Wikipedia talk:Pending changes/Archive 3

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Why the f- did this happen?

I know most of you are tired of me coming up with different issues with this system. But, I am trying to use it as much as I can so I can get accustomed to it (because its obviously not going away after the above conversations!). Anyway, the weirdest thing happened at the David Silva article.

I am a REVIEWER, but I made an edit and it was subject to review. Guess what? I reviewed it myself.[1] That's a horrible glitch, isn't it? How did it happen and how is it prevented? Feedback ^☎ 21:13, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

If you edit a version that is not reviewed, your edit is not marked as automatically reviewed. This means that you are not obligated to painstakingly review every edit you make, which is a good thing because that would be very burdensome. If you find that one of your edits is not automatically reviewed, and you want it to go live, you only need to check the diff to the last reviewed version and then mark your edit as reviewed. Or you could wait and let someone else do it. It would be worse if it marked your edit as automatically reviewed even though you didn't realize you needed to look at a diff. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:39, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I already brought this up somewhere. Was a week ago, can't recall exactly where it was. CycloneGU (talk) 02:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I get it, but I think reviewer edits should be automatically accepted. What I was doing was adding the other guy's edit, so its the same thing. Feedback ^☎ 06:06, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

You can already do that though. Just check the box that indicates you want to immediately review the edit. The problem with having that happen automatically is that there may be vandalism on the page that you haven't looked at yet. So it would be a bad idea to have it approved if you haven't checked yet. Reach Out to the Truth 02:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Restart: Proposal on how to make this better

Given that your stances seem so strong about Pending Changes (even though I find it completely unnecessary; not BAD, just unnecessary), I am hereby giving up on expressing my displeasure with the trial. Instead, I implore you to read my concerns and proposals to see if we can make pending changes much better then what it currently is:

• 1. Whenever an anon makes an edit, the edit is waiting for review. The reviewer can either accept it by making a click or decline the edit by undoing the anon's revision. This is inconsistent. I propose the system be reworked so when we reviewers decline an edit, it doesn't take a new edit to do so. Instead, just like accepted versions, a parenthesis appears next to the edit. Like:

02:18, 22 June 2010 Example (talk | contribs) (58,001 bytes) (pp) (undo) [declined by Example2]

• 2. Reviews tend to ask for a type of "edit summary" when accepting an edit. This edit summary which we reviewers add, is only visible in the review log and not in the history page whatsoever. I suggest the little parenthesis at the end of the edit include the "review summary":

02:20, 22 June 2010 Example (talk | contribs) (58,001 bytes) (pp) (undo) [accepted by Example2 (minor spell checking)]

• 3. I'm not sure on this one, but what I saw with John Hancock was that when the "pending changes protection" was added to the article, it didn't appear in the history section. The removal of protection was shown, but not the adding of pending changes to the article. I think its obvious that it should appear in the history.
• 4. If a reviewer makes an edit while there is a pending change, the system should automatically assume that the user declined the edit and made one of his own. Why? Because this is what is going to happen most times. When a reviewer sees an edit that replaces "dawghouse" with "dooghouse, instead of having the burden of declining the edit and then making the correction himself, he should be given the faculty of being able to "automatically decline" by making an edit without having to review his own edit afterwards. He should be able to make "doghouse" without looking back.
• 5. The edit notice at the bottom has got to go and I mean immediately. As in ASAP. During the trial. As of now, it says changes will be immediately viewable. It should say "usually". Every second we waste by not adding it, is a second where we are unintentionally lying to those who aren't reviewers. Feedback ^☎ 06:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I have much more criticisms, but not much more proposals to state. When I can channel my dissatisfactions into ideas, I'll post them. Feedback ^☎ 06:26, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Edits HAVE to be stored, because of the licenses. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:43, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what you're getting at, never did I say edits shouldn't be stored. Feedback ^☎ 17:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable response to the sentence above where you say: "I propose the system be reworked so when we reviewers decline an edit, a new edit is not stored." On reading the rest of what you say, I think you may have a different definition of "stored" to what others think you mean. You seem to think edits awaiting review are stored somewhere until they are reviewed. As far as I can tell, this is not true. They enter the page history immediately, and anyone can view them if they know how to access the page history. When an edit is reviewed, the only change is that it means that that edit will be displayed to everyone (including the public) if that version of the page is the current version. If it is not the current version, then it only matters to the extent that a future rollback or undo or manual edit might make it identical to the current version and hence if the old version was accepted, the current version would become automatically accepted (I think). Carcharoth (talk) 01:28, 3 July 2010 (UTC)I added a diff to Feedback's response to make clear what this whole conversation is about. 02:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I have reworded it so you could understand what I was trying to say. What I want is that it doesn't take a second edit to decline, and instead, a feature that lets us decline the edits with a click. Feedback ^☎ 01:34, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

But then the declined version is still the top revision, which all future revisions will be based on. If you want to restore a previous revision you must create a new revision, because that's how MediaWiki works. It's completely linear. Reach Out to the Truth 02:00, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thats the problem. The system could be enhanced so that all future revisions will be based on the top accepted revision. (Whichever was the last accepted or non-reviewed revision would be the top. The declined ones would be skipped.) Feedback ^☎ 02:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Then if someone restored a declined revision - say, because they disagreed with declining it; a single editor's single decline is not the Word of God - the history would either be fallacious (if it omitted the name of the editor who originated the content) or very confusing (if it didn't). — Gavia immer (talk) 02:34, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what the conundrum is here. If someone wanted to add in a declined edit, then they can just add it in. The point here is to separate the system for "editing" and for "reviewing" on the history page. This is the simplest way to do it. Feedback ^☎ 05:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Your criticism makes sense. Your solution doesn't seem to. I was also confused by the inability to base all new edits off of the most recent accepted version, but if you think of it differently it makes sense. Pending changes is not a new system, it's just a filter through which the old system runs. All the stuff still goes through it--the junk, warring, vandalism, etc.

To change this would mean, as others have mentioned, tweaking not pending changes but all of mediawiki. That's like fixing a car acceleration problem by adding a solar panel. And then fixing the solar panel by getting rid of the engine. Even if it's not impossible, it's a much bigger project. 69.142.154.10 (talk) 12:48, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Header on unaccepted revisions and note in page history

Last time I looked there was no header specific to unaccepted revisions (the page anyone can see when they click on an old revision or diff), so has anyone suggested something like the following?

• "You are looking at an old revision [which may never have been shown to the wider public]. You can check this in the [[LINK|page logs]]."

Maybe revisions that were never accepted (because some later revision was accepted instead) should state in history "(never publicly shown)"? The wording above was suggested by someone else, but I'm suggesting it here to see what people think. Carcharoth (talk) 22:37, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this question? :-) I see that the page history does have a note, but old revisions of a page don't seem to note whether or not they were ever fully publicly visible or not. I think this does need looking at, as the media could link to an unaccepted revision and claim it was visible to everyone (well, it was, but it wasn't displayed by default, you had to go looking for it). It would be nice if some header similar to that used on old revisions said whether a revision was ever accepted or not. Carcharoth (talk) 10:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Inquiry

I finally (yay!) saw a change pop up on my watchlist that wanted my attention as reviewer. It was this change to Ann Coulter. Well, I studied the change carefully and decided not to accept it - the change proposed was not reflected in the source cited. I left a note for the person who did it because I didn't want to seem harsh about it (not sure yet of the best etiquette around an apparently good-faith edit that I just didn't care for and would have reverted in the old world).

Now, my watchlist is still telling me that there are pending changes to review. This page] tells me that this article wants to be reviewed. When I go the article, I have only the choice to "accept" - "unaccept" is grayed out. Presumably this is because I have already unaccepted and I'm only allowed now to change my mind to "accept".

This seems counter-intuitive. Isn't the task done? I was asked, I unaccepted. Why is it still bugging me to review the page?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:41, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

A lot of people have been confused by this. "Unaccept" means undo a previous acceptance. Since the edit hasn't been accepted, you can't unaccept it. If you don't like the edit, you need to revert it the old fashioned way. By just not accepting it and not reverting it, you didn't actually do anything so it was still there waiting for review. There is a plan to introduce a button next to the accept button that will revert the edit because so many people have been confused by this. --Tango (talk) 00:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Jimbo, you know that I do not like Pending Changes, so I'm glad to see that you've noticed this problem; if I brought it up, others would think I was simply bitching about something I do not like. To answer your question, though, the interface is very badly implemented. I have never seen "unaccept" except as a grayed-out button, and grayed-out buttons are the wrong solution in any case, since you could have no button at all instead.

Really, if you are confronting a pending revision, your choices are to accept that revision, revert that revision, or leave. It would be nice if the "unaccept" button were replaced with a rollback or revert button, since that is what you actually have to do to "unaccept" the change - but in any case, the nonfunctional grayed-out button is simply a mistake. That, of course, is why the button seems counterintuitive - because it is counterintuitive. It should be removed. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Just following up to myself and Tango here: if the purpose is to cancel a previous acceptance, then it will really be useless most of the time. More importantly, it will always be a binary function to accepting a revision, so you would have a useless gray button then, too. It seems like the whole idea behind this part of the interface should be rethought. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

As I said, it is being rethought. --Tango (talk) 01:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Where is that discussion taking place? You do need a way to unaccept an acceptance, if only because you might accidentally accept a revision without intending to. Also, having a bad revision in the page history that is accepted is not good, because if the page is reverted to that revision, it will be publicly visible (as far as I'm aware). i.e. the new revision will be auto-accepted because you are reverting to an accepted revision. Talking of that, what happens if you revert from a current revision way back to a revision that existed before the page was brought under pending changes? Are revisions that exist before pending changes considered "unaccepted" by default, and hence reverting to one of those revisions means the new revision can never be auto-acccepted? Carcharoth (talk) 10:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Level 2 protection

(originally posted at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pending changes trial)

Should we reconsider using the level 2 protection (see Wikipedia:Pending_changes#Description), which holds edits by users who are not reviewers until accepted (while level 1 automatically accepts edits by autoconfirmed users made after an accepted revision) ? So level 2 is equivalent to the 'classic' flagged revisions. Level 2 is supposed to be used on articles subject to major disruption by autoconfirmed users, such as persistent sockpuppeters, where using full protection is needed, current examples include: Satanic ritual abuse, Amaras Monastery, Yeghishe Arakyal Monastery, ..., Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, Queer Collaborations. But there are concerns with how this level could be used by administrators, and how it could appear to good-faith users who are not reviewers. Cenarium (talk) 16:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

The trial will begin soon, so we need to make the decision quickly. Level 2 provides the ability to edit articles which would otherwise be fully protected, but are the risks too high ? Cenarium (talk) 21:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe they are. The autoconfirmed side (level 2) is, IMHO, bound to be gamed as to content by experienced but highly non-neutral editors. If it's meant to be implemented only against socks, most high traffic humanities articles (like anything at all linked with politics) have big sock worries, so I can see those winding up level 2 quick. Then, little "PoV teams" of editors that lurk at most of those articles would soon grok that level 2 (queuing edits from any autoconfirmed user, meaning most editors) is a way handy tool for screening PoVs, sources and editors they don't like and don't want, even though the edits may be thoroughly sourced and encyclopedic... down the memory hole they go, as "vandalism." Level 2 should be held back, though I wouldn't be nearly so worried if it could only be put to BLPs. Gwen Gale (talk) 22:52, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to say, level 2 would sooner or later leave in its wake a "caste" of thousands of long-time editors who have lost straightforward editing rights to a wide swath of high traffic, core articles. Whether or not this is the hoped-for outcome, I don't know. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I am solidly on the record as believing that any version of flagged protection/pending changes/etc. will do harm to Wikipedia, so my comments should be evaluated in light of that bias - but I agree with Gwen Gale and others that Level 2 would be used to enforce "editing cliques" of users with the right to edit certain articles, at the expense of denying most others the practical capability to see their edits accepted. In my opinion, it's not worth the risk or the drama that would ensue from using it. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:08, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There are 2 normal reasons for full protection - content disputes and vandalism by auto-confirmed users (i.e. sockpuppets). I don't see any problem with level 2 being used to combat vandalism - maybe even completely replacing full protection for that purpose - but it shouldn't be used unless the alternative is full protection.  --Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 01:37, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I have to agree with Joshua, if Level 2 will be used on articles that normally have {{pp-protected}} on them, wouldn't that help reduce the workload on admins? In other words, editors who are reviewers, but who are not necessarily admins, would be able to accept/reject changes to those articles that normally would require an admin to do the same thing. I'm not sure I understand some of the other above concerns about cliques of reviewers and higher levels of risk. Wouldn't those same cliques be around to edit non-protected articles, of which there are much greater numbers, and even more possibilities to do damage, than the protected ones that are subject to constant vandalism? Opening up the current fully protected articles to a Level 2 editing ability would give more editors the opportunity to make changes (constructive ones, of course) to the articles than before. This may increase the risk of vandalism, but not if the reviewers are doing their jobs correctly. Funandtrvl (talk) 01:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

With classical full or semi-protection, an affected editor will not be able to edit, the interface will make it clear that they cannot edit, and they can be confident that the same level of protection applies to anyone who meets the same mechanical standard for allowed and disallowed editors. With pending changes, a situation might arise where you cannot edit because one or more article gatekeepers will not approve any version with edits by others visible; in this case, the interface will still insist that you can edit (even if you can't in practice), and will not enforce any equal restriction on editors; rather, it will allow editors with Reviewer bits to enforce unequal restrictions if they so choose. While pending changes level 2 would allow more edits than full protection even under such bad circumstances, it would not particularly represent an improvement to the encyclopedia. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I concur with Funandtrvl. If these "cliques" do becaome a problem, then their Reviewer status should be revoked. Shouldn't that solcve the problem? (This is also done to Rollback editors who abuse the privelidges.) Anyway, Level 2 should be allowed in the trials, so we can see how it will be used in practice - Isn't that what the trial is all about? To see what works and what doesn't? - BilCat (talk) 02:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Even with Level 2 articles being restricted to editing by a reviewer, this would be an improvement over the situation now, because when an editor has to go thru all the steps to make an edit to a fully protected article, most won't bother to take the time to do it. For the editors that are not yet reviewers, they would have the opportunity to apply for a reviewer access level, in order to be able to edit Level 2 articles. So if another editor (who would have to be a reviewer) has been gate-keeping changes to a Level 2 article, that wouldn't stand for long, not to mention the availability of the admin/incidents noticeboard where an editor in that position should go to when a problem like that arises. As for the anonymous IPS, enough said to be able to review their work before publishing! Funandtrvl (talk) 03:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Joshua and Funandtrvl. Actually, I don't really think that level 2 is that risky: unreviewed changes are visible to everyone, except unregistered users (who, anyway, can access the edit history and see them, if they so wish). And if I were a POV-pusher refusing to review an edit I disagree with, then, well, that wouldn't be really a big deal: another reviewer might come along and review the edit in question. And, most probably, I'd be stripped of my reviewer privilege... I agree that level 2 protection should be cautiously used, but I don't object to it in principle. Salvio ( ^{Let's talk 'bout it!}) 11:00, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Salvio. OpenTheWindows, sir! 23:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Bottom line, if it is used at all, it should only be used in those very, very rare circumstances where we have vandalism from autoconfirmed accounts, such as the ones Cenarium pointed out at the top of this thread. We're talking about a half-dozen of all of the fully-protected articles. The overwhelming majority of protected pages are either (a) pages salted to prevent creation/re-creation or (b) those protected because of an ongoing content dispute that must be worked out by consensus discussion. Neither of those groups of articles should be placed on pending revisions. Given the tiny number of articles to which this would apply, I'm not persuaded that this level is particularly desirable. Risker (talk) 17:02, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

We can require consensus for applying it. Cenarium (talk) 17:25, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps widely drawn consensus such as at ANI, not the article talk page. I agree with Risker that L2 should be put only to a tiny number of articles, it could easily run amuck into hundreds of core high traffic articles. Gwen Gale (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Justin Bieber could have also benefit from L2 protection, there was a fairly well-trafficked webforum which instructed users how to groom autoconfirmed socks to vandalize the article in concert. –xeno^talk 18:39, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

There are two articles on the Day 1 trial list which might be appropriate for L2, Ten Commandments and (perhaps, I'm not involved) Rush Limbaugh. How bout we see how it plays out on articles like these, and modifying or removing L2 if they don't turn out well?

