Wikipedia talk:Semi-protecting policy pages

No thanks

Hmmm, no-one's started discussing this, so I guess it's up to me to do the honours (-: Anyway, I don't think this is a good idea. The reason is that new and unregistered users are far from being a uniform, monolithic horde of trolls, vandals, and spammers. In fact, according to the available data, they write most of Wikipedia's content. If we want the encyclopedia to continue to grow, our policies need to continue to be amenable to these new users, and an important part of that is allowing new users to edit them. Even if they often don't have anything constructive to add, it's easy to revert dumb contributions. On the other hand, I think it's highly unconstructive to call ourselves "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and then put off-bounds important parts of the project. JYolkowski // talk 22:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not claim that "new and unregistered users are... a uniform, monolithic horde of trolls, vandals, and spammers." Rather, this proposal is based on an obvious (and presently undisputed) claim that new and unregistered users are unlikely to be able to determine whether there is consensus for their changes to official policies. Preventing vandalism is therefore a quite compelling justification for semi-protection of official policies if new and unregistered users are unlikely to be able to improve official policies, even when they are editing in good faith. The statement that Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which most people can edit most articles. However, many other "important parts of the project" are far more restricted in editing than official policy pages would be under my proposal. For instance, even most established users cannot edit the main page, nor can they edit high-risk templates. Consequently, there is no need to assume that the statement that Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" implies that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which anyone can unilaterally alter official policies with which they disagree. Indeed, I would argue that our present system of allowing new and unregistered users to directly edit official policies essentially entraps such users into editing the policies against a consensus of which they are wholly unaware. The experience of having their good faith edits to official policies unceremoniously reverted, and of being warned and blocked if they persist in reinserting them is likely to encourage many new and unregistered users to leave Wikipedia. So, if new and unregistered users write most of Wikipedia's content, we should encourage them to continue to edit articles by preventing them from editing official policies.

I don't think that there's a snowball's chance in heck of many new and unregistered users feeling "left out" of the policy making process and leaving Wikipedia if all official policy pages are semi-protected. After all, new and unregistered users hardly seem discouraged from editing by the fact that they may not vote in requests for adminship. Similarly, since Wikipedia administrators are concerned with the interests of new and unregistered users despite the inability of such users to vote in requests for adminship, there is no reason to assume that Wikipedia policies will become biased against new and unregistered users if such users may not directly edit them. John254 00:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

What about people like User:68.39.174.238?--MrFish^{Go Fish} 13:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

User:68.39.174.238 could create an account. Or, barring such a drastic measure, he could propose edits to official policies on their talk pages. Almost all established editors edit with accounts. While User:68.39.174.238 is welcome to continue editing as an unregistered user, by doing so he is necessarily giving up certain privileges that are normally afforded to established users -- not the least of which are directly creating non-talk pages, directly moving pages, voting in RFA's, and the possibility of becoming an administrator himself. John254 00:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. We can't hold back an important and useful policy just to save one or two editors (out of hundreds of thousands) the fifteen-second inconvenience of registering a free account. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me

I can't really imagine any reason an anon or brand-new user would have to edit the core set of policy pages anwyay. They've all been gone over enough that there's few if any typos and such. And of course the talk pages are always open if anyone feels like proposing anything. I see a good deal of potential benefit to this and frankly very little harm. It has my support. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to agree with the previous poster. New users' changes to policy pages seem mostly to be vandalism or "remove the reason somebody used to delete my pet article". Where a legitimate suggestion comes up, it really should go through the talk page anyway, to leave a not-paper trail establishing consensus or documenting reasons for opposition. Barno 17:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Regardless of the above proposal, it is absolutely not a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand. This is a widely-held but incorrect belief. The only requirement is that changes not be made that don't reflect consensus, and new and unregistered users are quite capable of making such changes. JYolkowski // talk 22:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
    • That would be something that applies to both long term users and new users, so that's not really the issue here. The issue here is the access new or unregistered users have. This is no different in how page moves are restricted for new and unregistered users. I completely agree with the rational of this proposal and support it. -- Ned Scott 00:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
    • It is true that "it is... not a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand." However, the determination of whether there is consensus for changes to official policy without prior discussion is an exceptionally fine art that new and unregistered users are extraordinarily unlikely to have mastered. Indeed, even many changes to official policies by established users should be discussed prior to implementation. New and unregistered users are well advised to propose any changes to official policies. John254 00:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
    • You're right, but there's also a strange circular logic here: You're saying that policy changes needn't be discussed on the talk page if there's consensus, which is technically true. But what's the best way to obtain consensus? Discussing it on the talk page! Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

