Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2012/Discussion

Discussion

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Blocking edits

I'm wondering if I'm understanding something correctly. If a page is level-1 protected, it appears that IP/new attempts to edit will effectively block non-reviewers from editing, until a reviewer comes along and either approves or disapproves the IP/new attempt to edit. Correct? Allens (talk | contribs) 11:06, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. At least, I once saw two edits to the same article listed in the queue, and if you couldn't edit the page again until the first was reviewed, then there wouldn't have ever been two edits simultaneously waiting for approval.

Also, even if that were true (and it doesn't seem to be), the typical length until review was only a couple of minutes during the trial last year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Were the two edits in the queue in the same section, or different sections? As with edit conflicts, they can be separate...

What proportion of people were reviewers in the trial last year? Thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 21:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't remember; they weren't pages that I wanted to review, so all I really know is that there were multiple edits. If I understand things correctly, people who click "edit" see the latest version, including anything that has been changed but not reviewed. But readers only see the last-approved version, without any unapproved changes.

The number of people with the review right increased over time, but it includes all admins automatically, so there were more than 1,000 editors capable of reviewing at the start. Currently, there are about 7,000 people with the ability. I'm not sure how many people actually tried to review an edit, though, and that would be more relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

When and how did we end up with 7,000 reviewers???? Wnt (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Well that was the trial, I suppose. My experience with the German Wikipedia, where we already have PC, shows the average length is hours, but it can take days or even weeks until some articles are reviewed. --BerlinSight (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia uses the more restrictive "flagged revisions" tool. Pending changes is a specialized version of that tool developed specifically to meet the requests of this project. They are similar, but PC is applied on a case-by-case basis, only to articles that are experiencing problems, as with other forms of page protection used here. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I personally think that Pending Changes should be able to detect good from bad edits in the way

Cluebot NG does before it will really benefit us. --Kangaroopowah 04:08, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the abuse filter already do that? Why does PC need to be able to do that as well? --NYKevin @868, i.e. 19:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Will policy be improved?

• I'd just like to make a follow-up comment, after my "position 3" comment earlier. Assuming the community goes forward with this, I hope that the users who are working most closely with it will look very carefully at the points that I and others have drawn attention to in section 3, and present the community with a policy that is updated accordingly. I realize that this may be implicit in the way the RfC has been presented, but I thought it would be useful to point it out. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  Sorry to say it, but I highly doubt that your concerns will be addressed. Just look at the way that this RFC was set up, so that there was a single position for enabling PC and two slightly different options to oppose it being re-enabled. That sort of engineering to diffuse the opposition doesn't bode well to those who want PC listening to our concerns at all. It's all about making vandalism patrolling easier, and everything else be dammed. The Foundation already scuttled one attempt to add a tool which would ostensibly have made NPP easier, and now there's this. It all comes down to control, control, control. It's time to start taking a knee and kissing rings in order to rack up the user privileges if you're interested in continuing to edit here.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

  Ohms, don't forget the straw poll was constructed in a similar way, except that the three pro-PC options were all tallied together. That straw poll was put together by a PC supporter. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

  You guys may well be right. Beeblebrox et al.: I hereby challenge you to step up and prove them wrong! The ball is in your court. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am not and will not be involved with any administrative duties related to this RFC. There are four volunteer coordinators, all users who have not previously expressed any strong opinions about PC, who will be doing all that so even if I agreed with you I would not be the one making any such changes.

• Since nearly 100 users have already endorsed the draft policy, I don't believe it would be reasonable or fair to begin changing it now. When trying to craft the positions for this, I quickly realized I was in a no-win-situation. There was simply no way to structure this RFC so that it would make everybody, or even almost everybody, happy and produce a usable result. When I tried last year to make it a binary choice, some users insisted it was not. When I tried to make this a trinary choice, with the option to "kick the can down the road" and deal with it later, some users objected to that, insisting that it was really a subset of supporting it. And now the objection is that it was deliberate tactic to diffuse the opposition into two camps,m which is the complete opposite of the previous objection to it. See what I mean?

• The design is intended to present three distinct, mutually exclusive possibilities:

1. Do not use PC
2. Do use PC
3. Status quo

• The format is deliberately not a "dogfight" between competing proposals for a fully-fleshed out policy. The reason for that is that it has repeatedly proven more or less impossible to make a decision this important in that manner. Some of you may remember a year or two ago, there was much interest in formulating a community process for removing admin rights. I was one of the early participants in that discussion, and what I learned there partially informed what was done here. I put up a proposed draft policy and asked others to help edit it and improve it until we had something we could put forward for a wider discussion by the community. Instead of collaborating everyone simply added their own complete proposals, many of them almost identical to ones already posted, and in the end we had 17 separate policies to decide between. And now he we are, still without any community de-adminship process.

• Of course the other discussion that informed how this RFC was structured was the disaster that was the 2011 PC RFC, where we once again saw pretty much exactly the same thing, one position after another being added to suit each users specific needs or desires, often with only cosmetic differences from already existing positions. And again, no usable long-term result. The draft policy you see here is simply the same policy we already used during the trial, with minor tweaks based on what usable feedback we were able to get from phase 2 of the last RFC. It is not my original creation. I know it isn't perfect and doesn't please everyone, and also know that you could say the same for any other policy proposal I or anyone else would come up with. I won't deny that I have a desired outcome here, but more than that I believe Wikipedia needs an answer to the main question of whether to use PC at all or to do away with it for good. However, because there are some users that don't believe that and think that we should perfect the policy before making that decision that the option to leave things as they are for now is included.

• Sorry for the TLDR post but I wanted to make sure I was as clear as possible about the thinking behind the structure of the RFC and the admittedly imperfect nature of the draft policy. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

• The Tl;DR thing wasn't much of a problem to me. That all sounds well reasoned, but... On the other hand, nearly 100 people are supporting this (which should hardly be surprising since it was preloaded with nearly 60 supporters), as you've mentioned above. It doesn't feel worth it to take the time to go in depth with a criticism since this is basically a done deal (I don't know, maybe I'll find the motivation to reply later). I think that you're well aware of the possible criticisms anyway. What kills me is that nothing has really changed since last year, and yet here we are covering the exact same ground. Oh well, I for one am not going to get bent out of shape about it (I'm just not going to participate in anything to do with PC. *shrug*).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Beeblebrox: I totally sympathize with what you say about the difficulties of this task. And I'm not finding fault with any of that. But I (not necessarily the other commenters in this thread) was making a specific point, and you didn't really respond to that. I'm saying that I recognize that the community is going to support PC, but I'm pointing out that some useful suggestions have come out of "Position 3". It would just be common sense to make use of these suggestions. I don't mean changing the proposal mid-RfC, of course. But I'm saying that, post-RfC, it would be smart to incorporate the feedback from that section. Otherwise, there would have been no point in asking. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I guess I did kind of miss your point, the whole "balls in your court" thing made it seem as if you were indicating something should be done now. I've tried repeatedly, including right in the position statement itself, to acknowledge that the policy is incomplete and imperfect and it is fully expected that it will be changed in the future if the tool is put back into use, like any other policy we have. That's pretty much the way Wikipedia has always worked, decide if we want to do something, and tweak the policy or guideline that dictates how we will use it as needed. What horribly muddied the waters and made this so controversial now is what I think we all agree was a badly mismanaged trial period that resulted in a loss of trust. This time around, the only people we have to worry about trusting is ourselves. This isn't something Jimbo or the WMF is foisting on us, in fact I haven't heard a peep from any of them in this RFC. This is our decision to make, and, if it is approved, our policy to work with and alter as we see fit. I assume discussion would start back up at WP:RG if/when the tool is brought back into service. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a very thoughtful answer. I, in turn, probably shouldn't have said that thing about ball's in your court, but I guess that I was reacting to what the other two editors had just said. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned (maybe not as far as some other editors are concerned), that's all that I was looking for here. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

• I think that part of what bugs me about this is that there seems to be an assumption that... I'm not exactly sure. Something along the lines of "let us use it and we'll figure out the policy stuff as we go" (I'd say "we'll stumble around until we figure it out", but that's probably a bit too hyperbolic...). I think that there's still a sizable minority of folks who are basically saying "Wait a second, we don't think that using pending changes is that great of an idea at all!", which means that there are groups here who are decidedly talking past one another at this point (and that was a big reason for the "kerfuffle" over the trial, from my perspective). Personally, I don't even want to think about policy at this point until I see something that can reassure me that Pending Changes will not turn into a massive increase in the use of page protection (of any kind). To be frank, I don't trust that the current community of administrators here is utilizing the tools that they already have available in a responsible manner (based on my personal experience in observing how over-used full and semi protection currently are), which is making it (extremely) difficult to accept the idea that policy issues will be addressed. I don't necessarily think that Pending Changes is "evil" or anything (although there are some [minor] technical issues which need to be addressed); this is more about trust in the system administrator community, to my mind.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:22, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
  • There was a sizable minority opposed to IAR, too. I don't think that I've ever seen a discussion about any proposed change that involved more than ten Wikipedians and didn't have a "sizable minority" opposed to the change, including changes that were handed down as a mandatory change from the WMF's legal department, so the existence of the Loyal Opposition doesn't disturb me.
    Your apparent wish that policies would spring fully formed from the community's forehead and then be eternally unchanging, however, does disturb me. I rather like the fact that the community learns and improves over time, even if that means that we sometimes stumble onto better processes than we first had. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

    In my mind, the problem with comparing this to the development of the IAR policy is that the character of the two items are basically reversed. At it's core, IAR is about enabling editors to do whatever it is that they need to do. In contrast, PC is about controlling what other editors are able to do. I suspect that statement will rankle some, since at least part of the justification is that PC is supposed to "enable" more than semi-protection does; which is true as long as it's use is limited to only those instances where semi- is currently used. However, we all know that isn't going to be the case, as there's a history to refer back to [the PC trial] which demonstrates that. I also don't see how comparing this to an office action is relevant (and frankly, that seems like a smoke screen here).
    I'm no fool either, in that I don't at all believe "that policies would spring fully formed from the community's forehead" (or even wish for that; policy is, and should be, a living thing). However, as I mentioned already, we have experience with Pending Changes now, and yet the policy questions are still very much unresolved. That's what makes me uncomfortable with the "we'll figure it out as we go" attitude, because that makes me suspicious that the actual motive is something along the lines of "the further we can spread the use of PC the better". I'd love to be incorrect about that, but so far there is nothing here being offered to satisfy my suspicions.
    The structure of this RFC, the pre-loading of the debate with support for position 2, breaking up discussion on multiple pages and hiding half of it on an untranscluded subpage (which has mostly been rectified and [somewhat satisfactorily] explained, following objections), and the note in the into to this RFC explaining the rational for limiting the "fix the problems first" opinion, all do nothing but fan suspicions rather than satisfying them. We did give PC a chance already, and so if those who support it's being reimplemented would address the concerns that are being brought forward, that would go a long way in moving things forward. I don't see what this needs to continue to be as polarized an issue as it's continuing to be.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:41, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Arguments against Position #2

In bulleted format, each bullet signed, for ease of threading.

• "During and after the trial, PC was shown to be an extremely helpful tool for combatting bad-faith edits while still allowing easy submission of good-faith edits." I do not buy this argument as it relies on the same basic (psycho)logical fallacy that all PC/FR is predicated on, i.e. that every reviewer is knowledgeable about the subject and not a Knight Templar, not to mention it ignores the fact that not all bad-faith edits are obviously so, and those that are not can very easily slip by an unknowledgeable reviewer (of which there shall be many per topic. Not everyone is omniscient). How does this get addressed? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  No, it does not rely on this argument. It does rely on the argument that every reviewer is knowledgeable enough to recognize vandalism, BLP violations, (good faith) deformatting and similar things, but definitely not necessarily in the subject of the article.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:16, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  It does, given the arms race that's been going on between vandals (especially dedicated ones) and administrators/editors. We already have issues with sneaky vandalism that unknowledgeable users cannot revert; it is this situation (as opposed to obvious vandalism) this argument is predicated on. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  Reviewers are really going to check sources to see if an allegation is WP:WELLKNOWN? Come on, we've seen the fanatic BLP supporters who want this enacted. Their answer will be no, no, no, no, no. They'll be able to "review" a thousand edits in the time it would take me to do one, because all they have to do is look and say "that sounds nasty, goodbye". Wnt (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

• "Support PC, especially on BLPs to prevent defamation." Last time I calculated number of reviewers with number of BLPs I got a result of 65 articles to one reviewer, which is unworkable logistically. I would imagine the number has only since increased due to there being less active users and more BLPs. Given that BLPs tend to be edited rather frequently how can one address this fundamental flaw? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Who says that it has to be used on every single BLP article? "Especially on BLPs" does not automatically equate to "please use PC on every single BLP". Why can't we use it on 1% or 2% of them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  Because those 1 or 2 percent are likely the highest-profile ones where PC can't work due to edit volume, and given that much of the arguments for PC that I have seen assume it will primarily be used on all BLPs, that is why I commented about the "all BLPs" bit.—Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  I wouldn't put PC on a high-traffic article. In fact, I have specifically advocated that it not be used on any high-traffic article, and I believe that my view is generally shared among those who have thought about it for more than a few seconds (e.g., any admin who actually deals with page protection). So your assumption about what is "likely" seems completely wrong to me. IMO it is far more likely that it would be used on a small number of low-traffic BLPs as a less restrictive alternative to semi-protection, or as a way of demonstrating that previously applied semi-protection was no longer necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  That particular view runs counter to the bullet below, which advocates using it on controversial articles (which are either high-traffic or under sanctions, rendering PC useless or moot). Contrariwise, putting it on a low-traffic BLP is apt to be a waste since there's not likely to be anywhere near enough activity on it to justify PC, and logistics needs to be kept in mind since there's far less available reviewers compared to PC candidates. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  Actually, you've got it backwards. Having an article under PC costs us nothing until some IP edits it. And then ten changes to one article cost us exactly the same as one change to each of ten articles. But watch-listing one busy article costs far less than watching ten separate articles. If you want to minimize resource waste, you put the low-taffic articles under PC and the busy article under either manual surveillance or under semi-protection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  TheRedPenOfDoom's argument falls under this bullet as it is virtually identical and has all the same logistical pitfalls. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

• "[...]seems like a perfect mid-way point between page protection and open editing. It will help IPs Be bold and fix our mistakes, even on controversial pages." It will not because controversial pages are generally universally-vandalized in the first place or otherwise difficult to edit. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both were put on PC during the trial and had to be removed from it because the volume of edits was too much. How can you reconcile this point with the actual reality of the matter? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  Pstanton's argument falls under this bullet as well, for much the same reason. High-profile pages are either too busy to use PC on, too partisan to attract anything but edit-warriors and truthers, or are under discretionary sanctions. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  While I support (with reservations) PC, I basically agree with your observation here: high-profile pages, high-edit-count articles are a poor match for PC.

