Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions/Trial/5

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Looks like it is being adopted

The godking has said he will be asking for flagged revisions to be switched on soon. [1]. DuncanHill (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a total kick in the teeth to the community. 60% has never been enough support to delete an article, let alone throw away a foundation principle. Switching off anonymous article creation didn't work one iota; this won't either. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

You may wish to view the continued conversation in that same area then, which may be found here. It's starting to get a little heated but it may be worth keeping up with. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 18:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I respect Jimbo in general, but I really wonder how a 60% support ratio can be considered strong support. We would never trust a user with admin tools below 75% or a crat below 85% but we should implement such a feature with 40% of the community opposing? If this were any other discussion, any admin would consider this a no-consensus close, but surely not a support one. But then he talks about it coming "without any question at all", it kind of sounds like he would have implemented it no matter how the poll would have ended. Just lucky for me that I already speak German, seeing that Jimbo apparently wants us to become de-wiki step-by-step. SoWhy 18:34, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

SoWhy - I have already stated to Jimbo that using de-wiki as a comparison for Flagged Revisions is pointless. The German Wikipedia is about 3 times smaller than English Wikipedia, and my main concern is that we're gonna have major issues with queueing for review. I have done new page patrol on de.wikipedia a couple of times, and your new page creation rate is much slower than en-wiki. We're gonna be swamped. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 18:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It looks like he announced it on a radio programme, then in passing on his talk page. Maybe he's unaware of this talk page? DuncanHill (talk) 18:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It's kind of hard to miss, it is our biggest poll in history... :D Happy‑melon 19:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the top of Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions, it appears that editors were not entirely free from pressure from him in this matter. DuncanHill (talk) 19:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It certainly wouldn't have been appropriate on the staw poll page itself (note how Jimbo (support #7) didn't give any comments in the actual poll?) but note that A) that's been there for months, and B) the box wasn't posted by him - when he originally made the comment, it was rather more low-key. Anyway, this is rather tangential to your previous point, isn't it? Happy‑melon 10:06, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Iceflow: Isn't this, actually, for good? The sooner this nonsense fails, the better. If this buttongame is inevitable, I'm for a full deployment as soon as possible - no test can imitate scale factors. NVO (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

No. It's not good, far from it. Screw FUD. This is a clear case of messing up our values and our world. If you want full deployment, fine, you are entitled to your view, but you're rapidly heading into a minority. Over 40% of users here now don't want this at all and its getting closer, last time I checked, just over 126 people between the support and oppose camps. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 20:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's the thing -- the poll's numbers aren't exactly correct. Most of the 'votes' (from BOTH sides, but far more in the oppose) seem to be voting as if it 1) Weren't just a trial and 2) Is going to be on all articles. It seems to be the poll was handled quite badly, causing people to really not understand what it is they were voting on. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The voting numbers are spot on according to people's views. The first step to implementation is testing. Sightly off topic, and just an example, look at the UK's membership of the European Union. It was only joined by the UK as a trial and for free trade which we could pull out of at any time. Now the whole of the UK is practically run from Brussels and we're on the verge of losing the last bit of our national identity, our currency. Flagged Revisions is gonna be a suck in. We'll start with the trial, the results "go" in WP's favour, and we wind up stuck with it. If we don't stop it now, we'll never stop it. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 20:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Melodia's statement - a lot of the "Support" votes explicitly mention that they're only supporting a trial, with some being along the lines of "well, it's just a trial". If it was a poll on actual full implementation, many of those might've voted against. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 11:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is going to enable FLR for all articles overnight. It has never been proposed. I personally think that this is unnecessary. However some articles like BLP may benefit from them. Ruslik (talk) 20:22, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but my point is it seems many people answering the poll are thinking that's what it's about (more or less), based on their explanations. But that's just the way I see it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe they just don't believe that it will stop at a trial? Many bad things were introduced step-by-step, grinding away opposition by saying "it's just limited cases". Studying law, I know some good examples: Wire-tapping for example has been introduced into German law with the promise that it will only be used in cases like murder. Nowadays it's being used for a score of crimes, even such crimes as forgery or bribery. Many who opposed this law with the slippery-slope-argument were ridiculed that they were opposing something that noone planned. Now we know they were correct, but the damage has been done. I think the same may as well apply in this case and people may want to prevent it. Apart, of course, that this feature, no matter how limited its use, does in fact remove "anyone can edit". SoWhy 22:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I see that as a matter of opinion. If you want to hold "anyone can edit" to that level of purity, then the principle is already dead in the water. What are protection and semi-protection templates? What does blocking IPs and preventing anonymous page creation do? Flagged Revisions takes, on the other hand, only delays the appearance of contributions. Sure, you can argue that FLR will be abused to block valid contributions, therefore killing "anyone can edit", but it's not as if WP:AFD and reverts aren't abused in the same way. Estemi (talk) 22:44, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Especially if it's used in place of semi-protection/protection, it offers more editing ability, not less. Not to mention, blocking anyone in general means that "anyone can edit" isn't true if you want to get all technical. But this has all been said before, in a better heading devoted to such. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:16, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thor Malmjursson (who apparently lives in the UK; who'da guessed) gives above the example of the UK's trial membership in EU "which we could pull out of at any time." Similarly, SoWhy gives other "slippery-slope" examples, stating: Many bad things were introduced step-by-step, grinding away opposition by saying "it's just limited cases". Several of us have argued along these lines. Above, these arguments are not answered; the "answers" involve only anyone-can-edit purity, which is not the (main) point. Ignoring the slippery-slope concerns has practical consequences. We've already used many hundreds of man-hours reading, discussing and !voting. If/when the trials begin, even more man-hours will be required to define and evaluate them -- how many of them is unknown. I have opposed and I think this argument should be taken seriously. Thanks, - Hordaland (talk) 01:03, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I strongly support this proposal--I think that we should at least try flaged revs in some limited fashion before rejecting them. But I think that this kind of disregard for the community's wishes is terrible. Because Jimbo has indicated that he will be moving forward, I think that the community now needs to open a dialogue not on weather flaged revs themselves are a good idea, but if enabling them despite clear lack of consensus is a good idea. I urge my colleagues to recognise that this action will split and damage the community, even if you think that flaged revisions ultimately could be a good thing. We need to speak up now if we are going to keep this from happening. Cheers, — Jake Wartenberg 03:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, we need a poll on WP:Flagged protection, the proposal that Jimbo seems to support, before it goes forward.--Res2216firestar 04:03, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't even want the extension switched on--that's what this proposal is about--without consensus, which we clearly don't have. And that needs to happen before we even think about doing trials. — Jake Wartenberg 04:10, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Please refer to this clarification by Jimbo: "I, too, do not support turning on FlaggedRevs in the configuration the Germans are using, as I consider it to be much too aggressive. I am also willing to be proven wrong, and who knows what we will find. My view is that it should be "as a protection type system"", then continuing that he would be in favor to use it instead of semi-protection and more liberally for blps. So the implementation he proposed to turn on would indeed be the proposed trial implementation, and I suppose he would support, among the proposed trials, to use it instead of semi-protection and on most problematic bps. Cenarium (Talk) 16:50, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

