| Revision as of 04:47, 30 January 2007 editPoetical7 (talk | contribs)1 edit →Removal of semiprotection← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 14:48, 17 November 2013 edit undoPaine Ellsworth (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, File movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers, Template editors255,654 editsm include the ToaR template + rm shortcut notices | ||
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| Semi-protection policy is a commodity. | |||
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| ''The "Semi-protection policy" was merged to ] on 19 May 2008.'' | |||
| ==Timed article semi protection== | |||
| I still think that the wikipedia needs to implement: ]. | |||
| {{softredirect|WT:Protection policy}} | |||
| It solves quite a lot of the problems that we talk about above; it tackles random vandalisation at root by making it pointless.] 16:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Before your proposal, the first logical step would be a trial implementation of the requirement of user registration, or perhaps universal semi protection. ] 04:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == I'm not a new user, but still can't edit; why? == | |||
| The 2003 invasion of Iraq page has recently been locked, with a message that new users can't edit. I'm not a new user, or anything like that, and yet I don't see an edit tab there anymore. Any ideas on why this is true? Thanks! --] 09:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :It looks like an admin accidentally fully-protected ] instead of semi-protecting it. –]<sup>]</sup><sub> 09:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)</sub> | |||
| ::Actually it seems to be the other way around; it's supposed to be fully protected, but the wrong notice was put on it. –]<sup>]</sup><sub> 09:34, 30 April 2006 (UTC)</sub> | |||
| == Open up semi-protection to all editors == | |||
| As is noted above and elsewhere, semi-protection works best when it works fast, and it doesn't need to stay around long. Before I realised that there was a whole procedure to follow to semi-protect a page, I tried just slapping up the {{tl|sprotected}} flag. Guess what-- it worked (sorta). The template alone will put a stop to a lot of persistent vandals simply because the page ''looks'' like it's protected. I stopped using it once I realised there was more to it, but I think it would be a Good Thing if the template provided protection all by itself-- dump the rest of the procedure. There are a lot of us non-admins out here fighting vandalism all the time, and remember-- to be effective, it has to be applied quickly (like within minutes). | |||
| I'm sure there will be some admins who imagine that it would be misused by non-admins. Think about it though-- who is going to abuse it, and what good is it going to do them? -- ] | ] 20:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Y'know this sounds crazy... but it might just work. After all, it's not like it could be used in edit wars. --](<sup>]</sup>/<sub>]</sub>) 20:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Well for a start, I'd say that that template is never supposed to be used as a bluff! Just incase you didn't know. Anyway, all editors? I don't know... If you look at ] you'll see that "protection should only be used as a last resort". I feel that if users were given the ability to sprotect on their own, they would not follow protection policy (either due to ignorance or malice) and that'd not be ideal. We don't want a billion sprotected pages. You can see from ] that there are plenty of users who request semiprotection for articles that have been vandalised 5 times, or whatever. I don't think this would work. --] ] <small>]</small> 20:30, 3 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::See, I ''knew'' that wouldn't take long. Consider, though, that it's just as easy to revert an {{tl|sprotected}} tag as it is to revert vandalism (and meanwhile, ''some'' vandalism would be prevented). Users who overuse the tag could be warned, and users who place an sprotect and don't remove it quickly could also be warned. My guess is that even with some misuse, it would result in a substantial net reduction in problems. But your mileage may vary. -- ] | ] 20:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::I can see the logic behind your proposal... but my instincts tell me that non-admins being able to semiprotect pages is a bad idea. --] ] <small>]</small> 20:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| We need to get ] implemented. Most of these issues go away; people don't vandalise nearly so much if their changes don't appear.] 16:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :people might not write at all if their changes don't appear.] 04:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == 130 articles seems like a lot == | |||
| I remember when this was first implemented, we had like 4 articles semi-protected, and agonised over each one. Now we have 130 articles semi-protected. Is this not going a little far? I notice that ] is semi-protected, an unlikely target of continued vandalism I would have thought. Is any kind of review of semi-protection in general planned? ] 14:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Protect against New Users? == | |||
| Hello there. I am actually an admin of an independant wiki. I am wondering how you guys were able to put a protection against new members? It actually sounds like a grand idea on my wiki, as we have a hack installed so only members can contribute. This way those vandals who just make a username to vandalize can't on those important pages that we have. Could you show me or lead me to the hack which lets you guys do this? ~U | |||
| ==Extending sprotection== | |||
| I've tweaked the page a little to reflect Jimbo's proposal that sprotection be extended on a limited basis to allow pre-emptive continuous protection of some pages, and that such pages need not be tagged but should still be categorized, citing his post as a reference. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 11:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :In that proposal, : | |||
| :: ...''the template at the time is misleading and scary and distracting to readers. I propose that we eliminate the requirement that semi-protected articles have to announce themselves as such to the general public. They can be categorized as necessary, of course, so that editors who take an interest in making sure things are not excessively semi-protected can do so, but there seems to me to be little benefit in announcing it to the entire world in such a confusing fashion.'' | |||
| :I agree with this 100% and hope we can now free '''all''' those poor sprotected articles from that hideous box. We can do this by either stating that ] should be put on talk-pages only (as on the German wikipedia) or to simply edit the template to make it like ]; no box, just adding it to the sprotected category and with a lock-icon (or somesuch) in the top-right corner. ] 11:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I adjusted the page to say that pre-emptively protected pages shouldn't be tagged, because I was trying to be conservative with the changes, but I agree that it'd be good to get these tags off all the sprotected pages. Adding them to talk instead is a good idea. Shanes, what did you understand Jimbo to mean exactly on this point? Did he mean the sprotected tag should be removed from all pages? ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 11:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::Maybe we should just ask him, but what he is saying in the above quote is that he finds the box distracting and that we can do without it. I suspect that it's the tags on high profile articles like ] that made him care enough to make that post, but if it's distracting on those articles, it's distracting everywhere. He does use the word "carefully" in the first sentence, though, so being conservative with the changes to the policy page sounds reasonable to me. And it was just a suggestion of his, so I'm fine with discussing it for a few days first. But I must say ] that box so intensely that I've never been more tempted to be bolder than ever and just go on a tag-zapping spree. But I must remain calm. Must remain calm. ] 12:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::LOL!! Well, how about we leave it as it is for a bit to gather opinion? :-) I can't see any objection to having the tag on the talk page and it does sound like a good compromise. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 12:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::::I like the idea :o) --] 11:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::I don't like this idea at all. Hiding the fact that this has been done from readers (who are the most important people let's not forget, Misplaced Pages is not the private club some people treat it as) smacks of a cover-up. I don't remember seeing this mentioned on the village pump, but I have just spotted that it is about to be announced in the Signpost as a ''fait accompli''. I also really don't like to see an all too obedient rush to change policy in response to a suggestion from Jimmy Wales when there is only minimal evidence of backing for it. Misplaced Pages needs to grow out of being his personal fiefdom. ] 22:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::: It is exactly because of the <i>readers</i> that the sprotected should not be visible on the article pages. The editing status of an article is not relevant to the <i>readers</i> - it is only relevant to the (much less numerous) <i>editors</i>. As I have said elsewhere, there should be a mechanism that explains the sprotected status to non-eligible editors <i>after</i> they click on the "edit" link. - ] 16:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I fully agree with the removal of that {{tl|sprotected}} box from semi-protected articles like ]. This box ''is'' distracting. We simply don't need it. And we do not need a replacement for that box either. There is enough explanation for the readers if they click on the "View source" tab. We don't even need a category for semi-protected pages—this is not encyclopaedic. If you like, put {{tl|sprotected}} on the respective talk pages. --] 12:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Clicking on the "view source" tab is not an obvious thing to do if you want to edit the page but aren't familiar with MediaWiki. I think we do need some form of notice, though I think the current version is unnecessarily cumbersome. ] 12:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| Agreed. It should be moved to the talk page. Readers don't care about editing; and there are far more people reading Misplaced Pages than editing. Also, the mere mention of "vandalism" will put into question everything in the article, even though the article is protected from vandalism. Even the term "vandalism" is only for editors; readers are not likely to understand what that term is referring to, as many of them don't even realize Misplaced Pages is editable. — <small>]] • 2006-06-04 16:24</small> | |||
| :Yes, the term 'vandalism' is unnecessary and should be removed from the template. But the template itself should not be removed from semi-protected pages. ] 10:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| Hi, | |||
| I have comments on how I perceive the psychological approach to wikipedia. To a new user, wikipedia is perceived as free, universal, and honest. For a new user, realizing he can't edit a page only after he maybe made reasonably accurate preparations and thinking for his first edit, and clicked the edit page, whether he has registered or not, may be perceived as dishonest, and have a bad effect on his decision of joining the project. | |||
| I, for one, have never cared much about registering. I made several edits before registering and, even now, occasionally make edits without logging it. It's not that I have anything to hide, I simply and honestly forget to log in before editing. For the most part, this I think is due to my perception that Misplaced Pages is simply an universal project, and there is no much point in keeping scores of the number of edits. I know many users disagree, but I also believe this point of view is shared by many. | |||
| I can understand the rationale behind semi-protection, but I think it should also be remembered that the vast majority of editors are honest and in good faith, not vandals. This is a basic assumption that the very existence of wikipedia as it is now has, perhaps surprisingly, confirmed. I do not think that the logic should pass that wikipedia has to be ''protected'' more than it has to be ''improved''. Even good articles should be seen, I think, as potentially being able to spiral towards being better through continual edit. | |||
