User:CXI/RC flags proposal

This has been archived from VP (proposals) so that the MediaZilla report has a (more) permanent reference for the proposal and surrounding discussion.

Proposal to extend Recent Changes flags

Okay, at the moment RC displays the m and N flags for "minor edit" and "new page", respectively. Currently, the only other method of edit assessment on the RC page is the username and edit summary, both of which are of limited use, especially in the case of vandalism. This is a proposal for additional RC flags that would decrease vandalism response time and make things easier for RC junkies and admin.

Proposed flags and issues

Note that these flags use a (totally unofficial and made-up) standard, wherein lowercase is used for flags related to the edit, whereas uppercase is used for flags related to the article itself.

• "+" - Significant addition. Edits that add over a certain amount of characters would trip this flag. Typically this would total a couple of sentences of editing.
• "-" - Significant removal. Opposite of above. Not triggered if "blanked" (below) is triggered.
  • Possibly "--" and "++" for large addition/removal (for lack of a more original name) These would be triggered by the addition or removal of a couple paragraphs of text. This may just be bloat, however.
• "B" - Blanked. Triggered if all text has been removed from a article.
  • Is this letter already used for bots? An alternative is "W" for whited out or wiped.
• "R" - Revert. Triggered if edit matches a previous version of the article.
  • This would require the calculation and storage of the md5sum for every version of a page.
• "u" - Unwikied text. Triggered if a significant amount of unwikied text is added.
  • The value of "significant amount" could result in improper flagging of minor edits if too low, and miss unwikied stubs if too high. Perhaps should be calculated as a percentage of article size.
• "C" - Contentious. Triggered by an edit to an article that is {{disputed}} or has received over a certain number of edits in a given amount of time.
  • The former system for detecting contentious articles might flag non-contentious articles with factual problems, whereas the latter might flag rapidly-growing articles.
• "D" - Recently deleted article. This would trigger upon recreation of a previously (recently) deleted article.
• "p" - Profanity (or "t" for Trigger). This flag would be triggered if an edit contained any profane or trollish words, as specified in a protected list of trigger words.
  • This would yield a high level of false positives, especially on innocuous articles about reproduction or similar. For this reason, it may be of limited use.
• "E" - Highly exposed article. Used for articles directly linked to by the front page, or having received a certain amount of hits in a period of time (this should make waves of vandalism immediately following linking in news articles, blogs or on the front page more difficult).

There is further potential for flagging edits to pages containing certain templates. These might include stubs/sectstubs/substubs, cleanup pages, disambigs, etc. There is a huge potential for bloat in that idea, but it may also prove useful for quickly isolating articles that might need work.

Another possibility is a flag for edits by known contentious users, such as those who have been warned for editwars, as one step below temporary banning. However, this may be a bad idea because it overpublicises disputse of that nature. A similar (and just as possibly bad) idea is flagging edits by new users.

Positives

• Makes vandalism/junk detection easier (Nu = new article full of unwikied text, for example)
• Changes edit information from user-reliant to program-reliant (m and edit summary rely on the benevolence of the author)

Negatives

• Additional resource use for calculation and storage of data (such as md5sums)
• Letters have little intrinsic meaning and are not understandable by new users (requiring added external documentation)
  • Maybe using the <acronym> tag would help. [ alerante | “” 14:07, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC) ]
• Added clutter to recent changes
• Breaks the enhanced recent changes page (which currently aligns flags on the left)
• Not internationalised (what's the first letter of "Revert" in Mandarin?)
• Vandals will turn to more sneaky vandalism once they know the simple vandalism is traced automatically

Implementation

Solutions to the lack of intrinsic meaning are generally centered around mouse-over explanatory text. Either the <acronym> tag, or a simple link to a page like Wikipedia:Recent changes flags with a title attribute describing the tags in question.

Through surveys on this page and on the #wikipedia IRC channel, it appears that some users are in favour of coloured flags, while others completely detest the idea. Accordingly, if used, this should be a configuration option, defaulting to non-coloured.

Regarding the particular flags and number of flags used, most users seem to be in assent with the general idea and flags, while some feel that the flags may prove to be too numerous. Most people seem in favour of a trial run, in which all the above suggested flags are implemented, with these removed if needed.

