be a bad thing. I think this is largely the result of people, especially the foundation/Jimbo, being sick of Wikipedia's reliability being the butt of a collective internet joke. Prioritizing the search for a solution to that is going to have some major downsides. "Openly-editable" and "reliable" are fundamentally two conflicting terms. But as it's already been set in motion, I suppose we'll have to wait and see. Equazcion •✗/C • 18:14, 3 Apr 2008 (UTC)

Every one of those statements is perfectly reasonable, unlike the daft things I have seen outside of Wikispace. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Why is there a push for "quality versions" when "Sighted versions" is the solution? Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 00:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Sighted versions isn't an actual validation process, just a sight-check for vandalism. Most of our articles at any given moment are vandalism-free, but can still contain outright falsehoods. Chasing out the falsehoods takes real legwork and fact-checking, not just a "not vandalism" rubber stamp.--Father Goose (talk) 09:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Wow! The sky is falling! I have been suggesting for some time that we need "verified" versions; I had not thought that the software would actually make these the default for the "outside" to see, I was thinking that it was going to take kludges, such as simply tagging all unverified articles as such. This is better, then, than what I'd been suggesting.

It is crucial. For some reason which remains obscure to me, a great deal of effort has gone into scrubbing non-notable (but verifiable) articles from the encyclopedia, when these don't harm the reputation of Wikipedia at all. Who sees them? People who are looking for them Or maybe random browsers, but they can expect to find obscure stuff. What harms the reputation is articles on important topics that contain unverified information, or that are POV imbalanced. Now, verified versions (and that is an application of flagged revisions) will, indeed, create new problems. But these are standard editorial problems for an encyclopedia! I do know how we could pull it off, efficiently, but ... until people are willing to try to understand new proposals before rejecting them ... it's not going to happen. I speak of WP:PRX, of course. Which was not at all about voting, in spite of the constantly repeated refrain at the MfD, nor did it propose to create any bureaucracy (though it could create a spontaneous hierarchy that might replace the functions of a bureaucracy without the inefficiency if the community chose to do so). I'm making this comment here, but I'm in pull mode. Want to know about this? Ask me. And the discussion will probably take place, for the most part, off-wiki. Too much poison in the air here at this point.

It was said, "Openly-editable" and "reliable" are fundamentally two conflicting terms. No. Not at all. Thinking that way is essentially a failure of imagination. Consider the possibility before us. I won't get into the nit-picking distinction between being logged-in or not, and, really, all that might need to happen is that an IP user presses a button and, presto, "automatic session log-in as IP." (Warning: your IP address will be shown for edits you make. If you wish to avoid this, register an account and log in.) Piddling detail. So what we have is an encyclopedia that any one can edit, with a layer over it, seen when not "logged in," which consists only of a subset of articles. Presumably those which are (1) notable and (2) verified. Reliable. (The set of users who can tag as verified would be those who could handle the responsibility, and follow consensus.) This, I think, might make some deletionists extraordinarily unhappy, they will have to find something more useful to do, or at least equally as satisfying as crushing other's work, for with the verified layer, the arguments for actual deletion based on non-notability largely disappear. (Though there is still the work of reviewing notability tags.) Not "anyone" can verify or otherwise flag an article, this would be a privilege; it might indeed be automatically assigned, perhaps so many edits without problems, or perhaps by admins, but could be removed for failure to follow guidelines that the community would establish. Frankly, if a debate was over a notability tag rather than life or death for an article, I'd care much less about the result, and, as far as I'm concerned, notability standards could become stricter. It will be useful if the flags for versions could be not just "verified," but also more than one "notable" tag. The very top layer is verified *and* clearly notable, but below this there could be the complete encyclopedia, where the standard for notability is that a single user took the trouble to create an article and another to tag it as "noticed and therefore notable," having that right. And below that would be submitted articles. Verified tags would be independent, and verified articles could exist at all the notability layers. True deletion remains for hoaxes, copyvio, libel, etc. (But some hoaxes might better simply be tagged as hoaxes! I have one in mind, what was really a humorous essay -- but, unfortunately, placed in article space.) And nearly all true deletions would be routine, speedies.

Knowledge without hierarchy is far less useful than knowledge which is arranged in layers of increasing detail an decreasing overall importance, with the ability to drill down through the layers. That was the vision of hypertext that had us so excited in the 1980s. I considered the development of wikis very hopeful.--Abd (talk) 01:36, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

We already have a members-only club: the set of autoconfirmed users, who are able to mark pages as "patrolled". You may think of that as "the end" if you choose.

I think this is a great idea! The main thing I want to see is the very bottom-level flagging, used to flag pretty well all changes as "good" except vandalism.

On many pages, if you glance at the page history it's obvious that there's vandalism from time to time and between it, people keep reverting back to the same version. I'd like there to be a tab labelled "stabler version" such that if you click it, you get that page that keeps getting reverted to. I had proposed that this be done automatically: e.g. if three editors reverted back to the same identical version, it would be automatically marked as the stable version. (I had a more complex algorithm than that.) But here we can easily do essentially the same thing just by having ordinary users flag things as checked, in a similar way that we mark pages as patrolled.

I look forward to implementation! --Coppertwig (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Look at it this way: It won't change anything, except that it will provide one more feature as a convenience. As it is now, anyone can study the page history (and talk page) and figure out that a certain version seems to be accepted by several editors and likely free of recent vandalism. This takes time. The new feature will simply allow people to find such a stabler/less-vandalised version at the click of a button without having to study the details of the page history themselves. If what you want to do is look up the atomic weight of an element (for some purpose that's not important enough to require true reliability, but you still want a high probability of getting the right value) this sort of thing could be highly convenient. The most recent version of a page could easily have the value arbitrarily changed; the "stabler version" is far less likely to, although it can also suffer from the same problem. What's wrong with letting people find that stabler version at the click of a button rather than having to spend time studying the page history? --Coppertwig (talk) 22:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

My main reservation about the "sighted versions" portion of the proposal is that new or unregistered users will no longer have direct interaction with the encyclopedia, but instead will post changes, then have to wait for someone to sight them. Not all the details are in place, so that may or may not be how it will actually work. But if it does end up functioning that way, it will make it so that people are no longer editing the encyclopedia, but instead "suggesting" edits which may or may not be approved. There's a definite psychological difference -- for better or worse, I can't say, but it might scare some editors off. It would probably also make "afterthought" or "fixup" edits impossible, where a person writes something, checks it after writing, notices something is wrong. Yes, you should preview before saving, but even I sometimes rewrite stuff after posting it even though I preview religiously.

An additional problem is that I wonder if people will sight good-faith, non-vandalism edits that are just not very good. I'd rather people be actively reverted than ignored, and given no explanation as to why their edits never appear in the encyclopedia. Depending on how it is implemented, Sighted versions may end up being a complete abandonment of how wiki editing works, where every edit must be approved by a bureaucracy first.

I'm totally for Quality versions, as a means of offering a "known good" version to readers, but Sighted versions flirts with "control freak" issues that I am very wary of.--Father Goose (talk) 02:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It might be best to start out by having the stable version be the default page content only for trolled/semi-protected pages, like Evolution. Voice-of-All 03:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That might not be bad.--Father Goose (talk) 05:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

If they're semi-protected then presumably they'd already be free of vandalism, generally. Or did you mean in place of the semi-protection... Equazcion •✗/C • 05:50, 7 Apr 2008 (UTC)

I believe in place of protection. I remember reading somewhere that Jimbo was promoting sighted versions as an alternative to semi-protection.--Father Goose (talk) 07:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the idea is that we don't have to shut out people from editing pages by putting them under semi-protection; instead of semi-protecting we can set the default view to the last "sighted" version. Anons can still make changes, the edits just won't show up to unlogged-in viewers until somebody with a few edits under their belt marks the latest version "sighted". It's kind of like seconding a motion. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 07:38, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That means we'd still have to deal with any IP vandalism. It just wouldn't show publicly in the interim. I dunno. Equazcion •✗/C • 07:42, 7 Apr 2008 (UTC)

I gather it wouldn't show for the vandals either. That would probably discourage them from continuing after an experiment or two. But while "sighting" might prove to be a good option in certain extreme cases, it may be hard to resist the temptation to eventually apply it to all articles. Just as there was no "study" performed to see what we lost with prohibiting new users from creating articles (despite one promised), I doubt there will be one with sighted versions, and we won't know if we lost good potential contributors because of it. I'd personally rather do 10 vandalism reverts than lose one good contribution, or worse still, scare away a good contributor. I can't say if sighted versions will end up being a good idea or not, but I wish we were more willing to concretely measure the drawbacks than look only at the benefits and dust off our hands.--Father Goose (talk) 09:09, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, we should do a pro/con analysis. I think it would be difficult right now since the implementation is still up in the air. Otherwise I'd start a page now that lists pros and cons of semi protection vs. sighted version. Equazcion •✗/C • 09:16, 7 Apr 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) More than a pro/con, I'd want to see an actual study of contribution patterns before and after implementation, to see if it produces a dropoff in new (good) users, for instance.--Father Goose (talk) 11:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not all that curious there. We're talking about protected articles that switched over to sighted, so # of new editors could only increase, I'd gather. Are you more likely to create an account if you weren't able to edit the article you wanted to at all? The point in keeping anons able to edit is to encourage them to join, so I'd imagine the more they're able to do, the more likely they are to join. Why would you assume the opposite? Equazcion •✗/C • 11:31, 7 Apr 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I agree about preferring to do 10 vandalism reverts than lose one good contributor. However, many of the terrible consequences discussed above would only occur if we took away from some users the ability to see the most recent version -- and I don't think anyone's proposing that.

The proposal is to supply more information, not less. People will still be free to read the most recent version, and to look through the page history and read any version they wish. But they will have additional information: that certain version(s) has/have been marked as being preferred or approved in some way.

Actually, there could be a problem if non-Wikipedians look at the approved or "sighted" version as the default: they will see less vandalism, and therefore be less likely to begin editing.

On the other hand, we might bring in even more new users, if it's made easy to compare the most recent version with the sighted version, perhaps via a tab. Then vandalism would be more obvious and more people might start editing.

Whether the most recent or the sighted version is presented as the default view should be based on what the reader prefers, in my opinion: what the average reader prefers for the default default, and with each user able to set the default in their preferences. Anything else would be overly controlling, IMO. --Coppertwig (talk) 11:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

(←) How can one find out what the average reader would prefer? The discussion archives are full of speculations about what would be more attractive for new contributors. Some say a person is happier if her changes show up immediately, others argue that a person is more pleased when his edits gets reviewed. It would be interesting to poll actual readers of Wikipedia rather than just reading speculations. Personally, I would be more impressed to see that my edits are being reviewed. I'm a Ph.D. student, so I'm used to having my fabulous papers reviewed and rejected; I consider that an integral part of doing science. Seeing a review process in place here would greatly increase my respect for this project. But like most people, I'm not average. :) --Vesal (talk) 14:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Documentation update?

Hi. As I noted at the VPump, this page (Wikipedia:Flagged revisions) would really benefit from an update, by someone who knows what is what, and the historical development of this whole concept. Specific things that might be useful include:

• a slightly more detailed summary of how it works (2 new UALs, 4 selectable ratings, (I think))
• perhaps with a link to the screenshots at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs#Use
• pointers to any current/ongoing discussions
• pointers to important historical discussions (mailing list threads, local/meta/de talkpage threads, etc). All I can find in the Signpost archives are 2006-07-10/More stable versions and 2006-08-07/Wikimania tech
• A very brief sense of how it developed; and how it differs from, or incorporates, meta:Article validation and Wikipedia:Stable versions
• anything else that might be helpful in bringing a newcomer to the idea, up to speed.

Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Listing Port (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Someone has made a start of this at Wikipedia:FlaggedRevs fact sheet. If anyone with knowledge about the unaddressed points could improve that page, we could link it from, or merge it to, this page. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

A new kind of vandalism?

With this feature, is there the danger of a new kind of vandalism, where a malicious user marks a vandalized version as the "flagged version" shown to the outside world, but editors remain unaware because they see the recent version where the vandalism has been deleted? --Marcinjeske (talk) 02:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Not everyone will have the power to tag articles as assessed. We aren't sure how liberal we will be with handing out this power, but you can bet that anyone caught knowingly marking vandalism as quality will get in trouble. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It is very unlikely for Editors to vandalize. Only as likely as say, users that go rogue and "go out in a bang". Also, if it was deleted, there is a good chance that the deletion was auto-reviewed. Last, users still know if the stable version is different than the current, no matter what. Voice-of-All 19:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me for disagreeing, but editors (that is to say, with accounts) vandalize all the time. If you want to be malicious, it is not that hard to get an account. Yes, usually these are short-lived accounts or sock puppets, but I would be concerned because of the two aspects: 1) that editors don't see the flagged version, but the current, so less chance for noticing it, and 2) the vandalism is indirect.. the editor would not be making the bad edit, they would simply be referring to the bad edit already made. I think limiting the handing out of this power as above may address my concern... but I still fear that for controversial articles (where this feature would be most helpful), it may also be the most open for abuse... imagine edit-warring over the flagged version by point-pushers. But I guess time will tell - it probably is worth it to try.--Marcinjeske (talk) 23:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

In this case "editor" is not the same thing as a user with an account. "Editor" is a user right (similar to the current rollback right). Mr.Z-man 23:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I get that the implementation is in the form of a new rights group to join "rollbackers, administrators, bureaucrats, bots, checkusers, and oversights". I hope there is no suggestion of naming that right "editor" and leading to endless confusion? My original concern is mostly alleviated if the right is treated like WP:oversight is now. The big issue with vandalism (both obvious vandalism "wiki sucks" and sophisticated vandalism of changing meaning - "The company's founder was a well-known communist.") is the time it takes to correct it. Edits (in decreasing order of reaction time) are patrolled by bots and people at Special:RecentChanges, on logged in user watchlists, and by people noticing something while reading an article and checking the page history. I hope that these existing mechanisms can be used to monitor change to flagged revisions. Otherwise, the people in the best position and with the knowledge to fix it (the editors) won't notice because they see the current version.

For an example of subtle kind, until my series of edits this week, the Monarch article had a section on Monarchs in Africa that was solely composed of a description of a modern pan-African Imperial Empress... with no third-party source and no mention of well-documented historical monarchies. Much more than the "this is stoopid" form, wildly misleading information is what gives Wikipedia the bad rep. --Marcinjeske (talk) 03:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Editors under this system will routinely look at diffs between current and sighted version. Either the bum info is in the current version too, in which case we are no worse than at present, or it has been removed from the current version by a clueful person without capital-E Editor rights, in which case such a significant edit should attract the attention of an Editor with the page on their watch list, and be rapidly (within days if not hours) sighted. The most popular idea is hand out "Editor" rights very widely, so it would be the most common status for registered users with a significant editing history. That way, it is possible for Editors to sight a large fraction of wikipedia and keep it under active observation on their watchlists. (Think of this as a replacement for Recent Changes patrol, which would require much less effort under sighted versions). While this would mean that occasional "sighting vandalism" would surely happen, it would also allow it to be quickly reverted. The trick is to make the qualification onerous enough to deter most vandals and slow down the rest of them, while light enough to hand out to a large fraction of active editors. There has been a lot of productive debate (see archives) about how to do this, and I think all suggested solutions are available in the current implementation. PaddyLeahy (talk) 14:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Now live on DE:WP

Flagged revisions (both sighted and quality) went live on the German Wikipedia on 6th May. This gives an updated summary of the current sighting statistics.

As of 12th May, 14.5% of the 750,000 pages had been sighted, and just over 2000 users had sighting rights, compared to 298 admins and 550,000 user accounts. 0n English Wikipedia, about 90% of user accounts have zero edits; if the same applies on DE:WP it looks like the rights have gone to a substantial fraction of the actively editing community, as hoped for EN:WP sighted versions as well.

Two users have each sighted over 4000 pages each. That's not so good IMHO: unless they are very active, that is too many for one person to monitor for useful updates (of course these probably are hyper-active users!). On average it looks like each sighter will have a few hundred pages to watch; not too awful since many will be very obscure.

Comparing the numbers for English Wikipedia, we have 3 times as many articles but 14 times as many user accounts, and 5 times as many admins. Presumably our hard-to-count "active user community" is bigger than the German one by something between 5 and 14 then, so we probably have an easier job of keeping EN:WP sighted and up-to-date than they do over there. PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting, thanks for giving the overview. I guess it makes sense to wait and see how it works out over there, before we try it out here; but I hope we won't wait for too long ... Merzul (talk) 20:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be interesting to know what their criteria for sighting articles is. IIRC, de.wiki has much stricter content policies than we do, I wonder if that is reflected in their flagged revisions policy as well. Mr.Z-man 20:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The criteria that will be chosen for this is still beeing discussed. Right now you have to request the rights on a special page. One of the ideas for who gets the rights is: 30 edits during 30 days.FreddyE (talk) 08:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I´m wondering if it wouldn´t be most efficient to sight per category as part of an "inital sighting process"...for example..a group of sighters could form a "sighting group" for category A, and sight all unsighted articles of that category, then move to the next? FreddyE (talk) 08:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

You can do this, if you like. You can order Special:UnreviewedPages by category. --Avatar (talk) 14:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Unlike "guarding" articles on your watchlist, sighters do not "adopt" pages. So it's perfectly OK to do an initial sighting on 20,000 articles and not monitoring them further in the future. If they are changed by a person withough sighting rights (we plan do have at least ~10,000 sighters in de), the unsighted versions are listed on the special page Special:OldReviewedPages. Every sighter (and mainly the disburdened vandal fighter) can check this page and sight the new versions, which is very easy because you only have to take a look at the diff. --Avatar (talk) 14:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Avatar; anything you want to share would be appreciated. (Avatar is an admin on de.wp, guys.) I just found out on the wikiquality-l list today that a good page to monitor progress is http://tools.wikimedia.de/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi (in German). Currently it says (my translation):

Out of 748726 articles currently on de.WP, at least 122890 currently have a "sighted" version (16.41%). At this rate, every article will have been sighted at least once by June 27. In addition, 122291 articles are currently sighted in their newest version (16.33%). During the last hour, 798 new "sighted version" symbols were placed [and it also gives daily and monthly totals]. 2188 users have the right to mark articles as "sighted".

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dank55, you can click on the US flag above the text and than you don't have to translate yourself :-) --Avatar (talk) 04:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, this is interesting, but many people here would like to know how this influences the quantity and quality of anon contributions to sighted pages. Is anything like that measured? Merzul (talk) 16:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

P.Birken ist searching for good metrics in the quality-l mailinglist. --Avatar (talk) 04:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tim. Yes, but there were some words whose meaning was not obvious to English speakers (reviewed, set, marks, module), so I translated it myself. I steal, um, borrow many things from the German Wikipedia :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:48, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The results that you mention from de.WP sound good and useful. One question: since what I'm reading above indicates that people don't want to see too many editors able to flag/sight revisions, and since I don't see any specific criteria listed for who will be able to flag/sight revisions: what about admins? Any admin has been approved by a significant majority of the community who voted and commented in the case, and a bureaucrat has agreed that the editor should have admin tools; it seems reasonable that an admin should automatically have flag/sight tools as well. Nyttend (talk) 13:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, although when considering giving admins significant new authority, it would be best to be clear what kinds of misuse would result in losing admin rights. There has always been resistance on en.wp to anything perceived as "bureaucracy", and if only admins are allowed to mark articles as "examined" (a better translation of "gesichtet"), I would be very likely to support an RFA for someone who would do a good job of this, even if they don't know how to use every admin tool. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC) It looks like no one is considering this, so I don't need to worry about it. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

According to the sighted page, We already have a proposed guideline on the requirements. They are:

The right will also be given automatically by the software to editors who meet the following conditions:

   * Has an account for 30 days
   * Has 150 edits
         o 30 edits to article namespace pages
         o 10 article namespace pages edited
         o 15 days of edits
   * Has confirmed an e-mail account

I for one think that spreading it out widely among editors is a good idea. --Falcorian ^(talk) 17:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that we should be careful to spread out flag/sight tools, perhaps requiring a few months and several hundred edits. I do not think that it should be restricted only to admins; my point was that I think that all admins should have it. Nyttend (talk) 01:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree -- all admins get these tools by default. For everyone else, have requirements similar to what's needed for AWB (maybe 400-500 mainspace edits), including making people apply for access. That way, it would really only be people who want to use the tools that will get access to them. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 04:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The criteria at WP:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions emerged as the consensus after a very long discussion now archived at WT:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions. The consensus was that sighting rights really are not a big deal (because improper use has very mild effects and is trivially reversed), and hence should be much more widely spread than adminship. Most new admins have 1000-2000 mainspace edits so requiring a good fraction of this for a mere "sighter" is overkill. Sighting will not work unless there are enough sighters to promptly re-sight pages where useful edits have been made. If the aim is that most pages are eventually sighted, as planned for DE:WP and as many of us hope will be the case for English WP, then you need the sort of numbers Avatar is talking about above, ie several thousand for DE:WP, a few times more for here. PaddyLeahy (talk) 19:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the 150 edits as on the page at the moment seems to be a reasonable balance between having enough people to sight versions and reducing the abuse potential. I do not see the need for the requirement to 'have confirmed an e-mail account'. Having e-mail does not seem related to the ability to flag versions - I can see the case for admins but not for just sighting versions. Davewild (talk) 19:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, now that I think about it, something around 150 edits would be best. Would sighting rights be able to be revoked, or would abuse just result in a block? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 23:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I seem to remember it being said that it's simply a new class of user, so that would suggest that it would be possible to "demote" people if necessary. --Falcorian ^(talk) 03:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure how this works when rights are given out automatically. Just as interesting fact: When we started sighted versions in German Wikipedia there was a bug and users weren't given the right automatically, but admins have to give it. In two days more than 1.000 users got the sighting right. After that the automatism kicked in (30 days, 30 edit), but the community decided that this requirements are too low. So we disabled it again and till now, the sighting right is given per hand after request. --Avatar (talk) 13:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The right to mark sighted is a user group membership and can be revoked. I hope the implementation wouldn't regrant the membership after the automatic membership criteria (e.g. 150 edits) are remet, but I don't know if it works that way. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 19:46, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I sure hope it can be revoked and stay that way. Once this goes live, I will revoke my own right to sight! I'll do this because I am concerned about limiting my legal liabilities. GRBerry 00:08, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

"Step out of line, the man come and take you away" -R. S. Shaw (talk) 20:44, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Outdated text on the page?

Please note that the German Wikipedia does a test run since May 6th. And they handle the opposite of "Note that all logged-in users, even new users, are shown the most recent version irrespective of what version is tagged." --Subfader (talk) 12:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

There may be many differences between the way German Wikipedia uses Flagged Revisions and the way English Wikipedia uses it. For English Wikipedia, the provisional plan at this point is to show all logged-in users the most recent version.--ragesoss (talk) 00:23, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

This is correct. In contrary German Wikipedia shows the latest sighted version. This is a long debate. Most users (of the German Wikipedia) don't see a point in having sighted versions which aren't shown as default. So the question is if the sighting of new edits scales, so no new version is unsighted for more then x minutes/hours/days. If it won't scale, most users will see the stable version approach as failed. But at the moment, we're still optimistic. --Avatar (talk) 13:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Flagged revisions implementation proposal

Note: The following text was moved from User:Thomas H. Larsen/flagged revisions implementation proposal at 03:09, 22 May 2008

I move that flagged revisions be enabled over all articles.

If you see flagged revisions as a system to solely preserve accuracy and coverage once it is achieved, then yes, flagged revisions should be enabled only on FAs, GAs, and perhaps BLPs. However, if you see flagged revisions as a system to preserve, and create, and facilitate the creation of accuracy and coverage, as I do, then it makes logical sense to enable flagged revisions over all English Wikipedia articles.

Articles which receive reasonably high traffic (numbers of views) should be flagged in order to (a) preserve accuracy and coverage, and to (b) stop blatant vandalism (the "YOU SUCK!" sort) from appearing to readers. Articles which receive low or medium levels of traffic should be flagged to stop discreet vandalism (changes of the number "7" to "8", for example) from slipping out to readers.

In my experience, as traffic levels of articles decrease, the number of inappropriate editors per number of readers increases. Thus, flagged revisions are probably required more on low-traffic articles (in other words, not the majority of GAs and FAs) than on high-traffic articles (which most GAs and FAs are).

The worst that enabling flagged revisions on all articles could do would be to make low-traffic articles update much more slowly, and even this is not much of an issue:

• changes carried out to low-traffic articles (which form a honeypot for vandalism, spam, and misinformation) should be verified before being made default to logged-out readers;
• low-traffic articles need only update in proportion to the number of views they receive, and the number of views is relative to the number of updates (in other words, $A=B$ and $B=A$ — number of updates is proportional to number of views, and number of views is proportional to number of updates); and
• are readers going to prefer partial or full accuracy, coverage, and stability, fast updating and no stability or slow updating and complete stability?

As a philosophical reason, the first and foremost principle of the English Wikipedia is to provide a reliable encyclopedic informational resource to all people. Reliability, which consists of accuracy, coverage, and stability, is not just an ethical plus: it is a fundamental, essential, necessary moral principle for any resource which calls itself objective, informational, and free, and always has been. If we have a way to improve reliability in any way, and this way does not interfere with the "everyone can edit" and the "information should be free" principles, we should pursue it.

I suggest that we pursue this way of improving the English Wikipedia's reliability through enabling flagged revisions on all articles, since it has major obvious benefits, no major obvious downsides, and does not conflict with the objectivity, informational aspect, or freedom that forms the basis of the English Wikipedia.

Actually, though, the question of how flagged revisions should be enabled isn't really up to the writers of the English Wikipedia. After all, as logged-in account-holding editors we are nearly always going to see the current revision of articles anyway, and we should be designing the English Wikipedia primarily for readers, not writers. I suggest (a) that we set up a temporary voting site on the Wikimedia servers which accepts yes-or-no votes regarding whether or not flagged revisions should be enabled over all or over just some English Wikipedia articles (and asks a voting question such as, "Would you prefer (a) all articles to update more slowly, but be more reliable, or (b) some articles to update more slowly and be more reliable, but the rest to remain as they are?"), (b) that the aforementioned system accept only one vote per IP address, and (c) that a notice should appear at the top of all English Wikipedia articles to all logged-out readers inviting them to vote. This system would permit even writers to vote, but would primarily reach a reader audience.

Best and friendly regards, — Thomas H. Larsen 09:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I support the stable revision of articles being displayed by default to logged-out readers of the English Wikipedia. Imagine educating all Wikipedia readers how to get the stable revision :-/. Reliability should be default. — Thomas H. Larsen 09:57, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Voice your opinion

I absolutely support this. Finally a proposal that is based on the reason for Flagged Revisions - not so we can better deal with controversial articles or use semi-protection less, but so readers can trust the content of all articles. I think if the link is prominent enough we won't necessarily need to display the stable version on all pages. Mr.Z-man 16:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Strongly support Kevin Baas^talk 18:08, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• I also support this; it is well thought out. It makes sense that the reader (ie those coming for accurate and stable information) should see the flagged version, and editors (ie logged in) see the standard. If flagging-rights (as it were) were given to a large number of editors, this would run smoothly (ie. most regular, proven editors). WP remains an encyclopedia which "anyone can edit", while becoming more reliable, and less prone to nonsense vandalism or BLP issues. Thanks, Thomas, for putting the thought into this. Gwinva (talk) 03:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
• (Above content copied from village pump proposal archive 23. — Thomas H. Larsen 04:36, 19 April 2008 (UTC))
• UberMecatasticaldestructoplazma Support I cant find a single flaw with this proprossel. БοņёŠɓɤĭĠ₳₯є 15:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Flagged revisions should have been a part of the wiki system from the start. The sooner we can get it implemented, the sooner we move towards having a Wikipedia that is actually reliable. Kaldari (talk) 00:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
• Partially Support. I feel that the system of revisions by itself could be a great boon to helping the accuracy of content in Wikipedia. That said, I do agree with some of the points listed under the discussion section, specifically the comments made by Nonplus and Judgesurreal777. If there is going to be a default view, it should be the current page with a easy and prominent system for switching over to the latest stable release. Warhorus (talk) 16:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong support. Finally, an answer to Wikipedia's critics and a solutions to our most vexing problems - vandalism and unverified information. The sooner we get this in place the sooner Wikipedia ceases to be the butt of everyone's jokes (one of which I heard on the radio yesterday). Kaldari (talk) 14:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Support. There are a large number of articles where the likelihood of a new edit being accurate and helpful are sufficiently low that this should be a net improvement overall. I further support the flagged revisions being the only revisions available to non-logged-in users, to remove any perceived reward for vandalism: if they can't even admire their own handiwork, what possible motivation can they have to vandalize pages? Jclemens (talk18:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
• I support flagged revisions on all articles if only to ensure that someone who is enabled to tag an article as flagged has actually read the article. Fixing uncategorized pages fulfills a similar function for new pages, but flagged revisions would extend that concept toward ensuring minimal standards for all articles. I would oppose any system where non-logged in users see a different page than logged-in users: I'll have to think about how to work around that issue. But the basic idea deserves my full support. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 06:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Support I can't wait until this is rolled out. Much needed to increase reliability and stability and to fight vandalism. — Becksguy (talk) 12:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support I support flagged versions strongly and will support pretty much any sensible proposal to implement them. I urge people to be willing to compromise and that any proposal to implement flagged versions be written so that it can gain the necessary consensus in order for them to be implemented. Davewild (talk) 16:07, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong support on all articles; unconvinced about benefit of polling non-editor readers. Wikipedia is very much at a point where a little more content stability and vandalism prevention is more of a Good Thing than seeing the latest version this moment. "Your edit is visible to other editors, it will be shown to the public as soon as it's been checked. See here for more, including being allowed to check edits yourself". Sighting rights will be widely enough given that many edits will be sighted pretty quickly in practice. This is applicable to all articles, although we could trial it on "just some types of articles first". More comment when home. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
• Support. I support implementing flagged revisions: I see no downside to simply implementing it while leaving the current version as the default view. It makes additional information available. All versions are still accessible to all readers. As to whether it's better to have the sighted version as the default view: that's a separate discussion, but any downside to that should not stop us from implementing flagged revisions at all, since we still have the option of displaying the current version as the default. In any case, the other version is also easily accessible at the click of a link. It probably does make sense to have the sighted version as the default view for non-logged-in users, and this should be based on an estimate of what such readers prefer, possibly via poll, as suggested. Coppertwig (talk) 23:22, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong support. I haven't seen any problems at the German WP, and don't expect any here. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong support. Implement ASAP. --Stefan ^talk 04:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
• EXTREMELY strong oppose - The proposal is well-designed and intelligent, but I see this as part of an ongoing process where Wikipedia grows ossified and closed to contributions. This is not the first step, and it is far from the last. I suspect that five years from now, all changes will be approved by a six-month process involving three committees in a well-defined hierarchy, and that editing will slow to approximately 20 to 30 edits per year - not per article, but per wiki! Specifically, I think that this step of the "freeze" process will amount to a de facto ban of anonymous editing, and that flagged revisions will be so unmanageable in scope that they will bring nearly zero actual benefit - unless you consider drawing a curtain across the workings of Wikipedia to be a benefit, which I know many do. Further, the flagging system will be highly imperfect when it comes to maintaining accuracy, and Wikipedia will remain the butt of jokes from people who despise open-source thinking and free culture (and who never actually cared about accuracy in the first place - wake up!). The type of clown who cracks wise about Wikipedia's alleged inaccuracy is not going to change his mind because of "flagged revisions"! Further, the inevitable imperfections of the flagging system - which will be massively worse than anyone is predicting - will mean that the reputation of the 'pedia among legitimately open-minded persons will become far worse, because it will now be officially "flagging" (read: declaring) inaccurate content to be accurate and vetted, which is much more embarrassing than any problems we have had before. Accuracy will NOT increase, blatant vandalism WILL decrease or at least be less visible (I admit that much, but I deny that blatant vandalism is a problem worthy of such an anti-Wikipedian countermeasure), the reputation of the encyclopedia WILL suffer, editing rates WILL go down, membership and community WILL eventually decline as the barrier between anons and registered members rises higher, and Wikipedia WILL take another step toward becoming a very, very bland version of Britannica. The amount of groupthink surrounding these new policies, and the near-total defection of Jimmy Wales to the POV of Larry Sanger, is demonstrative of a deepening sickness in the "community", which is becoming more like a scared little village every day. I suspect that anyone replying to this comment will nitpick based on the specifics of the proposal, but this opinion is meant as a blanket condemnation of the entire concept of flagged revisions, and to the idea of starkly dividing the logged-in community from the world of anonymous viewers. Despite all of the above, I have no doubt that the flagged revision system is inevitable, as it is supported most strongly by the sort of people most likely to be aware of, and to participate in, cloistered discussions such as this one. Among these classes of users, opposition is virtually nil, and flagged revisions will be policy before 98% of people who visit the site have ever heard of them. 100% of users will suffer from the results. Mr. IP (talk) 09:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
• Weak support. I believe everyone should see the most recent version of articles by default. Among other reasons already mentioned, this avoids confusion on the part of anonymous editors who attempt to edit a page only to find that the article they're editing is substantially different from the one they just read. A prominent "Stable" or "Reviewed" button could cookie the viewer such that they will see the flagged revisions of all articles instead. tgies (talk) 10:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. While I understand the arguments for this proposal, and I don't necessarily dispute that it will fix some of Wikipedia's major problems, we must ask ourselves: what is the cost? Wikipedia is based on the principle that by gathering this great number of people together to contribute, we can arrive a complete, intelligent discussion of nearly any topic. And I believe it works; we all do, that's why we're here. Critically, though, the system depends on an constant influx of new sets of revising eyes and expert minds. When we don't have those things, we end up with WP:Systemic bias, a content problem that, long term, is far greater than vandalism and spelling mistakes. So then what is the effect on the influx of new editors if we create a system that favors the Wikipedia establishment over Joe Internet? I believe it will be extremely off-putting for a newcomer to see that for their whole first month of editing, their edits are second-tier. I further believe that it runs contrary to WP:BOLD, in that the sighting process will inevitably be used not just for obvious vandalism, but to simply remove edits that otherwise might have been reworked and added to the article. How can we tell new editors, "be bold," while simultaneously telling them "we can't trust you"? That basic hypocrisy will cause the number of people willing to come edit Wikipedia to plummet, and the result will be net negative for the quality of our encyclopedia. SaveThePoint (talk) 01:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Spirit of wikis and flagged revisions

I do not agree with the idea that flagged revisions go against the spirit of wikis. I see the purpose of wikis as being:

... to bring reliable informational resources to all people, all cultures, all nations, in their own language, free in the senses of both liberty and gratis ... [r]eliability is defined as an inseparable combination of accuracy ... and stability. — User:Thomas H. Larsen#Our horizon

Notice my emphasis on reliability. Information, even fast-updating information, is not enough by itself. Stability and accuracy are also required.

In any case, the idea that flagged revisions will take away from the speedily-updating aspect of wikis seems to me to be false. Flagged revisions basically give readers a choice: "Hello, madam, which version of the content would you like: the latest stable version, or the most current version?" Since a prominent link will be placed on the stable and current revisions of articles pointing readers to their complementary revision and explaining the difference between the two so that readers can make a choice, I don't see how arguments that flagged revisions go against the spirit of wikis could possibly be correct.

For example, on the current revision of pages we could have a message like this:

You are viewing the most current revision of this page, which may contain unstable, inaccurate, or otherwise undesirable content. View the latest stable revision if you would prefer content that is more stable.

... and, on the stable revision of pages, we could have a message like this:

You are viewing the latest stable revision of this page, which may contain content that is out of date. View the current revision if you would prefer the most recent content.

These messages would be displayed to logged-out readers whenever they read the current or stable revisions, respectively, of an article.

I support the latest stable revision of articles (the "default revision") being displayed by default to logged-out readers, since I think that reliability should be default and that readers shouldn't have to click to receive stable content. On the other hand, either way would probably work fine in the long term, provided the links were prominent.

Best and friendly regards, — Thomas H. Larsen 04:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Please no further polution of pages with tag templates. From HCI-Usability perspective these tags are making Wikipedia much less user friendly for the novice user. Arnoutf (talk) 16:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The German wikipedia has it made it quite discreet. On their front page featured article the flagged version is here and the non flagged version is here. I can't read much German so can't tell what it actually says but the format looks good to me. Davewild (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The German WP page looks good. I agree, it's discrete, on the same line as the title, and that would be my vote. — Becksguy (talk) 17:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Amendment to proposal

I now support the current version being displayed by default, provided the link between the current and stable versions is prominent enough. — Thomas H. Larsen 01:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

I think some measure of flagging would certainly be beneficial, but I'm not sure about making the last flagged version the default for display to non-logged-in readers. This would radically change WP's status as something "everyone can edit". Edits made by non-flag-empowered users would effecitvely not come on board until reviewed by a flagger - and there's no guarantee that that would happen within any reasonable period.--Kotniski (talk) 15:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have unregistered users see stable versions by default except for articles which they have edited? There's a log of edits made by IP isn't there? That way they could get the satisfaction of seeing their edit instantly. They would be sortof incrementally welcomed into the community of Wikipedians before even creating an account. Nonplus (talk) 17:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, perhaps, but then they might feel rather miffed when they next come in under a different IP and see their edit not there after all.

I still think that if flagged revisions are to be implemented, they shouldn't be the default for any class of user. That would give the impression that we don't trust unknown editors, which would be quite a turnaround from the "anyone-can-edit" policy which has made Wikipedia great. --Kotniski (talk) 18:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree. To make flagged versions the default article seen would undermine a core strength of wikipedia, which is the instant correction and expansion of articles. I think there should be a system set up so that the flagged version and the current version are rarely significantly different so we have the best of both worlds though. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 23:28, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'd prefer the stable revision being displayed by default, but in the long run it could be better to have the current revision displayed — provided the link between the stable and the current was prominent enough to get noticed and discreet enough not to get in the way — better, anyway, than no flagged revisions! Cheers, and thanks for the help. — Thomas H. Larsen 04:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

And there should be quick & easy access to the diff between the stable version and the current version. Kevin Baas^talk 15:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I have some misgivings about a system in which we have a banner displayed at the top of the page providing a link between current and stable. I can't claim to be a usability expert. I can offer my own thoughts, but I don't really have an alternative to suggest, unfortunately. I hesitate to get behind the idea that we should have a banner displayed on every page for every unlogged reader out there. There are so many articles that exist already that have a banner (or seven...) at the top of their page that I'm afraid to say that we should throw yet another one out into the world. I fear we run the risk of pushing a bunch more articles into what I'll call "NASCAR" space, with the top of their pages looking something akin to a bulletin board or the side of a stock car. I don't know, anyone else have any thoughts? Warhorus (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, nearly all of the banners at the top of articles are currently along the lines of "X needs fixing". Perhaps these (template) banners could be grouped into a single banner which can be shown or hidden? — Thomas H. Larsen 04:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Now, that's an interesting proposal! I don't know exactly how we could go about applying that idea, but if it could be pulled off I think that would be an incredible change! Would be a great discussion to get started at some point, see what ideas people could throw out about the virtues/practicalities of that proposal.Warhorus (talk) 16:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a bad idea; one of wikipedia's greatest strengths is instant fixing and updating, and this would cut that out. There should be a stable version that people can access, and it should be updated and reconciled with the current version often, but the stable version should never be the default. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 02:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support this proposal. Please keep in mind that as Wikipedia matures, the ability for changes to instantly appear becomes a weakness as well as a strength. Policy which was extremely useful when we were a small hobby site may become more of a hindrance as we grow. --Zvika (talk) 06:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, with my amendment to the proposal (above), I support the current revision of articles being displayed to all users by default, but I also believe that we strongly need a stable revision that readers can acquire for more reliable, stable, accurate information. — Thomas H. Larsen 00:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Who would be given the power apply to flag? Zginder 2008-05-06T13:04Z (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question; could you clarify it, please? Cheers, — Thomas H. Larsen 00:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's the same question as I came here to ask. In fact I have two questions, which obviously need to be settled before this can go live. So here they are:

Outstanding issues

1. What class of user will have the power to place flags? (i.e. admins only? autoconfirmed users? rollback users? some other as-yet-undefined class?)
2. What is a flagger expected to check when placing a flag? Just that the page doesn't contain any obvious vandalism or misinformation? Detailed copyediting? Investigation of sources?

As I see it we have to find a combination of answers to those two questions such that:

• (a) the flag-lag between the flagged version and current version does not get too great due to not enough people having the time, power and expertise to perform flagging; and
• (b) flagged versions do actually meet some meaningful standard of reliability.

As I understand it flagging is already live at least on German Wikipedia, so perhaps we could start answering the above questions (and any others people may raise) by drawing on the Germans' experience to date. Later, of course, the policies we adopt can always be modified based on our own experiences.--Kotniski (talk) 09:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions and Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Quality versions:

• There will be one or two new user rights: Surveyor and Reviewer. Reading the page on Flagged Revisions, and it's two subpages, it appears that that the new rights would be higher than autoconfirmed and much less than sysop (Administrator). The page says: The intention is that any user who is not a vandal should have this right. Possibly granted after a minimum time/edits threshold, or (my preference) maybe much like rollbacker is now. That is, granted to a trusted established editor. I don't think any editor that has a history of blocks, topic bans, 3RR, or serious contentious editing should be granted this right. Surveyor should be phased in first, and if successful, followed by Reviewer, if needed based on experience.
• The requirements for sighted pages is described here, but basically free of: vandalism, spam, red links, libel, BLP, and cleanup tags. And is cited, spell checked, encyclopedic, and been around for a few days.

This is an edit than can be reverted just like any other edit, and only admins can survey or review fully protected pages. There is also an English WP demo setup to play with here: Welcome to the FlaggedRevs demo installation!. — Becksguy (talk) 12:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

• • All right, thanks for the links. So the questions actually appear to have answers ready. In that case, what is actually preventing the feature from being made live? Are we waiting some defined time for the result of the German experiment? Or are there still debated points that need to be agreed on?--Kotniski (talk) 13:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the powers that be are looking for more community consensus, or the completion of the EN demo testbed. I can't wait until this is implemented and I'm glad to see interested editors promoting this. Should this page become a project page so we get more wide ranging community exposure? — Becksguy (talk) 14:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Centralized Discussion

Certainly we ought to have one discussion about this going on, instead of the several we have at the moment (this one, and the ones at the talk pages of the links you gave above and their superpage). I guess the most logical place to merge to would be Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions.--Kotniski (talk) 15:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

If no one objects, this page will be moved to Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions. — Becksguy (talk) 18:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

There is also a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions. Would someone please decide which one page the discussion should be at, and put a note at the bottom of the other page(s) suggesting that all discussion continue at the one page? (I'm willing to do this if people express agreement that it's a good idea.) Coppertwig (talk) 23:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine by me, as I already moved Larsen's well done sandbox discussion here. We definitely should have only one discussion page, and this one seems the most logical. Note that the central discussion link on WP:CENT points to this page now. — Becksguy (talk) 23:48, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, what about the various Village Pump discussions on this subject? Should they be copied also? Or linked? — Becksguy (talk) 23:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Continuation

I oppose a blanket application because I think it will undermine the foundation issue of everyone being allowed to edit. If there was a way to have it in reverse, i.e. unstable on front, stable linked, or a way to apply this to articles where stability is truly deeply needed (FC, GA, BLPs only), I'd support. Sceptre ^(talk) 15:58, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Sceptre, and this is possible, according to the FlaggedRevs demo - admins can adjust the settings per-page as long as the extension is so configured. Nihiltres^{t.l} 23:40, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

End of moved text - 03:09, 22 May 2008

A lot of discussion... I agree with most of it, and I think many of us here would love for this to be implemented ASAP on all articles, except perhaps the hottest current events that are updated and watched heavily. However, there were quite violent opposition a while back. I didn't understand most of the objections, but I do recall that a user called Black Falcon raised some serious issues. If I recall, he argued that sighting is too light a validation process to pretend we have done something.

Assume we start this. Naturally, there will be lots of media coverage as we unroll Wikipedia 2.0 and so on. But then we are bound to be hit with news about some libel having slipped through our sighting mechanisms; not only are we embarrassed, we won't be able to blame some anonymous IP. Someone here will actually have approved of it!!

I fully agree that we should think of our readers primarily; but still, experimenting on a subset of pages to avoid over-promising and under-delivering is wise. That's why I think we should roll this out as a modest beta, so we can really observe how it works here. The dynamics of the English Wikipedia might differ from the German. Otherwise, I'm strongly in support of revision flagging NOW, Merzul (talk) 14:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

All press releases need to emphasize that there is still no guarantee of reliability, etc. Coppertwig (talk) 23:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

What it looks like on German Wikipedia

At German Wikipedia:

In the upper right-hand corner they say:

• "Gesichtet" (sighted; example), implying that the most recent version is a sighted version
• "Keine Version gesichtet" (No sighted version; example).

For articles for which there is a sighted version but the most recent version is not sighted (example example_{(12:29, 23 May 2008 (UTC))}, or find examples in their Recent Changes ("Letzte Änderungen")), the first two tabs at the top are "Artikel" and "Entwurf" ("article" and "draft"). If you click on "Artikel", then at the upper right you see:

• "Gesichtet (zur aktuellen Version)" "Gesichtet" is a link to de:Hilfe:Gesichtete und geprüfte Versionen which describes the sighting process and includes a statement that there is no guarantee of the correctness of the article. "zur aktuellen Version" ("to current version") is a link to the most recent version of the article.

If you click on "Entwurf" you see:

• Ungesichtete Version [letzte gesichtete Version] (vergleiche). meaning "unsighted version [last sighted version] (diff)".

When logged in, when going to an article you get to the most recent version by default. When not logged in, you get to the most recent sighted version by default. In the page history ("Versionen/Autoren"), sighted versions have a note at the right in small font between square brackets, "[gesichtet von username]".

Comments: This is great – I look forward to getting it here. One advantage: vandalism will be easier to notice. When editors are browsing around for one reason or another, they might not always bother to look at the page history, but they'll tend to notice if it says in the upper-right corner that the most recent version is not sighted, and they'll check into it, revert any vandalism or sight the most recent version. So in most cases, the most recent version will be a sighted one. Browsing around, I was unable to find any with the most recent version not sighted unless there were no sighted versions of the article; to find such examples I had to look in Recent Changes. In other words, the mark in the upper-right corner alerts editors to when they need to check for vandalism, and provides a convenient link to a diff to make it easy to do so. Bring on Wikipedia 2.0!☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

If I understood correctly what I read at the German Wikipedia: "gesichtet" means that the article is free of offensive stuff (vandalism), and there's another level, "Geprüft", that an article can be marked (though I didn't see any such articles) that means that there are no false statements (?). ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

How can we "bring on Wikipedia 2.0" if we don't even have Wikipedia 1.0? -- Imperator3733 (talk) 14:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

You are right. "Gesichtet" (sighted) is very low level. It only states "there is no vandalism in this article". It does not say that all facts are checked or anything similar. "Geprüft" (quality version) is much more - it states that the article is factual correct and that no important information is missing. There are no "geprüfte" versions yet, because the community hasn't decided yet who should get the possibility to set this flag. The "gesichteten" Versionen disburden the people who check new versions for vandalism because every change only has to be checked once. --Avatar (talk) 16:12, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

By the way, on German Wikipedia, if I understand correctly, it says that anyone can request "Sichter" (sighter) status is automatically given (see below)_{(12:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC))} after 60 days, 500 edits, having a userpage, enabling email and having a clear block log. It also says that pages are automatically sighted when a sighter creates a new page; when a sighter edits a page which had previously been sighted; and when a page is reverted back to a sighted version using Zurücksetzen (undo? rollback?).

You have a good point, Avatar: instead of multiple people checking the same new edits, each edit only has to be checked once, and I think fewer edits will slip through with nobody happening to check them.

