Wikipedia talk:Protection policy/Archive 12

Neutral

1. On the one hand, implementing this risks leading either to bureaucracy (defining in detail when it can be used) or to enormous admin discretion in applying semi-protection to BLPs (which many think desirable anyway, but it shouldn't be smuggled in by the back door). On the other hand in practice it may be that there will be sufficient feedback on particular use of it such that admins will calibrate their use to community consensus; but in the absence of a clear mechanism for doing so, it's hard to support as proposed. I think this is yet another example of an idea needing more discussion before becoming a !vote. For instance, is it envisaged that this pre-emptive semi-protection needs to be applied very rapidly, such that admins must make the decision alone? Or would there generally be time to discuss it (preferably onwiki, though IRC would be better than nothing if time is pressing), so that there's some agreement that Evidence X justifies the proposed semi-protection in Case Y? How long would such semi-protection be - any guidance or restriction? Will it have a different template? Requirement to show a full semi-pp template, rather than just a top-right icon? Finally, what concrete or hypothetical examples are offered where an admin could reasonably predict the need for semi, but no actual vandalism has yet occured? (I'm not disputing that such examples can be produced, but none have been yet and would help clarify the nature of the problem which the proposal is supposed to solve.) Rd232 ^talk 10:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

   Note: the longer these issues go unaddressed, the more I'm inclined to oppose the proposal as half-baked (in which case I would reserve the right to judge a future fully baked proposal on its merits). Rd232 ^talk 22:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

   The concerns voiced by Rd232 and others have merit, but I am inclined to think the community will muddle through eventually and refine the process in a suitable manner, provided this process is kicked off in the first place. If it causes a significant amount of discussion, even drama, that is not necessarily a bad thing, as that is how a culture grows. --JN466 11:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

2. I'm very disappointed that as this is the status quo that there haven't been more good arguments in favour. The admins (and others) who follow this status quo (apart from Casliber) aren't justifying their case at all. And again apart from Casliber noone is really discussing the details and the real merits of the proposal. If none of the other supporters can really justify the proposal then I don't really feel I can be in favour of it - especially when the people against the proposal have made a strong and persuasive case. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:42, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

   The best argument for the status quo is right at the top of

   the main page. "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." That's one of our Founding principles, #2, in fact. The proposal here is that as soon as a page becomes popular, it should be semi-protected, so not anyone can edit it. :-P --GRuban (talk

   ) 18:10, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

3. This is an interesting proposal as it has implications for our attitude toward one of the core founding principles of Wikipedia: immediate editing access - a principle that made Wikipedia desirable for many of us in the first place, and is largely responsible for its success. There are legitimate concerns for the impact on individuals of irresponsible comments made in Wikipedia articles - though these concerns can be over-emphasized, and with such over-emphasis comes an approach in which protection drives our methodology rather than access and knowledge. I took a look at the discussion linked above (User_talk:Casliber#Your_indefinite_semi-protection_of_John_Laws), and then at the article at the heart of that discussion - John Laws. I think that article may have given Casliber the idea for this proposal, so I thought it worth examining closely. The article was created in 2004, and has attracted 276 edits, of which 105 have been by IP or newly created accounts. I examined each of the 105 IP/new account edits and found that 38 were irresponsible, 19 were neutral, and 48 were positive (adding information, references, correcting errors, and - ironically - at least four edits removed irresponsible edits). That is 17% of the positive, helpful and anti-vandal edits made to the article were by IP or new accounts - accounts which can no longer access the article. So IP accounts can add significantly to an article. However, IP/new accounts are also responsible for the bulk of irresponsible edits which are made to articles. Some of the irresponsible stuff added to the John Laws article was silly, some was laughable, some was unpleasant such as "John Laws is a dickhead", much made play of his own stated dislike of gays. The majority of the obvious stuff was soon removed - and the article's history shows that we take a responsible attitude to removing such material. Some of the more subtle vandalism - such as adding a porn link (removed by an IP account [1]), an incorrect quotation (again removed by an IP account [2]), and a dubious opinion (again removed by an IP account ([3]) - hung around a bit longer. I am not an expert on defamation, however I understand that "an insulting statement that does not actually harm someone's reputation is prima facie not libelous" (from our Defamation article). So it would appear that, in good faith, and with the best of intentions, Casliber has indefinitely protected an article to which some IP/new accounts have made significant positive edits, and to which some IP/new accounts have made nuisance edits (which have been successfully removed, sometimes by other IP accounts). The IP accounts have made a net positive contribution to the article. And none of the irresponsible edits appear to have been actionable in a libel court. However, having said all that, and not being so moved to support either the semi-protecting of John Laws nor this proposal, I am not actively moved to formally object either. I am, however, concerned that we are possibly moving in the wrong direction, even if for the right reasons. I agree that we need to show that we are putting steps in place to protect the reputations of the innocent, though we perhaps need a more elegant solution than this. SilkTork *^YES! 12:36, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

   With regards to libel doesn't that apply in the UK? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 00:08, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

4. While this is a good idea in principle, there needs to be a requirement that such a drastic measure be justified by coverage in the news. Without such a justification, this falls short of my full support.
   96
   04:27, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Discuss

