Wikipedia talk:Protection policy/Archive 7

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Tree of Life

I was just wondering if the Tree of Life should be mentioned in the druid description, as the moonkin has been referneced. If the moonkin is being mentioned because it is a talent tree specific form, I think the Tree should be too. Also, I would like to point out that the aquatic form is more of a seal-polar bear hybrid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrrodgers (talk • contribs) 04:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

This is the protection policy. Please go back to the page you came from and use its discussion page to ask for changes – Gurch 04:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Mike Huckabee

There should be an addition in the the Criticisms Section - Fiscal record stating the percentage of tax increase over the time he was govern, possibly after Note 99. It should state, " However, while in office the average yearly tax burden increase was only .14% (http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/442.html); lower than both inflation and Arkansas average yearly population increase. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.4.179.67 (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

see the discussion page on the article you just came from to post comments and collaborate, no exceptions. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 03:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

This page documents represnts only one side of the story, this artical is widely criticised. There are many bad aspects of Scientology and nothing of the Anti-Cult movement in this artical.

So the fist page should be neutral and editable, then a link to the Cult movement scientology (lock that one if you like that) and a link to the critcs of the cult movement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.89.248.17 (talk) 12:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection rules of thumb

Many thanks to David D. for recent semi-protection of LSD article. - Much appreciated. I note that this was applied for a limited period (one month). I don’t have an issue with this, as it certainly helps the situation for now, but I have been trying to get an idea of any 'rules' that may exist or that could perhaps be established as proper criteria for permanent semi-protection.

When I have some more spare time I thought I might extend the analysis of the LSD article’s edits back, say, over the last three months, and count up the total number of anonymous edits and see what percentage were vandalism compared to those that added anything of value. However, this might be something of an academic exercise if there are no well-followed criteria anyway. I’ve read in discussions (e.g. further above) that it’s pretty much down to how each individual administrator feels at the time of protection request. This may or may not be a comment that was made in full seriousness, but in any case, it must surely be better to work toward establishing some kind of consensus on some more objective assessment criteria, rather than simply leaving it to which and in what mood an administrator is to be found at any particular time.

For example, if I go back and analyse three months worth of anonymous edits to an article, and if I find on average one incident of vandalism per day over that period, and I find overall that 80% of the anonymous edits are vandalism, then what (or who) is to say that is (or isn’t) enough to merit article protection? Someone else might suggest that it is worth continuing to allow anonymous edits for the sake of the 20% which are not vandalism. - In that case, what about 90% vandalism? - Or 95% vandalism?

I realise the criteria need to have some degree of sophistication and discretion. For example, if the vandalism was predominantly caused by only one or two distinct IP addresses, then blocking just those IPs would naturally be a more appropriate course of action. But otherwise I feel the establishment of some rules of thumb would be worth the effort in order to help an editor know where they might stand before they make a protection request.

Could we try establishing something along the following lines, for example?

Where vandalism averages greater than one incident per day over a period of at least a week, and vandalism comprises greater than 80% of anonymous edits (compared to anonymous edits of value), then the article may be protected for a period comparable to the length of time that vandalism has occurred.

Persistent vandalism over a combined (i.e. not necessarily single*) period of over three months can be considered for permanent semi-protection.

Further considerations for such analysis:

• The article should be fully protected for the time periods analyzed also no swearing. Analysis should not count any prior periods during which the article was temporarily semi-protected as these will skew the average incidents per day figures of course. * What's meant by the phrase 'not necessarily single' period above is, for example, that if two distinct month long periods of semi-protection were applied as a result of two distinct month long periods of vandalism, and these were consecutive (i.e. with no significant period of intervening respite), and then another following month of vandalism occurred, you could say that the article had then suffered a total of three months consecutive vandalism and be considered for permanent semi-protection.

• For comparison with anonymous vandalism, anonymous edits of value should count enduring contributions to the article. An anonymous edit, perhaps made in good faith, but later having been removed as being factually incorrect, or as uncited information, may be perhaps not counted as vandalism, but neither should it counted as an edit of value. It should just be ignored for these analysis purposes. I suggest that anonymous reverts of anonymous vandalism should not really be counted as edits of value either, as these would likely have soon enough been fixed by signed in users anyway (and would not have been needed at all had semi-protection been in force). Similarly, minor changes such as edits to whitespace, changing dashes to brackets, harmless but rather fussy minor grammatical changes, should also be ignored for these analysis purposes.

• It's not expected that the administrator do such detail analysis of previous edits (though they can if they want). It's really more of a consideration for the user requesting the page protection. And they wouldn't have to submit such analysis if they didn't want to. It's just an option they could refer to if they wanted to get a feel of where they stood with their request.

This proposal is naturally subject to further discussion and establishment of a consensus, but in reading around on what's been said previously on this and related subjects I noted an argument given with regard to the perennial discussion topic - Prohibit anonymous users from editing - namely, under normal circumstances, it's reckoned that somewhere around 75% - 80% of anonymous edits are intended to improve the encyclopedia. So I think, when it can be clearly shown this is not the case for a particular article then an editor should be fairly confident that they have good grounds for proposing semi-protection for an extended or permanent period of time. I think that the nature of the subject matter of some articles (such as the LSD article for example) means that they're not ever likely to come close to this supposed figure of 75 - 80% for well intended anonymous edits. Where this has been clearly demonstrated with analysis of an article's previous edit history then there should be no need to keep messing about with the continued application of only short-lived semi-protections.

Please contribute with your further thoughts on this.

Thanks, --SallyScot (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The archives are full of rejection of any addition to policy that would include numbers or statistics. I still stand against any addition. of that kind. I also stand against any addition that is instruction creep. Luckily, protection follows a more common law route because it allows admins to make decisions based on many factors, or just protect it anyways. If people want an analysis of the history, they can do it themselves because we don't have time to do it, and it's really pointless. If you tell me that 70% of the history is vandalism, but there hasn't been any for the past 2 days then I'd still deny semiprotection. I'm also against combined periods of semiprotection. If an article is protected from March to May, then protected from October to December I say it has been 2 months, not 4 because it was unprotected for 5 months. We also do not have time to analyze specific edits for what they did. Sorry. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 03:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

---

Thanks for your reply Royalguard, but your closing comment - "We also do not have time to analyze specific edits for what they did. Sorry." - suggests you haven’t really read my post and are instead perhaps just reeling out one of your stock replies. I said - "It's not expected that the administrator do such detail analysis of previous edits (though they can if they want). It's really more of a consideration for the user requesting the page protection. And they wouldn't have to submit such analysis if they didn't want to. It's just an option they could refer to if they wanted to get a feel of where they stood with their request."

Your point about combined periods of semi-protection doesn’t really make sense either and suggests another misreading. I'm talking about editors looking at, and, for the purposes of analysis of vandalism, combining the periods when the article was unprotected, not when it was protected. In that context combining the protected periods March to May and October to December gives a largely irrelevant 4 month protected figure. What's of interest is the 5 month unprotected figure in-between. Plus any unprotected periods before or subsequent to that. If combined unprotected periods consistently indicate repeated high-levels of vandalism then it establishes that the article itself is, due say to the nature of its subject matter (e.g. as in the case of the LSD article), in need of permanent semi-protection.

Self-policed semi-protection

Another proposal that I would make in connection with this is, having better established some rules of thumb, semi-protection could then become something that ordinary (signed on) editors could apply to (and remove from) articles for themselves. Rolling out this responsibility to article editors would free up hard-pressed administrator time. It's got nothing to do with instruction creep; it would be simply getting rid of smoke and mirrors.

