FamilySearch Wiki:How Community Governs Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

FamilySearch Wiki:How Community Governs Wikipedia (view source)

Revision as of 17:02, 20 March 2009

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Added WP's editorial control process

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 Wikipedia:RfA
 Wikipedia:RfM (request for mediation)
 Wikipedia:3O (third opinion)
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 *Bug tracker — a facility for reporting problems with the Wikipedia Web site or the MediaWiki software that runs it;
 *Village pump: proposals page — a place for making non-policy suggestions; and
 *Wikipedia:Help desk — Wikipedia's general help desk, if other pages have not answered your query.
-=== Editorial structure<ref name="wpEdOvCo">from Wikipedia:Editorial Oversight and Control, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editorial_oversight_and_control</ref> ===
+=== Editorial structure<ref name="wpEdOvCo">from Wikipedia:Editorial Oversight and Control, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editorial_oversight_and_control</ref>  ===
 The Wikipedia community is largely self-organizing, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized tasks, such as reviewing articles at others request, watching current edits for vandalism, or watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75-80% approval rating after a communal "no holds barred" inquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Wikipedia.
 (Such rights are stringently restricted, ensuring that editorial and administrative matters are separated powers and only rarely lead to editorial conflict of interest.)
+=== Wikipedia's editorial control process<ref name="WPEdOvCo">from Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editorial_oversight_and_control</ref> ===
+Wikipedia has somewhat more formal editorial systems of control than are apparent to a newcomer, with ten main areas of overlapping control in three main areas primarily responsible:
+==== Core community level controls ====
+*The degree of oversight possible with tens of thousands of bona fide editors
+*The wiki system itself, which as operated, appears to strongly select for robust and best collaborative knowledge of many people (even on contentious topics), rather than the unrepresentative viewpoint or negative impact of a few.
+==== Editorial panels and processes ====
+*Widely respected and enforced policies which provide all editors with a solid basis to take matters into their own hands in addressing both deliberate and innocent bad edits.
+*A consensus based ethos, which impacts beneficially the decision-making process.
+*Escalation processes whereby poor conduct or articles being problematically edited will tend to come to the attention of a wider range of editors with authority or willingness to act on them, making vandalism very short term and ultimately somewhat futile.
+*Wide range of fine grained editorial processes such as dispute resolution, mediation, third party opinion, and requests for comment and consultation within the wider Wikipedia community.
+==== Software facilitated controls ====
+*Systems built into its editing software that make it easy for a large number of editors to watch for vandalism, monitor recent changes, and check for activity on selected Watchlist articles, in real time.
+*Design decisions in the software that make identifying and reverting any number of bad edits possible at the immediate click of a button, whereas vandalism itself takes longer to do.
+*Ability to set fine-grained software blocks on problematic editors, and partially or fully protect targeted articles.
+*Standardized alerts, known as tags, which can be added to any fact or article, and which allow individual facts (or entire sections and articles) to be highlighted as questionable or brought immediately to others' attention.
+==== Controls under development ====
+*The control known as flagged revisions is being rolled out as of 2007[update]. It aims to differentiate the version shown to most readers, from the draft "cutting edge" version being edited, and in the first instance to only show the latter when it has been checked for reasonableness. Flagged revisions are expected to provide a powerful way to prevent most vandalism or poor quality edits from being seen by readers, once it is fully operational.
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