"Pending changes" trial, Chief hires, British Museum prizes, Interwiki debate, and more

According to apost by William Pietri, project manager for the Flagged Revisions Deployment Project, the flaggedrevs extension will be deployed on the English Wikipedia on June 14.

Unlike other projects such as the German Wikipedia (where the extension has been live since 2008), the English Wikipedia will make use of only the "flagged protection" feature, which has been renamed "pending changes" following extensive discussion on the mailing list Foundation-l and theterminology subpage. It allows administrators to apply a new kind of protection to a page, under which it can still be edited by every user, but the change will not be visible (in the default view) to unregistered users unless it has been made or confirmed by a trusted user.

The feature will be activated only for a trial, which is expected to last two months and will be limited to a maximum of 2,000 pages. The trial is likely to generate considerable media attention, given the fact that its mere announcement last August has already received coverage (seeSignpost story).

A new help page, with which Pietri has requested assistance, ishere. Some diagrams explaining the terminology arehere. The feature can be tested out before deployment on theflaggedrevs test wiki.

There was some debate in a recentRfC on whether or not the trial configuration should involve the separate "Reviewers" user rights group or use the existing "Autoconfirmed" group as the trusted users group. Some technical details of the deployment arestill being hammered out.

The following table summarizes permissions under current settings for the trial (more detailshere):

Protection levels and their impact on various English Wikipediauser groups^[α]

• v
• t
• e

F	Protection level	New orunregistered editors	Confirmed	Extended confirmed	Template editor[β]	Admin	Interface admin	Appropriate for...
Editing	None (default)	Normal editing						The vast majority of pages.
	Pending changes	Can edit Changes are only visible to logged-in users until reviewed by apending changes reviewer or administrator.[γ]	Can edit Changes are visible to everyone if there aren't any unreviewed pending changes. Otherwise, they are only visible to logged-in users until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or administrator.[γ]			Can edit If there are any unreviewed pending changes, the administrators will be required to review them before they can edit the page.[γ]		Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism,BLP violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users.
	Semi	Cannot edit	Normal editing					Pages that have been persistently vandalized by anonymous and newly registered users. Some highly visible templates and modules.
	Extended confirmed	Cannot edit		Normal editing				Contentious topics authorized byArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, orhigh-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive.
	Template	Cannot edit			Normal editing			High-risk or very-frequently used templates and modules.Some high-risk pages outside oftemplate space.
	Full	Cannot edit				Can edit[δ]		Pages with persistent disruption from extended confirmed accounts.
	Office					Can edit[ε]		Pages that the Foundation has determined to be exceptionally sensitive.
	Cascade[ζ]					Can edit		Particularly visible pages, such as theMain Page, to prevent vandalism to pages that aretranscluded onto them.
	Interface[η]	Cannot edit					Normal editing	Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects fundamental to operation of the site or that are in other editors'user spaces.
Creating pages	None (default)	Cannot create[θ]	Can create					The vast majority of page titles.
	Create[ι]	Cannot create[κ]		Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups.		Can create		Pages that have been repeatedly and problematically re-created.
Moving pages	None (default)	Cannot move	Can move					The vast majority of pages.
	Move	Cannot move		Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups.		Can move		Pages that have been the subject of move wars. Pages that are edit-protected are usually also move-protected at the same level.
Uploading files	None (default)	Cannot upload[λ]	Can upload					The vast majority of file names.
	Upload[μ]	Cannot upload		Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups		Can upload		Files that have been repeatedly uploaded after deletion
Notes: ^Historical protection levels and user groups no longer in use are available atWikipedia:Protection policy § Retired protections. ^This table assumes that template editors are also extended confirmed, which isalmost always the case for non-bot accounts. ^abcHowever, if any unregistered or registered editor reverts all unreviewed pending changes back to the latest accepted version, that revision is automatically accepted and pending changes reviewers and administrators aren't prompted or notified. ^Only noncontroversial changes or requested changes following an achieved consensus should be performed. ^Only with the approval from theWikimedia Foundation. ^Cascade protection extends to all pages that aretranscluded onto the protected page, unless the transcluded page is at the same protection level or higher. Cascade protection can only be applied to pages that are fully or office-protected because otherwise itcreates a workflow flaw. ^The interface protection level is automatically set by theMediaWiki software to a specific set of pages, such as pages in the MediaWiki namespace, system-wide CSS and JavaScript pages, and personal CSS and JavaScript pages of other users. It is not a protection level that an administrator can manually apply to any page, nor is it a protection level that can be modified on pages currently under interface protection. Because of this, administrators also cannotcascade-protect pages that are Interface-protected. ^This has been in effectfor unregistered users since 5 December 2005. The restriction wasextended to newly registered users on a six month trial basis starting on 14 September 2017. The extension became permanent on 18 April 2018. The prohibition does not apply to theDraft namespace nortalk pages in any namespace. ^This form of protection is often also called "salting". ^Under the default no protection, unregistered and newly registered users can still createtalk pages in all namespaces and draft articles in theDraft namespace. For these namespaces, it would therefore be possible for the create protection to only apply to unregistered and newly registered users. ^Unregistered editors cannot upload anything. Newly registered users can upload files that arecopyright free to theWikimedia Commons and used on Wikipedia in all languages, but cannot upload anything to the English Wikipedia. ^Like all the other protections in this table, the Upload Protection applies only toEnglish Wikipedia, not to theWikimedia Commons. The Wikimedia Commons is for uploading files which arecopyright free and can be used on Wikipedia in all languages. The Wikimedia Commons has its own protections that are independent of the protections on the English Wikipedia

