# Conflict and Computation on Wikipedia:
## 3 Results
### Drivers of Conflict Transitions
#### 3.2.1 Page Protection Events  
Administators can exercise direct control over who edits a page. These page protection events are the primary mechanism for authorities to influence the patterns of editing on the page; they are  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c l l} \hline
**Size** & **Type One Motifs** & **Type Two Motifs** \\ \hline
2 & CR, RC & CC, RR \\
3 & CRC, RCR, RCC, CCR & CCC, RRR, RRC, CRR \\
4 & RCRC, CRCR, CRCC, CCRC, RCC & CCCC, RRRR, RRCC, RCRR, CRRC \\
5 & CRCRC, RCRCR, RCRCC, CCRCR, CRCCR & CCCC, RRCR, RRRR, CRRRR, CRRRR, RRRRCC \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Characteristic motifs of the higher (type one) and lower (type two) conflict subspaces across all 62 pages, ranked by partial-KL (see Ref. [43], Equation 2). The lower-conflict subspace is characterized by long runs of cooperation, but also by long runs of reversion. Conversely, the higher-conflict subspace is characterized by more rapid patterns of alternation between R and C moves.  
a blunt and top-down instrument that restricts editing on a particular page to increasingly smaller populations (\"hard\" protection) or, conversely, opens it up to the wider community (\"soft\" protection events). Releasing a page from protection can occur by explicit action or by default, when a prior restriction is given an expiration date.  
Page protection is mostly ineffective in inducing a transition. Of the 1545 protection events in our data, only 136 (8.8%) occur within ten edits of a transition event; while the effect is statistically significant (35, or 2.3% expected; \(p<10^{-3}\)), the effect size is small.  
Page protection can explain some, but far from all, transition events. There are 1387 transition events that we can, potentially, associate with a page protection (this is less than the total number of transitions, because we do not have reliable records of protection events prior to 10 November 2003); thus, at most, about 9.8% of observed transitions can be associated with page protections (2.5% expected; \(p<10^{-3}\)).  
Norms on the encyclopedia itself urge the use of page protection as a response to conflict. We thus might expect protections to lead to a transition to the low-conflict state; and, conversely, weakening of protection to lead to a transition to the high-conflict state. This happens 80% and 72% of the time, respectively. Interventions are not usually successful in changing a page state, but when they do, their effects do have the correct valence. Page protection appears to operate in the direction administrators expect.  
Increasing the window increases the number of transitions we can potentially associate with a protection event. When we enlarge the window size to one hundred edits, 397 of the transition events, or 29%, are now associated with a page protection event. The signal is statistically significant (\(p<10^{-3}\)), but the false detection rate is higher (240, or 17% expected) and the valence less certain (65% rather than 80%). Post-selecting for the optimal window provides an upper bound: at most, only about 11% of transitions can be reliably explained by page protection events.  
Top-down control thus has at best only weak effects on the transition between the high- and low-conflict subspace. This is surprising, given the association between vandal-like CR patterns and the high-conflict subspace. \"Locking down\" a page may lighten the burden for pro-social users who police vandalism, but the high-conflict subspace describes more than just vandalism, and excluding users, even large classes of them, only rarely induces lasting effects on long-term patterns of cooperation and conflict. Conversely, opening up a page rarely leads to an emergence of new conflict. Most top-down actions are unsuccessful in causing a page transition; most transitions can not be explained by reference to top-down action. Comfortingly, however, when associations can be found, they do have the correct valence. It is unusual for a hard protection event, for example, to be associated with a transition to the high-conflict subspace.