Ah, now if only the inner problems could be solved by software…

Although the FlaggedRevs (the name of the flagged revisions extension) software allows for it and the German test has been configured so, it isn’t necessary for the flagged version to be displayed by default. It’s also possible to enable the latest version by default, and if this is so, also possible to dynamically enable it selectively for particular pages. What this means is that it’s not necessarily the change you dread.

In fact, the system might allow for more open editing by allowing pages which are currently semi-protected (so that only users with four-day-old registered accounts and at least ten edits can make changes) to simply have only the most recent flagged version visible. People would then still be able to make changes, though they’d have to be approved, rather than the current setup where unregistered users can’t make changes at all.

Also, the system is designed with multiple levels of “flags”: most people will be allowed to rank articles as clean of vandalism, while only experienced reviewers will be able to mark good articles and featured content (which will still be determined by consensus using the same method already in practice, using the privilege only to confirm what the community’s agreed on).

FlaggedRevs will be a useful tool and I don’t forsee it affecting much for the end-user aside from improved visibility of quality control. See nonsense in an article or need to be more sure it hasn’t been vandalized? Go back to the last sighted version. Want to be sure everything you’re looking at in a featured article has been scrutinized carefully by hordes of dedicated volunteer editors? Go back to the last version flagged “featured”. It’s not as earth-shatteringly numbing of the open-editing or constantly-updated nature of Wikipedia as you might believe.

There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt floating about there. Perhaps the best advice to take comes not from Wikipedia, but its spiritual companion the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC.

P.S.: You can check out (and even try yourself) the FlaggedRevs software at [en.labs.wikimedia.org] where an open test of the software is taking place. It’s also very informative about the nature of the extension.

Wikipedia ain’t perfect, but this would be a big step in the wrong direction.

Yeah, I’m a fan of it as it currently is and don’t really see a need to delay the flow of information with an approval system.