How Wikipedia works (part 3)
Hi, Habr!
Given the interest in previous publications about the device Wikipedia continue the story. I briefly take a wand from a colleague. The topic of this publication can be formulated as “Who are the“ Moderators of Wikipedia ”?” - it is about who has what rights when editing on Wikipedia.
Previous articles:
“The Wikipedia moderator deleted my article”, “The Wikipedia moderator canceled my edits” - such messages are often read by Wikipedia members, they are often left by novices and people who decide to “correct the error” in an article about their favorite movie, character or something else. So who are they - "Wikipedia Moderators"? Understanding the different statuses of Wikipedia participants is not so easy, the purpose of this post is to tell about it.
')
To begin, I will answer the question about moderators - in fact, they are all Wikipedia participants. Any participant (even unregistered) can technically undo any editing in the article, unless the article is protected from editing. Unfortunately, the concept of "Free Encyclopedia" is not completely understood by many. Freedom, they understand as an opportunity to write anything about anything. In reality, the concept of freedom refers to the fact that Wikipedia can be ruled by anyone who desires this. At the same time, there are participants who keep track of recent edits - it is they who more often than others cancel incorrect edits if they contain vandalism, advertising, spam, etc. It should be borne in mind that different participants may have different technical capabilities for such actions. Someone can just undo the edit, someone can take some measures to prevent such violations. So let's try to figure out who has what rights.
First, a little about terminology. All people who make edits on Wikipedia are referred to as participants (in English user terminology). In addition, the concept of “participant status” is usually avoided; they say that the participant has some kind of flag.
There are 2 fundamentally different categories of participants.
Sometimes they are also called anonymous participants, although this is not quite terminologically correct. Oddly enough, but unregistered participants leave much more information about themselves. The fact is that for any Wikipedia page you can see the history of edits. And it certainly has information about who makes what changes. For unregistered participants, their ip-address is recorded. So if you don’t want someone to find out more about you than necessary, it’s better not to edit Wikipedia anonymously - by ip-address (especially if it is static) you can learn a lot about the author of edits (for example, place of work - if the participant rules from the working computer). In addition, unregistered participants can edit far from all pages, and the attitude of many Wikipedia authors towards them is quite ambiguous (for example, in English Wikipedia, unregistered participants have even cut off the possibility of creating new articles). Although there are participants who essentially do not want to register, but believe me: a registered participant gets much more opportunities to write articles.
What does a member get if he signs up? First, it will have a permanent account and a discussion page. If an unregistered participant has a dynamic ip, then chasing him to bring some information, pleasure, is something else (I know from my own experience). Registered member after some time will be able to download illustrations and rename articles. In addition, a registered participant can create articles in his personal space - no one will interfere with his work on the article, after the work is finished, the article can be moved to the main article space (without different prefixes). But Wikipedia spaces are a topic for a special conversation. In short, that is the main space where all the articles are located (there are no prefixes before the title of the article). There are various service spaces, which are not so few. They contain pages that are not articles. One of these spaces is Personal space. For it there is a prefix Member. For example, you are registered as Goga. Then your personal page will have the name Member: Goga (the synonymous name User: Goga is also supported). Discussion page may be titled User Discussion: Goga. What else does a registered member get? He can mark articles that interest him (or which he has created) as tracked, after which he can track any edits to them - each registered participant has a special “Watch List” page, where all edits in the monitored pages for a certain period of time are displayed. In addition, a registered member can customize Wikipedia for themselves - choose the design option that he sees (there are several themes created from which you can choose the one you like most), you can use various scripts and gadgets that significantly expand the possibilities of working in Wikipedia ( for example, expanding the capabilities of the toolbar for editing articles), you can make your own design, using a personal css file.
