Wikipedia talk:Protection policy.html |
| | | ca | | | de | | | en | | | es | | | fr | | | it | | | nl | | | no | | | pl | | | pt | | | ru | | | ro | | | fi | | | sv | | | tr | | | vo | | |
| |  |
 |
The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss on the talk page. Always remember to keep cool when editing. Changes to this page do not immediately change policy anyway, so don't panic. |
 |
This page is not for proposing or discussing edits to protected pages All substantial edits to a protected page should be proposed on its talk page, and will be implemented if a consensus is found to do so. If the page is fully-protected, you may attract the attention of an admin to make the change by placing the {{editprotected}} template above your request. Requests placed here will probably be removed or ignored.
|
 |
 Archives |
Contents |
Request
Hillary Rodham Clinton's Wikipedia page has her middle name in the title. This article should be titled "Barack Hussein Obama." Thank you.
- Please make requests about a certain article on that article's talk page. -Royalguard11(T) 16:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Since when are U2 'alternative'
They were pretty mainstream last time I checked.
Mistake
Shouldn't there be a new line just after the first padlock? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.73.93.44 (talk) 15:26, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Graphics on talk page, too.
I think it's an error in the script of protection to put a graphic lock on a talk page, when that talk page is not locked. BrewJay (talk) 02:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Unprotect automatically after 1 year?
Can we add something to the policy saying that it is appropriate to unprotect mainspace pages (with the exception of stuff like the Main Page) automatically after 1 year, without the need for discussion? There could even be bot-enabled unprotection of such pages. I notice there are a lot of pages that may have had edit wars, etc. at one time, but now are probably needlessly cluttering the list of permanently-protected pages. In general, I think it's a bad practice to permanently protect low-visibility pages; it would be better to temporarily protect and renew as needed. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 16:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see why we need to lock it at one year; if an edit war has been dead for any amount of time, it should be unprotected. Automatically expiring protections can be dangerous; if something is semi-protected to prevent anon vandalism but fully-protected against move vandalism, both will be reset. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- I think there is a mentality on the part of some, when it is pointed out that protection is not needed because an edit war has been dead for awhile, to say "See how well it works!" I.e., they think that it is better to leave it that way so it doesn't flare up again. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 16:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- To be fair, there are times where that is true; obviously, an article that has a lengthy history of repeated, constant edit warring should not be unprotected for that very reason (for example, see Elephant's protection log. That's one of the reasons that this shouldn't be an amendment to the policy; sometimes, leaving it protected is the correct course of action. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- It's a tricky balancing act because we may well be missing good edits from anons with useful information about elephants. Given the potential for negative consequences either way, and given that vandalism is easily corrected, the safest course of action seems to be periodic renewal of protection. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 18:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- With the Elephant example, while we may be missing out on valuable edits (however doubtful), it obviously isn't worth the risk; as you can see, the protection is almost immediately restored as soon as it's unprotected. I'm still not seeing anything with how we handle long-term protections as an issue that needs to be addressed. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- It's a tricky balancing act because we may well be missing good edits from anons with useful information about elephants. Given the potential for negative consequences either way, and given that vandalism is easily corrected, the safest course of action seems to be periodic renewal of protection. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 18:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- To be fair, there are times where that is true; obviously, an article that has a lengthy history of repeated, constant edit warring should not be unprotected for that very reason (for example, see Elephant's protection log. That's one of the reasons that this shouldn't be an amendment to the policy; sometimes, leaving it protected is the correct course of action. