• Question Are we still expecting a new and improved version of Pending Changes to be rolled out in the future? I was under the impression that the in-limbo state we're currently in was because we were waiting for a new version with improvements in the areas people complained about. —Soap— 23:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• This appears to be the last thing resembling an "official" statement on the matter, which suggested resuming discussion about a month from now. However, there have been several other conversations lately where users have expressed frustration at this delay, and at the perception that PC is being "shoehorned" into being an accepted reality on WP because the trial period has now run for seven months as opposed to two. However, if the higher-ups could give us a firm release date for said improvements as opposed to vagaries this could of course be reconsidered. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:05, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I always was under the impression that someone had promised a new update in November, after which time another poll would be held, but I never heard about it again. Am I imagining things? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It appears that the trail period will run until the opposition runs out of steam. So I'm really unsure as to the point of any more RfCs. Protonk (talk) 02:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I suspect many of the supporters of Pending Changes are also "running out of steam", so to speak, as we were expecting a new and improved version to have launched by now. Currently there are no pages with PC on my watchlist and we're not allowed to add any new ones so I would have to say that for all practical purposes Pending Changes is off and to officially discontinue it would make no difference to me. I'd like to see it revived, but the last poll made it clear that the majority wanted an improved version, not just a revival of the one we have. Of course I would not be in favor of reviving a version that most people dont want.—Soap— 12:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Self correction: It seems that the wording of the page protection notice has changed from specifically disallowing new Pending Changes protection to "please don't do anything drastic". So technically we can still do it. But it seems that it is used very rarely based on what I see at WP:RFPP. —Soap— 12:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid, Protonk, that tone doesn't communicate well over the internet, so I can't tell if you're being shrewdly cynical of blatantly sleazy. Essentially, I agree (or disagree) that waiting for everyone else to "run out of steam" is not the way to solve these disputes.☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 12:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not making a normative statement, so I don't think either characterization applies. Protonk (talk) 16:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• In the past, I've supported PC, and I would still like very much to see it work. But the delay is actually having the effect, for me, of diminishing my support. I thought that it was very clearly understood that the November "deadline" was for the purpose of allowing developers to incorporate fixes for the things that the community had identified as needing improvements. In the interim, I've seen a few things that I consider to be relatively modest improvements. But a big concern has been that PC was needlessly slow in terms of page loading etc., and that hasn't been fixed at all. Atheism is on my watchlist (ironically, now semi-protected in addition to PC, because there was still so much IP vandalism), and it remains molasses-slow to do anything there. If there's a limit to how well the developers can make PC work, I'm afraid that the community will need to insist that we reconsider whether it should be permitted to continue. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Please note We've gotten some word from the front office now, it seems they don't know what they are supposed to be doing and there is no giant update in the works because they didn't know if we wanted to keep using this or not. They would like us to give them some clear input on that. So, that is our first task, if we decide to keep it the next job is to define the standards to be used when applying it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

View of Fetchcomms

We should hold a new straw poll—that seems to be the norm for gathering consensus on PC—as soon as possible (e.g., next week) to decide three things:

• Is PC working?
• Should we keep PC?
• Is someone going to apologize for breaking so many promises along the way? As stated above, the two-month agreement has stretched past half a year now. The policy on applying PC still is extremely vague (is it for BLPs only? is it being used at a decreased rate? should it still be used "normally"?), as are the details on what it's doing here still (seriously, seven months when the promise was two; is there a new version coming or not?; when will this trial end?)

Either the community agrees to break the original deal by extending the PC "trial" again or it decides to make the policy clear that it should not be used at all until a new version comes out, which would also come with a new straw poll regarding whether people like the changes or not.

/ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this in principle, but I don't think a straw poll would work, and I'd rather be more aggressive about Jimbo not closing it down prematurely. (See below for my full position).☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 09:05, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. Sorry Fetch, but it was "policy by polling" that got us into this mess in the first place. That is why I deliberately opened a discussion and participants are asked not to vote. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, but my only concern is how long this will drag on. If we have a poll, we can set a predetermined threshold, a clear start/end date, etc. Discussions are more productive, but who knows how long it'll take to get consensus? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Fetchcomms. The clock is always ticking. Guoguo12--Talk--  17:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

RFCs usually run for 30 days unless a consensus becomes overwhelmingly clear before then. While consensus is harder to interpret than raw numbers, it is Wikipedia's primary decision making model. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Fetch that this should be over, 2 months were promised and we're now closer to a year, than we are to 2 months. However I do not think a poll will help the mess. One unbinding poll after another caused the current disaster. What we should do is look at the origional poll, count the !votes, and if the keeps are over 75% we keep it to some extent, if not we have the whole thing deleted, removed, and blocked Sumsum2010·T·C·Review me! 23:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Research before more discussion?

Instead of launching into this debate again, I wonder whether it would be more worthwhile to gather some data on how the feature has worked so far. Possible questions for examination would be:

• How many articles have been subject to PC control and for how long? How has that number changed?
• What types of articles (based on category or WikiProject perhaps)?
• Percentage of proposed edits accepted vs rejected
• Time changes stay in the pending state before review: mean, range, SD, etc...
• Percentage of live edits that are reverted before/after activation of PC

It seems to me that we can't have an intelligent discussion on the future of this feature without some data on how it has been used and factors that hint at its effectiveness. Zachlipton (talk) 05:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That idea has merit, but I don't see it as being mutually exclusive of having a discussion at the same time. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

View of s8333631

A straw poll is clearly out, as the last one on this topic (which was, IMO, established rather prematurely, considering the diversity and intensity of opinions), had the effect only of polarizing users and confusing the issue. Some other, informal and discussion-oriented system should be used.

Unfortunately, the main problem with previous attempts at consensus on this was that they were ended by the Word Of God before an actual community decision could be made. This essentially shut down discussion for a long time, and this RFC is an attempt to revive it. So this time, we should let the community decide.

☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 08:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Very much agreed. Especially since, usually, what Jimmy wants Jimmy gets. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 20:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the system currently works as-is and the de facto state of affairs (PC, like protection, applied at admins' discretion to articles when they need it) is fine. Stifle (talk) 10:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with that, the protection is being applied where required without any problem. Another tool in the box to help protect our articles. Off2riorob (talk) 16:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I like it and think we should keep it, but the current state of affairs has it "in limbo." The advice for admins on when and how to use it is wishy washy waffling and provides little to no real guidance. For example, when an admin goes to protect a page, a pink box pops up that says: "The pending changes trial has ended. The result of a poll was in favor of the temporary continuation of PC on most of the currently PC-protected articles until a new version is released. Please don't do anything drastic. Please don't fight. No page in the Wikipedia namespace should be protected under pending changes except those for testing." I wasn't planning to do anything drastic, just maybe add PC to this one page. Is that ok? Is that "fighting"? When is this "new version" coming out? Over at the protection policy page itself we have this "For a trial period that began on June 15, 2010 articles could be protected by pending-changes protection. The trial is now over and the Wikipedia community is currently seeking to gain consensus on where to go with the pending changes idea." Where is this "seeking" going on? Apparently nowhere for the last several months, so here we are. In my opinion these are the questions that need to be put to bed. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Who wrote the edit note? Have you got a link to it so I can investigate it please. I agree this does need putting to bed, some admins are experianced in the tool and have a good idea where it is starting to clearly be beneficial and are adding it, as I understodd there is to be no major increase in usage and we are presently at about half the number of the trial usage on articles. Off2riorob (talk) 20:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't even figure out how to open the history or edit the notice, maybe someone with more technical knowledge can answer that. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean MediaWiki:Protect-text? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks, it is a bit outdated and not expressing current common practice so we should look at updating it. Off2riorob (talk) 22:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC) I think it should be edited to the note below , which is a better reflection of the current practice. Off2riorob (talk) 16:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

note - The community supported the tool in a straw poll although consensus as regards expansion is undecided. Please use sparingly if and when required so as not to greatly increase the current pool of articles under this protection.

As Fetchcomms pointed out, this is a huge mess of contradictory, confusing, and inconsistent information. I don't believe any disucssion would be valid, let alone wise, before a clear document was composed, answering the following questions.

