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# I think that there shouldn't be a full-out ban on PC2, but that it should be used with discretion in a few limited cases. Extreme BLP problems, as Joe Decker points out above, or pages persistently targeted by sockpuppeteers. But since the potential for abuse (as the opposers say) is there, it should only be used in '''very few cases'''. <strong>[[User:David1217|<span style="color:darkblue">David</span>]][[User talk:David1217|<span style="color:darkgreen">1217</span>]] <sup><em>[[Special:Contributions/David1217|<span style="color:black">What I've done</span>]]</em></sup></strong> 18:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC) |
# I think that there shouldn't be a full-out ban on PC2, but that it should be used with discretion in a few limited cases. Extreme BLP problems, as Joe Decker points out above, or pages persistently targeted by sockpuppeteers. But since the potential for abuse (as the opposers say) is there, it should only be used in '''very few cases'''. <strong>[[User:David1217|<span style="color:darkblue">David</span>]][[User talk:David1217|<span style="color:darkgreen">1217</span>]] <sup><em>[[Special:Contributions/David1217|<span style="color:black">What I've done</span>]]</em></sup></strong> 18:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC) |
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#Support leaving it in the toolbox, but specifically oppose authorizing its use in to respond to edit warring. I think there are some specific uses that deserve consideration, and it would be better to not reject PC/2 out of hand until they are each considered at an RFC. [[User:Monty845|<font color="Green">Monty</font>]][[User talk:Monty845|<small><sub><font color="#A3BFBF">845</font></sub></small>]] 21:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC) |
#Support leaving it in the toolbox, but specifically oppose authorizing its use in to respond to edit warring. I think there are some specific uses that deserve consideration, and it would be better to not reject PC/2 out of hand until they are each considered at an RFC. [[User:Monty845|<font color="Green">Monty</font>]][[User talk:Monty845|<small><sub><font color="#A3BFBF">845</font></sub></small>]] 21:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC) |
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#'''Support''' pending changes is great for stopping edit warring of any kind while still allowing constructive edits to go through with review. It's also great for filtering out vandalism while allowing other IPs to edit without the need to proxy through edit requests which can really be a hassle for some.—[[User:Cyberpower678|<font color=green face=Neuropol>cyberpower]] [[User talk:Cyberpower678|<sup><font color=red face=arnprior>Chat</sup></font>]]<sub style="margin-left:-3.7ex"><font color=red face=arnprior>Offline</font></sub> 01:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC) |
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===Oppose PC/2=== |
===Oppose PC/2=== |
Revision as of 01:12, 5 September 2012
The administrators who closed May's Request for Comment (RfC) on Pending Changes determined that it should be implemented around the end of 2012, but asked the community to continue working on the Pending Changes draft policy, noting that opposers had pointed out potential problems and supporters were not uniform in what they were supporting. Following extensive discussions, this is the first in a series of RfCs designed to answer these questions before some form of Pending Changes goes live. This RfC is on one of the less controversial questions – the role (if any) of Pending Changes Level Two – in the hope that the community will be able to come to a quick decision on this one, and in the process, join in developing a more elaborate RfC to follow.
Pending Changes currently has two levels of protection, Level 1 (PC/1) and Level 2 (PC/2):
- When a page with PC/1 protection is edited by an unregistered user or new user, that edit and all following edits by any user are not included in the article displayed to the general public (that is, for readers who are not logged in), until the edits are approved by someone with the "reviewer" user right.
- When a page with PC/2 protection is edited by a non-reviewer, not just unregistered and new users, that edit and all following edits by any user are not included in the article displayed to the general public, until the edits are approved by a reviewer.
Table of Pending Changes Level One and Level Two
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Please indicate your support for or opposition to PC/2. Any replies to voters or longer rationales should go in the Discussion section. 14:13, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Support PC/2
Please indicate your support by inserting your signature (and, optionally, a brief statement).