--SallyScot (talk) 11:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to respond to the idea that it could be extended to regular users, I don't think it'll ever happen. People are skeptical enough electing admins as it is because they're all too concerned about trust issues and other things, so I don't think they'll ever be consensus on en-wp to extend protection abilities to any regular users. There was also a proposal a while back to give admins certain duties (like able to protect, but not delete), but that was also rejected because people felt that if your trusted enough to do one then you should be able to do all. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 17:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Again I find Royalguard's line of argument difficult to follow. It seems to be saying that some people are sceptical about administrators having too much power, while at the same time that people feel they ought to be trusted. - A rather confusing juxtaposition. From my point of view the idea of rolling out article semi-protection responsibilities is not intended as a slight to administrators. It could be considered as an experiment in Wikipedia's further democratisation. It would simply be recognising that it's the article editors who are the ones in the frontline here. - They're the ones principally doing the reverting of the vandalism, suffering its consequences, and having their contributions otherwise undermined. Now, some editors would like to see anonymous users prohibited from editing Wikipedia altogether, and the very fact of this being a perennial discussion topic indicates that many hold to a much more extreme position than the one I'm proposing. In light of that, the enablement of editors' ability to self-police and semi-protect articles that they are themselves concerned about would be a fair compromise.

--SallyScot (talk) 20:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT a democracy or an experiment in democracy, anarchy, ect. All I'm saying is it'll never happen. Current consensus is that only admins should be able to protect, delete, ect. Just take a look through Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform. #1 was about a class between user and admin, was rejected. Also rejected Wikipedia:Junior and assistant administrators. I know there was one about splitting up tasks (like only protection, only deletion, only blocking) which was also rejected. The only admin tool that has been successful in extending to users is rollback (but there are also 100 other scripts that do the exact same thing, sometimes better), and it's under discussion right now. By the way, anons will never be prohibited, it's a foundation issue. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 21:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps my use of the term 'democratisation' was confusing. In fact, WP:NOT being an experiment in democracy is the reason I was tying this up with getting greater transparency and better establishing in the criteria for semi-protection. I'm not suggesting that anyone be encouraged to simply vote for semi-protection using their own personal measures of assessment. And my reference to the perennial discussion topic of prohibiting all anonymous users from editing is not to suggest my support for that policy in that particular form, but to suggest that there are perhaps legitimate concerns behind it, to suggest perhaps a better way of addressing these. Instead of numerous references to other rejected proposals and your "it'll never happen" line you could maybe consider the fact that an issue keeps cropping up suggests that it has yet to be dealt with satisfactorily.

--SallyScot (talk) 01:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The community is not really that keen on addressing the anon issue either. Believe me, I tried with a proposal that involved an already programed in option, but no one cared enough to give an opinion (you can see it at Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal). And really, short of Jimbo-intervention, the devs aren't that keen to implement anything that isn't explicitly endorsed by basically the entire community. The only exception was Rob Church, who programed a ton of stuff only to get half of it rejected by the community anyways. He's gone now.

If you were really wondering my opinion, I'm against it. I think only admins should be able to protect, I wouldn't trust non-admins to do it. There's a lot of bad requests on WP:RFPP that are rejected, and that is my reasoning. If you really want to make a proposal, make a page for it. You don't need any endorsements to propose something. Anyways, I'm done answering this question now. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 02:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Certain user protections

So far im satisfied with some protections on right now, but when i look at full protection your not able to edit your own userpage. is there some other protection to prevent anyone and everyone from editing so you may also continue?

Explain —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidzx (talk • contribs) 18:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Nope. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 17:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Error in 'Christmas' Article; specifically the info on 'Ganulin v. United States'

Hello, I just wanted to point out an error in the information provided on Ganulin v. United States.

On December 19, 2000, the decision of Ganulin v. United States was upheld by the 'Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals', not the 'U.S. Supreme Court'. On April 16, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the case certiorari, but this only means that the body chose not to try the case, not that it upheld the Sixth Circuit Court’s ruling.

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.192.224.5 (talk) 07:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Please put comments on the talk page, not here. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 02:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection; used pre-emptively all over the place

Did you know - lots of Admins use semi-protection in a pre-emptive manner and it happens on frequent occasions. So let's not beat about the bush. Pre-emption is fine as a reason for SP, at least that's the de facto policy, so why not include it in the written policy. Examples: Benazir Bhutto, Madeleine McCann, Assassination of Benazir Bhutto (pre-emptive SP removed after complaints) to cite just three. I totally disagree with this policy, but Admins are a law unto themselves. 86.31.35.135 (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Protection is not preemptive because that would justify protecting the entire encyclopedia. It also violates the principle that semiprotection is not done to prohibit anon editing in general, which is what preemptive protection would do. I decline many requests on RFPP because they are asking preemptively. Protection must be justified because of vandalism, banned users, spamming, edit warring, or other unwritten rules. Preemptive protection is specifically not endorsed by policy. I could semiprotect this page because I might be afraid it'll be spammed or vandalized (both of which have happened in the past) under that policy. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 19:47, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, quite right. So why do many admins continue to SP pre-emptively? I'll perhaps answer my own question - because they want to exlude IPs, since these admins believe IPs to be inferior editors who generally can't be trusted editing "important", high profile articles. 86.31.35.135 (talk) 20:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

You'll have to ask them yourself, or point them out to us (like examples would be good). Admins aren't suppose to "officially" take that stance since the Foundation tells us that anons can and will be able to edit articles on Wikipedia. They can take that stance personally, but their admin actions shouldn't reflect that because it is contrary to community consensus and foundation issues. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 05:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. See the examples noted in my first post on this matter, although as noted, the last of these has now been unprotected. Madeleine McCann is a particularly egregious case. Here, the admin who SP'd it is also the major contributor to the article. 86.31.35.135 (talk) 11:50, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how McCann is such an egregious case, if the protection log entry is accurate. As it has been two months, I removed the edit protection to see if the problem is still important.

I made a rough count of edit=autoconfirmed articles just now, and it's around 2500, which is about 0.13% of our articles. I think you are attributing too much malice to the protecting admins, who are more likely just trying to reduce vandalism. Certainly a few pages will be protected when they don't need to be, and some will not be protected when it would beneficial to protect them, but overall I don't see evidence of an epidemic. You can always request unprotection of specific pages at WP:RFPP. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a point though where it's no longer "reducing vandalism" and just plain "don't edit my article". We need to eliminate the latter case. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 22:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Another problem appears to be admins placing an article on permanent SP then forgetting about it (see Australia). OK, anyone can request protection be removed at any time, but the concept of permanent SP is not good, except perhaps for a VERY SMALL number of high-profile articles, and even then it really goes against a basic tenet of Wikipedia. 86.31.35.135 (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is a compromise with the goal that everyone can edit. But it is only used on 0.15% of our articles, so I think it's accurate to say semiprotection is only used on a small number of high profile article. The indefinite protection also irritates me; there's no reason to set expiration longer than 6 months as far as I can see. But overall I don't see that the semiprotection system has a pattern of abuse. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:05, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

See up for discussions on overprotections and no expiries. There is still a 7 month backlog of protected pages at Special:Protectedpages. I was already yelled at on ANI for trying to clear it. More of "it's not a real good idea [to go on unprotection runs], but we have no other solution at this time". (see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive342#Un-semiprotecting). Some people there had no problem with indefinite protection for no valid reason. It does happen. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 23:51, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

It would probably go over better to change indefinite protection to protection with a fixed expiration date, something between 1 and 6 months depending on the protection history. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have recently rewritten this policy page. I've moved some parts, such as the bit about office actions, to try and create a more logical arrangement and simplify the table of contents. Most of it has been reworded, for simplicity and/or clarity; I don't think that it now says anything that wasn't the case before, or vice-versa, though I have explained common practise in a couple of places. I've also added a couple more examples – Gurch 18:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Largest Country

I believe that since the american flag is planted on the Moon, therefore the U.S. owns the moon. This then means that the U.S. has the largest land area. I do not know the measurements but someone should calculate it and edit the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.56.12.69 (talk) 19:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. You see up top where it says "This page is not for requesting or complaining about protection"? Well, while I admit it doesn't also say "this page is not for discussing U.S. posession of the Moon", I think it is implicit in that sort of message that it isn't – Gurch 21:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The Outer Space Treaty is signed by the US, which forbids any nation to claim the moon. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 21:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Education

Under the education heading it states that a ranking of Japanese 15 year olds are 6th in the world in knowledge skills. If the link is followed, it shows that Japan is ranked 6th under the Science category. Thus this section of the article has a bias and should be rewritten to either state all the rankings by each category, or at least state that the #6 ranking is based on science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.232.35.71 (talk) 01:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

To discuss changes to the protected page you just came from, use its discussion page. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 19:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

FYI .typo....'Hypocisy' Section - Correct Spelling is Hipocrisy...

please fix

This is the protection policy. Please go back to the page you came from and use its discussion page to ask for changes – Gurch 07:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for clarification on semi-protection

On semi-protection, this page has

Semi-protection should not be used [...] solely to prevent editing by anonymous and newly registered users. In particular, it should not be used to settle content disputes.

