Template talk:Reviewed

Experimental template

I created this based on Wikivoyage talk:Business listings reliability Expedition#Reviewed templates. Thoughts? I think we wanted to restrict its use to a trusted class of contributors, but I don't know how to do that, and maybe it's not really something to worry about. --Peter ^Talk 00:31, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I wonder what scope this template is intended for? Whole article, sub/section, single listing? --DenisYurkin (talk) 20:40, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It would be for a whole article. It's the equivalent of a printed travel guide's first page, where they say who has verified the content and when (i.e., publishing details). --Peter ^Talk 16:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Before deploying this more widely I'd like to see a bit more definition around what "This page was reviewed and found accurate" entails, and ideally have the template link to a page that explains what is meant by "reviewed". I would think that at a minimum we would want to verify that all listed businesses are still in operation, although that could lead to a great deal of variation in quality of review if (for example) someone also verifies the hours and prices listed. Would it make sense to perhaps break this down into a couple of different levels of "reviewed"? For example, "all businesses are still operating", "all prices and URLs are valid", etc? -- Ryan • (talk) • 03:35, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I would fear that this template would backfire, emphasizing how out of date a guide is rather than how accurate it is. LtPowers (talk) 15:00, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

My sentiments exactly, if they are not clear from the below. Texugo (talk) 15:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Rationale

I forgot to explain the rationale: the criticism I see over and over and over again in the press (usually quoting traditional travel publishers) is that our content is inherently less reliable because there was no "expert" to check over the content and put their name next to it as a certification of reliability.

Put in different terms, it's also a criticism I've seen here from many users—that it's hard to determine whether our content is reliable, unless it's written by someone from one of our "fiefdoms" (e.g., stuff I've written about Baltimore, User:Gorilla Jones has written about Hiroshima, User:Sertmann has written about Copenhagen, etc). Even then, you would have to go into the history to see how recently a trusted user wrote the information.

This template would communicate the reliability/up-to-dateness of an article not just to insiders who know how to check history pages and know who is reliable, but to all our readers. --Peter ^Talk 16:40, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I get the rationale of suggesting reliability, but for me this template does 2 things wrong.

• First: it's way too prominent at the top of the screen, and having one particular name there seems wrong to me. Despite the good intentions, it suggests that the guide is mainly written by or at least is developed under editor-in-chief supervision of who-ever's name is written there. Especially to those random visitors who don't know wikis very well. Instead of re-inventing the wheel and experimenting with our own tool, can't we try the flagged revisions feature that Wikipedia uses, and develop further for our needs from there? Media has picked up on that quite a lot, and in fact we could benefit from the coverage there.
• Second, I think it gives a false illusion of reliability, this way. If we are to integrate something like this, we should be careful about what it promises. If I understand correctly, the template is updated when e.g. Peter makes an edit. However, it doesn't mean that Peter checked or updated all the other information there: he might just have corrected a syntax issue.

Lastly, can I propose that -while we discuss this further- we pick another article as test case, not La Macarena? I find it a bit unfortunate to have it as a factor in the star nomination. JuliasTravels (talk) 09:46, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

1. I also think it is a bit prominent at the top, but that is a detail that can be changed. Maybe a small green tick mark a suitable icon (and maybe the word "reviewed") in the top left corner, with a link to the notice, and the signed and dated notice at the bottom of the page, or if it is technically possible, at the top of the talk page.
2. It was worse than you suggested, it changed to suggest the last person who edited the page was the reviewer, at the date set by the person who last edited the parameter, but that bug has been removed. Now the date and time are set by putting your signature into the template as a parameter. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I also think it is way too prominent at the top. I would suggest nothing more than an icon somewhere, but if it doesn't display at least the date of review, it kind of defeats the purpose. So.. if we have to have this template, I think it should go at the bottom of the article just before the article status box, and in a less eye-catching color. However, to be quite honest, I am not a fan of this template idea in the first place. I think that either a) it won't catch on and will be used sparsely by a few users in just a handful of articles, or b) it will catch on, and rather than pointing out the few articles that are very up-to-date, it will end up emphasizing just how out of date most of our articles can get and discourage users from trying to use our information. Texugo (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I didn't mean for it to update whenever a change was made—that was definitely just a mistake! The point of the name + datestamp is the same as the publication date & author's name for a traditional travel guide. I can vouch that all content in La Macarena was accurate as of 26 Oct 2012, and I think that's extremely useful information for anyone traveling there. I also would like to see the information displayed more parsimoniously, but I'm very inept with templates. --Peter ^Talk 15:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

