Wikipedia:Semi-protecting policy pages

This is a proposed amendment to the semi-protection policy to permanently semi-protect all policy pages.

Proposed amendment wording consistent with original proposal:

• All policies should be semi-protected on a continuous basis.

Rationale

Semi-protection is an effective way of preventing vandalism. Articles are usually not permanently semi-protected, because the ability of new and unregistered users to contribute to articles is regarded as outweighing the need to prevent vandalism.

This rationale is less persuasive when the page in question is not an article. There is a strong case for limiting the editing of policy pages to established users. Edits to policies have to be consistent with the prevailing consensus, and policy pages must be consistent with each other. This requires a degree of familiarity that new and unregistered users don't have.

The proposal is therefore that all policy pages be semi-protected. This will prevent vandalism as well as good-faith but misguided edits by new and unregistered users.

Alternative language being considered:

• High-visibility policy pages may be permanently semi-protected.

• High-visibility policy pages that have a history of vandalism may be permanently semi-protected if there is community support to do so.

Radiant's alternative proposal

We should neither unthinkingly (semi-)protect all policy pages at all times, nor unthinkingly keep them unprotected at all times. Rather, if the history of a policy page shows a large amount of non-constructive edits by anonymous users and little or no useful edits by anons, indefinite semi-protection could be considered as the detriment of anon edits outweighs their benefit.

Splash's alternative proposal

Use WP:SEMI, and protect a policy page when it receives a problematically-high level of vandalism. Unprotect it once the problem is likely to have passed. Re-protect if it turns out that the problem has not yet passed. Repeat.