Now, the arbcom in a recent case was "fact finding", and concluded that

Dbachmann (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) [...] has misused his administrative tools by protecting pages on which he was involved in content disputes (evidence).

The 'evidence' pointed to is a link collection presented by Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (talk · contribs), and includes the following items (re-ordered by topic, since the 'analysis' of these edits did not even go so far as to identify individual 'disputes')

1. Assyrian people: [1], context; Chaldean [2], context
2. Armenian hypothesis [3], context; Armenia (name) [4], context; Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni [5], context
3. Slavic people [6], context

all these instances date to between 30 May and 29 June of last year.

• item 1 has the background of a dispute with EliasAlucard (talk · contribs). I have semi-protected the article Assyrian people because in the middle of the dispute, anonymous editors suddenly joined in revert-warring (e.g. [7], [8], [9]). EliasAlucard's ability to edit was not affected.
• item 2 does not have a background of a valid dispute. The articles were under attack by a returning banned editor (Ararat arev (talk · contribs) and related socks) editing anonymously (e.g. [10], [11]) see also this thread where I point interested editors to the pattern of attacks on Armenia-related articles. The ability of Alex mond (talk · contribs) with whom I was at the time in a dispute at the Armenia (name) article to edit was not affected by this semi-protection. (Alex mond was however later banned as another sock of Ararat arev).
• item 3 concerns Nasz (talk · contribs), a notorious problem user who was community-permabanned on 1 June, i.e. as a direct consequence of his trolling spree of 30 May. I was not at the time even involved in editing the article in question, I was just doing the chore of following Nasz around undoing his damage.

All of these three cases are reported as six cases of "abuse" of "protection" by Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (talk · contribs) and are endorsed as such by the arbcom. In spite of the phrasing "protection", they exclusively involve instances of semi-protection that did not affect any ongoing editing disputes: instead, they were (a) one prevention of logged-out socks joining a revert-war, (2) a returning banned editor and (3) semiprotection due to a trolling spree without actual involvement in the article in question.

I request that the phrasing of the policy regarding semi-protection be adapted

• either so that it becomes apparent that my application of semi-protection in these cases was illegal (such as, if you have ever touched an article, you may not semi-protect it; which would mean I could basically hand in my admin buttons because I have touched far more than 10,000 articles on Wikipedia)
• or so that we identify more strictly what we mean by "semi-protection used to settle content disputes", preventing the arbcom to allege "misuse of administrative tools by protecting pages" in the event of semi-protection that did not affect any ongoing editing dispute.

dab (𒁳) 10:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it, if you have a stake in a conflict then you should avoid using admin tools in relation to that dispute. To put it another way, it should be obvious to a non involved user that the outcome of the conflict would have been the same if you had not been an admin. So you can use admin tools even if you have touched the article, but not if you are in the middle of a dispute about the article.Taemyr (talk) 12:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Uh... forgive me if I'm being dumb, but what exactly is the issue here? The section of policy you quote says that semi-protection should not be used to settle an ongoing content dispute on a page. This has nothing to do with whether administrators should protect pages when they are involved in disputes. It simply reflects the fact that if protection is necessary to deal with a dispute (which should of course be only as a last resort) then that protection should be full protection, not semi-protection.

An entirely different issue, also covered by this policy, is that an administrator should not use protection to deal with a dispute if they are involved in that same dispute. This applies similarly to other administrative actions, for example administrators involved in a dispute shouldn't block other parties to the dispute.

I'm thus having trouble making sense of your comment. Yes, the instances of protection you mention were judged to be inappropriate by the Arbitration Committee. Of course that does not mean that you aren't allowed to semi-protect any article you've ever edited. Please use common sense when deciding whether or not your involvement with the article would affect your ability to deal with its protection in a neutral way. As for the second bullet point... I don't understand it at all, it only makes sense if one assumes that semi-protection to deal with an editing dispute is the only possible misuse of protection. Of course, it isn't. If the Arbitration Committee believe that misuse of semi-protection has occurred then they are entitled to say so.

In short, disputes should be settled with full protection rather than semi-protection, and administrators should not use protection to settle disputes in which they are involved. Both of these things are already in the policy, and neither equates to either of the rather extreme viewpoints taken by your suggestions – Gurch 12:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I think another clarification needs to be made here. I don't see any disagreement over the proper application of semi-protection to editors in good standing. The question pertains to applying semi-protection during content disputes with socks of banned users or obvious vandals. How can they be a party to a content dispute if they have no standing as editors? Ovadyah (talk) 16:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Ovadyah. This is an encyclopaedia and content is everything. Why should we allow banned trolls and obvious vandals to wreck it when we can stop them? --Folantin (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Speaking generally, I believe the current policy is adequate -- or at any rate, may not need significant change is response to these concerns, since it seems to be more of a judgement call. I think the problems dab mentioned have more to do with possible conflicts of interest; when it seems a particular admin would have a personal interest in a particular action or outcome that might become controversial, it's probably best to just grab other admin(s) for help. This is just as true for protection as it is for deletion or blocking (or reversing any of those). We needn't be the sole defender of the wiki to do some good. – Luna Santin (talk) 02:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

proposal: protection rationale

I've seen a number of pages that are protected or semi protected without an obvious reason behind why or for how long they have been protected. Editors shouldn't have to dig into the edit history to see this. I propose that as part of protection, the admin should include a template on the talk page that explains the rationale behind protection and the date that protection was initiated. Currently there is no obvious way to lobby for a page to become unprotected. This would at least provide a starting place for this dialog to be structured around. ~ Paul^C/_T+ 05:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Check the page log. It lists a short reason and the date. If you need it clarified, why not actually ask the admin on their talk page instead? Adding an extra template would be instruction creep. To request unprotection, use WP:RFPP, or better yet ask the admin who protected the page (which, again, is listed in the log for the page). You can find the log under page history, then the link that says View logs for this page right under the title. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 00:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:10347 might be relevant, here. – Luna Santin (talk) 01:42, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary, you can just check the log page, and to request unprotection you can go to WP:RFPP or ask the admin who protected it. Oysterguitarist 20:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

For semi-protected pages, the reason for protection and the admin's name have often disappeared off into the mists of history. For example, Dog is edited frequently (and has already been vandalised five times today, so I can't really argue about its being protected!). Perhaps the top of the talk page would be a good place to put a summary of reasons in a simple template. This could also indicate the level of protection, just in case anyone has failed to notice the text that pops up when you hover on the coloured padlock. Certes (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC) if its protected on dispute matter, till that matter solves it shouldnt show to public. or in that page it should mention dispute matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.43.128.168 (talk) 22:04, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

protection policy

is there someway we can change the semi-protection from users of 4+ days to those of 30+ days? four days doesn't seem like very long. All a vandal has to do is create multiple sock puppet accounts. At least 30 days makes it a little harder, and any new user within the time frame can use that time to learn more and then come back. Sallicio (talk) 20:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)Sallicio

I'm all for increasing the time for the autoconfirmed level. I proposed WP:Autoconfirmed Proposal last summer, but it sunk through because of lack of discussion (or community apathy, either one). I'm willing to reopen the discussion. Any others? -Royalguard11(T·R!) 04:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Four days seems plenty long enough. The number of people who actually take the time to create socks is fairly small, and the number that create multiple socks over time is even smaller. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit, so increasing the number (or duration) of hoop-jumping is BAD™, IMHO. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 22:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• Anyone can edit. Just not a very select few articles (because of multiple vandalisms), and not for the first thirty days of their wiki-existance. 30 days is not long...it's sort of like having a security clearance for certain articles, those editors over thirty days old have established credibility. Maybe 4 days is long enough for some articles and 30 days is long enough for others (like different security levels). Sallicio (talk) 07:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Sallicio

Is there...