See also theSignpost's backgrounder on the history of the extension (An extended look at how we got to flagged protection and patrolled revisions, August 2009) andotherSignpost coverage dating back to 2006.

The Wikimedia Foundation has hired two new employees: Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer, and Barry Newstead will be the Chief Global Development Officer.According to an FAQ about the positions Exley will be in charge of programs, including Fundraising, Reader relations, Public outreach, and volunteer coordination; Newstead will be in charge of Communications and Business Development.

Zack Exley has worked in high-profile positions organizing fundraising and volunteer activities forMoveOn.org, the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign ofJohn Kerry, and the UK Labour Party's 2005 election campaign. In recent years he has advised other organizations on similar issues, including theACLU, Amnesty International, theNAACP, theInternational Rescue Committee and Greenpeace USA. He also ran the parody website gwbush.com.

Barry Newstead is currently a partner at the strategy consultancy firmThe Bridgespan Group, where he has been leading the team assisting the Foundation in the Strategic Planning process since last year. Newstead has written aseries of blog postings about the process on the web site of theHarvard Business Review. Inone of his first postings, Newstead expressed concern that the inner Wikipedia community might not be "open to more radical strategic options that might advance the vision", citing the "near-taboo" of advertising as one possible example. However, in alater posting, Newstead offered huge praise for the contributions of Wikipedia volunteers to the strategy process.

Originally, the Foundation had set out to hire aChief Development Officer, responsible for fundraising (a common position in non-profits) and aChief Global Program Officer (responsible for relations with Wikipedians and readers). According to aQ&A and a separateannouncement to the community by the Foundation's executive director Sue Gardner, the CDO role was expanded to that of a Chief Community Officer, at the suggestion of Exley, who argued that donors should be regarded as part of the same community as editors and readers, instead of being treated separately.

According to Gardner, filling these positions is the result of a search process of "many months", and "completes the C-level hiring, with the exception of the Chief Human Resources Officer", which is expected to be announced within six weeks. (The other two C-level posts are the Chief Financial and Operating Officer, filled by Véronique Kessler since 2008, and the Chief Technical Officer, for whichDanese Cooper was hired earlier this year – seeSignpost coverage – following the departure of Brion Vibber.)

In an article titledVenerable British Museum Enlists in the Wikipedia Revolution,The New York Times covered the event at length, explaining that the British Museum's motivation to collaborate with Wikipedia is "to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages". The article noted that museums and Wikipedia have as their common interest "educating the public: one has the artifacts and expertise, and the other has the online audience", but also mentioned possible conflicts, recalling the legal threats issued last year by theNational Portrait Gallery, butnot subsequently pursued, against a Commons user who had uploaded high-resolution scans of public domain images from the Gallery's collection (seeSignpost coverage). Regarding the Wikimedia side, the NYT quoted Wyatt's objection to what he saw as free culture "extremism": "‘Content liberation’ is the phrase that has been used within the Wikimedia community, and I hate that: they see them as a repository of images that haven’t been nicked yet." (The term "content liberation" has been used in the past by German Wikipedian Mathias Schindler, now project manager at Wikimedia Germany, who had negotiated large scale image donations fromBundesarchiv andDeutsche Fotothek.)

