User:Triona/Wishlist

This is a running list of things I'd like to see changed, both policy and technical, and their rationale. As ideas here mature, they may go to subpages, or they may be posted elsewhere for community comment...

=Per-article ACL=

=Reviewers=

This is a somewhat more sophisticated approach to "checked edits", which are currently implemented in MediaWiki but not used on Wikipedia. This approach relies on individual users to decide who they trust to review articles, and provides for several types of review.

Review Flags
Review flags would be applied to either articles or individual edits - if applied to an article, the entire article has been checked, if applied to an edit, only the changes introducted by that edit have been checked.

An article is considered checked for a given flag if all edits have been checked, or if a version of the entire article and all subsequent edits have been checked.
 * Patrolled - the edit or article has been checked for vandalism.
 * Spelling - no spelling errors have been noted
 * Grammar - no grammar errors have been noted
 * Accuracy - no factual errors have been noted
 * NPOV - Neutral Point of View has been adhered to
 * ExtLinks - External Links are ok
 * IntLinks - Internal Links are ok, and redirects have been bypassed.
 * Copyright - no evidence of copyvio found

Any editor can review an article or individual edit and set review flags. The effect of setting review flags is to advise other editors that a review has been performed.

Trust Lists
As part of this system, each editor would have a list in their preferences of editors that they trust to review articles or edits. Editors can choose to hide edits in RC that have been reviewed by an editor they trust.

=Editorial Control=

Wikipedia currently lacks a mechinism for making hard and fast decisions on content. While community consensus is generally the way to go, some degree of editorial oversight would speed up the process, and would ultimately keep a lot of content disputes under control.

This would have several purposes. One major purpose would be early intervention in edit conflicts, by making an initial ruling on content, which would be enforceable until a consensus can be formed. Another purpose would be to intervene where no consensus is likely to form - highly controversial articles. Also, an editorial board could take stewardship over articles that are locked for legal reasons such as the potential for libel.

As I see it, an editorial advisory board would have the following responsibilities.


 * Confer with subject matter experts to determine matters of factual accuracy.
 * Determine a compromise version for articles involved in editing conflicts.
 * Act as a custodian for long-term protected articles, insuring that they will continue to be updated in a timely matter.
 * Act as community leaders to improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia.
 * Ruthlessly seek out and destroy bias, factual inaccuracy, and unverifiable statements.
 * Ensure that core policies of NPOV and factual accuracy are not trampled upon by other interests.