Also, IMO it would be nice to have pending edits applied automatically to GAs and FAs, perhaps with L2 for the latter. These are articles which are already developed and stable, so a primary concern is about ignorant edits reducing their quality, as there are not likely to be editor cliques trying to take advantage of even L2. — kwami (talk) 22:40, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Kwamikagami, I think you made your comment about FAs in GAs in perfectly good faith, and I want to be clear that I don't see you as a cheesy serial villain in a top hat and duster coat twirling your mustache as you tie Pauline to the train tracks. However, when I and others express concern about editorial cliques misusing pending changes, it is exactly this sort of thing that we are worried about. There's no fundamental right to disenfranchise other editors just because it's a nice neighborhood article and you don't need Those People lowering the tone; but there's a great risk that editors' good faith behavior will lead to pending changes being used exactly this way, if we allow it to happen. There needs to be a hard line against using this tool to enforce quality standards, or excluding anything other just plainly unacceptable content, or else we should just be honest and drop the "anyone can edit" from our tagline and be done with it. — Gavia immer (talk) 23:03, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Protection of FAs and GAs is a hoary perennial. It should not be accepted in this version either. They may be better than other articles when promoted (although experience as a reviewer induces skepticism - all too many reviews ignore content altogether); but they are not so months and years later: for one thing our standards do change. We don't even protect articles on the main page; once off it, FAs and GAs are no more prone to vandalism than other articles on the same subjects. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's my view on the subject: before the creation of this form of protection, protection worked in a linear way, with each step being slightly higher than the next: none->semi->full->office. (yes, salt and move are exceptions, but those do not affect article bodies). Level one review maintains this linear system, simply adding review between none and semi, an idea I approve of. Level 2, however, is in some ways stricter than semi (still affects autoconfirmed) but in others less (anonymous can still edit). This could create confusion as to which kind of protection to use when, and confuse autoconfirmed editors. -Quinxorin (talk) 02:00, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

• Level II protection is still better than full-protection, in my opinion. Traditionally, if an administrator was overzealous and full-protected for a month an article that, say, only needed to be semi-protected for a week or two, that decision would be challenged through the ordinary channels of discussion on the sysop's talk page and then on ANI. I don't see why the same thinking is not to be applied to pending changes. Level II protection ought to be used very sparingly, but it should still exist as an alternative to full-protection. We might be well-served to review on a daily basis any level II protection (either through an automatically-generated list or through a manually-maintained list of articles that are level II-protected, perhaps that, using an editnotice, we remind administrators to update?). AGK 10:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, level 2 will be of great use on pages with auto confirmed vandalism that now have full protection, allowing constructive editing without burdening admins. And if someone abuses there reviewer right by playing gate keeper they can have there right removed.--IngerAlHaosului (talk) 17:37, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree AGK. Personally, I think that pending changes is fine exactly the way it is. Level 2 protection is a perfect alternative to full protection, which I feel is unnecessary even in the worst cases of vandalism. Level 2 at least allows some edits to be made. Full protections block all edits by non-administrators, which defeats the purpose of Wikipedia. Shannon! talk 21:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I would support level 2 for similar reasons: as a practical alternative to full protection which still allows some improvements to articles, rather than freezing them. bobrayner (talk) 15:48, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

• Level 2 might be unnecessary with the sole reason being that the articles where it applies are too few. But if they are not too few (and I have no idea how many they could turn out to be), then the problems that could arise with it, I think could be solved and are outweighed by the problems that other users have pointed out that is solves. I guess that aside from revoking reviewer rights from a user, another solution would be to fall back to some of the protected article levels, if it turns out that the level is being repeatedly abused by different people on the same article. I think that a lot of people must have said this many many times, but the greatest pitfall with reviewing in general is that it could be used to assess content. Given that the criteria for granting reviewer rights to a user are not all that strict and do not take at all into account (aside from the generic "track record" clause) user behavior pertaining not to the purpose of having reviewed articles, but to the dangers of it, it might turn out that the added strain put on administrators by having to revoke reviewer rights will be significant. (note you can skip: I have only read the current section / issue under discussion, so I might have repeated oft-repeated concerns or have missed a point. I haven't been active for a while, but while I was active I witnessed my fair share of content disputes [the main problem under discussion here]. I even participated in a handful, hopefully as an open minded and receptive party or a mediator, rather than an aggravating factor).--Atavi (talk) 20:29, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Although criteria for granting reviewer rights to a user are not all that strict even the generic "track record" clause is more then enough to weed out vandals and people with malicious intent, as for those that get drunk with power the revocation of the right and the time it takes to get a new account with sufficient track record is going to discourage such behavior. I do agree there will be added strain put on administrators by having to revoke reviewer rights but i believe it will have a bell curve with 1 spike at the point where it get popular but it will sharply drop as the admins get a feel for the right type of user and the trouble makers get dealt with. --IngerAlHaosului (talk) 12:28, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that Level 2 should be kept, because it would be much better than full protection in most cases. That way, good faith edits by auto-confirmed users on articles with vandalism by auto-confirmed users (or with ongoing edit wars) can be done and reviewed. Most veteran users on Wikipedia can be trusted, and many veteran users on Wikipedia are non-administrators, so if an article has an ongoing edit war by auto-confirmed users or vandalism by auto-confirmed users, it can be Level 2 protected so non-admin veteran users can edit articles with Level 2 protection, rather than being unable to edit an article at all because of edit wars or vandalism. However, I do not think that full protection should be removed, because some pages (such as the Main Page or highly visible templates) need full protection since they cannot have a risk of vandalism at all (if there was a vandal edit that was accidentally accepted by a reviewer on a highly visible template, then the edit would have to get reverted, which would cause a server lag). --Hadger 22:51, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

My two cents - strongly oppose. Way too easy to "game", and goes against the original philosophy of the place. The criteria to select reviewers is going to suffer too - the rejection reasons on the page are sometimes highly suspect and alot of it, I imagine, depends on who happens to read/reject/approve a given proposal and the mood they are in. More detailed reasons have been covered here and so I defer to them. Zelse81 (talk) 06:01, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I oppose Level 2 protection because it would restrict immediately visible editing to just the several thousand Reviewers and Administrators. This is the kind of oligarchic editing I find on other wikis like Bulbapedia, where the Admins go crazy with protecting everything and prevent the general editing population from, well, editing. If this proposal is accepted, I think that a lot more articles are going to put under PC protection because it is a much easier way to deal with vandalism. The consequence is that Special:OldReviewedPages will become just another unclearable backlog. There will be more edits to these pages than Reviewers and Administrators would be able to keep up with: although there are thousands of people with the ability to review, I only see a small group spending significant time reviewing in the pending changes log. The institution of Level 2 protection will add autoconfirmed edits to this already crazy backlog: the vast majority of them will be good and perfectly constructive, but we will have to look through them one by one. If we just use Level 1 protection, then we will only have to review the anonymous edits, and keep an eye on the "questionable" autoconfirmed editors (or block them). Wikipedia is a wiki, and we must not forget that. --Brandon5485 18:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I agree with Level 2 protection or not anymore. Maybe Level 2 protection should be changed in a way that auto-confirmed users can see it, although their edits will still have to be confirmed for anons to see it. However, I still also think that it wouldn't be such a good idea, because many editors are auto-confirmed editors, and most auto-confirmed editors have constructive edits, and, like Brandon said, it will be hard to review an auto-confirmed user's edits to a Level 2 protected article one by one, so I have mixed feelings about Level 2 protection. --Hadger 02:29, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

In all honesty, Level 2 protection falls just short of being flat-out censorship in my opinion and is something I cannot agree with. Level 1 would be reasonable in a high vandalism environment but Level 2 is just entirely unnecessary. If Wikipedia does not censor, then by default, this violates that principle in my truthful opinion as it reduces general editor oversight and restricts general oversight and contributions to articles as well the encyclopedic process to a very specific group (Potential elitism?). In general, I'm supportive of a review process but Level 2 is just going to far. ⒺⓋⒾⓁⒼⓄⒽⒶⓃ② ^talk 18:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

• I support Level 2 protection and I am enjoying this new review system. I particularly like that anyone who is a reviewer can approve the change, but being a reviewer does not grant you the ability to block it. I suspect many of the long term users of Wikipedia will soon have this privilege enhancing the ability of the community to keep Wikipedia successful. This is the best project I have seen implemented on WP in a long time.Alan.ca (talk) 09:13, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Where did my comment go?

I reviewed an edit today in which an unregistered editor removed some material from an article. The edit appeared to me to be in good faith and with a plausible justification. However, the unregistered editor had provided no explanation his/herself for the edit. Thus, when clicking "accept", I entered a summary in the handy text-box labelled "Comment" - expecting the comment to appear in the history where it says "[checked by CIreland]". However, it did not. So where did it go? CIreland (talk) 15:09, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Forget it, I found it, it goes in the review log (actually creates a new entry, that accepting without comment does not). Regardless, in my opinion this falls foul of the Principle of least astonishment. CIreland (talk) 15:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

To join the trial

Where do you propose for articles to be part of the trial? Feedback ^☎ 20:27, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFPP now. --Izno (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

At the WP:RFPP, as per semi prot and full prot. Off2riorob (talk) 20:34, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Too Complicated, Too Obscure, Little Benefit

Even the experts are confused by this. That means that this would certainly be a mess with everyday users. North8000 (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

It is not really complicated, just new and takes a little bit of usage to get a good feel for it. Off2riorob (talk) 20:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I didn't mean that the underlying structure was rocket science. I meant that for an average user it will be confusing and obscure North8000 (talk) 21:12, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Presumably, average users won't have reviewer status, just like average users don't have rollback or use Huggle. There is room in the tech community for different levels of sophistication. On the other hand, everything should be done to streamline the pending changes process for efficiency and ease of use. The trial will help gather relevant feedback to do that. 69.142.154.10 (talk) 01:14, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Everyday user here. I found that it isn't complicated at all and I understood it at once. I'm personally retarded, and had no problems. Before you say it has little benefit perhaps you could rid yourself of ignorance. Beam 01:45, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Speed

Any computer I use takes longer time to get to the edit made on a pending changes article than on a regular article. Materialscientist (talk) 00:27, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

The lag time is long, I've found. It's frustrating. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed that too. I thought it was just my ISP! --Funandtrvl (talk) 05:30, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Addressing conflicting interests

• "pending changes" is a good tool, it gives users and administrators more freedom to adjust the level of protection to each situation.

• There are two problems to address:
  • Vandalism and obviously bad edits
  • Differences in opinion.

• Re the latter case: From my initial experiences with Edit, there is a tendency to Revert quickly one's contributions; this may prevent Editors to present their opinion. I asked that my changes be left for some time so others can view them, but was refused.

• It is possible to propose changes in Discussion, but that may be ineffective, if there are several people involved or each would like to present a complete picture of his/her version.

• Proposal: Add a tool to allow editing of several versions of an Article; possibly with pointers to different versions; then each version can be edited and reviewed by all, and a consensus may be reached faster. A time limit may be imposed; one may be the main/official version, the others - secondary, displayable only on request.

--Zutam (talk) 20:58, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Not quite sure what you're complaining about. There's no real difference as far as what logged in people see. Edits could always get reverted quickly, and if an edit is reverted it means the editor disagrees with it in some fashion -- if it's something that's a dispute, the article talk page is always there. For more info, see WP:BRD. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:08, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Tool to support cooperation among editors

• At present, each Article has only one version, each Editor striving for their contribution to be on stage.
• If several versions of an article could coexist, then each user could compare their version with the other versions- easily, at a glance, without making any changes in them.
• A version which is more popular will get more improvements, so it will evolve with time.
• It may be possible to mix and match - take the definition from one version, the references from several, etc. To achieve the best final article.

--Zutam (talk) 08:06, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Quick link to pages with pending edits worklist

There needs to be a quick link to the pages with pending edits somehow, because one can't bookmark the "Pages with pending changes" page. Otherwise, you need to bookmark this page and then click on the link to it. Isn't there a better way to notify reviewers that work needs to be done? I've only seen a notice at the top of my watchlist when a page on the list needs to be reviewed, but haven't seen a link to a work queue that would be very handy. --Funandtrvl (talk) 05:29, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree! DocOfSoc (talk) 05:53, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

KISS

Wikipedia succeeded, enormously, largely because it followed the KISS principle. Anyone can edit, everyone sees it immediately; if good, it stays, if bad, bit bucket. Bad persists, semi-protect if from new account or IP, full-protect otherwise. Watchlists are simple, easy on the eyes, easy to spot a problem and quickly fix it. You can monitor your watchlist as well as write new content, no problem. This *worked*, and succeeded beyond all expectations.

But some programmers can't leave well enough alone, so they decided to build a Rube Goldberg contraption, in the hope of making a huge success even better. Except whoever designed this apparently has no idea how to design, and worse, no idea how Wikipedia really works. So now we have a mess, and the fundamental principles of the wiki are threatened.

Watchlists are so busy you need to look away, protection which used to be simple is now so complex to be useless, BLP articles end up with more trash, rather than less, visible to tens of thousands, and the maintenance process is so confusing and distracting that it's hard to focus on article writing.

It seems to me the only solution is to go back to the drawing board. And before coming back with new ideas, study the KISS principle (System Design 101), and get input from the real users: the veteran admins and editors who actually write new content, keep BLP articles in shape, and do the real work. What bothers me the most is that this PC runs counter to the core simple revolutionary principles that made us a success. It seems some people just don't get it. Crum375 (talk) 00:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I think pending changes is a good thing in theory. That said:

• The "review conflict" issue described below needs looking at. It is very annoying and will leave a lot of reviewers giving up on the whole idea.

• I like Crum's point about how important watchlists are. Maybe if there is going to be any more tweaking of the wiki engine, improving watchlists should be on the agenda. Perhaps we could make them more configurable. Perhaps we could make it so that if you hide minor edits then the last non-minor edit is shown instead. Perhaps we could make it so that if you have the option of showing more than the last edit for each page.