As you might have guessed, I think this proposal is a good idea. "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is not scratched in the slightest sense, because Wikipedia namespace is not part of the encyclopaedic content. It is content about content, content about organizing the project in a broader sense. Requiring that users show a minimal track record by requesting that they create a login before editing the rules is even more common sense. Everything else is a waste of resources. Because we do seem to have an abundance of volunteers doesn't mean we should waste their time. Time partially spent reverting the 99% revert-quality anon-edits on policies and guidelines. There is a big gap between admins and non admins today. Let's help closing this gap a little bit by using the software tools we have today. And employ them where they are reasonably employed. Nobody is asking to semi-protect the whole 'pedia. Just the rules. --Ligulem 23:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. It's not like any anon or new user would have any reason to be editting any of the policy pages. Moreover, it would deter vandalism to said pages. Naturally, a new user who edits in good faith would need to get familiarised with our policies anyway, a process which would take a few days. By the time they're familiarised with the rules, they've been registered long enough to be able to edit the pages about them. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 20:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems very reasonable to me as well. NBeale 20:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Existing practices

The logs for the semi-protection policy itself show that two administrators have attempted to permanently semi-protect the policy, but one administrator has reverted them. There appears to be a substantial interest in the semi-protection of official policy pages on a continuous basis, which is being obstructed by adherence to the current language of the semi-protection policy. John254 00:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a "no-brainer"

It is a fundamental rule of Wiki-hood that our policy pages are editable, but there is no reason they should editable to newbies and anons. Anons with experience, or amazing ideas, who are unwilling to register -- as is their right -- can always make proposals on policy talk pages; if these proposals are meritorious, any non-newbie registered editor may add them in short order. I don't think every policy page necessarily needs immediate semi-protection (there are many of them, and some aren't regularly edited), but where a history of troublesome edits exists, invoking permanent semi-protection should be within the discretion of any admin. In short, I support this. Xoloz 15:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I also agree that this proposal should definitely be adopted. Allowing non-logged-in and new users to edit policies pages is something no good can possibly come from. Andrew Levine 17:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Frankly I believe we would be wise to go a step further. Policy pages could only be modified by administrators. Guideline pages could be modified by any logged in user. Those discussion pages and all other pages could be modified by anyone. Terryeo 23:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

That would be too much, actually. Ordinary users, if their ideas agree with consensus, or their edits are minor, should be allowed to contribute, but semi-protecting the page to prevent vandalism would make some sense. Either that or make it a lot easier to gain adminship. 170.215.83.83 23:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Goes against what semi-protection is supposed to be used for

In my eyes semi-protecting all policy pages, no question asked, is not something we should be doing. Each case should be looked at individually. We must remember that semi-protection can indeed be harmful - it was merely an addition so we could not completely lock out pages that were experiencing heavy vandalism that people could not handle. By semi-protecting all policy pages, we are essentially saying that newcomers are not welcome to point out typos or errors in such pages (and I bet many would be too lazy to go to the talk page, as well, heh). Semi-protection is supposed to be used only if it's necessary - using it preemptively only to protect from possible future vandalism is foolish and goes against what Wikipedia stands for - anyone can edit. If we don't have enough people reverting, fine then, get more people to watchlist the page. I've already added Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy to my watchlist. If we have cases where the page gets vandalized for hours without anyone noticing, semi-protection could be a possibility. People seem to have the notion that IP Addresses are evil, though. What we want to do is encourage users to get involved in the community, not shut them out.

Another objection would be press concerns. I of course can't speak on behalf of the Wikimedia foundation, but if we started permanently locking down groups of pages, I assume we would no longer be the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, as people just hopping by can't fix a funny grammatical error or a typo.

