Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy/Archive 1

message: Putting this up for a vote.  Vote either Support or Reject, and state your reasons why.
*Support - we need some minimum level of protection on our pages evolution and abortion.  --Cyde 09:30, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Voting

message: *I strongly recomment a minimum of 25. I have watched vandals and they can easily rack up the ten needed to hit a major page and damage more user's view of Wiki.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 05:42, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 came out with a Wikipedia:Requests for publication feature which is quite similar to this. By freezing content in a special section of the site, they are planning on producing a stable version that can be cited and quoted. While the goals of the two proposals are different, perhaps cross-posting there would benefit this discussion? Titoxd(?!?) 05:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this help [[WP:1.0]] too? 

message: I think it is unfair that only admins can edit the Main Page, this is a good alternative. Gerard Foley 14:57, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: YES! This is where a higher threshold would come in. NO vandal, except for someone who really didn't want to be here, would take the time to garner 500 or 1000 edits simply to vandalize the main page. -Mysekurity 22:07, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: THis solves a lot of problem, IF and only if we as users can easily getadmins to mark pages as semiprotected. Many times vandalism comes in the form of people shipped from other forums to edit wikipedia to push a PoV. Dominick (TALK) 20:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I've seen it done a number of times, and I love the idea of opening the main page to those other than admins. The great thing is that this isn't as harsh as full protection, which is unwiki, but isn't as bad as making us look like fools with these vandalism edits, and can be temporary. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I LIKE 

message: Is this even technically feasible? And if so, shouldn't we not be trying to create a bunch of levels of editors? --LV (Dark Mark) 22:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no developer, but I think it is. I agree that we should be trying to unify editors as much as possible, but some content should at least be given this (maybe 10 pages at most). -Mysekurity 22:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I actually favor protection-creep. I have been watching the Napoleon page and, because of his rather high historical visibility, there are many defacements of the page every day. Despite people's misgivings about keeping wikipedia editors all on the same level, there is a hierarchy here in any case; people who reach a certain number of edits can gain the respect of the community and can become admins and have a greater impact on the day-to-day look of any given page, among other things, which is as it should be, I think. Requiring people to make real edits before they edit sensitive pages is not an undue burden on them. I also think that pages should not be protected because of their "importance," but protected when they are under constant attack by multiple IPs, for whatever reason. I'd be in favor of Level 4 protection for a fair number of pages. IronDuke 22:49, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree with IronDuke. I mean the thing is, this would be limited. We're not talking about having 10-15 levels of editors. I don't personally want that. I don't think anyone does. But IronDuke makes a good point. We already have admins, bereaucrats...you could argue that people on the arbcom have more power than other users. We'd be creating one, possibly 2 more levels of users and it would be for just semi-protection and nothing else. And we're not talking 1,000 edits or 100 or even 50. It would just be a way from stopping anons and brand new users from vandalizing some of these pages. IronDuke, the thing with importance is that we already pages protected due to visibility reasons. We'd be talking about similar pages for semi-protection. We'd be talking Community Portal, maybe some of the higher profile templates...basically stuff that usually isn't changed without a major consensus anyway, so there isn't much harm in semi-protecting them. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 01:25, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Protection creep doesn't have to happen, but it might happen. I personally would hate to see Wikipedia become unwiki, but, like others have said, "Which is worse?" I don't think a new user will care or notice that they can't edit the one page. (Somebody) makes a good point in discussing the Main Page. We will not drive off a new user perminately because they can't edit a few pages (again, we're talking about a small amount here), but we might, and probably will, if they see :Image:Human Feces.jpg on pages. Even the "____on wheels!" stuff would probably not bother a new user too much, even though it bothers us. We simply must have a better way of dealing with this. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this even possible? 