trial or not

Hi all

I, and I suspect others, was just wondering why the word "trial" does not appear in the proposal line ?

At the moment it reads "Should the proposed configuration of FlaggedRevisions be enabled on the English Wikipedia?"

I was under the impression that it was only a trial.

I expected to see "Should the proposed configuration of FlaggedRevisions be enabled for trial on the English Wikipedia?

can someone clarify as i have spent some time reading about it now and would like to vote !

thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 09:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The "proposed configuration" is a trial. Estemi (talk) 09:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I understood after reading many of the articles, comments and pages that it is supposed to be a trial, but i wonder if there aren't people out there who haven't yet voted simply because it appears that we are actually "straw polling" on having flagged revisions implemented, rather than a trial

I feel that it would be a wonderful thing if locked pages could be opened up by flagging, but that having "normal" and new pages flagged would slow down and possibly detract from the freedom we all enjoy at present. I did try the demo though, and admit that it is easy to use.

Still, my objection is only because if i vote "yes", i am still voting for flagged revisions to be enabled, and not to be put in trial - if this was a pollster approaching me in the street with "we will do this" and they said it was only for a trial i would vote no, if they said "we will do this for a trial period" i may well vote yes, as signing the first one means that they could say "well you voted for it to happen without us trying it out" .
I am not assuming that this is the case, but am pointing out that it could be and, to avoid confusion, simply sticking those words in would help sway at least one voter to yes rather than undecided

Chaosdruid (talk) 10:04, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

It says on the proposal page, on the first line in boldfaced and italicized letters no less, that this is a limited trial implementation. How much clearer can the point be made? Estemi (talk) 10:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

By putting it in the header line on the voting page Chaosdruid (talk) 12:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The current proposal is not about an actual trial of flagged revisions; it's about turning on some software options that would be needed before one or more future trials of flagged revisions could be performed.

If the current proposal is implemented and the software features are turned on, the features would nevertheless remain unused (for the time being), and nobody except people in a special user group would even notice that the features were turned on. The only change would be that people in the special user group (called "surveyors") would get a new user interface that would allow them to turn on "flagged revisions" behaviour on some articles.

If the current proposal is implemented, surveyors would not (yet) be authorised by policy to turn on flagged revisions for anything. Some future proposals could give surveyors permission to configure certain articles to work the "flagged revisions" way for a trial period. Only after such future proposals (if any) are passed will you see a real difference in how any articles are viewed and edited.

If you can imagine any future flagged revisions trial that you would support (for example, using flagged revisions on some heavily vandalised articles, or on some pages that hardly ever get edited, or on a few randomly chosen pages, or whatever), then you should support the current proposal to turn on the software features that would allow that future trial to take place. If you can't imagine any future trial that you would support, then you should vote against the current proposal which would make those future trials possible.

It appears to me that many of the people voting "oppose" on the current proposal have misunderstood the proposal, and I don't blame them for that, because the proposal hasn't been well explained. —AlanBarrett (talk) 19:34, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks you for that explanation, after trawling through numerous pages of extreme legnth and various links, i did the trial on Wikilab, and enjoyed it lol

With your explanation I am more than happy to vote yes, as I know that eventually this will benefit Wiki much more than it will detract.

Chaosdruid (talk) 19:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems with setting it up like this is something that SoWhy explained earlier. A lot of people "just don't believe that it will stop at a trial? Many bad things were introduced step-by-step, grinding away opposition by saying "it's just limited cases". Studying law, I know some good examples: Wire-tapping for example has been introduced into German law with the promise that it will only be used in cases like murder. Nowadays it's being used for a score of crimes, even such crimes as forgery or bribery. Many who opposed this law with the slippery-slope-argument were ridiculed that they were opposing something that noone planned. Now we know they were correct, but the damage has been done. I think the same may as well apply in this case and people may want to prevent it. Apart, of course, that this feature, no matter how limited its use, does in fact remove "anyone can edit"." Now, you can say that each case will individually require consensus, but I'd prefer to just vote on each case one at a time. If I support this software importation, I have no idea if Flagged Protection (the only trial I support at the moment) will be one of the ones up for vote. If someone started an RfC about Flagged Protection, I'd be happy to support it, but until then, I must oppose. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 19:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Yehbut sometimes "grinding away opposition" just means showing people that their fears were irrational, so that what was initially unpopular becomes acceptable. And if you think the powers that be are hell-bent on imposing this even if it continues to be unpopular with a significant minority of users, then they are not going to pay any attention to this debate so you're wasting your time here. Since bureaucrats will have control over who gets the key "surveyor" right, you had better spend your time trying to elect bureaucrats you can trust. PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Support and Opposition by editor experience: a study

Full study is complete and in last section.

Beginnings

I wanted to know how experienced editors were who were for or against the flagged revisions proposal, so I researched total edit counts of a small sample. I started at #301 for support and #201 for oppose (opposes hadn't hit 300 yet).

Update: now not so small, n=120. My results, supports #301-360 and opposes #201-260):

Edit Count	Support	Oppose
>10000	24	12
1000-9999	21	29
100-999	9	14
<100	6	5

If anyone wants, continue consecutively from where I left off (support #326, and oppose #226) and report your results here. Just make a copy the table for your results and I'll integrate the data. Diderot's dreams (talk) 03:35, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

Too small of a sample size to mean anything, IMO. Try researching editing time instead of edit counts. After all, when people like j.delanoy support it, everything gets messed up. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 04:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I was editing it as you wrote just because of edit count average skewing as you said. I'm redoing it, dividing the votes by edit count range, not using an average. As for sample size, I know that's why I put so far. The title's a bit of a teaser to get people to contribute, but I'll change that too! Diderot's dreams (talk) 04:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like work for a bot. If you want, I can offer to write one by tomorrow (I don't believe a read-only bot requires approval to run). Melissa 4.0 (talk) 09:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

A bot certainly would be ideal to get the job done. All bots require approval to run, though, and must be written by an "editor in good standing". Your account has only made a few edits. If you can get it approved, then it would be great, but I don't see how that could happen. Maybe you have another account?

Another approach would be to save the entire voting page to a home computer, then extract the user names and votes, query SQL tools (an off-wiki site) for the edit count, and tabulate the data. This wouldn't require running a bot on Wikipedia.org. Can you write something like that? If you can, please go right ahead. And could you include the source code? Diderot's dreams (talk) 15:19, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

That's what I had in mind. Is Wannabe Kate good for getting the edit count, or is there something more efficient? I'm still undecided about publishing the source code. Melissa 4.0 (talk) 15:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

X!'s edit counter is a bit faster. _(Talk) 17:10, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

My main concern now is mass automated use of these tools a violation of Wikipedia/Wikimedia policy without bot permission, etc.? I am going to ask someone in the bot approval process about this now.

OK, I've looked at bot policy and if does't edit anything, it's not a bot. It's just a analysis tool and Orange Mellon's comment below applies. Diderot's dreams (talk) 18:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh noes, an unapproved read-only bot!1!! What people don't know will not hurt them (plus search engines do this continuously). — CharlotteWebb 21:19, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Which tool to use? Wannabe Kate is OK but slow and undercounts a bit (I tried it on my account), we should avoid it if possible to avoid criticism. I couldn't get X!'s edit count to work. Can you guys? I have been using | SQL's tools.

Thanks so much for offering to write a program, Melissa. Before I run it on my computer, I need to see the source as you are effectively an anonymous editor. It doesn't have to be released publically, but can be emailed to me. Diderot's dreams (talk) 18:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

If you only want the total edit count, just use the API [2]. This is super-fast because the number is stored and incremented every time you edit, rather than counting the edits each time you check it. Deleted edits are not subtracted from it, if that matters. — CharlotteWebb 21:19, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

What wasn't working about it? I could check it fine. CharlotteWebb, my edit counter does use the API. Xclamation point 02:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that's just silly to use the API for one step of the program when you already have database access. I guess the best way to do it would be to use the API as a backup for everything, but only when it cannot connect to the toolserver database. That's besides the point. If people only want the total edit count they are not going to want to put names in your tool one at a time. That would take too long and contain a bunch of information they don't need. — CharlotteWebb 04:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't give any results when I tried yesterday afternoon (more than once). It worked fine just now. Diderot's dreams (talk) 13:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Progress statistics from the poll

I have been doing some analysis of my own, although my focus is more on the changes over time than the background of the voters. Some results are shown in the graph to the right. I note several things. Firstly, the percent support has been largely static for about ten days now, at almost dead on 60%. This notwithstanding the considerable fluctuation in net support over the same period. This confirms to me that the poll is reaching the stage where significant further variation is extremely unlikely, given the very large weight of the existing contributions compared to new votes. In addition, the rate of contributions is declining steadily, and the time between votes is rising correspondingly.

I have not yet made any attempt to extract the user associated with each vote or any corresponding background data on them. I may do so at a later date. Happy‑melon 17:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. The poll does seem to be winding down, but the question of how differently experienced voters responded is still valid even if the poll is over. The issue of flagged revisions doesn't end with this poll, so the question is still out there: do more experienced users favor flagged revisions more, and if so then why? My study is to determine the answer to the first question. And that is enough for now, so let's please not discuss about why at this time. Diderot's dreams (talk) 17:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Automated read only activity works on the out-of-sight-out-of-mind basis. Wikimedia serves over six billion page views a month. If you do something automated that's on a sufficiently epic scale to be at all noticeable, you deserve to be mauled for it. But this will be merely a drop in the ocean. Using a messy combination of excel, notepad and a quick python script, I now have the raw data required (editcounts, group membership and registration date for all participating users) for a full analysis. Give me some time to analyse it. Happy‑melon 18:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I checked bot policy, and what we are talking about isn't a bot by definition. My concern was violating policy, I realise that 1000 automated queries of SQL's Tools or whatever isn't going to impact Wikipedia servers that much. Since you've gone ahead on your own, could I please have a copy of the raw data so I can finish my study? Diderot's dreams (talk) 18:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Study results

	Sup	Opp	Neut	Net+	%+
By user group
Administrators	129	48	4	81	71.3%
Rollbackers	117	66	3	51	62.9%
Checkusers	7	0	0	7	100.0%
Oversighters	7	0	0	7	100.0%
Anons	1	2	1	-1	25.0%
Non-admins	253	216	4	37	53.5%
All	382	264	8	118	58.4%
One edit one vote
All	5,949,184	2,857,468	115,979	3,091,716	66.7%
By edit count
0<edits<100	11	10	0	0	52.4%
100<edits<1000	35	54	0	0	39.3%
1000<edits<5000	93	66	2	0	57.8%
5000<edits<10000	70	40	0	0	63.6%
10000<edits<50000	150	86	5	0	62.2%
50000<edits	21	6	0	0	77.8%

edit count	votes	pct.
Participation by Edit Count
0 edits (anons)	4	0.6%
0<edits<100	21	3.2%
100<edits<1000	89	13.6%
1000<edits<5000	161	24.6%
5000<edits<10000	110	16.8%
10000<edits<50000	241	36.9%
50000<edits	27	4.1%
Total	654	100.0%
Participation by Sysop Status
Administrators	181	27.7%
Non-Admins	473	72.3%

I have completed my analysis (apogies for not seeing your request, Diderot, I haven't checked this page since my previous post). The summaries are in the table to the right; they make interesting reading.

It seems that FlaggedRevisions is in general more popular amongst users with higher permissions: all analyses show an increase in support over the baseline. The admittedly very limited samples of checkusers and oversighters are unanimous, which is notable in itself (for reference, there are currently 37 checkusers and 34 oversighters on en.wiki).

The "one edit one vote" row shows how the votes stack up when the voice of each editor is weighted according to how many edits they have made; so a user with ten thousand edits effectively casts ten thousand votes, while an editor with only a hundred edits casts 100 votes. Obviously this is not a particularly equable way to judge a poll, but it is very interesting to note that the balance of net and percentage supports closely mirror the one-editor-one-vote tallies.

