Wikipedia:Pending changes/Feedback/Archive 2

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I LOVE THE PENDING CHANGES FEATURE

The title says it all. FINALLY! Now if we could just apply this feature to the ENTIRE PROJECT, I wouldn't feel like the bulk of time many editors sink into this project is going to waste! Let the vandals waste THEIR time, not ours! I can't express in words how happy I am that this has finally been implemented! Long overdue to be sure, but better late than never. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 17:43, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Um, I'm pretty sure it wastes our time. We need more people to check these pages for vandalism, making it so that there is far more to revert. So there is more vandalism, which does waste our time. It has never been the plan to implement it for the entire project; that would cause many problems, using it on 3 million+ pages. This was meant to be an substitute alternative for semi-protection, and as far as I can tell, it is quite a bit worse. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:14, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Alternative to semi-protection, no substitute. 山本一郎 (会話) 18:22, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Oops. :) That's what I meant. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
You're kidding right? The pending changes don't "go live" until they're approved. Vandalize all you want, suckers, casual browsers of Wikipedia will never see it! That's the whole point, in case you missed it. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 20:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I think you didn't understand what I said. We still have to review the edit, and we still have to revert it, people just won't see it for the thirty seconds it would usually take for someone to catch it. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 20:51, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
I think you didn't understand what I wrote. Who cares if we still have to review it. We will ALWAYS have to review it as long as we allow "non-trusted" or anonymous editors to edit Wikipedia. The difference here is that now the unreviewed edits aren't publicly visible to casual readers. That's the whole point. There's nothing complicated about it, and I'm sure you fully understand how it works, you just don't seem to like it. I love it. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 21:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Concur! - BilCat (talk) 22:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
If this is used instead of semi-protection, there is more vandalism to revert. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 00:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
And when semi-protection is lifted completely, there is more vandalism also. With PC, the average reader doesn't have to see it. - BilCat (talk) 01:33, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
First, it usually is reverted within 30 seconds to a minute anyways. Second, why remove semi-protection? ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 01:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Sorry Hi878, but you're off your rocker on that, where do you get your data? I come across vandalism which has been sitting for hours, I repeat, HOURS, before I revert it on a daily basis. Every so often I find days/weeks/months old vandalism of biographical articles. Had the Pending changes feature been applied then casual readers would not have been subjected to it. I know already that I'm not getting through to you so I'm not sure why I'm even wasting my time responding at this point. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 15:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, adding this to the entire project would be helpful. Semi-protection does not need to be removed, but pending changes would just be pretty much useless on those pages, as autoconfirmed users have their edits automatically reviewed/confirmed. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 01:49, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Not all semi-proteced pages are targets for constant vandalism. So why remove semi-protection? To allow those most sacred of WP users, the IPs, to make constructive edits, but retain some sort of control over the vandalism. Semi-protection is not going to be ended, but pending changes will be helpful in the less extreme cases. There are many cases where semi-protection is refused,and I believe that PC will be most useful in those cases. At least, that's what I hope will happen. - BilCat (talk) 01:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Why can't the IPs just request that someone else edit the article for them? ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 02:01, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
If that's such a good system, why can't we have it for all pages? It would save us all alot of work! I spend at least 30-60% of my daily edits reverting vandalism on pages that will never be semi-protected. I'd rather be improving articles, but I'm a good person, so I revert the vandlaism rather thn leave it for someone else. At least with pending changes, it isn't seen by most readers. Unless of course you actually think seeing "I EAT S***!!!!!!!" "YOUR MOM SUCKS MY DICK", et al on articles is a good PR move for WP! I don't! - BilCat (talk) 02:09, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
But is usually isn't seen. :) Vandalism is usually reverted rather quickly. If this is used in place of semi-protection on some articles, then there would be more vandalism to revert. So instead of having none by IPs, you have some by IPs that won't be seen for the thirty seconds until it is reverted, said reversion taking time away that could have been spent doing other things. Thirty seconds isn't much, but it adds up, and having to wait forever for the pending changes diff to load isn't very appealing either. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 02:31, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Another problem with pending changes is that, until the vandalism is reverted (or the edit approved by a reviewer), no one else can edit the page - not even autoconfirmed users who don't have reviewing rights. To clarify - autoconfirmed users could make an edit, but if there's a previously unapproved edit in the article, the a.c. user's edit won't be visible until it's approved, too. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Comment. Wasn't this entire trial supposed to help ease the load on admins.? It was to test a new feature where other non-admin users can review edits from anonymous users and determine whether they were spam or legitimate in nature? I wonder how many admins. are complaining about it...it eases the amount of spam they have to deal with, and we are the ones who would let them know if a page still needs additional protection! At least, that's how I understand this feature to be...am I mistaken? 20 spam edits to an article can be reverted by 20 non-admins., and if it's all concentrated in a small period, we can notify admins. of the need for extra protection. If an admin. chooses to work in the reviewer log, I think it kind of invalidates the test in a way as they're now handling all of these IP edits that we reviewers are to handle for this test.