| I do think that the current tag is confusing, though. In my opinion the tag should clearly state who ''can'' edit the article rather than who ''can't''. For example, clearly and honestly stating "this article has been semi protected because it has been targeted with vandalism (or "because it is a potentially sensible biography of a living person"). Only regstered users whose account is older than 4 days can edit it". Or something like that. ] 11:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==How much vandalism is enough?== | |||
| What's the general rule of thumb for how many different IPs or accounts need to attack an article in a day before semi-protection becomes necessary? There must be one, but I haven't seen it. Right now I really don't have much idea whether an article should be semi-protected or not. --]<sup>]</sup> 18:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :The question I always ask myself when evaluating a SP request is whether or not it is at a level that users on that page are able to handle (informed by the way the ] article used to be). If it's only annoying, but manageable, that doesn't really require administrative intervention -- if we wanted to get rid of the annoyance factor we might as well just ban anon users entirely. But if it's at a level regular editors just can't handle, or that isn't reasonable to ask them to handle, then I'll semiprotect. It has to be significant, concerted, ongoing vandalism ''at that moment''. Averages over time don't make the cut. I'd hate to try to put a number on it, but I generally don't consider anything less than 15 reversions in a day as a minimum. Sometimes I will be less strict with an article on a living person because of the potential for libel, but that depends on the types of edits being made. · ]]] <sup>]</sup> 19:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Permanent semi-protection == | |||
| I'm all for this on articles that get a high degree of vandalism. However, can we make the indication of semi-protection less prominent on the article? An unobtrusive indication would be great. - ] 04:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I like the idea of permanent semi-protection, but I'm wondering why the indication should be less prominent. What's the current standard indication? Perhaps we should use what I put on the top of ]. <nowiki></nowiki> — ] | ] 19:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::It doesn't look good on the page to have a huge warning about vandalism, and with living bios, it could imply that the person is problematic in some way. That's why it was better to have the little keys sign than the words. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 09:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == semi-protection and wikipedia stability == | |||
| I think Misplaced Pages has a real problem with stability. I know this is going against the party line, but it seems to me semi-protection offers a way to ameliorate this problem. | |||
| Right now we are voting to delete a major template because we cannot prevent users from adding to it at random and we are not interested in policing it all the time. Also any time an article loses its primary editors it starts to decay. | |||
| I'm going to make a controversial suggestion. I suggest we use semi-protection much more liberally on pages that we want to stabilize. This would include major templates that are used by a lot of pages and perhaps featured articles. | |||
| I am new and perhaps that is why I have not bought into the party line. But I thought I would throw this out and see what people think. ] 10:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| For some discussion of this issue, see ]. ] 10:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| =="new users"== | |||
| what is a "new user"? At present, less than 10 edits seem to be required before an account can edit a semi-protected article. That is far too little, determined trolls often create throw-away accounts and do a couple of minor edits before having at their actual target. A good faith newbie can be expected to do at least 100 edits to uncontroversial articles to get the feel of Misplaced Pages before engaging in editing controversial or disputed aritcles. Hell, when I was a newbie, I stayed away from controversies for ''months''. ] <small>]</small> 09:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :The ''only'' limit is 4 days — the same as that to receive the "move" privilege. There is no edit count requirement. It was discussed during the formulation of the policy, but the devs indicated that it was undesirable to have to count edits on every page save. -] - ] 13:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Splash, do you know if there's a way to make it contingent on days edited? I've been fighting off some newly created accounts/anon socks that have been used to stalk me, and would love a more beefed up sprotection policy. <font color="green">]</font> 05:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::I am not a dev, but that's an interesting possibility. I rather suspect that the database does not explicitly store the time of first edit though (e.g. there is no ], only a ]. But it has its flaws; one edit a day would clear that kind of hurdle, unless we're looking at X edits per day on average for N days, where e.g. X=10 and N=4 or something. I don't think I like the sound of that: protection should not become a hoop to jump through to 'earn' editing privileges. We should approach it from the perspective of how to limit vandalism whilst making the life of good-faith newbies as easy, transparent and hurdle-free as possible. When getting heat from bad guys, or spending too much time vandalwhacking it's easy to forget that most people aren't bad and just want to help. -] - ] 05:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Points well taken. But it seems to me if the system can exclude users under 96 hours, then it could exclude users based on any time period, right? And perhaps I am just being curmudgeonly due to the torture that's being inlicted me just now, but I can't help feeling like we err so often on the side of not hurting a newbie's exquisitely sensitive feelings that we allow smart vandals and trolls to game the system. This would be fine if it didn't lead to decent editors becoming burned out on the project. No new editor "needs" to edit an article on ], do they? Surely, they can be patient, if they're good faith editors? <font color="green">]</font> 17:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I'm not sure you'd have to count edits on every page save as there is already a record of edits. I'm a dev myself so i'll take a look at the code and see if it's possible. I personally think there should be, say, 50 edits minimum and/or 14 days minimum - it's not that hard to make scripts that generate registrations, so 4 days wouldn't reach the height of impatience and discourage potential vandals nearly as much as 14 would. And why would a new member need to edit controversial articles anyway? Possibly we even have certification where admins take a quick look over a user's edits and give them the thumbs up so that they can edit articles marked with semi-protection, that way we eliminate the bulk of the problem, albeit waste a lot of time on the admins' part. Recruit more admins? :) --] 00:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == When SHOULD an article be semiprotected? == | |||
| The guidelines talk a lot about when a page should not be semiprotected, but they say nothing about when a page ''should'' be semiprotected. Say there's an article for which the majority of its edits are vandalism by random IP addresses and reverts to this vandalism. Semiprotection would seem to be in order, except that the guidelines seem to say that semiprotection is only intended to be in place for a limited time; and in this case, the moment semiprotection is removed, the back-and-forth vandalism-and-reversion will start right up again. What's the proper solution in this case? Should WP editors just put up with the fact that vandalism from anons will continue, and they have to remain diligent? Is it ever tolerable to let semiprotection remain in place indefinitely? Does the number of anon vandalisms to the article per day or per week make any difference? It kind of seems like the guidelines discourage semiprotection from being used at ALL, except in cases where a lot of vandalism happens from a wide range of anons over a short time period, and then they all go away and the problem disappears - and I don't see when that's ever the case. - ] 13:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :The policy says quite clearly: ''"A page can be temporarily semi-protected by an administrator in response to vandalism, or to stop banned users with dynamic IPs from editing pages."'', and that ''"Jimbo has suggested that semi-protection may be used in the cases of "minor bios of slightly well known but controversial individuals" which are not widely watchlisted, if they "are subject to POV pushing, trolling vandalism"."''. I don't see much room for misunderstanding in that. Your question is not ], though. In my opinion, no, it is never acceptable to have permanent semi protection, and certainly not on anything other than the very very highes profile articles. The one you do some revering on is certainly not among those. If you've never seen someone repeatedly vandalise an article then get bored when their plaything is taken away, then well....you must not have done much RC patrol in the last year or so - it happens all the time. -] - ] 15:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::], I don't know if I'm missing something here, but that reply doesn't seem to answer Brian's main point (in upper case in the title, see also his first sentence). I don't see Brian's question as "what does policy currently say" but as a question for discussion about what policy ought to say. He's saying that, at the moment, policy states that semiprotection ''can'' be instigated under various circumstances, i.e. it doesn't have to be; what he's asking is whether there are any circumstances - i.e. a subset of the first set, where semiprotection ''should'' be instigated. Does that help you to see the distinction? BTW, reading the above, I'm not ''that'' far away from you in my views on the use of semiprotection - we disagree only in that I think that the case for near-permanent semiprotection of the very highest profile articles has been convincingly made now; so my response to Brian is yes, let's have a very restricted set of circumstances where ''near''-permanent semiprotection is ''the'' outcome, not just a possible outcome if requested. The existing mecanisms seem to work well for everything else. ] 16:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::See Brian's first sentence. I answered it, I think, and that sentence is more or less exactly the question you say it isn't. I don't think it makes good sense to allow only a single outcome of permanant protection for a certain class of articles. It's a noose to be hanged with. The existing mechanisms cover this case anyway, George W. Bush has a more or less permanent semiprotect on it by supposedly-common consent among admins. No need to provide bars for ourselves to trip over when we're doing alright without them. -] - ] 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| Here is an idea. I propose that when the History of a given article has, on the average, say more than 90% vandalism edits and reversions compared to other edits, and a minimum of 10 vandal edits per day (''excluding'' anything to do with real content dispute which is never vandalism), it should be a candidate for semi-protection. If an admin sees that the vandalism rate continues unabated, say over 24 more hours after the nomination, then the admin inserts the sprotect for say 1 week, after which the cycle resumes, with an approporiate notice in the Talk page. If the subsequent vandalism rate continues and justifies another sprotect, the minimum period is ''quadrupled'' to 4 weeks, and so on. The current vandalism reversion effort takes a toll on people's workload, and this process must be streamlined for future scalability, IMO. Thanks, ] 15:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Hard-and-fast rules never work very well because of the fact that few situations actually meet the exact requirements of them. If you want a page protected, list it at ]. -] - ] 15:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :*Definitely there needs to be some discretion, that's why the admin would still be in the loop. But as of now there is no guideline anywhere that I can find as to what is considered 'annoying but normal' level of vandalism vs. 