As far as I can tell, on Recent Changes and the watchlist there's no information about whether things have been sighted. It would be nice to have sighting status marked with a little symbol, and it would also be nice to be able to choose a setting to list only unsighted edits. I'm guessing maybe those are features that will be added later by the developers. Coppertwig (talk) 17:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

On Recent Changes and the watchlist the red ! (maybe known from the patrol-extension) is shown if a version is not sighted yet, so you can easily see if you have to check the diff. The possibility to request the „editor“ (Sichter) rights is given to every user who has his account for at least 2 month and has done 200 or more edits to articles. After "60 days, 500 edits, having a userpage, enabling email and having a clear block log" (as you wrote) the editor right is given automatically to the user. Maybe you are interested in current statistics (a tool by User:aka) --M.L (talk) 11:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction, M.L. You're right: now that I re-read it, that's what it says. Sorry I got it wrong.

What editing looks like: When not logged in and when looking at the default (gesischtet) version of a page whose current version is not gesichtet, the edit tab at the top says "Entwurf bearbeiten" (edit draft). When you click it, it shows, above the edit box, a diff of changes between the draft and the gesichtet version. example I think that's a very good way for it to work. (The orange warning is simply warning you that you're editing while not logged in, etc.) ☺

Re the red exclamation mark: Maybe it's not working? Maybe it only works for Sichters? I logged in (I'm not a Sichter) and put an article with "keine version gesichtet" on my watchlist. The article was recently changed and is listed on my watchlist, but I don't see any red exclamation mark. I also have an article showing on my watchlist which has a gesichtet version but the most recent is not gesichtet. Again, no red exclamation mark. But, at the top of the watchlist it explains what the red exclamation mark means. Maybe non-Sichters don't need to see the red exclamation mark, so it's not shown? (but then ideally the red exclamation mark shouldn't be defined at the top for them.) Coppertwig (talk) 22:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Clarification on my proposal, and final !voting?

I'd like to clarify on the proposal that I have made for the implementation of flagged revisions.

• Flagged revisions is introduced, and enabled over all articles.
• All readers, logged-in and logged-out, see the current revision of articles by default, not the stable revision. A discreet but prominent (obviously a compromise between the two) link is displayed between the stable and the current revisions.
• Procedures for the rating of revisions and setting stable revisions of articles still need to be developed, although they could be done so during and after the introduction of flagged revisions.

This proposal for the implementation of flagged revisions does not conflict with the Wikimedia Foundation issue of "anyone can edit"; it permits everybody to edit, makes their edits available immediately to the public, and gives readers a choice between unstable, current content and stable, possibly-out-of-date content.

Read my proposal above for more details and the reasoning for my position.

If there are no significant objections, perhaps we could begin a final discussion and poll on this at the beginning of, say, June? – Thomas H. Larsen 23:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. If possible, maybe some sort of "stable flag", similar to protection, that could be placed on an article by an admin to make the stable version display by default? Just an idea to throw out there, and one that would only be used occasionally even if implemented. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 00:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, Thomas H. Larsen. Let's do this one step at a time. First step: implementing flagged revisions with the current page always displayed as default, just as it is now. There's no downside to this, so let's do it. After that's decided (or after it's actually implemented, so people get a feel for how it works) then we can discuss whether or not to have the stable version display as default in some circumstances. There are of course reasons not to; but opposition to default-displaying of the stable version should not stand in the way of implementing flagged revisions at all.

I would say that your proposal in a section above ("Flagged revisions implementation proposal") is too complex for a simple poll. I would say something like "proposal to implement flagged revisions, for now with the current page displayed as default". You can expand it a bit, but multiple paragraphs or calls for specific other polls are too complex, in my opinion. You could add something like "(The community could decide later to change the proposed default display, but that's beyond the scope of this poll.)" ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:55, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a big thing, so I suppose maybe the poll should be advertised in a site notice or watchlist notice or something, the way it was done for the WP:Attribution poll. (Although there was also opposition to that at the time.) ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:58, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, with the WP:Attribution poll, we had multiple editors editing the wording of the poll (complete with edit wars and everything). Maybe we should do that for this poll, too? ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I see the value of a poll to authorize taking the first step on flagged revisions. Perhaps I read too quickly, but I don't see who is authorized to designate the stable versions. If that is going to be decided later, then in what sense is the first step an actual step at all? Will admins be authorized to designate surveyors and reviewers? If they are offered that technical ability, what happens if an admin flips a bit? Is that forbidden until a second poll is taken? EdJohnston (talk) 03:06, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do we not vote on sighted versions as editor have been working on that proposal for years and as reached a consensus between the active editor there? Zginder 2008-05-24T13:47Z (UTC)

I propose that the first poll authorize the implementation of sighted versions without the technical ability to designate individual pages to display the sighted version as default (assuming withholding such technical ability from admins is technically possible). Then later, there can be another poll to decide whether sighted versions can be displayed as default in some circumstances; after which discussion at individual pages and/or some policy would determine what happens at each page. To clarify: having sighted versions means that there is a link at the top of the page "to last sighted version" so that anyone who wants to see a slightly more stable version of the page has the ability to do so. People who are allowed to "sight" pages might be admins; rollbackers; perhaps people with 150 edits or possibly autoconfirmed (4-day-old account) users, or anyone given the right by an admin. That's just my suggestion how to proceed; I'm just one of many with opinions here. There are other ways to do it, such as having a poll with two questions: (1) shall we have sighted versions (assuming the current page continues to be displayed as default if only this one question gets consensus) and (2) shall we sometimes have the last sighted version displayed as the default. As I see it, having sighted versions available is a big advantage, providing additional useful information (dare I say "increased reliability"?) to the reader, but which version is displayed as default is a relatively minor detail since the reader can always get to the other version with a single click, and anyway I expect that the most recent version will almost always be a sighted one (as was my experience browsing around the German Wikipedia, except for pages with no sighted versions at all). I look forward to being able to look at the sighted version when I'm reading Wikipedia to obtain information. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 14:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

In answer to Zginder: the reason for doing it that way is that some people have brought up reasons to oppose having the sighted version displayed as default (see above discussion), seeing it as changing the fundamental nature of the wiki. Therefore, in order to get approval for having sighted versions existing at all, I'd like to separate the two decisions. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 15:07, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

That might be a usable compromise. My remaining concern is that, the way the proposal reads now, when flagged revisions are first turned on nobody will see any difference to the encyclopedia at all. I picture that the sighted-version-selector would start to appear on articles that have sighted versions, and that would be the noticeable sign that something has changed. However the proposal makes no provision for sighting any articles. How will people know that anything has changed, and how will they be able to experiment? We shouldn't start up in an initial state where nobody is allowed to do anything with the new tools. EdJohnston (talk) 15:48, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

But sighted versions have decided who gets the right this proposal we are still deciding who gets the flag. Zginder 2008-05-24T16:27Z (UTC)

If it's like the German Wikipedia, then when it starts up, all articles will have a link in the upper-right corner saying something like "no sighted versions", with a link to a page explaining what sighting is all about. People reading that page can then presumably request being awarded sighting privileges, if it's something being given out rather than just automatically given to rollbackers or whatever. Those with sighting privileges will also see a link at the bottom of unsighted pages, which allows them to sight the page by clicking on it. (Allegedly. I guess I'm not trusted enough on German Wikipedia to be a "Sichter" myself. I can't complain, with only 13 edits, all in Benutzer space ☺) Coppertwig (talk) 17:01, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

As an initial experiment I think we could justify letting rollbackers be sighters. I assume the long-term plan is that there will be an automatic designation of sighters based on time on WP and number of edits. That means that the class of sighters will widen out gradually, so nobody will feel hurt by having sighting taken away. Something I read suggested that 20,000 sighters would be a good number to have. (Per WP:ROLLBACK, we have only 1,374 rollbackers at present). EdJohnston (talk) 19:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I propose giving it to all admins and rollbackers or automatically based on edits and time at the beginning and have admins start giving it out generously. Zginder 2008-05-24T21:01Z (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I would suggest that if a user have more than some number of edits (say 200?) and a clean block log, then an admin would have to justify not giving out the privilege, instead of vice versa. This would help dispel the "two classes of users" objection. I hope we can poll and implement this in a timely manner, since as a main-page contributor, specifically for ITN, this could significantly help us out. Random89 22:07, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I see two ways of doing it that each make sense: one is to give sighting privileges to almost everyone (e.g. autoconfirmed users, like page-patrol privileges) and require the sighter to be a different person from the editor; or else to do it the way the German Wikipedia does, where an edit by a sighter (except to pages with no sighted versions at all) is automatically sighted, but in that case it would be meaningless if the sighting privilege is given out to everyone, so it makes more sense to restrict it to more trusted users such as rollbackers or people with 150 (or 500 or whatever) edits and a relatively clean block log. I prefer the former; except that as with newpage patrol, edits by admins would still be automatically sighted. (i.e. the way pages created by admins are automatically patrolled.) I don't like the idea of edits by ordinary sighters being automatically sighted. Well, it depends on what the meaning of sighting is: if it's just to get rid of vandalism, fine, most edits can be automatically sighted. But if it's to check for useful edits which seem to be improvements, then checking by a different person is good. I like the idea of checking by a different person for most edits.☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I would argue that rollbackers will not vandalize, so I don't see the need to have a second step of checking on any edit made by a rollbacker. Sighting (if it is not done automatically) takes work, so many articles would wind up not having any sighted versions. Has anyone from de.wiki joined this discussion, and can tell us how they arrived at their current plan? (Apologies if this question was raised long ago). I agree with Coppertwig that letting all auto-confirmed users be sighters is not a good idea. EdJohnston (talk) 03:13, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Actually, my preference is to let all autoconfirmed users be sighters, but not have their edits automatically sighted. If the only purpose is to identify vandalism, then rollbackers can be trusted to have their edits automatically sighted. I think I'd probably prefer having a separate person sight edits, however – possibly even for admins – to catch not only vandalism but also some good-faith edits which are mistaken, misspelled, ungrammatical, POV or otherwise unconstructive or imperfect. One good possibility would be to let all autoconfirmed users sight edits, and have the edits of all rollbackers and admins automatically sighted (unless the article has no sighted versions yet); that might be the solution that is most likely to get lots of articles sighted with a minimum of effort. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Instead of of giving it to autoconfirmed users. Give it out automatically like as follows based off the sighted version proposal:

1. Any trusted editor may be granted rights by an administrator, regardless of their edit count.
2. The right will also be given automatically by the software to editors who meet the following conditions:
   • Has an account for 30 days
   • Has 150 edits
     • 30 edits to article namespace pages
     • 10 article namespace pages edited
     • 15 days of edits
3. Administrators can also revoke the flag if needed (much like blocking an account). This can happen if:
   • The user deliberately sights versions containing vandalism
   • The user repeatedly violates WP:3RR with respect to sighting versions
   • The user engages in other repeated disruption involving reviews
   • The user requests removal of the right because they prefer not to be involved

(Previous unsigned comment was by Zginder (talk) at 12:48, 25 May 2008. _{Coppertwig (talk) 12:53, 25 May 2008 (UTC)}

As noted in the recent poll on raising the autoconfirmed level, this is way beyond the software's capability. Total edit count can be done, as can the age of the account, but it certainly can't do edit count by namespace and probably can't do time since first edit. It ought to be given out by admins through a WP:RFR-style process (with some agreed guidelines for admins to follow). Hut 8.5 18:07, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That is incorrect. FlaggedRevs can check those and many other things. Please read the documentation or ask a developer before saying it cannot be done. It's live on .de wp now (a batch updater was used to initialize some of the values). Aaron Schulz 18:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

And getting the "time since first edit", although not part of the software, would be a fast and trivial query. Aaron Schulz 18:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

• Getting Surveyor rights should require admin granting of them, much like Rollbacker rights. No one should get those rights automatically. We need to take reasonable care that only trusted and established editors get this trust level. Especially editors without a history of vandalizing or serious blocks and topic bans. Any vandalizing should disqualify. — Becksguy (talk) 06:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Requirements for Sighted pages

Copied from Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions#Requirements for Sighted pages proposal:

For an article to be confirmed initially as sighted, an editor needs to read the complete article and check that the page:

• Is clear of vandalism.
• Contains no spam in the external links.
• Is clear of libel and unsourced statements about living persons.
• Is clear of unencyclopaedic content.
• Contains some references to reliable sources.
• Has been around for several days.
• Has been spell-checked. (Firefox/Opera/toolbars can help with this.)
• Is readable (uncluttered) and is not tagged for cleanup. There should be no links to non-existent images.

Like other Wikipedia edits, the decision to sight a version of an article can be reverted by other editors.

Once a page is sighted, edits to the sighted revision could be automatically reviewed (to the same level) when edited by a Surveyor. Upon editing, Surveyors will be prompted to review with a diff (reference) to the last sighted version to make sure someone else has not inserted vandalism while they were editing the page. A new page created by a Surveyor should be sighted by a different editor, unless others have substantially edited the page or it is subject to repeated vandalism.

End of copied text

I can see a potential problem with the requirement that the article Is clear of unencyclopaedic content. That is a concept that often comes up in AfDs as a rationale for deletion. And this potentially could cause edit wars, as we tend to have very different ideas of what such content is, or should be. I think this is overreaching for what should be a more simple check of the article. — Becksguy (talk) 13:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion: "is clear of obviously unencyclopedic content" ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 14:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Why can't pages requiring cleanup be sighted? They can still get vandalised, and we'd still rather people saw the unvandalised version rather than the vandalised one, so we still need to sight them... I don't get that requirement at all. Likewise with the "been around for several days" requirement. Both of those should be required for quality versions, not sighted versions - sighted versions is about vandalism, trying to make it about quality too will stop it working. --Tango (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

"sighted versions is about vandalism": I don't think that's been decided yet. I think that's one possibility. We could have one level (sighted) about vandalism, and the next level up (whatever it's called) being about some sort of basic quality, and another level above that, etc. Or, we could decide that the bottom level is not just about vandalism. We could have a small number of levels or a large number of levels. The more checking required at a given level, the fewer pages will tend to be marked as being at that level – that's probably inevitable, but I wouldn't call it not working; it's like "Featured article" status, which is working well IMO even though most articles are not marked as such. It depends on what one wants to accomplish. You have a good point that an advantage of having it only about vandalism would be (if we display the sighted version as default) that people would not see vandalism on articles needing cleanup. Good point. On the other hand, perhaps requiring cleanup before sighting would have the benefit of giving an extra incentive to go ahead and clean up the article, as well as reducing confusion for readers who see a page marked as approved in some way but also marked as not really approved (needing cleanup) at the same time. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 20:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest that we should begin the sighted pages process with "sighted against vandalism", as that is a clear definition, and I also believe much of the community would agree to that much easier than more vague concepts such as "unencyclopedic" and "readable". Once that is accepted, we can move on to adopting another level which would include things such as reliable sources and no clean up tags. Mind you, my view on this is probably skewed, since is see flagged revs mainly as a way to open up mainpage templates for more editing. Random89 22:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with starting with the most basic: enable sighting, have it just mean no vandalism, and continue to display the most current version as default for all users. I suggest using the same parameters as newpage patrolling: autocnfirmed can sight, and only admin's edits are automatically sighted. (Or admins and rollbackers, if it's really just for vandalism.) Actually, I'm fine with many possible ways of doing it other than not doing it at all. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Sighted versions (Flagged Revisions) is an initiative to improve the quality and reliability of the articles the public reads. Cleaning up vandalism is part of that, but not the whole thing, nor should it be the whole thing. — Becksguy (talk) 05:04, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Note that we can have multiple levels of flagged revisions. A "this contains no crap" level could just be a base level. Mr.Z-man 05:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Situation on the german Wikipedia

Hi!

In my opinion, it could be helpful for the english Wikipedia to have a look on the issues mentioned on the german Wikipedia. (At least, you could avoid some of the mistakes we made.) Please note that "flagged revisions" are a highly controversial topic. (e.g. here: [1] and on many many other pages...) The biggest mistake was, that "flagged revisions" were enabled from one day to the other. There was no general "big discussion", where most users could take notice, that there are at least ideas about implementing such things as flagged revisions. So, as the flagged revisions got activated on May 6th, many users were surprised and shocked. As a consequence, many many users are now opposing the new extension.

But many other users have issues about this feature too. Some say, it scares new writers, some say, it just creates too much hierarchy, etc. etc. etc... (If there would be a vote today, flagged revisions would be abolished on the german Wikipedia! (see the link above)) The users on the german Wikipedia are seperated into two groups. And both groups blame each other for beeing contraproductive! Just like this:

"You support flagged revisions? I damn you for beeing a wannabe-inspector!" and "What? You dont support flagged revisions and as a protest you mark your edits as unsighted? You are the contraproductive one here!" The discussions on the german Wikipedia just don't end...

It's just horrible! --84.187.167.30 (talk) 15:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

This is food for thought. How can we avoid such trouble on the English wikipedia? I wonder if Flagged Revisions could be rolled out here for only a subset of our articles first, and we could treat those articles as a limited experiment. Define the subset of articles in such a way that it would cause the least political trouble. Define the people who could do the sighting according to some category that now exists (e.g. admins + rollbackers) so that we don't introduce any status anxiety. Let the rules be adopted only for this one experiment, which would be limited to some number of months. After the experiment ends, a wide-open discussion would be held, in which complete rejection of flagged revisions would still be one of the options to be considered. EdJohnston (talk) 17:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

We could trial it on some semiprotected articles first. Unregistered users and IPs can't edit them at all at present, so introducing it can't really hurt anyone. This would be a very drastic change and we need to go as carefully as possible. Hut 8.5 17:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you won't be able to avoid this. The flagged revision ("stable versions") are in discussion and development since years. They were discussed inside the Wikipedia, announced several times on almost all community places (mailing list, WP:Kurier [the German signpost], ...) and many, many blog postings and press articles were written about it. So the only possibility to avoid that too many people claim they never heard of this idea will be a prominent placement of a pointer for a longer time on the main page - on the other side there are users who never visit the mainpage... perhaps a MediaWiki:Sitenotice will have more impact. It is true, that there was no "short time" warning that the feature will finally go live. Many people weren't too happy about this. The devs can't give you a concrete prediction when a feature goes live. This is a problem of the technical side caused by WMF structures. --Avatar (talk) 18:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem here is that as much as there was a purported consensus, in fact no large discussions took place. I've mentioned this on #wikipedia-de and some people admit this and don't seem to care. I'd strongly suggest some poll be made for this after intensive discussion. The discussion can discover all the pros and cons, which can then be mentioned at the top of the inevitable poll. Then it can be posted to Bugzilla. Russian wikipedia is a good example of this. Aaron Schulz 17:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. This should not go ahead without a WP:A-style poll advertised on everyone's watchlist. The last thing we want is a drastic change like this being rolled out without anyone knowing what it is or how it works. Hut 8.5 18:10, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you mean WP:ANN :-) — Becksguy (talk) 05:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

No, I think Hut 8.5 means Wikipedia:Attribution, as the user indicated. There was a huge poll and there was an announcement appearing at the top of peoples' watchlists, to get peoples' attention. (Sorry if I'm missing the meaning of your smiley.) ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:35, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Never mind per Gilda Radner from Saturday Night Live (Three wikilinks for the price of one). Sorry, my bad, WP:A as an example makes sense. Thank you Coppertwig. And yes, I absolutely agree about needing very wide spread and obvious announcing. — Becksguy (talk) 13:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to be a stuck-in-the-mud reactionary, but I feel that flagged/sighted revisions are such a horrible idea (for reasons I have detailed above) that it will be impossible to introduce them without widespread dissatisfaction. They are the pet project of a small class of users, but it is the most influential class, so we will doubtless see them introduced on a pseudo-trial basis (de facto permanence) with little consensus from the larger editorship of Wikipedia. When the time comes to make flagged revisions permanent, the vote will be taken among this same small class, and so it shall be done. The real threat to Wikipedia has never been a "cabal" - it has been a relatively large class of addicted editors who are involved heavily in hidden discussions (yes, like this one) and are way, way out of touch with the larger community. They have come to believe the canard that almost all productive editing is done by a small number of people, and to discount and disrespect all others. They really aren't interested in those who are not self-identified members of "the community", and largely fail to understand the importance of such persons. Here's a test: if you jumped at my assertion that this is a "hidden discussion", you may be one of them. If you think this is a public discussion, you're really not grasping how large the true Wikipedia community is. If the words "But, but, but...there was a notice on the Community Portal" spring to your lips, you need to take a step back. A change this massive, a change this antithetical to the spirit of Wikipedia, should never be imposed at all. But if it is, there needs to be an unprecedented level of consensus and a historic effort to obtain the opinions of as many as possible. The main page needs to go meta, and it will need to stay meta for months. Nothing less is acceptable. Mr. IP (talk) 10:03, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, Mr. IP. Having an announcement on the main page for months sounds like a good idea; I'm not sure what you mean by "go meta". Please allow me to nitpick based on the specifics of the proposal. Suppose flagged revisions are implemented but the current page is always displayed as the default. Would any of your objections still apply, and if so, would you please explain how? Actually, I argue that it makes little difference which version is displayed as default since in almost all cases the most recent version will be a sighted version (I predict, based on browsing the German Wikipedia and thinking about those red exclamation marks in Recent Changes etc.); therefore if displaying the sighted version as default for non-logged-in users will cause the sorts of rifts you mention, I suggest we display the current version as default, with various advantages such as an increased chance that new people will start editing because they see errors: in fact, with the convenient diff link between the current and last sighted version, people who have never edited before will easily spot obviously unproductive edits and become Wikipedians. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:15, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, Coppertwig. By "go meta", I meant that the main page itself - not just talk pages, not just process pages, not just project pages, not just meta pages - should advertise the discussion. For a change this serious, we need to reach out to Wikipedians who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of the project and the places where these workings are traditionally discussed. As to the possibility you bring up, that does go a long way toward mollifying my principle fears and objections, which center around a divided experience of the encyclopedia - one Wikipedia experience for the in-crowd, and another Wikipedia experience for the new folks and outsiders, essentially drawing a curtain over something that is best at its most transparent. I have far less objections to an "opt-in" system of sighted revisions wherein the most current version is shown automatically to all users (anons included), and a flagged-for-accuracy version is also available but must be specifically clicked on. My only concerns over that model are these: 1.) The scope of the project may mean that inaccurate information is formally declared accurate through the flagging process, which is actually more embarrassing than simply hosting inaccurate material. 2.) We could still end up, via slippery slope, at the situation I fear most. These concerns, however, are not sufficient for me to oppose a trial period of a system like the one you propose. If we concentrate on an opt-in model, I think that sighted/flagged revisions could possibly become a useful part of the project. 71.172.186.109 (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

What is the point of bringing in flagged revisions if they are not made the default view for non-logged in readers (i.e. 99% of users)? As far as I'm concerned, this is a technology to protect readers from the junk that editors (including IP editors) expect and known how to remove/avoid. Disadvantages of not making them the default:

• Readers still get to see vandalised content. A button at the top saying "Click here for a sighted version" is too late, the damage is already done.
• Pages would still have to be semi-protected, whereas they would be editable by IPs if sighted versions were the default view.
• Hence, there would be no disincentive to vandalism
• Recent changes patrollers would still be needed to revert vandalism ASAP.

It needs to be said again and again that RCP and reverting vandalism would just not be necessary if the whole encyclopedia was sighted: good-faith editors would only need to change the text (of the last unvandalised revision) to make actual improvements.