Maybe I'm completely off the mark here, but I think that was part of the idea (not wholly, mind) behind this test. Combine it with an idea in this thread and it's extremely unlikely we'll have a lot of problems (except for lag). CycloneGU (talk) 04:25, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but how does ease the load on admins? I don't understand what you mean... ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 05:01, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
What I mean is that pages that were previously SPed and are now PCed are being reviewed by us non-admin. reviewers. So are other pages that were not protected before, but might call an admin.'s attention when an obvious spammy edit occurs (it still might even now). We're there to handle these spammy edits before they become engrained in Wikipedia even for 30 seconds. Admins. don't HAVE to review those pages, thus allowing other things that they might respectively need to do and we can bring to their attention anything out of the ordinary.
Like I said, maybe this thought is out of place, and many admins. will still do the reviewing bit as well. My concern is that their doing that job is causing some "too much bother", etc. comments, which might be unfair because they'd be reverting these spammy edits in any case. There are now 5,000 new pairs of eyes keeping an eye on spammy edits, so why not let those 5,000 eyes help and then we can judge the feature better? (No offense is meant, either, and if you disagree, by all means post it; I might have a flawed viewpoint.)
(P.S.: I added your sig. manually there, just so it's there. =) CycloneGU (talk) 06:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Don't we watch for spammy edits anyways? I still don't quite understand what you are saying... ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 17:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The 300 or so admins. (sorry, I don't know this number) now have 5,000 and ever-growing extra pairs of eyes watching for spam, yet several admins. have already voiced opposition to the idea extremely early on. That's my point. If admins. do all the review work, yes, it seems like more work to an admin. If they let us do what we've been asked to help with for the trial, we'll be able to conduct the PC test in a good way and report to the admins. if any article still needs additional protection. (see Julia Gillard, which I had to make such a request for; it's now SPed for a month). We can make the requests; if it's not needed, we deal with the spam. Merge my other idea of restricting IP edits to one every two minutes or so, and thast also helps with the spam issue on PC articles as well, IMO. Back to PC...by the end of the trial we'll have a good idea how well PC works on the trialed articles, hopefully being able to incorporate it a bit more fully after crunching the numbers. Not on all 3 million articles, but at least a bit more widely.
As a side note, once the lag issues are fully dealt with (BTW, it's MUCH better today, just did a review to test), it will literally take one minute to review an article if it's obvious spam.
I thought of another idea, too. I actually think having senior reviewers responsible for reviewing accepted review logs would be a nice addition; that way, we have people who have a more advanced knowledge of the rules and will review all accepted edits to see whether the information is valid or not. That way, situations like what happened with Rules of chess, while they don't look like spam and might be accepted legitimately because accuracy isn't guaranteed, can be rectified by a senior reviewer. Maybe we should set up a second page for such a log and, when it's reviewed, we just mark it on the page to remove it from the page? Maybe out of the 5,000, about 1,000 be selected as senior reviewers, with slightly more responsibility than a standard reviewer (but still not admin.-level). Could this become a feature of the test in the second month?
Last note: I actually think having 1 hour being the lowest marking limit at the reviews page is a bad idea...maybe 5 minutes, then 15, then 30? No article ever gets to an hour in my early experience. Sorry to ramble in this post, just getting ideas today. =) CycloneGU (talk) 18:36, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
But users watch for spam already! This doesn't make it so that admins have to watch for less spam, users do that anyways! ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, if a user is reading an article, they'll revert any spam they see in the article; I know I would do so and make spelling and grammar corrections in places if needed, too. We now have a log of edits that we can be directed to for reviewing, so we don't just stumble upon it now and then; we instead are told this edit is just made, we take a look, we see spam, and we get rid of it.
As an example, I reviewed Sidney Crosby the other nite. Here is my reversion of an unexplained removal of information from the article. I would never have stumbled upon the Sidney Crosby article unless it appeared on the reviews page, and it might have taken an hour or two for someone to notice the removed information otherwise because of a backlog of IP edits on an administrator's watchlist. I've already taken care of it. This goes the same for every reviewer reverting spammy edits; it's an edit the admin. no longer has to look at, and perhaps trusted users can have the responsibility for helping revert spam, bringing extreme cases to the admin. pages for action. Is my viewpoint flawed? CycloneGU (talk) 18:57, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Do you know about recent change patrolling? There are tons of users that attempt to check through every edit to see if it is vandalism, using things like Igloo, Twinkle, Huggle, or other tools, or just the normal recent changes list. OR did you already know all of this, and you meant something else? ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 19:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Oh? Actually, I didn't realize this. So you're saying this entire pending changes thing is just a way to do the same thing but give titles to people, or something? CycloneGU (talk) 19:48, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, normally, edits are seen instantly, but this hides the edit temporarily. That's the other difference. But when this is used instead of semi-protection, it makes it so that there are more opprotunities for vandalism, so more people have to revert vandalism. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 21:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
That's somewhat misleading I think. Pending changes hardly creates more opportunities for vandalism, it actually prevents the casual reader from having to see it. Make no mistake, I don't think that Pending Changes should be used in lieu of Semi-protection, and there is a solid argument for using them in combination with each other, but if anything this defeats vandals until the edits are approved. They're just spinning their wheels. Good on us. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 00:37, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue with what you said, mainly because I agree with most of it, that it shouldn't be used instead of semi-protection. However, what I was meaning about more opprotunities was not that it is a problem for the reader, since it isn't seen, but it is a problem for us, because we would have more vandalism to revert, even though people wouldn't see it. And that just seems like a waste of time to me. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 03:18, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I hate to break it to ya kid, but 99% of Wikipedia is a wasted effort. Everyone knows that.  :-/ JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 06:24, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
First, don't call me "kid". Second, if that is what you think, then why are you here? ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:41, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes the worst vandals are well-meaning users who are not cut out for article editing.