message: I'm kind of having difficulty deciding what the purpose of this is. I think this should start small and stay small, but it has some potential for as the wiki grows in scalability. For now, I think we should maybe leave it to high profile pages like GWB and others (only a few), and then maybe we'll increase the number in the future. Any thoughts? -Mysekurity 22:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: One problem we're going to run into is that even the protection page doesn't have hardened "rules" like that. Not sure how well that's going to sit with some. Everything we do on WP:RfP is through very informal guidelines. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 23:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Yes, but we need more weapons against vandalism and this would be another weapon. And as I said, take a look at the RfP page. We don't give protection liberally. We reject as many (if not more) requests than we accept. And this would be similar. The purpose of semi-protection is to help stop vandalism. It wouldn't be used for edit wars as far as I can see. Just vandalism. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 00:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Of course we need to urge caution over this.  That's why we will have a lengthy process to change semi-protection status that requires multiple admins, if not arbcom.  The goal is only to semi-protect about 5-10 pages on all of Wikipedia, if even that.  But I'm sorry, protection does not necessarily equal unwiki, especially given the article is completely uneditable, highly vandalized, and a pain to deal with.  We should be hashing out what process should justify semi-protection, currently, I think an admin vote of at least 15 people with a 70% pass rate should set semi-protection, in addition to only allowing semi-protection to go up one level at a time, in other words a separate vote for each level. --kizzle 04:13, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Question for you kizzle. Why would the semi-protection process have to be so much more difficult than protection? I ask this because protection only takes one admin. Semi-protection would actually be much less restrictive than protection. Protection now allows absolutely 0 edits...even by administrators, except in special circumstances (I've seen one edited by an admin all of once). Semi-protection would allow edits by everyone over a certain threshold, which means that basically 90% of the registered users (if not more) would be able to edit the page. So shouldn't it be less restrictive or be the same level (one admin) as protection? I don't quite understand that. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 16:24, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Short-term protection would not be so complex. Long-term would require a discussion and admin/experienced user vote. Short-term would work like regular protection, and be undone in about a week, while long term would stay until a big event, or high visibility passes. This is the major difference, I see. The point of this is to be more wiki-like with protected pages than we are currently. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purpose 

message: (Crossposted from talk page )
Hi there.  You've recently begun something of a determined course of action to have this article protected.  Admins have repeatedly unprotected it quite quickly; I was wondering if you were aware of this. It's fundamentally wrong to have our highest profile articles protected, in the same way we never protect the main page article.  Most vandalism on GWB is removed in well under a minute, and those in #wikipedia-en-vandalism practically scramble to be the first to revert.  Perhaps you should take a look at Wikipedia:Semi protection instead? -Splashtalk 19:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for contacting me.  Yes, I am aware of the discussion at Wikipedia:Semi protection, and have commented there earlier this morning.     There have been several recent cases where this page, the most highly vandalised and watched page on Wikipedia, remained vandalised for over one hour and fourty minutes, as originally pointed out by Rhobite in October.    As is noted on the Semi-protection policy talk page, the George W. Bush article is now being vandalised to such an extreme that, on average, the article is effectively in a vandalised state 8% of any given time.     So, while vandalism may be reverted within 1–2 minutes, it is rather moot when the article is being attacked every other minute.  The decision to temporarily protect this page was made   while the article was in the process of being simultaneously attacked from multiple IP addresses, meeting my interpretation of Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Uses first line item.  The statement that "Admins have repeatedly unprotected it quite quickly" is open for debate after a review of the protection log, but please do note that I specifically requested that someone "please remove and protect from moves only when appropriate" after reluctantly placing this under .  I believe we both agree that this article needs to be open to well-intentioned editors, but on that same token we are equally beholden to our readers to present them with something more professional than "George Bush is a son of a bitch", or much, much worse.  If you have any suggestions on how to better deal with distributed vandalism attacks such as the one made earlier today, please let me know.  Best regards, Hall Monitor 22:08, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

text: This is partially in response to Splash's post. You know what? I'd much rather have a high profile page protected than to make people look at multiple pictures of penises, which is something we got hit with last night. And I don't get this attitude about the vandalism room in IRC. Because people are quick to revert the vandalism, this makes not stopping the vandalism acceptable? That's more fundamentally wrong to me than to protect high profile pages. Anyway Hall Monitor, I think the only reason why we can't really use protection against the Bush page is because in order to stop vandalism using the current process, we'd have to have it protected 24/7 and that's not acceptable to Splash or me or anyone else I've run into. I mean it literally gets hit multiple times an hour. It makes it kind of pointless to permanently protect it, which is why I think semi-protection is a good idea. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 00:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: My particular concern with permanent protection of high-profile pages is embodied in Golbez's comment on Talk:George W. Bush where he basically says that if somone wants a change, they can and I quote, "submit" it on the talk page. The idea that admins should have a content approval role is extremely distasteful and gives them a role they were never considered for in RfA. -Splashtalk 00:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes but admins generally cannot touch protected pages except to revert vandalism that occured just before protection and also some other very limited circumstances. And if we agreed to a semi-protection policy, we can pretty easily forbid admins and others from adding content that's proposed by people with less than whatever the threshold is. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 00:47, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Crosspost regarding GWB vandalism

