Wikipedia:Pending changes/Feedback/Archive 5

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yes

sounds good. Lexicografía (talk) 22:54, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

pages using pending changes

If 'Pages using Pending Changes' is going to hang around after the trial, wouldn't it be better to be in alphanumeric order, instead of the random order it is now in (after the first page)? Hmains (talk) 23:37, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

pages with pending changes

My evaluation is that it is too slow to invoke 'review' or even 'history' from this panel. Slowness is discouraging. Hmains (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Reviewing rejected changes

Unless I am missing something there does not appear to be a mechanism in place to review changes that have been made and rejected - once they have been rejected they disappear from the edit history. Is this correct or am I simply missing something obvious? If it is that is a major problems with respect to accountability. Flying Llamas (talk) 19:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It could very well be me who is missing something, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen, it does not happen like that. If an edit is "rejected" there isn't a button to reject it, but rather, the reviewer just does not hit the "accept" button, and then reverts the edit, after which there is an edit history as with any other reversion. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no link to the rejected version in the history, so we can't see what was rejected. That could give rise to legitimate edits being filtered out since they don't fit someone else's POV, and without them being subject to scrutiny by third parties. Flying Llamas (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way of rejecting an edit, without reverting it? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

No. – Smyth\^talk 22:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Llamas, Tryptofish is right. Rejected versions appear in the history with a white background, while [auto-]accepted versions are blue. ALL versions can be viewed and compared in the same way, irrespective of whether they are accepted or not. – Smyth\^talk 22:47, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

This is slightly misleading because it doesn't distinguish between versions and edits. The history may have many edits that were accepted but will have a white background because they were included in subsequent versions that were accepted. Yaris678 (talk) 17:03, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Background color notwithstanding, I think the important thing is that there is not a danger of a not-accepted valid edit disappearing without a trace, which was the concern that started this thread. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Yaris678 (talk) 17:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

How did this edit get accepted?

This edit [1] is obviously inappropriate, but it shows up as having been accepted by User:Zhenhaili000286 , who actually made the edit. That editor has fewer than 20 edits, and shouldn't have reviewer rights, or have its edits automatically accepted. What's going on -- am I missing something (most likely), is the "Review Log" messed up, or is something else going off kilter? I've unaccepted it and approved an edit undoing it, which is probably overkill. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, reverting that was fine. It looks to me like the editor is autoconfirmed, and so subject to automatic acceptance, but is clearly not a reviewer, so it wasn't a question of the editor accepting their own edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:27, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Confusion on Narendra Modi

The my version of the scenario - what I could see:

1. 15:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC) 81.136.166.103 made 2 edits marked [pending review]
2. 15:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC) 117.204.140.168 first an edit, which I see and rollback
3. 15:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC) Redtigerxyz (my rollback) marked [pending review]. I am now confused why my edit is not auto-reviewed as I am an reviewer
4. 15:19, 27 July 2010 (UTC) Tckma rollbacks using Twinkle. He intended to rollback edit 1 and could not see the edits 2 and 3. Ends up rollbacking 3. Marked [pending review]
5. 15:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC) 117.204.140.168 edits [pending review]
6. 15:32, 27 July 2010 (UTC) Redtigerxyz rollback to anon's edit. I think that may be rollback all edits in sequence would lead to the clean version. Marked [pending review]
7. 15:34, 27 July 2010 (UTC) 117.204.140.168 3 edits. Marked [pending review] initially, then accepted by User:Shabidoo. IMO, Shabidoo must have only accepted the last edit of 117.204.140.168, not all other edits which were POV and unsourced. All above edits do not have the [pending review] mark any more.
8. 15:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC) Redtigerxyz remove POV (Manually remove 117.204.140.168 edits). Initially Marked [pending review] then I accept my own edits, which surprisingly works
9. 15:46, 27 July 2010 (UTC) Redtigerxyz: Through various versions manually clean up anons' edits.

I will also invite Tckma and Shabido, to share their experience. I hope that I do not have to face this again. Can any one figure what went wrong? --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 16:03, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello all. I accepted the second of the two edits made by 117.204.140.168 (which I see now in the log) on the article which shows me having accepted. I did not accept the first edit (which I cannot review as it is now blank). The edit I did accept removed the word evil (making the article less POV), removed "though not proven" as the word alleged is already used, again balancing the article and making the article less POV and changes "it must be" [said] for Followers of Narendra Modi have" which checks out in the source previously provided. While it may have been an edit coming from one side (though I don't know if this is the case) or even perhaps POV it certainly did not seem like vandalism to me [at least the one edit I did review] and I left it to other editors to treat the edit as they liked. I did however only accept one of the edits, nothing more and know nothing about any previous or post edits nor can I now view them. Perhaps there was a glitch or perhaps I mistakenly accepted other edits in which case I apologise. Hopefully through discussion and consensus all these problems in the article can be solved and good constructive writing will ensue. Shabidoo | Talk 18:28, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I went to Special:OldReviewedPages, and clicked on the review link for Narendra Modi, as it was the only one not marked "under review". I saw only one edit on the diff, as opposed to a more current picture of the concurrent edits that were (apparently) occurring. I decided to roll back the edit using the Twinkle WP:AGF rollback link, and all seemed fine. I continued poking around, until I saw I had a new message on my talk page from User:Redtigerxyz questioning my rollback, quoting a passage from the article that I did not recognize, and linking to the diff resulting from my Twinkle rollback. I saw that this diff removed quite a bit from the article that I did not intend to remove. I did some investigation and found that I only saw the first edit listed above, responding to this effect to User:Redtigerxyz's message on my talk page. I'm guessing that there was an edit conflict, which under normal (non-review) circumstances, would have caused Twinkle to say something to the effect "latest revision is not the same as this one, perhaps it has already been rolled back." Maybe this ought to be reported at WP:TW/BUGS, though I'm not quite sure it's Twinkle-related. Tckma (talk) 20:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Re Redtigerxyz:

