Wikipedia talk:Rough guide to semi-protection

message: The essay currently states that 50% of edits being vandalism is the 'maximal proportion', as each vandal edit will be reverted. This is not the case. Semi-protection is often applied after a string of anonymous edits from various IP addresses and sockpuppets, particularly on articles which are not widely watchlisted. For an example see where this protection was applied. There was a flurry of vandalism in the preceding three days - there were 47 vandal edits and 23 reverts - 67% vandalism. -- zzuuzz (talk) 00:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good point - it can vary, and vandals often make several edits at a time to one article, which are then all reverted at once. It's also possible, though probably rarer, for a user not to revert properly but to manually remove the vandalism as they come across it, thereby creating several 'revert' edits for one vandal edit. Richard001 00:44, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 50% maximum vandalism?

message: Yesterday,I tried to have a page semi-protected because of several repeated attempts at vandalism. This was on a page that is a biography on a living person. Yet, this morning some "bot" removed the template saying the page is NOT protected. Apparently, I didn't go about it right. How does one formally go about protecting the page? I really feel this needs to be done immediately. I am referring to the biography for the rock singer Rick Springfield...and people's attempts to vandalize that page with lies re: his personal life.  Can someone help me with getting that page protected? Ladycascadia 15:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Registered editors request page protection at WP:RFPP, then an admin applies (or not) protection templates.  --Lexein (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Semi-Protection Needed

message: It would be helpful to have some guidance on semi-protecting user and user talk pages. --A. B. (talk •  contribs)  02:15, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  User and user talk pages 

message: Now this proposal/discussion migh be worth considering in adding to this page. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  BLP issues 

message: How does one nominate an article for semi-protection?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grace321 (talk • contribs) 19:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Refer to WP:RFPP.  —EncMstr (talk) 15:21, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: How to

message: I nominated Billie Piper per WP:RFPP for temp semi-protection here but it was declined:
:not enough recent disruptive activity to justify protection.
So I commented 
:Since Feb 15 (a month ago), of 31 edits, 7 were reverted vandalism from IP users, or 22%. Per WP:ROUGH, this is 4 times the acceptable level (5%) of vandalism for generic articles. It is suggested there that the threshold should be lower for living persons. 
Or should I just renominate with these stats included? And, more generally, how best to deal with declined protection requests? --Lexein (talk) 03:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Old followup: After asking about this at the IRC Help channel irc://irc.freenode.net/wikipedia-en-help another admin reviewed and processed the request, but also recommended discussion with the declining editor in future, rather than IRC. --Lexein (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Renominate after declined WP:RFPP, or discuss in-page?

message: It should be complete protection as no changes really need to be made to the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrK4 (talk • contribs) 15:57, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It is general practice to protect articles only when needed due to recent activity.  Ideally, all articles would have no protection.  —EncMstr (talk) 16:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is this article( Rough guide to semi-protection) semi-protected? 

message: Of how to request semi-protection! I only skimmed but I didn't see a major mention of where one goes about requesting protection for an article.--Senor Freebie (talk) 14:31, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've wikilinked WP:RFPP in the first section. --Lexein (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This could do with being more prominent - I wanted to quickly link to this page to answer somebody's question of "how do I protect an article?" (as it's a better introduction to the concept than WP:RFPP), but this tiny wikilink seems too opaque to be very helpful. --McGeddon (talk) 08:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  --Lexein (talk) 02:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  No prominent mention 

message: The intro paragraph (as of 6/23/11) says that "'Friday' was derided by many music critics and viewers, who dubbed it 'the worst song ever.'"  
The grammar here is unclear.  Did all the critics and viewers who derided the song also dub it "the worst song ever"?  Probably not, but that is what the sentence, as written, suggests.  
The ambiguity can be eliminated if, between "viewers," and "who dubbed it" one added the phrase "some of who."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.6.12.237 (talk) 01:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some copy editing 

message: One of the bullet points under General Considerations is "Is the problem on a high-profile, widely watchlisted page?".  What does a yes mean here - if it is high-profile it SHOULD be semiprotected because many eyes will see it and it's a vandal target, or it SHOULD NOT because there are plenty of people to keep it clean manually? -- stillnotelf is invisible 18:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the problem on a high-profile, widely watchlisted page? 