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- I think there is a mentality on the part of some, when it is pointed out that protection is not needed because an edit war has been dead for awhile, to say "See how well it works!" I.e., they think that it is better to leave it that way so it doesn't flare up again. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 16:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- Perhaps we could add some verbiage about it being generally okay to unprotect long-protected pages, but there are many cases where pages must not be unprotected (e.g. some OTRS-protected pages), or where there is little reason to (obvious vandalism); and many cases where pages should be "automatically" unprotected long before 1 year. —Centrx→talk • 16:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, even with obvious vandalism, I still think it's better to unprotect eventually. Who knows, maybe Britney Spears will come out with a new album called Trevor is a fag that sells a million copies but an editor will be unable to create an article on it without seeking unprotection because the page name was abused three years ago. There are probably less extreme examples but you get the gist. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 17:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- I agree with Centrx. Pages should be unprotected after a period of time, especially semiprotected ones. There's currently a long backlog at Special:Protectedpages. The oldest semi-protected pages are over a year old now, and there is no reason for that to happen. Even George Bush gets unprotected periodically, and that time next year Bush probably won't need s-p. But of course the last time I tried doing something about it some concerned editor yelled a bunch on AN how I didn't notify user when I was unprotecting. Maybe I'll be bold and try again some time soon (this time setting an expiry date for protection a week away to give "proper notice"). -Royalguard11(T) 18:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- I think that actions on Wikipedia are sometimes drama- and crisis-driven in that people will often respond to the squeaky wheel and then choose to lock a certain decision in place in order to bring an early end to all the hubbub surrounding some controversy, and keep it from flaring up again. Unfortunately, it often compromises the integrity of our ideals, i.e. that this is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Of course, one could argue, anyone can still edit it as long as they hang around for awhile, or choose an unprotected page to edit. Well, sure. At the extreme, we could fully protect everything but a single page, and have the semi-protection on that one require that your account be seven years old, and this would still theoretically be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We're far from that extreme, but the point is that when possible, we should keep pages open to editing because that's part of where our strength relative to Britannica, etc. comes from. Their strategy is to keep things locked up to keep the bad stuff from getting in. Our strategy is, for the most part, to let everything in and fix any problems after the fact. Empirically, we know that this works better in most cases.
- Why is the burden on you to provide notice when you're unprotecting? Don't they have a watchlist that lets them see when changes are made (e.g. an edit made following the unprotection)? If any notice at all is to be required, I would think it should be the person wanting to protect a page, since they're the ones inconveniencing anyone who had planned on making an edit. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 19:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
- Here was the whole saga. Recommendations included that I should contact protecting admins before unprotecting (of which there is no point because many of them don't care that their protections last forever, and many others don't care if you change their protections), and getting consensus from editors when unprotecting (which has never been required because it's overly bureaucratic and is really irrelevant).
- I know this is wiki-blasphemy, but ordinary editors don't have experience with protection to understand (heck, some admins don't understand it). They treat protection as a knee jerk reaction, just look at RFPP. Half the requests are denied. There is a reason that the policy is written so admins can interpret and decide without the need for discussion. People think their article is so important that it should remain in pristine condition forever, so they want it protected (not realizing they have no ground for protection). I guess that's the flip side of the policy: by trying to leave it open to interpretation by admins users can't understand what it means unless they watch. They don't.