  Personally, I believe the best use case for PC involves low-traffic BLPs which have encountered long-term, episodic vandalism or libel. I deal a *lot* in the very-low volume article parts of the Wikipedia, and while the vast majority of such articles are, well, not severely problematic, then you end up with the occasional case that rarely gets edited, but for which problems (as a result) often linger for weeks or months. In these cases, PC1/PC2 feel to me to be superior alternatives to SP/FP respectively. --joe decker^{talk to me} 03:47, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

  I agree with Joe. I think the best use of PC is for BLPs of minor politicians who need more editors but run the risk of vandalism that stays on the page for a long time. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:23, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

• "As a community, we should welcome with open arms anything that offers a solution to our problems of vandalism without totally shutting out new and unregistered editors." Part of the issue is that new editors already feel shut out because of the perceived air of elitism in the place. Adding another userright that amounts in several peoples' minds to "censor" does not help add editors; it helps drive them away. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  THIS. Wikipedia is already a place where some pigs are more equal than others. -- Jay Maynard (talk) 01:57, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  The equality of pigs seems to be an argument in favour of PC. Rather than new editors not being allowed to edit semi-protected articles at all, PC will allow them to contribute. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:23, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

  The question isn't ability to contribute but edit retention, Arctic.gnome, since edit retention correlates somewhat with editor retention. Anon makes an edit, sees it's got to go through a bozo filter, stops bothering. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:32, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

• "The minor problems encountered in the trial did not demonstrate the unworkability of the system; instead they demonstrated that it basically did work." By what metrics? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  Have you read the metrics that have been collected? For example, did you know that PC permitted us to benefit from more than 200 good edits from unregistered users per day during the initial trial, all of which happened on articles that had previously been semi-protected? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  Out of how many edits? I have seen the metrics, and they suggest those 200 edits are less than 50% of all edits caught behind the review filter. Compared to unprotection (the metric that should be used) that isn't a better situation. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  You're comparing apples and oranges. The proposal is to change from semiprotection to PC, not from unprotected to PC. If your idea is to remove the semiprotection from all the articles that it is on, and replace it with nothing, that would be a separate proposal. PC is only used for articles that would otherwise be semiprotected or fully protected, and it gives an improvement over those forms of protection. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:01, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  However, by its very nature PC is intended to allow unregistered/new editors to edit pages that would otherwise be semiprotected. Thus, comparing it to semiprotected is pointless (as semiprotected prevents those editors from editing that page in the first place) and the appropriate comparison is to an unprotected state (the only other way unregistered/new users can edit a page). This was brought up in the 2011 RFC. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  We agree that the point of PC is that the pages would otherwise be semiprotected. I don't follow the logic that, therefore, it is wrong to compare PC with semiprotection. Those are the two options for the pages we are talking about, and PC is only used on pages that could be (and would be) semiprotected anyway, so when deciding about the benefits of PC we should look at what would otherwise happen to the pages in question. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:27, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  If you're comparing edits by anon/new users between PC and semi, you're going to get positive results because of selection bias - semiprotected disallows edits by anon or new users. Thus, for a fair comparison, you have to compare it to unprotection, as PC is a middle ground between that and semiprotection. Thus, the arguments should support that PC is as effective as unprotection - the state closest in equivalence - in allowing users to edit. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  No, that seems like a false dichotomy. It's like saying that methadone would have to have as few side effects as no drugs at all in order for people to use it to replace heroin. In reality, when someone is already addicted, methadone is far better for them even if it is far worse than being clean. Similarly PC is much better than semiprotection and that is all that matters, because we are talking about articles that are semiprotected anyway. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:42, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  I see no false dichotomy in my statement, and your drug metaphor is crap because it assumes a position of complete safety (being clean). My argument here is based on anonymous and newly-registered users being able to edit, as opposed to vandalism (where only full-protection grants complete safety). Thus, semi-protection is a poor metric because it prevents that (and even fails your drug metaphor because it's still relatively ineffective at stopping vandalism). —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  I'm getting an IDIDNTHEARTHAT vibe here, so I'm out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  I heard everything you said. I'm disputing your metrics because they compare a nonzero value against zero, as opposed to two nonzero values. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:05, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

  There's a bit of "the pot calling the kettle black".
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  • I pretty much don't understand this argument. You want the English Wikipedia to be "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", right? But you object to a system that allows 200 good edits to be made each day, and 400 bad edits to never see the light of day, because only a third of the edits were good? And then you propose, as the preferable approach, that those 400 bad edits be shown to all readers? How is getting 200 good edits and showing 400 edits of obvious vandalism and libel to readers better than not getting 200 good edits and not showing vandalism and libel to our readers? WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:09, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  That argument assumes that vandalism remains on an article for a relatively long time (let's argue fifteen seconds). Except for borderline cases (i.e. sneaky vandalism) and deeply obscure pages, this isn't often the case. Not to mention IPs are as apt to revert vandalism as named users. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:54, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

  I've reverted blatant vandalism that was more than a year old. How about you?
  But you're comparing it against no protection, which isn't relevant: the expectation is that the choice would be semi vs PC, whereas the existing choice is semi vs semi vs semi. How successful have you been at getting indef-semi'd articles de-protected? As far as I can tell, that size of that category grows continuously. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  My metric is ability of anons to edit in good faith (including reverting bad edits), not vandalistic edits stopped (as even semi-protection is barely functional in that regard), and that is why I compare FR to no protection. I have made this clear. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:30, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• "It also will help against self-promoters, allowing established editors in good standing to contribute and sockpuppetters to be blocked." Unless you can apply PC to redlinks, the first is effectively impossible and the second is already done by semi-protection (as most sockpuppetteers make socks specifically to cheat it, making them all the more obvious). Aside from putting all anon/new user edits through a bozo filter (which {{editrequest}} does equally as well) what does PC do that semiprotection cannot? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Editrequest plainly doesn't do it equally well. If you want to just fix a typo, it's non-intuitive and a hassle, and you are not likely to bother. At least, I wouldn't. FormerIP (talk) 22:25, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

And PC has much the same flaws. Why try to fix a typo if the change isn't live immediately? That hurts the encyclopedia. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 06:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

No, with PC you edit in exactly the same way you normally would and it takes you exactly the same amount of time and effort. You don't have to find the talkpage, you don't have work out how to explain the change you want in words, you don't have to get into a conversation about it. The only difference between PC and regular editing is that there's a delay before your change will appear. FormerIP (talk) 13:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

And that's a whopper of a difference. You're also glossing over the fact that for said edit to ever appear, yourself or someone else will have to approve it. That's a fundamental, earth shattering change to the way that Wikipedia operates. Yourself and others can gloss that over, and try to dress it up in language about "200 good edits and 400 bad edits", but the fact is that pending changes fundamentally changes the way that Wikipedia works.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It does, but only by allowing editors to edit pages that they would otherwise be unable to edit due to semiprotection. No edit that the editor could otherwise make is blocked by PC. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I think this discussion is hampered by a difference in understanding of what "to edit" means. If it means "submit one's desired changes using the edit tab/text box/save button mechanism", then of course PC enables more people to "edit" than SP does. But if it means "independently alter the content of the article as it is displayed to the world", then PC sometimes allows fewer people to edit. In any case there's nothing earth-shattering about PC, unless it's to be used on many more articles than SP now is, since the differences are mainly technical.--Victor Yus (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Because PC is only used on pages that would be semiprotected otherwise, I don't know of situations where PC allows fewer people to edit in the second sense. If there was a proposal to change lots of pages from unprotected to PC, that would be different, but as things stand the only change is from semiprotected to PC. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:31, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

That is because you are thinking of the hereandnow, CBM, as opposed to the long-term, where PC will (not could, will) be requested on unprotected articles. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Why PC allows fewer people to edit: If there's an unconfirmed user's edit waiting to be reviewed, then I (as a confirmed editor who is not a reviewer) cannot edit (in the second sense). I'm effectively reduced to being an unconfirmed user in that position.--Victor Yus (talk) 19:23, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. I assume that whoever made up this RFC has the statistics on how long it took for reviews to happen when PC was active before? — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Whatamidoing indicates above it was, on average, a "couple minutes". Anything more accurate you'd have to go log-delving for; I do not have the time to do it at the moment but will do so tomorrow or Tuesday (PDT). —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The fact is, PC is all about some peoples desire to control what others can or cannot do on Wikipedia. If that's not a fundamental change to Wikipedia then I don't know what is. I don't expect anyone who's supportive of re-enabling PC to hear this, but that doesn't mean that it isn't true.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

The first sentence is a borderline personal attack on everyone supporting option 2, and IMHO unsubstantiated by anything. Please retract it. --NYKevin @903, i.e. 20:39, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

How so, and which sentence? If you mean the one immediately after the bullet, that is a direct quote from Option 2, not something I made up. It's not a personal attack, Kevin, nor is it incivil. While it shouldn't be presented as fact (as it may not 100% be true) it's not explicitly denigrating reviewers. I would defend a statement comparing support of position 1 with collaborating with vandals (and indeed a similar comparison has been made on this page). —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:16, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• "Editing BLP's irresponsibly actually makes the subject of the biography less free since the subject would become affected by forces (i.e. the irresponsible revisions) outside of his or her control." In related news, it's not certain whether or not the reviewer would suffer legal responsibility for approving sneaky libellous vandalism. I'm unsure whether or not the Foundation has answered that question, but if reviewers are, then they share some of the liability when something like this inevitably happens. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:08, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

• It's been admitted by one proponent of PC that the likelihood that defamatory-even-if-true information will be blocked from being posted by reviewers worried about liability is one reason sie is in favor of PC. Sorry, but if it's true, if it's important enough that someone would classify it as defamatory (or positive!), then it should be posted. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• Defamatory content has no place in any article at anytime - Defamation is a crime. - Please don't miss-portray me and my comments. The thread the user is reporting on is here please read for yourselves - True? what is that - nothing I have mentioned. Anyone should take great care with any addition of content about a living person that might be considered defamatory - this is my position/this is current policy position/this is the foundations position - it has nothing to do with pending protection - Users should/are already legally responsibility for all their additions irrespective of pending protection. - Youreallycan 18:46, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

"Defamatory" is a general word for negative content, as far as I am aware (note that the defamation article states that slander, a type of defamation, is "malicious, false, and defamatory content"; also note that the Wikitionary definition does not specify that it is untrue, although it notes - correctly - that it often is). "Defamation" is a more specific term; in the US, it specifically does not include true information (other countries vary); therefore, when I say "defamatory but true", I am not speaking about what in the US is legally defined as "defamation". I'm sorry if I mis-portrayed your comments; I had thought that's what you meant, and I believe I had indicated the information I was talking about was true below. One should make sure that such negative information is well-backed-up, of course - but I suggest that it is a violation of NPOV if one does not take similar care with positive information about someone, since otherwise an article is likely to look like an autobiography whether it is one or not. Allens (talk | contribs) 19:16, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

• "Effective tools to combat persistent vandalism, BLP violations, and other unconstructive edits already exist, and they work well; other options have been identified but not actively considered." Since this point was brought up, what's wrong with the edit filter? Where has Cluebot seriously erred? Why are the other antivandalism tools in the arsenal, except semiprotection, not being brought up? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:12, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
• "[...] [T]he fact that changes will not be visible until reviewed might quench motivation to vandalize." Contrariwise, the fact that changes will not be visible until reviewed might quench motivation to contribute in good faith. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:15, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
• The weight of opinion does seem to be with option 2. Assuming it goes ahead, it would seem sensible to pre-define (a) a set of Critical Success Measures, to be supported by associated ongoing metrics and (b) a set of Critical Failure Measures, which would result in the whole thing being switched off again. This would include live instances of some of the points above, such as layered vandalism (which is after all close to how some vandals operate today, with the nasty edit hidden behond an innocuous spelling last-change). AllyD (talk) 21:12, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
• "I support adding pending changes to prevent ip vandalism, if somone is serious about editing on wikipedia, they would make an account. When i say full pending changes, i mean it should be on all pages and not just added to a page like how "page protection" is added to a page i.e on request. thats useless, not revolutionary to take the site forward and wont help much" Requiring IPs to register is a Foundation matter and not going to happen, and requiring PC on all pages is logistically impossible - we have nowhere near that level of manpower. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, on plwiki we have flagged revisions on all pages (887 332 articles in mainspace), community about 20 times smaller than on enwiki, and yet we have no problem with reviewing... --Teukros (talk) 22:10, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

    Apples and oranges. The fact that the community is 20 times smaller (and I'm betting that is a conservative estimate) means that it's much easier for everyone to get along. If we want the enwiki community ot be 20 times smaller than it currently is (and I know for a fact that some would absolutely love that, although I don't think that anyone here so far would), then enabling flagged revisions is certainly a way to achieve that. Pending changes isn't flagged revisions of course, but it's at least similar.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

  Not to mention it's extremely likely pl.wp's culture is completely different from en.wp's. This is also why comparisons to de.wp are pointless, as the culture of the two projects are very different. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:30, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

On the one hand, that's correct. But, on the other hand it does tell quite strongly against hypothetical "we'll never be able to cope with the volume" naysaying. More likely, as en.wp, we will find our own equilibrium and optimum way of doing. It seems obvious that if we find we have too many articles on PC, we will adjust the number and get over the teething problem. I don't actually think there will be such a teething problem in the first place. We will undoubtedly build up to the right level, not switch a ridiculous number of articles to PC and then work down. FormerIP (talk) 03:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Not as strongly as you think, as the number of active users is still more-or-less stagnant at best and dropping at worst. Assuming not all active editors are reviewers, there will come a point where there's not enough reviewers to handle it all. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 04:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems that in all the talk of comparing the various wikis, it is simply not enough to say that "cultures differ". You may as well post about the wetness of water. What is being neglected is just how much they differ, and why. If we take the two brought up recently (pl & de), then it is astonishing to me that the notion of competition has been completely overlooked. Sure, flagging works in pl, but that just might be because some of us are trying our level best to - if not be #1 - then at least be the definitive #2. And I am absolutely convinced there are individuals with similar motivations on de. (As to why I have consistently delivered many more edits into en than pl given what I've just said, consult my shrink.) Seriously, though... do the folks who are "pro" on PC not see that other wikis are even worse than comparative here? They're downright distortive in this context! Pimpoosh (talk) 02:43, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