'clearly excessive'. If there were such a guideline, it would be a clear starting point for someone to initiate the process. As of now, we are totally in the dark. ] 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::*That's exactly my point. Codifying in language what constitutes a level for semiprotection won't work well because of the need to apply common sense when faced with a request. Until a certain pro-protection editor removed the words, it used to say "serious" before the word vandalism e.g. and that is really pretty explicit. I will add that back in, I think. The "Adminstrators note" in that link was also obviously useful, but again got edited out since someone wanted to protect something that didn't qualify with that left in. -] - ] 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| To rephrase my question a bit: There are lots of articles out there which are vandalized by random anonymous accounts more often than they're improved. The policy says that they can be semiprotected against the vandalism, but this won't help matters because when the semiprotection is removed the vandalism will start right back up again, and the policy says that semiprotection should only be for a limited time. '''When should this limited time begin and end? What's the guideline for deciding when an article deserves, and then no longer deserves, semiprotection?''' I feel that the article should be more clear about about the proper circumstances for semiprotection - not just "Jimbo has suggested that...", but something more along the lines of: ''"Semiprotection should only be used when an article has suddenly become high-profile, such as by being linked from Slashdot, and is being vandalized a lot right now but the vandalism is expected to die down in a few days. Semiprotection should then be removed three days later."'' Are there any other circumstances under which you can see semiprotection being called for? (Jimbo's suggestion itself goes against the rest of the guidelines, because it seems to imply a more permanent state of semiprotection.) - ] 20:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Yes, well, that particular fudge is because Jimbo did suggest that in a not-very-suggestion-like manner. I don't think there is too much trouble in expecting admins to lift the protection to see if the serious, current vandalism problem has passed after a few hours or days, leave it unprotected if things look ok, and reinstate it if not. Your question effectively stems from the highly editorial changes I linked to above. An article should be protected if there is a serious, current vandalism problem that cannot be dealt with by reverting and blocking the vandals. This seems like a clear enough statement to me. -] - ] 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I agree, that's clear - except, please define "serious" in this context; how many vandalisms over what period of time make it a "serious" problem? Once that's defined, I'd like to see the policy clearly state what you said: ''An article should be protected if there is a serious, current vandalism problem that cannot be dealt with by reverting and blocking the vandals.'' (Right now the policy says nothing about the "cannot be dealt with" part; it seems to paint semiprotection as more of a convenience thing.) And then, the article should state: ''Lift the protection to see if the serious, current vandalism problem has passed after a few hours or days, leave it unprotected if things look ok, and reinstate it if not.'' Right now the policy says nothing about when semiprotection should be lifted. - ] 04:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::Well, like I've said, I personally don't think it useful to codify the meaning of "serious"; I think there are enough other bits there to make the meaning of this in a Wikpedic sense clear enough, but to allow enough room for the key element of judgement. It's that element of judgement and the existence of edge cases and exceptionals that make codification more of a noose to be hung with than a useful move. If an admin is unsure, they should either make a request at RFPP and learn from the feedback, or watch that page and learn what the prevailing feeling(s) is/are about their kind of article/request/etc. -] - ] 12:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| By the way, Splash - the article you linked is actually not a good example of a need for semiprotection, as that article is only vandalized a few times a week at most, and isn't a high-profile article to begin with. (Though, after looking over ], it appears that the policy is really quite subjective - for example, ] gets fewer edits and fewer vandalisms than ], but the former is semiprotected while the latter is not. And ] is semiprotected "to prevent sockpuppets of banned users from editing it;" there even exists a template <nowiki>{{sprotect-banneduser}}</nowiki> for this purpose! This only reaffirms my belief that better guidelines are necessary for this.) - ] 21:38, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :CAT:SEMI is a good example of admin laziness. No more than about 30-50 of those will actually need protection any longer. Bored schoolkids don't usually have the patience to wait more than about 24 hours. If you see an article that shouldn't be protected, then unprotect it. Banned users may not edit the site period and anyone may revert their any edit without restriction; this is vandalism in all but name, and usually in fact as well. -] - ] 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Many of those pages are listed because (1) the policy gives no guidelines about how "serious" the vandalism has to be before semi-protection is justified and (2) the policy gives no guidelines about when semi-protection should be lifted. It appears that several of these pages are listed because an article got a rash of vandalism over a couple of days, and the editors don't want that to happen again. I believe this isn't the intent of semiprotection, and I'd like to see the policy more clearly discourage this sort of use. - ] 04:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| I think your changes to the policy are good and accurately reflect both the intent of the policy and the manner in which it is routinely implemented at present. Well done! -] - ] 12:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Thank you very much! I appreciate that. - ] 13:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==New users== | |||
| Splash, why do you want to tell people how long they have to wait before they can edit? The legit users will find out soon enough by simply continuing to try; the non-legit ones (and I suspect most of those we help with this edit will be non-legit) will know to prepare themselves with sleepers accounts four days in advance. Also, why do you want to add that sprotection should be lifted within hours? It almost never is, nor is there any reason it should be. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 09:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Why should we not tell them? This is an open editing project, and smoke and mirrors are not helpful. | |||
| :I didn't add it; it was the result of the discussion above. It is the case that protection is usually removed within a few days, however. Why did you remove that? -] - ] 19:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Sprotection should be lifted when the protecting admin thinks appropriate. Sometimes that's a few hours, sometimes days, sometimes longer. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 20:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Trial run of permanent semi-protection of Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy == | |||
| Would permanent semi-protection be appropriate for ]? It is a very important official policy page and I feel that vandalism on it is more harmful than it would be on an ordinary page. It is not vandalized constantly, but it is vandalized regularly, about once or twice a day. | |||
| I'm not basing my whole argument for semi-protection upon similar vandalism, as it is much rarer than regular vandalism, but I reverted the other day. What is disturbing about it is that it is an apparent attempt to change policy without anyone noticing rather just deleting the article or adding "you suck". Someone reading the page who is unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages policy might not realize that the article has been vandalized and think that it is okay to evade a block that you think is unjust or that anyone with a high edit count can become an admin (see the links on ] to many unsuccessful RfAs of editors with high edit counts). If they don't come back to reread it and they are not informed otherwise, they may retain those beliefs indefinitely. Also, if someone had made a regular edit or two soon after, without noticing the vandalism, it might have gone unnoticed for days. As it was, it was about a half hour before I found it. Semi-protection would stop the everyday vandalism and the sneakier, potentially more harmful vandalism like this edit. | |||
| I'm strongly opposed to unnecessary protection, especially permanent protection. However, semi-protection only blocks anonymous users and very new registered users, most of whom are unfamiliar with Misplaced Pages policies and ill equipped to make substantive edits to the policy anyway. Also, they would still be able to suggest changes on the talk page or sign up and wait a few days so that they could edit the page themselves. | |||
| Semi-protection would stop virtually all vandalism of the page, and similar pages, because the vast majority of vandalistic edits on it are made by anonymous users and the rest are almost all new users. There are some reverts of edits made by established users, but those are just disagreements rather than vandalism. Semi-protection of an official policy page is less harmful than the protection of an article, like ] and ], which are given as examples of continuously semi-protected articles. | |||
| We might need to modify ] first, or at least eventually, but I suggest we just try semi-protecting this one page for a couple of weeks, if there is a consensus to do so, and see how it goes. If semi-protection is implemented permanently, I think there should either be no notice on the page itself (with an explanation given when you click to edit the page) or a discrete notice, like a padlock image that sends you to the semi-protection policy page when you click on it. If the trial run is successful and the semi-protection usage is expanded, I would suggest not even using it on all guideline and official policy pages, only those that are regularly vandalized and/or those that can cause serious problems when they are vandalized. I don't think most of the guideline pages would qualify for the second one, but a few might. A few Misplaced Pages namespace pages that are not policies or guidelines might benefit from permanent semi-protection, too. Still, I think that it would be limited to a dozen or two pages. -- ] 08:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Extend policy == | |||
| I know that ]' views are final here, and I know that lots of other admins and editors are very attached to building a "''💕 that anyone can edit''" but I can't see the advantage of restricting semi-protection to the limited cases that it is. | |||
| I have just asked for ] to be semi-protected. I have contributed quite a bit to this article and have it on my watch list. However, most of the changes that are done are vandalism by unregistered users. But apparently there's not enough vandalism to merit semi-protection!! I was advised to add it to my watchlist and just revert vandalism when it occurs. Why should I bother - it's not my encyclopedia and the powers that be don't seem to care! | |||
| Perhaps people don't fully appreciate the impact that vandalism has to wikipedia: | |||
| - it is demoralising to editors - particularly new editors - to have their contributions damaged | |||
| - it makes wikipedia look foolish and amateurish have readers come across vandalism all the time | |||
| - it diverts resources away from building a good encyclopedia towards chasing after vandals. | |||
| - many new editors don't know how to revert (I only found out after several hundred edits) | |||
| What is the disadvantage with semi-protection? I dont understand the hesitation at all. ] - ] 16:14, 12 August 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :As one who was in your situation in the past, and had a similar opinion at the time, here are some reasons I can think of today, with more experience, why having a more liberal semi-protect won't work: | |||
| #Anyone who is hell-bent on editing to the article will just set up a dummy one-time account, let it stew or use it randomly a few days (so it won't be brand new) and easily get around s-protect. | |||