There are quite a few policy pages experiencing more vandalism that perhaps might be a candidate for semi-protection, but only those that are fundamental to the running of the site, such as Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. That page, however, as it is much more popular, already has people reverting vandalism within minutes, so is it really that necessary to semi-protect? I'd rather not stuff any beans up someone's nose as to what sort of vandalism would make it a good thing to semi-protect the page, but when the time comes, it's obvious. We are not at the point where it is a necessity to semi-protect all these pages.

This policy is simply seeking to lock out those who aren't already in the circle of usernames registered for more than three days (or whatever the number is, I can't quite recall), and I certainly hope people don't have have the belief that all anonymous IPs and new users are evil. Cowman109^Talk 14:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The claim that "Semi-protection is supposed to be used only if it's necessary - using it preemptively only to protect from possible future vandalism is foolish and goes against what Wikipedia stands for - anyone can edit." is unpersuasive since the statement that Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which most people can edit most articles. However, many other important parts of the project are far more restricted in editing than official policy pages would be under my proposal. For instance, even most established users cannot edit the main page, nor can they edit high-risk templates. Consequently, there is no need to assume that the statement that Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" implies that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which anyone can unilaterally alter official policies with which they disagree. Similarly, we shouldn't avoid the useful semi-protection of official policies because the press might misinterpret this action to suggest that Wikipedia is "no longer... the encyclopedia... [whose articles] anyone can edit"

While the idea that "people just hopping by [would fix] a funny grammatical error or a typo" on official policy pages is nice in theory, that's not what actually happens with edits by new and unregistered users on these pages. For instance, the history of the blocking policy shows heavy IP vandalism, which fills up the edit history , and makes it more difficult to find substantive edits. New and unregistered users often make positive contributions to articles, not official policy pages. Moreover, this policy proposal is certainly not based the notion that "all anonymous IPs and new users are evil". Rather, semi-protection of official policy pages is suggested based on strong evidence that this action promotes the health of these pages. John254 15:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I think a big point is whether this is really needed or not. Are policy pages experiencing enough vandalism that prevents other users from viewing the pages properly? If it ain't broke, then don't fix it would be what I would say if the answer is no. If there are problems that I'm not aware about, such as underwatched, but important policy pages consistently getting vandalized every day, then by all means, as I've stated above, it should be looked at for semi-protection. If something similar to this proposal was proposed, however, there should be a clear distinction between policy pages that are still experiencing changes and those that are set in stone and are absolutely fundamental to Wikipedia as a whole (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view comes to mind). Cowman109^Talk 16:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Official policy pages are experiencing enough vandalism to prevent other users from viewing the pages properly. For instance, the semi-protection policy itself recently remained in this state for ten minutes. More generally, all vandalism prevents some users from properly viewing the pages when they are in vandalized states. For articles, this diminution in utility is ordinarily counterbalanced by the value of contributions by new and unregistered users. However, since new and unregistered users very rarely make positive contributions to official policy pages, allowing new and unregistered users to edit these pages impairs the viewing of the pages to some degree without any counterbalancing benefits. Permanent semi-protection of official policy pages is justified because it will stop much vandalism, but exceedingly few legitimate contributions. John254 16:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Or as Ligulem put it when attempting to permanently semi-protect the semi-protection policy:

Anons don't edit policy about semi-protection. History shows only vandalism edits by anons (no useful edits seen)[1]

John254 16:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree with John. It is just a common sense decision, newbees and anons are welcome to propose changes on the policy talk pages, but the editing should be done by established editors. I can not see any harm of this and if it would save a few thousand admin-hours on monitoring policies and reverting the vandalism it is a good step Alex Bakharev 08:56, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

If one needs to make that edit, one can just sign up for an account. This wouldn't stop "newbies" from editing it, they would just get an account, but it would stop a lot of vandalism. The editing need not be done by "established editors" (whatever that means), because a "non-established" editor can still have a very good idea. Whether or not someone should put in their idea has nothing to do with how long they've been here, and everything to do with how good their idea is and how much the community agrees to it. Decide based on the proposal, not the proposer. 170.215.83.83 23:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Can't quite believe

...that after about 3 days and 5 editors, someone decided that this had been thoroughly scrutinized, widely publicized, well-considered and had deep, broad, consensual support. I thought the reason for locking down policy pages was to prevent ill-thought-out edits to them?! -Splash - tk 23:39, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Examples from the other side?

