Door43:Content quality
From Door43
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How can discipleship resources on a wiki be trusted? If anyone can edit the content, how can its quality be ensured?
There are some important things to understand about the way the Door43 wiki is configured that make us confident we can simultaneously allow any believer in the world to help build the project, while also maintaining resources of the absolute highest quality. These configurations affect the management of Door43 users and the content-creation process itself.
User management
- No anonymous edits - In order to create or edit content on Door43, you must create a user account to do so. This tends to minimize "drive by" vandalism of content.
- Blocking user accounts - If a user does not abide by the Door43 Statement of Faith and creates content or acts in a way that is contrary to it, their user account can and will be blocked, preventing further involvement by that user under that username.
- Blocking IP addresses - If someone creates another user account to engage in the same activities for which their previous account was blocked, the IP address from which they are accessing Door43 can and will be blocked, preventing future activity on Door43 from that computer.
Content-creation process
- Draft vs. Stable - Every page on Door43 has two versions: a draft version (labeled as "Pending changes") and a stable version (see below for more on this and the "Flagged Revisions" extension that makes it possible). Anyone with a user account on Door43 can edit the draft of any page. However, when an anonymous visitor browses Door43 looking for content, they do not see the draft page, they see the stable page. Only selected Door43 users that are trusted and known to have good doctrine are given elevated permissions to review draft pages and mark them as the stable version of that page. Subsequent edits to the page create a new draft version that is marked as "pending review" until it is flagged as quality (or rejected as unacceptable).
- Every edit is a new draft version - Any time an edit is made to a page in Door43, it creates a completely new version of that page. This means that even if someone were to delete the contents of a page, the previous versions of that page with the good content are not lost. (And, because of the preceding point, the deletion of the content would not affect the stable page, so the changes would not be visible to Door43 visitors.) See the "View history" tab at the top right of each page to compare changes between previous revisions.
- One-click rollback - In the event of a user deleting or vandalizing content in Door43, any user with sufficient privileges can roll back their changes in one click, making it as though their edit had never taken place. (Kind of like justification for a wiki, to borrow the concept.)
- Recent changes - There are dozens of "Special" pages in Door43 (see the list here) including one that shows all "recent changes". This list of changes can be accessed as a news feed, meaning anyone who wants to can help keep tabs on the changes being made to the Door43 project, within minutes of those changes being made.
- Watchlists - A user can create a list of pages they want to keep track of by clicking "Watch" in the drop-down page menu at the top right of any page. This list shows changes that have occurred to the pages the user is watching and can also be accessed as a news feed for remote monitoring of content.
- Page stabilization - Once a page has reached a "version 1.0" kind of status, it can be stabilized so that future visits to that page will always show the stable version. However, editing of drafts and further revisions may still be taking place "in the background".
- Page locking - Once a page is completed (or being subject to "edit wars"), an administrator may lock the page, preventing any further edits, even of the draft page. The discussion section of that page will, however, still be available for ongoing dialog and suggestions for possible improvements to the page.
Draft vs. Stable Page Versions
Door43 is configured so anyone can create an account on Door43 and edit the draft versions of pages in the wiki. Users skilled in reviewing and academic research are given elevated privileges to "flag" the content of a page in two dimensions: Accuracy and Readability. To accomplish this, we are using the FlaggedRevs extension to MediaWiki.
Flags used
Accuracy
The accuracy of the content is indicated by this flag, which has three levels:
 | Unapproved (or Unreviewed) — Content either has not been reviewed or contains doctrinal inaccuracies and needs editing (i.e. it does not adhere to the statement of Faith, see Door43:What we believe). Note: in most circumstances, content flagged at this level is probably doctrinally sound but has not yet been reviewed. The reason for this is that when reviewers encounter doctrinal errors in content they are instructed to correct (or remove) the content right away or revert the page back to a version that does not contain doctrinal error. |
 | Sighted — Doctrinal errors have not been identified in the content, but a comprehensive accuracy review is still pending. |
 | Accurate — Content has been reviewed for doctrinal accuracy and has been approved. |
Readability
The term "readability" covers the clarity and naturalness of the writing style. Note that the same flag is used for discipleship resources that are primarily intended for non-print use (e.g. stories) and should be understood accordingly. The readability flag has four levels:
| | Unapproved (or Unreviewed) — Content either has not been reviewed or contains significant issues with regard to clarity and naturalness. |
| | Sighted — Content is usable, but a detailed readability review is still pending. |
| | Acceptable — Content has been reviewed and is adequately readable. |
| | Concise — Content has been reviewed and is clear, natural and concise. |
Page ratings
Each page in Door43 is flagged according to the highest setting attained in both the Accuracy and Readability dimensions. The overall rating of any given page can be one of three ratings:
| | Unchecked — Content either has not been reviewed or needs revision in either the Accuracy or Readability dimensions. |
| | Checked — Content has been flagged at least Sighted in both the Accuracy and Readability dimensions. |
| | Quality — Doctrinal Accuracy of the content has been reviewed and approved as Accurate and the Readability is Acceptable or Concise. |
A page will not be flagged higher than the lowest flag in either dimension. The page rating matrix is shown in this table:
| | Readability Flag | ||||
| Unapproved
| Sighted | Acceptable | Concise | ||
| Accuracy Flag | Unapproved | Unchecked page
| | | |
| Sighted | Checked page | Checked page
| Checked page
| ||
| Accurate | Checked page
| Quality page | Quality page | ||
Who flags the content?
We want to keep the team of reviewers and editors small enough to be manageable (meetings, conference calls, etc.) while having a large enough team to help us review and improve the quality of Door43. In general, we are looking for users who make a lot of contributions ('edits') to Door43 content and have the "gift" of editing and clearly communicating to serve as editors and reviewers.
What if I disagree with how an article is flagged?
Please say so - your input is most welcome! Every page in Door43 has a corresponding "Discussion" tab at the top where comments, suggestions and input of any kind is welcome.
Summary
What it all comes down to is this: wikis, by design, make it easy for good people to create good content. Door43 is configured to make it easy for administrators to maintain high quality content and discourage unhelpful people from being a part of the project. Because of this, we think Door43 fills a unique need for an open platform for creation of discipleship resources, while also maintaining the highest level of quality in those resources.