• Re 3: Since you reverted to an unaccepted revision, MediaWiki does not automatically mark your revert as accepted. This is deliberate.
• Re 4: This is actually the expected Twinkle behavior. If you look at a diff of two non-consecutive revisions, like e.g. this one, MediaWiki gives you the "(XX intermediate revisions not shown)" hint to indicate that there are revisions between the two revisions that you don't immediately see. However, that doesn't change the behavior of Rollback (both Twinkle and MediaWiki): If you press Rollback on the right-hand revision, you will not rollback all the way to the left-hand revision. Instead, you only rollback all consecutive edits by the editor of the right-hand revision. If you want to restore the left-hand revision, youe the "restore this revision" link.
  I've never thought about this, but I agree that it is bad. You will not know what the rollback links actually do unless you previously checked the history (explicitly or with navpop).
• Re 6: Rollback only reverts sequential edits by one editor, so it correctly only reverted one.
• Re 7: Correct.
• Re 8: Yes, you can review your own edits. Actually, when you make an edit based on an unreviewed revision (and it wasn't reviewed yet at the time you made the edit), you get an "automatically accept edit" checkbox next to the "minor edit" checkbox, which can save you one step if you really want to accept the combined changes. FWIW, if you cleaned up problems from the accepted revisions, you could/should unaccept those revisions then. If you don't, then any IP can undo your POV-cleanup, i.e. reverting to an accepted revision, which will then be automatically accepted as well.

Does that answer all questions? Amalthea 21:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Action 6 was a product of my confusion, the system worked perfectly. I still see some problems:

1. The action 7: As I anticipated, Shabidoo intended to accept only the last edit, he did not accept the other edits. I would have done the same. There are some glitches
   1. How did other pending changes get approved?
   2. Shabidoo did not intend to approve other edits, but ended up approving them. How can this be avoided?
   3. Shouldn't this (accepting last change => accepting all pending changes) be explained to all reviewers?
2. The action 8: The version I edited was an accepted one, my edit should have been "automatically reviewed". Why did that not happen? --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

As I have seen it is combined reason like when you use twinkle and when other un-reviewed edits are still in place. I recommend as I myself do, after each review go back to the edit history and see if your intention has benn implemented, if not then correct it as you intended and then again check the edit history to fully satisfy yourself that all is correct. As a reviewer I have found it is sometimes that your edit is not accepted and I have also followed along and accepted reviews and edits from reviewers and confirmed users. It is also totally ok as a reviewer to accept your own edits and reviews if and when situation necessitates. Off2riorob (talk) 15:45, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Stupid question

Where do I actually see where the pending changes are? If i check the history on an article that happens to have them I see them, but is there a log anywhere or somewhere to see what has been accepted/rejected easily? Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 02:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Not a stupid question at all: Special:AdvancedReviewLog shows all pending change reviews; Special:StablePages lists all pages using pending changes. Have a look at the Pending changes section in Special:SpecialPages. —Bruce1ee^talk 05:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Editor is a reviewer yet his edit was not accepted

How does that work? Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 21:21, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

An edit is not automatically approved unless the previous edit was approved, because there's no guarantee that contributors have actually checked the pending revisions. He had the option to approve his edit while editing the page, but he did not use it. Reach Out to the Truth 23:58, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 00:38, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Limited usefulness

In my observations, the PC feature has limited usefulness and only works well for high-traffic articles, where a significant number of users are watching the articles and the pending changes are reviewed quickly. For lower traffic articles the feature is not effective, as it may take quite a long time before a given change or a sequence of changes get reviewed. Even with some of the higher visibility articles, Pending Changes did not always work out well, where it turned out that the great majority of edits by non-autoconfirmed users were either plain vandalism or unsourced, and had to be reverted. I think this happened to the article Russia, for example. My feeling is that a greater use of long-term or permanent semi-protection is often a better solution, especially in view of the shrinking number of regular editors of Wikipedia available to do the reviewing. Nsk92 (talk) 03:59, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe a category of articles awaiting review would be helpful? Adabow (talk · contribs) 06:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

This depends on the scale of the PC feature. If it remains a relatively limited experiment, it is probably fine as it is and maybe a category like the one you suggest would be helpful. However, if the PC feature is implemented on a large scale (e.g. for all BLPs or something like that), then it would add too much extra work for the shrinking pool of regular editors, who, by and large, have other priorities and don't really have time for dealing with a large additional type of task. A permanent semi-protection of some categories of articles (e.g. BLPs) may be a more viable option. In the long run, unless the current trend changes (where more regular editors are leaving that coming in), disallowing edits by IPs may become the only realistic option. Nsk92 (talk) 06:56, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

My feedback?

It's a good tool but... clunky. There's also a lack of proper documentation which makes it hard to understand. Sceptre ^(talk) 20:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

My opinion

I think the best way to prevent non-users from seeing vandalism is to just fight vandalism in general. What we have to know is that there are lots of users and administrators fighting vandalism and also a lot that are abusing Wikipedia pages. Users that have been intentionally abusing articles and want to keep doing it will probably not like this project. I've only seen an obscene comment in an article once, and that was before I created an account. I don't know what article it was in, and I'm sure it has been removed by now. But getting freaked out that non-users of Wikipedia are viewing vandalism shouldn't be any more alarming than the fact that users and administrators are viewing it too. Anyone can create an account, so there may not always be much difference between someone who just created an account yesterday (and probably knows close to nothing about how Wikipedia works) and someone who creates one tomorrow. Jsayre64 (talk) 01:54, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

hardly seen it

Even though I've been aware of the trial going on, I've hardly seen the feature. I only recall seeing it on one page, and that page had so many autoconfirmed changes that I couldn't decide whether there were any changes waiting to be approved. Perhaps because the feature is new to me, I find it confusing. I think a somewhat broader trial might help us get more experience with these features. --Stepheng3 (talk) 05:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

General Feedback / Suggested Improvements

Most of this has been mentioned by other users before but I thought I would still post my thoughts. Firstly, the documentation about this feature is lacking (or at least hard to find). I cannot find any deny changes button. All in all I echo the comment above I LOVE THE PENDING CHANGES FEATURE. Themeparkgc (talk) 06:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Pending Changes is great - it would be even better if it was faster. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Great for problem pages

I've had problems for a while getting people to deal with some of the nonsense going on on one article and having those extra eyes from this process noticing it and then giving editors who need it warnings from NPOV editors is just great! Please keep this process focused on problem articles and only expand it to less problematic articles as more editors willing to do it become available.