Yaris678 (talk) 12:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree on the point that it is indeed making some things too complicated. However, it could be invaluable for BLP issues, and not vandalism like we originally tried to apply it to. (primarily) NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:27, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Yaris's watchlist suggestions, it is possible to configure your user preferences to show all edits to the pages that you are watching. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 19:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

How? I can't se a "configuration" button on the watchlist. Yaris678 (talk) 16:19, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

By checking the box that says "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in the watchlist section of your preferences. Graham87 12:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Found it! Thank you! It is a bit strange that this feature is not toggle-able from the watchlist when the other features are (Hide minor edits, Hide bot edits, Hide edits by anonymous users, Hide edits by logged in users). The other option that is not toggle-able from the watchlist is "Hide my edits from the watchlist". I think that is a good suggestion for improvement of the watchlist - make these two options toggle-able from the watchlist itself. Yaris678 (talk) 13:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Someone requested some feedback from me. As a new editor, I appreciate suggestions and attempt to put the good ones into practice. Hopefully, having a bit of fun is not offensive eo ipso. Odd is being threatened with blocking for bizarre reasons; the tetchy do this with reckless abandon. In general, I'd recommend that newly minted editors such as me have all edits placed on an approve basis. Should someone wish to disapprove the edit, a reason must be supplied, along with a place to discuss matters.--CharlesHenryLeaFan (talk) 21:39, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Still confused

I'm still having difficulty seeing how this works. I just undid an edit by a new account on a PC-protected article, Aristotle. Apparently my revert now needs to be accepted by someone else. The history says: [2]

1. (cur | prev) 17:47, July 6, 2010 SlimVirgin (talk | contribs | block) (77,238 bytes) (Undid revision 372064919 by Jsolorio14 (talk)) (rollback | undo) [pending review]
2. (cur | prev) 17:47, July 6, 2010 Jsolorio14 (talk | contribs | block) (77,235 bytes) (undo) [pending review]

SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:51, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I think you would've had to accept the revision at the same time as undoing. –xeno^talk 17:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

This happened to me also (something to do with reverts and rollback), as a reviewer you can accept your own reverts. Off2riorob (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

That's because the new user made 2 edits:

1. (cur | prev) 18:47, 6 July 2010 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs | block) (77,238 bytes) (Undid revision 372064919 by Jsolorio14 (talk)) (rollback | undo) [checked by SlimVirgin]
2. (cur | prev) 18:47, 6 July 2010 Jsolorio14 (Talk | contribs | block) (77,235 bytes) (undo)
3. (cur | prev) 18:46, 6 July 2010 Jsolorio14 (Talk | contribs | block) (77,235 bytes) (undo)

Before you began editing the page, both of them needed to be reviewed. When you undid one of them, the article still had one unreviewed edit. Accepting your own edit to be the stable version caused any previous unreviewed edit to also be accepted . You had to accept your own version manually because it included prior unreviewed material. CIreland (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The 18:46 edit by Jsolorio14 had been reviewed and accepted by someone else. Jsolorio then made an edit at 18:47, which I undid. So I have to accept an edit before I can undo it? Or I have to manually accept my own reverts? SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:13, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The 18:46 edit had not been reviewed by anyone else. The last reviewed edit before your own was by 71.195.209.227. You only have to accept your own edits as the stable version if your version includes previously unreviewed material. So, for example, if you had use rollback to undo both of Jsolorio14's edits then you would not have needed to accept your own edit since all unreviewed material since the last stable version would have been removed. CIreland (talk) 18:22, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The 18:46 edit was reviewed by Brandon. That was visible in the edit history when I made my edit, though it's visible no longer. I didn't include it when I posted the history above because I didn't think it was relevant. You can see it in the PC log:

1. (del/undel) 17:50, July 6, 2010 Brandon5485 (talk | contribs | block) deprecated a revision of Aristotle ‎ (I need to pay more attention...) (revision: 17:46, July 6, 2010)
2. (del/undel) 17:48, July 6, 2010 SlimVirgin (talk | contribs | block) reviewed a revision of Aristotle ‎ (changes reviewed) (revision: 17:47, July 6, 2010)
3. (del/undel) 17:47, July 6, 2010 Brandon5485 (talk | contribs | block) reviewed a revision of Aristotle ‎ (changes reviewed) (revision: 17:46, July 6, 2010)

He later undid his acceptance, but that was after my edit. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 18:28, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, didn't see the accept/unaccept. That complicates things. When Brandon unaccepted that revision, it made all subsequent revisions that included it need re-reviewing. So... you made an edit creating a version that included material accepted at the time - you would not have had to accept this version. Brandon then deprecated some earlier material but did not edit the article to remove it. That meant the most recent revision (your own) now contained unreviewed material. CIreland (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. But crikey! SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm wondering why the default behavior isn't: If a pending change is neither reverted nor accepted, but rather another edit occurs afterward, the previous pending change is automatically rejected. That would be less confusing than having pending changes pile on top of each other. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:47, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

That would be rejecting a contribution without even looking at it. Off2riorob (talk) 20:37, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean when you say "rejected"? Reverted? They could be perfectly valid edits, so that would be bad. Reach Out to the Truth 03:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, that was sort of my point. The current implementation is already bad in its ability to generate confusion, as described above. If a "fix" is bad in another way, doesn't that suggest that there's something deeper that was broken to begin with?

Another "bad" alternative (but probably better) to avoid the confusion described above is to block articles from being edited until a pending change has been resolved, either by a revert or an acceptance. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:55, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

???

Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia that ANYONE can edit and give there information for the good of this site? We can't let a few bad apples ruin the bunch. This is Wikipedia, we've been through tougher times!Hollister4Mayor (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and that's why this system was implemented, so MORE people can edit articles that would otherwise be semi-protected or protected. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The articles under Pending Changes were previously semi-protected so that anonymous editors couldn't edit them at all. Now they can edit them, subject to acceptance by a reviewer - so things are less restrictive now, not more restrictive. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:53, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

United Kingdom

Question - why did I need to accept this edit by myself ? I thought that it should have been accepted automaticly as I am both Autoconfirmed and a Reviewer ? Codf1977 (talk) 19:38, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Confirmed editor vs reviewer

Can someone explain the differences between these two groups to me? I am a little unclear. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 07:01, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi. The table at Wikipedia:Pending changes shows you which categories of editor can do what - essentially, a confirmed editor can edit and have their changes immediately visible, but cannot accept other people's changes. A reviewer can also accept other people's changes. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:00, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi back. Actually, i could tell that from the table, but am still unsure what qualifications differentiate - currently - a reviewer from a normal user. Is a normal user a reviewer? - Jack Sebastian (talk) 18:31, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"Normal user" is not a term in use at that page. A reviewer is a user who has the reviewer userright. I suppose the closest thing to "normal user" would be "autoconfirmed" user as most users will be at least autoconfirmed. –xeno^talk 18:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd misunderstood - yes, a Reviewer needs to be specifically given reviewer rights. There's information on how to become a reviewer at Wikipedia:Reviewing. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:58, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Environment conducive to quality articles

• "Pending changes" may add a useful tool to editors. To help achieve quality articles, it may be used together with other features which are discussed below.

• "Pending changes" is a means to control acces to edit an article. One may ask, why such limiting is necessary at all? One cause is differences in opinion, which may be solved with better communications.

• Editors, like me, are volunteers and have little time to explain changes they make. Tools can be added to complement "Pending changes", to quickly explain one's intentions, for example:
  • A list of relevant WP policy article, to be made available to an editor during edit. This will make it easy to cite a specific item.
  • Likewise for other articles in WP, or the WP Style manual, etc.: whatever may indicate to the previous editors what to do.

--Zutam (talk) 12:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC) --Zutam (talk) 10:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

What has any of this got to do with the "Pending Changes" trial? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

removed after the comments I was replying to were re-written. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:28, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The proposed tools may be used in the Talk and Discuss section of articles.

--Zutam (talk) 14:49, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

--Zutam (talk) 10:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

This page is for discussing the Pending Changes initiative specifically, it's not for your gripes about Wikipedia in general. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

removed after the comments I was replying to were re-written. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:28, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Contentious articles can't be solved anonymously

I agree with Wikipedia's observation that the problems with contentious articles stem from the fact that they can be edited by just anyone. Where I disagree is that Wikipeida stops classifying users as "just anyone" when they lurk around Wikipedia a lot. I would like to see an elite panel of experts who have the power to put in changes to wikipedia articles that cannot be changed by anyone lower. Other parts of the article could be changed, but these certified experts in that field could write sentences that were unable to be rewritten or moved around by other users. These articles would have a lock that unlocks after a while or has its timer reset if the article is checked by some other expert. Too many Wikipedia users are semi-qualified academic wannabees with agendas detrimental to an encyclopaedia. From what I've seen, Wikipedia makes no effort to match up its usernames with real-life experts. I think that some attempt to make a pairing with these groups would go a long way. Owen214 (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

That would make Wikipedia be not-Wikipedia. Perhaps you wish to try Citizendium? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:10, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Academic experts are also guilty of making poor edits, especially in terms of readability. I cannot be the only one who is disappointed when I come to Wikipedia for some intuition about a mildly complex topic, and I'm immediately bombarded with dense mathematical proofs and jargon that would make any elitist proud but do nothing to help the novice. The back-and-forth between the rigor of experts and the intuition of non-experts tends (with some exceptions) to produce better encyclopedia articles in the long term. Maghnus (talk) 20:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

May I propose another view for this discussion, in addition to the present issue of means for blocking access or who can have access:

• Revert is a very strong medicine and it is too often used.
• It is easy to revert, just push a button.
• However, to discuss things - it is more difficult.
• Proposal: WP to provide tools for easy expression of one's opinion, in addition to the final option revert. Buttons can express either positive and negative opinions:
  • I strongly oppose this article
  • I completely support it
  • This paragraph (provide means to indicate it, such as in color or underline) - is wrong
  • This paragraph infringes on WP rule...
  • This article supports/contradicts what is said here (with link to that article)

--Zutam (talk) 12:27, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

How is this going to work exactly?

I recall the last time I had a hand in any major site wide change was back when C-class was introduced; in that particular instance, the measure past but the option of implementing C-class was left to the individual projects. Would this likewise be a measure left to individual projects if it is adopted, or would this be a blanket change to all of the encyclopedia? I've started a discussion at milhist for feeling out the project's position on the matter, and while I feel personally that the whole thing should not be adopted I would like to know how free a hand we would have in deciding what gets semi-protected and what does not. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:20, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

It can be done gradually

• People can choose this venue of their own free will, in a specific case, or

• this to be an option to choose (or be enforced by WP) in problematic cases - those where people fight for some time and you may want to test another venue.

• It can use existing technology at WP, no drastic changes required
  • There is already a good system to name files. you just allow versions to be included,

such as Orange_Tom, Orange_Mark, Orange_001, etc.

• • There are icons at the top of the green screen - and there is space left.

You can add buttons, such as

• • • choose version Tom or version 003 - for display, edit, discussion. etc..
    • choose action to apply to article or paragraph thereof: Strongly disagree, Complete support,

• I believe such changes can be implemented gradually, while evaluating user's responses, and can use existing technology at WP and - use the same or a similar interface system-users.

--Zutam (talk) 23:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Further How To

• When there is a dispute, Editors can send each other an invitation

"You are hereby invited to discuss it in Wiki Arbitration Court " .

There may be applied the mechanism detailed above.

• People can attach little icons to an article or a specific paragraph therein:
  • He/she is right, I guess
  • Maybe this needs further verification
  • I strongly oppose
  • I strongly support
  • I Revert
  • I recommend it be protected from Reverts

• It is easy to attach the above icons: just provide several additional buttons adjacent to Revert . People just choose a button and press it.

--Zutam (talk) 08:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Zutam, I appreciate the enthusiasm but absolutely none of your replies has anything to do with my question. I seek to determine whether the option to adopt flagged revisions will be given to the individual projects and task forces, or whether this will be adopted on a site wide basis with guidelines beyond the control of projects and task forces. The two answers you have provided above are not even remotely related to my question. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:59, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

• Either of the two options is feasible, a decision - per WP goals.

• There are advantages to start with individual projects - or make this a project. We can then improve it per user's feedback, before applying on a grand scale.

• Adopting on a site-wide basis: Also a good idea. I found Wikis can respond fast, so any issue can be promptly answered. This will allow the most interested users to adopt it.

• I can't see WP from your point of view and don't know the terminology;

Please let me know if my answer still is not adequate, I have much more to add.

--Zutam (talk) 06:56, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

To answer Tomstar's questions, my impression is that this will be adopted on a site wide basis with guidelines beyond the control of projects and task forces. Carcharoth (talk) 07:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Concerns about moderation overhead due to PC protection (solution: auto-accept timers, global "watchlist"?)

The pending changes system is a good start on a credibility/vandalism problem that has plagued Wikipedia from the beginning. It was only a matter of time before it had to be addressed.

The PC system is rather similar in nature to moderation schemes, which are commonly used for blog comments, forums, code change management. They have huge moderation overhead but are proven spam stoppers. On Wikipedia, most vandals edit on their IP and won't go through the effort to create accounts, they are almost never autoconfirmed though this may change with the introduction of PC.

My concern is that the PC system is drifting away from Jimbo's idea of "you can edit this page now". Many IP users make useful contributions and I feel that they may be disappointed with the Wikipedia experience if their edits are overlooked for long periods of time. There is already a glut of neglected pages and the PC system may exacerbate this as much as it would help, by hiding constructive changes for any length of time.

Possible ways to mitigate the "backlog" problem include:

• Limits on the usage of PC protection coordinated with normal page protection policies
• Allowing any autoconfirmed user to approve edits to Level 1 pages (and using Level 2 very sparingly)
• A global queue page where reviewers can view all pending changes sitewide, oldest first.
• Other sitewide dashboards or "autoconfirm" type of systems, that increase visibility of pending changes and/or number of reviewers.
• A timer that automatically approves edits once a certain time has passed without an affirmative rollback

A timer system could reintroduce the problem of submarine spam but would prevent a backlog of pending edits from becoming too large. A global "pending changes" list would make changes more visible.

Shouran (talk) 01:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

No comment on your other comments (which are interesting), but responding to this point: A global queue page where reviewers can view all pending changes sitewide, oldest first - you may be looking for Special:AdvancedReviewLog or Special:OldReviewedPages. Carcharoth (talk) 07:30, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

• "A timer that automatically approves edits once a certain time has passed without an affirmative rollback."

I would be in support of that option. I was thinking about it myself recently. CycloneGU (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

• Allowing any autoconfirmed user to approve edits to Level 1 pages (and using Level 2 very sparingly)

I think this is an absolute necessity. Making users apply for review privileges is, in my opinion, a very contentious and best avoided policy. All autoconfirmed users should be reviewers automatically as far as I can see. Otherwise we are losing functionality unless we go through the process to become reviewers (which I have already done, 'just in case'). Colincbn (talk) 13:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

See where you are coming from but have to say if we go that route (with say a Auto-Reviewer group) you loose some of the ability to deal with abuse of the system; better to allow editor who want the functionality to apply and be reasonably lax on who gets it (no evidence of recent disruptive edits) and then it can be removed if it is misused. Codf1977 (talk) 14:18, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal related to above: Why not (1) Autoconfirm registered users as reviewers (only upon request) after X number of uncontested edits; and also, (2) Create {{caveat}} tag so reviewers can approve good-faith IP edits without gatekeeping

Why not simply automatically give (auto)confirmed users reviewer status if thay have more than X number of uncontested edits? Is there a bot for testing how many reverts a user has suffered? That would give a sufficient baseline for indicating that a registered autoconfirmed user account is not a troll or sockpuppet. If so, then said bot would be activated when an auto-confirmed user hits the "Click Here to Become A Reviewer" button. If the result came back negative, the bot would say "Sorry, you don't have enough uncontested edits to become a reviewer yet." If kosher, an "Automatically Sign Up As Reviewer" page pop up, describing the policy.

You can use a newly created {{caveat:(name of policy template)}} tag for a reviewer to confirm an IP user's edit but mark it in the edit history as flagged for further improvement, for any of the standard reasons (e.g. the standard template tags such as {{citation needed}} would appear as an argument of the {{caveat}} tag), said further improvement can be done by any editor. The {{caveat}} template tag would then appear as a phrase in the page's edit history as follows, e.g.

June 1: (edit summary + timestamp) The preceding edit by (IP Address) (talk) was held for pending review under partial page protection guideline. --Validated by reviewer User:blablabla on (time) with caveat: contingent on {{name of policy template}}. Please offer improvement or correction as needed. (WP:CAVEAT)

(bold would be the auto-generated template text for the {{caveat}} tag)

Subsequent edits by an IP user such as myself (including the person who made the original edit) would be held for review also of course, but can and should be confirmed by any person with review capabilities if the edit is a good faith attempt to fix a previous edit marked as {{caveat:(name of policy template)}}. Just my 2¢, --berr 216.15.63.67 (talk) 21:31, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that the phrase "contingent on" very specifically due to the fact that the "{{caveat}}" tag would be exactly that: the disinterested reviewer's obligation to assume good faith and not hold things up, or worse, overzealously discard any and all IP edits, does not prohibit someone with particular knowledge in the subject from reverting good faith edit after validation, for the reason stated in the caveat tag, or some other reason. --berr 216.15.63.67 (talk) 21:47, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

User:Emijrp/Popular articles

Hi. Recently I have restarted updating this page: User:Emijrp/Popular articles. It is obvious that the page includes very useful info, for editors, and for vandals. I say that because of we suffered an attack to high visible pages yesterday [3]. Would it be interesting to enable "pending changes" in this kind of high visible pages, automagically? Regards. emijrp (talk) 10:13, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

example of Pending changes trial cancelled

I write this with no agenda to promote pending changes or to stop it. Selena Gomez is an article that was open to flagged revisions on 15 June and ended on 20 June by Slim Virgin.

