The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Re-instating this proposal, I want to make the icons look more clear and sleek; I will eventually add on more to the icons (such as good articles, audio articles, etc.) I also want to add region-based letter shackles, so for example 拡 (拡張, Kakuchō) would be the Japanese extended-protection icon, same with 満 (満杯, Manpai) for full-protection.
Agree with others that these new icons look dated. However, if we are discussing changes to lock icons, then I must say the the purple for upload protected is incongruously gaudy. Cremastra — talk — c20:23, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think the gradients or bevels make these icons less clear and sleek, at least in their current iteration. The icons also become less readable at smaller resolutions since the shackle part of the padlocks takes up more space, making the actual symbol inside smaller.
Pretty strong oppose trying to run a geolocation script on every load to try to make dynamic labels here. If anything (which I also don't like) labels should follow user interface language. — xaosfluxTalk17:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the differences, I was just suggesting (because I don't really speak any other language you could propose a specific version) Also, I will later add the letters on the shackles.
Oppose making the primary (only) differentiation be color, as that gives out less information then the current scheme and is useless for those without color viewing abilities. — xaosfluxTalk17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Xaosflux on this one. Furthermore, the two issues of the old icon scheme (color and "realistic" shading that doesn't look great on small icons), which were the reasons for the change to begin with, are present on this one too.Regarding the region-based symbols, it would make more sense to display them based on the language edition, and, since each language edition already sets its own standards for this stuff, there isn't much more we can do. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, but only slightly. If you added the letters, it would be better. Also, a solution to your region-basing could be to do a Language-based (like "O" for "Office" would become "S" for "Schoolhouse" in a theoretical "Reversed English") The Master of Hedgehogs(converse)(hedgehogs)14:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought we were using "shackle" as the word to describe a thing by a single aspect for the purposes of avoiding conflation with protecting/locking editing. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we shouldn't, because as @WhatamIdoing noted, the shackle is one part of a padlock. And simply using the word "padlock" avoids conflation, without calling things the wrong thing. (It's even the exact same number of letters.) FeRDNYC (talk) 03:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:WIKICLICHE we've been asked to not say this quite as much, due to supply chain issues – if we use them too much we could see a huge shortage down the road. But I hope I'm not generating more heat than light with this comment, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cremastra — talk — c20:22, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Never throw the baby out with the bathwater. This will contaminate your greywater collection system. Like other meats, babies are not compostable, so they should be sorted into the landfill waste stream unless otherwise advised by your municipal waste management authority. Folly Mox (talk) Folly Mox (talk) 20:46, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The pseudo-3D shading looks dated compared to the current flat icons. Most modern design systems (including codex, which is the new design system for Wikimedia wikis) are built around flat icons. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)18:36, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just for funStill feel like a step backwards. The current "Good article" icon, on top of having less of a distracting shading and being more readable, is in a consistent style with a lot of our other icons. The current "Featured article" icon, although not consistent with the others, is pretty unique and recognizable in design, while this one looks like a generic star.Just for fun, I did once make a "Good article" star in the style of the FA one – not meant for any official implementation beyond my personal script of course, but it's neat to see how it would look like. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:14, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Have you ever looked at the Featured Article icon, full-size? (If not, check it out at File:Cscr-featured.png. I'll wait.) ...Like or lump @Chaotic Enby's GA star, it's actually of a fairly harmonious style with the current FA star, which is (as noted) currently not consistent with anything else anywhere. Arguably it's well-known/recognizable — Chaotic makes that argument, anyway — but TBH I have a feeling the great majority of readers never see it larger than head-of-a-pin-scaled, and wouldn't even recognize the actual, full-sized image AS our FA icon. FeRDNYC (talk) 04:10, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen the full FA icon; the GA star is just straight out of Cthulhu (...positively). It is fun, but I think GA should be more inline with the rest of the article-rating icons because of the kinda lesser rigor. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:26, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, it's definitely a concept design rather than an actual proposal. If anything, I far prefer having the current GA icon as our official one, as it is more harmonious with basically anything that isn't the FA star. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:18, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are not visual improvements whatsoever, unfortunately. They are clear regressions in design, and the current icons are fine. Our system is particular to the English Wikipedia, so it's perfectly appropriate for their design to be relative to the English language.Remsense ‥ 论19:29, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Color me baffled. By starting with Re-instating this proposal, you make me think you want to reinvigorate some failed proposal. But then I follow your link and see that the proposal led to the implementation of new padlock icons, which; I guess, you mean to reverse. I also fail to understand what you mean by region-based letter shackles; do you mean for articles about, e.g., Japan? Or articles viewed by somebody we're supposed to have guessed might be in Japan? Or somebody with the Japanese language listed in a userbox on their User page? It's English Wikipedia, so I can't see the last two being useful options, and the first one will only lead to arguments and confusion and we've got that already. The current icons seem clear enough to me, although I don't know how to measure "sleek", I guess. In summary: baffled. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)12:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean region-based letter shackles basically like the letters on shackles but different regional translations. (This'll probably not work because of @Chaotic Enby's post.)
So (just to see if I understand it finally), you're proposing on English Wikipedia that Japanese Wikipedia use icons with Japanese symbology, and Spanish Wikipedia use some Spanish-language indicator on the padlock, etc. Yes? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)22:30, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now. Status quo is fine. It's really cool that you're contributing your graphics skills to the movement though. I'm sure there's some less high profile areas that could really benefit from your skills. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: New proposals are nice but I personally like the style of the old ones better, and flat icons also seem more up-to-date to me. Regional shackles sound like a good idea, but don't appear to be in this proposal, so I'll just say I support those (maybe in the old design-style in my preference). Mrfoogles (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Remsense. The new 3D icons look like something from the early days of the internet. Plus the shadowing makes the icons appear unnecessarily "bulky" (not sure how to say this). Nythar (💬-🍀) 22:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose here as well. It's not about status quo or resistance to change, I vastly prefer the current icons to the proposed replacements. (Admittedly subjective) points in favor of the current icons over the new ones:
The flatter look will render better at small sizes (since these icons are actually shown at a fraction of the size they're displayed in this thread)
Ditto the blockier font
Ditto the thicker shackle arcs
The skinny shackles and rectangular body give the proposed replacements the appearance of handbags, not padlocks
The letter placement is more uniform and precise in the current icons; the proposed replacements appear to have been "eyeballed". IMHO SVG art of this sort is best hand-coded (if not from scratch, then at least as a finalization pass to clean up the code), with all of the dimensions precise and uniform.
I appreciate the effort, and I'm sorry to be critical, but I'm just not into them at all. The current set, OTOH, are actually fairly well-designed and optimized for their purpose, which is an important consideration in designing functional artwork of this sort. It's puzzling to me that anyone would be looking to replace them, as there's surprisingly little room for improvement IMHO. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:19, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposed sets may been cool at the time of the previous proposal. Those locks would be more appropriate for something like in 2008. It's for the same reason why traffic lights are always (from top to bottom) red yellow green. And why train doors on British trains need doors to have sufficient contrast to the rest (see PRM TSI). In other words, using colour alone for distinguishing isn't enough.
Oppose - not a fan of the proposed icons (see also Nythar's comment), and the current locks work quite well. however, I would be supportive of a redesign of the GA/FA icons (/the various icons of the same style) in a style similar to the current locks. Rexo (talk | contributions) 20:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What if we kept the shackles and good icon, get a new featured icon, and make a built-in feature that allows shackles to be compatible with dark mode? 2I3I3 (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(to clarify: the style used by a lot of icons across the wiki (including FA/GA) feels dated, and the locks have a cleaner look that I think could be used as a basis for further redesigns. I don't think that would inherently lead to the quality symbols implying protection.) Rexo (talk | contributions) 13:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the Norro or FA icons are dated, and using padlocks to indicate quality just makes no semantic sense. We adopted padlocks because it showed that the article was locked from editing. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our article Shackle says "A shackle is also the similarly shaped piece of metal used with a locking mechanism in padlocks.[1]". Some here seem confused, but anyone using "shackle" to refer to the handle part of the handbag-looking icon is correct. Anomie⚔21:18, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the section heading to not be confusing (except, I guess, to one person whose idiolect equates locks and shackles, which is rather like calling your door a "handle" or "knob". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, because when people want to cause trouble on Wikipedia, they immediately think "I'm going to change the wikipedia article for Shackles so that anyone who wants to know anything about them will be confused! Archer87643 (talk) 00:27, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While I personally favor skeuomorphism in electronic interface design and am not fan of the last decade or so's fashion for making everything flat and same-looking, we cannot sensibly re-inject a cluster of skeuomorphic design elements and leave the rest anti-skeuomorphic. Design and user-experience do not work like that. PS: The actually-named-a-shackle part of the lock depicted in the proposed new icons looks farcically thin and weak, like those on the pretend-security of luggage locks, so even if WP went with a skeuomorphic design (for everything) again, these icons in particular should not be used. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Should a new pending changes protection level - extended confirmed pending changes (hereby abbreviated as PCECP) - be added to Wikipedia? AwesomeAasim19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ARBECR (from my understanding) encourages liberal use of EC protection in topic areas authorized by the community or the arbitration committee. However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption. Extended confirmed pending changes would allow non-XCON users to propose changes for them to be approved by someone extended confirmed, and can be applied preemptively to these topic areas.
It is assumed that it is technically possible to have PCECP. That is, we can have PCECP as "[auto-accept=extended confirmed users] [review=extended confirmed users]" Right now it might not be possible to have extended confirmed users review pending changes with this protection with the current iteration of FlaggedRevs, but maybe in the future.
Support for multiple reasons: WP:ARBECR only applies to contentious topics. Correcting typos is not a contentious topic. Second, WP:ARBECR encourages the use of pending changes when protection is not used. Third, pending changes effectively serves to allow uncontroversial edit requests without needing to create a new talk page discussion. And lastly, this is within line of our protection policy, which states that protection should not be applied preemptively in most cases. AwesomeAasim19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's better than EC, which already restricts being the free encyclopedia more. As I've said below, the VisualEditor allows much more editing from new people than edit requesting, which forces people to use the source editor. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is not somehow less or more restrictive as ECR. It's exactly the same level of protection, just implemented in a different way. I do not get the !votes from either side who either claim that this will be more restriction or more bureaucracy. I understand neither, and urge them to explain their rationales. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By creating a difference between what non logged-in readers (that is, the vast majority of them) see versus logged-in users, there is an extra layer of difficulty for non-confirmed and non-autoconfirmed editors, who won't see the actual page they're editing until they start the editing process. Confirmed and autoconfirmed editors may also be confused that their edits are not being seen by non-logged in readers. Because pending changes are already submitted into the linear history of the article, unwinding a rejected edit is potentially more complicated than applying successive edit requests made on the talk page. (This isn't a significant issue when there aren't many pending changes queued, which is part of the reason why one of the recommended criteria for applying pending changes protection is that the page be infrequently edited.) For better or worse, there is no deadline to process edit requests, which helps mitigate issues with merging multiple requests, but there is pressure to deal with all pending changes expediently, to reduce complications in editing. isaacl (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think this would be fixed with "branching" (similar to GitHub branches)? In other words, instead of PC giving the latest edit, PC just gives the edit of the stable revision and when "Publish changes" is clicked it does something like put the revision in a separate namespace (something like Review:PAGENAME/#######) where ####### is the revision ID. If the edit is accepted, then that page is merged and the review deleted. If the edit is rejected the review is deleted, but can always be restored by a Pending Changes Reviewer or administrator. AwesomeAasim21:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of programmers who struggle with branching; I'm not certain it's a great idea to make it an integral part of Wikipedia editing, at least not in a hidden, implicit manner. If an edit to an article always proceeded from the last reviewed version, editors wouldn't be able to build changes on top of their previous edits. I think at a minimum, an editor would have to be able to do the equivalent of creating a personal working branch. For example, this could be done by working on the change as a subpage of the user's page (or possibly somewhere else (perhaps in the Draft namespace?), using some standard naming hierarchy), and then submitting an edit request. That would be more like how git was designed to enable de-centralized collaboration: everyone works in their own repository, rebasing from a central repository (*), and asks an integrator to pull changes that they publish in their public repository.
(*) Anyone's public repository can act as a central repository. It just has to be one that all the collaborators agree upon using, and thus agree with the decisions made by the integrator(s) merging changes into that repository. isaacl (talk) 23:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. This has influenced me to amend my Q2 answer slightly, but I still support the existence of this protection and the preemptive PC protecting of low-traffic pages. (Plus, it's still not more restriction.) Aaron Liu (talk) 23:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, functionally a more efficient form of edit requests. The volume of pending changes is still low enough for this to be dealt with, and it could encourage the pending changes reviewer right to be given to more people currently reviewing edit requests, especially in contentious topics. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:25, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support having this as an option. I particularly value the effect it has on attribution (because the change gets directly attributed to the individual who wanted it, not to the editor who processed the edit request). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support: better and more direct system than preemptive extended-confirmed protection followed by edit requests on the talk page. Cremastra (u — c) 20:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, Pending Changes has the capacity to take on this new task. PC is much better than the edit request system for both new editors and reviewers. It also removes the downsides of slapping ECP on everything within contentious topic areas. Toadspike[Talk]20:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've read the opposes below and completely disagree that this would lead to more gatekeeping. The current edit request system is extremely complicated and inaccessible to new users. I've been here for half a decade and I still don't really know how it works. The edit requests we do get are a tiny fraction of the edits people want to make to ECP pages but can't. PCECP would allow them to make those edits. And many (most?) edit requests are formatted in a way that they can't be accepted (not clear what change should be made, where, based on what souce), a huge issue which would be entirely resolved by PCECP.
The automatic EC protection of all pages in certain CTOPs is not the point of this proposal. Whether disruption is a prerequisite to protection is not altered by the existence of PCECP and has to be decided in anther RfC at another venue, or by ArbCom. PCECP is solely about expanding accessibility to editing ECP pages for new and unregistered editors, which is certainly a positive move.
I, too, hate the PC system at dewiki, and I appreciate that Kusma mentioned it. However, what we're looking at here is lowering protection levels and reducing barriers to editing, which is the opposite of dewiki's PC barriers. Toadspike[Talk]10:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Agree with JPxG's principle that it is better to "have drama on a living project than peace on a dead one," but this is far less restrictive than preemptively setting EC protection for all WP:ARBECR pages. From a new editor's perspective, they experience a delay in the positive experience of seeing their edit implemented, but as long as pending changes reviewers are equipped to minimize this delay, then this oversight seems like a net benefit. New users will get feedback from experienced editors on how to operate in Wikipedia's toughest content areas, rather than stumbling through. ViridianPenguin 🐧 ( 💬 ) 08:57, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Idk what it's like in other areas but in mine, of edit requests that I see, a lot, maybe even most of them are POV/not actionable/nonsense/insults so if it is already ECR only, then yea, more filtering is a good thing.Selfstudier (talk) 18:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support assuming this is technically possible (which I'm not entirely sure it is), it seems like a good idea, and would definitely make pending changes more useful from my eyes. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 20:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support per @JPxG:'s reasoning—I think it's wild that we're willing to close off so many articles to so many potential editors, and even incremental liberalization of editing restrictions on these articles should be welcomed. This change would substantially expand the number of potential editors by letting non-EC contributors easily suggest edits to controversial topic areas. It would be a huge win for contributions if we managed to replace most ECP locks with this new PCECP.– Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 02:07, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle. Edit requests are a really bad interface for new users; if discouraging people from editing is the goal, we've succeeded. Flagged revisions aren't the best, but they are better than edit request templates. Toadspike's reasoning hasn't been refuted. Right now, it seems like opposers aren't aware that the status quo for many Palestine-Israel related articles is ECP. Both Israeli cuisine and Palestinian cuisine are indefinitely under WP:ECP due to gastronationalist arguments about the politics of food in the Arab–Israeli conflict (a page not protected), so editors without 500/30 status cannot add information about falafels to Wikipedia. That being said, this proposal would benefit from more detail. For example, the current edit request policy requires the proposed change to be uncontroversial and puts the burden on the proposer to show that it is uncontroversial. On the other hand, the current review policy assumes a change is correct unless it's obvious vandalism or the like, which would be a big change to the edit request workflow. Likewise, what counts as WP:INVOLVED for reviewers? Right now, there's a big firewall between editors involved in content in an area like Israel-Palestine and admins using their powers in that area. Can reviewers edit in the area and use their tools? This needs to be clarified, as it seems like editing in PIA doesn't disqualify one from answering edit requests. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply)21:06, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the current review policy assumes a change is correct unless it's obvious vandalism or the like
@Chess That's true, but reviewers are also currently expected to accept and revert if the change is correct but also irky for a revert. Below, Aasim clarified that reviewers should only reject edits that fail the existing PC review guidelines plus edits made in violation of an already well-established consensus. As for Involved, since there's no guidance about edit request reviewers yet either, I think that should be asked in a separate RfC. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The number of sysops is ever decreasing and so we will need to take drastic action to ensure maintenance and vandalism prevention can keep up. Stifle (talk) 17:29, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle. While I understand objections from others based on the technical downsides and design of the current Flagged Revisions extension, I support making it easier for users to suggest changes with a GUI rather than a difficult-to-understand edit request template, which creates a barrier to entry. Frostly (talk) 05:24, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's a lot of history here, and I've opposed WP:FPPR/FlaggedRevs consistently since ~2011. Without reopening the old wounds over how the initial trial was implemented/ended, nothing that's happened since has changed my position. I believe that proceeding with an expansion of FlaggedRevs would be a further step away from our commitment to being the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit without actually solving any critical problems that our existing tools aren't already handling. While the proposal includes However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption as a problem, I see that as a positive. In fact that's the entire point; protection should be preventative and there should be evidence of recent disruption. If a page is experiencing disruption, protection can handle it. If not, there's no need to limit anyone's ability to edit. The WordsmithTalk to me03:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Wordsmith, regarding "However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption as a problem, I see that as a positive.", for interest, I see it as a negative for a number of reasons, at least in the WP:PIA topic area, mostly because it is subjective/non-deterministic.