After some time has passed after registration and the registered participant will make a certain number of edits, his possibilities will expand. After 4 days from the date of registration, the participant who made at least 15 edits is automatically transferred to the “Authenticated Member” group. What does this give? He gets the opportunity to edit partially protected pages, rename pages, add external links without confirmation (captcha). After 14 days, participants who have made more than 20 edits automatically receive a flag uploading, which makes it possible to upload files to Wikipedia (first of all, these are illustrations). Although everything related to files is not so simple - there are very serious limitations on which photos can be uploaded and which not, but this is a topic for another discussion. In short: you can upload only files you personally created (with certain restrictions), as well as files in the public domain or created under a free license. Non-free files can be downloaded in principle, but with very substantial reservations. The issue of image licensing is generally one of the most difficult on Wikipedia. Moreover, if you violate the rules for the licensing of images, then the flag of loading you may be removed.
However, these flags are not the only ones that exist on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community is a self-organizing mechanism, for the normal functioning of Wikipedia you need competent participants who can get additional technical rights. Briefly consider what kind of rights.
First of all, it is the Administrator flag . The administrator is an experienced member who knows the rules of Wikipedia. He has a number of technical rights, including the possibility of deleting / restoring articles, as well as blocking participants for violations. Administrators can also assign (and remove) some flags to participants. At the same time, administrators also have a social component - administrators summarize discussions (deletion of articles, for example), act as intermediaries in complex issues, and are approached to respond to various violations. Also, administrators can protect pages, and there are 2 levels: to auto-confirmed members and to administrators. Usually protection is imposed in the event of permanent vandalism or a war of edits. At the same time, preventive protection is also possible. There is an alternative - stabilization of the article. In this case, the article can be ruled by anyone, but unregistered participants by default will see the latest patrol version.
Now there are 89 administrators in Russian Wikipedia, and not everyone is active. The administrators' flag is assigned according to the results of the voting of active participants in Wikipedia, which lasts 2 weeks, in order to receive the flag certain requirements are imposed on candidates for their length of service and the number of edits.
As it is easy to see, there are not very many administrators (for comparison, there are 1,400 of them in the English Wikipedia), the work for them is not so little, and getting the flag is generally not so simple: you need to have some experience and experience, and to assign the flag you need to gain more than 2/3 of the votes (66%). As a result, some other flags were introduced, which are assigned after the discussion:
The administrator flag is assigned by bureaucrats, the other 2 by administrators.
Administrators can get it by voting, which is carried out in the same way as receiving the administrator flag, only you need to gain at least 2/3 of the votes (66%) as administrators, and 3/4 (75%). The presence of this flag extends the capabilities of the administrator, the bureaucrat can assign the flags of the administrator, bureaucrat, arbitrator and bot. Accordingly, the bureaucrats sum up the results of applications for the status of administrator, bureaucrat and bot, and also sum up the elections to the Arbitration Committee - a special commission on Wikipedia re-elected every six months in the amount of 5 to 7 arbitrators, which serves as the last stage for resolving disputes, has the authority to remove flags, including administrator and bureaucrat flags, as well as unblock participants and impose various restrictions on participants in case of violations. If it is interesting, it will be possible to talk about the arbitration committee separately. Until recently, bureaucrats were also involved in renaming participants ’accounts and usurping accounts, but soon they would withdraw this function from September 15, renaming local accounts would no longer be there, instead they would rename global accounts that the stewards would implement. Previously, only bureaucrats had the right to sum up in complex discussions (for example, rules), but now any experienced participant can summarize.
There are currently 6 bureaucrats on the Russian Wikipedia. It should be noted that there are not bureaucrats in all sections, and in Spanish Wikipedia the flag of bureaucrats is assigned to all administrators.
One of the challenges facing the Wikipedia community is to create quality articles. It is clear that this process is very long. One of the problems of Wikipedia is that anyone can rule it. And a lot of edits in the articles - vandal. To combat vandalism, spam, hoaxes, etc. At one time, a special mechanism was created - article patrols. A patrol may mark an article as patrolled if they meet certain requirements. First of all, this is the absence of obvious vandalism, advertising, clearly inaccurate information, etc., as well as when the article complies with certain requirements for filling and design.
To accomplish this task, a special patrol flag was introduced. It is assigned to bona fide participants who have shown their understanding of the requirements for articles being patrolled. Moreover, if the patroller makes an amendment to an article that has already been patrolled, then it will remain patrolled. If the article (or, more precisely, the current version of the article) was not patched, then the patrol officer must manually set the mark on patrol. This mark demonstrates that the article meets certain quality requirements.
