Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Flagged Revisions

Category:Wikipedia flagged revisions
I have put in a cfd for Category:Wikipedia flagged revisions to be renamed to Category:WikiProject Flagged Revisions. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 08:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Lets get on with it!
I have set up this WikiProject to try and get some sort of flagged revision system up and running. The whole process is getting slowed down by the consensus process and perhaps by a lack of coordination. Consensus is good if the decisions are based on good information and research. Some comments in the process so far has suggested that not all the discussion, or decisions made in polls are particularly well informed. I tend to agree with that sentiment. I hope that this WikiProject will help inform editors and speed up the implementation. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Um... We aren't waiting for consensus or coordination or anything. We're waiting for the devs to implement it as discussed here and here Wikipedia talk:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions. There's little the vast majority of wikipedians can do about it, other then push the devs harder which is not necessarily a conducive pathway anyway. To be blunt, while I appreciate your enthusiasm, as discussed in the FPPR page given the current situation I don't know if this project is doing much good or simply confusing the situation and diluting discussion further. Nil Einne (talk) 06:20, 20 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Oops - I stand corrected. Instead of confusing and diluting the process I hope that the WikiProject clarifies and concentrates! Maybe the confusion is due to a lack of a central resource for references? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:30, 21 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I have now expanded the project page a little more. It is approaching the sort of thing that I am aiming for. Can you give some feedback? Ta. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:23, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

An essay
See User:Alan Liefting/Editing constraints essay for a short dissertation. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:30, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

BLP implementation
According to an article in the New York Times, and discussed on Slashdot, Wikipedia is expected to introduce flagged revisions for Biographies of Living People within weeks. There's a report on this at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions which includes links.

To comment on this, please go to the link just above rather than duplicating any discussion here.- gadfium 06:47, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion and poll on reviewer usergroup criteria
You may be interested in a discussion and poll I've started to decide the criteria that will be used for promoting users to the reviewer group at Wikipedia talk:Reviewers - please put your comments there. AndrewRT(Talk) 17:56, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

advantages of FR
I know this is only a subjective list, but I would like to discuss the following advantages here:


 * Reduces conflict of interest
 * Reduces systemic bias
 * Pages will be of a better quality in terms of content, style, spelling, grammar and layout

The Reviewing_guideline states that reviwers will not be expected to review edits for any of these items, only vandalism, BLP violations etc.


 * Rather than spending time and energy reverting vandalism editors will be able to carry on the task of building up Wikipedia

Actualy, editors will end up spending lots of time flagging revisions, so in net terms we will probably have less time to build up Wikipedia


 * Will make page histories shorter

Why does this matter?

Please share your comments. AndrewRT(Talk) 01:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Scale
I think the community needs now to agree the scope of the trial. There are hundreds of thousands of BLP articles and less than 2,000 protected and semi-protected articles. Lots of discussions (e.g. on reviewers) only really make sense after we know the scale of the trial. Clearly if we are talking about hundreds of thousands of articles, the number of reviewers needed is very different to if it's just a few hundred.

There was an earlier straw poll on applying Flagged Protection to all BLP articles. This closed with 60% support and nearly 350 participants.

The main project page, however, states that the trial will only enable ad hoc flagging by admins. I don't see how that can be the conclusion from the poll - surely if 60% support it then there should at least be a trial, say of a subset of about 100k living people, to see how it works in practice. AndrewRT(Talk) 01:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * 60% isn't consensus. A lot of people are strongly motivated by BLP, but most of the editorship of Wikipedia isn't. Ozob (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I am new to Wikipedia looking to find a place where I can ask a question about a certain article, or certain articles. For example what is being done to update information on Wikipedia that is 8 years old, not current anymore, but where it is important the present status of a particular situation? Thanks. Erik Wassenich, ewazzy36 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewazzy36 (talk • contribs) 22:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not really the right forum for that. I will reply on your talk page. Ozob (talk) 22:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Legal question about flagged revisions
I know nothing about the law but it is my understanding that part of the motivation for flagged revisions is to help shield the Wikimedia foundation from potential libel cases. This stems from the vandalism of the Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd articles among others. Even working under the assumption that a Wiki-site can be held legally responsible for the edits of its users &mdash; I hope there's no precedent because in an ideal world it should not be &mdash; one of my main concerns regarding flagged revisions is that it shifts potential legal burden of added content to those who green-lighted revisions. It would be naive in the extreme to think that only factual and non-libellous material will pass the scrutiny of editors so it must be admitted that it will still be a problem even if flagged revisions are used, just to a lesser extent. I fear that flagging articles vets the articles as having a measure of veracity rather than the "buyer-beware" model currently used. In a libel case under flagged revisions, I can easily envision a good lawyer using this approach against an editor that approved the contentious edits. Has this issue been discussed properly? Jason Quinn (talk) 18:48, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Somewhere (I can't remember where, but I think it was late December of 2008), I asked about this. Apparently, the Wikimedia Foundation's official and considered legal position at the time was, "We have no idea." Apparently, liability for libel in this kind of situation has never been considered in any US court, ever. It's possible that I'm remembering wrong, or that the situation has changed substantively since then; but I'd guess that nobody has any idea, even now. (Maybe there's a law review article somewhere? At the time it didn't even sound like there was one of those.) Ozob (talk) 18:26, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I also worry that any proposal such as flagged revisions that are incorporated with protecting against libel as a stated reason implicitly admits or implies that the Wiki-site acknowledges they have a legal responsibility for their content. In other words, merely talking about vandalism as "libel" in any Wikipedia policy could be used against Wikipedia. I prefer the term "vandalism" as I view bad edits like graffiti on a house, and don't think the owner of a vandalised house should be responsible for what some hoodlum wrote on it. For the most part the guidelines about flagged revision do seem to prefer the term "vandalism" and that the authors were aware of this point; but since there are so many discussions, many instances can be found, such as at Flagged_protection, that use the term "libel" in a way that could be detrimental. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:48, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The name of this WikiProject
Greetings! I'm curious what people think about this, but I feel that naming the project "WikiProject Flagged Revisions" does not define our goals clearly, given the number of different possible implementations there are for flagged revisions (see this). Perhaps we could serve Wikipedia better if we focused on the proposed trial? If so, maybe the name of the project should be "WikiProject Flagged Protection and Patrolled Revisions"? Any thoughts? 2help (message me) 06:51, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * If the project is aimed at helping the rollout of the approved Flagged Protection and Patrolled Revisions trial, then all well and good. Calling it Flagged Revisions makes it sound like a partisan project trying to advocate for a certain political position. Skomorokh  06:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * If that's the aim of the project, then "trial" or "test" should appear in the name. This also has the advantage of limiting the project to the running and evaluation of the trial.  Thus, the project name could be "WikiProject Testing Flagged Protection and Patrolled Revisions".  However, I think the name of the project is the least of our concerns; more important are:
 * the need for
 * the scope of
 * the purpose of
 * the ownership of, and
 * the manager of
 * the project. So where's a poor editor - more concerned with content than politics - to go, to find a clear definition of these items?  Mind you, I have some inklings as to the definitions, but doubt I'll find them at the Village Pump!  yoyo (talk) 15:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Implementation testing started
... at http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/. Please participate and give feedback there. Thanks, Cenarium (talk) 15:50, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

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Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)