Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2009/July

Enable flood flag?
(I know this has been brought up before, but that was a long time ago and that discussion seems to have stalled.) Recently, I've become somewhat annoyed when I, or another administrator, makes many edits in a very short period of time (i.e. using AWB, archiving articles, fulfilling masses of editprotected requests, etc.) and as a result flood rc so that other edits can't be seen without difficulty. If we had a flood flag enabled, this would help things when monitoring the rc. (Plus, the irc still shows all edits regardless of flood flag, so non-admins can easily check up on them). Thoughts? Tempodivalse [talk]  00:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I know I was nonplussed when the RC was filled with your recent fulfillment of editprotected requests. However, I am unfamiliar with the flood flag. Can you describe it and how it is applied? Is it a check box like the "minor edit" option or is it more like a bot flag? --SVTCobra 00:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I guess I should have provided a link, as not every one is familiar with how this works. See Flood flag. Tempodivalse [talk]  00:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I like it. However, I think that abuse of the flag should be punished severely, so to make sure it is only used appropriately. --SVTCobra 00:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's just another administrator function, like blocking, deleting, etc., so I think we should reprimand misuse of the flood flag the same way as we would punish misuse of other admin tools. Tempodivalse [talk]  00:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've seen this used on other projects like Meta, it generally works pretty well. Cirt (talk) 03:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I expect it mostly works well, but I think there should be some proviso that you alert when you enable it and disable it on WN:AAA. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If I understand correctly, the logs for granting/removing the bot flag appears in the user rights log and on the rc, so that should probably be enough. Tempodivalse [talk]  15:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that there's been some discussion and the idea seems to be feasible, I'd like to request a straw poll to help us determine whether we have consensus to install the flood flag. (remember folks - voting is evil but !voting is not.)


 * per my above comments. This can be very useful. Tempodivalse [talk]  03:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Cirt (talk) 03:50, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. Would have loved to have this in the past. (→ Zachary ) 03:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think if users are likely to deliberatly misuse the flag they shouldn't be admins in the first place. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 14:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * with the proviso that, based on this bit "Such actions must never be controversial, as using the flood flag decreases the amount of oversight they may receive. Abuse of the flood flag is treated as abuse of any other administrator tool would be." from the meta page controversial misuse could lead to a de-sysop vote, and a second incident of controversial misuse would definitely involve a vote of confidence. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * per Brianmc's proviso Brian | (Talk) | New Zealand Portal 20:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This poll has been open for over two weeks now, and nobody has opposed or objected, I think we have consensus. Could someone make a request for the flag to be installed at Bugzilla? I'd do it but I don't know my way around 'zilla very well. Tempodivalse [talk]  22:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems like a good idea. Calebrw (talk) 14:27, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Filed as bug 19521. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 22:07, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Changing the flag level on specific revisions
I made a new tool that allows Controlling if specific revisions are flagged. For example, if someone accidentally flagged an article before it was published, we could use it to de-flag the article. See User:Bawolff/sandbox/powerFlag. Cheers, hopefully its useful to someone. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That looks really useful, I'd recommend sticking it on the newsroom. Is there any way to have a list of sighted but unpublished pages - perhaps with quick links to your widget for this page? --Brian McNeil / talk 15:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Alrighty it should all work now. Both newsroom and User:Bawolff/sandbox/powerFlag may need to be hard refreshed for new js to kick in. Bawolff ☺☻ 16:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * So what happens when an article gets flagged before it was published? Exactly, nothing at all. Only the combination of flagging _and_ using the publish template has influence. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 14:33, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I find it far, far more useful to have unpublished stories highlighted in recent changes because there are no flagged revisions. I have on one or two occasions unflagged revisions and I'd suggest others do so as well. --Brian McNeil / talk 14:58, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Rollback
Please see Water_cooler/technical. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Q & A or faqs about current events
I propose Q&A or faqs about current events. Sometimes I have questions about current events but I don't find an answer in the news stories or in Wikipedia. BBC News does Q&A but it's not enough and they choose the questions and the topics. 62.120.207.203 (talk) 19:55, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be a nice addition to Wikinews, and something similar has been mentioned on the mailing list.
 * What was talked about was being more flexible in the interview format we use, and picking people qualified as subject-knowledgeable to expert. The problem is getting those knowledgeable people. Mainstream news agencies pay experts or keep them on retainer. We'd be more in a position of getting interested professors, and subject experts who might have a relevant PhD. The trial of the floated idea for this would likely be on the Serbian Wikinews but possibly translated. They have a couple of friendly geneticists and virologists who'd be interested in doing a piece on the H1N1 flu virus.
 * Is this the sort of thing you're thinking about? Any ideas how we could recruit other experts? Might find some ideas if you look in Category:Interview. --Brian McNeil / talk 21:00, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of the answers are already there, but they are scattered in different stories. 62.120.207.203 (talk) 21:32, 28 July 2009 (UTC)