Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy/Archive 7

message: Would permanent semi-protection be appropriate for Wikipedia:Blocking policy? It is a very important official policy page and I feel that vandalism on it is more harmful than it would be on an ordinary page. It is not vandalized constantly, but it is vandalized regularly, about once or twice a day.
I'm not basing my whole argument for semi-protection upon similar vandalism, as it is much rarer than regular vandalism, but I reverted this edit the other day. What is disturbing about it is that it is an apparent attempt to change policy without anyone noticing rather just deleting the article or adding "you suck". Someone reading the page who is unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy might not realize that the article has been vandalized and think that it is okay to evade a block that you think is unjust or that anyone with a high edit count can become an admin (see the links on this page to many unsuccessful RfAs of editors with high edit counts). If they don't come back to reread it and they are not informed otherwise, they may retain those beliefs indefinitely. Also, if someone had made a regular edit or two soon after, without noticing the vandalism, it might have gone unnoticed for days. As it was, it was about a half hour before I found it. Semi-protection would stop the everyday vandalism and the sneakier, potentially more harmful vandalism like this edit.
I'm strongly opposed to unnecessary protection, especially permanent protection. However, semi-protection only blocks anonymous users and very new registered users, most of whom are unfamiliar with Wikipedia policies and ill equipped to make substantive edits to the policy anyway. Also, they would still be able to suggest changes on the talk page or sign up and wait a few days so that they could edit the page themselves. 
Semi-protection would stop virtually all vandalism of the page, and similar pages, because the vast majority of vandalistic edits on it are made by anonymous users and the rest are almost all new users. There are some reverts of edits made by established users, but those are just disagreements rather than vandalism. Semi-protection of an official policy page is less harmful than the protection of an article, like Jew and George W. Bush, which are given as examples of continuously semi-protected articles. 
We might need to modify Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy first, or at least eventually, but I suggest we just try semi-protecting this one page for a couple of weeks, if there is a consensus to do so, and see how it goes. If semi-protection is implemented permanently, I think there should either be no notice on the page itself (with an explanation given when you click to edit the page) or a discrete notice, like a padlock image that sends you to the semi-protection policy page when you click on it. If the trial run is successful and the semi-protection usage is expanded, I would suggest not even using it on all guideline and official policy pages, only those that are regularly vandalized and/or those that can cause serious problems when they are vandalized. I don't think most of the guideline pages would qualify for the second one, but a few might. A few Wikipedia namespace pages that are not policies or guidelines might benefit from permanent semi-protection, too. Still, I think that it would be limited to a dozen or two pages. -- Kjkolb 08:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trial run of permanent semi-protection of Wikipedia:Blocking policy 

message: The article says: in the case of a few static IP vandals hitting a page (blocking the vandals is a much better option than semi-protection)... but there is no indication how this is done. Is it possible to block all users  58.160.185.* ? There has been persistent and sneaky vandalism to the Alexander Downer page, from users  58.160.185.97,  58.160.185.80 and  58.160.185.32 (obviously all the same person). Rocksong 00:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. He's struck again from 203.5.217.3 . At a different time of day to all his other edits. I'm guessing that's his workplace, since WHOIS suggests Adelaide where it's 9.45am. Rocksong 00:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind. I got an answer at Wikipedia:Help desk. Rocksong 05:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. Range blocks. But honestly, they are only useful for very short times. Any longer than say 30-45 minutes and collateral damage is caused by them. --Woohookitty(meow) 09:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to block vandals without accounts? 

message: If you look at history of  you will notice that it is hit with linkspam on the almost daily basis from various IPs. I looked through last 50 edits. Out of 24 anon edits - 23 were linkspam. Out of non IPs, 11 were lablelled as linkspam removal. That's means 2/3 of the edits in edit history are linkspam and it reverts! This leads me to a conclusion that we should consider pernamently semi-protecting this article; and further, that we may want to semi-protect other articles targeted by linkspam (which I'd assume would include cities and other places that are touristical attractions, if they are also target by linkspam vandals in such a manner). Comments?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  23:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How many thousand articles are you proposing a blanket semi-protection for? -Splash - tk 22:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As many as needed.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  19:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi as a defense vs linkspam? 