Where the discussion of risk should take place

• The idea that 'risk' can be discussed by editors on the talk page. There are some obvious examples that could be used as guides. e.g. speculatory incidents of a LP's drug use/infidelities/arrests etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of discussing it on the articles talk page first. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Google Caching

• Other issues - the speed with which google can pick up wikipedia pages, hence the need to remove the risk of 'bad version' pages if at all possible being picked up and cached. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
  • You keep bringing this up, but you do realise that the speed with which "bad" version are cached is the same speed at which reversions are picked up, do you? It's an irrelevant consideration. 123.225.192.66 (talk) 13:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
    • It doesn't matter if a good version has been picked up though. That is the default and what should happen - it's avoiding the bad ones being picked up which has happened in the past. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
      • You could bring this up for any article, so it's just a general argument against open editing, and doesn't weight particularly in this situation. Cenarium (talk) 16:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
        • Of note see:
          WP:GOOGLEPURGE. -- Eraserhead1 <talk
          > 23:27, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: it looks to me like google search now indexes wikipedia edits almost instantaneously (within a minute or so). My guess is they have gotten a toolserver-like database feed around the time of their $2 million donation, and are processing it in near-real-time. Maybe someone can experimentally check how long their cache lasts. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 18:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Adding RFC header

I assume this will be done as a proper RFC (as per

Link away then. I have been busy off-keyboard. I was going to place on centralised discussion template as well. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Cool, I thought you might have wanted to have a prelimiary discussion before doing a proper RFC :). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks for that - I got alot going on IRL ATM. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

On challenging on

WP:RUP

But you can challenge them - there are around 5000 pages that are semi-protected, quite a few of which are on fairly dodgy ground that aren't high-profile BLP's that you can easily succeed in getting removed from the list. This will be made easier if this is changed as then admins won't be able to argue that "everyone bends the rules". -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Other discussion

• Hopefully slowing the rate of vandal reversion to allow recent changes patrollers to catch their collective breath and have some time to collaborate with IPs a bit more. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Is this the kind of collaboration with IPs that you would advocate? 123.225.192.66 (talk) 13:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
    • You're a special case :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
      • You do realise that it was my first contact with you, do you? I was not a special case then, I was just any IP. 114.167.133.168 (talk) 03:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• This seems like a good idea, but if "such protection should be removed immediately upon anyone's request" it may be a bit weak. That said, I suppose it is unlikely that an IP will go througth the trouble of requesting unprotection just to vandalize the article (and at that point, restoring semi-protection won't be preemptive anymore) so it will probably work. Rlendog (talk) 14:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

They could just make an account and get 10 edits in 4 days - it'd be less effort to be honest. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I am open to discussion - if you see some honest and earnest attempts to improve the article after a trial unprotection all the better. If none are forthcoming then one can reprotect and unprotect later. No biggie. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• There is a huge amount of abusive vandalism on biographies connected to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This proposal could eliminate much of it. RolandR (talk) 15:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
  • That doesn't sound very pre-emptive. Anything with even less than a huge amount of vandalism is already covered by policy. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Many articles are only protected after (often libellous) abuse, or the protection is lifted after a while, leaving them open to such abuse again. Premptive semi-protection would prevent most of this material from being posted in the first place. RolandR (talk) 18:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• FYI I pinged the folks who participated in the first discussion. –xeno^talk 15:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment: pre-emptiveness introduces complications I'd rather avoid. In some cases there's a case to be made, so I wouldn't want to ban it, but I wouldn't want to encourage it either. At minimum, if the proposal passes, each pre-emptive protection should be accompanied by a talkpage discussion of the protection; and such pages logged and/or categorised specifically. Rd232 ^talk 17:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

See section 1 of this proposal, that's something I'd definitely like to see as well. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

In general, I'd rather see a proposal which (for BLPs) allows quicker semi-protection responses to actual vandalism, when there is a reasonable expectation that this is a sign of more to come, due to the subject being in the news and due to the news/subject making it likely to attract vandalism. Currently WP:SEMI says "Subject to significant but temporary vandalism". SuchA more "hair-trigger semi-protection" should be short-term. Rd232 ^talk 17:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

How can that be improved on the system we have now? That should already allow that to happen. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment pre-emptive BLP semi-protection probably is a case where using the large semi-protect header would actually be appropriate. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I am mildly in favour of this until FlaggedRevs come online, but I would categorically oppose having admins liberally apply it without very good reason. "It might get vandalized" is not enough, imo. I think an admin pre-emptively protecting an article would have to show concrete evidence of the need. I would also argue that pre-emptive protection should be a short term option only. One or two weeks max. Indefinite semi-protection should be restricted to articles with a history of vandalism. Resolute 18:46, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, only issue is I'd feel uncomfortable being too candid on the talk page sometimes - e.g. "I am semiprotecting article about politician/rock star X because there are rumours flying around he's a pedophile/heroin addict/Republican - as it then documents the headache I am trying to avoid going into the article in the first place - I do get your point though and I think it is a good one. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