message: I'm wondering if there is any possible synthesis between this and Wikipedia:Requests for publication? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:32, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it would definately help to push this along. I'm invisioning FAs or s with proposed changes at the bottom, which can be rejected or accepted, (far off in the future, that is, when we're much more complete, but may be useful for GWB). -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests for publication 

message: if anyone knows how to do it, can they post the link to this page on the wikipedia mailing lists, along with bugzilla?  Thanks. --kizzle 06:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I asked a little while ago about Bugzilla, and was told to wait. I'm not sure if this is the right time, but if someone (possibly me) could ask the devs in the IRC channel, it would be awesome. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  requests for advertising 

message: Semi-protection could be temporary right? It doesn't say on the project page, but I would think that it would be an ideal tool against vandalism. Instead of doing vprotect, we could put semi protection on for a day or so until the threat ceases. That way, constructive edits could be done. I don't see that mentioned, but I assume it could be used for that. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 16:49, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I like that idea a lot. This way, the vandalism will subdue, while still allowing good edits. The semi-pro can be removed as is done with regular full protection. I think this would probably be the best idea. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. I'll alter the proposal a tad since right now, it doesn't mention this possibility. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 06:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Am I missing something or...

message: Is there any way Wikipedia can be set up so that only registered users can contribute edits? I'm sure it's obvious to anyone that's ever had to revert an article, that the vandalism almost always comes from unregistered users.  Just the usual thought that my penny can buy, odds are good I'll be getting change back from it. -- Cjmarsicano 17:30, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is very possible to do this; many wikis using MediaWiki software indeed do make registration a requirement for editing. However, one of the main points of Wikipedia is that all people can edit it, without having to register. There are many anosn who are good editors, perhaps just coming here to look up a topic, but seeing a typo and wanting to correct it without having to go through a registration process. I am positive that making registration mandatory will never happen as long as Jimbo is still an active personality in Wikipedia. - Pure</font>]]blade</span> | ☼ 18:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: See Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)#Abolish anonymous users. It is a Foundation issue that will probably never receive support from either the Board, the community or Jimbo.-Splashtalk 18:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you for the link to Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement.  Wikipedia is experiencing exponential growth; I wonder what the outcome of that poll would be two years from today.  Hall Monitor 19:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  This has been discussed ad nauseaum, and most people decided against it. Redwolf24 wrote a great essay on the subject, that, at some point, we were all newbie anons. Wikipedia is a great way to launch into wikis, so we have to be the best one out there. -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion in the form of a question... 

message: We could revoke permission to edit protected pages (this gets a little complicated) but would prevent people from abusing the semi-pro part (e.g. a vandal warned with /multiple-blocked vandal/editor who edits a (temporarily) semi'd page. Thoughts? -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: <Small>P.S. Are we ready to archive yet? We're at 41 kb or something</small> -Mysekurity 21:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Lets not break the thread just yet...give it another day or so.--MONGO 21:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, hold on. There's no need to archive yet, 32 KB is a subjective limit. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 23:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revoking permission 

message: To address the issue of protection creep (The second kind, as suggested by Splash), I propose that there be some sort of threshold for the percentage of edits that are vandalism-related before a page may be considered for semi-protection. For example, if the threshold for semiprotection were set at 80% in the last 50 edits, then over 80% of the last 50 edits to an article would have to be vandalism-related before an admin could arbitrarily protect it. Pages would be eligible for un-semi-protection after a predetermined interval of time (unless, of course, the vandalism rate were to still exceed the threshold). Even if my proposal is rejected, I still support the introduction of semi-protection. It might help significantly in reducing the wiki-stress that leads to premature wiki-death. And, for the record, I think that the privilege of editing the Main page should be reserved for those editors who have been determined trustworthy by the community. Now, please reveal the fundamental flaw in my plan. --TantalumTelluride 22:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure something like semi-protection should be decided on an automatic level.  Caution should be exercised, possibly through multiple admins or arbcom, but setting some arbitrary limit doesn't seem to be the answer, as cases may come up that hit right below the mark that still warrant semi-protection. In addition, what you'll get on moderately vandalized pages is legitimate users vandalizing the page in order to get to the semi-protection threshold, I guarantee it. --kizzle 01:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind my idea. I think admins can be trusted to use good judgement when semi-protecting pages. They won't protect too many, and they'll unprotect them when it is appropriate. --TantalumTelluride 21:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percent-vandalism threshold for semi-protection 

