Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions/Archive 2

message: This is currently rather inconsistent. We used to have editor rights granted automatically based on the 3 criteria, now it is given by admins based on 4 criteria. I think this is a bit weird, I can think of 2 alternatives that make sense, and both seem okay to me:
# Users are given rights automatically after a fixed set of criteria, but admins can give earlier. 
# Admins can give these rights to any user they trust is not a vandal. (If only admins give the rights, then certainly a confirmed e-mail account is completely irrelevant.)
Also, the current standards seem very high to me, especially since I'm not sure if I am myself particularly "clueful". --Merzul 23:15, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Granting editor rights

message: Is it just for vandalism or is also quality checking? I think a lot of us are wondering this. I also think a lot of us are kind of floating between the two ideas "just vandalism" and "vandalism and quality". We're probably unclear about what exactly this will impact because we're kind of waiting to see how it could be used in actual practice. I ask myself, would I support or oppose this it if was more than just vandalism checking. I honestly don't know, but I'm excited to find out. What I'm trying to get at is, I think some of us are unsure of what exactly to support, because we don't want to write the idea off, but we want to be cautious. A lot of us really want to at least test the concept, in some shape or form, before we can honestly comment on how we should use it. We got this proposal that doesn't really know what it's proposing anymore.
Maybe we should be asking more than one question (do you support this idea or not). Like "Question 1, do you think this would help for vandal fighting" then "Question 2, in addition, do you think some level of quality checking could later apply". Or even "Would you like to see how this works in action before commenting". I find myself at that last example, in that I don't think I can give an accurate response without seeing some kind of indication of what will happen.
What I would love to see is just some kind of test, even if just for a week, so we can actually get our hands on this and really see what we're dealing with. -- Ned Scott 07:02, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism and/or quality checking?

message: How about giving all readers the option of turning this on or off. Anonymous editors would see the stable version by default, registered users would see the latest version. There could be a small icon somewhere for the version to be switched from recent to stable (e.g. a small tick imposed on an article for stable, and a small clock for most recent). Users could alter this permanently in their preferences. Richard001 03:21, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the plan I believe. This is more for 'drive by' viewers than regular contributors. →Ollie (talk • contribs) 03:49, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. The way it works is that a tab with the text "Current revision" is placed between the "Article" and "Discussion" tabs, and when viewing the current revision, there will also be an "edit" tab. —METS501 (talk) 03:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think it is a good idea to allow all registered users to see the most recent edits. I still worry about adding classes of users, overall though. I wonder if some viewpoints and people who have them will be censored out or have less priveledges. I already feel this is the case to some extent in deletion arguments. If 'sighting' etc is added I fear it will get so bureacratic that it will drive new users away. I'm a fairly new user myself and there is enough complexity to the system already. Adding more will probably discourage people. Moonbug 19:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I endorse Richard001's idea. I was thinking the same thing myself. Makes perfect sense. I'd let readers change the version by clicking on a tab on top of the page in the same area where "discussion", "history", "edit" are. It would probably be nice if there were some kind of notice in color at the top of the page (more subtle than the typical colored notices we now have) so that the type of version we're looking at is instantly recognizable to a registered user. It would be noticed, generally, only if it changed. Perhaps a somewhat different background color? Noroton 21:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: All registered users will see and edit the most recent version of a page

message: If the point of a wiki is to let everyone be able to edit it, flagged revisions whouldn't work. It is like if someone submits a change to make, and then editors must check if the edit is not harmful. But then, WP:BOLD will be rendered useless, because no one's gonna care about being bold if it is reviewed by an admin. Also, that whould create an HUGE backlog of articles. I think we are better the way we already are.-Flubeca (t) 19:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless this was significantly changed recently, it does not quite work how you seem to think. Every page would not automatically get this, only ones that are somewhat comprehensive and stable are tagged as "sighted", this can be done by anyone with "Editor" rights, which will be given quite liberally, not only to admins. Only pages tagged as "Quality" would be harder to update as this would require a "Reviewer" (which has to be given by a bureaucrat). "Quality" would only be given to the best pages, like FA quality pages though. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 20:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand that. However I still think this whould be a bad idea. -Flubeca (t) 16:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Per:WP:BOLD

