Wikipedia:Protecting BLP articles feeler survey: Difference between revisions

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This is a simple survey to see if there is any support for, and what people think of, the ideas of enhancing the protection of Biographies of living persons (BLP) articles on Wikipedia, the articles about living people. THIS IS NOT A POLL TO CHANGE ANYTHING TODAY. Rather, it is just a survey to get a general idea of what people think, and feel, of the ideas to address the outstanding problems with biographical informations on living people. The two ideas that are floated most often are to use one of the following by default on all biographies:

Semi-protection: locking articles so that only those with accounts more than a few days old can edit them, or
Wikipedia:Flagged revisions: periodic tagging of the most recent good version, which is then the version visible to the public.

This spawned from this conversation on User:Jimbo Wales's talk page.

Two example studies that were compiled of vandalism in general, and vandalism to high profile BLPs, are:

General study of anon vandalism to WP articles (Link to entire study: [1]
Study of vandalism to articles about United States Senators

It may be worth reading some user essays on the subject: Category:User essays on BLP

Again: This survey is not to change anything today but to just see what if any options are popular, and to see if there is support to later work further on one, the other, both, or none.

Implement Semi-protection for all BLPs

I do support the idea. I think like it was mentioned before that the real (flesh and blood) person should have a prominent saying with respect to his/her page, somehow... not losing objectivity and the social force of WP. I also think there is the issue of who is a living person, excuse the absurdity. How is some page removed from BLP status? What status should the page for Elvis have? --Consci (talk) 04:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Though maybe we could put a template on semiprotected pages telling new users of the register and autoconfirm processes. Quantumobserver (talk) 22:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have always supported this. I'd also support a proposal made by Greg Kohs (comment on the proposal not the proposer…) to experimentally semiprotect a subset of BLPs (for example, all those beginning with "A") and after a couple of months compare the vandalism & editwarring stats with the unprotected control group. – iridescent 19:28, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I find no compelling reason to not use a tool we already have, semi-protection, to protect the reputations of living people on whom our project contains articles. If an IP wants to edit a BLP, create an account. One of the main reasons I first created an account back in early 2007 was that I was sick of being shut out of editing semi-protected articles. It's not a big deal to place semi-protection, and the reward (less vandalism and general junk on BLPs) far outweighs the risk (less IP editing generally). SDJ 19:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2nd, but I think Flagged is better. rootology (C)(T) 19:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Tired of people coming in and trashing BLPs and I have to clean it up, especially when I don't look carefully enough for a few weeks and bad and good edits get mixed up. Frankly, I think you should give IPs maybe 50 to 100 "free" edits and after that they have to register. It's not like they are protecting anything being anonymous or giving anything away being registered. (Or maybe it is, but I think most of them don't know what it is any more than I do.) CarolMooreDC (talk) 19:53, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The only risk is that article subjects who see defamation will not be able to fix it without registering. As long as we do this via a template or some such that also includes, in the sitenotice text, links to the OTRS email address and BLP noticeboard, there is no real reason not to at least test the idea. I know a lot of people make much of anons providing a lot of our content, but I think that is less true now than it was and should be balanced against the fact that they also provide rather a lot of vandalism. In the case of BLPs, vandalism is a more pressing problem than it is in, say, articles on Pokémon. Guy (Help!) 20:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your answer is more backlogs? Seriously? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree per CarolMooreDC. Willking1979 (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
BLP's should be semi protected, I have always supported thus, but again, it won't happen, Wikipedia and "change" do not mix well. — Realist² 20:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, but as a second choice. I would favor doing this if it can be implimented more quickly. It shouldn't be required once flagged revisions are implemented, however. Cool Hand Luke 20:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I have frequently called for indefinite semi-protection of BLPs suffering from inordinate vandalism -- Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Neve Gordon, Joel Beinin, Uri Avnery and several more. This would prevent not only anon ISP vandalism, but also the constant vandalism by one-off throw-away acocunts that has characterised these and other BLP articles. This peoposal would contribute significantly to reducing this problem. RolandR (talk) 20:55, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to point out that one of those three articles is not a BLP... Everyking (talk) 05:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Amended my comment in light of the (correct) criticism above. RolandR (talk) 00:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. shoy (reactions) 21:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice, or step on the way where we need to be (Semi and flagged for all BLP, flagged for everything in article space) ++Lar: t/c 21:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. Actually choice 2.5, as the optimum would be stricter than just flagging. Collect (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Support this option. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
. Keep it simple. I prefer this marginally over introducing yet another layer (flagged revisions), but both have merit. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously I support something I have been saying for months should occur. MBisanz ^talk 03:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is the least radical of possible steps, and it should be tried first. It will certainly help the situation somewhat, and then we can judge what to do further. If we do try flagged revisions, we should try it for a very small subset first, as proposed by Cenarium and others in the section on General Comments. (I'd suggest US Presidents)DGG (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fundamentally changing the nature of a very, very large portion of our site is the "least radical of possible steps"? What on Earth? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. BLP issues are among the most significant facing this project, and reducing or eliminating vandalism on those articles - particularly on lower profile BLPs - is part of the responsibility the project has to its article subjects. If this means indef semi-protection on those articles, so be it. Pfainuk talk 00:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. It's simple without adding an unreasonable amount of extra work. EconomicsGuy (talk) 09:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support this or some reasonable variation (there may be a subset of BLPs that are lower-risk, for example). I'm closely following the discussion on this page, which is developing some nuances I had not previously considered; further thoughts to follow. But I've become convinced that the status quo is not acceptable. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This would do nicely. First choice. Stifle (talk) 10:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Preventing real-world harm is crucial. Everyone can still edit, though they must create an account first, so I can't see why the open-edit brigade have too many worries GTD 21:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK for a start as long as it does not preempt even stronger measures in the future – such as far more stringent standards for inclusion, default-to-delete for AfDs on bios, and opt-out for marginally notable people. All these little-watched BLPs are legal and ethical time bombs, out there ticking away. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At minimum. Plus, all BLPs need a little transcluded wikibox: "Are YOU the subject of this article? HERE is what you need to do, to edit it" Followed by simple autoconfirm directions for newbie IPs who find themselves bio'ed, plus a link to OTRS and [2].S B H arris 00:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Much needed. Everyking (talk) 05:46, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea. WP needs much higher standards of protection for living people. Lawsuits aside, this is something often mentioned in critical articles about WP. Remember the person whose article said he was the real killer of JFK? It makes WP look bad when that kind of thing is reported. Redddogg (talk) 19:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're recalling the Seigenthaler incident. Like the vast majority of problems, it came from an IP address. WilyD 21:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1st - I think this is an excellent idea. I would like to see it expanded to heavily-vandalised articles in general. That is, all BLPs, and an easy way to semi-protect an article without going through an RfA... and yes I reallize that may be impractical or a bad idea.sinneed (talk) 21:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that some form of protection is a good idea, and I support this instead of flagged revisions due to the concerns expressed by User:Jéské Couriano. SU Linguist (talk) 21:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Actually, I wouldn't mind having ~~semi-protection be the default article state~~ anonymous editing be turned off by default for all articles. But I guess I'm still in the minority on that. --Alvestrand (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, although I would also support the idea of testing it on a random subset of articles for a few months first to see if it really does have the beneficial effect that I would predict. Anaxial (talk) 22:35, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This makes sense. How many BLP issues are really caused by established editors? Jclemens (talk)
Weak Support, especially if this can calm down the unfounded BLP paranoia that seems to be propelling this entire survey. I think this option is in fact more democratic and inclusionary than the flagging option. It takes very little effort to register and get a Wikipedia account, so I don't think that this option is really antithetic to the "everyone can edit principle". On the other hand, it is an established fact that most vandalism, especially of the barnyard childish kind, comes from IPs and it would certainly be reduced by permanent semi-protection. Nsk92 (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a semi-newbie here, but from what I've been seeing anon edits do seem to do more harm than good. I think that it is too easy to romanticize the value of anons as a source of valuable edits and as a way for new editors to get interested. It's just not that hard to register (maybe there are good ways to make it even easier?). I support a small-scale test to see how it works. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some further thoughts as I continue to read the ongoing debate. Many of the opposing comments cite the "anyone can edit" motto as something that would be lost with implementation. Emotionally, this is a powerful argument (and almost won me over at first), but it is not really based in fact. We require all editors to go through several steps -- going to the edit-this-page screen, understanding any of the editing tools they wish to use, hitting the save button -- to edit, and that's just the way it is. Registering is just a few steps more, and very easy ones in my experience, certainly not anything onerous or unreasonable. Anyone would still be able to edit: just register and edit. Also, there are many references to "BLP paranoia." Again, this argument is emotional (and a bit personal), rather than factual. There is nothing objectively paranoid about wanting to respect the personal and legal rights of living persons. It is a fact that frequent vandalism of BLP articles (and many others) occurs, certainly not a paranoid delusion. I find it helpful to keep in mind that, as visitorship grows exponentially, people who come to use the encyclopedia are interested in obtaining accurate information, not in watching the internal workings of an editing process patrolling for drive-by edits. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also: I notice that many users point out the need for newly-registered editors to wait an amount of time and perform an amount of other edits first. I think this concern should not get in the way of evaluating the basic merits of the proposals, because we can always modify the logistics, which are really a separate issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think so. jj137 (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
By a long way a better idea than flagged revisions and should happen immediately. Personally, I would consider stopping all IP edits across the entire encyclopedia. Anyone can still edit the encyclopaedia, however they must first create an account . If anything is antithetical to the project, flagged revisions are, where a change can't be simply and easily made where needed. Agree with Short Brigade Harvester Boris that this should be a first step only and stronger action is needed to prevent further BLP problems which eventually will blow up in our faces, not to mention our ethical responsibilities. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support So much time is wasted on cleaning up vandalism/POV/agendas on BLPs that a lot gets taken away from other editing endeavors. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support...Smarkflea (talk) 03:10, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think is quite a good idea. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 03:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support §FreeRangeFrog 04:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Too many BLPs are either semi-protected or full protected. When something like this gets messed up, people can be held responsible, just like when Steve Jobs' obit was published.... -- RandorXeus. Remember to Be Bold! 05:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Potentially dangerous for every kid at every school being able to add false crap about people who can easily take legal action. The Dominator^Talk_Edits 05:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a less drastic alternative to flagged revs. Semiprotection of bios is reasonable for PR and legal reasons. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tentative Support. I suppose it depends on whether the person is likely to be a controversial figure, and whether it would attract much attention. For an instance, someone with the likes of Osama Bin Laden should be automatically protected, but some conductor, such as Zdenek Macal, that few people, on English Wikipedia anyway, have probably heard of, should only be protected with the usual criteria for an non BLP article. Vltava 68 13:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I'm sooo tired of foolish vandalism. Almost enough to drive me away. It's endemic on controversial sites, but even shows up on less controversial ones. Problems of not knowing why IP'ers and newbies are being stopped can be handled, I assume and hope, by a bot telling them what's happening.Bellagio99 (talk) 14:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support - Possibly a step too far but I'm willing to back it... Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 15:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support anything that reduces bad IP edits in sensitive pages. I see some opposers are worried that these measures might deter potential future editors. But if an editor is to be even halfway good, then s/he must have a sense of responsibility, and should register. That's why I registered before I started, particularly as my interest was certain biographies at that time. Add to that the fact that you can only learn if an admin or bot has access to your talk page. -- ALGRIF talk 17:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support There is too much vandalism on BLPs, some of it hatefilled. It's bad for Wikipedia and bad for some good people that are hurt by this, in real life. Priyanath ^talk 23:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Thaimoss (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - I've gotten involved in a handful of vandalism-plagued BLP's. Almost all the damage is done by anonymous editors. One simple step will greatly reduce this. Lou Sander (talk) 03:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - If we know that new and experienced editors sometimes struggle with BLP standards, how can we expect IP editors generally unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy & guidelines to adhere to them as well? ←Spidern→ 05:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support while I think it's unfortunate that we must do this I still think we must do it. Spidern's point says it all really, and I also agree with Guy--Cailil ^talk 12:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support yes.--EchetusXe (talk) 14:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pages such as Jon Holmes are repeatedly vandalised and now information such as accurate date of birth has been lost through various edits and roll-backs C2r (talk) 19:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't help when people LIKE Jon Holmes are actively encouraging vandalism of BLP articles on radio and television GooRoo (talk) 18:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think this is probably sane.
Support This will cut down on the majority of vandalism, while not providing a false sense of security. --omnipotence407 (talk) 03:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think that we may have to do something, and this seems like the least intrusive solution, in that the regular editors will still be able to edit and have changes show up immediately. I think that saying that people must have accounts is reasonable (and I have read the arguments on the other side). I think that there are some constraints on having an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and bios of living people seems to be one of them. Morris (talk) 04:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I have read all of the arguments on this page for all options, both support and oppose. Respectfully, I must add my vote to the immediate semi-protection of all BLP's. It takes one single vandal to go unnoticed, a tort-happy BLP article subject and Wikipedia finds itself in a libel case that could have devastating impact on the project as a whole. Anything that can be done to reduce that potential liability is a good thing. Wikipedia will still remain 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit', just with an additional layer of protection. Anarchy be damned, something needs to be done to protect the Wikipedia project from a potential death sentence. It's easy to say "it hasn't happened yet"... but when it does, then what? --Chasingsol ^(talk) 05:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support for the simple reason that i.m.o. by now the entire Wikipedia should be permanently semi-protected. DVdm (talk) 09:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have to ask, if the whole wikipedia was semi-protected how would any new editor make the ten edits they would need in order to be autoconfirmed, and thus be able to edit semi-protected pages? Davewild (talk) 10:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I believe this change would eliminate a great deal of vandalism to BLP. If I'm wrong, a few month's trial would have little affect in any case.--John Foxe (talk) 14:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Even though it sort of undermines the function of Wikipedia (everyone can edit it) but that sort of is just a marketing scam nowadays it seems, this would do a great deal to avoid vandalism and especially controversial edits involving death and suches. --Kaizer13 (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support. I would prefer a semi-protection for all non-stub BLP articles. We mainly need protection for well-established articles and I don't like the idea of flagged version. I want everything I do to be visible immediately. I think we can semi-protect for a test period and see how it goes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This should eliminate most vandalism. Cadan ap Tomos 22:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This eliminates driveby without imposing onerous usability restrictions. Orderinchaos 22:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is a fair and reasonable solution to a complex and multifaceted problem, and I suspect that it would eliminate more than 50% of current BLP vandalism. CJCurrie (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's the most functional way of tackling the problem, using a solution we already have and which already works. Rebecca (talk) 02:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It never hurts to have some protection, it will cut down on vandalism, and I'm almost sure it will not hurt Wikipedia in terms of quality edits. Makes it more of a legitimate encyclopedia. If someone wants to edit a page so damn much they can wait a few days. :) ~ [t] .: Flffy'd :. [c] ~ 02:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support per Magioladitis. There are plenty of BLP stubs in need of expansion (or even creation) that IP editors or new users might have the knowledge on that existing users don't.--J. F. Mam J. Jason Dee (talk) 03:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. First choice. This should have been done years ago. No sense in WAITING for the lawsuit. JBsupreme (talk) 03:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: First choice. I see constant vandalism, particularly along political lines. Registration is free and easy, so it doesn't preclude anyone from stepping out of the shadows. Niteshift36 (talk) 04:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Being scientific about it as User:Iridescent suggested sounds sensible (with a control group etc.). However, some of the negative side effects mentioned in the section below seem harder to measure (discouraging constructive anon IP editors etc.) Lanma726 (talk) 06:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: At least, we can ban accounts this way and it would greatly reduce vandalism. -- Lyverbe (talk) 14:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - way past due - Alison ^❤ 14:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLP vandalism is some of the most frequent I come across, and I've frequently seen IPs changing birthdates etc by a couple of years here and there - sneaky vandalism that very easily slips through the cracks. This would cut down on that and improve the quality of our information. --JaGa^talk 17:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support: Heck, I'm in the "registration should be required to edit articles" camp. As is said above, this would certainly help blunt a lawsuit, any which would accurately point out that Wikipedia right now takes no steps to prevent or deter libel of living persons, save for the (oft-erratic) vigilance of volunteers. RGTraynor 21:11, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - И i m b u s a n i a talk 22:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support (as 2nd choice). This option is probably less effective than the flagged revisions solution below, but on the other hand, it's much less complex. The problem with it is is rather that "any unregistered user can edit" has so much evolved into a Wikipedia mantra that semi-protecting large sets of articles is unlikely to find wide acceptance. (Below, some people are "shocked and dismayed" that this option is even being discussed - huh?) --B. Wolterding (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as an extension of my stance on protection. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 00:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - it's great that Wikipedia is open for edits from everybody, but we need a bit of accountability too, the openness is preserved, everybody can create an account if he/she's serious about editing articles. There's minimum pain involved. In my opinion all the articles should be semi-protected, I don't know how popular is this opinion, but in any case this is even more important in case of BLP articles. man with one red shoe 00:21, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I spend a huge chunk of my time on Wikipedia reversing vandals. Imagine what could be accomplished with this simple measure, given the limited time most editors have to create content. Why not mandate registration for editing all articles? Ryanjo (talk) 01:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - I think the latter option is the better, but it is important to have some controls, particularly over libelous content. NoVomit (talk) 03:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - echo what Iridescent (support #1) said. Protecting a test group and comparing differences in edit histories for vandalism/edit wars is a great idea. It's long past due for us to take extra measures to protect the subjects of our BLPs. لenna vecia 03:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Having gone through an extended struggle on a BLP that an IP, (and then a succession of socks), wanted to add negative OR and attack-site sources to, I believe we definitely need to get control over this. I've never understood why IPs cannot get an account. New principle: Anyone can edit, just get an account. Evaluate how it works with BLPs and then consider other classes of articles (e.g., FAs). Sunray (talk) 07:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You should change that to Anyone can edit, just get an account, wait four days and make 10 edits to other articles. Don't forget that in order to edit semi-protected articles you must be autoconfirmed which requires 10 edits and a delay of four days. Davewild (talk) 09:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, why wouldn't a serious person wait four days for the privilege of editing Wikipedia? Sunray (talk) 16:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Unnoticed vandalism is a massive problem, but BLPs are the area where it has the most effect on real life and stuff. Semi-protection is a relatively easy thing that should reduce this. It's not as if we don't have plenty of other articles to edit. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 09:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's exhausting to both add content and fend off vandals, particularly persistent vandals. There are articles which I know contain errors & falsehoods re BLPs, but which go uncorrected because editors know that we "have to pick our fights", i.e. there are more anonymous trollers than there is time to combat them. This would be a useful tool in doing so. EylonTheGreen (talk) 11:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Support IPs have been a net negative for BLP articles for as long as I've been here. The percentage of IP edits to BLP articles that are vandalism is very high indeed, and the vandalism is not always reverted in a timely manner. This is my first choice. Enigma ^message 16:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support We don't have enough eyes on our articles. We need something like this to prevent vandalism from accumulating in obscure bios. Zagalejo^^^ 20:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support If we really have a problem that can't be handled by robots, we should take the lowest-impact and most wikipedian option. Drpixie (talk) 22:58, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Based on my own experience here and on other wikis, including ones where I'm an admin, 90% of true vandalism (as opposed to differences of opinion) comes from unregistered editors. If something really does have to be done, then this is the solution I'd support. However, I do wonder if this may scare off people wanting to make edits of genuine benefit, but who either don't want to register or can't do so due to their situation or circumstances. Emma white20 (talk) 00:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I think this is a great idea, it is important to be able to make these biographies un-vandalized. I do however suggest we also get robots on the job of watching these pages. Fully support this idea! Stealth (talk)
Support Wikipedia needs to show due diligence in not allowing itself to be a platform for libel. Beve (talk) 08:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support (also for all articles, not just BLP). mfc (talk) 09:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I agree with the point Sunray made. Also extend this to all articles, if possible; it makes our work much easier when we don't have to waste half our time reverting anonymous vandalism. SBC-YPR (talk) 10:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Would make wanton vandalism less appealing, although legal issues must be considered in relation to defamation. Definitely for BLPs or even those of the recently deceased. Probably not all articles as this detracts from the real point of Wikipedia - for everyone to contribute. Just my opinion... Ljm091 (talk) 14:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Dealing with the BLP issues far outweighs any idea that "anyone can edit" in any immediate sense. This won't solve the problem, but it will discourage a lot of drive-by vandalism and some of the more annoying sockpuppetry (in my opinion, of course). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incredibly Strong Support. Since last "good" version is a terribly subjective term and can potentially remove constructive content, a semi-protection on all BLPs is a much more viable and fair solution to combat vandalism on these pages. --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 16:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support It just makes sense for these litigation-bombs-in-waiting to do some sort of protection. Timmccloud (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This will prevent the bulk of vandalism, without the problems of flagged revisions. And it's not a large burden to require people to register before editing some articles. --Alynna (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - While this certainly will not rule out vandalism its entirity, it is certainly a reasonable restriction to make, that will only help. I see no downside, and only the potential for it helping. --–m.f ^{(t • c)} 19:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This doesn't mean that wikipedia is no longer the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. You can still edit, you just need to register to edit BLP articles. Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend. --Kbdank71 20:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose- Wikipedia, the community-driven encyclopedia, anyone?--EmpMac (talk) 22:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - BLPs are a special subset of Wikipedia articles in terms of need for sensitivity, legalities, and favorite targets of vandals. I think they need the most stringent protection available. Otherwise it's just a matter of time before we have another Seigenthaler incident, or worse. Ward3001 (talk) 02:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Semi-Protection for all BLPs