I will analyze the results at a later time. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 22:29, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Slim doesn't quite understand how to review, as evident by her comments throughout the project talk pages. Perhaps in the future she will. Beam 13:00, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Noticing the Notice Board

Not happening, anyone notice that? Beam 00:20, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that it's likepy that there is nothing noticable to notice, hence no notes. - BilCat (talk) 00:42, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, consider it noted, thanks for the notification. Beam 16:38, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Potential Edit War

What is the role of the reviewer if it looks like there is an edit war / potential for edit war ongoing? For example, on the Dave Batista page, I accepted an edit because it wasn't vandalism, but when I checked the Discussion page, it appears that there's an ongoing dispute about whether the subject is properly sourced (turning on whether a particular website is a reliable source). Should I just accept the edit because it is not vandalism, or by accepting it, is that like I'm taking sides in this debate about whether or not the statement is properly sourced? Adam sk (talk) 02:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

If the info is sourced and it doesn't look like vandalism accept the edit and let the ongoing debate continue things can be undone in the end.--Steam Iron 02:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Leaving Pending Changes on during the discussion and !voting period

We don't yet have an exact timeline for when a !vote will occur and when we'll have all of the statistics gathered for an informed decision on whether to keep this feature. The one date that is fixed is August 15, when the two-month trial officially ends. I'd like to suggest that during that brief period while we figure out what the permanent plan is, we leave the feature running. It'll be less operational headache and give us a place to still view the feature in action while a vote is taking place. -- RobLa (talk) 22:10, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Quote from William Pietri to Wiki-en-L on 15 June 2010 at 01:12 EDT:

"This is, as the community requested, a 60-day trial. At the end of that,unless the community clearly requests otherwise, we'll turn it back off. Assuming that the trial starts on time, it will also end on time."

Please don't change the rules now. I understand what you are saying from a technical point of view, but I am already seeing significantly decreased community interest in this trial only a few days in. If the collective "we" (meaning the developer team and the project) can't get our act together well enough to provide statistical information and structure a vote for July 31 to August 14th, then that probably tells us something right there. Risker (talk) 05:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I will jump in as soon as I can view pending changes by Wikiproject and some pages under WP:MED are added. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Risker, the problem with starting the statistics gathering early is that the statistics will only reflect a portion of the trial, rather than the length of the trial. Is that acceptable? -- RobLa (talk) 00:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Undo diff confusion

I used the 'undo' on a pending change, and afterwards, it showed me a diff between that version and the last approved version - but all I had actually undone was one specific change.

It showed this and actually I did this.

Also, at the top of the page, it says "Your changes have not yet been accepted."

 Chzz  ►  13:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Unaccepted/Unapproved? Revisions

Hi all,

From what I understand about pending changes (feel free to correct me, I only read about it today) is that is a revision is "approved", by User A, and then User B decides that this approval is wrong, then can "unapprove/unaccept" this revision.

My question is, say for example this User A continually has their reviews of revisions "unapproved", is there a special page / list which allows you to see on which pages this has occurred and/or how frequently?

If so, then how many times would User A have to make a mistake before they get a friendly message giving them details of the guidelines of what their job as a reviewer is? If, on subsequent occasions they still make mistakes after their warning, will they get further warmings (how many?), or will their reviewer flag be removed?

I apologise if this question has already been asked, I've not had time yet to read all of the discussions on about Pending Changes.

Thanks,

The Helpful One 14:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I think many of these things are not yet determined. If you have to "unapprove" an edit someone else has approved, I think leaving them a note is always prudent. But for the moment, I think the agreement is that only arbcom can remove the "reviewer" right. This would suggest using the normal dispute resolution mechanism: personal notes, user RFCs, and arbitration. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:10, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Confusing terminology (Again) - approve/unapprove

The 'Approve' and greyed out 'Unapprove' is very confusing, because "unapprove" does not mean "do not approve" - it means, reversal of a previous approval.

This is confusing lots of people.

We are used to the familiar layout style of "Do you wanna do something? YES or NO"

In this case, that does not apply. It's especially confusing because, when 'approving', the second option is greyed out. so it can seem (to the reviewer) that they have no choice - they have to either 'accept' it or, well, nothing.  Chzz  ►  14:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I've asked if something could be done [4]. There are discussions on this at the new feedback page. Cenarium (talk) 00:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Please review - what?

I've just looked at two entries from Special:OldReviewedPages, and they both said "Please review the pending revision below." yet there was nothing to review - the diff was blank. The 'unaccept' button was available, but I've no idea what I'd be unaccepting.

The links are [5] and [6]

I think it's because someone else has accepted them - but it's v. confusing.  Chzz  ►  15:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

"Pending Revisions" versus "Double Check"

• I strongly prefer "Pending Revisions" over "Double Check." "Pending Revisions" is more precise, more accurate and less ambiguous. To me, "Double Check" comes across more as the type of slick branding that we seek to avoid. —David Levy 01:27, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

  I agree. "Pending revisions" describes the functionality quite well; Double Check is a feature name which rings positively in the optimists ear. The current implementation is going to be giving some of this functionality to autoconfirmed users, who have only made 10 edits, so I am confident the functionality will be abused quite frequently. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

• I strongly prefer "Double Check". It is simple, neutral and describes the intent behind the feature. The biggest problem with "Pending Revisions" is that it is already a term used in the feature, so making it the name of the feature as well would mean using the same phrase for two things. It is always best to avoid that where possible. --Tango (talk) 18:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

1. You're referring to an arbitrary description, which could just as easily use different terminology. However, the terms "protect" and "protection" (and numerous variations thereof) are used to describe elements of the protection feature, and I don't recall that ever causing any problems.

2. The term "double check" (or "double-check") has two connotations listed at Dictionary.com, neither of which accurately describes this feature.

The first is a chess term, meaning "a simultaneous check by two pieces in which the moving of one piece to give check also results in discovering a check by another piece." This meaning is entirely unrelated, but confusion could arise if the feature's name were interpreted as a reference to that concept.

The second connotation (more correctly styled with a hyphen) is "to check twice or again; recheck" (verb form) or "a second examination or verification to assure accuracy, proper functioning, or the like." (noun form). That obviously is what we mean, but it isn't accurate either. "Double Check" literally conveys that affected revisions will be checked twice, which simply is not so; the process entails a single check, not a second one.

"Revision Review," proposed below by Emufarmers, conveys the intended meaning in a simple, straightforward manner (with the added benefit of explicitly referring to "revision," which is one of the things that I like about "Pending Revisions"), and it is much more accurate and less ambiguous than "double check" is. I endorse it an alternative that perhaps we can agree on. —David Levy 19:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that "Revision Review" is a good name too and you are right that we aren't really double checking, but checking the first time (the idea is that the person that makes the edit is the first check, which makes sense, but it isn't really what "check" means). --Tango (talk) 20:03, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Can we agree to withdraw our support of "Pending Revisions" and "Double Check" (respectively) in favor of "Revision Review"? As a write-in candidate, it might otherwise be overlooked. —David Levy 20:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not a double check (a common misunderstanding). If the editor has the status of "revisor" (or how you call it), then his edit is already marked. No other editor is necessary to make the edit visible to everyone.--Ziko (talk) 21:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "double check" is not very descriptive of the actual process. At best its only slightly misleading because it assumes that people will recognize that the "first check" is by the initial editor. I agree that "Revision review" is more accurate. Mr.Z-man 21:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

But who's the "double check" then? "Revision" sounds as if every edit gets a "revision".--Ziko (talk) 22:33, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Every edit is a revision. If that's too technical of a word, I'm sure some synonym could be used. Mr.Z-man 22:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

• My !vote goes to "double check". Despite being technically inaccurate, it has its merits. Unlike "pending revisions", which brings to mind bureaucracy, "double check" is not overly formal. Also, consider WP:Requests for pending revisions versus WP:Requests for double check (currently we have WP:Requests for page protection). We could say we want a page to be "double checked" for a month, but a made-up word "revision-pend" would not make any sense. PleaseStand ^(talk) 18:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

"Revision Review" carries the same benefits without being technically inaccurate (and therefore confusing). —David Levy 19:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I do find "Revision Review" acceptable, and it is already used on Wikibooks. PleaseStand ^(talk) 21:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC) PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The whole purpose of changing the name is so that non-Wikimedians can surmise what it does without having to read about it. Using a technically inaccurate name defeats the purpose. Mr.Z-man 21:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

"Sanity Check" as a slight variation on the terminology? See below. PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:25, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Might I point out that "technically inaccurate" things are often more useful to non-hypertechnical people, which is kind of the demographic that we want to be expanding into.--Pharos (talk) 01:05, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes. We want new, productive contributors, and we should not be limited to technical people—the confusion that could result from seeing one version of an article and then having to edit another is exactly the reason why I do not necessarily find FlaggedRevs (by any name) acceptable. PleaseStand ^(talk) 01:28, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

That isn't the applicable connotation of "technical." "Double check" is inaccurate because it carries a contrary meaning in plain English. —David Levy 02:16, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

• Vastly prefer "Double check" since "check" can be both a noun and a verb, which vastly simplifies the language necessary to apply it to articles. "This article is being double checked" is a simple statement describing the state of an article. "Pending Revision" can only refer to a revision that is pending, and so I have no idea how to naturally apply the phrase to anything other than an existing revision that is pending (pending what?). Nifboy (talk) 02:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a good point, but the word "review" (as in "Revision Review") also is both a noun and a verb.

And I'm sure that we could recast the explanation to accommodate "Pending Revisions" (or a slight variation). —David Levy 02:16, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The word "review" is okay, but its connotations lean more towards the comprehensive, especially since we already have Peer Review. Nifboy (talk) 02:28, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Write-in candidates

"Revision Review"

• What about "Review" or "Revision Review"? —Emufarmers^(T/C) 00:45, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Having read Tango's comments above, I strongly endorse "Revision Review" in the hope that it is a mutually acceptable alternative to "Pending Revisions" and "Double Check." It appears to combine the simplicity and straightforwardness that Tango sees in "Double Check" with the accuracy and specificity that I see in "Pending Revisions." —David Levy 19:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

As I've said above, this is a good option. --Tango (talk) 20:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I asked my mother, a non-Wikipedian and educator, which of the 3 main candidates she thought was best. Her choice was "Revision Review" which now also has my full support. - Stillwaterising (talk) 00:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

"Revision Review" also strikes me as the best option--it's both clear and accurate. "Pending Revisions" would be my second choice, but I don't care for "Double Check" at all, as it fails to explain the process and is highly open to misinterpretation. -CapitalQ (talk) 02:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm worried that this one doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and doesn't abbreviate well (e.g. "Pending Revisions" is "Pending Revs", whereas "Revision Review" is "Rev Review"?). -- RobLa (talk) 01:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, I wasn't going to cite this as asset (because of the explanation that we aren't focusing on style), but I think that "Revision Review" actually is quite catchy (particularly because of the alliterative quality).

As for abbreviation, I see no problem with "Revision Rev" (which is the same length as "Pending Revs").

Also note that WP:PR is a shortcut to Wikipedia:Peer review linked from more than 6,000 pages, while WP:RR is a shortcut to Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains linked from fewer than 40 pages (and therefore can easily be reassigned, giving us the abbreviation "RR"). —David Levy 02:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

RevRev, obviously. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I do find "Revision Review" acceptable, and it is already used on Wikibooks. PleaseStand ^(talk) 21:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC) PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:03, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

"Delayed Editing"

• I'd go for "Delayed editing". As in, "Delayed editing has been applied to this article". Copying from the mailing list:

  "We will be placing some articles, especially those that get vandalism, under "delayed editing". This means that when a [completely / relatively] unknown editor edits the article, the edits won't be made public until they have been given a basic check by vandalism patrollers. Once they are cleared as non-vandal edits they'll be made public. The average delay [is expected to be around __ minutes / is not yet known as this is a new anti-vandalism measure, but should not be excessive]."

  Doesn't imply any kind of checking or approval, nor censorship or the like, just that edits will be delayed. I think even the average non-Wikipedian would understand vandalism isn't considered the same as normal "edits". Other terms such as "screening/patrol/review" still strongly suggest more review than may take place, and "pending" is too likely to be arcane for 99% of readers. A term like "delayed editing" describes exactly what happens to legitimate edits and, usefully, suggests almost no review - which is healthier for us as it's less likely to suggest inaccurate expectations and means we are more likely to exceed expectations than get flamed for the inevitable mistake. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, the term "delayed editing" likely would be mistaken for an indication that the entire editing process (including one's access to the edit window) has been postponed. Conversely, the word "pending" typically is used in contexts in which a process has been initiated and awaits completion. —David Levy 15:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think "delay" is the right word to be using to describe this process. --Tango (talk) 20:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

"Marked Versions"

My suggestion: "marked versions". It is about giving a version a mark that it is okay.--Ziko (talk) 21:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

"Marked" in British English means "graded" and suggests someone is assessing the quality of the edit on a scale. We aren't doing that. --Tango (talk) 23:41, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. This connotation (along with references to grades as "marks") also exists in American English. —David Levy 23:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

This was why "flagged" was used previously. A common usage of flag as a verb in english is "to mark (a page in a book, file card, etc.) for attention, as by attaching protruding tabs". It seems some people are not familiar with this usage (although it's very common in business), are there other words which would express "Things marked for attention" without expressing judgement as is claimed for "marked"? --Gmaxwell (talk) 15:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. --Ziko (talk) 13:37, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

"Sanity Check" or "Quick Check"

These have the advantages of "double check" while avoiding the technical incorrectness of the term "double". The review is really just to ensure the revision has not been vandalized or become an obvious BLP problem. PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:24, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

"Quick Check" a good alternative to "Double Check"; "Sanity Check", though, brings up too many negative associations.--Pharos (talk) 01:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed on "Sanity Check," which would be interpreted as an attack on editors' sanity.

In my opinion, "Quick Check" doesn't convey much about the feature's nature and could be misconstrued as a promise of speed. It also could be confused with QuickCheck and associated with QuickChek. (I'm from New Jersey and immediately thought of the latter.) —David Levy 01:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

"Spot Check"

Adding this one as an alternative to "Double Check", since it carries the connotation of intentionally not being a comprehensive review, which the "Pending X" titles don't have. Nifboy (talk) 00:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This one was my first thought before "Sanity Check". PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a good alternative to "Double Check".--Pharos (talk) 00:59, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The term "spot check" refers to "a random sampling or quick sample investigation." A likely (and entirely inaccurate) assumption would be that the process is based on a random sampling of articles or a random sampling of affected articles' revisions.

Additionally, the term does not literally translate to other languages (and therefore would be difficult for non-Native English readers to understand). —David Levy 01:19/01:24, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The only problem with that assumption is the assumption that it is a random, since we aren't spot checking all articles and we aren't doing a thorough investigation of those we are. However, I think saying "This article has been spot checked" communicates exactly what it is that happened to the article, as opposed to a "pending edit" which only refers to the edit in question and doesn't communicate anything about the article or the edit once it's been approved. Nifboy (talk) 01:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

1. If that is "the only problem," it's a major one. Randomness is one of the key elements of a spot check (as the term is commonly used). We don't want people to think that we've randomly selected the affected articles.