| #WP's openness is a natural magnet to both good and bad people - that's life. There is no magic solution - the good have to outlast the bad, just like in real life - that's why you need to monitor your watchlist and revert vandalism like most of us here | |||
| #If there is a real peak of vandalism, virtually any admin will gladly help - if one refuses, re-think your reasons and his/her refusal, and if you are still convinced it's needed, try another | |||
| :] 17:32, 12 August 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thanks for your thoughts. In essence you seem to be argueing there's no point in trying because it wont work. This certainly wouldn't be the case with my article. That was a case of "drive-by" vandalism - lots of different people coming along at different times and thinking lets do something funny today - not determined users trying to push a POV. Semi-protection would have been a very effective solution to this problem. | |||
| ::In "real life" the bad guys lose out because there is an effective deterrent against people doing bad things. If protection was more widely used, vandals blocked a bit more readily, and maybe reported to their employers/colleges or even prosecuted on occasions, I'm sure you would find vandalism becoming the exception rather than the rule as at present. ] - ] 23:51, 12 August 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::You may be missing something. The 'bad guys' don't have to decide to pick on ''your'' article only. They can decide to (and often do) pick on WP as a whole, attacking random articles. So they could still set up as many handy dummy accounts as they wish, let them sit a few days to satisfy any 'newness' criterion, and then attack your article, at random. So again, s-protect is not the magic cure you are yearning for - it is a temporary crutch for some specific situations, to be carefully used along with other tools such as IP blocking or article protection. The bottom line remains the same - you need to watch your article, if it is very contentious you may need to resort to s-protect to at least reduce the pressure. Remember that all admins are here to help you, plus you can go to the ]. Don't take no for an answer if you feel the amount of vandalism from multiple sources is excessive (single source vandals should be blocked by IP). ] 01:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :: What ] says is not borne out by the facts (at least not of the articles I've been analysing): | |||
| :: ''1. Anyone who is hell-bent on editing to the article will just set up a dummy one-time account, let it stew or use it randomly a few days (so it won't be brand new) and easily get around s-protect.'' | |||
| :::Perhaps - but during the several weeks that both ] and ] were semi protected, the amount of vandalism on both articles dropped from several per day to absolutely ZERO. There certainly are determined vandals - but they are a teeny-tiny minority. | |||
| :: ''2. WP's openness is a natural magnet to both good and bad people - that's life. There is no magic solution - the good have to outlast the bad, just like in real life - that's why you need to monitor your watchlist and revert vandalism like most of us here'' | |||
| ::: The good have to outlast the bad - but having the patience to open an account so you can edit semi-protected pages is something where the good will also outlast the bad. What vandalism does is to drastically reduce the amount of time serious editors can spend on writing an encyclopedia - and that's never a good thing. It also degrades the quality of the encyclopedia more than anything else. When you open a page to sit with your child and read about ]s together - you aren't generally pleased to discover the page is full of obscenities. It would be interesting to know how many readers (who are actually more important than contributors) are put off by vandalism. | |||
| :: ''3. If there is a real peak of vandalism, virtually any admin will gladly help...'' | |||
| ::: The problem isn't peaks of vandalism - it's continual, ongoing half a dozen random attacks per day vandalism. It doesn't "peak" and then go away - it just goes on and on forever at about the same level. | |||
| ::The PRACTICAL truth is that semi protection works like a dream. It shuts off almost all vandalism and deters almost nobody who really wants to contribute. The two 'almosts' in that sentence in no way detract from it's validity. | |||
| ] 05:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==Main Page Linked Articles== | |||
| I think the policy could do with a bit of clarification here. Forgive me if it has come up already. But at the moment this page gives no advice specifically on pages linked to the main page. Given that the protection policy does do this - stating unequivocaly that main page linked articles should not be protcted - I think there is a bit of confusion over the issue. Taking ] as an example, this was protected/unprotected ''thirty times'' on September 4th. There was no wheel warring - though maybe if different admins had been invovled there was certainly potential for it - just a general confusion/fudge over policy and precedent here. | |||
| I would propose that this page states that 'With the exception of the day's featured article, articles linked to from the main page can be semi protected. However, this must not be done as a pre-emptive action and semi-protection must not be maintained on such articles for more than '''x''' hours.' | |||
| Thoughts? --] 07:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :No. Certainly not in the sweeping sense you just added it to the project page at the very least. Articles linked from the Main Page should not be protected except in dire circumstance. -] - ] 20:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::OK, well its a shame that I had to try and add this to the article before anyone decided to respond. I accept the idea of ''protection'' of linked articles, but note that many articles linked to from the main page do get ''semi-protected'' at the moment. I'd also reject that is paticularly sweeping. | |||
| ::I can see both the sides of the argument for and against semi-protection of linked articles and, though I'd probably weigh down on the side of 'semi-protect for a short time where necessary' view, I'd happily go along with any consensus. | |||
| ::However, my experiences suggest that the current situation - where linked articles are mentioned on the protection policy but not the semi-protection policy - simply causes confusion. Some people appear to be labouring under the impression that semi-protection of any linked article is also prohibted under Misplaced Pages policy; at the moment it is not. Others follow this as a personal policy - fair enough, but this could be frustrating for other users who are not admins, see nothing in the policy to prevent semi-protection, and yet do not see it happening. Many others (myself included) appear to be in a state of confusion and this leads to situations where pages such as ] are protected/unprotected thirty times in a day - a waste of admins' time, and it looks messy. | |||
| ::Therefore, what is needed is for this page to ''say something'' on main page linked articles. Now, what it says - as far as I'm concerned, anyway - is of less importance, but at the moment it creates confusion. This is why I created a section on the talk - I wanted to know what people wanted! Do people want it so that policy prevents main-page-linked semi-protection? Do they want it so that it is a 'dire circumstances' solution? Do they want it so that it is introduced as with other articles but maintained for a restricted length of time, or a restricted proportion of an article's time on the main page? Are there any other solutions out there to the problem that people have thought of? ] 21:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::Maybe this is the case. I've always mentally operated on the principles laid out in ] and the fact that the policy here makes clear that semi-protection is a last resort. On Main Paged articles, we should be prepared, IMO, to go much more than just the proverbial "extra mile" and where we'd normally lock an article down if it were somewhere else, we should be striving to keep the first article(s) a user sees good to the claim "...which anyone can edit". It is disingenuous of us not to. The trouble of course is that the IRC channels make the Main Paged articles look positively terrifying in vandalism terms, when in fact the good edits are usually also rising in proportion to the edit rate (various statistics have shown this). Given that, and given the fact that these are show-cases of one form or another, we should be reluctant to semi-protect these articles. | |||
| :::The reason I reverted your particular change was that it simply said they "may be protected" when really the case should be that they "can be protected in emergencies/dire circumstances/things are totally out of control/under deliberate targetted attack" or some similar phrasing that puts sprotection beyond the reach of over-enthusiastic vandal fighters. (Who have the best intentions but who only see the bad edits, and rarely the good and have no counterweight to the hit-by-hit scrolling of the bots' lists.) | |||
| :::I don't think that a specific "''x'' hours" thing is likely to fly because we'd be unlikely to find agreement on ''x''. If some approximate codification of what amounts to current practise — which does indisputably agree to keep Main Paged articles unprotected as a working assumption — can be found, then perhaps it can be added. It's hard to see how to avoid ] with that, though, so no promises in advance... -] - ] 01:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC) (PS. I saw your message, forgot about it, carried on, and then got reminded by your project page edit.) | |||
| == How to block vandals without accounts? == | |||
| The article says: ''in the case of a few static IP vandals hitting a page (blocking the vandals is a much better option than semi-protection)''... but there is no indication how this is done. Is it possible to block all users 58.160.185.* ? There has been persistent and sneaky vandalism to the ] page, from users 58.160.185.97, 58.160.185.80 and 58.160.185.32 (obviously all the same person). ] 00:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Hmm. He's struck again from 203.5.217.3 . At a different time of day to all his other edits. I'm guessing that's his workplace, since WHOIS suggests Adelaide where it's 9.45am. ] 00:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Never mind. I got an answer at ]. ] 05:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::Yep. Range blocks. But honestly, they are only useful for very short times. Any longer than say 30-45 minutes and collateral damage is caused by them. --]<sup>]</sup> 09:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Semi as a defense vs linkspam? == | |||
| If you look at history of {{article|Kraków}} you will notice that it is hit with linkspam on the almost daily basis from various IPs. I looked through last 50 edits. Out of 24 anon edits - 23 were linkspam. Out of non IPs, 11 were lablelled as linkspam removal. That's means 2/3 of the edits in edit history are linkspam and it reverts! This leads me to a conclusion that we should consider pernamently semi-protecting this article; and further, that we may want to semi-protect other articles targeted by linkspam (which I'd assume would include cities and other places that are touristical attractions, if they are also target by linkspam vandals in such a manner). Comments?--<sub><span style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">]|]</span></sub> 23:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :How many thousand articles are you proposing a blanket semi-protection for? -] - ] 22:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::As many as needed.--<sub><span style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">]|]</span></sub> 19:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == What is the point of short term semi-protection for long term vandalism? == | |||
| I can understand the concept of applying semi-protection for a limited time in the event of very specific vandalism, edit wars, etc. But if an article is vandalised a dozen times a day (as for example ] and to a lesser degree ] are) - then the present policy seems to be to grant semi-protection for a while and then to withdraw it some weeks later (as specifically happened with both of those articles). Why is this a good idea? If vandalism is continual and ongoing from a wide variety of addresses then either semi-protection should be a good thing and therefore permenantly applied - or a bad thing and thus never applied. There is simply no logic to applying a short-term fix for a chronic problem. | |||
| Having recently experienced the benefits of semi-protection - (zero vandalism in either article) - only to have it yanked away again (half a dozen vandals in a day) - I would very much like for protection to be permenant. | |||