Where can we suggest problem pages to add? Libertarianism is a big one with anon IPs (probably socks) doing personal attacks and WP:soapbox out of control, even with several new editors now looking at it! Even with new editors, as the main target of attack I'll probably have to do a WP:ANI but the more people with experience dealing with these problems get on the case, the faster the problem solved. There are some legitimate issues to deal with in the article but with all the nonsense, I personally don't feel like it.

Example I just noticed: This diff reverted by an editor as this new account which made it was blocked as a sock, probably of one of the AnonIps. I'm glad this article has gotten attention (probably from my Wikietiquette complaint about Anon Ips) but definitely one that needs ongoing oversight, just in case. CarolMooreDC (talk) 13:11, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Where to request that pages be added to pending changes: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:14, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! It worked and couple problems there seem to be dealt with already! :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 23:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Not happy....but....

Having had this system explained to me elsewhere, I am very doubtful that Pending changes is a good idea. As an 'ordinary' editor of many years standing, I suspect PC is a punishment rather than a cure. There are many editors who will find it perplexing that they have to have edits cleared and checked. Is there a guarantee that Wiki has enough 'experts' across all fields to deal with queued edits? Will there be an obscure field of interest whereby a lack of experts will cause few if any edits to be cleared? doktorb _words^deeds 13:37, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If this trial is continued and broadened then "ordinary editors of many years standing" should get flagged as reviewers, so the only effect they should notice is that their work is less frequently accidentally reverted by vandal fighters, and when it is vandalised it should get cleaned up more quickly. ϢereSpielChequers 13:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Mixed bag

If all the reviewers have to do is check for the four issues listed here, then I think this is good. If they are expected to evaluate a change beyond that, then I think this is more work than it's worth in many cases. I doubt we'd have great correlation between subject matters that reviewers are sufficiently familiar with and articles needing review. --Auntof6 (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I like to take the extra step of verifying the citations and noting/tagging if there is something ELSE wrong with the edit, but it should be kept to the limited scope of getting rid of the "foul four" listed in the review process. Vampyrecat (talk) 22:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

articles just recently reviwed

Where is a list of articles which have just recently been reviewed, regardless whether the change was accepted or rejected by reviewers? Hmains (talk) 19:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Special:Log/review and Special:AdvancedReviewLog. Reach Out to the Truth 21:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being dense, but what is the difference between those two logs? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The advanced review log adds a few more options for searching the log. Other than that, the information provided is the same. Reach Out to the Truth 02:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:40, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

More overhead than it's worth - and line wrapping complaint

Hi. I genuinely appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in this, but I'm afraid I find the feature cumbersome and more trouble than it's worth. That said, the new history page coloring and the addition of the "automatically accepted" and "accepted by" labels to history page entries makes it considerably harder to "read" or scan page history to find what you're looking for. The additional labels force most lines to "wrap" on all but large screens or on laptop-size screens, for one thing.

We always harp on eachother ( and rightly so ) to include descriptive edit summaries, but if you can't include an edit summary of more than 10 - 20 characters or so without causing the history page display to "wrap" the purpose is defeated to an extent. ( See an example here.) The edit summary text is of paramount importance, imo, and it shouldn't be made harder to read or obscured in any way. I'd like to see some kind of initiative to make history pages easier to read, actually, but the least we can do is not make them harder. Thanks,  – OhioStandard (talk) 02:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Too few articles

To my mind the key tests for success of this trial are did the software work, and secondly did it make the pedia better. I think we all agree that it works, though some people have highlighted performance niggles. Whether it has improved the pedia is harder to be sure about, but my impression from a few articles that I watchlist is that yes it has.

However I suspect this has been trialled on too few articles to give us an idea of what would happen if it was broadly applied, and the instructions limiting it to "catch and filter out obvious vandalism and obviously inappropriate edits" were overly lax for the number of reviewers and the number of articles protected. We could roll this out to a larger number of articles, possibly even the whole pedia, but if so we would have to do so on the basis of only screening out obvious vandalism. Alternatively, and my preferred option, we could continue this for a relatively small number of articles but with the instructions broadened to "revert edits you are confident are bad, mark as patrolled edits you have checked are good, if in doubt leave for others to check". If so we could usefully create a list of editors who've had more than x edits patrolled, so they can be considered for reviewer status. ϢereSpielChequers 13:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

autoaccept revert/rollback to accepted version

It would save work if a revert/rollback to an accepted version was automatically accepted. e.g. one ip reverted another ip's vandalism [[2]] but the system requires a reviewer to sign off on it. Gerardw (talk) 12:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

An unintended consequence of that might occur when the first pending edit is a good one that just hasn't been reviewed yet, and the reverter is the vandal. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point. May cause more problems than it would solve. Gerardw (talk) 09:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Metrics collected so far

Here's a list of the metrics we've collected so far:

• Per-page anonymous edit quality - table which breaks down per-article quality metrics
• Per-page full stats - table which has per-article quality metrics. Superset of the anonymous edit quality table, but includes metrics which aren't quite ready for prime time. This table should be updated sometime hopefully before August 10, 2010
• Special:ValidationStatistics - Standard statistics page built into the FlaggedRevs plugin