- While writing this, I actually came up with an idea. User:VoABot used to notify admins when they protected something without a reason. Someone could write a bot that notifies admins after say 1 month if they protected an article without an expiry date. It would at least force admins to remember that they did do a protection. They could be reminded to either unprotect the article or set a reasonable expiry date. -Royalguard11(T) 16:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- WP:ANI is one of the least conducive places on Wikipedia to try to carry on any sort of meaningful discussion. I think preventing permanent protections from being simply forgotten could be a step in the right direction, so we might as well go ahead and write a bot. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 16:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- Why don't we just use common sense. If the protecting admin wanted it to expire in a year they could have put that. We can deal with them one by one. Chillum 16:59, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is, they're creating a situation that hinders growth and improvement of the encyclopedia, in a way that's a pain in the butt to fix because an ordinary user can't fix it on their own initiative; they have to get an admin involved. We may never know how many users wanted to create a cockblock article but were unable to do so because it was indefinitely protected; and did not want to go to the trouble of seeking unprotection. I cringe at the thought of the many useful contributions that were forgone. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 17:10, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- It is questionable whether even the cockblock article now created is appropriate for an encyclopedia, rather than being a non-notable sub-topic of a particular subject, much like every character in a film does not warrant an independent article. —Centrx→talk • 18:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- The repeated re-creation of an article by unrelated authors tends to speak in favor of that subject's inclusion. Is there any reason to cockblock people from consummating their passionate desire to create a new article on a subject that appeals to them just because previous attempts by others have crashed and burned? Fact of the matter is, it routinely happens that one seemingly spammy article after another will be deleted about, say, a company or band, and then finally someone writes a well-sourced, well-written one that survives. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 18:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- Outright vandalism pages are repeatedly re-created by unrelated authors. Simply, cockblock is a bad example of what valuable articles might be blocked by long protection: the entire purpose of deleted protection is to block the creation of some articles, and cockblock may very well be exactly the kind of article that is the target of that purpose. —Centrx→talk • 06:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- And for all we know, a bestselling XBox 360 game will be developed that has the player try to hold off enemy fire with defense shields made out chickens, and it will be marketed as Cockblock yet some hapless user will be unable to add it because it's protected. Not only that, but if consensus changes, or the topic of seduction-related cockblocks should become more prominent in the public eye, then it will likewise not be possible to add it. There's not really any reason to permanently block page recreation, ever. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 07:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- Outright vandalism pages are repeatedly re-created by unrelated authors. Simply, cockblock is a bad example of what valuable articles might be blocked by long protection: the entire purpose of deleted protection is to block the creation of some articles, and cockblock may very well be exactly the kind of article that is the target of that purpose. —Centrx→talk • 06:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- The repeated re-creation of an article by unrelated authors tends to speak in favor of that subject's inclusion. Is there any reason to cockblock people from consummating their passionate desire to create a new article on a subject that appeals to them just because previous attempts by others have crashed and burned? Fact of the matter is, it routinely happens that one seemingly spammy article after another will be deleted about, say, a company or band, and then finally someone writes a well-sourced, well-written one that survives. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 18:44, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- It is questionable whether even the cockblock article now created is appropriate for an encyclopedia, rather than being a non-notable sub-topic of a particular subject, much like every character in a film does not warrant an independent article. —Centrx→talk • 18:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is, they're creating a situation that hinders growth and improvement of the encyclopedia, in a way that's a pain in the butt to fix because an ordinary user can't fix it on their own initiative; they have to get an admin involved. We may never know how many users wanted to create a cockblock article but were unable to do so because it was indefinitely protected; and did not want to go to the trouble of seeking unprotection. I cringe at the thought of the many useful contributions that were forgone. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 17:10, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, so I've made a boilerplate at User:Royalguard11/sandbox that I'm going to start giving to admins en mass. It's a notification, not spam, and it fulfills one of the requests that people made (that I notify admins), and hopefully they'll get the picture and start doing it. -Royalguard11(T) 19:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- Anyone can request a page be unprotected at WP:RFPP. Chillum 19:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- I would like to request 1000 pages. Kind of impractical, isn't it? -Royalguard11(T) 20:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- Go for it. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 20:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
