Flagged revisions

Flagged revisions, also known as FlaggedRevs, is an MediaWiki extension meant to save Wikipedia's reputation as a reliable resource. Since its reception, Wikipedia has been susceptible to hoaxes, especially on BLP pages. With flagged revisions implemented, trusted editors would approve or reject any revision made to any sensitive article. Basically, Wikipedia is seeking to create a peer review system. Of course, this would mean that a bunch of obsessive editors with agendas would be in charge of everything.

Motivation

For years, vandals and trolls have written about the fictional biographies of several celebrities and prevented this as truth on Wikipedia. They claimed that Ted Kennedy died after a seizure (no, this wasn't the same one that killed him) and that John Seigenthaler killed his brother from the Grassy Knol. Needless to say, this false information caused major stirs within the media and tarnished Wikipedia's reputation. As a result, Jimbo Wales organized a team of developers and ordered them to develop a practical peer review system in order to restore the people's faith in Wikipedia.

Pending changes

On June 15, 2010, flagged revisions was enabled on the English Wikipedia (enwiki) as a two-month trial period. For its launch, flagged revisions was re-branded as pending changes in order to distance the extension from YouTube's flagging system. Due to this, anonymous and new users can't see unreviewed revisions on pages with pending-changes protection.

There are two types of pending-changes protection that wikipedia sysops can apply to pages:

1. Level 1 protection – Autoconfirmed users can view unreviewed revisions by default. Basically, this means that you are forced to register an account and make a few revisions in order to view unreviewed changes.
2. Level 2 protection – Only reviewers and sysops can view unreviewed revisions by default. This basically means that only high-ranking, established users can see pages as the vandals intended.

Of course, anyone can view unreviewed revisions through the page history, but there isn't anyone who bothers doing that.

Feedback

This extension isn't without its complications:

• Several users claimed that the extension simply created extra, unnecessary work.
• Others complained that anonymous editors couldn't revert vandalism any longer.
• There is a general agreement that the new special pages take far too much time to load.
• There is evidence that Reviewers are too stupid to do their job right.
• Who reviews the reviewers?

For a full list of lists, click here.

Next step

On August 14, 2010, Wikipedians started discussing the future of the extension, but the community is divided as always.

External links

• Extension:FlaggedRevs at the MediaWiki wiki.
  • Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs at the MediaWiki wiki.
• Category:Wikipedia flagged revisions at TOW

Flagged revisions is part of a series on Wikipedia Visit the Wikipedia Portal for complete coverage.