Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions
historical reference. . Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump |
Pending changes Interface: Protection policy · Testing · Statistics |
2010 Trial and 2012 Implementation
Historical: Trial proposal · Specifics · Reviewing guideline · Metrics · Terminology · Queue · Feedback · Closure · 2012 Implementation Discussions: |
Summary information for editors
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The two month trial of flagged protection, renamed to pending changes, ended in 2010, and was reactivated in 2012 on a permanent basis. See Wikipedia:Pending changes. Patrolled revisions was not implemented. |
This page describes two new features approved for trial, based on the concept of
Background
The "Flagged Revisions" feature was initially developed for the German Wikipedia (de.wikipedia.org) so that
Description
Those features are principally aimed to address the lack of flexibility of our current protection mechanisms and the relative inefficiency of our basic monitoring tools such as
Pending changes (flagged protection)
- This feature was formerly known as "Flagged protection"
Pending changes introduces new protection levels which can be used as an alternative to regular semi-protection and full-protection. In terms of policy, the conditions for using pending changes protection at level 1 are the same as for using semi-protection, as determined by the
Unregistered or newly registered | Confirmed or autoconfirmed | Extended confirmed | Template editor | Admin | Interface admin | Appropriate for (See also: Wikipedia:Protection policy) | |
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No protection | Normal editing | The vast majority of pages. This is the default protection level. | |||||
Pending changes | All users can edit Edits by unregistered or new editors (and any subsequent edits by anyone) are hidden from readers who are not logged in, until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or admin. Logged-in editors see all edits, whether accepted or not. |
Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism, BLP violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users.
| |||||
Semi | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Pages that have been persistently vandalized by anonymous and registered users. Some highly visible templates and modules. | ||||
Extended confirmed | Cannot edit | Normal editing* | Specific topic areas authorized by ArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, or high-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive. | ||||
Template | Cannot edit | Normal editing | High-risk or very-frequently used templates and modules. Some high-risk pages outside of template space. | ||||
Full | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Pages with persistent disruption from extended confirmed accounts. Critical templates and modules. | ||||
Interface | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects central to operation of the site or that are in other editors' user spaces. | ||||
* In order to edit through extended confirmed protection, a template editor must also be extended confirmed, but in practice this is almost always the case. Other modes of protection: |
- Advantages over the current system
- Even though their edits are not visible immediately to readers, unregistered and new users can edit pages protected by pending changes, while they cannot edit semi-protected pages. So this allows constructive changes while disallowing vandalism and other unconstructive changes.
- Semi-protection is insufficient in certain cases, especially for articles targeted by persistent vandals or sockpuppets, or subject to extreme BLP violations; these sometimes require full protection. The option to deactivate auto-reviewing for autoconfirmed users who are not reviewers (autoconfirmation) provides a protection level adapted to handle those cases.
Patrolled revisions
The aim of patrolled revisions is to coordinate and improve the monitoring of all articles, especially biographies of living people. Reviewers can mark a revision patrolled, which has no effect but only to inform that this revision contains no vandalism, no blp violations, and satisfies certain other requirements defined by a guideline. In particular, this does not affect the revision viewed by unregistered users by default, it's still the latest one (unless the article is flag protected). A new revision by a reviewer is automatically patrolled when the previous version is.
Reviewers have access to a special page listing articles that have never been patrolled and a special page listing pages patrolled at least once with an unpatrolled latest revision. They allow respectively to detect never patrolled pages, that may not have been checked for vandalism, blp violations, etc, and monitor changes to patrolled pages, on which vandalism or blp violations may have been inserted since the latest patrol. Those special pages are filterable by category (for example, Category:Living people). It can also be filtered so that only elements on your watchlist appear, and mentions how many users are watching a page.
Currently, the number of edits to articles and in particular BLPs is so large that we don't have the power to check all of them, we have no way to even coordinate our efforts. This system allows us to monitor changes to articles, in particular BLPs, much more efficiently by comparing new edits to previously patrolled revisions. Even if only one edit of 10 is patrolled, it'll allow to bring potential vandalism and BLP violations to the attention of reviewers and so significantly reduce their general visibility.
Patrolled revisions would also allow checking of edits by autoconfirmed users who are not reviewers, to flagged protected pages, as those are generally automatically confirmed when the previous revision is, but would not be automatically patrolled. To avoid work duplication, patrolled revisions are automatically confirmed.
In addition, a special page displays articles with tagged edits that have not been patrolled.
New
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Confirmed
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Reviewer
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Administrator
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No protection | can edit; visible immediately | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Patrolled revisions | can edit; visible immediately; cannot accept |
can edit; visible immediately; can accept? |
can edit; visible immediately; can accept | |
Pending-changes level 1 protection |
can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept |
can edit; visible immediately; cannot accept |
can edit; visible immediately; can accept | |
Pending-changes level 2 protection |
can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept |
can edit; visible immediately; can accept | ||
Semi-protection | cannot edit | can edit; visible immediately | ||
Pending-changes level 2 with Semi-protection | cannot edit | can edit; visible after accept; cannot accept |
can edit; visible immediately; can accept | |
Full protection | cannot edit | can edit; visible immediately | ||
Note: Under pending-changes protections, "visible immediately" assumes no previous pending changes remain to be accepted. |
Trial
Consensus has been reached for a two-month trial of flagged protection and patrolled revisions after series of discussions and a final poll. A trial of flagged protection has been prepared by the Wikimedia Foundation and began on June 15, 2010. At the end of the trial, the Wikipedia community will decide whether to continue or discontinue using flagged protection, and whether to test alternative configurations of flagged revisions. A trial of patrolled revisions is not planned yet.
Implementation
The
Notes
- ^ Initially a full flagged protection level, where flagging was restricted to administrators had been proposed but won't be implemented in the trial for simplicity.
- ^ http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/01/flagged-revisions-your-questions-answered/