~~#Oppose SP. Not all the BLPs are huge targets for vandals. It's be better just to SP the ones that are subject to repeated vandalism.~~ Quantumobserver (talk) 22:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose semi protection. Flagged revs seem better. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Object. It's a cost-benefit thing. A fair number of people who want to exploit BLPs are sloppy and edit from static IP addresses. This would cut down on abuse somewhat, but it would also reduce accountability. Think how useful the Wikiscanner was at sniffing out trouble. Why would we want to make BLPs marginally less difficult to exploit, while shutting down Wikiscanner capabilities completely? Durova^Charge! 19:45, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose strongly, this would be a clear break with the ability of anybody to edit. Flagged revisions are far superior for the reasons I have commented in the flagged revision section ~~above~~ below. Davewild (talk) 20:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in the strongest possible terms. This would only
1. Create a false "don't need to watch this page anymore" sense of security.
2. Make determined BLP attackers more difficult to identify at a glance, because they have to build up a certain number of meaningless edits before doing deliberate damage.
3. Funnel drive-by BLP violations to tangentially related non-BLP articles which are unprotected and probably unwatched.
4. Leave good-faith newcomers unable to edit at all when their favorite baseball players (or whoever they're interested in) are s-protected and they don't know how to game the "autoconfirmed" criteria. Then if they figure out how to ask for help, we do what? Ask them to "just go edit asteroids or pokémon for a week"? Forget that! — CharlotteWebb 21:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose More BLP paranoia. We have a functioning and strict BLP policy. We just need to enforce it and edit accordingly. We don't need to invent these contrivances to "solve" this non-problem. And I oppose flagged revisions generally. Protonk (talk) 21:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not only "No" but... While we need to be responsible in our treatment of BLPs, a default position of semi-protect is antithetical to the basic premise of Wikipedia. It is obvious that a great deal of vandalism comes from IPs, but so do a tremendous number of constructive edits. In addition, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of us here first contributed as IPs before becoming sufficiently hooked to register an account. It is foolish to create an impediment to the contributions of those who would join this community. And consider, in many cases the way we find out that there's a problem on a BLP is when an IP (probably the subject or someone close to them) repeatedly tries to fix a problem and gets reverted. The need to protect the subjects of ~~this~~these articles would be addressed in a far superior way through the use of flagged revisions on problematic articles.Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:42, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Could serve to lock in vandalism, such that the subject who found something untrue in the article can't just fix it, while the benefits from doing this are largely obsoleted by flagged revisions. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 21:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
CharlotteWebb put it nicely. Let's not forget the point of Wikipedia. John Reaves 21:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Building a stable and reliable encyclopedia? Cool Hand Luke 22:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So why not semi-protect the whole mess? Protonk (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? Still the site anyone can edit, but no longer the site anyone can drive-by vandalize. BLPs just happen to be the most potentially damaging class of articles. Cool Hand Luke 00:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because it betrays one of the fundamental purposes of wikipedia: that editing be as open as possible. No one promised that these purposes were going to be concordant--the meat of good policy debates comes from situations where guiding principles conflict or are mute. WP:NFC is a compromise between our goal to be a free encyclopedia and to be a comprehensive encyclopedia. It would be unacceptable to betray either pillar through inaction or immoderation. Likewise we have here two competing principles, we need to satisfy both partially. Semi-protecting BLP's preemptively and indefinitely doesn't do that. It's lazy, it won't stop determined vandals, it will not stop real threats to BLPs (no one really believes obvious vandalism on a page but they can believe misinformation inserted by dogged SPAs), and it turns away too many productive edits and prospective editors. Protonk (talk) 01:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The fundamental purpose of Wikipedia is building and maintaining an encyclopedia. If any supposed principle gets in the way of that, we should ignore it. Cool Hand Luke 01:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, its not just an encyclopedia, its a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We can't toss away "free" or "anyone can edit" because it gets in the way of "encyclopedia" in some cases. Any idiot can see that you would get a stable encyclopedia by restricting who can edit it. Paper and other electronic encyclopedias have been doing it for years by restricting editing to their staff members. "Anyone can edit" is why Wikipedia is successful, and why we have 10 million articles in 250 languages. If you disagree with that principle, I hear Citizendium is recruiting. Mr.Z-man 04:01, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly I don't. You don't need to lecture me; I have a passing familiarity with the success of Wikipedia. Cool Hand Luke 05:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was confused by your comments suggesting we abandon the "anyone can edit" principle in favor of more stable content. Mr.Z-man 06:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you do. I voted for you. I don't think he was intending to lecture you, just make clear the point that the foundation issue of a free encyclopedia is in contest with the implementation of semi-protection for a class of articles. Further, since you alluded to IAR, he was probably hoping to show that this was an ends based argument, not some position taken merely out of advocacy or inertia. The real point is we can all go back and forth appropriating "what wikipedia is" for our end of the argument because the definition is too fluid and vague to serve as a decision rule here. I accept that wikipedia faces a tradeoff in anonymous editing. We may disagree on the magnitude of that tradeoff, but we agree that there is one. Protonk (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We absolutely agree. There's always a trade off. My first edit was to start a new article that was redlinked. We haven't allowed IPs to do that in a long time, and we've certainly lost some contributors who would have begun like I did. In this case, I just think we have particular editorial obligations to BLP subjects which trump volunteer recruiting.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to move some of this thread to the currently-redlinked talk page, I wouldn't mind at all. Cool Hand Luke 06:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pointless when you can have flaggedrevs. Semiprotection can and should be used liberally but only when there has been a problem: pre-emptive protection of all BLPs is just overkill. Moreschi (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No - flagged revisions are OK, even necessary, for BLPs, but stopping all anonymous or non-autoconfirmed users from editing them at all is far too extreme. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 23:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the very good reasons outlined by CharlotteWebb and Xymmax. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Mr.Z-man 00:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; flagged revisions offer a much less intrusive way of protecting articles. — Coren ^(talk) 00:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
oppose per Charlotte, Xymmax and Coren. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - This chucks the baby out with the bathwater. IPs do work too, you know. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Many useful contributors to BLPs are anons - protection should be on a case-by-case basis. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support a compromise solution. Any BLP should be automatically semi-protected for a period of time on a request from any established user if an IP is making reverts in the article.Biophys (talk) 05:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cost-benefit. Most BLPs do not ever attract disruption. Those that do can already be made subject to some sort of protection. Sandstein 07:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; this essentially and eventually becomes disallowing anons to edit and thus a Foundation issue, not a community one. It's too slippery of a slope towards Citizendium. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 07:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this is overkill. It would reduce the amount of vandalism on BLPs, but we have to weight this against the huge adverse effects. Hut 8.5 10:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, it would not cost wikipedia just the anon edits, but also a number of contributors, who started out as anons and got hooked on Wikipedia. bogdan (talk) 11:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose another kick in the face for anonymous editing. Antithetical. Skomorokh 13:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Studies have shown that the anon edits make up a significant amount of vandal reversions. Making it harder for anons to fix errors in BLPs is not beneficial to the project. It also goes against the whole idea of being an encyclopedia anyone can edit when the majority of BLPs pose no problems. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unnecessary. --Tango (talk) 14:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think a blanket semi-protection of BLPs will probably be more harmful than the vandalism it will prevent. Flagged revisions are a better solution. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose—any systematic protection of pages is effectively a way of categorically denying people the right to edit that page. That seems to me to be in conflict with one of our core principles, that anyone should be able to edit. While abuse concerns might even justify the use of sighted-revision-by-default FlaggedRevs (which I also intensely dislike), systematic protection of any level is simply unacceptable. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the autoconfirm barrier is way too high. -- lucasbfr ^talk 17:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
not strongly opposed - but not for this solution either. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose Too easy to bypass, too much collateral damage. Whacka-redlink isn't productive.--Tznkai (talk) 21:14, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, do it only on those that have problematic IP edits on them. There are lots that don't --Enric Naval (talk) 22:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Per the valid reasons above. This is a wiki™. There are many, many valid edits to BLPs from IP users. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per Rjd, many valid BLP edits come from IP users. VegaDark (talk) 04:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen any real convincing evidence to support a measure this drastic. Is there evidence of anonymous users or brand new users causing significantly more harm to BLPs than autoconfirmed users? And if so, does anyone have a link? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Gurch had some stats somewhere based on what was being reverted by Huggle, I believe – iridescent 18:52, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would be a net negative. There are less crude ways of resolving the BLP problem without denying a substantial proportion of our contributors the right to edit a sizable group of articles. AGK 16:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are ways of "resolving the BLP problem"??? I'd love to hear them, please.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
[Points downwards.]

FlaggedRevs being one.

AGK 13:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose What ever happened to the "encyclopedia than anyone can edit"? I know that semi-protection is a necessary evil, but BY DEFAULT on BLPs is utterly ridiculous. ~the editorofthewiki ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 16:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A policy of this sort could far too easily evolve into semi protection throughout article space. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that IP editors do more harm than good in BLPs. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
New Main page greeting: Welcome to Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Just don't try it one BLP's, even if its a legit edit. Synergy 19:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose some good edits to BLPs come from IP editors. If the concern is people adding incorrect or slanderous information, I think a better answer is to have more editors closely watching BLP articles and have them be more hard-line about reverting unsourced or defamatory edits. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not so long as there's a chance that the flagged revisions idea will work. Wikipedia will succeed in the coming years only if we can (1) keep recruiting new editors -- who get interested in Wikipedia by discovering they can edit it, and are discouraged when they cannot; and (2) steadily improve in reliability. Obviously this points to a need to balance monitoring of edits with openness, but if we're capable of handling the work of monitoring edits, aided by flagged revisions, then I would strongly prefer that we do that and forgo as little openness as possible. — Dan | talk 21:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is just as effective at keeping vandalism in the BLP as it is at keeping vandalism out. Some BLP violations are discovered by the subject of the article, and I can imagine that they would be hopping mad if they find that the libel is protected. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest possible oppose. Are we so quick to compromise our foundation issues? TotientDragooned (talk) 23:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit Oppose --Dweller (talk) 13:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Dweller says it best. So Why 21:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeAnyone can edit wiki that is the theory in anyway and we should stick with that. BigDunc^Talk 22:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't feel this is the right solution. This won't help, it's however going to stop positive contributions from ip's. Just because some ip's are doing it does not mean we should block them from editing BLP's. --Kanonkas : Talk 22:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for many of the reasons highlighted above. Page protection should be the exception, not the rule. --Explodicle (T/C) 22:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. This is an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. I strongly oppose anything which will take that away. Sure, semi-protection is needed often by default is ridiculous in my honest opinion. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 22:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose per above comments. It won't change anything. Majorly ^talk 23:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - It's all said above. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - I originally supported this idea, since, being a vandal-fighter, flagged revisions seemed practical. Then, the thought of Wikipedia's freedom, the singular "you-can-edit-this-right-now" quickly changed my mind. And speaking practically, I can't begin to mention the dramaz this would start. —La Pianista ^(T•C•S) 23:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - all users should be able to edit all pages. Bushytails (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose To quote Jimbo himself: "you can edit this page right now" should be a guiding check on everything we do. Net negative, by far. Steven Walling (talk) 00:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Default semi-protection for all BLP's would make Wikipedia lose its premise. And if you do that, you may as well just make accounts compulsory anyway. I say keep Wikipedia a place that anyone and everyone can edit! JS (chat) 00:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose: Whatever happened to the free encyclopedia that "anyone can edit"? Besides, whatever happened to WP:NO-PREEMPT? Oren0 (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Semi-protection should never be used preemptively, but only be used when there is a real problem with vandalism. --Itub (talk) 00:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - What happens if the BLP or the BLP's representatives want to update the article to take out any libelous information. I know that those people need to contact OTRS regarding conflicting information. However, in most cases, not everyone does so. miranda 01:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Will do more harm than good. Malinaccier (talk) 01:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think this will do more harm than good, and it would prevent good edits from being done by IPs or new accounts. I don't see any good or valid reason for implementing this which outweighs the bad that would come from it. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Limits presentation of potentially important information about a person Stampit (talk) 03:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose on principle that anyone can edit and on fact that many good editors first make anon edits to articles and resist registration until they are familiar with Wikipedia; even, I suspect, if that means not ever editing if faced repeatedly with you may not edit this article notices. DoubleBlue (talk) 05:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as demonstrated here, semi-protection will not stop established users from insert BLP information into articles. What is needed is immediate action if and when BLP information is found.
Oppose The current standard for semi-protection works fine.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's other ways for improving this place than protecting articles. aye matthew ✡ 13:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think controversial figures should be s-protected, but to sprotect all WP:BLP would violate the spirit of a wiki. Jonathan321 (talk) 15:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Very bad idea. I wasn't able to fix several bios before I registered and became auto-confirmed because of this. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Articles are semi-ed when needed now. To do it to all is anti-wiki. Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 17:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this would basically mean to edit one would require an account and would prevent people from editing from workplaces etc. It goes against the ethos of a wiki. Computerjoe 's talk 19:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very Strong Oppose as others have said, what makes Wikipedia so special is the ability for everyone to edit. It is unfortunate that legal reasons have brought us to the point that changes to BLPs may not be seen immediately, but semi-protection is certainly not the way to go. It would ruin the whole point of the wiki. 2help (talk) 19:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. We should not be using more and more semi-protection period. Flagged revisions are the way forward. Protection creep threatens to undermine what made Wikipedia a valuable resource in the first place, the fact that it's a wiki. Doing this to biographies is particularly insidious, because biographies are probably the most important class of articles that need to change over time. You can argue there's not much harm if Physics or Mona Lisa is semi-protected once their respective articles are high-quality already, since those subjects aren't likely to change, but important events happen in the lives of notable people on a daily basis, and it needs to be possible for the widest group of people possible to work on keeping that up-to-date for us to retain our (widely-noted and very useful) timeliness on such things. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weakly oppose - if we can implement flagged revisions, then we shouldn't need semi-protection unless we receive lots of bad flagged revisions from anonymous users. ~~ [ジャム]^[t - c] 20:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Noble objective, bad solution. Semi-protection is a very confusing thing for newbies and a blanket s-protect across the project will inevitably drive away potential editors. Though semi-protection will reduce vandalism, it won't eliminate it. Actually, I think it would give us a false sense of confidence that the problem is solved. The current permanent semi-protection of particularly problematic articles is a smarter and more manageable option. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 22:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit—except biographies." It screams bad idea. DiverseMentality 22:58, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Simple — Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:37, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We don't need more "class distinctions" on this open project that anyone can edit. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfathomably strong oppose. As per Charlotte Webb, Protonk, Xymmax, Nuclear Warfare, Totient, etcetera. We need to overcome our fear of lawsuits and continue with what's best for the community. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anti-wiki. Charlotte Webb covers the details. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:48, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Protection has to always be a final resort in response to persistent problems which cannot be dealt with by other means. Adambro (talk) 16:27, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anti-wiki. Oppose BLP paranoia. Hipocrite (talk) 16:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We're already overdoing biography of living persons worries. If someone is notable enough for Wikipedia, they're probably notable enough that the "public figure" safe harbor in US libel law applies. --John Nagle (talk) 18:08, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as a matter of principle. And remember, we already have the means to address criminal behavior when it comes to BLPs. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, there are time an anonymous editor might have useful information on a particular person that a normal editor would not have that was not original research. Bear in mind that some of the information these IP users might have on a living person could make a difference in the article's readability on that living person. If we start putting semi-protection on BLPs, where will the semi-protection stop? Chris (talk) 01:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose, "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" Terlob (talk) 02:00, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unlike many of the above responders, I have no strong antipathy toward changing Wikipedia's policy of allowing anyone to edit almost anything; I just like the flagged revisions idea better. GrouchyDan (talk) 02:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose This is a free encyclopedia. By semi-protecting all biographies, it defeats the purpose of a "free-encyclopedia that anyone can edit". If there are any vandals who repeatedly vandalize some guy's page, we can just warn him/her first, and if he/she doesn't listen, we can block him/her. Simple. JoshuaKuo (talk)
Strong oppose Wikipedia worked because it was the encyclopaedia anyone can edit - if you take that away you will impede its development. Cedars (talk) 03:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Sloppy edits notwithstanding, IP edits also add great content. An example (from a BDP article) floated across my watchlist this morning [3]. The edit was unreferenced and in the deprecated trivia section. However, some kind 45 rpm enthusiast reading the Sean Flynn article realised that the article was missing his brief recording career. They took the time to add some information (thank you who ever you are!) They also added the info with enough detail for me to find a source and add it to the article. This particular piece of biographic information is missing from all the web biographies of Flynn that I have found - but now Wikipedia has it. Semi-protecting thousands of BLP articles will make this impossible and significantly slow the development of these articles. Hordes of Huggle enthusiasts are squabbling over vandal reversions, the vandals are losing ground, so where's the Net Positive in this suggestion? Paxse (talk) 07:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, blocking 33% of our editor base is not a good idear, my guess is that our base of people who donate to the project will decline at the same rate as the exclusion. Mion (talk) 07:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - it would make it more difficult for new users and IPs to edit and make corrections or improve content, and could cause problems on unwatched BLPs. With semi-protection only used as a result of vandalism, often the pages will be watched by the users reverting the vandalism or protecting the page, but with all BLPs semi-protected I think there would be too many for that to be effective. —Snigbrook 14:00, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification the reasons I mentioned explain why I would prefer flagged revisions, however if that proposal cannot be implemented (or is a failure), or if it is rejected in favour of semi-protection, I would not oppose semi-protection as an alternative (or in addition, if flagged revisions are not sufficient). —Snigbrook 18:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, against the fundamental principles of Wikipedia.Jezhotwells (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, there are some people who doesn't have an account and want to edit a BLP. They don't want to wait for 4 days and make at least 10 edits in other non-semi-protected pages before editing BLP. semi protecting all BLP is so unnecessary. Fangfufu (talk) 18:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I said elsewhere, it would be in complete contradiction with the spirit of Wikipedia, and would be far from a panacea anyway. Cenarium (Talk) 18:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's a bad idea to pre-judge contributors, and it goes against the spirit of the project. Most of the arguments for protection boil down to fear of lawsuits -- this fear can be used to justify anything. Besides, I've always been of the opinion that we should avoid defamation in BLPs not because of fear of lawsuits, but because it is the right thing to do. csloat (talk) 20:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this would greatly reduce the openness of the English Wikipedia. IP editors contribute a huge amount of useful content and tidying, and shutting them out would harm the project more than help. If there are BLPs that need protection, they should be protected on an individual basis, not as an across-the-board restriction for all BLPs. -kotra (talk) 22:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - We are supposed to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and protecting articles would prevent the majority of users from editing Alexfusco⁵ 00:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Slippery slope. --Jackieboy87 (talk · contribs) 01:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - charlotteweb's "just go edit asteroids or pokémon for a week" arguments certainly its a convincing argument. We are the encyclopedia anyone can edit.Pectore^talk 03:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - "Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. HEY, NOT SO FAST!" DragonflyDC (talk) 03:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Too many articles have been vastly improved by anonymous editing; that's why we allow it, right? Do not let us throw out the baby with the bathwater. I truly feel that if anonymous editing is restricted for BLP articles, it should be restricted for all of them (yes, all or nothing, I know). Magog the Ogre (talk) 08:36, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose I'm shocked and dismayed that this effort to partially close off the wiki even came to a poll. Current policies, focused on specific and easily identifiable issues with specific articles, works just fine. Cutting away at that to save administrators and the legal team time carries with it so grave a cost in potential new editors and new information that I am absolutely shocked that we're even considering this. I would not be at all shocked to see such a poorly thought-out move, in such direct opposition to the nature of the project, result in a successful fork. MrZaius^talk 11:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be editable by all? CapnZapp (talk) 19:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not by all who set up an account? Sunray (talk) 07:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not by all who set up an account, pass a written exam, and donate 10 dollars? Editing a semi-protected page requires more than an account, you need to make 10 edits and wait 4 days as well. Mr.Z-man 18:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - camel, nose, tent, yadayada. We're not that out of alternatives yet. --Kizor 21:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - the registered editors do not have the sum of all known facts. There seem to be many types of vandalism that need to be countered. One type is where someone deliberately records incorrect information and this can be discouraged by constant removal and monitoring the people doing this. Another type of vandalism is to but barriers that stop people maintaining information on pages. This will discourage people not only from adding information, but from correcting errors (including spelling mistakes) and can only be harmful. Stellar (talk) 00:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Overkill in most situations. Royalbroil 04:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Inane paranoia. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 09:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't honestly get the paranoia over BLP. The only argument for semi-protection I kind of follow is the weight of vandalism, but in this day and age I can't see why wielding a nice heavy banhammer for offenders would do much harm. Calum (talk) 13:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as not needed or productive. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I feel this would move us to far away from the core message of this being a free encyclopaedia anyone can edit, is to much of a blanket hammer option, with far from all BLPs having a big problem with non-constructive IP edits, and some IPs will always be around to make constructive contributions in most cases. Furthermore, this will not stop more determined trolls/vandals which can do the more significant damage. Camaron | Chris (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Flagged revisions would be a much better solution to the problem. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 22:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. There are many good edits made by IPs to BLP, I would rather see protection on a case by case basis. I would like to see it easier to protect BLP pages, perhaps allowing any established user to temporarily add semi protection to a page. Martin451 (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. As per most of the above. Key points: (1) not all anon IP edits are vandals (2) requiring registration just moves the problem without solving it; (3) I see plenty of registered vandals; (4) enforcing further automated requirements (e.g., edit count) again just moves the problem without solving it; (5) WP:BLP does not override the rest of the project; (6) vandalism to non-BLP pages shouldn't be considered any less severe; (7) not all BLP issues are obvious vandalism (but rather, people who don't understand BLP); (8) BLP is not a timebomb, because fixing discovered BLP problems is easy (it's a wiki!). • The only way I'd be willing to consider some kind of blanket semi-protect policy would be if someone had solid data satisfactorily demonstrating the vast majority (e.g., 70%+) of anon IP adits were vandals. At that point we might have to close the gates. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
'Oppose. Seems to be a sure-fire way to scare off new users. If they can't edit the obscure stub they've come to fix, even when they have bothered to sign up, are they really going to hang around? Not to mention the fact that I fail to see how they could be prevented from creating an article on the subject, meaning that new users may well create a new, excellent article, then be locked out of it. J Milburn (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Against fundamental principles ... Baby with the bathwater (per 14 above)... would also alienate potential new users. Bad idea. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If we do this, we might as well get rid of IP logins altogether. BLP have a particularly high percentage of interwiki edits, which are often done by IP accounts. (By interwiki edits I mean edits that are triggered by or connected to an article in one of our sister products, such as adding an interwiki link, or adding small bits of information from the sister article.) — Sebastian 03:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implement Flagged Revisions for all BLPs

