Wikibooks:Requests for permissions/Howard Beale

+Editor
I have recently been hired under a NSF grant awarded to Dr. Richard Doyle for, among other things, expanding and maintaining the Nanotechnology wikibook. Unfortunately, not even the former lead editor ( KristianMolhave) has permissions to approve changes made to the book, and no one has taken her place. So far as I can tell, no one still active on the book has editor status - a factor contributing greatly to the current stagnation of this project. Since no one still involved with the wikibook can approve my changes to the index and other pages, I have come here.

I am requesting manual authorization of my editor status for this wikibook only, if possible. Though I will certainly meet the requirements eventually, there is a time limiting factor imposed by the fact that this book is being used as a material reference in the curriculum of a Pennsylvania State University class associated with the grant. In order to add reviewed student contributions as they are created and incorporate research generated by our college in a way useful to both the wikibook and our class, I ask that I be granted editor status.

Although I have few edits on this wiki so far - in part due to my disillusionment from it currently taking two weeks for anything I code to be approved - you can see much more of my work at our Nanotransformations wiki, and my contributions page there. Thanks in advance! &mdash; Howard Beale (talk) 22:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The requirements for the flags were reached by trial and error, it falls to the acting admin to be satisfied by the requests for permission and that no objection is raised. I'm not objecting here, only attempting to explain the situation to you...
 * One of your comments seem strange to my understanding on how the system works, you said "I have few edits on this wiki so far - in part due to my disillusionment from it currently taking two weeks for anything I code to be approved", since your first 2 edits on the 8 October 2009 (having I "sighted" one of them on that same day), I don't understand how could you become so disenchanted about the system and the project to place this request on your fourth edit...
 * I'm not particularly supportive on the new flagged revision system on wikibooks, the issues you raise are only a few of the problems the system has on a project like Wikibooks (and am a bit unsatisfied myself by it not be formally discussed, since the approved but unspecified trial period has been for all measures supplanted).
 * In any case the only rational I can see for the requirements seems to be as a reward for the commitment of users to the project and to reduce the usefulness of spaming the pages, the only ones affected by the revised status of pages are unregistred or unlogged user. If working as expected most active users will be granted the flag in ~30 days, that makes the rest of the Wikibookians needing the flag having to do some extra work or just wait out that timespan.
 * This is the problem of this request. The issue created by advancing users that are too recent to the project (unknown and probably without knowledge), working on the good faith principle, all requests from Wikibookians sharing this characteristics should therefore all be dinned, if not it would extremely unfair to exclude any user that requests it (see Request by keithonearth ) and it would ultimately remove any of what I perceive are the only benefits the revision system brings to Wikibooks, reinforcing participation and reducing abusive actions... --Panic (talk) 03:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand where you are coming from. However, the sighting you seem to be referring to was KristianMolhave's - mine did not appear in the stable version of the Nanotechnology wikibook's title page until several days later. Although the flagged revision system certainly operates much smoother on books with an active community of contributers, for those such as  Nanotechnology it serves more as a barrier to entry than a protection against vandalism.


 * More to the point, the very first guideline listed on this site is the universal maxim of wiki editing: be bold - Permission to make improvements isn't required. Yet as it stands, I may only be bold in improving this wiki in a limited sense. Many completed pages of the nanotech wikibook will remain orphans, for example, until I am given permission to simply add them to the index. Perhaps it is a trivial thing, but then again, I am only asking for a trivial and ultimately inevitable promotion that I might fix it. &mdash; Howard Beale (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Question Would anyone object to simply de-sighting the page(s) in question? Off hand I'm not sure there's even more than one page involved; a small sample of pages from the book seem to all be unreviewed except for the main page. Since Panic seems to have done the first review of that page, presumably good etiquette would require his agreeing to the idea (I suspect he won't have a problem with it, do you, Panic?), but with only one page involved, it would only be very slightly tedious (de-sighting each reviewed version of the page, presumably in chronological order from earliest to latest). Then the page would show as having never been reviewed, and all edits to it would immediately become the default version for unregistered users. As long as there's going to be someone around to undo vandalism promptly, I for one would have no objection to this. And that would solve the actual problem without requiring a manual promotion to editor. --Pi zero (talk) 13:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This sounds like an absolutely fine solution to me. -- Howard Beale (talk) 16:49, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Editor status does the same thing as reviewer but doesn't apply pages rated at the highest level. Since Nanotechnology pages are rated at the base rating, editor status will be sufficient for the purposes described above.  Active books have less of a need for flagged revisions since they will be patrolled more often.  Flagged revisions help to reduce the effect of vandalism on inactive books.  Even those who are logged in can choose to see the latest sighted revision and not the latest edit.  Editor status is "no big deal" and so I am granting that in lieu of the initial request of reviewer (headline changed to reflect this).  All actions are logged and if it were necessary this flag could be removed. -- Adrignola talk contribs 17:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Howard Beale (talk) 17:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)