User:Bookish

Map of the Galapagos archipelago showing the names of the islands.

I enjoy creating graphics images that are clean and sharp. I contributed a screenshot of my favorite tool for image file size optimisation to Wikipedia's Portable Network Graphics (PNG) article.

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When I look up information in Wikipedia I don't always log in. Nevertheless, if I see vandalism I revert it straightaway. Those repairs won't show up on my user contributions page.

Patrolling vandalism

I have been a registered Wikipedia user since the beginning of March 2006. Since then, I've realized that if I were to ignore all the non-neutral edits and dedicate my time to reverting vandalism, it would still require more time than I have available. It appears Wikipedia has reached the size where attempts to police bias and vandalism can't keep up with the backlog.

Wikipedia is based on five foundation issues that are essentially beyond debate. One of them is that anyone can edit articles without registering. The consequence is that vandalism is a never ending problem. It occurred to me that an "Approval" system might be the answer. Each change could be put on hold until a second editor clicked an "Approved" button. Only registered users would have approval status. Prior to approval, proposed changes would appear on a separate "Pending" page, listed in the same way as the history of changes. The article's talk page could have a counter showing the number of changes pending. Once approved, they would be transferred to the article's main history page.

In practice, there would probably have to be a central list of changes that had been awaiting approval for more than a few days -- "Approvals outstanding." It might also be necessary to flush changes that had not received approval after a much longer period of time, perhaps a month or two. One possible drawback is that some articles don't get visited by registered users very often. Perhaps the top ten items on the central "Approvals outstanding" list could presented to users each time they log in.

Since Wikipedia's inception one of the changes introduced is that only registered users can start new pages or upload images. Putting changes on probation would have the added benefits of neutralizing deceptive sock puppet accounts and dampening retaliatory NPOV tagging. It wouldn't prevent conspiracies between editors who wanted to promote a POV agenda. Maybe there could be a sanction to bar users from granting approvals if they ignored a certain number of warnings.

Wikipedia's Village pump proposals

Since writing the paragraphs above I've found a place where similar proposals have been discussed before: Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals).

In particular:

1. Non-logged-in users only see most recent logged-in-user edited version, and
2. Proposal: Require changes by anonymous and novice users to be reviewed.

The difference from what I've suggested is that neither proposal tackles sock puppetry, retaliatory NPOV tagging or editor conspiracies. There is also a proposal to revise the IP blocking policy.