Support per Pascale Tesson. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 15:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ja, this will work. ► RATEL ◄ 00:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My choice. rootology (C)(T) 19:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Choice. But, of course, there are a number of highly divergent ways that flagged revisions could be implemented. CIreland (talk) 19:37, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have a dream that one day Wikipedia will be a respectable source of quality information, and not the punchline of hack comedians. WilyD 19:40, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense. Durova^Charge! 19:41, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. Flagged revisions make semiprotection largely unnecessary. Eventually I'd like to see everything in article space using flagged revisions but this is good for now. Also has the advantage that IPs can actually make substantial edits and changes to BLPs they just need to get approved. Also removes the issue of someone starting an article that they can then not edit which occurs if we semiprotect. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:43, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Most anonymous edits to BLPs are good and we don't want to lose those. Flagged revisions is a reasonable way to protect biographies from the bad anonymous edits. -- Ed (Edgar181) 20:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We should really be pushing towards this for all articles, actually. The question is whether it will scale to the size of enWP, or even just enWP's biographies, but the deWP experience seems to indicate that it should. Guy (Help!) 20:03, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, yes, yes. If it can be activated on articles selectively, I would personally spread it to all the BLPs I could, and I'm certain that others would help pitch in. Cool Hand Luke 20:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely. Vastly preferable to semiprotection - David Gerard (talk) 20:45, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, I have long supported this, far better than semi protection (which I would strongly oppose) for the strong reason that it preserves the ability of anybody to edit, while preventing the casual reader from seeing vandalism/libel. Semi protection would either lead to BLPs being hopelessly out of date, a impossible surge in requests for edits and the moving of vandalism to talk pages and other articles. Flagged revisions enables the reader to update/make corrections as necessary which is the great strength of wikipedia and I am confident (and would help ensure) we could keep BLPs flagged quickly. Davewild (talk) 20:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flagged Revisions would be a big step forward. Semi-protecting a substantial portion of our articles is just too antithetical to Wikipedia. --Alecmconroy (talk) 20:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. Much preferred to protection. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. shoy (reactions) 21:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice, or step on the way to where we need to get. ++Lar: t/c 21:37, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Prepared to endorse this. Reasonable balance between dealing with BLPs in a responsible way and encouraging free anonymous participation. Would prefer some selectivity in which BLPs are flagged, but not a deal breaker. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is just to gauge general feelings, the nitty-gritty details could include partial or selective activation of flagged revs on BLPs. (If this isn't yet technically possible, we could buy Brion something nice for Christmas). WilyD 21:53, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but the section header said "implement on ALL BLPs" ... Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 22:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, we needed to finally have THIS discussion, rather than pointless little "What if this? What if that?" chats under FLAGGED and the protection policy and 100 other places, to see who actually supports what in general--is all-semi-BLP a good/dumb idea? Is all-flagged-BLP a good dumb/idea? And based on this, the appropriate next steps can then be looked at, and shaped up. The specifics--"Protect all via a transclusion of a widget under the positron matrix"; "Flag rev all via the MacGuffin's inverse matrix", and so on, can be hashed out later and doesn't require 1,000 people to say Yay! or Nay! This is just to see if the ideas even have legs. rootology (C)(T) 22:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how this is technically possible without some sort of BLP namespace, but, yes, do it. John Reaves 21:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the best bet. We need to do something about the fact that BLPs of relatively obscure people (which in many cases will be their first Google hit) can be targeted with vandalism that stays for long periods of time. The Siegenthaler incident is probably the most notorious case, but such incidents can and will happen again if nothing is done. At the same time, cutting off all anonymous BLP edits seems to go too far. *** Crotalus *** 21:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was leaning towards semiprotection as the best approach, but Crotalus' response made me think it over a bit. Our biggest problem for BLPs is when a little-watched article is dinged, often by someone with a grudge against said person; these are the ones that come back to bite us in the collective ass most often. Flagged revisions would provide a level of oversight to the process, and ensure that we don't have an issue where the first anyone here hears about a problem is when it's being frothed about in the media. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:59, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I sort of started an initiative to watch unwatched pages from Special:Unwatchedpages (pretty much dead now due to technical problems with the page), if we could do that on a more massive or potentially semi-automated scale, that would help a lot. John Reaves 10:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- actually I would like it stricter than the current German implementation. Currently "affiliated editors" seem to stake out notable BLPs or groups thereof, and we would need to make sure that the person accepting the flagged revisions was aware of this. Collect (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Even short term vandalism or poorly sourced edits can be harmful. We can do better and should. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like this option too. — Realist² 23:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, first choice. We try it first on BLP's, then if it helps stabilize content and reduce the amber waves of crap that some of our high-profile BLP articles are hit with throughout their time of notoriety, we expand the flagging to ALL articles.GJC 23:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Semiprotecting them all is a bit extreme, but this seems an ideal compromise. IPs aren't stopped from editing, their edits just have to be processed by, say, a rollbacker. I presume we can tweak the settings on a per article basis so it applies to, say, all non-admins for some articles, or so only admins can 'sight' the revisions or something? Dendodge Talk^Contribs 23:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth a try. This may be better than semi-protection because of the essential problem with banning editing by IPs: barriers to editing tends to favor editors with stronger POVs. Flagged revisions could change the POV balance less than semi-protection while still reducing vandalism. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support I am concerned this will be unwieldy in terms of time used up implementing it, but certainly more owrthwhile trialling with BLPs than with FAs or GAs. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice, prefer flaggedrevs on all pages. Mr.Z-man 00:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support evolutionary step as a reliable encyclopedia. Docku: What up? 00:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support in the alternative; I don't think singling out BLP is that useful, but if we have a choice between flagged revisions on all pages and only on BLPs then I'd rather have at least the BLPs protected. — Coren ^(talk) 00:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Coren above. I'd prefer indefinite semiprotection of BLPs and flagged revisions of all articles, but better this than nothing. – iridescent 00:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This seems ideal to me, if technically feasible. Deli nk (talk) 03:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I could support some 3-month or 6-month trial of this to see what happens. I would prefer this to semi-protection for all BLPs. As of right now, Category:Living people has 324,956 articles in it. About 1 in 8 articles on the English Wikipedia is a BLP. Looking at the recent changes to BLPs, it looks like a BLP is edited about 12 times per minute, or once every 5 seconds. I would prefer we try out FlaggedRevs on BLPs first, before we even think of enabling it on all articles — to see how out of date the 'sighted' BLPs get and what kind of backlog results. But I think there needs to be a clear plan in place (how someone gets/loses 'reviewer' status, how many 'reviewers', when and when not to 'sight'/'unsight' a page) before it goes into effect. Vandals could still game the system, but I guess if you make it a real chore for them you could dissuade most of them. But once FlaggedRevs is enabled on all BLPs, will all BLPs be 'sighted' as is, or will 'reviewers' have to review them all one by one? If they need to first be reviewed one by one (which I think is the case), how long will it take to do the first sweep ('sight' some revision of all 324,956 BLPs), and who's going to do it? --Pixelface (talk) 03:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice, some improvement, but a little clunky. MBisanz ^talk 03:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My first choice. As mentioned above, semi-protection may inadvertently encourage editors with a stronger POV (i.e.: the barrier to edit is higher); and affect the neutrality of our articles. I hope that we move to try this solution before semi-protection. Lazulilasher (talk) 04:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to be the best course of action, keeping the "anybody can edit!" philosophy intact, while also affording more protection to the subjects of BLP articles. Definitely worth a trial, if nothing else. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]
This is the best alternative over two extremely unsatisfactory situations: semi-protection on all blps that would be an extraordinary break in our open-editing wiki spirit, and a situation where blps are largely unmonitored and prone to vandalism and wp:blp violations. I think it's manageable, but we'll still probably face huge backlogs. Cenarium (Talk) 14:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is the perfect middle ground. It allows editing, but at the same time builds in a safeguard against vandalism. The only possible problem is scaling, but we can't dismiss it before a trial has been done. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support There is a lot to discuss regarding the details, but some form of FR for BLPs seems like the best option to me. --Tango (talk) 14:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice.Peacock (talk) 15:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flagged revisions are very promising, but it is a big change so we need to go slowly and carefully. There are real concerns about backlogs which need to be addressed and trials are probably the only way to find out. And of course there are many details to be filled in. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's known that the details need to be filled in. What we want to find out is whether it's worth trying to fill in those details, by seeing how people feel about flagged revisions, whether it's likely the community will give a mandate to implement them once the details are worked out. WilyD 16:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional Support -- I think flagged revisions are a wonderful idea, but should be strictly kept to featured articles (helps us look good) and biographies of living people (legal reasons). I am strongly opposed to them going farther than that, I think it would break the spirit of wikipedia and turn it into a cool kids club of people who can commit revisions. --ScWizard (talk) 08:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I completely agree with ScWizard above. -- lucasbfr ^talk 17:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support; appears to be an excellent idea, and if it turns out to be unworkable we can turn it off. It's worth a try. I also think we should only try one thing at a time: this would be a good preliminary test for flagged revisions in general on en:. Antandrus (talk) 17:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak and qualified support—while on the one hand I strongly support the general use of FlaggedRevs, it is my impression that its use here implies a sighted-revisions-visible-by-default implementation of FlaggedRevs, which I strongly oppose. FlaggedRevs would be helpful in combatting vandalism, but I can't shake the feeling that a sighted-revisions-visible-by-default implementation constitutes effectively denying editing to those not allowed to sight edits (in other words, most people). I'd accept sighted-by-default FlaggedRevs to any more extreme protecting-BLPs proposal, however, as it's got many advantages over other schemes. I must note that BLPs are one of the few areas where sighted-by-default FlaggedRevs would be acceptable to me: I don't want any implementation on BLPs to be used as an excuse to enable sighted-by-default FlaggedRevs elsewhere. My preferred implementation of FlaggedRevs would make the "sighted" or "unsighted" status visible as a means to aid more basic BLP-monitoring efforts. Sighted-by-default FlaggedRevs would be preferable to semi-protection, in any event. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I generally support, but I think it may be impractical to implement FR over all BLP articles at the first stage. It is better to select several thousands most vandalized BLP articles and enable FR over them. Ruslik (talk) 19:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
support - I like this as a test certainly, one that we will find reduces both the blp-vandalism, and complaints about it from blp subjects. Not sure about full article implementation of it though. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Do this, do it now - we have other things we need to work on.--Tznkai (talk) 21:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's well past time to at least try this idea. Gnome de plume (talk) 21:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support without question, per my previous comment above. We must do what we can to protect BLP subjects from harm - particularly those that are lower profile - and this seems to be a very good way of doing this. So a few anons and newer users have to click another link to see their changes (until they are sighted) - that seems a small price to pay given the potential for harm to BLP subjects. Pfainuk talk 00:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do it - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support TimBuck2 (talk) 02:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Second choice per my concerns about how much time this will consume. EconomicsGuy (talk) 09:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Distant second choice. If we must let IPs edit BLPs, at least have the revisions be flagged. SDJ 15:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, so long as we take things slowly and organize the resources needed to make FlaggedRevs work. My first choice: seems to be the best option. AGK 16:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very weak support - I think this would be a good way to see how flagged revisions work, but I am concerned that it would disenfranchise any editor without reviewing rights. 18:52, 21 December 2008 (UTC) [That was User:J.delanoy - Dank55]
Support - this is a good idea, certainly worth trying. --Aude (talk) 20:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
By all means. — Dan | talk 21:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to them wholesale either, but BLP's provide a useful test to discover any major issues. Eluchil404 (talk) 08:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, the only question is how. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 13:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If there is a widespread feeling that this is a good idea in general, "How?" is the next question to ask. But "Is this worth pursuing?" is the logical place to start. WilyD 15:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly, though I'd rather create a class of "BLP editors" who have to openly declare their identities and be of an age to be legally accountable in a court of law GTD 21:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. And add sprotection also to reduce antivandal-load (as noted above). If we lack manpower for promotion, then that's a sign our notability criteria are too low and we have too many BLPs. Finally, although it's true IPs add a significant fraction of good content, nobody knows the answer to what would happen if they were forced to register. You can guess that they will; you can guess they won't. The truth is: nobody knows. So try the experiment. S B H arris 00:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Everyking (talk) 05:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
–Moondyne 10:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This will limit the damage caused by BLP violations (including by users who register, wait 4 days and make 10 edits first), while allowing the BLPs to remove false information as needed. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, the least damaging option. --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 20:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2nd choice for me. I am dubious about how to make this work. There are a LOT of BLP articles. I also fear it would expose Wikipedia to greater liability. Or that it might even expose ME to liability, if I did something that made an article version flagged "good"... and I had missed something that someone found unacceptable. sinneed (talk) 21:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, this is my preferred option. Allowing everybody to edit, but removing the risk of people being harmed by vandalism. A balance of our rights and responsibilities. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I like this option. It provides a nice effective degree of oversight on the public face of the encylopedia without preventing continued editing. Mfield (talk) 22:09, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support once enough experience with flagged revisions is gained. --Alvestrand (talk) 22:12, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This would be my first choice (and would render semi-protection somewhat moot). As with others, I'd like to see this for all of article space, but that's a matter for later debate - BLP seems the obvious place to start if we must do it piecemeal.Anaxial (talk) 22:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This would help implement some control without turning away potentially useful contributions. – Joe Nu tter 22:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It will provide more control over the articles while still allowing anyone to edit. And it will provide a good (large) test case for Flagged Revisions. --Falcorian ^(talk) 23:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy with this. Majorly ^talk 23:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Another excellent and pragmatic solution. Jclemens (talk) 23:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. A step in the right direction for persons whose real lives may be (and have been) harmed by biographies that anyone can edit. Firsfron of Ronchester 00:10, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctant Support I think that flagged revisions is going against what Wikipedia stands for, but it seems to be necessary. Captain panda 00:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely. jj137 (talk) 00:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - seems a decent way of telling everyone which versions they can fully trust without assuming everyone is going to vandalise the pages. Colds7ream (talk) 01:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. I see this as much more effective than semi-protection. I also see it as a way to allow people to begin trusting information on Wikipedia more. I can see no arguments against this option which even come close to outweighing the good. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - at least to try out. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 03:59, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support on a trial basis. I am concerned about how flagged revisions impacts the spirit of Wikipedia as well but vandalising BLPs is a real problem worth trying a solution like this. DoubleBlue (talk) 05:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Full Support of this option. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 06:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. With some caution. Aaron Schulz 08:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I like the idea of turning it on for BLPs, seeing how it goes. With flagged revisions, "anyone can contribute" remains true. I would be in favour of flagged revisions for other articles (FAs for instance) if it worked for BLPs. My only qualm is that it will be impossible to measure how many well-meaning anons we will lose as long-term contributors, when they submit a test edit only to find they apparently can't edit: to guard against this with flagged revisions, the immediate feedback will have to be loud and clear that their edit worked but hasn't been published yet. Wikipedia is effectively a publisher: I doubt that the community would write "we will immediately publish anything and everything submitted to Wikipedia for any purpose by anybody" into policy, but it is the current reality. For this reason, I have sometimes thought the emphasis on "editing" of the maxim "anyone can edit" out of kilter with Wikipedia's purpose: there's more to contributing than "editing", and as stated the tag line encourages purposeless edits as well as constructive edits. Don't get me wrong, I am strongly in favour of allowing anyone to edit. --RobertG ♬ talk 10:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed! BillMasen (talk) 13:52, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Sounds like the best choice. Skinny87 (talk) 14:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - hell YES! Xenus (talk) 14:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as test Pragmatically, we're at greater risk of law suits in this area than anywhere else. It's sensible therefore to exert better control over such articles. --Joopercoopers (talk) 16:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support seems like a great idea. Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 17:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support flagged revisions in some form for all articles, therefore obviously for BLPs. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support for all BLPs, with the possibility of requesting flagged revisions for other articles if necessary. ~~ [ジャム]^[t - c] 20:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support with many reservations Ultimately, I think flagged revisions will be a plus for Wikipedia and they seem like a particularly reasonable option for BLPs. But I don't think that flagged-revs should be used only on BLPs, nor do I see any reason to use them on all BLPs. In particular I think it's idiotic to use BLPs as a test case for flagged revs. For one thing, BLPs represent something like 10% of the wiki and most are low-traffic, low-activity articles for which the cost/benefit ratio of flagged revs is atrocious. Ideally, the solution should be selective implementation of flagged revs on individual articles and by "selective" I mean "selected by individual editors who think that a given article could benefit from flagged-revs". This would avoid unnecessary backlogs. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 23:08, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLPs would be the logical place to start an experiment with sitewide Flagged Revisions. Priyanath ^talk 23:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support per Jimbo's plan to test it for a few months and re-examine it's effectiveness. I can live with that, provided we have real research on our side to help determine what affect it has had when the trial period is up. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice - better than nothing but IMHO not really far enough. At least flagged revisions are a step in the right direction - hopefully the test will prove me wrong and this measure will be enough to effectively eliminate vandalism on BLPs--Cailil ^talk 12:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not so keen on flagged revs everywhere, not even for FAs, but for BLPs yes. A good test case. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flagged revisions are working very nicely on dewiki (despite a small number of vocal naysayers) and where introduced there with strong consensus after extended testing. They might work just as well on all of enwiki, but even only for BLPs they are definitively a good idea. They offer the same benefits as semi-protection, but without any of its disadvantages. --Latebird (talk) 16:10, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - if the revision is flagged, it will give another user a change to look at the revision and see if it something as simple as a minor edit or something more complex as new information on the person that no one was aware. It can also allow to revert any vandalism if needed. Chris (talk) 01:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This proposal might be a good way to improve article quality. Seems reasonable to test it on this subset of articles. GrouchyDan (talk) 02:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support selective implementation, not just on the highly visible articles, as problems are more likely to occur on articles not watched or edited by many users. It should be used on BLPs and other articles protected due to WP:BLP violations and vandalism (including the five articles currently with full protection from vandalism with no WP:BLP issues). I would also prefer flagged revisions as an alternative to semi-protection, as it still allows anyone to edit - it is easier than the {{editprotected}} and {{editsemiprotected}} templates, which many people will only use for specific corrections and updates, and provides a more useful revision history than use of a separate draft article such as Talk:Evolution/draft article. Full protection would still occasionally be needed, but only for problems such as oversight issues, legal issues (e.g. Office actions) and content disputes. —Snigbrook 13:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It is quite apparent that BLP articles can, in some cases, cause harm to the subject. So why can we allow them on Wiki at all? Oh yes, that was because Wiki articles are always cross-read by other editors, and these will revert any libelous statements etc. per WP:BLP. But does that actually work in practice? I think that the answer at this point, with 300.000+ BLPs and no further means of control, must be: no one can tell. This proposal will allow us at least to ensure that at least one other editor has reviewed the article, and found it OK. That's clearly an improvement over the status quo. Even in case that we won't be able to review all changes in a timely fashion, it will at least allow us to find BLPs which lack attention.
Support. What harm could it possibly do? Jonathan321 (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, the flagged reision should be shown to the public to default, it protects the dignity of the subject described in BLP.
Support. We obviously need to change something about BLP articles (see also). Automatic semi-protection is a terrible idea; we're "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Articles that need to be protected will be protected by consensus. As of now, flagged revs is the least worst solution. I think people are forgetting that this would simply institute a trial run of flagged revs. If the backlog is huge (which I expect it will be), and it' that big of a problem - we'll vote on getting rid of it. What's the loss of a trial run? Bsimmons666 (talk) ^Friend? 23:02, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support for frequently vandalized pages. Doing it across the board will frustrate and discourage anonymous editors. --Jackieboy87 (talk · contribs) 01:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Not all anonymous IPs are vandals. If it doesn't work out then semi-protecting all BLPs is the next best thing.Wapondaponda (talk) 02:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Semi-protecting would be more functional in practice, but since this has the more support, let's give it a go. Rebecca (talk) 02:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support a trial for a few months. I think for BLPs we are justified in valuing reliability before spontaneity but I'd oppose flagged revs for all other articles. In cases of sensitive non-BLP articles (e.g. about religion) I hope they are protected by a large number of watching users. eug (talk) 10:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Flagged revisions are certainly worth trying. (The German wikipedia's experience is very encouraging.) However, working out how to best use them (eg., sighted vs QA process vs ...) will not be easy or quick. The BLP articles are a very good test case for this experiment. CWC 14:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - yup - Alison ^❤ 14:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Aye, Woody (talk) 15:00, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - a good start. If we have a group of very little things like this, we might be able to tackle most of the issues without having to worry about damaging the encyclopedia as a major protective measure might do. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Our best option. Ice Cold Beer (talk) 22:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - I think this option is the best; it is important to have some controls, particularly over libelous content. NoVomit (talk) 03:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - I like the idea more than semi-protection, actually, but support either. لenna vecia 03:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: We need to make a change to better be able to deal with POV pushers, vandals and trolls operating from IP accounts. Flagged revisions for BLPs would be a good first step. Implement for a set time period, evaluate, reconsider our options. Sunray (talk) 07:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This would be my second choice, after semi-protection. Enigma ^message 16:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'd like to see flagged revisions for all pages, but this option appears to me more palatable to the editing community.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 19:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I would like to flaged revisions for BLP.One of the main reasons is libelous content. Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 21:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This would prevent libelous content from being visible to the public, without preventing anonymous users from adding good content. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 22:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Army1987 above. Semiprotection has its place, but it's pretty blunt, blocking good-faith anons while only doing so much against savvy long-term problem editors. J. Spencer (talk) 03:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I would prefer semi-protection, or the combination of both, but this would allow anons and new accounts to contribute. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a three-month test with a community conversation during the final month to see whether the community wants to continue, modify, expand, contract or abandon this approach. David in DC (talk) 15:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support this is why the capability exists in the first place, we should use it. Timmccloud (talk) 17:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Flagged Revisions for all BLPs