message: I'm kind of concerned about this proposal, to be frank. While admittedly some pages (George W. Bush included) do get a large amount of vandalism, that shouldn't be a reason to hinder progress. Progress on making an article better shouldn't be sacrificed or hindered just for the sake of attempting to prevent vandalism. In my opinion, setting arbitrary edit thresholds for editing very public and high-traffic pages is a bad idea. While the principle - attempting to strike a balance between editing and stopping vandalism - is good, I don't like the implementation. What is 25, 50, or 100 edits to a vandal? Vandals, including those who are determined enough to write a 'bot to vandalise, won't let an arbitrary number of edits stop them, especially after they start vandalising other pages first and then turn to the high-profile pages. Potential users, on the other hand, will be deterred by this - Hey, isn't this supposed to be edit-able by me? I know several users that I have talked to would probably not have joined if the first article they tried to edit was restricted. I'm also worried that the increasing proposals to restrict editing will slowly but surely chip away at the spirit and freedom of the Wiki. What's to stop all the articles from being semi-protected like this in one month, two months, or three months? Anyone - regardless of edit counts, ISP, country, or IP address should be able to edit Wikipedia. Finally, I've seen some analogies above to when the Main page was protected. You can't really compare the two; people expect a high-profile website's front page to be locked — besides, it's not an article. People don't expect articles, especially high-profile ones, to be protected, even if it's semi-protection. Thus, in my opinion, we shouldn't sacrifice progress in an attempt to hinder vandalism. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you think about the proposal to, instead of going by edit count, by age of the account?  Similar to what's done with page moves. · Katefan0(scribble) 23:33, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I think my suggestion above can prevent too many articles from being semi-protected. It would allow only extremely vandalized pages to be semi-protected, and it would set a time-table for un-semi-protection. The number of admins and highly experienced users leaving recently has convcinced me that the current attitude towards vandalism is not beneficial to Wikipedia in the long run. --TantalumTelluride 23:37, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Of course, all vandalism won't be stopped. The determined vandals will still be a problem, but many of the thousands of minor vandals that add stupid comments to high-profile articles might be deterred. Vandalism will still occur on "normal" non-protected pages, but semi-protection can help reduce vandalism considerably on such articles as George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. Legitimate users with the tenure required to edit semi-protected articles will be much more productive with the resulting coherent history pages for the articles, most of which are critical to Wikipedia 1.0. --TantalumTelluride 00:05, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Age of account certainly is an interesting proposal; however, I would still be concerned about the  hindrance of progress in an effort to stop vandalism. Regarding the minimum threshold of vandalism — isn't the line between vandalism and non-vandalism be extremely ambigious with some edits? Who would spend time counting the exact edits? What distinguishes an article that has 79.9% vandalism and one that has 80.1% vandalism? Who likes rhetorical questions? :-) No, seriously though, my point is that I don't think setting an arbitrary percent that can be calculated at any random time would be too effective. If the semi-protection worked out, I would support just a general guideline advocating when to semi-protect, similar to the guidelines we have for protection now. However, I still am concerned about the blocking of progress in an attempt to stem vandalism. Of course all vandalism won't be stopped — that's a fact of life that comes with a wiki. However, the question should be whether the benefits of this proposal outweight the downsides and risks; I believe that there are too many risks, uncertainties and unknowns to overcome the (in my opinion) limited benefits that we can get. Vandals, in my opinion, seem to be more determined than potential users stumbling upon Wikipedia for the first time; vandals won't let account age or editcountitis stop them. We shouldn't risk losing many potential valuable contributors in the hopes of stopping a few vandals. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:35, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm for this proposal in that its spirit is to block blantant vandalism only...Having certain articles editable only by aged accounts would curb a LOT of the major acts of vandalism taking place everyday.  Even if the age was low, say 3 days, that would still help.  Heck, even if it is nothing more then Requiring any account to edit would help.  While of coure any current vandalism IS removable by anyone, it takes diligent editors to remove it as soon as possible, thus keeping the encyclopedia as accurate as possible, as often as possible. xaosflux T/C 04:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Concerned

