Wikipedia talk:Delayed revisions

Previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions#An alternative to flagged revisions: delayed editing reconsidered

Wikipedia is not a democracy by indicating support or opposition here we can get a better idea whether the proposal has the support of the community in general

Timing

Instinctively I'd actually go with a number more like 15 minutes, since most reverts appear to be quite quick. But this is probably something that could benefit from actual data about revert timing. Dragons flight (talk) 20:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it kind of depends. I just wanted to avoid anybody suggesting something more like 18 hours. I've seen vandalism on little watched pages hang for hours before getting reverted. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 21:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After thinking about it so a while I'd stick with two hours. We may delete most obvious vandalism with seconds if not minutes, some of the less obvious stuff is harder to catch. Two hours means that more sophisticate vandalism on less watched pages would be found and reverted before being published. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 18:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This...is bad

One point about Flagged Revisions (that a lot of people seem to miss) is that even if the 'public' version doesn't change when someone edits, it's still considered an edit in the eyes of the software -- there's no 'accidental reverting' or whatnot. Any new edits will be to the new page with the unflagged edit. With this proposal that isn't so, and it's far far more "anti-wiki" than FRs. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are misunderstanding. The intent, as I understood it, was to operate under exactly the same logic and technical process as FR, but that revisions would automatically become flagged (and hence "public") if they haven't been reverted (or otherwise changed) after a fixed time delay. The process for editing would stay the same as FR. Dragons flight (talk) 22:17, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Per Dragon. Were my proposal to become reality a history page would look something like this:

(cur) (prev) 23:32, 29 January 2009 86.45.67.96 (Talk | contribs) (0 bytes) (→BLANKED THE PAGE) (Edit pending: 23:47, 29 January 2009) (undo)
(cur) (prev) 23:17, 29 January 2009 Dragons flight (Talk | contribs) (1,858 bytes) (→This...is bad: reply) (Edit pending: 23:32, 29 January 2009) (undo)
(cur) (prev) 22:54, 29 January 2009 Melodia (Talk | contribs) (1,405 bytes) (undo)

The public at large would see the article as per Dragons flight's last edit. Registered editors would see the article as per 86.45.67.96's edit. It wouldn't be possible to edit the public version of the article with other edits were pending, unless of course you're reverting a pending version as:

(cur) (prev) 23:45, 29 January 2009 Blue-Haired Lawyer (Talk | contribs) (1,858 bytes) (rvv) (undo)
(cur) (prev) 23:32, 29 January 2009 86.45.67.96 (Talk | contribs) (0 bytes) (→BLANKED THE PAGE) (undo)
(cur) (prev) 23:17, 29 January 2009 Dragons flight (Talk | contribs) (1,858 bytes) (→This...is bad: reply) (Edit pending: 23:32, 29 January 2009) (undo)
(cur) (prev) 22:54, 29 January 2009 Melodia (Talk | contribs) (1,405 bytes) (undo)

Notice, no edits are pending as I've just edited the page and my delay is set to zero. I'm not sure if this is currently compatible with Flagged Revisions, but this is what I'm proposing. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 22:53, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But what if an IP comes along and tries to edit the page after the blanking -- say, they see a typo (as they are still looking at the old version)? Will they be locked out, will they see the pending version (the blanked page), or will they edit the old version (essentially reverting the blanked version by default when they edit)? If the last option, that would be the problem I saw. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right I see now. Here's where the proposal would be like Flagged Revisions. An anon viewing a page with edits pending would see a "view draft" link instead of an "edit this page" link. Once clicked they see the latest version along with a "edit this page" link. Unlike Flagged Revisions, this kind of thing would happen much less often. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One minor reservation

I strongly support the idea mentioned here, with the creation of pending edits that gives the opportunity to review edits before they go public. I believe this puts the burden in the right place. Those that want Wikipedia to remain vandalism-free bear the burden of doing the reviews to stop it, but it doesn't encumber everyone with the requirement of being an anti-vandalism cop.

Unfortunately, I think classifying by "trusted" and "untrusted" just pushes the problem elsewhere. It will just cause vandals to get accounts so they'll be trusted. Instead, I think the way to handle this is to leverage the timing aspect further.

I propose a tiered system for the timing. Suppose, for example, that anonymous edits have a 2 hour pending time. Then, we can choose an appropriate value less than this for non-anonymous editors, say 20 minutes.

An example with a Vandal and good-faith Editor:

1:00PM Baseline Article

1:30PM Vandal edits article, will become public at 3:30PM.

1:40PM Editor reverts vandalism (not yet public), will become public at 2:00PM.

2:00PM Reverted article becomes public. Contains no vandalism.

3:30PM Vandal article becomes public. Contains vandalism, but not public, as it has been superseded by good-faith editor's cleanup.

My fear is that making any account have immediate "sighting" rights just encourages vandals to create sock-puppets with that level of rights. I think that can be avoided; edits should be judged by the quality of the edit, not by the position (trusted or not) of the editor--that just shifts the problem.

70.251.32.227 (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]