In addition, the auto - patrol flag was introduced - it is assigned to bona fide members, whose patrols do not need to be edited. If an auto patrol makes an amendment to an already patrolled article, then it remains patrolled, but they cannot manually leave a note on patrolling.
In the load to the flag patroller usually issue two more flags:
Flags are assigned by administrators following a discussion that lasts 3 days, as a rule, although the administrator has the right to assign a flag to a bona fide participant at his own risk and risk without discussion.
In addition to the above, there are a number of flags to perform specialized tasks.
With it, you can hide the version of the pages from the visibility so that their contents will not be seen by anyone except the auditors themselves. By the way, administrators have had such a tool for several years now, but auditors can hide the visibility of article versions from administrators. Generally, auditors hide personal information (for example, if someone has published a phone number, credit card, etc.) The flag is assigned only by the decision of the Arbitration Committee by the stewards, while the auditors are required to prove that they are at least 18 years old and must be prepared Provide personal information about yourself to Wikimedia Foundation staff. In Russian Wikipedia now there are 4 auditors (according to the rules they should be at least 2).
Inspectors can view a list of all IP addresses of a user account, a list of all edits from a specific IP. They can see the log of actions of all reviewers. The main area of ​​activity is the identification of serial violators and the circumvention of locks by permanently blocked participants. There are strict rules - when such verification is possible, as well as what personal information can be communicated ( CheckUser policy ). The flag is assigned only by the decision of the Arbitration Committee by the stewards, while, as in the case of the auditors, the auditors are obliged to prove that they are at least 18 years old and must be prepared to provide personal information about themselves to the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. In Russian Wikipedia now 5 inspectors.
Wikipedia has many routine tasks that can be automated. To solve them, participants register separate accounts for which you can get the status of a bot. The flag is assigned by the bureaucrats at the end of the discussion. Bots work in automatic or semi-automatic mode, while by default the edits of the bot are not displayed in the list of recent edits or watch list. Details about this was written in the previous section .
The flag is assigned to participants selected to the arbitration committee who do not have the administrator flag. He adds to the arbitrators some of the functions of the administrators. After completing the work in the Arbitration Committee, the flag is removed. Currently, out of 7 non-admin arbitrators 2 participants, they are assigned a flag.
This is one of the global flags, stewards are assigned globally for all language sections of Wikipedia by the Wikimedia Foundation by a special procedure. Stewards can issue and remove any flags to any user in any Wikipedia section administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. At the same time, for local sections, stewards assign / remove flags only when there are no participants with corresponding rights in them. For quite some time now stewards can also be engaged in renaming global accounts, although it seems that for such a special flag will be created that can be obtained by the simplified procedure by bureaucrats.
Owners of this flag do not fall under the action of auto-blocking and blocking a specific IP address or the entire range. The flag can be assigned to bona fide members if their ip-address is periodically blocked. For example, if a vandal rules from some dynamic ip address, then the only way to deal with it is to block the entire range. In this case, bona fide members may also fall under the lock. To prevent this from happening, they may be given a special flag, although they must be ready to check for the identity of this vandal (see further about the checking flag).
There are a few more flags, but they are either very specific or not used yet.
More information about all the flags can be viewed on the Wikipedia pages, the main page here . Finally - a small statistic. Now in Russian Wikipedia:
I hope that the information provided will be useful. If you have specific questions, I am ready to answer them.
See you again!
Given the interest in previous publications about the device Wikipedia continue the story. I briefly take a wand from a colleague. The topic of this publication can be formulated as “Who are the“ Moderators of Wikipedia ”?” - it is about who has what rights when editing on Wikipedia.
Previous articles:
“The Wikipedia moderator deleted my article”, “The Wikipedia moderator canceled my edits” - such messages are often read by Wikipedia members, they are often left by novices and people who decide to “correct the error” in an article about their favorite movie, character or something else. So who are they - "Wikipedia Moderators"? Understanding the different statuses of Wikipedia participants is not so easy, the purpose of this post is to tell about it.