message: "This reasoning does not apply to pages that aren't articles, e.g. templates or pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Indeed, it may be useful to permanently (semi-)protect pages that would require familiarity with Wikipedia to make true improvements to, e.g. high-risk templates."  It appears that people have been semi'ing HRTs recently so I figured it wouldn't hurt adding that to this policy. It seems quite reasonable to me that the maxim "everyone can edit the encyclopedia" does not necessarily apply to complex or frequently-used templates that require a bit of expertise to edit. >Radiant< 08:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: High risk templates are normally inexistent. There are high use/high visibility templates. For the high use, I would say over 10'000 transclusions is definitely a case for full protection (but this is not the sole criterion). An unprotected 10K template is a high risk. As such, high risk templates are now inexistent on this wiki. Semi-protection for <10K templates is a reasonable measure, as long as it is not advertised (please don't list them, please don't tag them). Mainting a page/category/tag-template that lists semi-portected templates is a high risk. Otherwise, I don't care what Splash reverts or doesn't revert on this page :-). Just use common sense and, yes, take a dip from IAR.  --Ligulem 08:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *As I wrote above: Yes, this is risky, please don't tag them (that's why I've put template:Sprotected_template on tfd). --Ligulem 09:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition 

message: I have removed this provision, as it is absolutely an unacceptable provision. No user who is dealing at all with vandals, new, or inexperienced editors should make it impossible for those users to contact them with questions or for an explanation. Phil Sandifer 18:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your version would also make protection of user pages which the users remove warnings unprotectable unless you block th users...You may want to modify the blanking of warnings template which warns of protection of the user page. See Template:Wr, and what about users who are not admins that are being targeted by vandals, your version would prohibit this protection as well... You therefore may want to modify your blanket change about no protections. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 23:42, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Should not be used to protect user talk pages that are the subject of vandalism" work for you? Phil Sandifer 14:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Protecting user talk pages

message: I'd like to see at least a quick note in the article on "what to do in cases of apparent abuse of semi-protection." Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 11:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Post about it on WP:AN/I.Voice-of-All 00:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Handling apparent abuse of this feature? 

message: I submit that this policy should be amended, to improve the integrity of official policy pages by permanently semi-protecting them, thereby preventing much vandalism and many good-faith but ill-advised edits against consensus by new and unregistered users.  Please see Wikipedia:Permanent semi-protection of official policy pages. John254 03:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Consensus having been reached on Wikipedia talk:Permanent semi-protection of official policy pages to enact this amendment, I added it to this policy on October 28, 2006.  John254 02:52, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: There is patently not consensus on that page (I objected, for example), and there hasn't been anywhere near enough time or discussion to form one.  JYolkowski // talk 13:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One solitary substantive objection to a policy proposal does not constitute a lack of consensus where there is otherwise substantial support for a proposal.  The use of administrative rollback in content disputes is not an appropriate use of administrative privileges: per Wikipedia:Administrators,Administrators have a faster, automated reversion tool to help them revert vandalism by anonymous editors. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like: [rollback] – appears next to edits that are at the top of the edit history. Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by that user, with an edit summary of (Reverted edits by X to last version by Y) and marks it as a minor change. One-click rollback is only intended for vandalism, spam, etc.; if reverting over disputed content, it should be done manually with an appropriate edit summary.JYolkowski's claim that determining consensus requires lots of time and discussion contradicts his claim on Wikipedia_talk:Permanent_semi-protection_of_official_policy_pages that "It is absolutely not a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand [at all]"  I additionally note that JYolkowski has yet to respond to the rebuttals to the arguments he presented against this amendment on Wikipedia talk:Permanent semi-protection of official policy pages, even after removing it from the policy using administrative rollback. John254 14:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, it was improper for him to use administrator rollback, but nonetheless it is not necessary to discuss uncontroversial changes, such as grammar and typo fixes, but I strongly object to the inclusion of this proposal. (Guess that makes it two sysops for and two sysops against if you're counting, but that's wholly irrelevant anyway, heh). I've made my comments on the proposal page, but won't edit war any further to get this removed. Instead I ask that you please remove it while this is sorted out, and seek a wider consensus. And wee, we're making a wave of threaded conversation.. I hate when that happens :/ Cowman109Talk 14:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have posted something on the village pump to hopefully attract a wider audience to this discussion.  JYolkowski // talk 18:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: John, I agree that policy pages should be semi-protected; in fact, I'd go even further and introduce minimum-edit qualifications or something. However, it's something that's been proposed before and while many supported, many objected too, so it needs thorough discussion before being added here. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

text: The changes don't stick, but making sure they don't can involve a lot of hassle and time-wasting. It's not just vandalism, Splash, but people with three edits and 10 minutes experience turning up to make changes; but, because it's not vandalism, we can't just roll back, can't violate 3RR, but have to discuss, persuade etc. It is sometimes very time-consuming, especially when you get a few of them at once. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that the solution here is not to restrict editing to experienced users, but to explicitly allow rollback and maybe 3RR exemptions for generally unhelpful policy changes, even if they aren't vandalism.  I think that the criteria under which admin rollback may be used are far too narrow right now (Note:  This is not an excuse for my use of rollback as discussed above).  JYolkowski // talk 20:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed amendment to this policy