There is no way for the use of stable/flagged/cabal-approved revisions to be limited to one category, and it wouldn't make any sense to do so as anyone can add or remove a category. This would be a social restriction rather than a technical one, and I see no reason to honor it really. What purpose would be served by writing a policy that says "this feature should only be used for living people, other articles are unworthy"? Oppose in favor of explicitly allowing edit-flagging on any and all content pages. — CharlotteWebb 23:03, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do we know for a fact this technical limitation can't be changed? rootology (C)(T) 23:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just found out we can indeed do this from a technical standpoint. People can certainly remove a BLP category, but thats sort of a red-flag action in and of itself that would also be limited by the flagging process. rootology (C)(T) 23:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be a technical restriction if the 'surveyors' agreed to only enable FlaggedRevs on articles in Category:Living people, or if you had a bot with 'surveyor' status do it. --Pixelface (talk) 03:48, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I must have confused the hell out of somebody. Let me make this clear. I will support this only if there are no technical or social restrictions against using flaggedrevs for other pages (some of which will need it more badly than the average BLP). — CharlotteWebb 15:52, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose as someone who is continuously vigilant of a conservative reading of our blp policy, as both going against our "anyone can edit policy" and making it harder to actually deal with random blp vios. I often spot blp vios reading an article on somebody I have just read about elsewhere and the idea that I and others could not do this kind of blp removal IMMEDIATELY just seems completely counter-productive. Plus its a huge time waster. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
comment I doubt any version of flagged revisions would prevent you from flagging. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose, ~~but I will not be opposed to an X month trial so we can see how bad backlogs really get~~. I suspect this will go the same way as the New Page Patrolling backlog (ie, dies). - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC) [reply]
Followup: After thinking about this more, I feel that I would not even support a multimonth trial, not for a group as large as BLPs. There 327k articles in the Living People's category. That's far too high of a number to start a trial at; I'd prefer it if say, currently featured or semi-protected articles were trialed (both have 2-3k articles). Even something with 100k articles would be more preferable as a trial. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 16:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - unless an exception was granted for high-edit and/or articles tagged with a "recent event/death/whatever" tag. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; I do not see what flagging revisions will do except for irritate vandals and provoke them to become more egregious in their vandalism. This is especially of concern with BLPs, and flagged revisions more like than not will not affect vandal pagemoves (a common JA/G tactic). We need to be able to see and remove vandalism on sight, registered account or otherwise, and this would firmly plant anons in a second-class citizen situation. Flagged revisions at present are too double-edged - good anons cannot reverse the actions of their crueler counterparts unless they access and read the history (which a lot of anons likely do not know how to do), and good anons updating an article will constantly repeat their edit or become a vandal when they find that the good edit they've just made doesn't show up, even after server-side delay is factored in. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 03:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'm irritated by the invocation of the Wales at the top of this page, but that isn't the reason. Flagged revisions, when they come to wikipedia, should be trialed in a much smaller and more controlled area than BLPs. Further, if we don't have the willingness or editor resources to revert vandalism to these articles (ostensibly the reason we are pursuing this), how the hell are we going to flag all of these revisions as sighted? I'm not going to. If I see an article edit on the RC feed I won't give it a second thought unless it is obviously vandalism, then I will revert it. That's basically how Huggle stops most vandalism and it does so very quickly. The stuff that doesn't get caught is plausible info that upon deeper reflection, is vandalism. No technical process will make those edits more scrutable. What we will find ourselves with will be hundreds to thousands of articles with revisions in the sighting queue and no motivation to review them. Those edits will never make it into mainspace without being sighted so the motivation to pay some cursory look at them for the sake of keeping obvious vandalism out is gone as well. Aside from the effectiveness issue, I still don't understand how this notion of sighted revisions helps us gain new adherents or live up to our guiding principles. We can bullshit ourselves into thinking "sighted revisions means we can unprotect George W. Bush", but the same number of anonymous edits to that page will stick with protection as without. And in return we will have blocked off anonymous access to every MLB, NFL and NHL player page (or, placed that access behind the gatekeeper of a revision sighter). Great. Protonk (talk) 05:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose again this is overkill. We are the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Hut 8.5 10:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Not yet. We should try semi-protection first. And then perhaps we wil still thik we need ths--and if we do, it should first be implemented on a vulnerable subset so we can see how practical it is.DGG (talk) 18:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Too much management needed. Stifle (talk) 10:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Flagged revisions are a stupid idea, it creates a false sense of security and much work. Determined vandals proved time and time again that they are willing to create masses of socks to circumvent such measures. Think of it, they just need to manage to mark a bunch of BLPs as flagged with vandalism and most people will ignore checking the page because of the "flagged"-state. Regards So Why 21:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So we should avoid a solution that would only fix the vast majority of the problem because some problems would remain uncorrected? WilyD 22:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose As I said above wiki is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. BigDunc^Talk 22:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. First it is a tremendous overkill and an overreaction. The great majority of BLPs are quiet, noncontroversial articles where nothing much ever happens and in the few cases where there genuine BLP issues, there is usually enough attention to fix them. Second, the flagged system is inconsistent with the basic philosphy and the basic model of how Wikipedia operates and would certainly interfere with the normal editing process that involves incremental changes by multiple editors. Untangling "good" edits from "bad" ones would become a real mess. All sorts of new types of edit wars could ensue. Who will have the right to flag what and when? Are we about to introduce a new stratification of "trusted" users, something intermediate between an admin and the average Joe Shmoe? If yes, the very nature of how content discussions and disputes are handled will change dramatically, with users being divided into several classes of citizenship. It will be very easy to abuse and misuse the system by pursuing editorial agendas that have nothing to do with BLP. Imagine, for example, the effect of flagging on AfD discussions. It will be rather easy to prevent improvements to an article listed for deletion being made by refusing to flag them or by simply not getting around to flagging them. Also, presumably, a brand new kind of content dispute will arise, regarding whether or not a particular version deserves to be flagged. We have enough disputes and acrimony already. No thanks. Nsk92 (talk) 22:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per my above reasoning against semi-protection. Anyone should be able to edit this encyclopaedia. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 22:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flagged revisions in general. Other projects like Veropedia are better suited for deciding which versions are "good". Wikipedia is and should always be the live, you-can-edit-this-page-AND-see-it-right-now project. --Explodicle (T/C) 23:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flagging revisions. I don't think people understand how big Wikipedia is. This would create an enormous backlog and waste the time of Wikipedia's active users. Shii (tock) 23:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flagged revisions. Not worth the effort. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Flagged revisions is a flawed technical addition that would increase bureaucracy and hierarchy, inhibit contributions from new people interested in joining the community, and create a false sense of security. Steven Walling (talk) 00:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Its just not worth it. I also agree with Steven Walling's comments above. JS (chat) 00:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose though it seems futile. This will just decrease the quality of the project, moves away from the purpose of a Wiki, create a bunch of new work, and increase accusations of WP:CABALism. Oren0 (talk) 00:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Steven Walling (above) puts it best for me. I hate to place a "per x" comment, but my thoughts are echoed exactly by Steven Walling's. Malinaccier (talk) 01:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Too much extra work required. Epbr123 (talk) 01:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very strong oppose. I don't want to see flagged revisions because half the fun of Wikipedia is seeing your edits pop in right away and watching an article take shape before your very eyes. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. This would require much more effort and would discourage editor's from contributing and would turn Wikipedia into something similar to Encyclopedia Britannica. -- RandorXeus. Remember to Be Bold! 05:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as way too drastic. Semi-protection is much milder and more reasonable. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not yet Suggest flagged revisions be implemented on Featured Articles first, as a control group. In the alternative, pick the 100 most heavily edited BLPs to use as the control.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose , its against the Wikipedia philosophy, and whats worse, the two referenced articles on which this discussion is based are outdated, the first[4] is from 2004 - 2006, the second from dec 2007[5], not taking into account the improvements on the vandal fighter tools and bots like cluebot in 2008. Mion (talk) 07:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - SqueakBox said much of what I wanted, but in addition to that, I'm afraid the backlog for flagging revision might become too long and this is counter-productive and against the open nature of Wikipedia. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 14:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Even FA isn't much guarantee of article quality. Why would FR be any better? And who is going make the approvals? Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions indicates several options. None seem much better than FA. Xasodfuih (talk) 16:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I support testing the flagged revisions feature with a small subset of articles, but I think BLP is not the right subset because 1) it is too large; 2) it would add to the hoopla about BLP with which I don't agree. --Itub (talk) 16:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose as it turns "anyone can edit" into "anyone can edit but you'll have to wait a few days for a select cabal to approve your edit before anybody can see it" plus the immense diversion of energy from actually improving the encyclopedia to dealing with a backlog that will grow every five seconds 24/7/365. - Dravecky (talk) 22:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. CharlotteWebb and Steven Walling sum it up quite nicely. DiverseMentality 23:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Overwhelmingly strong oppose. Per CharlotteWebb, Protonk, NSK92, and Dravecky, all of whom said everything I could have said. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, simply because the idea of flagged revisions is (in the end) impractical, as explained by several editors above. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:19, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, adding flagged revisions adds this process of editorial review which limited and slowed the editing process. -- クラウド６６８ 09:36, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose on the grounds of imprcatibility as noted above.Jezhotwells (talk) 17:36, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I'm not convinced that the benefits of flagged revisions outweigh the costs, of which there are many: 1. our better editors would feel obligated to put aside article improvement in favor of reducing the flagged revision backlog, 2. it would make Wikipedia less interesting to new editors (and established editors), and 3. reducing Wikipedia's reputation for openness, in addition to the reasons given by others above. Not to mention that, due to abuse in the flagged revision reviewing process, we'd have to restrict who would be able to review edits, and for the restriction to be actually effective in weeding out the untrusted editors, I doubt there would be enough qualified reviewers to handle the load. Flagged revisions may be a good idea to test out on a smaller scale, but BLP is about a tenth of all Wikipedia articles. It's too many for us to handle, and people will notice, complain about the "censorship", and Wikipedia's reputation for openness will be further reduced. -kotra (talk) 22:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A good idea in practice but unworkable - who would flag the revisions? I don't mean just a trust issue (i.e. we need to have trusted users doing it) but a time issue - we have limited volunteer capacity here and we have enough trouble even just reverting vandalism in time without adding duties to volunteers. Would this create any problems down the track if we've flagged revisions which contain libel? In some sections I edit, which contain many BLPs, I'm doubtful that *anyone* would ever see any edits, and they're so obscure that any edits are likely to be useful ones. Orderinchaos 22:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Relatively strong oppose - I can see why this would work, but I've seen something simmilar to it before - at Veropedia. I feel like this is a little bit of a slippery slope, and my instinctive resistance to change (lol) is telling me that this is a bad idea. I don't really see any difference between this option and the one above. With the one above, we would create a sort of sandbox for the protected BLPs (the sandbox would be a copy of the article, which users could freely edit) - and every so often an admin would transfer the edits that are in the sandbox, so I don't really see why there are so many more supports on this option than that one.--daniel folsom 16:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This solution might work where the subject of the pages is static, but people do change and the information about them does need to be changed frequently and regularly. To use this process there would need to be too many rules to make it work effectively. It might be too hard to get approval to change a page and this would discourage valid changes from being made, resulting in the flagged version being displayed only because it is approved and not because it is correct. This could increase inconsistencies in Wikipedia - where the individual's page is not updated, but changes are made in linked pages. Stellar (talk) 01:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Steve Walling said it better than I could. No need to fix something that isn't really broken. –Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 03:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Overkill in most situations. Too much time would need to spend by the most important content expanders to approve revisions. We already have major time shortage, why increase the load on people already too overworked. Royalbroil 05:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is the basic idea of Veropedia and Nupedia with Wikipedia, and it ruins the idea that Wikipedia is a wiki. It is sad how corrosive BLP paranoia is. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 10:01, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose: Overkill, not needed, discourages the free flow of information. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - There is a lot of vandalism of BLP, some of which goes unnoticed for a long time. I have seen vandalism reverted to an already vandalised page on several occasions. To flag a Good version, someone who is knowledgeable about the subject would have to thoroughly inspect the article to make sure it is correct, before flagging as the good version. Also wikipedia would in effect be endorsing a version that may be the wrong version. Martin451 (talk) 22:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose This option goes strongly against "be bold" and actively discourages people from editing articles. And it's the thin end of the wedge, from this we'll be doing FR on all articles. Robots can and do fix most vandalism, lets not waste people's time with a scheme that requires continuous monitoring and selecting of the official version of something - very big brother. Drpixie (talk) 22:57, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flags for just BLPs. If flagged revisions are something that will effectively fight vandalism, they should be used for the entire site, because vandalism is a problem for the entire site. If they work, let's use them! If they don't work, they won't help BLP pages in particular, either. (Note that I'm arguing all-or-nothing in the long term; it might make sense to do a rollout in stages, but that's a manpower/load/management thing, not a BLP/content thing.) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. This is a tool that I can see easily being abused. "Good" is a POV, and while we as Wikipedia editors do not (or aren't supposed to) make biased edits, we are inherently biased, so policies/tools shouldn't be created that encourage editors to exercised biased judgment. --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 16:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implement Flagged Revisions for all articles / content pages

This would include templates, images, categories, and anything else that might somehow be part of the dependency tree of any article or portal page, etc. — CharlotteWebb 20:33, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
An important move to make in making this an encyclopedia. Has worked well on de:wp - David Gerard (talk) 20:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would support but doubt consensus would be reached without first seeing it implemented in some articles such as BLPs. Davewild (talk) 20:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it were possibly to do this and get it through, it would be a good thing, but not on Wikipedia space, please (at least at first). rootology (C)(T) 20:56, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is where we need to get. Maybe this isn't the first step, but this is the destination, in my view. ++Lar: t/c 21:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm prepared to be persuaded, but I'm going to have to see how this functions in the wild first. Let's start with problematic BLPs and see how it goes. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Third. I do not know how readily it could be implemented with the large number of minor edits on non-controversial topics. Perhaps the limit should not be on the "topic" but on the activity therein -- if an article gets more than (say) ten edits a day that it goes into "flagged" status? Collect (talk) 22:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To move the emphasis to the quality of all content. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:16, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Moreschi (talk) 22:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
bibliomaniac 1 5 22:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Prefer this, though I support implementing flaggedrevs in pretty much any way. Mr.Z-man 00:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support; this will allow stability without sacrificing the ability to edit as semi protection schemes necessarily must; it will also greatly reduce the number of times we have to protect at all. — Coren ^(talk) 00:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. It has worked well on .de and on the English wikinews as well as a variety of other projects. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Third choice, weakly, we don't have the manpower to implement this idea, but if it will help the BLP issue, we must adapt. MBisanz ^talk 03:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Essentially to get rid of vandalism, libel, most blp issues, etc. Not too soon though, I am afraid that we might rush things and ultimately screw up. But only with an expiration system to prevent inevitable backlogs. Cenarium (Talk) 04:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indent, as explained, I prefer the option to #Implement Flagged Revisions for blps and Flagged revisions with expiration for all non-blp articles / content pages. Cenarium (Talk) 14:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Possibly with a different implementation for BLP vs non-BLP articles, but we can discuss that later. --Tango (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. Peacock (talk) 15:23, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support iff the implementation is not sighted-revision-viewed-by-default, for all users and all pages. While I think that flagging revisions is probably a good idea, making sighted revisions what's visible by default effectively denies editing to those without the ability to sight edits. Even if we could handle the backlog of unsighted revisions (our ability to do so is dubious), the disincentive to editing for anonymous users would definitely be a bad thing. It's been shown by academic studies that anonymous and infrequent users contribute a significant amount of our content, and I think that sighted-by-default FlaggedRevs project-wide would disrupt that positive influence. For all that it would effectively destroy vandalism, we could do that any number of ways which would be obviously unacceptable by our foundation principles, and I think that this is one of those ways.
That being said, I do think that FlaggedRevs has potential, for BLPs and elsewhere. Showing, to some extent, what's been reviewed and what could be vandalism—that is, the status of being sighted or not—would be a good step in the direction of visible quality without sacrificing the ability of most people to effectively edit. I find that being able to selectively, but not systematically enable sighted-by-default for particular pages liable to much vandalism or libel might be worthwhile, as a different form of protection which could be applied to articles, such as BLPs, for example, as an alternative to semi-protection. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not advocate this— Without 'by default' flagging is little different than the ill-fated page patrolling feature which no one put enough effort into using simply because it didn't do anything except update a little note about each revision. Some people argue that flagging will be a massive failure because no one will update the flags, but that prophecy becomes potentially self-fulfilling when its used to argue that flagging should be castrated to non-default viewing. In terms of mitigating harm a link to some "blessed" version is little different than the availability of the history tab.
With the right configuration flagging can be setup so that the new-editor would be largely unaware that his edit is only visible to himself, other editors, and people who have chosen to see the latest draft: He edits, he sees his edit and continues to see his edit every time he visits the site unless it is reverted, based on the existence of an editing cookie. The whole flagging and visibility to millions of people vs visibility to thousands of Wikipedia editors would then just be sausage making details that most new users would be completely unaware of… With that in mind your whole causal chain falls apart. In fact, life would be much easier on the new editor since we wouldn't need to be as overagressive with vandalism patrol. I edit logged out a lot and have too frequently found that my perfectly good edit is reverted seconds later by a fly-by "vandal fighter" with little hope of recovery unless I redo it. So, in fact your doomsday situation where new users are effectively unable to edit happens already to anons and careful use of revision flagging can actually be a way to escape that problem. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I differ on the point that "a link to some "blessed" version is little different than the availability of the history tab". Unless a vandal leaves an obscene, descriptive, or automatic edit summary (and it is my experience that vandals don't generally bother with edit summaries), it requires active work for the average reader to discern quality revisions with only the page history. I think that 'a link to some "blessed" version' is precisely what would help many users easily avoid vandalism and other nonsense. We can get that without making any restrictions on dynamic updates, so I think that's what we should do.

Transparency in the editing process is important, and we need to be transparent about how things work and what editing is going on. I think that it would be a big problem if we have to make a big distinction between "thousands of Wikipedia editors" and "millions of [readers]". I don't think it would be healthy to cement or expand any gap between readers and our preexisting editors. Besides, technical fake-outs to show the newbie editor the draft (as you seem to suggest would work well) will fail at some point: if Anonymous user A refers a good faith correction to a friend and the friend can't see it, how long is it until he complains that his edits aren't showing up?

Can you please provide examples of areas where you, or another editor, have had their edits reverted solely on the basis of their being made by an anonymous user? Even assuming that there are several valid examples, how could we acknowledge that random anon-reverting is a problem while condoning a more effective measure to prevent their effective participation? Certainly the answer here would be to address any problem with arbitrarily reverting anons, rather than introduce a more serious barrier to entry.
I think that the above points are valid concerns. At the very least, please consider that it is a valid opinion—I think that non-default flagging is a good thing, and I am free to advocate my opinion, within reason. Besides, I do not advocate a hard limit: one of the things that I say is "not default" (emphasis added), and it might just be possible to recognize that my position is not black and white on the issue… all this ignoring the point that this is explicitly a "feeler survey" on which our opinions are being asked. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 21:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think the common wisdom about BLPs is wrong: BLPs are not subject to greatly increased risk of total harm —rather, BLPs are subject to greatly increased risk of complaint about harm. In other words: BLPs are more sensitive indicators of our overall performance than other types of articles, but by themselves are probably only somewhat more risky than average. In a great many non-BLP articles there is a risk of vandalism causing extreme harm: consider a statistics article vandalized in an unfortunate way at an unfortunate time which results in an engineer miscalculating the safety of his design. In that case there is no singular obviously wronged person to notice and complain that his article is incorrect—so we may not feel the pain of the vandalism but a great many people may be harmed. Moreover, the impact of significant harm caused by problems in BLP articles is generally limited to a few people (the subject and his close associates), while errors in other areas can impact more people. I've witnessed firsthand an error from Wikipedia making its way into a software design document. While not itself a safety-impacting error, it was enough to make me sure that safety-impacting errors do occur. Even to those of us who care only or mostly about BLPs, flagging only BLP articles is clearly insufficient to protect the subjects: if a vandal changes Bomis to call it a child porn site, the actual harm to Jimmy would be just about equal to the harm caused by the same claim placed directly in the article on Jimmy himself. I think it's unfortunate that we continue to special-case BLPs, since when we do that we're killing our best indicator of potential harm throughout the project while only making a fairly limited improvement. All that said, if people wanted to flag only BLPs as a testing point, I wouldn't oppose it, since we do need to start learning about the impacts of flagging. I do oppose flagging+semi at this time, but only because I think we should make one change at a time in order to measure the results. --Gmaxwell (talk) 01:01, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're wrong about potential harm. When people want to know about Jimmy Wales (or any individual), they do not type "Bomis" into a search engine. They type the person's name. If there's something harmful in their biography, it is much, much more likely to reach the eyes of people curious about that person, thereby causing harm. That said, thank you very much for not being opposed to BLP flagged revisions as an experiment. Cool Hand Luke 01:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And yet… the Bomis article still gets more traffic than most of our BLPs. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:08, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At ~300 hits per day, it gets more traffic than most of our non-BLPs too. I'm not sure which way that cuts; low hits also lengthen the period of time that errors might persist. Jimbo has many more hits than Bomis in this case, but I'm more interested in the mechanism of serving articles than the hits.

When someone wants to know about an individual, they type the name of that individual, and google retrieves their Wikipedia biography because of the page name and the inlinks. So sure, Nike, Inc. gets much more traffic that CEO Mark Parker, but when one searches for "Mark Parker," only the biography comes up, not the company. Every BLP is a high-ranking magnet for potential defamation on particular individuals. It's not that there's no potential for harm from non-BLPs (there certainly is), its that BLP articles are a good place to start—to test whether or not we can handle flagged revisions. Cool Hand Luke 19:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is our destination, and editors are certainly free to focus on BLPs if they wish. I would. Cool Hand Luke 19:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flagged revisions have far more upsides than downsides - the upsides are practical and ethical, the downsides are philosophical or extremely hypothetical.--Tznkai (talk) 21:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any practical downsides to this. The German Wikipedia seems to manage just fine, and I don't see why we wouldn't do just as well. Pfainuk talk 00:45, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is definitely the way forward for en Wikipedia. dougweller (talk) 16:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. Reduces the reward for vandals, provides higher-quality content, still leaves editing open to all comers. What's not to like? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anything that would improve Wikipedia's credibility is to be welcomed 21:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC) <-- This is User:George The Dragon.
Everyking (talk) 05:53, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I support doing this and/or semi-protection for all articles. I've seen firt-time IP users do things like change a birthdate by one year. I can't check out everything like that. Bubba73 (talk), 22:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~A very attractive idea. I'd like to see how it unfolds once actually put into use. —La Pianista ^(T•C•S) 23:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)~~ Changed to oppose upon further thought. Reasons below. —La Pianista ^(T•C•S) 23:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Another fine, workable idea. The departure from the ideals of infant Wikipedia is more than made up for by the usefulness in building an encyclopedia. Jclemens (talk) 23:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. en.Wikipedia needs to move beyond mere content creation and (hopefully) become a more reliable source. The flagged revision tool has worked well elsewhere. I welcome anything that would significantly reduce blatant vandalism on this project. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I don't trust any number in a Wikipedia article because I've seen how long it takes for editors to catch crafty vandalism and how lenient administrators are in dealing with the repeat offenders. Flagged revisions may also rain on the parade of bored middle-schoolers who vandalize articles to show off to their classmates who are in the same room using Wikipedia to look something up. Switzpaw (talk) 06:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support though not in the immediate future. We do have to test how well this works and we also need to avoid the over-optimistic idea that this will be a cure against unreliable info. Nobody flags the flaggers and the system will have to deal with incompetent flagging and malicious flagging, just as we now have to handle incompetent editing and malicious editing. This is not a cure-all. I tend to agree with Charlotte that a priori scope restrictions are counter-productive but if individual editors are the ones deciding whether flagged-revs are used in a given article, we'll be in a better position to benefit from flagged-revs without getting buried under the backlog. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 23:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Let's start with BLPs first, though. Priyanath ^talk 23:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Works well on dewiki and makes the life of anonymous vandals incredibly boring. Administrative overhead is neglectible, good edits can be sighted with a single click (the effort for reverting is the same as before). This will greatly reduce the need to semi-protect articles, enabling constructive contributions by IPs. --Latebird (talk) 16:19, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very broadly speaking, the harm caused by Wikipedia outweighs the good at present, and that's not going to change until some kind of responsible editorial process happens (if you disagree, I'd be happy to convince you otherwise). Giving instant access for anyone on the planet to authoritatively print whatever they like and present it as truth is beyond stupid. With some pages getting hundreds of thousands of hits every day, even the fatest reverts will have dozens of misled readers. The only question is whether the project can handle it yet - trying it on BLP will be a good test. Phil153 (talk) 23:03, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think flagged revisions should eventually be extended to all articles (or at least all established articles), but start with BLPs, protected pages, templates and images, then featured articles, good articles, etc. Maybe there could be different options for flagged revisions – so that on some articles they would expire and have to be renewed, and on others they would not.Snigbrook 14:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Although if Wikibooks is anything to go by, nothing much will ever get reviewed. Maybe that's because it's quieter over there. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 22:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, although I'd like to see a phased rollout to BLPs first - Alison ^❤ 14:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Not sure this will make it through immediately, but I think the project has reached a point that we need this sort of change. It's working well on a sister project. It's worth a shot here. لenna vecia 03:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the Fat Man's failed 2009 ArbCom campaign platform. Flagged revisions would make editing the wiki less fun, less immediately gratifying--but that's sort of the point. This is an encyclopedia, not a playground (my talk page excepted, of course).--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 19:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It will only improve wikipedia as an encyclopedia and further it is being used in a sister Project.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 21:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support I do not see why this measure should not be supported. Extending flagged revisions is a logical step. However I think the alternative measure of 'with expirations' may be a better bet at first as established editors may not like change or may be skeptical. That way once people have become accustomed to flagged revisions the expirations could be dropped completely or revised as needed depending on user experience. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Flagged Revisions for all articles / content pages