A protection option where no anonymous or registered members vandalize User pages and the only one to revise the page is the person him or herself? I am still new at this and in the past, I had an ugly history of people vandalizing my User page from people who still have heat with me (even though I put it behind me and ignore them). I just came here to create and support people that have Wikipedia pages, but still they tend to follow me. Honestly, I am desperate to have security on my pages. Thank you very much for any information. Mc2006 (talk) 21:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

In short, no. We can fully protect your page (so only admins can edit it), or we can semiprotect it (so that only users older than 4 days can edit it). There's currently no option to protect a userpage so that only the user can edit it. I guess an option is to create your userpage at something like User:Mc2006/userpage.js, then transclude it onto your userpage (then you could get an admin to fully protect it). Pages that end in .js and .css are only editable by the user who's space it's in, and admins of corse. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 22:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I see. After a lot of thinking, I just don't want a User page. Can admins fully protect someone's page w/o anything in it? I don't want a page but don't want anyone vandalizing it. Curious. And thank you.Mc2006 (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, we can protect deleted pages. It was added recently. Just give us the green light and we can do that. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 23:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The green light is on :). Thank you so much. MeanChe (talk) 04:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it's done. Just ask any admin to reverse it if you change your mind. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 22:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I will. Thank you very much. MeanChe (talk) 00:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed addition to content disputes

Proposed to add:

"Reasonable actions undertaken by uninvolved administrators to quell a visible and heated edit war by protecting a contended page should be respected by all users, and protection may be reinstated if needed, until it is clear the edit war will not resume or consensus agrees it is appropriate to unprotect."

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, even admins should not edit, even minor ones, full protected pages; it looks bad. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

This one's not so much to forbid admins editing where they usually would, it's much more about "if protection has been put there by an uninvolved admin to quell an actual visible heated edit war, then users should respect the intent of the protection and not frustrate it by ignoring it" (since admins do technically have the ability to unprotect and/or edit through it). FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 03:00, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, a very sensible addition. Clearly worded too. Will (aka Wimt) 02:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree admins should not edit full protected pages, unless there is consensus to do so. Oysterguitarist 03:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I wasn't so much thinking of changing any norm. Admins have always been able to edit through protection, just with great respect and clear explanation - and rarely done. Minor edit to ensure this stays the same, and also to cover the key exception related to BLP/privacy:

"Reasonable actions undertaken by uninvolved administrators to quell a visible and heated edit war by protecting a contended page should be respected by all users. Administrators should not edit the page in any way likely to be contentious (and if reverted, should not reinstate the challenged material), and protection may be reinstated if needed, until it is clear the edit war will not resume or consensus agrees it is appropriate to unprotect."

"Exceptions: removal of information under BLP or privacy policy is allowed at any time; these should not be reversed without discussion and clear consensus."

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 05:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought this was already the policy? Maybe I'm a better admin than I thought ;) Mr.Z-man 05:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. It is supposed to be :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 05:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It is already there as "Administrators should not make significant changes to fully protected pages without prior discussion". Making changes like spelling corrections, reverting vandalism or fixing broken markup is fine, even if the page is protected – Gurch 12:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. But when there are heated disputes between admins, often even protection to prevent warring on the page may become the subject of wheel warring, as the page becomes protected and unprotected, or some admins simply ignore protection. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened, and I'm thinking it would be no bad thing to strengthen the wording to state that once an uninvolved admin has seen fit to protect the page due to such a dispute,

1. Even admins whose access would allow them to edit through it unhindered, are expected to respect the intent of it and not do so (other than non-contentious edits as you describe). And -- as a corollary -- such edits may be reverted if contentious,
2. Regardless of protection, BLP and privacy related textual deletions are always allowed until clear consensus otherwise states.

Can you suggest a way to strengthen the wording for these concerns? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

If they're squabbling over protection, or ignoring protection, then they're ignoring the policy. No change to the policy will solve that; you'll have to take it up with them – Gurch 17:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The Account Age Requirement is Too Long

I created my account two days ago and I still can't edit semi-protected articles. How much longer do I have to wait and why is the wait so long? I imagine a 24-hour wait would be enough, since accounts created for vandalism are usually used right away. If they're sleeper accounts, what difference does it make to the puppet master if they have to wait two days or seven? The inconvenience to vandals is exactly the same, since they probably have to write down the account names and forget about the issue while the accounts are aging even if the time period is 24 hours. The only people inconvenienced by such a long wait are legitimate contributors.--Guywithdress (talk) 04:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The wait period is four days. As for why it is so long, I don't actually know. Sancho 05:29, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

We've walked a very fine line with this issue, and there are people (like me) who think that just four days isn't enough (add in an edit count requirement or something). If you do want to edit something that's semiprotected, just ask on the talk page or use {{editprotected}} to request an edit be done. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 03:27, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

content dispute

Currently it reads: "Administrators should not protect or unprotect a page for this reason if they are in any way involved in the dispute." I'd prefer "must not" instead of "should not" analog to WP:BLOCK. There are admins who read this as a suggestion and are confident, that they are allowed to protect pages when they're involved in a dispute. --Raphael1 23:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

This belongs at VPR. Jmlk17 23:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Green padlock for move protection

At small sizes, the green "move-protect" padlock looks far too similar to the silver "semi-protect" padlock. Could we use a deeper, darker shade of green on the lock, or switch to a more immediately obvious icon (perhaps a lock with an arrow on it?
Furthermore, the protection templates need to use anchors to link directly to the particular kind of protections used, instead of merely the top of the page. This will aid new users, especially those clicking on the small lock icon because they're confused of its meaning. - Chardish (talk) 04:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Archived talk pages

The policy page doesn't seem to cover this:

Should archived talk pages be protected by default? The template tag {{atnhead}}, states Do not edit the contents of this page. Therefore, wouldn't it be natural to protect them from further comments being added to the discussions. The reason that I ask is because I recently seen someone (at Talk:Burma) adding to a discussion about a requested move that had been "closed" and marked do not modify for a while, but not yet archived. Another editor reverted their addition and I archived the discussion and protected the archived page. Is there anything wrong with doing so? —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 20:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Archives shouldn't be edited, but they all shouldn't be fully protected. If an archive is getting a number of edits, then it would qualify for protection (for a while at least). Not all should be though because there's really no point. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 00:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Automatic semi-protection to stop anonymous IP vandalism?

Is there or should there be a BOT for protecting pages from anonymous IP edit vandalism? Maybe have it look at the last 5-10 IP edits and see how many times "vandalism" is in the edit summary reverting their edits? Once certain rules are tripped then automatically semi-protect for a week/month or other time period based on the frequency of IP edit vandalism over the same period. Among the pages on my watchlist (primarily U.S. Civil War history) almost all of the IP user edits are vandalism. I can see little if any redeeming value in allowing anonymous editing of the wikipedia articles I monitor. Evaluating risk vs. reward I would wager heavily that more useful editors are driven away by the vandalism than are attracted by allowing IP edits. And certainly far more useful editing time is wasted combatting intentional vandalism. (And few user accounts seem to be vandalizing by comparison.) Rule of thumb for me right now is to consider all IP edits vandalism until I can prove to myself they are not by reviewing them. It is nice to be pleasantly surprised at times. Red Harvest (talk) 01:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It is traditional that bots requiring the admin bit must pass an RfA in addition to BRFA. Of the precious few bots which have ever attempted it, the success rate has been incredibly low:

• TempDeletionBot - withdrawn by operator (38/34/2)
• ProtectionBot - withdrawn by operator (185/41/13)
• TawkerbotTorA - failed (131/69/10)
• RedirectCleanupBot - passed (168/15/7)