The WP:ARBECR rules have no dependency on subjective assessments of the quality of edits. Non-EC editors are only allowed to make edit requests. That is what we tell them.
If it is the case that non-EC editors are only allowed to make edit requests, there is no reason to leave pages unprotected.
If it is not the case that non-EC editors can only allowed to make edit requests, then we should not be telling them that via talk page headers and standard notification messages.
There appears to be culture based on an optimistic faith-based belief that the community can see ARBECR violations, make reliable subjective judgements based on some value system and deal with them appropriately through action or inaction. This is inconsistent with my observations.
Many disruptive violations are missed when there are hundreds of thousands of revisions by tens of thousands of actors.
The population size of editors/admins who try to address ARBECR violations is very small, and their sampling of the space is inevitably an example of the streetlight effect.
The PIA topic area is largely unprotected and there are thousands of articles, templates, categories, talk pages etc. Randomness plays a large part in ARBECR enforcement for all sorts of reasons (and maybe that is good to some extent, hard to tell).
Wikipedia's lack of tools to effectively address ban evasion in contentious topic areas means that it is not currently possible to tell whether a revision by a non-EC registered account or IP violating WP:ARBECR that resembles an okay edit (to me personally with all of my biases and unreliable subjectivity) is the product of a helpful person or a ban evading recidivist/member of an off-site activist group exploiting a backdoor.
Oppose, I hate pending changes. Using them widely will break the wiki. We need to be as welcoming as possible to new editors, and the instant gratification of wiki editing should be there on as many pages as possible. —Kusma (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We already have a similar and larger backlog at CAT:EEP. All this does is move the backlog into an interface handled by server software that allows newcomers to use VE for their "edit requests", where currently they must use the source editor due to being confined to talk pages. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... if the number of protected pages does not increase. I expect an increase in protected pages from the proposal, even if the terrifying proposal to protect large classes of articles preemptively does not pass. —Kusma (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most PCECP pages should be ECP pages (downgraded?) as they have lesser traffic/disruption. So, the number of pages that will be increase should not be that much. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping>13:35, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma Isn't the loss of instant gratification of editing better than creating a request on the talk page of an ECP page, and having no idea by when will it be reviewed and implemented. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping>11:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — Feels unnecessary and will only prevent other good faith editors from editing, not to mention the community effort required to monitor and review pending changes requests given that some areas like ARBIPA apply to hundreds of thousands of pages. Ratnahastin(talk)01:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a very good reason I reference Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums in my preferred name for the protection scheme, and the answer is generally no since the topic area we are primarily talking about is an ethno-political contentious topic, which tend to draw partisans interested only in "winning the war" on Wikipedia. This is not limited to just new users coming in, but also established editors who have strong opinions on the topic and who may be put into the position of reviewing these edits, as a read of any random Eastern Europe- or Palestine-Israel-focused Arbitration case would make clear just from a quick skim. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques18:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except that is how pull requests work on GitHub. You make the edit, and someone with reviewer permissions approves it to complete the merge. Here, the "commit" happens, but the revision is not visible until reviewed and approved. Edit requests are not pull requests, they are the equivalent of "issues" on GitHub. AwesomeAasim19:03, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may come as a surprise, but Wikipedia is not GitHub. While they are both collaborative projects, they are very different in most other respects. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With Git, submitters make a change in their own branch (which can even be in their own repository), and then request that an integrator pull that change into the main branch. So the main branch history remains clean: it only has changes that were merged in. (It's one of the guiding principles of Git: allow the history tree of any branch to be simplified to improve clarity and performance.) isaacl (talk) 22:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Edit requests are supposed to be pull requests.
Clearly indicate which sections or phrases should be replaced or added to, and what they should be replaced with or have added. — WP:ChangeXY
Yeah that is what they are supposed to be but in practice they are not. As anyone who has answered edit requests before, there are often messages that look like this:
This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y".
The edit may be made by any extended confirmed user. Remember to change the |answered=no parameter to "yes" when the request has been accepted, rejected or on hold awaiting user input. This is so that inactive or completed requests don't needlessly fill up the edit requests category. You may also wish to use the {{EEp}} template in the response. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request.
Oppose, per what JSS has said. I am a little uncomfortable at the extent to which we've seemingly accepted preemptive protection of articles in contentious areas. It may be a convenient way of reducing the drama us admins and power users have to deal with... but only at the cost of giving up on the core principle that anybody can edit. I would rather have drama on a living project than peace on a dead one. jp×g🗯️18:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as unnecessary, seems like a solution in search of a problem. Furthermore, this *is* Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit; preemptively protecting pages discourages contributions from new editors. -Fastily22:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose I do understand where this protection would be helpful. But I just think something is EC-protectable or not. Don't necessarily think adding another level of bureaucracy is particularly helpful. --Takipoint123 (talk) 05:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm inclined to agree that the scenarios where this tool would work a benefit as technical solution would be exceedingly niche, and that such slim benefit would probably be outweighed by the impact of having yet one more tool to further nibble away at the edges of the open spaces of the project which are available to new editors. Frankly, in the last few years we have already had an absurdly aggressive trend towards community (and ArbCom fiat) decisions which have increasingly insulated anything remotely in the vain of controversy from new editors--with predictable consequences for editor recruitment and retention past the period of early involvement, further exacerbating our workloads and other systemic issues. We honestly need to be rolling back some of these changes, not adding yet one more layer (however thin and contextual) to the bureaucratic fabric/new user obstacle course. SnowRise let's rap11:23, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The more I read this discussion, the more it seems like this wouldn't solve the majority of what it sets out to solve but would create more problems while doing so, making it on balance a net negative to the project. Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and Point of Order Oppose because pending changes is already too complicated and not very useful. I'm a pending changes reviewer and I've never rejected one on PC grounds (basically vandalism). But I often revert on normal editor grounds after accepting on PC grounds. (I suspect that many PC rejections are done for non-PC reasons instead of doing this) "Point of Order" is because the RFC is unclear on what exactly is being opposed. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty sure that what happens is that when vandals realize they will have to submit their edit for review before it goes live, that takes all the fun out of it for them because it will obviously be rejected, and they don't bother. That's pretty much how it was supposed to work. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today22:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very good point, and I ask for @Awesome Aasim's clarification on whether reviewers will be able to reject edits on grounds for normal reverts combined with the EC restriction. I think there's enough rationale to apply this here beyond the initial rationale for PC as explained by JSS above. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewers are given specific reasons for accepting edits (see Wikipedia:Pending changes § Reviewing pending edits) to avoid overloading them with work while processing pending changes expeditiously. If the reasons are opened up to greater evaluation of the quality of edits, then expectations may shift towards this being a norm. Thus some users are concerned this will create a hierarchy of editors, where edits by non-reviewers are gated by reviewers. isaacl (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that and wonder how the reviewer proposes to address this. I would still support this proposal if having reviewers reject according to whether they'd revert and "ostensibly" to enforce EC is to be the norm, albeit to a lesser extent for the reasons you mentioned (though I'd replaced "non-reviewers" with "all non–auto-accepted"). Aaron Liu (talk) 00:13, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure to whom you are referring when you say "the reviewer" – you're the one suggesting there's a rationale to support more reasons for rejecting a pending change beyond the current set. Since any pending change in the queue will prevent subsequent changes by non-reviewers from being visible to most readers, their edits too will get evaluated by a single reviewer before being generally visible. isaacl (talk) 00:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant Aasim, the nominator. I made a thinko. Currently, reviewers can undo just the edits that aren't good and then approve the revision of their own revert. I thought that was what we were supposed to do. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:13, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Anything that is obvious vandalism or a violation of existing Wikipedia's policies can still be rejected. However, for edits where there is no other problem, the edit can still be accepted. In other words, a user not being extended confirmed shall not be sufficient grounds for rejecting an edit under PCECP, since the extended confirmed user takes responsibility for the edit. If the extended confirmed user accepts a bad edit, it is on them, not whoever made it. That is the whole idea.
Of course obviously helpful changes such as fixing typos and adding up-to-date information should be accepted sooner, while more controversial changes should be discussed first. AwesomeAasim17:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but also edits made in violation of an already well-established consensus. Edits that enforce a clearly-established consensus (proven by previous talk page discussion), are, from my understanding, exempt from all WP:EW restrictions. AwesomeAasim18:38, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Thryduulf and SnowRose. Also regardless of whether this is a good idea as a policy, FlaggedRevs has a large amount of technical debt, to the extent that deployment to any additional WMF wikis is prohibited, so it seems unwise to expand its usage. novovtalkedits19:05, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the more productive approach would be to reduce the overuse of extended-confirmed protection. We have come to rely on it too much. This would be technically difficult and complex for little real gain. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. How can we know that the 72,818 extended-confirmed users are capable of reviewing pending changes? I assume this is a step above normal PCP (eg. pcp is preferred over pcecp), how can reviewing semi-protected pending changes have a higher bar (requiring a request at WP:PERM) than reviewing extended-protected pending changes? Doesn't make much sense to me. — BerryForPerpetuity(talk)14:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but assuming this will work the same as PCR, isn't it possible that an extended-confirmed user who doesn't want to review edits, will try to edit a PCECP page, and be required to review edits beforehand? They're not actively seeking out to review edits in the same way that a PCR or someone who handles edit requests does. Will their review be on par with the scrutiny required for this level of protection? — BerryForPerpetuity(talk)14:55, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You do not need to review edits to edit the pending version of the page, which is what happens when you press save on a page with pending edits. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it not the case that reviewers need to check a page's pending changes to edit a page? Either way, the point of "what would constitute a revert" needs to be discussed and decided on before we start to implement this, which I appreciate you discussing above. — BerryForPerpetuity(talk)15:38, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How can we know that the 72,734 extended-confirmed users are capable of reviewing pending changes? This isn't about pending changes level 1. This is about pending changes as applied to enforce ECP, with the level [auto-accept=extendedconfirmed] [review=extendedconfirmed]. As this is only intended to be used for WP:ARBECR restricted pages, it shouldn't be used for anything else.
What might need to happen for this to work is there are ways to configure who can auto-accept and review changes individually (rather than bundled as is right now) with the FlaggedRevs extension. Something like this for these drop-downs:
Auto-accept:
All users
Autoconfirmed
Extended confirmed
Template editor
Administrators
Review:
Autoconfirmed
Extended confirmed and reviewers
Template editors and reviewers
Administrators
Of course, autoreview will have auto-accept perms regardless of these settings, and review will have review perms regardless of these settings. AwesomeAasim16:36, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you're saying, and I'm aware this isn't about level 1. I'm not strongly opposed to PCECP, but my original point was talking about the difference in reviewer requirements for semi-protected PC and XCON PC. If this passes, it would make reviewing semi-protected pending changes require a permission request, but reviewing extended-protected pending changes would only require being extended-confirmed. If that could be explained so I could understand it better, I'd appreciate it.
This also relates to edit requests. XCON users are capable of reviewing edit requests, because they don't have to implement what the request was verbatim. If a user makes a request that has good substance, but has a part that doesn't adhere to some policy (MOS, NPOV, ect), the reviewer can change it to fit policy. With pending changes, there's really no way to do that besides editing the accepted text after accepting it. The edit request reviewer can ask for clarification on something, add notes, give a reason for declining, ect.
Especially on pages that have ARBCOM enforcement on them, the edit request system is far better than the pending changes system. This approach seems to be a solution for the problem of over-protection, which is what should actually be addressed. — BerryForPerpetuity(talk)17:22, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I would also support this change if only reviewers may accept. I think editing a change after acceptance is superior. It makes clear which parts were written by whom (and thus much easier to satisfy our CC license). Aaron Liu (talk) 17:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Identifying which specific parts were written by whom isn't necessary for the CC BY-SA license. (And since each new revision is a new derivative work, it's not that easy to isolate.) isaacl (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but there's no need to forget the attributive edit summary, which is needed when accepting edit requests. Identifying specific parts is just cleaner this way. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the change is rejected, then a user who isn't an author of the content appears in the article history. In theory that would unnecessarily entangle the user in any copyright issues that arose, or possibly defamation cases. isaacl (talk) 22:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We should be maximizing the number of pages that are editable by all. Protection fails massively at this task. All this does is tell editors "hey don't edit this page", which is fine for certain legal pages and the main page that no one should really be editing, but for articles? There is a reason we have this thing called "code review" on Git and "peer review" everywhere else; we should be encouraging changes but if there is disruption we should be able to hold them for review so we can remove the problematic ones.
Since Wikipedia is not configured to have software-based RC patrol outside of new pages patrol (and RC patrol would be a problem anyway not only because of the sheer volume of edits but also because edits older than a certain timeframe are removed from the patrol queue), we have to rely on other software measures to hide revisions until they are approved. Specifically, RC patrol hiding all edits until approved (wikiHow does this) would be a problem on Wikipedia. But that is a tangent. AwesomeAasim19:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's also a reason why Git changes aren't pushed directly to the main code branch for review, and instead a pull request is sent to an integrator in order to integrate the changes. There's a bottleneck in processing the request (including integration testing). Also note with software development, rebasing your changes onto the latest integrated stream is your responsibility. The equivalent with pending changes would be for each person to revalidate their proposed change after a preceding change had been approved or rejected. Instead, the workload falls upon the reviewer. Side note: the term "code review" far predates git, and is widely used by many software development teams. isaacl (talk) 22:45, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see I see. I do think we need better pending changes as the current flagged revs system sucks. Also just because a feature is turned on doesn't mean there is consensus to use it, as seen by WP:SUPERPROTECT and WP:PC2. AwesomeAasim18:11, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your second sentence would render everything about this to be meaningless. Plus, the community does not like unnecessarily turning features on; both of your examples have been removed. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:18, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand your point. You're making a proposal for a new feature that has to be developed in a MediaWiki extension. If it does get developed, it won't get deployed on English Wikipedia unless there's consensus to use it. And given that the extension is not supported by the WMF right now, to the extent that it won't deploy it on new wikis, I'm not sure it has the ability to support any new version. isaacl (talk) 22:53, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per JSS and others. We don't need another system just to allow the preemptive protection of pages, and allowing non-EC editors to clutter up this history in ARBECR topic areas would just create a lot of extra work with little or no real benefit. – bradv23:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Someone who is an expert at configuring mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs will need to confirm that it is possible to simultaneously have our current type of pending changes protection plus this new type of pending changes protection. The current enwiki FlaggedRevs config looks something like the below and may not be easy to configure. You may want to ping Ladsgroup or post at WP:VPT for assistance.
Extended content
// enwiki// InitializeSettings.php$wgFlaggedRevsOverride=false;$wgFlaggedRevsProtection=true;$wgSimpleFlaggedRevsUI=true;$wgFlaggedRevsHandleIncludes=0;$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReview=3;$wgFlaggedRevsLowProfile=true;// CommonSettings.php$wgAvailableRights[]='autoreview';$wgAvailableRights[]='autoreviewrestore';$wgAvailableRights[]='movestable';$wgAvailableRights[]='review';$wgAvailableRights[]='stablesettings';$wgAvailableRights[]='unreviewedpages';$wgAvailableRights[]='validate';$wgGrantPermissions['editprotected']['movestable']=true;// flaggedrevs.phpwfLoadExtension('FlaggedRevs');$wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote=false;$wgHooks['MediaWikiServices'][]=staticfunction(){global$wgAddGroups,$wgDBname,$wgDefaultUserOptions,$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces,$wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels,$wgFlaggedRevsTags,$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions,$wgGroupPermissions,$wgRemoveGroups;$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces[]=828;// NS_MODULE$wgFlaggedRevsTags=['accuracy'=>['levels'=>2]];$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions=['accuracy'=>['review'=>1,'autoreview'=>1],];$wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['movestable']=true;// T16166$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings']=false;// -aaron 3/20/10$allowSysopsAssignEditor=true;$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces=[NS_MAIN,NS_PROJECT];# We have only one tag with one level$wgFlaggedRevsTags=['status'=>['levels'=>1]];# Restrict autoconfirmed to flagging semi-protected$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions=['status'=>['review'=>1,'autoreview'=>1],];# Restriction levels for auto-review/review rights$wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels=['autoconfirmed'];# Group permissions for autoconfirmed$wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['autoreview']=true;# Group permissions for sysops$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['review']=true;$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings']=true;# Use 'reviewer' group$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='reviewer';$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='reviewer';# Remove 'editor' and 'autoreview' (T91934) user groupsunset($wgGroupPermissions['editor'],$wgGroupPermissions['autoreview']);# Rights for Bureaucrats (b/c)if(isset($wgGroupPermissions['reviewer'])){if(!in_array('reviewer',$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat']??[])){// promote to full reviewers$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'][]='reviewer';}if(!in_array('reviewer',$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat']??[])){// demote from full reviewers$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'][]='reviewer';}}# Rights for Sysopsif(isset($wgGroupPermissions['editor'])&&$allowSysopsAssignEditor){if(!in_array('editor',$wgAddGroups['sysop'])){// promote to basic reviewer (established editors)$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='editor';}if(!in_array('editor',$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'])){// demote from basic reviewer (established editors)$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='editor';}}if(isset($wgGroupPermissions['autoreview'])){if(!in_array('autoreview',$wgAddGroups['sysop'])){// promote to basic auto-reviewer (semi-trusted users)$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='autoreview';}if(!in_array('autoreview',$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'])){// demote from basic auto-reviewer (semi-trusted users)$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='autoreview';}}};
I basically came here to ask if this is even possible or if it would need WMMF devs involvement or whatever.