2. "This article has been spot checked" communicates that random revisions have been examined. —David Levy 02:16, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

1) I disagree that randomness is a major component: Mirriam-Webster defines the phrase as "to sample or investigate quickly or at random", (emphasis mine).2) No, "This article has been spot checked" communicates that portions of the article have been examined (as opposed to a comprehensive peer review); no layman sees a Wikipedia article as a series of revisions. Nifboy (talk) 02:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

1. I'm not claiming that the above interpretations are the only ones. I'm simply noting that they're likely to arise. We're trying to select a name subject to as little misinterpretation as possible.

2. "That portions of the article have been examined" is not the concept that we seek to convey. Examining individual edits is merely a means of ensuring that the article as a whole complies with certain standards.

3. Again, a non-native reader of English cannot translate the words "spot" and "check" to another language and arrive at a phrase that makes sense. —David Levy 03:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

If you're looking for a phrase that is totally unambiguous and perfectly communicates the new and unique concept we have invented, you're speaking the wrong language. "Spot check" or "double check" may not be perfect, but I think they're better than "revision review" (too much like peer review) or "Pending revision" (pending what, exactly?) Nifboy (talk) 03:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it's impossible to fully communicate the feature's nature via a mere name.

We can, however, seek to avoid selecting a term highly likely to be interpreted in a manner contrary to the process it's intended to describe. Given the choice, ambiguity ("What does this mean?") is vastly preferable to misunderstanding ("This means [incorrect impression].").

And again, non-native readers of English should be able to translate the individual words and formulate a phrase retaining the original's approximate meaning. I dislike "Double Check," but it satisfies this criterion (albeit in a misleading fashion, as discussed above). And I do understand the intent behind "Double Check," while "Spot Check" simply doesn't seem particularly relevant to the feature's core details (no offense). —David Levy 04:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

To me, an ambiguous term that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, only one of which is "correct", is misleading. In that sense I think "review" is misleadingly ambiguous, "pending" and "revision" are simply ambiguous, and "check" is closer to the right word. The point of the "double" or "spot" is to turn it into a phrase, and so long as the phrase is used consistently as a phrase I don't think it's necessary that its individual words "translate well"; whatever phrase we use is going to wind up taking on its own meaning in time anyway (see e.g. "notability"). Nifboy (talk) 05:07, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

1. I agree that "an ambiguous term that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, only one of which is 'correct', is misleading." In my opinion, this describes "Spot Check" (and to a lesser extent, "Double Check"). To me, "Spot Check" strongly conveys unintended connotations, and the intended connotations that you've cited (e.g. quickness and non-comprehensiveness) seem tangential at best.

2. Have you read Rob's explanation of what the Wikimedia Foundation is after? Our goal is not to come up with a slick phrase. It's to select a name that won't be confusing.

3. You're entitled to your opinion that the name need not translate well. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

4. See the "Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch" example below. If we wanted to invent a phrase based on the assumption that it will "wind up taking on its own meaning in time anyway," at least that one would carry the advantage of not actively misleading people via its literal meaning. Heck, "Flagged Revisions" would have worked in that respect (but we seek something clearer). —David Levy 06:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Clarification

Having read this message, my impression is that the field of candidates has been formally narrowed to "Pending Revisions" and "Double Check" (with insufficient time to backtrack and discuss other possibilities), but both of the other respondents (Emufarmers and FT2) have proposed different names. Have I misunderstood the situation? —David Levy 15:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

That's correct. We really need to have a term nailed down quickly, so it's hard to imagine how a completely open ended process can work for us here. That said, I don't think anyone minds if people want to brainstorm alternatives. Someone could come up with something magical that's better than either of the alternatives we presented. However, we suspect it's not likely, so everyone who wants to weigh in here should make sure they weigh in on the question of "Pending Revisions" versus "Double Check" if they have a preference of one over the other. -- RobLa (talk) 15:48, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

David: ^ This is a pretty perfect picture of why I don't have any faith in this entire FlaggedRevs implementation effort. Nobody involved on the Wikimedia side is on the up-and-up. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:26, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand. Please elaborate. —David Levy 04:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I mean that what's said can't be taken at face value when FlaggedRevs is the subject. In this particular case, someone made a statement that suggested that the FlaggedRevs team was actively brainstorming new names. The reality, as RobLa clarified above, is that they're really just choosing between the two pre-chosen names. In past cases, the statements surrounding FlaggedRevs have been intentionally ambiguous and/or subsequently and deliberately ignored. The FlaggedRevs saga has been marching along for years at this point. It'll be one more labs site, or one more test configuration, or more hardware purchases and re-examinations, or a better user interface or, now, better terminology, and then everything will be ready to go. Or so they say. A few more weeks pass, a few people start asking questions again, and it turns out that what you thought the final hurdle was isn't even close. And you find out that what you thought the hurdle itself was isn't even close. Nothing is as it seems with this entire affair. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

My interpretation of the mailing list message was that the team's brainstorming resulted in various suggestions that were narrowed down to two ("Pending Revisions" and "Double Check"). The above reply does not contradict this. —David Levy 05:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Additional discussion

You could call it fluffy bunnies for all I really care, but I don't think that either "Pending Revisions" or "Double Check" actually make any sense considering the actual workflow. The project page here substantially mis-represents the workflow as a Yes/No gate on every revision in which case the words "pending" or "double check" might actually make sense. What was approved by the community and implemented is different from the illustrations on the page.

Instead every edit is immediately made, there is no "pending" period to speak of, and many revisions can go without individual review. Instead, editing happens like normally and the software provides the ability to display an approved, and potentially older, version of the article by default to anons instead of the most recent. Tools are also provided to move that approval around manually and, in a few cases, automatically.

I have created an accurate description of the workflow here, and I strongly suggest you review it before contemplating terminology. This doesn't cover all of the behaviours, for example it's possible to remove the flags revisions and it's possible to flag revisions older than the most recently flagged (which is useful if the most recently flagged revision gets unflagged), the software also has support for many classes of flags and levels though we won't be using that functionality right now. But I believe this document covers the most important aspects of the behaviour.

In particular I would suggest you try to mentally replace whatever terminology you are considering with the ones used in the workflow description I created in order to see if they make sense.

The wider world will, no doubt, not get this right. No amount of well selected wording is going to prevent that. But it's important they _we_ describe it correctly especially since we actually have to use it. At the very least we shouldn't have people who don't understand the functionality choosing terms which actively promote the most popular misunderstandings. --Gmaxwell (talk) 01:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

My preference to be honest is still for "double check" I think it is easiest for people to understand. However for both this and pending revisions I feel it would be better as "edit" instead of revisions. It is a lot simpler for people who either don't have English as a first language (a lot of readers) or for people who just don't use the term "revision" as much. As someone (I can't remember who) said on the mailing list it also fits very well with "the encyclopedia anyone can edit". James (T C) 20:54, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

"Double check" is likely to confuse native and non-native English readers alike, as it seems to convey that two checks are being performed (and it's unintuitive to regard the initial submission as a "check"). It also fails to specify what is being checked.

"Edit" is inaccurate because it's the entire revision that is accepted or rejected. I would interpret "Pending Edits" or "Edit Review" to mean that the individual edits composing the revision are handled (and ultimately included or excluded) separately. —David Levy 21:01, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

James, "double check" means: edit - first check - second check. What is according to you the first und what the second check? By the way, "check" gives the impression that the article is thoroughly checked with regard to a lot of quality criteria... --Ziko (talk) 23:36, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

What's the point of all this? Why bother? This is an internal affair and it may be as far removed from plain English as ... notability. "Fluffy bunnies" may be over the top, but it could just as well be a totally meaningless, Kodak-style codeword. East of Borschov (talk) 20:56, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, this feature's deployment is expected to generate substantial media coverage (because it addresses a highly publicized problem). —David Levy 21:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah, if PR is the real concern it should've been clearly noted. Anyway, I was under the impression that instead of wholesome deployment it will be applied only to certain articles (as in this pic) in which case one should not expect substantial response. Now, if all unreviewed article would one day disappear from public view (by unregs) this would stir things up a bit. East of Borschov (talk) 09:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

1. No one has indicated that "PR is the real concern." I'm responding to your incorrect statement that "this is an internal affair" by noting that public perception/comprehension is a real concern.

2. Do you mean "wholesale"?

This is our response (at least for the time being) to a controversial situation, and I regard it as appropriate. Widespread perception to the contrary would lead not to reduced media coverage, but to the spin that "Wikipedia has failed to adequately address the problem."

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the feature's name will be the determining factor; I'm noting that we should anticipate significant attention either way. —David Levy 13:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree that this is just an internal affair, or at least it should be given that this is only a two-month trial. There will be a bit of media attention of course, but the problem warrants more attention than this new tool in our toolchest. Given that this English Wikipedia trial implementation is a watered down solution when compared to the German Wikipedia approach, it is not sensible to talk it up just yet. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:36, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

That this should be an internal affair is a reasonable position, but I've seen no indication that it will be. Public perception/comprehension has been discussed as a significant concern.

Keep in mind that we seek to select a long-term (potentially permanent) name, so the extent to which the feature is downplayed during its trial is of little relevance. —David Levy 14:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Feature rename redux

It looks like the discussion on the name is dying down, so I'd like to summarize what I think we've heard here:

1. There's no clear favorite out there. In addition to the two ideas we put forward ("Pending Revisions" and "Double Check"), there's been quite a bit of discussion around alternatives, for example: "Revision Review" and "Pending Edits".
2. There's are still some that aren't comfortable changing the name away from "Flagged Protection", but that doesn't appear to be a widely held view.
3. Some people like "Double Check", but some people dislike it a lot. The people who like it seem to be comfortable with the colloquial use of it, whereas the people that dislike it don't like the lack of precision and the possible confusion created by the use of the word "double".
4. "Pending Revisions" seems to be something most people would settle for. It's probably not the hands down favorite of too many people, but it doesn't seem to provoke the same dislike that "Double Check" does.
5. "Pending Edits" is a simplification of "Pending Revisions" that seems to have some support, as it replaces the jargony "Revision" with the easier "Edits"
6. "Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch" seems to have gathered a cult following. Yes, we have a sense of humor. No, we're not going there.  :-)

A little background as to where we're at. "Double Check" had an enthusiastic following at the WMF office, but we're not inclined to push that one if it's going to be a fight (it's far from the unanimous choice at WMF anyway). "Revision Review" seems to be heading a bit too far into jargon land for our comfort. "Pending Revisions" is the compromise that seems to stand up to scrutiny. A variation such as "Pending Edits" or "Pending Changes" also seems acceptable to us.

That's where we stand now. If you haven't spoken up yet, now is the time, since we're only a couple of days from making a final decision on this. -- RobLa (talk) 22:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

As noted above, I like "Pending Revisions." If the word "revisions" is regarded as too uncommon (as some have opined), I would suggest "Pending Versions" as an alternative with the same meaning. ("Edits" or "changes" could be misinterpreted as references to the individual changes composing the revisions/versions.)

A major advantage of "Pending Versions" is that WP:PV is a virtually unused shortcut to Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves#A troublesome case, so it can easily be reassigned. Conversely, WP:PR is a shortcut to Wikipedia:Peer review linked from more than 6,000 pages, so it isn't realistically available.

No matter what name is selected, the community is highly likely to sometimes refer to it by its initials, so selecting a name whose initials aren't widely used in reference to another Wikipedia entity (as the initials PR are) would help to prevent confusion. —David Levy 22:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

How is "Revision Review" more jargony than "Pending Revisions"? The various proposed alternatives to "revisions" in "Pending Revisions" apply to "Revision Review" too, so we could have "Edit Review" or "Changes Review" or "Version Review" (although "Revision Review" is still my favourite). --Tango (talk) 05:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Pending...

Per the above, if we go with "Pending (something)", we need to figure out what that something is. Candidates are:

• Pending Revisions - wins on precision, loses on abbreviation (PR)
• Pending Changes - up until very recently, this is what the tab was named. We could always name it back. David expresses some concern above about the confusion between the changes themselves and the resulting revisions, but I think we may be getting overly precise for this particular purpose
• Pending Edits - Suggested on wikien-l. Downside is that we probably couldn't use it as a tab name, because it looks too close to "edit"
• Pending Versions - David's suggestion above. I'm still making up my mind about this one.

I'm leaning toward "Pending Changes" on this list, but that's just me. -- RobLa (talk) 23:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I like "changes" or "edits" as much more readable than "revisions" or "versions", the latter of which sounds more like a preview of coming MediaWiki software changes. Nifboy (talk) 00:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

"Pending versions" seems the most clear of the "Pending x" choices to me. PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:40, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

If we are going to consider the PR effect of the abbreviation, Pending Changes will be PC, which is short for "politically correct". IMO, not a good option.

The UI for 'Pending ...' could be '<Edit> | <Pending>'; not great, but it isn't scary or difficult to comprehend. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I think a larger concern with "PR" is WP:PR (peer review), which is in pretty widespread use. WP:PC is much more easily commandeered if needed. -- RobLa (talk) 19:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Renaming "Flagged Protections" to "Pending Changes"

Posted to the Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List and the English Wikipedia Mailing List by Rob Lanphier at 22:25, 28 May 2010 (UTC):

Hi everyone,

After much debate, we've settled on a name for the English Wikipedia implementation of FlaggedRevs: "Pending Changes". This is a slight variation on one of the finalists ("Pending Revisions") which has the benefit of using the less jargony term "changes" instead of "revisions". The MediaWiki extension will continue to be named "FlaggedRevs", but the greatly simplified subset of functionality that editors and readers on en.wikipedia.org will see will be referred to as "Pending Changes" in the user interface, help documentation, and other places that we'll talk about this feature for non-developers working on English Wikipedia.

Thanks everyone for weighing in! We'll be updating the message strings on flaggedrevs.labs to reflect the new name: http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Message_updates

Rob

How will the name be used?

Hmmm, I must have missed this discussion, though I don't object to the chosen name. What I am wondering, though, is: how exactly will the name be used? (This is probably something that should have been settled before deciding on a name.) The comment above says this system '...will be referred to as "Pending Changes" in the user interface, help documentation, and other places'. That's not very clear. What we need to think about is exactly how a page will appear under this system, and how it will appear when someone edits it. Is it going to say, for instance: 'this page is currently under the effect of Pending Changes, and your edit will be held until a reviewer approves it'? Or simply 'these changes are pending'? Or what? (It's safe to assume there will be a WP:Requests for Pending Changes and a Category:Articles with changes pending in any case...) Robofish (talk) 22:35, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi there...sorry you missed the discussion. Figure 3 on Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Terminology shows how we're planning to use the name (though replace "Pending Revisions" with "Pending Changes"). You're right that we need to think through all of the use cases. Please feel free to add use cases that I'm missing to the terminology page. I'll be updating the diagrams soon, but feel free to crack open Inkscape and edit those too if you feel inspired and can beat me to the punch. -- RobLa (talk) 03:14, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Going away from protection

A big downside of this name is that it goes away from 'protection'. The community has approved this implementation to use it as an alternative to classic page protection. With 'pending changes', it's no longer apparent that it is a form of protection, and that protection can be applied only in special circumstances. The community has agreed to an implementation where FlaggedRevs is used as a form of protection, flagged protection is a new level of protection. From the beginning, this seemed to be understood by the developers, for that purpose Aaron has actually integrated the interface to put articles subject to FlaggedRevs in the protection interface. I think the PR concern is misplaced, since with this move people may start thinking this means it'll be used more massively, no longer as an exceptional protection, you know this is the most important issue with respect to Flagged Revisions. It would be going too far away from the proposal to no longer view this implementation as adding a new protection level. Cenarium (talk) 14:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Are you proposing we reopen the naming discussion? If so, do you think we should delay the launch of this feature? -- RobLa (talk) 00:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I have no major objection to the rename of the feature, but we should preserve the intended use of it here. Especially now that 'protection' is no longer in the name, we should make sure to note in the documentation that the feature is intended to be used as a form of protection, as consensus determined.