| I know the arguments against this - vandalism is typically corrected very quickly - and sometimes valuable contributions come from anonymous users and sometimes editing anonymously is important. Well, I think that the need to edit articles about (say) Terrorism in America might require some anonymity - but we're talking about automobiles and computers - hardly things where anonymous posting is essential for the continuing freedom of the author! So I'm going to dismiss the "NEED" argument and test the other two reasons. I decided to test those two hypotheses by looking at the actual edit histories (it's hard work - and perhaps a little subjective - but the numbers are sufficiently compelling that a wide margin of experimental error doesn't change the conclusions). | |||
| I found that of the 500 edits over the three months prior to semi-protection, ] was edited about 200 times by anonymous users and 300 by named users. Of those 200 anonymous edits, all but EIGHT were vandalisms of one kind or another and of the 300 named user edits, (inevitably) nearly 200 were reversions of anonymous vandalism. So we have a 200-edit effort in anti-vandalism paying for the rights of anonymous users to make just eight valid edits (against a background of 100 or so 'real' edits by named users). What of those eight? Well, six were VERY minor - to the point where, frankly I wouldn't have bothered. Only two added any significant material at all...and both of those changes were eventually overtaken by other edits and no longer contribute to the article as it is today. In all likelyhood, some of those anonymous edits were probably from named users who had simply switched computers and forgotten to log in or something - but that's just speculation. | |||
| So - if we had had semi-protection over those 500 edits, what would we have lost? NOTHING WHATEVER. What would we have gained? That's harder to quantify - but 200 wasted reversions represent a significant amount of editor's time that could presumably have been spent improving this or some other article. Furthermore, what about "vandalism is swiftly corrected" - well, that's something of a myth too. I didn't check over the entire three months or so of those 500 edits - but over a week or so, the article was screwed up maybe 35% of the time...and in almost every case the vandalism was some sort of obscene text. So - in addition to the wasted efforts of all of those editors, we can imagine that close to 35% of our readership who wanted to read about automobiles came away with an eyeful of crap. That might be acceptable for articles about very obscure subjects - but for ] and ], I think not. | |||
| I think there is a more subtle balance to be struck here. The number of vandalisms needs to be weighed against the number of regular editors who are reverting those vandalisms. In some of these unglamorous but 'headline' articles like ], we have a small number of active editors - but a huge burden of vandalism. There are other articles which have a lot of vandalism (perhaps a lot more than ] - but if they have a large community of people watching them, then correction will none the less be swift. | |||
| IMHO, the case for long-term semi-protection of continually and frequently vandalised pages is extremely compelling (unless the pages are of a nature where anonymity of legitimate contributors might be required for compelling reasons of possible retribution or persecution of named contributors). | |||
| But if the decision is that semi-protection cannot be applied as a permenant solution to a permenant problem - then we should stop short-term semi-protecting for the purposes of long-term vandalism because short-term protection doesn't come close to fixing the long-term problem. | |||
| ] 05:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Without wanting to comment too directly on the arguments of this piece, I think its worth remembering here that 'anonymous' editors who show their IP address are in fact far less anonymous than us registered users who work under a pseudonym and need not give any information about ourselves. --] 08:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::We must continue to remain committed to openness for all, even for those who don't chose to log in or register. You cite the specific examples of ] and ] above, but didn't acknowledge the many intangibles that semiprotection would have caused. For example, many of our users and editors were first attracted here ''because'' of the openness and the lack of a need to register at first. I, myself, first came here after editing an article, and then only after that became a registered user. I'm sure many of the other administrators and Wikipedians here came through the same process. By permanently semi-protecting these articles, we not only lose the valuable contributions of some non-logged in users (and even though an edit may not stand today, it has built the foundation upon the article that is here today), but lose many potential contributors. In addition, we must also recognize that vandalism will be inevitable - at what price are we to limit progress in an attempt to stem vandalism? Finally, also consider the argument that we could theoretically fully protect the vast majority of articles, most of which are rarely edited, to stop vandalism. Of course it would be effective in stopping vandalism - the articles can no longer be edited except by admins! - but at what price? At ending the open model that served us so long and so well. Permanent semiprotect would upset that balance of openness and editing that we have come to establish. Thanks! ] <small>(])</small> 13:53, 4 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::You are arguing in absolutes - I am arguing from practicality and the balance of benefits. If EVERY article - or even 10% of articles were semi-protected, I agree that we'd be losing something important. If 0.1% of the most vandalised articles are semi-protected, I think we lose a negligable amount - but win enormously. The pragmatic balance is between the loss of a tiny number of edits to a tiny number of articles versus the saving of immense amounts of frustration on behalf of a large fraction of our existing editors. If you deal only in absolutes then the front page should be unprotected. | |||
| ::::Certainly full protection is theoretically needed in order to avoid vandalism completely - but 99% or more of the vandalism goes away with mere semi-protection. If you deal with absolutes - your argument is convincing - but if you are pragmatic about things, then IMHO, it's entirely wrong. I also started with an anonymous edit (] if memory serves) - but those 'leaf' articles are not at issue here - they are almost never vandalised. It's the 'trunk' articles - with wide scope and obvious names like ] and ] - that need protection. ] 19:54, 4 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| Agree with Steve; see also my post above.--<sub><span style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">]|]</span></sub> 19:31, 5 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Addition == | |||
| ''"This reasoning does not apply to pages that aren't articles, e.g. templates or pages in the Misplaced Pages namespace. Indeed, it may be useful to permanently (semi-)protect pages that would require familiarity with Misplaced Pages to make true improvements to, e.g. ]."'' It appears that people have been semi'ing HRTs recently so I figured it wouldn't hurt adding that to this policy. It seems quite reasonable to me that the maxim "everyone can edit the encyclopedia" does not necessarily apply to complex or frequently-used templates that require a bit of expertise to edit. ] 08:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :High risk templates are normally inexistent. There are high use/high visibility templates. For the high use, I would say over 10'000 transclusions is definitely a case for full protection (but this is not the sole criterion). An unprotected 10K template is a high risk. As such, high risk templates are now inexistent on this wiki. Semi-protection for <10K templates is a reasonable measure, as long as it is not advertised (please don't list them, '''please don't tag them'''). Mainting a page/category/tag-template that lists semi-portected '''templates''' is a high risk. Otherwise, I don't care what Splash reverts or doesn't revert on this page :-). Just use common sense and, yes, take a dip from IAR. --] 08:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| *Of course, the people who have been semi'ing HRTs (I'm not involved) have also been adding a "semi-protected" template to them. So assumedly they can all be found from there. Do you think this is risky? ] 08:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :*As I wrote above: Yes, this is risky, please don't tag them (that's why I've put ] on ]). --] 09:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| But your addition went considerably beyond just templates: it said that it does not apply to pages that are not articles. That covers some 12 or 13 (?) namespaces and is sweeping in its assumption. Freely-editable applies to all pages without exception, save for those that are mission critical (the Main Page, copyright pages etc). It applies also to templates. That a sort of quivering-in-fear-of-an-edit approach means we'd prefer to see no improvement to certain parts of particular pages does not result in an extension to everything that is not an article. I am also a little disappointed at the advocation of smoke and mirrors in what is supposed to be an open project. Those who are the target of the smoke and mirrors will quickly see through them; those that cannot see through them are likely to be those with benign intent who are thus unable to contribute where they otherwise might. -] - ] 17:09, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| *I see that my wording was overly broad. However, nobody is quivering in fear of edits. Rather, it is acceptable (within strict boundaries) to place limits on what certain parties can edit, in instances where the edits of said party have been shown to do (far) more harm than good. It is for this reason that anons cannot create pages, that new users cannot move pages, and that IP ranges can be blocked. It is quite reasonable to disallow (through semi-protection) new users to edit pages that require familiarity with the wiki to edit properly, in particular oft-used templates. ] 13:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==Protecting user talk pages== | |||
| I have removed this provision, as it is absolutely an unacceptable provision. No user who is dealing at all with vandals, new, or inexperienced editors should make it impossible for those users to contact them with questions or for an explanation. ] 18:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Your version would also make protection of user pages which the users remove warnings unprotectable unless you block th users...You may want to modify the blanking of warnings template which warns of protection of the user page. See ], and what about users who are not admins that are being targeted by vandals, your version would prohibit this protection as well... You therefore may want to modify your blanket change about no protections. --] | ] 23:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::"Should not be used to protect user talk pages that are the subject of vandalism" work for you? ] 14:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Editorialising policy == | |||
| Things like , are highly editorial changes, to the extent that the edit summaries are baldly misleading. SlimVirgin, what was the reason behind your rewrite? -] - ] 19:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :It wasn't a rewrite, but a copy edit. Some of the writing in the version you restored was poor and unnecessary, or entirely subjective. What is "serious" vandalism from multiple IPs or accounts, as opposed to vandalism from multiple IPs or accounts? Saying admins have the ability to "temporarily" sprotect, when what you mean is they have the ability to sprotect. Saying it is a temporary measure," whereas in fact it is "usually" a temporary measure: the continuously protected pages are testimony to that. | |||