  • Suggestion Eliminate anonymous editing on all pages, allow registered users to edit developing articles, but make them have to earn the ability to edit good articles by proving they are good editors. You could have several levels of edit clearence, like ranks. --GabeMc (talk) 06:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Acceptance comments: Where do they go?

I just accepted an edit for the first time, on Dragon Ball. On my acceptance I added a comment into the field for that (I think it was "checked edit through Google") and then clicked accept and my acceptance worked, but I am unable now to find where that comment went. It's not listed in the article's edit history, nor in reviewed revisions, nor in the pending changes log. So, where do our comments made upon accepting edits get displayed, if anywhere?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

A bot sucks them in and chews the evidence, then spits out a report. =)
Or something like that. The bot part is for sure; I was in the chat area the other nite and saw every time someone accepted an edit. CycloneGU (talk) 20:54, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
It shows up here. There is a log for each page with this kind of protection. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 20:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Hi878. I looked at the pending changes log. It did not occur to me that there was a review log.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
I was going to ask if it was ok to put in comments since most of them have none. I suppose this answers my question, thanks. Vampyrecat (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

An automatically-accepted bot edit leaving the underlying IP edit pending

I saw a pending change on Association football this evening. This change by an IP was shown as pending and unaccepted, even though a bot had reverted it, and the bot's edit was automatically accepted.

Effectively, I had to accept the vandalism edit to clear it from the pending queue! I noted in my acceptance reason why I did it, but the history page just says "accepted by C.Fred" without any of the underlying reasoning.

So my major question is, Why are pending edits not removed from the pending queue by a subsequent automatically-accepted bot edit? This seems to run contrary to the purpose of vandalism-removal bots. There should be some mechanism other than me accepting the change by hand to clear it from the pending queue.

My minor question is, Where are acceptance summaries logged for review? There's no obvious way to get to them from the page history, and I don't think a user should need to read help page(s) to figure out how to see why an editor accepted the page. (That assumes the editor left a rationale/summary, which may be another question entirely…) —C.Fred (talk) 04:32, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

First, the sumaries show up in the review log. In the case of this article, it would be here. On each article page, in the box that has the review information, there is a link to the page. Second, those edits don't show up in the queue. If you lok at the diff, it still says pending, but that is the only place that it says that; it doesn't show up in orange on the history page, or on Special:OldReviewedPages. I hope this helps. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 05:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, before I accepted it, it was in orange on the history page, and it was on OldReviewedPages. That's why I reported it, because I thought it was odd to have an orange version in the middle of a sequence like that, with accepted edits before and after it. —C.Fred (talk) 05:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm... I haven't seen that before. Not sure why it would do that. Perhaps a bug? Or, heaven forbid, I could be wrong about something... ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 05:11, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Given those options, clearly it must be a bug. :) I'll keep an eye out for it (as I have the page bookmarked to check for pending changes regularly). If it happens again, I'll report it again and snap a screenshot. —C.Fred (talk) 05:18, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It's a bug. But not that big a deal, that's what acceptance trials are for. Gerardw (talk) 12:31, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I can confirm this bug, it just happened to the obesity article. Here is a screenshot [1]. Also, the pending changes tab would only let me hit the unaccept button. --WakiMiko (talk) 18:48, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Box at the top of articles

The box at the top of articles, when expanded, looks like this:

File:Pendingscreenshot.png

I'm guessing the "&1t;reviewer-status&gt" stuff isn't supposed to be visible. PhilKnight (talk) 14:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Press the "(-)" button to make it go away. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 17:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
It seems that only happens when viewing the stable version of a page that has pending changes. I imagine it is supposed to show, but we're not actually seeing it. The system messages that are referred to in that message, revreview-status and revreview-status-1, do not exist. Reach Out to the Truth 19:38, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Did nobody think what I said was funny? Oh well... :)
It looks like that's the result of a couple of system messages that actually aren't in the code for whatever reason. I've put in strings on enwiki that were over at the test site for now, and will add this to the list of stuff we need to fix. Thanks! -- RobLa (talk) 05:35, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Grammar in box

Should read, "This is an accepted version..." – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 20:09, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, nobody's perfect... :) ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 21:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Seems to me that "This is the latest accepted revision... is better. Sign My Guestbook!·Sumsum2010·Talk 21:25, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Unless you are looking at an old revision... ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 21:46, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
True.=)Sign My Guestbook!·Sumsum2010·Talk 00:09, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Low Traffic Pages

This in a nutshell:Pending Changes might not work for all pages.

This is just for if Pending Changes went to all pages: For high traffic pages Pending Changes works because the edit is either accepted or unaccepted minutes. But on low traffic pages that get a few edits a month the changes would take a while to be accepted/ unaccepted. Meaning that if someone without an account were doing research on that page they would not see the latest revision which may contain the info. they're looking for. Wikipedia has so many low traffic pages the backlog could easily begin to look like Special:NewPages with so many pages that do not get looked at until they're at the very back of the backlog.