So far, those who oppose this seem to be arguing that by adopting this we'd miss out on useful anon edits to policy pages. While it's easy to find plenty of anon vandal edits to policy pages simply by looking in the history of any one of them, I'd like to hear from the other side of the story: Can anyone point out a few positive, lasting policy page edits by anon users which were neither vandalism or minor typo/format changes? Even a few such examples (4 or 5 maybe?) would help the rest of us understand your position immensely. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The unfortunate forking of this proposal away from WT:SEMI means that several arguments made there have been lost here. My personal one is that the vandalism doesn't matter, since it doesn't change the policy itself. Revert, block move on. No need for blunt instrument solutions to something that doesn't actually matter. Above, it's said that some policy was in a bad state for .... 10 minutes. That's really no problem. -Splash - tk 16:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Quite a few positive IP contributions from just three pages I looked at: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

While many of these are indeed minor changes (one of them to WP:IAR was very helpful and added links that are still in use today), does that make their contributions less important? Any positive contributions are helpful, and as Splash says, if there isn't a problem, why should we be trying to fix it? Cowman109^Talk 18:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Since this is a new proposal, the onus is on its supporters to explain why anonymous users editing policy pages is such a huge problem that we need to disallow it. So far no particularly convincing arguments have been made. JYolkowski // talk 20:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's some situations that come to my mind. For one, we already have enough work trying to keep up with vandalism in the article namespace, it seems very needless to divert our time and resources for monitoring policies as well (at least, in the sense of how much we monitor, since people should still monitor policy to some degree). Also, I've seen times where there are pages that aren't well monitored and / or where vandalism wasn't caught until much later on. Some vandalism isn't obvious, like changing the date on image policy about what images uploaded after "2005" can do such and such. Considering how high use some of these policies are, I don't really see the difference between them and some of our protected high use templates. People should be able to edit any article, but I'm not sure if that should apply to every page. -- Ned Scott 21:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Why not just semi-protect all pages then? Because we're a Wiki, that's why. The amount of vandalism on policy pages is incredibly small compared to that in the main namespace, so the extra amount of time spent rolling that back is IMHO significantly less important than the importance of allowing everyone to contribute to them. The possibility that someone could make significant, undetected changes that would actually affect people's behaviour seems highly remote to me but if you have concrete examples please share them. JYolkowski // talk 21:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying, but when things happen to policy pages they can effect a much larger group of pages and articles. If someone vandalizes a single article it doesn't necessarily have a big impact on other articles and pages. So even if the vandalism is less, their effect on policy pages is more significant than normal pages and articles. -- Ned Scott 21:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is hardly ever the case, though. If someone changes WP:VAND to say you get a barnstar for vandalising, you don't suddenly get one. If someone amends WP:NPOV to allow for opinionated articles, you cannot suddenly write them. If someone unfortunately reads them in their broken state, a thing that will happen rarely given the hawk-like watching the pages have, then a small amount of education will clear things up. In the example you mention above, things are slightly worse, I agree. But then such a particular kind of bad thing really cannot be happening often enough to realistically justify locking down every policy page we have. On the ideological point, if the policy of Wikipedia is that it be freely editable, then its policies of all things ought to live up to that charge. It is fundamentally not the case that only articles need to be freely editable. Almost every namespace benefits from its open nature and the occasional fix. The only exception is Mediawiki: pages which can literally beserk things if they get broken. And thus are fully-protected in software. -Splash - tk 21:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but those are cases of obvious vandalism. Not only that, but there's also the concern about good faith edits, such as re-wording part of a policy, that can cause problems. -- Ned Scott 21:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I hope we're not discussing a proposal to prevent good-faith edits. They just need to be gently reversed, and a user/talk message left explaining things. In this kind of case, also remember that sprotection gives only 4 days (96 hours!) of a reprieve, and if a user doesn't quite things on day 1, they're not terribly likely to have got it all in their head just 3 days later; particularly not if there is nothing by way of an education process in the interim. Now I know Wikipedia is neither therapy nor school, but there is value in having to discuss such things with new, but inexperienced users and sometimes they do pick up on something that the groupthink effects prevent more established editors from seeing so easily. But my main concern is the notion that we would ever seek to pre-emptively disallow good-faith editing. WP:SEMI has this effect as collateral damage, and that is the principal reason why its usage should be narrow, brief and regularly subject to review in each page it is deployed on. -Splash - tk 22:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Good faith edits that have major negative effects should be avoided when reasonable, just like high use templates. We're talking about policy, and only blocking new and unregistered users. I fail to see the harm, at all, and I definitely see the benefit. -- Ned Scott 22:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