| :It seems to me that it's you who wants to editorialize and prescribe how sprotection ought to be used, rather than simply describing how it is in fact used. But regardless, the page should be written tightly if possible. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 07:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::It wasn't a copyedit, it was a rewrite. It might (now) describe how you use it, but that's fairly idiosyncratic. Most admins don't protect articles permanently, and most consider the tag more or less par for the course. Articles from the main page are not protected just because they get attacked; only when the attack is extraordinary. The reason the stuff about durations got added in (I forget by who; it's probably further up here somewhere) was because last time you took it out, the page left no guidance of any kind about what non-admins might expect/request nor to new admins about what to apply. To answer your edit summary, I already ''had'' put a note on the talk page, so I'm not sure why you asked me to do so. -] - ] 13:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::It's not a rewrite at all (no substance is changed), but the writing needed tightening and so I did it. You were complaining recently on AN about people not using the tag. The fact is that the tag is ugly and it's not good to have it on pages protected for longer periods, as was discussed on the mailing list; there was consensus to change it to an image of a small lock or similar, but a couple of editors opposed it and the others couldn't be bothered arguing, so the ugly templates remains and is therefore not popular. I don't use sprotection at all idiosyncratically; could you say why you think I do? Please look at WP:PP and you'll see how it's being used. This policy should describe that. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 13:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::::The hoo-haa over what the template should or should not contain bemused me not inconsiderably; I'm surprised you're still on that. But I quite often see people go and add it to sprotected articles that didn't get tagged because, well, I'd be guessing, but I suppose they feel it appropriate. Mailing list consensus, shmailing list shconshenshush. It most certainly is a substantive change to say that anything on the main page can just be locked down, to say that if more than one static IP is hitting a page, it should now be protected rather than them blocked, to go from not pre-emptive to pre-emptive when you feel like it (someone else took that out before, too), and to go from heavy vandalism to merely vandalism. | |||
| :::::Idiosyncratic is protecting pages that get literally a handful of bad edits, and leaving them protected for ever. -] - ] 13:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| I reversed those things I identified above but left what you term your tighter phrasing in place. It's not ok to widen protection policy one edit at a time in the name of improving the grammar. I don't see ] describing the way you wrote it; and even if it is, that would be descriptivism gone wrong. A policy shouldn't be amended to describe practises that are wrong just because someone/people happen to misunderstand sometimes! -] - ] 14:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I'm fine with your changes, except the talk page thing. User talk pages are sprotected if they're being vandalized or people are being harassed. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 15:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I took it from the section above this. Phil Sandifer has a good point. Admins who are regularly blocking new users/unregistered users should not have their talk pages protected. -] - ] 15:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::Splash, what does this sentence mean exactly? "Those of users engaging with new and/or unregistered editors should be protected sparingly to permit communication." If someone is being harassed, are you saying that, before we help them by sprotecting their talk page, we first of all have to check (a) whether the victim is an admin, and then also (b) look through his block log to see whether he's blocked a lot of unregistered editors and new accounts? And if he has, he has to tough it out? ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 16:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Along those lines, yep. If you're interacting with the users who cannot talk to you, particularly those who you are preventing from editing, you need to be available to talk to them. This is why people insist on email enabling during RfA and the like. Vandalism isn't the same as harrassment though; I guess your talk page is permanently protected because of harrassment rather than because a bunch of silly newbs were playing with it. -] - ] 21:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::::People can always e-mail admins if their talk page is sprotected. I don't think female admins should have to put up with being called c***ts and being told what sexual practises they're going to be subjected to, just because they blocked someone's sockpuppet. That's the kind of situation, whether you call it vandalism or harassment, where talk page sprotection is important. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 21:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::That would be harrassment, not simple vandalism, and would not have arisen as a result of interactions with new or unregistered users. -] - ] 21:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::Well, of course it might. A lot of it comes from vandals who don't like seeing their nonsense rolled back. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 23:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Handling apparent abuse of this feature? == | |||
| I'd like to see at least a quick note in the article on "what to do in cases of apparent abuse of semi-protection." Thanks. -- ] 11:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Post about it on ].''']''' 00:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==Proposed amendment to this policy== | |||
| I submit that this policy should be amended, to improve the integrity of official policy pages by permanently semi-protecting them, thereby preventing much vandalism and many good-faith but ill-advised edits against consensus by new and unregistered users. Please see ]. ] 03:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Consensus having been reached on ] to enact this amendment, I added it to this policy on October 28, 2006. ] 02:52, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| I have restored this amendment. As ] explained on ]: "It is absolutely ''not'' a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand " Consequently, purely procedural objections to the manner in which ] was enacted are unpersuasive, especially since ]. Only one editor objected to the policy proposal, and all objections were rebutted. Furthermore, five established editors (including myself) supported it. Additionally, the arguments in favor of semi-protecting official policy pages were far stronger than the arguments against it. I don't see why this is a "drastic new policy proposal" -- it merely creates a small exception to the general theme of this policy for official policy pages, which new and unregistered users are highly unlikely to edit in beneficial manner. Finally, the decision of two administrators to act on this policy amendment (see and ) provides further evidence that there really is consensus for this amendment. ] 05:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :There is patently not consensus on that page (I objected, for example), and there hasn't been anywhere near enough time or discussion to form one. ] // ] 13:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::One solitary substantive objection to a policy proposal does not constitute a lack of consensus where there is otherwise substantial support for a proposal. The use of is not an appropriate use of administrative privileges: per ],<blockquote>Administrators have a faster, automated reversion tool to help them revert vandalism by anonymous editors. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like: – appears next to edits that are at the top of the edit history. Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by that user, with an ] of ''(Reverted edits by X to last version by Y)'' and marks it as a minor change. ''One-click rollback is only intended for vandalism, spam, etc.; if reverting over disputed content, it should be done manually with an appropriate edit summary''.</blockquote>]'s claim that determining consensus requires lots of time and discussion contradicts his claim on ] that "It is absolutely ''not'' a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand " I additionally note that ] has yet to respond to the rebuttals to the arguments he presented against this amendment on ], even after ] 14:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Yes, it was improper for him to use administrator rollback, but nonetheless it is not necessary to discuss ''uncontroversial'' changes, such as grammar and typo fixes, but I strongly object to the inclusion of this proposal. (Guess that makes it two sysops for and two sysops against if you're counting, but that's wholly irrelevant anyway, heh). I've made my comments on the proposal page, but won't edit war any further to get this removed. Instead I ask that you please remove it while this is sorted out, and seek a wider consensus. And wee, we're making a wave of threaded conversation.. I hate when that happens :/ <font color="DarkGreen">]</font><sup>]</sup> 14:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I have posted something on the village pump to hopefully attract a wider audience to this discussion. ] // ] 18:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::John, I agree that policy pages should be semi-protected; in fact, I'd go even further and introduce minimum-edit qualifications or something. However, it's something that's been proposed before and while many supported, many objected too, so it needs thorough discussion before being added here. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 20:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| I find the manner of 'implementation' here rather unpleasant. "I propose this! I hear some objections! They are wrong to object! Thus this is policy! No, you may not say it isn't!". More substantively, it doesn't matter in the least if policy pages get some vandalism, since it doesn't actually change the policy. You don't suddenly get a barnstar for vandalism if someone changes ] to say you do; you don't suddenly get to write opinionated articles if someone changes ] to say you can. The vandalism does no damage - revert it, and move on. Don't start using pretty blunt instruments to 'solve' a 'problem' that doesn't actually exist. Now, policies like ] and ] are the subject of much edit-warring and disagreement, particulary from people who don't understand that even if they shoehorn a new piece of law-esque stuff in that says they can do the silly thing they can't otherwise do, they still can't do it. THis I suppose is the idea behind SlimVirgin's edit-countitis on policy pages - again, though, these people being wrong doesn't actually do any damage to the policies, since their changes never stick. -] - ] 23:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :The changes don't stick, but making sure they don't can involve a lot of hassle and time-wasting. It's not just vandalism, Splash, but people with three edits and 10 minutes experience turning up to make changes; but, because it's not vandalism, we can't just roll back, can't violate 3RR, but have to discuss, persuade etc. It is sometimes very time-consuming, especially when you get a few of them at once. ] <sup><font color="Purple">]</font></sup> 23:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I think that the solution here is not to restrict editing to experienced users, but to explicitly allow rollback and maybe 3RR exemptions for generally unhelpful policy changes, even if they aren't vandalism. I think that the criteria under which admin rollback may be used are far too narrow right now (Note: This is not an excuse for ''my'' use of rollback as discussed above). ] // ] 20:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==A good idea== | |||
| This is likely a good idea. I especially liked this discussion from ]: | |||
| ---- | |||
| What about people like ]?--<font style="color:#7FFFD4;">]</font><sup>]</sup> 13:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :] could create an account. Or, barring such a drastic measure, he could propose edits to official policies on their talk pages. Almost all established editors edit with accounts. While ] is welcome to continue editing as an unregistered user, by doing so he is necessarily giving up certain privileges that are normally afforded to established users -- not the least of which are directly creating non-talk pages, directly moving pages, voting in RFA's, and the possibility of becoming an administrator himself. ] 00:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::One thing he doesn't give up is the privilege of editing Misplaced Pages. You shouldn't be so keen to take that away from him, too. -] - ] 23:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::The privilege of editing Misplaced Pages articles is not synonymous with the privilege of directly editing official policy pages. Editing these policies is at least as sensitive a function as pagemoves; so, if we can restrict pagemoves to registered users with accounts older than four days, we can certainly limit the editing of official policies in a similar manner. ] 15:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::It is ''vastly'' less important than page-moving. See my comment above for why. The privilege of editing Misplaced Pages extends to just about all the 13ish (?) namespaces. Mediawiki: being the only exception, because that actually ''does'' have the potential to send something really truly belly up. -] - ] 16:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ---- | |||