Sorry if that was confusing to read.Sign My Guestbook!·Sumsum2010·Talk 21:36, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

No, it all made sense. I pretty much agree with you. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 21:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
I think this special page may make that unlikely. Any page under Pending Changes, with unreviewed edits, will show up there. I suspect that if this goes live, there will be people, maybe quite a few, who watch that special page regularly to expressly avoid the scenario you propose. - TexasAndroid (talk) 00:18, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I suppose that is true. Probably would end up being followed as much as Recent Changes, and the different vandal-fighting programs would start including it. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 00:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
If this is rolled out to cover every single article, Recent Changes patrol will essentially be converted into Pending Changes review, right? Any change requiring review will also, by definition, show up on the Recent Changes log when it is made. So the two logs would become identical if review was rolled out to cover all pages. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:04, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
But as others have commented elsewhere on this page, the trial concerns only Pending Changes as a supplement to existing page protection options, not for side-wide application, so take my comments with the limited weight they therefore merit. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:11, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
With all the people watching and blanking that page now I guess there are many editiors who are constantly at that page looking for something to help with(like me!).Sign My Guestbook!·Sumsum2010·Talk 00:25, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Approving changes may be manageable now. But it won't be once the number of pages over at Special:OldReviewedPages balloons from a few thousand to over three million. That's going to suck up considerable time from good editors who could spend that time better elsewhere, and it's going to create a massive backlog that will discourage anon editors from editing. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I know we have already reached 5,000 reviewers, or close, so I think there are enough interested parties to do the job of keeping the log clean. I agree that NewPages isn't quite so squeaky clean. It would take a few days of "one group does all of this date while another does today's" to clear that backlog. But you know what? I'm sure it can be done too if volunteers there really got down to it. =)

But the previous point is correct: pending changes logs are cleared in less than ten minutes. That is my experience. There may be exceptions, but not many. CycloneGU (talk) 21:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm one of the 5,000 reviewers, but only because I had no intention of having to wait to see my edits approved on pages where there are outstanding unapproved edits by anons (in such a situation, new edits by autoconfirmed editors don't go live until the log is cleared). It's impossible to say whether "there are enough interested parties to do the job of keeping the log clean" if we're talking about well over three million pages. That's a ginormous number. Almost certainly, there won't be enough people. As for "pending changes logs are cleared in less than ten minutes" - again, you can't know that if we're talking about three million pages. Even if by some miracle the logs generally get cleared within a reasonable time, that would mean a massive chunk of editors will have considerably less free time to make useful edits, because they'll be so occupied with clearing the log. If pending changes ever goes to all Wikipedia articles, it'll be a massive drainage of manpower. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 23:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps if sitewide implementation occurs, time will be taken to add more reviewers such to help out so that 5,000 reviewers don't get bogged under all 3.2 million articles. Hopefully the conflicting edits issues are resolved, too; fortunately, I haven't had "conflicting accepts" yet. CycloneGU (talk) 05:48, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
How many articles use pending changes now? If it's 3,000, then you're going to need one thousand times more reviewers to keep it at the current level if it goes sitewide (not one thousand reviewers, but rather the current number of reviewers times one thousand - that's five million reviewers). Even if we assume that there's a higher than needed supply of reviewers now, that could still be as many as 500 times more reviewers - i.e. 2.5 million reviewers. Besides, why are we talking sitewide here? This was a trial to see if pending changes could work as an alternative to semi-protection. It's thus inapplicable to anything sitewide-related. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
There is hope for eventual sitewide implementation. This is NOT a certainty, it has to be decided after August 15, at which point PC gets removed from articles (one by one? It's still active for a short time after 11:00?) and, after that's done, the decisions and votes get done.
Also, regarding how many reviewers would be needed for site-wide implementation, that remains to be seen. This could be something where every single editor with over a certain number of edits gets reviewer access (thus, spammers cannot review their buddy's spam and so on unless they decide they're done editing forever). It could even be a special right much like admin. Or it could be treated just like NewPages, where we patrol pages as we wish. Personally, I've done NewPages too without any special userrights, hence why I am more suspect of this being the eventual format if fully implemented (which leaves the question: will some articles not already protected still not have PC applied?). CycloneGU (talk) 17:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
"There is hope" for eventual sitewide implementation? Why is there hope? Not everyone likes pending changes, and certainly not on a sitewide basis. That would be the single biggest change ever to occur to Wikipedia since its inception. It's a big, big deal. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:49, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Implementing pending changes for all articles is likely to end up as one of those WP:PEREN issues on which there is no consensus. In any case, Jimbo has said that pending changes for all articles is "extremely unlikely" and "neither necessary nor desirable", with which I fully agree.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:46, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
I fully agree with Jimbo. Sumsum2010·Talk 19:04, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Hi All Hallow's Wraith! You said [...] you're going to need one thousand times more reviewers to keep it at the current level if it goes sitewide (not one thousand reviewers, but rather the current number of reviewers times one thousand - that's five million reviewers). Your assumption is not valid looking at the German wiki, where review is active for all >1.1 Mio pages. Currently we have ~10,000 reviewers; the maximum lag is about two weeks – but generally less than a couple of hours. To be honest, I don't understand the bother. →Alfie±Talk 12:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Alfie, you're making a rather severe logical fallacy that what's good for a Camry is good for a big rig. de.wp is far smaller than en.wp. We have billions of articles, not a hair over one million. If it goes sitewide, there will be such logistical problems that actually using it will end up consuming more time than would be better spent editing, leading to a higher rate of burnout than vandal-fighting. Couple that with the massive long-term trolls on en.wp compared to de.wp and you have a recipe for disaster. Think about it. —Jeremy (v^_^v Carl Johnson) 18:35, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi Jeremy! Billions, are you kidding? As of 22:22 (UTC), 9 August: 3,373,326 articles in en.wp and 1,104,734 articles in de.wp. de.wp is not far smaller than en.wp, but the second largest wiki. You get the idea? I give you some numbers: All articles at de.wp (~⅓ of en.wp) are efficiently reviewed by 9,535 reviewers (=41% of the 23,524 active users and 0.9% of the 1,047,428 registered ones). en.wp: 4,887 reviewers, 134,844 active users, 12,844,256 registered ones. I think that your argument is flawed & I don't understand the cant. Following the discussion here I get the impression that most arguments are a strange combination of reinventing the wheel and not invented here. Of course we can pile up hypotheses why a review system cannot work – ignoring the fact that across the pond one is already working for more than two years now. →Alfie±Talk 23:07, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Edit: en.wp contains much more one-sentence stubs like Triplophysa zhenfengensis than de.wp does (stricter notability policy). Therefore a simple comparison (three times as many articles) should be seen cautiously. Don't tell me that it's difficult to review one sentence. ;-) →Alfie±Talk 00:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I retract the number-of-articles statement - but not the second part of my statement you ignored. ("Couple that with the massive long-term trolls on en.wp compared to de.wp and you have a recipe for disaster.") —Jeremy (v^_^v Carl Johnson) 01:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi Jeremy! Well, do you really think we have not trolls over here? ;-) Some of them are quite nasty as well, believe me. →Alfie±Talk 01:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Concerning disaster: Compare review statistics of en.wp with de.wp. Unfortunatelly the order of plots is different. The backlog here is roughly one hour (on less than 1500 articles), whereas the total (registered+IPs) average in de.wp (“Durchschnittlicher Sichtungsrückstand in Stunden”) is four hours (on >1.1 Mio articles!). Edits of IPs are reviewed within two hours. I don't see disaster approaching. →Alfie±Talk 02:18, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Subtle vandalism