• "[...]especially on pseudoscience pages that are constantly bombarded by SPAs looking to promote their pet cancer 'cure' or perpetual motion machine." Pseudoscience as an area of the encyclopedia is under ArbCom discretionary sanctions. SPAs that are noncompliant with Wikipedia policy in the area are as much subject to the sanctions as anyone else. Why do you need PC on that set of articles?—Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 04:02, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• "Pending changes [...] reduces vandalism and allows good edits through." This assumes spontaneous and blatant vandalism, not willful malice. If the past is any indication, vandals will very quickly find a way to cheat PC and make reviewers' lives more difficult. It's happened with every other antivandal measure save the bots: Semi-protection was ducked by four days, then four days and ten userpage null edits; the edit filter is easily probed for what will and will not work, the title-blacklist was cheated with non-Unicode characters. Given that PC is far weaker than all of these and falls very easily to tactics similar to those used by JarlaxleArtemis, how can it provide any protection, let alone the bare minimum Band-Aid measure semiprotection provides? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 04:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
• "I think admins should have the power to approve or disapprove of all edits. There should be a comments box during editing to send messages to admins. Once your edit has been approved or disapproved you should recieve a notification of which admin a/d it. This will create more work and I think there should be a special type of admin especially for a/d articles. When you are notified of you edit being a/d, you should recieve a message from the admin. this feature should also have a way for you to defend your edit post a/d. More admins should be acquired and trained." There's so much wrong with this argument....
  1. "All edits" isn't even under consideration. English Wikipedia specifically requested Pending Changes, 'NOT' Flagged Revisions. The difference is that the former can be done on a case-by-case basis.
  2. There is no practical way to provide all admins with a message that doesn't also include raising the attention of any other interested party (problematic on articles with POV problems) and if there were it would not be possible to do so while editing, as the system is designed to be used with no additional input from the editor aside from edit and edit summary.
  3. Likewise, there is no practical way to be informed which reviewer (NOT admin, reviewer) approved or rejected your edit that doesn't also inform any other interested party. Something like this just seems designed to get an admin dragged to AN/I or AE because they don't fit the editor's POV. It is up to a reviewer as to whether or not to inform you the edit was rejected, but my money is on you'll have to be the one to bring it up to the reviewer, not the reverse. I've been here long enough to know that.
  4. There already is a special userright for PC; it's called "reviewer". It's also not restricted to admins. Still will not help due to logistical issues.
  5. At present it is widely acknowledged our administrator-promotion process is badly broken due to the extremely toxic atmosphere there by the users that regularly man it. See WP:RfA reform 2011. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 04:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Is there any way at all to audit which reviewers are rejecting things for bad reasons i.e. POV? Wnt (talk) 21:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Not without checking the logs, which (when PC gets passed - not if) I'll try to do on a daily basis and sending to ArbCom. I would suggest others do the same. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:52, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

• "This tool has proved extremely useful on German Wikipedia and its introduction here is long overdue.[...]" No, de.wikipedia is NOT using Pending Changes (which is applied to pages on a case-by-case basis); it's using Flagged Revisions (which is automatically applied to all pages on that project). Also, de.wikipedia and en.wikipedia have different cultures, so what's good for one is antithetical to the other. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:13, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
• "[...]It's a lighter touch than semi-protection and it allows new editors to be greeted by and guided by experienced ones who are more likely to be neutral about the article in question." I don't know what fantasy world you live in, but unless you're building Turing-compliant reviewerbots, it'll be far more likely that the experienced editors won't do any of that unless approached by a (now-disillusioned) IP or user. And if we're talking an article under ArbCom sanctions, the usual response is apt to be an ARBXXX discretionary sanctions warning, not a friendly welcome. The problem starts with the mentality of the general editor corps. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:58, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• "Sometimes it is simply necessarily to prevent editing to a page as vandalism or BLP issues reaches intolerable levels which cannot be dealt with trough blocks. This works, but at times there are also productive IP editors on a page who will be hit as well by this form of protection. [...Pending changes] should be seen as a tool that can complement or outperform the existing tools (blocks and protection) in some cases." The Oversighters have opined that they actually had to oversight more edits during the PC trial. The edits don't magically go away, Excirial; they remain in the history. Also, PC is ineffective against vandalism (especially once it starts being aimed at reviewers) and rewards vandals for gaming it to a far greater degree than semi-protection. And compared to unprotection (the appropriate metric, since semiprotection does not allow anon edits and is just as effective against vandalism, if not marginally better compared to PC) PC is far less friendly to new users, again because of it being built to obscure one's edit and the general "barricade the doors" mentality of the general editor corps, who now have a nice excuse to reject IP/new user edits out of hand. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• "Support but plain semi-protection should be removed IMO." I will refer you to #Replace semiprotection with PC? below, where the consensus is that this should not be done, since that would make the next escalation (PC2/Fullprot) overkill. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• "Was wondering if we could implement this tool for school/shared IPs only." The way Wikipedia is set up this is not possible. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 06:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Just keep asking

Moved from RfC discussion page. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 06:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

As much as this has already been discussed, I guess that this RFC just goes to show that if you're dogged enough and remain focused enough that you can beat through whatever changes you want into Wikipedia. The whole "just keep asking until you get the answer you want" approach really does work, doesn't it?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

If it had actually worked the last RfC would not have removed it. I disagree with you on the accusations of forum-shopping since a new RfC was always going to happen because the last RfC left the overall question of whether to use PC or not unresolved. It took this long to do it because the well had been sufficiently tainted by the neverending trial. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I hate to say this, Jeremy, but I agree with Ohms law on this. The process here is like the 5 year old in the supermarket nagging mom for candy, keep going and going and going and eventually, it will get its own way. That's not intended to be an ad-hominem, rather a direct view on a process which is trying to resurrect something which was killed, quite clearly. We had a trial which didn't stop, then a clear consensus that said switch it off. Now we're back to the old "what happens now?" which is where we've been before. It's dead, it died, it done gone an' kicked the bucket. Let's leave it there, please. You're not getting any candy this time.  BarkingFish  19:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

No, BarkingFish, the last RfC only determined that it should be switched off because the trial had been long overextended. The actual question on what to do with PC was left unresolved, and as Beeblebrox noted the atmosphere was far too toxic to try and resolve that question right away. It was never formally killed off. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd disagree with "The actual question on what to do with PC was left unresolved", and point to the same "toxic atmosphere" that you described to support that. But none of this appears to have much relevance anyway.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't respond to this when it was first posted because I find it is often better to simply ignore baseless attacks on one's character. However, if we're really going to discuss this, let's be clear about the facts.

• I opened the RFC last year with one goal only: to decide the fate of pending changes in the long term.
• I felt like we were making progress towards answering that question, but in the end the RFC was diverted to the issue of what to do about the never ending trial period.
• In the end the only decision that was made was to put the tool out of service until we had made that decision.
• This was always going to happen at some point, and I waited nearly a year for someone else to do it before deciding to get the ball rolling myself.
• Every other discussion we have had has been about the short term and/or the trial period, with the exception of the beginning of the derailed RFC from last year.
• This is being discussed in the same place as before, an RFC subpage of the main PC page, and the same site-wide notices are in place as before, the accusations of forum shopping are obviously incorrect.

I will not be commenting here further as we are not here to talk about me, we are here to talk about pending changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

You view this as personal because as it turns out you've been shepherding everything to do with PC from the get go (as far as I can tell). When I first made this comment I hadn't realized that was true. If I had known... I mean, I still believe what I said here, but I may have posted this on your talk page (and in a slightly different manner). I do still believe what I said though, and I think that it's obvious that PC is something that you personally would really like to see in use here on Wikipedia (the protestations of neutrality ring somewhat hollow). You may consider that to be a "baseless attack", but it's my perception of events, and I think that my perception is based on a reasonable interpretation of events as they have been observed. I don't have a bone to pick with you personally at all (and don't really appreciate the insinuation that I do, but I'm willing to ignore it), I just don't think that PC is the wonderful tool that you seem to think that it is.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Funny that, I thought the previous RfC was about whether to remove pending changes with no prejudice against starting it back up again if there is consensus. No prejudice... right. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:42, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying, Tom. The last RfC never settled the question of what to do with PC; it only ended the overextended trial. This was made clear then. There shouldn't be this much controversy over this point. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Where was everybody when semi-protection was proposed?

Moved from RfC discussion page. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 06:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm just asking where everybody was (note, back in 2005) when semi-protection was implemented, because I hear the similar comments flashed here as then for when semi-protection was proposed as an alternative to plain full-protection of everything (i.e. opponents of that claimed that semi-protection was similarly "un-wiki" and against the "editing principles"). --MuZemike 07:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

In case people was wondering about what MuZemike is referring to, here's a link: Wikipedia_talk:Semi-protection_policy/Archive_3#Oppose_.28please_explain_why.29. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 22:24, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

As everyone can now see (thanks Michaeldsuarez), there was some opposition to implementing semi-protection which has a familiar character to the opposition that there is to PC. It wasn't nearly as vocal, but back in 2006 semi-protection was an entirely new concept. That experience with semi-protection is there now, along with the prior (somewhat poor, technically) experiences that we've had with PC trials.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

As with many concepts of "consensus" here on Wikipedia, policies and what-not favor those who have time to check in frequently, regardless of the importance of the discussion. --Joe Sewell (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Draft policy

Moved from RfC discussion page. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 06:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the first sentence of the draft policy, "Edits on articles protected by pending-changes protection will not be displayed to readers who are not logged in, until the edits are checked by reviewers." Don't you mean that edits will not be incorporated into the version of the article displayed by default to readers who are not logged on? They can still see the edits if they look at the history, or the effects of them if they try (god bless them) to edit the page themselves. Also, if this is supposed to be policy, you'd better say which edits you mean - and be careful, because it's like "either all edits, or all edits made by unconfirmed users or even by confirmed users if there have been edits by unconfirmed users since the last review" (so level-1 PC is in fact slightly MORE restrictive than semi-protection, which I know is not to be spoken too loudly). Also you'd better say who can apply this protection (administrators I presume). --Victor Yus (talk) 12:24, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't the restrictiveness under this interpretation (which I also inquired about) vary depending on how frequent the reviewer "status" is among (auto)confirmed users? (BTW, the above is an example of what I would think should belong on the Discussion page - if it's transcluded onto the main RfC page.) [User:?]

Is this not the discussion page?--Victor Yus (talk) 17:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Not the one linked to from the proposal voting page - Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment/Discussion. Allens (talk | contribs) 17:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see, there are actually two discussion pages. Starting to look like this whole exercise (like the abortion one I also wasted my time trying to take part in) is just a rubber stamp for a decision that's already been taken, somewhere. Try to minimize the likelihood of anyone's attention being drawn to any inconvenient facts before they fly by to vote. (90% of voters seem not to understand the issue anyway, their comments are effectively about whether or not restricting editing on certain pages is a good thing, not about whether PC is a better technical solution than semi-protection for achieving that. And those who do appreciate that this is the question, seem not to be aware of the downsides of PC. Maybe they think the upsides outweigh those downsides, which is fair, but I think there's no reason to assume voters have been given full enough information to make this vote worth anything.)--Victor Yus (talk) 18:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

So is a suggestion for a change for ease of navigation forthcoming? And rest assured, none of the coordinating admins here have any strong position on PC; that's why we're the ones who are watching over it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:01, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I've suggested transcluding the discussion above the voting sections. But the whole exercise seems flawed (see below).--Victor Yus (talk) 07:06, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• I object strongly to the notion that reviewer permissions should be any easier to remove than administrator permissions. Bluntly put, we had a large number of editors refuse to accept reviewer permissions, despite their undoubted abilities as editors, because any administrator could arbitrarily decide to remove the permission. The fact that a poor decision was made a long time ago (with the majority of participants in the discussion being administrators) to permit rollback permisions to be controlled by individual administrators does not mean we should repeat this error in judgment. Frankly, given the number of times I have seen administrators arbitrarily remove rollback permissions from users, I'm surprised we haven't had more requests for desysopping. I would prefer to see a defined number of non-automated edits that must be made before reviewer permission is automatically granted, with its removal only via a request to the Arbitration Committee or some other similar, elected, broadbased and representative committee (I'd fold in rollback if we went with the latter). I'd propose 500 non-automated edits.

  Absolutely not, Risker. Automatically granting it at any number of edits is foolishness, especially if they're active in sections that have their own culture compared to the rest of WP. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 07:43, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

  Is it that much of a deal? We already get the right to edit semi-protected pages automatically after a certain number of edits; why not the right to accept other people's edits (which is really just part of the same thing). Same with rollback - why is that even called a permission at all? Why not just give all of these things to all (auto)confirmed users (and be prepared to block on sight any such user who is seen to be acting maliciously)? --Victor Yus (talk) 08:29, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely it's a big deal, Victor; I can think of quite a few editors who refused the permission the last time because of this issue. And Jeremy, it works just fine on other projects to make it very difficult to remove the permission. I don't so much have problems with admins granting the permission, but I really have problems with a single admin having the ability to arbitrarily remove it. We have seen some really horrendous errors in judgment on the part of admins when it comes to unilaterally removing rollback. Sadly, nobody has the courage to call those admins on their behaviour; other admins don't care, since it doesn't affect them, and other users don't want to be pilloried for pointing it out. Risker (talk) 03:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

• My objection isn't to being restrictive in it's removal, Risker. It's to automatically granting it after X amount of edits, and that's what Victor is responding to. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:40, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, that's right. Though if I were to address the other matter, I'd probably say that admins ought to feel empowered to remove the right without ceremony, for example if someone was clearly misusing it (waving through nonsense edits en masse, for example). People are much too worried about status around Wikipedia - losing reviewer or rollback rights (or even admin rights) can hardly matter than much to anyone in itself, particularly if it's only temporary, but when they are treated as badges of rank, people feel personally affronted to be "demoted" or "punished".--Victor Yus (talk) 06:50, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

  You're confusing ability to edit with the ability to judge edits. Just because one can edit autoconfirmed pages does not mean they're any use with more advanced permissions (rollback, reviewer, administrator). —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 00:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

  I'm not confusing anything. I just don't think there's that much difference between the ability to think of a change oneself and judge whether it's a good one, and the ability to see someone else's change and judge whether it's a good one. Or (with rollback) that there's much difference between being able to revert someone's edit with one mouse click or two. These are trivial things that are unworthy of the name "advanced permissions" (of course administrator rights are a different case). --Victor Yus (talk) 06:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

  There is a quite stark difference between conceptualizing a change that you think is for the better and judging whether a change is for the better according to both consensus and Wikipedia policy. There is no such thing as an unbiased human. Everyone has their own opinion on what edits abide by Wikipedia policy; past obvious vandalism, it's all grey and shades thereof. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