These RfAs attract a huge amount of discussion about the merits of the specific task being proposed, and the task is usually acccepted only when it is completely objective and uncontroversial. RedirectCleanupBot, for instance, deletes only redirects which point to a redlink and have only one revision in their history - this is a relatively small subset of the redlink-redirect problem. The task you suggest, requiring as it does even the slightest amount of subjective analysis, has (in my opinion) no chance whatsoever of passing RfA. Which is not to say that it would not be useful or safe, simply that it is impossible. Happy‑melon 09:58, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I have tons of melons in my garden!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.139.230 (talk) 14:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

This appears to be a good example of an IP that should be blocked rather than given dozens of useless warnings. This sort of vandalism and the ineffective response to it appears to be the norm rather than the exception on Wikipedia. Sort of like trying to cook while monkeys swing through the kitchen slinging feces everywhere. Red Harvest (talk) 14:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I would be against any automatic protection of pages. One of the reasons is that there isn't a fixed set of rules for determining when a page gets protected. Admins have similar but sometimes differing opinions on when to protect and for how long (or whether indefinitely or not, etc etc). Number 2, a bot who's only job would be to protect what's going on the main page couldn't pass RFA, so there's no way a bot like this would pass RFA. I'm sure other admins would agree that this isn't a good idea. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 21:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:pp-create

When I added {{pp-create}} as the protection reason for Barnyard Bash, it didn't render on the page as expected. Am I doing something wrong? --ZimZalaBim ^talk 00:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You won't see it from an admin account. Try logging out. Happy‑melon 10:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The Grundle article

Right now the Grundle article redirects to a slang term.

However, "Grundle" is also the name of a character in a video game. Please see Adventure (Atari 2600).

The Grundle article is locked, so I can't edit it.

I already left a message on the Grundle talk page a few months ago, but no administrator ever responded.

Since I am not an administrator, I can't edit the Grundle page. Would an administrator please edit it so it mentions this video game? Thank you! Grundle2600 (talk) 22:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Replied at Talk:Grundle. Happy‑melon 23:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Grundle2600 (talk) 23:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Hadrian's Wall

Is someone with an account able to put the apostrophe in "Hadrians Wall"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.202.66.70 (talk) 19:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

New users?

A semi-protection prevents new users from editing. What defines a new user? Kingturtle (talk) 18:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Any account 4 days old is "autoconfirmed". These accounts may move articles, edit semiprotected pages, and have fewer captchas. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have been working on a rewrite of this policy, which I would appreciate comments on. It is not the intention to actually change any of the spirit, only the manner in which it was laid out. I hope it is more consistent and easier to read, and also easier to link to specific sections. Comments and criticisms welcome on the talk page here. Happy‑melon 19:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yikes. That increased the size of the page by over 25% which is IMO way too much considering no real change to the policy itself is being made. I think there are some good things about the rewrite, moving cascading protection right down and adding creation protection, for example, but I think we can manage this without making one of our million policy pages even longer... – Steel 20:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It is certainly true that the size was increased, but that was mainly due to me expanding bullet lists to prose, and making implied points explicit. The latter, I think, certainly has some merit. I think the biggest thing I like about the new version, however, is the changes to organisation. Why put some forms of indefinite full protection under "full protection", and some under "permanent protection"? The protection of {{tlx}} is no different to most users to the protection of MediaWiki:Common.css - they are not able to edit it themselves, and never will be. Separating full protection into "indefinite" and "temporary" is just unnecessarily confusing. Similarly, having a bulletted list for indefinite full, and then expanding some, but not all, the points below (and also including some points which weren't in the list!). For these reasons, I think the best way to proceed is to work on the rewrite (currently at Wikipedia:Protection policy/new, trying to trim down and balance the text, to make it less verbose but along the same organisational lines. Unless, of course, you have any objections to said layout, in which case do make them known! Happy‑melon 22:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

After a cursory glance of the page, this seems like a fantastic addition of instruction creep and complicated, procedural thinking. I'm not saying you have no good ideas here, but I am disturbed by the over-complication and tendency toward a "rulebook" mentality of Wikipedia policy. Keep it simple, stupid! ;-) --causa sui ^talk 03:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I had hoped that I'd avoided adding additional instructions, merely rewording what was already there. Can you give some examples? Happy‑melon 10:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Here's the most profound example. What was once

Administrators should not make significant changes to fully protected pages without prior discussion.

becomes...

Any modification to a fully-protected page should be discussed on its talk page or another appropriate forum. Once consensus has been established for the change, any administrator may make the necessary edits to the protected page. Attention can be drawn by placing the {{editprotected}} template on the talk page discussion. Administrators should not use their ability to edit protected pages to make significant changes to fully protected pages without prior discussion...

No new information, but a whole lot of extra words. A good rule of thumb is to remember that nobody should have to memorize a policy page to follow it, nor should anyone have to return to the policy page to make sure he or she is not running afoul of the rules. (notice that like any other rule, that one is subject to the pitfall of micromanaging our thought process.) The key idea I'm trying to express here is that it is not helpful to consider the purpose of the policy page to give us a formula through which we can decide what to do in any case; rather, the policy pages guide our thinking in a broad but nonspecific way. I think Wikipedia policy pages could be renamed to "Wikipedia Philosophy" pages, since that would capture the idea much more clearly; once a person understands the policy, following it should be nothing but common sense from that point forward. Understood this way, your edits look very much in good faith and an honest attempt to help -- but I hope you can understand why I find them counter-productive. Cheers, --causa sui ^talk 07:14, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying and entirely agree, so any genuine case of instruction creep is a mistake which should be corrected. However, I think your analysis may be a bit simplistic. Unfortunately I don't have a diff from my sandbox during my original rewrite process which demonstrates this part of the rewrite, but this diff summs up what I think were the changes involved to that phrase. As you can see, my (ultimate, after a needed knock on the head from User:Steel359) intention was to reorganise, not to expand; that paragraph has been expanded with details drawn from other areas. Perhaps there are areas where that has not been successful - if you still think that this phrase is one of them, I'd appreciate any alternative you can suggest. Happy‑melon 12:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay! Well, since we agree about our overall direction, I'll go ahead and make some edits and we'll see how it comes out. Let me know what you think! --causa sui ^talk 01:50, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion and proposals on protecting biographies.

SirFozzie has written a few proposals here that involve protecting biographies of living people upon request. I've also written a different set of criteria for article protection here. It'd be great if we could get some more input about this from a wider range of people... please take a look if you have time. Please comment there to keep things centralised. Thanks! -- Naerii 04:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Minor Vandalism

Just went through and undid some minor vandalism. Looking at the history, maybe it's time to go for protecting the page on the protection policy (oh, the irony). --Kant Lavar (talk) 08:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

There was more since you stopped; I've semi-protected. As you say, how ironic! Happy‑melon 11:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Temporarily unprotecting semi-protected pages about events, during period around their date

On or near the date of a holiday or event that subject receives a lot of attention. Consequently it is a good opportunity to get edits improving that article (I don't have any hard data on that, but it's falsiable). Wouldn't it be a good idea to issue a policy requesting semi-protected articles to be unprotected four days before and after an event? For example, today is Sunday Easter and its article is semi-protected. A casual user would simply give up improving on that article. A new user might even try to create an account, but he or she wouldnt't be allowed to edit it before four days. By that time he or she might well have lost his or her interest in that subject. At least until next year. =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.251.254.165 (talk) 01:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense in principle, but maintaining it would be a fantastic example of instruction creep. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. Happy‑melon 11:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there is no need for that to be in the policy. Just do it. --causa sui ^talk 00:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Minor change to indefinite semi-protection section

I've re-added the clause about user pages requiring heavy vandalism before being indefinitely semi-protected. It's just silliness, and frankly, anti-wiki to preemptively protect pages. Out of the four clauses for indefinite semi-protection, it was the only one that didn't include a piece about heavy vandalism. User pages aren't "owned" by their user; in fact, I think we should encourage people to fix typos and errors if they find them. But that's beside the point. The text was there years ago; not really sure how it was removed, but it's back. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to deal with mass sockpuppet disruption

Hi there, I've made a proposal for an experiment with a new way to deal with pages that are attacked by long-term vandals with large stocks of sockpuppets and single-use IPs. See implementing "approved versions" at the admin noticeboard. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

RFCs contain April Fools !