• I probably just shouldn't say this at all, but... either I'll get excoriated, or maybe this can clear the air a little bit. I don't really like this idea, but I don't really oppose it either, on its face. That Lar supports it to the point of challenging everyone else about opposing it, or even questioning it, actually pushes me to actually oppose the proposal. I don't want to make this personal, but there are certain personalities in this whole mess who I honestly believe have become toxic.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I was sorta hoping we could rise above that that too...I guess if we keep debate down in this section that helps...Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Ohms law: "Everyone" ?? I count 2 people I replied to, that's rather a lot less than "everyone" even if we grant rhetorical hyperbolic license. However, feel free to move all replies from me and others down here though, if you like, I don't mind. But opposing something because of who supports it? Not often a good idea, unless that person is a reliable contrary indicator. ++Lar: t/c 18:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm perfectly willing to admit that there's an emotional component to all of this, so it's hardly surprising that the rationale could be picked apart as illogical. That doesn't address the emotional reaction at all though (and, from an armchair psychologist's perspective, is more likely to aggravate the situation then anything else). Look, the problem here is that this whole issue area has become so polarized and over-politicized by the ongoing campaign that there's just no room for compromise. I used to have nothing but respect for all of the major players in our current little melodrama, but frankly you've all burnt away any capability to respect y'all from me (on both sides, really). I'm at a place now where I'm willing to oppose anything BLP related, simply because it's BLP related. That's the primary reason why I've completely bowed out of the RFC process on it, and my sense is that I'm not alone (add to that the fact that there are several well-spoken individuals on "both sides" of the issue, as well). I'm really uncomfortable calling people out, but you should also realize that you're perceived position of leadership (though the raft of permissions that you've cultivated) opens you up to this sort of criticism, as well as working to ratchet up the perceived importance of the issue to monumental proportions. Like it or not, people don't tend to react well to such leaders running around as ideological partisans, and it's hardly conducive to developing a collegial atmosphere. (ps: I wanted to extend to you a heart felt thank you for your assist on Commons, though. It's not that I'm out to get you or anyone else, I just want us to all be willing to compromise and work towards consensus building better.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Question - Would a justification like "there has been in the last varying degrees of speculation in tabloid press and elsewhere" (with no references) be considered enough to semi-protect an article pre-emptively under this proposal? 118.8.245.244 (talk) 12:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Question - protection should be removed immediately upon anyone's request. What does this mean exactly? Would anyone (registered or not) be able to go to

It should mean just that. The protecting admin should probably be informed so they can watch the page. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The protecting admin should probably be informed - Are you guys improvising? This proposal doesn't seem to be well thought-through. I'm asking, by whom should they be informed? Whose is the onus? 58.91.89.187 (talk) 21:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

so they can watch the page - Please note that any registered user (including admins) can already watch the page, we don't need this proposal for that (and for many other things that I will get to). 58.91.89.187 (talk) 21:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment given this is the status quo I'm pretty worried that apart from me and Casliber no-one has made any good arguments in favour of this proposal - whereas those against the proposal have made extensive arguments to support their position. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:11, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

As is usual with this sort of thing, there are three distinct groups here. There are those in favor, those who absolutely oppose, and the rest of us. For "the rest of us", I think that Rd232 sums up the issues with this proposal fairly well. I'm not confident that the proposal can ever be made unobjectionable enough to avoid a good contingent of those how absolutely oppose it based on a principle, but I'm at least willing to listen. (Unfortunately, I find myself lacking any creativity in terms of coming up with any suggestions, however.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 10:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, there actually were some arguments in favour of this proposal? I must have missed them. Anyway, it would be a shame if this RFC were to close so soon, I was only getting started to tear it to bits... 123.225.96.163 (talk) 12:27, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Its will run for 30 days. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Not only are there arguments in favor, there's a core Wikipedia principle that supports this. RxS (talk) 15:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Gajillions of conceivable proposals are supported by core WP principles. Your point does not justify implementing a proposal which can't reasonably be described as even half-baked; I make it about one-eighth-baked. Supporters seem to show no interest in debating the details, in marked contravention of

WP:NOTVOTE. Rd232 ^talk

17:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

My arguments - along with Casliber - are some of the strongest in favour of the proposal that I can see but noone else who supports this is really discussing the details or putting forward a good case. On this basis I'm going neutral. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, if you think out of all those Gajillions of conceivable proposals, there's one that's has a compelling need go ahead and propose it. For the time being, the BLP issue is a compelling one and thus, this proposal. There's never been a need for a proposal to anticapte all the possible outcomes, it's not even possible. This is a Wiki and not bureaucracy (another wiki principle). Proposals can evolve through use. RxS (talk) 18:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

What do you think my Alternatives section below is? I also suggested above changing policy to make it more responsive to vandalism that does occur. "The BLP issue" is not an argument to distinguish between this half-baked proposal, a more thought out version of this proposal, my alternatives, or many other ideas. ("Let's ban editing of BLPs by anyone with less than 1000 edits. Won't someone please think of the BLPs!!"). Plus, that's the first time I've seen

WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY applied in favour of implementing something; I should remember that spin - demanding that a proposal be properly thought through is "bureaucracy"! In sum, your logic (and that of other supporters) seems to be "something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do it." Rd232 ^talk

18:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

But, that said, I still support the idea of the proposal. In my !vote, I somewhat grumpily, somewhat jokingly, made reference to what is, for me, actually a very serious consideration. Look at it this way. To us (people who edit), "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" can seem like a core value that should be immutable. But there is a much, much larger population of people out there, the readers of Wikipedia (remember them?), who really do not care about the processes of writing this thing, and care only about making use of it. For them, it is really "the encyclopedia where anyone (with an internet connection) can find the information they want to find", and the editing process is just a means to an end. What matters to them is the accessibility and the quality, the accuracy, of available information. In the case of BLPs, there is the very significant additional issue, now well-recognized by WMF, that there is a responsibility not to post potentially harmful information. So, in the end, what is more important: the ability of IPs to edit without hindrance (and, oh!, the horrible burden of having to register!), or the responsibility of Wikipedia to post a professional-quality encyclopedia that does not harm living persons? It actually does annoy me that many long-time Wikipedians think that holding onto immutable inner workings of the project should be more important than what we provide to society. There's a world out there. And, I do not buy for a minute that administrators cannot predict accurately that certain pages are going to be likely vandal targets. Of course there are cases where it's obvious to anyone who has had a watchlist for any amount of time that such pages will be vandalized. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a long-established point on this you're missing - making it easy for people to edit (not having to register) is said to increase the tiny proportion of readers who become editors. The argument is made that drawing people into editing is worth not putting barriers in the way of, particularly when those barriers (merely registering, or 10 edits / 4 days) are actually quite low. Apart from the issue of to some extent merely displacing vandalism (from anon to registered), anon vandalism is more often spotted. You may agree or disagree with these reasons or the weight to be placed on them, but merely framing it as making people take 30 seconds to register is missing a bigger picture. Rd232 ^talk 19:46, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't miss it. I'm aware of it. I'm just not persuaded by it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

To be fair they don't just have to register - they also have to make 10 edits, and when a significant number of popular articles are semi-protected that isn't totally trivially easy.

PS You did make a case before (though in fairness it wasn't particularly fleshed out :p) and I was wrong to miss you out when I re-looked through this discussion, sorry :o. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:12, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I still think accumulating the 10 edits is not the decisive factor here. And don't worry about not counting me! Even I think my !vote was not explained in much detail! :-) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The defamation point is a good one, and one which noone else has bought up before, and it is a concern to me. But also the proposal needs to be fleshed out a bit more, and there has to be some sort of understanding that the consensus won't be totally bent out of shape if this proposal is accepted. I only bought up the "its easy to edit on semi-protected pages as you just need an account And 10 edits/4 days" point as its something I generally disagree with as you need to get fresh blood into the project - though clearly there does have to be a balance between allowing IP edits and preventing defamation/disruption on Wikipedia. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:34, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Question - Would this proposal cover articles like Perjury? In other words, would it allow an admin to pre-emptively semi-protect an article just because in their view it "has high potential for BLP violation with list of famous people-purgery" [sic]? 124.87.96.46 (talk) 23:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I've been having a look at that article this week, and when the indefinite protection on it started there was a lot of unsourced information for both Allegations of perjury and Convicted perjurers (which seems to me to be a bit of a defamation minefield - so under this policy it probably would have been legitimate) - that was mostly cleaned up quickly - I'm just going through it again and most of it is now sourced correctly. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:48, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

under this policy it probably would have been legitimate - "Probably", huh? That word again. OK, so let's assume it would have been covered by this proposal. Then:

Question - Why didn't the protecting admin source or simply remove the unsourced BLP information (as per

WP:BLP) instead of semi-protecting the article, incidentally preventing millions of unregistered users from sourcing/removing that unsourced information? In other words, how would this proposal help in this situation, since you (Eraserhead1) did not need it in order to do the right thing? 124.87.96.46 (talk

) 00:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

My reasoning was thus - I looked at how best to continue 'pedia building, and figured this was best done by semiprotection to minimise risk and source, rather than wholesale removal of (unsourced) material. I feel this really needs to be a last resort and is often worst outcome/a real step backwards. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This isn't even starting to make sense.

The rationale of this proposal, along with your semi-protection comment of this article, suggests that pre-emptive semi-protection is good, because you are worried that people (especially those pesky IPs) might in the future add unsourced, libelous material.

Now you tell us that you actually *did* notice that there were some such material (for example, Berlusconi's entry), but preferred to leave it there, without even adding a ^{[citation needed]}, for the sake of "'pedia building"? It just doesn't add up.

Are you saying that what Off2Riob did was wrong? It is certainly what

WP:BLP (as linked in your proposal) recommends. In bold letters. In the lead. 114.167.133.168 (talk

) 08:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Question - Would this proposal, by extension, allow an admin to semi-protect any article, claiming that it's because it has high potential for BLP violations? Say for example an admin misguidedly "

perfect article. Would this proposal then allow them to claim that there is a high risk of IPs changing that caption from "Yokozuna Asashōryū waits for his match" to "Yokozuna Asashōryū is a drug addict"? 124.87.96.46 (talk