AFAIK, the only people to benefit from non-default flagged revisions would be second parties (e.g. commercial mirror sites) who could extract "checked" versions, thus saving themselves some work. Frankly, this is a constituency I havn't much interest in helping. PaddyLeahy (talk) 17:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Paddy, my feeling is that the need to "protect" people from blatant vandalism is insufficiently great that we should introduce new barriers and speed bumps to the editing and article-improvement processes, insufficiently great that we should divide the Wikipedia experience so dramatically between anons and registered users, insufficiently great to create massive new levels of bureaucracy, and insufficiently great to draw a curtain over Wikipedia's working. In fact, the best "protection" (who are we protecting? Are all our users scared children whom we must defend and shield at all costs?) from inaccuracy and vandalism is an open and transparent system where the naked workings of the encyclopedia are visible to all. Further, I feel that non-default ("opt-in") revisions could have some usefulness beyond the second parties (a group I have no love for either), in that they could be used by students in some cases. 71.172.186.109 (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

(to Mr. IP): As the title of this section reminds you, Flagged revisions have been introduced on a trial basis (i.e. on German Wikipedia), and it won't be long before we can tell whether your predictions about their effect are at all accurate. You are right of course that the majority of Wikipedia users don't bother with pages such as this one, and so tend to be taken by surprise when the software changes. Here's the thing: if, after a couple of months, the German Wikipedian community decides it was a good idea, would you be prepared to support it here? Or is your opposition so ideological that you would be opposed even if it demonstrably helped to build the encyclopedia? PaddyLeahy (talk) 17:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Opposition to flagged revisions isn't my religion or political creed, so if it works beautifully and without detriment to the project, I'm not going to throw myself into the gears of Wikipedia to stop it. However, you're right that my concerns about this idea extend beyond the pragmatic. I think we should be extremely wary of dividing the Wikipedia experience between anons and registered users, and even more wary of drawing a curtain across the workings of the project. As I said above, I feel that openness is the best protection against inaccuracy, and to have different default versions for different people is an idea which goes against what is best in this project. If the German Wikipedia overwhelmingly supported the changes on the basis that they helped to build the encyclopedia, and if that support went well beyond the classes of user who naturally tend to support such changes, I would not be reluctant to throw my support behind a mild, possibly non-default, version of the flagged-revision system. However, my answer here is hypothetical and my current opinion remains one of extremely strong opposition. I'm not sure that the German community's experience will be as positive as most here are predicting (or already claiming). 71.172.186.109 (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

to Mr. IP: I find that it's not very helpful to treat a complicated change as if it were some kind of easy puzzle to settle with clever arguments. We're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing: the Germans are trying it out, we're watching, we'll probably do it one step at a time and see what works. Wikipedia is an evolutionary pool of words, and evolution needs two things to work: stability and change. Over time, as a species matures, the balance slowly (slowly!) shifts in the direction of stability. You can't fight Mother Nature. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Without trying to be obstinate, I must say that I find your contention that this change is inevitable and natural - in fact an unstoppable product of nature, physics, or the laws of the universe - to resemble a "clever argument". You're painting this controversial change in policy almost as if its adoption were a law of history, a viewpoint which doesn't offer much room to those who disagree. If this change is indeed the inexorable will of Mother Nature, why have a discussion at all? If it is demanded by the progress of history, why not discern the next six or seven policy changes which are required by Mother Nature and implement them all ahead of time and without discussion? In short, I disagree with you about the inevitability of this change, and feel that it may rather be another dead end of Wikipedia history, to be looked on 2-3 years from now as a regrettable and misguided period during which many energies were wasted. We've seen that evolution has its dead ends, and I feel that "sighted revisions" may well be one of them. We will watch what goes on at the German 'pedia, but we must pay attention not only to the classes of user who wanted this change, but to those who opposed it and continue to do so. If consensus is not clear and strong, and if results are not inarguably positive, we must not adopt or implement this change based on some notion of the unalterable march of history. The first part of your reply tells me that we must wait and see how it plays out with the Germans, while the second suggests strongly that there can be only one result, meaning that you may have already reached your conclusion. I do not intend to accuse you of bad faith here - I just urge you not to see these changes as part of the natural course of history, but rather as an experiment that could well be a mistake, a mistake to be remembered with regret. 71.172.186.109 (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me ask you this: what's the point of having yellow highlighting on New Page Patrol, since people can see the unpatrolled pages anyway? Similarly, flagged revisions can help make sure each new edit is checked at least once, as opposed to the current random system where people look at Recent Changes and some changes are checked by five people while a few slip through checked by none.

There are two main advantages, as I see it, to flagged revisions if the current version is displayed as default. One is that readers have the option choosing the sighted version. They might choose to click "sighted version" before having noticed any vandalism; but if they do see vandalism, it's still an advantage if they have the option of clicking "sighted version" and reading an unvandalised version without having to study the page history.

The second advantage is that I believe vandalism would be caught and changed more quickly and effectively, in a similar way that the yellow highlighting on New Page Patrol helps with checking new pages. Editors would quickly notice the presence of unsighted versions: by red exclamation marks on Recent Changes and on watchlists, and by the icon in the upper right corner when they view a page. Less vandalism would slip through.

When I read a Wikipedia article to get information, I would like to have the option of choosing to read a sighted version. Implementing flagged revisions will give me that option, regardless of which version is displayed as default. I'm sure there are many others like me who would also appreciate it. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a very nice summary, Coppertwig. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 01:03, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. This is a clear and helpful summary of the reasoning in support of having the unsighted revision as default, a position I support. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The non-default position is something that I could eventually support if it functioned well, if consensus was clear and broad, if benefits were tangible, and if the possibility of a slippery slope toward the other position was somehow ruled out. 71.172.186.109 (talk) 06:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Auto-promotion to 'Sichter' is now in effect on the German Wikipedia, according to this page. They used to have a system for handing out Sichter permission (analogous to our system for giving out rollback), and this replaces it. You need to have been editing for 60 days, have 500 edits (starting from now), a user page, an enabled email address and a clean block log. EdJohnston (talk) 13:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe they have auto-promotion after a set of criteria including 500 edits, and also the option of requesting Sichter status after 2 months and 200 edits. See the message above from M.L at 11:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC).☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Here's why I think vandalism is poisonous enough to really try to eliminate:

• Vandalism is steadily increasing. A study in 2007 found that 30% of all edits to wikipedia were either vandalism or reverts. Based on my watchlist I'd guess that it's more than 50% now.
• Lots of our readers are children. You can tell by looking at the list of most-read pages.
• I'm sure most kids are pretty unfazed by most vandalism, but their parents and teachers take this sort of thing more seriously. They make a fuss.
• Vandalism is an easy peg for critics of wikipedia and frequently parodied in on and off-line media.
• As a result Wikipedia's reputation is seriously damaged. Wikipedia is as closely associated with vandalised content as Dan Quayle is with "potatoe".
• As a result of that, many people who might have contributed usefully have decided that wikipedia is worthless, and don't. My guess is that more good-faith IP editors are deterred by vandalism than would be by having to work on the "beta" version of the text instead of the "current release".
• The social dynamics of vandalism fighting bother me. We have many editors whose major contribution to the encyclopedia is reverting. They tend to see the project as a war zone, and I think that attitude leaks into excessive deletionism and confrontational interactions with other editors. (Of course some parts of Wikipedia really are proxy war zones, but they affect many fewer editors than vandalism).

So OK, non-default sighting would be a neat tool for RCP, but that seems so unambitious when we could more or less make RCP redundant. And as for the reader interaction, having to load two (often long) pages (unsighted then sighted) every time you want to look at something is utterly horrible. I think wikipedia editors need to remember that we are effectively charity workers acting on behalf of the passive readers. It's our job to make this site as useful to them as possible, not to make it as convenient for *us* as possible, at their expense. PaddyLeahy (talk) 15:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The vandalism figures you cite are hugely inflated. The bast study I know of (User:Dragons flight/Log analysis, which looked at over 100,000 articles) found that only 10% of edits to articles were reverted, and this is as recently as October last year. Unscientific guesses about edits to pages on your watchlist aren't going to be accurate - for a start, you should be looking at a list of edits to all articles, rather than the select few you happen to watch. If you go to Special:Recentchanges and click on a few diff links you will find that the vandalism rate is far lower than 50%.

If every article on the project had a sighted version it would indeed eliminate the need for RC patrol, but it would act as a huge barrier for new and unregistered editors. The attraction for new editors is the fact that their changes are visible immediately. Plenty of people already read Wikipedia but don't ever edit it because they find the idea too intimidating - they think the edit button "isn't for people like me". The number of people in this category would increase drastically if the changes had to be approved by some other editor. The last thing we need is a system which gets rid of all vandalism at the expense of crippling the influx of new contributors. Hut 8.5 15:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

My informal experience outside Wikipedia supports Paddy's statement that "Wikipedia is as closely associated with vandalised content as Dan Quayle is with 'potatoe'." (Dan Quayle was the first Bush's notoriously undereducated vice president.) This has hurt my ability to recruit academicians as helpful content experts. Hut, same response as above: a simple analysis is not going to solve this very complex problem and save us all from the hard work of comparing the quality of articles before and after flagged revisions. And if we want to know whether new users prefer the new way or the old way, we'll have to ask them, and then pay particular attention to the responses of the new users who wind up generating high-quality content. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

To hut 8.5: if in October 2007 10% of edits were reverted, then 20% of edits were either vandalism or reverts. That's a significant fraction of the total and not too different from what I remembered off the top of my head (I'm an astrophysicist: 20 ≈ 30 in my book). And Dragonflight's data (and others) shows that it is steadily getting worse, although I agree my own watchlist is not a fair sample. As for the size of the barrier, experience on DE:WP will show. I notice none of the "antis" have picked up the point about semi-protection made by Jimbo at the top of this very page. PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the "or reverts" part of your sentence for some reason, but I still don't see any need to include reverts in the calculation - they don't damage articles and we don't need to guard against them. If anything the statistic of 10% may be too high for a figure of vandalism, because reverts can be made for several reasons other than vandalism, say content disputes. I haven't seen any evidence that we are failing to cope with the level of vandalism we have at the moment. I would happily support an implementation of this as a replacement for semi-protection, but the proposals being made by proponents of the tool at the moment are far broader than that. --Hut 8.5 20:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I see you are a recent changes patroller. Do you enjoy doing that? Wouldn't you prefer to use that time adding useful content to the the encyclopedia? PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Whilst recent changes patrol doesn't add content to the encyclopedia in itself, the policy of open editing it grows out of does. A substantial fraction of good editors are unregistered or have few edits, and recent changes patrol is the price we pay for having them here. In my opinion it is a price worth paying. Hut 8.5 20:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

A little bit offtopic, but nonetheless interesting: I fixed my blocking ratio tool and wrote a mail to wikide-l (german, but data included which can be groked easily). Sighting allows to eliminate almost all semi-protection flags from articles. --Avatar (talk) 22:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The page Avatar is pointing to reads: "Anyone who's been following the mailing list for a little while, or knows me, knows that I'm not a fan of page protection. Don't get me wrong: page protection is sometimes necessary, and the introduction of semi-protection was a Good Thing (TM), since it has helped us avoid full protection. Nevertheless, no protection is doubtless to be preferred to semi-protection (leaving aside the discussion about only allowing logged-in users to edit). In order to get a slightly better overview of the top-10 Wikipedias, I've updated my "protection tool"...the results are..." - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 00:28, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Got to say it doesn't look good. As of now, despite flagged revs, German wikipedia has (by far) the highest fraction of semi-protected pages in the top ten language versions. Is no-one taking the initiative to sight and unprotect these pages, or is there a good reason not to? PaddyLeahy (talk) 14:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

No semi-protections were lifted until now since the implementation of sighted versions. Many German admins are fast in semi-protecting pages but are not very fast in unprotecting them. I have criticised this (and the high amount of (semi-)protected articles) several times. What has happend after the implementation of semi-protection: the amount of fully protected pages declined. As soon as I find some time, I'll start unprotecting semi-protected pages. --Avatar (talk) 14:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, various semi-protections could be lifted. However, someone actually has to propose that idea. There is also the real possibility that the site config may change per consensus, so perhaps the draft may be the default. If that were to happen, then a mass unprotection of semi-protected pages would then have to be rolled back. So it may not yet be a good idea to get unprotected these pages *right* now. Aaron Schulz 21:11, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Translation of German discussion

Here I attempt to translate de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/Akzeptanz des neuen Verfahrens «Gesichtete und geprüfte Versionen», a poll about acceptance of the new procedure "sighted and proofed versions". I might not have time to translate the whole thing. People are welcome to help translate, or to summarize the discussion. I apologize for any errors in the translation. People are welcome to check and correct my translation (go ahead and edit it). I put three dots in places where I skipped translating some parts. If this is going to take up too much space here, feel free to suggest another place to move this to. (I include some translator's comments in parentheses within the translation.)17:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll be happy to help, Coppertwig, but I'd like to see the discussion over on de.WP mature first. They're like us, in that they're on a search for the truth, which I suppose is the same thing as saying that they don't know the truth yet...except that we don't have the context necessary to understand their angst. They will eventually do a good job of summarizing the arguments. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Dan. I just saw your message now. I put a message at their poll talk page asking for help, too. Maybe you're right, there's no need to hurry. I may still continue to translate some comments, anyway. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Here, Lienhard Schulz tells me he has written a summary of the German discussion as Contra vote 128 in that discussion. I'll begin translating it here as the "Summary according to Lienhard Schulz" below. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Pro

1. I find sighted versions sensible for fighting vandalism. We still have to wait to see, whether Sighters can sight articles quickly enough which have been edited by non-vandalising IP's, so that these versions can be promptly displayed. When this can be guaranteed, the Opposers will have less of an argument. ... Leyo
2. Good extension. Waiting for the effect. Drahreg01
3. Brilliant stuff. Improves the outside effect of WP and motivates more people to become more strongly engaged. Nachtagent

   For this motivation I have an example I like. I just have this example, that two users alerted by me by telephone logged in and complained about this action. Jonathan Groß

4. Hopefully effective method to distribute our patrol work, so that 10 people won't sight the same vandal edit while another vandal edit goes unsighted. So, for example, this rubbish stayed undetected and publicly visible for seven weeks (from my userpage) – should it develop, that with many once-sighted articles many following changes stay unsighted a long time, we should think it over, standardmäßig(default?) to always display the current version, otherwise it demotivates occasional and IP users. But it is too early to ascertain this. Dealerofsalvation

(78 comments in favour of flagged revisions, most of which not yet translated)

Contra

1. I find the function overall not good. One essentially writes for the draft, so that a person essentially promoted as "Sighter" approves one of them. This social class system, or rather one-sided watchers-over on a hierarchical basis didn't happen earlier on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has, in sum, functioned until now! Special experts who perhaps only know a narrow field and have not written a lot overall, as far as I see, have no chance of ever being able to write things directly as a Sighter! To become a Sighter one has to do a certain number of edits or file a job application! Scherbe
2. In order to prevent some vandalism a 2-class society has deliberately been bought. ... Curvededge
3. The time a short while ago when one could, without an announcement or a big Brouhaha, simply contribute one's knowledge and the world could immediate benefit from it, is now over. ... Asthma
4. I second Asthma. Otherwise, I could tell by any discussion, that edit-warriors and such, ... will immediately want the Sighter rights. In this way they can push a lot more through. Endless discussion and strife ... Nutzer 2206

   That must be made clear. I read through the article de:Tony Vaccaro, ... I correct a link, and now the correction is in the draft, and anyone who looks at the article version goes to the wrong link ... Nutzer 2206

5. The fact that, at first, new changes are not visible to all deters new authors. ... Please stop this test! Jonathan Groß
6. Now we have, beyond the distinction "Article worth reading" and "Excellent article", also the distinction "Article that does not contain 'Philip is daft'". Also, with checked versions everything is still open (IMHO they won't come at all). We are provably better than the up-until-now best German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus. ... our image ... Hans Koberger
7. The fact that anonymous users see not the current, but the last sighted version, makes Sighting almost compulsory. when the particular version should not be put on hold as potential vandalism. It's questionable whether the anonymous standard WP user finds the link to the current version, makes use of the definition of "sighted" or is interested in it anyway. ... Niteshift
8. After initial rather positive views of the sighted (as opposed to(?) proofed) versions I must meanwhile second the previous speaker. Nothing will be won. Obvious vandalism is just that: obvious. The reader recognizes that without further ado and without an elaborate sighting procedure. Further quality-increasing effects are not to be recognized, instead for these an ignorant person will be given an unzutreffende impression of proofed, objective accuracy.
9. Sighted and proofed versions in principle yes, but the newest version should always be shown as the standard view. Sighted or proofed only on request, ... pre-installed setting (Cookie). Otherwise Wikipedia will soon be pretty dead, for why would someone contribute, when the changes are not visible? Or is the goal to measure, whether soon only the self-named wikipedia "elite" will edit articles? Balubaer

   Sorry, but please think over again the meaning of these features. What you said is like saying "please fight vandalism, but please display each immediately nevertheless": then one could just as well leave things as they are. Subfader

   Hello, Subfader. Fighting vandalism is only a small subgoal. For a couple of years, there was an even more fundamental problem than my feelings about vandalism. The main goal is quality assurance and improvement (see the original discussion from 2006) and the development of stable versions. Maybe you and many others should think over the sense and point of the history? Balu, for the moment as IP 217.229.49.62

Translation of summary according to Lienhard Schulz

Because of the discussion up until this point, the process of sighted versions should be stopped, before the power (of effectiveness?) further cements it. (Something about clear majority, votes, weight of arguments, etc.)

1. The central, ultimate, sole argument of the supporter is the damming of vandalism. However overly multiply marked it became, the previously existing tools sufficed to fight vandalism.
   1. Vandalism is one of the smallest of Wikipedia's problems and is in the range of thousandths.
   2. Also, the advantage in time is minimal. For the entry "My teacher is stupid" to no longer be visible, would have taken about an hour with the previously existing vandalism-fighting tools.
   3. For this marginal advantage, we sell reader confusion and and make Wikipedia a bit user-unfriendly. Colleague at office: You're familiar with Wikipedia. It often says "sighted version". What is that? Should I click on it and read it?" ...
      1. (Not finished translating conclusion by Lienhard Schulz.)

(113 comments against flagged revisions, most of which not yet translated)

don't know/can't decide

(2 comments, not translated)

I reject this poll

(21 comments, not translated)

I support this poll

(7 comments, not translated)

I reject discussion of whether this poll makes sense or not

(7 comments, not translated)

I am quite tired right now, so if this makes no sense please ignore me, but does the phrasing of this poll seem a bit python-esque? "I support." "I Oppose." "I oppose this poll." "I support this poll." "Well fine, I oppose the opposing and supporting of this poll!" No wonder the Germans have a mess on their hands. Random89 07:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

LOL! But isn't that just normal for polls, on English Wikipedia too? I assume those sections might have been added by the (non-)participants after the poll started (I haven't checked). I don't see those sections at the end as affecting the validity of the poll itself.

I understand how the Germans feel about sighted revisions as implemented there. It makes sense to me: I can try to explain it. I think it's important to implement it differently here, as I've explained already, to avoid those problems.

The thing is, under our current system if you put in an edit and it gets reverted, at least your edit was actually in the article for a short time before being reverted; or you can think of it as having lost a game – everybody can't win all the time, but you can put it in the past and go on to play other games. But with the sighted revisions, if you've made a number of edits and they haven't been sighted yet, first of all in a sense they haven't been in the actual "article" for even a minute yet; secondly, it's like playing a game and not having found out yet whether you won or not: it keeps weighing on your mind. You can't just forget about it. Having made a certain number of edits which might possibly all be rejected before ever appearing in the "article", one might feel that one has invested a certain amount of editing time and that it's now better to wait before doing any more editing, to see what happens to those edits that are already there. Even reverting is paying attention to an edit: leaving it unsighted is totally ignoring it. So one feels ignored. And at the moment when one does the edit, all those feelings are there: one doesn't know that it's going to be sighted in 2 minutes, so one feels the same as if it's going to sit there for months. And if an edit does sit there for a long time unsighted, one feels more and more resentful as time goes on.

In our current system, one can feel proud of fixing a couple of grammatical errors, improving Wikipedia's image. But in the German system, the reader is not going to go to the trouble of clicking "to current version", or of comparing the two versions, just to avoid a few grammatical errors. So one's corrections, relegated to a mere "draft" (a word that sounds like something of lower quality, not the higher-quality thing that one's corrected version actually is) are just wasted while the reader still sees the grammatical errors. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 10:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

German users voting with their feet

While the talk-page debates on the German Wikipedia are interesting, we should compare the number commenting on talk pages with the number who are currently establishing a consensus on the ground by taking up "sichter" rights and actually using them, namely 2849 editors as I write (see here for current update). In that sense the pros outnumber the antis by 25:1. PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone who seeks Sichter rights is not necessarily in favour of a system they may see as removing a freedom, which previously everyone had, from one of two social classes; they may simply prefer that if they are in such a system, then they are not in the lower class. (I think the basic implementation I propose above would not tend to be seen as two social classes or as removing a freedom.) ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 21:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, avoiding the impression of a 2 class system is critical. This, just like other new usergroups we add, need to be seen as a tool, not a reward or a status symbol. Mr.Z-man 22:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Paddy, I think this is an extremely misleading metric for the reasons stated above. Are you serious about this contention? Mr. IP (talk) 02:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps users sighting new pages as roughly a metric, but not people sighting in general. Maybe they just don't want pages to get outdated? Aaron Schulz 04:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

My point is that the actual behaviour of users carries much more weight in determining consensus than comments on pages like this (and rightly so, given the numbers involved). If German editors are taking up sichter rights despite being opposed to the concept, I guess we'll hear about it soon enough. Moreover, if a supermajority of (experienced) German users is really opposed to sighting, they could easily use sichter rights to remove such flags and restore the status quo. After all, it is much easier than initially sighting a page since you don't have to check the text in any way, in fact you could do it with a script. Spoiler warnings were removed from English Wikipedia very much in this way (ditto "fair use" images etc) so there is a clear precedent for establishing consensus via force majeur. (But maybe "due process" is more important on DE:WP?) PaddyLeahy (talk) 19:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Split proposals

I think that this needs to be split into two separate proposals.

1. Flagged revisions as a replacement for semi-protection and maybe even full-protection.
2. Flagged revisions for the whole wikipedia.

Personally, I would probably support both of these depending on the specifics, but I think that the first proposal would receive consensus much more quickly then the second one would. Looking at the first proposal alone, it seems clear that it would allow more people to edit pages then is currently allowed, and (IMHO) less hierarchy (In current system admin has to make change, but in the new system, almost anyone could make the change provided they were a good editor.) I know it has been mentioned that we could roll it out by starting on semi-protected pages, but this proposal would means only semi-protected pages, period. (Allowing for the possibility of the second proposal still, if it gained consensus.) Jkasd 04:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Flagged revisions cannot replace full-protection (and so it cannot replace semi-protection either) as edit wars frequently occur between long time users. Ninety Mile Beach (talk) 06:29, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

There are two types of protection: protection to guard against vandalism and protection to stop edit wars. Flagged revisions could replace the former. --Hut 8.5 09:04, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

In fact flagged revisions could replace full protection if admins felt able to remove "surveyor" permission from editors who engaged in persistent edit wars rather than trying to reach consensus. However if this looked like developing into a big procedural thing like (or at) arbcom, it would probably be better to keep full protection; after all, according to Avatar's neat tool, only a tiny fraction (<0.03%) of pages are fully protected. PaddyLeahy (talk) 13:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

There are some cases in which articles have been fully protected due to extreme levels of vandalism (Evolution and Atlantic Records are the two which spring to mind) and flagged revisions would be useful in these rare cases. --Hut 8.5 14:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe we could add flagged revisions on a page by page basis: if there was consensus that a page needed flagged revisions, then it would be given flagged revisions. We could still keep semi-protection and full-protection and use them when they are the best solution. Jkasd 18:38, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Granting it per page would be a good idea. We could have a WP:RFPP-like process for enabling it on specific pages (with a policy giving criteria to determine which pages should be sighted). Possibly we could enable it on all articles but have the newest version displayed be default unless an admin has decided otherwise specifically for that page. Hut 8.5 18:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I feel that this is becoming more and more complicated, one reason that many are confused about flagged revisions and their purpose. Keep it simple: flagged revisions on all articles, a stable revision, requirements for rating article revisions, and that's about it. – Thomas H. Larsen 06:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

But not everyone wants it on all pages. I don't think having a request for flagged revisions process for pages that might need it would be overly complicated. Jkasd 15:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The process doesn't become overly complicated; getting anything done does. – Thomas H. Larsen 23:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Surveys can be deceptive if they're not large and random. I'm okay with picking three pages for flagged revisions, just to see what happens, because it's not likely that we would wind up enforcing conclusions drawn from so small a sample; it would just be to get our "feet wet". I'd be okay with doing something random-ish, such as adding the feature to every article that shows up at WP:GAN; that gives you a slow, steady stream of articles whose improvement would be a big plus for the encyclopedia, in an environment where people who are committed to improving the encyclopedia would be watching and arguing about the results anyway. (That's the route I took for my WP:GAU survey.) If we only pick pages that meet specific criteria, such as pages that have a lot of a certain type of vandalism, or pages that don't, that's not good, because the results of the survey will be biased in one way or another. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi folks. I'd like to clarify that semi-protection will still be required as a counter-vandalism measure on very frequently vandalised articles until/unless readers end up seeing the stable revision of articles by default. Flagged revisions is a method to achieve higher stability and give readers the option to acquire stable content, but for practical reasons we'll probably still need to semi-protect articles in some cases. – Thomas H. Larsen 06:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure, when semi-protection would be better, we could still use it. Jkasd 15:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm starting to think that we should never try to put flagged revisions on the whole wikipedia. Just on certain pages with a request for flagged revisions process (WP:RFFR) (along with talk page discussions) to decide. Jkasd 15:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Very simple proposal

I don't have my full proposal with me at the moment, and I will attempt to upload it tomorrow, but here is a basic preview of my vision of flagged revisions:

• Have a user access group, patrollers. Hand it out to all non-vandals who want it. Users in the group can:
  • rate aspects of article revisions up to some basic level, and
  • not downgrade aspects of ratings of article revisions if they are above this level.
• Have a user access group, reviewers. Hand it out to trusted, experienced people who want it. Users in this group can:
  • rate article revisions up to a high level,
  • downgrade ratings of article revisions to any level, and
  • set a revision of an article as a stable revision (readers still see the current revision by default, but they have a box directing them to the stable revision if they want it).
• Administrators can add and remove users from these groups.
• The interface consists of a simple box at the top of the screen, providing links to the stable and current revisions and a page describing the feature, and providing graphical sliders to denote the article revision's accuracy, depth, and readability.
• That's about it (as far as I remember).