For those unfamiliar, pending changes is not the same thing as the flagged revisions used on de.wp. PC was developed by the foundation specifically for this project after we asked for it. We also used to have WP:PC2 but nobody really knew what that was supposed to be and how to use it and it was discontinued. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today21:21, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on what exactly is meant by "implementation". A configuration where edits by non-extendedconfirmed users need review by reviewers would probably be similar to what was removed in gerrit:/r/334511 to implement T156448 (removal of PC2). I don't know whether a configuration where edits by non-extendedconfirmed users can be reviewed by any extendedconfirmed user while normal PC still can only be reviewed by reviewers is possible or not. Anomie⚔13:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the MediaWiki documentation, it is not possible atm. That said, currently the proposal assumes that it is possible and we should work with that (though I would also support allowing all extended-confirmed to review all pending changes). Aaron Liu (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the RfC summary statement is a bit incomplete. My understanding is that the pending changes feature introduces a set of rights which can be assigned to corresponding user groups. I believe all the logic is based on the user rights, so there's no way to designate that one article can be autoreviewed by one user group while another article can be autoreviewed by a different user group. Thus unless the proposal is to replace autoconfirmed pending changes with extended confirmed pending changes, I don't think saying "enabled" in the summary is an adequate description. And if the proposal is to replace autoconfirmed pending changes, I think that should be explicitly stated. isaacl (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal did not specify if it assumed co-existence is possible, or enabling it is possible, which could mean replacement. Thus I feel the summary statement (before the timestamp, which is what shows up in the central RfC list) is incomplete. isaacl (talk) 22:31, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While on a re-read, It is assumed that it is technically possible to have PCECP does not explicitly imply co-existence, that is how I interpreted it. Anyways, it would be wonderful to hear from @Awesome Aasim about this. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The key question that ought to be clarified is if the proposal is to have both, or to replace the current one with a new version. (That ties back to the question of whether or not the arbitration committee's involvement is required.) Additionally, it would be more accurate not to use a word in the summary that implies the only cost is turning on a switch. isaacl (talk) 22:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is assuming that we can have PC1 where only reviewers can approve edits and PCECP where only extended confirmed users can approve edits AND make edits without requiring approval. With the current iteration I don't know if it is technically possible. If it requires an extension rewrite or replacement, that is fine. If something is still unclear, please let me know. AwesomeAasim23:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest changing the summary statement to something like, "Should a new pending changes protection level be added to Wikipedia – extended confirmed pending changes (hereby abbreviated as PCECP)?". The subsequent paragraph can provide the further explanation on who would be autoreviewed and who would serve as reviewers with the new proposed level. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think inclusion of the preemptive-protection part in the background statement is causing confusion. AFAIK preemptive protection and whether we should use PCECP over ECP are separate questions. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Q2: If this proposal passes, should PCECP be applied preemptively to WP:ARBECR topics?
Also to add on there needs to be some enforcement measure for WP:ARBECR. No technical enforcement measures on WP:ARBECR is akin to site-banning an editor and then refusing to block them because "blocks should be preventative". AwesomeAasim19:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Blocking a site-banned user is preventative, because if we didn't need to prevent them from editing they wouldn't have been site banned. Thryduulf (talk) 21:16, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, including on talk pages. With edit requests mostly dealt with through pending changes, protecting the talk pages too should limit the disruption and unconstructive comments that are often commonplace there. (Changing my mind, I don't think applying PCECP on all pages would be a constructive solution. The rules of ARBECR limit participation to extended-confirmed editors, but the spirit of the rules has been to only enforce that on pages with actual disruption, not preemptively. 20:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:21, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm going to disagree with the "no" argument entirely - we should be preemptively ECPing (even without pending changes). It's a perversion of logic to say "you can't (per policy) do push this button", and then refuse to actually technically stop you from pushing the button even though we know you could. * Pppery *it has begun...20:52, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support (Summoned by bot): While I disagree with ECR in general, this is a better way of enforcing it as long as it exists. Constructive "edit requests" can be accepted, and edits that people disagree with can be easily reverted. I'm slightly concerned with how this could affect the pending changes backlog (which has a fairly small number of active reviewers at the moment), but I'm sure that can be figured out. CFA💬23:41, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think this is necessary at this time. I think it should be usable there, but I don't feel like this is a necessary step at this time. We could revisit it later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, we still shouldn't be protecting preemptively. Wait until there's disruption, and then choose between PCXC or regular XC protection (I would strongly favour the former for the reasons I gave above). Cremastra (u — c) 20:43, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I feel this would be a bad idea. Critics of Wikipedia already use the idea that it's controlled by a select group, this would only make that misconception more common. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. No need for protection if there is no disruption. The number of protected pages should be kept low, and the number of pages that cry out "look at me!" on your watchlist (anything under pending changes) should be as close to zero as possible. —Kusma (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No need for protection if there is no disruption. Trouble is, the ECR restriction is enacted in response to widespread disruption, this time to the entire topic area as a whole. Disregard for POV, blatant inclusion of unverifiable or false (unreliable) information, and more all pose serious threats of disruption to the project. If WP:ARBECR was applied broadly without any protection I would agree, but WP:ARBECR is applied in response to disruption (or a serious threat of), not preemptively. Take this one for example, which is a long winded ANI discussion that ended in the WP:GS for the Russo-Ukranian War (and the ECR restrictions). And as for Arbitration Committee, ArbCom is a last resort when all other attempts to resolve disruption fail. See WP:ARBPIAWP:ARBPIA2WP:ARBPIA3WP:ARBPIA4. The earliest reference to the precursor to ARBECR in this case is on the third ArbCom case. Not protecting within a topic area that has a high risk of disruption is akin to having a high-risk template unprotected. The only difference is that carelessly editing a high-risk template creates technical problems, while carelessly editing a high-risk topic area creates content problems.
Either the page is protected technically (which enforces a community or ArbCom decision that only specific editors are allowed in topic areas) or the page is not protected technically but protected socially (which then gives a chance of evasion). I see this situation no different from banning an editor sitewide and then refusing to block them on the grounds that "blocks should only be used to prevent disruption" while ignoring the circumstances leading up to the site ban.
What PCECP would do is allow for better enforcement of the community aspect. New editors won't be bitten, if they find something that needs fixing like a typo, they can make an edit and it can get approved. More controversial edits will get relegated to the talk page where editors not banned from that topic area can discuss that topic. And blatant POV pushing and whatnot would get reverted and would never even be seen by readers.
The workflow would look like this: new/anon user make an edit → edit gets held for review → extended confirmed user approves the edit. Rather than the current workflow (and the reason why preemptive ECP is unpopular): new/anon user makes an edit → user is greeted with a "this page is protected" message → user describes what they would like to be changed but in a badly formulated way → edit request gets closed as "unclear" or something similar. AwesomeAasim14:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Consider this POV change made to a topic that I presume is covered under WP:ARBPIA and that is not protected. The whole reason that there is WP:ARBECR is to prevent stuff like this from happening. There already is consensus either among arbitrators or among the community to enact ECR within specific contentious topic areas, so I don't see how it is productive to refuse to protect pages because of "not enough disruption" when the entire topic area has faced widespread disruption in the past. AwesomeAasim18:18, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. We should be quicker to apply protection in these topics than we would elsewhere, but not preemptively except on highly visible pages (which, in these topics, are probably ECP-protected anyway). Animal lover|666|17:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying such a discussion exists, but changes to Arbitration remedies/discretionary sanctions are something they would want to weigh in on. Arbitration policy (which includes WP:Contentious topics) is in their wheelhouse and this would have serious implications for WP:CT/A-I and any further instances where ArbCom (rather than individual editors, as a discretionary sanction) would need to resort to a 500/30 rule as an explicit remedy. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques04:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is not my reading of WP:ARBECR. Specifically, On any page where the restriction is not enforced through extended confirmed protection, this restriction may be enforced by...the use of pending changes... (bold added by me for emphasis). But if there is consensus not to use this preemptively so be it. AwesomeAasim05:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I appreciate the forward thinking that PCECP may want to be used in Arb areas, this feels like a considerable muddying of the delineation between the Committee's role and the community's role. Traditionally, Contentious Topics have been the realm of ArbCom, and General Sanctions have been the realm of the Community. Part of the logic comes down to who takes the blame when things go wrong. The Community shouldn't take the blame when ArbCom makes a decision, and vice versa. Part of the logic is separation of powers. If the community wants to say "ArbCom, you will enforce this so help you God," then that should be done by amending ArbPol. Part of the logic is practical. If the community creates a process that adds to an existing Arb process, what happens when the Arbs want to change that process? Or even end it altogether? Bottomline: Adopting PCECP for ARBECR is certainly something ArbCom could do. But I'd ask the community to consider the broader structural problems that would arise if the community adopted it on behalf of ArbCom. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓05:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I'd say ArbCom should be able to override the community if they truly see such action fit and worthy of potential backlash. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a terminology note, although I appreciate many think of general sanctions in that way, it's defined on the Wikipedia:General sanctions page as ... a type of Wikipedia sanctions that apply to all editors working in a particular topic area. ... General sanctions are measures used by the community or the Arbitration Committee ("ArbCom") to improve the editing atmosphere of an article or topic area.. Thus the contentious topics framework is a form of general sanctions. isaacl (talk) 15:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the general point: I agree that it is cumbersome for the community to impose a general sanction that is added on top of a specific arbitration remedy. I would prefer that the community work with the arbitration committee to amend its remedy, which would facilitate keeping the description of the sanction and logging of its enforcement together, instead of split. (I appreciate that for this specific proposal, logging of enforcement is not an issue.) isaacl (talk) 15:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Extended confirmed started off as an arbcom concept - 500 edits/30 days - which the community then choose to adopt. ArbCom then decided to make its remedy match the community's version - such that if the community were to decide extended confirmed were 1000 edits/90 days all ArbCom restrictions would update. I find this a healthy feedback loop between ArbCom and the community. The community could clearly choose (at least on a policy level, given some technical concerns) to enact PCECP. It could choose to apply this to some/all pages. If it is comfortable saying that it wants to delegate some of which pages this applies to the Arbitration Committee I think it can do so without amending ArbPol. However, I think ArbCom could could decide that PCECP would not apply in some/all CTOP areas given that the Committee is exempt from consensus for areas with-in its scope. And so it might ultimately make more sense to do what isaacl suggests. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The "contentious topics" procedure does seem like something that the community should absolutely mirror and that ultimately both the community and ArbCom should work out of. If one diverges, there is probably a good reason why it diverged.
As for the broader structural problems that would arise if the community adopted it on behalf of ArbCom, there are already structural problems with general sanctions because of the community's failure to adopt the new CTOP procedure for new contentious topics. Although the community has adopted the contents of WP:ARBECR for other topic areas like WP:RUSUKR, they don't adopt it by reference but by copying the whole text verbatim. AwesomeAasim17:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the same structural problem. The community hasn't had a lot of discussion about adopting the contentious topic framework for its own use (in my opinion, because it's a very process-wonky discussion that doesn't interest enough editors to generate a consensus), but that doesn't interfere with how the arbitration committee uses the contentious topic framework. This proposal is suggesting that the community automatically layer on its own general sanction on top of any time the arbitration committee decides to enact a specific sanction. Thus the committee would have to consider each time whether or not to override the community add-on, and amendment requests might have to be made both to the committee and the community. isaacl (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Prior to contentious topics there were discretionary sanctions. Those became very muddled and so the committee created Contentious topics to help clarify the line between community and committee (disclosure: I help draft much of that work). As part of that the committee also established ways for the community to tie-in to contentious topics if it wanted. So for the community hasn't made that choice which is fine. But I do this is an area that, in general, ArbCom does better than the community because there is more attention paid to having consistency across areas and when a problem arises I have found (in basically this one area only) ArbCom to be more agile at addressing it. But the community is also more willing to pass a GS than ArbCom is to designate something a CT (which I think is a good hting all around) and so having the community come to consensus about how, if at all, it wants to tie in to CT (and its evolutions) or if it would prefer to do its own thing (including just mirroring whatever happens to be in CT at the time but not subsequent changes) would probably be a good meta discussion to have. But it also doesn't seem necessary for this particular proposal. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Q3: If this proposal does not pass, should ECP be applied preemptively to articles under WP:ARBECR topics?
Support as a second option, but only to articles. Talk pages can be enforced solely through reverts and short protections so I see little reason why those should be protected. AwesomeAasim 19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC) Moved to oppose. AwesomeAasim19:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support for articles per Aasim. Talk pages still need to be open for edit requests. (Also changing my mind, per above. If anything, we should clarify ARBECR so that the 500-30 limit is only applied in cases where it is needed, not automatically, to resolve the ambiguity. 20:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:20, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Chaotic Enby and Pppery above and think all CT articles should be protected. I am generally not a fan of protecting Talk pages, but it's true that many CT Talk pages are cesspools of hate, so I am not sure where I sit on protecting Talk pages. Toadspike[Talk]20:57, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Under the current wording of ARBECR, When such a restriction is in effect in a topic area, only extended-confirmed editors may make edits related to the topic area. We should protect pages, rather than letting new editors edit and then reverting them for basically no reason. This is a waste of their time and very BITEy.
I am not opposed to changing the wording of ARBECR to forbid reverting solely because an editor is not extended confirmed, which is a silly reason to revert otherwise good edits. However, until ArbCom changes ARBECR, we are stuck with the rules we have. We ought to make these rules clear to editors before they edit, by page protection, instead of after they edit, by reversion. Toadspike[Talk]10:55, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support preemptive ECP without PCECP (for article space only). If we have a strict policy (or ArbCom ruling) that a class of user is forbidden to edit a class of page, there is no downside whatever to implementing that policy by technical means. All it does is stop prohibited edits. The consequences would all be positive, such as removing the need for constant monitoring, reducing IP vandalism to zero, and reducing the need to template new editors who haven't learned the rules yet. What I'd like with regard to the last one, is that a non-EC editor sees an "edit" button on an ECP page but clicking it diverts them to a page that explains EC and how to get it. Zerotalk05:53, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because I think this is a bad idea. For one thing, just making a list of all the covered articles could produce disputes that we don't need. (This article might be covered, but is it truly covered? Reasonable people could easily disagree about whether some articles are "mostly" about the restricted area vs "partly", and therefore about whether the rule applies.) Second, where a serious and obvious problem, such as blatant vandalism, is concerned, it would be better to have an IP revert it than to mindlessly follow the rules. It is important to remember that our rules exist as a means to an end. We follow them because, and to the extent that, they help overall. We expect admins and other editors to exercise discretion. It is our policy that Wikipedia:If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. This is a proposal to declare that the IAR policy never applies to the rule about who should normally be editing these articles, and that exercising discretion is not allowed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am neither Arb nor admin, but I think the words "broadly construed" are specifically chosen so that if a topic is "partly" about the restricted area, it is included in the CTOP. @WhatamIdoing, could you please show me an example of a case where CTOP designation or ECP was disputed? Toadspike[Talk]10:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I avoid most of those articles, but consider "the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted": Does that include BLPs who come from Israel/Palestine? What about BLPs who are in the news because of what they said about the Israel–Hamas war? IMO reasonable people could disagree about whether "every person living in the affected area" or "every person talking about the conflict" is part of "the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
David Miller is what we call a "partial" Arbpia. So while it's a BLP in general, parts of it are subject to Arbpia/CT, not a particularly unusual situation. The talkpage and edit notices should, but don't always, tell you whether it is or isn't, part of. Selfstudier (talk) 20:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IAR stands for IgnoreAllRules. The latter two cannot be claimed valid based on IgnoreAllRules because they don't have strong IgnoreAllRules arguments for what they did, not because IgnoreAllRules somehow only applies to content. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that "ignore all rules" applies to rules – including rules about behavior. ARBPIA is a rule about behavior. IAR therefore applies to ARBPIA.
Of course, if breaking the rule doesn't prove helpful to Wikipedia in some way, then no matter what type of rule it is, you shouldn't break the rule. We have a rule against bad grammar in articles, and you should not break that rule. But when two rules conflict – say, the style rule of "No bad grammar" and the behavioral rule of "No editing this ARBPIA article while logged out, even if it's because you're on a public computer and can't remember your password" – IAR says you can choose to ignore the rule that prevents you from improving Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While there's already precedent for preemptive protection at e.g. RFPP, I do not like this. For one, as talk pages (and, by extension, edit requests) cannot use the visual editor, this makes it much harder for newcomers to contribute edits, often unnecessarily on articles where there are no disruption. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:47, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mu - This is basically my reading of the 500/30 rule as writ. Anything that would fall into the 500/30'd topic should be XCP'd on discovery. It's worth noting I don't view this as anywhere close to ideal but then neither did ArbCom, and given the circumstances of the real-world ethnopolitical conflict only escalating as of late (which in turn feeds the disruption) the only other - even worse - option would be full-protection across the board everywhere in the area. So why am I not arguing Support? Because just like the question above, this is putting the cart before the horse and this is better off being discussed after this RfC ends, not same time as. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques02:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not, pages that do not experience disruption should be open to edit. Pending changes should never become widely used to avoid situations like dewiki's utterly absurd 53-day backlog. —Kusma (talk) 21:53, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very strong oppose, again Kusma puts it excellently. Protection should always be the exception, not the norm. Even in the Israel-Palestine topic area most articles do not experience disruption. Thryduulf (talk) 13:50, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RUNAWAY sums up some of the tactics used by disruptive editors: namely Their edits are limited to a small number of pages that very few people watch and Conversely, their edits may be distributed over a wide range of articles to make it less likely that any given user watches a sufficient number of affected articles to notice the disruptions. If a user is really insistent on pushing their agenda, they might not be able to push it on the big pages, they may push it on some of the smaller pages where their edits may get unwatched for months if not years. Then, researchers digging up information will come across the POV article and blindly cite it. Although Wikipedia should never be cited as a source, it still happens. AwesomeAasim14:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The number of revisions within the PIA topic area that violate the ARBECR rule is not measured. It is not currently possible to say anything meaningful about the amount of 'disruption' in the topic area by non-EC IPs and accounts. And the way people estimate the amount of 'disruption' subjectively depends on the timescale they choose to measure it. Nobody can see all of the revisions and the number of people looking is small. Since the ARBECR rule was introduced around the start of 2020, there have been over 71,000 revisions by IPs to articles and talk pages within the subset of the PIA topic, about 11,000 pages, used to gather statistical data (ARBPIA templated articles and articles that are members of both wikiproject Israel and wikiproject Palestine). Nobody has any idea how many of those were constructive, how many were disruptive, how many involved ban-evading disposable accounts etc. And yet, this incomplete information situation apparently has little to no impact on the credence we all assign to our views about what would work best for the PIA topic area. I personally think it is better to dispense with non-evidence-based beliefs about the state of the topic area at any given time and simply let the servers enforce the rule as written in WP:ARBECR, "only extended-confirmed editors may make edits related to the topic area, subject to the following provisions...". Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:22, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Make sense, but I am not sure if this is meant to be an oppose. Personally, since there hasn't been much big outrage not solved by a simple RfPP, anecdotally I see no problem with the status quo on this question. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As OP I am actually starting to lean weak oppose unless if we have a robust and new-user-friendly edit request system (which currently we don't). We already preemptively protect templates used on a lot of pages for technical reasons, and I don't think new users are at all going to be interested in templates so our current edit request system works decent for templates, modules, code pages, etc. When we choose to protect it should be the same as blocking which is the risk of disruption for specific pages or topic areas, using previous disruption to hope predict the future. Users already have a hard time submitting edit requests for pages not within contentious topic areas, so as it stands right now preemptive protection will do more harm than good. AwesomeAasim19:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This behaves a little like pending changes, but with a few different things:
There would be an additional option entitled "allow users to submit edits for review" in the protection window. There could also be a specific user group able to accept such edits.