| Perhaps we should create an RfC about this, rather than have it spread among the talk pages. - ] 21:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Please don't! That's just another pair of pages for it to appear on. Doing it here's fine; it should never have been hacked off into a seperate page anyway. THis is what policy talk pages are ''for''. -] - ] 23:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::I agree with both Splash and the proposed amendment. ] (]) 19:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Changing the criteria? == | |||
| Would it be possible to bump up the criteria from "less than 4 days old" to "less than 4 days and at least n edits", with n about 20 or so? Otherwise its trivial for a far sighted vandal to keep the account creation going. I know knocking up 20 edits isn't hard but it would raise the bar a bit ] 19:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I would definitely support such a change - where would the proper place be to propose this, though? This is more something to bring to the attentions of developers rather than on this one page of the English wiki.. <font color="DarkGreen">]</font><sup>]</sup> 20:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :The devs said that this would require database changes to do at the time we originally worked out this policy, since edit count information isn't actually stored by MediaWiki. See ]. By way of asking for as little as possible, and keeping the barriers to editing as low as possible (I confess to this policy having been an abject failure on that count), it wasn't sought at the time. -] - ] 20:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==Question== | |||
| Is there a length on how long something can or should be semi-protected. I just found an article that had been semi-protected since September 22 and was rather stunned that no one had bothered to check back and see that the protection was never lifted. ''semper fi'' — ] 23:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Well, Voice of All seems to be forced to do much of the work, but administrators are encouraged to unprotect long-protected pages by looking at ] from time to time. Usually just a week or two is good enough unless there's a major problem. <font color="DarkGreen">]</font><sup>]</sup> 23:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::How about adding a category like in {{tl|cleanup-date}} adding all semi-protected pages into a category for how ''long'' they have been protected? ''semper fi'' — ] 00:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think that's a great idea. ] 15:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Would be a great tool. --] 17:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Examples == | |||
| I have never particularly understood why the 'examples' exist on this policy page, when we have ] which is far more functional. The reason the examples should not be on the page is that they then appear to be ''policy'' to protect those pages forever. In the case of ], I am not able to fathom why it suddenly replaced ] (is it a better example? is Jew a worse example? does someone need to justify protecting ] so having it in the policy, hey, that's handy?). ] is about the only example that belongs on the policy page: permanent protection is highly toxic, and this page should not become a surrogate of either that toxin or ]. ] - ] 17:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| *I don't really see the need for any examples. Most policy pages don't need them. ] 12:46, 7 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Four days? == | |||
| Is this number entirely arbitrary, or is there a reason for its selection? --]] ] 02:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :It is the same limit as applies to being able to move pages around. At the time of instituting the limit for semi-protection (and earlier for moves), 4 days corresponded to something like the newest 2% of accounts. So essentially arbitrary, but handy because something like it already existed in the Mediawiki code at the time ] was being developed at a policy and a technical level. -] - ] 09:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Template for long-term semi-protection == | |||
| The question has been raised at ] whether it makes sense to use {{tl|sprotect}} for pages that are semi-protected more or less permanently. In response to that discussion, ] very kindly created ] as an alternative template for high-profile, long-term semi-protected pages. I am very much in favor of this, but I wanted to bring it up here and see if there are any objections before we start doing it. ] 17:16, 12 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| : As far as I'm aware, this discussion has been done to death before. One of the counter arguments to this is that new users might get confused (or something) because there is no obvious way to edit the page, as the "edit this page" link would instead display "new source", and may think they can't edit all the pages. To be honest, I really don't care either way. --] <small>]</small> 17:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| : Somewhere on one of the Wiki mailing lists I seem to recall Jimbo favoring the removal of the {{tl|sprotect}} template in those very rare and unique instances where semi-protection isn't all that semi. Does anyone have a way to search through the archives for this? ] 06:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| : That template is now being used far beyond its original specification on dozens of pages that are neither high-profile nor need long-term semi-protection. ] 16:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Semi-Protection of Day's FA== | |||
| I've noticed two occaisions over the last week on which the day's featured article has been semi-protected for a number of hours. My understanding of the policy was that the day's FA could be semi-ed for a few minutes only to remove serious vandalism and provide time to check that the article was back in shape. On the first occaision I raised this with the protecting admin, who dissmissed my concerns; I passed it off as a one off (the admin who protected had done a lot of work on the article to remove vandalism that day). However, I noticed again on the 14th November that ] had been semi protected for a number of hours. | |||
| I don't want this to be an ideological - 'the FA should be open at all times' v 'we must do everything to stop the vandals' debate, but at the moment either: | |||
| * Policy is being interpreted very differently by different admins - could we thus clarify it? | |||
| OR | |||
| * Admins are (unknowingly) breaking policy by giving the FA a lengthy semi-protection - so should we warn the protecting admins? | |||
| OR | |||
| * The policy does not reflect the consensus of the Misplaced Pages community - so should it be changed? | |||
| I'm not sure what the case is; but I'm putting it up for debate. I personally believe that we should clarify the policy to explain that the FA should only be semi-protected for very short periods to remove excessive vandalism (when rollbacks start rolling back to vandalised versions) --] 10:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| *See also ]. Your first point is probably correct; it's also true that policy pages are edited all the time and most editors are unaware of the changes. By human nature, most people who read a policy once assume they know it, and won't see the need to read it again. (]) 10:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| (edit conflict) To clarify what is happening at the moment, of the 14 featured articles on the main page in November as of today, 6 have had some sort of protection on them. Of these, and were protected only for a few minutes to sort out vandalism. , and were semi-protected by one admin, whose protection was removed later. was protected for a few hours and later protected for a few minutes to sort out vandalism. ] 10:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Yeah, I appreciate the protecting the main page point and the comment in Raul's user space - whilst important, though, the latter is not policy and the former does not speak of semi protection. Bare in mind too that the semi-protection policy has ''never'' explicitly allowed for the protection of the featured article. --] 10:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| *That page of Raul's is pretty much a guideline, though. WP:SEMI hasn't explicitly disallowed it either. (]) 14:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Execpt that many people act like it does explicilty disallow it. ] 14:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::The Featured Article of the day (the main page is permanently fully protected, so be careful with the terminology ;) ), should definitely not be protected for more than a few minutes unless there is serious vandalism that needs to be cleaned up. Mass penis-placement vandalism for example would merit semi-protection for some time, but other than that, it is is important to the foundation of Misplaced Pages that the featured article of the day, which I would assume attracts the most new users to Misplaced Pages, needs to be open for people to understand the concept of 'The encyclopedia that anyone can edit'. Sure, there's a good deal of vandalism, but I'm sure there are people who vandalize first eventually create accounts and edit positively. Basically, it's of fundamental importance that people can try out editing pages. Talking with the administrator who left the page semi-protected for several hours would be a good idea to see if there was a serious problem with vandalism at the time. <font color="DarkGreen">]</font><sup>]</sup> 20:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :This is in response to the question of whether different admins are interpreting policy differently--as I recall, no one ever semi-protected a main page FA until the admin's phone number vandal turned up, when it became quite obviously necessary. That created a precedent for doing it in response to extreme situations, but as far as I know no one has ever defined what those situations might be, and so it's not surprising that there's some confusion about them. On the other hand, setting them out too explicitly would be a ]-kinda thing to do. So yes, they're being s-protected too much, and admins who happen upon them while s-protected should take the responsibility of unprotecting and then watching them. But I still think we have no choice but to play it by ear. ] 20:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::OK, that's kinda where my POV stands, and I was under the impression that consensus stood there too. If that is so - and I'm doing this all via talk so that at any later stage I can'tbe accussed of changing policy to suit my views - could we re-word the current sentence to state. "On the day's Featured Article, protection should last for a matter of minutes, not hours, and should only be used to allow serious vandalism to be reverted or prevented. Other pages linked from the Main Page may be protected if under attack" ] 01:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think specifying that it's for major vandalism only matters more than a time limit--one can easily imagine exceptions to that. You're right in principle, but I think specifying that it's not to be done lightly solves the problem without being overly restrictive. ] 03:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Ok, I was just now alerted to this conversation I did not realize that we have a policy debate here. I semi-protected becuase of vandalism. I should probably unprotect as well... I sort of have been leaving that up to other admins as I have been busy on #wikipedia-spam. —— ] (]) 08:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| My impression is that s-protecting the main page featured article does much more damage than good. If there is need for a change in policy (or to frequently bend policy), it seems much more productive to simply hand out blocks like candy than to protect the main page article—much less collateral damage. Usually, spurts of vandalism that trigger semi-protection are really originating from just two of three IP addresses (sometimes only one), and nobody gets around to blocking them. The potential damage of "biting" blatant main page vandals with 24 hour blocks is much less than the main page featured article being protected. These articles actually do improve substantially during their time on the main page in most cases and they are basically the flagship of our open editing policies. ]<sup>] ]</sup> 20:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :This is true 90% of the time, and I agree in principle. However, we do get some fairly sophisticated vandals using dynamic IPs from time to time, and if (as has happened) their vandalism is particularly destructive (such as revealing personal info), we have no choice but to s-protect. That is not to defend the amount of s-protecting that has recently been done. ] 22:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::Yeah, we need to allow for occaisional semi-protection. My suggestion was not really to set a time limit for such s-protection as such but to indicate that in general, when we say a 'brief period', most editors are thinking of, say 10-15minutes, and not 6 hours. | |||