Best and friendly regards, – Thomas H. Larsen 06:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Full proposal

My full proposal for the implementation of flagged revisions is found at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/reliable revisions. Note that there is no reason why we have to implement this proposal at the same time as we turn on flagged revisions; we can evolve toward this proposed implementation over a period of time. However, I would, if possible, like to have this implementation at the start, so please read it and provide feedback.

I think that a watchlist notice is the best idea for announcing the impending arrival of flagged revisions. However, one very real concern is ensuring that the discussion here remains comprehensible: the last thing I want is to be answering questions such as "What is flagged revisions?" or risking everybody's voice getting lost in the crowd. If we have too many people commenting on the same thing, their voices will be meaningless and will probably be accidentally ignored.

Thus, I am somewhat reluctant to go posting large "flagged revisions is coming!" notices aimed at a large amount of people who don't recognise or respect their own competence. Doing so is a recipe for ear-deafening noise, not constructive discussion.

These are issues that are important and that we need to address. Perhaps we should divide discussions into many parts where editors can voice their concerns and/or shout their joy about certain aspects of flagged revisions. Again, I do not think that editors who have not participated in discussion and understood the proposal(s) should be permitted to vote on whether or not to introduce the extension.

Here is a proposed timetable for implementing flagged revisions; please provide some comments.

Date	Action	Status
June 1	Impending arrival of flagged revisions announced via a watchlist notice and through the Main Page.	Upcoming
June 1	Officially, major discussion about whether or not to introduce flagged revisions onto the English Wikipedia starts.	Upcoming
June 8	Officially, major discussion about whether or not to introduce flagged revisions onto the English Wikipedia stops.	Upcoming
June 8	Major discussion about how to implement flagged revisions starts.	Upcoming
June 15	Major discussion about how to implement flagged revisions stops.	Upcoming
June 15	Voting on how to implement flagged revisions carried out.	Upcoming
June 22	Voting on how to implement flagged revisions stops; final decisions made in this regards.	Upcoming
June 22	Final voting on whether or not to implement flagged revisions starts. Votes must be accompanied by a valid, reasonable, and logical reasoning.	Upcoming
June 30	Final voting on whether or not to implement flagged revisions stops. If there is 80% or more support for the introduction of flagged revisions, a developer enables the feature on the English Wikipedia.	Upcoming

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomas H. Larsen (talk • contribs) 00:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

• Thomas, I see that you are calling for us to go boldly forward, but I don't see 80% approval being achieved on the date you want it. The all-or-nothing phrasing of your above plan concerns me. I believe there is a consensus on enwiki for movement on flagged revisions, but I don't see people buying the strongest form of it just yet. I think we will have to mess around with partial versions of it for a while before people understand what it can do, and before they can make up their minds. So we might start with a weak or limited form of flagged revisions, and try to go forward from there.
• As an announcement, why not say 'Thank you for agreeing to an initial trial of flagged revisions!' The lack of objection in the threads thus far can be interpreted that way, I believe. EdJohnston (talk) 04:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Just a little update from a German user

As it stands, you guys have already been given the link regarding the poll on this on the German Wikipedia. I'd like to flesh out for you the basic reasonings given against:

• People feel it entirely eliminates the Wiki principle , the most basic interactive grass roots philosophy Jimbo founded Wikipedia on, quote "[Other than Citizendium run by registered experts], we welcome a diversity of efforts."[2] If they are unregistered or have one single time been blocked for a few hours years ago, millions of potential and long-standing registered users are shown the door, getting reduced to supplicants and beggars that are only granted to sent in mere suggestions which hopefully the newly promoted expert committee will at some unknown time condescend to examine. Whatever happened to the old slogan, "This is a free encylopedia" for everyone to join in? Does this "free" only refer to royalty-free if quoted or software parts are copied elsewhere, as the German supporters of their version of flagged revisions are claiming now? That's why some people are beginning to refer to this new feature as a silent coup d'etat behind closed doors and that people never were given a chance to vote or voice their opinions about beforehand. In the particular small circles where these ideas floated around for years prior to the feature's installment, it never got a strong foothold, and nobody put much work into designing it properly which was why even the pro-people admitted that anything at such a primitive, undeveloped stage would need much work first, until it suddenly went live overnight when German publishing house Bertelsmann publically announced that they need flagged revisions on the double for an upcoming print version of the German Wikipedia.
• Even for the people still allowed in, it's an enormous waste of time and energy of epic proportions. The justification given for the sudden, little previously known implementation of flagged revisions is "eliminating vandalism" of the kind where IPs slip in four-letter words here and there. Even though our German community certainly is much smaller than yours, such petty vandalisms hardly last minutes, at most hours usually, even without this new feature of flagged revisions. So what's the use? And apart from what enormous increase of energy will have to be sunk into processing an entire day's or even a week's worth of sent-in suggestions, even the people still allowed in now arduously and cumbersomely have to first send in their own edits in as suggestions just like anybody else, this suggestion will appear in the invisible, invalid "draft" (Entwurf), then they'll have to use their new powers to approve of their own suggestion, and after that they'll still have to do one more step and move their self-approved suggestion to the actual article. This is not only awkward but also incredibly time-consuming.
• Astronomical, disproportionate growth of server, download, and upload capacities. Instead of handling only one single document per article with usually but a two-digit kilobyte per edit, each single suggestion sent in is internally stored as the corresponding entire article with the edit suggestion added in. Ever-changing, ever-growing Wikipedia is intensely memory hungry as is; some people have started joking whether Jimbo intends to rent the entire solar system as server space now that we have flagged revisions.
• Complicating the entire handling by effectively having to work with two parallel versions of each article. So far, people allowed in to flag revisions can chose in their account options whether they want the invisible, internal draft or the actual article displayed by default. So if they always intend to be up to date with what's happening, they'll potentially lose orientation easily on what's actually found its way into the actual article yet. If they intend to only see actual articles instead, vandalism of a far more critical kind than some silly four-letter words is invited: We currently get more and more alerts about "invisible AfDs" spotted literally at the very last second before articles would have gotten deleted.
• "Scaling" as an in fact harmful Pyrrhic victory, Part 1: Prescribing working quotas to meet. The supporters say the flagged revisions feature will have to remain in existence, in its current shape, for at least half a year from now, maybe even one whole year, before anybody will be able to tell and judge how flagged revisions will affect the project and what they are good for. If anybody will still be around interested in examining the issue by then, they say the only thing that'll matter will be "Does it scale?" What does to scale mean, then? Does it mean, "Does Wikipedia benefit from it?", or, "Does it fulfill any useful purpose?", or, "Do the benefits outweigh any obvious and potential, as-of-yet unknown harms at the end of the day?" NO! "Does it scale?", by their definition, simply stands for, "Will we be able to uphold a 'sensible' suggestion/approval ratio, or in other words, will we be able to process all suggestions coming in within a 'reasonable' timeframe?" Some critics therefore fear that the people allowed to flag revisions will put all their energy exclusively in fulfilling their set quota of suggestion approvals and they will less and less care about doing actual edits to the articles by themselves, just to save this one feature they wanna keep at all costs. Their entire work will potentially end up as fulfilling useless working quotas within an absurd planned economy of awkward bureaucracy while neglecting to make their own edits to articles by themselves.
• "Scaling" as an in fact harmful Pyrrhic victory, Part 2: People voting by their feet. The German Wikipedia has lost its entire interactive, easy-to-use appeal for all newcomers (and many oldtimers, but more of that below), a fact mourned by many critics giving figures, statistics, and links to irate boycotting calls. Within days of the implementation of flagged revisions, the inpouring of edits and new articles to the German Wikipedia irreversibly dropped far below that of the French Wikipedia, something that never happened before in the entire history of both language versions. The supporters watch this with delight, as this will make meeting their scaling quota much easier for them. What a great idea: Let's call our test a total success in the end simply because we scale, and totally ignore we lost 95 percent of all efforts, contributions, and contributors that ever kept our free enyclopedia alive in the first place!

Due to all these flaws inherent to the flagged revisions feature that we were force-fed, many active editors that registered years ago say that they are entirely opposed to it, or even openly call for mass boycotts. Twice as many people in the linked poll belong to these critics than there are supporters, and the critics mention and link to statements saying that more than half the people still allowed in as the new omnipotent censorship bureaucracy, simply by automatic inclusion due to meeting certain criteria, are totally up in arms against this total mess that went live overnight. They all add to the many, many IPs and newcomers that already deserted us and for the first time in our history made us succumb to the French language version (that's what adds up to the estimation of 95 percent of editors and contributions we'll lose). Most of us are determined that all this what we are now facing already at the German Wikipedia will inevitably happen in every language version where this version of flagged revisions will be implemented. --87.154.30.81 (talk) 03:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

From what I gather a fair number of users are ignoring that poll. I know several supporters that didn't bother voting because of this. Aaron Schulz 04:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, I've noticed those that said, "Hey, why are those sissies complaining yet again whenever we change any minuscule silly bit? I think it's high time we'll take the right to complain from them as well!", as well as those saying, "Hey, I don't see the big deal! It's summer outside you dunces, so just go playing in the beautiful sun for a few weeks and look the other way while we're pre-emptively and collectively taking editing rights from millions of innocent editors, including many, many people still registered since ages ago, just so some people's pets won't poop on the pavement anymore!" --87.154.30.81 (talk) 05:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Time for conspiracy theories...

I won't answer this in deep, but to reply to the biggest reproaches:

• There is no connection between stable versions and Bertelsman publishing a one book encyclopedia. It wouldn't make sense - sighted versions are against blatant vandalism, but the text in the encyclopedia will be edited by a group of experienced encyclopedic editors. By the way - do you really think they start to put together the content of the book now? Printed books needs 'a little bit' forerun.
• It seems you don't know much about the currently used data structure. Every edit (even if you only add or remove one char) is saved as whole article regardless if the stable version extension is running or not.
• Please publish/link data where your assertions can be verified.
• Answering in this style to the simple fact that a fair number of users is ignoring that poll (which can be checked easily) you're discrediting yourself. --Avatar (talk) 12:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

As for "conspiracy theories", how would you call it if your parliament would decide that 95 percent of people are deprived of their former right, or (if you prefer to call editing not a right but a "privilege") ability to vote, just "to make elections more efficient", and the official reason given as, "so people's pets won't poop on the carpet anymore"? Instead of the primarily universal ability to edit, we now have 95 percent of former editors reduced to humble supplicants that can send in their suggestions and petitions to be hopefully considered by the parliament at some other time. I registered years ago to the German Wikipedia and still am, and yet I'm denied the ability to edit articles any longer now because of this feature. And even the few people still allowed in now have to go through a long-winded and awkward mass of useless and absurd bureucratic red tape just to add their own edits to articles.

From what I gather here, the German admins didn't implement what you guys here are actually developing as flagged revisions as being a mere new template while everybody retains their right/ability to edit, in fact the German admins implemented exactly what appeared in many incompetent press articles and what Jimbo above warns people from as being FUD. They obviously didn't even read to bother what you guys are developing here, they just took editing rights from millions of innocent, often long-standing registered users. That's not some wild conjecture, it's a simple fact, and I'm one of the registered users that is not allowed to edit anymore. That's exactly the misunderstanding Jimbo warns about in that box above, and they implemented the misunderstanding instead of what you guys here are working on.

• The feature was implemented overnight without a single warning just days within Bertelsmann ordering flagged revisions for their print version. The connection between both events, especially because of the equal terminology, has been drawn a number of times by now, we also get people saying, "I refuse to effectively work only for Bertelsmann, so I'm hereby leaving Wikipedia for good", and all supporters adamantly refuse to reply to these accusations of Wikipedia buying out to a commercial company until now. If it would really be as silly as you claim, you should at least get a few denials within a month, right?

• I don't know much about Wikipedia's data structure? Then why is it that the server space issue arising due to this feature is the only problem acknowledged even by most supporters?

• The suggestion that people should rather leave Wikipedia for a few weeks to "take their stupidity elsewhere and play outside because it's summer now" was literally taken from users like Mbimmler or Raymond, and they're not the only ones suggesting that everybody complaining about this feature now should be leaving Wikipedia for some time. Without even commenting on any of the critics's many arguments, the number of supporters collectively calling all critics of this feature "regularly" incompetently and irresponsibly abusing their right to complain is too copius to list here, and they say this "negative attitude towards any change at all" has to end one way or another. Coupled with the fact that they are in favor of taking the ability to edit from millions of users collectively and pre-emptively, it's especially nasty they also think that everybody complaining should be deprived of that right as well.

• What exactly would you like to have links for? This is a bit odd though, as all the data is in German, and if you do speak German, you should be able to gather the informations from the poll itself. I'll be using the poll to suggest people to pile up documenting data from now on regarding all the things I quoted from the poll. It'll be a good idea to battle this irrelevant "scaling" brainchild with all this data in case we won't be bringing this mess down within a few days.

• I'm discrediting myself by quoting the common tenets of the poll? Come again? Furthermore, most people that got their ability to edit taken away from them overnight, be they IPs or registered users, don't even know that there's a poll going on. Just like the application form to be given back one's rights, it's hidden deep within the system. And being someone registered but having been blocked one single time years ago, I'm directly forwarded to the internal drafts (which are invisible if you're not registered, and even if you're registered, you'll have to manually click the tab to see it) when attempting to make an edit so it took me some time until I even realized that I'm not editing actual articles anymore. --87.154.30.81 (talk) 14:59, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Your allegations (and comparisons) are ridiculous, you're lying which is simple to prove (talk to Brion about details and schedule of implementation - or is he part of the Bertelsman conspiracy too?), Bertelsman hadn't asked for stable versions, the devs/tech guys (talk to them) don't see a problem with server space issues, you're misquoting and you didn't give a valid and/or reliable source for your claim that ip edits dropped because of enabling sighted versions. I'm hoping you're not talking about this statistic. All in all, I can't see that this "discussion" will be worthy either your time or mine. From my side EOD. --Avatar (talk) 15:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

How lovely. What next? Are you gonna deny the simple fact there's a poll going on and call me a liar for saying so? All I do is quoting what many people are saying, but you even deny the fact that people are saying it, just to divert from the fact you have no answers to the overwhelming protest. Are we living in the same reality at all? The Bertelsmann issue people are voicing their concern over (Kölsche Pitter for example says it's useless to fight this feature as the only reason German Wikipedia implemented it is because Bertelsmann and SPIEGEL Wissen are paying the Foundation for this as they intend to make money from the content Wikipedia has generated over the years), as serious as it would be if proving true, is just a neglectable side issue, but you blow it all out of proportion and claim that would be the only problem in order to divert from the fact it's just a side issue. --87.154.30.81 (talk) 16:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

My 2c:

• working through Special:OldReviewedPages is much more relaxed than checking Special:RecentChanges. The latter is practically impossible.
• The backlog of OldUnreviewedPages is quite constant (between 500-1000) even though the number of reviewed paged is constantly growing. That means that the process is scaling very well and it also means that we probably have already covered the most interesting articles where people tend to edit a lot.
• Whenever I work a bit on OldUnreviewdPages I find things that have been misses on Special:Recentchanges. So to me this proves that flagged revisions is the only way to completely cover the changes made by anonymous users.
• to most IPs this process is no real problem. Most anonymous changes get checked quickly. Those that lead the backlog are usually strange edits where so far no one gave their support and when checking these in detail, a huge percentage of them needs rollback. At the moment the average waiting time in the backlog (those long-termers included and all those excluded that have already been checked) is three hours, so that is nothing to complain about. That time could even be less, if there were not some long-term Wikipedians who boycott the new system, refuse review permissions and happily produce backlog. Ninety Mile Beach (talk) 20:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

One or many proposals?

Hi, I haven't followed the most recent developments; but I noticed the above timeline to announce this tomorrow on the main page. In order to avoid the German counter-reaction, we need to make sure this is presented properly. I don't think we are prepared for a wider discussion yet.

I see two ways of proceeding right now:

1. We streamline what is presented here into a single readable page that is very concrete, so people know exactly what they are in for right now. The current proposals are very open-ended, and speak of suggested "roll-out" strategies, this could cause panic. ;)
2. We present a number of different proposals about how people suggest to use flagging, so that people can choose between various ideas, and see that there are many choices.

The second option would lead to better solutions coming up, but it will also generate much confusion. If we go for a single proposal, then I like the idea of having a request for sighting process. I like the idea of presenting flagging as a tool to assist Wikipedians, not as something to be imposed on them.

Should we maybe streamline the many proposals into a single concrete proposal that most people on en.wiki would be comfortable with? Since we have started this discussion early, we know many opposing views, and we should take into account the German reaction as well. What are the opinions? Merzul (talk) 11:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Surely the thing to do now is precisely nothing until the situation on the German Wikipedia sorts itself out, and we can get an agreed report from them. Before we work seriously to introduce "quality" or "reliable" versions we better see whether the minimal sighted versions approach even works. A while ago I posted a request on the Signpost Tipline for updates on this, but it was deleted by Ral315 so I guess he doesn't feel it would be of general interest to English wikipedians. Nevertheless I hope our German colleagues continue to comment here. I notice that at the Wikimedia Elections, Ting Chen makes the good point that the "German experiment" lacks a clear set of goals and success criteria. For the record, the report I would like to see would say:

• What has been the reception, among: general editors; recent changes patrollers; admins? Also, since the German chapter is one of our most organised, perhaps they could commission some proper opinion polling about this amongst non-editing readers, since the whole thing is done mainly for their benefit.
• How is the debate evolving about who should get "sichter" rights? (Apparently settled now, but I didn't see the jump in the number of "sichters" I would have expected if automatic accreditation has gone into effect.)
• Have sighted revisions let to many pages being unprotected, as advertised by proponents? If so, has this been beneficial or otherwise to those articles? (Apparently not, yet.)
• What about the effect on pages that were never protected? Has it slowed down drive-by copy editing, as some fear? 87.154.30.81 alleges above that there has been a dramatic drop in edits, but Avatar seems to question this; unfortunately I can't translate the link he gave. Note that if flagged revs worked "perfectly", it would eliminate all vandalism and therefore all reverts of same, hence reducing the edit count by some 20%. So we need a bit more work than just looking at raw edit rate.

PaddyLeahy (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

"Surely the thing to do now is precisely nothing until the situation on the German Wikipedia sorts itself out, and we can get an agreed report from them" – oh, dear. Here we go again. The German implementation is different from the one being suggested by the supermajority on the English Wikipedia, and therefore any report from the German Wikipedia will not be entirely relevant. – Thomas H. Larsen 01:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

But still relevant in various aspects (response, scalibility, problems). Waiting a bit while discussing this won't hurt. Aaron Schulz 03:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

As of today, the "FlaggedRevs" extension is available to any wiki community that wishes to use it.

Erik Moeller says:

As of today, the "FlaggedRevs" extension is available to any wiki community that wishes to use it. FlaggedRevs is a tool for patrolling changes, identifying high quality article versions, and changing the default version shown to unregistered users. It's highly configurable. As such, we're making it available in two configurations:

1) A minimally intrusive "patrolling" configuration; 2) Custom configurations per your request.

Who needs this feature and where can I see it?

Larger wiki communities will probably benefit more from the use of this feature than smaller ones. If you have problems keeping vandalism in check, and/or want to experiment with new ways to identify high quality content, you should look into this functionality.

You can see an English language demo installation of the feature at: http://en.labs.wikimedia.org/

The feature is in production use on the German Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/

The German Wikipedia uses a custom configuration where the most recent vandalism-patrolled version, if any, is shown to unregistered users. You can track the progress of their use of the patrolling feature here:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english

Patrolling Configuration

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.

To activate the patrolling configuration,

1) File a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ of type "enhancement", component "site request". You may need to create a BugZilla account to do this.

2) Title your request "Enable FlaggedRevs Patrolling Configuration on (my project name)".

3) Post a link to your BugZilla request to your project's "Village pump" and mailing list, if available.

If there are no objections on the BugZilla page, the request will be considered valid after 7 days. (It may still take a while longer to process it.)

Custom Configurations

The FlaggedRevs extension is highly flexible in its configuration. We are willing to accommodate custom requests. Since some configurations of FlaggedRevs could be considered highly disruptive, the requirements are somewhat higher.

1) Read about the configuration options at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs and experiment with the live demo at: http://en.labs.wikimedia.org/

2) Create a page in the "Project:" namespace (e.g. "Wikipedia:", "Wikibooks:") of your wiki community describing the configuration you want to use.

3) Create a BugZilla request as above, titled "Enable FlaggedRevs custom configuration on (my project name)" pointing to the proposal page you have created. Provide an English translation of all relevant information if possible - or we may not be able to help you.

4) Post a link to your proposal and to the BugZilla request to the various relevant channels of your wiki community, e.g. "village pump", mailing list.

If there are no objections within 14 days, your request will be considered valid. If there are objections, please try building consensus. If necessary, you can also resort to a poll (a very large majority, at least two thirds, is generally necessary).

Note that custom configurations will take longer to process, and might sit in the technical support queue for several weeks.

Our developers will _only_ look at the information attached to the BugZilla request, so please make sure that everything relevant is at least linked from there.

Translators needed

The user interface of the FlaggedRevs extension needs to be translated into as many languages as possible. The extension can be localized using http://translatewiki.net/ - please follow the instructions there to become a translator.

User interface developers needed

If you are a PHP developer with JavaScript/CSS experience, your help in improving the user interface experience (by improving the CSS or adding AJAX features) would be appreciated. Just check out a fresh copy of the MediaWiki code and the FlaggedRevs code and get started:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs

If you need committer access to our version control system, please e-mail <commitaccess at wikimedia dot org>, attaching your SSH key and desired username as per the above link.