message: Should the levels of semi-protection address edit count, or the length of time an account has been used?  How do IP addresses factor in the previous question?  How will AOL and other proxy accounts be addressed?  Should there be more levels than simply 25/100, such as 25/100/500?--kizzle 01:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Should the levels of semi-protection address edit count, or the length of time an account has been used?" Either one will probably have the same results. "How do IP addresses factor in the previous question?" Anonymous contributors probably shouldn't be allowed to edit semi-protected pages anyway. Requiring them to register before editing semi-protected pages does not significantly reduce their freedom because registering actually makes them more anonymous if they choose not to reveal their real names. "How will AOL and other proxy accounts be addressed?" In my opinion, AOL users should stop whining and just register an account! Unfortunately, the MediaWiki software has no means of identifying anonymous users except by their IP addresses. People with dynamic IP's will just have to register if they want to accumulate edits or account age or even if they want to receive the correct messages on their talk pages. "Should there be more levels than simply 25/100, such as 25/100/500?" I don't think there should be more than one level, at least until the system is tested. We're not planning on using semi-protection on a lot of articles, only a few. --TantalumTelluride 05:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You have to be logged in for any kind of semi-protect anyway. So this is not much of an issue.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 18:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't realize that, I just thought it was minimum amount of edits.  I didn't think we decided that already, you're saying if we have a legitimate anon editor with a static IP and over 500 edits, that person would be banned from editing any semi-protected pages? --kizzle 18:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I have that same question. I don't like that if that's the case. I mean some of our anons are good users. They are far outnumbered by the vandals, but still. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 19:03, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Anonymous users shouldn't be allowed to edit SP'ed pages. If they want to edit a page, they should create an account, just as AOL users must create an account if they want to recieve their messages. It's not like it's a big deal to register. All you have to do is choose a name and password. If you're not willing to do that, then you shouldn't need to edit an SP'ed page. (Anons will still be able to edit most pages because only a few pages will be SP'ed.) --TantalumTelluride 21:21, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If it will be a problem to semi-protect through an edit count against anon AOL ips, then I agree we should enforce only logged-in accounts. --kizzle 21:57, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you are a good anon, 25 edits is not hard to get, and it is only on a few of 800,000+ articles until you build up the edits on your new account. Also, IP edit histories naturally build up from random users over time, so we should not try to include IPs here, this on top of all of the AOL issues, lets keep it to logged in users.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 05:52, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criteria to consider within Semi-protection 

message: Should there be a notice of some sort notifying people that the page is semi-protected?  If so, how should the message be crafted without inferring illegitimacy within the text, such as NPOV tags? --kizzle 01:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea.... Well, when a page is nominated for deletion, the template placed on its talk page contains a link to the deletion policy. Perhaps a template could be placed at the top of a semi-protected page's talk page with a link to a project page describing the possible reasons behind the protection, a sort of semi-protection policy. Alternatively, if we decide that a high vandalism rate is absolutely the only legitimate reason to semi-protect a page, then the template can say "This page has been semi-protected because it is a common target of vandalism." It's short and to the point, but readers could find out more information by following the link. --TantalumTelluride 05:26, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Look at any of the pages on the protected pages page to see what the protection tag looks like. The 2 main ones are Vprotected and protected. I'm sure we could just modify one of those. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 09:05, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed - Vprotected is a good model (as the page would only ever be semi-protected, or perhaps Sprotected, for vandalism). BD2412 T 19:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Sounds good to me. Whether the wiki software can do that is another question. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 20:43, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm pretty sure the devs can work something out. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree also. --TantalumTelluride 21:27, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd add that said error message page should list all of the semi-protected pages (of which there should only be a handful) so our prospective editor does not jump right to another one closed to his or her contributions. BD2412 T 21:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. Also, new users would realize that only a few pages are on the list, and that they can edit the other ( minus the number of protected pages) pages on Wikipedia. --TantalumTelluride 22:57, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We could say that too - maybe even point 'em to projects needing assistance. BD2412 T 23:13, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effect of semi-protection on visible content 

