Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:06, 6 June 2007

This policy originated from a subpage in User:Raul654's user space. Archive1

Templates

How about this one:

ALL templates in a main page FA should be semi-protected. As in, protect them before the main page goes up, and not unprotected until it's off the main page. I'm staring at that big penis on the Macedonia (terminology) page, and I see that they're scrambling to figure out in which template the image was stuck.

An new IP user making a good faith first edit really has no business mucking around in the Templates anyway.--DaveOinSF 03:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

As of now, 11 different templates were vandalized a total of 18 times in the first few hours that the Macedonia (terminology) page was the main page FA. The longest instance where it failed to revert was 21 minutes. There were several other instances of 5-to-7 minutes.--DaveOinSF 04:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking the "xx icon" templates for a start, and similarly widely-used templates, should all be semi-protected anyway. An anonymous or newly-registered user can always use {{editprotected}} on the talk page if they do have a useful edit to make – Gurch 10:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I too witnessed the large phallus photos, as well as my young daughter. I don't see why it is unreasonable to temporarily lock featured articles while they are on the main page. I mean, they garner the "featured" status because they are well constructed. Any improvements to the articles can certainly wait until they come back down. ZincOrbie 20:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Other discussions on this topic

Other discussions on this topic are here, here, here and here. Please add more if you find them. Someone may wish to consolidate all these disparate discussions into one location. Carcharoth 12:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Change on policy page on 5 December

This policy was changed on 5 December with the addition of a section that reads:

Templates included in the main page FA are sometimes vandalized, and it is more difficult to remove this kind of vandalism quickly. It is also less likely that casual readers would need to modify the templates. Admins may semi/full-protect the templates as needed.

I don't think the policy should make such protection MANDATORY (and it does not, as it now reads); that would be (a) telling admins what they have to do, when they are volunteers and, more generally, (b) it's instruction creep. But the policy clearly needs to state (as it does now) that administrators can protect templates while still complying with the policy. John Broughton | Talk 15:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This has been done in practice already anyway. Borisblue 16:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

What now?

Now that the study has been completed with a week's worth of statistics, we need to determine what the feeling is about continuing with this policy. I don't agree with the policy, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one. Is it appropriate to have a policy that clearly doesn't have consensus support? Would it be appropriate for someone to simply remove the template saying that it's an official policy, citing the controversy about it on this page? Everyking 07:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, but where are the study statistics? I'm looking over this page and not seeing a link to them. I'm good at missing the blindingly obvious though. Anyway, my initial reaction is that having no specific main page FA protection policy might lead to wheel wars and general confusion... I think it would be better to improve the policy rather than simply negate it. --W.marsh 15:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been waiting for Robdurbar to return from a wikibreak (by Wednesday), to discuss posting some conclusions from the week-long study. The raw numbers are here: Misplaced Pages talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis.

I thought the "disputed" tag that was posted on 5 December (removed two days later) was a good way to go, rather than remove the "official policy" tag (since this policy admittedly still is, and is being followed). I admit to some confusion over the removal of the tag/template on the 7th - if I understand that editor's logic, a policy that is being enforced can't also be "disputed", which to me makes no sense - if the policy gets changed after some discussion, then (following this logic) the "disputed" tag would never be put on the article - it would just go from official version A to official version B without ever alerting anyone (other than those reading the discussion page) that a change was being considered. At minimum, I think a discussion of putting the "disputed" tag/template back up would be helpful. John Broughton | Talk 16:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome to put it back. However, note that I dded the tag to the talk page to clearly indicate that it was disputed. My logic for removing it is that, most often, those that ask about it are newer users, and if they see it is disputed they will waste peoples time continually asking that an article be protected, thinking that since it is disputed that means that it isn't enforced, or only enforced selectively. --Trödel 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Missed the template at the top of the talk page; I'm okay with that as opposed to being on the project page. John Broughton | Talk 21:40, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Another comment, I would like to hear from Raul654 before going forward with any particular decision since this policy originated from his userspace. --Trödel 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Experience with Photon

Ordinarily, I never comment on Wiki-policy, because I feel out of my depth; but Opabinia regalis asked me to comment on my experience with Photon, which was on the Main Page on 14 October 2006.

At the time, I had just freaked out after seeing the ~300 edits to Enzyme three days earlier and was thinking about protection or semi-protection of Photon as a defence against vandalism and a way to prevent the waste of good editors' time. However, talking it over with friends led me to a better understanding of Misplaced Pages and its community. Speaking just for myself, I agree with the old policy of almost never protecting the Main Page Featured Articles.

I can't claim to have clear experimental data. The amount of outright vandalism to Photon was relatively low (~30/150 edits) but the new contributors generally did not add much to its scientific content, either, with 1-2 exceptions. The bulk of the newcomer edits seemed to be relatively minor changes in emphasis or re-wordings; nonetheless, although incremental, I believe that their net effect was positive, especially for the clarity and tone of the article. Sometimes, when you've read an article too many times, you develop a tin ear and it's hard to imagine reading it for the first time. The day on the Main Page is a true "test by fire" that lets us evaluate how well our article "flies" with its intended readership, the legions of people who will read it for the first time; it helps our articles to progress more quickly.

Aside from practical encyclopedic considerations about readability, the lack of protection on the Main Page sends a powerful message, at least for me: "Misplaced Pages is beyond the reach of malice; we have nothing to fear." It may seem quixotic, or at least St. Francis-like, but it's also a thought-provoking lesson in the power of a community of good people, an example that may attract new well-meaning editors to Misplaced Pages. Willow 11:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Very nice. I really like this analogy in general, and the whole Misplaced Pages project can certainly be construed this way. What's frustrating for me is that this "process" perspective/philosophy has no end in its application here, and thus seems like dogma. The sanctity of the day's featured article is worth something too. Such a "process" perspective, after a certain point, fails to respect the goal orientation implicit in any project (where the project, in this case, is a single encyclopedia article about something). The last thing you do, according to some monks, is kill the Buddha. –Outriggr § 04:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Petition

Please see Misplaced Pages talk:Main Page featured article protection/Petition for a call to amend or cancel this policy. I believe it would be beneficial to gauge the number of users, in a straightforward list-of-names style, who are concerned about this policy. Thanks. –Outriggr § 01:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

some analysis

Ok, I know that this was originated in Raul654's userspace, but currently it resides in the mainspace, and thus should be treated as a mainspace policy. I think some ideas need to be drawn from the statistics. I created a simple table with the amount of time the page spent vandalized by anons.

*Links go to the relevant section of Misplaced Pages talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis

**Today was the first day of the study that saw a substantial number of vandalising edits by newly registered users, who would also be blocked by semi-protection of the article. (New editors are not included in the counts below.

***Very hard to gauge how long the article spent vandalised without per-second history.

****December 5, the time was not available. Therefore the percentage next to the total is calculated by taking 6 days (144 hours)

Note - Of course new users have been left out of this study. (this is only anons).

Note - Feel free to clean up and improve the wikitable if you want, it is fairly primitive.

From what is seen in that table... and from the total for that week (minus one day) the main page was in a vandalized state 8.8% of the time it was up. This is not counting new users accounts (who would be blocked when the article is semi-protected). That is quite high, I fear to say that our anti-vandalism efforts are not quite as fast as we like to think. At the very least this needs to be downgraded to a guideline. —— Eagle 101 05:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• What was interesting in looking at the more detailed report was that just 11-12% of IP edits were beneficial. It seems, and the ammount of time the FA spent vandalized, draws into serious question two of the core rationales against semi-protecting the FA. Many will say "too small a sample size" but nevertheless these are hard numbers and the best we have so far, so I say we should treat them as a reliable picture of the main page FA activity until someone takes the time to do a more extensive study. Certainly more reliable than hunches and cherry-picked examples. --W.marsh 05:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
  • So you think we should move the {{Disputedpolicy}} thing back to the main page where it belongs? I mean right now there is nothing on that page showing any idea to people looking at the page to look at the talk page. —— Eagle 101 05:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't be opposed to it. The arguments for protection are much stronger than the arguments against it, at this point:
      • Only 11-12% of IP edits to the main page FA are beneficial.
      • The FA is vandalized for an average of 8.8% of the time it is on the main page, or 2 hours and 7 minutes. This represents thousands of pageviews of a vandalized article on a typical day.
      • Many new and anonymous users come to the main page FA's talk page, the main page's talk, and other pages such as WP:AN/I to complain about vandalism and/or plea for protection, sometimes several each day. Few to no good faith new users are known to have complained about the page being protected.
      • Prominent sites such as Wonkette have mocked Misplaced Pages for vandalism that occurred to the main page FA. There is no known reputable off-site criticism of Misplaced Pages for protecting the main page FA. --W.marsh 05:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved the {{disputedpolicy}} back to the main policy page. —— Eagle 101 05:57, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much for doing that analysis, to all involved. Part of my continued interest in this issue is based on the numbers I saw when looking at the analysis page some time ago—and seeing the amount of time articles spent in the vandalized state. It appears this is still borne out.–Outriggr § 07:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, based on the arguments above, what do we all think about making this a guideline rather then a policy. Guidelines still have some force, but at least are not as much instruction creep as policy is (for this case). If the page is undertaking say, no edits (like todays featured article did through the period 9:06 to 11:21 UTC), there is no need to protect it. But the instant that vandalism starts to pick up, it is in our best interest, according to the stats information that we have above to semi-protect the page. —— Eagle 101 23:14, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Just downgrading the current policy to a guidline will not accomplish anything. Based on the above, it needs to be rewritten to encourage semi-protection when the FA page is vandalized.--Paul 23:45, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Is the data above accounting for the vandalism that is not occurring directly to the article, rather is in associated templates and images? When a template was vandalized on Enzyme inhibitor, one (truly obnoxious) instance alone remained up for two minutes. If the analysis is looking only at article edits, it's missing a substantial source of current main page vandalism - data on that would require examining all of the image and template vandalism. Sandy (Talk) 23:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The data is collected by examining the history of the main page FA while it is on the main page. Template vandalism is something different, and much harder to research. The times given are the near exact amounts of time the main page FA was in a vandalized state. If we add in template vandalism I am willing to bet the statistics above would look worse then they do now. Do note that those stats are only tracking anon vandalism, and have left out new users entirely. —— Eagle 101 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