Subtle vandalism - comprising swapping of two words, or replacing one number with another - is a concern. See "chess" above. I wonder if there is a way to get the software or a bot to flag when a subtle change of this kind is made by a user with few edits, or an IP, so the information is there for a reviewer "check carefully, this could be subtle vandalism". A bit like how some email providers and modern browsers add a header "careful, this could be a phishing site"?

Ideally we should aim at reducing the visibility of this kind of vandalism in the public view, if a way can be found. FT2 (Talk | email) 10:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe the page you might be referring to is Rules of chess. CycloneGU (talk) 21:36, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Feedback on trial

Since the encyclopedia exists to serve its users and readers, and non-editing users/readers make up 99%+ of page hits, I would hope we have some means to obtain feedback from non-editors (end users) referencing pending changes protected pages, whether they feel the system increased their enjoyment, comfort, trust, or perception of openness, on those articles?

Maybe as simple as a site header message - "We are trialling a new protection system. If you want to give us feedback whether it improves Wikipedia, click here" plus a form that captures feedback and stores it anonymously and non-publicly until the trial closes (to minimize cognitive bias). FT2 (Talk | email) 10:25, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I like it. Seems like it would be a good idea. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
One thing that may help is that vandals rarely leave an edit comment. Once in a while they do, but only rarely. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 18:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
The quality of the edit comment is also a giveaway. "OMG SPAM I LOVE HACK LOLZ" or such. CycloneGU (talk) 19:23, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, when there is an edit comment, it usually is something like "typos", something that we wouldn't look twice at. At least, that is what I've seen. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 19:29, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I have seen a few like that, but in my experience the great majority (99%) of vandalism has no edit comment. So if checking for vandalism, first priority should be on first edits by an IP user with no edit comment. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 03:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I'm relatively new to Wikipedia so I'm still coming to terms with the ins and outs. I was wondering if you could help me? How do you provide feedback? What do I have to do? Zerowing22 (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

You do exactly what you just did. Find a section you want to comment on and add your thoughts at the bottom of the section. Or if you don't see a section that's appropriate for your comments start a new one. Ucanlookitup (talk) 16:48, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the help. Zerowing22 (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Biting newcomers

Overall I think this is a good idea. I would never have become an editor if I had had to go through the registration process before making my first edits. As noted above, the speed needs to be improved to make in workable.

I'm concerned this implementation is giving the anti IP editor cabal too much power. I haven't been reviewing that much and I've already come across two rejects of edits that weren't obvious vandalism that a 90 second google search would have verified as reasonable edits.

