If you've looked at
Special:Recentchanges lately, you've probably noticed the exclamation marks next to edits. These are part of the newly implemented edit flagging system. When you check a diff from the Recent changes page, a link saying "Mark as patrolled" should appear at top. For newly created articles, a link saying "Mark this article as patrolled" should appear at the bottom-right. If you click on such a link, the exclamation mark will be removed. This system exists to help Recent changes patrollers. If you wish to hide the exclamation marks, insert .not_patrolled { font-color: #f8fcff !important;} .unpatrolled {display: none;} into your user CSS. --
Slowking Man 23:03, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
This sort of thing really makes me angry - it's not the first time we've had developers adding "it's not a bug, it's a feature" material to Mediawiki and then dumping that on Wikipedia as a default. I've managed to override it, but I don't believe that should be necessary.
I'm starting to think that the Wikimedia board should give approval before we let the latest version of MediaWiki go live on Wikipedia - whoever asked for this, and particularly in this horrendously ugly form? Ambi 08:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I understand the logic of this measure, but i'm worried with the (very likely) possibility that vandals learn to outflank this thing. A smart vandal can mark vandalism as patrolled and what happens then? I dont think patrolled edits are trustworthy. muriel@pt 16:48, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it would be more workable if you could see who patrolled a given edit, so a known vandal/sockpuppet/troll's patrols aren't given much heed. Though this does cut both ways: I've been marking vandalisms as patrolled and then reverting them; if I'm beaten to the revert, or I mark an already-reverted vandalism as patrolled, then it looks like I'm hiding it instead of fixing it. — Korath ( Talk) 17:44, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Good concept, incomplete execution. Thanks to the devs for doing it though; I'm sure it will improve eventually and it won't hurt anybody too much in the meantime (despite the negative remarks above). Being able to see the user name who approved the edit would be helpful. Having a complex (underneath) yet easy to use reputation system would be better. But, of course, people will try to game such a system, and finding the balance of necessary complexity and ease of use is certainly not a trivial task. I look forward to seeing this improve, but I probably won't use it much until it works on watchlists instead of just RC. Thanks again to the developers who implemented it. ~ leif ☺ HELO 22:02, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Just a little comment, I reached this discussion from the Recent Changes Page (where most people would see it), but perhaps this feature is so great that it deserves its own page (or maybe even subpage?) Ambush Commander 03:13, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
The feature is a lot more useful at New Pages things scroll slower and it has a snazy yellow highlight. Only problem is that after clicking on "mark as patrolled" it refers you to recent changes not new pages. BrokenSegue 05:11, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Let me rephrase what I said before. We do need some sort of feature to patrol edits, and thank you to the developers for this much, but this haphazard implementation is a mess. It's ugly, for starters, overzealous (i.e. applying to admin rollbacks), easy to game, and in its current form, fairly useless. I do hope we'll see an improved version of this in the future, but I maintain that the current version - at least as it applies to recent changes, is more of a bug than a feature. Ambi 07:13, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I really don't think that Recent Changes in the right place for this. I - and I suspect many others - 'live' on my Watchlist page and on NewPages. In those two locations it makes much more sense but as it isn't on my Watchlist page I have to hit the database more that I would if there was a 'patrolled' flag there too. Also, as Recent Changes is linked off of every page IWHT that there was more likelihood of partolling in error as newcomers look at that page and experiment ... I agree with many of the above comments though that presently it is more of a fault than a feature. -- Vamp: Willow 14:23, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC) eep! this gets worse ... checking NewPages and spotting a couple that looked likely junk, went to them and found a message about the page not being found. (a) it isn't clear that this is a system message and not the text of a page, but (b) the page can be marked as 'patrolled'! This is insane! (and no explanation of why NewPages has gone yellow in place either) -- Vamp: Willow 14:28, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
OK, so I've done my first "Mark as patrolled", and the article is STILL showing up with a red exlamation point. Why? Rick K 23:47, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
I have created my first monobook.css page, which I didn't think I would need since I use the Classic skin. I did a Control-F5 to make sure the change took, and I'm still seeing the exclamation points. Is there a way to avoid seeing them when not using the monobook skin? Rick K 23:54, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
Looking at it now I see that not a single edit has been marked as patrolled. I really think that this makes the entire Wikipedia reviewing process look very poor. violet/riga (t) 00:07, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(partly a repeat of what others have said) This feature would be more effective if we could 1) see the users marking the edit as patrolled and 2) see whether articles have been patrolled in our watchlists and in the page history of articles. I mostly check articles on my watchlist and it would save me time if I knew a trusted editor had already checked some anon's edit. -- Ji ang 03:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
What is CSS?And how do I find it?-- Onefool 01:35, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'll just turn it off if no-one wants to use it. Judging by the frequency with which edits are being checked at the moment, I think we can assume that no-one does. Forget improvements, I've spent enough time fixing this flawed feature as it is. I discussed at length how I thought an RC patrol feature should work, at Wikipedia:Checked edits brainstorming, but Timwi chose to ignore that discussion. I'd rather write my own from scratch. I just enabled it as a trial, since people kept asking about it. I think we can assume that the trial is over. -- Tim Starling 09:47, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
A little time after it was turned off, 0.8% of edits and 8% of new pages in the last week had been marked as patrolled. For anons only, 2.6% of edits and 18% of creations had been marked as patrolled. Jamesday 11:12, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If you've looked at
Special:Recentchanges lately, you've probably noticed the exclamation marks next to edits. These are part of the newly implemented edit flagging system. When you check a diff from the Recent changes page, a link saying "Mark as patrolled" should appear at top. For newly created articles, a link saying "Mark this article as patrolled" should appear at the bottom-right. If you click on such a link, the exclamation mark will be removed. This system exists to help Recent changes patrollers. If you wish to hide the exclamation marks, insert .not_patrolled { font-color: #f8fcff !important;} .unpatrolled {display: none;} into your user CSS. --
Slowking Man 23:03, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
This sort of thing really makes me angry - it's not the first time we've had developers adding "it's not a bug, it's a feature" material to Mediawiki and then dumping that on Wikipedia as a default. I've managed to override it, but I don't believe that should be necessary.