The breakdown by edit count is perhaps the most interesting result. Support appears to be stronger amongst those with very few edits than amongst those with slightly more; indeed there is a region where there is net opposition to the proposal. For improved gradation I have created and uploaded another graph, visible to the right, which orders voters by their edit count rather than by the time they submitted. The height of each line is essentially the number of voters who took a particular position and had less than x edits. The blue line is net support, which briefly dips below the x axis before rising to its final value of +118 or so. net support count hovers very close to zero for editors with less than a hundred editors, reaching a high of +2 and a low of -3 (this section of the graph contains 25 editors). It dips sharply below the axis to reach a low of -22, before rising back to zero and beyond. The point at which the line crosses back into the positive is at around 4,250 edits, there are 254 contributors below this point and 400 editors above it. Very interesting.

My source data files are extremely messy but I can publish data from them if anyone still wants the raw values, although I can't upload them here as .xls files are blacklisted. If anyone wants more or different statistics (I still have a set of account registration dates that are thus far unused), just say the word. Happy‑melon 21:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

A completely random fact: the editors who have commented on this poll are responsible for over three percent of all edits to en.wiki. Happy‑melon 22:36, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I have added results for non-admins, and a table of participation by edit count. Interesting results. Diderot's dreams (talk) 23:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's my interpretation of the study: The voting results show divisions by experience about flagged reviews. Those with "some experience" with Wikipedia are opposed to FRs. (100-1000 edits, by a 20% margin). Those with less experience seem evenly divided, although the sample is maybe too small to tell. Those with more experience (>1000 edits) increasingly favor FRs. This verifies what has been said before by the opposition: that FRs are one more way to make WP more complicated and difficult for the less experienced to contribute, and easier for the more experienced to get their way in editing conflicts.

The results say something about Wikipedia democracy too. The "some experience editors" are underrepresented in the voting, only 13.6% of voters. They must be a much higher percentage of editors than that. Certainly "expert editors" (>5000 edits) are not nearly 57.8% of editors, which was their pct. of voters. The "inexperienced" and anons are hardly represented at all. So the decisions at WP are made by the "expert editors".

Why don't the less experienced vote? Three factors, I think. They are (1) unaware of the procedures or its importance, or (2) are too busy learning the ins and outs of editing the encyclopedia, or (3) are busy making edits in their initial enthusiasm. Their ignorance is perpetuated by the prohibition about canvassing and the way voting is done-- nobody is sent a ballot, there are no set election dates, there is just an informal notice when they log in, if they log in.

For flagged revisions, this study shows that consensus does not really exist for its implementation. Only 53% of non-admins agree, and a large class of editors, for whom the effects will be different are opposed. Maybe that's OK for a trial run, but for a final implementation the support must be greater and more uniform.

Diderot's dreams (talk) 20:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I can agree either with your analysis or the majority of the conclusions you draw from it. You make the extremely common statistical mistake of failing to consider possible systemic errors, and estimate their maximum possible impact on the results. For instance, you correctly note both that a smaller percentage of the population of users in the 100-1000 edit range contributed than did other populations, and that the percentage of those users who did contribute that supported was also lower. It is statistically equally plausible that the sample taken from that population was biased in opposition to the proposal (for whatever reason) as it is that the 100-1000 edit population is overall less supportive of the proposal. Since the sample was self-selecting (rather than randomly chosen), the presence of such a bias is in no way inconsistent with a completely fair ballot; it merely means that users in that population who were opposed to the proposal were more likely (for whatever reason) to contribute than users who supported. I suspect that you are at least partially correct in that the overall level of support in the 100-1000 edit population is lower, but to assert that it is a full twenty percent lower is not supportable. Statistics are dangerous tools.

Your second analysis (of the relative balance of involvement in the decision-making process) is framed in such a way as to reduce the impact of such statistical uncertainties; you are probably correct to conclude that highly-active users make up a larger proportion of the sample who voted than the active editor population as a whole. However, remember that said population is itself biased: an active user is more likely to have a high edit count (as only active users have the opportunity to increase their count), and a user with a high edit count is proably also more likely to be active (as they are more likely to be committed to the project). Taking the simplest possible situation in which edits to a wiki are distributed completely randomly across pages, and hence the edits to a voting page are a random sample, you would still expect to see a higher proportion of those edits being made by the more active users, as each highly-active user has mor edits to be potentially selected. Imposing the condition that only one edit from each editor can be counted (a feature of a ballot) and the proportion of highly-active users' edits included will rise further.

I agree with some of your conclusions, but others appear entirely arbitrary: to conclude from an apparent reduced support amongst users with lower edit counts that "FRs are one more way to make WP more complicated and difficult for the less experienced to contribute, and easier for the more experienced to get their way in editing conflicts" is entirely unsupportable. The implication, although I know you are merely repeating others' comments, is that the statistics 'prove' that the proposal is a diabolical scheme to suppress users with lower edit counts, which those insightful users have seen through and oppose. There is simply no way you can support such a sophisticated assertion with these simple figures.