This discussion got forgotten, it seems :-) I'm still not at all a fan of this concept. I could imagine some sort of quality control in terms of trusted revisions or something, but I do think it's something we should do by the time the community is large enough to keep up with such things. Otherwise, I think Texugo will be right and this will end up pointing out how out-dated information gets. I also think any such thing should not have a single editor's name so prominently in the article itself. It just doesn't work well with the spirit of a wiki, I think. In any case, I've plunged ahead and removed it from the top of star article La Macarena. In the end, experimental templates should only be used on a low-visibility article and it's been there long enough, not updated for 5 months or so. But please, just replace it on another article if you want to bring this discussion back to life. JuliasTravels (talk) 09:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Datestamp

Right now the template inserts the current date, but a curator might want to put a template up later and backdate when the content was reviewed for accuracy/up-to-dateness. I've added it as an example to La Macarena, but that should be backdated to 26 October 2012, when I left the town (it's not possible to confirm changes remotely, since the town has virtually no online presence). --Peter ^Talk 16:32, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just made it a fully editable parameter. --Peter ^Talk 16:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Magic word causing problem

Magic word REVISIONUSER seems to remain active and changes the display every time someone edits the page. This will not give the desired information. You need maybe something that takes the reviewer's signature and stores that until someone else changes it. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I have changed the template. You now simply type in the usual four tilde signature as the parameter. This provides identity and timestamp. It seems to work. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

It might be useful to allow optional multiple parameters so more than one (up to five) reviewer can sign the template. Just add a pipe and four tildes after the last signature • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:17, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Huh? Unless those 2-5 users went there together and checked everything, I don't see why you would need to mention anything but the last person who checked everything and the time.Texugo (talk) 11:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's only the most recent review that needs displaying. --Peter ^Talk 15:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I am almost entirely neutral about the usefulness of this template, and how many reviewers it should accomodate. I made the edits because it needed fixing, and added the expanded capacity mainly to see if I could do it. I don't think many of us actually know many destinations well enough to give a realistic judgement that a whole article is accurate and up to date. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If we ever do develop a category of "trusted user" (perhaps a docent that also has the admin bit?) it may become useful. Until then and since it does not seem to be in use and does no harm, keep the experimental tag. This whole idea of "template clutter" is problematical in a project like this where server space becomes cheaper every year and the maintenance cost of this kind of template is pretty well zero. --118.93nzp (talk) 01:46, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Avoiding template clutter has never been a matter of server space but rather a matter of keeping our mental space organized - not making it harder for users to familiarize themselves with what is useful, common, and accepted versus a thousand idiosyncratic ways to do things. If we aren't going to use this, let's scrap it. There is no reason to keep shelved experiments which have failed to catch on, sitting around for years at a time. Personally I don't like the idea in the first place, and agree with whoever said above that allowing one user to sign their name right on the page isn't a very wiki-like style of attribution. Texugo (talk) 10:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

You've persuaded me, not with the "clutter" argument that really does not hold much water, but by highlighting the problem of allowing just one user to sign their name right on the top or bottom of the article. Archive it to a special area of "Problematic templates". --118.93nzp (talk) 11:51, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Peter was right about this idea and I strongly believe we really need some sort of initiative which can help maintain the quality of our guides especially guides of most important, or most visited or popular destination. As Julias suggested, I think using flagged revisions feature can be affective to some extent. --Saqib (talk) 13:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC)