Hosta

Hello, I am Cenarium, a user and administrator from the English Wikipedia. Here, I like to participate in policy discussions and proposals, as well as some technical aspects, and contribute to content when I have the occasion.

Most notably, I pioneered the concept of using the FlaggedRevs extension as a form of conditional page protection similar to semi-protection. Technically, I proposed that edits by all autoconfirmed users, and not only by reviewers as in classic FlaggedRevs, be automatically accepted when the previous revision was already accepted ; while in terms of policy, I proposed that the use be targeted to demonstrably problematic pages as with semi-protection, instead of a large-scale preventive use as in classic FlaggedRevs proposals. This shifted the paradigm and I think was the main reason that the then perennially rejected FlaggedRevs gained acceptance on the English Wikipedia. I first proposed it for a trial (it was then called flagged protection) and after some adventures, it ended up being implemented on a permanent basis, and is now termed pending changes (see background).^[1]

The original trial proposal also contained the related patrolled revisions, a passive technical aid for patrolling changes, but it was never implemented, although I'm now working on a partial implementation of this concept. My main interest at the moment is a system by which automated processes like bots and the edit filter can defer for review edits assessed as suspicious, either actively (by delaying their visibility) or passively (by merely adding the page to a queue). I'm also interested in change tags, various software changes, modifications in userrights and other proposals.

I also proposed the BLP editintro which is a policy notification displayed when editing BLPs, helped to draft the policy for the BLP PROD (following this dispute), was among the originators of the idea lab, suggested the creation of specific namespaces for 'books' to better regulate them as well as for drafts for the same reason, and worked to improve the categorization and signalization of protected pages. I also originated, with others, the concept of a list of cascade-protected items. In addition, I did a fair amount of anti-vandalism work during my first years on Wikipedia. If you want to contact me, you may on my talk page or send me an email. If you need administrative assistance, I suggest you check here as I am not always active.

I am also a mediawiki hacker! I'm working mostly on recent changes, change tagging, logging, patrolling and flagged revs. My biggest contribution to date is making possible to patrol files. At the moment, I'm working on a project to provide a limited form of RC patrol that would allow to detect and deal with tagged changes much more efficiently than with the current system. I am also planing to integrate this system with FlaggedRevs, in order to implement WP:Deferred changes. I've also added references preview in section previews, and am currently working on allowing preview of refs defined outside the section being edited. In addition, I made the commit that allowed filtering of logs by type (e.g. page deletion vs revision deletion).