')
To begin, I will answer the question about moderators - in fact, they are all Wikipedia participants. Any participant (even unregistered) can technically undo any editing in the article, unless the article is protected from editing. Unfortunately, the concept of "Free Encyclopedia" is not completely understood by many. Freedom, they understand as an opportunity to write anything about anything. In reality, the concept of freedom refers to the fact that Wikipedia can be ruled by anyone who desires this. At the same time, there are participants who keep track of recent edits - it is they who more often than others cancel incorrect edits if they contain vandalism, advertising, spam, etc. It should be borne in mind that different participants may have different technical capabilities for such actions. Someone can just undo the edit, someone can take some measures to prevent such violations. So let's try to figure out who has what rights.
Registered and unregistered members
First, a little about terminology. All people who make edits on Wikipedia are referred to as participants (in English user terminology). In addition, the concept of “participant status” is usually avoided; they say that the participant has some kind of flag.
There are 2 fundamentally different categories of participants.
1. Unregistered members
Sometimes they are also called anonymous participants, although this is not quite terminologically correct. Oddly enough, but unregistered participants leave much more information about themselves. The fact is that for any Wikipedia page you can see the history of edits. And it certainly has information about who makes what changes. For unregistered participants, their ip-address is recorded. So if you don’t want someone to find out more about you than necessary, it’s better not to edit Wikipedia anonymously - by ip-address (especially if it is static) you can learn a lot about the author of edits (for example, place of work - if the participant rules from the working computer). In addition, unregistered participants can edit far from all pages, and the attitude of many Wikipedia authors towards them is quite ambiguous (for example, in English Wikipedia, unregistered participants have even cut off the possibility of creating new articles). Although there are participants who essentially do not want to register, but believe me: a registered participant gets much more opportunities to write articles.
2. Registered members
What does a member get if he signs up? First, it will have a permanent account and a discussion page. If an unregistered participant has a dynamic ip, then chasing him to bring some information, pleasure, is something else (I know from my own experience). Registered member after some time will be able to download illustrations and rename articles. In addition, a registered participant can create articles in his personal space - no one will interfere with his work on the article, after the work is finished, the article can be moved to the main article space (without different prefixes). But Wikipedia spaces are a topic for a special conversation. In short, that is the main space where all the articles are located (there are no prefixes before the title of the article). There are various service spaces, which are not so few. They contain pages that are not articles. One of these spaces is Personal space. For it there is a prefix Member. For example, you are registered as Goga. Then your personal page will have the name Member: Goga (the synonymous name User: Goga is also supported). Discussion page may be titled User Discussion: Goga. What else does a registered member get? He can mark articles that interest him (or which he has created) as tracked, after which he can track any edits to them - each registered participant has a special “Watch List” page, where all edits in the monitored pages for a certain period of time are displayed. In addition, a registered member can customize Wikipedia for themselves - choose the design option that he sees (there are several themes created from which you can choose the one you like most), you can use various scripts and gadgets that significantly expand the possibilities of working in Wikipedia ( for example, expanding the capabilities of the toolbar for editing articles), you can make your own design, using a personal css file.
After some time has passed after registration and the registered participant will make a certain number of edits, his possibilities will expand. After 4 days from the date of registration, the participant who made at least 15 edits is automatically transferred to the “Authenticated Member” group. What does this give? He gets the opportunity to edit partially protected pages, rename pages, add external links without confirmation (captcha). After 14 days, participants who have made more than 20 edits automatically receive a flag uploading, which makes it possible to upload files to Wikipedia (first of all, these are illustrations). Although everything related to files is not so simple - there are very serious limitations on which photos can be uploaded and which not, but this is a topic for another discussion. In short: you can upload only files you personally created (with certain restrictions), as well as files in the public domain or created under a free license. Non-free files can be downloaded in principle, but with very substantial reservations. The issue of image licensing is generally one of the most difficult on Wikipedia. Moreover, if you violate the rules for the licensing of images, then the flag of loading you may be removed.
Flags assigned to participants on Wikipedia
However, these flags are not the only ones that exist on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community is a self-organizing mechanism, for the normal functioning of Wikipedia you need competent participants who can get additional technical rights. Briefly consider what kind of rights.