Strong oppose, ludicrous idea that would be unworkable and make wikipedia the website not to edit. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:25, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Flagged revisions do not restrict the ability to edit the page. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: It would make us more reliable, at the cost of being less informative. We'd get massive backlogs, which no-one will want to tackle. Because of these massive backlogs, newbies will complain that their edits aren't being processed and then leave us. Then we have even less editors to handle the growing backlog. Rinse, lather and repeat. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 00:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, a cogent explanation of the problem this would cause. Thanks, SqueakBox 00:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Except that it's hand-waving speculation which is unsupported by the experiences of other projects who have enabled flagged revisions. I expect there is consensus that those outcomes would be bad and would justify further changes to the configuration. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Crazy strong oppose Yeah, lets increase the existing backlog by a factor of 12. I'm not sure how many articles we miss at NPP, but I'd estimate 150/day, at least, translating to 4500/month. At least those articles are still allowed through. I shudder to think of the backlogs that have to be gone through before edits from, say two months ago are let through. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose without some kind of trial first. This could either be a small-number-of-pages trial, or a "flag but show most recent version" type test as I proposed elsewhere on this page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...and does absolutely nothing to help the BLP issue. Many readers don't even notice the edit tabs, why would they notice a "prior flagged revision available" note? Why would anyone even care to flag such articles? What is the purpose, exactly? Cool Hand Luke 01:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Templates Only, see above for BLP thoughts--Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming you mean that you oppose in all cases outside of Template: namespace, I'd like to point out that one of the main things that caused me to develop an interest in the editing process was tinkering with templates early on. I'd be just as hesitant to lock down template space any more than it already is - and it is already far too locked down - since when did getting included in some semi-unofficial javascript tool automatically qualify a template as "heavily used," and why on earth does that automatically warrant more than a semi-protect? Getting a touch off topic, I suppose, but would like to reiterate that much the same issues exist with discouraging new contributions when dealing with template namespace as anywhere else. MrZaius^talk 15:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now, see how it works on BLPs first. About 1 in 8 articles is a BLP, and a BLP is edited about once every 5 seconds. 156,430 users have made at least one edit in the last 30 days. Even if you made all of them 'reviewers', is that enough people to 'sight' all 2,665,657 articles? --Pixelface (talk) 03:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, for the same reason as the opposition to flagged BLP revisions: the idea of flagging is (in the end) truly impractical, as several editors before me have already explained. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lor no; see my opposition to flagging BLP's above. Flagged revisions are too much stick and too little carrot. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 03:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ABSOLUTELY NOT. Yeah I used caps. I really do think this would be a very bad idea, for many reasons, most of which have been said again and again. Wizardman 04:27, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - the backlogs would probably explode... VX!^~~~ 05:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Uhhh How many permutations are there going to be? I guess I'll note here that I'm opposed to implementing flagged revisions elsewhere but my rationale is at one of the various "Whatever it is, I'm against it" sections above. This is confusing. Protonk (talk) 05:32, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Disaster waiting to happen. Let's not go there. PeterSymonds (talk) 09:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this will prevent huge numbers of constructive editors from contributing and is directly opposed to the spirit of Wikipedia. Hut 8.5 10:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
oppposeWe simply don't have the rescources.Geni 13:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose until a trial has been run and there's evidence we actually have the resources to handle it. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - Would the site still be wikipedia after such a monumental change? I mean last I checked the front page said: "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." --ScWizard (talk) 17:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Quite apart from the merits, I don't think we're well enough organized to do this--unlike some other wps. We would need to try a subset first. I may be wrong, but we need to find out before we go ahead with something this drastic. DGG (talk) 18:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support or oppose depending on what exactly is meant. See my comment in the support section above. To summarize: I think FlaggedRevs is a good thing, but making sighted revisions what's visible by default is a bad thing (and this opinion is not self-contradictory! :) ). I suspect that many oppose FlaggedRevs primarily because of the idea that sighted revisions will be visible by default. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 19:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: As I opposed the trial proposal for flagged revisions. The backlogs would likely be unmanagable. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Something needs to be done about BLPs and this effort is only a partial solution but implementing this across all articles is against the spirit of Wikipedia. We manage vandalism very well I think so this is overkill. Also, as others have stated we don't have the manpower for this and it would consume the time needed to address other serious problems such as POV pushing that this does not solve. EconomicsGuy (talk) 09:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do not have sufficient obscenities in my vocabulary to express how strongly I oppose this suggestion, and I take pride in my vocabulary. DS (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
DS above pretty much sums up my sentiments. J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 18:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
J.delanoy above, sums it up for me. Synergy 19:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Goodness no. Stifle (talk) 10:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I think it would be simpler to semiprotect all articles, which is in effect what is being done from the casual ip editors point of view ("your edit won't appear until one of us checks it", really takes away from the instant gratification) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This would require us to manually approve each and every edit. RC patrol is loaded enough dealing with the bad edits. Forcing them to take action on good edits will triple their workload at least. Flagged revisions are a good idea on a few articles, but it is a bad idea for universal implementation. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Premature without a trial. --Dweller (talk) 13:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If people are opposed to the idea of flagged revisions, as you're indicating you are, there won't be a trial. WilyD 13:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - A trial with BLPs, yes, this? No.sinneed (talk) 21:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I cannot think of something more absurd to import from de-wiki. I am a "sighter" there, I could run around flagging stuff as "flagged" and I could surely mark vandalism as such if I were a determined vandal and people would probably be tricked by it. So Why 21:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per my above reasoning that this is an encyclopaedia which anyone should be able to edit. Also per NuclearWarfare that this would increase the backlog further. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 23:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flagged revisions in general. Other projects like Veropedia are better suited for deciding which versions are "good". Wikipedia is and should always be the live, you-can-edit-this-page-AND-see-it-right-now project. --Explodicle (T/C) 23:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. An even more terrible idea than flagging all BLPs. Nsk92 (talk) 23:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose flaggedrevs period. -- penubag (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
STRONG oppose. All users should see the latest version of all pages. Anything else is not acceptable for a site like this. And do we really want a "decide what people get to see" cabal? I sure hope not. Bushytails (talk) 23:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A flawed technical approach to increasing veracity and combating vandalism. Contrary to the open spirit of a wiki that has made our encyclopedia a success. Steven Walling (talk) 00:23, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would destroy everything Wikipedia stands for! JS (chat) 00:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: This will just decrease the quality of the project, moves away from the purpose of a Wiki, create a bunch of new work, and increase accusations of WP:CABALism.
We have bots and vandalfighters to check for vandalism, right? miranda 01:26, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Too much work, too little benefit, large backlogs, and easily abused or misused in my opinion. I do not think that such measures should be put into use unless things get drastically worse. Malinaccier (talk) 01:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This would suck the life/fun right out of WP. I don't consider the German test to be a success. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unconditionally oppose flagged revisions for any and all articles as antiethical to our belief that this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. --ElKevbo (talk) 04:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in the strongest possible way. As I said above, one of the joys of Wikipedia is watching the article form online right before you. Otherwise you end up with a nasty class system. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Would make Wikipedia something like Encyclopedia Britannica. -- RandorXeus. Remember to Be Bold! 05:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. An important part of the encyclopedia that anyone can edit is seeing the impact of your edits immediately. I do not yet see the necessity of this on non-BLP articles and only support the BLP flags on a trial basis. DoubleBlue (talk) 05:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose , the side effects of this measure to handle 15% of the IP edits are to big and shouldn't be an argument for bureaucracy creep, i think Risker is right, the people helping out on vadalism patrol do this mostly out of understanding about this problem, the sighter group is against the spirit of wikipedia and as a result many editors will go elswere. Mion (talk) 06:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; This totally contravenes Wikipedia's philosophy. We are not Citizendium, and for good reason. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose until we've worked the kinks out.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose strongly, I might add. This would create far too much bureucracy. Also part of Wikipedia's charm is that the edits you make become instantly visible. This would take that away. — Twinzor ^{Say hi!} 12:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose will discourage new editors and contributions. Experimenting the same idea for BLP is acceptable. Docku: What up? 15:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Having just dabbled with a featured article where I found bias and outright misrepresentation of sources, I think this a very bad idea. It will just allow entrenched editors to promote their POV better. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Opposes. Should be tried in a small scale first. I support testing the flagged revisions feature with a small subset of articles, but I think BLP is not the right subset because 1) it is too large; 2) it would add to the hoopla about BLP with which I don't agree. --Itub (talk) 16:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Are you kidding me? 6,840,588 articles? King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Considering our unpatrolled backlog of new pages currently stretch back to November 28. I don't belieeve we can handle the backlog for Flagged Revisions in a reasonably timely manner at all. --PeaceNT (talk) 08:00, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not just yet. I hope I'll have a different opinion when we have a test case, and BLPs are definitely the place to start. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:52, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, for the same reason as the opposition to flagged BLP revisions, the idea is (in the end) impractical, as already explained by several editors before me. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, for same reason as opposing BLPs. Also, you would have problems on a user's subjective review of articles, images, templates, contents, etc. Let us remember it is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If we start making ourselves more exclusive, then it will make recruiting new users more difficult. Chris (talk) 01:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, never liked the idea. It will be horribly backlogged. It is triple work for marginal benefit. Renata (talk) 02:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, adding flagged revisions would add in an editorial review process, and this would both limit, and slow the editing process. -- クラウド６６８ 09:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, would create a heavier workload for reviewing editors. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per my rationale above (greater workload, less openness, less article improvement). A much smaller scale test would be ok (smaller than BLP). -kotra (talk) 22:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per my rationale above (just below Kotra's in the same location). A better model would be to have a stable site which extracts Wikipedia diffs, rather than limit Wikipedia itself. Orderinchaos 22:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That reminds me of Veropedia. Similar idea, though it's owned by someone else (and has ads). -kotra (talk) 00:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - Would cause far more work than its worth and goes against the whole instantaneous aspect of Web 2.0. --Jackieboy87 (talk · contribs) 02:10, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - Raising the technical difficulty involved in newbs editing these articles and acknowledging the threat of this sort of action being taken on any rarely-edited and rarely-reviewed article makes this an easy issue to dismiss out of hand. Even given some potential effective solution to those problems, I continue to strongly oppose this proposal on the simple basis that any active disinsentive to edit an article without the specific and easily identifiable issues that currently lead to protection and similar measures will result in fewer new active editors and a general loss of new information and quality. I'm shocked and dismayed that this effort to partially close off the wiki even came to a poll. MrZaius^talk 11:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Seeing the results of your edits is perhaps Wikipedia's biggest draw. It is enormously empowering, and it is the direct reason I'm here today. CapnZapp (talk) 19:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - There is little, if any benefit. The last thing we need is another backlog. –Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 03:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per King of Hearts. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 10:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong OpposeThis seems like a workaholics solution.--omnipotence407 (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm not really sure about it, even for BLPs. Funny how apparently noone mentioned anything about trust metric, which is not so obtrusive, yet can be even more powerful. GregorB (talk) 08:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest Oppose - Requiring every edit to be approved before it's visible is a) twice as much editor work, b) antithetical to the idea that "anyone can edit". --Alynna (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Way too much work. Editors have better things to do than review every last IP edit before it goes live. Royalbroil 03:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implement Flagged Revisions for blps and Flagged revisions with expiration for all non-blp articles / content pages

This is the best course of action: it will avoid harmful backlogs by automatically making visible to IPs revisions that are old enough on non-blps. While blps require more scrutiny, most articles comparatively don't and applying flagged revs without expiration on all would certainly create huge backlogs and prevent a mass of edits from going live. This would still allow to get rid of the quasi-totality of vandalism and other disruption, since most is reverted within a few hours. With the understanding that this is very flexible: it can be deactivated on certain pages, be prevented by the abuse filter, etc. Cenarium (Talk) 13:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Best option, since the "backlog" issue becomes moot. rootology (C)(T) 14:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed (rather like what I supported before). Obviates all concerns about manpower. Collect (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is my new favourite, as long as the expiry is no longer than 24 hours. This would allow us to prevent many of the bad edits from even happening, without creating massive backlogs. The one problem is whether or not it is possible. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 17:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support (as a rather poor alternative to others) as long as the auto expiration was at least 6 months, preferably a year. One day, for example, is far too short. ++Lar: t/c 07:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This would be useless with such configs. Better keep it short, a few hours at most, and make it longer or indefinite where needed. Cenarium (Talk) 14:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~I support doing this and/or semi-protection. Bubba73 (talk), 21:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)~~ [reply]
Support. Avoids backlog and still keeps BLP's safe. Padillah (talk) 20:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, if something is a good idea, and I think flagged revisions for BLPs is a good idea, limiting it to a short time just means nothing is settled and we postpone the decision to down the road. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tim, I don't think this option means the BLP Flags will expire, just the Non-BLP flags. This helps eliminate the backlog that would be created by flagging everything and making certain people review every article revision. Padillah (talk) 20:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The technical implementation is not known yet, but note that the distinction with manual flagging will be very clear. Just to correct a previous comment I made, IPs will be initially directed to the so-called 'stable' page, displaying the latest expired revision (old enough and not identified as 'suspect' by the abuse filter), and will be given the possibility to view the latest rev (displayed at the so-called 'draft' page) and the latest flagged. If the latest expired rev is the latest rev, no stable/draft separation appears. I haven't proposed it for blps, them being sensitive 'per default'. Cenarium (Talk) 14:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I think this is the best idea out there. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 08:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the reasons I mentioned in my other comments on this page[6][7][8][9]. —Snigbrook 14:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral: Good idea but why not expire all flags at least until we see if non-expiring flags are needed? If you auto-expire all flags after an hour or a day, it will be pointless to vandalize high-traffic articles. If there's still a problem after a trial period, lengthen the expire time on BLPs or make it indefinite/no expire. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. It is clear that a progressive implementation is needed, so middle-term delays for blps, then longer or indefinite ones on a case by case basis, then per subcategories for example, could work well. Cenarium (Talk) 23:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose flagged revisions for all BLPs per my rationale above. -kotra (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Whilst Kotra makes good points, I do not see why this measure should not be supported. Extending flagged revisions is a logical step, however I think as it's new and some established editors may not like change or may be skeptical that it's wise to go this way and use expirations. Then when things are going well the expirations could be dropped completely or revised as needed depending on user experience. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, with an expiry time of 72 hours or so. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support I like the 72 hours, three days should catch just about everything. Timmccloud (talk) 17:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implement both Semi-Protection and Flagged Revisions for all BLPs

Comment. Is this not redundant? As I understand them, Flagged Revs are only placed for IPs, so if it's semi-protected, what's the need for FRs? SDJ 19:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See my objection to semiprotection. Durova^Charge! 19:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't the above a comment, Durova? WHO sees flagged revisions first is an option, it could be set to "everyone" so it is possible to have and need both SP and FR. ... suppor this. ++Lar: t/c 21:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lar makes a very good point. The two are not mutually exclusive; one is presentation, the other control. Support (which I didn't think I would, even though I added this section header myself!). rootology (C)(T) 21:33, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I consider myself progressive on this issue, but doesn't FR make semi-protection redundant (assuming that the flagged version is the reader default)? Cool Hand Luke 21:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I took it to mean that... BLPs are semi'd--the drive-by vandalism by IPs is a thing of the past. That still leaves sneaky vandals on usernames that are past the semi-limit, but wouldn't have the "Flagger" ability or whatever we'll end up calling it. So, it would be a double layer of protection, like an Oreo, with the BLP as the creamy center. The benefit of this is casual readers (our real userbase, not us) will only ever hopefully see a "good" version, without the chance of any crap snuck in by untrusted users OR anons. If I've butchered the technical aspects of this, someone please correct me. rootology (C)(T) 21:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is fairly redundant, unless it's taken to mean "Semi today, Flagged when we work out the details". WilyD 21:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with WilyD here. I support semi as a stop-gap to work out the details of flagging. I suspect that most sneaky vandalism actually comes from savvy throw-away accounts (flaggers would probably be more comfortable approving edits from a blue-link user), such that using both protections is redundant. Cool Hand Luke 22:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lemme clarify that I'm not exactly endorsing that position, just explaining it. I'm conflicted about semi-prot. On the one hand, we clearly need to do a lot more than we're doing. But the barrier to entry is high. It's a tricky cost-benefit. Flagged is just soo much cleaner. Semi-protting is worth exploring, but I'm tepid. WilyD 22:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wait... why is this an option? The whole point of the flagged revisions extension was as a more open alternative to semi-protection, to make articles editable by anyone without any inappropriate revisions being visible to readers (too bad it didn't work). Semi-protecting the page and using the extension defeats the point of it -- Gurch (talk) 23:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Implement both - I'd support implementing both SP and FR, but at different levels, if it can be done. Have the main version be semi-protected, but allow IPs/new users to edit the versions for review, with any editor who is able to edit SP pages can make review. (My apologies if this how FRs work, but I haven't seen the details. And I'd support this for all articles, possible with greater restrictions for who can edit SPs. Opening reveiws to SP editors would help avoid the backlogs, while keeping the articles free of silly junk that doesn't need to be seen in the first place. - BillCJ (talk) 02:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is my preferred option out of all that have been proposed, it is essential to protect all BLP's from anonymous editing due to the sheer backlog created by the requests for semi-protection. Secpndly registered user can also vandalise pages so there must be a system of flagging their edits as well. --Lucy-marie (talk) 22:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That makes no sense. There is no backlog now. You're saying we should semi-protect hundreds of thousands of articles because otherwise there's going to be a huge backlog in requests for protection on BLPs? Why would there be a huge backlog? Mr.Z-man 06:44, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to comment and say that both that flagging and semi-protection both seem like good ideas to me, and I'd support it, for what its worth. Pstanton 07:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Support This makes the most sense to me to guard against vandalism and defamation. The case studies cited at the top are good evidence of a need for something to be done. I believe that creation of user accounts should be promoted, and in certain cases be necessary. I believe this is one such area. Further flagged revisions have proven successful in its trials, and there's no reason it shouldn't be utilised more on en-wiki, and I think that BLP is a logical starting point. There will always be a few beginning bumps with new features, especially with established editors used to things the "way they are". However those are not valid arguments to avoid change. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. A small minority of the edits by autoconfirmed users are in bad faith. Such a measure could be useful in cases such as featured articles or content disputes, but using it for all BLP is overkill, and could seriously slow down the development of the encyclopedia. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 14:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like any of these options but something has to be done for BLPs

Leave your alternate idea here

For all articles, show the current version but have a link at the top to the last-flagged version. This would alert users immediately that the version they are looking at has not been reviewed and give them an opportunity to go to the last reviewed version. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly how flagged revisions work already (for those who use them). — Sebastian 03:33, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Spread the word that Special:RecentChangesLinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people and other patrols exist. If that doesn't work to reduce the time vandalism stays on biography articles, then look at more severe actions like making BLP articles flagged-revision or semi-protect by default. "Use a light touch first, use more pressure only if necessary." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like that! How about adding that as a preferences option for anytime RC is clicked? Is that doable? Daniel Case (talk) 06:57, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki:Recentchangestext? --MZMcBride (talk) 07:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea too. -kotra (talk) 22:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the idea of semi protecting anything until such time as is demonstrably required. I don't like the idea of not allowing anonymous editors in, automatically. As a suggestion, perhaps categorize all BLP as a BLP and then place a noticebot in a public IRC channel. That would be a suggestion, but as for protection, I don't think I like the idea. NonvocalScream (talk) 21:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We just need to enforce a conservative interpretation of blp, its only cos loads of editors don't want to that we see this problem. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind that the problem of vandalism is completely distinct from the problem of what material should actually be in an article when that material is well-sourced. Let's not confuse them. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is quite a lot of crossover. This, for example, was vandalism. -kotra (talk) 22:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse Davidwr's idea. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:48, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A while ago I did a survey of how long it took to revert some vandal edits (see User:Hut 8.5/vandals). The vast majority of edits were reverted extremely quickly. However a handful of edits were missed by RC patrol and survived for much longer, and presumably it is these which pose the biggest risk since there is a much greater chance that someone will see them. In order to catch these edits we need some way of marking an edit as "patrolled", which I understand is already done on some wikis. Alternatively we could use flagged revisions while still giving all users the most recent version to read. Hut 8.5 10:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Alternate idea - If you have the capability to edit semi protected articles, your edit goes straight though. If you do not then your edit gets flagged. Kind of a cross between "flagged revisions for BLPs" and "semiprotect BLPs." --ScWizard (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I support this idea, as it is basically what I've proposed in the above section, but SCW said it better! - BillCJ (talk) 02:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
improve patrolling A follow up on what Hut said a little above--organize RC patrol so we can catch what gets missed. If we can implement semi-protection of NLPs, we could alternatively establish a separate RC patrol for BLPs. DGG (talk) 18:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this and davidwr's idea above. Keeping a close eye on BLP articles, and having editors be more hard-line about reverting unsourced or inappropriate edits, seems to be a better solution than semi-protecting them. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:26, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think we have all the policies here to address problems, we just have to priortise dealing with them. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On the few times I have been on RC patrol recently I have generally allowed very little tolerance on blatant vandalism to BLPs. While newbie testing on BLPs, such as adding "Hello" or "LOL" at the end of the article is dealt with in the usual, kind, {{test}} manner, I have been much harsher with people who use the bio as a medium to launch attacks. If I'm in a good mood, I can go with {{test4im}}, but if the vandalism is particularly vicious, I have no compulsions against instant-blocking without warning. I don't believe that anyone would be surprised, or righteously upset, at being blocked as a response to lies and slander to someone's bio. Perhaps standards are that way already with some admins, but if not I have no trouble in implementing tougher practices on vandalism like this. If a non-admin sees an anon making libel and slander on a BLP, they should be able to take them to WP:AIV immediately, without seeing the report rejected with "user hasn't been warned". Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:16, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Improve access to reporting functions, admins, and OFFICE Need I point out that the administrators' noticeboard is usually a 300kb, ad-hoc mess of a discussion page? Is it really so difficult to implement a simple forum on Wikipedia? If there were a "Problem!" tab before the "Talk" tab that took readers to a report form or admin forum, problems would get solved much more quickly. Shii (tock) 23:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea. Let the readers and/or editors (most of whom are not vandals) report blatant problems quickly and easily. Oren0 (talk) 00:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ironically, too, the administrators' noticeboard is ignored by most admins as most of the time it's simply a hotbed of drama with nothing of interest or use to them. We need to establish something admins will actually read. Orderinchaos 23:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like this proposal (an easy to access forum for reporting "problems") would just increase the number of reports without proportionally increasing the number of people responding to them. Besides, if there are blatant problems, editors are encouraged to be bold and fix it themselves. The noticeboards (plural noticeboards, as opposed to the single bloated WP:AN) should be more publicized, though. They are pretty obscure. -kotra (talk) 23:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Improved patrolling is the way to go, not flagged revisions. Having a "Recent Changes" or #en-wikipedia-vandalism type route, that only shows changes on articles tagged with the BLP template on their talk page is a good start, requiring administrators to patrol a minimum amount somehow would be a nice additional step though not likely "possible". Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 01:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Required patrolling would be bad. We're all volunteers here. -kotra (talk) 23:21, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would like admins and arbitrators, when alerted to BLP violations to read complaints and act on them. I have recently had reason to do so, and I find the non-attention by admins and arbitrators to be lacking, and in the case of one arbcom member, they don't even understand the policy. I question Jimbo about this on his user page, and you can see his (non) answer here. The interesting thing is, I framed the question to Jimbo in such a way that it would get his attention, because admins and arbcom members have ignored it. What I wrote initially is here. The funny thing is, it is not acceptable to use an analogy on Jimbo's talk page in framing a question, because it could be seen as an accusation against Jimbo, yet when we have the exact wording on an article this is not only acceptable, but when alerted admins and arbs do nothing (well, they did something, they blocked me for 3RR for using BLP as it is written), and Jimbo's non-answer is also not acceptable. Is it acceptable for admins and arbs to do nothing? No it is not, unless of course it is totally ok with the Wikimedia Foundation for BLP information to exist in some articles but not in others? So yes, something has to be done, that thing being enforce the blooming policy across the board! --Russavia ^{Dialogue Stalk me} 05:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the problems here is that there are a whole bunch of admins who are not doing much if not anything admin wise. They basically are glorified editors who want to hide their adminship and rarely use their tools. I feel to fix this, we need to make it mandatory that all admins identify themselves and also assign them various tasks that they are required, under their adminship, to accomplish. (I.E. patrol certain groups of articles, work as a vandalism patrol, deal with fires before they erupt into an edit war, etc.) If these admins are not willing to take on the responsibility of being an admin, then they should be stripped of their adminship and another appointed in their place who will do the job. Brothejr (talk) 11:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Requiring admins to have essentially a "work quota" is not the way to go. They are, just like the rest of us, volunteers. We need more good admins, not to burn out existing admins or discourage editors from even wanting to become admins. -kotra (talk) 23:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Could we have a system to turn on flagged revisions at the request of a BLP subject? I'm imagining that if a living person complains about their article, we could ask them if they want flagged revisions turned on. They'd be given a revision of the article to look over and asked hold Wikipedia and its editors not liable for any error in that version. If they agreed, flagged revisions would be turned on for that article, the revision the subject agreed to would be flagged, and a template would be placed on the talk page stating that flagged revisions have been turned on at the request of the article subject. The template would state that flagged revisions must not be turned off except at the request of the article subject, and it would state which article revision the subject had agreed to. I realize that not everyone would agree to this, but it may be worth a try. It doesn't stop vandalism or POV edits, but it might make people more comfortable with the existence of an article about them. Ozob (talk) 20:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That could work. One downside I can see is that it would be confusing for readers and anonymous editors to have one article with flagged revisions and another, similar article, without. It would make Wikipedia more complicated for readers and editors. But the benefits might be worth it. I think a small-scale test would be essential first, though, since what you describe would not be reversible ("flagged revisions must not be turned off except at the request of the article subject"). -kotra (talk) 23:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I supported weakly the semi-protection option but still I have some doubts. Many BLP articles are created by anonymous IP accounts. I think they should be able to improve the article as well. I think we distinguish between stubs and non-stubs. Non-stubs must be semi-protected and we can leave the rest without protection. Patrolling helps with newly created articles and stubs, maybe we have to find ways to improve patrolling. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If all the people who argue all the time about deleting articles that are at worst harmless put their efforts into reviewing BLPs the problems would be much smaller. If we stopped deleting articles for a month and worked on BLPs the encyclopedia would be much better. Except for speedy deletions. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that quality improvements to BLP articles help mitigate the impact of vandalism and what we really should be concerned about, sneaky attempts to smear someone. In the Seigenthaler incident, and some of the other cases where libelous information remained in articles for long periods of time like that Norwegian politician we were falsely id'ing as a child molester, I forget his name, the offending sentences made up at least 25 percent of a very stubby article's total body text. No one reading the article could have missed them. Similarly, I have seen efforts to make the short Sergio Zyman article either very negative or very peacock-y in the past by anons (looks like it needs some work to address the former shortcoming).
Maybe ... the solution here is to put every newly-identified (and we need work on doing that in recent changes as well) BLP article on semi-protect or flagging until it reaches a certain quality level (C-class sounds about right to me ... and I prefer that to byte count because not only can that measure be padded with garbage or trivia, a quality assessment requires an actual human eye on the page). Daniel Case (talk) 21:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have wondered about protection of sections of pages, rather (or as well as) protecting the whole page. e.g. the first section with the key facts, stats. (DOB etc), and poss. tags (BLP tag) could have strong protection than the rest of the article. Of course this would need a lot of work. Martin451 (talk) 23:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As an alternative to imposing technical solutions such as semi-protection or revision-flagging on all articles subject to BLP. I would like to propose establishing a network of registered users dedicated to keeping an eye on those articles, either through existing channels, such as the Counter-Vandalism Unit, WikiProject Biography, Recent Changes Patrolling, encouraging widespread Watchlisting of articles subject to the BLP policy, or establishing a brand-new network of registered users for that purpose. --TommyBoy (talk) 02:29, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Leave BLPs exactly as they are

