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Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2012/Option 1

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by M4gnum0n (talk | contribs) at 14:13, 27 March 2012 (→Position #1: +1). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Position #1

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users who endorse this position
  1. While I do understand the benefits of PC and why people support it, I still believe that any PC/FR-style protection is against the fundamental principles of the project, in that there should no difference between editors (except such differences that are unavoidable) and that everyone should be able to edit equally (while semi-protection for example blocks IPs, those users can easily get the status that allows them to edit regardless - PC on the other hand would restrict editing in those cases to a small group of users). I also think that the PC trial showed that this is a kind of "power" that a number of admins do not grasp correctly and I fear that PC will lead to further problems with incorrect usage and problems with anon / new users being scared away by overzealous "reviewers" who use their new-found "powers" to reject valid edits they don't agree with. Imho the problems of any tool that allows one group of users to decide which edits of other users are valid without discussion by far outweigh the benefits. Regards SoWhy 19:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. That's pretty much it. I get the idea and all, but it just didn't work out. Rcsprinter (orate) 20:27, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Will be glad to see the back of it. HairyWombat 20:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Use of pending changes over a significant fraction of our articles would contradict fundamental principles and create huge mountains of work. I was supportive of the alternative idea of using pending changes as a form of protection, but I don't think the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. Protected pages are by definition subject to abuse, most suggested edits to pages under PC were not constructive, and the edits which were useful did not justify the expense of editor effort to weed out the problematic edits. At the same time there is certainly the potential for abuse in the manner described by SoWhy. I don't think use of the tool can be justified except possibly in a handful of special cases. Hut 8.5 20:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Pending changes is strictly worse than any other antivandal/accuracy measure we've got, since it can very easily be gamed by vandals, is overly reliant on an ever-shrinking user pool (last time I pegged the rate of reviewers to potential PC candidates at 1:65), and does active harm to Wikipedia and its reputation if understaffed/ignored. There is no way in creation that this would serve any purpose for Wikipedia, other than depressing already-anemic membership numbers even further. No new blood means nobody to write the encyclopedia. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 21:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. I understand the good intentions, but I wonder if I would have been as likely to join WP if I had to start out as a third-class-citizen. Our radical openness and the immediacy of an edit is an essential part of the Wikipedia experience. If we applied PC only to pages currently protected, perhaps it would help openness-- but I think we can reasonably anticipate that PC will be used more liberally, e.g. every BLP. We're a wiki-- no one expects us to be perfect. It's okay if a 'bad' revision is public for a bit-- that's an opportunity the readers to learn just how democratic WP is. In some ways, "reviewing" could make things worse-- implying that an article has been 'screened for quality' in some way, when in fact, it's only screened for obvious vandalism. In the balance between "Openness" and "Quality", we are too far towards quality. "Quality Mania" has to stop before we drive all new users away. HectorMoffet (talk) 02:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  7. I dislike Pending Changes (and any derivative of flagged revisions) primarily due to the "third-class citizen" idea that it brings about, which has been brought up by others above. I also think that Pending Changes is largely only seen as good from the "vandal fighting" perspective, but there is more to Wikipedia than attempting to control the behavior of others and the content of articles which are in an editors personal interest area. It looks like a foregone conclusion that this RFC will show Pending Changes as being supported, but I believe that it's use is antithetical to the core principles of editing Wikipedia.
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  8. I find the system unnecessarily complicated to use and administer. Wikipedia is already complex enough, especially for newbie editors. The aims of the draft policy below, to protect pages that need it from disruption, can just as well be achieved by applying the standard full or semiprotection tool.  Sandstein  08:06, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Pending Changes would, I believe, make Wikipedia more authoritarian and less democratic. The fact is this is a free and open encyclopaedia that anyone - even the most malevolent and ignorant people on the Internet - can and may edit, and edit it without censorship. --... there's more than what can be linked. 10:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Right problem, wrong solution. Incomprehensible technical wizardry, confuses everyone as to whether they are in fact editing the article, and even as to what "the article" in fact means at a given time. I don't so much share the concerns about preserving "core principles" of openness and democracy - which are double-edged swords - but just want things simple and upfront. If an article is closed to public editing, then tell people so, tell them why, and tell them how they can still get changes made. Victor Yus (talk) 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  11. As a purist, I think Wikipedia should remain instantly updateable, without allowing privileged users to "approve" content. As a radical, I think we should just remove all currently unsourced content and revert any new additions of unsourced content, to prevent any sort of "sneaky vandalism" or other unhelpful edits whatsoever. That would be a ore useful solution than pending changes, I think. Really, I think we should have a Wikipedia where anyone can write crap, and a second Wikipedia, which can claim to be reliable. Of course, Citizendium tried that and essentially failed. But I digress. Pending changes compromises my ideal of openness, and is inadequate in stopping vandalism or undesirable edits. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  12. This tool is fundamentally in violation of the idea of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I am not convinced that our coverage is so great or our problems so immense that we need to change this foundational policy and make it more difficult for new users to edit. ElKevbo (talk) 23:18, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Absolutely not. I quietly watched the first trial from afar and saw no saving virtues in it whatsoever. Moreover, we'll no longer be able to call ourselves the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Lock Pending changes up and throw away the key. Evanh2008 (talk) (contribs) 23:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Pending changes has a cumbersome interface, is confusing to use and unnecessarily complex to administer, has the potential to drive away clueful editors, and fails utterly to address the most serious content problems we are facing. More troubling, we are again putting the cart before the horse by considering resurrecting PC in the absence of any credible evidence that it is needed. Effective tools to combat persistent vandalism, BLP violations, and other unconstructive edits already exist, and they work well; other options have been identified but not actively considered. Unless it can be demonstrated that there is a serious, intractable problem that pending changes is uniquely capable of solving, let's not go down this road again. Rivertorch (talk) 07:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Pending changes will make Wikipedia controlled by only some individuals in certain pages, which is entirely different from the main principle of the free encyclopedia. I am also in favor of comment number 1, 4, 5, 8 and 11. --G(x) (talk) 10:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  16. --Michig (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Frood! Ohai What did I break now? 16:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Logan Talk Contributions 16:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Bzweebl (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  20. I think pending changes unnecessarily complicates Wikipedia even more for new users. I think that page protection and edit requests can accomplish the same task without adding unnecessary work for reviewers. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  21. Per SoWhy. -Branabus 19:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Just complicates matters. As things stand it's easy enough to throw an edit request at someone when a page actually needs it, at least enough that a lot of people do figure out how, and they'd still have to do that even with PC in use, so what's the point? Thing doesn't even work on high-traffic pages, which seem like they'd need it the most; such pages would still have to be at least semi-protected. And as for other pages which might have use for it, well, present countervandalism measures aren't that ineffective, are they? Meantime it just makes everything that much more confusing. — Isarra (talk) 20:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Jane (talk) 20:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Particularly as per HectorMoffet and GorillaWarfare. AllyD (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  25. No, no and no. This has been resurrected and buried a couple of times now. Why will nobody let this corpse rest in its grave? The only thing to come of this is arguments, more arguments, and Wikidrama. It's dead, for god's sake leave it that way.  BarkingFish  21:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  26. Although as a community we have dealt with vandalism and content disputes in the past, if there are serious flaws with an editors who are interested in an article who watch it can always revert it and begin a discussion if necessary. One of the virtues and responsibilities of Wikipedia is that ANYONE can edit an article (and we are to have good faith that for the most part that anyone will be editing in a positive manor that keeps with the pillars that guide our community), and with such freedom others can also alter those edits if they are deemed to not be keeping with guidelines and policies that have consensus by our community. Granted this means that involved knowledgeable editors need to patrol for vandalism or content they believe do not meet WP:V or WP:NPOV or something else (like WP:BLP), but that is the responsibility that keeps with the freedom of openness that makes Wikipedia so accessible. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  27. My views are summed up by many of the previous posters here. Dalliance (talk) 12:03, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  28. Unnecessary complexity creep. TotientDragooned (talk) 14:28, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Honestly I find myself surprised I'm taking this position, but I feel I should oppose PC. I am concerned that this results in a more hierarchical system with more power to administrators. The draft policy requires reviewer status to have similar requirements to rollback, but I am concerned that a sort of RfA attitude could drift into PC which would have disastrous and cabal-like results. PC protection is different from the existing semi-protect because AFAIK confirmed is an automatically granted permission; not one that requires beseeching one of our administrative overlords to allow you into the cool kids club. OSborn arfcontribs. 15:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  30. PC level 1 proved to be a spectactular failure: added complexity, reduced performance, conflicting views as to what editors should look for, and generally less usable than our current system. PC level 2, while underused previously, appeared to have actual merit and value. I would support a move to add PC 2 to our toolset, but oppose PC 1.—Kww(talk) 19:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  31. It simply didn't work properly. Reyk YO! 20:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  32. There are over 3000 pages under Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages; of which I can only assume a good portion will eventually achieve "pending changes" status instead. This is not to mention which contains over 500,000 pages, of which it is safe to assume at least a small portion will achieve "pending changes" status as well. Let's assume that only 1% of BLPs eventually get saddled with pending changes: That's 8,000 articles. Who is going to review all of these? And more importantly, what projects will suffer from losing editors to pending changes. I suspect Special:Newpages and Special:Recentchanges will lose some people, and those projects are incredibly backlogged already. There just aren't enough man-hours to go around, and not enough benefit to the Wiki. This is only one of my reasons for not supporting Pending Changes, but I feel a long-winded tirade would be unwelcome here. Great idea, but then again so is communism: It only works on paper. -RunningOnBrains(talk) 21:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  33. Pending changes are confusing and ineffective, considering the sheer number of daily changes made to most popular articles. --Dmitry (talk•contibs) 22:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  34. Feeling that this RfC is forum shopping until the desired outcome is achieved. OhanaUnitedTalk page 01:24, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  35. Never supported it. Never will. — ξxplicit 06:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  36. --M4gnum0n (talk) 14:13, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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