message: I support the general idea of stable versions. Though, instead of require all articles and changes to be approved, how about some time-delay mechanism. Changes from newbies or anons. don't go live immediately, but there is a time delay. (so many minutes or some other amount of time) I'm not sure one particular amount of time is suitable for all articles. Right now we have semi-protected articles and non-protected articles. Maybe one length of time be applied to what currently are semi-protected articles and another time length for non-protected articles. And, users logged in would see the live version no matter what. A time delay would allow us to flag vandalism, but non-vandalism edits would go through. Don't want this to be overly complicated. Also, having some sort of filter, like User:MartinBot, is helpful. Though would be good if bad edits (as determined by whatever filter MartinBot uses) were delayed, rather than go live and then reverted. If an edit has blanked a page (or deleted large portions), it needs to be checked or delayed. If an edit includes naughty words, it must be checked, etc. I'm not sure of specifics, but some sort of stable version or time delay would be a good thing for Wikipedia, to help reduce instant gratification that vandals get from seeing their edits go live immediately. --Aude (talk) 19:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Time-delay is a bad idea. It'd eliminate one of the fundamental concepts of Wikipedia, the fact that anyone can edit it now, and the changes will be visible immediately. A time delay will greatly reduce the number of new editors, stunting the encyclopedia's growth. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 18:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is my concern too. As a newer user myself I can testify that there are already hurdles to getting involved. Being automatically classed as a second class editor to start would just drive people away. I hear that sighting privledges would be given liberally, but what does that mean? How will it be decided. I worry that it will make it less accessable. Moonbug 19:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I think sighting will cause no more of a problem than new users being unable to move pages or edit semi-protected pages. It wouldn't make people second-class users; rather, it would simply grant users more rights with greater experience. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 19:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Time-delay

message: "Users who have been around for some time can be granted (possibly automatically) rights that would let them review page revisions."
Initially I read "let them review page revisions" to mean let them click on the History tab, look at the list of edits, and click on them to view an earlier version - the implication then being that others could not do any of these things. Reading further I gather that "review" here means something rather more than this (i.e. checking the article and flagging it). Maybe that could be made clearer in the sentence quoted? Matt 00:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, "crucial issue..." doesn't make much sense. What was intended was something like "The crucial difference from Citizendium or other stable version proposals..." is that everything will continue as normal for registered users. (Non-registered users will see the flagged revision, but they will of course still edit the most recent version.) I don't know exactly how to phrase it... --Merzul 13:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed it to read: "All logged-in users will continue to see and edit the most recent version of a page. Users who are not logged in may not see the most recent version of a page by default, but will always edit the most recent version." I hope this is correct... if not maybe someone could fix it. Matt 20:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation could possibly be clearer?

message: Probably this has already been mentioned (apologies, I haven't read all the above!). One thing that troubles me about this proposal is the length of time it might take before good edits are reviewed and made the version that people see by default. I can see worthwhile additions and corrections languishing unreviewed for months and months. Would there be some mechanism for flagging up edits needing review, and would there be enough editors to cope with the volume? Matt 00:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe flagged revisions are only for high-traffic pages, though I'm sure there would be a Special:UnflaggedPages and enough willing editors if the scheme were to be expanded. CloudNine 08:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And like 200 backlog pages getting created per minute. -Flubeca (t) 16:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Indeed, there is a Special:Unreviewedpages that lists either those pages that have not been reviewed or those pages that have been reviewed but not marked as quality. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:40, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So, flagged versions will not be used for all pages. Will be used only for high-traffic pages, such as those currently semi-protected. Would flagged versions also be used for featured articles? good articles? what else? It seems more manageable to use flagged versions only on some pages. This should be made clear on the Wikipedia:Flagged revisions proposal page. --Aude (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, if the proposal is meant to apply only to selected articles (such as high-traffic articles) then this should be made clear in the text. Currently several passages seem to imply that it will apply to all articles. Matt 20:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is a notice though on pages that haven't been sighted. Someone requested that this notice be removed. This is probably a good idea (for at least any potential trial period). This system could then be used only on pages where there is consensus on that particular talk page that sighting would be helpful. --Merzul 22:01, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, I think we might be talking at cross-purposes here. I was referring to the explanation of the proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions, not to any on-screen messages that might appear alongside articles. What I am suggesting is that if this proposal (particularly the fact that latest edits may not be seen by default) is intended to apply only to selected articles, as someone said above, then ideally this should be made clear in the explanation. Matt 01:04, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: Search engines were mentioned above in #Major choice, because search engines are anonymous users. I point out that Wikipedia's servers are aware of at least some search engines (such as in feeding changes to them). Should an attempt be made to treat search engines differently than anon readers? An advantage to Wikipedia is a better reputation by presenting higher quality articles to searchers. To avoid Wikipedia deciding how to treat this type of user, maybe search engine crawlers could request the article flag level when asking for an article. The flag type option then could be used by crawler programmers to use if they wish to, and articles for anonymous users who don't request a certain flag type would use the anon default behavior. (SEWilco 17:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no robots-restrictions placed on "Current version," so search engine crawlers can gladly follow the "Current version" tab, provided no modifications are made to robots.txt to prevent that. I'm not sure how engines such as google would index Current versions, but I figure they will wind up as the result of searches somehow. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The name of the "Current version" link could be documented in the crawler feed API documentation, wherever that is. (SEWilco 04:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Search engines