In reply to Paul.h, perhaps that is the case, maybe we should start such a re-write as a subpage of this talk page? —— Eagle 101 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm following still: if the analysis is analyzing only the actual article history, it is missing the main source of recent vandalism from the "penis" template vandal, who isn't hitting the article directly, rather vandalizing the article via the templates and images. Sandy (Talk) 01:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Correct, right now the main page is in a vandalized state an average of 2 hours and 7 minutes. With template vandalism that number only increases. But, remember we are talking about semi-protecting the main page itself. we know that in recent times (from December 1 to December 7) how long the page itself is in a vandalized state on average. (due to edits to the FA, not to edits to templates transcluded onto the FA). Basically I am arguing that this policy needs to be downgraded to a guideline, and or rewritten to more closely match reality. The idea of rewriting it comes from Paul. —— Eagle 101 01:37, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

My objections

Hello there, I have been following this debate for some time and would like to offer my thoughts:

1. The Misplaced Pages front page is the "curb appeal" of Misplaced Pages. It should be neat, well kept, and free of vandalism.
2. A main ideal of Misplaced Pages is "the Encyclopedia anyone can edit."
3. This idea does not extend to blatant vandals.
4. There is no fundamental problem of principle with protecting any elements on the Main Page.
5. There is no need for a hard-and-fast policy regarding the protection of the Main Page. This is more than adequetely covered in the Protection policy.
6. This policy represents policy creep.

Just my thoughts. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with any policy or guideline that discusses "policy creep". Did you mean "instruction creep"? I ask because a policy change to "Front Page Articles will always be semi-protected" would not be instruction creep -- it actually would be instruction simplification.

As admirable as the six items above are, they are in fact not all achievable simultaneously. A (relatively) low level of vandalism is, by the current policy (#5), acceptable (that is, does NOT invoke semi-protection), yet this (relatively) low level of vandalism results in numerous, quite visible failures to keep the Main Page article "neat, well kept, and free of vandalism" (#1 not accomplished); the current policy also does extend editing privileges to anonymous (or newly registered) blatant vandals (#3 not accomplished).

In short, I believe that whether we stay the present course or change policy, there will be both benefits and costs to whatever we choose. There is no policy that can accomplish all the goals of Misplaced Pages simultaneously. John Broughton | Talk 01:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Right. Personally, I think the FA should be semi-protected for the duration of its time on the front page. People will be impressed with Misplaced Pages from seeing an article that is well-written, not one they can edit but that is mucked up by vandals or other unhelpful edits (and it really does seem, from the above analysis, that that is almost all of what we get from IPs during the FA's time on the front page.) Just my opinion. Grandmasterka 02:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Appeal

Think of the new user that first comes to Misplaced Pages having heard about it on the news, or the radio. They will enter on to the main page and see at the top, "the 💕 that anyone can edit." Then maybe on to the featured article, the first article they see, a high quality article worthy of any for profit encyclopedia. They will see an "Edit" button at the top, and on a whim, incredulously, they will click it, and they will be confused that they can't edit. But they won't be confused, it will reinforce their idea that, of course, only members can edit, surely, or only editors, like they always thought. Because, of course, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit can't survive. This is what they will think, and many will never click edit again. I didn't think I would feel strongly about this before reading, but I do. Please do not protect the single article on Misplaced Pages that has the most visibility. The vandal fighters can handle it, and if not stable edits can when it comes. We can find a way. We don't need to lock down everything that vandals might touch. This is not a good path to go down. - cohesion 04:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You make a number of assumptions that aren't necessarily valid:

• A significant number of completely new readers will want to make constructive edits to an already polished Featured Article.
• They are happy for thousands of people to see their first mistakes at wiki syntax.
• The world interprets "anyone can edit" as meaning "edit anonymously" (which it isn't anyway since we publish your IP address).
• The vandal fighters can handle it. It is very clear that on some days, they can't.

Using hyperbole ("lock down everything") doesn't help the discussion. This policy needs tempered with a little common sense. It is common sense that George W. Bush is semi-protected much of the time. Other articles on such magnets for schoolboy vandalism like Down syndrome seem to be handled by vandal fighers OK until they appear on the main page. Then they are just, frankly, an embarrassment to Misplaced Pages. So, I'd like the "for a very brief period" in the Semi-protection policy adjusted to allow for the possiblity that some articles will need day-long protection. It is surely not beyond the wit of our admins to use common sense (and ignore dogma). --Colin° 14:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

They will see an "Edit" button at the top, and on a whim, incredulously, they will click it, and they will be confused that they can't edit. This is incorrect. I just checked a semi-protected page after logging myself out. As an anonymous user, I saw neither the "Edit this page" tab nor the "Move" tab. John Broughton | Talk 17:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I know people like minimizing infoboxoes, but maybe an infobox would be appropriate for the top of the daily featured article -- "This article is featured on the main page of Misplaced Pages today, December 19, 2006. For today only, this page is protected from editing by non-registered users. Other articles remain open for editing". Or, um, something. -- 66.88.193.125 19:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Our IP friend is thinking of a template to use with semi-protection, and a message for that template. I support the idea of adding such a template to the article's actual page, since it seems to me that the message pre-empts vandals while signalling to good faith anons that the action is limited to this one high-visibility article and limited in duration. That's a good balance to strike, IMO. -Fsotrain 17:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's a wonderful idea. --Masamage 20:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Ideas

A few thoughts I've come up with:

1. I think it is not beyond Misplaced Pages's ethos to change the semi protection template (perhaps a specific one for Todays featured article) so that it is more of a welcome message, stating 1) that in order to protect the quality of the article, new users/editors won't be able to edit the article page directly, but if the care to go to the discussion page they can put their edit there and someone can add it in if it's useful; 2) provide a link to the sandbox in the template, so they can have a go without disrupting the article itself; 3) suggest there are many pages that may need their attention in the rest of Misplaced Pages and a quick search should bring up something they're interested in; 4) point out that Misplaced Pages isn't censored. I think this would allow us all the breadth we need to encourage new good faith editors.
2. I think all templates should be semi protected because even as an established member, I don't even know how to use a template, let alone change one, and yet there seems to be a lot of problems caused by these being vandalised. I would think it reasonable to restrict template editing to seasoned editors generally.
3. Semi-protection should be offered to the regular contributors to an article a short time before the FA ends up on the main page, leave it up to them whether they have enough time, energy and coverage throughout the 24 hours to cover any vandalism problems. You may find that some pages have sufficient people to cover the article that the article itself doesn't require any protection (I would still advocate template semi-protection in this case).

This could also include:

1. 1. Making sure editors know where to go for help if a problem occurs.
   2. Allowing editors to prearrange semi-protection for times when they don't have enough cover would also be helpful, as it may be that vandals come out more when they realise there are too few people physically watching the article.