The conclusion "So the decisions at WP are made by the 'expert editors'" is more defensible, and appears superficially correct. My issue here is to challenge the underlying assumption that this is necessarily a Bad Thing. Wikipedia is explicitly not a democracy, and implicitly is somewhere between a noocracy and a timocracy: the weight of users' 'votes' is dependent primarily on their level of respect within the community, and on how coherent and persuasive their arguments are. Most importantly, users gain "respect" primarily by demonstrating a commitment to, and constructive record in, building and maintaining the encyclopedia. This is why we give vandals, trolls and sockpuppets zero weight in discussions, and give more weight to more respected users. As a high edit count is correlated with (although not directly related to) increased 'respect', as is higher user rights, it is probably neither surprising nor detrimental to see greater influence being wielded by more 'respected' users, provided that this is an entirely natural situation and is not being encouraged or enforced. By summarily discounting the opinions of the 181 administrators who participated to note that "Only 53% of non-admins agree", you discarded fifty five percent (4,878,294) of the edits involved. That is, the group of administrators, who make up just a quarter of the contributors, have made over half the edits. Should they be accorded a correspondingly larger voice? No, of course not. Should their voice be artificially suppressed because of a perceived imbalance? Equally not. Statistics are a dangerous tool. Happy‑melon 18:34, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. First let me say I do not think there is a conscious scheme to thwart newer editors. There is a phenomenon occuring, but it is not a conscious scheme. I would have said so if I thought it was. Now some replies to your specific points.

I haven't failed to consider systemic bias in the results for "some experienced" editors. One doesn't discount results because it is theorectically possible to have systemic error, such error is always theoretically possible. You need to present a compelling argument or evidence of a specific systemic error. This you haven't done. 89 people voted, and voted "NO" by a 20 point margin. You must accept the fact, or show this systemic error.

One thing I will say. Eighty-nine may be too small a sample size. There is some possibility that the actual percentages of the entire group could be substantially less or more. Not likely, but possible.

I see no way to discount the conclusion that higher count editors have participated at a much higher rate. If you just count active editors, I'm sure the result would be the same.

I did not conclude that "FRs are one more way to make WP more complicated and difficult for the less experienced to contribute, and easier for the more experienced to get their way in editing conflicts" because of the statistics presented. The statistics simply support that conclusion. My analysis is not just a scientific analysis of the data, since this page is a discussion the issue of FRs. The conclusion is my belief based on my own experience, and the experiences of others.

I am not disregarding the opinions of "expert editors", I am just saying the total vote does not represent consensus, because of edit-count class support differences and razor thin support amongst all non-admins.

Thank you for correcting me that Wikipedia is not a democracy. I always understood that for article content debates. I knew also for policy making, but these straw polls and talk of consensus really fool you into thinking it is one. After all, what is consensus but "agreement by some number above a majority" coupled with "amongst varied groups or interests."? The former is democracy. I thought we had an advisory democracy when it comes to making policy. But more experienced editors have more power in the decision making process, because voting and advising is more known and accessible to them for the reasons I stated in my interpretation, and a lack of potentially correcting mechanisms, such as campaigning. The participation rates make that clear.

This study has opened my eyes that we don't have an advisory democracy, but an advisory aristocracy. So let me comment on our monarchy with an advisory aristocracy. Expert editors have much advisory power in creating and shaping policy. This naturally leads to policies which favor them, and the needs and interests of underrepresented groups are likely to be underconsidered, and over time degraded. Further, I have noticed a certain tendency towards contempt and arbitrary dismissal of lower count editors. We have fewer new editors who stick around these days. This leads to stagnation. All of these things are characteristics of aristocracy, and reasons not to have it.

All types of the editors are important to the success of the encyclopedia: anons, "inexperienced", "some experience", "expert editors": all should have equal access to voting. We recognize the superiority of democracy in some organizations, like countries. We need to recognize it here.

I am also against the idea of monarchy, here or anywhere where it wields power. Even a benevolent, sagacious, and successful monarch. But lets leave that for another time.

Diderot's dreams (talk) 15:02, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Moved from the voting page

Moved from the voting page as the discussion is getting big (and difficult to follow). --X-Weinzar (talk) 13:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

1. Support FlaggedRevs and specifically setting up for the planned trials. Splitting the decision between principle and specific details of trials is a good idea, and I note that the quality of the specific proposed trials has improved a lot since this poll started, mainly due to edits by users who (unfortunately) are still opposing this motion. Now we have some feedback on the German experiment and it seems to be scaling OK (>92% of pages currently have their most recent page sighted), and is doing its basic job of shutting out most vandalism. If it was the disaster some are claiming it would have been switched off by now; furthermore, we could configure it better than their current set-up. PaddyLeahy (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

   Well, shutting out most vandalism is done by the RC patrol, you don't need flagged revisions for this. As we have produced (though hard to measure) several MB of discussion already I'd be interested in your suggestions for "configuring it better than their current set-up". Once in a while new ideas do show up but only rarely by now. --X-Weinzar (talk) 15:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

   I sometimes think RC patrollers oppose FlaggedRevs because it will spoil their game or something, although of course they could just as usefully patrol the special pages listing unflagged revisions. Needless to say at present RC patrollers can't get rid of the vandalism before it has been displayed to readers for a finite time. As for improvements over the de version lots have been discussed, my favorites include (1) actually turning off semi-protection where no longer needed (2) extending the "sighter" permission to a larger fraction of the community, on an automatic basis, and (3) only applying flagged revs to articles which really need it (I would include BLPs, FAs, and currently semi-protected and protected pages). PaddyLeahy (talk) 11:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

   • Well, there is no way to do without RC patrol. You can't let them vandalize dozens of pages and console yourself by thinking "well, none of this will be visible anyways, we can revert this at some point later".