I also think that there's no conflict in referring to the act of putting a page under pending changes as flagged protection. Cenarium (talk) 13:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

"Unaccept"

I unaccept that unaccept is a word anyone should ever say without being immediately struck down by the vocabulary gods. Can we get a plain English word here? I suggest any one of "reject", "deny", "repel", "veto", "disallow" or "exclude".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Based on what I was just told, I think I misunderstood. I thought hitting unaccept was to reject an edit, but if it's for undoing the acceptance, the word makes a lot more sense.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:35, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yup, "unaccept" is something we're thinking about making less prevalent in the user interface because it's really an odd way of manipulating the article history. We are planning to implement a "reject" button but that hasn't been implemented yet. The design is a tricky one to get right, so I'd encourage your feedback on it. There's already a discussion about the "reject" button on the talk page for the spec which I'd encourage you to weigh in on. -- RobLa (talk) 14:15, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I had to manually accept my own change

Regardless of whether or not my edit was in error, I thought this was strange. The article List of common misconceptions is pending-change protected. A user I didn't recognize tried to put a pp-semi tag on the article. I undid the change (see diff). And then I noticed my edit appeared as a "pending change" which I then had to accept manually.

What's going on here? I thought it was odd to have to approve my own edit. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I had just that minute semi-protected the page per a request at WP:RFPP. Probably some sort of odd correlation there, but not entirely sure. Jmlk17 17:54, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

It is both semi-protected and PC-protected. You forget to remove the pending changes protection. After you semi-protected the page, another edit was made that was never approved. You added the semi-protection template after that, which was then approved by someone else. Amatulic undid that, returning it to the unreviewed version. Therefore it was not automatically accepted. Reach Out to the Truth 19:55, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly...

It appears that the rate of reviewing pending changes has come to slow down recently. I just today found a long list of changes a moment ago, and reviewed three of them; one was about 45 minutes after it was initially made. The list is being updated now, but I found this interesting. EDIT: I just had one an hour old now, shortly after posting. CycloneGU (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

There is no hurry, some of the pending protection is on quieter more obscure articles and it may take a little while for a reviewer with some understanding of the topic to come along. Off2riorob (talk) 21:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Quite true. I have approved some edits yesterday that were not spam, but I trusted were accurate; I did pass over a couple for the same reason as you stated, because the material I had no knowledge about. CycloneGU (talk) 18:14, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Forest fire

I'm concerned about the proliferation of discussion pages about PC, which means concerns about it aren't focused, which they need to be given that this is a trial. We have:

• Wikipedia:Pending changes and its talk page
• Help:Pending changes and its talk page
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Feedback and its as-yet-unused talk page
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Testing and its talk page
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Trial and its talk page
• Wikipedia:Pending changes/Terminology and its talk page

And now this noticeboard, which used to be Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue. It's adding to a sense of chaos. :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:47, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Do something about it! Beam 22:40, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Making a start on this now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I've merged quite a few of these into one. I think we now just have three main talk pages: Wikipedia talk:Pending changes, Wikipedia talk:Reviewing and Help talk:Pending changes. Perhaps that last one should be merged as well because there are queuies going unanswered over there. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Templates nominated for deletion

I have nominated Template:pp-pending and Template:pp-pending2 for deletion. Please comment at the discussion. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sole benefit?

(I would have thought this had been discussed enough, but who am I to argue with a bot that says my input is wanted? :-)

In a quick reivew of the archives I did not see any discussion of what seems to be the sole benefit of this change. Consider that, currently, if someone slaps a bunch of vulgarities onto a page, they are publicly visible immediately and until some editor reverts them. And for some brief period Wikipedia is besmirched. As proposed, such edits (almost universally anonymously) would be held in abeyance for some period, then automatically (right?) made visible to the general public. To revert them would still require editor intervention, so there is no change whatsoever in the editor effort required. The sole benefit is to reduce public visibility of these rudenesses. Which might also reduce the inclination towards such vandalism, and even get Wikipedia unblocked in various schools and libraries that have high sensitivity to these vulgarities. This is a very laudable goal. But it might be better achieved by simply blocking anonymous editing. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:47, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

A complex solution in search of a (non) problem. Vandalism gets quickly reverted anyway. North8000 (talk) 01:07, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

You bring up a Foundation issue, so your argument is invalid. As are those of the tens of others who keep comparing this to banning anonymous editing. Even I'm not so extreme as to consider that as even a remote possibility. Everyone needs to stop bringing it up. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 03:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

So perhaps I should have left off the last sentence, as it tends to attract lightning to the disparagement of anything else that gets said. My point was that even flashes of vulgarities injure Wikipedia, and blocking that is the one benefit of this proposal. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the point is that 99% of Wikipedia's readers would never see the vandalism if it is PC protected. Only logged in editors see the latest version. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:11, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly! It's not about editor effort, it's about improving the quality of what the Wikipedia-reading public actually see. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Formatting

I think that the bar at the top of an article indicating that it has Pending Changes is rather obtrusive and unnecessary. It is very big and irritating compared to the other indicators, which are all different types of locks, which sit barely noticeable up in the corner of the page. Some of the locks indicate situations which are even more open than PC, so I see no reason why PC shouldn't be represented by some color of lock as well. In fact, I would bet a lot of IPs are turned away by the banner, who would just overlook a little padlock in the corner and go about their edits. In short, I suggest we represent PC, instead of with a banner, with a little padlock in the corner like all the other forms of protection. Sithman VIII !! 17:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you. However the box is not just for display - it has functionality as well. It tells you whether you're reading the latest version and if you hover over it, there is some more details. Therefore we would have to think about whether this functionlity is useful and if so, how to incorporate it into a smaller icon. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Update coming soon

Hi everyone - just to let you know that we have an update to this page coming soon. We'll be publishing some statistics soon which outline per page metrics on revisions under Pending Changes. Nimish Gautam and Devin Finzer (Devin is an intern that is working for Wikimedia Foundation this summer) are working on some statistics. See Wikipedia talk:Pending changes/Metrics for more. -- RobLa (talk) 17:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Oddity

I just had an interesting experience. I was checking a change to Ike Davis which had been accepted. I unaccepted it, as the information that had been changed was incorrect. I then went in to edit the pending change so that it would reflect the correct information, but got the message that my changes had not yet been accepted. I then proceeded to accept my own change so that the article would be correct. I presume that shouldn't happen.

Also, I note that the unaccepted pending change still appears in the revision history, immediately prior to mine. I presume that shouldn't happen either, unless I'm doing something wrong. -Dewelar (talk) 04:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect on the latter. The revision that is unaccepted will appear in the revision history. It is still a revision, after all, but it never got to see the light of publicity.

As for the former...yes, I've done that too. CycloneGU (talk) 00:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

If you want to ban anonymous edits, ban anonymous edits.

This is a particularly half-assed solution to a non-problem and I advocate the immediate termination of the pending edits experiment.

I understand the need to protect important articles from vandalism. I particularly understand the importance of permitting edits from anonymous users. I understand the motivation of this experiment was to extend an invitation for anonymous users to edit articles that would have otherwise been semi-protected, requiring login.

The taste I have gotten of the real-world results of this experiment has been bitter and depressing. My constructive edit to the article Wiki has been repeatedly rejected by a number of users who are unwilling to discuss the issue. I have been undone multiple times based on what appears to be a presumption -- albeit, a rebuttable one -- that edits from anonymous users are by default destructive. Had I been logged in, I believe that these edits would have been treated in a far less disrespectful manner.

If this is the only thing Wikipedia can come up with to sustain the continued permission of anonymous IPs to edit, then frankly it is time to ban edits by users who are not logged in. 72.152.0.189 (talk) 08:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. If you were an established user, your edit probably would have stuck, as you do have a valid point about the material's relevance to the article. This being said, edit warring about the removal wasn't the best choice of action. ThemFromSpace 08:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The longer you've been editing at Wikipedia, the less seriously you take anon. IP edits. The anonymous Ip above is correct: had they been looged in, their edits would have been treated as carrying more weight.--Wetman (talk) 04:14, 29 July 2010 (UTC)--Wetman (talk) 04:14, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed.Jackson Peebles (talk) 23:38, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Banning anonymous edits is absolutely not what this is about - it's about the exact opposite! The vast majority of Wikipedia articles are open to anonymous editing, with a very small number semi-protected due to excessive vandalism. The "Pending changes" initiative is intended to open up some of those pages to anonymous editing again, thus minimizing the number of pages that can't be edited anonymously. And IP edits are not just rejected on the basis that they are assumed to be destructive - I have accepted many IP edits myself, and I have seen many more accepted by other reviewers. In the case of this specific example, I suggest discussing the issue on the Talk page would have been the sensible way forward, as with any disputed change. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:09, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, looking at what happened, it very easily could have occurred without pending changes existing. It's nice to see the IP did at least eventually take it to the talk page. And the people who reverted should have done a bit more explaining, at least the second time and later. Again, unrelated to PC. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:51, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

This also happened to me, albeit a registered user:

"The taste I have gotten of the real-world results of this experiment has been bitter and depressing. My constructive edit to the article Wiki has been repeatedly rejected by a number of users who are unwilling to discuss the issue. I have been undone multiple times ... "

--Zutam (talk) 10:52, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

That sounds more like just a content dispute than anything specifically to do with Pending Changes. As a confirmed registered user, your changes are never pending, but they're just as open to reversion as they always have been. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:29, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

The obvious solution is to (a) ban anonymous edits; and (b) ban vandals. Granting more power to admins – bless their obsessive little hearts – is simply a step toward dismantling the crux of Wikipedia: huge input from massively diverse sources, constantly improving and double-checking facts and bias. Taken to the logical conclusion, the proposed restriction on “accepting” edits will eventually result in no edits by anyone who is not authorized to “accept” edits. Wikipedia, RIP ca. 2015.DOR (HK) (talk) 10:23, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I've seen both sides of this way to much, there are many great IP editors that do a fine job, however the amount of effort that has to be expended to stop drive by vandalism has been out of control for many an article. More than a few of those pages I have to watch daily. Some like the War of 1812 have been more or less semi protected for years. Oh it gets removed but within a week it has to be restored. I feel like this is the right move.Tirronan (talk) 04:25, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that the only "issue" that this overly complex idea would help is truly random "drive by" vandalism. And those usually get fixed within minutes anyway, so it's a minor problem. Any true repetitive simple vandalism of the same page by the same user can be done just as easily with a spur-of-the-moment account(s) as with an IP, and this would just cause them to switch to the former. This idea is TOO MUCH COMPLEXITY, FOR TOO LITTLE EFFECT.North8000 (talk) 13:36, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Drive-by vandalism does not "get fixed": hard-working adults with lonmg Watchlists have to clean the scribbles off the walls. They do not "get fixed" by any stretch of the imagination.--Wetman (talk) 04:14, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Banning IP edits is a bad idea. It destroys the integral ideal of Wikis being open to all. There are a lot of people out there who's only access to t'interweb is using public computers and want to leave as little personal information on them as possible. Also, there are a lot of people out there who have difficulty remembering passwords and the like so write them down, but may not have their crib sheet on them (say at work or the library). There are also people who, while they have much to contribute, are unwilling to 'sign up' to anything (I have a friend like this - doesn't even have an e-mail). Vandalism, unfortunately, is always going to occur. Whether it's malicious, someone with a grudge, playfulness or simply someone seeing something from a different perspective (the Creation-Evolution Controversy article is a brilliant example for all of these). It also has to be considered that what one person considers vandalism another will see as a fair point. Where is WikiOpinions? (talk) 06:36, 22 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kendroche (talk • contribs) 06:33, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Stop wringing hands about banning IP edits - that's not our call, it's the Wikimedia Foundation's. I'm getting rather irritated that people keep bringing this nonissue up in re FraggedRevisions (usually in a form of defense of it). It's insulting to the developers who had to push this stuff out to satisfy the imbecilic American media's hype. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Carl Johnson)} 18:43, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Banning IP edits is not on the agenda. Do please have a look at the process under review, folks.--Wetman (talk) 04:14, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

"The permission is removed at the request of the user, the community, or the arbitration committee."

Seriously? It's handed out based on more or less nothing at all and it's supposed to be removed only by consensus, user request, or arbcom? Whose idea was that? I bring this up because some users are objecting on my talk page to my removing the right from an incompetent editor who has repeatedly shown they can't tell a good edit from a bad one. Was there actually a discussion about this somewhere? This seems horribly askew. Any admin can randomly hand it out to anyone without actually checking them out personally, but an admin who has checked them out and seen that they can't be trusted with any sort of advanced tools or permissions can't remove it? I was actually trying to be nice, sort of a warning shot to let them know they are on the edge of the abyss because of their poor judgement, now I've got users getting all process-wonky on me because I removed a user right. If this is policy, it needs to be changed. Either the tool belongs in the hands of trusted users only, or it doesn't. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:20, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Its a right that is given pretty freely and requires a very minimum of trust and you are attempting to remove it from a user and you have not even looked to see if he has misused it. Off2riorob (talk) 21:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Twinkle blacklisting or removal of rollback can be done by a single admin based on their assessment of the user, I'd like to know why this user right has this special status, and I'd like to see a link to the conversation that shows there is a consensus to support this status. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Let me ask you a direct question Rob: Do you think that user should be making these judgement calls, or is this just an objection based on process? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you have added the removal to his punishment and if you cannot show me that he has misused it then you should replace it, actually I don't really know apart from you have told me that you didn't look to see if he had misused it. What is your problem with asking at ANI to see if there is community support? Off2riorob (talk) 21:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Rob, don't you think this user has been at AN/I enough? After this and this, not to mention Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gobbleswoggler, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gobbleswoggler 2, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/gobbleswoggler 4, and Wikipedia:Editor review/gobbleswoggler...isn't this really an open-and-shut case where the community has already spoken enough times?  Frank  |  talk  21:43, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi gobbleswoggler here.I understand why beeblebrox took my rollback and reviewer rights off me now.I accept it so there is no point in arguing if i should have it or not.Gobbleswoggler (talk) 21:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, good. We can put that aspect of it behind us and move on to the larger issue: Why does this user right have this special status and where is the discussion wherein the community agreed that it should be so? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe the original discussion was here, and there was also this RfC. I myself have only read parts of those discussions, though I was aware of the results they produced with regards to how reviewer rights can be removed. —Soap— 21:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It is out of process to remove his reviewer rights without community support, and it is secondly out of process to do it and then open a discussion in an attempt to alter the guideline, it was this sort of Administrative action that the condition was inserted to avoid. Off2riorob (talk) 21:46, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I opened this discussion because if that is really the policy I think it ought to be changed. Exactly what process am I violating by seeking input on a policy talk page? Thanks for the links Soap, I'll read up on all that now. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:50, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The general understanding that we don't do something and then go and attempt to change the guidelines, we change the guideline and then do it. You have yet to show me that the editor misused this right in any way. Your reason for removal appears to be that he is not a trusted user in your opinion. If your can't demonstrate that he has misused the right then there is no reason to remove it and if there is no reason for you to remove it there is also no reason to alter the guideline. Off2riorob (talk) 22:06, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Didn't you know what the policy was before you blundered in Beeblebrox? Didn't it occur to you that it might be a good idea to find out out what the policy was before trying to chuck your weight around? Malleus Fatuorum 22:49, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Beeblebrox has done exactly what it was predicted that administrators would do, use the removal of this "right" as a punishment or a threat, in this case for some unspecified crime. Luckily though this "right" isn't worth spit anyway, so who cares. Just another demonstration of the inherent corruption in the present system of governance. Malleus Fatuorum 22:44, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The policy statement is vague and removal of the rights is not the focus of the trial. As Beeblebrox is part of the community and the editor in question has accepted removal of the right there really isn't any significant issue regarding the removal. If pending changes goes forward after the completion of the trial it would be reasonable to outline a more formal process for reviewer removal. Gerardw (talk) 00:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

• Yea, the exact case that started al this is a dead issue now that the user in question has agreed with the removal. And for the record, he was absolutely not a "trusted user" and I didn't do it to punish, I did it because he has shown a distinct pattern of exceptionally poor judgement. If some other admin feels it's soooo important for him to have it back they have my express permission to overturn my decision without concern of wheel warring.