I think it's better to have an article semi-protected so an anon knows they can't edit it then to allow them to make a good faith edit which is summarily rejected. That's quite discouraging. Gerardw (talk) 12:58, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending Changes will work best for articles with few or no watchers

The few experiences I've had with trying to review changes have been largely negative. PC has been set up on frequently edited articles -- those are the ones that already have lots of watchers to revert bad changes, and going through PC slows the reversion process down considerably. Where I think PC would work best is with low-traffic BLPs, and only if combined with a optional "Global Watchlist" of BLPs with few or no regular watchers. Somebody adding "Obama! Devil Shorts! I snort the nose Lucifer!" to Barack Obama is already going to get reverted fairly quckly. The damaging changes to this encyclopedia are the bad changes made to rarely seen articles, for it is in those articles where a vandalism is likely to remain undetected for months. With a Global Watchlist, randomly bringing up a few tens of articles to review would be easier. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 15:49, 28 June 2010 (UTC) (edited for my atrocious typing, ArglebargleIV (talk) 19:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC))

Actually, I completely agree with you. What you said is true; I now think that this is the way that PC should be used. ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
How many "low-traffic articles" are there? Surely over a million, at the least. What's the standard for "low-traffic", anyway? Are you saying pending changes should be used for low traffic and high traffic, or just low? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure where I would draw the line between low-traffic articles and the rest, but I think a reasonable attempt at a line could be drawn. What I was trying to say above is that I don't think pending changes is good for high-traffic articles, which usually have many watchers. With lots of watchers, vandalism is usually quickly reverted, and in the event of heavy IP vandalism, semi-protection is a good choice. In my view, pending changes would work best on low-traffic articles with few or no watchers, as long as there was a global watchlist of, say, the last few thousand or so unreviewed pending changes, unrelated to an individual watchlist. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 20:47, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Concur with the above, though that's not to say little-watched articles are necessarily PC's only use case. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:15, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
I think the above is a good method of selection. But to add that high traffic pages with low vandalism should also be considered for PC regardless of the number of watchers. Any page that suffers from a high levels of vandalism should always be Semi-Protected, else the revert workload gets too time consuming for no good reason. HumphreyW (talk) 06:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Ideally all pending changes should be reviewed within an hour, otherwise it becomes unfair to the IPs who add material in good faith. On some of the more obscure articles, it would be hard to guarantee this.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
If a page is on PC, the edits go to a centralized list and are quickly reviewed. If not under PC, then the edit is approved immediately; only if someone is watching edits on a page would they go back to check it immediately (often within a day), which is good for obscure articles to have a watcher. CycloneGU (talk) 19:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I disagree. The high-traffic PC articles are now less of a target since the vandals won't get the immediate feedback of seeing their "work" in lights. So this actually helps to keep vandalism down. I've seen this on the Cold War article. When it was on semi-protection, no problem. When it was unprotected, we had tons of vandalism problems. Now that it's on PC, we get a few things here and there, but nothing like before. Sadly, not many IP-ers have come to make constructive edits, but there have been a few. Hires an editor (talk) 14:18, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
I also disagree. Inactive articles have the problem that no one checks to give approval. That is frustrating if someone new makes edits but they are not going live. In fact you'll likely have hundreds on thousands of articles sat waiting for perhaps years awaiting approval for changes. There is a similiar pending changes system on wikibooks and about 99% of low activity pages that I'm familar with have not been approved even once in over a year. Rightly so as well as whoever makes the first approval effectively approves the articles entire contents as it starts. This is a major task when you consider the 3 million plus articles on Wikipedia. Just think of the 25,000+ BLP we have without a single reliable source? No one could approve them without either finding sources for all it's content or giving approval to content which undoubtably could contain major errors/hoaxes and more. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 04:46, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Excellent Tool

As a reviewer, I must say I am highly impressed. The tool works well, and I have approved both good edits which would not have been made under semiprotection and also denied bad edits. My experience is actually that I have approved most requests. There is a technical issue (the pending diffs load slowly), but other than that I have no complaints. It will take a little while for the admins over at WP:RPP to figure out when to use Pending and when to use Semi, but other than that the trial seems to be working wonderfully. N419BH 16:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

As long as it never goes beyond being an alternative to semi-protection. Some people posting on here seem to be under the impression that this was a trial to see if pending changes should be applied in every article on Wikipedia, and are clamoring for that. That concept should have its own trial and its own discussion. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
True - it should be applied to BLPs, featured articles and pages where someone applies for it, but nothing else. FA, to stop vandalism on the most visible pages. BLPs to stop the most common types of vandalism. --Smaug123 (talk) 22:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Wait a minute here - BLPs? All of them? That was never part of the trial either. It's just an alternative to semi-protection. Taking it wider than that is a whole different issue. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 23:43, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I know - I'm just voicing my opinion that it should not be a replacement for semi-protection, merely to help police the articles of relatively high risk. --Smaug123 (talk) 19:50, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Some strange things

I saw two things that I found strange:

  1. For a page that had just been put on the "pending changes" protection level, I was asked to accept this level change - which I am not supposed to do, I guess. I clicked "accept" just to see what happens (yes, I know, bad idea) and got the page reloaded as-is, with the same status.
  2. Most of the pages listed at Special:OldReviewedPages are highlighted as "under review". I tested this as well (yes, I know, bad idea): If you click on "review" but neither accept nor decline it, it will still be highlighted for quite some time (minutes?), discouraging others to review it. Even if you immediately close the browser window, which is not a too unlikely use case ("Ooh, this change I cannot review"). We don't have that for normal pages and edits ("This page is currently being edited by someone"), why should we have it here?

The grey button is also a concern, took me a few minutes of wondering. --Pgallert (talk) 14:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Review reviewers

Here's my feedback.

  • Overall, I think it's a good instrument and it worked well on those pages that are on my watchlist.
  • However, pages take more than 20 secs. to load, which is too much.
  • Pending changes should only unaccept vandalism, and reviewers unaccepting good faith edits should lose "reviewer rights".

