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Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Anti-harassment/Reduce Conflict - Change Revert workflow

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Reduce Conflict - Change Revert workflow

  • Problem: Reverts can cause conflict and harassment, but this may be due system issues as well as editor behaviour. Causes of conflict to do wth reverts are are that discussions are not happening, or are happeing using comments on reverts rather than talk, or on user talk rather than article. Attacks on user pages has been linked to the loss of experience editors and harassment

    Currently, the revert process is:

    1. An edit is done by the soon to be revertee.
    2. Watchlist is triggered, an editor reviews with the help of ORES
    3. The reverer reverts, and a revert triggers a notification to revertee.
    4. Revertee may be upset at speed of revert (perceived injustice may cause conflict)
    5. The revertee clicks on the notification, and they are sent to diff
    6. The difference screen
Issues with this are:
  • There is no clear call to action, and the screen is powerful but complicated (uncertainty is a cause of conflict).
  • The diff screen has lots of coloured options/links, but most will cause conflict if done for the wrong reasons ([restore this version], [edit], and [Undo] etc).
  • The diff UX accidentally personalises the revert ; the revertee editor (left) vs Revertor editor name(right), and the last coloured line (so most likely to be done if confused) links to the revertor's user page and user talk).
As an aside, code repositories sometimes use mine/theirs to remove bias.
  • Proposed solution: A new preference (set to Yes for new editors) gives two choices
    1. No - Same as now
    2. Yes - the revertee to be given clear choices
      1. Add revert topic to article (or maybe project talk)
      2. revert summary, and link to diff copied to article talk, with a reply started to be filled in by the revertee, revertor receives a notification upon save
    The next step in the dispute resolution is outlined.
    • View the diff
    • Learn more about reverts
  • Who would benefit: Editors Community as it encourage dialogue see Wikipedia:Revert_only_when_necessary#Explain_reverts, and Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution
  • Risks: Editors do deletions rather than reverts.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:
  • Proposer: Wakelamp (talk) 12:26, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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