With that out of the way we can return to the larger issue that was the reason I brought opened this discussion in the first place: I think it's bad policy to allow admins to hand out this user right willy-nilly based on nothing but edit counting and then severely restrict the circumstances under which it can be revoked. Looking at the previous conversations I can't say I see a strong consensus that this is how we should do it. So it seems further discussion of that issue may be warranted now that this out of the realm of the hypothetical and there are literally thousands of users that have been granted this user right. I don't have a problem with liberally handing it out, I think that's as it should be. It should also be easy to remove it if the user shows a lack of judgement and/or competence. We do the same thing for users that can't handle rollback or Twinkle, why is this being set on a higher plane? Beeblebrox (talk) 00:40, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Given the vagueness of the guideline, I think an admin removing the right clearly falls under the WP does not have firm rules fifth pillar WP:FIVEPILLARS. I just think it's a waste of time to worry about it now when the end of trial consensus could be pending changes suck; in that case, removal of reviewer right policy would be moot. Gerardw (talk) 00:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. You have a point there. Several actually. So, we take this back up if and when it is decided to carry on with pending changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Direct Question

Like many long standing Wikipedia editors who have not made the step-up to reviewer or administrator status, I contribute when and where I can, making as many corrections and improvements as possible. I am now fearful that we "ordinary" Wikipedians are being brought into the punishment regime going by the name "Pending Changes". My question is this; will "Pending Changes" restrict the use of Wikipedia for editors like me and the many like me who are not reviewers or admins? doktorb _words^deeds 12:51, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Calling it a "punishment regime" is a little offputting... but, anyway. The short answer is "no, not really". The long answer is "it depends on what you mean by restrict". A small number of pages, which would otherwise have been protected to restrict the number of people allowed to edit them, have now been switched to a system where edits get checked before being shown to "the general public", ie unregistered users, to allow vandalism to be reverted without being prominent.

The ability to edit these pages, by anyone, is open; you are in fact quite possibly able to edit more pages than you were before, given that some pages transitioned to PC off full (admin-only) protection. As a registered user, you will always see the most recent edit, so it will make no practical difference to the way you read the site when logged-in. The only difference is that some of your edits, on a small proportion of pages, will need to be approved before they are shown (as the default view) to third party readers. Shimgray | talk | 13:13, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this description contrary to the description given on the project page. It seems to say to only edits by unregistered and newly registered users go through that complicated mess, implying that edits by non-new registered users go directly to the article (?) BTW my opinion is to dump this plan. Makes a complicated mess out of something that should be simple, and all of that to solve a non-existent problem. Vandalism gets quickly reverted. North8000 (talk) 15:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I glossed it slightly because it's complicated - though in practice, since there are so few "pending" edits at any given moment, it's unlikely an autoconfirmed user's edits would be following an as-yet-unchecked one, and so the matter is a little academic.

As for quickly reverted... well, that's only one part of it. Think statistics. A popular page can easily see 20,000 views in a day; that's about fifteen every minute. An average reversion time of say a minute and a half - which I think is the right order of magnitude - then means the vandalism's still been served up to ~20-25 readers, which is really 20-25 more than we'd desire. Whilst vandalism may be quickly reverted, we still publish an awful lot of it to the world!

Consider also the amount of time wasted vetting an anonymous edit to a popular page under the normal system. You look at it, say "ah, vandalism", and revert it - fine. But if it's not vandalism, you just leave it be. Someone else sees the edit, opens it up to look, decides its not vandalism, leaves it be. Repeat ad nauseam, because of the lack of information - whilst we are trivially able to indicate something is bad by reverting it, we don't have an easy way of saying "this edit is fine, I've checked it", and as a result we force our vandalism-patrollers to do a vast amount of duplicated work. The problem is that it's not an obvious inefficiency - it's hidden - and so we don't tend to realise that something like this can help offset it. Shimgray | talk | 15:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I am worried that this creates a backlog of edits and punishes the many for the behaviour of the few. I will see how it goes in practice doktorb _words^deeds 13:34, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The trial ends on August 15, so we'll see how it is evaluated and further information as to possible permanent implementation will be determined after that time. CycloneGU (talk) 14:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my anecdotal experience has been that there are rarely more than half a dozen pages with pending edits at any one time; the list is usually less than that, occasionally completely clear, and I've never noticed it as high as ten - this is from a pool of about 2,000 mostly well-trafficed pages. The fears of a massive backlog haven't been borne out, although it's debatable if this is partly due to the novelty effect.

As to punishing the many for the misbehaviour of the few, well, as I noted before these are pages which would otherwise have been protected; the "many" are arguably less hindered in editing now than they were before. Shimgray | talk | 14:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Doktorbuk, another process that can be built in is the automatic "granting" of reviewer permissions to editors after a certain minimal contribution pattern; for example, after 100 mainspace edits and a minimum of 30 days since registration. After taking two minutes reviewing your contributions, it's clear to me that you're a very well qualified editor and I'd be very pleased to "flip the switch" for you; just let me know on my talk page. This automatic granting of the permission hasn't been done during the trial because it is, well, a trial. Risker (talk) 15:15, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Dear doktorb, don't worry! In my home-wiki DE:WP we have a similar system up and running for more than two years – for all (>1.1 Mio) articles. Reviewer rights are automatically granted after 500 edits or after request. Of course the queue of articles is quite long (maximum time lag for 'complicated articles' about 14 days), but review of small changes generally takes less than one hour. BTW, as of today there are 9,505 reviewers in the German wiki (1.044,185 registered users; 23,299 active within the last 30 days). In other words, only ≈1% of registered users are reviewers, but ≈50% of the active ones. →Alfie^±Talk 22:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

One anomaly

One problem with all this and it relates to the autoconfirmation thing. Recently, despite not being a German speaker, I've made a few contributions to the German wiki where pending changes are also used. My edits have mostly been to election articles where the numbers, rather than the language, are important. There, despite me having made over 8000 edits to various wikis in a five year period, during which time I've never been blocked, my edits are in deep freeze until someone okays them. I find that a bit patronising and illogical. So in the case of the pending changes trial here, is there anyway to use a bit more commonsense and autoconfirm users based not only on contributions to en.wikipedia but based on contributions to other wikis? On the valid basis that someone who's made a few thousand constructive edits on another wiki over a few years is highly unlikely to turn vandal here? Valenciano (talk) 23:40, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Valenciano! See my reply to doktorb about de:WP. Just checked the current policy:

You are automatically granted active reviewer's status (German: Sichter; you may review edits of other editors) if all of the following applies

• you are registered at de:WP (or by SUL) for at least 60 days
• 300 edits or 200 edits which have been reviewed
• 15 edits, each of them have a time interval of at least three days to next older one
• 5 edits within the last 30 days
• at least 12 different articles have been edited
• in at least 30 edits the edit summary was used
• a maximum of 5 edits were reverted by reviewers or admins

You are automatically granted passive reviewer's status (your own edits are autoconfirmed) if all of the following applies

• you are registered for at least 30 days
• 150 edits or 50 edits which have been reviewed
• Seven edits, each of them have a time interval of at least three days to next older one
• at least eight different articles have been edited
• in at least 20 edits the edit summary was used (including autosummaries)
• never were blocked

If you want to get reviewer-status earlier, you may apply for it at de:WP:GSV/R. There's ar rule (but not a policy!) that you have to be registered, have actively edited for at least two months, and have at least 200 edits. Manual reviewer status was granted in the past to editors from other wikis if they had a long editing history in their home-wikis. Click on Antrag stellen (=file an application) to ask for reviewer rights and add the page to your watchlist. Reviewer rights are granted if the application is tagged with “Dieser Abschnitt kann archiviert werden.” (=This section can be archived) without further comments. You can try to negotiate otherwise.

If you don't have reviewer status, you may ask for a quick review of a particular edit (maybe the best solution if you only rarely edit in the German wiki). Use de:WP:GSV/A and click on Neuen Sichtungswunsch eintragen (=Register new review request); in the template replace Artikelname by the name of the article.

Even if you opt for not going for active review, you don't have to worry that your edits will not be reviewed at all. The maximum time for a review in de:WP is approx. two weeks. →Alfie^±Talk 23:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Unaccept button greyed out

Ignoring grammar and English for a moment, why is my unaccept button always greyed out? — Blue-Haired Lawyer 16:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I think I get it now. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 16:56, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Some advice, please?

A page I watch, List of common misconceptions, showed up with an unapproved pending change. When I looked at it, I saw the author was attempting to add the following to a paragraph regarding bulls' (in a bullfight) inability to see color:

The red color is used to mask the blood that comes from the bull during and at the end of the bull fight.

There was no citation or reference, so I was skeptical; it sounds like BS to me, but it might be true--you never know. However, I've not been able to find any advice on how hard-headed we are supposed to be with Pending changes, so I accepted it.

I did add a {{Citation needed|date=August 2010}} tag before I saved it, though.

Any advice--or a pointer to a policy paper I missed--will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 01:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a reasonable approach per my reading of the policy. Other editors disagree. See discussion above Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback#Users_accepting_false_additions. Gerardw (talk) 01:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, generally speaking pending changes should only be used to prevent blatant vandalism or incorrect material in BLPs from being displayed. Other issues should be dealt with as you normally would without pending changes. - EdoDodo ^talk 02:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I think this is one of those cases where the "true" nature of Wiki overrides the strict implementaion of PC. The citation needed tag is the tool editors have usually to deal with dubious edits. Why should PC somehow devalue "citation needed" ? As it happens, I don't think any of the pages on my watchlist are coming up with unapproved pending changes yet, unless I am looking in the wrong place (t'is likely) so if I get to this bridge I'll tell you how fast the water is flowing...doktorb _words^deeds 03:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with and like what pending changes does, it does need some guidelines on the approving of material which a reviewer may not be as familiar with. We all make mistakes, but some editors will blatantly and blindly accept edits that may not be spam, but are in fact infactual and end up having to be corrected by a third editor either immediately or later on. Mistakes will happen - heck, I've made them - but more care should be taken by reviewers to only accept edits that are certain not to be infactual, and not hide behind a policy that absolves them of any wrong by accepting infactual edits. In other words, if you do not know the material is either true or untrue, and don't know how to find this out, let another reviewer handle it!

UncleBubba, that is a good policy, maybe I will take that into consideration on my own reviews. CycloneGU (talk) 15:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems like there is still quite a bit of active discussion of this issue and it's happening all over the place. Thanks, everyone, for pointing me to some discussions I hadn't seen--I wish I'd found them without having to ask! I think I was reasonably close to correct in the actions I recounted earlier, at least until these discussions have run their course and some semblance of consensus is reached. Thanks again! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 04:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Why, as in UncleBubba's case above, would an editor "accept" a change where they actually didn't know one way or the other? Won't this pending change create a false sense of Wikipedia's being "vetted and approved"? --Wetman (talk) 18:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Aren't we trying to enable good edits while stopping bad edits? As the degree of review increases, the need for editors to justify their edits increases. As I understand it, the citation needed tag demands a citation in the article. In the case of the red cape in a bullfight, I agree that there should be a real citation in the text. In many other instances, however, it should be acceptable for comments that justify the edit to include information that the reviewer finds convincing, even if they cannot be sure of the issue from their own knowledge. We need to be careful to prevent edits of content where few people have access to the source materials that references are citing. Just as we need to require citations sometimes, also, reviewers will hopefully be sufficiently familiar with the documents cited that they agree that the citation supports the edit. Just as the pending changes policy was introduced to allow a broader array of people to approve changes on pages that were in dispute, so we need to remember that, depending on the degree of the dispute, different levels of argumentation may be appropriate to maintain the quality of our content. -- Peterbbishop (talk) 18:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

We are trying to uphold m:Founding principles, specifically #2. Pending changes is to allow more editors to contribute and is orthogonal to the existing quality control measures. Gerardw (talk) 22:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

If an edit isn't vandalism (or blatantly erroneous in its submission), it should be approved, regardless of the factual accuracy. Approving the edit as a reviewer doesn't prevent you from then acting as an editor in removing the addition or, as UncleBubba did, requesting a citation. I would have flat-out removed it myself (after approving it), as such a claim is absurd. Red may have become the color of the cape used in the faena as a result of some symbolic correlation to blood, but it would do nothing to hide blood. It is purely tradition. Of course, due to the coincidental nature of the claim (red being the same color as blood), I'd still do a cursory search for some information that might support it (there is none).
--K10wnsta (talk) 19:08, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

There is still a misconception about this, so it definitely needs to be clarified. There is absolutely no point in accepting an edit which you are then going to revert. It is not just vandalism which this method of protection can be used to catch. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:34, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Permissions for users from other Wikipedias

Consider an example user who has a long revision history on the German Wikipedia, but only a handful of edits on the English Wikipedia. Should this user be granted review permissions here?

I know of at least one language Wikipedia that considers itself sovereign and thus would not grant permissions in this case. But such an attitude seems xenophobic. What, if any, will be our official policy on this? --pmj (talk) 17:52, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Unless I am mistaken, you must have a certain number of edits on the English Wikipedia. I do not believe the English one is the one that thinks itself sovereign, though, and thus I also suggest there might be a guideline for global edits. This is something we will have to sort out at the time this gets implemented permanently, if such happens; the trial will be ending in roughly a week from now. CycloneGU (talk) 19:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be assumed that familiarity with other Wikipedias makes an editor familiar with our guidelines. There are chronic problems in the music articles with editors from Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia making edits that English Wikipedia editors tend to class as vandalism just because the guidelines for chart inclusion and formatting are so radically different. When looked at more closely, the editors are just translating material from their home version and porting it here.—Kww(talk) 20:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I was going to emphasize the "if". IMHO, this whole thing is too much complexity (especially taking away the feedback loop of seeing changes, including multi-step changes) chasing too little of a problem (vandalism already gets quickly reverted) North8000 (talk) 10:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Had to accept my own edit

Look at this history page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iker_Casillas&action=history

Note that in my first edit, I had to accept my own change. The second edit I made was automatically accepted.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Why?

BTW, the load times for PCP articles really suck. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:06, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

An edit is only automatically accepted if you revert to a version which has already been accepted. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:44, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Two month trial of Pending Changes?

If there is a two month trial of the Pending Changes review process, starting June 15, then we are approaching the end of the trial. I have reviewer status, but I have only reviewed one article. I looked at another article for review, and decided that I did not know enough about the particular subject to decide, so I left it for others.

From the statistics, it seems that most articles to be reviewed are reviewed rather promptly. Other than that, how will the success of this review process be judged? --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

One must also acknowledge that "success of this experiment" and "is it a good or bad idea to implement this" are two different questions. North8000 (talk) 11:16, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Closure

Time to make a decision since the two months are over tomorrow, please see Wikipedia:Pending changes/Closure, we need to organize the discussions. Cenarium (talk) 11:28, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ability to view PC by Wikiproject

I wish the ability to view pending changes by Wikiproject. This would allow editors to observe just the articles within their area of expertise. I think it would only generate more people interested in reviewing articles. Any work to implement something like this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:14, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

archiving

Should we start archiving this page ... it's getting long and unwieldy; on the other hand their are currently active pages [[7]] referencing sections of it, and archiving would break the links.Gerardw (talk) 02:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal of another trial

I would like to proposal another trial which will generate numerical data to help us judge the benefits and risks of pending changes. Here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion the test went very well and with minimal problems and we should activate this functionality fully and extend it to all the protected articles and possibly Biographies of Living people. If the concensus is that the functionality isn't ready though I would like to recommend a larger group, perhaps all protected articles this time to really see if this is useful. IMO the first limited run test allowed us to test the process and the coding to work out any bugs and it seems to work pretty well. Testing it on a larger group now would allow us to gather data on its effects and should give us a much broader understanding of its benefit. Other than the pages loading a bit slower, a few minor glitches and that another editor must review and approve the edit (making more work for them) I think its ready to go live. --Kumioko (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

If Doc James wants a wikipedia with Pending Changes, he is free to request a fork or mirror. The mere fact that it is still operating is bad faith. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:21, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes Kumioko if this goes live as I think it should than I will gather further feedback from the WP:MED group and hopefully begin this trail. It seems that PC works best on certain articles and determining which articles these are is still important.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:39, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

• It was only meant to be a trial. The results and reception are somewhat less than stellar. Judging from the straw poll, there is no consensus for continuing with this experiment, so it should be stopped forthwith. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:24, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget there are about 500,000 blp articles. I am not convinced either way. Even reviewing happens at several levels - well a continuum:

• Not nonsense
• Not obvious vandalism
• Change supported by external sources
• Change reasonable to someone with good knowledge of the subject
• Change reasonable to expert in field
• Change reasonable to expert in subject

Rich Farmbrough, 00:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC).

