This page is currently inactive and is retained for
historical reference.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. |
This page in a nutshell: Flagged revisions can be used to open editing up to anonymous and newly-registered editors on currently protected pages, as well as allowing a check on content added to the biographies of living persons to uphold our own policies on the matter |
Semi-protection and full-protection are a technical means to prevent an article being edited by anonymous and non-autoconfirmed users in the case of semi-protection, and all users except administrators in the case of full-protection. The semi-protection policy indicates that this should be used in cases of persistent vandalism or of content violations, giving the example of violating the policy on the biographies of living persons. Protection in both forms does, however, bring the disbenefit of preventing contributions from good-faith editors as a result of persistent bad-faith contributions from a minority.
Wikipedia has policies relating to the biographies of living persons (BLPs), with the specific intent of strictly enforcing our content policies of verifiability, neutral point of view, and assorted others with the rationale:
Wikipedia is a high-profile, widely-viewed website with an international scope, which means that material we publish about living people can affect their lives and the lives of their families, colleagues, and friends. Biographical material must therefore be written with strict adherence to our content policies.
This has formed the basis of multiple discussions on how to prevent harm to living subjects, particularly those who are not sufficiently prominent to be widely watchlisted meaning that vandalism goes unnoticed for longer, allowing more readers to view the article and potentially damage the person being discussed. One such proposal has been to permanently semi-protect all BLPs, but the counter-arguments to this are that new or anonymous editors also make positive contributions and that autoconfirmation is not a useful threshold to avoid editing by determined vandals.
Protection as it stands can therefore be seen as a blunt instrument against content violations, which has been necessary because there were no technical alternatives available.
This proposal seeks to do two things:
Normally, a user part of a usergroup able to flag pages will automatically flag a page as visible to all readers when they edit the page - there will be an additional step if they are editing the draft of an unflagged version, which will require a manual check of the diff and a manual approval for it to become visible. This additional step requires a negligible amount of time for semi-protection replaced by flagged protection.
If adopted, this proposal would affect the following categories of editor in the following ways
Protection type | Anonymous / non-autoconfirmed | Autoconfirmed | Reviewer | Administrator / Bureaucrat | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unprotected pages | Current experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | |||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | ||||
Semi-protected pages | Current experience | Cannot edit | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | ||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers until reviewed by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the reviewer or other 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's flag them. | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the administrator flags them, or flagged by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer' | |
Biographies of Living People | Current experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | |||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless a 'reviewer' flags them | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the administrator flags them | ||
Fully-protected pages | Current experience | Cannot edit | Can edit; edits are visible immediately | ||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by administrators | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but other intervening edits are not visible to readers unless an administrator flags them |
In a previous discussion about flagged protection, which encapsulates the protected page portion of this proposal, autoconfirmed was deemed the appropriate level since it opens the protected portions of the project to everyone without imposing greater restrictions. The role of the Reviewer permission is required in some form since the Autoconfirmed threshold is considered by many to be too low to prevent damaging material being added by determined vandals/libellers. Rather than create a new usergroup for reviewers of all flagged articles, it will be less bureaucratic to simply spin out a usergroup that can review the edits to BLPs. Since BLP checking requires a different set of checks to standard reviewing, it is also worthwhile separating. See also #Userrights.
For the protected, non-BLP pages, this proposal broadly enacts the same principles and policies required by WP:Flagged Protection, except that it is explicitly subject to the protection policy in its application. The conditions are summarised in this section for convenience
The condition for normal flagged protection should be the same as the current semi-protection policy allows. If the article does not meet the requirements for semi-protection under the current semi-protection policy, then it should not be protected with flagged revisions. This proposal seeks to ultimately eliminate the need to use traditional page protection methods in favour of flagged protection, but for now, this choice remains at the discretion of the protecting administrator.
Full flagged protection is similar to the protection described above, but with the reviewer rights limited to the group administrators like its full protection counterpart. This can be used as an alternative to full protection during disputes or for articles under heavy vandalism attacks from sock-puppet accounts, subject to the same requirements . Administrators can elevate an article to full flagged protection, in accordance to the current protection policy.
Autoconfirmed and other editors reviewing edits to these articles should simply check if the edit adds obvious vandalism, as RC patrollers do at present. If not, the edits must be approved for display, otherwise the edit to the draft should be reverted. Autoconfirmed users editing a previously approved draft will have their edits automatically reviewed. If the draft they are editing is unapproved, manual review and approval will be required before the draft is displayed as the default.
The restrictions of the protection policy will not apply in the application of flagged revisions to BLPs, and all would be flagged if this proposal were implemented fully (beyond a trial phase).