Instead of the standard "protected page text" informing the user is protected, when this option is enabled, the user is given a message something like "This page is currently protected, so you are currently submitting an edit request. Only when your change is approved will your edit be visible." An edit summary as well as a more detailed explanation into the review can be provided. Same for title blacklisted pages. However, the "permission error" will still show for attempting to rename the page, as well as for cases where a user cannot edit a page for a reason other than protection (like being blocked from editing).
All the changes submitted for review end up in some namespace (like Review:1234567) with the change id. Only users with the ability to edit the page or accept the revision would be able to see these changes. There would also be the ability to discuss each change on the talk page for that change or something similar. This namespace by design will be unprotectable.
Users with the ability to edit the page (or when a higher accept level is selected, users with that accept level) are given the ability to merge these changes in. Administrators can delete changes just like they can delete individual revisions, and these changes can also be suppressed just like individual revisions.
Changes are not directly committed to the edit history, unlike the current pending changes system; only to the page in the Review: namespace.
This would be a major improvement over our edit request system which ONLY allows a user to write what they want changed, and that is often prone to stuff that is not WP:CHANGEXY. If there are merge conflicts preventing a clean merge then the person who submitted the edit or the reviewer will have to manually fix it before it merges cleanly. If this path is chosen we can safely retire pending changes. AwesomeAasim18:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support failing Q1, as it streamlines the experience for making edit requests, especially for new users. I have had ideas for scripts to make the experience of submitting an edit request a lot easier but none has really come to fruition. I still don't entirely agree with the arguments with Q2 and Q3, but I am starting to agree that that is putting the pen before the pig and thus can be closed as premature, unless if there is an emerging consensus that pages being within a topic area should not be protected for being within that particular topic area. AwesomeAasim18:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in theory, but wait to see if this is technically possible to implement. While a clear improvement, it will likely require quite some amount of work (and workshopping) for implementation. While a non-binding poll to gauge community interest is a good thing, having a full RfC to adopt this before coding has even begun is way too premature. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:29, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Too soon to know. Once it is known that it is technically possible and you have mockups of things like interfaces and details of how it would handle a range of common real-world scenarios then we can discuss whether it would make sense to implement it. Thryduulf (talk) 22:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Before proposing something like this, first find out whether it is possible. If it isn't currently possible but could be, work out structures and how it will work, at least broadly. Then find out whether enough people want it that someone spending the time to make it will be worthwhile. You can't just assume that anything you want is technically possible and that if enough other people also want it that developers will make it for you. Some relatively simple, uncontroversial feature requests, with demonstrated demand, have been open tasks awaiting developer intention for over 15 years. Thryduulf (talk) 02:16, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As an actual developer, this seems like it would be possible in the technical sense, but also a sufficiently large project that it won't actually get done unless some WMF team takes the initiative to do it. This would likely amount to writing a new extension, which would have to go through the review queue, whose first step now is Find at least one WMF team (or staff member on behalf of their team) to agree to offer basic support for the extension for when it's deployed to Wikimedia Production. And I have no idea what team would support this. Moderator Tools would be my first guess, but they refused to support Adiutor even when it was actually coded up and ready to go and is much simpler, so they definitely won't. I personally think this requirement is unnecessary (and hypocritical), and the WMF needs to stop stifling volunteers' creativity, but there's nothing I can do about it now. And all of this is despite the fact that I think there's actually some merit to the idea. * Pppery *it has begun...04:17, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If additional proposals come (seems unlikely), I wonder if this might be better split as a "pending changes review" or something similar. AwesomeAasim18:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First, please stop calling this a git-like system. The real essence of version control systems is branching history. Plus one of the key principles for git is to enable developers to keep the branching history as simple as possible, with changes merged cleanly into an integration branch, so proposed changes never show up in the history of the integration branch.
I would prefer keeping the article history clear of any edit requests. There could be a tool that would clone an article (or designated sections) to a user subpage, preserving attribution in the edit summary. The user could make their changes on that page, and then a tool could assist them in creating an edit request. Whoever processes the request will be able to review the diff on the subpage. If the current version of the article has changed significantly, they can ask the requester to rebase the page to the current version and redo their change. I think this approach simplifies both creating and reviewing a proposed change, and helps spread the workload of integrating changes when they pile up. isaacl (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It won't. If the change is not merged. The point of this is the edit history remains clear up until the edit is approved. We can do some "squashing" as well as limit edits to be reviewed to the original creator. A commit on GitHub and GitLab does not show up on main until merged. It is already possible to merge two page's histories right now, this is done after cut and paste moves. This just takes it to a different level. AwesomeAasim22:53, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
History merge isn't really the same thing, in that you can't interlace changes in the version history, but only have a "clean" merge when the two have disjoint timespans. If multiple versions of the same page are edited simultaneously before being merged, even assuming no conflicts in merging, the current histmerge system will not be able to handle it properly. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:58, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it doesn't show up in the article history, then it isn't like pending changes at all, so I suggest your summary should be updated accordingly. In which case, under the hood your proposal is similar to mine; I suggest having subpages under the user page would be easier for the user to manage. Squashing shouldn't be done with the history of public branches (commits should remain fixed once they've been made known to everyone) plus rewriting history can be confusing, so I think the change history should be preserved on the working page. If you mean that the submission into the article should be one edit, sure.
My proposal was to layer on tools to assist with creating edit requests, while yours seeks to integrate the system with the edit function when a user is prevented from editing due to page protection. Thus from an implementation perspective, my proposal can be implemented independently of the rest of the MediaWiki code base (and could be done with gadgets), while yours would require changes to the MediaWiki code. Better integration of course offers a more cohesive user experience, but faces greater implementation and integration challenges. I suggest reaching out to the WMF development team to find a contact to discuss your ideas. isaacl (talk) 23:13, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that for now we should have JS tools, although that itself has challenges. A modification to MediaWiki core will also have challenges but it might be worth it in the long run, as Core gets regular updates to features, but extensions not always. AwesomeAasim01:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since we're assuming that PCECP is possible and the last two questions definitely deal with policy, I feel like maybe this should go to VPP instead, with the header edited to something like "Extended-confirmed pending changes and preemptive protection in contentious topics" to reflect the slightly−larger-than-advertised scope? Aaron Liu (talk) 23:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think policy proposals are also okay here, though I see your point. There is definitely overlap, though. This is both a request for a technical change as well as establishing policy/guidelines around that technical change (or lack thereof). AwesomeAasim00:26, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If this proposal is accepted, my assumption is that we'd bring back the ORANGELOCK which was used for the original incarnation of Pending Changes Level 2. There's a proposed lock already at File:Pending_Changes_Protected_Level_2.svg, though it needs fixes in terms of name (should probably be something like Pending-level-2-protection-shackle.png or Extended-pending-protection-shackle.png), SVG code (the top curve is a bit cut off), and color (should probably be darker but still clearly distinguishable from REDLOCK). —pythoncoder (talk | contribs)21:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think light blue is a better color for this. But in any case we will probably need a lock with a checkmark and the letter "E" for extended confirmed. AwesomeAasim22:22, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am actually starting to wonder if "protection" is a bit of a misnomer, because technically pages under pending changes are not really "protected". Yeah the edits are subject to review, but there are no technical measures to prevent a user from editing. It is just like recent changes on many wikis; those hold edits for review until they are approved, but they do not "protect" the entire wiki. AwesomeAasim23:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to withdraw Q2 and Q3 for putting the pen before the pig, but I did realize I added a couple more comments particularly to Q2. I did add a Q4 that might be more actionable and that is about making the experience of submitting edit requests a lot better. I am starting to agree though for Q2 and Q3 everything that has needed to be said has been said so the proposals can be withdrawn.
We do need to consider the experience of the users actually being locked out of this. I understand the opposition to Q3 (and in fact just struck my !vote because of this). But Q2? Look at the disaster that WP:V22RFC, WP:V22RFC2, and WP:V22RFC3 is. These surveys are barely representative of new users, just of experienced editors. We should absolutely be bringing new editors to the table for these discussions. AwesomeAasim19:13, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't pre-close. 4 of the opposers to the main proposal seem to address only Q2 instead of Q1, and I don't see anyone addressing the argument that it's less restrictive than ECP. It's up to the closer to weigh the consensus. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:30, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Add AI translation option for translating from English to non-English article.
AI certainly improved a lot by now. It can translate to many non-english language better than traditional translators . My suggestion is to add AI translation option for translating from English to non-English article. User will review the AI translation to see if its correct. It will increase the translation quality. I dont suggest using AI for English article, that could have a devastating impact. Dark1618 (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's out of scope here, and would need to be asked on each and every individual language-edition of Wikipedia, as those would be the ones dictating policy for translations into their respective languages. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques19:10, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would a translation into English be devastating, but a translation from English into any other language be acceptable? English just happens to be that most used language in the world by some measures: beyond that it has no special status. Anyway, we can not decide here what is appropriate for other language Wikipedias. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good Idea! That’s actually what I was going to propose but you took it. To add to your amazing proposal, I suggest that every wiki translation must be approved by a speaker. Like If someone translated an article from English to Arabic, the translated article goes to an Arab speaker, by algorithm when the person would press a button that says “send for approval” or something like that, and the Arab person who gets the translated article will read the Wikipedia page and look for any errors, then the Arab corrects it and it gets published to the world. And why can’t the opposite happen, when an article gets translated to say french To English the same thing happens the French person machine translates the article, it gets sent to approval, a fluent English speaker goes and corrects it, then it gets published. If it is an extinct language, a person who is a professional in the language will correct it, and as for rates, I mean Wikipedia has at least 1 person who knows the language. Anyway have a good day! Cheers! Datawikiperson (talk) 10:10, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure of the technical backend for that tool, but I do see at English Wikipedia a constant inflow of articles translated from sister projects, usually without proper attribution, sometimes with broken templates.Some of these translations are pretty good, up to idiomatic phrasing; others have the appearance of raw machine translation, with errors no one fluent in the target language would leave in.As to the original proposal / idea, a flow of machine translations from this project to sister Wikipediae, that is indeed out of scope here, and would have to be brought up individually at each language project. Except maybe Cebuano Wikipedia. Folly Mox (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I occasionally translate from English to Chinese and vice versa, and take on some bits from Japanese and Korea projects to be translated on to here if the information and sources can be used on here. And I strongly discourage automated AI translations from English to other languages, which you are proposing, without further inputs from the targeted language projects. AI translations to other languages from English are not perfect and can have the same devastating impact you don't want to see on English Wikipedia. – robertsky (talk) 14:30, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Machine translation from English to most other languages is already enabled (and where it isn't it is a choice of the to project, not of the English Wikipedia). I don't think there is anything for us to do about this proposal? — xaosfluxTalk10:33, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose see also WP:CXT. We should never be using AI to translate works; always humans. Yes AI is good, but just by the nature of how LLMs and neural networks work, they can't necessarily be better than humans. AI does not have any understanding of context, cultural norms, and so much more that humans do have, it just finds patterns in data to see what comes next. AwesomeAasim19:17, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Heya, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that while interface administrators and central notice administrators need 2FA, bureaucrats, who can grant interface admin don't need 2FA. To me this seems a bit weird, because if you wanted to compromise an account with access to interface admin tools, bureaucrats may not all have 2FA. Hence, I'm proposing requiring all enwiki bureaucrats to enable 2FA as a precaution. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 09:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see non-restricted adjacent bugs T242553 and T242556 were both created on 12 Jan 2020. Would it be accurate to describe this as an evaluation which has been unresolved for about 5 years? -- zzuuzz(talk)13:58, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support per pppery and zippybonzo - should be a requirement locally. Waiting for phab tickets could take years while I imagine a RFC would pass pretty quickly. BugGhost🦗👻19:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that 'crats can assign interface admin (a role which requires 2FA) but are not required to have 2FA personally enabled is wild. Support a local rule (and hopefully the largest WMF project implementing such a rule will encourage others to make such a change). HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 00:43, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definite support. I am personally in favor of a 2FA requirement for any privileged group, but it is something I doubt will happen anytime soon. Crats should absolutely have it enabled. EggRoll97(talk) 01:51, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question. How are you going to check whether the user enabled 2FA or not? This information is not public. Only WMF can confirm this. Ruslik_Zero20:02, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, stewards can check this, and we periodically audit this for compliance on projects. Also, 'crats will very likely soon be able to check this as well - just some paperwork in that way right now (primarily so they can check it before assigning intadmin to others). — xaosfluxTalk10:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, because the last time I checked, WMF's self-developed version of 2FA was not really fit for purpose. It's not like they're using Duo or Google or something. If anything, I'd support removing it from the roles requiring it now. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It works OK, but is certainly not ready for large-scale deployment due to the support model and capacity. Staff is generally responsive to recovery requests for those that WMF requires enrollment though. — xaosfluxTalk10:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in theory - I use 2FA as a crat. Makes all the sense to me. As Xaos says above it's not ideal how it's setup. If it was just a "should this user group use 2FA", then I think yes. And, I'd argue administrators should as well. I can't support the technical solution we currently have being rolled out further without more Dev time. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)13:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support now. This is an security oversight. Regardless of the issues with WMF's 2FA this is still a flaw in the current security model since an attacker could gain interface admin without bypassing 2FA Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply)00:44, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Floq, plus it's not clear how we're enforcing this: either we're revoking permissions (in which case several crats will lose the bit on inactivity alone) or we're not (in which case we're no more secure than before). A much better solution would be to just put the stewards in charge of adding/removing intadmin. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I support implementing phab:T282624, which would make IA a steward-only thing. 2FA for interface admins is required by WMF, and only stewards can check whether the requirement is being followed. Letting 'crats check whether 2FA is enabled is stuck in phab purgatory, though there has been some movement in 2024. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 05:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RfC: Should a blackout be organized in protest of the Wikimedia Foundation's actions?
A single discussion where somebody argues something that does not gain consensus is not evidence of a problem, let alone evidence that the proposed change would solve that problem. Thryduulf (talk) 16:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a feature, not a bug; "or" does not mean "and". That WP:BAND currently circumvents WP:GNG is either trivially true (as creating subject-specific notability guidance outside of the GNG is the whole point of a WP:SNG) or arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the subject-specific notability guidelines. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)16:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
or arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the subject-specific notability guidelines. That might actually be what is at issue - there seem to be two different understandings of what SNG's are - supporting GNG or an alternative to it.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:17, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I posted this in the other village pump thread, but while I'm generally fine with this proposal, I don't think it's coming from a place of understanding.
Basically, there's an assumption happening that record labels work off some kind of predictable tier system, where the Big 3 labels are home to the most famous artists, indie labels are home to the semi-famous ones, and everyone else is a non-notable bottom feeder. That's not how it works. One of the more notable albums of the year is Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee, which was self-released. Meanwhile, there are artists on the Big 3 who I would guess probably don't have significant coverage. This is because music journalism is dying, no one has staff and no one has money, and the range of artists being covered has shrunk dramatically. See this Columbia Journalism Review article for further on that.
So in other words, I don't think criterion 5 in NBAND is good or useful, but for the opposite reasons that this proposal suggests. The problem is not that people's random garage bands will be considered a "label." The problem is there is less and less correlation between being signed to a label and having significant coverage. (Ironically, the "albums" criterion is probably the more stringent one, because labels are less and less likely to put out a full-length album by an artist that isn't already established via singles and streaming tracks.)
I don't know what to do with that. (I honestly think the collapse of journalism and the shrinking scope of what gets reported on is a ticking time bomb for notability criteria across the board, but that's a whole other topic.) The most straightforward solution is to use WP:GNG, but I think it's important to have a correct understanding of exactly what musicians we're talking about here. The bar is way, way, way higher than "run of the mill non-notable items" now. The bar is one or two tiers below Sabrina Carpenter. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:26, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: One way that this criterion could have value is to serve as a reminder that one Google search is not a sufficient WP:BEFORE check, because artists on notable labels are likely to have received coverage in print. (Another way this proposal is misinformed
I'd love to make BEFORE specifically include looking where sources are most likely to be found and explicitly state that looking at the first few pages of Google do not constitute a proper check. This always gets shot down in howls of protest at how dare I require people nominating pages for deletion to do more work than they imagine it took to create a three line sub-stub. I don't know how we get past this. Thryduulf (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, it already does: The minimum search expected is a normal Google search, a Google Books search, a Google News search, and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects. The problem is that WP:BEFORE is not considered binding so there are no consequences to ignoring it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:51, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your proposal operatively eliminates the SNG for bands. And also creates an even tougher GNG requirement than GNG by requiring that GNG compliance be demonstrated. I would like there to be some at least partial demonstration requirement added to GNG, but that's a whole 'nother issue and a secondary one in this case.