) 00:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

As long as semiprotection can be discussed on the talk page, and then lifted by any admin after a good-faith request and follow through to improve the article, I'd think. This nullifies thee risk of ownership. I have repeatedly stated that I will not oppose any admin who unprotects any article I protect. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This not only muddles the waters even further, but it also fails to answer my question. Would this proposal allow an admin to semi-protect any article, claiming that it's because it has high potential for BLP violations? Yes or no. 114.167.133.168 (talk) 08:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• This is a major proposed change to a fundamental policy and should have been much more advertized from the beginning. I have added this to
  WP:CENT and posted at VPR. Cenarium (talk
  ) 19:00, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, that's my fault. I wasn't aware of the existence of

WP:CENT. -- Eraserhead1 <talk

> 20:19, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment I note that this follows a now established principle: proposals which restrict our open nature tend to receive more opposition as it is advertized more broadly and run longer. Cenarium (talk) 14:28, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternatives

Some alternatives:

Semi-protect all BLPs

Option: Semi-protect all BLPs and have done with it. Do away with crystal-balling. Faced with semi-protection, especially if properly explained (eg the Edit button shouldn't become View Source, it should stay Edit - with an explanation after clicking that you've got to register and get autoconfirmed status) more people may sign up to edit, and crossing that barrier encourages them to contribute more and become committed Wikipedians. This may offset the loss from people unable to try editing anonymously and never quite get the idea that "anyone can edit". (Some way to measure the two effects would be very helpful.) See also

This is even a better idea than the pre-emptive idea. I think that pre-emptively protecting BLP's was only brought up in large part because semi-protecting all BLP's would stand even less of a chance of agreement. But this would be my first choice anyway. RxS (talk) 18:29, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

So if that was done how would new editors get into the project? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

(a) via the many articles that are not BLPs (b) by changing View Source to Edit, perhaps with friendlier explanation and not showing the source - because what use is that really to the person who can't edit? It's just offputting. (c) possibly via sandboxing as suggested below. Also, as noted, getting more people to sign up whilst some are deterred from editing at all may lead to more committed editors and fewer driveby anon edits, which may be a good trade depending on the ratio. Rd232 ^talk 21:08, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I listed this proposal as a conservative one which I figured would have most consensus. Personally, I'd be happy to semi-protect all BLPs but I do concede I have concerns about new editor pickup myself and many arguments along those lines are valid. Truth be told, all roads ahead have pitfalls - I just figured this was the best way forward for now. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:05, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

If your proposal involved some requirement for pre-protection discussion, and otherwise flagging such protection for review, it would seem more conservative. As it is it's too vague. Rd232 ^talk 00:56, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

But that's the thing, we already have

WP:RFPP. All this is is tweaking one of the parameters we use for semiprotecting. Otherwise it's business as usual. Casliber (talk · contribs

) 01:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

But RFPP doesn't necessarily involve discussion, and it's not clear to what extent it would aid monitoring of semi-protection based on crystallballing. And there's no requirement for uninvolved admins to use RFPP. Rd232 ^talk 01:28, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why there is so much obsession with picking up new editors. If Wikipedia weren't geared to burn out experienced editors so fast, it wouldn't have to pick up as many new ones, so maybe it should think about other sorts of changes instead. As a long-term IP editor I'm still trying to form a view of this proposal to permanently semi-protect 200,000(?) articles, but I'll say that at the current level (5000 articles) I don't run into semi-protection issues that often. I mentioned elsewhere that :This article about "who writes WP" might be of some interest--it says most of the top contributors of actual text (not edit count) to articles in the study (in 2006) were IP addresses rather than named accounts. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 06:22, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Create list of High Risk BLP Articles

Option: Create a list of Permanently High Risk BLP Articles and of Temporarily High Risk BLP Articles, promote widely, and thereby increase watchlisting. This is already done occasionally in an ad hoc way using

Assuming this does not involve any pre-emptive semi-protection, and provided it's made clear that pre-emptive semi-protection would not be allowed as a "temporary" surrogate to better watchlisting, I could support it. We could have an adopt-an-article scheme, as you say, but to reiterate, I really want to be sure that people are not going to be allowed to argue that, "Since this article is on the BLP-high-risk list (because *ahem* I just put it in) and since it's still not well watchlisted, then it's justifiable to pre-emptively semi-protect it, so I'll do just that." No dice.

I think making the number of watchers appear more prominently, e.g. in the article page somewhere, and for all users, could help.

As for the other two alternatives, thank you for the effort but I think they are not even worth discussing. 124.87.96.46 (talk) 09:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea too, though I think displaying the number of watchers would be a mistake, vandals might use the information to vandalise pages that aren't well watched. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I meant all logged users, or all auto-confirmed users, or something. But yeah maybe it doesn't really help at all, I don't know. Just an idea. 124.87.96.46 (talk) 10:57, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The only way it could work would be if it was only visible to administrators IMO. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:24, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I can hardly wait for all the needless argument this would cause about whether a particular article should be listed, and which list it should be on. Our goal should be to make WP less complicated and easier to understand for newcomers, this would have the opposite effect.

talk

) 21:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Is that more or less argument than the crystallballing involved in the pre-emptive semi-protection proposal? Also I fail to see how this affects newbies - only established users are going to know about the lists; it's their attention which needs to be drawn to vulnerable articles. Rd232 ^talk 23:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