These links are now on Wikipedia:Pending changes/Metrics as well. The talk page associated with /Metrics had been merged with several others, but I split it back into its own page. There's already been some good discussion there about the metrics if you are interested. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 21:10, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

We're doomed

"Pending changes" signifies a fundamental change to the viewpoint of Wikipedians toward the view that there is a work to protect, information to preserve, an entity to guard, rather than the fluid existance, the eternal work-in-progress that it has always been. It is an attempt to harden the project, its content, its reputation, its community. It is an attempt to make order of the chaos upon which Wikipedia thrives. For Wikipedia to survive, there can be no "editorial community", no "published articles", and no one above anyone else. The concept of one user approving the edits of another goes entirely against the wiki system. The website that anyone, everyone, has full control over, will evaporate, to be replaced by a "wiki", but not really a wiki anymore, that has contributions filtered by an elite editing community. The very idea behind the extension is so horribly wrong; on a wiki, success is not stability, success is anarchy, chaos, a situation in which the entirety of the wiki is made up of random individuals off the street, because in 50 years, the continuation of the wiki will not be done by our current administrators, it will be done by those who are now not even anonymous contributors or newbies, but only if they are given full control, otherwise they will never have the chance to become our administrators and regulars. A successful wiki is not stable, a dead wiki is one that is stable. Our current content and its usability is irrelevant entirely to whether there will be anything to support.

The entire idea behind Pending changes is fundamentally flawed in so many ways. If edits come in faster than the Recent Changes Patrol can check them, no amount of delaying the edits will allow more to be checked. If we get vandalism, we revert it and show the world that open collaboration works because given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. We don't say "Oh, a completely open system doesn't really work all that well, let's block those changes until we can look them over". The most common question about Wikipedia is "what do you do if someone just decides to mess up one of the articles?". What's our answer to that? Is it, "Because of hundreds of volunteers constantly looking at the changes, we can spot and revert all vandalism almost immediately. It really works, go check it out!", or is it "Well, when we say 'anyone can edit', we really mean that people submit changes and then we check them to make sure they're okay"? That's what endless amounts of previous projects have attempted to do, and all have failed. Wikipedia is united by a shared belief and a shared goal. We believe that an open, freely editable encyclopedia can work, that we can overcome all those problems that people will constantly say will make the idea impossible. When did we lose this? We've all answered people's questions of how Wikipedia can possibly work. When did we forget these answers ourselves? From the beginning, Wikipedia could have had changes delayed until reviewed, and if it had, I am certain Wikipedia would not exist today. We didn't go that route, we trusted every single person with complete and total access. And what more, it worked, when anyone asked would have said that it can't. Wikipedia was the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Until now. Already, there are users supporting protecting all pages, and more users are advocating more frequent usage of pending-changes protection. What happened? Is this the project that was envisioned nine years ago? What is the path ahead? I ask every single person here, where are we going? Right now, are we 'wrapping it up', getting a mostly finished encyclopedia ready to sit for people to read, or are we just getting started, trying to gather random individuals to help build the content? I am saddened by everything related to this proposal. Years ago, when I was an anonymous IP patrolling the RC, I learned the answer to the most basic question of wikis, and it didn't have "pending changes" anywhere in it. --Random ranting person 22:30, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

So...what do you think of semi/full protection? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

At least semi/full protection obviates the need to have CRASH sitting on every article with a trashcan cleaning up after the perps they let walk out the fragging door. With PendingChanges, that crap remains in the history and, realistically, could still get us in deep shit. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I think semi/full protected pages are problematic areas of Wikipedia, but making parts of Wikipedia non-wiki was really inevitable. It will be a long time, IMO, before the community has matured enough to both fully understand the damage protection causes, and to be able to deal with heavily visible vandalism before damage is done. There are also (I think) only 2000 articles that are indef protected, so it's not that much of a problem. PC, on the other hand, gives the false impression of openness, and thus is likely to be very widely used. In reality, PC-protection is not any more open than semi-protection. I fully expect to see tens of thousands of articles PC-protected not too long after the trial is over. PC puts us quite a bit back from ever easing out of using semi-protection. (This is probably going to completely ruin my credibility, but I should point out that I support eventually unprotecting the Main Page. I should also point out that I am extremely freaked out by the proposal above to enable PC-protection for every page.) I know this is slightly off-topic, but does anyone know if there's ever been a proposal to add a button to add {{Editsemiprotected}} to the talk page to protected pages for IP's? --Random ranting person 01:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You aren't the only one who fears FlaggedRevisions of any stripe on the whole of Wikipedia. However, that's not going to happen because it would create an intractible logistic nightmare. Even the people pointing at de.wiki as an example have to acknowledge that we are not only far larger than de.wiki, but we also have more serious and intelligent vandals than they do (which is the basis for my objection above, about BLP-violating edits that are rejected). —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 20:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Revision delete works fine on articles protected with pending changes. We may need to encourage more patrollers to report stuff for removal, and it would help if more of our reviewers became admins and could delete such revisions themselves. But pending changes doesn't lower our guard against BLP violations. As for Random ranting person's comment "If edits come in faster than the Recent Changes Patrol can check them, no amount of delaying the edits will allow more to be checked." Agreed that is the flaw in recent changes, but pending changes would fix that flaw. Pending changes allows more edits to be checked than recent changes because the reviewers know what has and has not already been checked. So instead of some edits being multiply scrutinised and others slipping through totally unchecked, with pending changes every edit will get looked at at least once. And when things are busy or reviewers scarce, then while recent changes would simply fail and rely on watchlisters to pickup on vandalism, pending changes would get a little backlog that would be fixed later. We don't know how often recent changes gets swamped, I suspect from my watchlists that it happens rarely, but if there were a 20 minute window in the last week when vandalism could have got through, then with recent changes we couldn't identify when that gap was or find the vandalism that occurred then. With pending changes we would have already resolved it. ϢereSpielChequers 14:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

