Help:Pending changes
| Pending changes trial General policy · Reviewing guideline · Original proposal · Pages with pending edits · All pages on trial |
"Pending-changes protection" (PC protection) is a tool that is being tested on a limited number of articles during a two-month trial. Articles under PC protection are open for editing, but changes will be visible to readers who are not logged in only after being checked for obvious vandalism and clear errors. To become visible to everyone, the edits have to be reviewed by a user with the appropriate access, known as a "reviewer". Reviewers are editors who have enough experience to identify obvious vandalism and other clear mistakes. You can become one too!
The use of PC protection is governed by the protection policy. Also see Wikipedia:Pending changes.
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[edit] Effects of PC protection
[edit] What it means for readers and editors
Viewing an article under PC protection, you may see an extra tab (see example). This means the latest edits are not shown, and can be viewed by clicking the tab. If you always want to see the latest version of articles, please log in and create an account. You can then set a preference to always show the latest version even if unchecked.
[edit] How it affects past revisions and page history
Pending changes only affects the current version of a page to be displayed to non-logged-in users. It does not affect page history. Reviewers accept or fix the latest version of a page; they rarely check all intervening changes. Unaccepted edits are never "lost" for lack of being "accepted". They are simply no longer candidates for wider public display as the current accepted version.
[edit] What pages will it be applied to?
Targets for "pending changes" include articles with a history of vandalism or inappropriate changes, and articles on breaking news stories. Initially a limit of 2,000 articles will be set. Diverse application of the new protection system is the goal, but preference may be given to pages that are likely to provide useful feedback for the trial Special:StablePages list all pages under PC protection.
[edit] How does the review process work?
If the edits under review are appropriate, the reviewer clicks the 'accept' button. If not, he/she can revert the obvious issues, and their fixed version will be considered checked and accepted instead. In both cases the latest version checked and accepted will be immediately shown to all our readers. This new version is called the "latest accepted revision".
For most articles that use the review process, edits by logged-in users (except users who registered very recently) are exempt from review; the software immediately grants such edits "accepted" status.
This process does not affect editing. All edits will be visible immediately to logged-in users and be shown in page history and user contributions, and all editing is of the latest edited version and the latest changes.
[edit] Advice for admins
To apply pending changes to a page, open up the page protection interface. Scroll down until you see the pending-changes selection box. You can change the status of the PC protection from there; the middle option corresponds to level 1 pending change protection, while the third option corresponds to the level 2 pending change protection. PC and traditional forms of page protection can coexist. For example, a page can be semi-protected, but have level 2 pending changes on so while auto-confirmed users can make an edit, they cannot review their edit and must wait for a reviewer. See the bottom of the page-protection interface for the PC protection log.
[edit] Why is this feature being introduced?
Wikipedia has always removed or prevented inappropriate changes using a combination of automated and manual checking, and page protection. But some changes cannot be machine-detected, making their prevention labour-intensive, while protecting articles is a source of frustration to well-meaning editors.
PC protection is an implementation of the highly configurable 'flagged revisions' extension in use on other Wikimedia projects, customized for the current needs of English Wikipedia. It is the first trial of that tool on this wiki.
