Submissions/Flagged Revisions vs. Page Protection

From Wikimania 2012 • Washington, D.C., USA

This is a rejected submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

611

Title of the submission
Flagged Revisions vs. Page Protection
Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)
workshop
Author of the submission
w:en:User:Николай95
E-mail address
my.main.reg.box@gmail.com
Username
Николай95 (call me Nick95 or rather just Nick)
Country of origin
Russia
Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)
none
Personal homepage or blog
none
Abstract

Intro

Since Wikipedia was founded in 2001, one of its major problems has been the problem of quality.

To be more exact, the problem of minimizing low quality edits.

So far, it has not been solved, but today we already have two software extensions with regulations, which can be of much use to tackle the problem.

First one, the Protection Policy (PP) was introduced in 2004, which allowed sysops to protect susceptible articles from being edited by anonymous contributors, (Semi-Protection)

or, in complex cases, by nobody except sysops themselves (Full Protection).

The second extension, called Flagged Revisions (FR), was made in 2008.

It enables one to flag versions of articles that meet quality standards.

There are two levels of version quality: Sighted Versions and Quality Versions.

A Sighted Version is checked for vandalism by an Editor.

A Synced Article has its last version Sighted.

A Quality Version, is checked for high quality by a Reviewer.

Susceptible articles can be stabilized, i. e. only the last sighted version is shown to the reader, which makes vandalism less attractive.

The $64,000 question is: which is better, more useful and more effective?

Of course, it depends on the situation. Flagged Revisions have been requested by many Wikis, but implemented only on a few of them.

Proof link: Flagged revisions (MetaWiki)

I assume in most Wikipedias the community didn't reach consensus.

I would like this problem to be discussed at Wikimania — perhaps some Wiki-Communities will change their mind.

At the Wikimania 2006 it was announced that the focus be shifted from quantity to quality. Still many Wikipedians prefer quantity.

Of course, big additions like Wiki Loves monuments are good and nice,

but there SHOULD be someone to CONTROL THE QUALITY.

P. S. I'm an editor in Russian Wikipedia.

I'm sorry I'll be unable to attend Wikimania so I'm looking for a host. Николай95 (talk) 12:16, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pro-FR reasoning

Issue Protection Policy Flagged Revisions
Catching Vandals PP doesn't help catch vandals Vandals can be warned or reported to sysops
Quality Assurance PP is not a trash remedy FR assures a basic article quality
Raising Quality PP provides no means of improving the quality FR can raise the quality to no end
Contribution Scale PP holds back lots of good users FR sets few limits on anonymous editing
Combatting Vandalism on Hot-Topic Articles Semi-Block only bars anonymous vandals,

and thus doesn't fully prevent vandalism (registered users can also be vandals)

FR helps catch ALL vandals as every edit is checked;

stabilisation is a good alternative to Semi-Block

Pro-PP reasoning

Issue Flagged Revisions Protection policy
The More Language Speakers — The Higher the Risk of Vandalism FR can do little to stop waves of vandalism PP is useful in popular-language Wikis, as the risk of vandalism is high there
Waves of Vandalism on Hot-Topic articles PP prevents anonymous vandalismб which has a big share

Sighted Versions on Russian Wikipedia

Russian Wikipedia introduced Sighted Versions in 2009. As of June 2nd, 2012, of 862,452 articles, 91,16 % were sighted, while 77,86 % were synced.

Source: Special:Validation Statistics

Quality Requirements:

No obvious:

  • vandalism
  • slander, libel
  • copyvio
  • spam
  • nonsense
  • content forking / rq:delete
  • outdated info / rq:update


  • at least 1 category / rq:topic
  • minimal design, free of mass errors
Track
Technology and Infrastructure
Length of presentation/talk
1,5 hours — quality is VERY important
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

If I could I would.


Interested attendees

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  1. CutOffTies (talk) 15:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Saper (talk) 22:53, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Krinkle 07:17, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Lvova (talk) 09:47, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Zellfaze (talk) 17:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 23:31, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]