Any comments/suggestions/criticisms etc are welcome. CXI 15:23, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Comments

Some questions: Would these have to be manually selected by the editor? If not, how would they work? If so, of what value are they? How do you define 'significant'? Filiocht 09:23, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

No, Filiocht, as it says above, these would be automatically generated. 'significant' would be decided during the process of setting up the feature(or it could probably be changed later(it might even be able to be a pref, like the stub feature)) JesseW 09:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would you see the minor tag becoming automated? Filiocht 09:49, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't - what simple algorthm is there for "formatting changes"? ;-) JesseW 10:55, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sigh. I had a nice long, involved response. And I lost it all in broswer crash. Damm. Well, I'll just say it's a great idea, I strongly encourage you to do it, and all that. Damm. Damm. Damm. JesseW 09:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would like to see all of these that don't require too much of a load on the server (R sounds a little risky, for example). Ashiibaka tlk 05:39, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would someone format each of these ideas as a Mediazilla feature request and enter them in? Please post here after you do it. JesseW 04:23, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

By each of these do you mean each flag? CXI 07:28, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. A lot. Some of them would be tricky to implement, but some (such as B) we should have had a long time ago! -- Chuq 23:55, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If the overhead is low enough, sounds like a great idea. Paul August 03:54, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

I like it too -- submit it to Mediazilla! Catherine\^talk 10:10, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would anyone mind giving comments on individual flags? I'm particularly curious about whether anyone has any suggestions or additions, or considers the flags perhaps too numerous. What about the two possibly-bad-idea flags? I have some more ideas for flags, such as 'r' for consecutive edits to a page by one contributor, but I'm worried that polluting the namespace too much will erode the usefulness of the whole idea.

I'm also not sure what to propose regarding the the non-intrinsicness of the flags. Ideally, a key might work, but isn't terribly extensible. Perhaps links for each flag letter, with a mouse-over text containing a description of each. Should they be coloured or not? Grey for unwikied, red for contentious... might be nice, or might look really ugly and be a waste of time. The thought of pretty icons for each flag also springs to mind, except for the effort involved, the loading time, and the general uselessness.

Oh, for the record, the p and E flags were added just before I wrote this. Thus, previous endorsements of the flag system would not include those two. CXI 14:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've been considering this one for a couple of days. I fear that the flags might be too numerous, but I can't think of alternatives; color-coding entries on RC would be garish (and not accessible for some), although it might be useful in combination with flags, for high-probability vandalism like blanking.

I've come to the conclusion it would probably be better to go forward with all of the flags for a test period, and then get feedback from users (especially the Wikipedia:RC patrol) on what is useful and what is clutter. At the very least, I think "+", "-", "B", and "U", and possibly "E", should be/would be retained. I share your concerns about "R" and "C" fueling edit wars -- it basically takes those battles currently fueled by watchlists into everyone's turf. Whether this would turn wars into conflagrations, or bring cooler heads in to moderate, is up for debate, and experimentation, I guess.

"P" seems very useful to me, although I've been trying to think of a word other than "profanity" for it; it's not profanity we're worried about per se, it's the "words commonly abused by vandals". Whatever we call it, I think everyone who has spent any time patrolling RC would agree that it would help highlight the common stupidities (nazi, gay, 0WNZ0RED, etc.), and that it would be easy to learn when it produces false positives. It would also be useful if the diff could somehow highlight the word(s) that tripped the flag, for ease of evaluation. Also nice if users/admins can add words to the "flag" list; perhaps admins could be given the right to remove words from it -- this would allow words to be set temporarily, to deal with spam-vandals, by highlighting edits with a certain non-"profane" words or links, until they get bored.

I can't find it in Mediazilla, but I've heard this request before -- a flag that patrollers can set on an article to say it's already been checked. This alone would save huge amounts of time, if we don't have efforts duplicated quintuply or more. The problem is in who you trust to set the flag.... Anyway, those are my thoughts, hope it helps. Good idea! Catherine\^talk 05:25, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps coloured flags could be a configuration option. I'm sure some art-capable person would be able to make them look at least slightly nice. About the edit warring thing, I'm also reserved. I think a fundamental wiki assumption is that most people are mostly good, so from that premise I'd hypothesise that more people looking in on an edit war would shorten its lifespan rather than lengthen it. Whether that actually turns out to be the case is anyone's guess, I suppose.

Good point about the profanity flag. I can't think of anything short of "b" for "bad word" or "t" for possible trolling. Neither of those are particularly good, so maybe we could pretend that it's an old designation that couldn't be changed for compatibility. Perhaps the words could be taken from a protected article like Wikipedia:List of Abuse Trigger Words.

That last idea is a particularly good one, though I don't know if it sits with this particular proposal, which is more in the line of automated flags rather than author or viewer set ones. Regardless, I'd be in favour of a "I've checked this edit and it's okay" option, and an equivalent "someone needs to have a look at this" option, which could also be settable during the edit. Maybe those could be displayed in tally form. CXI 15:37, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the "I've checked this" flag should not be submitted to the developers as part of this proposal, as it would require different functionality, but if submitted separately each proposal should reference the other.

I don't think "++" or "--" would be necessary; I think it would be better to stick to single-character codes, in any case. On the other, maybe "A" for abuse, or "T" for "trouble" or "trigger"...actually, I think I'm kind of partial to "trigger" -- simple to remember, not judgemental like "troll" or "vandal", broader than "profanity". The use of a protected page for it is good too. Catherine\^talk 18:18, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)