Edit flags would cripple Wikipedia
EDMONTON (CUP) — Early last week, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales pushed forward a plan to further protect the infamous online collaborative encyclopedia from vandalism.
The concept for the flagged revisions system was born after vandals edited the pages on U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, falsely proclaiming their deaths.
Essentially, flagged revisions would enable Wikipedia's administrators to add an extra step to the editing process for certain controversial articles; any edits made to an article protected by the system by anonymous or new users would be put into a queue, which trusted users would review, and either approve or deny the changes.
Of course, vandalism is nothing new on Wikipedia, and any change towards making the site a more accurate resource is generally a good idea. While flagged revisions seem like a good plan in theory, there are some major issues with the implementation of such a system.
The main issue is that the flagged revisions plan doesn't scale to a website the size of the English Wikipedia. With over 2.5 million articles, even enabling this process on a minority of the articles would be prohibitively time-consuming for the site's current volunteer staff.
The flagged revisions process is currently in use on the German-language edition of the site (which is host to around 800,000 articles), and so far, delays as long as three weeks have occurred in the review process.
The review process also creates further delays as a result of staffers having to review multiple changes to the same article. Unlike the current system, under flagged revisions, multiple users could make changes to the same version of an article, leaving it up to the unpaid staffers to sift through the revisions and merge them together. Having such delays in an online encyclopedia, where the main benefit is providing the most up-to-date information, effectively destroys the utility of such a resource.
More issues come about with the selection of reviewers for the new system. Wikipedia currently has a fairly rigorous and time-consuming selection process with regards to who gets chosen to be an administrator. These administrators have the power to protect and unprotect articles from edits.
There are roughly 1,600 of these administrators on the English version of the site. Leaving only them in charge of approving or denying revisions would make the site grind to a halt.
Proponents of the flagged revisions system suggest that a new rank of users, called surveyors, be created. The criteria currently proposed by Wikipedia users basically amounts to giving surveyor rights to anyone who's been continually using the site for over a month.
While I'm not necessarily opposed to this, the fact is there are not many people out there who will actually care enough to weed through the hundreds of edits per day made to the site and meet these criteria.
While Wikipedia currently boasts over 8.8 million users, only 150,000 of those have made at least one edit in the past 30 days. It's more than likely that only a small percentage of those are editing on a regular basis, and even fewer would be willing to put in the work that flagged revisions requires. Quite simply, there's not enough unpaid manpower to keep a system like this going.
Wales is obviously looking out for the best interests of the encyclopedia, but I'm afraid that in its current state, I'm flagging it for further revision.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
The concept for the flagged revisions system was born after vandals edited the pages on U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, falsely proclaiming their deaths.
Essentially, flagged revisions would enable Wikipedia's administrators to add an extra step to the editing process for certain controversial articles; any edits made to an article protected by the system by anonymous or new users would be put into a queue, which trusted users would review, and either approve or deny the changes.
Of course, vandalism is nothing new on Wikipedia, and any change towards making the site a more accurate resource is generally a good idea. While flagged revisions seem like a good plan in theory, there are some major issues with the implementation of such a system.
The main issue is that the flagged revisions plan doesn't scale to a website the size of the English Wikipedia. With over 2.5 million articles, even enabling this process on a minority of the articles would be prohibitively time-consuming for the site's current volunteer staff.
The flagged revisions process is currently in use on the German-language edition of the site (which is host to around 800,000 articles), and so far, delays as long as three weeks have occurred in the review process.
The review process also creates further delays as a result of staffers having to review multiple changes to the same article. Unlike the current system, under flagged revisions, multiple users could make changes to the same version of an article, leaving it up to the unpaid staffers to sift through the revisions and merge them together. Having such delays in an online encyclopedia, where the main benefit is providing the most up-to-date information, effectively destroys the utility of such a resource.
More issues come about with the selection of reviewers for the new system. Wikipedia currently has a fairly rigorous and time-consuming selection process with regards to who gets chosen to be an administrator. These administrators have the power to protect and unprotect articles from edits.
There are roughly 1,600 of these administrators on the English version of the site. Leaving only them in charge of approving or denying revisions would make the site grind to a halt.
Proponents of the flagged revisions system suggest that a new rank of users, called surveyors, be created. The criteria currently proposed by Wikipedia users basically amounts to giving surveyor rights to anyone who's been continually using the site for over a month.
While I'm not necessarily opposed to this, the fact is there are not many people out there who will actually care enough to weed through the hundreds of edits per day made to the site and meet these criteria.
While Wikipedia currently boasts over 8.8 million users, only 150,000 of those have made at least one edit in the past 30 days. It's more than likely that only a small percentage of those are editing on a regular basis, and even fewer would be willing to put in the work that flagged revisions requires. Quite simply, there's not enough unpaid manpower to keep a system like this going.
Wales is obviously looking out for the best interests of the encyclopedia, but I'm afraid that in its current state, I'm flagging it for further revision.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
