Wikipedia:PC2012/Wnt

Reviewer rights

• Every editor who makes 300 edits on en.wikipedia shall be granted reviewer rights automatically.

• Reviewer rights shall not be taken away from anyone. Editors can be WP:blocked, and occasionally may even be WP:topic banned from reviewing due to a specific abusive pattern, but the reviewer right in software shall not be used as a means of enforcement.

Reviewer conduct

• The point of reviewing edits is to be a valuable, but imperfect screen against bad content. Wikipedia and the WMF shall strive to ensure that reviewer activities are protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act - that they are treated as moderators of content, not as speakers or publishers of the content they approve.

• Nonetheless, the administrative penalties for deliberately approving bad edits, or for deliberately rejecting valid edits, shall be the same as if an editor made or removed the text by normal editing. Admins will WP:assume good faith in considering whether the editor was misled or mistaken in evaluating the text. Such evaluations shall be made at the existing noticeboards.

• Reviewers are not required to be competent, knowledgeable, or to verify offline sources; their responsibility is merely to make a reasonable effort to spot bad edits.

• If a reviewer cannot find a reason that an edit violates Wikipedia policy or guidelines, he should pass it. If the edit strikes him as untrue, but cites an offline source, he may note this in the edit summary or on the talk page, but he should not reject the edit. However, reviewers rejecting additions should only actually be subjected to administrative sanctions when they are found to have rejected valid material for bad faith reasons (such as POV censorship); thus, if a reviewer is absolutely sure that a ridiculous cited claim is a hoax or vandalism, it is still safe for him to reject it. Rejecting an apparently sourced edit because "I don't know if it is true" is not a good faith reason.

• Likewise, reviewers are expected to reject deletions that improperly violate WP:PRESERVE, a policy which the relevant help pages should be sure to point out, and a reviewer deliberately approving improper deletions of sourced material should likewise be treated as if the reviewer had made the deletion himself.

• Because rejected edits violate policy or guidelines, reviewers should explain these to the editors after making the rejection, and on occasions when it is appropriate should bring discussion to the appropriate noticeboards.

Articles subjected to Pending Changes

• Pending Changes shall be limited to Level 1 only, targeting edits from IP addresses and recent accounts. Level 2 Pending Changes, which would subject experienced editors' contributions to review, shall be completely unimplemented.
• Articles shall be subjected to Pending Changes only if they receive actual abuse from IP or recently joined editors lacking reviewer rights. A template shall be designed which permits any user to make a request for this and place the talk page of such an article into a category which will be watched by admins.
• Only articles in mainspace shall be subjected to Pending Changes.
• To prevent technical problems and focus on low-traffic articles most vulnerable to vandalism and hoaxes, Pending Changes shall be removed from any article receiving more than 24 legitimate, non-bot edits within a three-day period. A template shall be designed which permits any user to make a request for this and place the talk page of such an article into a category which will be watched by admins. Articles identified by this means may either be semi-protected or unprotected at the admin's discretion, based on their prior troubles.
• Pending Changes shall be applied to articles for limited terms of up to one year. When Pending Changes expires, it should be evaluated whether it found and stopped significant abuse during its term, in which case it may be renewed. Technical mechanisms should be developed to make it easy to determine how many edits to an article have been rejected under Pending Changes during a specified period.
• To protect very low traffic articles from abuse by IPs and non-reviewer accounts, it is desirable to devise some method of listing edits by these users to articles that have otherwise been unedited for some time, permitting those interested in examining them (whether or not they possess the reviewer right) to undo any vandalism and propose the targeted articles for Pending Changes. However, such a feature must be independent of Pending Changes, and should not deny these users the chance to make the change and see it applied immediately - i.e. articles shall not be subjected to Pending Changes "by default" or "preemptively".