It also sort of misses the main point discussed at the linked pump discussion which was eliminating one or two items / "ways in" in the SNG.Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:04, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
in line with this, NBAND can be eeaily fixed to makes sure that the idea that the criteria are a presumption of notability is added. I do not see any language like this though the intent seems to be there. That would quickly resolve one conflict. Mind you, deprecating or time gating criteria that do not make sense in modern music distribution is also a reasonable step though I would not remove them outright for historical purposes. Masem (t) 19:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was amazed by how much our guidelines were written with Western popular musicians in mind when I started editing 17 years ago and it seems that nothing has changed since. It is so much easier for such a person to have an article about them than for other types or nationalities of musician. This is so obviously caused by Wikipedia's demographics that I hesitate to say anything further. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder what effect imposing GNG would have on that. I've heard from some African editors that much of the real news for music and pop culture is posted on social media (i.e., actually posted on Facebook itself, not some website that's sorta kinda social media-like). So if you take away an objective but non-source-oriented criteria and substitute 'must have the kind of sources that are usual enough in the US and UK but are unusual in Nigeria', will that tip even further towards overrepresenting Western popular musicians?
My impression of the two albums/two films kinds of rules from back in the day is that the advice had more to do with WP:Build the web than with writing full articles. The expectation was that (if there weren't significant sources to justify writing more), the articles would usually be very brief ("Joe Film is an American actor who appeared in Film and Example" or "The Band is a British band who released Album in 1998 and Cover album in 2001") but that we'd still be able to provide non-red links in related pages and still not have to duplicate information. Consequently, I think the traditional thinking is closer to how we think of spinning off a list or splitting a long article, than about trying to justify the subject as "worthy" of a full, stand-alone article via extensive sourcing.
I could imagine people opposing this merely for fear of the resulting red links, and of course the idea of going beyond the GNG to require "demonstrating" it will turn off other editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it is established that reliable third party sources covering African music are going to include posts on social media rather than print or web publishing, then we should work to accomodate that so that we are more inclusive, rather than expect the more traditional forms of media. Masem (t) 20:05, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
speaking for myself, I never had issues with using a third party posting via something like Facebook. I've always considered that to be a statement by that third party, they're just using Facebook as the medium. Am I understanding this example correctly?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 20:18, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A statement by the band('s representatives) on the band's official facebook page is no more user-generated content and no less reliable than if that same statement was made by the same people was posted on the band's official website or quoted verbatim in a newspaper. Thryduulf (talk) 20:55, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Thryduulf, that's partly what I'm referring to. Schazjmd, I am indeed familiar with that guideline. In fact, my first edit on Wikipedia was removing content that I had generated as a user on another site. I'm referring to established media outlets posting something on Facebook. Like, say, Salon posted a story on Facebook rather than on their official site. It's gone through an editorial process, they just are using Facebook as a publishing medium.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 21:00, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There isn't a wiki-requirement for the type of source that sources used, or even that they have sources. Of course such things still matter regarding regarding actual/ real world reliability of of the source. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So keeping in mind that I have never had a Facebook account and have no experience with social media, my impression from these editors was that when they say they get news on Facebook, it's not necessarily the band that's posting (which wouldn't be Wikipedia:Independent sources) or even news articles being shared. Instead, it could be an ordinary comment by someone whom their followers believe is knowledgeable but who is not necessarily "official". For example – and I completely make this example up; the African editors who told me about this dilemma two years ago are welcome to disavow and correct anything I say – imagine a post by a professional DJ: They'll know things about music and bands, and they'll probably know more than a magazine writer assigned to do a piece on pop music in that city/country. They are "reliable" in the sense that people "rely on" them every day of the year. But it's outside the kinds of formal structures that we use to evaluate official sources: no editor, no publisher, no fact-checker, no peer review, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all for adapting guidelines and policies for geographic and cultural considerations. However, I don't think this would get far, because it's essentially a using self-published sources for BLPs issue, and that's going to be a steep climb to weaken that policy.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I don't see any easy solution here. Even if it's not BLP-related, it relies on already knowing which accounts are the trustworthy ones, and there's no impartial way to evaluate an unfamiliar source. The post could say something like "This village is best known for cloth dyeing" or "The bus service there doesn't run on Sundays", and you'd still have to know whether that source is a good source of information. What if one person posts that the bus runs on Sundays and another person posts that it doesn't? An outsider would have no way of knowing which to trust. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:28, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I always thought the the reason "two or more" was specified was that if there was only one the name could be redirected. Since that time there seems to have developed a dislike for stubs. I don't know where that came from (most articles in most traditional encyclopedias only consisted of one or two sentences, if that) but in order to satisfy that dislike maybe criterion 6 should be an encouragement to create a disambiguation page (or maybe a set index page, if you want to be pedantic) for the title. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is correct. If there's only one, then you could:
Have an article about the album
Redirect the band's name to it
Put the little bit of information you have about the band in the album article
but if there are multiple albums, then:
You can have an article about each album
But which one do you redirect the band's name to?
And do you duplicate the information about the band in each of the album articles?
So it seemed easier to have an article. Now, of course, when the median size of an article is 13 sentences and 4 refs, and when we have a non-trivial minority of editors who think even that is pathetic, there is resistance to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:33, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I am interpreting this section as an RfCBEFORE, and contributing in that spirit.
Having briefly reviewed the linked discussions, I do not see a problem with NBAND itself that would justify deprecation (rather than revision). And turning NBAND into a predictor of GNG rather than a standalone SNG seems to me essentially akin to deprecation. Fixing specific criteria seems much more appropriate to me, given the issues raised to date.
There are what seem to me to be evident reasons why NBAND operates according to the same logic as NCREATIVE, which is explicitly excluded from WP:NOTINHERITED. These SNGs reflect the reality that creative people produce creative works, and that therefore the people creating those works gain encyclopedic relevance directly from having created them.
In addition, it seems to me that there are practical, navigational reasons (having to do with the affordances of hypertext, Wikipedia's list system, and Wikipedia's category system) to offer more consistent treatment rather than leaving each individual musician, each musical group and each album up to the vagaries of WP:NBASIC, WP:NORG and the WP:GNG.
There may be problems with specific NBAND criteria and the way they are sometimes used at AfD, but it seems entirely incommensurate to deprecate the whole SNG based on such marginal concerns. Newimpartial (talk) 20:31, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the Wikipedia norm for a "just barely made it" band has sourcing that meets a slightly lenient interpretation of GNG, and the decision is influenced by somewhat meeting an SNG criteria, thus being more conducive to artists than for example a for-profit corporation. And the "norm" means that is is how Wikipedia as a whole wants it. There are folks out there who are at the extreme deletionist end of the spectrum and they will typically say that the above is not the case and piece together an unusually strignent "letter of the law" demand, even adding some things from essays saying that three sources that 100% meet GNG is the expectation. And so while I really think that the burden should shift to providing some GNG-ish sources (vs. just saying "they are out there" without actually supplying any) I'm loath to shift the balance too much, keeping the folks at the deletionist end of the spectrum in mind.
The pump discussion started with talking about how being signed by a label is no longer as indicative as it used to be and to remove it as being a key to the city of SNG compliance. I think there was support for that.
I agree with everyone else above that this proposal would gut WP:BAND, which I am not okay with. If you want to remove some criteria of WP:BAND, like #5, which I agree is a little opaque and outdated, fine. But this seems like a sneaky way of demolishing WP:BAND without openly saying so. Toadspike[Talk]21:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like the point North made, that our notability rules are set up to be more conducive to artists than for example a for-profit corporation. I've never thought of our guidelines on artists as particularly lax, but I know that NCORP is purposely stringent and that is the way things should be. Toadspike[Talk]21:41, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not disappointed at the consensus emerging here, and hopefully it might help clarify discussions. there does seem to be some consensus to ditch criterion 5. I'm happy to amend it to that particular criterion disappearing and everything else stays.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 21:48, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if the most practical thing with criterion 5 (the one about releasing two albums on a label) would be to give it an end date. It was a useful criterion in the pre-streaming music world, so why not say "two albums on a label before 2010", or at whatever point editors decide that labels became less relevant? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:42, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea but the cutoff should be earlier. The iTunes music store was founded in 2003, Spotify was founded in 2006, sometime around there would make more sense. Gnomingstuff (talk) 21:39, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we are specifically concerned about self-published labels (again, I think the "more important indie" labels part already rules that out anyway, but whatever), the digital distribution companies making that happen DistroKid in 2012 and CDBaby in 2004. But even those had their main impact by partnering with Spotify and iTunes respectively. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AIUI the problem there isn't that deletion isn't one of several available options according to policy; instead, the problem is that other editors do not agree to delete it. DELPOL allows such deletions, but it does not require them, and if I want to delete the article for being IMO undersourced, but other editors show up at AFD saying things like "qualifies under NBAND 5", then the article won't actually get deleted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I thought. The rules don't result in the deletions "I" want; therefore, we must change the rules so other editors can't prevent the deletions "I" want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly opposed to the proposal as written by 3family6 as it's written at Wikipedia:Band_notability_proposal now, because it still contains the same text from #5 and #6, which are the two criteria from NBAND that I am objecting to that SNG's presence in the first place. I am unfamiliar with proposal process, but 3family6 went ahead and put it together on his own and doesn't want anyone editing it now. As I said, I don't know how proposals work, but if one user puts it together and quickly puts it out for a vote, is it off limits to editing? Graywalls (talk) 22:09, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Making criteria 2-11 contingent on also meeting criterion 1 is a much larger (and seemingly unnecessary) change compared to removing or reformulating 5 and 6. Newimpartial (talk) 13:08, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Yeah, why not; I didn't really see the point back then, I'm not sure, honestly, that I do now, but enough people have said it's useful work that who am I to deny it? And Graham87's obviously both good at it and committed to it. Support this proposal. SerialNumber5412912:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Support. Importers are editors who are highly trusted to undertake a very specialised role and it makes sense that they be given the rights needed to fully do the job properly. Thryduulf (talk) 13:09, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support obviously – thanks, wow, did not expect this and I didn't know this would be feasible. As I said at my RRFA, I have my own issues with this tool (which explain why I didn't use it so much), but access to it is way better than no history-merge access at all. Graham87 (talk) 13:25, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support if technically feasible. I really opposed the RRFA because Graham87 was asking for a role we didn't have. If they can do their importing/merging work without being able to block users, I would support that. (Normally I wouldn't support a one-off solution like this but, given the rareness of this, I think it makes sense here.) Note that I would also favor further unbundling admin powers beyond this nom. - RevelationDirect (talk) 13:35, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support sure. This is super niche, but basically: if someone can be trusted to be able to do an xmlimport, this is related and much less dangerous. If we're going to touch it I'm find also adding it to transwiki importers as well (even though we don't have any currenty) for parity. transwiki import is less dangerous, and most of the WP:RFPI items are able to be done that way -- in case any non-admins were looking to work in that area. — xaosfluxTalk13:44, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support If somebody is a importer, they can be trusted with not messing up the databases any further while apply (merge-history). Sohom (talk) 13:58, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This seems like a bit of an exceptional case, but I do think that it's worthwhile to allow importers to merge histories for practical reasons. And the role is so restricted that I don't have trust issues here. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)15:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I got to support Graham's importer request once upon a time. Pleased to support this request as well. Even setting aside the direct impetus, this is a logical bundling of the tools that does not raise the required trust level for this small user group. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 17:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Let's at least permit Graham to continue his archaeological work. No one else does this, and it requires the mergehistory perm. Folly Mox (talk) 11:15, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, obviously, this is invaluable work and it would be a clear negative for it to stop being done, which is effectively what would happen otherwise. Gnomingstuff (talk) 01:51, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support My gut doesn't like this (mergehistory feels like a distinct permission from importer), but I do trust Graham87 to use the tool and think the chance of us ever getting any other non-admin importers is negligible, so I guess I support this. * Pppery *it has begun...01:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Importers are already highly trusted and it is granted by a steward, so this would be a narrow unbundling that would probably satisfy any WMF legal requirements. And I would trust Graham87 with this tool. Abzeronow (talk) 20:58, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Importers already can fuck with the page history a lot more than someone with history merge rights can. I see no reason to not allow importers to merge history. ThatIPEditorTalk · Contribs02:04, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support because if this enables work to be performed that much easier for one editor, then chances are increased for other editors to follow suit or pick up the mantle later on down the line. Thanks. Huggums537voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk)06:50, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I don't see a reason why not. This seems relevant to the importer group, and I'm surprised this permission isn't already included. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:31, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because importing is importing a bunch of revisions into the history of the page. It's quite similar and often needed. Those two users are the only ones who maintain this area critical to Wikipedia, and that's the system, which has persisted due to their being able to merge history; now that Graham's been stripped of history merging, half of his duty and thus a quarter of this system, we need to rectify it or risk destabilizing of the system. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The system is only two people doing this work, and we're otherwise taking away half of what one of them does. I don't see any reason not to do this. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:36, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@RevelationDirect yes, criteria is basically a user-specific RFC. This is a super niche area; though I'd be open to expanding this permission to the less dangersour transwiki-importer group -- which also requires a per-user rfc to add too, but with a lower bar to entry. — xaosfluxTalk13:46, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87: Since the topic has come up, I've actually wanted to jump into importing for a while (I'll be quite honest, probably transwiki importing, given it seems like a better place to start out at than XML import), but how does one really get into that line of work? I presume the common answer would probably be the direction of WP:RFA, but that seems like a bit much given a right already exists that is outside of the sysop group. EggRoll97(talk) 20:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@EggRoll97 transwiki comes with admin, so most people that want to deal with it go that route, WP:RFA. It is possible to add transwiki in isolation - to do so start a discussion (suggest over at Wikipedia talk:Requests for page importation). The discussion will need to be well advertised (WP:AN and WP:VPM are good places), run for a reasonable time to allow feedback (about a week), be well attended, and show a good consensus of support (someone else should 'close' the discussion with such showing). The bar for transwiki is generally less than for sysop, while the bar for importxml access is generally higher than sysop. At that point, it would get processed over at m:Steward requests/Permissions#Miscellaneous requests. — xaosfluxTalk11:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: Yeah that. @EggRoll97:, I did notice your ping, but I wasn't sure how to respond (given that no-one,, especially a non-admin, has asked such a question before) then got distracted by other things. If you have a good idea how/where you'd like to use the import tool, feel free to float your proposal as noted in the message above. Graham87 (talk) 15:52, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is, and no. The only way we can assign permissions is to add the permissions to a group, then users can be added to the group. It would be possible to create an entirely new group that has this permission - but that seems overkill here unless it was going to do a whole lot more (like a "technician" group that had a bunch of other sub-admin permissions). — xaosfluxTalk13:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Compassionate727 those are certainly case-by-case. Sometimes historymerge is the right tool for the job. Any complicated merge/imports that require deletion are going to have to be handled by admins unless we want to make some new sub-admin technician group in the future (the community has repeatedly rejected such proposals though) which could have extra tools (like delete/undelete and others) but only be permitted to use them for certain purposes. — xaosfluxTalk14:09, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Graham believes that the MergeHistory tool is inferior simply because it doesn't log a merge on the target page. I see no problem with this view. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
RfC: Log the use of the HistMerge tool at both the merge target and merge source
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the lists. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Currently, there are open phabtickets proposing that the use of the HistMerge tool be logged at the target article in addition to the source article. Several proposals have been made:
Option 1a: When using Special:MergeHistory, a null edit should be placed in both the merge target and merge source's page's histories stating that a history merge took place.
(phab:T341760: Special:MergeHistory should place a null edit in the page's history describing the merge, authored Jul 13 2023)
Option 1b: When using Special:MergeHistory, add a log entry recorded for the articles at the both HistMerge target and source that records the existence of a history merge.
(phab:T118132: Merging pages should add a log entry to the destination page, authored Nov 8 2015)
Option 2: Do not log the use of the Special:MergeHistory tool at the merge target, maintaining the current status quo.
Should the use of the HistMerge tool be explicitly logged? If so, should the use be logged via an entry in the page history or should it instead be held in a dedicated log? — Red-tailed hawk(nest)15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 1a/b. I am in principle in support of adding this logging functionality, since people don't typically have access to the source article title (where the histmerge is currently logged) when viewing an article in the wild. There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful. As for whether this is logged directly in the page history (as is done currently with page protection) or if this is merely in a separate log file, I don't have particularly strong feelings, but I do think that adding functionality to log histmerges at the target article would improve clarity in page histories. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 1a/b. No strong feelings on which way is best (I'll let the experienced histmergers comment on this), but logging a history merge definitely seems like a useful feature. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1b would be most important to me but but 1a would be nice too. But this is really not the place for this sort of discussion, as noted below. Graham87 (talk) 16:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 History merging done right should be seamless, leaving the page indistinguishable from if the copy-paste move being repaired had never happened. Adding extra annotations everywhere runs counter to that goal. Prefer 1b to 1a if we have to do one of them, as the extra null edits could easily interfere with the history merge being done in more complicated situations. * Pppery *it has begun...16:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you expound on why they should be indistinguishable? I don't see how this could harm any utility. A log action at the target page would not show up in the history anyways, and a null edit would have no effect on comparing revisions. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2 History merges are already logged, so this survey name is somewhat off the mark. As someone who does this work: I do not think these should be displayed at either location. It would cause a lot of noise in history pages that people probably would not fundamentally understand (2 revisions for "please process this" and "remove tag" and a 3rd revision for the suggested log), and it would be "out of order" in that you will have merged a bunch of revisions but none of those revisions would be nearby the entry in the history page itself. I also find protections noisy in this way as well, and when moves end up causing a need for history merging, you end up with doubled move entries in the merged history, which also is confusing. Adding history merges to that case? No thanks. History merges are more like deletions and undeletions, which already do not add displayed content to the history view. Izno (talk) 16:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They presently are logged, but only at the source article. Take for example this entry. When I search for the merge target, I get nothing. It's only when I search the merge source that I'm able to get a result, but there isn't a way to know the merge source.
