Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/reliable revisions

Article ratings
What you are proposing would require a drastic change in the current rating system. It also seems it would make WP:FAC and WP:GAC obsolete, or at least function in a totally different way. I also think that your proposal isn't really flagged revisions any more, I think you've made it into something different that will probably take my time for developers to create (especially before June 1). I think it's a good idea however (mostly), but I also think it's too far ahead of its time.  J kasd  03:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My understanding of this proposal is that it would be something separate from FAC and GAC, and work in tandem with them, since the highest levels of ratings will be reserved for a certain, smaller class of users only. Of course, I might be misunderstanding something here, so perhaps Mr. Larsen can jump in.--Danaman5 (talk) 05:56, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this is a good start. I say that because I think mechanisms to judge these categories will begin to develop on articles and that if we implement _anything_ it will be a great change for Wikipedia.  We can't really use FA or GA as a model because once something is featured it's done (unless it's up for FAR).  We don't currently have a "more featured" or a way to chart improvement in featured articles.  I think this can give us a way to track improvements within articles that are already featured. gren グレン 08:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Too complicated
The English Wikipedia currently has 2,394,699 articles in it. In order to flag a large number of revisions and keep flags up to date, we need a flagged revisions system that is simple - it should be a relatively quick process to judge whether a typical revision should be flagged. This proposal is far too complicated, and thus would slow down the effort to combat misinformation on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greenrd (talk • contribs)
 * Given our previous assessment structure (which is, arguably, much more involved than this) holds some 1.6 million articles, I don't believe this is an issue. Nifboy (talk) 14:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Unnecessary
The current general proposed system of having a mark on an article as being 'OK' or unsighted covers accuracy in general, and depth/readability are not only very subjective but also easily assessed by the reader, whereas a vandalised figure or quote in an article is not. Because of this I don't think this proposal is suitable for Wikipedia guiltyspark (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Depth is not always easily assessed. Knowing that there are gaping omissions or basic facts that are missing often requires know what they are. If the reader is looking up the page in the first place, they likely won't know them. At any rate, we need sighted versions if anything is to scale. Having a higher criteria will lead to outdated reviews with heavy lag. This would be annoying to newcomers.  Aar on Sc hulz  22:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Missing sections are already served by the various 'expand' tags guiltyspark (talk) 07:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Reviewer cabal
I fear that some reviewers will make a large group of articles well sourced, high, and/or concise to prevent patrollers from making any father reviews. Zginder 2008-05-31T20:37Z (UTC)


 * This is open to review as much as protection, admins giving rollback privileges, or any other editing on Wikipedia. I'm sure we'll eventually have a noticeboard for FlaggedRev issues no matter what the system we have is. gren グレン 09:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Eventually there will be a noticeboard, but we don't have to do everything all at once :-). – Thomas H. Larsen 01:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * My concern is that at the high levels it my be a while between reviewers reviewing and patrollers can not patrol the page during that time. Zginder 2008-06-03T12:32Z (UTC)

Not enough patroller vs. reviewer distinction
After reading this over and thinking about this I dislike several things about this proposal. I don't like that patrollers and reviewers should have the same job. While patrollers can't rate things too high they are doing the same thing as a reviewer does. This is problematic on a few levels. Firstly, because to know that an article is "Accurate" and not "Well sourced" you need to know what a reviewer would. I understand that it removes the problem of the more plentiful group uprating articles to a level they don't deserve and only letting more privileged users do it.

The reason I feel this way is because I am not sure I fully like the idea of a reviewer for higher levels. I think "reviewer" should model, more or less, what we do for adding wikiproject banners. Whoever adds them has some leeway in choosing between stub and start and B... but GA, A-class(?), and featured were all decidedly communally. So, I'll lay out what I think would make this proposal better.


 * Patroller: much liked in SightedRevs, the patroller would simply mark to the best of his or her ability the newest version without vandalism or, on 'better' articles make sure that there was at least some level of sourcing. More or less they should take a very general idea to make sure there are no huge problems with the article for the first marking of the article and for updating the "sighted" version they should make nothing clearly makes it worse than the last sighted version.


 * Reviewers: would have broad powers to mark articles on Accuracy /	Depth / Readability as you proposed--up until a point. When you are getting past accurate–moderate–good then all decisions should be done through consensus either on the talk page or in some other arena.  Reviewers don't need the software to stop them marking articles in these ways since they are trusted users much like admins but there will be community standards on how high reviewers can mark articles without getting outside input.  It doesn't have to be the same wiki wide... more viewed and more important articles might demand more input from the community while obscure articles might not.  We can let community standards evolve.  There will always be a mechanism to request a change so that one reviewer does not control the rating.  This allows for more interesting updates.  For instance Ran (film) was promoted to featured on April 3, 2006 so it would have that revision marked as featured... but right, two years later is the article better?  A suitably large group can come together every once and a while and update the featured tag and see if new versions deserve to be marked as featured or if the article has gotten worse.  This will be the perfect mechanism to track improvements in featured articles as well as lesser articles and to (hopefully) make sure featured articles don't degrade as they have in the past.

So, I like your framework of two jobs I just dislike what jobs these two groups do. I don't think they can be doing the same rating but one is not allowed to rate higher. They have to be doing different jobs... I'm not fully sure if FlaggedRevs supports this but, hopefully it does or can in the future. gren グレン 09:45, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, in a way this proposal would have two jobs – patrollers can simply have only basic access because their job (to fight damage) doesn't require higher access. Reviewers need higher access since their job (assessing quality) does.  – Thomas H. Larsen 01:42, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * But they are still trying to judge the merits of the article (depth, accuracy, etc.) which I think needs to involve community consensus even for basic levels (obviously you need to know the subject to know if the article is in depth)... whereas sighting an article as not vandalized is something that anyone can do without community consensus. That's the issue, I think.  All I think patrollers should be doing is sighting.  gren グレン 07:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Worry about implementation, not procedure; we will have a Flagged Revisions noticeboard
Worry about implementation, not procedure. We will have a Flagged Revisions noticeboard, after all, where issues surrounding Flagged Revisions can be discussed. – Thomas H. Larsen 01:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Why restrict patroller membership?
I suggest that the "patroller" privileges be given to any auto-confirmed user (that is, someone who has logged in to an account that has been active for X number of days). These users already have the ability to patrol new pages, recent changes, etc.; they also should have the power to flag revisions. I can see the argument for restricting the higher levels to vetted "reviewers," but don't see the rationale for implementing yet another approval mechanism for the lower-level patroller privileges. --Russ (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)


 * We don't even give rollback to every user. I think it would be problematic and much more likely to lead to edit wars.  I have no problem with there being no strict criteria for patroller access but by making it admin given, even liberally given, it can then easily be revoked.  I suppose you could have it admin given but enabled by default... but, still, I think it's better that people interested ask and admins give it but are able to revoke it if problems arise. gren グレン 07:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Why should we abandon our old procedures?
I think our FA and GA review procedures are good enough we just have to mark the revision that the article got the status for. The decision is by a community, the actual marking is by an admin evaluating the consensus. If an article is re-reviewed the version can be upgraded.

I think a single editor should not make decisions of that sort (especially for FA-articles). The edits that appear to helpful to a reviewer may appear to be POV-pushing or undersourced to another Alex Bakharev (talk) 05:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)