I'm aware most of this would involve quite large changes to policies, not just this one, but maybe they would be worth testing at least. Terri G 13:02, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

In addition, I think it highly unlikely that a new user will be able to significantly contribute to an FA, just because they would probably find it too difficult to pass the verifiability criteria, paticularly adding citations on a first attempt, and are therefore likely to be reverted and get disheartened. Terri G 14:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Some good ideas Terri. Related to the sandbox, another idea would be to duplicate today's FA in the sandbox, and point new editors to that if they wish to improve the article, where an experienced editor can review the change in relation to featured article standards. (Sorry if that was what you meant; I didn't think so.) Here's where someone cries censorship, without recognizing that every reversion they do has the same effect. –Outriggr § 00:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure how feasible the "duplicating the FA" in the sandbox idea is, but the other ideas are very good. I have some worries about whether or not the sandbox would remain synchronized, with the main page. I think it is best to simply have newcomers suggest improvements on the talk page. I am still debating whether this policy is even needed, the protection policies seem to be enough. More thoughts on that in a bit. Though I would encourage everyone to look at the history of the policy, and see how and why it was created. Cheers —— Eagle 101 01:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of a special main-page protection template, as Terri suggests. And to keep down the storm of edit suggestions, maybe the template could have a link to, say, Talk:Bulbasaur/Mainpage--a subpage created just for suggestions on improving the article? --Masamage 02:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. It seems like a no-brainer to me that the featured article should be protected as long as it is featured article. Don't we already do that for the featured images? Let's face reality here. It is getting vandalized at with the number of hits we are getting, it is inevitable that too many people will see a vandalized version. Danny 03:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad my ideas seem to have been received favourably, particularly the separate template, I thought it would be nice to combine the main features/answers newbies are likely to want in one place.

Outriggr, I'm not averse to the idea of duplicating the main page as a sandbox, but I did intend just a blank sandbox, like you would get anywhere on wikipedia, which I presume would not need to be synchronised with the main page? In a duplicated sandbox, I would be concerned that the code for the various things like infoboxes etc could get a bit daunting to a newbie though. I am keen to maintain somewhere for the people attracted by the TFA to have somewhere they can edit and for their contributions to be added to the TFA if possible without too much difficulty, perhaps the specific talk page for changes, afterall for some people the knowledge that people around the world are looking at and using your info is part of wikipedia's charm. I'll go and look at that history now. Terri G 10:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Templates redux

I was thinking, what if we just subst'd all templates before a FA went on the main page? A) this ends template vandalism without adding a lot of admin work and B) no "collateral damage", the templates in the FA can be editted by anyone, and the templates themselves can be editted by anyone... but at the same time it's simple to revert main page FA vandalism again.

I don't really know how practical this would be, some templates might become very long when subst'd, but doing/undoing it would be relatively easy if someone wrote a simple script. Just thought I'd throw the idea out since I hadn't seen anyone suggest it. --W.marsh 17:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I hesitate to throw my support behind this excellent suggestion, lest I be accused of having mono-mania.
brenneman 06:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

And our poor newbie anon presses Edit and sees 100K of template code. He'd have a hard job adding his serial comma then :-) Colin° 08:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the templates should just be protected. Leaving the article itself unprotected is one thing (although I don't agree with it), but leaving the templates open seems completely unjustifiable. How much editing needs to be done (or can be productively done) on any of these templates? Everyking 12:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think we already do protect the templates and have a provision in the policy for that. What I think we need to look at is this policy on protecting the main page. Have a look at this history to see how little discussion has gone into making this policy. (look at the edit summaries on the creation of this policy). I see a few links in the what links here relating to the discussion of this policy. Most of them don't seem to be real discussion about this policy, rather just linking to it as a justification for not protecting the main page. Looking at this, I can't even see why this was upgraded to policy to start with. I cannot see the discussion that made this a policy. Therefore I think some serious talk and perhaps re-writing of this policy needs to be done, as per the statistics given above. I think there is a case where protecting the main page is indeed needed, especially for controversial topics, and those that just seem to attract more vandalism then others. There has to be some happy medium. —— Eagle 101 17:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Apparently there's been a huge amount of template vandalism recently affecting these articles, so I guess they aren't protected at least some of the time. Anyway, I guess it became a policy just because Raul is FA director and he's a big proponent of the view it represents. The policy definitely needs to be redeveloped to reflect community judgment on the matter. Everyking 11:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen some articles (the recent Definition of Macedonia was one) where parts of the articles, including text that people may want to edit, are trancluded onto the page as a template: Template:Macedonia intro. And I don't understand Everyking's comment about how people shouldn't need to edit "any of these templates". I suspect Everyking is referring to the administrative and widely-used templates, not the ones specific to a small area, or which might contain content that new readers might be able to constructively edit. In general, something to think about, as not all templates are the same. Carcharoth 21:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the need to edit them is much lower than the need to edit the articles themselves, and I don't even think there is much need to edit the articles themselves during their special day. That constructive editing might be possible doesn't mean that the negative side-effect of vandalism doesn't outweigh it. Everyking 11:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, this is absurd.

Torchic is now the featured article. Thus, we have vandalism reverts flying right and left, because it's both Pokemon and featured. For that matter, Pokémon got subjected to page move vandalism, meaning that it's currently awaiting speedy deletion so I can move the history from Idiot262. AAARGH! -Amarkov _edits 00:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The vandals are putting Pokemon on the front page now, are they? :-) Carcharoth 01:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Bottom half of a bloody naked dead woman. On an article that is directed at children no less. Classy. What I'm wondering is how long before Misplaced Pages gets sued?--DaveOinSF 03:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It's really agonizing. It's like throwing little cups of water onto a fire that's spreading across the kitchen, desperately hoping you won't have to resort to using the fire extinguisher. Everyking 11:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, we need to re-write this policy. How about Misplaced Pages:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Lets not get too picky with the wording, but lets get a general feel for what we want. I will copy the contents of the policy as is, and then see what we can come up with. I will redirect the talk page of that re-write here, so that we can keep all the talk in one location. —— Eagle 101 12:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Haven't read anything else on this page, not going to read anything else on this page. Just saying here, the featured article of the day should be semi-protected for as long as it is on the main page if it starts getting heavily vandalised. Why should we be made to use a policy that prevents us from protecting a page just because it might be improved when most of a day's edits are vandalism? J Di  13:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have re-written it to meet what looks like we have agreed upon. Feel free to modify, Misplaced Pages:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Lets see if we can come up with something that is a happy medium. —— Eagle 101 14:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday, 24th dec 2006, featured article got vandalised alot because it wasn't semi-protected. Is there some new rule that makes it impossible for admins to semi-protect the articles? I mean, todays too got vandalised as soon it was put on the main page. I showed a relative the featured article, and on the 24th, a big banner with "this article SUCK" parade over the screen. Very nice. And as DaveOinSF said, people aren't just doing ordinary stupid stuff, but pure evil vandalism like putting that bottom half of a bloody naked dead woman on a article for children. If someone doesn't want to contribute to an article just because they don't want to sign up, then the edit that he wanted to make, wasn't that important. Sry for my english, it's sooo late. Good night, and Merry Christmas!--NoNo 03:59, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Template protection, including talk page

Just throwing a random thought out there that we should also be s-protecting the templates that get included on the talk pages of Featured Articles. After seeing a large penis appear on the talk page a while back (I think it was the "this article appeared on the main page on DATE" one), I suggested on IRC that templates such as Template:Featured be protected, but the prevailing opinion was that "no one cares about talk pages", and I was shot down. Gzkn 09:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

There's extensive discussion on template protection for MPAs going on at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Follow-up to Vandalism on Main Page. You might get a more receptive reaction there regarding protecting talk page templates as well. John Broughton | Talk 16:19, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

December 1-7 analysis

Here are what I consider to be ‘’facts’’ from the analysis of anonymous edits of Main Page articles (MPAs) for the week of December 1 to 7, as detailed at Misplaced Pages talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis. I’ve also added some additional information based on my edit-by-edit analysis of several of those days. John Broughton | Talk 23:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Composition of anonymous IP edits

• About 75% of all anonymous IP edits of a MPA are vandalism on any given day (range: 70% to 83%).

• About 10% anonymous IP edits are beneficial. (Range: 7% to 15%.) Of these, the majority are to negate vandalism, though often the corrections aren’t full reverts (that is, often further edits are needed to fully reverse the vandalism).

• Less than 5% of anonymous IP edits are actually constructive content changes (wording changes, adding facts, etc.).

• Of the 206 anonymous IP edits on December 5th, 10 had edit summaries indicated reverting or removing vandalism. Only 17 other anonymous users (8% of the total) added an edit summary to explain their edit.

• The rare addition of apparently valid text by anonymous IP editors generally didn’t survive the time that the MPA is on the main page. That may be partly or mostly because such additions typically weren’t sourced, presumably because most anonymous IP editors don’t understand WP:RS.