If I don't know when or if the histmerge took place, and I don't know what article the history was merged from, I'd have to look through the entirety of the merge log manually to figure that out—and that's suboptimal. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)17:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)
But ignoring that, why is it valuable to know this information? What do you gain? And is what you gain actually valuable to your end objective? For example, let's take your There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful. Is not the revisions left behind in the page history by both the person requesting and the person performing the histmerge not enough (see {{histmerge}})? There are history merges done that don't have that request format such as the WikiProject history merge format, but those are almost always ancient revisions, so what are you gaining there? And where they are not ancient revisions, they are trivial kinds of the form "draft x -> page y, I hate that I even had to interact with this history merge it was so trivial (but also these are great because I don't have to spend significant time on them)". Izno (talk) 17:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)
Page moves do leave a null edit on the page that describes where the page was moved from and was moved to. And it's easy to work backwards from there to figure out the page move history. The same cannot be said of the Special:MergeHistory tool, which doesn't make it easy to re-construct what the heck went on unless we start diving naïvely through the logs. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)17:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It can be *possible* to find the original history merge source page without looking through the merge log, but the method for doing so is very brittle and extremeley hacky. Basically, look for redirects to the page using "What links here", and find the redirect whose first edit has an unusual byte difference. This relies on the redirect being stable and not deleted or retargetted. There is also another way that relies on byte difference bugs as described in the above-linked discussion by wbm1058. Both of those are ... particularly awful. Graham87 (talk) 03:48, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the given example, the history-merge occurred here. Your "log" is the edit summaries. "Created page with '..." is the edit summary left by a normal page creation. But wait, there is page history before the edit that created the page. How did it get there? Hmm, the previous edit summary "Declining submission: v - Submission is improperly sourced (AFCH)" tips you off to look for the same title in draft: namespace. Voila! Anyone looking for help with understanding a particular merge may ask me and I'll probably be able to figure it out for you. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another scenario, this one from WP:WikiProject History Merge. The page history shows an edit adding +5,800 bytes, leaving the page with 5,800 bytes. But the previous edit did not leave a blank page. Some say this is a bug, but it's also a feature. That "bug" is actually your "log" reporting that a hist-merge occurred at that edit. Voila, the log for that page shows a temp delete & undelete setting the page up for a merge. The first item on the log:
clues you in to where to look for the source of the merge. Voila, that single edit which removed −5,633 bytes tells you that previous history was merged off of that page. The log provides the details. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, there are times where the clues are much harder to find, and even in those cases, it'd be much better to have a unified and assured way of finding the source. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1b (log only), oppose 1a (null edit). I defer to the experienced histmergers on this, and if they say that adding null edits everywhere would be inconvenient, I believe them. However, I haven't seen any arguments against logging the histmerge at both articles, so I'll support it as a sensible idea. (On a similar note, it bothers me that page moves are only logged at one title, not both.) Toadspike[Talk]17:10, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2. The merges are already logged, so there’s no reason to add it to page histories. While it may be useful for habitual editors, it will just confuse readers who are looking for an old revision and occasional editors. Ships & Space(Edits)18:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But only the source page is logged as the "target". IIRC it currently can be a bit hard to find out when and who merged history into a page if you don't know the source page and the mergeperson didn't leave any editing indication that they merged something. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1B. The present situation of the action being only logged at one page is confusing and unhelpful. But so would be injecting null-edits all over the place. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 01:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2. This exercise is dependent on finding a volunteer MediaWiki developer willing to work on this. Good luck with that. Maybe you'll find one a decade from now. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And, more importantly, someone in the MediaWiki group to review it. I suspect there are many people, possibly including myself, who would code this if they didn't think they were wasting their time shuffling things from one queue to another. * Pppery *it has begun...06:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That link requires a Gerrit login/developer account to view. It was a struggle to get in to mine (I only have one because of an old Toolforge account and I'd basically forgotten about it), but for those who don't want to go through all that, that group has only 82 members (several of whose usernames I recognise) and I imagine they have a lot on their collective plate. There's more information about these groups at Gerrit/Privilege policy on MediaWiki. Graham87 (talk) 15:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I totally forgot Gerrit behaved in that counterintuitive way and hid public information from logged out users for no reason. The things you miss if Gerrit interactions become something you do pretty much every day. If you want to count the members of the group you also have to follow the chain of included groups - it also includes https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/wmf, https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/ops and the WMDE-MediaWiki group (another login-only link), as well as a few other permission edge cases (almost all of which are redundant because the user is already in the MediaWiki group) * Pppery *it has begun...18:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. This stupid RfC isn't even asking the right questions. Why did I need to delete (an expensive operation) and then restore a page in order to "set up for a history merge" Should we fix the software so that it doesn't require me to do that? Why did the page-mover resort to cut-paste because there was page history blocking their move, rather than ask a administrator for help? Why doesn't the software just let them move over that junk page history themselves, which would negate the need for a later hist-merge? (Actually in this case the offending user only has made 46 edits, so they don't have page-mover privileges. But they were able to move a page. They just couldn't move it back a day later after they changed their mind.) wbm1058 (talk) 13:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 1b – changes to a page's history should be listed in that page's log. There's no need to make a null edit; pagemove null edits are useful because they meaningfully fit into the page's revision history, which isn't the case here. jlwoodwa (talk) 00:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm noticing some commentary in the above RfC (on widening importer rights) as to whether or not this might be useful going forward. I do think that having the community weigh in one way or another here would be helpful in terms of deciding whether or not this functionality is worth building. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that this is an odd thing to RFC. This is about a feature in MediaWiki core, and there are a lot more users of MediaWiki core than just English Wikipedia. However, please do post the results of this RFC to both of the phab tickets. It will be a useful data point with regards to what editors would find useful. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that even if we had enough checkuser capacity to routinely run checks on every new user that doing so would be contrary to global policy. Thryduulf (talk) 04:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Setting aside privacy issues, the fact that the WMF wouldn't let us do it, and a few other things: Checking a single account, without any idea of who you're comparing them to, is not very effective, and the worst LTAs are the ones it would be least effective against. This has been floated several times in the much narrower context of adminship candidates, and rejected each time. It probably belongs on WP:PEREN by now. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 04:21, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't it be automated? What are the privacy issues and what would WMF concerns be? There has to be a better system than SPI which imposes a huge burden on the filer (and often fails to catch socks) while we just leave the door open for LTAs. Mztourist (talk) 04:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How would it be automated? We can't just block everyone who even sometimes shares an IP with someone, which is most editors once you factor in mobile editing and institutional WiFi. Even if we had a system that told checkusers about all shared-IP situations and asked them to investigate, what are they investigating for? The vast majority of IP overlaps will be entirely innocent, often people who don't even know each other. There's no way for a checkuser to find any signal in all that noise. So the only way a system like this would work is if checkusers manually identified IP ranges that are being used by LTAs, and then placed blocks on those ranges to restrict them from account creation... Which is what already happens. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 04:58, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would assume that IT experts can work out a way to automate CheckUser. If someone edits on a shared IP used by a previous sock that should be flagged and human CheckUsers notified so they can look at the edits and the previous sock edits and warn or block as necessary. Mztourist (talk) 05:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We already have autoblock. For cases it doesn't catch, there's an additional manual layer of blocking, where if a sock is caught on an IP that's been used before but wasn't caught by autoblock, a checkuser will block the IP if it's technically feasible, sometimes for months or years at a time. Beyond that, I don't think you can imagine just how often "someone edits on a shared IP used by a previous sock". I'm doing that right now, probably, because I'm editing through T-Mobile. Basically anyone who's ever edited in India or Nigeria has been on an IP used by a previous sock. Basically anyone who's used a large institution's WiFi. There is not any way to weed through all that noise with automation. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 05:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: An actually potentially workable innovation would be something like a system that notifies CUs if an IP is autoblocked more than once in a certain time period. That would be a software proposal for Phabricator, though, not an enwiki policy proposal, and would still have privacy implications that would need to be squared with the WMF. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 05:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Tamzin has it about right, but I want to clarify a thing. If you're hypothetically using T-Mobile (and this also applies to many other ISPs and many LTAs) then the odds are very high that you're using an IP address which has never been used before. With T-Mobile, which is not unusually large by any means, you belong to at least one /32 range which contains a number of IP addresses so big that it has 30 digits. These ranges contain a huge number of users. At the other extreme you have some countries with only a handful of IPs, which everyone uses. These IPs also typically contain a huge number of users. TLDR; is someone is using a single IP on their own then we'll probably just block it, otherwise you're talking about matching a huge number of users. -- zzuuzz(talk)03:20, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
T-Mobile USA is a perennial favourite of many of the most despicable LTAs, but that's besides the point. New users with an account can actually edit from T-Mobile. They can also edit from Jio, or Deutsche Telecom, Vodafone, or many other huge networks. -- zzuuzz(talk)03:50, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would apply to every new User as a protective measure against sockpuppetry, like a credit check before you get a card/overdraft. WP:NOTFISHING is archaic like the whole burdensome SPI system that forces honest users to do all the hard work of proving sockpuppetry while socks and vandals just keep being welcomed in under WP:AGF. Mztourist (talk) 05:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you're suggesting is to just inundate checkusers with thousands of cases. The suggestion (as I understand it) removes burden from SPI filers by adding a disproportional burden on checkusers, who are already an overworked group. If you're suggesting an automated solution, then I believe IP blocks/IP range blocks and autoblock (discussed by Tamzin, above) already cover enough. It's quite hard to weigh up what you're really suggesting because it feels very vague without much detail - it sounds like you're just saying "a new SPI should be opened for every new user and IP, forever" which is not really a workable solution (for instance, 50 accounts were made in the last 15 minutes, which is about one every 18 seconds) BugGhost🦗👻18:12, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And most of those accounts will make zero, one, or two edits, and then never be used again. Even if we liked this idea, doing it for every single account creation would be a waste of resources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
CU's use their tools to identify socks when technical proof is necessary. The problem you're linking to is caused by one particular LTA account who is extremely obvious and doesn't really require technical proof to identify - check users would just be able to provide evidence for something that is already easy to spot. There's an essay on the distinction over at WP:DUCKBugGhost🦗👻14:45, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
LTA MAB is using a peer-to-peer VPN service which is similar to TOR. Blocking peer-to-peer VPN service endpoint IP addresses carries a higher risk of collateral damage because those aren't assigned to the VPN provider but rather a third party ISP who is likely to dynamically reassign the blocked address to a completely innocent party. 216.126.35.235 (talk) 00:22, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question I ask myself is why must we realize that it is not meant for fishing? To catch fish, you need to fish. The no-fishing rule is not fit for purpose, nor is it a rule that other organizations that actively search for ban evasion use. Machines can do the fishing. They only need to show us the fish they caught. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:24, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think for the same reason we don't want governments to be reading our mail and emails. If we checkuser everybody, then nobody has any privacy. Donald Albury20:20, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I sympathize with Mztourist. The current system is less effective than it needs to be. Ban evading actors make a lot of edits, they are dedicated hard-working folk in contentious topic areas. They can make up nearly 10% of new extendedconfirmed actors some years and the quicker an actor becomes EC the more likely they are to be blocked later for ban evasion. Their presence splits the community into two classes, the sanctionable and the unsanctionable with completely different payoff matrices. This has many consequences in contentious topic areas and significantly impacts the dynamics. The current rules are probably not good rules. Other systems have things like a 'commitment to authenticity' and actively search for ban evasion. It's tempting to burn it all down and start again, but with what? Having said that, the SPI folks do a great job. The average time from being granted extendedconfirmed to being blocked for ban evasion seems to be going down. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:28, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing, me too. I'm doubtful about everything I say because I've noticed that the chance it is slightly to hugely wrong is quite high. The EC numbers are work in progress, but I got distracted. The description "nearly 10% of new extendedconfirmed actors" is a bit misleading, because 'new' doesn't really mean new actors. It means actors that acquired EC for a given year, so newly acquired privileges. They might have registered in previous years. Also, I don't have 100% confidence in the way count EC grants because there are some edge cases, and I'm ignoring sysops. But anyway, the statement was based on this data of questionable precision. And the statement about a potential relationship between speed of EC acquisition and probability of being blocked is based on this data of questionable precision. And of course, currently undetected socks are not included, and there will be many. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not interested in clicking through to a Google file. Here's my back-of-the-envelope calculation: We have something like 120K accounts that would qualify for EXTCONF. Most of these are no longer active, and many stopped editing so long ago that they don't actually have the user right.
Wikipedia is almost 24 years old. That makes convenient math: On average, since inception, 5K editors have achieved EXTCONF levels each year.
If the 10% estimate is true, then 500 accounts per year – about 10 per week – are being created by banned editors and going undetected long enough for the accounts to make 500 edits and to work in CTOP areas. Do we even have enough WP:BANNED editors to make it plausible to expect banned editors to bring 500 accounts a year up to EXTCONF levels (plus however many accounts get started but are detected before then)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Suit yourself. I'm not interested in what interests other people or back of the envelope calculations. I'm interested in understanding the state of a system over time using evidence-based approaches by extracting data from the system itself. Let the data speak for itself. It has a lot to tell us. Then it is possible to test hypotheses and make evidence-based decisions. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:13, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More than 100 XC socks? Or more than 100 detected socks, including socks with zero edits?
Making a lot of accounts isn't super unusual, but it's a lot of work to get 100 accounts up to 500+ edits. Making 50,000 edits is a lot, even if it's your full-time job. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of users get it done in a couple of days, often through vandal fighting tools. It really is not that many when the edits are mostly mindless. nableezy - 00:18, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But that's kind of my point: "A couple of days", times 100 accounts, means 200–300 days per year. If you work five days per week and 52 weeks per year, that's 260 work days. This might be possible, but it's a full-time job.
Since the 30-day limit is something that can't be achieved through effort, I wonder if a sudden change to, say, 6 months would produce a five-month reprieve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ban evading actors who employ deception via sockpuppetry in the WP:PIA topic area are here to improve Wikipedia, from their perspective, rather than damage it. There is no need to use faith. There are statistics. There is a probability that a 'new user' is employing ban evasion. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My initial comment wasn't a direct response to yours, but new users and IPs won't be able to edit in the WP:PIA topic area anyway since they need to be extended confirmed. Some1 (talk) 20:08, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not hold up the way PIA handles new users and IPs, in which they are allowed to post to talk pages but then have their talk page post removed if it doesn't fall within very specific parameters, as some sort of model. CMD (talk) 02:51, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support automatically checkusering all active users (new and existing) at regular intervals. If it were automated -- e.g., a script runs that compares IPs, user agent, other typical subscriber info -- there would be no privacy violation, because that information doesn't have to be disclosed to any human beings. Only the "hits" can be forwarded to the CU team for follow-up. I'd run that script daily. If the policy forbids it, we should change the policy to allow it. It's mind-boggling that Wikipedia doesn't do this already. It's a basic security precaution. (Also, email-required registration and get rid of IP editing.) Levivich (talk) 02:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you've been reading the comments from people who know what they are talking about. There would be hundreds, at least, of hits per day that would require human checking. The policy that prohibits this sort of massive breach of privacy is the Foundation's and so not one that en.wp could change even if it were a good idea (which it isn't). Thryduulf (talk) 03:10, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A computer can be programmed to check for similarities or patterns in subscriber info (IP, etc), and in editing activity (time cards, etc), and content of edits and talk page posts (like the existing language similarity tool), with various degrees of certainty in the same way the Cluebot does with ORES when it's reverting vandalism. And the threshold can be set so it only forwards matches of a certain certainty to human CUs for review, so as not to overwhelm the humans. The WMF can make this happen with just $1 million of its $180 million per year (and it wouldn't be violating its own policies if it did so). Enwiki could ask for it, other projects might join too. Levivich (talk) 05:24, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Oh now I see what you mean, Levivich, good point, I guess you know what you're talking about, after all."
I seem to have missed this comment, sorry. However I am very sceptical that sockpuppet detection is meaningfully automatable. From what CUs say it is as much art as science (which is why SPI cases can result in determinations like "possilikely"). This is the sort of thing that is difficult (at best) to automate. Additionally the only way to reliably develop such automation would be for humans analyse and process a massive amount of data from accounts that both are and are not sockpuppets and classify results as one or the other, and that anaylsis would be a massive privacy violation on its own. Assuming you have developed this magic computer that can assign a likelihood of any editor being a sock of someone who has edited in the last three months (data older than that is deleted) on a percentage scale, you then have to decide what level is appropriate to send to humans to check. Say for the sake of argument it is 75%, that means roughly one in four people being accused are innocent and are having their privacy impinged unnecessarily - and how many CUs are needed to deal with this caseload? Do we have enough? SPI isn't exactly backlog free and there aren't hoards of people volunteering for the role (although unbreaking RFA might help with this in the medium to long term). The more you reduce the number sent to CUs to investigate, the less benefit there is over the status quo.
In addition to all the above, how similar is "similar" in terms of articles edited, writing style, timecard, etc? How are you avoiding legitimate sockpuppets? Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You know this already but for anyone reading this who doesn't: when a CU "checks" somebody, it's not like they send a signal out to that person's computer to go sniffing around. In fact, all the subscriber info (IP address, etc.) is already logged on the WMF's server logs (as with any website). A CU "check" just means a volunteer CU gets to look at a portion of those logs (to look up a particular account's subscriber info). That's the privacy concern: we have rules, rightfully so, about when volunteer CUs (not WMF staff) can read the server logs (or portions of them). Those rules do not apply to WMF staff, like devs and maintenance personnel, nor do they apply to the WMF's own software reading its own logs. Privacy is only an issue when those logs are revealed to volunteer CUs.