WereSpiel, have you ever looked at Special:RecentChanges? I'll bet dollars to doughnuts well over half the edits there are by IPs and nonconfirmeds. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 18:47, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Jeske. Yes I've done a fair bit of recent changes patrol in my time, certainly enough to see the flaws in our current systems and the benefit of pending changes. 31% of our article edits are by IPs, but new editors are down to little more than seven thousand a month, so less than half our edits are by IPs and nonconfirmed. However if you go for the default options at newpage patrol and hide bot edits and minor changes then over half the remaining edits you see will be by IPs and newbies. That's why pending changes on all articles would be such an improvement on the current system - remember currently much of the work you do at recent changes is wasted because other users have already checked that edit. With pending changes you know which edits have been checked and which are still pending, and hopefully there will be fewer occasions when good IP edits are reverted because they only need to be approved once. ϢereSpielChequers 19:23, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

A big loophole in Pending Changes

Both logged-in users and anonymous users who click the "edit this page" tab will edit the latest version as usual.

All this means is that anonymous users (presumably the generators of most vandalism) can simply create or obtain a tool to read the latest versions of articles (bypassing the review process). The tool would be simple: it would automatically edit the page (allowed for anonymous users--the loophole), extract the article text, and go back to the previous page, discarding the editing page.

Also, concerning "We're doomed" above: Very Much Agree. WP has enough problems with bullying editors who, adhering to WP guidelines, satisfy their egoistic need to dominate others by authoritatively telling others what they may or may not do in their edits. Extending this already oppressive environment, especially for newcomers, to reviewing the edits of others is a terrible idea. I desperately hope it fails to become a permanent mechanism. David Spector (talk) 00:54, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Um, ANY anon user can see the latest version, even without this sort of 'loophole'. It's just not shown by default. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Unregistered users can always view the latest version if they so chose. There's a tab that allows them to do that incredibly easily. They just don't see it by default. Reach Out to the Truth 02:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Right, and this ability to get around seeing Pending Changes helps how? It merely attempts to justify this kludge, a kludge that attempts to correct the poor policy of permitting anonymous (and sockpuppet) editing.

Concerning vandalism and any other motivation for Pending Changes, I see this as resulting from a fundamental flaw in WP. Founding WP with a mixture of advantageous and disadvantageous principles was understandable; letting it get out of hand and not fixing it is quite another. Permitting anonymity (except for IP address) allows for more vandalism, for making any statements without personally standing behind them, and sockpuppetry. Sticking to this poor principle leads to kludges like this Pending Changes proposal, with its insane idea of allowing editors to be Reviewers who decide whether a logged-out contributor's edits can be included in WP.

Isn't it obvious that requiring login and honesty in a required User page (profile) would reduce many of the problems that plague WP and use up valuable editing time?

Of course, other mechanisms would work even better: mechanisms such as a confidential piece of information that almost absolutely identifies a person (automatic verification by telephone, signature, verification of driver's license or other photo ID by a Notary Public, address verification by a person sending snail mail to him/herself then mailing the envelope to WP, and so on).

Solutions to the fundamental WP problem caused by anonymity are so easy and plentiful, yet they are avoided like the plague--like the very plague of sockpuppetry, vandalism, and edit wars that such solutions would largely prevent.

There are online encyclopedias that copy and improve upon WP's content, whose main difference is that anonymous users are not permitted. What a lot of work (creating a separate encyclopedia) to get around an unreasonable policy. Asking people to registe--and, yes, to visit a Notary Public or fulfill some other such hurdle, in order to have the priviledge (as well as the fun) to be able to edit a famous, detailed, free, mostly accurate, and popular encyclopedia responsibly--should obviously be a requirement here at WP.

Currently, there is no reliable way to track down and eliminate vandals or sockpuppets escaping from sanctions. Eliminating anonymity would provide much better methods for dealing with such problems than using editors' time to undo the resulting damage.

Until editors think more deeply and more creatively and put pressure on the extremely conservative directors of WP, we have to live with all of WP's policies, even the ones that create more serious problems than are justified by the minor advantages that they offer (such as not having to bother registering or logging in to edit WP--a cute and unique idea, but a very expensive one that may ultimately kill WP if the vandals become intelligent).

Policy has a tenacious life of its own unless we stand together to improve it. David Spector (talk) 16:40, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Those aren't issues that can be taken locally or even at meta-wiki. What you're advocating (both in re anon editing and compulsory identification) are Foundation issues, and to me smacks of Sanger's syndrome. (It is worth noting that one of the main reasons a good IP will not register is specifically because they fear they will be compelled to expose their RL identity, and it is also worth noting that there is absolutely no way to confirm someone's identity without breaching the Foundation's priv-pol.) Also, as has been pointed out, "Anonymity" isn't - IPs can, barring open proxies, be easily traced back to their ISPs and rangeblocks can be formulated based upon that without needing to call in the checkuser. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 20:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: David Spector (no i.p edits...) Don't underestimate the suffocating effects of higher barriers to entry, more restrictive security, and more draconian punishments. As a simple statement of fact, you have no idea how much of Wikipedia's current success would never have happened without some of the things you are currently railing against. We just don't know. Yet, since the encyclopedia has worked, changing fundamental methods now requires a very high burden of proof and a really good argument.

