This is a failed proposal. Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump. |
The proposal is to give rollback privileges to users who are not admins. The process is simple:
A Bureaucrat has given their support to this proposal and said the workload would be manageable. A developer, Rob Church, is planning to work on an improved user rights interface which would facilitate this change.
Requests for rollback privileges is the place to ask for the rollback privilege, for fighting vandalism. Fighting vandalism and watching recent changes for unencyclopedic changes is a large but unrewarding task. It is made easier by the "rollback" feature which creates a one-click process to revert to the latest version of an article not edited by the last user to edit the page. The rollback appears in the edit history as a minor edit.
The rollback tool should be used strictly for reverting vandalism (what is vandalism?). It should not be used for other changes that are not clearly vandalism, such as a differing point of view (for example, if someone changes 'communist dictatorship' to 'socialist state', this should only be reverted without using the rollback).
Users with rollback privileges are expected to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Revert. Rollback does not allow explanations of the reversion rationale and is thus considered highly aggressive and inappropriate when dealing with a content disagreement. Misuse of the rollback feature in a content dispute is grounds for the removal of rollback privilege.
A user who is misusing rollback privileges should be reminded that they are operating outside of the guidelines. The template ((rollback)) should be placed on the user's talk page after a misuse.
A user who again misuses rollback after being given a warning may be listed at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard, and will have the privilege removed if a bureaucrat finds it to be abuse. Any user may report rollback abuse. The reporting user should list the diffs of alleged misuse and confirm that the user has been adequately warned. A monitoring administrator who finds the report to be valid may put a short-term block on the user to prevent further misuse of rollback while it is under bureaucrat review. The blocking admin should place ((rollback2)) on the user's talk to explain the reason for the block. If the reviewing bureaucrat finds that the report of misuse is valid, the bureaucrat will remove rollback privileges, remove any block, and place ((rollback3)) on the user's talk informing them of the decision. If the bureaucrat disagrees with the report, he or she will simply remove the block. In either case, the bureaucrat will note the action taken on the bureaucrat's noticeboard.
Egregious misusers of rollback may have their privileges immediately revoked by a bureaucrat, at the bureaucrat's discretion. After the privileges have been revoked, the bureaucrat should note the action taken on the bureaucrat's noticeboard.
Users who have had rollback privileges removed may reapply.
To request access to the rollback feature, please follow the instructions below. A history of positive contributions to Wikipedia, ranging from article edits to interactions with other users on talk pages, will be expected. While access to the rollback feature will be given out liberally to Wikipedians who request it, misusing the rollback feature may result in the permission being revoked.
In the case that the rollback tool is being misused, a bureaucrat may, at his/her discretion, remove the rollback ability. If someone has their ability to rollback removed, they may reapply to be granted the permission.
Add an entry for your request using ((subst:reqrollback|User name|Reason)) ~~~~
.
Foo user (talk · contribs) – I fight vandalism! Foo user 01:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Bar user (talk · contribs) – I do recent changes patrols! The Bar man 04:33, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Baz user (talk · contribs) – signed, Baz 06:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Argy sample (talk · contribs) – Argy sample 09:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
A javascript implementation of rollback will not work for all editors, due to lack of browser support for javascript or unwillingness on their part to use third-party scripts. The javascript implementation is still a manual revert - that is, it involves the loading of the following pages:
Assuming each of these is a 20kb page, this adds up to 100kb to do a manual revert. For users on 56kbps modems and other slow connections, this is time-wasting and often frustrating. Given rollback, steps 2, 3, and 4 and 5 are omitted (there is a rollback button on the diff page, and rollback leads to a short message rather than automatically loading the content page). This lowers the amount of data transferred to ~20kb. This is a significant reduction and is not only more friendly for contributors on slower connections but for the servers. MediaWiki developers have also found bugs with the implementation of the script and do not approve of it (Brion Vibber, Rob Church (anonymously)).
Overall, the rollback which admins currently have is better for both contributors the servers and than a workaround implementation, as it is faster and uses less bandwidth.
It is correct to say that this proposal will introduce a small amount of bureaucracy. However, this proposal will also increase the number of editors who will be able to swiftly remove vandalism from articles. Admins who did RC patrol before they became administrators will know how much easier it became with the rollback tool. Granting rollback to trustworthy contributors to enable them to do RC patrol more effectively is well worth the extra bureaucracy.
Some have suggested that the rollback privilege be given out automatically when someone reaches X edits, or has been registered for Y months (or be granted at the same time the ability to move pages/edit semi-protected pages is permitted). This approach is flawed for the following reasons:
The bug which allows admins to use admin tools when blocked (rollback, protect/unprotect, delete/undelete) has been fixed. Blocking an admin will prevent them from using rollback, protecting or unprotecting pages, deleting or undeleting pages. They will see the undelete page in the same way a non-admin would. Blocking a user with rollback would prevent them from using them. See bug 3801.
This proposal would give bureaucrats the ability to grant and revoke the rollback privilege individually. It is not a significant change from a technical perspective, but developers are reluctant to make any changes to MediaWiki until there is a consensus on what to do.
Appoint more, then! Bureaucrats have commented already that the load will not overwhelm them, but a few extra hands might be useful.