Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy/Archive 6

message: So, to formalise the proposal, then:
* The sprot template should be amended to include the words "on <date> for <N> days"
* When semiprotecting a page, an admin should decide how many days is appropriate and state this in the tag parameters 
* All pages which have reached the end of their semiprotection period should automatically have the sprot template removed
* Any admin wishing to remove an sprot tag before the expiry period is up should take the subject to the talk page and establish whether there is consensus for early removal of the tag or not, and should act according to that consensus (N.B. this procedural change to come into play when the automatic removal is implemented)
Does this have everyone's support? If so, can I suggest we make the changes to the page, and contact the developers to set wheels in motion for their bit of the change?
SP-KP 19:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you'll both take a look through the archives, you'll see we discussed both of these propositions. The main issue with telling when an article will be unprotected is that they give vandals that much more chance to just wait for the day. An article will become unprotected once it is naturally ready to become unprotected. We have no way of automatically removing a template (aside from a bot, but this is more of a judgement call, and why we don't do this with ProD). Our current requests for unprotection are handled at WP:PP, although they are usually discussed on the talk page first. In regards to the GWB and Tony Blair pages, we have discussed this as well—there is too much of a temptation to vandalize both pages, and thus they shall stay pretty much constantly protected until both are out of office, or some significant event occurs that new editors are needed or encouraged. Happy editing, Mysekurity [m!] 20:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

text: My argument for unprotection as regards GWB and Tony Blair, is, there are no significant events in the news concerning them. If there was an event as such it could be protected easily. --Sunfazer 21:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A BBC News website search gives 4 stories covering Blair today, the same number yesterday, and about a dozen from last week. Perhaps not "significant" stories but enough to keep him in the forefront of vandals' minds. The vandalism figures following each unprotect speak for themselves - go take a look. SP-KP 21:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

text: A 'protection expiry date', so to speak, should NEVER be set. This way it is up to the admin to use their judgement. --Sunfazer 10:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Taking this forward

message: This discussion is in danger of fizzling out with no actrion being taken. Clearly there is a consensus for something to be done in respect of high-profile vandal-attracting articles, we just don't seem to be able to agree on what. I want to see if we can rescue the proposal above before proposing a change of tack. To deal with Mysekurity's first concern, this seems to be about visibility of expiry dates - so, can we display the expiry dates away from the articles themselves, so that they are not obvious to the vandals? Any suggestions as to where? Where would they be of most use to editors / admins? The second issue, a template-removing bot ... I think we need to understand how big an issue that is. Can someone expand the reasoning on this one please? SP-KP 10:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Continuing discussion

message: I still think that the wikipedia needs to implement: Wikipedia:Timed article change stabilisation mechanism.
It solves quite a lot of the problems that we talk about above; it tackles random vandalisation at root by making it pointless.WolfKeeper 16:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Before your proposal, the first logical step would be a trial implementation of the requirement of user registration, or perhaps universal semi protection. Ben 04:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Timed article semi protection

message: 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! --Hermitage 09:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like an admin accidentally fully-protected that article instead of semi-protecting it. –Tifego(t) 09:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually it seems to be the other way around; it's supposed to be fully protected, but the wrong notice was put on it. –Tifego(t) 09:34, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm not a new user, but still can't edit; why? 

message: 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  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? -- Mwanner | Talk 20:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Y'know this sounds crazy... but it might just work. After all, it's not like it could be used in edit wars. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 20:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 WP:RfPP 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 WP:RfPP 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. --Darth Deskana (talk page) 20:30, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See, I knew that wouldn't take long.  Consider, though, that it's just as easy to revert an  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. -- Mwanner | Talk 20:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. --Darth Deskana (talk page) 20:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text: people might not write at all if their changes don't appear.Ben 04:45, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open up semi-protection to all editors 

message: 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 Frédéric Chopin is semi-protected, an unlikely target of continued vandalism I would have thought. Is any kind of review of semi-protection in general planned? Stevage 14:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  130 articles seems like a lot 

message: 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. --Sam Blanning(talk) 18:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 George W. Bush 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. · Katefan0 (scribble) 19:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How much vandalism is enough?

message: 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. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 Jew.  —  Rickyrab | Talk 19:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Permanent semi-protection 

message: I think Wikipedia 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.  Ideogram 10:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  semi-protection and wikipedia stability 

message: 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 Wikipedia before engaging in editing controversial or disputed aritcles. Hell, when I was a newbie, I stayed away from controversies for months. dab (ᛏ) 09:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. -Splash - tk 13:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. IronDuke 05:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 Special:Log/Neweditors, only a Special:Log/newusers. 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. -Splash - tk 05:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 Topic X, do they? Surely, they can be patient, if they're good faith editors? IronDuke 17:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

text: 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? :) --Draicone 00:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "new users"

message: 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. - Brian Kendig 13:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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 bio[graphie]s of slightly well known but controversial individuals" which are not widely watchlisted, if they "are subject to POV pushing, trolling [or] vandalism".". I don't see much room for misunderstanding in that. Your question is not as hypothetical as you present it, 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. -Splash - tk 15:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Splash, 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. SP-KP 16:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. -Splash - tk 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

text: 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 WP:RFPP. -Splash - tk 15:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

text: *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. Crum375 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *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. -Splash - tk 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

text: 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. -Splash - tk 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. - Brian Kendig 04:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. -Splash - tk 12:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

text: 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. -Splash - tk 22:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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. - Brian Kendig 04:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you very much! I appreciate that. - Brian Kendig 13:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  When SHOULD an article be semiprotected?