message: Can we start a trial with a few pages and see how it goes? Tom Harrison Talk 15:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Would be helpful to get a sense of how this might work. From what it sounds like, flagged revisions would not be applied to most pages, but just high traffic/frequently vandalized pages (the way semi protection is applied) and maybe to featured articles. If that's the case it will be helpful, and be a manageable number of pages. For now, let's try it out on a small number of pages. --Aude (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good idea, let's experiment on some pages that have been semi-protected forever. I think God or George W. Bush are good places to test this. Since these pages can't be edited by anons, there is absolutely nothing to lose. --Merzul 22:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone was allowed to edit the current version. It actually might move us closer to our 'anyone can edit' philisophy (compared to protecting pages). CloudNine 09:36, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that moving the permanently semi-protected or protected pages should be the first test step for flagged revisions. Especially for those pages whose protection is entirely or mostly based on vandalism. However, I think that before we can do a test, we'd need to be sure that there's consensus (whether here or at the Board level) on what makes an Editor an Editor (I still don't like that term for the lowest revision right). My thought on that is that it should be a rather low threshold, but at least at first it's best to start a little too high and adjust down later. It's always easier to give privileges than to take away. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 19:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The interface to review pages is quite awful in my opinion, with too many options. Until that is improved, I wouldn't want to use this extension here. Prodego talk 00:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree; it does need to be made a little clearer. CloudNine 21:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What's the next step?

message: Hello, I reorganized the main page to separate out the two different levels of flagged reviewing that we've been discussing here. I tried to include some of the points on which there seems to be a consensus and fix up some of the prose without changing the meaning. But mostly I wanted to put everything relating to "sighting" together and everything relating to "quality" together.
If I added anything that seems incorrect on the basis of discussions here, please change it back--please assume that any incorrect change probably reflects my lack of understanding of some aspect of the project rather than an attempt to put my POV in the article. Best, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw these as merely different levels of validation, but for the sake of clarity and per Ned Scott above, the change you made is probably very helpful. I notice some people are against one kind of validation, while liking the other, so probably keeping these two separate is a good idea... --Merzul 22:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reorganization of main page

message: If the quality status is granted by one person, isn't that against Wikipedia:Consensus? -Flubeca (t) 18:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm sure a quality version on high-traffic pages would be agreed upon first. (It's much like how consensus works at the moment; many people put foward their view, and a single person carries out the action involved). CloudNine 18:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think even non-high traffic pages should do that. It should be a requirement. -FlubecaTalk 18:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Quality" Title

