Remember when Jimbo announced that Flagged Revisions should be implemented before Wikimania 2009?

Then he said we should maybe wait about a month after Wikimania before getting restless. (I can't find the cite for that, but he definitely said it.)

Well, the natives seem to be getting restless now.

Erik Moeller has consistently been a firm voice in opposition to flagged revisions. Given that, it seems very likely he'd use his relatively high position (keep in mind the technical team at the WMF reports to him) to undermine them. I'd be very unsurprised to hear that this is exactly what is happening here.

And the Deputy Director (hired straight off the Foundation Board, without a job description, without any competitive candidate search) officially tells us to re-mark our calendars "hopefully... prior to the end of this year".

I forget... isn't he the one who once said that non-violent child pornography is not harmful?

You'd think that if this was a "priority" to be implemented "within a month", the foregoing statements would not obtain. Obviously, there's a disconnect between the word that floweth forth from the GodFounderKing's mouth and the marching orders issued (or not issued) subsequently.

One wonders what the tech team is doing, if it's not working on this. I suppose they must be supporting the hilarious "strategy wiki", which includes such gems as a proposal asking everyone to "be nice" (in nine languages), a suggestion to put Wikipedia in homeless shelters (because having access to exhaustive knowledge of the lifestyles of every Pokemon is so critical when you're living in a homeless shelter) and a proposal to create sleep learning tapes from Wikipedia articles.

Please...pretty please, with sugar on top...tell me that this is a sick joke hoax and that no adult was 100% serious about such a notion. I read the link and I cannot fathom that anyone could even conceive such a plan, let alone publish it.

There are a lot of, shall we say, non-serious proposals on that site, but it can be very difficult to tell a good, deliberate hoax from the well-meaning ramblings of an idiot. And the Wikimedia arena has no shortage of either.

It'll be interesting to see how, if at all, Erik replies to the latest countervolley.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/found...ber/055372.html

Apparently, with "I'll look at it later" and "it's a massive case of assume bad faith." So...anyone want to start a betting pool on when the extension will finally be turned on?

Now now! They're working on "track[ing] participation metrics after the roll-out"


(just switch it on, guys, even in some limited capacity)

The Flagged Revisions issue has been discussed over and over, again and again, and nobody seems to ever get close to implementation. I really don't see what is stopping such a simple and sensible reform from being implemented. This reform could accomplish something, if only they could just spend less time on deliberation and more on action. There are probably a small fraction of Wikipedia "anyone-can-edit" fanatics who believe that no matter whose reputation is harmed, the "rights" of Wikipediots to create attack pieces should not be "infringed upon".

I don't see what's stopping anyone from implementing flagged revisions on the English Wikipedia. Why does it need deliberation? Also, what's wrong with a Wikipedia article, by default, being NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, until it is reviewed by an elected Board, with all biographies of living people (which includes "possibly living") being permanently NOINDEX'd? Is there something too complex about this?

That is strange. But it gets worse. Apparently they wish to preclude anything useful internet access
might provide a homeless person, like free email, a place to get phone messages with privacy or a tool to look for work. No instead they only get something called a "Wikipedia kiosk." I guess they regard the homeless as recruiting ground for Web 2.0's Reserved Army of Labour.

That could significantly reduce Wikipedia's appearances in Google searches.



To save me having to read the article, how will this be paid for?

Apparently you write down what you want on a wiki and some invisible hand gives you the money.

For a second I thought you said defibrillation, to which I was going to reply "you can't shock a flat-line".

Yes, because poor people who can't afford a place to live due to the effects of vulture capitalism and globalisation really need some useless trivia about, well, Yu-Gi-Oh and the WWE. Let's give all those homeless people some good free knowledge, it'll really get them out of their terrible situation.

I see scales falling from eyes:


Even the wiki-faithful get there in the end.

Hmm, interesting, considering Brion's moving on as well.

Government grants, naturally.


It's very clear that Erik (who is apparently in the habit of speaking with the royal "we") believes that turning on flagged revisions in any capacity whatsoever will negatively impact participation, and that from Erik's demiroyal (does he style himself Wikipedia's Crown Prince, perhaps?) perspective this is so bad as to be unthinkable. Of course, there is no evidence to support either assertion, but it doesn't matter; when you're wikiroyalty you don't have to make coherent arguments. You can just accuse your questioner of assuming bad faith and walk away.

Another thing that amuses me is how



Who is Erik kidding? For all that WP is a big hitter in the Google PageRanking, sorry, I've worked on far bigger systems, with heavier pageview loads, and been in IT management for nearly a decade, and a "CTO transition" has never been quite the "all hands on deck" situation he makes it out to be.

Seems much more like he's looking for any excuses that'll delay things, "Umm, we need to do this, and that, and oh yeah this, and oh yeah, I haven't actually appointed a PM, let alone any developers, but it's coming, soon, why do you assume massive bad faith about the reality that it is way behind schedule, and we've been unresponsive to enquiries about turning on some config entries on a test server for nearly a month?"

I still think semiprotection makes a good alternative in the meantime.

Semiprotection of what? We can't even turn on category-sprotection of obvious schoolboy vandalism topics like U.S. presidents and chemical elements. They get done laboriously one-by-one, very painfully, and then go back after a while, only to be IP-vandalized yet again.

Now, back to draft of my screenplay: Harald & Kumar Edit Wikipedia.

Exactly. And so it will remain with flagged protection.