Comments on: The truth about Wikipedia’s flagged revisions

By: Padraic

Padraic — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:20:28 +0000

I still think flagged revisions is a bad idea (we seem to have tamed vandalism without using it, and this will absolutely reduce edits by new users when they don’t have the satisfaction of seeing the effect of their work), but this post does a good job of explaining it in lay terms.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:29:23 +0000

Oh, I just noted the sentence to make clear the context for where I was replying. This is a case of truth being, though not exactly in the middle, definitely somewhat apart from two extremes. I agree with you that the media reporting has gotten the story wrong, by greatly exaggerating the extent of the restrictions. HOWEVER, Jimmy Wales and other Wikimedia people are spinning just as hard in the opposite direction, by trying to portray what is going to be more restrictions, as an up-is-down increase in openness. That aspect is laughable, and is as inaccurate in the reverse way. No personal criticism intended, I was only trying to outline that the other side is problematic too.

By: Billy Barnes (IPilogue Editor)

Billy Barnes (IPilogue Editor) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:49:04 +0000

I never intended so much to be read into that sentence. I was thinking of the contrast between what was reported and the actual (short-term perhaps) results of the change. The NYT and blog articles said the move was Wikipedia locking everything down. It is not the case. In theory, it’s a move in the other direction. Of course, it is also true that by reducing the severity of the locks they will also reduce the inhibition towards locking.

One can also see the implementation of patrolling as a dry run for protecting an entire category. Right now, people are worried about delays, but if articles can be flagged in an acceptable time period (according to the WP community), then it will be easier to sell a broad protection scheme.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:57:03 +0000

Luke, the implicit fallacy being smuggled-in there is that the new method would only ever be used on the exact same articles as are locked now, instead of being applied much more widely. Whereas it seems pretty obvious that in practice, many more articles will be restricted. The whole point is to have a method which can be applied to more articles because the Wikipedia admins are very reluctant to lock articles. Hence the net effect will be more restrictions.

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:07:36 +0000

“This will actually open up Wikipedia further…”

This phrase is not misleading, because the previous method of vandalism prevention was to lock articles, barring them completely to users not registered for a certain amount of time.

That isn’t desirable for what the project is attempting to do, so this new method allows high-risk articles to be protected without instituting a universal ban.

And in moving from the universal ban to a review process, Wikipedia is opened further, and that is the main effect, and that is their intent.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:54:26 +0000

A couple of corrections:

1) Jimmy Wales should properly be termed “co-founder”, the other co-founder was Larry Sanger. See Larry Sanger’s page:

http://www.larrysanger.org/roleinwp.html

2) “. This will actually open Wikipedia further …”

The phrasing here is misleading. These changes were developed to deal with widespread vandalism, up to and including true libel. A small side-effect is that they will allow some loosening elsewhere. But that is not the main effect, or their intent.