Semi-protection

• Semi-protection of MPAs was done four days out of seven. It was done nine times during these four days, for a total of 21 hours and 53 minutes. Average protection time was about 2.4 hours. For these four days, the articles were protected an average of 23% of the time.

• Eight of the 9 semi-protections occurred between 15:00 and 24:00 standard time (9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Eastern Standard time, U.S.). The 9th was minor, lasting only for 20 minutes.

• One of the major factors that apparently affects whether a MPA is semi-protected is the volume of edits for a given article. December 1-3 (never protected) MPAs all had less than 200 edits during their 24 hours. By comparision, the December 4-7 MPAs had between 266 and 535 edits (and, as noted above, these four articles were semi-protected an average of 23% of their time as MPAs).

Impact on readers

• For the six days where editing where counts were recorded for portions of the day, the extreme case of anonymous IP vandalism was on 5 December between 01:00 and 02:00 standard time (7 p.m. to 8 p.m., Eastern Standard Time), when vandalism occurred 27 times – roughly every 90 seconds. By comparison, the total for December 4-7, during the non-protected hours, was 419 vandalizing edits during 74 unprotected hours, which is slightly less than one every 10 minutes.

• The vast majority of anonymous IP vandalism is not of the "Hi mom" type. Rather, most of it is page blanking, replacing sections or pages with text obscenities, replacing images at the top of the page with pornographic images, replacing key words in the lead paragraph with nonsense, and so on.

• For the five MPAs where the duration of IP vandalism was tracked, the articles were in a vandalized state due to anonymous IP edits for between 6 and 11 percent of the time the articles were on the Main Page.

• The percentage of the time that readers saw vandalism during these 5 days is, of course, more than the 6 to 11 percent – perhaps significantly more - because that percentage does not includes:

• Vandalism edits by newly registered accounts (such vandalism would also be blocked by semi-protection, but it was too time-consuming to check every registered account to see if it was new or not).

• Vandalism by registered accounts older than 4 days.

• Vandalism of templates (see , , , and (same links as mentioned above). Vandalism of templates is being addressed by increased (but not universal) semi-protection of templates.

• On average, it takes one-and-a-quarter minutes to revert a vandalizing edit. Between 20 and 40% are reverted in less than a minute.

Impact on editors

• Of the 329 edits on December 5th that were done by registered users:

• 201 revert and/or vandal-fighting edits (including 7 reverts by bots)
• 8 paired post/reverts (good faith reversals, I assume)
• 6 cases of vandalism (5 different users)
• 114 other edits (35%).

Of the 114 other edits, 23 had no edit summary and so might have been included some vandal fighting.

• During times of heavy edits, it may be difficult for any editor to make a beneficial change. For example, there were 43 edits between 01:00 and 01:19 on the 5th of December – one edit every 28 seconds – before the article was semi-protected.

Call it what it is...

Why doesn't the "Rationale" section simply say first and foremost, that this is a Honeypot and avoid a lot of the nonsense? And please, don't refer me to BEANS. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 01:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it is not, that is why. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 16:48, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Opinion on draft

The current policy draft seems to be much closer to what I would have envisaged were I a new user, (and oddly, almost the opposite of what was there before), and importantly adds in the need to protect templates and use semiprotection when there are few editors on revert patrol. I have no idea though whether this involves more work for admins, who presumably would be the people involved in doing such work. Perhaps it is worthwhile making sure there are people prepared to do this work, (or set up some sort of bot?) before we get too far with this policy. The other thing is have we convinced Raul654 that the change in policy is necessary? Because I'm guessing that as featured article editor, if he doesn't agree, we could have a fine time trying to get it implemented. Terri G 17:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the draft doesn't represent any more work for admins. Templates are already being protected based on the existing policy. Putting a semi-protect on an article arguably results in less admin work, since most vandal-fighting goes away. And, of course, the proposed policy doesn't require admins to do anything, it simply encourages (and empowers) them to use semi-protection more often.

As far as Raul654 goes, I too hope that he is convinced that a change in written policy is needed (actual practice has been changing; if it had not, this discussion would probably have ended long ago). But Raul654 doesn't own the MPA, as I think he'd be the first to say - once a new MPA is out, any admin can semi-protect (or unprotect) it. (For example, it's getting pretty common to move-protect it pretty early in its life.)

My major concern is we don't get wheel-warring where one admin puts semi-protection on and another promptly removes it. (In the seven days in December that the MPA was analyzed in depth, this happened at least once.) The proposed policy, if you will, is simply to move the tolerance level for semi-protection a bit. The policy change certainly doesn't mandate 24-hour semi-protection -- something I'd personally support, but also realize is much too significant a change to realistically have a chance of gaining anything resembling consensus. John Broughton | Talk 18:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the new draft policy is great and trust there will be little difficulty in getting consensus and publishing it. Is anyone working on the new template? That would seem to be on the critical path for moving this forward.--Paul 18:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I am not sure where to take this to next, but I support the current draft. —— Eagle 101 02:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps what is going on at Misplaced Pages talk:Usurpation#Votes as explained at Misplaced Pages talk:Usurpation#Can't we just... is a good model. In other words, it time to ask for a show of hands (support, opposed, whatever)? (The relevant guideline is Misplaced Pages:How to create policy.) -- John Broughton | Talk 21:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Any movement on this? Gzkn 08:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

(undent) No. I think it's time for someone to try to bell the cat, so to speak. I'm thinking of posting the proposal widely (without spamming, of course), and asking for any final constructive suggestions for changes to it, and then moving forward with a formal expressing of support/oppose.

One reason I've held off is that I wanted to review (but haven't had the time) the MPAs between 8 December and (say) yesterday - what number of them were semi-protected? If there were only 2 or 3, it may be difficult for this proposal to become policy; if (say) 20 of them were semi-protected at one point or another during their 24 hours on the main page, then it could be easier. John Broughton | Talk 17:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, with that amount of vandalism being done, (as in the 7 day study), we should adopt the draft version of this policy, or just scrap it all together. (and rely on our semi-protection policy to guide us. Cheers! —— Eagle 101 04:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course, we can still change the draft, but as it looks, we need to do something. —— Eagle 101 19:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Protection of templates used in featured articles

User:ProtectionBot and Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/ProtectionBot might be of interest to those watching this page. It is an adminbot programmed to (among other things) protect the unprotected templates used on the daily featured article, and then unprotect the templates at the end of the day. Carcharoth 15:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks like now as a result of it we have "Cascading" protection. 19:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Case studies of notable IP activity on main page featured articles

(Section addition: –Outriggr § 03:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC))

Notable cases of IP vandalism

• El Greco was featured on the main page on January 19, 2007. The deletion of the entire biography section by an IP went uncorrected for 2.5 days (correcting diff). –Outriggr § 03:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Notable cases of IP improvement

Specialized Main Page FA AntiVandalBot? / "Newbie edits" subpage?

I really don't know how helpful this would be, or how difficult to implement, but what if there were a bot running whose only purpose was to monitor the Featured Article of the day? Would that decrease the amount of time that the FA spent in a vandalized state? The bot could revert vandals as needed, or possibly even semi- or fully-protect the article for a short time if the vandalism hit a certain level.

I personally have a general bias against protecting articles. I was drawn into becoming a Misplaced Pages editor by the desire to fix the vandalism that I encountered. The ability to successfully do that felt incredibly empowering to me, and has kept my interest in helping and editing Misplaced Pages. I would hate to see that experience blocked off for future newcomers. While the main page FA does get vandalized quite frequently, I hope that we can think of other remedies than protecting the article.

If we absolutely have to protect the article (and this policy could be extended to all protected articles), I would recommend that some sort of "recommended edits" sub-page (separate from the regular talk page) be linked to from the protected article in question. The protection template placed at the top would have a prominent link to the sub-page, which is where anon and new users could post their edits. An editor could then scan that page for helpful edits and add them. If we do need to protect or semi-protect the page, let's give the newbies some feeling of empowerment.

Gosh, but I got wordy!--Aervanath 17:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like User:ProtectionBot already does part of what I had in mind. Could it be modified to fulfill the rest of my recommendation?--Aervanath 18:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think each and every problem here on the page could be solved by a software update that allows certain pages to wait three minutes or so before edits are allowed to go through. In the meantime a bot or admins could check for vandalism and page blanking, and cancel any vandalism before it even appears on the page. Mithridates 17:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

Copied here by Rlevse from the Scouting talk page, soon after the article's main page exposure.