message: I whould like that some mods be integrated:
# $wgFlaggedRevsOverride whould be set to tab mode.
# $wgFlaggedRevValues whould be set to what we currently have. (Stub,Start, ect...)
-FlubecaTalk 18:36, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: I've read over this, and have various thoghts/suggestions/agreements, but to make them all in the relevant threaded place would seem a little chaotic, so I'm making them all here.
# The basic premise of sighted and quality revisions is great.
# Not showing un-sighted revisions to the 'public' by default (or ever?) causes me a little concern, unless sighting is a very straightforward easy process. Given this, I suggest/support the following:
## Ability to 'sight' and article is basically the same as being able to edit semi-protected pages: only registered users who have been registered for a certain time. However, after this, no other qualification should be required. However, the right should be (temporarily) removable without otherwise blocking the user.
## The only restriction on sighting a revision, other than users who can/can't do so, be that no user may sight their own revision.
# Who may mark a revision as 'quality' is a more knotty problem; I don't claim to have any sort of sane solution. However, some points might be:
## It may conceptually be seen as separate to most administrator tasks; it might not. I think the distinction may be subjective.
## Letting everyone I describe above as able to 'sight' revisions mark them as 'quality' is probably a bit of a stretch. Recognising quality is far harder and more subtle than recognising a lack of vandalism.
That sort of summarises my views, informed by what I've read and my own experiences... take what you will... SamBC 22:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Admins are totally unqualified to recognise quality edits. Only people with subject expertise can do that. Baridiah 22:09, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Admins are mop and bucket cleaners of wikipedia not quality experts, some admins make the worst additions to articles imaginable, but they assist in other ways like dispute resolution. Equally there are only 1300 admins and they are already stretched quite thin. I just don't think we have the systems in place to actually control the level of work this is going to create. And its all done on the premise that vandalism is a significant problem - which it isn't, wheres the proof that vandalism is out of control? most vandalism is spotted within minutes of being made. I rarely ever come across pages which have had vandalism for years. WikipedianProlific (Talk) 18:54, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Some thoughts collected

message: Sooner or later, we'll need to switch from the current talk page- and bot-based article assessment system (Stub, Start, B, GA, A, FA) to one that is managed through flagged revisions. It's not necessarily something we want to do at the beginning (then again, maybe it is). But when that happens, we should probably put some effort into rethinking the assessment system itself. At the minimum, we need a new class between Start and B; there's an enormous range that can qualify as Start, and not much consistency in how well-developed an article must be before it meets B standards. Also, with the way GA has evolved, increasingly a mini-FA process, the A class is basically useless.
A more interesting possibility is to create distinct rating categories for 1) completeness and formatting, 2) prose and picture content, and 3) sourcing.
When a fuller rating system happens, will it be better to have "sighted" and "quality" as a separate rating category, or should the fuller rating system supersede the none/sighted/quality ratings (under the assumption that any rated version is sighted, and a high-rated article is synonymous with quality)?--ragesoss 03:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that there is a value in a distinct 'sighted' system, as a variety of relatively minor edits may occur on a page, without it being re-assessed, but it is still valuable to know that these more recent versions are not affected by vandalism and so on. This is to say, rated implies sighted, but sighted does not imply rated. SamBC 03:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it necessitates any change in the rating system, but if you want to discuss the topic meaningfully I suggest you take to to WP:Assessment. Richard001 04:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Integrating Flagged revisions with WP 1.0 ratings

message: This question has probably been answered before, but I haven't read it. What happens if an edit is vandalism? Can editors, or reviewers "delete" that revision, in the sense that they have marked it as "Unreadable", or vandalism? It seems to me, that having the little box at the top of the page saying "One revision to be checked", when the revision to be checked is vandalism, would be a little weird, because the reviewer (or Editor) can't mark it as a "bad" revision, can they?
:You make a new version which removes the vandalism, and mark that one 'sighted'. The easiest way to make the new version is often to simply revert to an already ok'd version (when the only changes since then are vandalism). -R. S. Shaw 03:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No plans for such, as the whole revision gets flagged. Say an 'editor' edits a section after another one was vandalized. That would make that risky. Voice-of-All 22:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What if the revision shouldn't be marked?

message: I'm curious how flagged revisions differs at this point from the German stable versions system. What details are different? I think I understand but I'd like to see this set forth by someone who's been closely involved. Also wondering whether we have a firm date yet for implementation. DurovaCharge! 16:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The main difference seems to be the name. GO AHEAD, priests, we want this .. (sinking to their knees .. praying .. singing) --Bernd-vdb 14:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Flagged revisions v. Stable versions