Since this is the closest thing to a "both options are bad" section, let me just say that (absent context), both options (semiprotection and flagged revisions) are bad. Semiprotection would prevent anonymous users from just casually removing obvious BLP violations whenever they see them, which would make such violations harder to fix, and keep them on the article longer. Flagged revisions would mean that when an IP acted to remove BLP-violating information, we would nonetheless continue to display the bad content until some approved user allowed the article to be fixed. Either one implies that you must be authorized to remove libel - that's Bad Bad Bad Bad. I realize that this badness isn't the poller's intention; it's only what will actually happen. We shouldn't stop IPs from fixing things. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How do you propose we stop IPs from breaking things? IPs are more likely to add violations than remove them. Cool Hand Luke 20:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The same way we do it now, which mostly works (ANI/AIV reports are not a representative sample of all IP edits). My experience is that most IP edits are generally trival (neither especially good nor especially bad), with an admittedly visible volume of test edits. My further experience is that most bad IP edits are either spam/SEO crud or experienced users attempting to avoid scrutiny. Restricting casual editing of BLPs because of a (very visible) minority of edits is the wrong way to do things. I do think there are addressable deficiencies in our monitoring BLP-sensitive articles; I just don't think these proposals are the way to go. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:55, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
From my experience, with the exception of highly visible pages (Governors, cabinet members) where vandalism is reverted quickly, IP editors are actually more constructive than destructive, hence (of course) the idea that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't thought of that, but flagged revisions would mean that if an IP saw BLP-violating information, then a 'reviewer' made a bad 'sight' (which is bound to happen I suppose). --Pixelface (talk) 05:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right - there would be mistakes, oversights, approvals made too speedily, etc. I myself have accidentally rollbacked an article to a heavily vandalized version because I didn't notice another editor squeezing in a rollback before me. There would also be the problem that today's puppetmaster with carefully autoconfirmed accounts can be tomorrow's puppetmaster with carefully aged accounts and approval to make revisions sighted - if someone wants to get this, they'll get it, however slowly. — Gavia immer (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And Pixelface's edit touches on another issue I mentioned: creating a small (relative to the total teeming millions of the planet, almost all of whom have the theoretical capability to edit) pool of editors with the power to review and approve changes to the most legally problematic group of articles increases the risk of the Foundation, and perhaps even an editor who regularly reviews a particular article and allows changes through, being held liable in a defamation suit as it would be harder to claim Wikipedia isn't "edited" in the legally relevant sense. Daniel Case (talk) 21:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Legal issues for the foundation should be judged by the foundation's lawyer, I think. No point in speculating about them here. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Since they are often cited as a reason for increased BLP protection (and justly so), I do indeed think they are a valid part of this discussion. And just because I'm not a lawyer doesn't mean I can't say what I think (and in any event, I don't what expertise Mike has in defamation law). Daniel Case (talk) 02:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Gavia has said it really well. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Gavia's concerns. This is a problem I hadn't considered, and I originally came here with the intention of endorsing semi-protection, but this argument has changed my mind. JulesH (talk) 10:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A BLP that meets WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:OR is not defamatory; a BLP which is defamatory doesn't meet one of WP:V, WP:NPOV, or WP:OR. Trying to use semi-protection or flagged revisions to fix policy violations is absurd on its face, because neither of them address the issue at hand. The only solution is to require strict adherence to policy—just as WP:BLP already does. Ozob (talk) 22:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(i) Protecting >500,000 articles would make "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" essentially incorrect. (ii) "Flagged revisions" does not scale to wikis that see more than a few thousand edits per day; the German Wikipedia has already proven this, so there is no reason this projects needs to -- Gurch (talk) 22:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On dewiki, an average of 18.000 revisions get flagged per day, and the system scales with that quite nicely (unless, of course, you have unrealistic expectations, like that every flag must be set within a day or two). --Latebird (talk) 01:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Gavia said it better than I can. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 23:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Damn right. Wikipedia should be as open and free as possible - if American libel laws require that we change that, we should move the servers to a different country. --Explodicle (T/C) 23:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. I have seen no compelling evidence that some sort of drastic changes regarding BLPs are needed, and the harm done by the proposed changes looks much more significant than whatever problems do exist. Nsk92 (talk) 23:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the sense that I don't think we're taking full advantage of the tools we already have available. My experience having watchlisted Anna Wintour after improving it to A-class has shown me that a vigilant regular editor is all that is needed for one high-profile BLP (and there are periodic attacks on that one from both PETA types and angry fashionistas); see the article's edit history. I was going to support flagged revisions until I read the opposes; they have concerns there that lead me to believe it could actually make problems worse by preventing anons from making good edits. I also think either measure may actually increase our legal exposure since it will be harder to claim that we aren't a common carrier.
There are some ways we could improve this; I'll put them in the above section later. Daniel Case (talk) 23:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Daniel, what happens when the super-vigilant editor goes on vacation for a few days? It's not realistic, IMO, to expect every good editor to keep vigil over even one BLP every day for months or even years, and the number of BLPs greatly exceeds the number of active, full-time editors. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I occasionally do? I'm not against long-term flagged revisions or semi-protection for articles, BLP or otherwise that have shown a definite need for it. But not every BLP does, and frankly a fair amount of other editors doing RCP have caught other vandalistic edits even on days I've been online.
In the case of a vigilant editor going on vacation, if an admin, he or she could easily just unilaterally semi-protect it for a few days or request it put on flagging for that time period. That's what I said ... we're not using our existing tools well enough. Daniel Case (talk) 18:23, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep it open. Malinaccier (talk) 01:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Leave everything as is for now Until we've established a control group and tested things thoroughly.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:30, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Where you've signed your name and what you've said are very inconsistent. If you're open to the idea of flagged revisions once details have been worked out and so forth, why are you signing with the "Abandon the idea of trying to do better with BLPs" crowd? WilyD 15:30, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I support testing the flagged revisions feature with a small subset of articles, but I think BLP is not the right subset because 1) it is too large; 2) it would add to the hoopla about BLP with which I don't agree. --Itub (talk) 16:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per Ozob. I feel personally we make too big of a deal about BLP's as it is. What are we so afraid of? That guy who was wrongly called a supporter of the assassination of Kennedy... he tried his best to defame us with no success whatsoever. The law is clearly on our side. Come on, Wikipedia! Be strong and courageous. Don't be so daggum scared of anonymous edits! We already do too much to stop people from joining the encyclopedia by not letting them start articles. Like many of you long-termers, I started my Pedia career filling in a redlink. Would you be a Wikipedian now if that redlink hadn't enticed you to start writing? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Working fine as is. Hipocrite (talk) 16:37, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Leave BLP guidelines as they are. Vandalism we can deal with - easily if judged by the pack of editors chasing real and perceived vandalism. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:27, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Gavia as well. Both options seem counterintuitive to one of the core policies of Wikipedia, ("the encyclopedia anyone can edit"). That was one of the groundbreaking principles of the site; the idea that everyone in the world can contribute knowledge. Of course in the past we have set up rules for how this is to be done, but keeping more than 500,000 articles "untouchable" from the world (with the exception of the relatively few admins and trusted users who would be able to verify a flagged edit in the case of FR or who would be able to edit it in the case of semi-protection) seems to be backtracking on what made the site so famous. Killiondude (talk) 00:01, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. –Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 03:57, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The status quo may well be problematic, but I don't believe the case has been made either that any significant action, as opposed to tweaking, is urgently needed or that the two proposals here, semi-protection and flagged revisions, would make a huge difference. The former would essentially throw one of WP's core principles—that anyone can edit—out the window for a vast number of articles, as well as running afoul of one of the most meaningful (imho) WP guidelines, AGF. The latter is an interesting idea which eventually may be necessary, but I don't think the case has been made that it would do the trick if applied only to BLPs. Rivertorch (talk) 07:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the cure is worse than the disease... CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In a word: Why? I'm not really defending the status quo, per se, but I'd before I could really get behind any major changes driven by WP:BLP, I'd want to see some hard data that suggests we really need to do so. We've got lots of essay-style opinions, but that's all subjective. I know lots of vandalism occurs, but this discussion is focused on vandalism to BLP articles. I don't take it as given that BLP articles warrant special vandalism protections. I'm aware that BLP articles have special requirements, but I don't see that as automatically translating into special vandalism protections. I know libelous/slanderous edits to BLP articles occur, but I haven't seen any decree from WMF legal counsel that existing countermeasures are failing. Maybe I just missed a memo; if so, could somebody point me at it? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
=Nichalp «Talk»= 13:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC) Keeping out anon editors would hurt projects such as WP:IN where a significant number of contributions to Indian people are made by anons. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Something needs to be done. Timmccloud (talk) 17:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Polls are evil

Keeping in mind that this isn't a poll, it's a survey to see which ideas are most popular, and worth looking more at later, and keeping in mind there isn't a more practical way to get a wide cross-section of users to simply sound off

Dogmatically: "All polls are evil", but some are more evil than others. This is among the least evil ever :) ++Lar: t/c 21:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What makes this poll ~~especially~~ evil? We've discussed this matter for over a year, and a poll seems like a good way of assessing community support of moving forward with implementation of one of these proposals. How should we decide? More inconclusive threads at the Village Pump? A fiat from Jimbo? If there's a better way please suggest it. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's traditional to have "All polls are evil".... somebody had to vote for it. :) (Note I've voted in several of the other categories too) Personally I think (as I said before) it's about as unevil of a poll as you can get. Because, maybe this time it would be the start of actually implementing some very needed changes. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC) (PS I don't actually think all polls are evil, myself)[reply]
All polls are [evil], but some polls are more [evil] than others. This one is just fine. :) - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why no to have an open discussion without the dreadful oppose/support? The result of these so called "polls" is that they die sooner or later and nothing happens. Why? Because they polarize views rather than build consensus. Show me a poll that ever worked. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1, 2, and probably a lot more. Big site-wide stuff needs a big site-wide review and you can't get hundreds of people in a discussion realistically without senior/power users unfairly dominating it. Besides, Jimmy already said he will act on the outcome of this. rootology (C)(T) 18:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The examples you give are actually votes, not polls. The section below is what was needed in the first place. Then, maybe later, when we have had the chance to discuss and explore, a poll could be constructed and announced to gauge consensus. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And as I wrote when I made this page, this is explicitly not a poll but a survey. Apples and oranges; lets kill internal systemic bias of frequently posting power users dominating any discussion that will affect the whole site, which is a better idea. All opinions are of value here but no one user is more more valuable in their opinion than another. Thats the neat thing about this format. rootology (C)(T) 19:08, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Self-serving comments aside, an open discussion rather than a support/oppose format is a much better way to build consensus. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is no way to fairly accurately gauge consensus for something of this scale on some tucked away 2004-style discussion for a realistic discussion, without given unearned and undeserved weight to the wikipolitical crowd that loiter on those pages. As this affects everyone, rather than just any of the various "in-crowds", this is how it has to reasonably be. Traditional, potentially outdated discussion formats have never scaled for site-wide matters in all the years I've been following this website. I would argue that this method (same as RFA, same as RFAR elections, same as Board elections) breaks the power that any group or lone people try to claim for themselves. No one user(s) are entitled to any undue weight on a matter of this magnitude. This is an even more important change, for that matter, if it happens than any silly RFA, AC election, or even board election. Self-appointing regulars, to be blunt, have no right to more say in a matter like this than those that don't religiousy, regularly, or too frequently haunt the Wikipedia discussion space. rootology (C)(T) 21:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for this should be explicit, so I'll note it: We've been having open discussion for a long time, and have very little idea how people actually feel about these things. This actually is illuminating - it suggests if a concrete proposal for a flagged revision system for BLPs was developed, a consensus could probably be developed to implement it, and then once we saw how it was running, we might revisit the issue of whether it was the right choice, whether we want to extend or retract the system or whatever. We could've continued the open discussion until it had been running for a hubble time and not figured out what to do or what people felt and thought. WilyD 07:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Polls aren't evil, pollsters are evil., this is a good way of determining how the AN reading and otherwise "hooked in" wikipolity feels about the BLP problems.--Tznkai (talk) 21:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support (lol) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The community is good at a lot of things but having polls is evidently not one of them per prior experiences. This should be a threaded discussion and should be advertised on watchlistes. EconomicsGuy (talk) 09:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The community does fine at polls; the niche crowd that assumes they're in charge of Wikipedia because they loiter more on some pages dislikes it because polls enable anyone who posts to even standing if they say something that makes sense, even non Wikipedia space regulars, as detailed to Jossi by me in painful detail above. In any event, this is already a threaded discussion page. Old-school consensus chat does not and will not ever scale for major site-wide things like this, and will less and less each year. It's not 2004 anymore. But the Watchlist thing is a good idea, and I'll suggest it on WP:AN! rootology (C)(T) 16:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This poll isn't so much evil as premature. We haven't even garnered consensus for a flagged revs trial yet, let alone implemented such a trial, let alone seen it successful, let alone found consensus for rolling it out. Not so much premature then, as still in the first trimester. --Dweller (talk) 13:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you misunderstand what we're doing here. We're trying to glean whether there's likely to be a consensus for a trial or implementation. If garnering a consensus is the first trimester, we're scheduling an appointment with a fertility doctor. WilyD 13:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I remember the idea of flagged revisions appearing some good long time ago; I didn't pay much attention to it, so I haven't a clue what the decision was. Thus I'll just toss in my opinion, rather than "voting" :-) I think the idea of flagged revisions for BLPs sounds like a good idea: permanent semiprotection for BLPs sounds like somewhat of a good idea, but the flagged revisions seems like it would be less restrictive while still reducing vandalism to BLPs significantly. Nyttend (talk) 04:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All of the above polling is aimed at too large a scope. Until we get a control group of articles which have Flagged Revisions enabled, and the community at large can see how they work, we're not going to get very far.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you've misread what we've been talking about here. We're trying to get a general feel for people's thoughts on the issue. Unless there is a decent consensus that flagged revisions may be a good idea for BLPs, no tests are going to happen. Same for semi-protection. What you're indicating your opinion is is "No tests, ever". If this isn't what you mean, you should review where you've put your name. WilyD 15:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that this discussion receiving a resounding consensus either way won't be used as an informal precedent for future discussion, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. If you read Averanth's comment below, her (just switching gender specific pronouns, last one was he) complaints about the poll are very relevant. It is too broad. It does conflate "flagged revisions" with "anon-vandalism". It does introduce an absurdly large and heterogeneous test group. It isn't fair to say "this is just a poll to see how people feel, don't tell us how you feel". Protonk (talk) 19:49, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree. See Winston Churchill about democracy. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:31, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. But, apparently, I am evil too. Go figure. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:01, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree This page is a mess, with a myriad non-trivial options presented in a non-intuitive way. CapnZapp (talk) 19:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Polls don't help. I won't call them "evil" since that's a loaded word, and not everyone gets the irony. But polls don't help. This particular ~~poll~~ survey tries to start out by saying it's not binding, which is well-intentioned, but people will point to it in the future and say "[[Wikipedia:Protecting BLP articles feeler survey]] clearly showed that ..." (followed by whatever argument you like). Now we'll also have endless discussions over whether this poll should be ignored/considered/whatever. Plus, the support/oppose format encourages false dichotomies, acts as a barrier to discussion between disagreeing parties, and generally impedes consensus. Sigh. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 00:49, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

General discussion

Comment Just to break the monotony of the structure of this poll/survey/whatever that do not allow discussion or the arguments/counter arguments cycle. As you may be aware, there is a proposed trial of flagged revs on featured articles. The class of BLPs is too huge for a trial and it would certainly be impossible to handle without a first experience and a phase of analysis and resolution of problems. So indeed, sighted revs on all articles, and especially blps, is to be considered and planned, but before we need a trial and a substantive reflexion on flagged revisions. The primary problem with flagged revs on the English Wikipedia is that due to its size and the very high number of editors, backlogs will become excessively large and so edits, good ones, won't be flagged for extensive periods. Allowing someone to edit and then not displaying the revision in a timely manner on a huge number of articles is actually worse than not allowing to edit on a limited number of articles. Very likely, it will discourage IPs and new users from editing Wikipedia, and prevent addition of good material. Now, there is a solution: automatically flagging revisions after a certain period of time, for example 18 hours, with a possibility to adjust the delay depending on the backlog, deactivate it on certain pages, for example on blps that have proved problematic, make the delay longer for blps, create a special page listing only blps, allowing the abuse filter to prevent automatic sighting for certain edits that are very likely to be vandalism, etc. We could also create a higher level of flagged revisions (like semi protection and full protection), with a smaller usergroup able to flag with this level on articles where it is enabled, for articles with serious problems. A comment on newly created blps too: those can't be handled by sighted revs before being sighted for the first time, if ever. So we still need to filter at Special:Newpages. When a blp is identified as such, for example through categories, that can be detected by the software, and has been sighted, it can then be monitored by flagged revisions in a specific manner. Cenarium (Talk) 23:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For the purposes of a test, it could always be done first just on one letter--flag all the "T" BLPs, or the "As", for a week or a month, to see how it goes. rootology (C)(T) 00:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. The most damaging sort of edits are the ones that survive RC patrol, so I don't think any kind of automatic flagging is a good idea. I'm unclear why everyone claims that backlogs will be huge (an untested assumption, honestly). Isn't flagging a user right that can be distributed like rollback? Cool Hand Luke 00:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

German Wikipedian backlogs are huge, I've heard. As of a few months ago, I believe they were at a 100,000 articles that still needed to be checked^{[citation needed]} though. I like the system put forth here though. If the most recent version is showed, but with an icon noting that it hasn't been checked yet, that might be far more useful. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page seems to say that 98.91% of all sighted articles are on currently reviewed. It appears that some articles have never been sighted, but for over 775,000 articles they are more-or-less up-to-date. Cool Hand Luke 01:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The first sighting of each article takes special care, as it explains here. This page shows that all of the articles are getting sighted. Once sighted, they go on a worklist, and they appear to be kept up-to-date. The column on the far right shows articles previously sighted that are not up to date. Note that this isn't increasing, even as all the pages are getting sighted; it never goes above 8000 or so. Anyhow, the German experience shows diminishing backlogs, not increasing ones. Cool Hand Luke 02:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even so, 8000 old-reviewed articles, with unreviewed edits, most of them being days-old and some weeks-old, preventing revisions from going live, is far from negligible. The English Wikipedia has a much quicker editing rate, especially from IPs, and not a lot of 'regulars' in comparison, so it's likely the backlog will grow much higher. The usergroup can be distributed, but it's also a reason we need, not only a trial, but a progressive implementation: at the beginning, we'll only have rollbackers and admins to flag edits, largely insufficient for all blps. If you are referring to sort of edits that led to the Seigenthaler incident, then having an 'expiration' (automatic flagging) system or not won't change anything: new unreviewed articles will be listed at Special: Newpages when filtering out reviewed pages. While blps are more sensitive and require more oversight, most articles don't, so if we intend to use flagged revisions on all articles, an expiration system is a necessity. For blps, it may be delayed longer, or deactivated if necessary. Expired revisions would also be dealt with differently than usual sighted versions:with distinguishable signs, a specific special page to list them, etc. We could also make a special page specific to blps. And Huggle could have an option to sight a revision when the previous one is sighted, but it would still be insufficient for all blps. Cenarium (Talk) 03:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are 400,000 BLPs, perhaps (probably less). German Wikipedia is already successfully sighting 775,000 articles with less users than we have. I don't think there's a bottleneck here; it's at least worth a trial run. Cool Hand Luke 03:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

However, you are missing the fact that articles on en are edited much more often. We can't only consider numbers anyway, we need to implement to see how it will turn out, and prudence demands a progressive implementation, otherwise we will be flooded, and a trial before that. I have already worked intensively on flagged revisions and I am not opposed to it, but try to find ways to adapt it to Wikipedia, in a pragmatic manner and respecting our wiki nature. Cenarium (Talk) 04:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We can also just try for one letter to see how it goes. A went smooth? Lets add B? Still good? C and D, etc. rootology (C)(T) 03:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the implementation needs to be progressive to give the time to grant reviewer rights and adapt, the alphabetical order looks acceptable, with the occasional exception. Cenarium (Talk) 04:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Implementation would be inherently progressive as articles wouldn't be flagged to begin with. That is, for articles where there is no flagged revision yet, the most recent one would be shown, and edits would take effect immediately. As BLPs would begin to be flagged, those BLPs that are would show the most recent flagged version first. That's how the German Wikipedia managed to scale the system.