Can't article editing be temporarily restricted to people with usernames? --Jagz 17:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandals are always a problem with the main page FA. I knew this would happen. Some feel like you and I that the mp FA should be protected, but others, lead by Raul654, do not feel so. There have been several debates about it. I always we should have to waste our time fighting the vandals, that it should be protected, but of course, no one cares about that, they think the vandals should be free to waste our time.Rlevse 17:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

After Eagle Scout went on the main page, I observed the next few main page articles. I guess I just needed to vent a bit, so I wrote User:Gadget850/MainPage. My experience is that if you convince an admin to semi-protect the page, another admin will come along and unprotect it and note Misplaced Pages:Main Page featured article protection. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, we shouldn't have to worry about it in the first place. More time and effort by all valid editors is spent fighting them than good is gained. New editors can simply move off the mainpage article to edit, it simply wouldn't be that big a deal. Rlevse 17:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Reversed vandalism on 06FEB2007, 12:37 EST I understand not what you say sir, but I will defend to the death your right to confuse me! 17:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

My point is we shouldn't have to fight vandals. Wiki should not allow them, wiki is too nice to them, everyone should have a verified account, etc. Thanks for fighting these scum.Rlevse 17:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Rlevse has a point, but if we block the main page from new editors then it could drive away new editors, since that is the first page they see. And I have seen a few cases of new editors reverting the vandalism they see, always a good thing. But yes, it is a hassle, thankfully lots of people have it on their watch page. Darthgriz 17:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I beg to differ, how many of us had our first exposure to wiki via the mp fa? Few I suspect. Most people I know got to it by looking up info for school assignements, google hits on a topic of interest (my case), etc.Rlevse 17:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm hoping we implement the German solution soon . --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention someone vandalizes and then a new person sees vulgar stuff of the mp fa...I'll believe the German solution here when I see. This issue is one reason Citizendium has been started, where accounts are required.Rlevse 17:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

My two cents on vandalism is this: if a featured article is being vandalized repeatedly, it makes WikiPedia look bad. Case in point, when I first went to this article (after seeing it featured on the front page), I discovered that it will full of link spam. Had I been a first time visitor, I would have been put off by what I assumed was a lack of attention to the article. I'm just sayin'. --Douglas Muth 17:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

But the point is Misplaced Pages is for everybody to edit, if the first thing you see when you click on the page to edit and you can't it defeats the purpose. Although, I hate vandalism just as much as the rest of us (especially personal attacks.) Then again, if they can semi-protect my userpage to stop vandalism, sometimes I wonder why they can't protect the main page. So I guess I just see both sides of the issue. Darthgriz 17:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

FA should get much less attention judging by their article merit. But we are inviting vandals to ravage them. We are frustrating a lot of people here. Mandel 16:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you PLEASE protect this page from vandalism?Anon 11:50, 6 February 2007 (PDT)

A guy with an IP starting with "69" keeps vandalizing this page and vandalized the Super Bowl XLI page as well. I think that IP address should be blocked immediately. -Daniel Blanchette 21:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Why Wiki does not block editing from unregistered people on the main page continues to amaze me. This article was reduce to garbage before my eyes at least 3 times in a matter of minutes. I propose that anyone that is going to offer anything helpful will be willing to register, it is almost to a point where I have to confirm other sources to verify if anything on Wiki is actually valid. Arzel 21:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

• Nice to see some interest in this topic. The most recent discussion about this "disputed policy", for those interested, has taken place here: Misplaced Pages talk:Main Page featured article protection. I honestly think everyone who disputes the "never-protect" garbage should at least make a comment on that talk page (that's what my "petition" subpage was for, but I was told that consolidated expressions of interest are evil, and that mine was especially evil). –Outriggr § 00:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It's not really an honor to have an article that you worked on appear on the Main Page because if essentially exposes the people who have put in their time and effort on the article for free to harassment. An attitude that the article on the Main Page should not be protected from unregistered users is insulting and fails to consider the welfare of the people behind the article. If there was nobody behind these articles the featured article on the Main Page would consist of a photo of someone's buttocks or whatever else the vandals might come up with that day. --Jagz 02:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

New Proposal

As a newcomer to this page I ask two questions. One, why aren't all FA article semi-protected, and two, how can such a proposal be made feasible, via a standard guideline.

I give three brief reasons for FA article semi-protection. One, Belittling contributors' efforts. Contributors spend a sizeable proportion of their lifetime editing, writing and researching a FA Article. This time is not compensated in any form. Generally, an FA article is conceded to be a fairly well-researched piece of work. Would you throw your Masters thesis to the streets for punks? Doing what Misplaced Pages does now is to offer no respect for hard works done by editors. It places vandals, pranksters on the same level as a diligent writer.

Two, drives away quality contributors. Contributors are bound to be disappointed that their paintaking efforts could be so slipshoddily edited by anyone. Having spent like, say, 30 hrs of their lives scripting an article, they have to be convinced that any Tom, Dick or Harry may be qualified to rewrite them, after a panel judges it to be of high quality. Vandals are easily dealt with, but who has patience and 100 hrs to deal with a troll?

Three, wasting time and money of Wikipedian Foundation. Misplaced Pages is not Bill Gates's private treasury. It does not have endless funds. Every year so much money is donated to keep it running. We have a responsibility to utilize them in a socially responsible manner. This means not allowing people to vandalize quality articles. Vandalizing a back alley is not the same as breaking Taj Mahal or Michelangelo's David.

Semi-protection is an easy way to identify trolls, extremists, vandals and problem users. It costs nothing. A genuine user would certainly not think twice about registering. Almost every privately run website in the world requires some form of registration. Mandel 17:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit confused by "Contributors are bound to be disappointed that their paintaking efforts could be so slipshoddily edited by anyone. Having spent like, say, 30 hrs of their lives scripting an article, they have to be convinced that any Tom, Dick or Harry may be qualified to rewrite them, after a panel judges it to be of high quality."- this has nothing to do with semiprotection. If an edit is good enough to be accepted on consensus, then it certainly isn't vandalism. Borisblue 09:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm advocating for FA semi-protection to guard against vandals etc. Semi-protection does make it easier to track errant editors and to prevent them from making NPOV or inaccurate edits to Misplaced Pages. A disfigured FA is much worse than anything else, IMO.Mandel 15:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding how can such a proposal be made feasible, via a standard guideline, the answer is that the reason this guideline is disputed is because of prior discussions that resulted in an alternate proposal: Misplaced Pages:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Note that the alternative proposal calls for making semi-protection easier, not mandatory; there simply is not enough support for the latter.

As for how to make this policy, see Misplaced Pages:How to create policy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• The information a few sections above (December 1-7 analysis) is very persuasive. We are losing more (in the time of valuable contributors spending time reverting vandalism) than we are gaining (from actual positive edits from anonymous accounts). It is time to make it a policy that all Main Page FA's are to be semi-protected while they are on the main page. Johntex\ 19:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Our time and money is not infinite, and yearly donation drives prove that. Vandal edits may be reverted, but at a cost. Admins regularly locked valuable contributors out by blocking a IP address; but comparatively, isn't semi-protection a much more effective way out. Maybe the German solution should be test-run on all FAs.Mandel 16:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Just watching yesterdays and todays featured article, I would have to say that I would not want to be an editor on a featured article the day it hits the main page. The volume of vandalism is enormous, and difficult to keep a top on. The editors of Californian Gold Rush let out a sigh of relief when the day was over. Many of the vandals appeared to have accounts set up specially for the fun. I say fully protect for the 24 hours, any serious editor will come back the next day. As someone said above, you just end up exhausting your volunteers. --Michael Johnson 02:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, more than that, I say that editors of a featured article deserve that 24 hours to sit back, enjoy a beer, and bask in the glory of their achievement. They shouldn't be run raggard by a bunch of vandals. --Michael Johnson 02:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

How abt this. For 24 hours edits will be accepted, but not immediately reflected. Then an admin weeds thru' the vandalisms. Aka a bit like the German solution. Sounds perfect to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mandel (talk • contribs) 17:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

German solution

I'm interested to hear how well the German solution is going. I only noticed it on the talk page when searching for another term, perhaps this proposal should be mentioned on the article page? Richard001 23:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

FA vandalism policy

Considering the weakness of current policy with regard to vandalism, perhaps a related policy for FA vandalism should be introduced. If we had a policy 'Any user who deliberately vandalizes a featured article on the main page shall be blocked for 24 hours' it would deter vandals, and there could also be a small warning message when editing the page similar to when editing older versions (e.g. 'You are editing today's featured article. Please ensure your contributions are neutral and verifiable. Edits considered to be vandalism by administrators will result in an instant 24 hour block').

