Flagged protection and patrolled revisions Flagged protection · Patrolled revisions · Poll · Implementation · Trial · Reviewing guideline · Reviewers

This page in a nutshell: A two-month trial of a specific implementation of flagged revisions, consisting in flagged protection, providing an alternative to conventional protection for administrators to use on articles targeted by vandalism, and patrolled revisions, a global passive monitoring system.

Please participate in the testing at http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/.

This page proposes a two-month trial of the flagged revisions extension. The proposed trial configuration supports two separate uses of the extension: flagged protection, which uses flagging as an optional alternative to semi-protection and full protection; and patrolled revisions, which uses flagging passively to coordinate the monitoring of vandalism, violations of the policy on biographies of living persons, and other regular problems affecting the English Wikipedia, but has no effect on the version viewed by readers. It relies on a "reviewer" usergroup that can be granted and removed by administrators, able to flag or patrol articles.

Shortcuts: WP:FPPR WP:FLPPR WP:FLP/PR

Contents 1 Rationale 2 Flagged protection 3 Patrolled revisions 4 Implementation 5 Trial 6 Notes 7 See also

[edit] Rationale

The trial is intended as a conservative starting point for using flagged revisions, inspired by flagged protection and patrolled edits, which serves strictly to enhance, rather than restrict, the ability of non-registered and new users to edit. However, it neither precludes nor entails other uses of flagged revisions in the future, and any additional uses will also require community consensus.

On the issue of biographies of living people, discussions have demonstrated the need to improve monitoring of these articles, and that flagging systems could help us to do so.^[1] But there is no consensus to use an active implementation (in which new edits are not shown to readers unless made by or flagged by trusted users) for all biographies of living people or an arbitrary subset of them, preemptively. Thus, it is proposed to enable patrolled revisions, which uses a passive flag that reviewers can use to mark a revision patrolled, for monitoring purposes, but that has no effect on the version viewed by readers. This passive flag is available for all articles. Flagged protection is a proposal to allow administrators to enable an active flag on a given article, 'flag protecting' it. Reviewers can flag revisions, and the version viewed by readers by default on (semi) flagged protected pages is the latest confirmed revision. During the trial, semi flagged protection is intended to be used with the same requirements as for semi-protection, and full flagged protection (see below), with the same requirements as for full-protection.^[2]

[edit] Flagged protection

Flagged protection introduces new protection types that can be used as an alternative to regular semi-protection and full-protection. Articles meeting the requirements for semi-protection (defined by the protection policy),^[3] can be semi flagged protected (temporarily or indefinitely): unregistered and new users are allowed to edit, but their edits are not shown to readers by default until confirmed by a reviewer. Classic protection can still be used, for example in cases of exceptionally high levels of vandalism. The proposed additional protection levels are shown in the second table:

Currently available protection levels	Anonymous / Non-autoconfirmed	Autoconfirmed	Administrator
Semi-protection	Cannot edit	Can edit; edits are immediately visible
Full protection	Cannot edit		Can edit; edits are immediately visible

Proposed additional protection levels	Anonymous / Non-Autoconfirmed	Autoconfirmed	Reviewer
Semi flagged protection	Can edit; a new edit is visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until confirmed by a 'reviewer'	Can edit; a new edit is visible immediately if the previous version is already confirmed; otherwise[4] not visible to readers by default until confirmed by a 'reviewer'	Can edit; a new edit is visible immediately if the previous version is already confirmed or when the option "confirm this revision" is selected; [5] otherwise left unconfirmed[6]
Intermediate flagged protection	Can edit; a new edit is visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until confirmed by a 'reviewer'
Full flagged protection [7]	Can edit; new edits are visible to registered users, but not to readers by default until validated by an 'administrator'

Advantages over the current system

• Even though their edits are not visible immediately to readers, IPs and new users can edit semi-flagged protected pages, while they cannot edit semi-protected pages.
• Semi-protection is insufficient in certain cases, especially for articles targeted by persistent vandals or sockpuppets, or subject to extreme BLP violations; these sometimes require full protection. Being able to deactivate auto-confirmation for autoconfirmed users who are not reviewers (intermediate flagged protection) would provide an intermediate protection level to handle those cases.
• When an article is fully protected, only administrators can edit it, and the development of the article becomes very difficult, especially during long-term protections. Using intermediate or full flagged protection in those cases would facilitate article development while keeping an independent validation of edits by reviewers or administrators. It would be an entirely new way to handle disputes.

