Flagged revisions

[espresso_addict]

A recent problem has brought to my attention the fact that the fanlore wiki appears to be using flagged revisions, ie a moderator has to approve all edits before they are visible when logged out. This system (assuming I'm right that this is the explanation for my problems) seems to me profoundly unsuited for a wiki where the rate of vandalism to existing pages is almost nonexistent (nearly all vandalism appears in the form of uploading promotional images or starting promotional articles) and the pool of moderators is small/overworked. Might I suggest it be turned off?

Comments

[liviapenn]

That is the weirdest thing. I just went in and made a test edit, and then logged out, and (1) you can see my edit on the "Recent Changes" page, and (2) you can see it in the revisions history of the page itself, but you can't see any change to the actual page.

I agree with you, it doesn't seem like a very useful feature considering most current spambots are creating new pages, not vandalizing old ones.

[onceamy]

It's related to the caching Systems put on, and we (Aethel and I) are trying to get things fixed so we use a form of caching that is time-sensitive (i.e. refreshes the cache in a certain amount of minutes). I'm in chat if you still want to discuss this issue -- all questions are welcome.

[aethel]

Thanks for pointing this out! I've forwarded the issue to Systems, and hopefully we'll get this sorted out soon. Amy may also have the wiki powers to fix this, but I do not know enough to say for sure.

[espresso_addict]

Thank you! I wonder if the settings have been changed inadvertently recently?

[aethel]

Systems does upgrades now and then, but I know I've seen those mysterious exclamation points for a while. I should have investigated them....

In the bottom corner of new pages I haven't looked at before, I can see

[Mark this page as patrolled]

but it doesn't show up for pages that I've already looked at.

[morgandawn]

For me, the "Mark this page as patrolled' goes away as soon as I (or someone else) has made an edit to a new page.


I am learning more about some of the wiki features we don't seem to use (but are installed)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol/patrolled_pages

[aethel]

Hey, I found this:

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Special:Log/patrol

[onceamy]

I'm turning off Patrolled Edits, since we don't use them, and it seems silly to have buttons that confuse users that aren't used.

[aethel]

sounds good to me. thank you!

[morgandawn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions

It looks as if the page would have been manually flagged to have locked it. But I agree - it would be useful to have this feature turned off, so someone doesn't accidentally trigger it.

[espresso_addict]

As I recall, the version of flagged revisions that was being trialled a while back on the de-wiki was that *all* pages were included & *all* edits needed admin approval, which seemed to be the software default. The idea of doing this on en-wiki generated such outrage that the rollout was severely limited, so that only a small number of high-profile pages were included & a very large number of editors were given permission to have their edits show unapproved.

[morgandawn]

nods. I did some tests and this is also happening to me and at least one other gardener (possibly more). So you may be correct that this is a global default setting that was turned on. Grrrr. I am so grateful you noticed this.....I never look at the site without being logged in.

More here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs

[aethel]

According to Systems, the problem you noticed is actually caused by caching, which Systems implemented because I complained about the slowness of the site. /o\ So the flagged revisions thing is actually turned off (since we don't even have the extension installed).

[espresso_addict]

Still not showing several days after the edit? That seems very odd. What's the explanation for things showing logged in, but not logged out? (And by the way, the site has been slower than ever today.)

[onceamy]

Hi there,

Yes, the site is definitely still slow. Aethel and I (I think it is late as where Aethel is) are communicating with Systems -- when they implemented caching, they used one that didn't exactly suit our needs. I'm trying to get that rectified.

I'm also in chat, should you want to discuss this in a more real-time way.

[espresso_addict]

Thanks! I'm so glad this is being looked into and hopefully fixed.

hope this helps Systems

[morgandawn]

My edits that are affected: October 31 through today.

Re: hope this helps Systems

[onceamy]

Yeah, about the time Systems implemented the caching. Trying to get that fixed up -- I'm in chat should you want to talk about it more.

Re: hope this helps Systems

[morgandawn]

Thanks. Sounds like you folks are on it. Perhaps drop a note to the Gardeners list in case they are not reading here.

[facetofcathy]

I do actually look at the site logged out a lot. I hadn't noticed this problem, and I couldn't check it because the servers were a little too robust at the time this post went up.

However, just now, I see that if while logged out I click a wikilink that's a redirect, it loads the redirect page itself and the redirect just doesn't happen. If I log in the redirect behaves normally. I assume this is also a caching problem and it seems like a very user-unfriendly one.

[onceamy]

If I've got the right email, you should be cc'd on an email I sent to Systems about your report :)

[facetofcathy]

Yeah, got the cc.

Wow, manually using the redirects is about the last thing I'd expect non wiki aware readers to have to do. I'm surprised I haven't noticed that before now since I haven't been logged in in days.

[onceamy]

It should be fixed now :)

[tiyire]

This might be part of the same problem: When I´m logged out, I sometimes can´t see/access the references. Not all pages have that problem, but most recently it´s happened to me at the Stargate Atlantis page.