But anonymous contributors can also make positive good-faith edits and by all means those should be allowed and not blocked. 170.215.83.83 23:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) Policy pages are quite different from high use templates in several ways. First, they're nowhere near as prominent as high use templates. If someone stumbles onto Wikipedia from a search engine or from clicking on a link from the Main Page, it's quite likely that the page in question will have high-use templates. Our policy pages are much less prominent (they're not linked to from the main page, they won't likely be at the top of search engine search results, etc.) so changes to them don't have the same effect. Second, changes to them don't really cause problems, because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and the specific text on a policy page at any given moment doesn't really matter; what does matter is the principles and beliefs of the community. Third, WP:VAND excepted, these pages are not really subject to a lot of significant vandalism. High-use templates have been in the past, which is why people decided to protect them. The guideline around that was written to reflect that practise, and was not by any means a solution looking for a problem. Here, however, there isn't any evidence that these pages are subject to so much vandalism that protecting them is important. JYolkowski // talk 00:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

If "the specific text on a policy page at any given moment doesn't really matter", someone couldn't, say, change the text of the policy page [11] and then convince an administrator to enforce the new policy language nine minutes later [12]. Therefore, it must have been patently obvious that my temporary enactment of this amendment did reflect "the principles and beliefs of the community". Thus, there clearly is consensus for this proposal, and it should be enacted and implemented. John254 01:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The fact that I un-did the protection would indicate that there isn't such consensus. JYolkowski // talk 01:48, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, consensus is not synonymous with unanimity. John254 02:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This isn't about unanimity, of course. There are still issues to be sorted out and the process of amending policy requires significant time. This can't be rushed. I have an amendment to propose to the policy that I haven't had a chance to do due to being busy during the week, but I hope to elaborate over the weekend. Additional time will give people more opportunities to bring forth their ideas. Cowman109^Talk 02:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

New users aren't the problem

More questionable edits to policy pages come from admins with agendas than from new users. Vandalism is obvious and easy to revert. Dealing with admins intent on changing the rules is much tougher.

Most requests for semi-protection are refused. It's been repeatedly refused for popular pages like Horse, which is vandalized several times a day. Why should policy pages get better treatment? They're watched by so many people that vandalism won't go unnoticed. --John Nagle 06:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse. The longer a process wonk has been editing, the more likely he will know the ropes well enough to insert a devious amendment to an existing policy page. "Real" anons and genuine new users have no interest in policy pages; if you semi-protect, the process wonk will just... well, beans. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Reid (talk • contribs) 08:40, 31 October 2006

When I was a new user I tried to read every guideline and policy I could before doing most things outside of very basic editing. To say that new users won't even look at policy pages is absurd. Not all newbies are the same. -- Ned Scott 02:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, new users often are the problem, and in any event shouldn't be editing policy pages, since they almost never have anywhere near the Wikipedia-specific experience required to make any positive contributions regarding Wikipedia policy. John just has a bee in his bonnet about a certain admin he likes to target for abuse; see, for example, this sad demonstration of one of his attempts to smear respected and longstanding admins in good standing, and note how quickly his nonsense is beaten down by sensible editors. Jayjg ^(talk) 23:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Personal attack ignored, but added to Permanent Record. --John Nagle 01:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

What if they had a good idea, and it worked? Then what??? Rv it and block just 'cuz of some (nasty word not posted) prejudice against "newbies"? What if they had experience doing work on policies similar to those on Wikipedia somewhere? udge by the EDIT not the PERSON, *****! 170.215.83.83 23:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above anon statement. Unilaterally semi-protecting all policy pages because a few anon users might vandalise them is a bad idea from the outset, for the very reason listed above. Editors (anon and registered alike) are encouraged from the first minute to be bold. How can one be bold and propose a new idea if they're not allowed to edit? Now I know the obvious argument against this will be "well they can propose it on the talk page, an an established user can edit it in." Why should an anon have to go through an extra loophole when they have a good idea? I think if a particular page is dealing with constant vandalism, then it should be semi-protected for a short while to help the vandalism die down, but to do them all? That's just not needed. There's enough people using VandalProof, Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool, Popups, and patrolling the RC page who detect vandalism and revert it in seconds. Just my 0.02USD ^demon^{[omg plz]} 21:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