Regardless of what policy is decided on, I believe we need to do something to make the main page FAs more secure and reliable for our readers and hard working contributors. Perhaps the German solution combined with tough anti-vandal policies could be this solution - this way anyone could still edit, the vandalism would never make the front page, and vandals would give up or be blocked before their edits would even be seen. Richard001 00:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Thought

Given that our featured articles are selected for the main page a few days in advance of their intended appearence, would it be possible (or feasable for that matter) to design an AntiVandalBot with the sole mission of watching todays featured article and reverting any vandalism it catches? Considering that articles slated for appearance on the main page now have the intended date of display on the main page printed on their featured article template, and assuming that someone could design a bot capable of reading the date on the template and instructing the bot to watch that page for vandalism for the 24 hours it will be on the main page may help keep the pages managable without protecting the page. This, of course, is just an idea. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

This still doesn't change the fact that it would muck up the FA's history, as well as being unable to block IPs who continually vandalize. Cheers, Lankybugger ○ speak ○ see ○ 02:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Disputedpolicy}}

I'm adding this back on, as I don't think anyone has replied to ideas about the draft mentioned about 3 weeks ago, and I still don't think the existing version is reflecting what I am seeing on this talk page. —— Eagle101 23:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

A poll should probably be taken before any thoughts of removing the disputed template. Richard001 00:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

m:polls are evil, in any case, we need to get back to the draft mentioned above, and work on a new writing of this. —— Eagle101 18:53, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps it would help to move that draft over the current version? That is, if it has more support than the current version. I am not fully familiar with the issues here, but it may be a way forward. >Radiant< 09:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

My own two cents...

I don't really think we should encourage new users to edit Featured Articles. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of the problems this can cause in regards to WP:BITE, but my rationale is simple. Per the assessment scale a Featured Article is of a quality which means "No further editing is necessary unless new published information has come to light; but further improvements to the text are often possible."

While I do believe that no article can truly be definitively complete (there will always be one sentence which can be improved, one phrase which can be made more precise), if these articles are being described as Misplaced Pages's best why are we encouraging their editing? These are not meant to display Misplaced Pages's strength by means of allowing anyone to edit them, but rather showing how good an article edited just by those willing to contribute can be! It should stand as an example, not a toy for newer people to try out.

Semi-protection makes sense, to me. While the edits by IPs can be beneficial, I'm inclined to point out that the 85% of edits constituting vandalism (or corrected vandalism) speak loudly enough. The changes to the text, while good, are comprised not just of IP users but registered users as well. Being a front page FA means that the articles are improved irrespective of their un-protected or semi-protected status.

I'm personally inclined to say semi-protection should be done for all FAs. They're good enough to be among Misplaced Pages's best, so we should take care. These articles are meant to represent the community and while we can't get rid of vandalism to these articles entirely, semi-protection for FAs would make these articles harder to damage and make those doing the damage more accountable for their actions. Cheers, Lankybugger ○ speak ○ see ○ 03:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Personally I'd like to see more research done on FAs in terms of their time on the main page. How much of the editing is vandalism? How much of that comes from IPs? How do the major contributors feel about the time their articles spent on the main page - were they happy to have them there for people to edit or did they find the vandalism tiresome? How long, on average, did vandalism stay visible? How does the average editor feel about this policy? I'd like to do some research on it myself but I haven't really got time. If anyone is interested Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Wikidemia is the place to coordinate this sort of research. Richard001 01:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Featured articles may be among Misplaced Pages's best, but they're definitely not perfect. I've seen featured articles with copyrighted images lacking fair use rationales (along with various other image problems a la Ian Thorpe, and there are generally copyediting problems that aren't noticed during a FAC. Whether or not these corrections come from IPs I can't say, but articles that appear on the Main Page always have room for improvement. ShadowHalo 01:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Research into Vandalism on the FA of the day

Unless someone has already done this, I'm going to start researching the effect of blocking would have on the Featured article of the day by looking at the edit that were Vandalism, undoing Vandalism, and constructive edits. --Andrew Hampe Talk 02:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If you want to check up on it, check my research page. --Andrew Hampe Talk 02:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

And as for someone already doing so, I think it's been done, at least for anonymous IP edits - see Misplaced Pages talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis, as is mentioned in sections above. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism. Simple.

Looking at the edit history for TFA, I see 16 vandalisms and 16 RVs in 50 edits. That means that there are 32 edits out of 50 that are related to vandalism. This is a MUCH higher then normal ratio. At the very least, I suggest that a sign be put on the top of the edit page for TFA that says that much higher consequences are in force for vandalising it. This, of course, should also be enforced. W1k13rh3nry 23:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Having read through the statistics of the December study I think we need to do something. Having vile vandalism in an article like Down Syndrome, during 10% of the time it was on display, not to mention template vandalism, is hardly acceptable. Higher penalties, editing restriction or some other option like requiring approval of IP edits, perhaps sorted by a bot, are some options. Going by the hard data, I think it's ridiculous to say IP editors contribute much more than puerile vandalism to articles, or that there isn't a problem with the level of vandalism. Richard001 00:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Are there any figures for the amount of time the vandalism remained on the page? Cheers, Lankybugger ○ Yell ○ 01:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, there needs to be semi-protection on Main Page FAs. 144 minutes of vandalism for the Down syndrome article is too long. Cheers, Lankybugger ○ Yell ○ 01:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

An analogy for the question of semi-protection

Imagine you are ill and I am your doctor. I say to you, "Take these 10 pills. 8 of them will harm you, 1 will have no effect and 1 will cause a very slight but barely noticeable improvement in your condition." Would you take the pills? Then decide whether 1 edit leading to a very slight but barely noticeable improvement is worth 8 edits that do damage and 1 that does nothing. DrKiernan 17:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I love it. -Phoenix 19:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

People are not wikis. If a vandal cut off a guy's arm and replaced it with a penis, it probably wouldn't be too easy to fix ;) --- RockMFR 04:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• LOL. I must say, this is the oddest rebuttal I've yet to encounter. -Etafly 15:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
• I'd like to know whether the penis is the length of an arm, or normal size. Just so I get the analogy clear in my head. DrKiernan 08:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

full/semi, maybe something new

After reading various user, talk, pump etc... discussions and giving the issue of FA articles and protection some thought, I have come up with an idea. Perhaps once an Article has reached the FA status and has survived its day on the main page maybe permanent less-than-semi-protected-but-more-just-on-editor's-and-user's-watchlist status should be enacted. In other words perhaps various "keys" should be given to the central contributers to that article and in order to edit said article an anonymous IP would have to go to one of those users pages and obtain that "key" in order to edit the page. The use of the "key" would notify the user whose "key" was used and all others with "keys" to that article. With this key system enacted, I believe that the quality of FAs might be stabilized and thereby make Misplaced Pages a better and more stable encyclopedia. I guess you could think of it as a sort of "active watching" or local adminship of an article. Also these keyholders might have the ability to lock an article lock an article for a period of time if they feel it necessary. I propose this because I believe that Semi is too strong and simply watchlisting to be too passive and prone to slower reverts of vandalism. Let me know if I am way off base or not with this idea.

Continually questing to make Misplaced Pages better Cronholm144 09:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget that in addition to being passive, Watchlists only feature the most recent change to an article. So if someone performs vandalism and then another user edits without noticing the vandalism, it's possible for the incident to go unnoticed. Cheers, Lankybugger ○ Yell ○ 15:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I would also like to know if this is a proposal worthy idea, and I would love as much input as possible Cronholm144 20:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of problems with this proposal. The most fundamental, probably, is that it calls for very granular permissions (for each FA, specified users would have unique access to the article). That's completely contrary to the fundamental design of MediaWiki software, where access to an article is by class of user (e.g., for semi-protected articles, all IP users cannot edit). I don't think the developers would be at all interested in this, particularly given that there are less than 2000 FAs out of 1.7 million or so articles.

In any case, this is the wrong place to discuss such a proposal; this is the talk page for discussing protecting Main Page articles, not FAs. If you really want widespread feedback on this, you should take it to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

No, this is not a good idea. Completely goes against the fundamental idea that everyone can edit. Users do not own articles. --- RockMFR 03:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Everyone can edit still thay just have to click two more times to do so. It is more of an alert system.Cronholm144 04:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Interferes with Ignore all rules?

This "policy" does hinder Misplaced Pages all the time, so wouldn't that make this policy/guideline void under Ignore all rules? And if so, how the heck did this become policy? It's too idealistic. --Andrew Hampe 22:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

New Proposal - Redux

I think TFA should automatically be semi-protected for its 24 hours.