message: Is there some technical reason why this has not been implemented yet? If not, why not just start now with the policy as given on the current page (unchanged for two months) and see how it pans out? It seems a blatantly obvious improvement, the only argument being how to fine-tune it to get the best results, which can be done after it goes live. The franchise for automatic "editor" status is pretty tight (almost as tight as for Foundation board elections) so it will certainly exclude common-or-garden vandals. I'd be happy to see a smaller edit count required, but the main thing is to get going. The worst that can happen is that too trigger-happy sighting freezes up a lot of pages as seen by the outside world, as suggested by some commentators above. IF that turns out to be a problem it can be solved by extending the franchise by reducing the number of edits required. But it shouldn't be necessary if we ask people only to sight pages on their watch list, at least at first. (We probably need a "Please sight this page" noticeboard as well).
As for reviewed status, there obviously needs to be a debate about how reviewer power is awarded and how it should be applied. It can be trialled by initially restricting to new FAs and FAs which pass FAR, with "reviewer" status initially given to the admins who close the debates (I doubt they would over-use it since Raul654 is a strong advocate of allowing edits by anyone). PaddyLeahy 13:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the idea of this sweeping change is not universally accepted (and, in fact, is not even known to the vast majority of editors since it has not been publicized properly). Badagnani 21:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Just do it

message: Citizendium and the German Wikipedia have both tried this. Does anyone know how those projects have faired with there different systems? How are the problems encountered in their systems been taken care of with this system? Don’t get me wrong, I too long for the day when it will be flaggers vs. anti-flaggers instead of deletionists vs inclusionists, but let’s not rush into this without learning from previous attempts.--Rayc 02:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Why did we have the German Wikipedia beta test this if we have nothing to glean from their experiences? Can someone create some type of report on how the German Wikipedia implemented this feature and what their experiences were? Kaldari 22:17, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Voice of All in an above thread, the software has not been finalized yet so it is not implemented in de-wiki yet. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 00:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Approved and Stable versions

message: I'll go on record in support of this, mainly because of conversations with non-Wikipedians. The vast majority of people who visit this site are looking for reliable information, period. Their major concern is whether the articles they read have been corrupted. Anyone who desires to go beyond that to the nuts-and-bolts of wiki editing can do so, so this is win-win. Not perfect, perhaps, but far better than what we have. Let's go for it. DurovaCharge! 04:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Same. Stable versions are not only necessary in push for higher quality, but they'll also be good PR (Well, yes, but teh CIA trolls couldn't get at the stable version!). Something needs to be troll-proof. Moreschi  Talk 17:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope we're not doing this because it's troll proof. No concievable technical measure (except restricting editing to a certain group of editors that never changes) can totally prevent trolls. -Amarkov moo! 18:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I also think we should implement this within the next few weeks, rather than waiting for de-wiki to try it out first. My experience with non-Wikipedians mirrors Durova's: this will be a considerable benefit to the majority of readers. Of course, it isn't troll proof. It just reduces the incentive for juvenile vandalism, since most of it won't ever be seen except by Wikipedians.--ragesoss 03:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Support implementation

message: I support this in theory, but viewing a non-current page by default goes against the whole spirit of a wiki. A huge number of good contributions come from non-logged in users, and while this proposal will not prevent them from contributing, it seems inevitable that it will confuse. This in particular: "users who are not logged in may not see the most recent version of a page by default, but will always edit the most recent version." That’s just asking for trouble. Perhaps there should be a reverse of this idea, so that all users see the current version, but there is an option to view a reviewed history version. Think outside the box 13:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The spirit of a Wiki is that anyone can contribute. This keeps that open and retains the ability for anyone to view all revisions. DurovaCharge! 18:05, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. This effectively helps us get closer to the spirit of a wiki: since vandalism will not be immediately displayed to readers, semi-protection will become less and less common and more users will be able to edit pages; a good thing. CloudNine 18:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, yes, they can still contribute. I would say that 70% of our readers do not know that there are revisions. Let's say I'm an average person reading an article. I happen to notice a typo; I click edit. Now I'm likely editing a different version of the page, I assume someone must have edited it by the time I clicked it. I fix my typo, hit preview, then click save. The article is the same. I try to refresh my browser, think I must have made a mistake then try to fix it again. When I hit edit I see the typo is fixed! What! I go back to the article and it still doesn't show the change. I get angry, finish reading the article, and likely do not contribute again since I think my computer is messed up or the editing system is messed up. This whole system of approving edits is idiotic. Would you like to wait for some "superior" person to approve all your edits? Any thinking person knows that vandalism is inevitable on a wiki like this. Vandalism gets reverted very quickly, so I believe it is rare for an average reader to see it. Psych less 00:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. That's exactly what I've said since the beginning. But I've also been told, more than once, that "This is going through no matter what you say," since Wikipedia's rulers apparently see a need to emulate Citizendium in this regard. Badagnani 00:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, sysops can configure the UI messages to make the tag on the top of the page make it even more obvious that users/anons can edit that the "edit this page" tab. Also, the tag shows the number of unreviewed changes, which pings up each time an edit is made (unless autoreviewed). This can be configured to be more obvious if needed, again, by sysops editing MediaWiki messages. Also, no one said that reviewers are "superior" to any anon, but their edits by and large, unlike half of anon's, won't be vandalism. Just saying "vandalism is inevitable", which, yes "thinking people" get, which is part of the reason for the proposal, doesn't really help our readers, many of whom don't know is actually a wiki (including people I've met). And this will home in the decline of semiprotection indeed. IMO, people should look more closely at what is being proposed and what potentials/configurations/modifications are possible, rather than just firing off snide one liners (such as the oft "trying to emulate Citizendium" remarks). Yes, like anything, it has drawbacks, but most of the reasons people are giving against any idea of stable version don't hold much water, at least so far. Much of the first criticism people made was based on failing to actually read the proposal/extension page thoroughly. Voice-of-All 01:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think this proposal will go through unless the community supports it. However, I personally think this proposal is a very good idea, and should be implemented, albeit with a little tweaking. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 18:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Against the whole spirit of a wiki