As we all know, Wikipedians will argue about anything, and this seems like a perfect way to encourage more drama rather than discouraging it. And it's quite simple to imagine a scenario where a newbie would stumble into this, all that would have to happen would be for them to wish to edit an article that is on one of these lists.

talk

) 23:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not fond of yet more lists to watch myself. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you misunderstanding this? These lists would not be used to make any decisions (like for pre-emptive protection) - just to get more eyes on vulnerable articles. I fail to see how that involves much risk of drama - certainly how it could create more drama than the pre-emptive protection proposal. And if it creates needless drama, it'll either be harmlessly ignored or die - unlike the pre-emptive proposal which could actually cause some harm. A bigger objection that occurs to me is the need to prune the Temporary list based on expired needs - but if it becomes too much of a burden to do manually, a bot can do it (if listing is for a standard or case-by-case specified period). PS I still do not get the newbie concern. The lists are of vulnerable articles, not of protected ones. You could argue

WP:BEANS, but I don't think it fits with vandals' motivation, and by definition these pages will be well watched. Rd232 ^talk

00:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Common watchlists would help us here, especially together with wp:patrolled revisions. Cenarium (talk) 00:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not worried about drama, just rising numbers of lists to watc hand pages to visit. However, some common watchlist or patrolled revision that is easy to use might be good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

True. But for now Related Changes on a list (which people can also watchlist pages from) is better than nothing. Rd232 ^talk 01:23, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

What would be wrong with just getting admins to list the pre-emptive cases on WP:RFPP? They usually seem to make good decisions and that would mean you'd be less likely to protect a page you shouldn't (which leads to lots of time consuming talk page discussions and possibly good editors leaving the project if they think the decisions are unfair) or missing pages that should actually be protected. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

These lists have nothing to do with protecting articles. Admins don't need to list pages at RFPP unless they're

WP:INVOLVED. And RFPP isn't really a forum for discussion. Rd232 ^talk

09:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Here you go >>

talk

) 03:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Option: provide every semi-protected article with an unprotected sandbox based initially on the version of the page at protection. Create a Flagged Revisions Lite Done Manually, where edits to the sandbox can be reviewed by established editors and undone if unproductive, or copied into the article if an improvement. Keeping the article and sandbox appropriately in sync would be a slight hassle, but a bot could help, throwing away unreviewed sandbox edits, but creating a log of diffs. Or limit it to high-profile articles where it's more important to give readers a sense of what's possible. Rd232 ^talk 08:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

And you honestly believe that we have enough admins who would actually want to patrol this monstrous list and individually evaluate every edit? An interesting idea, but too complicated and bulky to be practical.

talk

) 21:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Er, we're talking about semiprotected. Thus any autoconfirmed user could do the reviewing. We already have {{

editsemiprotected}}; this is making it easier to get IPs editing when their article of interest is semid. Rd232 ^talk

23:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok you got me there, it is essentially the same thing as using {{

talk

) 23:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Because enabling potential new editors to actually edit, even in a sandbox, is a plus. It may not be a plus worth the costs, but there it is. The costs are easier to see, but they may be reducible or acceptable. PS Wikipedians often seem to employ the opposite of the basic brainstorming rule ("there is no such thing as a bad idea"): there is no such thing as a good idea! This approach is extremely bad for creativity; talking about ideas not likely to be implemented can lead to all sorts of ideas which might be. Rd232 ^talk 01:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Similar to above. more lists...Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome to ignore them. Rd232 ^talk 00:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

True, on a personal level I am happy to do so. I guess I am just thinking of streamlining as many processes as possible in the bigger scheme of things. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Need for better monitoring tools

Watchlists and recent changes have become quasi-useless for sitewide monitoring of articles with the high volume of editing, and don't allow for any kind of coordination. Various technical and development requests have been made to improve our ability to cope with the number of articles and volume of editing, but little has come, for example not much has been done on common watchlists or wp:patrolled revisions. Thus we're left with the daunting choice of protecting more or not being able to properly monitor our vast number of articles, although some individual initiatives have been of great help for the latter. The Wikimedia foundation should invest more in technical development with views on improving the situation for our BLPs. Cenarium (talk) 00:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

True that. Shame

WP:DevMemo didn't quite catch on, as a way to communicate a bit better between community and devs. Rd232 ^talk

01:23, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

There's wisdom in this. How technically difficult would this be to implement? Is it just a lack of resources, or are we asking for the impossible? TheGrappler (talk) 12:20, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

As a programmer but not a mediawiki developer (I've perused the mw code a bit) I think it is doable and there has been some developer interest in it in the past. It's mostly a matter of priorities. There are a fair number of open bugzilla items related to patrolled revisions [4] and it also seems to me that the workflow could be handled by a toolserver application, without having to mess with mediawiki internals. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 06:31, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Tools such as

Huggle already exist, and they can be used to patrol BLP pages without a problem at all. The main issue here is available manpower, not tool efficiency. A couple of editors is sufficient to check the 12.000 or so edits we receive every hour, but since we are all volunteers vandalism patrol isn't fully manned most of the time. The only real improvement i can think of (Tools based that is), is dividing the workload more efficiently between editors. If we have 100 edits with 10 being vandalism, each patrol will check at LEAST 90 edits (Only vandalism edits are not double checked). I presume that such workload diversification (With some redundancy to prevent vandalism falling trough the first check) is sufficient to keep up with the current workload and number of patrols. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs}

