Jimbo to push through Flagged Revisions shortly?, "Real Soon Now" may actually be Real Soon Now! Options

[Doc glasgow]

I agree. One of the most important roles will be the one Lar mentions: making sure that the first-flagged version is ready to go. On de.wp, a surveyor must add each flagged article to the flagged universe by carefully checking the version. It's extremely important to get the first flag on an article right.

The trial absolutely has to be a success, and I'll work like hell to do my small share.

The problem is going to be keeping people with agendas away from the authority to flag revisions. The odds of that happening are infinitesimal, because so many of Wikipedia's active power brokers have deeply-held agendas and will compromise Wikipedia's mission in favor of their own.

I'd help out myself, but I doubt Wikipedia would let me.

The other reason this will not work is too many wikipedians will focus on patent vandalism (which is not really harmful in a BLP sense) rather than less-obvious stuff.

People will skim read a contribution, and if it looks reasonable and has a reference they'll let is stand. We've got plenty of hatchet jobs with seemingly good references and prose that's not very problematic.

I support this, but anyone who thinks it is a panacea is kidding themselves.

The danger is that people will become reviewer as a career move or status symbol and feel free to mark revisions as good without due care. I'd rather see flagging restricted to BLPs that cause problems or are unwatched - than have people waste their time on Sarah Palin vandalism that's quickly reverted under the present system.

We will still have people's reputations entrusted to 14 year olds who don't care.

[One]

I agree. One of the most important roles will be the one Lar mentions: making sure that the first-flagged version is ready to go. On de.wp, a surveyor must add each flagged article to the flagged universe by carefully checking the version. It's extremely important to get the first flag on an article right.

The trial absolutely has to be a success, and I'll work like hell to do my small share.

The problem is going to be keeping people with agendas away from the authority to flag revisions. The odds of that happening are infinitesimal, because so many of Wikipedia's active power brokers have deeply-held agendas and will compromise Wikipedia's mission in favor of their own.

I'd help out myself, but I doubt Wikipedia would let me.

The other reason this will not work is too many wikipedians will focus on patent vandalism (which is not really harmful in a BLP sense) rather than less-obvious stuff.

People will skim read a contribution, and if it looks reasonable and has a reference they'll let is stand. We've got plenty of hatchet jobs with seemingly good references and prose that's not very problematic.

I support this, but anyone who thinks it is a panacea is kidding themselves.

The danger is that people will become reviewer as a career move or status symbol and feel free to mark revisions as good without due care. I'd rather see flagging restricted to BLPs that cause problems or are unwatched - than have people waste their time on Sarah Palin vandalism that's quickly reverted under the present system.

We will still have people's reputations entrusted to 14 year olds who don't care.

That's true, but with this change, actual contributor access will be on the line, and that's always considered a big deal. Some SPA inserting subtle vandalism doesn't care about Wikipedia processes, but that 14 year-old is sure going to feel miffed if we cut off his access for allowing subtle defamation.

Yeah, it might be a game to some, but players have to respect BLPs in order to win. It bends the site's MORPGness into something worthwhile.

[EricBarbour]

And the violins keep playing.......

Tango; According to Thogo, from the German Wikipedia, their queue for flagged revision review currently stands at +/- 3 weeks. Whats that gonna mean for us considering how big we are? A backlog of bible sized proportions. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 02:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Too late, Ye Mighty Thor. It's already backlogged....with cruft and drama.
Get your Mighty Teaspoon out, and start bailing out the ocean.

See? Certain crazy-folk are starting to "sow dischord" over flagged revs.

Who needs soap operas when we've got Jimbo's talk page?
And just before the flagged-revs bit, FT2 posted a whole lot of diarrhea.
Mmmmmm, yummy feces. All we need is a poisoned Kool-Aid chaser.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Sun 18th January 2009, 11:49pm

[GlassBeadGame]

Yeah, it might be a game to some, but players have to respect BLPs in order to win. It bends the site's MORPGness into something worthwhile.