  I don't see what this has to do with restricting reviewer rights to certain privileged individuals. Now, any confirmed user can handle (or reject) an unconfirmed's edit request on a semi-protected page. Since PC is supposed to be just semi-protection with technical enhancements, why significantly restrict the ability to handle ("review") edit requests ("pending changes") on PC-ed pages?--Victor Yus (talk) 07:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  Because PC is a far more powerful tool relative to permissions than you give it credit for. A reviewer, if so inclined, could flat-out reject all anon changes, reject changes that don't fit his weltanschauung, or use it to further a content dispute. Such rejected changes, well-intended or otherwise, never appear on the live article, allowing for more subtle POV-pushing. This would be devastating to articles under discretionary sanctions (where POV-pushing is endemic), politics articles (and articles connected to same), and articles focused on divisive controversies. Making reviewer as hard to remove as admin is a very bad idea, and automatically granting it after X amount of edits or making it easier than administrator-level consensus (70%) is absolutely suicidal. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 08:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  But all these power actions you say a reviewer can do on a PC-ed article, any confirmed user can already do on a SP-ed article. In fact the whole point of semi-protection is to allow confirmed users to win edit wars against (certain disruptive) unconfirmed ones. Given that I can technically do what I like with an article anyway (delete its entire text, for example, or revert the last n actual edits), the ability to accept or reject other people's explicitly suggested changes is really no big deal. --Victor Yus (talk) 09:37, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  YOU ARE WRONG BECAUSE: I Am The World. This isn't about your abilities, it's about reviewers' abilities. And semi-protection prevents this type of issue in the first place by preventing anons from editing; the prot-pol explicitly states using it to win a content dispute is a misuse. With Pending Changes, the policy is in its infancy and its temptations for misuse are far greater than for semi-protection, since PC propagates a big lie, that anyone can edit the page provided things go through a bozo filter. If the bozo filter is himself a bozo (as will generally be the case as Reviewer is standard in admin kit and Lawful-Stupid-Shin-Megami-Tensei-Mesianism is nowhere near extinct in that group), what's the point of PC? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  As I understand it, the point of PC is to make it easier for folks who have to go through the filter to feed stuff into the filter. I share your opposition to it (though probably for somewhat different reasons), but if we are going to have it, it seems illogical to refuse to grant the reviewer right to anybody who is supposed to be able to edit the page anyway. Being allowed to operate the filter doesn't seem any bigger a deal than being allowed to bypass the filter altogether. Anyway, I think we're repeating ourselves, so unless anyone important is actually listening to this conversation, I suggest we just agree to disagree.--Victor Yus (talk) 19:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

  I will admit that part of the opposition to automatic reviewerhood is personal - I do not want Reviewer rights period, and relinquished my adminship during the last trial when I found out admins have that userright. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:16, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

• Secondly, the policy does not address some of the major issues that were found during the course of the trial:
  • Pending changes does not work properly on large articles; editors and reviewers were crashing on a regular basis because of load times, and there was some indication that this affected overall system performance. (This is the real reason that the George W. Bush article was removed from the trial.)
  • Pending changes increases the frequency at which rumours and innuendo can be inserted into an article's history. We had a lot more oversighting to do on highly active articles during the trial.
  • Pending changes is ineffective on highly active articles; edits to be reviewed were frequently overtaken by edits made by autoconfirmed users before anyone had a chance to review them.
  • Pending changes on featured (and likely good) articles raised several problematic issues: poor quality edits that would have been stopped by semi-protection being accepted that adversely affected the overall quality of the article (remember that all non-vandalism edits were supposed to be accepted); disputes between longtime editors of the articles and reviewers over what should and should not be accepted; conflicts when primary editors of the articles did not have reviewer permissions; etc.
• The proposed policy does not provide any guidance at all about what edits reviewers should be accepting, or the context in which they should be accepting them. While it's clear that genuine vandalism should not be accepted, it's not clear if the expectation is that any edit that is *not* vandalism of some form should be accepted. This actually requires a specific and nuanced discussion, as was identified during the last trial. We had reviewers (including several administrators) rejecting relatively non-controversial edits because they weren't accompanied by a reference, or because they had a typo in them, or because the reviewer didn't think the edit was helpful. We also saw a lot of edits rejected simply because they were made by IPs or newly registered users, in a repeat of the issues we see at Recent Changes patrol; there was nothing wrong with the edits themselves.
• I would like to see Pending Changes returned in some form; however, until the policy is determined, and we address the issues that were actually identified during the trial, I cannot support its reinstatement. Risker (talk) 04:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes, too much missing or unclear information. People coming here to vote aren't being enabled to understand the question. In fact, I don't believe anyone fully understands the question. Is it about PC as an alternative to SP, or is it about using PC on pages that don't currently get SP? What numbers of PC-ed pages, and what numbers of reviewers, are we expecting? How long are we expecting it to take before changes get reviewed? (And if it's a couple of minutes, as has been suggested, then the question is begged: if there's a group of editors collectively willing and able to review all (unconfirmed users') edits to a particular group of pages within minutes, then why do those pages need any kind of protection at all? And how much is this costing in terms of the time spent on this task by these power users, who presumably would otherwise be contributing to Wikipedia in other valuable ways?)--Victor Yus (talk) 07:06, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• I've a strong feeling PC supporters want a lot of this kept under wraps. I trust that they believe they're acting in the best interests of the encyclopedia, but I can smell the buyer's remorse. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Truly, everything about Pending Changes has been crooked from beginning to end. Even the bit about protecting BLPs, I don't believe. I think that once the class system is established, once we have a loyal clique of reviewers resolutely keeping discordant points of view out of articles, we're going to see a very sordid third act where these "protectors of BLPs" become the ones using articles to attack their subjects, and no one can prevent them. But of course, they'll be attacking the right people, or should I say, the left. Wnt (talk) 19:40, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Before this thread goes any farther along the track it's on, I'm (speaking for the coordinating admins) going to remind everyone to assume good faith of the people you're arguing against. Insinuating that supporters of Pending Changes are part of a conspiracy with nefarious intentions is no more helpful to the discussion than it would be for a supporter of PC to argue that a detractor is against it because they want freedom to vandalise. You're free to discuss the merits and problems of PC and people's logic in supporting or opposing it, but personally criticising other editors or assigning motivations to them is not acceptable here. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

To be clear, it is not my intention to suggest that they all have bad intentions. The tool will corrupt those who take charge of it, no matter who they are, and attract those who are corrupt to it. It is fundamentally a deviation from the principles the Wiki was founded on, and it will by nature work toward breaking them down. Wnt (talk) 22:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Like I wrote above, Jéské, this has been a textbook example of how not to change policy. Unlike Wnt, I don't think those who advocate PC are trying to deprive anyone of the ability to edit articles -- at least, not consciously. What I have seen happen here is a few think this is the perfect solution for... well, somthing -- exactly what this will solve has never been explained & proven to work to disinterested people (like me) -- & they have decided to keep pounding away at getting this adopted. -- llywrch (talk) 20:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Usage boundaries between pending changes lv. 1 versus semi-protection still not addressed

I remember there being discussion as to when it would be best to use Pending Changes and when it would be best to use semi-protection. The boundary isn't clear, and if this isn't addressed there's going to be a messy piecemeal system where if the admin likes PC, PC will be used, and if they don't, semi will be used. Something specific is needed. Sven Manguard Wha? 14:01, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I don't know if I can hit every point necessary here, but maybe at least I can get the ball rolling. SP is preferable to PC1 (and FP to PC2) on frequently-edited articles (pick a number, 1 edit/hour? 1/edit 10 minutes)? because things just get messy when multiple editors are queued, cognitively and otherwise.

SP is also preferable to PC (and FP to PC2), I would guess, when the type of problematic edit the protection is trying to address is not necessarily obvious from context. Vandalism that mostly consists of profanity is going to be clear to any reviewer who comes to visit, but the sorts of issues raised in cases where, to pick an example from an AfD I was just reading, the insertion of a date of birth is considered a BLP issue. There, the "Reviewer has to look at the Talk page and request in detail" is going to have a real advantage.

In my view (and I hear others dispute this, fair enough), PC1 is preferable to SP, and PC2 is preferable to FP, when these issues are not in play, because the changes an editor makes are captured, and, typically, incorporated into the encyclopedia. Such incorporation happens faster with PC than SP/FP, and no editors are pushed away by confusion about how to even *ask* to edit a semi-protected or protected article. It is, in my view, foolish to think that we don't have many editors simply walk away at the point they encounter an SP/FP article. I think PC1/PC2, problematic as they are, might actually be superior to editor retention in those cases.

Other suggestions? --joe decker^{talk to me} 04:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

That sounds quite reasonable - so PC1 would be used instead of SP on articles with where the problematic edits are not too frequent and are easily seen to be problematic. I still think, though, that if PC1 is to be regarded as SP with enhancements, then the reviewer right needs to be available practically to all confirmed users, otherwise those users will be shut out of editing in certain situations where at the moment they are not. I also feel that PC2 has not been discussed enough (well I'm sure it has, but I haven't seen it here). It cannot be regarded as an exact equivalent to full protection, since it allows reviewers, and not only admins, to edit (including to approve changes). And this raises the question: on what basis are the reviewers to operate in this regime? Are they supposed to act like admins in the case of full protection, and make/allow only changes that are completely uncontroversial or have demonstrated consensus? Or are they to allowed to use their own judgement as to what changes will be beneficial, as confirmed users can on a page that has semi-protection?--Victor Yus (talk) 08:02, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I attempted to raise this issue in my support for option 3. Unfortunately, the structure of the top part of this RfC means that you are required to either support/oppose PC or explain what improvements need to be made before it is potentially workable, and most people (entirely understandably) have gone for the former option. —WFC— 14:29, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Victor, With regard to your question about PC2, you're right that PC2 is not entirely comparable to FP, and I see that as a positive. I see the use case for PC2 as being articles where another careful set of eyes is used to check submissions to articles that have a history of serious problem edits (libel, attack, etc.) which which (a) are sometimes added by confirmed users and (b) are a sort of problem which is likely to be spotted by a reasonably aware reviewer. Right now, the best tool we have is FP, but really, any trusted, known editors with good judgement could identify serious problems.

To dig down into your question, I would say something closer to the latter, in that, their responsibility would be to deny edits which were clearly problematic (as libel, copyright, attack). It would be my preference that other potential problems be handled by "accept the edit, and then treat it as an editing disagreement", in other words, a reviewer who has a disagreement of benign fact (no BLP issues, etc.) would accept the change for the record, but then, if they so choose, could still act as a normal editor in taking issue with the change. I think of it as being akin to rollback in this sense. --joe decker^{talk to me} 18:32, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

For reviewers who intend to evaluate edits seriously, these policy issues are difficult problems. But for those who already make a practice of reverting a paragraph-long edit because a single supplementary source, in their opinion, is unnecessary, or because they just don't like talking about something nasty ... for them it is no problem at all. Wnt (talk) 22:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Victor, there are more than 7,000 people who can review edits right now. They tend to be very active editors. Although the overlap is imperfect, the top 7,000 editors make one-third of the edits to the English Wikipedia. I suspect therefore that we have a reasonable level of reviewers to handle some thousands of PC-protected articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

What of my alternative question then: if there are that many people capable of staying on top of that set of articles, then what's the need for protecting those articles at all? And will PC not have the unintended consequence of artificially directing an excessive proportion of those 7000 editors' working time towards a particular set of articles (and mostly handling quite minor changes to those articles), at the expense of whatever other contributions to Wikipedia they would otherwise have been making?--Victor Yus (talk) 06:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I find it helpful to remember that everyone here is a volunteer who will do whatever they want to help. They are the best judge of their time, and it will take no time to ignore PC completely, especially where it's being used on 'low' traffic pages. There was also feedback before that some editors found it interesting to see different articles, and that review queues were not long. As for having too many and 'staying on top' - there is always vandalism which slips through the net, and that's where PC comes in. I think I've provided a few examples somewhere in the talk archives of really bad vandalism staying around for weeks. I spend most of my time around here finding it. To have it happen once is embarrassing; to happen twice is negligent. Anyone who thinks recent changes patrol is up to the job is mistaken. I'd also like to agree with Joe Decker's comments. I used PC1 a fair bit but PC2 only once, where there was an issue of libel. I found PC2 very helpful in that case. I found PC1 very useful on biographies with a history of trouble. I also found myself using it on a few school articles that nobody, seriously nobody was watching. And these articles needed every edit they could get. Most are probably now under permanent semi-protection and in a sad state. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:00, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not goinjg to argue that RC patrol is up to the task, but arguing that PC is better than RC patrol makes your whole argument self-contradictory because, as you point out, it will take "no time" to ignore Pending Changes - which is a problem as PC requires a far greater time commitment than RC patrol and far more dedication. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm yet convinced that PC isn't a bit of smoke and mirrors (it creates the illusion of being a less restrictive version of semi-protection, whereas in fact it is more restrictive, unless you're prepared to be consistent and be ready to give the reviewer status to any confirmed user who wants it), but if it is to be used, as the voting suggests it will be, then I would certainly agree with what Joe Decker and you propose as regards the kinds of situation where it should be used.--Victor Yus (talk) 11:37, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Implementation: Do we tack this on to RFPP or create a new request system

I recommend the first option. Sven Manguard Wha? 14:01, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm staying out of the actual debating this time around, but I believe I can easily answer this and it gives an opportunity to clarify an important point. The way PC was used during and after the trial, it was just another tool in the article protection suite. No new systems or noticeboards are needed to begin using it again, everything we need is still present, we just need a consensus on whether or not we are allowed to apply it. This is why the draft policy repeatedly uses the words " as with other forms of protection". The draft policy would be an addendum to WP:PP and PC would be just one of the options available to admins when reviewing requests for protection, whether made at RFPP or through other channels.. The draft policy is just that, a draft. It is not intended to be complete or perfect, it is intended to give us something to work with if the tool is approved and it is expected to be changed over time, or even right away, just like any other policy. The idea here is to make the decision to use the tool or not use it, and sort out the smaller details in the usual manner, by identifying specific issues through regular use and correcting them as we go. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:55, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

My fear is that if a crap policy gets approved here, then whenever there's a proposal to change the policy in the future, even if it's supported by a clear majority of those who take an interest (which will probably be a much smaller number than the number of fly-by voters here), the minority who oppose the change will point to this vote as evidence that the "community" supports their point of view, since it has endorsed the policy as is. And the policy will remain crap (like most other Wikipedia policies I've seen).--Victor Yus (talk) 06:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that we should use RFPP for this - and work towards merging this into the protection policy. The idea is that PC is supposed to be a type of protection - adding this to pages is done on the protection screen (pages such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment_2012/Discussion&action=protect), and for similar reasons to protection. Additionally, we may have a situation where the reporter thinks that protection is better and the handling admin thinks PC is, or visa versa; handling them together means that such situations are handled more neatly. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

The use of Pending Changes should definitely follow most of the same procedures as semi- and full protection, including the use of the RFPP procedure, in my opinion. I hold out hope that PC will be as easy to remove as semi-protection is, which was one of the key problems with the trial period in my opinion (that Pending changes seemed to tend to "stick" to an article, unlike the way in which semi-protection tends not to "stick").
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:23, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I also support the "it's another form of protection, use the same processes" approach to any implementation of PC, RFPP included. --joe decker^{talk to me} 04:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for "not sticking". This is a "less than lethal weapon", to be used only as a kinder alternative to full-protection or semi-protection. Just like tasering a guy who asks a nasty question at a town hall meeting is a less-than-lethal alternative to shooting him for it. Wnt (talk) 19:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Ultimately, the view that you're describing here is the main reason that I oppose Pending Changes in general. If it is to be used, I sincerely hope that there are some controls put in place to limit both the breadth and depth of it's use (the number of articles and the length of time, to be clear).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Pending Changes' use continued