Flags associated with Wikipedia administration
First of all, it is the Administrator flag . The administrator is an experienced member who knows the rules of Wikipedia. He has a number of technical rights, including the possibility of deleting / restoring articles, as well as blocking participants for violations. Administrators can also assign (and remove) some flags to participants. At the same time, administrators also have a social component - administrators summarize discussions (deletion of articles, for example), act as intermediaries in complex issues, and are approached to respond to various violations. Also, administrators can protect pages, and there are 2 levels: to auto-confirmed members and to administrators. Usually protection is imposed in the event of permanent vandalism or a war of edits. At the same time, preventive protection is also possible. There is an alternative - stabilization of the article. In this case, the article can be ruled by anyone, but unregistered participants by default will see the latest patrol version.
Now there are 89 administrators in Russian Wikipedia, and not everyone is active. The administrators' flag is assigned according to the results of the voting of active participants in Wikipedia, which lasts 2 weeks, in order to receive the flag certain requirements are imposed on candidates for their length of service and the number of edits.
As it is easy to see, there are not very many administrators (for comparison, there are 1,400 of them in the English Wikipedia), the work for them is not so little, and getting the flag is generally not so simple: you need to have some experience and experience, and to assign the flag you need to gain more than 2/3 of the votes (66%). As a result, some other flags were introduced, which are assigned after the discussion:
- the Summing-up flag , whose owners can sum up (with some restrictions) on the discussion pages of deleting pages, as well as delete articles;
- flag renaming files (the essence of it is clear from the name).
The administrator flag is assigned by bureaucrats, the other 2 by administrators.
Bureaucrat flag
Administrators can get it by voting, which is carried out in the same way as receiving the administrator flag, only you need to gain at least 2/3 of the votes (66%) as administrators, and 3/4 (75%). The presence of this flag extends the capabilities of the administrator, the bureaucrat can assign the flags of the administrator, bureaucrat, arbitrator and bot. Accordingly, the bureaucrats sum up the results of applications for the status of administrator, bureaucrat and bot, and also sum up the elections to the Arbitration Committee - a special commission on Wikipedia re-elected every six months in the amount of 5 to 7 arbitrators, which serves as the last stage for resolving disputes, has the authority to remove flags, including administrator and bureaucrat flags, as well as unblock participants and impose various restrictions on participants in case of violations. If it is interesting, it will be possible to talk about the arbitration committee separately. Until recently, bureaucrats were also involved in renaming participants ’accounts and usurping accounts, but soon they would withdraw this function from September 15, renaming local accounts would no longer be there, instead they would rename global accounts that the stewards would implement. Previously, only bureaucrats had the right to sum up in complex discussions (for example, rules), but now any experienced participant can summarize.
There are currently 6 bureaucrats on the Russian Wikipedia. It should be noted that there are not bureaucrats in all sections, and in Spanish Wikipedia the flag of bureaucrats is assigned to all administrators.
Flags Patrol and Auto Patrol
One of the challenges facing the Wikipedia community is to create quality articles. It is clear that this process is very long. One of the problems of Wikipedia is that anyone can rule it. And a lot of edits in the articles - vandal. To combat vandalism, spam, hoaxes, etc. At one time, a special mechanism was created - article patrols. A patrol may mark an article as patrolled if they meet certain requirements. First of all, this is the absence of obvious vandalism, advertising, clearly inaccurate information, etc., as well as when the article complies with certain requirements for filling and design.
To accomplish this task, a special patrol flag was introduced. It is assigned to bona fide participants who have shown their understanding of the requirements for articles being patrolled. Moreover, if the patroller makes an amendment to an article that has already been patrolled, then it will remain patrolled. If the article (or, more precisely, the current version of the article) was not patched, then the patrol officer must manually set the mark on patrol. This mark demonstrates that the article meets certain quality requirements.
In addition, the auto - patrol flag was introduced - it is assigned to bona fide members, whose patrols do not need to be edited. If an auto patrol makes an amendment to an already patrolled article, then it remains patrolled, but they cannot manually leave a note on patrolling.
