According to a post by William Pietri, project manager for the Flagged Revisions Deployment Project, the flaggedrevs extension will be deployed on the English Wikipedia on June 14.
Unlike other projects such as the German Wikipedia (where the extension has been live since 2008), the English Wikipedia will make use of only the "flagged protection" feature, which has been renamed "pending changes" following extensive discussion on the mailing list Foundation-l and the
terminology subpage
. It allows administrators to apply a new kind of protection to a page, under which it can still be edited by every user, but the change will not be visible (in the default view) to unregistered users unless it has been made or confirmed by a trusted user.
The feature will be activated only for a trial, which is expected to last two months and will be limited to a maximum of 2,000 pages. The trial is likely to generate considerable media attention, given the fact that its mere announcement last August has already received coverage (see Signpost story).
A new help page, with which Pietri has requested assistance, is
here. Some diagrams explaining the terminology are here. The feature can be tested out before deployment on the flaggedrevs test wiki
.
There was some debate in a recent
RfC on whether or not the trial configuration should involve the separate "Reviewers" user rights group or use the existing "Autoconfirmed" group as the trusted users group. Some technical details of the deployment are still being hammered out
.
The following table summarizes permissions under current settings for the trial (more details
here
):
Interaction of Wikipedia user groups and page protection levels
All users can edit Edits by unregistered or new editors (and any subsequent edits by anyone) are hidden from readers who are not logged in, until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or admin. Logged-in editors see all edits, whether accepted or not.
Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism,
BLP
violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users.
Specific topic areas authorized by ArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, or high-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive.
Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects central to operation of the site or that are in other editors' user spaces.
* In order to edit through extended confirmed protection, a template editor must also be extended confirmed, but in practice this is almost always the case. Other modes of protection:
The Wikimedia Foundation has hired two new employees: Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer, and Barry Newstead will be the Chief Global Development Officer. According to an FAQ about the positions Exley will be in charge of programs, including Fundraising, Reader relations, Public outreach, and volunteer coordination; Newstead will be in charge of Communications and Business Development.
and Greenpeace USA. He also ran the parody website gwbush.com.
Barry Newstead is currently a partner at the strategy consultancy firm The Bridgespan Group, where he has been leading the team assisting the Foundation in the Strategic Planning process since last year. Newstead has written a series of blog postings about the process on the web site of the Harvard Business Review. In one of his first postings, Newstead expressed concern that the inner Wikipedia community might not be "open to more radical strategic options that might advance the vision", citing the "near-taboo" of advertising as one possible example. However, in a later posting, Newstead offered huge praise for the contributions of Wikipedia volunteers to the strategy process.
Originally, the Foundation had set out to hire a Chief Development Officer, responsible for fundraising (a common position in non-profits) and a Chief Global Program Officer (responsible for relations with Wikipedians and readers). According to a Q&A and a separate announcement to the community by the Foundation's executive director Sue Gardner, the CDO role was expanded to that of a Chief Community Officer, at the suggestion of Exley, who argued that donors should be regarded as part of the same community as editors and readers, instead of being treated separately.
According to Gardner, filling these positions is the result of a search process of "many months", and "completes the C-level hiring, with the exception of the Chief Human Resources Officer", which is expected to be announced within six weeks. (The other two C-level posts are the Chief Financial and Operating Officer, filled by Véronique Kessler since 2008, and the Chief Technical Officer, for which Danese Cooper was hired earlier this year – see Signpost coverage – following the departure of Brion Vibber.)
British Museum gives "backstage pass" to Wikipedians, announces prizes