) 16:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

What I mean by a toolserver app for handling workflow, is a centralized program that monitors all edits as they come in, queues them up, and parcels them out to reviewers (two reviews for each edit sounds fine). When reviewing isn't keeping up with editing, the program could triage the edits, prioritizing controversial BLP's, backing off to 1 review per edit for some kinds of articles, and advising reviewers which articles are getting frequently vandal-reverted, so the reviewers can consider protecting the articles if they're not keeping up. I guess it would do sort of the same things that call center software does, with edits and reviewers instead of phone calls and answerers. 66.127.52.47 (talk) 02:54, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Semi-protection based on a number

Can we collectively agree on a number of times IP vandalism must occur before semi-protection is warranted? There's been a lot of recent IP activity by what appears to be a fake IP user claiming semi-protection has been overused on articles such as Beryllium. Since Beryllium has been unprotected, the article has been vandalized by IPs 14 times; multiply that by the number of elements on users' watchlists, and users watching element articles are having to revert IP junk multiple times every day. A fixed number ("this number of IP vandalism is acceptable; this number is not") or a proportion ("90% of IP edits to this article are total junk; let's semi-protect for a while") would be helpful. Firsfron of Ronchester 01:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's possible. Articles of interest to schools are going to get vandalised more; this is accepted to some extent as part of the price of learning; hopefully eventually a few of these guys go on to be Wikipedians. What would be helpful is being able to strip vandalism and its reversion from history lists and watchlists. I'm not quite sure immediately how that could work (maybe rollback/Twinkle use applies a new RVV flag, which history/watchlists can be set to ignore along with the reverted edit?) but something could be done along those lines. Rd232 ^talk 01:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that is that then it would be completely impossible to audit whether a protection was sensible to apply or not, and that would be bad for challengers and the admins as they would have deleted the evidence they need to back up their decision. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about protection, and though I used the word "strip", the rest of what I set indicates I was talking about allowing editors to choose to hide things. Rd232 ^talk 10:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on the type of articles, the severity of vandalism and such. And I'm sure the number would vary greatly between editors, with no hope of consensus, anyway it would be considered

WP:CREEP. Cenarium (talk

) 01:59, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Why would it depend on the type of article (outside of BLPs)? And the number already varies between editors; a firm number would cure that. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:12, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The most useful number IMO would be a number of protections (say 4-5) before a permanent protection is applied. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

You want numbers? Why don't you go to

WP:RFP and ask someone to indefinitely semi-protect that article because there have been (gasp!) 14 disruptive edits in the last 3 months. Let us know how many *days* it gets semi-protected for. My bet is zero. 114.167.133.168 (talk

) 09:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable doing this on number as I think sneakiness, risk of harm, level of watching and ratio of good to bad IP edits should all be taken into account. A heavily watched highprofile page with 14 quickly reverted IP vandalisms and a much larger number of good IP edits in the same time is less needing of semi protection than a BLP or other high risk page where a half a dozen sneaky IP vandalisms are almost the only edits in a year. ϢereSpielChequers 09:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that all four items you've listed above should probably be taken into account; of course 'level of watching' isn't something an IP editor can monitor, resulting in the same disputes I'd like to avoid by having a firm number in place. As long as there isn't a firm number in the policy, any nutty user can log out, pretend to be an IP interested in editing an article, claim admin abuse, and demand unprotection of an article he has no interest in editing anyway. Firsfron of Ronchester 10:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to assume that for many pages one can work out the level of watching, all you have to do is assume that vandalism that gets reverted in a few minutes was picked up by newpage patrollers, vandalism reverted by IP editors is probably because someone read it and vandalism that sits for hours or more before reversion by a logged in editor is probably picked up by watchlisting. For example there is one particular vandal target where I and an editor in Japan revert most of the vandalism that gets past the hugglers, and vandalism rarely lasts 24 hours. Beaver by contrast is clearly on lots of people's watchlists, as vandalism rarely lasts an hour with lots of different editors reverting it. I've semiprotected a number of BLPs where I've found and reverted old IP vandalism that had sat unreverted for weeks if not months, I tend to assume such pages are not watchlisted by any active editors. ϢereSpielChequers 11:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

"Working out" the number of users watching a particular page can be done to some extent, but it will not prevent nutty editors from logging out, pretending to be an IP editor interested in editing an article, claiming admin abuse, and demanding unprotection of an article they have no interest in editing anyway. That's why I'd prefer having a set number in the policy. Firsfron of Ronchester 12:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I think what Firsfron of Ronchester is looking for is a way to avoid being challenged about his protections, and god forbid, have a peer review of the case.