message: We need a better term than "Sighted". The implication is that blind users are excluded. Further, there is no explanation of what the term derives from or means exactly and I am at a loss to imagine how or why it was chosen. Why not call it "Presentable" or "Reviewed" or "Inspected" or "Examined" or "Scrutinized"? Of these, the first, "Presentable" is the lowest level and probably the most appropriate term because it connotes the least amount (none) of fact-checking.
As an aside, I would suggest at least two editors and possibly three to inspect an article before it gains this status, otherwise it becomes another way for a single editor with an agenda to have an oversized impact on Wikipedia. Collusion is not likely to be a problem for more than a couple of articles because it becomes possible to compare edits and see patterns if collusion exists. Hu 20:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think inspected versions and quality versions sounds good. In my opinion, it should only require one trusted editor (surveyor) to make a revision sighted/inspected (whichever term we end up using), but I agree that marking a revision as quality should require 3 reviewers to mark it as such. Or, maybe allow a revision to be marked as quality by 3 or more surveyors in agreement. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 17:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Terminology Naming and number of inspectors

message: Yes, I do get the core reason why we are doing this. We're trying to combat vandalism and other thing. Heck, I've got a proposal of my own to combat vandalism. I have heard about this idea (patrolled edits) before, and I think it was tested on the de.wp before (?). But I think more than any other proposal I've seen, this is in great contradiction to the spirit of Wikipedia. WP is an ever moving and changing encyclopedia. When you edit something it goes live the second after you press save. There are a couple reason I don't like this proposal:
# By giving certain users (those with over 500 edits) the permission, it reeks of elitism. It took me from the start of June till the end of July last year to rack up 500 edits. If I would have seen your edits are important to us, but you must wait for someone who is obviously more knowledgeable than you to approve your edits, I would have left. I'm not even joking. I would have said "This isn't worth my time to see if some person I don't know thinks I'm good enough to edit their encyclopedia".
# The sheer amount of work that this'll add. Wikipedia gets 10s of edits per second. We don't have enough users to approve every single one, much less write the best encyclopedia we can. There are already enough backlogs here. As was said above somewhere, some articles will stay the same to readers for months because they aren't watched by regular users. Only the main articles will get updated regularly. Some articles literally live on annons editing (Saskatchewan Roughriders is one I know of). And how about current events? The shootings and bombings? News agencies have talked about our updating of current events, which will be lost if this is implemented.
# Let's face it, the only reason Wikipedia works is because of the immediate gratification. If people are told they have to wait for their article to be reviewed, it takes away from that. Wikipedia is part of Web 2.0, the idea that we as a general public can put information and other stuff up ourselves. From the kids to the intellectuals, everyone can edit Wikipedia, anyone can write Wikipedia. When you put a review up, it's no longer writing. It's submitting to a review board something that you think is good (eg, a band that's good, signed, kind of well known, meets WP:BAND) that mainstream editors do not care about. All the sudden we're being cared for and coddled again. Your throw out all the stops and you have Wikipedia. You put them back in, and you've got Citizendium.
People may not like it, but those are my reasons. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a reader, editor, administrator. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 02:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. As for 1), note that the "500" is a rough guideline of this proposal draft, and even if it where the recommended number, it would and should never be a hard number. Actually, for some users, it can be 50, really. Where people request editor rights, a quick look through contribs will show that some users like to make less, but larger edits. As for the others, note that the stable version need not be the default, which would resolve issues of pages falling out of date/removal of instant gratification. Also, the number of people that meet requirements to review pages (having been around for long enough and trusted to not be a vandal) would be much larger