1. What articles are eligible or ineligible for pending changes.
2. Who is able to place and who is able to remove pending changes from articles.
3. When placed on a page, how long is pending changes to remain active on that page.
4. What determines which level of pending changes is placed on a page.
5. What recourse can the community take if it believes that pending changes needs to be expanded or has gone overboard and needs to be scaled back.
6. What recourse can editors take when they believe that pending changes has been placed on a page in error.
7. What recourse can editors take when they believe that pending changes has been placed on a page with malicious intent in order to influence the content of the page.
8. What role the WMF and WMF staff have in pending changes.

All of these need to be answered on one page, marked as policy, in a simple and coherent way.

Additionally, any data generated from the pending changes trial needs to be released in one place, linked to the above policy page, so everyone can see it.

Any further discussion or voting is completely and utterly useless until everyone is working from the same information.

Sven Manguard Wha? 21:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you don't mind if I answer these issues as I understand them. Off2riorob (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• 1 - Any article where it is considered it might help to protect an article, it can just as easy be removed if it is assessed to be better protected by semi protection, or removed completely if protection is deemed to be no longer required.
• 2 - As per all protection any administrator can use all means at his disposal including pending protection to protect articles, bearing in mind from a position as to allow as open an environment as possible is the idea.
• 3 - Pending can be applied for any time short or long in the same way as other levels of protection as judged required by the administrator with a mind towards the basic principle of free to edit.
• 4 - As I understand it we only have one level of pending currently in use.
• 5 - If you edit an article and pending is in your opinion causing problems the place to go as with all protections is the admin that added it and discuss your issues with him or her. From the previous poll results large expansion is not supported, so natural slow and steady additions and removals is imo the natural way to progress with this tool.
• 6 - As with everything, go to the person that added it and explain your issue.
• 7 - There has not been a single case of this pending protection being placed in bad faith to control a page, as above, the first place to go would be to discuss with the admin that applied it, if your fears were not resolved then of to ANI it would be.
• 8 - The WMF will have to speak for themselves. Off2riorob (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was under the impression that until a new version is released, PC should only be used sparingly (limited to BLPs?) I don't think it can be used on any article, but I'm not sure. I think it will be a good idea to start a new section below on forming consensus for where PC should be used, so I'm doing that. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sven, I think you may have missed the point that clarifying this stuff is exactly why this RFC was opened, per the header at the top of the page. I'll put it in its own section to make it more obvious I guess. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a meta-comment: Sven, your list of questions makes it sound like you think this is some completely new, radically different system. This is still the English Wikipedia. We handle just about everything in the same basic ways. Pending changes is handled almost exactly like its nearest similar process, which is semi-protection: The community writes the rules, the admins push any complicated buttons, problems are reported and resolved in the usual places and in the usual ways. Pending Changes is business as usual, not some wildly different beast. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where should PC be applied?

To keep discussion organized, perhaps we should start by asking where PC should be applied. My understanding is, that if/until a new version is released, PC should be used sparingly (only for BLPs) and not just in any situation. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That was not my understanding. I thought it was to be used sparingly, but slightly less sparingly in the case of a BLP article. We have been allowing and sometimes granting requests for non-blp pages at WP:RFPP, so that seems to be the current practice. This si exactly what is wrong here, everyone seems to have their own understanding cobbled together from clues because there is nothing clear and specific. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is basically being used sparingly and as such, it doesn't really matter where we use it, but administrators are not restricted from applying the protection if they feel it would be beneficial. You could say, we are still in a trial and gaining experience of the tools benefits but just in a smaller, more flexible way. There was no support to dramatically expand the tools usage. Its on Rubygate which although not a blp has got living people in it, and doing alright, its on George Osborne and George Michael and working fine, other places it is not so helpful, football articles because of the statistical edits. Off2riorob (talk) 23:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could Fetchcomms and Beeblebrox (or anyone) please provide diffs for the historical discussion that gives rise to their different interpretations of the agreed appropriate use of PC?--Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like i said, there is no clear guidance anywhere and we are grasping at clues here and there at places like the what an admin sees when applying protection along with WP:PP and WP:PC. That's the whole point of this discussion, to determine if it is to be a permanent feature, and if so to craft those clear, or at least clearer, standards. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is there or isn't there a new version coming out?