-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

(copied here by WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

My first edit

My first edit to Wikipedia was as an unregistered user to a fairly well established article (I can't remember which article it was so I can't check whether it was a good article or featured) where I added one letter to correct an error in spelling (a genuine error not a UK/US difference). Seeing the "fixed" article made me excited and want to contribute more to the wiki and soon after I created an account and have since started several articles and amassed several thousand edits. How many users start in this way, by making a simple change, fixing a grammatical error, correcting a date, updating out of date information before they had a registered account? How many established editors would not have continued past that point if they had not seen how their action had changed and improved the encyclopaedia? The internet is about instant reward, about getting things quickly, watching a video now, get the latest news now, etc. I do not think an unregistered user will wait around to see there edit put in place, they'll move on to the next thing and we will have lost a potential contributor. Guest9999 (talk) 23:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Please read the proposals made above, then comment again. Your comment indicates a lack of understanding, specifically that the two proposals in consideration at this time both have the current revision of articles displayed by default to everybody, so changes do become available immediately. – Thomas H. Larsen 00:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I fully admit that I do not fully understand all the details of the system at this time but I was aware that the proposals above. However currently they are just that - proposals; over the coming weeks there are likely to be more proposals some of which may well be to "hide" changes from unregistered editors. I did not state that I am not in favour of the system; whilst I have my doubts I am still learning about it. The above comment was just to represent my first thoughts on what I see as a negative aspect of one potential way in which the system could be implemented. Guest9999 (talk) 01:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

People have already proposed above hiding the most recent version from unregistered users, and that is how it has been implemented on the German Wikipedia. Concerns like these should be considered and addressed. Hut 8.5 08:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of users agree that having flagged versions appear by default would scare away too many new users. The only time we need that feature is for articles that would be fully protected anyway, so that new users can at least make some changes to them. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:28, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, the "Sighted Versions" proposal is the closest we currently have to a consensus proposal, and involves showing the flagged version, not the current draft, to not-logged-in users. (Mr Larsen's proposal has attracted much less support than "Sighted versions" did at the time it was thrashed out last September.) Clearly, much the most common objection to sighted versions is the fear that it would "scare away new users", but these objections don't come from an "overwhelming majority" of editors, even of editors who comment here (see archives of WT:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions)—many of us are supporting, not objecting. In any case, a couple of months' experience with the German implementation will tell us whether this fear is justified, which is why I advise waiting. PaddyLeahy (talk) 19:07, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

"How many established editors would not have continued past that point if they had not seen how their action had changed and improved the encyclopaedia?" ... After making an edit the user is directed to the most current version of the page (the one including their changes). We could go further and give the user a cookie which would cause them to always see the most current version of that page (or even all pages). There is no particular reason for the user to have any particular knowledge of that fact that their change is not yet being displayed to the general public. Already many users edits are reverted so quickly that by the time they next reload the page they are gone,... I'd expect a well functioning version flagging system to greatly reduce hasty reversions and as a result be strictly superior from the perspective of users seeing their contributions take effect. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Indefinitely fully protected pages

I'm thinking mainly of:

1. The Main Page
2. High risk templates (e.g. Template:Unreferenced)

There is no realistic chance of these pages being unprotected or even semi-protected in the foreseeable future and I could definately see the advantage of these pages working on a flagged revisions basis assuming that all users at least have the option to only see the flagged version. Guest9999 (talk) 20:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that the ultimate victory for wiki principles will be when http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_page&action=edit is a valid link for everyone. I honestly can't see FlaggedRevisions as a reason to unprotect high-risk templates, legal pages, abused talk pages or most of the other 'administrative' indef protections; but having something better to do with Evolution than have admins 'courier' edits from a sandbox can't possibly be a step in the wrong direction. Happy‑melon 21:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Unprotecting the main page wouldn't be a great benefit. All the content there is transcluded from other templates, so there is virtually no reason to edit the page directly, and it often goes unedited for weeks on end. If the implementation of flagged revisions displayed the newest version by default, then the page would become a massive target for vandals even if viewers did have the option of seeing a sighted version. Hut 8.5 21:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The above scheme by Guest9999 makes no sense unless the default for non-logged-in readers is to see the flagged revision, not the latest version. Guest is minimizing the pain of that new default (I assume) by limiting the use of flagged revisions only to a small set of pages that can't be left open anyway. I know that this scheme would have value for Evolution, even if the main page is not a good example. EdJohnston (talk) 22:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression that "what logged-out user sees" is variable by page: there is a global default (currently 'sighted' for de.wiki; consensus seems to be drifting towards 'current' for any implementation here), but there is also a permission granting the ability to override that setting on a per-page basis (the assumption seems to be that that would be a 'sysop' permission). So even if the default is to display the current version, we can still use FlaggedRevs more restrictively on certain pages (like Evolution). If that's not the case, then it's a feature that definitely needs to be added. Vis unprotecting the main page, I agree that it's not particularly useful. However, it is undoubtedly an enormous psychological step, because we've spent the past five years making the main page almost impossible to unprotect. Allowing everyone to edit the main page will require whoever does it (and it really ought to be Jimbo :D) to edit or change eleven separate pages: I've seen the mainpage protection system compared to the interlock on a nuclear missile; we were that scared that it might be opened up to edits. What a change of direction to be allowing anyone to edit it. Happy‑melon 12:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Evolution is now semi-protected, I don't see that happening for the main page or pages transcluded onto it any time soon. Often at WP:RFA one of the reasons for needing the admin-tools that is given is the ability to see edit high risk templates, allowing such templates to be edited would allow them to undergo the same continuous revision/ improvement as other pages. I agree such a system would only work if all users saw the flagged versions of such pages but at least on a technical level I doubt having that option set on a perpage basis would be a problem. Guest9999 (talk) 12:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism is not the only reason why we indef-protect templates: see Template talk:Db-meta#reword for a perfect example of full protection stopping a good faith, catastrophically damaging edit from going through long enough for its proponent to see the light. FR is only an alternative to indef protection as long as we set $wgUseStableTemplates=True, which means that the stable revision of templates is used in parsing other pages. Since that can't be overridden on a per-page basis AFAIK (that is, we can't have sandbox pages displaying using the latest version of a template and yet have other transclusions using the stable version), using sandboxes will still be necessary; indeed vital. There's actually no way that I can see for FR to be an alternative to indef protection for high-risk templates. For pages like Evolution, Today's Featured Article or even most policy pages, however, FR is an absolute godsend. Happy‑melon 12:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I concur with this view. ╟─TreasuryTag (talk ╬ contribs)─╢ 13:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay you know a lot more about templates and their use than I do and if you say it's not a practical or workable system then I have no reason to doubt you and withdraw my suggestion. Didn't mean to cause a fuss, just trying to put ideas out there. Guest9999 (talk) 15:33, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) My main bias in supporting flagged revisions is in fact being able to "open up" the main page. On pages that are currently unprotected, i see no need (or consensus) to enable the "sighted version" as default on the majority of pages. However, for readers not logged in, there is in my mind a clear value to displaying the "flagged version" of pages that would otherwise be protected. This would enable first-timers to improve the article, while still hiding the worst of the free-to-edit concept from passive readers. In particular this would be great on transcluded mainpage templates such as ITN, or as happy melon said, TFA. Random89 07:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Another Proposal (clean pages)

Judging by the German experience and what seems to be the general ideas held here, and pursuant to my comments above, I have another suggestion for how to implement flagged revs. This can be seen as a basic first step, a way to demonstrate the usefulness of this tool and not scare the wider community. I do not view this as the end of the process, simply a step down the road.

• All users in good standing (clear block log and 100+ edits) have the right to receive the ability to mark a page as "clean".
• Any admin can give or revoke this privilege (like rollback), subject to community approval (WP:AN) in case of disputes.
• A clean page is to be free of vandalism, spelling and grammar errors, or any maintenance tags at the top.
• On most pages, the default displayed version is the most recent, all users have the option of clicking a prominent link at the top to view the most recent "clean" version.
• Highly visible templates and pages that are currently indef full- or semi-protect can be decided, by discussion, to display by default the most recent "clean" version to allow them to be opened for editing.

Ideally, I see this being discussed, voted on, and put to a 3-month (or so) trial. It could then be voted on again before being either adopted or abolished. In the former case, we can then begin to discuss the next level (as has been proposed in other forms above). In the latter case, we end up here again looking for another form of implementation, or simply hiding in a corner from bitter users (cough german wiki cough). Random89 07:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Lets ask ourselves "Why would we want 'clean pages' to exist?"

I think some reasonable answers might be:

• Vandals (generally) couldn't get their vandalism onto them. Thus discouraging vandalism and decreasing the workload of Wikipedians.
• The public will be spared offensive or blatantly inaccurate materials which hurt our reputation and discourage the public from using Wikipedia.
• The public will be somewhat protected from misleading information which might cause them harm, like "Ionizing radiation is good for you"
• The subjects of our articles will enjoy increased protection against libelous or otherwise inaccurate statements in articles about themselves, their projects, or products.

There are other advantages, but I think these are the most important. What I think is significant about this exercise is that these advantages are phenomenally reduced or eliminated completely if the 'clean' version isn't what is shown by default to the average reader. If an article's problems are subtle, the reader will almost never click the clean link... If the problems are gross we'll still lose face even if the clean link is good, in fact we may even look more foolish: "Why doesn't Wikipedia show me the version without animated penises by default?!?!" "I don't care that there was good version buried under a links! The Wikipedia article on me said I screw goats!". ... Having a non-default clean link is arguably little better than inviting users to browse the history for a good version: If a user is willing to wade to crap to find quality they don't really need our help in locating the level of quality your clean proposal would provide.

Perhaps even more important: Keeping the clean versions up to date will take significant man power. If the clean version is the default we could expect that much of the effort currently going to fighting vandalism can be redirected to keeping clean versions upto date and updating the clean page will feel like an important task because it influences what the typical reader sees. Will people really care about updating a clean page that almost no one views when there is still lots of vandalism that needs fighting? I suspect not.

Because of this I can't support a proposal that doesn't make the clean page the default page for at least anons.--Gmaxwell (talk) 19:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem as I see it with the clean-as-default idea a twofold. First of all, we have seen the reaction from german wiki with regards to what can happen if we start hiding, by default, the most recent version of a page from our readers. Also, we risk losing new contributors in this way, since, as Guest9999 said above, a small update by an anon would not be immediately visible, perhaps decreasing the likelyhood of them editing again.

In response to the criticism of manpower use, I don't see this being a drain on resources. The number of users who are allowed to set pages as clean would ideally be quite large. In this way, any page that they edit, whether or not they do so in the sole pursuit of vandal fighting, would be marked as the most recent clean version. Please remember that this would ideally be a first step proposal, and I do see a future where we can either display as default the "clean" versions, or have another level for sighted "quality" pages. Random89 19:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

See my comments about about anons in the prior section. Considering that we won't even let anons create new pages, I wonder why they are being cited as an important factor here. It shouldn't be too hard to measure the differential rate of anon-stickyness for German in any case, just measure the rate of account creation.

Speaking of German WP, they seem to be doing rather well. I'm not sure of what you're talking about with respect to "what can happen".

Why would I ever bother updating a clean page if it has virtually no effect? I can't see there being a second step if this is the first step: If the clean page isn't the default updating it will be a nearly valueless task and people won't do it. If the clean versions are frequently stale then no one will consent to making them the default. Catch 22. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

As others have noted, it's the minority of disgruntled users on German Wikipedia who seem to be complaining, while many, many times that number are simply proceeding with the actual use of flagged revs. It's also pretty remarkable that the proportion of previously flagged articles that are not flagged in their latest version is very small. This suggests that it will be feasible to keep on top of new edits very quickly, especially once all the articles have been flagged once.--ragesoss (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I think a fair amount of the minority complaints on German could be addressed by granting 'Surveyor' more liberally. Another point I didn't raise before: Without default-display flagged versions look a lot like the old revision patrolling feature which was a complete failure on English WP because very few users bothered to hit the patrol button presumably because it had no real effect. You can see the same pattern in effect today at Special:Newpages: a lot of pages never get patrolled. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the ability to declare a page "clean" should indeed be granted to almost all who wish for it. I wish I hadn't brought up the german example, because in the same way it has caused drama there, referencing it may simply cause confusion here, since most of us are not fluent in german (including me). I am not outright opposed to displaying the "clean" version by default, but I believe that most of the community sees this as step against our "anyone can edit" policy. That is why this proposal seems so mild, it is a first step towards a larger system of sighted and flagged pages, which would be too much to introduce all at once. Random89 22:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it, if we give the rights to mark revisions as "clean" to almost every editor whose been here for a while, then there should be no issue with displaying the last clean revision by default, as in most cases, that will be the most recent revision. While ideally every reader is also an editor, in reality that isn't true. We have a lot more readers than editors. Remember flagged revisions is not for the benefit of editors, its for the readers. Mr.Z-man 23:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think many Wikipedian's really appreciate how enormous the ratio of readers to even occasional editors is. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:23, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on defaults

One way of thinking of it is that we've always had flagged revisions with the flagged revision displayed by default, it's just that every revision by every user named, anon, new, and old was automatically flagged. Along that line of thinking it makes sense to change the behavior in small steps, perhaps limiting flagging to something like autoconfirmed and perhaps later restricting it further if value is seen. (Though that wouldn't allow us to unprotect the main page :) ).

Arguments I've seen against showing the flagged revision by default seem to fall into these broad categories:

1. Showing the public something other than the most recent raw version is unwiki
2. New users will be scared away by not seeing their changes go in
3. The flagged version will be too stale to tolerate as a default

For (1), I don't think that word means what the people using it here think it means. I was using Wiki before Wikipedia, and if you want to talk unwiki you don't need to go much further than Wikipedia: History? Images? (It's not called *Media*Wiki for nothing!) Named accounts? Non-CamelCase links? Blocking? Templates? Talk pages? ... Wiki is a new field, and MediaWiki/Wikipedia has already redefined the word several times. There is no reason we need to stop now while we still have useful enhancements to add. I don't recall Ward having any philosophical objections to the concept of "stable versions" at WikiMania Boston.

Of course, many of the people using the word 'unwiki' are really trying to say not that it's unwiki but rather that it violates their internal vision for Wikipedia, but unless they speak more specifically we can't really have a discussion over those points. Some seem to be equating 'unwiki' to not-pro-anarchy, but the notion of Wikipedia as an anarchy as been firmly rejected many times over the history of the project.

For (2), there is no reason for the newbie to know his change hasn't gone live to the general public: It has gone live for him. It might not last, but the same is true of all edits today.

For (3), German WP is doing a pretty good job demonstrating this to be an unlikely problem. ... But if we could confine the concerns to this one point I think a number of reasonable compromises are possible: For example, articles with pending drafts could have their flagging dropped automatically if there is no update within some safety timespan. One thing I'm fairly sure of is that making the flagging less important will not help it be used more throughly.

Cheers. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:23, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with you for number three. For the most part, I agree with 2 as well, we have no real reason to believe that people need to see there change right away, and the lost number of "hooked" first time anons may well be negligible. It is number 1 with which I take concern, not because I believe that showing an old version is "unwiki", at least as long as the newest version can be found, but because I think some users may have it in theirs minds that it is somehow "unwiki". It matters not whether it is or isn't, but how people perceive it. Thats why I suggest we take baby steps. Random89 07:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a different issue with flagging defaults. I don't want any of my edits to be flagged by default (I'm an admin). Just because I've made 1 improvement to an article doesn't mean there aren't 99 more problems that I missed... I only want my edits to be flagged if I explicitly choose to flag them or if somebody else choosed to flag them. So long as that is true, in the end I really don't care too much; I'll be able to live with not using the system at all and I'll be able to live with using it extensively. GRBerry 01:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The normal behavior is that if the article is already flagged and someone who could have flagged it makes an edit, the new revision keeps the flag. The assumption being that users with the ability to set a 'not-vandalized flag' won't be adding vandalism but they might miss some which was already there. If an article was not already flagged it will not gain a flag by you without an explicit action to do so even if you edit it. Does that satisfy your desire? Could just use a user-preference to suppress even that much but would you really desire a behavior which would create a lot of low-value busywork for people trying to keep the flags current? --Gmaxwell (talk) 04:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

If that is clearly documented somewhere, it will satisfy my concern, which is ultimately about defending myself from stupid claims a lawyer might make about liability for content. GRBerry 04:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

On German Wikipedia, I've noticed that bots have this behavior: they update the flag on articles they edit that are already flagged, but don't add new flags.--ragesoss (talk) 05:09, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

We should just need to make it clear that you wouldn't have been expected to even read the page. Doesn't sound like a problem. --Gmaxwell (talk) 16:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Weak point...

Well, there is a massive weak point to this "sighted articles are free of vandalism" statement - a case I definitely encountered within our test phase (that is still running, I suppose? Or why didn't WP/de had a poll on this?):

Fake vandalism

Not even a small bunch of editors are well versed in all kind of sub-topics enough. So it is possible for a vandal to place fake vandalism - and get its fake sighted as vandalism-free. That particular case I'm referring to was a fake poster adding some cr*p into the German One Piece article acting as if he was in Japan and knowing what'd happen in the very end of this series that is supposed to end in several years. This edit was sighted here - and stayed for hours as "vandalism-free". I was the one that reverted the edit and had to remove the flag.

Especially due to this case I'm convinced that editors only need the "one-click-revert" feature. And everything that's going beyond this creates unnecessary overhead... --Defchris (talk) 01:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC) Besides: For how long are we "testing"? And how many unsighted articles are still in our WP/de? Last week I read sth. about 30% that were sighted.

So you're saying that if an improvement can not cure all problems it should not be performed?

Overhead for who? How many hundreds of thousands of bad pages must readers see before a little review effort is justified on the part of Wikipedia? ... And why should flagging increase overhead: That a good revision is flagged means that it doesn't need to be reviewed 100x over by vandalism checkers.

German is up to >40%. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

This is an inherent issue with having a publicly editable site, regardless of flagged revisions. Articles may contain inaccurate content, added intentionally as vandalism or unintentionally. Fact-checking is not part of normal vandalism patrol. That would be a requirement for a higher level of flagging, something tied to existing quality control processes like WP:FAC. Mr.Z-man 02:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. That is why I proposed above for the first level of flagged revs to be solely about overt vandalism and other obvious issues, and not subtle things. Random89 06:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it is possible that vandals who find they can't get away with obvious vandalism will start doing subtle vandalism instead. Hut 8.5 06:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

@Gmaxwell: It's not only because of this fake vandalism problem I'm saying that we don't need the flagged revisions.

• The German's Stern compared different German articles to other encyclopedic articles from the Brockhaus - [3] (in German). And we were better in almost every aspect. So we don't need the flagged revisions out of quality issues.
• There are still some issues with this feature: Articles can't be marked as sighted properly if there's an unsighted template within. And if this template is fully protected you need a sysop to mark it sighted. (Well the article is sighted but there's a draft "copy")
• Many German users complain that this feature and using it is confusing - the readers and the ones that want to edit sighted articles can be confused because of flagged articles containing vandalism and a more actual version that isn't flagged. If there's no difference between flagged article and draft the editor has to look why there's still a draft.
• If a non-editor reverts vandalism it has to be reviewed and flagged.
• Edits are reverted because the editor wants to - vandal-free edits don't implicate this edit to be flagged. Users that don't have editor rights can't do anything about this - even if they revert this an editor's flag is already seen as "correct".
• It'll be much more work beyond the usual research for articles if you do more than just one .
• Everybody who's not an editor is suspected to be a vandal - but you even can't rely on the editors.

I have editor rights in the German Wikipedia - but I'm not marking any article without reading it completely and confirming through comparing to other versions of it that the edits are free of (fake) vandalism. If I don't know anything on a topic I won't either flag an edit nor the article itself - at all. So overall, this doubles my effort, my work I'm putting into Wikipedia - and it's too much. If I didn't have the editor rights my edits might be unflagged for days - and that's unacceptable.

And I didn't even complain on the "certified/surveyed" flags: This feature is asking for trouble between authors, editors and surveyors if the surveyor is well known to set his own, so called "higher expectations" on articles than it's asked for due to the guidelines. We already have users that are trolling through proposing deletion, editwars, demandig changes to articles that need more time than our proposed seven days etc.

You guys really want more conflict potential? --Defchris (talk) 11:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A couple of issues:

• Just because the selected articles compared well with Brockhaus doesn't mean the project can't do better.
• I don't know what you mean be "articles can't be sighted properly". If there is some issue, it should be explained and go on bugzilla.
• What do you mean by "many readers"? How many? And what proportion? And how often is the sighted version vandalized? Especially where the current versions is not and the reader noticed that. It's hard to buy that is a common problem without some evidence.
• I'm not sure what you're describing when you say "vandal-free edits don't implicate this edit to be flagged".
• I don't see how everyone else is "suspected" of being vandal. Suspected in this case means that one as seen as likely to have vandalized. That is just not the case. The point is to filter out a good portion of disruptive edits.
• As for reverts needing to be sighted, and the workload, much of these issues could be solved by making more surveyors. Having queried toolserver, only a portion of the possible surveyors have been granted rights yet.

It will require more oversight and eyes, which seems like a good thing. It may be easy (less work) to not look over edits as much, but it also means less people finding and removing less vandalism. This would only cause conflict for people not confirming to policy and good conduct. If bad conduct and "trolling" (I don't know how true that is either) is really a problem, then it needs to be specifically, not by hindering things it happens to bleed on to. Also, no proof that this is even a wide spread problem is given. I could easily go to special pages to find unflaggings and then point out some conflict in there. But there is already conflict in editing. Without any sense of scale it becomes meaningless. Aaron Schulz 21:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, de:One Piece cleary shows, that the wish for "opening up" Wikipedia articles cannot be achieved by this feature. After several months of being semi-protected, that article was unlocked. After three weeks it returned to being semi-protected because flagged revisions - look at all the reverts in the history. Plz look for "rückgängig gemacht" as well as "Revert". Defchris (talk) 17:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Reverts are probably not the best criteria to measure the success of flagged revisions. An important criteria should be number of times a member of the public sees something bad, and I'm pretty confident that flagging will will there even vs semi-protection as even semi-protected pages can get a lot of reverts. --Gmaxwell (talk) 22:30, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's the only really useful and comparable criteria to measure its success - there's no effect on heavily vandalised articles. If vandals/fakers look for a way to "have fun" they'll find a way - even if they had to register an account.

There's a "public-opinion poll" - please have a look at Contra #125. de:Benutzer:Lienhard Schulz explains in detail (and in German) what's wrong with these flagged revisions - much better than I could translate into English. sry Defchris (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, not a social networking site ... last time I checked, anyway

I would like to remind everybody here that regardless of their impressions of what wikis in general should look like and how they should operate, this particular wiki – Wikipedia – is dedicated to developing a reliable, free, useful encyclopedia that readers can trust, not providing a social networking site with a fun little encyclopedia-building project off to one side. Flagged revisions appears to me to be the only possible way of making Wikipedia stable.

I would also like to state that I personally think that the stable revision of articles should be displayed by default to logged-out readers. (I've changed my position on this in proposals that I have made mainly because some part of flagged revisions is probably better than no part of flagged revisions.) I think that seeing vandalised articles is much, much more likely to deter potential contributors than edits not appearing immediately. And if we can't keep tabs on the flags of our articles, perhaps we've simply grown too big for our community?

I think that many of the opinions expressed on this page, while given in good faith, are underinformed and mislead. Please consider what's best for Wikipedia's readership, instead of continually worrying about how we are going to handle it or whether we are going to like it.

Best and friendly regards, – Thomas H. Larsen 00:18, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

How is keeping the current version of the article on default making this a social networking site? According to the five pillars, part of free is that anyone can edit, so people who oppose flagged revisions on the grounds that people wouldn't see their edits immediately aren't underinformed and mislead.

You do make a good point that seeing vandalism is likely to deter contributors as well, and as of now, I can't decide yet which would be better, but for me, not seeing my changes right away would have been a bigger deterrent to me that seeing vandalism on a page. Almost all of the IP contributions on my watchlist are fixing typos and grammar, many times it is their only contribution. I think seeing vandalism would mostly inspire a reader to edit the page to fix it, not just to shun wikipedia for ever (in most cases; I'll admit some vandalism that hits close to home could deter some users forever). I think that most people here have legitimate concerns here, so please don't try to dismiss them as being "selfish".

Respectfully, - Jkasd 04:33, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia everyone can edit and this may change if we implement Flagged revisions. Why do anonymous users contribute to Wikipedia articles? They know their contributions will be marked and seen by every visitor (I know it from experience; I've been a long-time anonymous contributor before I decided to get an account). Why correct a spelling error or explain a technical term if I don't know how long will it take to be able to see the correction and and will it be visible at all! With this model we are becoming more similar to Nupedia, the thing Jimbo Wales took us away from. This may become an encyclopedia where anyone can edit, but where most edits go unnoticed for hours at least. Yes, there is vandalism and this project will decrease the amount of it significantly, but I remember reading somewhere (maybe Wikipedia:Statistics) that vandals make up for only about 3% of all anonymous edits. Is chasing off the 3% bad worthy putting in jeopardy the 97% good?