the the number of admins. But even with the option to not make it the default, I am not convinced that everything would fall behind. Current events that are edited up to the minute likely would have people there to review it, people who review are prompted to watchlist pages they look over, and unreviewed edits are flagged in watchlists/recent changes. And a group of thousands of editors (1 alone can check for vandalism) isn't really an "approval board" IMO. Voice-of-All 02:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But the idea is that readers (ie, not logged in) will only see the "stable" version. When I read Wikipedia, I want to see the most recent up-to-date version without having to log in. Of every page. For the average person (non-user), this is going to make a huge difference. This would be the largest change in the history of Wikipedia. It would be the equivalent of, say, Mozilla making daily builds of yesterdays trunk for average testers as opposed to todays. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 03:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re your item (2): in fact nearly every anon edit does get reviewed, as you can see from the fact that something like half of them get reverted (which suggests that most of the unreverted edits must have been looked at and "passed"). If flagged revisions have the effect that optimists hope for, vandal edits from anons will be dramatically reduced while good faith edits will not. I don't know how much trouble it will be to set a "sighted" (whatever) flag, but assuming it is a one-button push this suggests significantly less effort would be needed than now. Especially if the sighting retains some element of the original intent of "stable" versions, in which case the advice would be not to flag every good edit as soon as possible, but to re-sight at a relatively sedate pace (what that means would depend on how much edit traffic the article was getting: for breaking news stories it might be every 5 minutes). PaddyLeahy 03:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The point is, disclaimers notwithstanding, Wikipedia will at some point be sued by some celebrity whose page is vandalized with libelous content and the entire site may be shut down. I think we've already come close. A trustable, completely open content encyclopedia is an oxymoron. The goal is an encyclopedia, not the world's largest wiki. Letting any asshole with a browser write whatever they want on any page anywhere invites vandalism. If we're going to continue as a project we have to start exercising some sort of control. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we can find a way to make this all work in practice - to retain the most of the "instant gratification" aspect, to value good faith edits by anons, while vastly improving the reliability of Wikipedia. We may need to tweak the system to get the right balance, but heck, we really need this.... Walkerma 03:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In response to "readers (ie, not logged in) will only see the 'stable' version" That is true. This means that they will not see subtle vandalism, like a changing of a date or other barely noticeable inaccuracies. Of course if readers want to see the most recent version, there will be a link on top of the page (See  for an example) to see the current version. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 04:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why?

message: If this system is to be adopted, considerable thought needs to be given to making sure that good-faith contributors who haven't registered or are newbies don't feel that their contributions are disappearing into a black hole. The problem of recruitment & retention of knowledgeable editors is, I believe, as acute as that of controlling vandalism, and the proposed change would seem to run the risk of controlling one at the cost of severely exacerbating the other.
This would probably need to include an explicit message on saving that the edits have been accepted but won't be publicly visible until they've been sighted by an experienced editor, efforts on the part of all the WikiProjects &c to sight revisions to the articles under their umbrella extremely rapidly -- preferably within hours, and a noticeboard for non-sight-privileged editors to bring edits that have languished for more than, say, 48 hours. Espresso Addict 23:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think most good-faith editors will not mind that. On the other hand, most vandals will. I think its good. Most people who hunt for vandals now can just hunt for pages in need of approval. Yet, the second task will be less daunting than the first. We win. Brusegadi 21:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem of discouraging new good-faith contributors

