the end of wikipedia as we know it
I used to be far more involved in wikipedia than I am these days, so it was a surprise for me to learn about flagged revisions [1]. There's a lot of jargon and coining in the roll out: "surveyors", "sightings", "flagging", as well as a great deal of secrecy -- "ordinary" users were notified only by accident and the notice was quickly taken down. [2] The executive summary is that "edit this page" will now become "suggest an edit to this page." [3]
Editing privileges, now nearly uniform across all users, will be restricted so that a small number of people -- an as-yet undertermined number, but I estimate around
To understand wikipedia, you have to understand the bizarre class system that has evolved. There are on the order of five million "editors" -- people who contribute under usernames or anonymously -- who create and edit content on the site. "Above" them is a class of "administrators": these are less than 0.04% of the users on the site, and they have what are (accurately) known as "janitorial" privileges -- they can edit more closely to the bone. (There are also a tiny number of "bureaucrats" and "stewards": these people are in regular contact with the people who fund the servers -- I know very little about this rather secretive group.)A recent New Yorker article noted that the administrators contribute the vast majority of edits to the site, and claimed that the "true" editorial control rests with these particularly active group; other articles have even attributed the majority of the content to a "Gang of 500." In fact, nothing could be further from the truth: the administrators do contribute the most discrete editing units, but actually create or modify very little content.
Much of their time is spent not on the "mainspace" (as the bulk of the wiki is known -- all of the articles), but in the "project" space, where they hang out and discuss administrative matters. Nearly all of the actual content is contributed by anonymous users and editors who show up, contribute a great deal in a small number of edits, and then disappear -- you can read more about this at Aaron Swartz's blog, where he does a detailed study of this phenomenon.
Give someone a badge, and they'll act differently. While administrators contribute very little of substance to the encyclopedia -- the overwhelming majority of any article you read will have nothing to do with them -- they do have to occupy themselves with something. Until now, that's included catching trolls and carrying out long legalistic "arbitrations" against them, managing article deletions and acutally -- let's be fair -- carrying out a number of important janitorial tasks the position was created for.
But any bureaucratic class will attempt to gain more control, and the administrators are no different. While anonymous and drive-by users contribute the actual substance of value, the administrators have now pushed through a fundamental change in the project that will make them second-class citizens.
While I'm not a particularly active user, I do have more than ten thousand edits and have spent time "hanging out" in the project space; the "flagged revisions" proposal has been very little publicised (the notice that drew me to it was taken down within a few hours by an administrator who claimed the decision needed no more input from the userbase at large.)
It is claimed that it will not be implemented "against the community's wishes." However, the proposal has the support of the Foundation itself, and the new code has already been written (and paid for -- an outside contractor was hired.) There is no question that flagged revisions, barring some massive user revolt, will become fact by the end of the year.
[1]. In the two days since this post was made, various pages have been moved around, breaking links in this and other blog posts, without removing or significantly altering their content. In addition, various contradictory "tags" and misleading "nutshell summaries" have been added. Despite all of this activity, the proposal itself remains unchanged. New claims at the top of the linked page, made since this post went live, that "everything is in the very early stages" are false: everything has been written and paid for and it's a matter of when, not if. See remarks by administrators here; Erik Möller, a trustee of the foundation, discusses "deployment strategy" here.
[2]. Within three hours and then a single hour, with the edit summary "*sigh* ... we went through this debate months ago. We do not need to advertise this to everyone -- at present time it's about solidifying a proposal rather than bringing in the useless banter with ads". Right now, only rhubarb and Chris Lott have noted the imminent roll-out of these features. Consider this post, then, a rhubarb near-exclusive; follow the controversy here.
[3]. Although a number of administrators objected to my description in those terms, the substance of my discussion here has been confirmed repeatedly. I doubt you will see the iconic phrase changed, of course, for public relations and ideological reasons if nothing else.