Among the results of the tour arephotos andnew articles (including several DYK nominations) about the British Museum's artefacts. Unknown to Wyatt, one participant also started the articleWikipedian in Residence.

The Signpost is delighted to report the announcement of the British Museum'sFeatured Article Prize: five prizes of £100 (≈$140/€120) at theirshop/bookshop for newFeatured Articles on topics related to the British Museum in any Wikipedia language edition. Ideally, the topics will be articles about collection items.

The rollout of the new user interface on May 13 brought some controversial changes, among them the relocation of the search box, some of the modifications to the Wikipedia logo (seeSignpost coverage) and making Wikipedia inaccessible for some rare browsers (onBlackberry and PS3). The controversy about another change culminated only recently, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between volunteer and paid developers, or more generally the Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia foundation.

In the default view of the new user interface, theinterlanguage links to articles about the same topic in other Wikipedia language versions are hidden behind a link titled "Languages" (using the "CollapsibleNav" JavaScript module). Once a user clicks on the link, the whole list will be displayed (as in the old interface), until the end of the browser session.

Many users objected to this, andBug 23497 was filed. On June 3, a volunteer developer made the requested change and restored the old behavior, only to bereverted by a developer from the usability experience (UX) team which had developed the new user interface in a 16-month effort:

"This goes against an intentional design decision. To discuss that decision further and submit proposals to change this design please contact Howie Fung <hfung@wikimedia.org> or visithttp://usability.wikimedia.org"

Howie Fung laterexplained the background of the team's decision as follows:

"... we measured the click behavior for two groups of English Wikipedia users, Monobook and Vector (Vector users are primarily those who participated in the beta). Of Monobook and Vector users, 0.95% and 0.28% clicked on the language links (out of 126,180 and 180,873 total clicks), respectively. We felt that fewer than 1% of Monobook clicks was a reasonable threshold for hiding the Language links, especially when taken in the context of the above design principle [that one should avoid the sheer number of language links making users "numb" to the list] and the implementation (state persists after expanding)."

On the Foundation-l mailing list andon the usability wiki, numerous users still questioned the decision. Sue Gardnerdefended the usability team, arguing that "[t]he folks here on foundation-l are not representative of readers."

Erik Möller, Deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation,summarized some of the objections as follows:

"It has been legitimately argued that the language links are essential for many users, even if the click rate is lower than that of some other elements, and that they are also key to surfacing our value of language diversity. The reasonable hypothesis has also been presented that the click rates are higher in other languages than English."

Möller and Fung outlined a compromise approach, where only a limited number of language links would be shown per default, and the rest would be hidden under a "see other languages" link. Various ideas were discussed on how to generate a selection that is likely to contain the languages that are most useful to the user (e.g. based on browser language preference). The influence of different configurations on users' clicking behavior will be evaluated.

Altogether, the issue generated more than 160 postings on the Foundation-l mailing list within a few days(although a good part of this was a sub-thread, started by the Chair of the Board of Trustees, about racial, intercultural and gender issues – at one point readers of the list were educated on the origin of the termlynching in theAmerican Revolution.)

In a subsequent post titledCommunity, collaboration, and cognitive biases, Erik Möller observed that "the massive thread regarding the default sidebar language link expansion state has surfaced a number of fundamental and significant questions regarding the working relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the larger Wikimedia volunteer community". He offered a number of general thoughts which he summarized as follows:

"I believe that the transparency of Wikimedia's engineering processes, and the general quality of these processes, has significantly improved over the last year. At the same time, I agree with those who are observing a widening gap between staff and volunteer contributions, and I think we need to work together to close this gap in full awareness of the cognitive biases present in all of us."

• Anearly version of the Wikimania 2010 programme has been published.
• Voting on thefinalists for the Picture of the Year 2009 contest on Wikimedia Commons is open until 23:59 (UTC) on June 11.
• In an essay titledWiki-hacking: Opening up the academy with Wikipedia, WikipediansAdrianne Wadewitz,Anne Ellen Geller andJon Beasley-Murray examine the relationship between Wikipedia and academic teaching. All three are scholars at North American universities who have worked with their students on Wikipedia assignments (see the2008Signpost interview about Beasley-Murray's"Murder, Madness, and Mayhem" project). The essay was written in the context of a round-table titled "2010 A new frontier: teaching with Wikipedia" at the 2010 "Writing across the curriculum" conference last month at Indiana University.
• Theprocess to determine the two Chapter-selected members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees is currently underway after several delays. Currently, these seats are occupied by Michael Snow and Arne Klempert. The process is non-public, but two candidates have published statements:GerardM andphoebe. Results are due by July 1st, but might be delayed further if the chapters do not reach consensus early enough.