The problem is those in authority don't get to define "win" with policies and rules anymore than a organism gets to define success in terms of it's own well being in relations to viruses. The POV pushers, mischievous 14 year olds or even cabalistas seeking new terms of influence will be completely viral in this respect.

[Doc glasgow]

I agree. One of the most important roles will be the one Lar mentions: making sure that the first-flagged version is ready to go. On de.wp, a surveyor must add each flagged article to the flagged universe by carefully checking the version. It's extremely important to get the first flag on an article right.

The trial absolutely has to be a success, and I'll work like hell to do my small share.

The problem is going to be keeping people with agendas away from the authority to flag revisions. The odds of that happening are infinitesimal, because so many of Wikipedia's active power brokers have deeply-held agendas and will compromise Wikipedia's mission in favor of their own.

I'd help out myself, but I doubt Wikipedia would let me.

The other reason this will not work is too many wikipedians will focus on patent vandalism (which is not really harmful in a BLP sense) rather than less-obvious stuff.

People will skim read a contribution, and if it looks reasonable and has a reference they'll let is stand. We've got plenty of hatchet jobs with seemingly good references and prose that's not very problematic.

I support this, but anyone who thinks it is a panacea is kidding themselves.

The danger is that people will become reviewer as a career move or status symbol and feel free to mark revisions as good without due care. I'd rather see flagging restricted to BLPs that cause problems or are unwatched - than have people waste their time on Sarah Palin vandalism that's quickly reverted under the present system.

We will still have people's reputations entrusted to 14 year olds who don't care.

That's true, but with this change, actual contributor access will be on the line, and that's always considered a big deal. Some SPA inserting subtle vandalism doesn't care about Wikipedia processes, but that 14 year-old is sure going to feel miffed if we cut off his access for allowing subtle defamation.

Yeah, it might be a game to some, but players have to respect BLPs in order to win. It bends the site's MORPGness into something worthwhile.

I really question if arbcom/the community have the balls for this. Let me give you a scenario:

Young wikipedian with a perfect record, who ticks all the boxes gets the right to mark edits as OK. He looks at a BLP where someone has inserted something that looks ok at a glance and has an apparent source. "John Doe was recently declared backrupt<ref>etc</ref>"

Turns out that the ref is bollocks and the assertion libellous. But hold on, the wikipedian was acting in good faith, and he patrols millions of these backlogged edits.

You really going to criticise him?

But then, if you don't, the crap will keep coming - and the process will be superficial and easy to game by a determined libeller.

And that's before we start on bios where the references are good but utterly one sided. Hatchet jobs are not libellous, but they are highly damaging.

[tarantino]

The other reason this will not work is too many wikipedians will focus on patent vandalism (which is not really harmful in a BLP sense) rather than less-obvious stuff.

People will skim read a contribution, and if it looks reasonable and has a reference they'll let is stand. We've got plenty of hatchet jobs with seemingly good references and prose that's not very problematic.

I support this, but anyone who thinks it is a panacea is kidding themselves.

The danger is that people will become reviewer as a career move or status symbol and feel free to mark revisions as good without due care. I'd rather see flagging restricted to BLPs that cause problems or are unwatched - than have people waste their time on Sarah Palin vandalism that's quickly reverted under the present system.

We will still have people's reputations entrusted to 14 year olds who don't care.

True.

I've come across many examples of blatant BLP vandalism that are easily found by simple search terms, but remain undetected by the patrollers. The subtle stuff is much harder to root out and is potentially more damaging than being called a twat. How many of the 330.000 BLPs are harmful? No one really knows. It would require all of them to be fact checked by someone competent to find out.

As an exercise, see how long it takes you to find what's wrong with Tom_Hansen_(Nebraska) (T-H-L-K-D) (without stepping through its short history). Then multiply that by 330,000. Divide that number by the number of active Wikipedians who actually care and you will have an approximation of the amount of time and effort that is needed to clean up just the biographies.