A significant amount of anonymous editors can and will be chased away by the fact they have to register, then wait a few days to become autoconfirmed (in the least stringent version) and only then be able to make sure their edits will be seen by other users. Wikipedia's user base consists of 47,400,000 users, most of whom very rarely make edits. Anonymous users make up for a large percent of these edits. If we add Flagged revisions, the user base may sharply increase, but the number of edits by anonymous contributors will fall. Wikipedia will start to resemble a forum that allows all visitors to post in one section, but to post in all other section, one must register and wait until they become autoconfirmed to enable the public to see their revisions. If I had encountered such a system when I first came to Wikipedia, I would never have registered here. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 11:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Not to mention vandal fighting has become a style of editing here. If we kick out all the vandals, people will lose their "jobs" and possibly quit Wikipedia. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 11:35, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

3% is very optimistic (the actual figure is about 20%) but the point still stands - we would still be chasing off many good editors for every vandal we get rid of. And also bear in mind that it is from the ranks of these unregistered and new contributors that Wikipedia's experienced editors and administrators are drawn and we could seriously deplete our experienced user base if we scare off new contributors. Hut 8.5 11:52, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Focus on the negative

Looking at this article in New Scientist about convincing people, these proposals make the following mistakes:

1. The proposals are framed as trying to show the benefits of flagging. The fact is that people are more convinced by opposition.
2. The proposals try to give strong and authoritative arguments. The fact is that such arguments can dangerously backfire. Once a strong argument is resisted, a person is even more convinced that this is a bad idea.

Instead of defending the changes, proposals should focus on what is wrong with the status quo. I think this might explain why change is so often resisted on the Wiki. Merzul (talk) 10:29, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be pretty self-evident what's wrong with the status quo? --Conti|✉ 12:59, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

That's what many of us might think, but it is much easier to immediately think of a few things that are wrong with this proposal and then oppose it. Merzul (talk) 18:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Merzul has a point. It's not obvious to many editors here: Most of them have been desensitized to how shocking or confusing vandalism can be, and few of them appreciate how much readership volume there is here.

The like of thinking is "So the article said the senator liked beastiality, but we fixed it in 15 minutes. So what?" But in those 15 minutes hundreds of readers may have seen the vandalized text, and almost none of them have any clue how Wikipedia works. Most don't have any idea that Wikipedia is open for *anyone* to end at *any time* without *any review*. It's simply unthinkable to most people, so it's not obvious. So when thay see "and he enjoys beastality" their thoughts are along the lines of "Omg. Is that true? The article looks pretty reasonable otherwise. God what a cretin! Hm. Maybe they made a typo and intended to say that he opposes it? It seems like an important subject but they say nothing else. I'm so confused!" ... and perhaps 1/1000 of these confused members of the public send a confused email to OTRS. Some small fraction believe it and spread it. Another small fraction might go and write the senator.

And, of course, the harm and confusion of vandalism aren't just limited to BLP articles.

We simply can't expect the general public to deeply understand the sausage making of Wikipedia. They don't have time and interest for it and they have other things to worry about. All we can really expect them to understand about Wikipedia is "It's untrustworthy". I think it would be really sad if much of the value of Wikipedia were lost to the public simply because it was so confusingly untrustworthy that people ignored it completely.

Readers dramatically outnumber people who have made an edit here. If we were going to be truly democratic in governance, shouldn't we ask readers what they want here? After all ... they are the ones most impacted by the decision. I find it rather hard to believe that many readers would say no to "Would you prefer that changes to Wikipedia articles be reviewed before displaying them to the public?" ... I'd bet most would say, "You mean that isn't happening already!?@#! Hell yes! Tell me when it happens because I'm not going back there again until it does!" :) --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:33, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I logged on to OTRS looking for an example of this, and, not surprisingly, found one in a couple minutes. Someone emailed us regarding vandalism on Lou Piniella. Normally, vandalism is reverted hours before someone ends up replying to the email, but in this case it stuck for more than a day before I reverted it. We know that most things on Wikipedia should be taken with a grain of salt until checking sources and the page history for recent vandalism, but this person "thought everything on Wikipedia was true" (until now of course). While its possible it was sarcasm (sarcasm doesn't travel well through plain text), its far more likely, as Gmaxwell says, that he, like many people, really has no clue where content on Wikipedia really comes from. Mr.Z-man 20:20, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

It's true that we can't expect the general public to understand the processes inside WP. But one must not forget that flagged revisions themselves are one of these processes. I'm an editor at German WP; most people I know are not, but nearly all of them use it as readers. None of them has a clue of what is going on at the moment. Most of them intuitively take "sighted" as a mark of quality, meaning that sighted articles are reliable, while non-sighted ones are crap, which of course is definitely not true. Gmaxwell's example might or might not have passed the revision on de:wp; if it had, the damage done would even have been much bigger with a "sighted" mark on it. In fact, one couldn't even have blamed the person who sighted this, for it is no obvious vandalism.

Most readers are not aware of the meaning of the "sighted" mark and won't read our internal guidelines. The question is, do we want to delude them into thinking an article is reliable when we simply can't guarantee for it? Let's face it, as long as the wiki principle is at work, WP will never be completely reliable. Flagged revisions surely won't change this. In my opinion it's a very bad idea to have people think otherwise, and that's exactly what this system does, whether we like it or not. Greetings from Berlin, -- 87.123.124.145 (talk) 16:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with de.wikipedia to know what readers are expecting. I can tell you that readers of en.wikipedia.org are likely to judge the entire encyclopedia by whatever they read, and not look at the talk page or any markings; most readers don't know what the bronze star for WP:FAs means. If we find that, for some reason, readers are expecting a symbol for a flagged page to mean something it doesn't mean, the easy solution is to put the symbol on the talk page instead of in mainspace. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:51, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Do these readers even know that anyone can edit? Otherwise, they are likely to assume all articles are reviewed anyway, like a normal encyclopedia. And I don't see why people would assume non-sighted articles are automatically "crap". I have know idea where that comes from. Aaron Schulz 18:36, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm amazed how complicated examples and assumptions people are considering here in order to justify or to reject the proposal. The Sighted Versions proposals aims at fighting vandalism, and it's plainly obvious that vandalism is here, and that it's detrimental to the encyclopaedia. If you need an explicit example (and read a little German), have a look at this. That's the kind of stuff we don't want to see here, not even for 9 minutes. And flagged revisions prevented it from being shown to the public. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

"Whoever needs help for your 9- to 12-year-old child on the subject of sex, call..." Yes, that's a reason for Flagged Revisions. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Those versions containing personal information have to be removed through deletion from an oversight, not just reverted by "simple users" or hidden as centerfold between two flagged revision. Defchris (talk) 01:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

@Gmaxwell (indentation problem): Actually, the general public takes a large part in making Wikipedia and they will be definitely scared off by this proposal. Even if we lose only 5% of the anonymous contributors, we lose more edits than the vandalism we lost! Yes, the article probably (not definitely!) won't say "The senator lives in Florida and enjoys bestiality", but will it still say that the senator lives in Florida? We won't make a stand against the oppponents of Wikipedia here. Because of occasional vandalism that passes these magic lines and gets flagged as good edit, people will still say "It's untrustworthy." Even so, a plenty of readers do cooperate in Wikipedia. If only a third of all the 1,220 million edits is made by anonymous contributors, that still means that from these hundred edits, one or two will dare to revert the vandalism or at least make a contribution in another part of the article, a contribution that will be lost when a vandal fighter comes and reverts the full version to match the quality version. Most established editors, in fact most editors here started as anonymous contributors who got interested in the Wikipedia. They didn't hear about it on the TV one day and decided to get an account. Creating this rule opposes WP:BITE. Newcomers will be bitten as their good faith edits get lost in a queue or even actually appear on the public version, only days or weeks later (depending on the number of article visitors). This is the main issue about the flagged revisions. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 12:06, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Similar proposal

I thought of a similar idea to this, which I would be interested to know peoples' views on. The basic idea is that wikipedia has two versions - 'stable' and 'current'. Any viewer of the site would be able to choose between them, either on a page by page basis (similar to going to the 'talk' page of an article), or globally using a cookie.

The way I was thinking it could be done is with a timestamped queue. When someone makes a change, it goes automatically into the 'current' version of wikipedia, but is put into a queue for automatic insertion into 'stable' only after a certain period of time has elapsed. If no-one else makes an edit during that period, then it goes into stable automatically. If someone does, then the timestamp is re-set and the article goes to the back of the queue. The stable page could display a line at the top saying how many days it was lagging the current version, to give viewers an idea of whether to look at the current version for recent changes.

One advantage of this idea is that it doesn't involve creating two classes of users - only on the principle that if no-one cares enough to correct an edit within two weeks, then it should be allowed through. Also viewers would have the choice of which version of the site they preferred to use.

A possible disadvantage is that it might not work so well for frequently edited pages - articles could remain permanently in stable with no way for them to reach the front of the queue. This could be avoided if the queueing program was clever enough to connect the timestamps with the particular phrase that was edited and allow one part of the article to be updated while another was held in the queue; however I can see that this would be hard to code. --Lofty00 (talk) 11:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

http://www.stablepedia.org functions somewhat along those lines, although it's filter applied to Wikipedia content via an external site. Seems to be down right now; I'm not sure if that's a temporary glitch or if it died at some point when I wasn't looking.--Father Goose (talk) 17:43, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It has been down for a few days now, so is probably dead. --Lofty00 (talk) 11:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

German update?

The statistics page seems to clearly establish that every page can be flagged in a reasonable amount of time. Based on the trend it looks like they'll have it complete somewhere around four months after they started. That figure might be higher or lower on enWikipedia depending on the flaggers:articles ratio chosen, but based on this data almost any of the proposed 'flagger selection' criteria should let us flag everything within a year.

The story on changes to previously flagged pages is not quite as good, but still ok. They seem to clear the backlog every four days or so, for an average of about 40 hours between change and reflagging. That seems too high to me, but hopefully it will start to come down when they are no longer concentrating on getting everything flagged for the first time and/or spend less time dealing with vandals. Ideally, new changes would be rejected (if vandalism) or re-flagged within minutes.

Unfortunately, what that page can't tell us is whether the system is actually WORKING or not. Specifically, does anyone have statistics or general anecdotal statements on the two real issues here;

1: Vandalism. Have there been any notable changes in vandalism since the system was implemented? Has the AMOUNT of vandalism decreased? Have vandals shifted to targeting primarily the pages not yet flagged? Has there been a marked increase in 'subtle' vandalism (i.e. adding of facts and figures which the average user won't know are false)? Have there been many cases of users flagging things so fast that they missed obvious vandalism and marked it as ok? Has the number of COMPLAINTS about vandalism decreased (suggesting that vandalism is being SEEN by fewer people)? Et cetera.

2: User retention. Has there been a decrease in the number of anonymous edits being made? If so, is that decrease consistent with any decrease in vandalism committed by anons or is it a decrease in useful changes? What about new account creation? Has it increased, decreased, or stayed about the same? Has there been any evidence of larger than normal numbers of previously active users leaving? Has the rate of new page creation, featured article creation, or edits in general decreased significantly?

I think these are the questions we really need answers to. Basically, if there has been any significant reduction in the impact of vandalism and no significant reduction in user contributions then flagged revisions are indisputably a success and should be implemented here. If vandalism hasn't been slowed down much at all then there is no point in implementing this feature, and if user contributions are down then it may do more harm than good.

The stats page demonstrates convincingly that flagged revisions CAN be done, but not whether it SHOULD be done. It seems like with more than 60% of the pages flagged there could be a general sense of how things are heading on these issues by now. Does anyone have an idea how this stands currently? --CBD 13:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

(Replying only to a very small part of your post, and leaving the rest to other people:) In particular, there are two major factors to consider:

• has there been a decrease (or increase) in anonymous contribution due to the implementation of flagged revisions on the German-language Wikipedia? and
• has the German public seen significantly less (or more) vandalism and received content of significantly higher (or lower) reliability due to flagged revisions?

I think that we want to consider whether the public has got better content, not whether the project has received less vandalism.

In addition, I would like to see feedback from the German non-editing public on the feature, but I have no idea how to go about acquiring it. – Thomas H. Larsen 00:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The flagged revisions system currently implemented on the German Wikipedia isn't really geared towards "better content"... just a quick verification that the page is not obviously vandalized. Over time that might lead to 'better content', but content improvements inherently take longer than vandal fighting. --CBD 07:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a distinct difference between "Sighted Versions" and "Quality Versions".--Father Goose (talk) 08:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

A few facts from the de-WP:

1. First and foremost: As this adventure was begun without any planning there are no criteria what would constitute a success, there are no benchmarks, not even the slightest idea what kind of and how much effort is worth which result. Form the point of quality control, the implementation as it happened on de-WP is a disaster.
2. From the outside: Feedback from outsiders overwhelmingly states that the public does not understand the purpose and scope of the flagged revisions. The readers believe a flagged revision has undergone quality control regarding the content. No one I spoke to understood that the checking was purely formal and done by editors who have no knowledge about the topic of the article.
3. From inside: The backlog has essentially been constant over time! The predicted date for the initial flagging of every article is about 50 days in the future - it was after the first peak in the beginning and it is now. So the enthusiasm for initial flagging has fallen about the same rate with the progress of flagging. The result is stagnation.
4. One week ago, the implementation was switched so that non logged-in readers see the latest version now, no matter if it is flagged or not. So the very purpose of the flagged versions - that readers will always see a version that is supposed to be good - is lost. This was made without consultation of anyone - as was the initial implementation - with the stated intent to try this type of implementation in reality. I believe this decision was detrimental to the motivation of many editors, who don't see any purpose in the whole feature this way. At least it is this way for me.
5. Personally I don't engage in first line (RC) vandal fighting on de-WP - though I've spend a few hours with it over time to get a feeling. I work in the second line and regularly check a huge watch list, that tries to cover whole areas of (my) topics. On this second line and after now almost three moths I see no effect of flagged revision. The first line of defense was always very efficient on de-WP (frankly: significantly better than here on en-WP), so blantant vandalism was almost non-existent on my watch list before and is on the same level now. And flagged versions are worthless in supporting my type of quality control. Because 'flagged' means only that edits aren't blantant vandalism, the flagging editors have neither the expertise nor the time to check the edits whether they improve the article, so that still is my job in the second line for my topics.
6. I probably don't have to elaborate that there has been the expected flaws. A few people violated the trust set into them by flagging without appropriate checking for preexisting vandalism. There still (after almost three months) are open questions about what is blantant vandalism and how thorough the checking of new edits should be. We had our share of conspiracy theories around the flagged versions. And so on. That should be expected and can't be points pro or con the concept and/or its implementation.

Preliminary conclusion: The missing benchmarks are a fatal flaw. Without them honest evaluation the flagged versions as success or failure is impossible. A feature of this magnitude must not be implemented without benchmarks and a fixed trial phase. Those rules were violated on de-WP and motivation suffered. Personally, I was skeptic but open minded in the beginning and have been constructive in discussions during the development phase. In my view: The outcome so far is not worth the effort. Theoretically it might be different in projects where the first line of vandal fighting is less efficient than it always was on de-WP. But I advise such projects, that they should have clear rules for a trial period and think about benchmarks before they try it. --h-stt !? 11:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe this is a proof good enough that implementing Flagged revisions was a major error on de.wikipedia. Should we follow their example? Admiral Norton ^(talk) 13:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that's a subjective judgment, but there's more than one way to, er, skin an encyclopedia (well, there is, just go look at Special:Preferences). I think the primary purpose of flagging, at least on en, should be to keep the general public from randomly seeing "JOSH IS GAY" splattered across articles. Running around trying to flag every edit is counterproductive, in my view, since it doesn't really change anything; you're still scrutinizing every edit as it comes in to see if it seems malicious. It seems more prudent to flag articles that are in good shape, so if someone comes in and tears up the place, the damage isn't shown to everyone. When the article develops more, flag a new version. I don't think it should be considered necessary, or even desirable, to flag a stable revision for every article.

Judging by the test wiki, you can put text in the "flagged revision" box, so I don't think explaining should be too hard. Just put something like, "You are viewing a version of this page thought to be free of obvious problems. However, Wikipedia makes no guarantee of its validity. See disclaimer." --Slowking Man (talk) 14:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think we should try to 'explain' revision flagging to the general public at all. If you say anything along the lines of, 'we think this version of the page is ok' and it turns out that it DOES have some mistake or vandalism on it then it looks almost like Wikimedia has endorsed it. Instead, we could say nothing at all or just, 'Click here for the most recent version of this page'. As to the bit about the Deutsch experiment having recently switched to always showing the most recent version to all users... did anyone give any sort of explanation WHY? I'd have to agree that's just about completely useless. The whole point of the 'quick vandalism check' level of flagging is to keep vandalized pages out of the public's sight during the brief interval it takes to correct them. Also, having benchmarks for success was suggested by many people (here on enWiki anyway) long before this went live. Just seems slipshod implementation all around. Very discouraging. --CBD 15:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

You didn't understand what h-stt wanted to say, Slowking Man. Most articles on de.wikipedia haven't been flagged at all yet. I know that because I paid a visit to DE yesterday and found "Artikel/Entwurf" versions on exactly eight articles and I'm sure I ran across at least 10 other articles. The regime you are proposing is exactly the thing that happened anyway against all attempts to keep vandalism under control, and it happened only on some articles. Turning Flagged revisions into a obvious-vandalism-free page version would be taking away ClueBot's job and not doing it significantly better, and that's what they were able to partially do at the DE. To be able to sight versions on DE is similar to being able to roll edits back on EN. They are undermanned and yet they have problems with irresponsible people getting sighting access. Implementing such feature on EN and giving rights to, say, autoconfirmed users (we have a larger article base and less active editors, so we need better coverage), would be a total disaster and a vandal heaven. Not only would they escape the RC patrol, but they would be able to mark their edits as legitimate, bringing doubt to those who would revert them in a wink of an eye otherwise. This is definitely not the way I'd like a free encyclopedia to go. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:03, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

According to the statistics 63.58% of pages are tagged. You cite 8 out of 18 (~44%), but obviously there is plenty of room for that sort of variation in such a limited sample. I also suspect that there are some types of articles which will take longer to flag for the first time... anything particularly long or technical for instance. What's your source for the claim that we have fewer active editors? I've always seen it cited very much the other way around... that our editor to page ratio is significantly higher than that on the German Wikipedia. The primary difference between Cluebot and flagged revisions is that the general public SEES vandalism before Cluebot reverts it... with quickly reviewed flagged revisions they wouldn't. There also isn't any reason that we would take Cluebot offline. As to vandals with flagging rights... the ability to edit semi-protected pages being limited to autoconfirmed users successfully reduces vandalism. Ergo, if revision flagging were limited to auto-confirmed users it could be expected to produce a similar reduction in vandalism SEEN by non logged in users across every page. Stricter limits would make viewed vandalism even less common and might even reach a point where a vandal would have to make so many positive edits before being able to flag anything that it'd be a net positive even after having to clean up their mess. However, stricter limits might also discourage contributions.

I'm not sure that we can draw many conclusions from the German test. They've changed their requirements for getting the access a few times, alot of people apparently have the ability to hand it out to anyone they want (which is just a terrible idea), and it is now set up to not hide vandalism at all. They've demonstrated that all pages can be flagged (even with the chaos they DO continue to make progress, and getting over 60% in this timeframe before slowing down inherently shows that 100% is possible) and that they can keep everything flagged within a few days of last change... probably less if they were concentrating on that. It just isn't clear what impact the flagging is having... and apparently there won't be any way to determine that. --CBD 23:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess they had a reason to change their access requirements multiple times. They probably rotated the requirements possibilities because none of the schemes seemed to work efficiently enough and since we probably didn't learn much from them, I doubt implementing this would be a good idea. They took down the flagged version display because vandals apparently found a way to get around the system and inflict more damage by flagging vandalized versions. Even if they weren't giving away the rights to everyone, I'm sure there would still be enough vandals to do damage. As for the sources, per Special:Statistics, the average EN editor edits 31.82 times, while per de:Spezial:Statistik the average DE editor edits 86.17 times in their account lifetime. The de.wikipedia definitely has a higher share of active editors than we do. The chances are much higher you will meet someone on different articles twice in one day, yet this hasn't helped them judge who is a benevolent editor and who has the wrong intentions. You are talking about stricter limits being better, but the actual problem is that, the stricter the limits get, the less flaggers we get and the more strain is put into them. And, per #3 of h-stt's report, we can see that they can't manage even with their loose flagger requirements and that they still have a significant backlog. And the problem with backlogged pages is that vandals can still vandalize them as if the flagging system were not used. 37% is a very big number of pages that are virtually left out of control. Finally, I have to agree with you, it is unknown does flagging acutally reduce vandalism at all and we're not here to buy a pig in a poke. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:01, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you got those numbers by dividing total number of edits by total number of users. However, since that (in each case) includes edits to all the non-article namespaces and DOESN'T include IP edits in the total user count it isn't really an accurate reflection of 'edits per account lifetime'... which wouldn't be a good indicator of "active editors" anyway. Mistating the stats another way I could say that since we have 'only' 3.17 times as many articles, but 12.79 times as many USERS as the German Wikipedia we have a much greater proportion of people available to mark things. The problem with both sets of stats is that they don't report CURRENT activity at all.

As to how strict the restrictions should be. No, I wasn't arguing for stricter limits, just describing the effects of such. German Wikipedia seems to have adopted a weird amalgm of strict/loose limits... only about 3700 users have the access so far, but it was apparently given out to anyone that any admin felt was worthy. I'd think that you would want more users with the access, but restrict it such that the positive edits they need to make before getting it outweigh the damage a vandal could do after getting it. They apparently wanted to build in an 'admin review', but probably should have then restricted it to admins reviewing a bot or system generated list of candidates who had passed a certain editing thresh-hold. In any case, the progress they made in such a short time and repeated clearing of the 'backlog' of unreviewed edits clearly shows it is possible to flag all articles and keep them flagged within an average of a couple of days after the last edit - despite the chaos around the implementation. I'd think that would need to be brought down to a couple of minutes, but that doesn't seem impossible either. Just isn't clear what impact any of it could have on vandalism... which can't be measured with the current setup. --CBD 11:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I think your conclusions have become more negative than I intended. The flagging as such is going quite smoothly on de-WP. The rate of about 65% of all articles that are flagged at least once and more than 3600 users with the flagging-tag seems quite impressive on the first look. And the problems mentioned under #6 were minor and have been resolved. So I hope you could concentrate on the big questions around the flagged revisions. I believe benchmarks are the most important open questions. A test run is useless, if no one knows how to evaluate the result. And you need to look into the motivation issues - internal and from outside. As the backlog of initial flagging is constant over quite some time now, the motivation of editors to systematically wade through articles has fallen significantly. And the recent switch to showing the most recent version in all cases seems to be even more detrimental to their motivation. The third important aspect it the effect of flagged revisions to anons and non logged-in users. Will they continue to edit in the same rate as before if their edits aren't visible to the public before they have been flagged - which essentially means that we don't trust them to be overwhelmingly constructive. All of my ideas are preliminary - but so far I believe those are the issues you have to look at before you should try the flagged revision on en-WP. --h-stt !? 13:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Use of flagged revisions suspended on German Wikipedia

In the middle of H-stt's comments in the previous section is what seems to be a significant change which shouldn't be overlooked. In his item "4." he says that a week ago the German WP turned off the prime effect of flagged revisions -- the hiding of unflagged edits from readers. Since almost all article readers arrive unlogged in, they now are back to viewing the latest, possibly vandalized, revision, just as before flagged revisions. In this state the sighted flag has no significant effect; it simply turns on or off obscure markings.

I bring this up so that people are aware of this change, which in essence seems to suspend the effect of flagged revisions on de-WP. We're still in the dark as to why this action was taken and as to what might be done in the future. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 19:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

According to this remark, the upcoming vote on German Wikipedia about the use of Flagged Revisions will include the option "use sighted versions, but show the most recent version by default"; that's why they're trying it for a while.