Someone might want to ping the devs; I'm not sure who'd be best to contact. Also, is the WMF studying PC usage/effectiveness data at all? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Already  Done [1] Beeblebrox (talk) 22:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We got upgraded in some small way and its faster and some small points addressed, I don't see a new version on the horizon but as with all the other tools and interfaces, a constant re assessment and upgrades and improvements as and when possible. Off2riorob (talk) 23:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• - Support , as is, slow and steady development and assessment, the wheels aren't dropping off. A clear net benefit to the protective toolbox. Off2riorob (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• This RfC is to clarify PC first and to determine whether it should be continued second, so perhaps we should work on getting consensus for extending it/ending it after we figure out a clear policy on it? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 21:07, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, would you please look at the edit notice update in the section above to reflect the current actual practice and edit it for me please. Off2riorob (talk) 21:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like this? I'm not certain what you mean. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:31, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The experiment was originally supposed to end in two months.

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Closure said "The scheduled two-month trial has ended. The community should now decide if the implementation is to be continued, and it should discuss possible adaptations, in terms of policy. Developers have indicated it would be too complex to turn off the feature, then turn it back on in case the decision is in favor of continuing the implementation, so they will wait for the community decision — unless it takes more than a month, in which case they will turn off the feature."

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage said "a hard stop date of December 31, 2010 will be set for a new poll on interim use of Pending Changes in the event that the release of the new version is delayed"

Now it's not necessarily wrong for people to come back and keep extending a trial period. Some of the reasons why we might want to could be:

• The experiment is visibly producing useful ongoing results
• The experiment is allowing changes by developers or MediaWiki software to be evaluated as they are made
• The Pending Changes trial is unambiguously useful to Wikipedia.

The problem is, I don't see evidence of any of these, and I don't see any sign that community discussion has called for anything but a hard stop date which has simply been ignored. This project is displaying some weird kind of continuismo that just can't be justified by saying "They might fix it any time, who knows". The problem is, when the community can't stop an experiment despite clear resolution to do so, it creates general resistance to any new experiments, e.g. Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_7#Template:Invitation_to_edit. I think that unless there's some sudden strong consensus right now to extend the trial, the original poll's decision to end it as of December has to be honored. Wnt (talk) 15:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Seconded, Wnt. There was discussion for a trial, nothing else. We never had a vote for it to be fully enabled, or to continue as a fixed thing. A trial is a trial, the consensus was to continue only the trial, not for it to be taken as read that it was a done deal. The hard stop date MUST be applied. Now. BarkingFish 01:15, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the thing is, it isn't fully enabled either. Less than 1000 articles are affected, and admins apparently get some sort of a message discouraging them from adding any more. So the people who think it should be rolled out now aren't getting what they want either. It's just a bureaucratic anomaly. Wnt (talk) 05:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a failure to adhere to consensus. Perhaps this is an instance where consensus should be ignored, but no one has made the case for that in this discussion yet. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• "Pending change protection" should be removed from all articles, and then we can have a discussion about possible future use. There is currently no consensus for it. The community agreed to a time-limited trial, and were explicitly told by WMF, At the end of that, unless the community clearly requests otherwise, we'll turn it back off.ⁿ¹