When going to check the logs for average time of review, I stumbled upon this, which tells me that the consensus from the last RfC was not honored. I'd better start hearing explanations or I will take this up to the Arbitration Committee. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:59, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

That is rather surprising. At present when one opens the protection interface there is a rather hard to ignore warning to not use PC, but it seems a few admins are not heeding it. I don't believe this is an issue for this RFC though, it is something that should be taken up with those admins. It looks like many of them either realized their mistake or were corrected quickly by others as well. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Just checking: you know "reset pending changes" means turning it off, right? Almost all of those entries consist of a pair of actions: someone accidentally turning it on, followed by either self-correcting, or being corrected by others, fairly quickly. Special:StablePages shows no articles have pending changes turned on and the pending changes log you linked shows it happens, for a short time, very infrequently. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:59, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm raising a stink over the "configured" parts of the log, not the "reset" ones. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand the outrage, then. A few people made mistakes and either realized their mistake and fixed it, or were corrected by others. No one did it twice. Are people not allowed to make mistakes without threats of ArbCom? --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

A few minutes to a day is a mistake. Five (AMP v. Persons Unknown) to 13 days (Matt Stone) is willful disregard of the consensus. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

"Willful disregard"? That's... not reasonable, and... well, I'll leave it at unreasonable. They both undid their mistake themselves, with notes saying it was a mistake. This really doesn't look like a big deal. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

If it was actually a mistake they would have taken them off PC far sooner than they did. There's only so far you can stretch the definition of "mistake". —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

You can make a mistake without realizing you've made it. You might never correct it if it's not brought to your attention, but it was still a mistake. --Victor Yus (talk) 07:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Is this RfC really the right place to have this discussion? I don't see how it has anything to do with the current proposal or the re-implementation of PC, unless some of those articles can shed some light on whether it is effective. Everyone in the log admitted that they used PC by accident. If you feel it really requires attention, it seems like WP:ANI is a better venue than this RfC. I apologize if I am speaking out of turn. CittàDolente _{(per me si va)} 23:50, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

These mountains you discuss look rather more like molehills. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:37, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why people would agree with position 1. I understand 2 and 3, but 1 seems like flooring the issue won't be solving any of the issues. I voted on 133 for position 2. Do any of my comments have a place in this discussion? Thanks! Thepoodlechef (talk) 22:42, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

If you can't understand it then I'm not going to bother trying to explain it. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Let me clarify that statement. I'm not going to bother explaining it if you don't understand because almost everyone who has supported position 1 has given a rationale as to why they do not support it, and I myself have been MST'ing arguments from position 2. I will not claim to speak for everyone, but most of position 1's proponents support it on the same merits and arguments. If you can't understand where we come from, it's because you're not reading our arguments; thus, I'm not going to bother explaining it when reading the Position 1 arguments would be just as illuminating. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:41, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Reopening Pending Changes Trial But On All English Wikipedia Pages

Discussion should be of the three options above; I don't mean to be a dick, but I'd rather head things off at the pass. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:56, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Personally, I can't make a decision on weather using PC instead of semiprotection (I guess) is better or worse because I realize that PC was only used on a few pages. If a trial on all pages was used, would that give a better judgement for people who are ignorant of its powers?Curb Chain (talk) 02:15, 31 March 2012 (UTC) Not going to happen as that crosses the line into Flagged Revisions. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 03:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Importance of IP users

This essay by Aaron Swartz makes good reading. It suggests that the significance of IPs has been greatly underestimated by Wikipedians. Schemes to marginalize them from broad classes of editing should not be accepted. Wnt (talk) 22:14, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

It isn't IP users (unregistered users) that PC would marginalize, since they're already excluded by SP. The ones it would marginalize, to some extent, is the confirmed users who are not reviewers, since in some circumstances their edits are now going to be subject to a reviewer's good grace, whereas they wouldn't be under SP. (Though in any case any edit anyone ever makes is liable to be reverted by someone, even if you're Mr Wales himself, so I wouldn't dramatize this issue too much.)--Victor Yus (talk) 09:27, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

They're only excluded by SP if only SP articles are converted to PC. But every time a PC supporter says that the scheme "will help reduce vandalism and BLP violations" they are saying that PC will be applied to additional articles.

While the effect of deleting the edit may be similar to reversion, PC differs from reversion in that there is no tendency for inaction to leave the IP's work alone, or to consider removing only part of it that he disagrees with (as any reverter should) - rather, the reviewer can safely reject without comment, or accept at risk of being accused of misdeeds or even libel over anything the person said. Wnt (talk) 16:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are not responsible for this. WP:OFFICE is.Curb Chain (talk) 01:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think some of you don't realize that PC level 1 is virtually the same as SP as it still allows confirmed editors to edit without approval but the IPs can only push an edit with the approval of a reviewer like myself. It PC level 2 where confirmed and IP users can only edit with the approval of a reviewer. PC + SP means that only confirmed users can edit with the approval of a reviewer while IPs cannot. I also believe that PC will only be placed on an article that have continuous issues such as persistent vandalism from IPs where PC level 1 is warranted or edit warring or content disputes where PC level 2 is warranted or targeted consistent vandalism where SP + PC level 2 would be warranted. I hope I wasn't making a redundant statement here.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:19, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Bullshit. PC level 1 is not "virtually the same as SP" because it allows IPs to edit (and still vandalize) the article, thus wasting reviewers' time which could be better spent editing articles to improve them. It's far worse at stopping vandalism than SP, which is barely capable of doing so as is. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 07:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

And as I keep on saying without it apparently getting through to people, PC1 is also not the same as SP because, if there are unconfirmed users' edits in the queue, it does not allow confirmed editors to edit. Victor Yus (talk) 07:20, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Huh? Where did you get that idea? I don't believe that is true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe this is correct, at least this is how it works in other projects.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:35, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

(After edit conflict, replying to WhatamIdoing, not sure who Ymblanter is agreeing with.) Is it not? Enlighten me then. How can I edit the page if there are IP edits awaiting approval? (I mean edit in the strong sense rather than the weak one; I know I can still submit edits, but I don't believe I can instantly update the current public version of the page in that situation without a reviewer's approval - as I would be able to do under SP.) Victor Yus (talk) 17:39, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, Victor Yus. You will still be able to submit edits, but these would only become visible after review.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:47, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Replace semiprotection with PC?

Something that crossed my mind was replacing semiprotection with pending changes? That way vandals would be kept out and good edits allowed. Zaminamina (talk) 11:55, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protection is moreover a further step in protection. It prevents all edits from being made to the article if by an unregistered or non-confirmed user. Removing semi-protection in favor of pending changes is a very testy decision, as it places more weight on the reviewers and administrators that monitor pending changes. Although I do endorse position #2, I firmly believe that semi-protection is also a very good idea for protection, and its been working for the past several years. Any editor who is willing to make a good faith edit can request to do so on the talk page. Semi-protection should be kept as a further level of protection, rather than it being replaced. --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 13:55, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Semiprotection is useless against a determined vandal. Pending changes even moreso since, even though the edit was prevented from being seen, they've succeeded in getting someone to see it, which for hit-and-run vandals is the entire point. Not to mention a /b/ raid on a PC article will annihilate Pending Changes on that article since there's no way a reviewer can keep up with the volume of edits. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:29, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think vandals are motivated by the idea that someone will see their vandalism. I think they want the world or someone they know to see it. But in any case, why they are doing it is beside the point. PC can stop vandalism from being visible to the public. If the price of that is satisfying the vandal by looking at their vandalism, sobeit. FormerIP (talk) 21:58, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

If I placed myself in the shoes of a vandal, I would say that I vandalized Wikipedia for the fun of it, or as a joke to trick a friend or foe, whatever. Pending changes makes it impossible (almost) for the vandalism to be made public. So, the fun is then spoiled. But a vandal can however, target the vandalism directly at the reviewers, which, depending on how severe the vandalism is, can lead to that user's blocking or perhaps semi-protection of the page. All another reason to keep semi-protection. --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 22:36, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely. If we have no easy step up from PC, then we will have a problem sooner or later. FormerIP (talk) 23:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

This theory neatly explains why we see large quantities of vandalism using {{editprotected}} and {{edit semi-protected}}! —Tom Morris (talk) 20:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

We could always start off with pending changes protection however vandalism is targeted at the reviewer pending changes protection can be upped to semiprotection.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 00:43, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

What happens with queued changes from non-reviewers when a reviewer approves/disapproves an IP/new edit?

OK. As I understand it, edits will queue up from non-reviewers if an IP/new edit has done an edit on a PC1 page. Let's say I'm a non-reviewer who has done an edit to a section of a PC1 page after an IP has edited that section. Two closely related questions:

• Assuming that a reviewer approves the IP's edit, what happens to my edit? Does it immediately go into effect, or does the reviewer get to decide whether it goes through?
• Say the reviewer did not approve of the IP's edit. What happens to my edit?

Thanks! Allens (talk | contribs) 23:20, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Oi, could someone knowledgable answer Allens? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 00:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Help:Pending changes. You need to think it terms of the latest revision, which is pretty much the only one that matters for review, which has been edited by you both. Either you continue to include the IPs edits in the reviewed version, or you edit them out yourself like you normally would. To reject an edit you basically just undo it. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 00:36, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

That answer's a bit confusing, but I assume that as from "Either..." the word "you" begins to refer to the reviewer instead of the questioner. So the answer seems to be that it depends how diligent/lazy the reviewer is. If the confirmed user's edit is blocking the undoing of an IP edit, then it might get rejected just because the reviewer doesn't have the time to fiddle with the text manually. Victor Yus (talk) 06:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, at Help:Pending changes, it says "Reviewers accept or fix the latest version of a page; they rarely check all intervening changes." Regardless of whether this is a descriptive or prescriptive statement, it seems rather worrying, doesn't it? Victor Yus (talk) 06:36, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Intervening changes are often ignored, and that's fine - what matters when reviewing is only the difference between the latest accepted revision of the article and latest revision - as anyone dealing with a 4chan vandalism raid will tell you. If it doesn't contain vandalism the latest revision will probably get accepted - either by yourself as a editor and reviewer, or by another watching the article, or another attracted by the review request. On your other question, it really is the same as using the 'undo' button and you need to give the same reasons. If there's a blocking edit for the 'undo' then it gets fixed manually the same as currently happens. And yes, if your revision contains the IP's vandalism then it'll wait until someone can come along and fix it. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

(The IP's vandalism or the IP's perfectly good edit; my edit will have to wait anyway, which is why PC is not just semi-protection with bells as some people seem to think.) OK so this is starting to make more sense; a good modus operandi for the reviewer is: look at the diff for the current vs. last accepted version, if all the changes are OK then accept the current version, if none of the changes are OK then revert back to the last accepted version, and if some are OK but some are not then get your hands dirty. I presume all this will be (or is) documented somewhere. Of course out-and-out vandalism will presumably not be the only reason for rejecting changes (particularly in light of the reviewer's possible legal liability), anything potentially defamatory will have to go as well, I imagine.--Victor Yus (talk) 09:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Is it really the same as using "undo" - as in I'll know about it if I've watchlisted the page? Or do rejected edits not show up on the watchlist? Allens (talk | contribs) 10:56, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure they show up in watchlists, just as pending edits show up anyway for logged-on editors when they view the article.--Victor Yus (talk) 11:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

A question on liability

Has anyone done an analysis of the potential liability issues where, as will inevitably happen, defamatory content gets past reviewers? Thinking out loud, I would be of the preliminary view that where an editor puts up his own edit Wikipedia should be entitled, in EU law, to avail of the hosting exemption provided by Article 14 of the E-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC and as no reviewer contributed to putting up the information no liability should attach to a reviewer. On the other hand where information can only be put up by being reviewed by a person granted priviliges to do so by the community I suspect that issues could arise. This is by no means a fully formed view, I am just wondering if the analysis has been done. FrankFlanagan (talk) 20:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC) 22:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

The then-Foundation lawyer, Mike Godwin, posted a comment in 2009 about whether a reviewer could be held legally liable for approving an edit here. Essentially it's possible but no-one really knows. Hut 8.5 17:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I pointed this out above in one of my bullets arguing against Position 2. Also Wikipedia is hosted in the United States and would fall under that set of laws, as opposed to the European Union's. (This would not prevent European reviewers from potentially getting in trouble, mind.) —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:58, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

For an overview of some of the issues see chapter 3 of Caution! You are now exercising editorial control. I note, by way of example, that an Italian court has handed down suspended jail sentences to US based Google executives, although it is understood that that case is under appeal, see Google bosses convicted in Italy. FrankFlanagan (talk) 21:04, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

• Surely this is a fundamental issue which needs a clear answer. Would it really be advisable for any editor based in Europe to ok a pending change, with the risk of personal legal consequences if it turns out to be well-crafted but malign? (Possibly even more so in the UK, with its parade of well-heeled libel-shoppers parading through the London courts.) AllyD (talk) 20:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

• For a current court case regarding Wikipedia edits, see [1]. --JN466 12:00, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • A very strong argument in favour of making absolutely sure opinions are clearly stated as opinions of a particular source, rather then the current practice of "anything goes" on many articles. Particularly ones which attract POV editors at all, including political, religious, economic etc. articles. Where doubt exists, use direct quotations from the source on anything contentious. The case given was, of course, egregious. Collect (talk) 12:38, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

• - All editors are totally legally responsible for any additions of content they make to En Wikipedia. - as a reviewer and it is not your suggestion only your review you will be responsible but you will have a degree of mitigation to limit your responsibility. - At present legal charges against en wikipedia editors are at a minimal level - For the simple reviewing of basic desired edits such issues/worries will be IMO irrelevant.Youreallycan 21:46, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

<sarcasm> The kind of authoritative legal advice we are getting here will surely have put everyone's mind at rest. Onward! </sarcasm> Victor Yus (talk) 07:24, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

If you want an authoritative answer for your particular situation, then hire your own lawyer. Alternatively, don't volunteer to review other people's edits. Nobody's forcing you to do so, after all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I certainly have no intention of doing so. But I think we would (or should) all be somewhat concerned at the prospect that some of our fellow volunteers might be unwittingly exposing themselves to legal liability despite having only the best intentions for the project. We must at least ensure that anyone who is made a reviewer is consciously aware of the legal situation (or rather, of the fact that no one is sure what the legal situation is). But then there's still a problem since reviewers who are aware of this issue are going to be reluctant to approve edits that are in any way potentially defamatory, leading to a lot of "negative" information being excluded from the encyclopedia, giving it an undesirable bias in favour of its subjects... --Victor Yus (talk) 17:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