In the load to the flag patroller usually issue two more flags:
- rollback flag - when using it, you can roll back all recent edits of one participant with one click. This is mainly used to quickly cancel vandal edits;
- rename flag without redirects - allows, when renaming articles, suppress the creation of special pages - redirects that automatically redirect from one page title to another.
Flags are assigned by administrators following a discussion that lasts 3 days, as a rule, although the administrator has the right to assign a flag to a bona fide participant at his own risk and risk without discussion.
Other flags
In addition to the above, there are a number of flags to perform specialized tasks.
Flag of auditor
With it, you can hide the version of the pages from the visibility so that their contents will not be seen by anyone except the auditors themselves. By the way, administrators have had such a tool for several years now, but auditors can hide the visibility of article versions from administrators. Generally, auditors hide personal information (for example, if someone has published a phone number, credit card, etc.) The flag is assigned only by the decision of the Arbitration Committee by the stewards, while the auditors are required to prove that they are at least 18 years old and must be prepared Provide personal information about yourself to Wikimedia Foundation staff. In Russian Wikipedia now there are 4 auditors (according to the rules they should be at least 2).
Checker flag (checker, from English. CheckUser - checking participants)
Inspectors can view a list of all IP addresses of a user account, a list of all edits from a specific IP. They can see the log of actions of all reviewers. The main area of ​​activity is the identification of serial violators and the circumvention of locks by permanently blocked participants. There are strict rules - when such verification is possible, as well as what personal information can be communicated ( CheckUser policy ). The flag is assigned only by the decision of the Arbitration Committee by the stewards, while, as in the case of the auditors, the auditors are obliged to prove that they are at least 18 years old and must be prepared to provide personal information about themselves to the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. In Russian Wikipedia now 5 inspectors.
Bot flag
Wikipedia has many routine tasks that can be automated. To solve them, participants register separate accounts for which you can get the status of a bot. The flag is assigned by the bureaucrats at the end of the discussion. Bots work in automatic or semi-automatic mode, while by default the edits of the bot are not displayed in the list of recent edits or watch list. Details about this was written in the previous section .
Member of the Arbitration Committee
The flag is assigned to participants selected to the arbitration committee who do not have the administrator flag. He adds to the arbitrators some of the functions of the administrators. After completing the work in the Arbitration Committee, the flag is removed. Currently, out of 7 non-admin arbitrators 2 participants, they are assigned a flag.
Flag steward
This is one of the global flags, stewards are assigned globally for all language sections of Wikipedia by the Wikimedia Foundation by a special procedure. Stewards can issue and remove any flags to any user in any Wikipedia section administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. At the same time, for local sections, stewards assign / remove flags only when there are no participants with corresponding rights in them. For quite some time now stewards can also be engaged in renaming global accounts, although it seems that for such a special flag will be created that can be obtained by the simplified procedure by bureaucrats.
Exclude from IP Blocks flag
Owners of this flag do not fall under the action of auto-blocking and blocking a specific IP address or the entire range. The flag can be assigned to bona fide members if their ip-address is periodically blocked. For example, if a vandal rules from some dynamic ip address, then the only way to deal with it is to block the entire range. In this case, bona fide members may also fall under the lock. To prevent this from happening, they may be given a special flag, although they must be ready to check for the identity of this vandal (see further about the checking flag).
There are a few more flags, but they are either very specific or not used yet.
Conclusion
More information about all the flags can be viewed on the Wikipedia pages, the main page here . Finally - a small statistic. Now in Russian Wikipedia:
- Total participation: 1 338 642
- Active Participants (committed an action in the last 30 days): 10,517
- Bots: 113
- Uploaded: 35 370
- Patrolling: 1705
- Auto Patrol: 1615
- Rollbacks: 1564
- Rename without redirections: 466
- Exceptions to IP blocking: 47
- Administrators: 89
- Bureaucrats: 6
- Summarizing: 50
- Renaming files: 48
- Arbitration committee members: 2
- Auditors: 4
- Checking participants: 5
I hope that the information provided will be useful. If you have specific questions, I am ready to answer them.
See you again!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/234847/
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