Notes

• Reviewers have access to Special:OldReviewedPages, listing all flagged protected pages where the latest revision is not confirmed.
• When an autoconfirmed user edits a semi flagged protected page, the new revision is automatically confirmed when the previous one is. But not when the previous one is not, to avoid insertions of unnoticed vandalism or violations of policies. This second case should happen quite rarely, as edits are continually flagged by reviewers.
• If we don't have enough administrators to handle fully flagged protected pages, that would consist essentially of disputes, it would be possible to create a specific "moderator" usergroup with "validate" rights.

[edit] Patrolled revisions

For all articles, a passive flag, namely 'patrol', would be enabled in order to coordinate and improve monitoring of articles, especially BLPs. Reviewers^[8] can mark a revision patrolled, which has no effect but only to inform that this revision contains no vandalism, no blp violations, and satisfy certain other requirements defined by a guideline. In particular, this does not affect the revision viewed by unregistered users by default, it's still the latest one (unless the article is flag protected). A new revision by a reviewer is automatically patrolled when the previous version is.

Reviewers have access to Special:UnPatrolledPages (listing pages that have never been patrolled) and Special:OldPatrolledPages (listing pages patrolled at least once with unpatrolled latest revision). They allow respectively to detect unpatrolled pages, that may not have been checked for vandalism, blp violations, etc, and monitor changes to patrolled pages. Those special pages are filterable by category (for example, Category:Living people). It can also be filtered so that only elements on your watchlist appear, and notes how many users are watching a page.

Currently, the number of edits to BLPs is so large that we don't have the power to check all of them. This system allows us to monitor changes to BLPs by reducing the number of diffs to check by comparing new edits to previously patrolled revisions. Even if only one edit of 10 is patrolled, it'll allow to bring potential vandalism and BLP violations to the attention of reviewers and so reduce their general visibility.

Patrolled revisions would also allow checking of edits by autoconfirmed users who are not reviewers to flagged protected pages, as those are generally automatically confirmed when the previous revision is, but would not be automatically patrolled. To avoid work duplication, patrolled revisions are automatically confirmed.

[edit] Implementation

A modified version of the extension FlaggedRevs is the core of the technical implementation.

A page that has been patrolled is automatically marked as patrolled in the Special:NewPages sense (not reciprocal).

A revision can be confirmed by a reviewer only when the page is semi or intermediately flagged protected (and not when fully flagged protected). A revision can be validated by an administrator only when the page is fully flagged protected. All articles can be patrolled (including flagged protected ones).

Special pages (all filterable by category, reviewer-restricted):

• Special:UnreviewedPages: pages that have never been patrolled
• Special:OldReviewedPages, which can be filtered on 'patrol', 'semi-review'/'confirm' and 'fully-review'/'validate'

When a page is semi flagged protected, the revision at the time of protection is automatically confirmed, and when a page is fully flagged protected, the revision at the time of protection is automatically validated. This is done to avoid that the stable version becomes an old version from previous protections.

There are (patrol) links in recentchanges and watchlists for reviewers.

Patrolled revisions are invisible to readers and reviewers when editing.

When editing, like for protection, the latest entry of the stabilization log should appear.

[edit] Trial

The trial of the flagged revisions extension described in this proposal will last for two months. At the end of the trial, the Wikipedia community will decide whether to continue using the flagged protection and patrolled revisions features, and whether to test alternative configurations of flagged revisions.

The flagged protection and patrolled revisions implementation can also conceivably be modified strictly through policy after the trial to adjust the scope of "active" flagging.

The closed poll concerning this trial is located here.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• mw:Help:FlaggedRevs
• mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs
• FlaggedRevs.php