[Doc glasgow]

The other reason this will not work is too many wikipedians will focus on patent vandalism (which is not really harmful in a BLP sense) rather than less-obvious stuff.

People will skim read a contribution, and if it looks reasonable and has a reference they'll let is stand. We've got plenty of hatchet jobs with seemingly good references and prose that's not very problematic.

I support this, but anyone who thinks it is a panacea is kidding themselves.

The danger is that people will become reviewer as a career move or status symbol and feel free to mark revisions as good without due care. I'd rather see flagging restricted to BLPs that cause problems or are unwatched - than have people waste their time on Sarah Palin vandalism that's quickly reverted under the present system.

We will still have people's reputations entrusted to 14 year olds who don't care.

True.

I've come across many examples of blatant BLP vandalism that are easily found by simple search terms, but remain undetected by the patrollers. The subtle stuff is much harder to root out and is potentially more damaging than being called a twat. How many of the 330.000 BLPs are harmful? No one really knows. It would require all of them to be fact checked by someone competent to find out.

As an exercise, see how long it takes you to find what's wrong with Tom_Hansen_(Nebraska) (T-H-L-K-D) (without stepping through its short history). Then multiply that by 330,000. Divide that number by the number of active Wikipedians who actually care and you will have an approximation of the amount of time and effort that is needed to clean up just the biographies.

Yikes that was bad. And it's been there for three weeks.

But actually that sort of stuff is not the problem. Edits with "child molester" in them should usually redflag serious checking.

The problem is where the edit has stuff that is seemingly innocuous, but toxic if untrue. Try "bankrupt" "convicted" or even "divorced".

That article itself has the unreferenced claim "Prior to being elected to the State Legislature, Hansen served on the board of the Twin Platte Natural Resources District.". Now, it is almost certainly true and uncontroversial - but it is also unreferenced. And for all the casual reviewer knows it could be a fabrication where the "Twin Platte Natural Resources District" is an organisation where all the directors were jailed for corruption.

We need references, and we need them checked.

This post has been edited by Doc glasgow: Mon 19th January 2009, 1:57am

[One]

I really question if arbcom/the community have the balls for this. Let me give you a scenario:

Young wikipedian with a perfect record, who ticks all the boxes gets the right to mark edits as OK. He looks at a BLP where someone has inserted something that looks ok at a glance and has an apparent source. "John Doe was recently declared backrupt<ref>etc</ref>"

Turns out that the ref is bollocks and the assertion libellous. But hold on, the wikipedian was acting in good faith, and he patrols millions of these backlogged edits.

You really going to criticise him?

I will personally deflaganate him. Just let me know.

If we start a tradition of no tolerance for BLP error, I think it could be a new hard rule--like 3RR, maybe. Unlike 3RR, it actually has moral authority.

Incidentally, you're spot on about subtle vandalism.

[Doc glasgow]

I really question if arbcom/the community have the balls for this. Let me give you a scenario:

Young wikipedian with a perfect record, who ticks all the boxes gets the right to mark edits as OK. He looks at a BLP where someone has inserted something that looks ok at a glance and has an apparent source. "John Doe was recently declared backrupt<ref>etc</ref>"

Turns out that the ref is bollocks and the assertion libellous. But hold on, the wikipedian was acting in good faith, and he patrols millions of these backlogged edits.

You really going to criticise him?

I will personally deflaganate him. Just let me know.

If we start a tradition of no tolerance for BLP error, I think it could be a new hard rule--like 3RR, maybe. Unlike 3RR, it actually has moral authority.

Incidentally, you're spot on about subtle vandalism.

That's an encouraging response.

We really need to start putting the rights of subject above those of wikipedians.

Whipping maybe overkill but saying "make one mistake like that again and you won't be deflagging stuff" and then following through is essential.

