Topic on Talk:Flow/Interactive prototype

Vandalism, privacy issues, spam, libel issues, etc.

4
John Broughton (talkcontribs)

Today, every editor has the ability to remove vandalism, violations of privacy, libel, purely attack postings, wikichat, and so on from talk pages. Flow doesn't allow that!?!

What I'm seeing is statements like "Administrators must be able to delete individual comments or entire topics"; "certain groups (presumably local admins) would have the ability to edit other people's comments, but most users would not have that ability". Do you have any idea how many thousands of posts are deleted (directly or via revert) every day from talk pages? Are you really seriously thinking that whenever an editor sees something wrong, he/she should summon an admin?

The larger issue is that wikitext, and diffs, establish accountability. Yes, any editor can delete another editor's comments, but do that more than once - after a warning, probably posted via template, on the editor's user talk page - and that editor is likely to get blocked. Yes, any editor can edit anyone else's comments - but it better be constructive and defensible, or

And that's the problem with Flow as it seems to be conceived - exactly the problem that has resulted in moderation on discussion boards, and for comments to blog posts, and to a lot of blog posts not even allowing comments - it takes a lot of work to prevent abuse. Wikis solve that problem by enabling any editor to be a moderator (remove abuse). And the ability to see exactly what an editor did (diffs) establish accountability - yes, editors have all this power, but they also can be held to task.

So, if we're talking grand design here, the software absolutely needs to meet three major requirements:

  • (1) A majority of the experienced editors (for example, those with rollback privileges) must be enabled to fix problematical posts; the system will fail catastrophically (spam, vandalism, abuse attacks, etc, on user talk pages) if only admins can act on problematical posts.
  • (2) It must be possible for editors to edit the posts of others, not just hide or delete them. For example, in an article talk page, some issues are potentially libelous; it's critical to remove the libelous part without just deleting the posting if a good discussion is to continue (and, obviously, to prevent editors from feeling that their posts are being censored).
  • (3) There has to be accountability when someone edits someone else's posting (or deletes it, of course). That is, there has to be an "audit trail" - which is what diffs are - so editors can be accountable. There also has be to be some way to scan the editing that other editors have done (that's one use of diffs, in history pages); otherwise "accountability" is a pointless word.

If Flow can't do (2) and (3), that's a deal-breaker, as far as I'm concerned. The English Wikipedia isn't a pristine world where 99.9 percent of posts are non-abusive. Rather, it's a very messy place, with lots of vandals and spammers and trolls and newly-registered editors who don't understand community norms and IP editors who often have zero understanding of - and zero commitment to - Wikipedia's rules. In such semi-chaos, (almost) every experienced editor needs to be a moderator of sorts, and moderation has to be more than just deleting problematical postings.

Jasper Deng (talkcontribs)

I have to concur and note that this was one of the pet peeves I've seen with LiquidThreads. Although most people can edit most posts, only admins can outright delete them.

Quiddity (talkcontribs)

See w:Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Arbitrary_Section_Break_1, particularly Jorm's and Whatamidoing's comments. Editing other people's comments is just a user-right, which will (presumably) be up to us to decide how it is given out (and/or changed later on). If it can be restricted to "group-admin", it can be restricted (or unrestricted) in any way.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

There's a lot here; I'll see if I can capture all of it.

Currently, the prototype defines the following:

  • Editing your own comments is something you have the right to do.
  • Editing the comments of others is something that requires privilege (in the prototype, that's the "admin" toggle)
  • Deleting a comment is something anyone can do.
  • Restoring a comment is something anyone can do.
  • Deleting a topic (and all comments in it) is something anyone can do.
  • Restoring a topic (and all comments in it) is something anyone can do.
  • Closing a topic (hatnoting it) is something anyone can do.
  • Re-opening a topic is something anyone can do.
  • Suppressing a topic is something only those with privilege can do.
  • Editing a topic title is something anyone can do.

All of those use cases above are doable in the prototype. There is another use case - suppressing a comment - that has not been implemented in the prototype but will be in the next revision.

When comments are edited - by anyone - a marker is placed in the comment indicating that it was altered and by whom.

When a comment or topic is deleted - by anyone - a marker is placed indicating that an item was deleted and by whom. Leaving the marker is important for thread continuity and to note that replies to the comment have been left to something no longer there.

The only functional difference between the current model and the Flow model is that the ability to edit someone else's comments is restricted. That's it.

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