I suppose if we protected their talk page,

WP:ANI we could achieve that. 114.167.133.168 (talk

) 12:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Page protection is very much done on a case-by-case basis with no set bright line criteria. That is very much as it should be. I strongly oppose codifying the protection policy n this manner. If you don't have the judgement needed to evaluate requests on an individual basis, then don't deal with page protection.

talk

) 18:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

As I said earlier what about requiring a certain number of protections before indefinite protection is required? That would solve a lot of the problems bought up with the current protection process. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:44, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a better solution than "well, it's all done on a case-by-case basis"-type policy. That sort of policy only leads to "this is excessive"/"no it's not"-type arguments. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Normally an article wouldn't be indef protected unless a previous series of protections had failed to correct the problem, but there are occasional exceptions. That is why we have admins in the first place, to make such decisions. Our hands shouldn't be tied by some rigid one-size-fits-all policy. What if we did that with user blocks? Let's say the third time you get blocked you get indefinitely hardblocked with no talk page access. While this would certainly reduce the level of blocking related drama, it would hardly be fair or sensible.

talk

) 20:31, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of a totally hard-and-fast rule, just a minimum number of temporary protection attempts before indefinite semi-protection should be applied. Something along the lines of "pages must have had temporary protection applied at least 4-5 times over at least 6 months before indefinite protection is applied." I'm only suggesting it as some admins go for indefinite semi-protection on the first attempt, and if vandalism has been significant that time its virtually impossible to challenge it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see how that is not a hard and fast rule. It's also not needed as in the vast majority of cases articles are protected for months or even a year, and only if that fails to stop the vandalism is indef protection used. If you have a problem with the way a particular admin is interpreting the policy, I suggest you take it up with them instead of trying to change the rules to stop them. Just FYI, here is the policy as currently worded:

Administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages which are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism or violations of content policy (such as biographies of living persons, neutral point of view). Semi-protection should not be used as a pre-emptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used solely to prevent editing by anonymous and newly registered users.

talk

) 20:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

It isn't a totally hard and fast rule as you can apply 10 temporary semi-protections before going indefinite if you wish - it just protects against people jumping straight on it. After counting every 500 articles in the

WP:RFPP are indefinitely protected (even including time I'm sure its significantly less than 75%) there clearly is an issue with admins being over-zealous with their indefinite protections. -- Eraserhead1 <talk

> 21:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Eraserhead1, I understand where you are coming from. I am also frustrated by the fact that some admins are abusing the system and ignore people who raise this issue in the confines of their talk page.

However, I agree with Beeblebrox. Throwing an indicative number/range in the guidelines would lead to people rigging the system by serially applying (inappropriate) termed protections, just so that they can finally apply an (also inappropriate) indefinite protection, leaving them with a much stronger case when challenged.

Also, as discussed, protection decisions cannot be taken on the basis of only one element, but they must take into account several dimensions. In short, we need to exercise common sense.

The current policy and guidelines are enough to have most outrageous cases of inappropriate protection reviewed by peers and ultimately reverted. 114.148.238.95 (talk) 21:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, it is the "heavy and persistent vandalism" portion of the policy which should be adjusted to a measurable amount. As long as the policy is vague, it will lead to (and has led to) the arguments that are popping up here. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Beeblebrox, Cenarium and ϢereSpielChequers that we should not quantify a policy which is designed to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I think we've pretty much run out of ways of saying this.

One way of preventing individual admins (or admin cartels) from developing their own distorted measure for what is "heavy and persistent vandalism" is to stop unilateral protections, especially when admins are involved, and especially if they are involved in what is actually closer to content dispute than vandalism. In other words, I think we should force a collegial decision/peer review for protections with long expiries - and most definitely for all indefinite semi-protections.

The alternative is the current situation, whereby as we can see, admins who have been protecting inappropriately for some time find it hard to come to terms with the fact that they erred, and instead of questioning their past conduct they try to change the current policy to retrospectively justify it. 205.228.108.57 (talk) 06:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Again, if you have a problem with a specific admin, which you clearly do, take it up with them or go to

talk

) 06:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this rather applies to Firsfron's and Casliber's recent attempts of changing the policy, but you are entitled to your opinion.

The big difference in my proposal is that I have presented hard evidence, involving definitely more than just one admin, where the current process could be improved. Until then, as you say, we will just keep challenging these people through the regular User talk -> WP:RFP -> WP:ANI red tape.

Not a big deal, just not very efficient, and more divisive than it could be. 205.228.108.57 (talk) 07:18, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Noindex all BLP's

Apply {{NOINDEX}} to all BLP's, to get them out of search engines. The server software (last time I checked) doesn't allow using that template in article space, so that restriction would have to be lifted, or some other implementation offered that created similar functionality, but that's fairly minor.

This would decrease the exposure of BLP articles and hopefully cut down on drama (ZOMG, we're the top g00gle hit for everybody!!) and also demotivate a lot of COI editing, battleground editing, and self-promotion. I think this could take off some of the pressure leading people to call for semi-protection of everything.

The obvious objections are so unconvincing to me that I can't even manage to put them into words. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an SEO platform. Being a search magnet is doing us more harm than good.

At minimum, all currently unsourced BLP's (a topic of further drama elsewhere) should be noindexed immediately, while they are awaiting sourcing or deletion. That should be a reasonable compromise between the "hawks" and the retentionists.

66.127.52.47 (talk) 04:09, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

A discussion like this would need to occur in a wider venue. –xeno^talk 03:20, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Most certainly. Debresser (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea for unsourced BLP's. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)