[Milton Roe]

That article itself has the unreferenced claim "Prior to being elected to the State Legislature, Hansen served on the board of the Twin Platte Natural Resources District.". Now, it is almost certainly true and uncontroversial - but it is also unreferenced. And for all the casual reviewer knows it could be a fabrication where the "Twin Platte Natural Resources District" is an organisation where all the directors were jailed for corruption.

We need references, and we need them checked.

I can't even tell if you're being serious or not. Having read your essay on the subject, I assume you're not.

If WP had the shear manpower and will to create 250,000 perfectly referenced, and substantially error-free articles (i.e., all those BLPs), it would have done so, and come out as... Nupedia. But it couldn't, and didn't. And won't in future.

Deciding it's going to, just because everybody decides NOW to demand it, is a bit like the old story of the guy who was going to get 2 kittens to pull his truck out of the mud, by tying them to the front bumper with ribbons, and using a big whip.

IOW, this is as funny a tall-tale as the idea of Jimbo's Google-beating search engine, which was also to be powered by kittens, or hamsters in wheels, or something. hic.



I might as well make this Milton Roe's First Law of WP Editing Resources, for emphasis:

Roe Editing Law [1] The problems with WP's BLP accuracy cannot be fixed with WP's present-sized collection of BLPs, except with access to a pool of resources of sufficient power that it would also be capable of creating Larry Sanger's Nupedia.

Now, if there's anybody out there who thinks that this will happen anytime soon, where's my Nupedia? You think that will arrive about the same time? Eh? Do you really think that flagged and sighted revisions will make it appear?

Ah, the self-deception of which the human mind is capable, if it has reason to dislike reality!

Other things being equal, and if real people weren't being harmed by BLP meanwhile, one could simply sit back and enjoy the promises and the flailing about, something like watching the antics of a sinking company that keeps offering more and more grandiose business plans to its stockholders or prospective investors, instead of a product.




No, there's no Nupedia on the horizon, not for Wales, and not even for Sanger (Citizendium, anybody? Not enough hamsters? Golly). No, the Google-beating search engine has never arrived. And yes, the biographies continue to be vandalized, because there are 250,000 of them, and only a few disinterested volunteers to keep the mud and dust off them. None of this is going to change in the foreseeable future.

You can pretend that it is going to change, all you like. But you're doing that, methinks, only so that you won't have to take the obvious logical step in thought, which is that you must cut those 250,000 BLPs down to some managable size, or to zero. Which nobody wants to admit must be done.

So here we are. You Wikipedians deny reality. You simply refuse to acknowlege that which is quite obvious. You promise that it all will change. Soon, now.

Is it any wonder that I sometimes want to take aside all the people who make the decisions on WP, and ask if they've all been taking "stupid-pills," every morning?

[Kato]

From Jimbo's talk page:

I think it will come, without any question at all. Community support seems strong (per the nonbinding poll you cite above), the German experiment has gone well, and I strongly support it. I intend to ask that the feature be turned on, per the nonbinding poll, very soon now. It would strike me as foolish not to do it, considering the success it has had everywhere and given the very cautious way it has been proposed for testing here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

If I remember the discussion properly being cautious means that Flagged Revisions will be enabled either on all BLP articles, or a subset of BLP articles to start, and we will see how it turns out.

This needs to happen on BLP articles first. Likewise, Semi-protection of articles needs to occur on the BLP articles above all others.

This is an important point - because when it happens, the wider world is going to ask why it has been implemented on these articles and not others. People familiar with WP but not with the inner workings need to ask why BLP's have been singled out for protection. And they should come to the only ethical conclusions themselves.

In an ideal world - those conclusions will reverberate around the internet - and Wikipedia could play a role in shoring up some of the worst excesses of Web 2.0. By reversing the insidious culture it has created, and making certain current irresponsible attitudes taboo.

Some of the worst monsters Wikipedia has spawned are the "Biography" start-ups that appeared in the last couple of years. These are sites that have jumped on the bandwagon, and created forums where anyone can write an article on anyone - with no notability guidelines at all. I spotted one last year (called Biographo or something) - and asked some questions of the site creators in a Q&A section of an article. They were utterly naive to concepts of defamation, privacy, accountability and so on. And merely blurted back something about "we wouldn't let this happen" before sounding concerned and disappearing.