In the italian wikipedia about April Folls' Day (see http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesce_d'aprile#Storia ) they have a list of RFC. 83.182.236.41 (talk) 17:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection of templates

Since permanent protection of templates sometimes is overused and new users are not likely to understand template editing I would like to promote using semi-protection a bit more instead.

Currently the section "Permanent protection" states this:

In addition to the hard-coded protection, pages which are commonly permanently protected include:

* Pages which are very frequently transcluded, such as {{tl}} or {{ambox}}, to prevent vandalism or denial of service attacks. This includes images or templates used in other visible or frequently transcluded pages.

I would like to add this to the section "Semi-protection" in the bullet list that starts "Administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages which are:"

* Pages which are fairly often transcluded, to prevent vandalism. This includes images or templates used in other fairly visible or often transcluded pages.

And perhaps even add to the "permanent protection" paragraph above:

(For less frequently transcluded images and templates consider using semi-protection instead.)

But that is perhaps repeating the advice?

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I've rarely seen a genuine need for semi-protection of templates. Either they are heavily transcluded (I tend to set the bar at about 5,000 to mainspace, or 10,000 outside (WikiProject banners etc)), or they are not. I've never actually come across an instance of template vandalism which would have been prevented by semi-protection. And I very much approve of the principle that protection is applied in response to vandalism, not in anticipation of it. Indef full for templates, of course, is not just intended to stop vandalism: witness Template talk:Db-meta#reword, where a poorly-conceived, although good-faith, suggestion was impeded by the full protection long enough for its author to realise that to implement it would be a mistake. Happy‑melon 10:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Quick comment

The thing which comes most often to AN/I is precisely the question of uninvolved admins, called as easy above. Someone flags an edit war, BLP, other serious issue at AN/I, a previously uninvolved admin arrives to sort it out, makes a couple of edits and then blocks someone or protects the page. Then they are accused of being "involved" because their first act on the page was an edit. Equally "you are not uninvolved since you have previously edited a page in common with one of the antagonists, you are not uninvolved because of your nationality etc etc." In general the view on AN/I is that an uninvolved admin includes a admin who was not part of an edit war and arrived once an edit war has started and they don't get immediately counted as involved as soon as they start trying to sort it out (sometimes this is even just be fixing typos in another section out of habit when reading through the article to understand the issue, people in the wrong get very annoyed). When you start being "involved" is grey. --BozMo talk 06:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this is perceptive reasoning, and it's why I am hesitant about using any language of what counts as "involved" as well. What counts isn't that the administrator is involved; anyone who is trying to mediate a content dispute is involved! What counts is that we don't want administrators using their powers to advance their own positions in ways harmful to the encyclopedia. I think that kind of clarification is what I'm trying to achieve with these edits. --causa sui ^talk 02:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

When you're dealing with AN/I it doesn't matter what other people think: "that admin is a nationalistic pro-something, totally bias and should be desysopped". We give way to much leverage to the complainants, and cast too much doubt on admins doing they're job. Someone will always come along and complain because they think it's on the wrong version. This is the nature of Wikipedia and it'll always happen. I think in this case it's better if the admins and user who regularly watch AN/I all agree on some kind of "standard" for uninvolved and use that. You can't base a standard on what some Joe who happens to be edit warring says. They're going to say it anyways. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 00:01, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You have some good points here, but as I see it, you can go on trying to work out a meaningful definition of "involved", or you can scrap the term completely an focus instead on conflicts of interest. If you have to use "involved" as a technical term with well-defined meaning, it might be better to simply pick a different word. --causa sui ^talk 02:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Surprising shift in meaning

I notice this series of edits [12] has either accidentally or deliberately substantially changed this policy without any discussion I can see here? To say prior discussion and explanation is required for admin edits (not directly part of the dispute) under page protection is completely different from saying prior consensus is required for any changes. I am not bothered personally which we go for but I am not happy about an undiscussed policy change of this order and suggest we revert it until consensus is found to support it? There are also a whole load of people who would need to be told.--BozMo talk 19:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

TO be specific it is the change from "Pages protected due to content disputes should not be edited except to remove material such as this, to make changes unrelated to the dispute, or to make changes for which there is clear consensus. " going to Pages protected due to content disputes should not be edited except to make changes for which there is clear consensus" that I find a strong change. Under the prior policy an admin who locked a page because of a content dispute and explained and discussed what they were doing could still try and improve the page in ways not related to the dispute causing the lock. This change removes this possibility. As I say, not bothered but rather there was a consensus. --BozMo talk 19:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I never really looked at that series of edits in perspective - individually, they seem innocuous enough, but now that you put them all together, I realise that I don't like the tone of their changes. The changes did not have any consensus other than WP:SILENCE, and in hindsight I don't like them. Some of the changes are legitimate cleaning up and making it less legalistic, but the change you note in particular I do not like. I also see a general shift from "admins may protect pages which fall into one of these categories, loosely applied and allowing for use of common sense" to "admins may protect pages, here are some examples of why it might be necessary", which concerns me greatly. What's the point of having a policy at all when it's just a set of examples? Although it might seem a bit uncouth for me to revoke my implicit support for the edits when I was watching them occur, I never really saw them in perspective, and now that I do, I don't like what I see. Happy‑melon 20:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I would also like to object to a couple edits. Especially the deletion of the line Administrators should not protect or unprotect a page because of a dispute in which they are in any way involved. Its always been a clear violation of policy to take any administrator action in a dispute you're involved in (it's a neutral action if it's a semi protection/move protection due to just vandalism or spamming or similar). People have been taken to ArbCom over it. Admins should never fully protect a page if they are one of those involved in the dispute. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 00:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I am going to partly revert the text to the earlier version per above. I suggest you consider the same for the parts you object to. --BozMo talk 06:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments. As I see it, there are two issues to discuss here.

1) is whether the changes I made were discussed sufficiently before I made them, and

2) is whether the edits I made improved the policy or not.

I am inclined to focus on #2, since that is what's really at issue. Here's some rationale behind the edits that I made, that might make it easier to understand my intentions so we can find a common ground on them.

First off, I want to say that I don't take any ill-will from Happy-melon (talk · contribs) if he is dissatisfied with my edits only in retrospect. There is no statute of limitations on improving articles on Wikipedia, so there is no reason that anyone should feel uncouth for wanting to make constructive edits. What counts is whether the page is really as clear, descriptive, informative, and accurately reflecting of Wikipedia philosophy as it could be. I'm pleased to say that we all obviously have those ends in mind, so all that remains is for us to align our perceptions of what is the best way to achieve those ends. I don't have any high degree of certainty that my edits were the best way to achieve the goals I had in mind, but I do believe that my edits were reflective of a way that the old policy was unsatisfactory, and I'll outline my objections to the old version now.

Now, to explain my edits, and what I meant to achieve by them. Happy-melon (talk · contribs) described the version that was in place before I made these changes [13] in this way:

"admins may protect pages which fall into one of these categories, loosely applied and allowing for use of common sense"

I think that sounds great, and it's what I wanted the general sense of the page to be. There is an easy pitfall that many, many editors fall into when attempting to understand Wikipedia policies: the temptation is to think that Wikipedia policy pages are designed to be a collection of rulebooks that justify behavior and clearly delineate authorities. One must only go to the Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard or, god forbid, read petitions to the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee to see awful talk of WP:NPOV "violations" to collect as much evidence as you like of Wikipedia editors mistakenly interpreting policy pages strictly and literally, as if they were laws. I'm glad to see that we can all agree that Wikipedia policy pages are not intended to be used in that way at all.

