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

The following is a working draft of a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal is definitely still in development and under discussion, and has not yet reached the process of gathering consensus for adoption. Thus references or links to this page should not describe it as "policy" nor yet even as a proposal.

This page in a nutshell: Patrolled revisions provides a way to passively monitor articles using a flagging system.

Shortcut: WP:PLR

Patrolled revisions is a specific use of flagged revisions with an objective to improve article monitoring in a passive way: patrolling doesn't in itself affect the version viewed by readers. Patrolled revisions is part, along with flagged protection, of a planned trial implementation on the English Wikipedia.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Description 3 Patrolling 4 See also

[edit] Overview

The aim of patrolled revisions is to improve the monitoring of articles, particularly biographies of living people, using a flagging system maintained by trusted users. 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 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 trusted users and so reduce their general visibility.

[edit] Description

Reviewers can mark a revision patrolled, which informs that the revision should not contain any vandalism, blp violation, and satisfy certain other requirements given below (#Patrolling section). Patrolling does not affect the revision viewed by unregistered users by default, it's always 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.

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] Patrolling

It has been suggested that Reviewing guideline be merged into this page or section. (Discuss)

The aim of patrolling is to indicate that a revision has no major problem requiring immediate attention. Reviewers are expected to apply common sense when patrolling, and as there is no urgency to patrol edits, they should consider editing the article to fix problems, reverting unconstructive edits, or bring issues to the talk page or the appropriate noticeboards. With the exception of the first patrol, reviewing should be based on an analysis of the diff between the latest patrolled revision and the new revision.

A revision should not be marked as patrolled if it:

• conflicts with the Biographies of Living People policy
• contains vandalism or patent nonsense
• contains copyright violations
• contains legal threats, personal attacks or libel.

Reviewers are not required to thoroughly check for original research, neutrality, and verifiability compliance, but it is better to not patrol egregious violations of those policies.

The diff to the latest patrolled version should also be checked for unjustified removal of content.

When a reviewer is uncertain if a revision should be patrolled, the article may be brought to the reviewers noticeboard.

When an article has not previously been patrolled (in this sense), reviewers should verify that:

• The article is contained in Category:living people, either directly or through a template, if the subject is a living person (if it is unknown, this should be brought to the BLP or a reviewers noticeboard).
• The article contains the appropriate maintenance templates.

[edit] See also

• Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Implementation for the technical implementation of patrolled revisions