So... feeding the logs into software in order to train the software doesn't violate anyone's policy. It's just letting a computer read its own files. Human verification of the training outcomes also doesn't have to violate anyone's privacy -- just don't use volunteer CUs to do it, use WMF staff. Or, anonymize the training data (changing usernames to "Example1", "Example2", etc.). Or use historical data -- which would certainly be part of the training, since the most effective way would be to put known socks into the training data to see if the computer catches them.
Anyway, training the system won't violate anyone's privacy.
As for the hit rate -- 75% would be way, way too low. We'd be looking for definitely over 90% or 95%, and probably more like 99.something percent. Cluebot doesn't get vandalism wrong 1 out of 4 times, neither should CluebotCU. Heck, if CluebotCU can't do better than 75%, it's not worth doing. A more interesting question is whether the 99.something% hit rate would be helpful to CUs, or whether that would only catch the socks that are so obvious you don't even need CU to recognize them. Only testing in the field would tell.
But overall, AI looking for patterns, and checking subscriber info, edit patterns, and the content of edits, would be very helpful in tamping down on socking, because the computer can make far more checks than a human (a computer can look at 1,000 accounts and a 100,000 edits no problem, which no human can do), it'll be less biased than humans, and it can do it all without violating anyone's privacy -- in fact, lowering the privacy violations by lowering the false positives, sending only high-probability (90%+, not 75%+) to humans for review. And it can all be done with existing technology, and the WMF has the money to do it. Levivich (talk) 19:38, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The more you write the clearer you make it that you don't understand checkuser or the WMF's policies regarding privacy. It's also clear that I'm not going to convince you that this is unworkable so I'll stop trying. Thryduulf (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you are are unable to distinguish between reasoned disagreement and insults, then it's not at all weird that reasoned disagreement fails to convince you. Thryduulf (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: Whatever existing data set we have has too many biases to be useful for this, and this is going to be prone to false positives. AI needs lots of data to be meaningfully trained. Also, AI here would be learning a function; when the output is not in fact a function of the input, there's nothing for an AI model to target, and this is very much the case here. On Wikidata, where I am a CheckUser, almost all edit summaries are automated even for human edits (just like clicking the rollback button is, or undoing an edit is by default), and it is very hard to meaningfully tell whether someone is a sock or not without highly case-specific analysis. No AI model is better than the data it's trained on.
Also, about the privacy policy: you are completely incorrect when you "Those rules do not apply to WMF staff, like devs and maintenance personnel, nor do they apply to the WMF's own software reading its own logs". Staff can only access that information on a need to know basis, just like CheckUsers, and data privacy laws like the EU's and California's means you cannot just do whatever random thing you want with the information you collect from users about them.--Jasper Deng(talk)21:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So which part of the wmf:Privacy Policy would prohibit the WMF from developing an AI that looks at server logs to find socks? Do you want me to quote to you the portions that explicitly disclose that the WMF uses personal information to develop tools and improve security? Levivich (talk) 22:02, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: Did you read the part where I mentioned privacy laws? Also, in this industry no one is allowed unfettered usage of private data even internally; there are internal policies that govern this that are broadly similar to the privacy policy. It's one thing to test a proposed tool on an IP address like Special:Contribs/2001:db8::/32, but it's another to train an AI model on it. Arguably an equally big privacy concern is the usage of new data from new users after the model is trained and brought online. The foundation is already hiding IP addresses by default even for anonymous users soon, and they will not undermine that mission through a tool like this. Ultimately, the Board of Trustees has to assume legal responsibility and liability for such a thing; put yourself in their position and think of whether they'd like the liability of something like this.--Jasper Deng(talk)22:13, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So can you quote a part of the privacy policy, or a part of privacy laws, or anything, that would prohibit feeding server logs into a "Cluebot-CU" to find socking?
Because I can quote the part of the wmf:Privacy Policy that allows it, and it's a lot:
We may use your public contributions, either aggregated with the public contributions of others or individually, to create new features or data-related products for you or to learn more about how the Wikimedia Sites are used ...
Because of how browsers work, we receive some information automatically when you visit the Wikimedia Sites ... This information includes the type of device you are using (possibly including unique device identification numbers, for some beta versions of our mobile applications), the type and version of your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of your device's operating system, in some cases the name of your internet service provider or mobile carrier, the website that referred you to the Wikimedia Sites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the Wikimedia Sites.
Put simply, we use this information to enhance your experience with Wikimedia Sites. For example, we use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize mobile applications, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with the Wikimedia Sites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different Wikimedia Sites, and analyze trends. ...
We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels, JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage. ... Depending on which technology we use, locally stored data may include text, Personal Information (like your IP address), and information about your use of the Wikimedia Sites (like your username or the time of your visit). ... We use this information to make your experience with the Wikimedia Sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Wikimedia Sites, and to generally improve our services. ...
We and our service providers use your information ... to create new features or data-related products for you or to learn more about how the Wikimedia Sites are used ... To fight spam, identity theft, malware and other kinds of abuse. ... To test features to see what works, understand how users interact with the Wikimedia Sites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different Wikimedia Sites and analyze trends. ...
When you visit any Wikimedia Site, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location. ... We use this location information to make your experience with the Wikimedia Sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and their interaction with the Wikimedia Sites, and to generally improve our services. For example, we use this information to provide greater security, optimize mobile applications, and learn how to expand and better support Wikimedia communities. ...
We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, need to use and share your Personal Information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, this Privacy Policy, or any Wikimedia Foundation or user community-based policies. ... We may also disclose your Personal Information if we reasonably believe it necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise assess and address potential spam, malware, fraud, abuse, unlawful activity, and security or technical concerns. ... To facilitate their work, we give some developers limited access to systems that contain your Personal Information, but only as reasonably necessary for them to develop and contribute to the Wikimedia Sites. ...
Yeah that's a lot. Then there's this whole FAQ that says
It is important for us to be able to make sure everyone plays by the same rules, and sometimes that means we need to investigate and share specific users' information to ensure that they are.
For example, user information may be shared when a CheckUser is investigating abuse on a Project, such as suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts), vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruptive behavior. If a user is found to be violating our Terms of Use or other relevant policy, the user's Personal Information may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity, for example, to assist in the targeting of IP blocks or to launch a complaint to the relevant Internet Service Provider.
So using IP addresses, etc., to develop new tools, to test features, to fight violations of the Terms of Use, and disclosing that info to Checkusers... all explicitly permitted by the Privacy Policy. Levivich (talk) 22:22, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich:"We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, need to use and share your Personal Information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use" – "reasonably believed to be necessary" is not going to hold up in court when it's sweepingly applied to everyone. This doesn't even take into consideration the laws I mentioned, like GDPR. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm guessing neither are you. If you want to be the one assuming the legal liability for this, contact the board today and sign the contract. Even then they would probably not agree to such an arrangement. So you're preaching to the choir: only the foundation could even consider assuming this risk. Also, it's clear that you do not have a single idea of how developing something like this works if you think it can be done for $1 million. Something this complex has to be done right and tech salaries and computing resources are expensive.--Jasper Deng(talk)22:28, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What I am suggesting does not involve sharing everyone's data with Checkusers. It's pretty obvious that looking at their own server logs is "necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use". Five people is how big the WMF's wmf:Machine Learning team is, @ $200k each, $1m/year covers it. Five people is enough for that team to improve ORES, so another five-person team dedicated to "ORES-CU" seems a reasonable place to start. They could double that, and still have like $180M left over. Levivich (talk) 22:40, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: Yeah no, lol. $200k each is not a very competitive total compensation, considering that that needs to include benefits, health insurance, etc. This doesn't include their manager or the hefty hardware required to run ML workflows. It doesn't include the legal support required given the data privacy law compliance needed. Capriciously looking at the logs does not count; accessing data of users the foundation cannot reasonably have said to be likely to cause abuse is not permissible. This all aside from the bias and other data quality issues at hand here. You can delude yourself all you want, but nature cannot be fooled. I'm finished arguing with you anyways, because this proposal is either way dead on arrival.--Jasper Deng(talk)23:45, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a statistician/data scientist, @Levivich is correct about the technical side of this—building an ML algorithm to detect sockpuppets would be pretty easy. Duplicate user algorithms like these are common across many websites. For a basic classification task like this (basically an ML 101 homework problem), I think $1 million is about right. As a bonus, the same tools could be used to identify and correct for possible canvasing or brigading, which behaves a lot like sockpuppetry from a statistical perspective. A similar algorithm is already used by Twitter's community notes feature.
IANAL, so I can't comment on the legal side of this, and I can't comment on whether that money would be better-spent elsewhere since I don't know what the WMF budget looks like. Overall though, the technical implementation wouldn't be a major hurdle. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:44, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Building such a model is only a small part of a real production system. If this system is to operate on all account creations, it needs to be at least as reliable as the existing systems that handle account creations. As you probably know, data scientists developing such a model need to be supported by software engineers and site reliability engineers supporting the actual system. Then you have the problem of new sockers who are not on the list of sockmasters to check against. Non-English-language speakers often would be put at a disadvantage too. It's not as trivial as you make it out to be, thus I stand by my estimate.--Jasper Deng(talk)06:59, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we need to spend more time speculating about a system that WMF Legal is extremely unlikely to accept. Even if they did, it wouldn't exist until several years from now. Instead, let's try to think of things that we can do ourselves, or with only a very little assistance. Small, lightweight projects with full community control can help us now, and if we prove that ____ works, the WMF might be willing to adopt and expand it later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a mistake -- doing the same thing Wikipedia has been doing for 20+ years. The mistake is in leaving it to volunteers to catch sockpuppetry, rather than insisting that the WMF devote significant resources to it. And it's a mistake because the one thing we volunteers can't do, that the WMF can do, is comb through the server logs looking for patterns. Levivich (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure about the "building an ML algorithm to detect sockpuppets would be pretty easy" part, but I admire the optimism. It is certainly the case that it is possible, and people have done it with a surprising level of success a very long time ago in ML terms e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2018.03.002. These projects tend to rely on the category graph to distinguish sock and non-sock sets for training, the categorization of accounts as confirmed or suspected socks. However, the category graph is woefully incomplete i.e. there is information in the logs that is not reflected in the graph, so ensuring that all ban evasion accounts are properly categorized as such might help a bit. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thankfully, we wouldn't have to build an ML algorithm, we can just use one of the existing ones. Some are even open source. Or WMF could use a third party service like the aforementioned sift.com. Levivich (talk) 16:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let me guess: Essentially, you would like their machine-learning team to use Sift's AI-Powered Fraud Protection, which from what I can glance, handles safeguarding subscriptions to defending digital content and in-app purchases and helps businesses reduce friction and stop sophisticated fraud attacks that gut growth, to provide the ability for us to automatically checkuser all active users? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon16:25, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF already has the ability to "automatically checkuser all users" (the verb "checkuser" just means "look at the server logs"), I'm suggesting they use it. And that they use it in a sophisticated way, employing (existing, open source or commercially available) AI/ML technologies, like the same kind we already use to automatically revert vandalism. Contrary to claims here, doing so would not be illegal or even expensive (comparatively, for the WMF). Levivich (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, in my attempt to get things set right and steer towards a consensus that is satisfactory, I sincerely follow-up: What lies beyond that in this vast, uncharted sea? And could this mean any more in the next 5 years? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon16:49, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, @2601AC47, I think the answer to your question is "tell the WMF we really, really, really would like more attention to sockpuppetry and IP abuse from the ML team". -- asilvering (talk) 17:31, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
3 days! When I first posted my comment and some editors responded that I didn't know what I was talking about, it can't be done, it'd violate the privacy policy and privacy laws, WMF Legal would never allow it... I was wondering how long it would take before somebody pointed out that this thing that can't be done has already been done and has been under development for at least 7 years now.
Of course it's already under development, it's pretty obvious that the same Wikipedia that developed ClueBot, one of the world's earlier and more successful examples of ML applications, would try to employ ML to fight multiple-account abuse. I mean, I'm obviously not gonna be the first person to think of this "innovation"!
Unlike what is being proposed, SimilarEditors only works based on publicly available data (e.g. similarities in editing patterns), and not IP data. To quote the page Sean linked, in the model's current form, we are only considering public data, but most saliently private data such as IP addresses or user-agent information are features currently used by checkusers that could be later (carefully) incorporated into the models.So, not only the current model doesn't look at IP data, the research project also acknowledges that actually using such data should only be done in a "careful" way, because of those very same privacy policy issues quoted above.On the ML side, however, this does proves that it's being worked on, and I'm honestly not surprised at all that the WMF is working on machine learning-based tools to detect sockpuppets. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right. We should ask WMF to do the later (carefully) incorporated into the models part (especially since it's now later). BTW, the SimilarUsers API already pulls IP and other metadata. SimilarExtensions (a tool that uses the API) doesn't release that information to CheckUsers, by design. And that's a good thing, we can't just release all IPs to CheckUsers, it does indeed have to be done carefully. But user metadata can be used. What I'm suggesting is that the WMF should proceed to develop these types of tools (including the careful use of user metadata). Levivich (talk) 17:57, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not really clear that they're pulling IP data from logged-in users. The relevant sections reads:
USER_METADATA (203MB): for every user in COEDIT_DATA, this contains basic metadata about them (total number of edits in data, total number of pages edited, user or IP, timestamp range of edits).
In a few years people might look back on these days when we only had to deal with simple devious primates employing deception as the halcyon days. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any such system would be subject to numerous biases or be easily defeatable. Such an automated anti-abuse system would have to be exclusively a foundation initiative as only they have the resources for such a monumental undertaking. It would need its own team of developers.--Jasper Deng(talk)18:57, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely no chance that this would pass. WP:SNOW, even though there isn't a flood of opposes. There are two problems:
The existing CheckUser team barely has the bandwidth for the existing SPI load. Doing this on every single new user would be impractical and would enable WP:LTA's by diverting valuable CheckUser bandwidth.
Even if we had enough CheckUser's, this would be a severe privacy violation absolutely prohibited under the Foundation privacy policy.
It is perhaps an interesting conversation to have but I have to agree that it is unworkable, and directly contrary to foundation-level policy which we cannot make a local exemption to. En.wp, I believe, already has the largest CU team of any WMF project, but we would need hundreds more people on that team to handle something like this. In the last round of appointments, the committee approved exactly one checkuser, and that one was a returning former mamber of the team. And there is the very real risk that if we appointed a whole bunch of new CUs, some of them would abuse the tool. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today18:55, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And its worth pointing out that the Committee approving too few volunteers for Checkuser (regardless of whether you think they are or aren't) is not a significant part of this issue. There simply are not tens of people who are putting themselves forward for consideration as CUs. Since 2016 54 applications (an average of per year) have been put forward for consideration by Functionaries (the highest was 9, the lowest was 2). Note this is total applications not applicants (more than one person has applied multiple times), and is not limited to candidates who had a realistic chance of being appointed. Thryduulf (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, I tend to get the impression from those who have checkuser rights that CU should be done as a last resort, and other, less invasive methods are preferred, and it would seem that indiscriminate use of it would be a bad idea, so I would have some major misgivings about this proposal. And given the ANI case, the less user information that we retain, the better (which is also probably why temporary accounts are a necessary and prudent idea despite other potential drawbacks). Abzeronow (talk) 03:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. A lot has already been written on the unsustainable workload for the CU team this would create and the amount of collateral damage; I'll add in the fact that our most notorious sockmasters in areas like PIA already use highly sophisticated methods to evade CU detection, and based on what I've seen at the relevant SPIs most of the blocks in these cases are made with more weight given to the behaviour, and even then only after lengthy deliberations on the matter. These sort of sockmasters seem to have been in the OP's mind when the request was made, and I do not see automated CU being of any more use than current techniques against such dedicated sockmasters. And, has been mentioned before, most cases of sockpuppetry (such as run-of-the-mill vandals and trolls using throwaway accounts for abuse) don't need CU anyways. JavaHurricane08:17, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are, unfortunately, fair points about the limits of CU and the many experienced and dedicated ban evading actors in PIA. CU information retention policy is also a complicating factor. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:28, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I said in my original post, recidivist socks often get better at covering their "tells" each time making behavioural detection increasingly difficult and meaning the entire burden falls on the honest user to convince an Admin to take an SPI case seriously with scarce evidence. After many years I'm tired of defending various pages from sock POV edits and if WMF won't make life easier then increasingly I just won't bother, I'm sure plenty of other users feel the same way. Mztourist (talk) 05:45, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, the main function of that sort of thing seems to be compiling data that is already available on XTools and various editor interaction analyzers, and then presenting it nicely and neatly. I think that such a page could be useful as a sanity check, and it might even be worth having that sort of thing as a standalone toolforge app, but I don't really see why the WMF would make that particular extension a high priority. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)17:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it doesn't have to be that particular extension, but it seems to me that the entire "idea" has been stalled, unless they're working on another tool that I'm unaware of (very possible). (Or, it could be because of recent changes in domestic and int'l privacy laws that derailed their previous development advances, or it could be because of advancements in ML elsewhere making in-house development no longer practical.)
