Wikiversity talk:Rollback

Before this edit, this policy didn't even have any discussion about it. Did the discussion/vote that lead to community consensus happen elsewhere? If so where? --darklama 18:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing it was a unilateral decision. The Jade Knight 04:29, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A quick check shows that it was indeed so—JWSchmidt evidently thought that this should be policy, and so he unilaterally made it policy. A review is indeed in order.  The Jade Knight 04:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * How should we go about this? Emesee 04:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You are correct that there was no vote. If The Jade Knight is correct about this history, this would be the second known occasion on which JWSchmidt unilaterally made something policy (see also: Custodianship, where User:Mu301 originally drew attention to its status change). --McCormack 06:29, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Votes
Support Neutral
 * becoming an official policy though I am happy to consider any changes that might be proposed to make it more acceptable to others. Adambro 14:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * this is pretty clearcut and describes existing practice. --mikeu talk 14:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, this is standard policy, sooner or later when this place becomes more widely known there will be a few bored students looking to cause some mischief. Lysander89 08:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * layout structure reorganized --Gbaor 08:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * layout looks good, it's simple without a lot of WV jargon and should explain the policy pretty well to newcomers. Trinity507 23:41, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have some coments below. More page-organizational than content issues, but I feel that these could make the policy clearer. --Gbaor 09:08, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments
Comments moved from Colloquium

I think this is both a dangerous and redundant tool. Dangerous in that it allows minimal debate before making edits disappear, possibly while destroying other edits that might be important to the consistency of the page, and redundant in that you can get the same effect with the Undo button, but only on an edit by edit basis.

I first became aware of the danger, when a friend edited my page, in a session while I was also editing it. She being picky about the nature of her edits, undid her own work, and at the same time, undid a formatting edit that I had done.

Not knowing exactly what the rollback button is supposed to do, I worry that the user it rolls back to, might not be the last edit before the vandal editing started, or that a useful edit might be lost in the rollback. However I can see in the recent edit war, with a certain user who will remain nameless, because we are still not sure he is gone, how you might want to revert copious quantities of edits, or an edit that destroys the content of the page. Recently I have seen a number of entries reverting edits to a previous stage, and have not been able to comment on them because there is no remaining evidence as to what was removed at my level as a user. I believe there should be some way of telling what was rolled back, else it is possible that the rollback feature could be used to stifle debate, as was attempted once or twice during the recent event by the user being censored.

Recent comments by other users, have indicated that policies like this are open to attack for arbitrariness of the decision to revert. Whether or not these attacks are valid, they tear at the trust structure needed for collaborative work. I think there is a step missing, perhaps a page that shows before and after images of each page involved in rollback. When the rollback button is pushed, it should post diffs of both versions of the page, on this central page for comment. Most of the time we will probably agree that the rollbacks were necessary, but if there is a discussion about a particular edit, everyone can look at the diffs, and comment on them allowing debate where the decision might have been labeled arbitrary.

This change in policy might not be as good an idea, as I think it is, especially in the case where vandalism results in profanity, objectionable content or harassment, but it could be a time limited offer allowing time for debate before the data is hidden.--Graeme E. Smith 16:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * "I believe there should be some way of telling what was rolled back" - Please take a look at or  or  and then click on ← Older edit a couple of times.  You will see that nothing is ever "lost" by the use of rollback as the rollbacked edits remain in the page history.  In the session that you describe is sounds like there was an edit conflict and not rollback.  The wiki has difficulty preserving the saves of two people who attempt to edit at the same moment, but this has nothing to do with the use of rollback.  The rollback tool only removes edits from a single user, so if you were the last person to edit the page before someone else vandalised it then your edit would not be removed.  In practice rollback is very little used, since we don't usually get that much vandalism.  But, when a serial vandal does strike, the rollback tool is very usefull.  As far as a "change in policy" the current page describes how rollback has been used and this is just an official statement of that.  Please have a closer look at how this tool works and you will see that the concerns you have described do not apply to what this tools does.  See meta:Help:Reverting for details.  --mikeu talk 16:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I am sure you are right, that nothing is ever lost, in a rollback, but that is not the same as saying that everything is accessible to a naive user, or that attacks on the administrators can't be made by people who have ulterior motives, that destroy the trust of the users, because they (the users) can't see that the rollback was required, when they look at the pristene new page. I suppose a certain amount of bickering is to be expected between competing wiki's, but I have noticed that the proponents of two different wiki's have both attacked the administers of this wiki, possibly hoping to attract more custom to their own.


 * It is interesting to note that when you move an argument from one page to another, like this discussion was, there is no past history, that I know of, that tells what the full text of the original discussion said, which seems to allow the dropping of some aspects to the discussion that might be controversial. You would have to go back to the original page and do the previous edit thing until you found the original text to tell. The longer from the time of the original edit that you do this, the more likely you will be to quit trying after a while, if only because the edit will fall off the page, and get buried in the past.--Graeme E. Smith 15:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course, if rollback is used content can be removed from the current version of a page, however, that action is recorded in the page's history and the previous version can still be accessed. In this respect, there is no real difference between someone editing a page manually and removing some content or using the undo feature.
 * As you note, as I've moved some of the earlier comments to this page, only my addition of those comments appears in the history for this page. Someone certainly could drop some of the comments as part of that process but it is very unlikely in my view. Something I'll often do but didn't in this instance is to link to version of the page where the comments are being moved from. In this case that was http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiversity:Colloquium&oldid=490966#Wikiversity:Rollback. By working through that page's history, anyone can discover who added the comments and when. This probably isn't an ideal system, alternatives have been proposed but have yet to reached a stage where they can be implemented, but it does work for the most part. Adambro 16:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What to improve
Oh! Edit conflict :) Anyway: What do you think? --Gbaor 17:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * "Any other mechanism for reverting edits that does not involve providing an edit summary specific for each reversion should also only be used for obvious vandalism." => this sentence could be simplified to "Any other mechanism for reverting edits that does not involve without providing an edit summary specific for each reversion should also only be used for should be used just in case of obvious vandalism."
 * 2 lines after "Use of the rollback tool" move right to the beginning to the introduction part - this IS about the rollback
 * the 2 subheadings unify under "Not obvious vandalism" and "Obvious vandalism" - rollback is for the obvious one, but later it has to be clarified in what cases it should not be used.
 * Maybe specify these under "When not-to-use rollback": Edit wars + unexperienced editors (for now)
 * Maybe specify these under "When not-to-use rollback": Edit wars + unexperienced editors (for now)


 * These changes sound fine to me, and will make the text clearer. --mikeu talk 12:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest Gbaor goes ahead an makes the changes he is suggesting. It will probably be easier for us to consider changes that have been made rather than proposed changes. I doubt though based upon my impression that the changes would have any material impact on the policy and so it is unlikely they would change anyone's general opinion of the policy. Adambro 17:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

✅ - no changes in the meaning of the text, just reorganization to make the structure of the policy clearer --Gbaor 08:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me. Adambro 11:41, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Community Review
This policy is currently the subject of a Community Review. --JWSchmidt 15:37, 30 July 2010 (UTC)