So you have no intention of reviewing any edits but you are worried that ... users will be "reluctant to approve edits that are in any way potentially defamatory," - good - all users should be at that point anyway - Negative is in the eye of the beholder. - All truly notable details will be unaffected - You say, "or rather, of the fact that no one is sure what the legal situation is" - The clear and already stated in the foundations legal declarations is that all users are completely legally responsible for all additions of content they make to this project - that clearly will include accepting reviews - you would have a degree of mitigation from a review edit that would limit your legal responsibility for those reviewed additions. Youreallycan 17:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Problem is that some truly notable details are potentially defamatory. We want to say bad things about people sometimes, because our readers will be given a distorted or incomplete picture if we omit them (there's no pressure to exclude "positive" details, after all). But a reviewer (who likely will not be initimately familiar with the subject or the sources, will likely not have time to look into the matter in detail, and will be or ought to be worried about his/her own personal legal position) is going to feel under excessive pressure to reject such information, just to be on the safe side. Victor Yus (talk) 17:52, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you are correctly stating the benefits of Pending changes. - An addition in clear responsibility for what are currently mostly anonymous editors. Youreallycan 18:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's an excellent argument against pending changes - causing people to be reluctant to approve the posting of true information just because it happens to be defamatory. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

We can agree to differ. My position is that defamatory or potentially defamatory content should clearly be discussed and consensus resolved on the talkpage, so, no reviewer should ever add such content - such an addition is basically beyond a reviewers remit or responsibility - they should simply refuse to accept it and open a discussion on the talkpage to seek WP:Consensus - Youreallycan 18:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Certainly we can agree to differ, but I believe I'm backed up by WP policy. Currently, policy as I understand it - which will not be changed by PC - is that encyclopedaic information that's backed up with references gets published, and removing such true information is a type of vandalism. No consensus is needed to add true, relevant, encyclopedaic information, whether it's "defamatory" or not. And if reviewers should be reluctant to add "defamatory" information, then to keep things NPOV, they need to be equally reluctant to accept positive information. No assumption should be made that "defamatory" information is less likely to be true, relevant, or encyclopediaic; doing otherwise violates NPOV. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Umm... if the information is correct and well-backed-up, then defamatory material should certainly be published, with no reluctance, as should favorable material of which the same is true - and if material is not correct and thus not well-backed-up, then it should not be published, whether it is defamatory or favorable. (I'm less worried about unimportant material that is neither defamatory nor favorable, although it is certainly preferable if it is correct and well-backed-up.) That includes "defamatory" - and "favorable" - material that someone else may decide is not "notable", as long as it's backed up sufficiently to establish that it is indeed notable by Wikipedia standards.

Admittedly, in this case, anyone who edited the article after a piece of what a court decided was illegally "defamatory" material was added could probably be sued - not just a reviewer - since they do have a chance to revert such material... Allens (talk | contribs) 17:56, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Not according to my fathers expensive lawyer - As an unpaid and unprofessional volunteer, if you edit an article and there is defamation in the article and you don't remove it you are in no way responsible. You are legally responsible for all your additions of content - A case could also be made against a Wiki user that was repeatedly removing content from a BLP if that removal portrayed the subject in a defamatory/undue negative light. Youreallycan 18:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Is Daddy's expensive lawyer knowledgeable about defamation laws? If he's not, he shouldn't be offering an opinion. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 04:06, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Encouraging editors, not discouraging them

Sorry for the new section, but since section editing of this article is limited, I can't find in the sea of plain text where the mention of "if this type of thing had been in place when I started editing, I wouldn't have started editing." I concur. In fact, the authoritarian acts already put in place have caused me to limit my Wikipedia participation to little more than fixing typos and modern-day pitiful grammar errors that keep me from actually reading the article.

I also have some experience in administratorship, being one of the first "supervisors" of WikiAnswers. Those in authority are not objective, because they're human. Disagreeing with the information will result in legitimate edits being removed. It is happening now. Pending Changes will only make the situation worse, allowing admins even greater power to maintain control without accountability. --Joe Sewell (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Just for clarity's sake it should be stated that while admins will be the ones to apply PC to articles, any autoconfirmed user may accept edits under level one PC and anyone with the reviewer right may accept edits at level two. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Wow, really? So the table at WP:Pending changes, that says that (auto)confirmed users can "edit" but cannot accept under level 1 PC, is incorrect? Victor Yus (talk) 06:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you are viewing this a little to much as "a means to control", and to little as "a solution to a problem". The concerns you raise regarding the acceptance of edits are definitely valid, but is the current situation really that different from the situation afterwards? A few editors can technically gang-up and edit war an article to a preferred state or clog any discussion with a mass of red tape in order to maintain their preferred version. Pending changes won't really change this that much.

No, the real change that PC would bring is that there would be some way to allow editors to edit a normally inaccessible page. At times a page simply needs to be protected, and while this works it is a bit akin to carpet bombing al (new) editors who may actually be working productively. Were PC to be used it would allow those users to edit. That being said PC is not some kind of tool that is to be used liberally. Instead, it should only be used when there is a valid reason to place it, and those reasons (as far as i am concerned) are the same as the reasons that would otherwise result in the aforementioned carpet bombing of the same page. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 20:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be making the same error of reasoning (I assume it to be an error, since people go strangely quiet when they're asked to confirm that they know what they're on about) as several other PC supporters here. You say PC would "allow editors to edit a normally inaccessible page". In one sense of the word "edit", yes. But in the more meaningful sense (i.e. the ability to change the public Wikipedia article with immediate effect), PC actually has (compared with semi-protection) the reverse effect; it can prevent editors from editing a normally accessible page. Given that even the more (presumably) informed supporters of PC seem not to have realized this basic fact, one wonders how many of the drop-by-and-vote supporters are aware of it. And consequently how much validity can be attached to this vote, given that many users are at least partly unaware of what they are voting for.--Victor Yus (talk) 06:40, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Your comment is somewhat vague, so i fear i have to guess what you are referring to. Seeing your comment a bit further up I gamble that you are referring to a hypothetical case where a page is protected PC protection level 1? And in specific a situation where an unreviewed edit has been made (but not accepted), while a confirmed user subsequently edits the page? And i assume that the concern is that the edit made by the confirmed user is not visible immediately and has to be reviewed, whereas it would be visible immediately when the page would have been protected trough a semi protection instead? Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 15:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Correct. Victor Yus (talk) 15:25, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok granted, that is a valid concern and it is indeed something i considered as well. What i personally believe is that PC1 and PC2 are just another two tools in the vandalism-prevention belt, and like every tool they have their strengths and weaknesses. In some cases you would therefor use a specific tool while evading another ones like the plague as they are not effective, cumbersome or otherwise inappropriate. PC1 is ideal for situations where there is a mix between good and bad faith new editors, since semi protection would effectively cancel out both sets. Of course the situation above is unfortunate, but if PC1 is applied correctly the benefit of allowing everyone to edit should outweigh the drawback for confirmed users. And of course, there should not be a great deal of protected pages in the first place. As proposal 2 says: "As with other forms of protection, PC should not be used preemptively." Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 18:38, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this is about weighing up pluses and minuses and appreciate that people might weigh them differently, but I'm still not persuaded that the "benefit of allowing everyone to edit" really outweighs the drawback I've pointed out (and I don't think the voters have properly been made aware of that drawback, which means they will not have done the weighing at all). When you say "allowing everyone to edit" you really only mean allowing them to submit edits using a more convenient interface (and not actually to make changes); and notice too that the text that they are allowed to "edit" will often not correspond to the article as they see it, which must surely be confusing. Add this to the inevitable increased bureaucracy and time-wasting squabbles about who should and should not be allowed to be a reviewer, and the many resolutely unanswered questions about how the policy is supposed to operate, and I'm still getting more minuses than pluses over the whole scheme.--Victor Yus (talk) 09:13, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Interaction with anti-vandalism bots, STiki?

How is this going to (if it passes) interact with anti-vandalism bots and tools like STiki? Will reviewers have to be dealing with vandalism that a bot or someone using STiki would have dealt with otherwise? Allens (talk | contribs) 11:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The bots and patrollers continue as normal, with the bonus that every reversion to an accepted edit requires no further review. It would probably help to have a close look at an example - see the history of King's School, Rochester (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) over the relevant period.[2] -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:50, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you; that is informative. Allens (talk | contribs) 18:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The Encyclopedia That "Anyone Can Edit"

I don't see much of a problem with Pending Changes because the concept that "anyone" can do much of anything on Wikipedia without running afoul of countless policies rigidly defended by acronym-hurling editors strikes me as being just a little like "wishful thinking." Arcanicus (talk) 07:39, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

When will this RfC be closed?

Is there a deadline? And if it has passed, who would close this RfC and write a conclusion? I've send a message to User:Beeblebrox, the creator of this RfC. Cheers, theFace 20:11, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh wait... didn't knew there was also a talk page (another discussion page). See here: Wikipedia talk:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2012#Closure of this RfC. Cheers, theFace 09:23, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Deadline set: 22 May 2012. [3][4] - theFace 18:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

A poorly designed and unsupported feature

I think it should be made more clear that this extension is significantly different than the Flagged Revisions extension as enabled on other large Wikipedias. One of the misunderstandings here is that we know the impact of the feature on editing activity because it is used on all articles on German, Polish, Russian and other Wikipedias. However, the last time the developers looked at this feature (I know, I asked them) they said that Pending Changes is so different that it should be forked into its own codebase. Enabling a feature that is poorly supported and untested (for how this proposal says it should be used) while the Foundation is tied up working on new feature enhancements like New Page Triage is a very bad idea in my opinion. Even if there are no new bugs, this convoluted piece of software really needs a makeover that it is unlikely to get. Steven Walling • talk 01:56, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm just going to jump in and elucidate on what Steven said here. I'm not sure which developers he spoke to, but I recently had a conversation with Terry Chay, our new Director of Features Engineering (who comes here from Automattic/Wordpress. Great guy!) to brief him on this software. He has confirmed he will, regardless of what is happening with New Page Triage, probably be able to dedicate resources to upgrading the codebase. As for "unsupported"; the Foundation is supporting pending changes. The Foundation has always supported pending changes. Right back in November 2010 we promised that if the community asked for it to be switched on, we'd bring it up to date and develop it as any other feature. If anyone has further questions on it, please feel free to ping me, and I can pass them on to the staffers who will be directly working on this software. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm personally interested in possibly mixing the workflow required with Pending Changes into the workflow of the curation toolbar part of the New Page Triage system. A year and a half ago I did a second level design pass on the feature, and it has a lot of rough edges which might be smoothed out. However, I'm not sure when we'll have resources to devote to improving the feature rather than maintaining it.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 03:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you tell us how PC differs from FR? I thought PC was just FR made to be enabled at the individual page level. Victor Yus (talk) 05:48, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The two bear very little resemblance in the underlying code (and not much resemblance in their actions, for that matter). The complexity of the code is part of the reason that it works so ineffectively on large articles. Risker (talk) 05:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

This is not correct. The slowness is caused by how Parser works. Any "default page version is X" extension will suffer from this. Aaron Schulz 03:55, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks but I still don't get it. From my experience with FR on other projects, and my reading of the description of PC on this one, it just seems to me that their actions are practically identical (except that PC can be enabled per-page). Is there some place I can read about the differences? Victor Yus (talk) 06:02, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

FR is a possibility to patrol every edit or every group of edits(in contrast to partol only new articles, as it is now) . Those edits may remain visible or remain hidden before they get patrolled (on most, or on almost all articles in German and Russian Wikipedias they remain visible). PC is something completely different, it is just a possibility to screen new revisions on a (small) subset of articles until those will be reviewed/patrolled/whatever. I agree with Steven that FR are way better, on the other hand, given the situation and the unwillingness of the developers to work further on the code until something gets implemented, I am pretty certain that if PC gets voted down now, we will never have a chance to implement FR (which is really needed). This is why I voted for PC as at least a step in a good direction.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure it's just the sun affecting me, but I still fail to understand. What's the substantial difference (except with regard to the set of articles affected) between "edits remaining hidden before they get patrolled" (one of the FR options) and "new revisions being screened until they are reviewed" (PC)? As I read it, you've simply described the same scenario using different words. --Victor Yus (talk) 08:54, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

For FR, it is just one option and in my opinion not the most useful one. If this option is selected than there is indeed little practical difference between FR and PC. (In FRs I used to work with in this case the edits were hidden by default, and a reader always had an option to look at them, but this is a technical detail).--Ymblanter (talk) 09:01, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

So what you would like to see would be a system where all new edits (by unconfirmed users? on all pages or just selected ones?) were marked for patrol, but would still be immediately visible to the world (except on selected pages?) Sounds not a bad idea; but if it already exists in the form of FR, then I don't understand the need to vote for PC - why encourage the developers to turn their attention to a tool that you consider inferior to something that already exists? Victor Yus (talk) 09:28, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my favorit version of FR is when all edits of autopatrolled users are marked as patrolled automatically (similarly to how it is done now with new articles), and edits of non-autopatrolled users do not get marked but are still visible (possibly with the exception of a very few sensitive articles, like a recently died celebrity, or the articles which are now semiprotected), but any reviewer can mark any edit as patrolled. Since a large portion of the down votes of this poll is coming from the users who oppose ANY changes on the basis they introduce inequality of editors, I believe in the given situation FR do not stand any chance, and we should go for the PC and gradually arrive to FR. Otherwise we are stuck in the situation when no tool is introduced at all, and the tool is badly needed. --Ymblanter (talk) 09:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

You're ignoring the fact that membership growth is anemic at best. en.wp would grind to a halt were FR to be introduced. We aren't de.wp; the cultures are different and what works in one place is unsuitable for the other. Considering we have ~3,000K articles and only about 32K active users any given month, how the hell are you going to fill in the considerable gap? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 07:39, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No, I am not ignoring anything, I have an extended first-hand experience. If the non-patrolled changes are visible, for the reader there is absolutely no difference whether they are patrolled or not. The difference is for editors, and the world will not go down even if they do not get patrolled systematically and the backlog grows. It is just a tool for our convenience to better organize the vandal fighting work. It can be organized by different means, just to give an example. Many of us watch articles we never created or considerably edited just to make sure there are no vandal edits or good-faith inappropriate edits (such as breaking templates). Right now, if I see, for example, in my watchlist, that the article has been edited by an IP, I need to go to the article and check what actually has been done. In 80% cases, this is a good-faith edit. If FR have been implemented, and I have a reviewer flag (which I am eligible for with my contribution), then I also see whether the edit has been marked by another reviewer as reviewed. If it was, I know there is no vandalism or major problems. If it was not, I would better go and look at the article, and then mark the edit as reviewed. Otherwise, one can make lists on non-reviewed articles (some of the lists are actually automatically generated similarly to WP:NPP) and distribute attention, choosing, for example, the oldest unreviewed edits. Even if nobody is doing this, we are not actually losing anything, and nothing changes for the readers. The only drawback I see, based on my own experience, that some people start perceiving this as a competition, and try to review as many articles per month as they can, with the understandable quality drop. But this kind of things we have everywhere.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

No, Ymblanter, you are. As the main clamoring has been "Think of the biographies of living persons!", as is evident from the supporters of Position 2, readers will see the last approved revision, not the present one. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 17:35, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