As to why the WMF would make this sort of problem a high priority, I'd say because the spread of misinformation on Wikipedia by sockpuppets is a big problem. Even without getting into the use of user metadata, just look at recent SPIs I filed, like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icewhiz/Archive#27 August 2024 and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icewhiz/Archive#09 October 2024. That involved no private data at all, but a computer could have done automatically, in seconds, what took me hours to do manually, and those socks could have been uncovered before they made thousands and thousands of edits spreading misinformation. If the computer looked at private data as well as public data, it would be even more effective (and would save CUs time as well). Seems to me to be a worthy expenditure of 0.5% or 1% of the WMF's annual budget. Levivich (talk) 18:09, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This looks really interesting. I don't really know how extensions are rolled out to individual wikis - can anyone with knowledge about that summarise if having this tool turned on (for check users/relevant admins) for en.wp is feasible? Do we need a RFC, or is this a "maybe wait several years for a phab ticket" situation? BugGhost🦗👻18:09, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I find it amusing that ~4 separate users above are arguing that automatic identification of sockpuppets is impossible, impractical, and the WMF would never do it—and meanwhile, the WMF is already doing it. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This section was split off from "CheckUser for all new users" (permalink) and the "parenthetical comment" referred to below is: (Also, email-required registration and get rid of IP editing.)—03:49, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
@Levivich, about your parenthetical comment on requiring registration:
Part of the eternally unsolvable problem is that new editors are frankly bad at it. I can give examples from my own editing: Create an article citing a personal blog post as the main source? Check. Merge two articles that were actually different subjects? Been there, done that, got the revert. Misunderstand and mangle wikitext? More times than I can count. And that's after I created my account. Like about half of experienced editors, I edited as an IP first, fixing a typo here or reverting some vandalism there.
But if we don't persist through these early problems, we don't get experienced editors. And if we don't get experienced editors, Wikipedia will die.
Requiring registration ("get rid of IP editing") shrinks the number of people who edit. The Portuguese Wikipedia banned IPs only from the mainspace three years ago. Have a look at the trend. After the ban went into effect, they had 10K or 11K registered editors each month. It's since dropped to 8K. The number of contributions has dropped, too. They went from 160K to 210K edits per month down to 140K most months.
Some of the experienced editors have said that they like this. No IPs means less impulsive vandalism, and the talk pages are stable if you want to talk to the editor. Fewer newbies means I don't "have to" clean up after so many mistake-makers! Fewer editors, and especially fewer inexperienced editors, is more convenient – in the short term. But I wonder whether they're going to feel the same way a decade from now, when their community keeps shrinking, and they start wondering when they will lose critical mass.
The same thing happens in the real world, by the way. Businesses want to hire someone with experience. They don't want to train the helpless newbie. And then after years of everybody deciding that training entry-level workers is Somebody else's problem, they all look around and say: Where are all the workers that I need? Why didn't someone else train the next generation while I was busy taking the easy path?
In case you're curious, there is a Wikipedia that puts all of the IP and newbie edits under "PC" type restrictions. Nobody can see the edits until they've been approved by an experienced editor. The rate of vandalism visible to ordinary readers is low. Experienced editors love the level of control they have. Have a look at what's happened to the size of their community during the last decade. Is that what you want to see here? If so, we know how to make that happen. The path to that destination even looks broad, easy, and paved with all kinds of good intentions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can tell you objectively that the number of edits declined, but "quality" is in the eye of the beholder. I understand that the latter community has the lowest use of inline citations of any mid-size or larger Wikipedia. What's now yesterday's TFA there wouldn't even be rated B-class here due to whole sections not having any ref tags. In terms of citation density, their FA standard is currently where ours was >15 years ago.
But I think you have missed the point. Even if the quality has gone up according to the measure of your choice, if the number of contributors is steadily trending in the direction of zero, what will the quality be when something close to zero is reached? That community has almost halved in the last decade. How many articles are out of date, or missing, because there simply aren't enough people to write them? A decade from now, with half as many editors again, how much worse will the articles be? We're none of us idiots here. We can see the trend. We know that people die. You have doubtless seen this famous line:
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
I say:
All Wikipedia editors are mortal. Dead editors do not maintain or improve Wikipedia articles. Therefore, maintaining and improving Wikipedia requires editors who are not dead.
Trends don't last forever. Enwiki's active user count decreased from its peak over a few years, then flattened out for over a decade. The quality increased over that period of time (by any measure). Just because these other projects have shed users doesn't mean they're doomed to have zero users at some point in the future. And I think there's too many variables to know how much any particular change made on a project affects its overall user count, nevermind the quality of its output. Levivich (talk) 06:28, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the graph to the right accurately reflects the age distribution of Wikipedia users, then a large chunk of the user base will die off within the next decade or two. Not to be dramatic, but I agree that requiring registration to edit, which will discourage readers from editing in the first place, will hasten the project's decline.... Some1 (talk) 14:40, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are significantly more barriers to entry than there were 20 years ago, and over that time the age profile has increased (quite significantly iirc). Adding more barriers to entry is not the way to solve the issued caused by barriers to entry. Thryduulf (talk) 15:50, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or you could say it's about a user called PaperQA2 that writes Wikipedia articles significantly more accurate than articles written by other users. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:55, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is very clearly about a language model. As far as I know, PaperQA2, or WikiCrow (the generative model using PaperQA2 for question answering), has not actually been making any edits on Wikipedia itself. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:58, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is true. It is not making any edits on Wikipedia itself. There is a barrier. But my point is that in the future that barrier may not be there. There may be users like PaperQA2 writing articles better than other users and the demographics will have changed to include new kinds of users, much younger than us. Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:33, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In re "What do you suppose that chart looked like 20 years ago": I believe that the numbers, very roughly, are that the community has gotten about 10 years older, on average, than it was 20 years ago. That is, we are bringing in some younger people, but not at a rate that would allow us to maintain the original age distribution. (Whether the original age distribution was a good thing is a separate consideration.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like looking at the en.wikipedia user retention graph hosted on Toolforge (for anyone who might go looking for it later, there's a link to it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention § Resources). It shows histograms of how many editors have edited in each month, grouped by all the editors who started editing in the same month. The data is noisy, but it does seem to show an increase in editing tenure since 2020 (when the pursuit of a lot of solo hobbies picked up, of course). Prior to that, there does seem to be a bit of slow growth in tenure length since the lowest point around 2013. isaacl (talk) 17:18, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say that the story there is: Something amazing happened in 2006. Ours (since both of us registered our accounts that year) was the year from which people stuck around. I think that would be just about the time that the wall o' automated rejection really got going. There was some UPE-type commercial pressure, but it didn't feel unmanageable. It looks like an inflection point in retention. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think something particularly amazing happened in 2006. I think the rapid growth in articles starting in 2004 attracted a large land rush of editors as Wikipedia became established as a top search result. The cohort of editors at that time had the opportunity to cover a lot of topics for the first time on Wikipedia, requiring a lot of co-ordination, which created bonds between editors. As topic coverage grew, there were fewer articles that could be more readily created by generalists, the land rush subsided, and there was less motivation for new editors to persist in editing. Boom-bust cycles are common for a lot of popular things, particularly in tech where newer, shinier things launch all the time. isaacl (talk) 19:07, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, that glorious time when we gained an article on every Pokemon character and, it seems, every actor who was ever credited in a porn movie. Unfortunately, many of the editors I bonded with then are no longer active. Some are dead, some finished school, some presumably burned out, at least one went into the ministry. Donald Albury23:49, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at what happened to the size of their community.—I'm gonna be honest: eyeballing it, I don't actually see much (if any) difference with enwiki's activity. "Look at this graph" only convinces people when the dataset passes the interocular trauma test (e.g. the hockey stick).
On the other hand, if there's a dataset of "when did $LANGUAGEwiki adopt universal pending changes protections", we could settle this argument once and for all using a real statistical model that can deliver precise effect sizes on activity. Maybe then we can all finally drop the stick. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This particular idea will not pass, but the binary developing in the discussion is depressing. A bargain where we allow IPs to edit (or unregistered users generally when IPs are masked), and therefore will sit on our hands when dealing with abuse and even harassment is a grim one. Any steps taken to curtail the second half of that bargain would make the first half stronger, and I am generally glad to see thoughts about it, even if they end up being impractical. CMD (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want us to sit on our hands when we see abuse and harassment. I think our toolset is about 20 years out of date, and I believe there are things we could do that will help (e.g., mw:Temporary accounts, cross-wiki checkuser tools for Stewards, detecting and responding to a little bit more information about devices/settings [perhaps, e.g., whether an edit is being made from a private/incognito window]). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Temporary accounts will help with the casual vandalism, but they’re not going to help with abuse and harassment. If it limits the ability to see ranges, it will make issues slightly worse. CMD (talk) 07:13, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what the current story is there, but when I talked to the team last (i.e., in mid-2023), we were talking about the value of a tool that would do range-related work. For various reasons, this would probably be Toolforge instead of MediaWiki, and it would probably be restricted (e.g., to admins, or to a suitable group chosen by each community), but the goal was to make it require less manual work, particularly for cross-wiki abuse, and to be able to aggregate some information without requiring direct disclosure of some PII. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh look, misleading statistics! "The Portuguese Wikipedia banned IPs only from the mainspace three years ago. Have a look at the trend. After the ban went into effect, they had 10K or 11K registered editors each month. It's since dropped to 8K. " Of course you have a spike in new registrations soon after you stop allowing IP edits, and you can't sustain that spike. That is not evidence of anything. It would have been more honest and illustrative to show the graph before and after the policy change, not only afterwards, e.g. thus. Oh look, banning IP editing has resulted in on average some 50% more registered editors than before the ban. Number of active editors is up 50% as well[1]. The number of new pages has stayed the same[2]. Number of edits is down, yes, but how much of this is due to less vandalism / vandalism reverts? A lot apparently, as the count of user edits has stayed about the same[3]. Basically, from those statistics, used properly, it is impossible to detect any issues with the Portuguese Wikipedia due to the banning of IP editing. Fram (talk) 08:55, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The deletion discussion boards (AfD, RfD, etc..) are riddled with socks. You can see in old AfD pages, how many accounts were later banned as socks (strikethroughs). It would be interesting to analyze this data to quantify how bad the sock situation is. IPs are some of the worse abusers. Deletion of content by straight vandalism is hard, but aggressively and maliciously voting delete while using socks? That's kind of fun and "legal" (if you don't get caught). This misbehavior could be better managed with some simple rules. One Example:
IPs are not "banned", but IPs are limited to a certain number of deletion votes per week. It's good faith self-monitored restriction that can be enforced if needed.
Such a rule would force frequent IPs to either register, which makes sock detection easier; or force them to use dynamic IPs, which is more difficult and costly for them. Legitimate IP editors who frequently vote in deletion discussions need to register or do something else, I don't believe this category of editors will be a large number.
The consensus discussions, particularly deletion, are frequently abused by sock accounts not operating in Good Faith. We can take simple low-friction steps to make things more difficult for them, and easier for us to detect. -- GreenC16:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think limiting IPs to a certain number of votes would be helpful. It would restrict participation from legitimate users who might not wish to create an account, while encouraging abusers to use even more socks when voting. Also, many people already have dynamic IPs, which is more often a function of the ISP/network they are using than any costly choice (to take an extreme example, an IPv6 user can have the second half of their address vary between 264 possibilities in their device's assigned /64 range). This would automatically put static IP users and dynamic IP users on unequal grounds, and make it even more enticing to sock/use multiple IPs.It is easy to make proposals raising the bar for prospective editors to participate, in the name of defending the wiki from socks/bad actors/etc., but each step we take in that direction brings us further from our ideal of "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and we should be very careful about this. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:55, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been closing a lot of AFDs lately and, while some socks are caught in some discussions, I have not personally seen a serious issue with block-evading IP users. This proposal seems like it is assuming bad faith if IP users wish to particpaite at AFD. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today18:58, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As IPs may not be a single person over time, a soft participation limit doesn't work. It is at any rate up to closers to evaluate an AfD on its merits, not as a vote count. CMD (talk) 01:51, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without any idea of the statistics, we don't have any way to know if the problem is serious enough to justify restricting anons on this. When gathering data, exclude any CTOPs where anons are already disallowed, as these are more likely to reflect the CTOPs than AFD. Other CTOPs may also suffer from this, so probably list those separately. Animal lover|666|12:39, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I routinely discount low-activity IP's in discussions, on the argument that there is an absence of a basis for determining whether they understand the purpose of the encyclopedia and its policies. BD2412T15:08, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with that is that it's impossible to tell the difference between a newcomer IP, an anon who edits on a wide range of IP addresses and has perhaps hundreds of edits, and a long-time registered user who got logged out without realizing it and decided after expressing their opinion to let it stand as an anon vote. Animal lover|666|16:33, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Animal lover 666: I am aware of that, but the problem runs both ways. It is equally impossible to tell if an IP is really another editor already involved in the discussion; or a COI editor, or the like. If an IP makes a persuasive argument backed by evidence, their argument should be able to persuade non-IP participants in the discussion, whose opinions will be weighted more heavily. BD2412T17:03, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IP and non EC editors are not permitted to participate in consensus forming discussions if the subject matter is a CT, which are probably(?) the worst affected areas. If my assumption is wrong and the problem is extensive beyond CT, then perhaps consider a similar rule across the board, why not. It is not clear to me how such editors even find these discussions.Selfstudier (talk) 15:22, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For some context, see this comment by GreenC, where he makes an unprovoked casting of WP:ASPERSIONS with no evidence. Also worth noting is that the actual sock in this case, TeapotsOfDoom, had an account, and wasn't editing unregistered. Also also worth noting, is that yes, while socking is disruptive generally, Teapots's activity at RFD was overall quite productive, bringing a lot of bad redirects to the forum's attention. If he's reading this, I hope he follows the WP:SO approach and is able to return. Also also also worth noting is GreenC's characterization as "malicious", which is completely uncalled for. I would highly urge you to reconsider your words and strike your aspersion at the RFD in question. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was because TeapotsOfDoom had an account that checkuser was able to work. It doesn't work with IPs. That's the point. There is a loophole that gives IPs an easy bypass of checkuser and SPI. They have an advantage over registered accounts, when it comes to socking. -- GreenC22:55, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reply - It's like 3RR or anything else, you have the option to warn them, it's all voluntary there is no hard rule that stops them from editing. If nobody sees their editing as a problem then it won't be a problem. The issues are that it can be very hard to prove at SPI because IPs have natural immunity from checkuser. IPs are often used in deletion discussions for that reason. -- GreenC23:06, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which dates do we use for when a president or vice president of Brazil's term ends. As I understand it, their term of office (barring a military coup) ended at midnight. GoodDay (talk) 14:22, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm brazilian, so I think can answer this for y'all. The term ends the day the next president/governor is inaugurated. So for example, Jair Bolsonaro's term ended 1 January 2023, and Lula started 1 January 2023 (same day).
The new term starts at the time the inauguration takes place. So as an example, if the inauguration takes place at 1400, Bolsonaro was president until 1400, when Lula became the president.
The fact is we will never have an answer because the Constitution is ambiguous. It states the date when the term begins, but also states that the president must take the oath of office.
As this has never been brought before the Supreme Court to rule upon because there have never been any issues with deciding who the president is between midnight and 10 a.m. of January 1, the ambiguity will likely remain unresolved.
That said, the public perception is that the incoming president becomes president on the morning of the 1st, when they receive the sash from the outgoing president (when the outgoing president is gracious enough to take part in the ceremony). For that alone I would suggest that the term be said to end on January 1. Zelani (talk) 02:27, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This covers all the presidents & vice presidents of Brazil. So if we go with January 1? We'll have to also go with November 15 & March 15 for the earlier presidents & vice presidents. GoodDay (talk) 02:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@GoodDay The fact is that "terms end at midnight" just isn't a thing. Nobody's looking at their watches saying, "Ten seconds until Jurandir becomes mayor!" Jurandir's team isn't waiting at the door of Paçoquinha do Norte City Hall just waiting to barge in at midnight to take the reins to municipal administration.
Transfer of power is (ideally) a smooth handover of power.
If the Constituent Assembly had intended for there to be an exact time, they would have written it into the document.
That argument wouldn't go far, concerning Mexico presidents or New York governors & lieutenant governors. Terms in some places, do end at midnight. GoodDay (talk) 11:59, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My point is, you're splitting hairs over an issue that is irrelevant outside of Wikipedia. It has no bearing in the real world.
Anyway, the Constitution is clear in one respect:
"Art. 78. O Presidente e o Vice-Presidente da República tomarão posse em sessão do Congresso Nacional, prestando o compromisso de manter, defender e cumprir a Constituição, observar as leis, promover o bem geral do povo brasileiro, sustentar a união, a integridade e a independência do Brasil."
This, to me, leaves no margin for doubt. The President's term begins when they take the oath of office in the session in Congress.
I often remove redlinks from dab pages per WP:DDD. I recently did this on the Sylvester page and was pleased to see at the top of the editing page Attention editors! No red links. Every entry in this list must have an article written in the English Wikipedia ... else it will be removed without warning. I assumed this must be a new feature for dab pages, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere else so far. Some dab pages do have a notice at the top of the editing page explaining their purpose, but with no mention of redlinks, and many dab pages have nothing like this at all. Can/should they all be flagged with an appropriate notice about redlinks? Or at least all flagged with an explanation of dab pages? Shantavira|feed me10:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having an editnotice for name articles as @Shantavira suggests seems like a good idea. It should definitely be centralized and automatically added, so that we can ensure it represents best practices/consensuses and reduces the workload.
White
Silver
Blue
Pink
Gold
Red
Green
Skyblue
Purple
Turquoise
Black
Agree, but only slightly. If you added the letters, it would be better. Also, a solution to your region-basing could be to do a Language-based (like "O" for "Office" would become "S" for "Schoolhouse" in a theoretical "Reversed English") The Master of Hedgehogs (converse) (hedgehogs) 14:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
) Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity: If a certain case of IPs spamming at Help Desk is any indication, would a CU be able to stop that in its track? 2601AC47 (talk|contribs) Isn't a IP anon 14:29, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Note: This section was split off from "CheckUser for all new users" (permalink) and the "parenthetical comment" referred to below is: 
.png)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion § RfC: Enacting T5 (unused template subpages). HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 03:02, 25 November 2024 (UTC)