Rather, Wikipedia policy pages guide and inform our behavior as members of a community project to build an encyclopedia. Policy pages have strong consensus behind them because they are held to be the rules that most effectively promote the productive development of a free encyclopedia. In other words, policy pages say "We have learned through experience that this is the best way of doing things, and so you should most likely be doing things this way too." This requires a somewhat subtle understanding of policy, because while it can be comforting to say "it's the rules, so follow them", Wikipedia philosophy requires us to be honestly an relentlessly self-critical and apply the rigorous criterion "Does it work?" to everything we do. Various attempts to codify this basic principle have cropped up over our history, the most famous (and controversial) being Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. Understood properly, I firmly believe in the idea expressed by Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, and we all enjoy the irony of those who try to turn it into a firm rule. Imagine how we would laugh at one who spoke of a "WP:IAR violation"!

Of course, that is not to say that all policy pages should be redirected to Wikipedia:Ignore all rules! I want to be clear that I think policy pages serve a vital, fundamental role in all the Wikimedia projects.

Based on the way the page was written and how I have seen it applied, I did not get the sense that Happy-melon (talk · contribs)'s summary was the meaning that was being conveyed. The previous revision came off to me like it was giving us an exhaustive list of the cases in which an administrator may protect a page. Contrast this against the idea that the page should explain the rationale behind page protection and what is useful about it in terms of achieving our higher goal of building an encyclopedia, and I hope my edits will make more sense, in retrospect.

If we want to go through the edits I am proposing on a line by line basis, I would be happy to do that; but I think we need to all make sure that we agree about the fundamentals first.

Cheers, --causa sui ^talk 22:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that response, Ryan; I'm glad we're all reading from the same sheet. I've made these reversions, in two parts. The first is, I think, just a matter of tone, not meaning. The second is more relevant to the discussion. I agree that the wording needs to be placed on a continuum from 'exhaustive, definitive list' to 'loose suggestions', and not at either end. However, I think that the pre-revert wording is closer to the 'loose suggestions' end of the continuum than my version is to the other end. Perhaps we can work up something in the middle. Happy‑melon 13:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Uninvolved admins

I've also made one change, re-adding the line that admins shouldn't use admin tools in a dispute they are in. I believe ArbCom has ruled on in the past and made it very clear that if you are involved in the dispute, you can't take admin actions (regarding something like full protection because it allows abuse regarding which version the page gets locked on. Then admins aren't just a neutral third party trying to kickstart discussion, they've become a ruling judge, which isn't one of our jobs). -Royalguard11(T·R!) 17:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This is an interesting example and I'd like to get it out of the way first since it's the one that I have the least attachment to. That is, I think it's an important idea that needs to be expressed somehow, that administrators should take care not to participate in conflicts of interest. My problem with the wording is that it is vague what exactly constitutes "involvement" and I have been on both ends of an excessive interpretation of this doctrine. In the strictest sense we are all "involved" in every article on this project, and I have seen the policy that involved administrators should not use admin powers invoked to condemn any administrator from acting in a dispute; because acting in an administrative capacity is itself seen as involvement in the dispute! From this I think we can get the idea that "involved administrators" is far too broad a criterion, because it does not directly capture what is the issue here, namely that administrators should not use their powers to settle their own disputes. I haven't followed Arbitration Committee decisions in awhile, so if you are aware of any that spell this out in more clear terms, or have any ideas of your own about how to clarify this situation, I'd love to hear them. Cheers, --causa sui ^talk 19:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I always thought "involved" was pretty self-explanatory: If you are on of the parties who are warring with each other than you are involved. Even one content revert makes you involved (again, vandalism reverts don't count). I think it's kind of a silly interpretation to say we're all involved in all articles on Wikipedia. If you look through past ArbCom decisions, you see lots of remedies of "uninvolved administrator may block users" or things like that. The best definition of "uninvolved" being that you've never edited the article before (or better yet never edited within the topic before), never made a content edit (like you've only added templates or categories or copyedited) would be a close second, and then it gets murky. If you've made content edits before but have not edited the article in a while (like a month) then I'd say that would be "currently uninvolved". After that it's all shades of grey. If you're a major contributer to the article, then you probably shouldn't put full protection on because of a dispute (potential WP:OWN violations, maybe even unintended). The best way to avoid all this is to post the request at WP:RFPP, and hopefully a totally uninvolved admin is watching and will make a decision.

This wasn't the case I was thinking of, but Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman (from Feb. of this year), ArbCom made it clear that Administrative tools may not be used to further the administrator's own position in a content dispute. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar 2 (from last July) goes further (taken from here): administrators should not use their administrative powers in conflicts or disagreements they are involved in. (there are a few other parts which I'm not sure if they were just for that case or in general).

Lots of opinions there I know, but I hope it helps a bit. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 21:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was self-explanatory too, but as I argued above, there is a variety of ways to interpret it. I think that this statement you quoted is a much better way of putting the same idea without being so vague:

Administrative tools may not be used to further the administrator's own position in a content dispute.

The Arbitration Committee also says we cannot use administrative tools in disputes we are involved in, but I don't think there is anything conveyed by that statement that isn't conveyed by the above statement. Do you think there is anything that would be lost if we switched the wording? --causa sui ^talk 04:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I think on the Protection Policy page we should be specific and say that "admins should not protect or unprotect a page to further their own position in a content dispute", but other than that, it sounds good. Happy‑melon 09:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Both of those do sound like a better wording. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 01:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

 Done Ok, I went ahead and made the edit. Finals are coming up so I'm very busy, but I'll get some comments up about some other things in the next few days/weeks I hope. Thanks. --causa sui ^talk 11:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Content disputes

The incumbent revision reads:

Pages experiencing edit warring as the result of a dispute may be temporarily protected, with an appropriate expiration date, and involved parties asked to settle the dispute through discussion. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

My proposed revision would read:

On pages that have become the battleground for an edit war, temporary full page protection can force editors to take their cause to the talk page, where they can reach consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

I believe that the two versions represent the same meaning, but the previous revision focuses less on the philosophy behind page protection in terms of in what way it can be useful to achieve the goal of building an encyclopedia. The incumbent revision subcommunicates a mood of legalese, as if the policy is here to give us the authority to protect pages, rather than give us a roadmap for when and why we might want to protect them.

--causa sui ^talk 15:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the proposed revision. Maybe some editors might come here and get the subtle hint too instead of just waiting out the protection like some do now. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 18:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I dislike the style and tone of the proposed text: just becuase Wikipedia policies aren't legalistic rules doesn't mean they shouldn't be written formally. How about:

“ Pages experiencing edit warring as the result of a dispute may be temporarily protected, with an appropriate expiration date, to compel the parties to the dispute to discuss the issue on the talk page, where they can reach Wikipedia:Consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others. ”

I think this addresses Ryan's valid comment about the focus on the positive effects of protection, while retaining the more appropriately formal tone. Happy‑melon 10:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

“ Instruction creep begins when someone thinks, This page would be better if everyone was supposed to do this, and adds more requirements. ” — Meta-Wiki, m:instruction creep

Thanks for this proposal. Unfortunately I can't agree that it addresses my objection. You seem to be saying that I was unhappy about the legalistic tone of the article. Allow me to clarify; I think formal tone is fine, in fact it is very good in something like a Wikipedia policy page. What I don't like is language that creates the impression that the policy is limiting us to a certain developed list of acceptable rationales. Here's what I think is wrong with this. You read "Administrators may protect a page when..." as a suggestion, as if it is authorizing page protection in these cases. That is, you seem to be reading that statement as positive and inclusive. I think you might be missing the ambiguity in your language; people who read this will see it and think it is meant to be exclusive and exhaustive.

Recall the argument I gave where I suggested that a policy page that is too specific about when we can protect a page, someone will cite the policy as a rationale for overriding consensus in special cases on the grounds that the consensus "violates" the protection policy. In these cases, well defined rules tend to be limiting. If I could pick one word that I find worrying in the existing version, it would be the word "may". That is what I think is the cause of trouble here, because it gives me the strong impression that the policy is here to decree when I may or may not protect a page. I don't need a policy to tell me this; experience would be a much better guide than any policy.