This is up to community to decide, not up to you alone.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Seriously, Ymblanter, think about it. If the goal is to reduce the amount of time a damaging revision on a BLP is visible, then it's counterproductive to allow revisions that still need to be reviewed to be visible to the general public. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 18:01, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

In this hypothetical situation, Jéské Couriano, which we are not even close to at this point, I will be advocating to make the vast majority of unreviewed edits to be visible, and only a small minority, in a limited subset of sensitive BLP or otherwise sensitive articles, to be hidden.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

To be clear, however, the de.wp FR allows any editor with just 300 edits to review, whereas in PC reviewership is a prize plum to be handed out and taken away by admins depending on their political opinion of the would-be reviewer. Wnt (talk) 17:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The ru.wp FR flag is also given out by admins after a public discussion. It is all up to the community.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

More barriers like admin approval, less people are available to check the revisions. According to ru:Special:Statistics, there are 850,222 articles and 12,468 active users on the Russian Wikipedia, and by ru:Special:ValidationStatistics, there are still 111,355 outdated articles (most of them having over several dozen pending revisions) for the attention of a total of 1289 reviewers (including admins). The average review time is 168 days, with extreme cases going over 750 days (for example, ru:Vehicle registration plates of Russia currently has 138 unchecked revisions which are pending review since October 2010). I fail to understand how English Wikipedia is supposed to perform substantially better with 20 times as much registered users, 12 times as much active users, 10 times as much total edits, 5 times as much articles, and only 5 times as much reviewers and administrators, according to Special:Statistics. --Dmitry _{(talk•contibs)} 23:25, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Just in case - you are aware that PC on en.wiki isn't intended to be applied to every single article we have? And that it is instead a tool to complement our current protection policy by providing an alternative to either semi or fully protecting an article? Only a fraction of the 4 million article's we have is protected, and not every protection will be a PC variety. Even if we would decide to PC every single BLP we have we wouldn't even be close to the amount of protected pages the russian wiki has. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 22:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify: that's exactly how Russian Wikipedia currently uses PC. It's enabled on featured and other high-traffic articles, not all articles. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The "average review time" of 168 is for pages that are currently pending review. The percentile table gives a better view of what to expect for a typical edit (for anons at least). The former number gravitates towards outliers and is thus larger. In any case, a month is still ridiculous as a review time. Aaron Schulz 05:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

A reduction of the workload still won't make bad design any better. Have you ever tried to check a several dozen independent revisions in the edit history, especially when heavy changes are being made in small batches, as most editors are accustomed to? Most of the time it's easier to just edit the recent version than to check the intermediate revisions either individually or as a whole. A reduction in the number of pages might alleviate the review time, but as it is currently designed, the review process is still tedious and error-prone. --Dmitry _{(talk•contibs)} 10:00, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Huh? Did you mean to reply to Excirial? Aaron Schulz 12:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

My presentation for Wikimania 2012

In this presentation I pointed out 5 advantages of Flagged Revisions & 2 advantages of Protection Policy. --Николай95 (talk) 18:07, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Taking an overview

I'm an experienced editor with little knowledge of Wikipedia innards, technical or administrative, and only took an interest in PC by accident. That "objectivity" is either good or bad, I dunno. In order to decide I read thru this whole page (and others) and saw obvious categories of argument. Valid points are being made by people who:

• Oppose PC on moral grounds, in that it fundamentally violates Wikipedia's mission
• Oppose PC on process and/or tech grounds, as functionally worse than status quo
• Provisionally Support PC, if tweaks to policy and/or technology are made
• Support PC as proposed, if flawed, as functionally better than status quo
• Support PC on moral grounds, even long overdue to improve Wikipedia

The poorest arguments, well meaning or not, seem to be centered on:

• appeals to real or perceived breaches of trust during the trial period
• claims to unverified/unverifiable insider knowledge about the tool or developers
• complaints about whether Wikimedia is competent or has enough staff
• didn't read the proposals correctly before commenting, pro or con

Don't forget a potentially large number who:

• Are confused because they read this for hours and got tired before voting <- almost me

After this thinking, it seems that implementing PC solves vandalism problems while opening routes for new users to edit pages currently locked by PP. Worries about PC flaws seem overly blown. I'll vote above and look away, sorry in advance if this causes more yelling. -- Ultracobalt (talk)

While you are correct that PC theoretically gives editors new routes to edit protected articles, I believe that there is concern that with PC, far more articles will be protected. Right now, an auto-confirmed editor (i.e., an registered editor after 4 days and 10 edits) can edit almost any article since very few articles have full protection. People believe that PC level 2 protection will be utilized far more frequently than full protection is currently used.

I like your analysis of the arguments, but I think that there is one more that you should consider -- bureaucratization. Why should we create two new levels of protection, and a new class of users (e.g., reviewers)? Wikipedia already has a quagmire of policies. PC effects me personally. I am regular editor of Wikipedia articles, but I have no interest in being an administrator. I want to edit article, not enforce policies or gain status. However, I could easily envision a situation where most controversial articles have PC2 status, and if you are not a reviewer, you cannot directly edit them. See my alternative idea which I propose below. Debbie W. 12:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Your idea below is a no-go since it has already been vetoed by the Foundation.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:17, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with that decision, but I am curious to know what their motivation was for nixing this idea. Do you have a link to their decision? Debbie W. 04:47, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

You do not need to be an administrator to have unfettered, immediate editing of any articles under PC protection. The PC reviewer flag has been handed out liberally, much like the rollbacker flag. Unless your block log is as long as your arm, you can pretty much get it by asking any admin nicely. Last I checked, nearly 6,000 people had done just that.

By contrast, in the case of a page protected—right now, today, under the non-PC system—to stop vandalism by autoconfirmed socks, you would have to be an admin, because there's no way to stop such vandalism without resorting to full protection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for responsing to my concerns. However, based on my own experiences, and the article IPs are human, autoconfirmed vandals are fairly uncommon. Roughly 20% of IP editting is vandalism, whereas 2-3% of registered editting is vandalism. I don't have any hard stats on it, but I expect that the rate of vandalism by autoconfirmed users is even lower than that of registered users, with most registered-user vandalism being among people who just signed up. Although I'm not an admin, in the event that I do see an autoconfirmed user making non-contructive edits, I can undo their changes. If they continue, I can report them on one of the noticeboards. I know that I can get reviewer status if I want it, but I disagree with the concept of it, and I disagree with the expansion of article protection. Article protection violates the fundamental idea that anyone can edit articles, and should only be used in rare circumstances where the problem is severe edit disputes, and not violations of Wikipedia policy. Debbie W. 04:47, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Debbie, when I say Grawp, what immediately comes to mind? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I will say this much; there are certain types of vandalism which have to be undone by admins. Grawp is one such example, MascotGuy is another (and as of now, he doesn't even need to get autoconfirmed status to do what he usually does), and there are plenty of people who create lovely pages as John R. Niggerlover which have to be deleted and in some cases revision deleted. So while the vast majority of vandalism can be undone by just about anyone, there are certain types that require admin tools; I hope that sheds some light on the matter. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:40, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

You make a very good point about certain types of vandalism only being undoable by administrators. How does PC affect these situations? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking that PC would not prevent a long-term abuser from creating a nonsensical Wikipedia article or from harassing other users. Debbie W. 04:46, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

PC affects those situations by causing an escalation of misbehavior aimed at making PC unworkable or an active detriment to an article, such as masses of tiny edits coordinated off-wiki (4chan en generale) or cheating PC by editing first with an IP, then making a null edit with an autocon-buster. I mentioned Grawp specifically because his MO has evolved to a point where no matter what we introduce as an antivandal measure, he'll exploit its flaws. (He did this in the trial with Park51.) —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 19:45, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Debbie didn't really start editing until last summer, and so probably doesn't know anything about Grawp. She has also just been blocked for systematic copyvios, so we should not expect a response.

On a side note, I wonder how well we'll do at identifying and rejecting copyvios under PC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't foresee Pending Changes being much better than the status quo at ferreting out copyvios or close paraphrasing since PC can't be preemptively applied to pages that are yet to be. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:21, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

Not a discussion of the options above. The place for this discussion would probably be either WP:VPP or WP:VPR. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:37, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
"Pending changes" is unworkable and violates the egalitarian spirit of Wikipedia. Rather than try to devise new ways of protecting pages, lets think of ways of reducing the number of articles needing protection. Here is a much simpler proposal - (1) Prohibit anonymous IP edits; (2) Strictly enforce rules against vandalism, edit warring, conflicts of interests, sock puppets, tendentious (biased) editting, and other abuses of Wikipedia. There is no need need to further bureaucratize Wikipedia by creating a new class of users (i.e., reviewers), and two new levels of protection. The fact remains that most vandalism is caused by anonymous IP editors, and most requests for protection are driven by either by anonymous vandalism or by a single user violating Wikipedia's policies. Look for yourself through the current protection log. Debbie W. 12:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC) I think the "prohibit IP editing" approach is one that we would regret if ever implemented. Having a fair bit of experience in RC patrolling, specifically IP contribs, I'm of the opinion that most of the edits they make are constructive. OohBunnies! Leave a message 15:23, 8 May 2012 (UTC) From what I've read, 80% of IP editing is constructive, whereas 97-98% of of registered editting is constructive. If IP editting was banned, all the constructive IP edits would not disappear. Many of them would register, and than make their edits under a user name. Debbie W. 04:56, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Closure / Level 1 only?

10 days left. I'm wondering what kind of conclusion the four admins (see top of talk page) will draw? Despite the presence of a majority, it is obvious that this subject deeply divides the community. If implemented, it would certainly dissatisfy, perhaps even antagonize, a lot of people.

Here's an idea: what if we would use level 1 only? Combined with some rules of thumb about when to favor it over semi-protection? I think it would be a good compromise. First, it would make the new situation less complex. Second, it would create a slightly smaller backlog, consisting only of IPs. Third, level 1 is less risky than level 2 in terms of worsening content disputes. Fourth, I suspect level 2 won't be applied a lot anyway. Level 2 may be used to protect a stable version against passionate but non-neutral POV-pushers. But then again, perhaps those protecting may be the ones with a POV, abusing there Reviewer powers to keep it in. I think the admins patrolling WP:RfP do realize this risk, even those supportive of Pending Changes, and will think twice before applying it. Cheers, theFace 07:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I thought it would also hit non-autoconfirmed? And, as far as I am concerned, any FlaggedRevs implementation, including such a bastardized version of Pending Changes that I doubt the community at large would agree to, is anathema. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 05:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

You are highly negative... again. However, I believe you are right, not only about the non-autoconfirmed. If there's no consensus about the Pending Changes system as a whole, then neither can we speak of a consensus regarding my compromise. It would require another poll, which won't happen. So, I guess this is the end of it. Too much opposition, really. - theFace 18:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. It's generally been running two-to-one in favor of using PC, and some of the opposition rationales strike me personally as decidedly weak (presumably the opponents believe the same about the supporters' rationales). If this discussion were AFD, and we assumed that the arguments being made by each side were equally strong, then whatever the two-thirds majority preferred would be the outcome, and DRV would uphold it. So if it continues in this vein, I personally would not be at all surprised by a close that favored using PC.

But—that's really up to the poor souls who have to close this. I'm glad that I'm not one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Quantifying the Tool's Effects

Are there any statistics on how many acts of vandalism are perpetrated by unregistered/non-autoconfirmed users? And how many such acts are sock puppetry? An indication of the scale of such acts?

I hesitate to support proposition 2 because I'm not sure if there is a genuine need for this tool. Supaiku (talk) 06:30, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe that there are current stats for Wikipedia-wide vandalism. There are no stats for socking.

But there are substantial reports specifically about accepted/rejected IP editing under PC. See Wikipedia:Pending changes/Metrics, among other pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

A significant minority of edits by new and unregistered users are vandalism, and the vast majority of vandalism comes from those two groups of editors. But our existing systems are fairly effective and revert the vast majority of this almost immediately, the important thing about pending changes is its ability to deal with the minority of vandalism that gets past the patrollers. As someone who searches for and finds vandalism that gets past the current recent changes system I can confirm that our current systems have loopholes that some vandalism gets through (whenever you have a gap at recent changes with not enough patrollers to check everything for a few minutes then vandalism will get through). I would prefer to see pending changes on all articles, but introducing it on some would mean that they at least were more heavily protected against vandalism. ϢereSpielChequers 07:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

In lieu of real stats, I'll just take your word for it Spiel, since you deal in the area regularly:)Supaiku (talk) 09:14, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. I likewise deal with a lot of "older" vandalism, via STiki - I regularly see vandalism that's days if not weeks or months old. But STiki helps take care of this pretty well, enough so that I wouldn't say pending changes is a really necessary thing (particularly not on all articles!). And it'd be possible to make STiki deal with even older vandalism by some modifications that I'll be talking to the maintainer about. Allens (talk | contribs) 21:33, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Questions about PC

I have a few questions about PC that I couldn't find an answer to?

(1) What standard must be met for an article to be put under PC1 or PC2 versus the current semi- and full-protection? Is it just an subjective decision, or is there some metric that will be used to decide the level of protection?

(2) What is the impetus for implementing PC? I recognize that there is frequent vandalism, but has there been any one particular incident (e.g., major BLP violation) that really drove the initiation of this proposal? NJ Wine 21:09, 18 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by NJ Wine (talk • contribs)

1. Much like semiprotection, admins are intended to use their best judgment when determining what protection level to set a page to (none, Bribe CRASH, Semiprotection, Bribe LAPD, Full protection).
2. The impetus can be best summed up as BLPs' interests (rhetoric). —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:27, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

As I understand it, the software feature has been used in other wikis for several years (on all pages, not just on selected pages/as proposed for the English Wikipedia). It's been discussed off and on since before the feature was available to anyone. If memory serves, this particular round of discussions has been underway for something like two years now. So if there ever was some particular precipitating incident, it was a long, long time ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

With respect to (1), please see: Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment_2012#Usage_boundaries_between_pending_changes_lv._1_versus_semi-protection_still_not_addressed

Roughly speaking, I feel PC1 could sometimes be a less painful alternative to SP on certain classes of infrequently-edited articles, and that PC2 is a less painful alternative to FP particularly for cases of rarely-edited articles that have been subject to a slow but consistent peppering of serious BLP issues from autoconfirmed users. There are probably exceptions, but I'd expect that'd be more or less the usual case. --joe decker^{talk to me} 23:55, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

How can any instance of PC be less painful when it requires far more willing manpower to maintain than SP? With no reviewers, PC is a liability. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 17:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Fair question, I think you're forgetting that these are, more or less, replacing (in my view) {{edit semiprotected}} requests. Those are a lot more hassle than even the somewhat flawed PC interface provides. Have you worked those? (I honestly don't know.) Particularly given how few of them manage to specify a precise request, well, that creates a fair amount of hassle right there. --joe decker^{talk to me} 20:41, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I have worked those requests before, when I was an admin. Some of them were blatant vandalism aimed at trolling the reviewer. In fact, we discussed this above in #Replace semiprotection with PC? —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:35, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Close?

Q for the closing Admins - Is this in the process of being closed ? - lots of strong comments here again from the vocal objectors to Pending protection - but being vocal is not supported by the majority - can we get this closed please, when is the target date/time - Youreallycan 19:32, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we are in the process of closing. There was, needless to say, a lot of ink spilled here, and the closing admins are going to need some time to analyze it to give you an adequate close. We don't have a target date set, but if users feel strongly that you need a specific date, we can try to brainstorm one in the next day or two. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:39, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

So in the next day or two you will give us a target date for estimated closure if we request strongly? - Can't you just close it - why would you need to "brainstorm one" you have been reading it all along - you should be looking to and able to close ASAP - Youreallycan 20:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It's already closed, but there's no decision yet. Let us hope that the silence indicates that the 4 admins are taking their time to piece together a neutral, elaborate, ultimate final decision on this matter. Phew... glad I'm not in their shoes. Cheers, theFace 21:16, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I certainly hope the silence doesn't indicate they're having their discussions off-wiki!—S Marshall T/C 21:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I assume they do. I don't care, as long as they come up with something good. Cheers, theFace 19:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I have an extremely low opinion of the way this RFC has been run.—S Marshall T/C 20:55, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm also not too thrilled with the mismanagement, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:01, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

It's easier to assume good faith when there's transparency.—S Marshall T/C 21:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

With something as contentious as this transparency had the potential to do more harm than good. If there is one thing we cannot afford with respect to PC, it's more delays. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Constantly diminishing support

What I hope people evaluating this thing note is that the support level of this has trended downwards ever since the initial pop of PC supporters registered their opinions. On March 31, it was 140:53 (73% support ) and at close it was 309:178 (63%). That doesn't sound like much until you consider that in the votes since April 1, it ran 169:123, or 58% support. Choose April 30, and it's worse. 249:113 at that point (68% support) and support since then is 60:65, or about 48%. That suggests that if you left this open forever, the opinion would stabilize around 50% give or take a few points.—Kww(talk) 17:19, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

However the vocal opponents of this tool interpret the outcome of this community discussion, There is clear majority support for Pending changes in this RFC though after two months - ifs and buts and ow just leave it open forever and it will be (add your guess here) are distracting from that.- Youreallycan 18:21, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

The thing you have consistently failed to demonstrate understanding of through this entire process is that a majority doesn't equal a consensus. If we just go numerically, 63% doesn't approach our normal numeric limits for consensus. I'm too biased to make an accurate determination on a "strength of argument" basis (the real measure of consensus), but my inclination is that supporters haven't prevailed by that measure either.—Kww(talk) 18:28, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

You say, "The thing you have consistently failed to demonstrate understanding of through this entire process is that a majority doesn't equal a consensus", I am not attempting to demonstrate that I am just waiting for the assessment and closure - after two months there is a clear majority support for Pending changes in this RFC I have had little input to this issue and to be honest care a lot less than I did previously . I would just run it and remove it if there were issues - the wheels won't drop off - or at least if we see them starting to drop off we can fix them - No wheels dropped of in the trials and it's no big issue imo - Its just another beneficial tool in the box for use as and when it helps.Youreallycan 18:36, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned previously, based on the rationale they presented, many of the supporters of option 1 really should have supported Option 3. It seems that many of the Option 1 !voters didn't read the proposal and extant comments very carefully (or at all) – although, to be fair, that's probably true of the !votes in all sections. But, there were a number of misconceptions voiced by many of the supporters of Option 1 – conflating PC with Flagged Revisions; PC amounts to censorship; disenfranchises editors; and somehow contravenes the concept of being "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". I assume we will be seeing an RfC by those editors to eliminate semi and full protection for the exact same reasons. Some based their support of Option 1 on the conviction that PC would be used far more liberally than other forms of protection. What evidence can possibly support that view? Way to AGF in our admins. It seems clear that the next proposal needs to include guidelines that address at least some of these issues to minimize the FUD. Mojoworker (talk) 20:21, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Bullshit, Mojoworker. Many of the "FUD" points we raised are legitimate concerns (such as logistics and being more labor-intensive than even RC patrol or SP). Conversely, I wonder who you are to be making such accusations when you comment that the next RfC is going to be about removing protection, which nobody - save for a few misguided Position 2 supporters, as I noted above, and that's conditional on PC passing - wants to abolish. For every time I see a Position 2 supporter cry "FUD" I see another Position 2 supporter equating Position 1 to aiding vandalism. The blade cuts both ways, chummer, and it's hypocrisy. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:31, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Jeremy, I appreciate your comments, but decidedly do not appreciate your uncivil tenor. Perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote. I listed the following points as FUD that were used as rationale by some of the option 1 supporters:

1. Conflating PC with Flagged Revisions;
2. PC somehow amounts to censorship;
3. PC somehow disenfranchises editors and contravenes the concept of being "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit";
4. PC would be used more liberally than other forms of protection;

My comment about an RfC to remove protection was satirical and in relation to point #3. I most certainly did not say anything about "logistics and being more labor-intensive than even RC patrol or SP", so I'm not sure why you brought that up. Nor did I label all of the rationale provided by option 1 supporters as FUD – on the contrary, there are indeed legitimate concerns. My point is that a number of option 1 supporters provided rationale that is plainly FUD. Mojoworker (talk) 08:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Likewise, Option 2 has been relying on FUD - "libel is astronomically high and we're too slow to react", "(Anonymous) vandals will run roughshod over Wikipedia if we don't implement this," etc. Saying it's only Option 1 supporters doing this is inaccurate as Position 2 has also been using scare tactics. That's what I was trying to get at. (I will note that some of the concerns by Option 2 supporters, such as RC patrol being inadequate, are valid, however.) —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 17:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I switched from Option 3 to Option 1 because of how many problems I was seeing with PC - and each problem makes it less likely that all of the problems would/will be solved well. Allens (talk | contribs) 20:56, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Guys, I don't think anyone's going to benefit from continuing this. The admins in question are experienced enough that they can read through this whole long thing and come to their own conclusions without any of us pointing out factors that support "my" side, and especially without any further uncivil remarks. The time for comment was during the last two months, not now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Since a "no consensus" outcome is a distinct possibility, my remarks are directed at the next proposal – that it needs to include guidelines that address at least some of these issues in order to keep the FUD to a minimum, but also to address, where possible, the valid concerns raised by option 1 supporters. I saw an insightful comment by an uninvolved admin that "IMO the current state of voting indicates to me that good faith has broken down completely ... only a tiny fraction of the comments on either side attempt to rebut, or even address, the main points of the other side. That's going to make the discussion very hard to close" It's ironic, but in a thorough reading of all the responses, a case can be made to close as consensus for Option 3 – "Pending changes should be kept in the long term, but the draft policy is insufficient and/or out of step with what the community wants from the tool" – even though it received by far the fewest supporters. Mojoworker (talk) 08:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

That was one of the reasons why I devoted an entire section above to rebutting arguments from Position 2. I (correctly) assumed that, while there would be far more substantial rationales on the Option 1 side than the Option 2 side (as was the trend in the previous RfC), some of it would just be ungrounded speculation and much of it wouldn't directly rebut the Option 2 supporters' arguments, regardless of their merits. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

One of the closers has indicated that the close may come fairly soon, and it's unlikely that the close will be: "The winner is Option [whatever]. Have a nice day." It will be easier to chart a course of action after we see what they have to say. I'm hoping some of the Option 1 guys will talk it out and come up with a course of action, and the same for some of the Option 2 guys. - Dank (push to talk) 13:40, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Kww's statistical analysis is, unfortunately, seriously misguided. I don't have the time and won't claim the expertise to do a full exposition of the convergent series principles involved, but his conclusion that support would eventual drop to the 50% level involves a basic statistical mistake. The point that a series like this converges to isn't determined simply by its concluding pattern, because as participation declines the "weight" os subsequent parts of the series declines. It's a trivial exercise (albeit one that makes many of those who aren't statistically adept suffer from blinding headaches and bleeding eyes) to construct a series of the form (A1-B1)+(A2-B2)+(A3-B3) . . . where, after a certain point, the B-terms are always greater than the A-terms, so that the sum of each additional pair is less than zero -- but the series converges (levels off) at positive number, never equaling or falling below zero. Several of the examples given in convergent series demonstrate this principle. There's no reason to believe that the outcome wouldn't stabilize at 60% or higher as participation fell off. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 17:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You need to go reread the convergent series article. I agree that my 50% number is only an estimate, but the problem being solved isn't a convergent series problem at all. Those are sums of fractions that have a stated relationship to each other. This is a poll sampling problem, which has to do with the relative ratio of the population sampled to the population at large and discounting biasing effects.—Kww(talk) 11:07, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I believe Yogi Berra's analysis is more relevant to this particular problem: it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. - Dank (push to talk) 12:16, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Timetime

I wasn't here at the beginning, I was invited but doubted that people would write articles for free ... Whatever they close this attempt to strengthen policy implementation , the fact that users are desirous of pointy avoidance/weak policy asserts, those glory days are over and this appears IMO to be the death throes of the project, unless we strengthen WP:NPOV and WP:V - Weakly cited opinionated content is worse than nothing - uninvolved people/readers are now fully aware of the weakness and opinionated aspect of content here, and do not trust content here. Limited application of pending changes may well help to raise trust in small sectors of our content and protect a few limited notability subjects - if not we can remove it as easy we add it - its not wheels dropping off its just a tool in the box.. that might , in a limited way, raise trust between the reader and the project and strengthen the project moving forwards.Youreallycan 18:57, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I would argue the bulk of that issue rests with the "my way or the highway" mentality of most of the editors here. It's not an issue of sourcing; it's an issue of psychology and public perception, and always has been. Pending Changes would only exacerbate these issues by making the perceived elitism more prevalent. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 20:28, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Youreallycan, I agree with you that WP:NPOV and WP:V have to be strengthened, but pending changes won't really help. I expect that if PC is implemented, it will reduce the amount of vandalism, but will substantially increase what I call "article capture." Article capture is when one or more editors takes control of an article, and prevents any changes to it -- see WP:TAGTEAM. Usually, article capture occurs on low-traffic BLP or controversy articles where the main editors undue changes that they dislike so that the article retains a certain point of view. Rather than eliminate biased content, PC, particularly PC2, will make it much harder to get rid of it. Currently, any editor can remove crap, whereas with PC, I see articles being locked up so that only reviewers and admins can fix them. NJ Wine (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

(ec)The goal of Wikipedia isn't to be "trusted." It never has been. When people come to Wikipedia, only those who are delusional and disconnected from reality expect it to be vandalism-free, completely unbiased, and ultimately trustworthy at face value. This is why we have {{cn}}, {{reflist}}, the myriad of template messages, page histories in the open, and discussion pages. This is because the tradeoff of letting everyone edit means that inherently things will be imperfect—and we've always been happy with that compromise. It's the reason why editors like me started contributing in the first place: we found something we thought was inaccurate (or vandalized) and we got addicted to helping to make things better. It's been what's caused this thing to explode with popularity and content to the point that millions(!) of articles exist. Cynics will say "oh, but lots of them are crap, and shutting it up and keeping people from creating crap will protect us from the crap!"

Let me emphasize this: Wikipedia will never be perfect without becoming something other than Wikipedia, and we must not get caught in a delusion that we ever will be "perfect" in any conventional sense. Most importantly, we should avoid allowing people who think they can truly make it perfect with panaceas to run things.

"Perfection" was the expectation of traditional final-print encyclopedias, and they've been summarily rejected by the populace at large. They want us. They want the imperfection. Personally, I think it's largely because we have this brilliant thing called a page history. It reveals all of the bias, all of the vandalism, all of the crazies, and all of the sanes that go into making an article—something few other truly competing encyclopedias—and no print one—has had up until Wikipedia. It's between that and our citations where we earn our true trust in editorial process. It's in that where all of our cards are laid out on the table for everyone to see what really goes on behind the scenes; what really is up-for-debate; what really is the "truth" and what's the Truth™ that people are pushing. Most importantly, it's in that where we're finally teaching the population, as a whole, to not simply trust what you read—verify it too.

To expect biographies to be libel-free; to expect histories to be bias-free; to expect polarizing issues to be opinion-free—these are all fairy tales that we and countless writers and academics throughout history have told ourselves. Reality inevitably intervenes; people disrupt; people sneak their way into power; people try to shut out and unduely censor differing opinions to make their reality the one-and-only Truth™ that everyone sees. We nonetheless try to prevent that from happening, but we must avoid compromising the very value that helps us offset it: ostensibly, a free and open editing environment.

Any form of page protection reduces how much of the page history—and thus how much of the overall "truth" in our editorial process—is revealed. We use current forms of protection for practical reasons, from vandalism to edit warring and sockpuppetry. It forces people to discuss a change and figure something out, and it helps curb as much disruption as we can without compromising our free and open editing environment.

The tradeoff has always been that on pages where we fully or semi-protect things, things change more slowly, less appears to be "wrong," and everything seems to be tranquil. This isn't necessarily the case: we've simply reduced further the number of people able to contribute to the page, and we've made it more difficult to see what's really going on behind the scenes. To those looking for perfection, many see a small number of people being able to edit as a good thing. To those looking to preserve and expand what we are, in all of our glorious imperfection, many see it as a bad thing.

We therefore have to carefully weigh what's essential due to its practicality (i.e., current, conventional protection to offset a disrupted editing environment) with alternatives in which the ends justify the means (i.e., pending changes to reduce the number of people able to edit pages even further in order to trend toward realistically-unattainable, fundamentally suicidal "perfection").

Admittedly TLDR-worthy, but I felt that I needed to express this.

--slakr^\ talk / 21:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

slakr, I totally agree. A lot of problems would be eliminated by locking up articles, and only letting a select number of trusted people edit. But, then this wouldn't be Wikipedia with approximately 3,000,000 English-language articles, but instead Encyclopedia Brittanica with roughly 230,000 articles. Furthermore, while some Wikipedia articles have bias or mistakes, it's no worse than any other encyclopedia, and Wikipedia has a easy method of fixing those problems. NJ Wine (talk) 21:36, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

• - @User:Slakr - The goal of Wikipedia isn't to be "trusted." It never has been" - We can disagree there all day long - reader trust is a primary objective and Pending protection is a clear benefit to developing that primary trust.Youreallycan

• If reader trust were a primary objective we wouldn't have so many editors in the first place, now would we? Seriously, a lot of our editors signed up primarily because we aren't trustworthy; we have issues with inaccuracy, poor fact-checking, relevance, elitism, bias, and trigger-happiness. To define PC as a means of enforcing trust, in spite of the huge logistical problem it can create due to its time requirements and the fact that it solves none of those six issues (think the Joker running Arkham) is tantamount to selling us a bill of goods. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:29, 28 May 2012 (UTC)