The members of the Reviewer group will be required to review edits to BLPs to check, in addition to the requirements for flagging normally protected articles, whether the edit is compatible with the explicit requirements of the BLP policy with relation to the sourcing of contentious statements.
Before any full implementation, a trial must take place. This section outlines the scope of a trial and the means of determining its success.
Once a trial is approved, there will be a delay until the following is complete:
This is a tentative configuration which may require altering - based on User:Mr.Z-man/yet_another_FlaggedRevs_proposal.
# Limit it to mainspace only
$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces = array( NS_MAIN );
# Don't set any FlaggedRevs level for new pages
$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReviewNew = false;
# Pages display the current version by default - i.e. unprotected
$wgFlaggedRevsOverride = false;
# This requires it to be turned on by an admin for each page
$wgFlaggedRevsReviewForDefault = true;
# Flagging types
$wgFlaggedRevTags = array( 'protection' => 2 );
# Number of levels (BLP/full/semi/none)
$wgFlaggedRevValues = 3;
$wgFlaggedRevPristine = 3;
# Lets "pristine" (BLP) revs override
$wgFlaggedRevsPrecedence = 2;
# Restrict reviewers to flagging semi-protected
$wgFlagRestrictions = array(
'protection' => array( 'review' => 1, # editors
'blp-review' => 3, # BLP reviewers
'protect' => 2 # admins
));
# Group permissions for editors
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['unreviewedpages' = true;
# Define the extra right for BLP reviewers
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'blp-review';
# Rights for BLP Reviewers,
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['blp-review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['stablesettings' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['unreviewedpages' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['movestable' = true;
# Group permissions for admins
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['stablesettings' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['unreviewedpages' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['movestable' = true;
# Give bots autoreview
$wgGroupPermissions'bot']['autoreview' = true;
# Give admins the ability to add/remove reviewer
$wgAddGroups'sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
$wgRemoveGroups'sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
# How many pages count as a backlog?
$wgFlaggedRevsBacklog = 500;
# Remove unused groups
unset($wgGroupPermissions'autoreview']);
This page is currently inactive and is retained for
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. |
This page in a nutshell: Flagged revisions can be used to open editing up to anonymous and newly-registered editors on currently protected pages, as well as allowing a check on content added to the biographies of living persons to uphold our own policies on the matter |
Semi-protection and full-protection are a technical means to prevent an article being edited by anonymous and non-autoconfirmed users in the case of semi-protection, and all users except administrators in the case of full-protection. The semi-protection policy indicates that this should be used in cases of persistent vandalism or of content violations, giving the example of violating the policy on the biographies of living persons. Protection in both forms does, however, bring the disbenefit of preventing contributions from good-faith editors as a result of persistent bad-faith contributions from a minority.
Wikipedia has policies relating to the biographies of living persons (BLPs), with the specific intent of strictly enforcing our content policies of verifiability, neutral point of view, and assorted others with the rationale:
Wikipedia is a high-profile, widely-viewed website with an international scope, which means that material we publish about living people can affect their lives and the lives of their families, colleagues, and friends. Biographical material must therefore be written with strict adherence to our content policies.
This has formed the basis of multiple discussions on how to prevent harm to living subjects, particularly those who are not sufficiently prominent to be widely watchlisted meaning that vandalism goes unnoticed for longer, allowing more readers to view the article and potentially damage the person being discussed. One such proposal has been to permanently semi-protect all BLPs, but the counter-arguments to this are that new or anonymous editors also make positive contributions and that autoconfirmation is not a useful threshold to avoid editing by determined vandals.
Protection as it stands can therefore be seen as a blunt instrument against content violations, which has been necessary because there were no technical alternatives available.
This proposal seeks to do two things:
Normally, a user part of a usergroup able to flag pages will automatically flag a page as visible to all readers when they edit the page - there will be an additional step if they are editing the draft of an unflagged version, which will require a manual check of the diff and a manual approval for it to become visible. This additional step requires a negligible amount of time for semi-protection replaced by flagged protection.