Also, don't underestimate the power of technological response. Vandalism is just a technical problem. It can be blocked on the front-end, with moats and walls, or it can be solved in the implementation of some genius' algorithm and the automation of RegEx magic combined with a moderate number of intelligent eyeballs. Trust in genius over moats and walls. Ocaasi (talk) 11:04, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't see this as an argument against pending changes per se. I read this as an argument for ending Wikipedia's open editing model and shifting to one of the various closed editing models that have prevented our various rivals from taking off. If people want to do that I suggest doing so as a project fork, I'm confident that this is the version that would stay up-to-date, and would continue to improve in accuracy as the Nupedia mark IV degraded through neglect. ϢereSpielChequers 14:12, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

That's because I support pending changes, at least the trial. I was responding to User:David_spector who in the comment just above Jeremy's, suggests requiring registration, ending i.p. editing, etc. Confusing threading. Ocaasi (talk) 16:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Ending IP editing would be VERY bad. However filtering it somehow would be good. Ending IP edits would destroy half of WP's motto. Sumsum2010 · Talk · Contributions 03:32, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree we should not be removing the ability for IPs to edit if they don't want to register, but ending IP edits does not destroy any of WP's motto. Nowhere in the motto does it say that anyone can edit without registering a username. So we could require registration without destroying the motto. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 06:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The slogan does however say "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." this implies any person IP or registered. Sumsum2010 · Talk · Contributions 01:07, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The slogan/motto is not the principle at hand but rather a shorthand representation of the m:Founding principles which explicitly makes it clear unregistered editors can edit. Gerardw (talk) 02:06, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

My input here would be: "Don't ban anonymous users. Work on more effective methods of detecting/patrolling/reverting vandalism.". Just think about how ineffective current recent changes patrolling is, how much space there is for improvement. For example, there is no way to know if a page was patrolled by a trusted user, or not. How confident user patrolling (or reviewing) a page revision was. How much time was spend patrolling (reviewing) a revision. How many users have looked upon a page since the last edit. I did some preliminary experiments to improve the efficiency of the patrolling process (see http://wpcvn.com), and it is certainly seems to be doable. There is also a lot of new research on natural language processing and statistical machine learning. It can be applied to resolve vandalism problem gracefully. In other words "Don't ban anonymous users. Improve ClueBot instead." --Dc987 (talk) 11:21, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I dont see this as being worth the trouble

I am sorry, This too much leg work to be really be an improvement. Nothing i have seen is something that would not have been picked on watch list or our other anti-vandalism tools. Weaponbb7 (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I think this is mainly because the trial is too limited has has only been applied to pages where vandalism is normally reverted quickly anyway. We need another two (or three) months without any limit on the pages being included in the trial. We'll only get a good picture of how it would work in practice when a considerable number of pages have been included. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 16:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

We have had good IP edits to articles that were previously semi protected - that is definitely an improvement. ϢereSpielChequers 22:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Opinion

I think Pending Changes is great, and should be used on more pages. There are many pages that a lot of both constructive and vandlism edits from IP users. One comment though, there should be a do not accept option instead of rolling it back. JDDJS (talk) 20:19, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying; however, keep in mind that reviewers may either use the WP:TW rollback function, or use the basic undo function. I think maybe a 'do not accept button' may be redundant. Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:54, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Possible different edit summary: "Pending changes edit not accepted." instead of the rollback text. CycloneGU (talk) 19:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Good idea., broader implementation needed

I'm impressed so far with what I'm seeing, but there's really a de-facto Pending Changes implementation of sorts. Reverts happen right now in under a minute for the bulk of disruptive edits. Pending changes just closes a very short window of visibility for disruptive edits. The net effect of pending changes right now is very limited. Along with pending changes, we need to also change our RC patrol approaches, and extend review mechanisms to all articles not just articles for which Pending changes are in effect - such that a change that needs further examination can be "unreviewed" while that examination occurs.

The basic idea, Pending changes and "unreview" can keep changes from having a high visibility. That gives us a more reasonable time to look at them, and takes the urgency out of rolling back questionable edits.

Pending changes protection shouldn't be a big deal, it's less disruptive than semiprotection, and really, could replace full protection almost in entirety. Triona (talk) 22:33, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

There still remains the issue of severe BLP-vio edits, which are still in the history and, with someone technically savvy enough to peruse the history, can still get us in legal hot water. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 18:41, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Triona, are you suggesting having an option (next to Accept) in the dialog to submit a pending change that we may not have knowledge of to a separate queue? I would be in support of such an idea, and for the rare cases I've seen pages for one or two hours, it gives a chance for someone more knowledgeable to review it. CycloneGU (talk) 19:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

My opinion: I would have liked to see a broader application to really test it. Maybe the next step. That is, the focus of the first test was to "loosen" the protection of semi-protected pages. That was fine as a first step, and I cannot comment on the success of that goal since none of the pages I watch were in the chosen few. I would argue that if anything, I would have rather had this kind of feature for pages that are now wide open, attract vandalism in bursts from time to time, but not enough to merit semi-protection. Maybe this has been suggested, but dare I say we might want to "spin" this in a different way, perhaps by using a more positive name. How about saying such a page is "respected" instead of "protected" for what is called "Pending Changes" now? That makes it clear that it applies to articles that are viewed as reasonably complete and stable with many watchers. Until a substatial fraction of pages are protected, the "We are doomed" naysayers are being alarmist. I have seen more editors driven away by vandalism to their work than those who would be driven away by taking the little time to register, but that is my opinion. W Nowicki (talk) 17:28, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, but reviewers need to be reminded of the what the tool is designed for

So far, the pending changes is a great idea. It's a great way of preventing visibility of vandalism. However, I've noticed that a lot of reviewers tend to abuse the approve power and will also unapprove things that shouldn't be unapproved (anything that isn't obvious vandalism) and will use it to veto any changes to an article that doesn't match with their views of it. This is behavior that is very similar to cases of rollback abuse, so I'm of the opinion that giving out of the reviewer right should be on par experience-wise with the rollback right. I'm also of the opinion that reviewer and rollback should be lumped together in some form, considering that unapproving a change is more or less the same as rolling it back to an older revision. elektrikSHOOS 00:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

All of your ideas are good; keep in mind that no matter what kind of user right you are dealing with, there are going to be problems. Right now, it almost seems as though reviewer 'standards' are lower than they should be. Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