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===Pending changes trial===

How does one get reviewer rights?--TonyTheTiger(T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR)23:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You apply atWikipedia:Requests for permissions/Reviewer. --John Broughton(♫♫)18:22, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are admins going to be expected to manage this system? If so then I would like to know where I can do further research, and perhaps so test edits, to get a feel for this ahead of time.TomStar81 (Talk)02:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can try it out on thedemonstration wiki.Reach Out to the Truth02:54, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And to answer your question,no, admins aren't going to manage the system; it will be up to editors who have reviewer status (see above) to take care of unreviewed edits. Many, if not most of the reviewers won't be admins. --John Broughton(♫♫)18:22, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Foundation hires

I must say if Wikipedia started advertising I would consider going somewhere else. It seems that currently fiances are okay so hopefully this will never happen.Doc James (talk ·contribs ·email)04:29, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British Museum

About[1]: I do think that the existence of the articleWikipedian in Residence is a fact that might interest Signpost readers, many of whom are Wikipedians. However, rereading the previous wording I understand Liam's concern that it might give the wrong impression that he had created that article himself. Hopefully the new wording avoids that misunderstanding. Regards,HaeB (talk)14:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki links

To me, the problem is not that some of those links are hidden (I'm surprised the controversy is over the language links rather than the Toolbox ones, though), but rather that every time my session times out I've got to re-expand the dang list. I don't mind doing it once, but I use "What links here" quite frequently and don't care to have the list hidden by default.Powers^T17:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good point about the Toolbox. I too was surprised to see that this didn't play a role in the debate - while I understand the arguments of both sides about interlanguage links, I puzzles me why the UX team apparently thinks that someone viewing a user page is unlikely to be interested in that user's contributions. Regards,HaeB (talk)22:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) It's hard not to see how the handling of this unwanted change to the default skin as a symptom of an increasingly top-down approach to the Wikimedia communities -- which is directly against the process which has made Wikipedia & related projects so successful. I don't like where that is taking us. --llywrch (talk)17:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Further proof that this should never have made it past the drawing board. Whats worse is that our visitors and anons have no way of undoing this change, which rather leaves them holding the short end of theNew Wikipedia stick.TomStar81 (Talk)02:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's odd to me. Seems like a solution in need of a problem. Why not just make it a setting under preferences so that an editor can choose based on his or her frequency of use? I personally almost never use them, but sometimes, if I see that FA star, I might check it out to see how it compares to the English article.bahamut0013^words_deeds18:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It already is an option -Special:Preferences > Appearance > last item is "Enable collapsible left navigation menu". Turn it off there. :) --Quiddity (talk)18:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I thought I'd looked for that before.Powers^T19:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Though it would be nice to be able to enable the collapsibility for interwiki only, and not for the Toolbox.Powers^T19:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Splendid. But now they take up more room than when they're each manually expanded. I could probably fix that with some custom CSS if I knew what I was doing... I guess I'll just dump the Print/export section to free up space.Reach Out to the Truth23:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Of Monobook and Vector users, 0.95% and 0.28% clicked on the language links " This does immediately show that Vector decreases the number of interwiki clicks by about 3/4 - in other words makes them less usable. If a limited list of languages is displayed, then it needs to be content driven, or at least content drivable - articles aboutFarsi should display the Farsi link. Certainly weight should be given to displaying FAs in other languages, especially where the home language article is not featured.Rich Farmbrough,08:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC).[reply]

A small addendum: Following Erik Möller's proposal cited at the end of the story, a page has now been set up on meta to "capture ideas on how the User Experience Team and the Wikipedia Community can collaboratively approach Product Development":meta:Product Development Process Ideas.

Regards,HaeB (talk)11:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add that it shouldn't be all about the click-through ratio. Sometimes just hovering the cursor over an inter-language link (to see where it leads) is all that's needed. This kind of use is not represented by the click-through ratio at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2010; 14:38 (UTC)

Chapter-selected seats

As phoebe has a byline in this part, I want to note that the little update on Chapter-selected board seats has not been written by her. (She does take conflict of interest concerns quite seriously.)

Regards,HaeB (talk)04:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]