Misplaced Pages

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This is a poll to assist in the determination of consensus for the addition of the following language to the semi-protection policy:

• All official policies should be semi-protected on a continuous basis.

Please see Misplaced Pages:Semi-protecting policy pages for an explanation of the rationale for this proposed amendment.

Support

1. Support -- Semi-protection is frequently an effective means by which to prevent vandalism. However, articles are ordinarily not semi-protected except where necessary due to heavy vandalism, because the interest in allowing new and unregistered users to contribute to articles is otherwise considered to outweigh the value of the vandalism prevention that semi-protection affords. Such a rationale for the avoidance of semi-protection is unpersuasive when the page in question is not an article. Indeed, there is a strong case for limiting the editing of official policies to established users, as official policies are intended to be edited in a manner consistent with the prevailing consensus. Only established users are likely to have a sufficient familiarity with Misplaced Pages to be able to ascertain the prevailing consensus. Consequently, the decision as to whether to semi-protect official policy pages does not involve balancing the interest permitting in good-faith editing by new and unregistered users against the interest in preventing vandalism by such users, as would be the case for semi-protection of articles. Rather, semi-protection of official policies is beneficial both by helping to prevent vandalism, and by preventing good-faith but terribly misguided edits by new and unregistered users. John254 15:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Polls are evil, discuss, don't vote Far too early to have a poll about this. JYolkowski // talk 16:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Comment -- Woohookitty suggested that

   This is a major policy change. It needs to be voted on formally.

   (We have voted to enact many other policy proposals, as I explained at length on Misplaced Pages talk:Discuss, don't vote.) If this proposal needs to be voted on to be enacted, but yet cannot be voted on, it could never be enacted, regardless of the number of contributors supporting it. This "catch-22" is not an outcome that I favor. John254 16:15, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Unless we've actually discussed what options to vote on (which hasn't been done), having a vote is highly unlikely to produce any sort of consensus. JYolkowski // talk 16:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   If this proposed amendment wording doesn't achieve consensus, then we can hold another vote on some different wording. John254 16:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Other

1. Polls are not to be used for this purpose. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 16:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Actually, we have frequently employed voting to enact and amend Misplaced Pages policy. For a few examples, see Misplaced Pages:Arbitration policy ratification vote, Misplaced Pages:Three revert rule enforcement, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/G4, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/1, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/10, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/11, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/13, Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material, and Expansion of CSD A7. John254 17:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

2. This is indeed not the way to go about doing this. We're supposed to come to some some of consensus, not vote on what we like the best. We were making progress with compromises already, and this really isn't necessary. Let's just take this slowly. Cowman109 17:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)