Editing Encyclopedia:Historical archive/Policy/Approval mechanism (section)

===Magnus Manske's proposal===

:I'll try to approach the whole approval mechanism from a more practical perspective, based on some things that I use in the [[Wikipedia PHP script]]. So, to set up an approval mechanism, we need
**Namespaces to separate different stages of articles,
**User rights management to prevent trolls from editing approved articles.
:From the Sanger proposal, the user hierarchy would have to be
##Sysops, just a handful to ensure things are running smoothly. They can do everything, grant and reject user rights, move and delete articles etc.,
##Moderators who can move approved articles to the "stable" namespace,
##Reviewers who can approve articles in the standard namespace (the one we're using right now),
##Users who do the actual work. ;)
:Stages 1-3 should have all rights of the "lowerlevels", and should be able to "rise" other users to their level. For the namespaces, I was thinking of the following:
**The blank namespace, of course, which is the one all current wikipedia articles are in; the normal wikipedia
**An approval namespace. When an article from "blank" gets approved by the first reviewer, a copy goes to the "approval" namespace.
**A moderated namespace. Within the "approval" namespace, no one can edit articles, but reviewers can either hit a "reject" or "approve" button. "Reject" deletes the article from the "approval" namespace, "approve" moves it to the "moderated" namespace.
**A stable namespace. Same as for "approval", but only moderators can "reject" or "approve" an article in "moderated" namespace. If approved, it is moved to the "stable" namespace. End of story.
:This system has several advantages:
**By having reviewers and moderators not chosen for a single category (e.g., biology), but by someone on a "higher level" trusting the individual not to make strange decisions, we can avoid problems such as having to choose a category for each article and each person prior to approval, checking reviewers for special references etc.
**Reviewers and moderators can have special pages that show just the articles currently in "their" namespace, making it easy to look for topics they are qualified to approve/reject
**Easy handling. No pop-up forms, just two buttons, "approve" and "reject", throughout all levels.
**No version confusion. The initial approval automatically locks that article in the "approval" namespace, and all decisions later on are on this version alone.
**No bother of the normal wikipedia. "Approval" and "moderated" can be blanked out in every-day work, "stable" can be blanked out as an option.
**Easy to code. Basically, I have all parts needed ready, a demo version could be up next week.