In addition, depending on the mechanism being used to implement BLP protection, it could be applied incrementally. FlaggedRevs already supports per-page configuration of the default viewing level. Essentially the "show most recent flagged version first" setting can be seen as an alternative to semi-protection, and can be used as such on a per-page basis.

I'm writing some notes on the German experience at m:FlaggedRevs Report December 2008.--Eloquence * 04:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent; I look forward to your thoughts. Yes, I like the German system of incrementally reviewing new articles into flagged revisions. Cool Hand Luke 05:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is interesting, thanks. Some useful and significant data has been gathered, but it seems still too soon to see the impact on user contributions. I do not believe that 10000 articles is a reasonable number though.

Indeed the implementation would be progressive in that sense. At the very beginning of the implementation, admins should be allowed to enable flagged revs on blps, essentially to be used on high-visibility or problematic ones. Then in a second step, we could enable Flaggedrevs by default, either massively or incrementally. The advantage of an incremental implementation, for example following the alphabetical order, is that, since most blps are likely to be sighted randomly, it'll relatively keep things 'under control', avoid dispersion, and focus the attention of users for feedback purposes (in anticipation to an extension to all articles, in particular). Of course, a trial prior to the implementation would provide sample analysis.

The backlog is the primary problem, especially in the event of an extension to all articles. I believe that a system of expired revisions could precisely resolve it: if the backlog is huge, we reduce the delay to expiration (for non-blps), if it becomes less important, we can augment the delay. Expired revisions can still be flagged like any other, the only effect is that it becomes the stable version (the version showed to IPs). Cenarium (Talk) 05:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, revisions should not be sighted randomly. In the German Wikipedia, articles are not sighted at all until someone flags them for the first time (after an extra-thorough review). By this method, 775,000 articles have been flagged. That's how we should tackle BLP flagging. I strongly oppose any expiration for flagged revisions. On the German Wikipedia, 98%+ of flagged articles are up-to-date. Cool Hand Luke 06:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Revisions will be sighted randomly. Articles are seen by a user randomly, either through recent changes, viewing of an article, etc, and then the user decides to flag a revision of not. This is completely random, with a tendency for most viewed and most edited pages. You'd have to create a process to organize the flagging of blps and it won't be up and working in the beginning, and the random factor will still be there. Of course an article is not sighted until someone does (or automatically from the beginning if the creator is a reviewer), this is always true, it's the way flaggedrevs work, not only on de. Your numbers are not meaningful at all, we can't compare the situation with de, due to our size, our ratio regulars/all editors that is much weaker, etc. Have you considered the opposition to flagged revisions above ? Wouldn't you prefer flagged revs with expiration for non-blps rather than nothing ? You'll never get a consensus for flaggedrevs on all articles without an expiration for non-blps and for other content pages (templates, images, etc). Cenarium (Talk) 13:29, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely not. Expiration is worse than the status quo because it has the ability to lock in edits that no one has ever examined. See also Davewild's comment below. We would cope with backlogs by not biting off more than we can chew, and the BLP articles are a good place to start. Cool Hand Luke 19:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all. It won't lock edits: the time between an edit and the next one won't increase. Cenarium (Talk) 12:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with any automatic flagging of revisions. I think automatic flagging brings the worst of both the current situation and flagged revisions. Not only does the person who makes the edit have to wait for a period of time for his edit to be flagged but we do not have the benefit of flagging - the stopping of vandalism/libel from entering the flagged article. Imagine the situation where news organisations pick up on articles where vandalism/libel has been flagged automatically as good edits. If we cannot cope with the amount of edits to flagged articles then we should scale down the number of articles to be flagged, equally if we are coping well then we can scale up the number of articles flagged. I believe we will be able to cope with flagged revisions on BLPs but I see no benefit to introducing flagged revisions that are automatically flagged on other articles. Davewild (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a form of automatic flagging in the strict sense at all, and I would disagree with that too. Expiring is meant in the sense that it'll redirect IPs to the "draft" page instead of the "stable" page. Edits are not locked, the page can be edited and edits are added as normal, the delay between edits is not increased, revisions can still be flagged, IPs can access the stable page by one click. Think about all the vandalism that could be reverted before being viewed if edits were delayed by only one hour ... almost all of it. We could keep the delay quite short for all articles, a few hours at most, and allowing to augment it (up to indefinite) on the members of a specific category, and on specific pages as needed. Edits will still have to be flagged, but it will avoid the negative consequences of backlogs. Cenarium (Talk) 12:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we should be giving special technical (e.g., restricting editing through the software) treatment to BLPs. While we can reduce edits to these pages (by implementing semi-protection) or monitor additions more carefully (and we really should be doing that better), I think removing unsourced statements that currently sit in BLPs for months or years is perhaps more important than anything else. So I'm spamming Wikipedia:Database reports/Biographies of living persons containing unsourced statements. That list contains 500 out of about 17,000 similar pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Flagged revisions: who will flag? --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd guess it would be hashed out after the decision to flag or not to flag is hashed out. Other projects have extra groups like we do with Rollbackers. I think this is the Wikinews one. I'd point out the German one but I can't read German. I'd guess it would be as easy as giving out Rollbacker here, for trusted users. rootology (C)(T) 23:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to know this before forming an opinion on flagged revisions. If there are not enough flaggers it would make Wikipedia stagnate. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a binding poll. Look at the top; it's meant to get some ideas for how to proceed. Instead, suggest in your replies how flagging should be distributed; indicate that you would find it unacceptable without those conditions. On German Wikipedia, everyone with 300 edits and several months experience automatically sights revisions with their edits, and the ability to sight edits can be granted by permission like rollback. I think those rules are reasonable. Cool Hand Luke 00:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A three month exploration is a good idea. We should be able to assess if it works or if does not work, and undo the implementation if the latter. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:56, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some comments from Scott (Doc)

A few comments. Sorry, I come to this late, so most of these will have been made already. I'm not a fan of polling, since people tend to jump in dependent on prejudices and preconceptions. It might be better to create a list of pros and cons, that people might weigh up - then indeed some people might change there mind either way.

I am of the opinion that semi-protecting BLPs will have only limited utility. If you review my longer essay at User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem, you will note that my opinion is that passing vandalism and IPs adding in defamations is not the real problem. Most of this crap gets quickly reverted, and of that which does not a high proportion is obvious crap that's embarrassing for wikipedia rather than damaging to the subject. The biggest problem we have is that of the motivated biased user with an axe to grind, inserting libels or bias that looks OK to an uninformed reviewer, and may even be apparently sourced. These people will log in and wait. I'd support semi-protection as it might help a bit with some of the lesser problems - but I'm not that enthusiastic about semi-protecting all BLPs.

Further, the BLP problem exists not so much on high profile articles, where there are sufficient informed eyes to recognised biased or hatchet-job edits and revert. Even a sophisticated libel, with apparently good sourcing, will be investigated on George Bush, Sarah Palin, Michael Jackson. The problem emerges with less obvious libels on low notability BLPs - because no one care enough or knows enough to spot them if they are not obvious vandalism. So, if we were going to semi-protect BLPs as a class, I'd suggest:

Any admin may permanently semi-protect any BLP where there have been BLP violations inserted that have remained uncorrected for over 48 hours, or where there been a justifiable complaint to OTRS. Such semi-protection must only be undone if there is a consensus on RfPP.

As for flagged revisions, I'm again unconvinced that this will solve the problem. Will the person flagging really check all the sources and discover the hatchet job that looks OK on first reading? However, I do think this is worth trying, simply because it might help, and it might be a better check on the patient POV pusher. Again, if we don't want to go the whole way, we could start with problematic BLPs.

Any admin may switch flagged revisions on for any article (not just BLPs!) where there have been harmful BLP violations that have not been immediately reverted, or where there been a justifiable complaint to OTRS. Such flagging should only be undone if there is a consensus to do so.

Anyway, that's my initial thoughts.--Scott Mac (Doc) 01:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, would it be worth adding something to this essay as a first up? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think those could work. Orderinchaos 23:13, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like these ideas. لenna vecia 03:45, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, how about carrots instead of sticks?

A contest like ---> ta-daaaa this one. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. This is a great idea which I hope gets lots of participation, but I don't think vandals like carrots :-( --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 16:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question of referencing when it comes to flagging

I don't know a ton about the German wikipedia, but I've looked at a few of their featured articles. They're referenced quite a bit less than our Good Articles. If we flagged articles as acceptable, we'd either have to remove all information from 75% of them (basically delete them), or lower our standards per our guidelines and policies. Right now we just say there is no deadline, and add refs as fast as we can. If we check them when we flag them, that sounds like we'd have to get them up to GA levels right then, or remove all the info. I'm sure this isn't right, but how am I wrong. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Flagging has nothing to do with notability or referencing standards per se; it's about keeping "bad" edits from being instantly visible to the world. At least that's my take, unless I'm not understanding your point. This wouldn't change any of our basic content standards or policies. rootology (C)(T) 05:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Several options have been given. What is the problem with implementing them all? Assign each option for articles beginning with a series of letters and then see which one works the best and allow to comparisons for critism. I would favour semi protection but that only reduces vandalism. Much of the abuse of bio's I've noticed is from registered users who do not want to hear anything negative about their "hero" and delete relevant content rather than allow debate to, either delete or reach a form that is a not a BLP violation. Wayne (talk) 07:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any revision must be sighted unless it contains vandalism, libel and copyright violations. Ruslik (talk) 07:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) I'm simply a new user, but I support some level of protection for BLP. Only ~~resisted~~ registered users appears reasonable. I understand the principle of wiki being open to all, but it's not like it costs anything to register or is difficult to do. In lieu of controversial figures having their ... our ... you know what I mean, .. rather than have an article saying wrong/bad/inaccurate things, a level of protection wouldn't hurt. As far as the tags issues go, I'm not up to speed on that - I assume that's so you can easily find a good copy in history to pull out in case someone DOES deface and article. Makes sense to me. just all IMHO Ched (talk) 07:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC) oops Ched (talk) 15:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be clearer, hear's an example. An editor (IP or not) add that a person was born in 1950. They do this without a reference. If this is before the first flagging, does someone have to google them and check that they were born in 1950, then add that ref if they were? What if they do it after the flagging? What if the unreferenced information says they're a catholic? If they say they're a criminal, then it's removed. What kind of info stays? What kind of info goes automatically? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where this survey goes wrong: too much, too fast

This survey is actually conflating two different issues: 1) ongoing vandalism of Biographies of Living Persons (BLP), and 2) implementation of Flagged Revisions (FR) on the English Wikipedia. The reason for this conflation is that some people see FR as a solution to the BLP issues. However, this has not been shown to be true as yet, nor has it even been determined how we would make FR work for any articles here. It has been pointed out that Flagged Revisions is working well on the German Wikipedia (although it is not clear to what degree), but it has not yet been shown to what degree it will work here, where we have 3 times as many articles. It has been proposed above that we implement FR on some random subset of BLPs, for example, all BLPs beginning with A, and see how it works. I would argue that this is still far too large for an initial trial. There are currently 1,091,885 BLPs, which would mean that even picking one letter would be far too large a trial sample. I would argue that we should be using our Featured Articles to test Flagged Revisions, as they are, almost by definition, the most-watched pages. If not, then pick the pages with the highest pageview rates (maybe the top 500-1000), and implement a 1-6 month trial there. This will give us a chance to work the kinks out and figure out an efficient model before we start blundering about on a larger scale.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 08:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A much more representative sample could be found by clicking "Random article" ten thousand times. You don't want to implement FRs for all high traffic articles, because then you have no control group to compare the high traffic FR articles to. The same goes for BLPs or FAs. If people insist on testing FRs (a horrible, horrible idea), then it should be done to a randomly selected subset of pages. When the test is over (at which time FRs would be turned OFF until consensus is reached one way or the other), we can compare vandalism statistics between FR articles and similar non-FR articles. That would tell us where, if anywhere, FRs would be useful: High traffic, low traffic, BLPs, FAs, etc.

Myself, I think FRs are a good solution to a problem we mostly don't have. I would tolerate FRs for FAs, because FAs are stable and complete articles. But everywhere else—that is, for almost every article on Wikipedia—they're inappropriate. (And semi-protection is worse.) Ozob (talk) 05:54, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do not agree that you want to focus on FA's. Some of the long-term problems of BS being inserted into BLPs occurs in the edges. I kinda think FRs might be a good idea but I wouldn't support any such effort without a test, and I do think that maybe "All the A's" might be too large a test, but I doubt "All the J's" would be." (Substitute Q, X or Z for flavor.) Whatever's easy. --Joe Decker (talk) 21:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts

This is complex issue and I admit I'm perplexed by some of the options. The semiprotect option for BLPs is easy to understand in terms of pro and con. I'd say it's analogous to a waiting period on buying a gun except you will automatically be approved if you register and wait the four days. Thus it still allows "anyone" to edit, just not everywhere on WP or immediately. The huge number of articles involved, however, makes this an unwieldy solution.

The system-level flagging option would on the surface seem a reasonable protection to what the public sees. I may be missing something but this option looks to involve a massive amount of additional work for each article so flagged: passing/approving revisions, discussions on content for quality level, etc. Additionally, I believe this actually decreases the possibility that a new random/anon editor's edit (even a good one) will pass into an "approved" version. In other words, it's a layer that in effect severely limits casual input to the 'pedia. If an editor can't see their edit applied publicly after it is saved, this eliminates the immediate positive reinforcement of the editing process. Thus WP becomes the encyclopedia anyone can edit but only those who actively participate (on talk pages or discussions) can be assured that their edits are considered important. This happens gradually on some level anyway as new edits add info or parts are re-written or deleted. This is process of WP.

I agree that some form of protection is needed for BLP articles. Liability issues and plain misinformation continue to be problems. Yet I'm wary of both of these solutions. Pigman☿ 17:23, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good thoughts, a couple of responses, firstly on semi protection, don't forget that as well as waiting for 4 days the person must also make 10 edits elsewhere as well. Personally I can't see many new editors (or casual editors) being prepared to do that if a BLP (or BLPs) is the area they are interested in.

Secondly on flagged revisions I think the most popular version we are talking about here for BLPs involves a light check, basically so long as no vandalism or libel (including no unsourced negative statements) are being introduced by the edit then the edit should be flagged. This keeps the check light and easy, any other edits that people don't think should be there can be dealt with by them editing the article as they normally would. Davewild (talk) 18:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even a so-called "light check" involves a lot of very specific attention on a consistent and ongoing basis. I assume a list of articles needing the "light check" would be generated, yes? So that people can keep up on them and backlogs? I've read the specs for the flag but, again, I admit some of the details of practical implementation aren't obvious to me. Perhaps this flag is just the sort of housekeeping chore that WP needs to accomplish protection of BLPs but I can't avoid the feeling that the workload on it will be overwhelming and large. This is just my impression and I may not be up to speed on the facts. Note I have not offered an opinion/!vote in any of the sections above because of this. I'm just cautious but I'm certainly willing to go along with consensus on the matter. Pigman☿ 19:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think such a list would be essential yes. I agree this will mean an increase in workload and can understand why people feel that either we will not be able to cope with it or it is not worth the effort. Personally I think the problem is worth the effort and that the effort would be manageable particularly just on BLPs but that it is just my opinion. Davewild (talk) 19:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Two thoughts: "Anyone can edit" is not an absolute; and BLP is over our heads

"The encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is a very powerful and good idea, but none of us believes it is absolute: the only lasting contributions are those that are already published and that are expressed neutrally, on the other hand our images should be original (or are constrained tightly by what is "fair"). Our policies and processes constrain the nature of contributions in many ways, or we would not have achieved high standards of reliability that we have. Our invitation is genuine and genuine contributors understand its unspoken limitations. "Anyone can edit" is not an absolute promise, original research and editorialising are not welcome.

Living people have human rights protected by law. Wikipedia does not exist to allow anyone to publish anything they want regarding other living people. Theoretically, this is covered by the ordinary constraints on editing. However the important thing is that many societies have laws that do not permit any publisher to escape liability for harm done to others through publication. We have a responsibility to uphold these laws and the basic human rights they protect. Jimbo's comment above is consistent with a sensitivity to such responsibility. We have choices about how we work together to guarantee the civility of what we publish regarding living people, but we do not have a choice about taking that responsibility seriously.

I for one am keen to hear whatever those who have been working on our behalf to guarantee we are unimpeachably responsible have to say about making their lives easier. When it comes to BLP, surely Wikipedians want to sign up to the worldwide consensus regarding civil publication concerning fellow human beings. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well said Alastair and I agree with you 100%. Your second paragraph is precisely what is at issue here--Cailil ^talk 19:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We don't need to pay any more attention to British or anyone else's expansive notions of libel anymore than we need to pay attention to the consensus in Islamic countries not to have picture of Mohammed. False information is a problem. We aren't going to take out well-sourced content based on countries laws which are not part of any "worldwide consensus" no matter how much they are claimed to be. Moreover, this is all completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. We are discussing practical remedies to prevent harm or misleading information about BLPs not about making people feel better. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:55, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you Joshua. The laws of many countries go beyond what is rational, or even fair, in respect of many idiosyncratic sensitivities that should not be binding on Wikipedia. But they also share a conviction that they are not "above" responsibilities of human decency, but rather servants of it. And so do Wikipedians.

Of course, you don't believe your own explicit example regarding pictures of Mohammed, since these could hardly illustrate either the real man, nor provide accurate neutral presentation of the views of those who consider him to be a prophet. Wikipedia will never publish a picture of Mohammed.

But the response your post actually calls for is a response to the false distinction you make in the final sentence. This discussion has everything to do with making people feel better, as well as the relatively minor issues of how this is actually administrated.

We are not voting here, we are taking a step on the road to consensus—thinking alike so we can act in unison. It is the reasoning that is key. What common ground can we start with, and build on from there? I say our common ground is zero tolerance for uncivil text in BLP. No one is against that. So the remaining question is merely what we can all do to help administrate this. I say let's get behind those who actually do this work for us currently: let them decide what they need, and let us give them all the moral support they need in the process.

If that makes people feel good, I can't see how that's a problem. :) Alastair Haines (talk) 19:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mainly in agreement. My main point about Mohammed is not in the context of Mohammed being a living person(obviously not) but rather that having many countries prohibit something is not generally something Wikipedia should pay any attention to. In this case, they prohibit or strongly frown on pictures of the prophet. That's doesn't mean we should listen to them. In that same context, if there's some broad overarching notion of certain content being unacceptable in some countries we shouldn't use that as a reason to censor our text. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Although I do see where you're coming from Joshua I think we all need to consider this situation - if a wikipedian from outside the USA who adds material (or flags it) is potentially libel for it then they do need to be aware of their own country's libel laws. This is the whole problem of an international BLP law suit - we don't know how bad it could get. We don't know under which legal framework said non-american wikipedian would be libel (in my understanding probably both). Perhaps the lawyers have a better idea than I do but IMHO in such a situation we (each of us who are potentially libel) need to do no harm and maintain articles within a "no harm" structure. However, right now WP:HARM has no teeth and no standing in policy - we need to address this. And IMO flagging and/or semi-protecting BLPs is one way to do this.

Ultimately we're here to find a way to safe-guard the project and wikipedians from such situations. We probably wont all see eye to eye on a way forward but we need to begin the discussion--Cailil ^talk 23:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Legally, although I haven't checked, I think it is more likely that the Foundation would be held liable, rather than any particular editor. There are several reasons for that, but the important thing is, this gives us a reason to give support to protecting the Foundation from financial loss, rather than take freedom to potentially put it at financial risk. If you like, less editorial freedom regarding BLP is a "donation" to the Foundation that makes such editing possible in the first place. ;) Alastair Haines (talk) 03:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the OP in this section misses the point of "anyone can edit." I don't think anyone ever intended it to mean "anyone can add whatever the hell they want and expect it to remain for all eternity." It just means that anyone can click the edit button on 99% of pages and make a change, without having to jump through hoops like creating an account, making 10 edits on "lower risk" pages and/or waiting 4 days. We even say below the edit form "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it." Mr.Z-man 05:08, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLP is an attempt to document community consensus, and as such is a product of the community, and not at all "over our heads". Mandates from the WMF regarding page content are indeed over our heads. I note that such seem conspicuous in their absence, when it comes to WP:BLP-related matters. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on flagged Revisions for blps and Flagged revisions with expiration for all non-blp articles / content pages

This section is silly. This is basically just a "preliminary" discussion. Throwing in more options similar to existing options is just going to split people up even more, make consensus look even more fuzzy, and decrease the chance we get anything decided here. These are the kind of details that should be worked out if/when we decide we want flaggedrevs at all. AFAIK, "expiration" isn't even an option yet in flaggedrevs. Mr.Z-man 17:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hear you, and you're right. But people like to add options. Just support everything (with a lukewarm/secondchoice/meh sort of comment) that is a step in the right direction, and oppose everything that isn't. That's what I'm doing. My personal destination is:

All BLPs semiprotected, with flagged revisions, and their existance subject to opt out for marginally notable subjects, use of dead tree standard for judging who is not marginally notable, default to delete for no consensus XfDs. All other articles (and anything else in article space or embedded by it or reached from it, to include (but not necessarily limited to) templates, portals, lists, image descriptions, etc... ANYTHING that someone not concerned with the underpinnings of content production might see) using flagged revisions with no automated default to flagged for any of it.

ANYTHING that moves us in that direction from where we are now, gets at least my lukewarm support, so any proposal that flags BLPs in whatever form, any proposal that semiprotects BLPs in whatever form... gets something positive from me. All journeys begin with a single step. ++Lar: t/c 07:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I and others would oppose to flagged revisions without expiration on all articles because of backlogs, so this allows to make more specific choices. Cenarium (Talk) 12:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As already said, this section is silly by itself. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:23, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would flagged revisions make Wikipedia legally liable?

IANAL.

If I understand US libel law correctly, a living person who was defamed by a Wikipedia article would have a tough time suing the Wikimedia Foudation for defamation because it is not an "information content provider" under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Instead, WP editors are information content providers, and WP only republishes their content. My question is, if flagged revisions are turned on, would the Wikimedia Foundation become liable for defamatory statements that appeared in a flagged article? If an article is flagged, then someone with some capacity is supposed to have vetted it. Does that approval process make WP into an "information content provider"? Does it make the person who flags an article liable? The closest analogy I can think of is a moderated forum or mailing list; is the moderator liable if he allows a defamatory statement to be posted?

I hope the answer is no to all of these, but I don't have the expertise to even know where to look. Ozob (talk) 06:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed before in the context of flagged revisions for the German Wikipedia and the English Wikinews. The consensus seems to be that it does not make the Foundation more liable but it could conceivably make the flagger liable. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not, all the foundation does is enable the extension. The actual flagging will still be done by editors. Editors will still remain volunteers, and just as liable for a flagging as they are for an edit. Mr.Z-man 20:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than all of us playing armchair lawyer, shouldn't we let the WMF legal team handle legal matters? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My impression is that the Foundation legal counsel has no official view on this one way or the other, given that some projects (e.g. German Wikipedia) have enabled flagged revisions while others have not. Beyond that, anyone who wants can ask User:Mike Godwin if he would care to express any views or concerns. My own impression (I am a lawyer, though not an internet-law or defamation expert) is that there is relatively little caselaw exploring the parameters of Section 230, but as a matter of principle I thought a court would avoid penalizing a service provider such as the Foundation for taking a good-faith action intended to reduce the likelihood of defamatory content being posted, as a matter of public policy and avoiding the creation of perverse incentives. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are we just going to make vandals smarter?