   Why not? We can!

   Well, think about how edits would pile up. The first IP blanks the page, now another user wants to add something to the article. Obviously, he will edit the last flagged revision. But what about this case: There is one useful edit, then some bad edit and then some useful edit again, and they all pile up. Now when YOU want to continue editing you first have to go through the stack of non-flagged revisions to choose between good and bad edits that argued about each other's additions? In that case, you can't just edit the last flagged revision but have to merge the best edits from the stack of non-flagged revisions.

   • I don't think any of them feels that flagged revision would "spoil their game". Besides, they could just return to playing Counter-Strike or whatever in case they should really feel unnecessary ;-)

   Well, there's this and this but he's probably not being serious...

   I can assure you from my experience at DE:WP: Flagged Revisions have no influence on vandalism. Vandalism fighters will still be needed and, as outlined before, vandalism still needs to reverted as quickly as possible.

   • 1) You won't have much fun turning off semi-protection at topics like rap stars, porn stars, wrestlers.

   First we'd have to turn it on; hardly any of these are semi-protected on en:wp (de:wp uses semi-protection a lot more). Of course if we don't implement FlaggedRevs there is a strong push to semi-protect all BLPs.

   • Semi-protection is still useful.

   Often asserted, but have you (de:wp) actually tried to turn it off now you have FlaggedRevs? If so can we have a translation of the report where it is shown that didn't work? PaddyLeahy (talk) 02:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

   There was recently a discussion at the administrators' noticeboard where someone complained that so many articles were semi-protected (especially articles about music for teenagers). As one user put it, there are already enough stupid edits by auto-confirmed users in those topics. If you would turn off semi-protection you would have to revert every few minutes. The few useful edits would not be worth all the work having to revert all the time and would also mess up the page history. So there was consenus that there are articles where you just can't turn off semi-protection. (all those sentences are more or less quotes, except for the last one which I use to summarize the discussion)

   • (There will also be some articles where someone forgot the semi-protection but that's a different topic).

   Quite. If we didn't tolerate human error we wouldn't have wikipedia at all.

   • 2) If you give out "sighter" permission to everybody you can forget about the experiment or about the flagged revisions altogether. Of course, you could argue about what the requirements should be. I think what we have is okay. Automatic basis doesn't work, than you can forget about it too.

   Not everybody but 10-100 times as many people as admins (not for a limited trial, obviously). And evidence please on the last point. PaddyLeahy (talk) 02:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

   Actually, I'm not sure what you meant by "automatic basis". I understood it as giving the right to every registered user. Did you mean giving it on automatic basis to like users with 300 edits? --X-Weinzar (talk) 13:25, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

   • 3) That's an interesting suggestion. I wonder whether "we" (de-WP) have actually considered to do this. --X-Weinzar (talk) 12:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No Consensus

The voting shows that 58% have supported the proposal.

As this is effectively equivalent to a 'constitutional' change, going as it does to the heart of what the wiki is all about, one would expect a minimum of 66.6% or even 75% (in the case of certain nations) before it could be made.

Reading the supports and opposes, it is also clear that support is often grudging and weak, while opposition is usually vehement and angry.

Pushing these changes through in the face of this large and passionate minority would have catastrophic effects on the morale of the wp-community - it could even open up 'civil war' between an anti-censorship group, and a pro-control and bureaucracy group.

Why take such a damaging step for so little real gain?

Riversider2008 (talk) 15:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

As further evidence of lack of consensus, may I point out that only 53% of non-admins supported it, users with 100-1000 edits opposed it by a 20 point margin, and the majority of people who voted (58%) are "very experienced" editors (>5000 edits), a small group of wikipedians. Diderot's dreams (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Why is turning on a piece of software that won't be used until after another straw poll equivalent to a "constitutional change"? Fritzpoll (talk) 15:32, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

if you can't see how, you've missed something fundamental about the WP. Tell me exactly how can this be turned off once it has started? A huge backlog (91% of articles in Germany) with unsighted edits that would suddenly be unleashed on the community. Once this is in, there's no going back. Riversider2008 (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Because if this proposal passes, no pages would be flagged? If no trials were approved by a further consensus, the software would be there, but never used? That no more than a handful of people are suggesting implementing it across all articles like the Germans did? So tell me, how is installing a dormant piece of software a constitutional change? Fritzpoll (talk) 15:39, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You're going to a tremendous amount of effort to implement something that you now say won't actually do anything. Sorry, this makes me more suspicious than ever. You mention 'further consensus' - there is no consensus on this by any definition of the word.Riversider2008 (talk) 15:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not, personally, and I think the implication of conspiracy is silly. The developers need a straw poll on turning the software on - this is that poll. The proposed trial configurations are variously listed at WP:FLR/P - read the proposal yu're voting on would be my suggestion - it has always been this limited a proposal. The "further consensus" was assuming consensus was achieved on this poll - if there is no consensus, we will not be able to trial things like replacing semi-protection and full protection with flagged revisions (see the trials page) which would expand the ability of people to edit, rather than limit it Fritzpoll (talk) 15:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