Lova Falk talk 16:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

There is some debate on what good faith edits can be unaccepted. If someone adds a fact to the article but does not source the fact, the fact cannot stay in the article. If the user adds other information at the same time, we'd accept the edit and then manually cut out the unsourced fact(s). If nothing that is added can stay in the article, we must rollback or undo that "good faith" edit. So any reviewer doing that must lose reviewer privileges? Please clarify; I've had to undo some good faith edits noting them as unsourced, but I only rollback if it's blatant spam as it's not worth explaining. Also, no one is perfect, and you might click the wrong button or have an edit conflict sometimes; need I bring up that horrendous example of what happens with those mistakes? CycloneGU (talk) 17:48, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
You're absolutely right, people make mistakes and should not be punished for mistakes. My suggestion came after having read this editor - because I really felt for what the editor said. Furthermore, as far as I understand, pending changes is for stopping blatant vandalism, and getting an edit accepted should not mean that other editors should not scrutinize the edit. Lova Falk talk 18:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Correct. I somewhere raised the idea of having Senior Reviewers who don't necessarily monitor the regular feed, but instead have a separate feed that lists all of the edits that have been accepted. If an accepted edit appears out of the ordinary, then it can be easily removed manually most of the time. Sometimes, it might be an edit conflict and reversed a second time already, and nothing needs to be done. That way, we have the "Reviewers reviewing reviewers" idea and accountability is ensured. I'd even be willing to accept this role. CycloneGU (talk) 19:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm glad I found this discussion thread. I was granted reviewer rights when the trial started but have only spent the last couple of days seriously testing it. While many of my reverts and rollbacks have been blatant vandalism or BLP violations per the trial's guidelines, others have been along the lines of what CycloneGU mentions: rejecting good faith but unsourced and/or poorly-written assertions. And, as I've not been sure that's the correct approach, I came here looking for some perspective.
I think part of the problem is human nature. Conscientious editors, who would normally be selected as, or request to be, reviewers, try to abide by the pillars in the course of their normal editing. However, as reviewers, as the guidelines now stand, they are asked to ignore the pillars and accept edits that they would never themselves make, or would even revert if they where stumbled across on a watchlist or while surfing. Consciously or unconsciously, they apply the same standards to the submitted edits as they would their own, but in the process possibly discouraging and alienating anonymous editors who might otherwise create an account, learn the ways of the encyclopedia, and become regular editors.
It very well might take some sort of "review the reviewer" process as mentioned above. Northumbrian (talk) 19:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
A suggestion: in cases such as those, accept the edit, and then revert it in the normal way. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

That's occurred to me too. But then the thought of this scenario occured:

  1. an anon editor submits a good faith but poorly sourced or formatted edit
  2. I accept the good faith edit wearing my Reviewer hat
  3. I then revert the edit wearing my Editor hat with explanation in the edit summary (no source, bad format)
  4. the anon editor sees that sequence in the edit history and thinks "WTF? Why accept it in the first place then? Northumbrian, you're a jackass! Screw this, I'm off to vandalize the hell out of this encyclopedia!"

Whereas if I reject the original edit as a reviewer with an explanation in the edit summary, the editor would hopefully then think "Oh, okay, better go track down a source and try again". Or just become disillusioned and start vandalizing as described above.

An alternative of course would be for the Reviewer to accept the edit, then track down the source or fix the formatting. For simple cases, that seems to be the easiest and most acceptable answer.

However, for something obscure that would require a lot of time/effort to fix, the choice now seems to be:

  • the Reviewer spends his or her own time and effort finding that source on a topic that might be oof little intrinsic interest, or
  • the Reviewer ignores the accepted edit, hoping that the article is on the watchlist of an interested editor who'll then leap at the chance to source/format the edit and improve the article.

Lots to think about. Northumbrian (talk) 20:12, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I had to smile when I read that, because, for what it's worth, that scenario of the new user becoming angry over that is something that actually happened to me, in exactly that way. Ah, well. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
Oh yes, those heady days as an anonymous and then newly-registered editor, when the level 1 warning templates and dismissive reverts come raining down upon you like a hailstorm, making your blood boil and hackles rise. Good times!
Anyway, in addition to the top two priorities of 1) protecting the project and 2) making anonymous and new users who want to positively contribute to the project feel welcome, a third might be defining Reviewer selection criteria. Seems like a Reviewer should be willing to accept, in the short term, the pain of living with a sub-par-but-otherwise-good-faith edit (and be willing to improve the edit when appropriate) in order to forward the long-term aim of improving the encyclopedia by bringing in new editors who want to contribute positively to the project. Northumbrian (talk) 21:38, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

  • Are you kidding? WP is full of unsourced material added by registered editors. (Except in the case of BLP) unsourced additionals that are likely/possibly true should simply be tagged {{cn}} Gerardw (talk) 00:40, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Are you talking to me?? Because agree with you and I said (twice actually) that Pending changes only should unaccept vandalism. Lova Falk talk 07:42, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