My "Permanent Record"? Oh, no, am I about to be called to the Principal's office? Jayjg ^(talk) 14:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Jay, what are you talking about? It's useless to link to Pump; it's archived constantly. You need to link to a diff to show what an ass I am. John Reid 22:13, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

{{Policy}} not policy

I see a basic misunderstanding here. Let me fix it:

Policy pages are not policy.

This is a subtle distinction and it's not surprising that {{policy}} fails to make it. Most editors would get confused; I'm sure that those who frequent this page will not

Our community is not governed directly by reference to written policy. Instead, we form community consensus around certain principles and processes. Consensus does not mean that a supermajority votes a page up; it doesn't mean that a cadre of admins stands around a page, reverting and blocking those who attempt to edit it. The status of a page does not determine consensus; rather, it is the other way around -- sometimes.

Policy pages -- even those labeled "policy" -- do not necessarily track actual project policy. Sometimes the deviations are minor, sometimes major; sometimes they are inserted and removed quickly, sometimes they are present in the initial draft and remain so for years. Like all people everywhere, we do not always say exactly what we mean. Likewise, editors and admins do not always act in accord with actual policy. Sometimes, they cite written policy pages to justify outpolicy action. We have ways of dealing with such people; after all, we see them in the mirror from time to time.

This is a wiki; that's key. It's very hard for any edit to do lasting harm, no matter how pornographic or foolish. Shit left on article pages does degrade our public image in some proportion to amount, time left on, and number of page views by those offended; this is part of the price we pay for a wide-open-door editing policy. We probably do need to raise the bar to vandalism and astroturfing a very tiny bit. But that's a measure to apply to articlespace. It really doesn't matter at all if proposals are vandalized; they are, by definition, sub rosa.

To create an absurd example, let's take the case of the rogue anon jimbo who vandalizes the official Wikipedia:Foo policy page, fills it with autofellatio images, then WP:OFFICE-protects and locks the page. So long as a prior good version is available in history, we need be nothing more than slightly inconvenienced; we merely reference the prior version instead of the current. Policy has not changed; only the current version of the page. John Reid 09:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Since "'Real' anons and genuine new users have no interest in policy pages [as editors]", it would follow all of their edits would be vandalism. With no good edits from new and unregistered users, semi-protection offers substantial benefits (preventing vandalism) with essentially no costs (because there were no good edits from new and unregistered users). For articles such as horse, however, the interest in allowing good edits by new and unregistered users is considered to outweigh the interest in preventing vandalism through semi-protection. The argument against this proposal seems to amount to: "It doesn't matter if these pages get vandalized. In fact, we should encourage vandalism to these pages by not semi-protecting them, even though such an action wouldn't prevent any legitimate edits. The current versions of these pages don't matter. They could, and should be vandalism-filled garbage dumps, just to dissuade 'admins with agendas' from maliciously modifying them, by undermining whatever reliance might otherwise be placed on the current version of the page." I submit that this argument is absurd, and is a wholly unjustified slander against Wikipedia's administrators. John254 12:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, every policy page could be a reeking vandalism dump and it would not make the slightest difference to real community policy. You either understand this or you don't. No, it's not possible to slander an entire class of people. I certainly can, have, and shall comment on your behavior. Stop trying to make everything personal. John Reid 22:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia official policy pages are NOT sandboxes