I'm starting to think that the Wikimedia board should give approval before we let the latest version of MediaWiki go live on Wikipedia - whoever asked for this, and particularly in this horrendously ugly form? Ambi 08:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I understand the logic of this measure, but i'm worried with the (very likely) possibility that vandals learn to outflank this thing. A smart vandal can mark vandalism as patrolled and what happens then? I dont think patrolled edits are trustworthy. muriel@pt 16:48, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it would be more workable if you could see who patrolled a given edit, so a known vandal/sockpuppet/troll's patrols aren't given much heed. Though this does cut both ways: I've been marking vandalisms as patrolled and then reverting them; if I'm beaten to the revert, or I mark an already-reverted vandalism as patrolled, then it looks like I'm hiding it instead of fixing it. — Korath ( Talk) 17:44, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Good concept, incomplete execution. Thanks to the devs for doing it though; I'm sure it will improve eventually and it won't hurt anybody too much in the meantime (despite the negative remarks above). Being able to see the user name who approved the edit would be helpful. Having a complex (underneath) yet easy to use reputation system would be better. But, of course, people will try to game such a system, and finding the balance of necessary complexity and ease of use is certainly not a trivial task. I look forward to seeing this improve, but I probably won't use it much until it works on watchlists instead of just RC. Thanks again to the developers who implemented it. ~ leif ☺ HELO 22:02, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Just a little comment, I reached this discussion from the Recent Changes Page (where most people would see it), but perhaps this feature is so great that it deserves its own page (or maybe even subpage?) Ambush Commander 03:13, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
The feature is a lot more useful at New Pages things scroll slower and it has a snazy yellow highlight. Only problem is that after clicking on "mark as patrolled" it refers you to recent changes not new pages. BrokenSegue 05:11, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Let me rephrase what I said before. We do need some sort of feature to patrol edits, and thank you to the developers for this much, but this haphazard implementation is a mess. It's ugly, for starters, overzealous (i.e. applying to admin rollbacks), easy to game, and in its current form, fairly useless. I do hope we'll see an improved version of this in the future, but I maintain that the current version - at least as it applies to recent changes, is more of a bug than a feature. Ambi 07:13, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I really don't think that Recent Changes in the right place for this. I - and I suspect many others - 'live' on my Watchlist page and on NewPages. In those two locations it makes much more sense but as it isn't on my Watchlist page I have to hit the database more that I would if there was a 'patrolled' flag there too. Also, as Recent Changes is linked off of every page IWHT that there was more likelihood of partolling in error as newcomers look at that page and experiment ... I agree with many of the above comments though that presently it is more of a fault than a feature. -- Vamp: Willow 14:23, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC) eep! this gets worse ... checking NewPages and spotting a couple that looked likely junk, went to them and found a message about the page not being found. (a) it isn't clear that this is a system message and not the text of a page, but (b) the page can be marked as 'patrolled'! This is insane! (and no explanation of why NewPages has gone yellow in place either) -- Vamp: Willow 14:28, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
OK, so I've done my first "Mark as patrolled", and the article is STILL showing up with a red exlamation point. Why? Rick K 23:47, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
I have created my first monobook.css page, which I didn't think I would need since I use the Classic skin. I did a Control-F5 to make sure the change took, and I'm still seeing the exclamation points. Is there a way to avoid seeing them when not using the monobook skin? Rick K 23:54, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
Looking at it now I see that not a single edit has been marked as patrolled. I really think that this makes the entire Wikipedia reviewing process look very poor. violet/riga (t) 00:07, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(partly a repeat of what others have said) This feature would be more effective if we could 1) see the users marking the edit as patrolled and 2) see whether articles have been patrolled in our watchlists and in the page history of articles. I mostly check articles on my watchlist and it would save me time if I knew a trusted editor had already checked some anon's edit. -- Ji ang 03:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
What is CSS?And how do I find it?-- Onefool 01:35, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'll just turn it off if no-one wants to use it. Judging by the frequency with which edits are being checked at the moment, I think we can assume that no-one does. Forget improvements, I've spent enough time fixing this flawed feature as it is. I discussed at length how I thought an RC patrol feature should work, at Wikipedia:Checked edits brainstorming, but Timwi chose to ignore that discussion. I'd rather write my own from scratch. I just enabled it as a trial, since people kept asking about it. I think we can assume that the trial is over. -- Tim Starling 09:47, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
A little time after it was turned off, 0.8% of edits and 8% of new pages in the last week had been marked as patrolled. For anons only, 2.6% of edits and 18% of creations had been marked as patrolled. Jamesday 11:12, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)