message: I read the discussion up above (good discusion) and I just have some points. First of all, again, remember that semi-protection would NOT have to be permanent. It could be used on an ad hoc basis when its needed to stop vandalism. It could be on the articles for less than a day in some cases. Honestly, I'm not sure it'd have to be permanent for Bush. I mean, I can see a day where vandals get tired of not being able to edit the page, so they give up. 
Secondly, to splash, just because people might enjoy RC patrol doesn't mean that it's a good thing. I mean if vandalism ceased tomorrow, I highly doubt that people would be too sad. I'm not sure how much RC patrol you've done, but it's very draining. We essentially lost Doc glasgow over it and we'll lose others, I guarentee you. I just don't like this idea of "well it sucks, it's always going to suck, so let's not change it". Just because it sucks now doesn't mean that it's right or that it's something that we can't ever change. 
Thirdly, this isn't as severe as I think people are thinking it is. #1 we would not be talking lots of articles here. Look at the protected pages list. We have 100 pages protected. And 1/3rd of those are temporary. With semi-protection, we'd be looking at another 50 or so probably? So 150 articles out of 800,000. I think it's a small price to pay to make the encyclopedia more readable and to ease the burden on admins. Bush is literally vandalized every 5-10 minutes. I just don't see where it's a big deal here. We're not talking thousands of articles. We're talking less than 100. I don't see jumping from this to "we're stopping the wiki element of the site". it's alarmist. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 06:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with every point except for the conjecture that one day vandals will get tired of vandalizing GWB.  After 5 years of being president, vandals have only gotten more determined than before, I highly doubt they will ever give up until he's out of office and a new douchebag is president. --kizzle 06:46, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We won't know until we try, now will we? :) I dunno. I understand your concerns that we need to have a consensus for long term s-p. I just want this to pass. It's my main goal. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 07:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. I totally agree. That's why I'm really going to bat for semi-protection. You're talking to someone who does RC patrol AND the RfP page. :) We really really need an intermediate step. Otherwise, protection is too harsh and having it completely open is too lenient. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 20:14, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Just some points

message: I added the alert at the top because I'm not sure everyone here (especially the non admins) know the existing policy and tags. I thought it'd be helpful. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 09:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: I added the note at the top...

message: * Since this policy is simple to get around (have fun elsewhere to whatever level required, then you can vandalize whatever you want)
* since having a protected "published" page visible will never be vandalized (unless admins go bad)
* since *anyone* can wiki edit the "draft" page
* since moving draft edits to the published page will be less work for admins than the reverting of vandalism today
Why this proposal instead? -Jcbarr 13:19, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it doesn't involve locked forks of articles. -Splashtalk 13:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. And we can build it into the policy...something along the lines of...anyone who is doing that (creating a user account, getting their edit count #s up and then vandalizing the article) can be reverted (and eventually blocked) for doing so. It's not that hard to figure out...we do it when figuring out afd votes all of the time. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 13:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: why not use the publish methodology instead?

message: I just had an idea after looking at Special:Blockip. Instead of having two or three protection levels set at a fixed ratio, how about there is just one level (semi-protected), which then can be set individually?  It would be similar to the "Other" selection in Special:Blockip. This has two advantages:
# Simpler to code, since you would be passing down a variable into the MediaWiki software, which would then be processed as IF $User.editcount < $Protect.threshold THEN rejectEdit() or something similar (that line would not work in MediaWiki, it's BASIC, not PHP); and
# Inter-wiki simplification. The levels of semi-protection needed here at the English Wikipedia might not be the same as those needed on Spanish Wikipedia or the English Wiktionary; having a customizable level allows the different Wikis to adopt a semi-protection policy more suited to their individual needs. Meta would like this idea too.
Thoughts? Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 21:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think leaving the threshold up to the individual admins is a very bad idea, we could get anywhere from 5 to 500 edits minimum.  What guidelines or policies would we provide admins as to how many edits they should require, keeping in mind that setting the bar too high will result in unnecessary discrimination against possible legitimate editors? Whether its Spanish or English, I don't think it really matters, 25 edits along with a 5 day minimum account life (to counter vandalbots) for level 1 and 100 edits with a 1 month edit time for level 2 (for pages like GWB) will suit all intents and purposes, even as Wikipedia grows in scale.  As for simpler to code, I don't see logically how that is simpler than just running a simple check against the user whether their account has existed for X amount of time and they have X edits. --kizzle 21:19, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It would not be leaving it to admins' individual discretions, there would be limits set in the Semi-protection policy, similar to the ones at the Blocking policy, which would be set in every individual Wiki (we don't know how much vandalism is considered "acceptable"  at other Wikipedias, and some of them have a minimum one-month block guideline for vandalism, so there will be other interpretations besides ours) The problem with coding a number in MediaWiki is that it is first, bad programming practice, and second, prevents other Wikipedias from setting their own policies. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 21:27, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess the edit threshold and time limit could be built in as variable within the tool, and let policy (preferably as explicit as possible) be referenced by admins using semi-protection.  That way, the time limit and threshold can be decided upon by a concensus from each wiki implementation.--kizzle 01:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, the policy should be implemented in each Wiki as clearly and explicitly possible, on that we do agree. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 01:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Tito, before you claim an idea as your own, how 'bout taking a look at the main page ;). We've been doing so much talk about this on the discussion page (and frankly, it's huge), that we havn't really done anything to the proposal page. I guess great minds think alike  -Mysekurity 06:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protection levels