 | This page documents an English Wikipediabehavioral guideline. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptions may apply.Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus. When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | Reviewing pending changes in a nutshell: Reviewing pending changes consists of determining whether a new revision is broadly acceptable for public view or not. |
Pending changes backlog
(review log)
Very low backlog
[view •purge •update]
3 pages according toDatBot07:00, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This page explains and provides the guidelines for the review process associated with thepending changes protection feature (enabled on 1 December 2012). Articles with pending changes applied can be reviewed byadministrators or users calledpending changes reviewers (reviewer user group) who hold the pending changes reviewer permission. The process of reviewing is intended as a quick check to ensure edits don't containvandalism, violations of thepolicy on living people,copyright violations, orother obviously inappropriate content.
Currently, there are828 administrators and8,170 pending changes reviewers on the English Wikipedia. (In total, 8,998 user accounts have this right.)
The purpose of reviewing is to catch and filter out obvious inappropriate edits and vandalism on articles under pending changes protection, a special kind of protection that permits anonymous and newly registered editors to submit edits to articles that would otherwise be semi or fully protected under one or more of the criteria listed in theprotection policy.
Reviewers do not take responsibility for the correctness of edits they accept. A reviewer only ensures that the changes introduced to the article are broadly acceptable for viewing by a casual reader. The reviewer checks the pending change(s) for an article and can then decide to either accept it, revert it or modify it then later accept it. Reviewers are not expected to be subject experts, and their review is not a guarantee in any way of an error-free article. They are expected to have a reasonable editing history, the ability to distinguish what is and what is not vandalism, and be familiar with basic content policies. Reviewer rights are granted by administrators; and in cases of misuse of the right or to protect Wikipedia from possible misuse, the rights can be removed by an administrator. The permission can also be removed at the request of the user, or theArbitration Committee.
Articles with pending changes are marked as such inwatchlists,histories andrecent changes. In addition, there is a special page,Special:PendingChanges, which lists all articles with pending changes. Clicking on [review] at Special:PendingChanges or [pending revisions] in watchlists, histories and recent changes will return thediff between the latest accepted revision and the last revision to the page. Most of the time, you should be able to complete the process from the diff alone, while in more complex cases you may have to check the recent history or edit the article.
As a general rule, you should not accept the new revision if in analyzing the diff you find any of the following:
The protection policy limits pending changes protection to clear-cut cases, so interpretation issues should be minimal.
When reviewing, it is crucial to first check the number of users having edited the article; this information is provided in the middle of the page just before the diff content starts: "(X intermediate revision(s) by Y user(s) not shown)".
Also note that you remain subject to editing policies likeedit warring andownership of content.
For a list of tips and optional criteria you can apply when reviewing, seetips for pending changes reviewers.
If all the edits were made by one editor, then check if they are clear vandalism or not. If it isn't clear vandalism, then check if there are any of the obstacles to accepting described above (BLP violations, copyright violations, etc.). If there are obstacles to accepting, revert with an explanatory comment. Alternately, you can edit the page to fix the issue, for example by reverting BLP violations or modifying the text to remove copyright problems. If you deal with all obstacles to accepting, you can subsequently accept.
If you are reviewing multiple pending edits, it is only necessary to accept the most recent one. This implicitly accepts all earlier pending edits (though they don't get "accepted by" notes).
In ambiguous cases, reverting is not the default option; you should properly investigate the case or leave it for a second opinion. For example, if information is modified without a new source, which may be sneaky vandalism, you should not presume vandalism but check whether the article has an existing source for it, which may have changed as well (e.g. number of YouTube views, box office results, etc.). If no source is provided, you may search for one and if none is straightforward but there are no reasonable reasons to believe the new edit is vandalism, it is acceptable, but if on balance you estimate that the edit is more likely to be vandalism, you should not accept and may revert.
It is not necessary for an edit to be perfect for you to accept it. It is only necessary that it comply with theaforementioned requirements that pending changes reviewers are responsible to check for. If an edit looks like it might not comply with theneutral point of view,verifiability, ororiginal research policies, you may accept the edit, accept it and fix it, or revert it. It is left to your discretion. Pending changes reviewers should not be scolded by third parties for accepting an edit that passes theaforementioned requirements but has other problems, because checking for the other problems is outside the scope of pending changes reviewing. The idea is that pending changes reviewing is a basic check, and more complex issues can be left to the page's watchers.
If the pending edits were made by multiple editors, bear in mind there may have been a good edit that has been removed by subsequent vandalism. Do not rely solely on what you see in the "pending review" diff page, instead:
For any specific issues related to reviewing, please useWikipedia talk:Pending changes. For discussing the guideline itself, please useWikipedia talk:Reviewing pending changes.
If you edit a page with pending edits, there will be a note mentioning this between the page title and edit window; you can click to show the diff between the latest accepted revision and the last revision, and review pending edits. There is an option to accept the new revision you will save below the edit summary at the right of "watch this page". Be sure to have reviewed pending changes before clicking it. If you don't click it, after saving the software will ask if you want to accept the new revision.
Unaccepting a revision is reversing an action to accept a revision, whether manual or automatic (hence you cannot unaccept a revision which has not been previously accepted). It can only be done from the reviewing interface and is unrelated to the action of reverting an edit. You should generally not unaccept revisions, except to undo yourself if you realize you have made a mistake, because it only pushes the page back toSpecial:PendingChanges on latest revisions and has no effect on old revisions. If you have concerns with an accepted revision, then edit the article to address the concerns. If you think a revision should not have been accepted, you may discuss the issue with the reviewer if you feel this is needed. Automatically accepted revisions should generally not be unaccepted, even if they were vandalism, because there is no benefit in doing so (it only removes the [automatically accepted] tag appended to it in the history).
For mobile users with this permission, you can use the "accept revision" button at the bottom of any page with pending changes protection to accept pending edits. Since February 2024, it is now possible to revert pending changes without switching to the desktop version. The pending changes interface is now shared with the desktop version.
| Find out what your permissions are. Go toSpecial:Preferences and look at "Member of groups" under the user profile. |
Criteria for requesting the reviewer permission are:
If you meet the above criteria, then ask! Add your name to the list of requests atWikipedia:Requests for permissions/Pending changes reviewer.
If you haverollback orautopatrolled rights, you are a good candidate for reviewer rights as well – the level of trust is similar; though it is not necessarily the case that you will be granted reviewer rights if you have rollback or autopatrolled rights. Administrators automatically have reviewer rights.