message: Many, perhaps most, valid edits are minor things - grammar, formatting, categorisation, simple factual updates etc - and all of those edits would be more hassle if this was implemented. Therefore I believe that is would hamstring the whole project by reducing the amount of such good edits. There is an underlying false assumption that articles reach a point where they don't need much more editing - many of the most trafficked articles cover rapidly changing subjects that need to be updated a great deal. Baridiah 22:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The review form shows after each edit. If the current revision is tagged, and a "surveryor/sighter" makes an edit, it can even be autoreviewed. And many people should have sighting rights too. Logged in users see the current revision by default, so it's just edit as normal for them. Given that the incentive to vandalize sighted pages would go down, we could move some time wasted on reverting that to reviewing. Also, spelling corrections don't need to be urgently reviewed straight away. Voice-of-All 06:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: This is a bad idea that would make routine good editing a lot more hassle

message: See my proposal on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). It was a proposal similar to this, but it also proposed that links be available on official policy pages to the revisions that became policy, so that if the content of the policy is changed without consent or universal knowledge, this can be discovered and not mistaken to be the originally agreed-upon policy.--64.149.189.119 19:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't a bad idea. I've often seen established editors unilaterally add a sentence or two to a policy in light of an ongoing dispute. This would force community discussion before that is done.--Danaman5 19:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds like a quite good idea. I would think that Policy might need the quality level of flagging while guidelines only the sighted level? The counter-argument is that people who read the policy pages know that WP is a Wiki, that things change, etc. However, I have seen sentences jump into policy without any sort of consensus and "minor edits" of guidelines remove important caveats. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 05:08, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I really like this idea. -- Ned Scott 05:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely, Wikipedia has always had a problem with people sneaking out to the barn wall with a can of paint in the middle of the night. Nobody notices and suddenly there's this gawdawful 'policy' (that never really was policy because the community never accepted it) being enforced with blocks and its own templates and a noticeboard... until it all gets tracked back to the source and stomped out with much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how people are 'changing the policy'. I'd definitely prefer this be at the 'quality' level so that only things which truly have consensus show up on the policy pages. --CBD 12:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Extend this policy to include the revisions of policy pages that were accepted as official policy

message: # Eyu100(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team) 15:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: # Badagnani 16:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose

message: "Yes" to a review process and stable versions, but "no" to the suggested implementation here, a "Reviewer" (or "Surveyor") user class with special power over content.
# Father Goose 19:42, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Counter-proposal 1

message: * However, this poll attracts mainly only those interested/fascinated by this idea. It has not been publicized well to the vast majority of editors, for obvious reasons. In fact, a notice was placed on everyone's watchlist and one of the editors active here removed it within 1 hour. This editor later stated that it was best that most editors did not know about this proposal, and just let the people who had already decided *it WILL go through whether you object or not* work on it. So, that's a serious drawback to this poll, and will obviously skew the results, unless a serious effort is made to let the community know that this Citizendium-like proposal is being discussed here. Badagnani 16:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: Heres my two cents worth. When my 5 year old jumps on and simply deletes things on wikipedia, creating work for others to revert, I think just by placing this simple criteria saves a lot of inadvertent mistakes, time, and introduces some form of accountability and traceability. all the best. --T3Smile 17:23, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: T3, see WP:PEREN. That idea is going to be kicked out at the door. -Jéské (v^_^v Kacheek!) 17:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Disallowing editing from users not logged on

message: There should never be a system where one particular version is "the right version" (i.e. a "quality" version.) We need to acknowledge that consensus can -- and will -- change, and sometimes, it will change drastically. The idea of having a "stable version" to work off of shifts the preference toward past consensus instead of future consensus. Not only is this just a bad idea because of the inevitably contentious nature of the system, it will also go against the Wikipedia philosophy. .V. [Talk|Email] 17:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And when a better version of an article comes, we make that the new stable version. MessedRocker (talk) 18:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Unfortunately, it's never that simple. What constitutes a "better version" of an article is argued by Wikipedians day and night. .V. [Talk|Email] 19:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If we want a system where no particular version is the right version, why do we privilege the most recent version? Why not have a random edit from the article's history come up each time someone visits the page? The fact is, when vandalism, POV pushing, etc. are figured in, the most recent version of established articles is quite often no better than earlier versions. This extension is a recognition of that situation. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Not a good idea...