Another way of getting at this is that I want the sense that I am being told why to use administrative tools the way I should, rather than putting the focus on the details of what the policy is instructing me to do. I don't think this revision is a significant departure from the existing version in that sense. --causa sui ^talk 02:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

There are some good points there, and in general I agree that the policy shouldn't be too prescriptive. You can probably guess that the greatest problem I have with your proposal is the informal wording: "battleground", "can force", "take their cause", etc. Can you offer an alternative wording which is less lighthearted? While I agree with the effect you're trying to create, I can't support the inclusion of a passage that includes the word "battleground" :D. As I say, it doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) so serious as to be legalistic, but a certain level of solemnity is appropriate. Happy‑melon 09:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Aha! Progress. Yes, I have no attachment to having those particular terms in the policy whatever. I have to run to work, but I'll try to come up with a less colloquial proposal later this afternoon. --causa sui ^talk 15:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

How's this for a second proposal?

On pages that have become subjects of an edit war, temporary full page protection can force editors to the talk page, where they can reach consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

--causa sui ^talk 05:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

How about:

“ On pages which are experiencing edit warring between established users, temporary full protection can force the parties to discuss their edits on the talk page, where they can reach consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others. ”

I'm not sure about "the parties", but I ran out of synonyms for "editor" :D. What do you think?? Happy‑melon 10:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a good thing to make an exception for established users. Edit warring is bad, whoever you are. Can you tell me what you think isn't addressed by the revision I just proposed, so I can have something to work toward? --causa sui ^talk 14:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought the point was that, if the edit war is between an autoconfirmed user and an IP, semi-protecting the page stops the edit war without as much disruption. I thought that was common practice anyway; to full-protect only when semi-protecting wouldn't do the job. Vis the difference, I was just tweaking the style a bit (and making it a bit more obvious what the editors are being forced to do on the talk page :D). If you'd prefer to knock out "established" and just say "experiencing edit warring between users, temporary full protection..." I'd be happy with that. Happy‑melon 10:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. I don't mean to be rough, but I think it's an intensely bad idea to have the protection policy introducing ideas about preferential treatment for autoconfirmed users. How's this:

On pages which are experiencing edit warring, temporary full protection can force the parties to discuss their edits on the talk page, where they can reach consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

Sound good? --causa sui ^talk 04:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd consider the fact that autoconfirmed edit wars get fully protected while IP edit wars only get semi- to be "preferential treatment" (:D), but that wording is fine by me. Happy‑melon 21:25, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

 Done Great, thanks. --causa sui ^talk 00:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Permanent protection

The incumbent revision reads:

In addition to the hard-coded protection, administrators may permanently fully-protect pages which fall into one of these categories:

My proposed revision reads:

In addition to the hard-coded protection, pages which are commonly permanently protected include:

The way I put it is a bit awkward, and I'd be very open to other formulations. But I am very dissatisfied with the incumbent version because it creates the impression that the following conditions represent an exhaustive list. If it hasn't happened already, you will find cases where this wording is invoked in mailing list or talk page discussion where there is strong consensus to permanently protect a page, and it will be invoked in an attempt to invalidate consensus on the grounds that consensus would "violate WP:PROT". Again, I refer to our earlier agreement that the purpose of a policy page is not to provide us with a future-proof rulebook or to clearly delineate authorities. It does not help the project to determine beforehand what rules will work and which don't, and that's what I think the incumbent revision is doing.

--causa sui ^talk 15:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I've never liked permanent protection, and even if I was asked by people I probably wouldn't do it. I think that permanent protection is at odds with our goal, which is to produce an encyclopedia. Making it uneditable is contrary to what we want, as there are no "finished articles" (contrary to other projects like Wikibooks where I guess they do protect "finished books" and Wikinews where the news article doesn't change, a new one is made), and of course there is no deadline. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 18:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this is the area where the policy needs to be the most prescriptive: as Royalguard says, indefinite protection sits uncomfortably with the wiki philosophy, and should be used as infrequently as possible. There are situations where it is appropriate - narrow, clearly-defined categories of situations :D - and few if any other instances. For instance, things like this scare me; I don't ever intend to give such proposals a crevice to cling to in established policy. Admins should be given a fair ammount of judgement in most areas of the protection policy, but I think this isn't one of them. There simply aren't any other times when an admin should be able to permanently protect a wikipedia page! Happy‑melon 10:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

We are in absolute agreement that permanent protection should be rare, and we should be seeking to word the policy in a way that discourages it. I want to suggest that, somewhat counter-intuitively, the existing wording actually enables permanent protection more than it excludes permanent protection, because if an administrator can interpret the policy as justifying the protection, her or she will now have policy to point to, when common sense should have been the rule. I know it seems weird, but what you are doing is not restricting permanent protection, but creating a space where permanent protection is unassailable because it will be seen as justified by the policy. I worded my proposed revision the way I did because I want to emphasize that in each case of permanent protection, consensus is formed on a case-by-case basis to justify the action. --causa sui ^talk 02:30, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Here, I entirely disagree. The important thing to remember is that, within the three narrowly-defined categories, all the pages which fall into one of those categories should be protected. All high-risk templates should be indef protected. All of our legal disclaimers should be protected. All of our main pages (:D) should be fully protected. But the point is that nothing else should be. Within the categories, there is no need to minimise the use of indef protection, because the protection is most effective (and, peversely, the least disruptive) if it is applied throughout that category. It is vital, however, that the policy is worded such as to prevent indef protection being extended outside those categories. Your wording sacrifices complete proscription of other categories, in exchange for discouraging protection within the categories, when I think that the opposite should be the case. Indef protection is inherently against the wiki philosophy, so its use should be restricted to the few instances where the benefits have been proven to outweigh the downsides. Those instances neatly form three categories, within which protection should be universally applied, and it should never be applied outside. In this situation, I don't want admins to use common sense, because then we get things like this and this (look at Jan 15). Happy‑melon 09:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

 Not done I'm inclined to just let this one go, since I tend to agree that permanent protection is rare enough that each wording won't be too big of a deal (and we can react to events as they come to us). However, I think that Wikipedia:Practical_process has an excellent argument for why it's a bad idea to use policy to legislate against malice and misunderstanding. --causa sui ^talk 15:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Move protection

The incumbent revision reads:

Move protection may be implemented on:

My proposed revision reads:

Move protection is a possible solution for:

Same as above. Implies an exhaustive list of acceptable rationales.

--causa sui ^talk 15:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this one because I see move protection a little differently than regular edit protection. Most of our articles will never get moved and won't ever need to be moved, and move vandalism is much worse than regular vandalism. Move protection is a good tool against this because it doesn't affect anyone really. And we do have a method to move pages if they are fully move protected. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 18:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Here, by contrast, much more freedom should be permitted, as this is actually the least restrictive of all the posisble protection options. I don't like the exact wording of "possible solution for", although I can't put my finger on exactly why (:D), but I would be happy with another alternative to "may be implemented on". Happy‑melon 10:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

As I explained above, I think my beef is with the word "may" and the connotation of providing an exclusive list of acceptable rationales. If you have any other ideas I'd be happy to hear them, but this one sounds non-controversial enough to go ahead with it. --causa sui ^talk 02:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the move-protection section, unlike all the other sections, doesn't have an explanation of what the protection actually does. How about the below, which attempts to solve both these problems? Happy‑melon 09:44, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

“ Move-protected pages cannot be moved to a new title except by an administrator. This protection is commonly applied to: ”

I think that sounds very good. If no one objects, I think we should go with that proposal. --causa sui ^talk 20:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's go with that one then. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 23:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

 Done --causa sui ^talk 02:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Move protection restrictions

The incumbent version reads:

The same restrictions that apply to full protection during a dispute also apply to move protection during a dispute; administrators should avoid favoring one name over another, and protection is not an endorsement of the current name.

My proposed revision reads:

As with full protection, administrators should avoid favoring one name over another, and protection should not be considered an endorsement of the current name.

I find this very wordy. My revision is trying to express the same idea in simpler language, avoiding talk of "restrictions".

--causa sui ^talk 15:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Simpler is better in this case, and they convey the same idea. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 18:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Less is more as long as it conveys the same nuances, which this change doesa. Happy‑melon 09:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

 Done In fact, it looks like this was never reverted. --causa sui ^talk 02:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)