While I understand the concern here, I'm not sure I see the potential for abuse. Are you really saying that if, for example, I see a content change that I believe inappropriate but may not be a policy violation (say, for redundancy), that I should first accept it, then revert it? A nonreviewer could simply revert it for the same reason. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I think what Elektrik is alluding to is that we should inspect a user's contribs before granting reviewer permission (i.e. Any edit warring?), much as we do rollbacker to ensure that we upkeep standards for the position and be sure edit warriors do not get hold of this tool. I understand your reply that anyone can undo a revision, but some (if not many), may pay less attention to reviewer's reverts (as they've been granted the tool since they seem to be trustworthy). Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:51, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

This is exactly what I'm saying. Well said. elektrikSHOOS 04:54, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

In my view, reviewers who disagree with an edit that is generally acceptable should first review, i.e. accept it. Then, after having established an "equal playing field", they may alter or even remove the edit (per WP:BRD), and possibly enter into a discussion. Reviewing should be seen as distinct from editing.  Cs32en Talk to me  22:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Another approach

I did mention this early on, and it's probably in the archives somewhere. What about the ability to place individual IPs or editors under pending changes. Thus any edit made but that IP/editor would need to be approved before it went live, even if the article itself was not under pending changes protection. This could be a way to enable some editors who are not intentionally vandalistic but are in need of some guidance in certain areas to edit with supervision of their editing as an alternative to a block. Mjroots (talk) 08:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

All IPs at present are under Pending Changes.

Users, I'm not sure exactly how it's set up. I think if you have the reviewer userright, you automatically see your edits approved unless other pending changes need to be approved prior to yours also going live. Of course, you can accept your own edit if you are a reviewer, silly as that may be. Anyone not a reviewer, at this time, is treated like an IP on PC pages and they have to be reviewed as with any IP edit. Of course, all of these users can still edit non-PC pages as before. CycloneGU (talk) 19:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Cyclone, I don't thin that's why Mjroots meant. He is talking about having every edit from a certain user require approval before making it to an article. It's not an article-based protection scheme, but a user-based one. No idea how it would work, but it's interesting. Ocaasi (talk) 06:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, my bad then. I did not realize that was the meaning. It's a good idea for users who have received warnings and the like, but it seems a discouragement to them at the same time. It's really only properly used on vandals, and even then there are tools for catching them. I reported one the other day who also vandalized my talk page, and one edit later, the spammer was blocked quite neatly. =D So not sure if this idea would have any merit in the long run, though it's a good one in ways. CycloneGU (talk) 16:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

My Latest Observations

As we are coming nigh to the end of the Pending Changes trial (five days now), I want to give my latest views on the Pending Changes setup.

When I was first granted the userright early in the trial, I was curious and interested to try helping out in a way I'd never been able to before. I found it very interesting to go around to various articles I've never seen and be able to stop vandals from messing them up, while at the same time doing some reading of some of the articles and learning new things. During this early phase of the project, I found myself reverting a large number of edits that were spam. Early views showed it as a spam prevention tool, and guidelines still dictate that acceptance of an edit by a reviewer does not guarantee its accuracy, something I've had complaints about more recently (more on that momentarily). I did get to accept the odd review, and even had other Wiki problems like edit conflicts (see what happened to me at Domestic sheep). I took it in myself as a reviewer to spend time researching edits that didn't list a source, and I've also reverted good-faith edits that simply did not have any documented proof online, or sources provided by the editor, carefully wording my edit summaries as such.

I had to disappear briefly due to personal situations in July, popping in occasionally, but lately since returning, I've seen a lot less vandalism. I think Pending Changes actually restricts the anonymous user's ability to spam these articles. As a result, we've sent them off to other articles that they can still spam. So it's kind of a sore spot right now that we're only watching some pages; IMO, all pages need to have some form of this for a while so we can see whether it does in fact curb spammy contributions significantly. However. this might go against the project. Also, it could mean that we have people with no knowledge accepting not-so-spammy submissions that are in fact not true, and this could happen encyclopedia-wide, which could also be bad. In other words, we need a structure that makes the pending changes idea work in a way that is good for the whole of the encyclopedia.

I said I'd come back to the complaints I've had. Namely, I have seen a couple of cases - I won't name names or research them - where I've butted heads with people on the pending changes trial. I've made the odd acceptance that has been double-checked and in fact later reverted because I either misread something, or I accepted something by accident. That's fine, I will not question someone more knowledgeable about a subject and will in fact be quite polite with the person as to why I accepted it in the first place (unless it was an error, when I'd say something like, "I don't know how the bleep I accepted that"). However, when I've similarly advised people on accepts that I've disagreed with, I find myself facing at times some kind of standoffish bordering on rude reply. Those replies basically quote and hide behind policy that a reviewer can accept an edit that isn't obvious spam (for instance, putting "Obama likes sucking dick" or other stupid crap) and not having any accountability for doing so because the policy clearly says reviewers are not subject experts and may not necessarily research the information. I personally research before accepting; if I can't find anything and no source is given, I will revert an edit at times. I think thus that changes are also needed to how reviewers act in the manner of conducting reviews.

All are welcome to comment, and I'm interested in others' opinions. We have five days of trial left, and I faithfully remain a humble servant. CycloneGU (talk) 19:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that others were rude to you, but I guess this is an occupational hazard of editing here, with the added ambiguity of a policy that is still a work in progress. But your Obama example of what you call spam is something that I would unambiguously regard as vandalism. I would certainly expect editors to revert it. There is a genuine lack of clarity as to whether someone should simply revert it, or accept it first and then revert it. My take is that something as blatant as that should not be accepted first, but it seems to me to be a no-brainer to revert it or roll it back. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

My wording might be wrong here. I am saying the Obama example IS outright spam. And no worries about the standoffish comment; I expect out of millions of users that there will be some bad remarks among them, or people who otherwise are just not able to take criticism or suggestions easily. I would not classify the comment I referred to as rude, but it did feel like I was talking to a brick wall. CycloneGU (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been making some notes about the "overenthusiasm to accept" issue, which I've noticed being mentioned a few times here, and I think it's something that's really a bit of a temporary anomaly. We're currently treating PC as a high-profile trial, implicitly one that a lot of people are strongly committed to making work well, and this leads to an (unconscious) desire to prioritise the easily measured metric, speed of response, over the fuzzier one, accuracy. The fact that we have a relatively small pool of pages means that the backlog is also very small, making it possible for someone to "clear them all" centrally - again, an understandable wish, but one that probably translates into less knowledgeable reviewing.

