Help:Page validation

WikiQueer does page validation utilizing FlaggedRevs, an extension to the MediaWiki software that allows WikiQueer to monitor the changes that are made to pages, and to control more carefully the content that is displayed to WikiQueer readers. Pages are flagged by "editors" and "reviewers" to indicate that they have been reviewed and found to meet basic WikiQueer policies. Each subsequent version of the page can be "flagged" by those users to review new changes.

The ability to flag revisions makes it easier to co-ordinate the process of maintaining WikiQueer, since it is much clearer which edits are new (and potentially undesirable) and which have been accepted as constructive.

Introduction
This feature allows readers who have logged in and have set their preferences as such to be served the latest reviewed versions of pages when they exist. By default the latest version of a page, reviewed or not, is shown to readers. Administrators are able to change the settings for pages so that only the latest reviewed version of a page is shown by default to logged-out readers. Regardless of what version is initially shown, in cases where there are pending unreviewed changes to a page, there will be tabs titled Read and Latest draft to switch between the latest reviewed version and the most recent edit.

Regular contributors are automatically given reviewer status by the software. Reviewers automatically review pages at the lowest setting (called checking a page) when they save, so active articles will usually have contributions by non-reviewers reviewed shortly after they are committed.

Terminology
Page validation introduces some new terminology relating to users and editing. While each term is fully customizable to allow for language differences, some terminology is generally universal. Page validation defines "flags" that can be applied to revisions of a page to indicate the quality or other attributes of that version. Flags are grouped into hierarchical "scales"; while some wikis use only one scale, others may use multiple scales to indicate different attributes of a page. For instance, the default configuration of FlaggedRevs defines three scales, "Accuracy", "Depth" and "Readability", with each scale containing four flags.
 * Flags and flagging

Markers are more abstract groupings of flags that identify articles as generally of a particular quality. There are three markers available, "checked" and "quality". By default, any revision that has been flagged to any level on all of the flag scales that the wiki uses, qualifies for the "checked" marker. The default settings for the "quality" marker are level-1 for accuracy and depth, and level-2 for readability.
 * Markers

Pages are available in two 'aliases': the "current version" and the "stable version".
 * Stable and current versions

Current version
 * The current version is, as expected, the most recent version including the most recent edits, whether or not those edits were constructive.
 * The current version is also referred to as the draft of a page.

Stable version
 * The stable version is the most recent version of the page that has been flagged to a high enough level to qualify for the necessary marker.
 * Which marker is required for a revision to qualify as the stable version can be specified by a wiki's developers, and can be customised on individual pages by administrators. They can also set and customise which alias is displayed to readers by default, in the same fashion.

You can always link directly to the current or stable versions of a page, by appending &stable=0 or &stable=1 to the url, respectively.

Editing
Page validation does not affect a user's ability to edit a page; only the way the resulting version is handled by WikiQueer. Whenever a user edits a page, the contents of the edit window are always the wikimarkup for the current version, to prevent revision forks from accumulating. When there are unreviewed changes made since the last stable version, a diff is provided above the edit window to highlight any changes. This is important as the text being edited may not be the same as the page the user viewed before clicking the "" link (if the user was viewing the stable version); and it allows any changes to be immediately reviewed and modified or reverted if necessary. If the user will not be able to see their changes, an additional warning message is displayed,. Other than this the editing process is unchanged by the page validation process; edits are made, previewed and saved in the normal manner.

Users who are capable of reviewing edits are encouraged to do so both during and after they edit. There is an option next to the "" and "" checkboxes to immediately review the version resulting from that edit, although this option is unchecked by default. Once a reviewer has made an edit, they are returned to the article as normal, but are presented with a diff of all changes, including theirs, since the last stable version, with the option to immediately review the changes.

Reviewing
With the exception of the "review this edit" checkbox on the edit screen, all methods of reviewing versions use the same interface. At the bottom of a draft page, a series of radio buttons or checkboxes allows the reviewer to select which flags to apply to the revision, and there is the option to provide a comment that will appear in the review log.

Users can review any version, including versions that have already been reviewed by others. In this instance the newest review overrides previous reviews: if the new reviewer flags the version at a higher level than the previous reviewer, it is considered a normal "approve" review, while 'confirming' another reviewer's assessment by flagging the version to the same level is recorded as a "re-review". By flagging a previously-reviewed version as 'unassessed', reviewers can effectively 'unflag' a revision; these "deprecations" can be seen in a separate stream in.

Finding unreviewed versions
FlaggedRevs is designed to encourage eligible editors to review versions quickly and efficiently, and so links are provided in most common locations to review changes by editors who cannot flag the versions themselves. Edits that have resulted in an unreviewed version are marked with an exclamation mark ! in the watchlist and the RecentChanges feed, with a link to review the changes. When viewing a page that has unreviewed edits, a banner is also added to indicate the number of edits since the last stable version, the age of the stable version, and a link to review the changes. The FlaggedRevs extension also creates a number of new special pages that can be used to find and manage reviewed and unreviewed pages:
 *  - pages which have a stable version
 *  - pages that have pending changes from the stable version.
 *  - pages that have pending changes from the stable version that also have recent changes tags.
 *  - pages that have no reviewed stable version.

The latter two pages also include the number of users who have each page on their watchlist, so that 'backwater' articles can be identified and monitored; because of this slightly sensitive information, access to pages is usually restricted to users who have the ability to review versions. is sorted by the time since the last revision was flagged, oldest first.

General oversight
In addition to these pages, several other reports give general oversight over the reviewing process. is a list of pages where the default display settings have been overridden by administrators to always show readers the "stable" alias by default.

 provides an aggregated log of all reviews made on WikiQueer. These events are also added in a new 'stream' to the main log at Special:Log, at Special:Log/review. However, the report at can be filtered by marker type, namespace, whether the action was to review, unreview or re-review the revision, and whether the review was automatic or manual.

Finally,  provides a summary of how thoroughly each content namespace has been reviewed, and other useful data about the reviewing process.

Administrators' abilities
Each registered user can set in their preferences whether they wish to see the "current" or "stable" alias by default when viewing an article.

Administrators have the ability to use the special page  (Special:Stabilization/PageName) to override the default display for unregistered users. Administrators can set a page to display the stable version by default, and can also control how the stable version is selected, choosing which marker is preferred.

Administrators also have the ability to grant users the ability to review edits, and to revoke that permission in case of abuse, by using the Special:UserRights interface. This explicit assignment overrides any permissions automatically given to the user by the autopromote feature – if an administrator has explicitly revoked a user's reviewing permissions, the autopromote feature will not grant them back, and vice versa.