That being said, I don't think it's a reasonable thing to do, since it needlessly takes away much of the system's virtues, and discourages users from setting the flags. --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so there is a method to their madness after all. They keep changing things to show how various different implementations would work, or not work as the case may be. Obviously, changing horses in midstream muddies the waters (and mixes the metaphors), but they may be able to get a general feel for which methods are easiest to maintain and provide the most benefit. --CBD 11:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't really tell what they're up to, but if they are really trialing out different approaches, I commend them. People on en.wiki seem to resist "let's see if it works this way"-type changes tooth and nail. (Maybe de.wiki does too, and these experiments are an exception.)--Father Goose (talk) 18:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, this "trying out" usually means something has gone wrong and DE is trying to revert it, but won't accept it to preserve their dignity. I don't mean to be rude or unhelpful, but the "let's see if it works this way" approach is very similar to the "let's set our clothes on fire and see if something happens". The EN wikipedians are afraid of change and I think they have a good reason. Not only is it unclear if this experiment worked, but it is definitely true that it deterred non-patrollers. Give me any other viable reason why would they kill the system if you're not satisfied with this one. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 19:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hints from a german wikipedian: The decision to show the unflagged versions was made here: de:Wikipedia Diskussion:Meinungsbilder/Weiterführung der gesichteten Versionen#Start des Meinungsbildes am 13. Juli (last paragraph) A meinungsbild(voting) was going to start to stop flagged versions. The start off this meinungsbild was delayed via the concession of showing the lastest version to non logged-in readers. --Stefanwege18:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.63.56.202 (talk)

just to keep you up-to-date. There is a vote now about maintaining flagged versions on the de.wikipedia. There's a lot of discussion going on if the voting is fair, but I guess it will decide about the future of the flagged versions in the German wikipedia: here is the link. Option 1: Is about ending flagged versions completely, option 2 is to use sighted versions, but show the most recent version by default and option 3 is to use the original intent (show the last sighted version). The vote will end on 1st of september. --84.153.3.25 (talk) 23:35, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks like 306 for no revision flagging (option 1), 171 for flagging but no display change (option 2), 613 for displaying the most recently flagged version to IP users (option 3), 28 abstaining, and 113 saying the equivalent of 'voting is evil'. No overwhelming consensus, but a clear majority of opinion. Poll isn't closed yet, but the ratios seem unlikely to change much in the final week / 25% of the poll. One thing which stands out is alot more entries marked 'not entitled to vote' in the 'no flagged revisions' section. They apparently have some fairly high 'voting' requirements as some of those excluded people had a couple hundred edits over two months or so. Anyway, 2:1 for option 3 over 1 and 3:2 for 3 over 1+2. --CBD 12:55, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they seem to give more weight to polls than we do, and they require 200 main space edits for editors to vote, in order to reduce the sockpuppet problem. Anyway, there's one point which I find very interesting: Option 2 ("use flagged revisions, but show the most recent revision per default"), which was intended as a kind of compromise, is remarkably unpopular. This seems consistent to me: The advantages of flagged revisions, in particular against vandalism, become effective only when flagged revisions are shown by default. Since our proposal Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions is quite similar to that Option 2, there might be reasons to change it. --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on the future of vandalbots under flagged revisions

I was thinking about how current vandalbots could best be integrated with a revision flagging system. It seems to me that they could continue running as they are now with just two additions:

1. If the version of an article reverted FROM by the bot was flagged as ok then the bot should spit out the diff link of the edit reverted and the name of the person who flagged it to a list somewhere for review. This would help identify false positives by the bot and vandalism by people with flagging permission... who would then quickly lose it.
2. If the version of an article reverted TO by the bot was flagged as ok then the bot should be able to mark the new (exact copy) of that version as flagged also. This would prevent other users from having to review and flag every edit made by a vandalbot.

Thoughts? Overall it seems like the two anti-vandalism methodologies could actually complement each other very well. --CBD 11:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

"Vandalbot" generally means a bot that carries out vandalism - I hope that's not what you meant! Hut 8.5 11:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, make that 'Anti-vandalbot'... though I've seen 'vandalbot' used either as 'bot which commits vandalism' or 'bot which hunts vandals'. I intended the latter meaning. --CBD 13:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

German editing statistics

I have generated some statistics of edits to the German Wikipedia from the most recent database dump. They do show that since flagged revisions was introduced on 6 May the number of edits from unregistered users has declined, and there has been no comparable decline in edits by registered users (so this is not just people going on holiday). The number of edits also picked up again in July, which suggests it is correlated with the decision to show the newest version and not the sighted version by default. For context I have also produced graphs of edits going back to 2005. (The black lines are 14-day moving averages.)

• 
  Unregistered edits in 2008
• 
  Registered edits in 2008
• 
  Unregistered edits 2005-8
• 
  Registered edits 2005-8

--Hut 8.5 11:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting results. I'm wondering though what percentage of IP edits are vandalism before and after the change. I'm not sure how you'd get a good estimate of that though. (Also, could you throw up a marker on May 6? A little tough to find other wise. ;-) ) --Falcorian ^(talk) 13:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I've marked the dot for May 6 in red. Hut 8.5 20:51, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, based on those graphs I'd say that flagged revisions have had no discernable impact on editing (by IPs or logged in users). Yes, there was a down and then up trend... but both directions began BEFORE the events you seem to attribute them to. IP edits had been decreasing fairly steadily since around February 2007 and the uptick in IP edits shown began several weeks before they went back to displaying the most recent version. Someone could even claim from this data that flagged revisions had slowed and then reversed a trend of decreasing IP edits... but given that the fluctuations involved (in either direction) are inline with past deviations it seems more likely that this is just standard variation and flagged revisions had no real impact. --CBD 13:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

That was about what I concluded from the graph. That's why I'm interestest to see vandalism percentages (although I'm sure we won't be able to calculate them), because I imagine they've decreased, in which case this looks like quite a success. --Falcorian ^(talk) 13:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, there is a clear decline of IP edits in May/June 2007, I wonder what the reason was? --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Two more graphs, attempting to analyse vandalism levels before and after flagged revisions. The first is a graph of vandalism blocks, defined as a block where the reason includes the string "vandal" (the German for "vandalism" is "vandalismus"). The second is a graph of reverts (the standard edit summary for a rollback is "Änderungen von [user] (Beiträge) rückgängig gemacht und letzte Version von [user] wiederhergestellt", so I've defined a revert as an edit where the edit summary contains the string "wiederhergestellt"). Neither shows a big drop due to flagged revisions. (If anyone has a better search string for either of these statistics I am prepared to run the analysis again.)

• 
  Vandalism blocks
• 
  Reverts

--Hut 8.5 20:51, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a tough one because flagged revisions doesn't do anything directly to 'stop' vandalism. Indeed, if semi and/or fully protected pages are unprotected I would actually expect to have MORE vandalism being committed. The intended benefit of flagged revisions is to hide the vandalism from the general reading public (un logged-in users) until it can be corrected. The only 'statistic' I can think of for measuring that would be to count the number of vandalism reports received from IP users / people e-mailing in. If flagged revisions were working you would expect to see a sharp decline in such reports. Just as much vandalism being committed, reverted, and blocked for, but not SEEN by the vast majority of readers. In theory, flagged revisions might also serve to discourage vandals, but most of the drive by random one time vandals WILL still see their vandalism when they hit 'save page'. Thus, any 'vandalism deterrent' effect would likely require a long gestation time for the general public to learn and understand that vandalism they commit will generally be seen only by themselves and the one person who fixes it. --CBD 22:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the new plots! The physicist in me is jumping for joy over the data! CBD though brings up a good point, which is that my metric is flawed (vandalism)... I'm not sure exactly then what one would want to look at. I'll have to give it some thought. Maybe something like "number of edits reverted where the revert returned it to a sighted version" but you'd need to normalize to the average number of vandal edits pre sighting. That way you'd expect ~1 before it takes effect, and then >1 if vanalism increases and <1 if it decreases. Of course, this still doesn't really tell you what you'd like to know, because in the end the number isn't important, it's what people 'see' that is, and in theory they'd see clean pages regardless of whether vandalism increases or not. Ah well, it's also nice that you marked the day sighted started. Cheers! --Falcorian ^(talk) 23:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we do not need to look at anything, just accept that Flagged revision is a slight step away from the wiki philosophy, but anyone CAN still edit and the people actually READING what we write will have a better more correct experience, which to me is what we are really after, i.e. a good encyclopedia is the number one goal, not something that everyone can edit at any point. --Stefan ^talk 23:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

While I think that's probably the right philosophy, the scientist in me wants to play with the data. ;-) --Falcorian ^(talk) 01:06, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The comment was not directed at you, it was a general comment, and I agree statistics is very fun and I love the graphs. --Stefan ^talk 05:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The editing statistics are now here in case you want to do something with them. Hut 8.5 20:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh boy! gnuplot here I come! --Falcorian ^(talk) 01:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Just a notice: page protection is still in place on de-WP, so vandalism wasn't supposed to be on the rise. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Very recently, reader feedback is possible with flaggedrevs, though not enabled. This can track and graph various dimensions of reader perception over time. Also, stats people (like Erik) could run regexps to determine reverted edits and then use the DB to find the number of reviews that corresponded to the reverted revisions. This could track a sample of the views of pages, and how many where to bad states. I already have an old JS script that does some of this things (it instead tracks how long the page was vandalized). Aaron Schulz 01:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Why do we want to scientifically prove that readers prefer an articel about the International Olympic Committee that actually talks about it compared to one that does not or to see how long pages are vandalised or how many people see vandalised versions. Some vandalisms are fixed within seconds like my exampel, and some not so fast, I fixed one that was wrong for more than 6 months a few weeks ago.

Vandalism exists, we are getting better and better at handling it, but we are not perfect. Flagged revisions will obviously make the readers perception of wikipedia be better, and it will obviously make it harder or less revarding for IP editors to contribute and possibly not give us as many new contributors, since it might take many days before their contributions are shown to all. It is a simple choise, do we want that or not, no need for elaborate statistics that states that readers prefer good contents compared to vandalism, or that pages that are vandlised are only see in 0.0024% of the total page views, does it matter if it is 0.12% or 0.0000098%? What is our target, at what value do we accept flagged revision and when do we not. To me it is simple, flagged revisions will make fewer vandalised pages visible to the readers, at the expense of some new editors, that is worth it, with statistics we can prove that this is good and bad, but does it matter? --Stefan ^talk 05:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The time that readers are exposed to vandalised versions is important in deciding whether to use the feature or not. If it turns out to be absurdly low then the huge effort of using flagged revisions clearly isn't worthwhile. There are plenty of other areas which badly need more editors' time. --Hut 8.5 20:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

There used to be dozens of people who spent hours every day doing nothing but reverting vandalism. That has clearly decreased with the introduction of highly functional anti-vandal bots, but it is still a significant drain. People still spend alot of time doing recent changes and new pages patrol. Will 'flagged revisions' really represent a "huge" effort above and beyond what these people are already doing? I'd always thought it would be incorporated into that work. If recent changes patrollers flag updates they might even cut down on repeat reviews of the same page and theoretically decrease the amount of effort being expended.

I'd agree that anti-vandal bots have greatly reduced the need for flagged revisions, but there are still benefits to be had and the effort involved may be no more than we are expending now. The 'article of the day' is viewed by multiple people every second. When it is vandalized for even a few seconds we hear about it... and the view of Wikipedia as an unreliable vandal magnet is perpetuated. Put in flagged revisions and that problem should drop to near zero... just the occasional page which gets flagged by mistake, the rare vandals who are dedicated enough to put in days/weeks/whatever of positive contributions in exchange for being able to flag five minutes worth of disruption 'ok', and the logged in users who generally know how Wikipedia works and just revert it. --CBD 21:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Probably not. We already have some sort of new pages patrolling function, so flagged revisions wouldn't do any good there. As for the recent changes, incorporating flagged revisions wouldn't do any good there, too, because in the time it takes a page to be flagged, it has already disappeared from recent changes, which makes them redundant. Implementing flagged revisions in an external application style would just create another Huggle/Twinkle/whatever where patrollers have to check every page, not only those they suspect to be vandalized. Flagged revisions have no obvious benefits, but they do obviously increase the workload. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 17:22, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Flagged revisions will represent a considerable step up from RC patrol. If an edit isn't vandalism then at the moment the patroller will spend a fraction of a second examining it, and many don't check every edit (they use tools which filter edits based on whether they contain common vandalism terms). Under flagged revisions, the article will need to be checked by the patroller, and the guidelines will probably ask that the article be checked for spam, BLP violations etc in addition to obvious vandalism. Since the backlog on the German Wikipedia is about a week long and vandalism levels have remained about the same, we would need two processes - RC patrol to check current edits, and another group to clear out the backlog. Furthermore, we would find it harder to do this than the German Wikipedia, as 0.05% of their registered users are admins (0.02% here) and unregistered editors make 15% of their edits (30% here), so the ratio of users generating edits which need to be patrolled to users doing the patrolling will be higher. New page patrol is a good analogy for flagged revisions - unpatrolled pages lose their "unpatrolled" status after a month, and we have articles which are hours away from doing exactly that, which doesn't speak volumes for the effectiveness of patrolling.--Hut 8.5 17:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

So basically we can conclude that we will not get anywhere with statistics, we just disagree, but I see some hope, maybe I can agree that flagged revisions will not have that much impact on obvious vandalims, but when I do vandal patrol I do not dare to revert changes where the editor changes things that might be correct, i.e. spelling of a name, changing age of a person, size of a animal and so on, since it takes so long to check these facts. On pages that I care more about and know more about I will do these checks when possible bad edits are made, but sometimes I just do not have the time to do these checks, I say to myself that I will do it later, but I forget. Flagged revisions whould be a great help in these cases, if I can have a watchlist of flagged pages, and just go through them one by one to make the latest version flagged. This would for sure improve the quality for least a very small part of wikipedia, and I'm sure there are many/many more editors like me that would benefit from this. This can be implemented without changing what version is displayed, which seams (I think) to be the biggest reason to oppose flagged revision? It would also not increas the work load on anyone since this now is a tool only to check for more 'sneaky' vandalism, i.e. it does not need to be used. It would also give us some experience with flagged versions and can use this to test it out so that we can have better discussion about if it really is a huge effort or not, now none of us really know, we just think and one of us is obviously wrong and I'm fine to find out that it is me.

So my proposal is to turn on flagged revisions, but not change what page is displayed. Purpose would be to easier find less obvious vandalism and to test the system to see if we like it or not. --Stefan ^talk 00:57, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hut 8.5, please define your limits for 'absurdly low' and 'huge effort'. Because if we can not set any limits, measurement is pretty useless, right? --Stefan ^talk 23:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

There's no point setting arbitrary standards, particularly as we know little about the extent of the problem. For one example, though, I investigated the article Caesar cipher, which probably isn't top of anyone's reading list but a fair number of people probably search for and would certainly get flagged under flagged revisions (it's an FA). For the months of May and June 2008, the article spent 920 seconds in a vandalised state. During the same period, 38,253 people viewed the article. This implies that six or seven people saw a vandalised version of this article. Most pages don't get anywhere near that sort of traffic. Is it really worth implementing flagged revisions to protect the handful of people that saw a vandalised version of this article? (This argument doesn't apply to high profile pages, but I have no problem with flagged revisions being used on these.) Hut 8.5 17:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, we will get nowhere using statistics, just for fun I did the same example on a page that I just reverted for vandalism a much more general page, Whale shark not FA, but GA and about twice your exampels pages views, 43,102 in July, in my example the page was in a vandalised state for 20,940 secons or 5h and 49 minutes, i.e. statistically about 345 people saw a vandalised version of this article, and no I did not check what type of vandlism, just counted reverts, excluding 6 hours+ that was reverted for bad external links. Anything can be proven with statistics, so where do we go from here. You state that you agree with flagging for high page view pages? So lets start with that? flag all FA and more than 250,000 views per month? --Stefan ^talk 01:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say stats are useless. I did write the history stats JS code a while back, which uses a huge amount of edit summary heuristics (reverts tend to have summaries) to guess the amount of time vandalized for a page. It's the high profile pages that have the worst problems usually. Low key pages are typically very unlikely to be in a vandalized state. Aaron Schulz 16:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't personally think FA is a good indicator of how high-profile an article is (flagging Plano Senior High School wouldn't do much good), but I would be prepared to support a scheme whereby all articles with over 250000 views per month are flagged. (In fact, since that's only about 300 pages, 100000 views a month might be a better benchmark.) Hut 8.5 18:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's just try this

While I understand the concerns that people are expressing about the implementation of flagged revisions on the English-language Wikipedia, I feel that we, as a community, should be less reluctant to try out new things that can be reversed as necessary. The German Wikipedia experiment, while valuable, does not necessarily provide results that can be directly superimposed on the English Wikipedia – the de.wp. community is very different in many ways from the en.wp. community.

Therefore, I propose that we try out an implementation of FlaggedRevs on the English-language Wikipedia – multiple implementations, if necessary – and see how the community, and the public, react. If the reaction – in all of its multiple aspects – is positive, then the feature should be left enabled; if not, then the feature should be disabled. And it's just as simple as commenting, or uncommenting, a line in LocalSettings.php.

Let's at least try it, folks ... – Thomas H. Larsen 09:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think there are still alot of people interested in trying this on en.wp. However, it seems unlikely that anything is going to be done until the results of the experiments on the German site are in. I'm particularly interested to see whether they can make it to 100% of articles tagged at least once (at 67.28% now) and whether that will then allow them to decrease the average time before changes are re-tagged down to six hours or less (at 3.2 days currently).

Yes, things may work differently here, but if the system does or does not work there then that is a fairly strong indication of how things might go here without adjustments to the implementation. --CBD 10:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for introducing flagged revisions on en.wp. However, I think "trying it out" is quite a big deal - as seen on de.wp, it requires quite a bit of work for the "sighters", and trying several implementations may confuse people rather than help. Actually, without having any scientifically accurate numbers, it seems to me that quite a few editors were discouraged from flagging revisions when de.wp switched backed to showing the unsighted versions by default; the backlog has much increased since then. So, I think the best way to go is to wait a bit longer for the German results, at least until their final decision is made regarding the use of flagged revisions; in the meantime to update our proposal /Sighted versions to reflect any lessons learned from the test on de.wp; and then to start a smaller-scale introduction on en.wp in a well-prepared manner. --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

4th proposal added

See Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Checkpoints and grading. There were some things I like and didn't like about each of the three previous proposals, so I took a spin at a new synthesis. -- Beland (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Update

The poll on the German Wikipedia has closed with 708 in favor of continuing flagged revisions with IP users seeing the most recently 'sighted' version (Option 3) vs 362 preferring no flagged revisions (Option 1) or 197 preferring all users to see the most recent edit (Option 2).

Apparently there is a standard of 50% approval required to 'win' the vote. On the talk page some are objecting that the 362 plus 197 plus 33 abstaining plus 129 saying 'voting is evil' totals up to 721, and therefor 708 falls short of 50%. Others are saying that the 33, 129, or both are not counted towards the total and thus 708 passes 50%. I tried to point out that quite a few of those 33 + 129 stated that they preferred Option 3, but felt that the poll was improperly biased against it... which would obviously make counting those as opposed to Option 3 incorrect. In any case, from what I could gather it seemed likely that Option 3 had been or would be 'officially' ratified.

Meanwhile, the stats pages have been updated with a few new options and they've now got 73.52% of all artices flagged at least once. The listed completion time for flagging all pages is down to 42 days, but that is based on average progress over the life of the feature. At the current rate of progress it'd actually take about 80 days. Over 18,000 flags are set per day, but many of those are reflagging pages after changes. The past few days there seems to have been a concentration on reducing the number of pages with unflagged revisions... likely in anticipation of the feature causing IPs to see flagged versions being reactivated. Focusing on keeping pages up to date will likely further slow progress towards getting all pages flagged. From what I've seen they might actually be better off leaving the most recent edit displayed until they've got all pages flagged. Keeping pages perpetually flagged is time consuming, but reviewing all changes since the last flagging, even if it was a couple of weeks ago, is usually easy. --CBD 20:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Sighted revisions for specific articles

We don't have a consensus at this time for generalized flagged or sighted revisions, but it would be interesting to enable sighted revisions for certain articles. It would require a consensus on the talk page and then an administrator can enable sighted revisions on this page, it means that IPs will only see the latest sighted version. Then users in the group surveyors can flag a revision as sighted. (The group surveyor includes administrators and can be assigned by administrators and removed in case of abuse.) This has been proposed as a remedy in a current request for arbitration here. Cenarium ^Talk 15:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I would be prepared to support this. The only way that flagged revisions could actually function to increase the openness of Wikipedia towards unregistered and new users is if it was introduced as an alternative to page protection on a page-by-page basis (with the criteria being no more loose than our current semi-protection criteria). Hut 8.5 17:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I created a detailed proposal here, any comments are welcome. Cenarium ^Talk 10:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I have updated my proposal, what do you think ? Cenarium ^Talk 16:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This involves the ability for administrators to restrict the sighting of an article to a user subgroup of surveyor, say established surveyor (the name may be changed). This would be very helpful in cases of disputes, because the group of surveyors, charged essentially to prevent vandalism from being visible, is too large, while established surveyors are trusted enough for their respect of our core policies and known not to edit war. Cenarium ^Talk 17:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I think it would be good to have flagged revs here. But it is a form of protection, so admins should enable it consistently with WP:PROTECT -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 18:07, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

So this essentially becomes sighting in lieu of semi-protection, restricted sighting in lieu of full-protection. It sure seems like a win-win to me. Jclemens (talk) 18:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes we'll still need semi protection, because the level of vandalism is too high and we would have to revert thousand times a day (for some politicians for example), and adding sight revisions restricted to established surveyors will help to avoid edit wars, non-consensual additions, etc. Cenarium ^Talk 10:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm not particularly happy with this as a long-term solution. However, I do think it could be a reasonable short term solution, although I'm very much opposed to allowing only administrators to set it. (Flagging is not a form of protection, which restricts who can edit; it's a form of stability, which controls which versions of articles are displayed by default to the public.) Why not simply enable it, and allow certain users to set it on pages as they see fit (with strong recommendations against setting it on articles that are already fairly stable)? – Thomas H. Larsen 04:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree that it's not really a form of protection, but rather of control on the content. If we allow more users to enable it, the number of pages with sighting revisions enabled will strongly increase, and we may not have enough surveyors to check the edits and we'll have huge backlogs. In the future, we may allow "establish surveyors" to enable it also. The sight protection restricts the ability to sight a page with sighting revisions enabled to "establish surveyors" or admins and may work like usual edit protection and move protection ([sight=established surveyor], etc). Cenarium ^Talk 10:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll

I've created a straw poll on flagged revisions to acquire some Public Opinion (TM). Everybody is welcome to participate at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/straw poll. – Thomas H. Larsen 23:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll statistics

Here are the statistics from the straw poll.

• ~27 people argued that flagged revisions should be enabled over all articles.
• ~10 people argued that flagged revisions should be enabled only over some articles, decided on a per-article basis.
• ~14 people argued that flagged revisions should be enabled only over some articles, determined on a categorial basis.
• ~2 people argued that flagged revisions should be enabled on any article at flaggers' discretion.
• ~17 people argued that flagged revisions should not be enabled at all.
• No people admitted that they didn't know the right course of action.
• ~3 people claimed that they didn't really mind.

These are interesting statistics. They indicate that about $27+10+14+2=53$ people are in favour of enabling flagged revisions on the English-language Wikipedia, while 17 people oppose the introduction of the feature. Only 3 people don't have a polarised position on the issue.

Those arguing for flagged revisions to be enabled did so mainly from the point of view of reliability, while those who opposed the feature generally expressed concerns over deterring anonymous editors.

So, there we are. Interpret these statistics how you will. I hope that they'll provide a good benchmark for further discussion. – Thomas H. Larsen 23:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you read the don't mind opinions, which were all (including me) in favour of flagged revisions but did not mind which option for turning them on took place. So that is really another 3 in favour. Davewild (talk) 08:07, 11 October 2008 (UTC)