- Support - from table, gives a couple of levels of protection below full protection allowing more editing to take place by non-admins. Tom B (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Support I am deeply sympathetic to many of the concerns expressed by those opposing PC2, and I suspect their sentiments will carry the day. However, I continue to believe that there is an important use case for PC2. In my work with very infrequently edited biographies of living people, I have found a few cases, a very few cases, for which there have been consistent, infrequent, but very problematic sorts of vandalism and attacks. In at least two such cases the problems stem from editors willing to seek out new IPs and work through the wait to build auto-confirmed accounts. I feel that in those cases, PC2 would be a better alternative to indefinite full protection, but at this point, if PC2 is rejected, I'll feel that I have have little alternative. I believe that PC2 with stringent limitations on frequency of editing (there's *no* good use case I can see for PC2 on frequently edited articles) would be a reasonable way to address potential concerns of overuse and abuse. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I think that there shouldn't be a full-out ban on PC2, but that it should be used with discretion in a few limited cases. Extreme BLP problems, as Joe Decker points out above, or pages persistently targeted by sockpuppeteers. But since the potential for abuse (as the opposers say) is there, it should only be used in very few cases. David1217 What I've done 18:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Support leaving it in the toolbox, but specifically oppose authorizing its use in to respond to edit warring. I think there are some specific uses that deserve consideration, and it would be better to not reject PC/2 out of hand until they are each considered at an RFC. Monty845 21:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Support pending changes is great for stopping edit warring of any kind while still allowing constructive edits to go through with review. It's also great for filtering out vandalism while allowing other IPs to edit without the need to proxy through edit requests which can really be a hassle for some.—cyberpower ChatOffline 01:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Oppose PC/2
Please indicate your opposition by inserting your signature (and, optionally, a brief statement).
- The main reason Wikipedia went from zero to half a billion readers per month with volunteer editors was that people were attracted to being able to edit without being supervised, without having to wait for approval by "official" Wikipedians for their edits. I have spent a lot of time talking with people about PC/2 since the May RfC, and the best I can tell, there's not much support for it. - Dank (push to talk) 11:40, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- During the May RfC there was intense opposition to Pending Changes. I had voted to support it, but after the close I re-read many of the arguments and realized that PC has some major problems. Many of the concerns raised by opposers would be resolved by getting rid of PC/2: for instance the concerns that PC would give reviewers the ability to "own" protected articles, and that it would scare off regular users who felt suddenly demoted to a lower status would no longer be an issue. I would like for the community to come together on a compromise before PC goes live, and this would be a huge step in that direction. Besides, vandalism from autoconfirmed users is easily remedied by blocks, so PC/2 isn't needed the same way PC/1 is. ~Adjwilley (talk) 13:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- PC2 is considerably more contentious than PC1, and it has a higher potential for abuse. I could see it having a role if it is used very rarely (in circumstances when we would now use full protection for reasons other than edit warring), but I'm not persuaded that it will be used like that. Hut 8.5 15:07, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- PC2 would not improve upon our existing blocking policy as far as edit warring is concerned. Where a larger number of established users are causing a significant problem, full protection is an appropriate course of action: in these circumstances we want all editing to stop, discussion to accelerate, and admins to action {{editprotected}} requests once there appears to be a consensus. I'm sure arguments in favour of PC2 could be made, but I'm not convinced that the benefits would outweigh the damage that PC2 would do to our existing editor base. — — — Why doesn't the same logic apply to PC1? Because full protection puts all editors on an equal footing (an admin substantially editing a protected page without consensus constitutes clear-cut abuse), and therefore it is not particularly harmful to fully protect pages where absolutely necessary. On the other hand, semi-protection disadvantages a certain subset of users, and yet in practise it does not change the behavior of registered users. Therefore, semi-protection should only be used where there is no viable alternative, and with the right policy PC1 will be a step towards that. —WFC— 16:02, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I have never understood what the point of PC2 is and have yet to see any situation where it would be preferable to either semi or full protection. I believe most participants in the previous RFC were much more concerned with PC1 and that few users even understand what PC2 is. This is only going to work if we keep it simple, at least at first. let's ankle PC2 for the time being. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:49, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- My worry is the same as Hut 8.5's. I can certainly see how this could be useful in rare situations. I'm just worried it will be applied way too often. There may be controls on it that would make me willing to accept it, but I think any controls I'd be okay with would make it nearly useless in practice. Hobit (talk) 00:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