[4]. See this estimate in the discussion. The idea that 20,000 users could keep up with "reviewing" the massive number of articles seems absurd of course, and I think something much higher — perhaps 5% — would be required to allow for reasonably instant (on the order of days) updates. People are still arguing over exactly how the rights are to be granted; while the version the co-founder Jimbo Wales signed his name to (and that some comments below are based on) required individual approval of each new surveyor and no specific criteria that would allow one to estimate the population of surveyors, some administrators have been more specific, with a recent version proposing a criteria that would extend the privilege to roughly 0.5% percent of the wiki userbase.) One of the many contradictory "nutshell summaries" floating around the proposal claims this includes "almost everybody."
Update. Jimbo Wales, wikipedia co-founder, accuses me of FUD at the top of the proposal, claiming that flagged revisions will only be applied to semi-protected/protected articles — in direct contradiction to the proposal itself, which proposes flagged revisions for the entire wiki with this only as a first "experimental" step. (One of the common phrases, that Jimbo in particular likes to use, is that "this is not unwiki" or even "this is true wiki" — "unwiki" being the wikipedia analogue of "unAmerican".)
Update. Conrad Dunkerson, an adminsitrator on the English wikipedia, continues to make false and misleading claims here (as an unregistered user), and on Chris's blog, regarding this proposal. I've banned him from further comments on rhubarb; readers interested in being told additional counterfactual things by him will have to go elsewhere.
Update. I have had to close comments completely on this post. If you have something to say either in support or opposition to this article, please post on your own blog, wikipedia user page, or what have you. I of course would appreciate a backlink to this post, especially if you criticize me; if you wish (trackbacks sometimes break), e-mail me at glas[at]freeshell.org and I will happily include a link to your article here if it can be in any way construed as a contribution to the discussion and not purely a personal insult. (If you think this is heavy-handed, you can always use blogsearch to pull up all stories related to this proposal.)
produced by Simon | 6:17 PM
14 Comments:
But that was the *point* of wikis . . . . Sigh.
You seem to have misunderstood. This is not a massive change at all, but an incremental change designed to open Wikipedia up further, not to close things down.
For a long time we just had the ability to “protect” articles. This was not good because only admins were able to edit.
So then we created “semi-protection” which is more open and allows more people to edit even high risk articles… basically anyone who has had an account for at least 4 days.
“Flagged revisions” even further lowers the barrier to participation on those articles, by allowing *anyone* to edit, while the edits are held in a queue.
This is a very minor change, but in any event, it is not a closing of wikipedia, but an opening. For example, I would anticipate that once we go live with this, we will be able to allow public editing of the front page of English Wikipedia for the first time in more than 5 years.
I've understood perfectly.
"Edits will be held in a queue" for approval by a surveyor. This is not a minor change, although every single supporter I've encountered wants to claim it is.
(You suggest that this will only be applied to the semi-protected/protected articles. That's not true, although it may be true in the initial rollout.)
I don't see what all the fuss is about, why not wait and see what the community decides when it comes to the important parts of the roll out, such as the length of time before edits are auto-sighted and who gets to sight edits before we all get concerned.
What's especially good with this new feature and the way Wikipedia works is that the only real danger of this new feature is that we see a drop in the number of edits and the number of editors, and it's not a real problem, though the loss of editors is always regrettable.
If we find we're losing editors, there's always the option to drop flagged revisions. Wikipedia, and the way people edit the project has changed considerably over the past few years, there's only three or four possible outcomes, people will continue to edit much as before, they'll register an account so they can flag revisions eventually, or they'll leave which is deeply regrettable, but we've got volunteer churn anyway and there's always someone else coming along.
We have lost editors in the past, upset at their work being destroyed by vandals, POV warriors and other less than desirable elements. Where we might loose editors because of flagged revisions, we may keep more editors because their work isn't being destroyed. Swings and roundabouts, I'd say.
There's really no need for all the doom-mongering until we see how the community is going to play it and how the feature impacts the community months down the line.
This attitude:
"If we find we're losing editors, there's always the option to drop flagged revisions. Wikipedia, and the way people edit the project has changed considerably over the past few years, there's only three or four possible outcomes, people will continue to edit much as before, they'll register an account so they can flag revisions eventually, or they'll leave which is deeply regrettable, but we've got volunteer churn anyway and there's always someone else coming along."
is exactly the problem. Lose people from the group that performs the most important editing and make the most original contributions? No problem. They can go away, more will come. That's already a problem.