I'm relatively new to Misplaced Pages. Although the learning curve has ben steep in the few months I've been editing, and an article that I've been working on was rated FA back in February and was yesterday's (May 22, 2007) TFA, I still feel that what I've learned is a drop in the bucket compared to what I still need to learn. For example, I didn't really know anything about Protection until yesterday. Since then I've read lots and lots (including all the discussion on this page)and probably can't say anything new in support of semi-protection for TFA. All I can do is share my experience and support some of the comments written above - especially by Mandel and John Broughton - as well as others. Yesterday Ellis Paul was TFA. What should have been a day of nothing but excitment and joy, ended up also being a day of misery. I barely ate or slept since I was tied to the computer fighting vandalism. Thankfully quite a few other Wiki editors were there to help, but it was absolutely exhausting. I was shocked when my request for semi-protection was denied. There was alot of promotion regarding the Wiki TFA designation from Ellis Paul's management and many many friends and acquaintances visited Misplaced Pages for the first time. Sadly, several of them were greeted by juvenile vandalism on the Ellis Paul page. Although most of the vandalism was removed quickly - I would say within a minute to two in most cases - the vandals worked faster than the vandal police. To say that I am appalled at the waste of time, energy and talent is putting it mildly. Almost immediately after the 24-hour Main Page designation ended, the vandlaism stopped. IMHO, if that doesn't indicate a need for 24-hour protection I don't know what does. I counted 103 incidents of vandalism - several to the infobox. Almost all of them were anonymous IP edits. There were a handful of true edits - all minor.

Those who truly want to make an article better will. A simple headline at the top of TFA alerting visitors/editors that the article is being protected for 24 hours would suffice.

We need to be good stewards of the time, talent and energy that's out there. Right now I can almost say with certainty that yesterday's negative experience has soured me on ever working towards TFA again. I dont feel that my time, talent and energy is valued at all. Once again, it seems that the perpetrators have more rights than the victims. The vandals must be laughing at how stupid those that would allow this to happen must appear to be. IMHO, nothing can justify allowing this to happen. Kmzundel 13:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• The main argument of the "anti-protection racket" is that protection turns off new editors who would otherwise contribute to wikipedia. Kmzundel's experience indicates that the reverse of this may be true, i.e. editors are actually discouraged to participate because of the excessive vandalism of one of the main pages. The fact is that neither view is supported by data, and we are arguing over different hypotheses solely with the benefit of personal testimony. Do we have any data on the number of editors recruited and lost? If not, we should restrict our discussion to the facts. The fact is (as was shown in December) that anonymous edits of TFAs do more damage than good. DrKiernan 13:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• (edit conflict. I apologize if my response is somewhat redundant) While I agree with you, from what I've read, this has been proposed and denied repeatedly over the years -- the main position is that wikipedia is founded on the principle that it is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and FA's represent the apex of wikipedia -- as such, the wiki philosophy must especially be reflected when FA's are presented on the main page. To me, not semi-protecting FA's for their 24 hours of fame is illogical and stubborn -- as history (edit histories, in this case) clearly shows that the world is far from ideal. If anything, the credibility of wikipedia is irreparably damaged when a person looks at a FA (which represents the best wikipedia has to offer) for the first time and reads "ur faggots and im faleing grade 9." Statistically, of course, the great majority of readers won't encounter a vandalized page due to the vigilance of RC patrollers, but a great deal of visitors (probably in the order of high-hundreds, if not more, depending on the article), will most assuredly visit the article during the window of time you'd described. Of course, all of this has been argued before. If you haven't already, might I suggest looking at the archives? Perhaps you'll find an explanation that's to your satisfaction -- if not, then maybe this issue can be raised again, but this time with some success. Cheers! -Etafly 14:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say that I'm not proposing a change to Misplaced Pages's principle that anyone can edit - because anyone still can edit - just not at all times!, like, for example, during the 24-hours that an article is TFA!  :-) Kmzundel 14:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

From my short experience of reading this page it seems that most people actually agree with you. I might add that a statistically and practically significant number of readers view vandalized articles - often 10% and more. Another set of studies of FA vandalism to compliment the December studies (see WP:WPVS) would be in order. Frankly when you have articles vandalized 10% of the time and 80-90% of IPs are vandals (and the rest hardly making any major contribution to an already almost perfect article) there's no a great deal of logic in leaving it unprotected. There may be the odd newbie editor put off by not being able to contribute, but someone who could seriously contribute something worth while to the project is going to be much more put off by the high levels of vandalism and lack of policies to deal with them.

What is also needed besides further statistical analysis of vandalism is a survey of new users and anonymous editors as to what their opinions on not being able to edit articles (especially FAs) are. It may well find most readers would support the move, since they wouldn't have to witness vandalized pages nearly as often. Richard001 00:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

• I've changed the way I was thinking. I realize that Misplaced Pages's principle anyone can edit doesn't translate to anyone can vandalize. So semi-protection of TFA doesn't go against the principle. Kmzundel 02:56, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we could run a few trials - say once a week we have a day where the FA is semi-protected throughout its time on the main page. We have data for regular days, but we have nothing with which to compare it. I don't think it would be harmful just to run a few trials - maybe four or five - to get an idea how semi-protection would work and what impacts it would have. Editors of the article could be encouraged to further discuss their experience to help us get more feedback. Saying this is a step towards semi-protection is no argument here - we simply need some data for comparison so both sides of the debate can be better informed. Richard001 11:20, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Consensus

In order to gauge consensus for sticking with or changing the current policy/guideline on protecting today's featured article (only using semi-protection infrequently, if at all), I have categorised editors expressing an opinion on this discussion page since the completion of the data-gathering exercise in December 2006. As can be clearly seen, the overwhelming consensus of the editors contributing to the discussion (27 out of 32 on my count at 09:31 UT 24th May 2007) is in favour of a change to the current policy/guideline.

If you are in the wrong category or are not in a category at all, please move or add yourself.

No "polls are evil"-type posts please. I know already. DrKiernan 09:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that - I got the same response myself when suggesting a survey of current opinion, but I don't think there's any other way we can make progress with the debate, we'll just end up talking around in circles for years. Knowing where people stand will certainly help focus the discussion and allow us to give a more accurate indication of the dispute on the policy page. And if the vast majority of editors think the policy needs changing in some way, it probably needs to change. Getting as many editors as possible to add their opinion would help us come to a quick conclusion where the community stands on this one. Richard001 10:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks from me also. It seems pretty obvious that the majority favors policy-change. I hope this sparks some movement towards that. Kmzundel 12:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
• You've shattered my confidence in my writing skills, my good sir! Please allow me to clarify. I meant to say that I am in support semi-protecting all FAs for at least the duration in which it's featured on the main page, but that things were unlikely to change given the outcomes of all the previous discussions. My pessimism should not be confused with surrender, however! All the best, -Etafly 14:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
• Sorry that's entirely my fault. My reading skills are in error, not your writing ones! You've also highlighted that I'm only in support of semi-protection for the day (currently). DrKiernan 14:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

• We seem to be building consensus for semi-protection for a day. Question - who makes the final decision to change policy? This is all still mind-boggling to me - having only been editing about 6 months. Kmzundel 10:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Policy/guidelines are determined by the consensus of the community. I would advise that we continue making tiny adjustments to the project page, until someone starts screaming at us, and then we discuss that single minor point. If there is consensus to adjust that minor point we move on, if there isn't we hold and discuss. See Misplaced Pages:Consensus. DrKiernan 10:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Simpler approach

I would suggest that we simply examine current actual practice and have the guideline reflect that. There are always some people who strongly object to current practice, but until and unless they succeed in changing said practice, it is a guideline by default (I refer people who don't understand this statement to WP:PPP). >Radiant< 11:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Radiant, I don't understand what you mean when you say "examine current actual practice and have the guideline reflect that". Practice by whom? Could you please explain further? Kmzundel 12:37, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The practice of whether or not the main page featured article is protected each day. >Radiant< 12:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think so -- If people cite policy when they refuse to protect, or unprotect a FA page during its 24 hours, then the practice itself, logical as it may be, is thwarted by policy. I think reaching consensus here is the way to proceed. -Etafly 15:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Main page protection

Where can I find the analogous page for the main page protection policy? I can't seem to find any such policy page by searching. I've searched for such a page quite thoroughly, so I'm presuming its absence is no mistake here.