It's interesting to compare this debate with the one about Feedback (Rules of chess) above. Here the suggestion seems to be to undo changes only when they are clearly vandalism (as opposed to your editorial opinion). I would agree with this view. I think it's important not to send the message to IP editors that their good faith contributions are less valuable or somehow subordinate to the opinion of the reviewer. If you accept that view, though, it means that some subtle vandalism will slip by. Hypothetically, if you are reviewing an edit that is made in good faith, but in your opinion is inappropriate for some other reason - an unreliable source for example - should you accept the change as a reviewer and then undo it as an editor? Or does reviewing it suggest you should recluse yourself from the debate that is likely to follow? Ucanlookitup (talk) 00:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Not entirely linked to the arguments made by User:Lova_Falk but still, this section of the discussion touched on a thought I had about this whole proposal. It would seem to me that by limiting the acceptance of pending changes to reviewers, something very obvious is being ignored - Wikipedia is written by the people, for the people. Simply limiting acceptance to reviewers goes against the very concept of Wikipedia:Consensus. Unless of course the very approval can become subject to discussion. Which is another issue really - this whole proposal has the risk of generating a lot of excess discussion on whether or not a specific (minor) edit is acceptable or not. Especially if and when all of Wikipedia will become subject to this proposed level of protection, as some have suggested. --Kharay1977 (talk) 21:28, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Remove the option for "unaccept" entirely

By removing the option for "unaccept" entirely the whole process would much clearer and easier to understand. There only needs to be two options for IP edits: 1) "Accept" and make the edit visible, or 2) "Undo" as per the normal undo process. Of course Rollbackers/Admins/Oversight/etc. get a few other options and those would still work as usual also. I can't find any justification for the "unaccept" at all. It is just interface bloat. If the IP edit is not currently visible then it is, kind of by default, already unaccepted and needs only to be either undone or accepted as the next step. HumphreyW (talk) 17:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Further to this, by keeping the "unaccept" I can see a situation whereby an editor will "unaccept" an IP edit and leave the page at that knowing that the edit won't be seen. Then, later, a different registered editor will add some content to the page, not realising that the current page has been "unaccepted", and just start adding/editing without removing the previous IP edit. So we end up with vandalism that is never undone properly and require someone to spot the problem and waste spend time trying to unravel what has happened. HumphreyW (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
What is expected of an editor after pressing "unaccept"? Is it expected that the page then be further manipulated by using undo or rollback? Or is it expected that "unaccept" is enough and no further action is required? Because I can't see how "unaccept" is helping in any way. It just seems to create more work for editors. HumphreyW (talk) 03:35, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Concur with removing unaccept. If an accepted revision needs to be modified/removed, it should be edited or reverted using existing editing protocols. Gerardw (talk) 11:56, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
We're currently thinking about keeping "unaccept", but making it much less prominent. It would only show on revisions that have been accepted, and when pressed, would explain the consequences of unaccepting. This gives reviewers the opportunity to undo an acceptance without creating much of the confusion the current button does. - RobLa (talk) 21:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Side bar link

I think we could do with a link in the sidebar for the page that displays the pages with pending changes, like we do for recent changes. It would make it a whole lot easier to get to the page.
Tomd2712 | Tell me something? 18:20, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes! I give my wholehearted Support for this idea! ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 18:36, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to put in 2 Strong Support's for that idea!Sumsum2010·Talk 18:59, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Not exactly what you are asking for, but I did write a script that puts pending changes in the sidebar. See User:Joshua Scott/Scripts/pendingchanges for install instructions.  --Joshua Scott (formerly LiberalFascist) 04:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! That's even better!Sumsum2010 · Talk · Contributions 17:59, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Awesome, cheers Josh. danno 18:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
Just wanted to say thanks for this awesome script! WakiMiko (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Further support --Cybercobra (talk) 07:37, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The goals of the trial

I'm curious about what the trial is testing. A 'pending revisions' note pops up occasionally on my watchlist, I usually stare at the edit bemusedly and someone else takes care of the edit before I can figure out what I'm supposed to do. In that sense, I suppose, the trial is working. However, I can see a scenario where there are many pending revisions waiting 'acceptance' when this becomes all pervasive and the 'pending revisions' note will recede into background noise and not taken care of in a hurry. Does that mean that we'll have many articles where changes are not visible for quite a while? Will editors be diligently accepting revisions (I tend to agree that unaccept has no purpose)? What exactly is the trial supposed to be testing and is it testing the right things? --RegentsPark (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Disabled unaccept button

How come sometimes the Unaccept button is grayed out and only the Accept button is possible to choose? I was reviewing this article which was already under review when this happened. --Biblbroks's talk 19:20, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The unaccept button is for when someone else accepted it, and you want it to be unaccepted. At least, I'm pretty sure that's it... :) ~~ Hi878 (Come yell at me!) 19:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
You're right, thats what it's for.Sumsum2010·Talk 19:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
The page in question had a pending review status - the changes have been made which have been yet neither accepted nor unaccepted. --Biblbroks's talk 10:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
If a page hasn't been accepted yet, then it is by definition unaccepted. "Unaccepted" means "not accepted" - the reason for being unaccepted might be because the page hasn't been reviewed yet, or it was reviewed and deemed not worthy of acceptance, but in either case, it's unaccepted. -- RobLa (talk) 21:09, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
Maybe it does mean that, but "unaccept" should mean to reverse an acceptance. "Not accepted", "non-accepted", or something like that would mean that no acceptance was done -- maybe a pending change was undone or rolled back, or maybe no action at all was taken. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:37, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
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