And what happens if too many go away? What happens when, as Simon mentions, you "give someone a badge" in a system that is already burdened with an informal class system that can be seen as itching to be legitimized to get even more control?
Saying "wait and see what happens" is a non-answer. That can be said about anything and too often is, with decidedly mixed results.
Nonsense. From start to finish.
There was no secrecy. No accidental release of information. This is a well known and well publicized project which has been in the works for going on two years now. There have been dozens of previous discussions on it and the Wikipedia 'Signpost' newsletter has carried articles with updates on progress of the software development.
The descriptions of the feature in this article are equally inaccurate. It does NOT prevent ANYONE from editing. Indeed, as it will allow the removal of protection and 'semi-protection' from pages that have been so warded against vandalism it will actually allow everyone to edit MORE freely. Nor will these edits be 'stored in a queue'... they will be immediately displayed to the user who makes them and every logged in Wikipedia user, just as edits are today.
The DIFFERENCE is that users who are not logged in to the site, basically the many who read Wikipedia but do not contribute, will not see the new change unless it was made or endorsed by someone with access to 'approve' changes. Horror of horrors when the 0.4% of the userbase figure for such access is cited... but that too is absolute nonsense. This access will be given to everyone who has any significant history of valid (e.g. non vandalism) contributions. In most conceptions automatically by the software... one common set of criteria being after 30 days and 30 edits. Hardly a restrictive and insurmountable barrier.
Even for those new contributors who have not yet 'qualified' to have their updates flagged as valid by default this is no great barrier. New contributions will be quickly reviewed, just as they are now, and if there is no obvious vandalism/copyright problems/other violations of policy or law they will be quickly flagged. The idea is to keep the articles in a constantly approved state... the minority of changes by users without access to flag things themselves being quickly reviewed and approved or reverted if they are detrimental.
Essentially, this is nothing more than a brief delay between the time that edits by relatively unknown users are made and when they are displayed to the world at large. That brief delay will allow vandalism to be removed before it ever makes it to the screens of the un logged-in public. Currently Wikipedia gets hundreds of vandalism complaints every single day, but the vast majority of them have actually been corrected by Wikipedia's dedicated reviewers in the time it took the person to write the complaint e-mail. With flagged revisions that problem goes away... the vandalism is removed before it ever gets to the general public.
Your piece here is utter fiction bearing no resemblance to the reality of this long sought feature. This is Wikipedia finally reaching the stage where it can protect its content against vandals without blocking out useful contributors as well.
Your comment here is remarkable. At the risk of repeating true statements you seem intent to contradict or obfuscate:
1. Edits will be held in a queue until approved by a surveyor before "going live" to site visitors. (Logged in users indeed can see suggested edits, but are not allowed to approve them until granted surveyor status.)
2. The 0.4% figure I take from the only quantative analysis I've found; it's linked in the footnote. (Your suggestion of 30 days/30 edits would indeed produce a larger number, but it's not a suggestion that's been taken seriously — again, see the link.)
3. As for secrecy, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder. I know I, a reasonably experienced user who's spent time on project pages, only found out about it by accident.
4. Stating something else in ALL CAPS, does not make it true.
The 30days/30edits criteria for access which you claim has not been taken seriously is, in fact, the long settled and overwhelmingly approved standard to be used on the German Wikipedia... where the first tests of this feature will take place.
Discussion of implementation plans for the English Wikipedia are less developed, but again the vast majority of participants favor that the criteria be sufficient only to weed out most casual vandals while allowing all regular contributors to flag updates... the primary differences are over what standards would best achieve that.
As to the 'eye of the beholder', if you equate 'I had not heard of it' with 'secrecy', even after being told that it was publicly discussed in the primary source of 'Wikipedia news' (the 'Signpost')... well, you are correct about that being 'in the eye of the beholder' and I'd suggest that you've just amply demonstrated that, in this case, it is jaundiced.
"30days/30edits" appears nowhere in the proposal itself, which is completely vague on the criteria for surveyor status and says only that it will be granted to trusted users, on an individual basis, on application, and at the discretion of an admin.