As a wise Reviewer once said; "If these sites were .gov instead of .org - we'd all be tearing down the government to get them closed down due to gross privacy violations".

There needs to be a culture shift - and Wikipedia can actually help that by publicly undoing some of its own mess.

[Doc glasgow]

That article itself has the unreferenced claim "Prior to being elected to the State Legislature, Hansen served on the board of the Twin Platte Natural Resources District.". Now, it is almost certainly true and uncontroversial - but it is also unreferenced. And for all the casual reviewer knows it could be a fabrication where the "Twin Platte Natural Resources District" is an organisation where all the directors were jailed for corruption.

We need references, and we need them checked.

I can't even tell if you're being serious or not. Having read your essay on the subject, I assume you're not.

Oh, I'm serious. Unless things like that are checked, they shouldn't be there.

You can pretend that it is going to change, all you like. But you're doing that, methinks, only so that you won't have to take the obvious logical step in thought, which is that you must cut those 250,000 BLPs down to some managable size, or to zero. Which nobody wants to admit must be done.

I'm not pretending this will change. Flagged and semi-protecting will mitigate, but not solve the problem.

As for cutting the BLPs down to a manageable/maintainable size, I have long admitted that this is the only real solution.

[GlassBeadGame]

I really question if arbcom/the community have the balls for this. Let me give you a scenario:

Young wikipedian with a perfect record, who ticks all the boxes gets the right to mark edits as OK. He looks at a BLP where someone has inserted something that looks ok at a glance and has an apparent source. "John Doe was recently declared backrupt<ref>etc</ref>"

Turns out that the ref is bollocks and the assertion libellous. But hold on, the wikipedian was acting in good faith, and he patrols millions of these backlogged edits.

You really going to criticise him?

I will personally deflaganate him. Just let me know.

If we start a tradition of no tolerance for BLP error, I think it could be a new hard rule--like 3RR, maybe. Unlike 3RR, it actually has moral authority.

Incidentally, you're spot on about subtle vandalism.

First, no young person ought to be doing that volume of work on Wikipedia, even assuming that "millions" is hyperbole. If they are doing that much work (and many are making thousands of "patrols") then that ought to be a concern even more grave than BLP. Second One's zero tolerance will quickly result in "patrollers" avoiding BLP work like the plague. It is no great honor, even among the addicted, to do work that is not just thankless but that is likely to result in criticism and a black mark on their precious "record."

[tarantino]

Besides what has already been mentioned, there is another type of harmful edit that could linger even on highly watched pages.

Several months ago, a degrading remark was added to a world leader's biography. I don't know if was intentional, but it was not formatted properly and does not show up in a simple page view. Several non-wiki mirrors have since reproduced the content, and it now shows up in search engine results. I won't mention whose bio it is, because I want to see just how far the addition will eventually spread.

[Doc glasgow]

Besides what has already been mentioned, there is another type of harmful edit that could linger even on highly watched pages.

Several months ago, a degrading remark was added to a world leader's biography. I don't know if was intentional, but it was not formatted properly and does not show up in a simple page view. Several non-wiki mirrors have since reproduced the content, and it now shows up in search engine results. I won't mention whose bio it is, because I want to see just how far the addition will eventually spread.

Trivial.

Despite the idiots who suddenly got motivated when Sarah Palin was getting bad stuff, wikipedia can't do any really damage to world leaders and A list celebrities - there's plenty of other crap about such people on the internet, and no one will believe that GWB was convicted for paedophilia or that Margaret Thatcher was bankrupt. All that crap does is embarrass wikipedia because people ask "if they can't get these bios right, what hope for the other 200,000". That embarrasment is good, because it highlights the real problem.

Which is what happens when stuff gets put in some minor person's bio and it is libellous, but credible as truth.