If adopted, this proposal would affect the following categories of editor in the following ways
Protection type | Anonymous / non-autoconfirmed | Autoconfirmed | Reviewer | Administrator / Bureaucrat | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unprotected pages | Current experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | |||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | ||||
Semi-protected pages | Current experience | Cannot edit | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | ||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers until reviewed by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the reviewer or other 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer's flag them. | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the administrator flags them, or flagged by 'autoconfirmed' or 'reviewer' | |
Biographies of Living People | Current experience | Can edit; edits are immediately visible | |||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by 'reviewer's | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless a 'reviewer' flags them | Can edit; edits are visible immediately if there are no unflagged edits by anonymous users; otherwise not visible to readers unless the administrator flags them | ||
Fully-protected pages | Current experience | Cannot edit | Can edit; edits are visible immediately | ||
Proposed experience | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but are not visible to readers until reviewed by administrators | Can edit; edits are visible to registered users, but other intervening edits are not visible to readers unless an administrator flags them |
In a previous discussion about flagged protection, which encapsulates the protected page portion of this proposal, autoconfirmed was deemed the appropriate level since it opens the protected portions of the project to everyone without imposing greater restrictions. The role of the Reviewer permission is required in some form since the Autoconfirmed threshold is considered by many to be too low to prevent damaging material being added by determined vandals/libellers. Rather than create a new usergroup for reviewers of all flagged articles, it will be less bureaucratic to simply spin out a usergroup that can review the edits to BLPs. Since BLP checking requires a different set of checks to standard reviewing, it is also worthwhile separating. See also #Userrights.
For the protected, non-BLP pages, this proposal broadly enacts the same principles and policies required by WP:Flagged Protection, except that it is explicitly subject to the protection policy in its application. The conditions are summarised in this section for convenience
The condition for normal flagged protection should be the same as the current semi-protection policy allows. If the article does not meet the requirements for semi-protection under the current semi-protection policy, then it should not be protected with flagged revisions. This proposal seeks to ultimately eliminate the need to use traditional page protection methods in favour of flagged protection, but for now, this choice remains at the discretion of the protecting administrator.
Full flagged protection is similar to the protection described above, but with the reviewer rights limited to the group administrators like its full protection counterpart. This can be used as an alternative to full protection during disputes or for articles under heavy vandalism attacks from sock-puppet accounts, subject to the same requirements . Administrators can elevate an article to full flagged protection, in accordance to the current protection policy.
Autoconfirmed and other editors reviewing edits to these articles should simply check if the edit adds obvious vandalism, as RC patrollers do at present. If not, the edits must be approved for display, otherwise the edit to the draft should be reverted. Autoconfirmed users editing a previously approved draft will have their edits automatically reviewed. If the draft they are editing is unapproved, manual review and approval will be required before the draft is displayed as the default.
The restrictions of the protection policy will not apply in the application of flagged revisions to BLPs, and all would be flagged if this proposal were implemented fully (beyond a trial phase).
The members of the Reviewer group will be required to review edits to BLPs to check, in addition to the requirements for flagging normally protected articles, whether the edit is compatible with the explicit requirements of the BLP policy with relation to the sourcing of contentious statements.
Before any full implementation, a trial must take place. This section outlines the scope of a trial and the means of determining its success.
Once a trial is approved, there will be a delay until the following is complete:
This is a tentative configuration which may require altering - based on User:Mr.Z-man/yet_another_FlaggedRevs_proposal.
# Limit it to mainspace only
$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces = array( NS_MAIN );
# Don't set any FlaggedRevs level for new pages
$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReviewNew = false;
# Pages display the current version by default - i.e. unprotected
$wgFlaggedRevsOverride = false;
# This requires it to be turned on by an admin for each page
$wgFlaggedRevsReviewForDefault = true;
# Flagging types
$wgFlaggedRevTags = array( 'protection' => 2 );
# Number of levels (BLP/full/semi/none)
$wgFlaggedRevValues = 3;
$wgFlaggedRevPristine = 3;
# Lets "pristine" (BLP) revs override
$wgFlaggedRevsPrecedence = 2;
# Restrict reviewers to flagging semi-protected
$wgFlagRestrictions = array(
'protection' => array( 'review' => 1, # editors
'blp-review' => 3, # BLP reviewers
'protect' => 2 # admins
));
# Group permissions for editors
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'editor']['unreviewedpages' = true;
# Define the extra right for BLP reviewers
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'blp-review';
# Rights for BLP Reviewers,
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['blp-review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['stablesettings' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['unreviewedpages' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'reviewer']['movestable' = true;
# Group permissions for admins
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['stablesettings' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['review' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['autoreview' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['unreviewedpages' = true;
$wgGroupPermissions'sysop']['movestable' = true;
# Give bots autoreview
$wgGroupPermissions'bot']['autoreview' = true;
# Give admins the ability to add/remove reviewer
$wgAddGroups'sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
$wgRemoveGroups'sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
# How many pages count as a backlog?
$wgFlaggedRevsBacklog = 500;
# Remove unused groups
unset($wgGroupPermissions'autoreview']);