As this stops being a high-profile trial - and we stop being worried about it working - people will slack off a bit, or be less worried about "leaving it unreviewed" when they're not sure; the backlog will grow organically and response times will lengthen, but it becomes correspondingly more likely that the person reviewing the edit will have seen it through a watchlist, etc, rather than the central list; they'll be more likely to know the topic and know the article, and able to make a more informed judgement.

In effect, the current situation we have is distorted - the very fact we've set up a defined trial is causing people to unconsciously prioritise speed over quality, and once that framework is gone then we're likely to slip back to a more balanced approach. Shimgray | talk | 13:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

The most logical explanation some editors act as if The purpose of reviewing is to catch and filter out obvious vandalism and obviously inappropriate edits .... Reviewers are not expected to be subject experts and their review is not a guarantee in any way of an error-free article. is because that's what WP:RVW says. Those editors who disagree with this policy should focus on getting consensus on changing the policy rather than vague slurs of "over enthusiasm," "hiding behind policy," and" not having accountability" behind policy. Gerardw (talk) 15:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I think calling "over-enthusiasm" a slur is a bit unfair - I'm describing my own behaviour here as much as anything! Open a diff, think - "...well, it doesn't say "hur hur he's gay" anywhere, but for all I know this changing of one number to another one might be vandalism, it might be a good-faith edit, there's no source given..." - and I think that in most normal situations, unfamiliar with the context, many people would close the tab and decide to leave it for someone else, more informed, to look at. There's nothing against this sort of judgement call in policy - we can accept a vague unsourced edit, sure, but we can equally choose to step by it and take no action. People do a lot more complicated things than are defined by policy :-)

The policy says "not expected ... not a guarantee", but that doesn't mean we don't want informed reviewers and a better eye for spotting superficially clean but basically problematic edits, like changing statistics; just that we're willing to do without them if need be. I think we can both agree that whilst the reviewer doesn't have to be familiar with the page, all other things equal it's "better" (less false positives/negatives) if they happen to be; the current situation with a lot of "it's not immediately obviously wrong" isn't bad per se, but it is perhaps... suboptimal?

Consider, though: the longer an edit waits in PC, through being passed over, the more likely it is that they'll be picked up by someone looking at a watchlist rather than at the central page; and "has watched an article" is a pretty good approximation of "likely to know the field a bit better than average". So, when average delay times increase, we get a higher proportion of informed/involved reviewing, simply by the normal process of things.

The situation we have now is a little distorted; because we're aware it's a trial and we're monitoring turn-around times, there's a certain impetus to keep those turnaround times low; people are aggressively patrolling for changes in a way that, probably, won't happen six months from now, when it's normal and dull and routine. Once we stop having that environment and that sense of "we're being graded on this", turnaround times will naturally drift upwards a bit, meaning (as above) that the reviewers are more likely to come across things in the normal course of affairs. Shimgray | talk | 15:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Mmm, interesting thoughtful comments, I will say that there is not and has been no hurry to review at all, this understanding is imo a mistake. There is no requirement to keep the reviewing times low and no benefit to the project from that. Anyways, also I am on the if you are unsure if it is a correct addition then leave it alone for someone that does. It is to me similar to a good vandal fighter does not only revert the vandal he also templates him and then he should say to himself this editor has vandalized this article so I will look at his edit history to see if he has vandalized anything else. I do this when I am reviewing, if I revert or reject a users addition I then check there recent additions to see if there are any other problems. I actually do not think users should be or that there is even any need fro the following of reviews waiting pending changes page, just stick to the pending changes reviews that are on the pages you watch now, pages that you have some understanding of , in this way you will be able to review with more understating of the subject. Off2riorob (talk) 16:08, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If reviewing times get long Pending Changes is a failure, in my opinion. I think the most important thing is that valid IP edits get accepted quickly to affirm and encourage IP editors. I understand that this opinion is not universal; the it is better to have longer review times but better edits opinion is not unreasonable it's just different than mine. What is unreasonable is those editors in the better edits camp -- and I apologize for including you in that group inappropriately -- to act as if that is the current policy and to chastise those acting under the quicker accepts philosophy rather than doing the hard work of changing the policy. Gerardw (talk) 16:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

As before, you are interpreting the guidelines at a bare minimum, and asserting them in a individual stand alone point of view and I assert that the guidelines need to be viewed through the broader understanding of our goals and ambitions for the overall quality and accuracy of the content. I make no apologies for wanting more than the bare minimum. Off2riorob (talk) 16:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Where can I request an inclusion?

I would like to request that Scott Sonnon be included in the pending changes. It is not a hugely high-profile bio but it seems to be the target of a fair amount of POV pushing from detractors and the vast majority of this comes from anon IPs. Kindzmarauli (talk) 05:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection Gerardw (talk) 11:24, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Also,the trial ends in four days. So it won't really have much time if it's even granted before the conclusion. CycloneGU (talk) 16:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh I see, thank you both. I was hoping pending changes would just continue after the trial period ended. :-( I think it's worked out great and is a helpful tool from what I've seen. Kindzmarauli (talk) 17:51, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Pending protection is being evaluated as a possible alternative to semi-protection, which is still an option. So you're free to request semi-protected at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. (I have no experience there so I can't tell you whether it's likely to be accepted or not, but on WP it rarely hurts to ask.) Gerardw (talk) 20:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I will consider it if the edit warring and SPAs start up again. They seem to have quieted down for now. Kindzmarauli (talk) 08:00, 13 August 2010 (UTC)