- In particular I could see it being useful on otherwise fully-protected templates. I could also imagine it being useful for the rarely edited BLPs. But I worry that the cost--an effective "super editor" class who can get their edits up quickly--will be too high. I also worry that no matter how we restrict it now, it's use will continue to grow over time as all the "cool kids" will have the needed access. Full protection is so limited in use now, in part, because many of the regulars don't have the bit. If it's just the unwashed masses... I also think WFC has identified a very real issue. Hobit (talk) 01:05, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Discussion about PC/2
I have trouble imagining that people will want to use PC2, but I'm also having trouble convincing myself that it's such an apocalyptic issue that we need to ban it completely. PC2 would have the effect of making changes by anyone except the ~7,000 reviewers (including all admins) get reviewed by one of those 7,000 people before being displayed to readers. If it were actually used for OWNership, I'd expect a quick request for unprotection to be approved. So why bother totally banning it? It might be preferable to full protection for the occasional article, e.g., one targeted by a determined sock. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:12, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I've been on a quest to talk with people about Pending Changes since May, and the main thing I've found out is that what makes this complicated is that Pending Changes isn't Pending Changes, it's a reflection of a bunch of different conflicts, some stalled since 2007. So, I've learned not to be judgmental if people are saying something that doesn't make sense to me, because if I talk with them long enough, it generally turns out that what they're saying makes perfect sense, in some other context. Having said that ... what you're saying doesn't make sense to me, WAID. PC/2 is a form of page protection, so an admin would only add it to a page if there's edit warring or fighting going on that doesn't have some other obvious solution. So: in the middle of a conflict, an admin shows up and adds protection that allows some of the combatants to edit at will and forces others to get approval for any edits. Do you know any Wikipedians who would respond well to being muzzled in this way in the middle of a dispute? - Dank (push to talk) 15:41, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- (I'm sort of replying to Dank and WAID, sort of just musing out loud here...) PC/2 strikes me as useless (or worse) for edit warring situations. In an edit warring/content dispute situation where someone applies PC/2 thinking they can fix it, one of two things will happen: a) one or both warriors have the reviewer right, and push their edits through, or b) uninvolved reviewers end up being asked to make a content decision for which edit to send live. Neither of those things is acceptable. Yes, perhaps the warrior(s) who used their reviewer right in the conflict would lose the right, but we have edit wars all over Wikipedia, every day, and removing reviewer from editor X who warred in topic Y does nothing to stop incipient edit warring by editor Z in topic Q. We can't spend all day every day removing rights from edit warriors. However, I can envision PC/2 having some limited usefulness in cases where articles or templates are known to be attacked by sleeper socks. Where we now have templates full-protected to avoid particular kinds of trollish vandalism, we could fairly easily drop those to PC/2, which would allow good-faith non-admins to work with them but keep out (most) sleepers. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think consensus is going to develop among the supporters for the kind of restrictions you're suggesting, Fluffy, but if it does ... allowing non-admins to work in protected-template space is one of those problems that has resisted solution for a long time, and I agree it would be nice to have a solution of some kind. - Dank (push to talk) 16:26, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Hi Dan,
- Like Fluffy, I don't see the point behind using PC2 for regular, high-speed edit wars. I do see the point behind using PC2 for very rare scenarios. So imagine an editor who wants to "fix" a controversial, but not commonly edited article like Mental retardation, e.g., to remove the name used by medical professionals all over the world in favor of the term du jour in his activist's group with a screed about how only bigots use the official term.
- We semi'd the article years ago to deal with kids adding their classmates' names, but imagine that the sock is determined enough to create account after account, and to wait the four days and make the ten edits necessary to edit this article—for months on end. The article normally gets one edit every few days, but now it's going to get one POV pusher every four days for the rest of the year. To deal with this long-term sock, would you prefer:
- long-term PC2,
- long-term full protection, or
- long-term abuse
- on that article? Keep in mind that if it takes only 10 minutes to revert the abuse, then 15 readers have read it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed. I think a better approach to limiting any potential for PC2 abuse is to look for the few use cases it makes sense, and insist on them. To start, I'd suggest a maximum frequency of editing, PC2 is, in my view, best applied to very infrequently edited (which we could set a limit on) biographies (again, an objective criterion), with a consistent and persistent vandal or attacker. But again, I'll be employing indefinite full protection as an alternative in those cases otherwise, so, y'all choose. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with Joe, except that I wouldn't insist on the PC2-protected article being biographical. WhatamIdoing's, example shows why it might be needed on non-biographical articles. Yaris678 (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I'll reply at WT:PC2012/RfC 1#Persistent bad-faith edits. - Dank (push to talk) 17:46, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- The argument given by WhatamIdoing is quite convincing, and I would agree that PC2 would be the best solution in this scenario. However with all of the potential problems we've got flying around right now, and the very little experience we have with pending changes, I think that overall the net benefit would be a negative. Maybe after a year of using PC/1, people will begin to say "Hey, this isn't so bad after-all" and "This is really useful. It would be nice to have PC/2 as an option as well." If/when that time comes, the policy can be changed with another RfC. I think for now, though, we need to learn to drive using PC/1 before experimenting with PC/2. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I think I agree with Adjwilley. I would be happy with a consensus conclusion to this RfC along the lines of "PC2 is suspended without prejudice. When Pending changes goes live (currently scheduled for November) it will comprise only PC1. We will revisit the issue at some future point when people are more comfortable with the workings of PC. The facility for PC2 should remain in the software for now but it should not be applied by admins unless or until a consensus to use it is reached." Yaris678 (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- The argument given by WhatamIdoing is quite convincing, and I would agree that PC2 would be the best solution in this scenario. However with all of the potential problems we've got flying around right now, and the very little experience we have with pending changes, I think that overall the net benefit would be a negative. Maybe after a year of using PC/1, people will begin to say "Hey, this isn't so bad after-all" and "This is really useful. It would be nice to have PC/2 as an option as well." If/when that time comes, the policy can be changed with another RfC. I think for now, though, we need to learn to drive using PC/1 before experimenting with PC/2. ~Adjwilley (talk) 17:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I'll reply at WT:PC2012/RfC 1#Persistent bad-faith edits. - Dank (push to talk) 17:46, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with Joe, except that I wouldn't insist on the PC2-protected article being biographical. WhatamIdoing's, example shows why it might be needed on non-biographical articles. Yaris678 (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed. I think a better approach to limiting any potential for PC2 abuse is to look for the few use cases it makes sense, and insist on them. To start, I'd suggest a maximum frequency of editing, PC2 is, in my view, best applied to very infrequently edited (which we could set a limit on) biographies (again, an objective criterion), with a consistent and persistent vandal or attacker. But again, I'll be employing indefinite full protection as an alternative in those cases otherwise, so, y'all choose. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- (I'm sort of replying to Dank and WAID, sort of just musing out loud here...) PC/2 strikes me as useless (or worse) for edit warring situations. In an edit warring/content dispute situation where someone applies PC/2 thinking they can fix it, one of two things will happen: a) one or both warriors have the reviewer right, and push their edits through, or b) uninvolved reviewers end up being asked to make a content decision for which edit to send live. Neither of those things is acceptable. Yes, perhaps the warrior(s) who used their reviewer right in the conflict would lose the right, but we have edit wars all over Wikipedia, every day, and removing reviewer from editor X who warred in topic Y does nothing to stop incipient edit warring by editor Z in topic Q. We can't spend all day every day removing rights from edit warriors. However, I can envision PC/2 having some limited usefulness in cases where articles or templates are known to be attacked by sleeper socks. Where we now have templates full-protected to avoid particular kinds of trollish vandalism, we could fairly easily drop those to PC/2, which would allow good-faith non-admins to work with them but keep out (most) sleepers. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps can it be implemented with something like "PC2 is only to be used in cases of severe sockpuppet disruption, extreme BLP issues, or on high-risk templates, where full protection would otherwise be used. It is not to be used instead of full-protection to temper an editing dispute." Would that be okay? David1217 What I've done 18:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I imagine we might end up with something like that if we get roughly equal numbers of supporters/opposers. The extent of using PC on BLP articles is likely going to be one of the issues that we discuss in the next RfC. Also, until the developers rewrite the software, I would advise against using PC on high-risk high-usage templates. As things currently stand, PC almost doubles page loading times, and many of our articles are currently being bogged down by templates. We don't need to slow them down even more. (I believe the loading time issue will be fixed eventually. I'm not sure when, or to what extent.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 19:41, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I think that we could perhaps give those examples, and add "unless or until a consensus to use it is reached" for that article, i.e., if you think PC2 is warranted, then you need to have a formal discussion about using it for that particular article first, but not a big long debate over whether PC2 is inherently evil. But then, I feel the same way about full protection in excess of a day or so. Unilateral, long-term full protection usually makes me unhappy.
- The example above of fully protected templates seems like another potentially appropriate area. Why not offer PC2 in a few instances to reduce the protection level? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
- I think anything whose benefit above and beyond what we already have is so very murky it's best to just scrap it, at least for now. The simpler we keep this, the easier it will be to manage and the easier it will be for users to understand, a big problem during the trial. One of the most endorsed statements in the 2011 RFC was that PC is confusing. Keeping it restricted to level one only goea at leadt part of the way to addressing that concern. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)