For the Flagged Revisions WikiProject see WikiProject Flagged Revisions.

Shortcuts: WP:FLR WP:FLAGGED WP:FLAGGEDREVS

This page in a nutshell: Flagged revisions consists of letting some users flag revisions to a page. This concept can be used for different purposes, such as passive article monitoring, quality assessment, or as a way to present to readers only verified versions.

In the flagged protection and patrolled revisions two-month trial implementation, flagged revisions are used passively as a global tool for article monitoring, and as a protection measure for articles targeted by vandalism when specifically enabled by administrators. Please participate in the testing at http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/.

Flagged Revisions is an extension to the MediaWiki software. The exact implementation details for how this might work on the English Wikipedia are still being discussed and considered for trial (see Community proposals for various options). The extension can be configured in a number of ways, and can be adapted to the community consensus. It would allow a given revision to be "flagged" as providing a clean version of the article that did not include vandalism or other problems, and a page may be configured so that the latest flagged version appears to unregistered users by default.

On the English Wikipedia, the proposal flagged protection and patrolled revisions has gained consensus for a trial implementation, whose details are still being worked out. Flagged protection provides an alternative to page protection: an article can be 'flag protected', at different levels, temporarily or indefinitely, when it meets the requirements of the official protection policy, so that the latest confirmed version appears to unregistered users by default. Patrolled revisions are used for article monitoring, but are completely passive: they do not affect the version viewed by readers.

Contents 1 Description 2 Release history 3 Statistics 4 Community proposals 4.1 Flagged revisions 4.2 Revised editions 4.3 Trial proposals 5 Other projects 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Description

FlaggedRevs is a MediaWiki extension, released on June 4, 2008, which (if installed on a particular wiki) adds revision "tagging" capabilities. A revision, also called version, is a single entry in the history list for a page. One potential use of the implementation would be to set an article such that when a user viewed the article, they would see not the most recent edits to the article, but instead an older version of the article that had been tagged as a clean or "sighted" version. But this is not necessary: flagged revisions can also be used passively. Established Wikipedia editors might be granted rights (possibly automatically) that would let them review page revisions and determine whether the flag on an article should be reset to a more recent version.

When a revision is reviewed by a trusted editor, that revision is tagged in the edit history, while in the meantime, article development can proceed with the most recent revision. If changes to the page seem constructive, any reviewer can tag the new version.

Note that for pages where the latest flagged version is shown, logged-in users, even new users, could still be shown the most recent version irrespective of what version is tagged by default. For the outside world, one could choose to show the most recent flagged revision, but there are various ways to configure the extension.

It is up to the community to fashion proposals which set the specific procedures for reviewing.

[edit] Release history

FlaggedRevs was released for all wikis on June 4, 2008, following an extensive public beta-test on a dedicated test Wiki. It is up to each Wiki community to decide how they wish to use the system, or if they want to use it at all.

On May 6, 2008, Flagged Revisions were enabled, first for a test, on the German Wikipedia. After an extended test period with lots of bug fixing and massive controversial discussions, a straw poll was organized in August. Over 1,200 users contributed, with the majority voting in favor of the new system.

[edit] Statistics

Available statistics are at:

• User:Voice of All/FR stats (updated Feb 2009)
• http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ (updated July 2009)
• de.wiki flagged revisions statistics special page (live)
• de:Benutzer:ParaDox/Tabelle/noch_zu_sichtende_Artikel
• User:Hut 8.5/German editing stats (2009)
• User:Hut 8.5/DEWP reviewer stats (5 May 2008- 12 Dec 2008)
• http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php (2009)
• http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/rchiststat.pl?dur=86400&lim=30&wp=DE&hl=&fl= (live)
• http://toolserver.org/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english&action=images&project=dewiki (live, broken)
• http://toolserver.org/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english&action=outofdatereviews&project=dewiki (live, broken)
• http://toolserver.org/~aka/cgi-bin/reviewcnt.cgi?lang=english&action=overview&project=dewiki (live, broken)
• de.wiki general statistics special page (live)

[edit] Community proposals

[edit] Flagged revisions

The following are specific proposals on possible ways to deploy this feature on the English Wikipedia:

• Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions, detailed in the lead.
• Sighted versions proposes to use a very light-weight validation process, where almost anyone can tag a page as "sighted", in order to combat vandalism.
• Quality versions proposes to tag versions of articles that have gone through a quality assurance process based on the consensus of editors.
• Reliable revisions proposes two user access groups with different rights to rate article revisions and set article revisions as default.
• Checkpoints and grading proposes a lower-overhead mechanism for tagging specific revisions for both suitability and quality, with an eye toward maintaining progress.
• Wikipedia:Protecting BLP articles feeler survey
• Flagged protection is a current proposal which proposes to combine the system of page protection and flagged revision to make use of flagged revision on articles that are sensitive to vandalism and edit wars.
• Wikipedia:Deferred revisions a proposal to use the edit filter to defer suspect edits for review without the need to enable 'classic' flagged revisions
• Wikipedia:Delayed revisions - Edits by anonymous and non-auto-confirmed editors would be delayed for two hours, giving us a chance to revert vandalism before it is published while still keeping the principle of publication without the need for editorial review.

[edit] Revised editions

Some proposals have suggested 'forking' content, so that two pages are created from the same page. One page would show edits immediately and the other only revised edits. Instead of flagging only new user and anonymous edits for revision, all edits by all users would eventually be reviewed and all new content could still be immediately viewed by everyone. This would create a series of revised editions as well as pages with unrevised content:

• Tabbed revisions; a proposal to display 'reviewed' edits and 'new' edits on two separate tabs. Anyone can edit the page tabbed 'new'. All articles would be tabbed.
• Reviewed editions; a proposal to show links to revised editions as well as unrevised content, similar to the proposal for tabbed revisions. Revised editions could be updated annually. All articles would be treated this way.
• Revised featured content; a proposal to produce revised editions of featured content, as well as a print edition. Only featured content would be revised.

[edit] Trial proposals

Several trial proposals are proposed at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Trial/Proposed trials, related poll.

A trial of Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions has gained consensus for implementation, see poll.

[edit] Other projects

The FlaggedRevs extension was implemented on the German language Wikipedia for all articles in May 2008. On the German Wikipedia, the version viewed by unregistered users by default is the latest 'sighted' version.

It was implemented on the Russian Wikipedia for all articles in September 2008.

It was implemented on the Esperanto Vikipedio version effective November 17, 2008.

It has been implemented on Polish Wikipedia (November 17, 2008).

It has been implemented on Arabic Wikipedia (Augus 6, 2009).

For information on the use FlaggedRevs on other Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects, see meta:FlaggedRevs.

[edit] See also

• WikiProject Flagged Revisions
• Flagged Revisions fact sheet (describes Reliable revisions proposal)
• Wikipedia:WikiTrust - another proposal to increase the quality of Wikipedia and allow users to gauge the trustworthiness of sections of articles
• m:Reviewed article version (2004)
• Wikimedia Quality
• Wikiquality on Meta
• Wikiquality Mailing list
• Demo page on test.wikipedia.org. Approved version is displayed by default. The latest unapproved version of the article can be viewed by passing the parameter stable=0 in the URL: http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wx&stable=0
• Past article validation proposals on Meta
• User:Alan Liefting/Editing constraints essay

[edit] External links

• Wikipedia 2.0 - now with added trust, by Jim Giles, Sep 20, 2007 NewScientist.com news service
• blog posts on Flaggedrevs
• Slashdot article on Flagged Revisions.
• [1] Flagged revisions 'lab' test server