It raises some important problems for this policy if there is not: Letting IP editors edit an FA, the primary feature of the main page, while denying registered editors the right to edit the main page without the matter even warranting a policy page (and lack of policy page raising an eyebrow) hardly seems logically consistent to me. I could just as likely make a small improvement to the main page (perhaps adding a new news item, an internal link etc.) as I could for an FA. The FA is after all the best of our work, and the likelyhood that I would need to edit it, and that by editing it I would actually substantially improve it, is fairly low, just as for the main page. It is also going to be visited frequently, and having it vandalized is little better than having the same done to the main page. Users may get a kick from being able to edit our main page FAs, but the same applies to the main page. The situation is almost identical, yet one policy says 'No, nobody can edit it ever, it needn't even be discussed', while the other says 'No, it should never be protected except under extreme circumstances. Can anyone else see the strange divide here? Richard001 10:52, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I, indeed, find this to be a valid point. Evolauxia 22:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• Wow, Richard.....you have indeed uncovered a strange divide. Kmzundel 23:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying the main page is no more important than the main page featured article, but the divide in protection is still too large for my liking. Another comparison is editing the main page FA and uploading an image to Wikimedia Commons. You need to have an account simply to upload a free use picture found on flickr, but to replace the main page FA with a picture of a penis, which is viewed by thousands of people each day, requires nothing. Richard001 00:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Richard, you again make a valid point. If TFA is part of the Main Page for 24 hours....and the Main Page is always protected....it seems a paradox that TFA is not protected at least for the 24 hours that it is part of the Main Page. Kmzundel 20:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
• From the protection policy, "Indefinite full protections are used for ... High visibility pages such as the Main Page in order to prevent vandalism." >Radiant< 09:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Improvement whilst on the Main Page

Richard asks for proof that the articles are improved whilst on the Main Page. An interesting point. These are the last three Today's featured articles: . I have taken the first and last version from each day, and compared the two. DrKiernan 08:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

• IMHO, the comparisons do not show significant improvement and do not justify the time it took to revert all the vandalism. Kmzundel 10:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
• I agree. In Simeon I there are three errors ("Boris II", "817" and "they was rested") and as for Caspian expeditions, I don't think "Chungamania" has had a great impact on European history, in fact, as it is a made up country, it's had none at all! DrKiernan 10:33, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

A study of about 10-20 random diffs would be good. Since we need only look at the differences it shouldn't be that much work either. We could use these results to reword the policy page based on facts rather than speculation. Richard001 00:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Taking the last 10 then:
4 improved: (+ ref) (lead) (years unlinked; extra links added) (+ ref)
2 little different:
4 damaged: (made-up country) (incorrect dates, etc.) (repetition) (ref vandalised)
DrKiernan 07:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Even for a small sample size that basically shows the original argument was flawed. Changes to the wording now reflect the truth of the matter. I've also pointed out another important aspect - there is no evidence at all to suggest semi-protecting articles will prevent such improvements. It might even be found that most of the improvements were by registered users, and most of the damage was from anons slipping vandalism through the cracks and not having it cleaned up for all the chaos of high traffic editing. I'm not asserting this is the case, but I would hardly be surprised if it was. Richard001 09:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

DrKiernan, thanks for taking the time to compare the last 10. And I would add that 3 of the 4 "improvements" were barely that. IMHO, only one was a significant improvement (lead). I agree that the original argument is flawed. Kmzundel 10:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Time taken to correct vandalism

Richard asks: Is vandalism cleaned up in "a matter of seconds".

From the December 2006 study we estimate that the average time spent vandalised is:
(239 + 81 + 82 + 114 + 18 + 113 + 135)/7 = 130.33 minutes
and the estimated average number of vandal edits is:
(76 + 45 + 33 + 72 + 166 + 92 + 89)/7 = 81.86 edits
Hence, the estimated average time to clean up vandalism is: 130.33/81.86 = 1.59 minutes (95.5 seconds). DrKiernan 10:41, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for providing these statistics for, us DrKiernan. I've tweaked the policy page again to reflect the data we have available. I've also pointed out that what is most important for our readers (and they are most important, are they not?) is the percentage time spent vandalized, i.e. the chance a random user will view a vandalized page. I have made no judgment as to whether the times spent vandalized in the December study articles is acceptable, I've simply given the reader the figures. A comparison of this with the time spent vandalized for a 'normal' article would also be appropriate here, though I'm not sure if we have this sort of data available yet. Further research is needed - we're leaning too heavily on a single study from 6 months ago with a sample size of 7. Richard001 11:17, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

According to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Vandalism studies#Conclusions from study 1, the average time for reverting vandalism generally is 12.63 hours. The median time is 14 minutes. DrKiernan 11:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

What now (redux)

I've read and re-read everything here on this Talk page.....and it seems to me we keep saying the same things over and over again....making the same valid points over and over. How long do we keep this up before determining that we've reached a consensus? I don't see anyone posting comments here saying they strongly favor the current policy....only comments from folks who obviously don't favor the current policy. We've expended a good bit of time and energy (thank you all for that) making the same points. The question to be answered is simply this: should Misplaced Pages's principle "anyone can edit" be translated to "anyone can vandalize"? I cannot believe that's what the Wiki folks intent was. Nor do I believe that semi-protecting (at the very least) TFA for 24 hours goes against the spirit of that principle. If you sense a bit of frustration on my part, you're right. And I've only been part of this discussion for 10 days. Kmzundel 15:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps the main point of contention is that on the main page, directly below the header and above the FA is the following line, placed in full protection:

  "the 💕 that anyone can edit."

  While I don't think that semi-protection makes this statement false (anyone can indeed edit a semi-protected page, so long as they register!), others may feel that any form of protection is in direct contradiction to our favourite wikislogan. Perhaps the solution would be to footnote that statement explaining that anyone is free to register in order to gain the ability to modify FA's.. However, it's time we start seeing reality; I have not seen a single FA that has been improved by IP-edits during its 24 mainpage hours. The rare good faith edits are probably more frustrating, as I find that they tend to undermine the overall quality of the FA without justifying immediate reversion (others may disagree, of course.) I'm not sure how we can effect an immediate change to policy. Perhaps we could take this to WP:VPP. Best regards. -Etafly 15:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• I would rather continue evolving the policy here by making incremental adjustments, as Richard and I have done. It has changed for the better since we began. Although it doesn't seem to have effected perceptions yet, judged by my failure to get Today's featured article semi-protected. DrKiernan 16:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

My request was turned down as well.  :-) Thanks for all your efforts. Kmzundel 16:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Tsk :) Fact is, the "anyone can edit" slogan by the GodKing is a pretty powerful exhortation, too. If it gets extreme (and it's not right now, IMO), then by all means, re-report. But the main page article should not get into a situation where semi-prot is the default setting, like move-prot is right now - Alison ☺ 16:20, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps we should seek his opinion on the subject in light of WP:WPVS, though I don't agree that WP:JIMBOSAID should trump incontrovertible evidence (and possibly consensus) to the contrary. :) -Etafly 16:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

• (Why are we using bullet points?) I'd rather see it change gradually than try to make any sudden leaps as well, though I feel the logical point to go from now would be to set up a new research project and do some trials of semi-protecting. I suppose a lot of people will object, but we seem to have a very strong consensus to semi-protect already, so I think some trials would be in order so we can get some idea what semi-protection might be like. A week of semi-protection and a week without is my suggestion. Where would we go to get approval for such a trial - Misplaced Pages:Featured articles? Richard001 00:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• (Dunno - they look cool! :) ) I'm not sure there is a "strong consensus" to semi-protect, though this page may say otherwise. My suggestion is that you gather evidence/rationale/etc and bring the matter to the admin group over on Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard - Alison ☺ 03:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC) (disclosure: I'm an admin)

If there is not a strong consensus to semi-protect there must be some form of very strong sampling bias happening here. The odds of getting around 35 editors to 4 favouring policy change (most of which want semi-protection every day) purely due to sampling error would be something like one in four billion. Perhaps there is something about this process that is biased towards people who favour stronger protection, I'm not sure what, but unless one or two editors are going to dictate to a hundred others what our policy is, you are going to have to find a great many people who favour our current protection guidelines. More input is welcome though, of course; please do whatever you can to encourage participation in the discussion. Richard001 10:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Paste from User talk:DrKiernan

You've made a lot of changes to that document now - some of them I just reverted as they appear to be just unilateral changes. I think we need to bring this whole matter to a wider forum to gain greater input from the community rather than have just a handful of us make all the changes. Thoughts? - Alison ☺ 07:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Alison's revert: Period of protection

As I said above, at the point at which my minor edits are disputed, we hold and discuss that single minor point.

I think that the time period for protection should be until the end of the day and not for a shorter period because if vandalism occurs early in the day it will recur and recur all day wasting time in having the article reverted, protected, unprotected, the protection announced, the protection unannounced, etc, etc. If the article is being heavily vandalised in the morning, it will be heavily vandalised for the remainder of the day. Studies prove that the number and frequency of vandal edits is constant all day and not restricted to specific time periods. Hence, if it needs protecting in the morning, it will need protecting all day. DrKiernan 07:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have to agree here. If the vandalism is heavy, and not just of a marginal nature, then unprotecting the page is about as intelligent as a wasp displaying fixed action pattern behavior. What we really need is a slightly more rigorous definition of 'heavy', though. This is a matter for general discussion at Misplaced Pages:Protection policy, where I have argued for (and will continue to argue for) a more quantitative and descriptive, if still flexible and situation dependent, definition of 'heavy' vandalism. Richard001 10:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)