message: The section on Criteria for semi-protection states that "on average 5% of edits to a page are vandalism. So, 5% is the level of vandalism to be expected, and semi-protection should not be applied in this case." This needs to be clarified: 5% in what time period? Five percent of edits in a 24-hour period? A week? The total edits to the article since it was created (which would require one to examine every single edit made to the article, since vandals don't really leave edit summaries describing their edits as "vandalism")? Nightscream (talk) 02:17, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That figure comes from a study by the CVU, documented here. In short, they took the total number of edits in three separate months on 100 random articles and found that 5% were vandalism. NTox · talk 02:43, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Excuse the WP:Coatracking, but I'm glad the study conclusions are wikilinked right there; I'm strongly in favor of policies, guidelines, essays, and infopages having sources for claims made. --Lexein (talk) 07:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, so do I. NTox · talk 01:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: 5% figure

message: Let's make no bones about it; most registered editors, and virtually all admins, hate IP editing. As a result, nearly all the popular and high-profile articles have been closed down to such editing - often permanently. Yes, figures such as 95% or articles are not protected (or whatever the actual - high - percentage is) suggest a different situation, but this promotes a lie. The fact is, as I say, nearly all important articles are shut.
How about this one . High profile, recent, important. You'd think this would be a perfect article to encourage IPs to get on the Wiki bandwagon. But no, some jerk has SP'd it for all the wrong reasons. Nearly every article of this type only survives for a short while before it's closed down.
Where in policy does it say that an article can be closed down because "it's being edited too frequently", FFS! So c'mon guys. You know you hate IP editing, so why don't you put something like this in the policy:
"An article can be semi-protected if an admin feels that IP editing is getting in the way of registered-user editing". Or perhaps "An article can be SP'd if the majority of edits are from unregistered users". Or maybe "An article can be SP'd to preempt any type of problem caused by IP editing, especially for high profile articles". One of these should take care of it.
I'd like to hear some response here, because remember:
You can edit this page!
Really, you can! If you would like to, please feel free to do so. Make an edit – or even several! After all, that's what Wikipedia is all about! . Sorry Jimbo, some people beg to differ.
86.149.35.196 (talk) 10:15, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  SP - often used as an excuse to close down IP users in high-profile articles 

message: I don't understand what this means, under General considerations: "In addition, since higher-quality articles are bigger, there is less likelihood that the article will be edited." Why would being bigger make editing less likely? --valereee (talk) 12:54, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does this mean? 

message: How many edits do I need to make to be able to edit a semi-protected page? What else am I supposed to do, if anything?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheNamelessIndividual (talk • contribs) 00:42, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing semi-protected pages? 

message: There is a page that I monitor (Gay anthem) which is persistently edited by IPs in good faith, but with unhelpful additions. (Specifically, there is a table list, as well as several prose lists of "anthems" which IPs love to add to.) These edits aren't hard to check properly for referencing, but they do take time, and I am often the only editor to check and remove these additions. Does this sort of editing qualify for semi-protection, especially when textbook vandalism is rare? — HTGS (talk) 22:08, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: To belatedly answer your question, yes, page protection is sometimes extended for good faith edits when the level of disruption is sufficiently high. I don't believe there is currently enough disruption on that article to justify protecting it, but page protection is an option for persistent use of unsourced or poorly sourced changes and some other types of disruptive edits that are plausibly good faith edits. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:43, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is page protection ever extended for good faith edits? 

message: I reverted your changes especially due to  which really misses the point of the text that was there. This guide is about semi-protection which only affects new accounts and IP editors. If disruption is coming from autoconfirmed and higher levels of accounts then semi-protection isn't going to help.
Looking further at your other two changes:
*I'm open to a change around "widely watchlisted" which you . It might be more accurate to split this into a separate bullet like "Is the page watchlisted by a relatively small number of users?", but it's at best a minor factor compared to the others.
*I think it would be fine to remove "notable" as .
Let's see if there's consensus before we change anything, though. It's best to seek consensus on a talk page before making substantive changes to policies and guidelines. Please read WP:CONLEVEL for more on this.
Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:38, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, okay. I was editing according to WP:BRD. 123957a (talk) 21:59, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It's allowed, but it's generally best and encouraged to use the talk page first. It's discussed more at  and . I think that goes doubly if you're not actively involved in the area (e.g., frequently making page protection requests as a user or processing them as an administrator). Daniel Quinlan (talk) 22:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @Daniel Quinlan: Thanks for letting me know! 123957a (talk) 22:20, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @Awes Khan 2603:9008:20F0:A090:E977:83D8:340:CE7D (talk) 07:45, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed changes