There is no implication of a conspiracy, just that the language you have used is imprecise. Clearly the intention of the trial is to justify further use of FR, and the belief is that it will somehow deter vandalism. The metrics being used do not really measure success - they will not measure the number of potential new editors deterred by this departure from the key assumption that all editors have equal rights to edit, and equal accountability for what they do.Riversider2008 (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, that's how your comment that was I was saying made you "suspicious" sounded and I apologise for my misunderstanding. The intention of the proposal being voted on here is to turn the software on in the hope that further trials can be run to assess whether, as you claim, the perceived benefits are as good as claimed. Personally, I would like to try WP:Flagged Protection out for a couple of months to see if we could let anonymous editors and newly registered editors contribute to articles - to my mind that is more synonymous with our "constitutional" philosophy that "anyone can edit" than our current situation.

As to metrics, they can only be based on specific trials, not on this software configuration - so it makes sense that these aren;t in this proposal Fritzpoll (talk) 16:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I accept your apology, and would like to apologise in turn, if I implied any sense of 'conspiracy'. I hope that those who make the final decision will respect the deeply felt objections of the 'FR-skeptics'/'WP-Purists'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Riversider2008 (talk • contribs) 16:13, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad we were able to have this exchange in a relatively cordial manner, and I acknowledge your concerns. For my part, I have no idea if it will work or not - I'm just willing to try it to give people a chance to edit who wouldn't otherwise be able to. Best wishes, and good luck to whoever makes the call. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Just my own two cents. If we do a limited trial and find out we can't maintain the content (edits are waiting weeks to be cited and edit rates are declining), we can shut off the system and just set all edits live, as they are now. So the idea of resistance to turning off the system because it will foist edits on us is a bit misleading, since it would just reset us to the prior status quo. MBisanz ^talk 17:35, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The people that left the project won't come back, the damage is done, so yes on a tech (dev) level you can reset to the prior status quo, but you can't restore the social damage, as the people left, there is no tool to communicate with them. Mion (talk) 07:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Outdent - I am going to post a part from a message left by a user, User:X-Weinzar from the German Wikipedia, and a member also here. In his words: "I just read your statements at Jimbo's talk page. Here's one thing I can assure you from my experience at DE-WP: Flagged revs have no influence on vandalism at all, vandalism hasn't declined.". So Flagged Revs have done nothing to stem vandalism on Wikipedia, where it's been used already, and DE-WP have got it switched on right across the board. So what is the point of implementing it here, other than causing more red tape for us to go through? Thor Malmjursson (talk) 17:43, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Depends how you're intending to use it - if in a limited way like WP:Flagged Protection rather than the full implementation the Germans did it might work: we won't know unless we try. Comparisons to the German experience on both sides of this debate are meaningless - that's why we need to perform limited trials Fritzpoll (talk) 17:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The question that those making the decision must now ponder, is not "Are FRs a good idea?" or even "which side won the vote?", it is "is the community able to come to a consensus about this?" all the evidence from the comments left by people voting is that there is NO CONSENSUS ACHIEVABLE and that progressing down this path will be the start of deep and potentially irreperable ruptures among the editorial community. Riversider2008 (talk) 20:52, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't be so sure that unclear consensus will prevent FLR. Look at WP:N. Now, speaking as a filthy inclusionist, if we were to hold an advertised straw poll about the overall state of notability, I would guess more than 50% of votes would favor major revisions, and if advertised to anonymous voters over 66%. Nevertheless, the policy stands ironclad today. Why is this? Because the most important editors repeatedly decided in its favor. Call it the death of Wikipedia or its maturation, but the cabal is real. And it seems they will decide for FLR (I am not saying this is good). Estemi (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

@Riversider2008: Consensus does not trump doing the right thing, doing no harm, doing what is moral, doing what may be legally required. You say doing the right thing in this case may well cause deep ruptures? I say the project may well be better off without editors so wedded to consensus they are unwilling to fix the BLP problem. Just get on with it. ++Lar: t/c 15:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair point Lar. Perhaps I was being overly pessimistic when I said 'NO CONSENSUS ACHIEVABLE', if both sides are prepared to think and work hard then some real consensus might still be possible. See my most recent comments lower down: 'Alternative Proposals' Riversider2008 (talk) 23:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)