- I would like to request 1000 pages. Kind of impractical, isn't it? -Royalguard11(T) 20:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Bot Idea
So I went off and notified about 30 admins about this, and the response has been pretty positive so far. Many pages I asked about were unprotected by the admins, some told me I don't have to ask, and some haven't changed. I think this limited trial has shown that a bot notifying admins about old protections (without expiry dates) is a good idea. It would be able to go much faster than me too. I'm making a request at WP:BOTREQ#Old_Protection_Notification (it'll be there soon) to see if someone can do this. -Royalguard11(T) 21:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
- User:Betacommand has offered to code a bot to do the job. Here's hoping this will help. -Royalguard11(T) 02:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- Haha, yeah, sic Betacommandbot on the protectionists. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 05:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks like this is also going belly up. "The community" isn't comfortable with Beta running bots, and I haven't been able to get anyone else to volunteer to code one. -Royalguard11(T) 04:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
List of protected pages
I saw the bot request and thought that a clone of nl:User:Erwin/Beveiligde pagina's, which is a list of all protected pages and their protection summary, might be useful. However, the results for this Wikipedia are simply too long to put in a single page, or a couple of pages for that matter, and I had to split them up. A small part is now listed at User:Erwin85/Protected pages/Main/Sysop/Permanently/1. Those are articles that are permantly protected and only sysops can edit and/or move the page. The full, intended output can be found at tools:~erwin85/dbq/protectedpages.en.txt (4.7 MB; about 25,500 pages in all namespaces). If you're interested I can make a bot split the output to multiple pages and update them at fixed intervals like the Dutch page. --Erwin85 (talk) 10:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
- That's. A. Lot. Of. Pages. A nice list would be all [edit=autoconfirmed] with no expiry date. Doesn't matter what the move permissions are. Actually, another nice list would be all protections still in effect that were done by User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me, who was desysoped, but has hundreds of protections still in effect with no expiry dates. -Royalguard11(T) 18:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Lock a section rather than a whole page
I know this has probably been proposed before, but I didn't see it in the archive. My experience witnessing edit-warring has been that it is generally over one paragraph or even one sentence. It strikes me as overkill that the entire page may be protected when the problems are generally confined to one section. Could there be a feature allowing protection of one section within a page and leaving the rest of the page unprotected? This would be just as effective at stopping the edit-war without disrupting the other editors as severely. Plasticup T/C 14:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
- No offense, but - no, it wouldn't. The edit warriors would just copy the disputed information to some other part of the page and edit war over it there. There isn't any way to stop that happening, so the protection would only inconvenience cooperative editors, and edit warriors are never cooperative editors, by definition.— Gavia immer (talk) 14:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
-
- Indeed. It isn't technically possible to restrict editing on particular parts of an article in any way which would prevent people from just starting afresh outwith the locked section. One could even just stick some comment tags around said locked section to remove it from the page. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
-
-
- Both of those would require the editor to actively pursue a bad-faith tactic to circumvent an administrator's action. Not all edit-war-warriors are willing to do that, as it amounts to admitting culpability. There are ways around blocks and bans as well, but for the most part editors take the hint and yield to the authority. Obviously it wouldn't stop the most aggressive edit-wars, but I think it would be a good middle ground for your average good-faith disputes. Plasticup T/C 16:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
- I agree with Gavia immer and thumperwald, I don't think it would work. Besides that, I don't think it's technically possible. Each article basically has it's own entry in a table, so you can easily restrict who can edit a certain entry by changing a column "protection" to "true" (I'm oversimplifying), but I don't think you can restrict a certain portion of the article unless each section was split into it's own entry (which would require a huge re-writing of Mediawiki). Someone with better knowledge of exactly how Mediawiki works could probably explain it better. -Royalguard11(T) 16:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
- Both of those would require the editor to actively pursue a bad-faith tactic to circumvent an administrator's action. Not all edit-war-warriors are willing to do that, as it amounts to admitting culpability. There are ways around blocks and bans as well, but for the most part editors take the hint and yield to the authority. Obviously it wouldn't stop the most aggressive edit-wars, but I think it would be a good middle ground for your average good-faith disputes. Plasticup T/C 16:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
-
Sarah Palin
This page was fully protected because of persistent BLP violations. I believe it should not be subject to the same editing norms as if it had been protected because of edit warring. Specifically, I think that non-consensus editprotect templates should be honored (put into effect) as long as they are not obvious violations of policies or consensus AND they are converging asymptotically on some consensus (that is, they are not effectively revert wars). This article on a rapidly-evolving, high-traffic subject, and administrators are already (understandably) going in and making good-faith fixes; editors should have the same power to cause good-faith fixes to go into place. Homunq (talk) 01:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)