| ::However, I've tried a different rewording on the article re some of the concerns above. I thought perhaps that now Raul's guidelines had been officially promoted to policy, that page may be expanded slightly to discuss this all in more detail. --] 22:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| When the Today's Featured Article reads "HOME OF DICKSUCKING FAGGOTS WORLDWIDE" about 20% of the time, including an uninterrupted seven-minute stretch, as was the case for ], I would say common sense should trump blind adherence to policy. It is a disservice to readers to click on the day's featured article and be presented with a homophobic vulgarity instead.--] 20:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :This has basically already been said, but there needs to be a balance between "everyone can edit" and "stop vandalism at all costs" and probably occasional, short, stretches of semi-protection to stop the most annoying vandals while leaving the article open most of the time is generally considered to be it. As for some article being protected for a long time, one of the reasons may just be that the protecting admin has forgot/isn't online anymore, not a purposeful attempt to lock down the article, and no-one's really noticed how long the article's been protected. If you ever notice this, just go ahead and unprotect the article (or, if you're not an admin, ask one; I personally don't mind unprotecting if I'm online). ] // ] 23:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::If you are an admin and you unprotect a protected article, especially one that is the day's Featured Article, you are assuming the responsibility to stick around for an hour or so to make sure the vandalism does not resume. If you do not wish to take on this responsibility, DON'T UNPROTECT THE PAGE. Some admin unprotected San Francisco and it was promptly re-subjected to "HOME OF DICKSUCKING FAGGOTS WORLDWIDE" vandal attack, including 13 attacks in 11 minutes. Needless to say, it was left to some ''other'' administrator to unshit the bed. | |||
| ::Admins, please act responsibly.--] 06:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :::I agree that sysops should monitor pages they unprotect, but unless I'm missing something, it looks like in that incident the vandalism did not return until more than 10 minutes after the unprotection. That seems like more than enough time to wait to see if the vandalism immediately ensues, as people do have lives, you know :). <font color="DarkGreen">]</font><sup>]</sup> 15:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Indeed, you are missing something. In one instance the vandal attacks resumed eight minutes later; in another instance, the attacks resumed two minutes later.--] 19:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Semi-protection / protected confusing terminology == | |||
| When you attempt to edit a semi-protected page, a message says the page is '''protected'''. Any chance we could resolve this confusion? Even I'm not sure whether I can edit the page or not. ] 00:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I've changed the message so it now says semi-protected. -- ] 01:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Message is at ] and the change looks good. By the way though, shoudln't the edit tab be displaying as "view source" if you don't have permission to edit a given page? --] 01:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| ==Reasons for semi-protection== | |||
| If a page is given semi-protected status, could the reason "if not obvious" be put on the talk page or somewhere. I cannot see why ] for example should have this designation. (FA, some articles where there is much argument, and "topics currently under evolution" make sense.) ] 17:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :You can find protection reasons by going to the page history, then "view logs for this page". France was protected due to . -- ] 18:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :Some of us use "timed library sessions" and others may not be familiar with how to get locate the reasons: I was just using France as an example (having just come across it). Perhaps a link to the relevant explanation from somewhere on the page in question/talk page. | |||
| There will always be vandalism and "creative reinterpretation/ rearrangement" (not to mention "getting one's fingers in a twist"), and some pages will need more looking after than others. Possibly a bit more explanation at times may prevent the discouragement of people (not only newbies) who are put off by vandalism or attempts to block it. (Like others I sometimes correct typos etc seen in passing without necessarily signing in - but if I get a "Your number is blocked because of vandalism" message I don't always pursue it, especially if time short.) ] 18:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| My concern is that the page for Iraq is protected. To me, this phrase makes no sense: "...Iraqi nationalists that are fighting against what they view as a foreign occupation." I wanted to edit this out, because obviously it IS foreign occupation they are fighting, and not what they personally view as a foreign occupation, but the page was locked. I once added, to a page I cannot recall, that the Bush administration is just as much a terrorist regime as the al-queda. According to the definition of "terrorist" this was not a mistake, but was removed from the page almost as quickly as it was posted. This is obviously not what Misplaced Pages should stand for. This site should be a source for information that goes beyond politics and nationalism. If the current US occupation of Iraq is illegal, and if they can be considered a terrorist faction under the definition that wikipedia provides, then that is what every related page should say. It's pure ignorance to ignore these facts, and If I were family of one of the 650,000 people that have perished in Iraq since 2003, or family to one of the soldiers that have died as a result of this hopeless war, i would be utterly insulted to know that the hard facts were being shit upon by those who are not only supposed to stand for such information, but who are also supposed to be making this information available for the millions of people that demand it. This sort of information is available for people to uncover from various sources; hiding it on this site only makes Wiki look foolish and dominated by the corrupt system that we all writhe in. | |||
| ==Just for kicks== | |||
| I think it would be fun to semi-protect this page, you know? Anyone want to get on that? --] 02:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I think that all official policy pages, as well as important guidelines, should be semiprotected. It is very harmful to have those pages vandalized, especially when information is removed or when the text is rewritten to say the opposite of the original text. Such vandalism has gone unnoticed for relatively long periods of time (relatively because it is expected that vandalism on such pages will be quickly reverted). People can do a lot of damage if they do not know the rules or if they get rules that are the opposite of what they should be. | |||
| :Also, I think semiprotection should be used for medium and moderately high use templates instead of full protection. The cutoff between semi and full protection would be when the template is used on so many articles or is in such high profile places that it would significantly affect site performance or cause significant disruption or embarrassment. In those cases, the templates would be fully protected. However, the vast majority of template vandalism that I have seen is from IP addresses, which are blocked with semiprotection. Using only semiprotection makes it easier for non-admins to contribute, and I think that full protection drives them away because they do not want to take the time to fully explain on the talk page and then wait around for an admin to see the message and then answer questions that the admin has and so forth. Finally, we could be less discriminating in what templates are protected since the borderline ones would only be semiprotected. -- ] 16:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Expired blocks == | |||
| I suggest that semi-protection should apply to users who have a recently expired block. For example, if a user was blocked for 24 hours, semi protection should apply as if he was a new user. This will help cut down on cases where users who have a recently-expired block from immediatly pushing their POV onto an article (as it was done with ] and other articles pushed by the same user.) --] 08:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :I Agree--] <sub>]</sub> 17:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| :While this is a good idea, it would likely require a lot more work to implement than you've probably assumed. --] 07:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
| == Just my line == | |||
| There are perhaps some lines to add. "La Befana" should become only "Befana". "La" in Italian means "the", and we can omit writing it. 2007 January 6. In Italy, Sicily and Sardinia the Epiphany (Epifania) is the last day of Christmas time. On Twelfth Night, according to the ancient tradition, an ugly old woman (aka Befana) wearing a black shawl on her head, -often represented as a sort of good witch armed with flying broom -goes into the houses through the chimney to bring gifts, cakes or toys to the good children. On Epiphany day children wake up very early in the morning, and, very excited and curious, they hurry to discover what the Befana left for them. If children had been bad instead of toys they will find ash and coal in their socks. Many children believe the Befana is Santa's wife and that she lives on the South Pole. Since the XIII century, Befana's day is one of the most popular Italian feast long awaited by children and recalls the visit of the three Magi to the Holy Child. About Santa Claus. Once best known as Saint Nicholas, his relics and pieces of the body are kept today in the Basilica di San Nicola, Bari (in Southern-Italy). Some observers have reported seeing myrrh exude from these relics and are still studying them. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and is often called upon by sailors who are in danger of drowning or being shipwrecked. | |||
| --] 13:45, 6 Jan 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Invalid link == | |||
| doesn't work anymore. Should it be removed from the article? ] (], ]) 00:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Expiration of semi-protection== | |||
| I've just noticed that an "expiration" tool was added to the semi-protection tool above the confirmation button. I am therefore wondering about the usefulness of this new tool as we already have ] where users can request for unprotection. -- '']'' - <small>]</small> 16:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Semiprotect articles featured on the Main Page == | |||
| "Today's featured article" and articles "in the news" attract vandals like magnets. I think we should semiprotect them to stop the folly. --] (]) 16:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :See ], and its talk page, for a lengthy discussion of this issue. ] 21:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
Latest revision as of 14:48, 17 November 2013
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The "Semi-protection policy" was merged to Misplaced Pages:Protection policy#Semi-protection on 19 May 2008.
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