[tarantino]

All that crap does is embarrass wikipedia because people ask "if they can't get these bios right, what hope for the other 200,000". That embarrasment is good, because it highlights the real problem.

Which is precisely why I keep track of it when i see it.

Which is what happens when stuff gets put in some minor person's bio and it is libellous, but credible as truth.

I recognize that this is where the most damage is done.

According to erwin85's categorycount tool, there are now 333,981 articles tagged as Category:Living_people. How many of them are unwatched? There is Special:UnwatchedPages, but it is available only to admins, and has been broken for a long time.

What I'd like to see is a list of pages that are in Category:Living_people and are also unwatched.
If anyone with a toolserver account can hook me up with one, my gmail address is wr.tarantino.

[EricBarbour]

So here we are. You Wikipedians deny reality. You simply refuse to acknowlege that which is quite obvious. You promise that it all will change. Soon, now.
Is it any wonder that I sometimes want to take aside all the people who make the decisions on WP, and ask if they've all been taking "stupid-pills," every morning?

Is it any wonder why I've given up entirely on WP, and simply hang out here to mock the kool-aid drinkers? And to laugh at them while they proceed with teh dramaz (see above), while 333,981 BLPs sit and fester, unknown thousands of them desperately needing repair?

It's all just vaudeville. Wikipedia=amusement park.

Like Rush Limbaugh (on the right)
or Keith Olbermann (on the left).
They're all doing the old soft-shoe.

(Sorry to be so blunt.)

[Milton Roe]

According to erwin85's categorycount tool, there are now 333,981 articles tagged as Category:Living_people. How many of them are unwatched?

A third of a million articles which need to be reliable, sourced, cited and error-free. As of yesterday. LOL.

You-all get right on it, you WP Kool Aiders. I'm sure there's improvement to be done.

Milt



PS. You.... frigging nitwits. Sorry, I just had to point that out, one more time.

[dogbiscuit]

Classic software project doomed to failure.

We have a bit of software, Flagged Revisions, but where is anyone doing the work to agree what the issues that it will solve are? What dimensions of the data are to be considered - BLP is a nice little acronym, but I guess the underlying issue is that is about publishing damaging and hurtful information, then we have the dimension of adult material - of course better not forget the simple test of how to agree an article is fit for purpose in terms of balance, completeness and accuracy.

This is about readership, Wikipedia has shown itself woefully incompetent at considering the needs of readers, so this will just turn into another MMORG battleground, fighting to have a favoured version published, revert wars turn into publishing wars, more bans, more gaming. It is a pointless solution unless there is a mechanism to match the characteristics of users to the information to be published.

In the last couple of years there was time to have a think about that, I would have thought.

[SirFozzie]

Houston, we are go for liftoff!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=265582821

This nonsense(the Kennedy/Byrd issue) would have been 100% prevented by Flagged Revisions. It could also have been prevented by protection or semi-protection, but this is a prime example of why we don't want to protect or semi-protect articles - this was a breaking news story and we want people to be able to participate (so protection is out) and even to participate in good faith for the first time ever (so semi-protection is out).

We have a tool available now that is (a) consistent with higher quality (b) will allow us to allow more people to edit it a wider range of circumstances and © will prevent certain times of BLP harm.

* We now have a community poll indicating approximately a 60/40 support for the future. This is a very wide margin, with 20% separation between the pro's and con's.

* The proposed configuration is significantly conservative as compared to that of the German Wikipedia, which has been successful with all articles flagged. They do, however, have an approval delay of 3 weeks at times, a figure which I regard as unacceptable. Our version should show very minimal delays (less than 1 week, hopefully a lot less) because we will only be using it on a subset of articles, the boundaries of which can be adjusted over time to manage the backlog.

* The proposal is for a time-limited test.

To the Wikimedia Foundation: per the poll of the English Wikipedia community and upon my personal recommendation, please turn on the flagged revisions feature as approved in the poll.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)