Removing PC from all articles

A user has taken on removing PC from a large number of articles. Is this what has been decided? As could someone direct me to where it was decided? Thanks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Seems a little hasty. Rich Farmbrough, 00:04, 18 September 2010 (UTC).

Pending changes still in effect on some articles

How many articles were put under pending changes during the trial period? In a sense, the trial period has not ended so long as these articles remain under pending changes. I found one: Hernando de Soto. It is highly discouraging to see my changes *not appear*; this violates the principle of WYSIWYG, and more importantly it gives the lie to the claim that on Wikipedia anyone can edit. Anyone can edit only if first allowed to by some self-selected reviewer. I certainly am not motivated to fix any vandalism I may find, considering that the vandalism will remain for an indeterminate time until someone else gets around to reviewing my pending changes. I expect soon you'll be backlogged on pending changes just as you are backlogged now on Recent Changes. That's not a step forward for this project. Aren't Recent Changes patrollers supposed to revert only obvious vandalism? What about Pending Changes? My pending change was not vandalism, yet it was discarded. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 04:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, your resubmittal went through. Anyone can edit and anyone can have their edits reverted. Gerardw (talk) 23:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

About 2000. Rich Farmbrough, 00:04, 18 September 2010 (UTC).

Roadmap for Pending Changes published

We've published the roadmap for Pending Changes, which includes a near-term minor release in early November, as well as a comprehensive review of the feature. Please read that document for more details. Thanks! -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 01:04, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Can someone explain why an undone edit was marked "accepted"?

Why does this edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twitter&diff=prev&oldid=385468204

show up as accepted, when:

• the very next edit undid it, so it should not have been auto-accepted by that edit
• this appears to be the user's first edit (unless all their other edits have been oversighted!), so they should have been classified by the software as a new user, and therefore their edit should not have been instantly auto-accepted

I am concerned by two possibilities here:

1. The possibility that Pending Changes is not working as people would expect it to, from reading the description on this page
2. The possibility that statistics generated about the trial may be inaccurate, one way or another

Could anyone explain what is going on here and/or allay either of my concerns?--greenrd (talk) 09:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

It was listed as "accepted" because User:Dr.K. reviewed it and accepted it. It was reverted as being unencyclopedic and a (non-obvious) copyright violation, which aren't reasons not to accept the edit. Hut 8.5 10:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see now that this information is shown in the History tab. I didn't see it because I jumped straight to the diff page from my Watchlist. Sorry for wasting your time!--greenrd (talk) 11:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

RfC on wording of poll relating to Pending Changes

There is an RfC on the wording of a proposed poll relating to Pending Changes at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Quick poll on interim use of Pending Changes. DuncanHill (talk) 06:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Comparing rate of change with/without "pending changes"

Thanks, Howief - very helpful! You say One could potentially argue that an article with under a certain level of edits per day is simply not worth putting under pending changes. But since there is little cost to listing something as "Pending changes" I don't see why that would be true. What I'd really like to see is a comparison of the rate of approved changes to articles before and after being put under "pending changes" If there is a significant increase, and if volunteers don't tire of reviewing changes, then it seems like it is helpful. --NealMcB (talk) 20:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, this is not what I wanted to see.

• I want to see a comparison between before, during and after the Pending Changes trial.
• I have a feeling that the edits are getting less with higher unemployed numbers through the economic crisis.
• If I'm right, we had never less than 5 reverts per minute on Wikipedia:Huggle before the Pending Changes trial.
• The first and second question is: Does the Pending Changes trial frustrate anonymous editors? Are their destructive/ reverted edits getting less overall and on the Pending Changes trial articles?
• The third and fourth question is: Does the Pending Changes trial frustrate anonymous editors? Are their construtive edits/ nonreverted edits getting less overall and on the Pending Changes trial articles?
• --Chris.urs-o (talk) 09:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I copied comments from Wikipedia:Pending changes/Metrics/Preliminary Analysis, so that somebody might read it. We need a useful statistics. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 11:27, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Chris, could you or someone else who is interested in this do a manual comparison on one article you think provides a particularly useful example? I'd like to see that before asking our already stretched analytics folks for another run at the stats. Since most of the articles were previously semi-protected, it didn't seem like it lent itself to that type of comparison in bulk. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 19:57, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

(:p) Ok, let's see what I can get. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 03:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Tried something useful here: Wikipedia:Pending changes/Metrics/Preliminary Analysis. The IP behaviour changes too much over time, though :( --Chris.urs-o (talk) 11:55, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Another big problem is regression to the mean. Rich Farmbrough, 00:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC).

Would Pig be a useful example? 69.3.72.249 (talk) 19:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

How many Huggle reverts do you think we get per minute now? When I Huggle it is probably at a peak rate much faster than that - with about 2-3 other Hugglers going at the same time, but inevitably something happens that need a few minutes investigation. Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC).

Well, I thought Huggle is more time under 5 reverts per minute now, than before the begin of the Pending Changes trial. If IP vandals attack articles after they are listed as under Pending Changes protection, than this feature must be good for Wikipedia. But, it might be better that only sysops and reviewers have access to the list of the articles under Pending Changes. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 02:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Straw poll on Interim Usage of Pending Changes

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on Interim Usage. DuncanHill (talk) 13:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The straw poll says, "Jimbo asked the Foundation to work on a new version [of Pending Changes] to address the most common concerns which could be addressed in software in a reasonable period of time. It has been announced that a new version is slated for release on November 9." Is there any information available about how the new version will be different than the current one, and if so, where? Thanks. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 00:30, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Here's the roadmap: mw:Pending Changes enwiki trial/Roadmap -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 10:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Liability issues

This was asked before the two-month trial began, and has come up a few times since. I'm not aware of it ever being answered. What advice has the Foundation received about the effects on editors' liability of Pending Changes? DuncanHill (talk) 12:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

There was a discussion about it on one of the Flagged Revisions pages where Mike Godwin commented, and I think he said something along the lines of "editors could potentially be held liable but we're not really sure". Hut 8.5 13:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Found it: Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_revisions/Archive_8#Legal_liability_under_a_sighter_system. Hut 8.5 13:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

ec.As I understand liability and I am not a legal expert at all .. there would be strong mitigating factors and accepting or reviewing someone else's contribution that in the small chance that it turned out to be defamation or libel a good faith reviewer would not be fully responsible for that contribution. The chances of a personal legal case arising from such an acceptance of someone else's contribution are in the present environment and as regards previous precedents minuscule to non existent imo. Off2riorob (talk) 13:53, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Hut 8.5, so the answer is they haven't a clue what effect it could have for editors. DuncanHill (talk) 13:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Quotes to keep in mind: "It's primarily that WMF is not insured to give legal advice to community members. We run an encyclopedia, not a free legal clinic" and "We're not your lawyers". -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

We could be potentially held liable for anything we do on line or off. PCs changes nothing.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It means you're actively accepting an edit—deciding it should be visible to a larger readership—rather than passively editing after someone else has made it. It does change the emphasis in terms of responsibility. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 05:38, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• Scary. :-( --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Just stay anonymous. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Scope, deployment, and removal

Current table:

Interaction of Wikipedia user groups and page protection levels

	Unregistered or newly registered	Confirmed or autoconfirmed	Extended confirmed	Template editor  ★	Admin	Interface admin	Appropriate for (See also: Wikipedia:Protection policy)
No protection	Normal editing						The vast majority of pages. This is the default protection level.
Pending changes	All users can edit Edits by unregistered or newly registered editors (and any subsequent edits by anyone) are hidden from readers who are not logged in until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or administrator. Logged-in editors see all edits, whether accepted or not.						Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism, BLP violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users.
Semi	Cannot edit	Normal editing					Pages that have been persistently vandalized by anonymous and registered users. Some highly visible templates and modules.
Extended confirmed	Cannot edit		Normal editing				Specific topic areas authorized by ArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, or high-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive.
Template	Cannot edit			Normal editing			High-risk or very-frequently used templates and modules. Some high-risk pages outside of template space.
Full	Cannot edit				Normal editing		Pages with persistent disruption from extended confirmed accounts.
Interface	Cannot edit					Normal editing	Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects central to operation of the site or that are in other editors' user spaces.
★  The table assumes a template editor also has extended confirmed privileges, which is almost always the case in practice.
Other modes of protection: Create protection Move protection Upload protection Office protection Cascade protection

I think that the effect of "immediately visible" for PC-protected pages is overkill and contradicts the effect of PC protection: pending changes should still be suspended until they are accepted by a reviewer that can edit the page (not applicable to pages with full protections), or by an admin.

Shouldn't there exist PC protection too for semi-protected pages, i.e. where anonymous or new users could not edit, but others that are non-admins and non-reviewers (i.e. just confirmed or autoconfirmed users) would have their changes needing review by reviewer or admin against possibly dangerous edits ?

And why reviewers and admin edits are automatically accepted and immediately visible by all ? I think it would be useful, even for them, to delay their own acceptation, notably when editing complex templates. I think they should be able to delay the acceptation, before confirming these edits themselves. This would allow them to perform immediate corrections, in multiple edits during these tests, before putting the changes online (without requiring them to create complex sandbox versions and separate test pages that may forget many cases).

So I propose to remove "visible immediately" from Level 1 and Level 2 PC-protected pages, and replace them by "visible after accept" ; it should require an explicit accept action by admins and reviewer (including by themselves), as an additional step that they could perform after reviewing their own changes and their effects :

Wikipedia users, page protections, and page edits

	Anonymous	New	Autoconfirmed, Confirmed, Bots	Reviewer	Administrator, Admin bots
No protection	can edit; visible immediately
Pending-changes protection	can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept			can edit; visible after accept; can accept
Semi-protection	cannot edit; cannot accept		can edit; visible immediately
Semi-protection + Pending-changes protection			can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept	can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept
Full protection	cannot edit; cannot accept				can edit; visible immediately
Full protection + Pending-changes protection					can edit; visible after accept; can accept

Note that in this table, there are still two levels of full protection. Most probably, the full protection should also include the PC-protection, so the 5th row is probably not needed, keeping only the last row (which will still require an explicit accept action by admins for fully protected pages ; this will protect from unexpected errors by admins that can also review their own changes or see their impact, before approving them : admins may benefit from an accelerated "accept" action, and generally have additional gadgets to perform such actions fast in a single click).

With this scheme, there's no longer any need for PC protection level (levels 1 and 2 become equivalent). The discriminant level becomes the usal semi-protection or full protection that determines the edit rights (and revokes the accept right of non-admins for pages with full protection). There's also no longer need of the bottom note.

Note that a page may not be under PC protection, but may still be including a PC-protected template. In that case, the "visible after accept" should still apply to these pages, so that one can see this page either with the pending change in the PC-protected template, or without it. (So with cascading effect). This would work by not just checking the status of the currently viewed page, but also by walkink through its dependency list, to see if it includes a PC-protected page (generally a template).

But because such viewed page is not PC-protected, it would be displayed with its own edits applied immediately, except for anonymous and new users (including external indexing bots like search engines, that should perform their work as anonymous users, or logged on with a user account that has opted to only view the reviewed versions, and that would still view by default only the newest version up to but excluding to the first non-reviewed pending change.

Identified users may still have in their preference which version they want to see by default (and will still see the alert at the top of page indicating that the page has pending changes, so that they can see them, or see the last reviewed version : this link in the alert box that allows selecting a version to view should have a bots policy attribute of "noindex,nofollow"). verdy_p (talk) 03:03, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

In addition, the current "visible after accept" mode should not apply to edits made by the viewer itself, that should still see by default its own edits, even if the page shows the warning about his pending changes. And if he edits and save a page with existing pending changes (from himself or from others), this should not accept them.

The accept action should be clearly separated from the save action, and not performed in a single operation (including edits made by bots : almost all bots should not be permitted to accept edits, except bots with admin privileges which may still be needed for massive accepts of long lists of pages built with extreme care, or needed for maintenance cleanup or reconstruction, or after importing a wiki, but these admin bots generally have database access privileges so we may ignore them). verdy_p (talk) 04:28, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

You may wonder why I think that the two PC-protection levels are overkill and in fact not needed:

• In fact all users (independantly of their status, including anonymous users), should be able to view at any time the "stable" (reviewed) page or the last edited page (even if it contains changes that need review).
• All users (independantly of their status, including anonymous users) should also see that some page needing review has pending changes, even if they are currently viewing the last-edited version.
• Which version they will want to see by default (last-edited or stable) is part of their user preference. Only anonymous users don't have preferences, and so they will see by default only the stable version (but they can still see the last-edited version if they want, by following the link to this version, displayed in the warning box). This will be the case of external search engines connected anonymously without being logged on (except that they should honor the "nolink,nofollow" policy hint inserted in the link to the last-edited version within the warning box.
• Reviewers and admins can also have user preferences for selecting which version (stable or last-edited) they want to see ny default. This won't affect their ability to review PC-protected pages with pending changes.

In conclusion, PC-protection level 1 is not needed and means nothing different than absence of PC-protection (its sole purpose is to allow all last-edited versions to be displayed by default, independantly of user preferences when many users will just want to see the stable version). Only the behavior of existing level 2 should be kept, but both levels should be merged into the same one. verdy_p (talk) 04:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Removal

I have just removed reviewer status from a user who has violated our copyright policies demonstrably in several articles since he was granted the status in July, including as recently as October 13th. I do not think it would be beneficial to this user or to the project to drag him out for community review. Many people who violate copyright do so through an improper understanding of our policies or of the US copyright laws behind them. Community review can be embarrassing and discourage people who may become good content contributors, but obviously we need to exercise some caution in granting rights to users who have demonstrated issues with copyright themselves. I trust that this removal will be uncontroversial; if not, I would propose to alter the guideline to permit unilateral removal of rights in such clear cut situations. If removals of this type prove controversial, then would seem the time to bring in the community or arbcom. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:23, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I was an objector to the random removal of this right but it has with experience of some removals not been an issue and I think we could relax the wording to reflect that. Off2riorob (talk) 16:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I have tweaked the wording to reflect what has been occurring anyways without issue or controversy. Off2riorob (talk) 16:55, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. If others have been acting similarly, it's probably best to note that. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there have been a few previous Administrator removals in cases similar to as you have removed here, and the original worries about removal just haven't materialized. Off2riorob (talk) 17:22, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Objection to policy/non-policy

'Oppose' I just want to object to this becoming policy, until it includes proposed policy/guideline for granting (and revoking) the Reviewer right. The right is being granted to some (including me), and not others, based on, at best, unwritten rules. We're giving appointed-for-life admins more powers, and yet we're extending, not delimiting them. --Elvey (talk) 22:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Reviewing proposed trial guideline-thingy has some criteria, which are certainly more detailed than the one-liner stuck into the WP:ROLLBACK guideline. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:14, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I was just coming here to note that I'd found it (after seeing the thread above this one implying it existed). It's a start....--Elvey (talk) 22:16, 26 October 2010 (UTC)