As for internet-quibbling on "secrecy": if you think the vast majority of users have any idea about this proposal, you're wrong.
Right now, users who are not logged into the site-- the group you casually dismiss as being unimportant-- make a VERY significant contribution to Wikipedia in terms of original content and serious content revisions (as opposed to stylistic and administrative acivities). Getting in the way of that is regressive.
A primary power of Wikipedia to stimulate those contributions *is* their immediate availability. Those users are much less likely to contribute if their revisions become "pending" a review that-- *because they are casual users*-- they will have no real understanding of. Less immediate reward, less participation. It's a principle of social software and participation that is demonstrated time and time again.
All other issues aside (and I don't think they can be thrown aside so casually), I see this as a problem. Because the effects are so easily masked, if true, it is an insidious one.
"Right now, users who are not logged into the site-- the group you casually dismiss as being unimportant-- make a VERY significant contribution to Wikipedia in terms of original content and serious content revisions (as opposed to stylistic and administrative acivities). Getting in the way of that is regressive."
That's something we really are going to have to risk. There's no reason we can't encourage and nurture users to create accounts now or in the near future to take advantage of this system, probably by adding in some sort of message when they edit from an IP address.
There's lots of editors who register just to create a page or upload an image.
I'm not entirely certain how accurate you are when it comes to IP addresses being dissuaded from making substantial contributions because their edits won't go live instantly. It's true we might (and probably will) loose anon editors making small edits, spelling corrections as an example, and we'll certainly loose anon editors reverting vandalism, for obvious reasons, but I'm wholly unconvinced we will loose editors making substantial additions to articles, adding in plot summaries, adding lists from new data sources, adding many Kilobytes of new content. If someone sees an article and thinks "Hmm, I can add to that" then even if their edit won't go live for a few minutes, they're still as likely as ever to make the edit.
It's regrettable to be losing any editors, but those anon editors who make spelling corrections and such are becoming unnecessary (not, in anyway, unwanted though), advances in browser technology means most new contributions are word perfect.
What we can't be doing is losing content contributors and I honestly don't think there's many content contributors that will object to their contributions not going live instantly, indeed, I think flagged revisions has as much chance of generating more edits because the fear of work being vandalized is removed as it does of scaring editors off.
I'm not really concerned about the quantative question of whether the number of edits will rise or fall. To tell the truth, wikipedia has such google juice that I expect the number of edits, and the number of editors, to continue its rise.
What I think is the true issue here is the massive shift in direct editorial control to a literally tiny fraction of the editors on the wiki — through the administrative demotion of the very majority actual contributors of content.
This shift is driven by the natural desire of a beaucracy to enlarge its authority; more sympathetically, by a disregard or unawareness of how wikipedia actually functions.
"Right now, users who are not logged into the site-- the group you casually dismiss as being unimportant-- make a VERY significant contribution to Wikipedia in terms of original content and serious content revisions (as opposed to stylistic and administrative acivities). Getting in the way of that is regressive."
I agree entirely. Getting in the way of such contributions is detrimental. Which is why Wikipedia should stop doing it. They should implement flagged revisions so all those protected and semi-protected pages can be unprotected and edited by the unlogged users who are currently blocked from doing so.
You are also absolutely correct that the 'immediacy' of updates is important in motivating people to make them... which is why it is good that the flagged revisions system WILL show the user the results of their edit IMMEDIATELY. They hit 'Save', they see the page with all their contributions included. Exactly as they do today. If they then leave the page and go back, or otherwise reload it, they will then see the currently flagged version... but by that time the edit they just made might well have been flagged.
The 'immediacy' of seeing your changes is preserved for all users. Many may never even realize that some users won't see the edit until a few minutes later... and that brief delay should hardly be discouraging in any case.
Hi again, CBDunkerson. You're back with more misinformation and ALLCAPS.
"The 'immediacy' of seeing your changes is preserved for all users."
Again, completely false (at best misleading.) All changes must be approved by a "surveyor" before being shown to visitors.
There's also the false implication that this proposal applies only to semi-protected/protected pages. Again, untrue: once any page is flagged as "sighted" it is incorporated into the system.
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home