Stable Versions available soon, Now wtf am I supposed to do? Options

[Unrepentant Vandal]

From http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/found...rch/040334.html

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany have collaborated, with
financial support from Wikimedia France, to support development of a
new extension to our software
which makes it possible to flag versions of wiki articles as having
reached a certain quality. This new toolset could mark the beginning
of a new era for Wikipedia and its sister projects, giving readers
more transparency than ever about the quality of a given article. A
special note of thanks to Aaron Schulz, who has developed much of the
functionality as a volunteer -- we would not be where we are today
without him. The ongoing support and patience of Philipp Birken from
the German chapter was also critical.

Before this functionality will be enabled on any Wikimedia project, it
needs to be tested thoroughly for usability, bugs, security and
performance. Test wikis have been set up in English and German
(because the German Wikimedia community has been driving the
development of this functionality from the beginning).

http://en.labs.wikimedia.org/

http://de.labs.wikimedia.org/

On the bright side, more complex disruption will probably be made easier...

[Random832]

On a more serious note, this provides a technical means for e.g. BLPs to be locked in such a way as that only a version approved by a trusted user is shown to casual readers or to search engines.

Shouldn't this be in the mediawiki software forum?

This post has been edited by Random832:

[Somey]

On a more serious note, this provides a technical means for e.g. BLPs to be locked in such a way as that only a version approved by a trusted user is shown to casual readers or to search engines.

Well, let's be fair - this actually has little to do with the BLP issue. It will probably mean a general improvement in Wikipedia content overall, just because of the immediate reduction in petty vandalism. I suppose it's possible that some "vandal-fighters" will get bored due to the lack of AnonIP and throwaway-SPA vandals, and possibly become vandals themselves, but that's highly theoretical. Either way, some vandalism will almost certainly continue, it will just become more creative and subtle. (And hopefully funnier, but I'm not going to hold my breath...)

As far as BLP is concerned, edit-approval will almost certainly be used as yet another counter-argument against an opt-out policy, since no established or "trusted" WP user will accept the idea that non-throwaway "trusted" accounts would ever be used for revenge purposes in BLP articles. Personally though, I'd say there are plenty of terrible BLP situations that are caused almost exclusively by established users, including quite a few admins.

If you look further into the future, there could be a fair amount of user attrition resulting from edit approval, simply because vandal-fighting is part of the fun. The attrition would of course be followed by a drive to add technical features to make up for the reduction in head-count. Once added, the new features will allow (if not directly implement) the "lockdown phase," at which point many of us who are currently attacking WP pretty much willy-nilly will simply pack it in for lack of drama. They could delay the lockdown phase for quite some time if they want to, but I'm betting they won't want to.

[Moulton]

Personally though, I'd say there are plenty of terrible BLP situations that are caused almost exclusively by established users, including quite a few admins.

I can confirm that chagrinworthy observation.