When that did not happen, we had a straw-pollⁿ², which was "inconclusive" to say the least. Jimbo instigated another pollⁿ³ which said it would set no precedent for future use with a hard stop date of December 31, 2010; that poll received 60% support, and that was deemed enough to continue usage. The current continued use of PC makes a mockery of due process and consensus. The only sensible course is a) remove it, and then b) discuss if we want to conduct a further trial implementation or not, and what the remit of such a trial might be. I believe this is the only way we can ever truly resolve this messy situation.  Chzz  ►  14:50, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo wants pending changes to continue, so of course he's not going to stop it on December 31 to have another poll. That was up to the community that made the decision. But it seems the community forgot or maybe didn't know how go about it. There was no new poll, and if there was discussion at any of the village pumps I didn't see it. I didn't see any requests on Bugzilla to have it disabled, and checking now I see that the most recent reference to pending changes is bug 26335, a tracking bug filed prior to the "hard stop date". If we never actually requested for pending changes to be turned off, we shouldn't be surprised that we still have it. Reach Out to the Truth 16:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The last poll, run on a headcount, not consensus poll, was 289 for keeping the tool switched on and 199 against. All I see here, is people fixated in process, no good reasons to actually switch it off are being presented here at all. Its become a useful addition to the toolbox of article protection and ignoring that for the sake of historic process is pointy imo. Off2riorob (talk) 17:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, it looks to me like it was never turned off because nobody ever actually asked for it to be turned off. The people who didn't want it turned off probably assumed the people who did would make such a request. In any event, I agree it's not worth getting caught up in that now. Perhaps process failed us there and everybody thought somebody else was minding the details or making the final determination. It doesn't really matter, we need to focus first on if we are keeping it or not, not whether it should have already been turned off. It would be silly to turn it off only to turn it back on again later, and there's no rush that I can see. The crux of the issue should be this: is pending changes a good thing or not? Is it causing harm? Is it preventing vandalism? If it isn't causing harm and is preventing vandalism then we should keep it, regardless of any past errors in process. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How could we have made such a request without the supporters claiming that we were asking another parent, given they had a majority in the poll? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Hyper Combo K.O.!)} 21:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but the point is the focus of this discussion should not be "why wasn't it turned off" but rather "are we going to keep it." Lets not dwell on how it might have been done differently and instead focus on moving forward. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So, the word from the front office is that we need to work out if we want this tool or not - so it looks like we need to work out the format of the poll and the percentages we are looking for to keep on or switch off. I think the wording should be simple and along the lines of Do you support pending protection - yes or no. Without any conditions as to time limits or usage or any more trial - we have had a long enough trial now for people to have made up their opinions as to its benefits or not as the case may be and then if the answer is no, we can just forget about it and move on or accept the tool and use it and develop it as required. Off2riorob (talk) 20:14, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But do we have to do it by polling to reach some specific percentage threshold? I realize that is easier to measure than consensus, but I'd rather we didn't just vote on it. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:19, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having got in over my head in creating the first poll I am not going to get over involved in this set up, but we don't have to poll, we can discuss and convince and look for consensus. The main objections don't seem to actually be about the tool but about the process. Off2riorob (talk) 20:25, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't we getting a bit ahead of things? There's been a more-than-two-month trial - what were the results? Has anyone figured out how often good additions were reverted by accident? And what about the technical upgrades that everyone is supposed to be waiting for - are they done, in progress, abandoned?

There's also the larger question: why should people have to decide to abandon the PC project just in order to end the trial? There's a short list of <1000 articles subject to PC - if this mechanism is even conceivably usable on a fraction of Wikipedia as a whole, hundreds of thousands of articles, it shouldn't be a big deal to strike a few hundred articles off the list for a few months until the software is working optimally. No one is saying you have to forensically erase all the software off the Wikipedia servers. Wnt (talk) 21:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe we are getting ahead of ourselves. Further development of PC has been put on the back burner exactly because the trial has petered out and a new discussion, like this one, had not yet taken place to decide whether to even keep using it or not. There's no sense working to improve something that might not be used, so they have been holding off. Therefore, the first and foremost decision that needs to be reached here is if we are going to even keep PC. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's not an either/or proposition. I, too, see a lot of value in going ahead with a community decision about whether to keep or to discontinue, but I also think that it would be a lot more productive to conduct that discussion based upon the kinds of information that Wnt would like to see collected. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If somebody wanted to go ahead and collect that information and post it here I agree it would be very helpful. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:02, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there are any figures, especially not as regards, the number of good edits rejected or the number of bad edits accepted. The only assessment is the users that have been active with the tool, users experience. I would like to see figures of the users most active in accepting or rejecting pending edits if there are any as those users would be good to get comments as to the operation and interface questions. There are some users that just object to pending protection as a matter of principal in regards to free to edit and article control issues. In reply to Wnt's comment about the upgrade there is a link to a front office comment User_talk:Risker#Long_post_is_long. that until the community decides if they actually want the tool or not any upgrades are not being worked on, why waste their time if it is not even clear what the community wants to do with the tool. Off2riorob (talk) 22:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]