It seems like this will make it so only vandals who have devoted a certain amount of time to the wiki will see results. Is that what we want? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:55, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, we want as little vandalism as possible, and those that have devoted time will be vandalizing anyway, so why not stop the majority of vandalism. Besides, there will be plenty of other pages for the schoolchildren to vandalize. --omnipotence407 (talk) 15:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from a LP whose B gets vandalized regularly

My entry is one that gets vandalized on a regular basis, both by kiddies who think it's cool to make dumb comments and by a dedicated group that follows me around the net and makes nasty, libelous comments about me whenever they're presented with the opportunity. Vandalism to my entry gets fixed within a day, and it's pretty obvious when it happens. I'm not too concerned about it. I think semiprotection would stop nearly all vandalism of my entry in its tracks, and think anonymous edits are, in general, more trouble than they're worth (especially since registering is trivial); I think flagged revisions are, overall, a good thing, but probably orthogonal to this debate; and I'm left wondering what triggered the sudden interest in the topic. Then again, I got run off of active editing by an admin who ignored the rules on BLP as they're written and was backed up when I cried foul, so what do I know? -- Jay Maynard (talk) 22:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crazy idea

I know this may be crazy, but if we limited news sources to being over a week old before being "reliable" for use on BLPs, it would cut down a lot on speculation and other problems, and give newspapers a chance for corrections or retractions. It would also slow down the fervor and speculation during "breaking" events. Sure, it might hurt in the news, but there might be possible exemptions for such a thing. Who knows. I'm just saying. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You know some wonk will then apply this nonsensically to say that we can't say Barack Obama "won" the election until November 11th, 2008, and we can't say that Eartha Kitt has passed away until January 2nd, 2009. rootology (C)(T) 05:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting idea, but it will have trouble gaining consensus. It would be cool if we had some system for tracking retractions, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All we need is "deathnotice" as a special exception for edits in that case. WP is not intended for "breaking news" so very few special exceptions would be necessary. Collect (talk) 14:15, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is an awful idea. (I thought this page was for the BLP feeler survey anyways but we seem to be rapidly turning it into a brainstorming about BLP issues ah well...). This doesn't help matters other than make people feel good but doesn't stop any of the serious genuine BLP problems such as vandalism or serious POV pushing. All this would do is make us not up to date. If there is any problematic content in reliable sources that's a problem with those sources not us. Moreover, if ones concern is not to do harm then once it is in such sources that will generally not exist as a problem (since harm will already have been done). JoshuaZ (talk) 15:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Up to date? Seeing as how 99.999% of articles are about the past, there is nothing to be "up to date" about. Most science texts and publications take years to be published. Why should Wikipedia hold itself to such lower standards and let BLP problems slip in because of it? When Patrick Swayze was revealed to have cancer, there was edit warring and all sorts of problems with sourcing. The same went for every single issue about Sarah Palin. Most BLP problems and edit warring is based on new sources that are probably not reliable because they haven't had time to be vetted by other sources. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:50, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are multiple problems with your statement. First, Wikipedia does very well with the vast majority of breaking news material of major notability. Indeed, there have been news articles just about that topic. The classic example which was discussed in the New York Times Magazine was the articles related to the Virginia Tech massacre. We do this very well. What you advocate is like a marathon runner who occasionally trips when he is walking deciding to only travel by wheelchair to avoid the trips. Second, your claim that "Most BLP problems and edit warring is based on new sources that are probably not reliable because they haven't had time to be vetted by other sources" is false. Issues with news sources are very rare as one can see if one keeps a look on the BLP noticeboard. The vast majority of BLP problems extend from either vandalism or POV pushing. Moreover, in at least one of the cases you gave, Palin, there were not any serious issues based on timeliness but rather based on not having enough of a long-term perspective to know how much weight to give things which is not at all as serious a BLP problem. Furthermore, if we are using do-no-harm as the judge of what we should put then then once they are in major sources there's not any harm by as treating them as reliable sources. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How is starting with "Jimbo supports it" an accurate way of judging consensus?

It shoud have been good explanations of what happened with the German wikipedia, and pros and cons in general. Guess we'll never know what an even-handed treatment would have produced. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, how may votes (and they are votes) are based purely on Jimbo's recommendation? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 07:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Impossible to tell, but I share your frustration. The "invocation" shouldn't be there. Protonk (talk) 08:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have now moved this section below. We ought to provide a neutral introduction when asking the community for comments. Cenarium (Talk) 15:17, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this even needed?

I wrote on this elsewhere on this page, but the more I read of this discussion, the more this is gnawing at me: Who says a special response for BLPs is even needed? I know Wikipedia articles can't contain material that's legally problematic (libel, slander, etc.). But why are we taking it as given that "something must be done" about BLP articles? We have many existing mechanisms in place to deal with article content issues. Are they failing to protect BLP articles somehow? Has the WMF legal counsel stated that BLP vandalism is becoming a serious threat to the continued operation of the project? Citation needed, please. :) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Is this even needed?" Yes.

I'm going to copy here some points that I made on the talkpage, which was a mistake on my part in terms of where to put them, because people don't seem to be reading the talkpage. (I'm adding a little bit more emphasis in a couple of places to what I already wrote.) Basically, the concerns driving this page are based upon some generally accepted facts and concerns, viz.:

Okay, I'm going to respond point-by-point in-line below. That's going to make the discussion a bit messy, but the size and structure of your contribution leave no alternative that I can see. The key point I wish to make is: I am asking for some evidence as to how existing mechanisms are failing for BLP pages. As far as I can tell, you never seem to address that. Thus, I discard most of what you wrote as irrelevant to that question. I don't do that to suggest your words are totally irrelevant, just irrelevant to the question at hand. (FWIW, I agree with lots of what you wrote; I just don't think it applies.) You do make some other points, and I've tried to respond to them, but I'm afraid they're lost in this sea of words. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is designed as "the encyclopedia that anybody can edit." There are people who think that this model cannot, by definition, produce a high-quality encyclopedia, but by participating in the project, we are trying to prove them wrong.
- Irrelevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are some circumstances when we need to step away from the "anyone can edit" model. I don't think anyone opposes the availability of page protection or semiprotection as a matter of principle. It's a matter of deciding when these tools are needed, on which articles, and for how long.
- Irrelevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As the English Wikipedia has developed to become the most popular interactive website in the world, our impact on the subjects of our articles has increased proportionately. At this point, an article about a living person on the English Wikipedia will typically become the number-one search engine result for a search on that person's name. The impact of inappropriate article content on a BLP subject can therefore be extremely serious. This includes various types of inappropriate content, ranging from libel and defamation, to rumormongering, to unwarranted disclosure of private facts, to drive-by vandalism.
- That is just WP:BLP in a nutshell. I don't see how that says anything about how existing systems are failing to meet the threat. So, irrelivant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The community has largely rejected the idea that BLP violations consist only of false or unsourced content, and has accepted that undue weight to negative aspects of a subject's life or unwarranted disclosure of private facts can also constitute a derogation from what we want Wikipedia to be. (I can think of several horrifying examples, but would prefer not to publicize them further.) Where to draw the line, of course, remains disputed in many instances.
- If anything, this is an argument against blanket provisions, since it implies that we're talking about way more than just simple vandalism. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All of us edit Wikipedia for one or both of two reasons: (1) we are contributing and compile redistributable free knowledge to the world, and (2) we are having fun in doing so. We do not want our hobby to damage other people's lives.
- I think that's a given, but again, I don't see how that is relevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The loss of privacy associated with the Internet is not unique to Wikipedia, but a much more widespread problem, and is indeed the major negative social externality of the information revolution. Even what at first blush would seem a 100% positive development in direction of greater access to information—say, the publication on the Internet of the full text of old newspapers—can seriously damage privacy (e.g., no one will ever again outlive a youthful indiscretion that happened to make the New York Times). All of us now live in the goldfish bowl: It is not always a happy place to be.
- Not Wikipedia's problem. Indeed, WP:NOTCENSORED. The world is changing in this regard, and trying to fight it is both outside of Wikipedia's mission, and arguably a really bad idea in general. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Despite the fact that Wikipedia is not the only place where false rumors or privacy violations can be created on the Internet, our unique prominence gives us an especial responsibility for using best practices to mitigate these problems.
- I think Wikipedia should strive to be the best it can be, regardless of prominence or not. However, this again fails to demonstrate how existing mechanisms are failing. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Although a high proportion of IP edits are vandalism or otherwise problematic, we continue to allow unregistered IP editing both for philosophical reasons, and also because experience (e.g. mine) teaches that many established contributors got their start as editors by making a few edits on a whim, who likely would not have done so if they had had to register first.
- Nothing explict on the question. The implication seems to be that "allowing anon-IP edits is not worth the trouble" (if I'm wrong in my interpretation, correct me). To that idea: I haven't seen anything which addresses ratio of problematic-edits vs total-edits for anon-IP-edits, nor have I seen anything which puts that in context compared against registered-user-edits. If all 97% of vandalism comes from anon-IP users, but only 25% of anon-IP edits are vandalism, we're barking up the wrong tree. If, OTOH, 90% of anon-IP edits are vandalism which isn't self-reverted, then maybe we should close the door on anon editing entirely. This isn't BLP-specific. I fight vandalism on lots of tech subject pages. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There have been several reports of serious incidents in which article subjects have been victimized and suffered serious, adverse real-world consequences (including arrest or the loss of their jobs) as a result of content in their BLPs. We can argue that this is a result of the authorities or decision-makers (immigration officers, potential employers, etc.) using Wikipedia for purposes for which it was not designed; but that is little consolation to the people affected.
- Wikipedia cannot possibly support taking on the burden of everybody who might get hurt because of something that was read on Wikipedia. People get hurt all the time, for all sorts of reasons, often unintentional. BLP isn't about avoiding the possibility of hurting people; BLP is about accuracy, sourcing, and avoiding libel and slander. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some BLP subjects state that waking up every day and worrying what nastiness might have crept into their Wikipedia article overnight has had a detrimental effect on their quality of life.
- That's pure argumentum ad hominem. Vague, unsourced, no clear problem statement, no evidence any proposed solution is going to help matters. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The OTRS system, the Office, and the noticeboards receive complaints on a daily basis from BLP subjects seeking the removal or revision of their articles. Some of these complaints have more merit than others, but a significant number require some action. This is not a situation that was anticipated when the wiki editing model and system software were designed. No one would have predicted when Wikipedia started that along with its unprecedented success would come the need for several hundred volunteers to participate in the equivalent of a complaint department.
- Irrelevant to the question. It's just a history lesson, and an inaccurate one at that: Many did predict such problems. Wikipedia:Replies to common objections is largely about such, and it's one of the oldest pages in the wiki. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some BLPs are higher-risk than others. Lumping all BLPs together as a group may (or may not) be overinclusive categorization.
- Again, irrelevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some BLP subjects do not mind being included in Wikipedia, some do not mind so long as their coverage is accurate, a few object vehemently to inclusion, and there is also the related phenomenon of subjects determined to be non-notable and deleted who object to that conclusion and want their articles back in.
- Again, irrelevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Any system reliant on volunteers to patrol articles is only as reliable as the flow of volunteers.
- Completely true. However, given that Wikipedia is entirely volunteer-driven, there's not much we can do about that. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We collectively spend an enormous amount of volunteer time refining and policing our notability guidelines in areas where the negative impact of retaining a "borderline notable" article is slight, relative to the time we collectively spend dealing with articles where problems may damage people's lives and reputations.
- Again, irrelevant to the question. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is little reliable statistical evidence on what percentage of edits to BLPs or other articles constitute vandalism or BLP violations. It is demonstrable and generally agreed, though, that this percentage is far higher for IP edits than for those of registered accounts.
- Totally unsourced. Citation needed. "little reliable evidence" means we don't know. If it was demonstrative, we'd have data. Anecdotes or gut feelings won't change the fact that we don't know. "generally agreed" is the very sort of weasel-wording we don't allow in BLP articles. Judging from the tumoil on this page, very little is generally agreed. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Steps that would reduce vandalism in general (e.g., reducing the usual sequence of "test" warnings before a block is imposed from four warnings to three, which I think would be a desirable step) would reduce problems on BLP pages along with everywhere else.
- I agree that vandalism is a problem and that fighting it is critical. None of that addresses why BLP pages make the existing counter-vandalism mechanisms fail while non-BLP-pages do not make the existing counter-vandalism mechanisms fail. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Changes limited to "BLP pages" will address many of the most serious problems with BLP content, but not all of them, as references to living persons may appear in one form or another in almost any article at all.
- That's practically a tautology. It basically says that if we have a solution, applying it to only BLP pages will only address those pages. That's not an argument in favor of (or opposed to) any particular solution. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to use the "NOINDEX" parameter or its equivalent in mainspace in connection with problematic content has not been seriously evaluated to date.
- Irrelevant to the question. Indeed, irrelevant to any discussion of changing Wikipedia practicies. I'll agree it's worth studying, but one should collecting data before making changes. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Although BLP problems may affect an article on any living person (cf. the Sarah Palin wheel-war arbitration case), they will often be most serious on articles concerning less-well-known persons.
- That's a statement without a supporting argument. I guess your supposition is that high-profile pages are more likely to be under scrutiny, and thus low-profile pages might sustain more lasting vandalism. I'd buy that as a reasonable theory, at least. I'm not sure where it gets us, though. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The importance of nipping BLP violations in the bud increases in light of the number of Wikipedia mirrors which will grab whatever version of a page exists at the moment they scrape the site (and will miss the fact that an inappropriate edit might be reverted 5 minutes later) as well as by the creation of sites like Deletionpedia which are designed expressly to pick up and feature content (including BLP content) that we might eventually delete.
- So now we have to be responsible for not only Wikipedia, but the rest of the Internet? I feel you're laying an unfair burden on us. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In light of these considerations, I think it is reasonable to conclude that some action ought to be taken to reduce the problems identified above, and the relevant question is what action that is. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(also copied from the talk page) - "There is little reliable statistical evidence on what percentage of edits to BLPs or other articles constitute vandalism or BLP violations. It is demonstrable and generally agreed, though, that this percentage is far higher for IP edits than for those of registered accounts." - For plain vandalism I'd have to agree, but for non-vandalism BLP violations, I'm not so sure. From my experience, registered accounts are just as, or more, likely to add the subtle false information and character assassination that angers people a lot more than the "John Doe is a douchebag"-type juvenile vandalism. AFAIK, there has never been any study done on these types of BLP violations. Mr.Z-man 03:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By "action", I believe you mean "change in Wikipedia practices". Needless to say, I think you've completely failed to justify the conclusion that practices need to change. You've identified problems, sure. I think most of the problem apply to any page, not just BLP pages, or they are BLP-specific, but are already covered by WP:BLP. Again I ask: How are existing mechanisms failing BLP pages in particular?

(In case it isn't clear, "existing mechanisms" include things like watchlists, RC patrol, new page patrol, regular editors, random vistors, third-party oversight, etc. The "in particular" part is also key. RCP patrol misses stuff, NPP is overwhelmed, etc. But that applies to the entire project, not just BLP.) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Non-BLP votes/discussions are off-topic here

This survey's topic as established and promoted was to focus on BLP articles and what protection or flagging measures should be improved. For example, the watchlist banner promotes this survey as "A survey on options for protecting biographies of living persons is open for comments." (my emphasis).

Unfortunately, some off-topic voting and discussion sections involving non-BLP articles were introduced, particularly the following:

#Implement Flagged Revisions for all articles / content pages
#Oppose Flagged Revisions for all articles / content pages
#Implement Flagged Revisions for blps and Flagged revisions with expiration for all non-blp articles / content pages

Do we not have enough issues and discussion to sort out here with just the BLP article scope without opening entire cans of worms here? The non-BLP discussions are also unfair to those editors who were expecting this to be focused on BLP articles.

It may be appropriate to archive off the non-BLP sections as identified above, or at least freeze the non-BLP discussion in here. Treatment of non-BLPs could still be discussed elsewhere, such as at the Village Pump while we have enough to sort out with the BLP article issues. Dl2000 (talk) 15:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think part of the issue here is that how measures taken for BLP purposes interact with the rest of the project. I for one see a trend where much of the discussion on this page is about vandalism in general (a site-wide problem, not specific to BLP), and BLP is just being used as the excuse to discuss vandalism measures that are not in any way BLP-specific. Nor do I think it's reasonable to try and restrict it otherwise; vandalism is a site-problem problem, BLP pages are part of the site. Perhaps that means this discussion should really be framed in terms of counter-vandalism in general. But they're connected. Declaring them "off-topic" by fiat will just result in people trying to shoehorn their opinions into arbitrary headings, and/or ignoring/editwaring over the decree. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 20:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actual experience with flagged revisions

Many people here only cast their vote with a vague idea about flagged revisions. This section is for reports of hands-on experience.

Sebastian's experience: See de:Wikipedia_Diskussion:Gesichtete_Versionen#Erfahrungsbericht_von_SebastianHelm. Depending on interest, I can provide a partial or full translation here. — Sebastian 19:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What does Jimmy Wales think?

Jimbo also said:
I think that almost any argument, on any topic, which has premises beginning with "Jimbo said..." is a pretty weak argument. Surely the merits of the proposal should be primary, not what I happen to think.

This is what Jimmy had to say about this:

"I would be thrilled with the implementation of flagged revs on all BLPs as a test. I don't think I should force it through, but I strongly support that we experiment with it. What I will do is this: I will gladly serve as a formal point of contact to ask the Foundation directly to implement whatever we decide on. What I recommend is a timed test, i.e. turn on flagged revs for all BLPs for 3 months, and have a poll in the last two weeks of that period to determine whether we want to keep it. I feel confident that we will.
I would also support us simply copying what the Germans have done with it. I know there are concerns about volume, but the Germans are able to deal with it just fine as I understand it. Yes, we have more edits, but we have more community members. So I reckon we can deal with it quite well. However, I'm *thrilled* about it for BLPs and merely *supportive* for all articles.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)"

Not all Wikipedians believe Jimmy Wales’s opinion is more important than other Wikipedians’, or is in any way a form of guidance.

IP Comments

Similar to what happened on the DE Wikipedia the IP editors are not invited to this discussion, good thing is we can learn from it and prevent the same mistake, logged in we get a nice "A survey on options for protecting biographies of living persons is under way. Editors may participate by commenting here" on the watchlist, is there a way to invite the 85 % of good IP editors for the discussion if the option is raised that their contributions go on the queue list ? Mion (talk) 19:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would mean putting this on the general site header instead of the Watchlist template. I don't know the answer to whether this is good or bad, where to get consensus for such a thing, or if such consensus (which would be decided by logged in users) would be even possible. rootology (C)(T) 19:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1/3 of all edits are done by IP editors (based on User:Dragons flight/Log analysis) for the last 8 years, I think they have enough credit to be invited to the discussion before they are blocked in editing. Mion (talk) 20:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the point, I thought someone mentioned that the general site header is the same for logged in and IP editors, so maybe this discussion needs to be stalled and restarted after the fundraiser is over, i guess its the same route to consensus for placing it on the general header as for on the watchlist header? Mion (talk) 21:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We could put it in the MediaWiki:Anonnotice, but there's this extremely bright contradiction between this just being a "feeler survey" and this being something that will cited in the future as consensus.... --MZMcBride (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What he said. There's (so far) what seems like consensus for a small set test (maybe FAs? Maybe BLP FAs?) to see how it goes. Maybe we'll all hate it, maybe we'll all love it. But this is just to see if the idea has any merit, which it seems to clearly, but not for "lets do it German," and we're not deciding to turn on anything on some wide scale yet. rootology (C)(T) 21:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The point so far is that in this consensus 1/3 of the editors are excluded and exactly the editors that are restricted by the measure, so I would like to turn it around that who created this survey first sets up a survey for the editors who are affected and from there we can start the discussion about it, MediaWiki:Anonnotice is a good way, but this survey is already filled in by the other 2/3 group, so maybe a new discussion in 2009 is a good idear ? Mion (talk) 22:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Being that registering is trivial, this is really a moot argument. Those who are kept from editing and want to edit bad enough will register Timmccloud (talk) 17:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-reference

A few days ago I posted some thoughts and points for this discussion on the talkpage. Just cross-referencing here in the hope they don't get overlooked (I didn't want to post them on this page which was just the "survey" at that time, but if anyone wants to transplant to over here I won't stop them). Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As is usually the case, Brad's points on the talk page are well worth reading.

As is usually the case, he generates a whole lot of light without turning up the heat. David in DC (talk) 18:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Time/edit based flagging

If there is some question about wither article development will suffer because anon users can't edit articles, why don't we only flag articles that have a certain number of edits or have existed for a certain length of time? This would mean that newer or less developed articles would be easy to contribute to, while older and more mature articles (that probably have content worth protecting) will require a users to get at least a little involved with the community before they get to contribute. Would this address some of the issues coming up in this discussion? --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 04:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FlaggedRevs doesn't mean people can't edit (otherwise it would just be semiprotection), it just means that their revision won't immediately be seen by everyone. In any case, the goal isn't to keep the good info in, its to keep the bad info out. A low traffic stub is just as susceptible to libel as any other page. Mr.Z-man 05:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where the period for which the edit not immediately be seen by everyone may be 3 weeks de:Spezial:Seiten_mit_ungesichteten_Versionen. Mion (talk) 09:18, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or not at all, you have to wait 3 weeks.... Mion (talk) 09:21, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you write for a print encyclopedia, you may have to wait more than two years. If the material is proper and germane to the article in WP, it will get used. If not, the wait prevents damage to the WP reputation. I consider a maximum wait of three weeks to be rational, though I am sure many would argue that 3 days would generally be sufficient. Collect (talk) 13:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the bad edits typically would be spotted and rejected quickly, but the good edits would take a lot longer to look over and verify are good. As for "3 days would be sufficient", I think there may be a misunderstanding. I don't think it's a time limit one imposes. If I'm not mistaken, (though the link Mion provided is restricted, so I'm not entirely sure) they're saying that the backlog can take up to 3 weeks to sort through, not that there is an imposed delay of 3 weeks. Either way, waiting 3 days or 3 weeks for one's edits to be accepted would seriously cripple the fun, efficiency, and timeliness of Wikipedia (unless my crystal ball is broken). -kotra (talk) 03:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 ==Implement Semi-protection for all BLPs==
+#I do support the idea. I think like it was mentioned before that the real (flesh and blood) person should have a ''prominent'' saying with respect to his/her page, somehow... not losing objectivity and the social force of WP. I also think there is the issue of '''who is a living person''', excuse the absurdity. How is some page removed from BLP status? What status should the page for ''Elvis'' have? --[[User:Consci|Consci]] ([[User talk:Consci|talk]]) 04:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
 #'''Support.'''  Though maybe we could put a template on semiprotected pages telling new users of the register and autoconfirm processes. [[User:Quantumobserver|Quantumobserver]] ([[User talk:Quantumobserver|talk]]) 22:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 # Have always supported this. I'd also support a proposal made by Greg Kohs (comment on the proposal not the proposer…) to experimentally semiprotect a subset of BLPs (for example, all those beginning with "A") and after a couple of months compare the vandalism & editwarring stats with the unprotected control group.&nbsp;–&nbsp;''[[User:Iridescent|<font color="#E45E05">iride</font><font color="#C1118C">scent</font>]]'' 19:28, 19 December 2008 (UTC)