To further respond to John Reid's comments above, the current state of official policy pages is actually quite important, despite the fact that the literal content of the policy pages is not identical to community consensus as to the policy itself. Official policy pages are an vital tool in educating and informing new users of the community consensus as to policy. Such pages also serve as important references for established users. To the extent that such pages contain misinformation, they will misinform their readers, especially newer users who are unlikely to check the page history to determine if they are viewing a "good" version. Furthermore, an official policy "fill[ed]... with autofellatio images" or other vandalism would give new users entirely the wrong idea about Wikipedia. Consequently, I strongly disagree with John Reid's claim that leaving official policy pages in such vandalized states would be "nothing more than [a slight inconvenience]]". If someone "fills... [a Wikipedia official policy] with autofellatio images", we need to revert the vandalism quickly. However, we would be much better off if we could prevent most vandalism on such pages before it occurred. Use of semi-protection is disfavored as a vandalism prevention measure on articles because it prevents many legitimate edits by new and unregistered users. Yet, in the case of official policy pages, semi-protection prevents most vandalism while continuing to allow almost all legitimate edits, because legitimate contributions to official policy pages by new and unregistered users are exceedingly rare. Therefore, semi-protection of official policy pages will improve their quality. John254 00:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

What are users from other Wikis who are not familiar with the English language supposed to do when they want to add transwiki language links to articles, however? Also, it seems that if people really do want to vandalize these pages, they would simply avoid the semi-protection and create a swarm of sockpuppets as has been done in the past to vandalize it anyway. While semi-protection on policy pages removes most drive-by vandalism that gets reverted within minutes anyway, it would also make it much more difficult for minor edits such as grammar and technical issues to be fulfilled. Cowman109^Talk 01:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

On the rare occasion that interwiki links or spelling or grammar fixes need to be made on official policy pages, new and unregistered users can request these changes on the talk page. "Users from other Wikis who are not familiar with the English language" probably won't be able to access the English Wikipedia at all, or access it so rarely that they do not present substantial considerations in the decision to semi-protect official policy pages. Allowing large amounts of vandalism and modifications against consensus to occur on these pages simply because on extraordinarily rare occasions new and unregistered users actually make minor constructive contributions to them is not a tradeoff that I, or, it seems, most other Wikipedia editors, are willing to make. While it is possible to vandalize a semi-protected page, semi-protection greatly reduces the frequency of vandalism, since most vandals lack the technical knowledge of Wikipedia and/or the motivation to vandalize semi-protected pages. John254 02:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This brings up one further problem with semi-protecting policy pages. Most of our policies are not perfect jewels that have been polished and refined to perfection. Rather, they are "quick hacks to achieve a temporary result" (from WP:PRO). If policy pages are semi-protected, new users will incorrectly see them as polished, refined gems instead of the "bodgy hacks they are". JYolkowski // talk 01:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that it's constructive to leave official policy pages un-semi-protected, so as to solicit vandalism for the purpose of disparaging their status. John254 01:53, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a Wiki. Because of this, by default, we don't protect pages, block users, etc. without a really good reason. No such really good reason has been demonstrated. JYolkowski // talk 01:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism is bad. If we have the opportunity to prevent most of it, while allowing almost all legitimate edits, that is a "really good reason" to semi-protect official policy pages. John254 02:00, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we protect all pages? Because this is a Wiki, that's why. Furthermore, most reverts to policy pages are reverts/edit wars between experienced users, not reverts of vandalism. JYolkowski // talk 02:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't semi-protect all pages because new and unregistered users frequently make constructive edits to articles and other non-policy pages. The existence of "reverts/edit wars between experienced users" is not a reason to encourage vandalism on official policy pages. John254 02:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of people throw out 'most anon edits to policy are vandalism' and 'most reverts to policy are established users', but do we have any statistics? Those might help clear up some of these points of debate. Shell ^babelfish 02:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't have any formal statistics. However, one could examine the edit history of the semi-protection policy itself, which clearly illustrates the phenomenon of new and unregistered users making edits that are almost entirely vandalism. John254 02:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

We should probably collect some then. I took a look at the last 500 edits to WP:V, dating back 7+ months. Out of those, 65 were anonymous. Out of those, around 49 were reverted. A significant amount of these 49 weren't vandalism, but good-faith edits to attempt to improve grammar or whatever that didn't really. Note that this works out to about 0.2 reverts of anonymous edits per day, and about 25% of the anonymous edits were kept. Out of the 500, around 113 of them (25%) were reverts of non-anonymous editors edits. So, 70% of reverts are of non-anons. Based on these, it's somewhat dubious that most anon edits to policy are vandalism, and seems to be a safe bet that most reverts are reverts of edits by established users. JYolkowski // talk 03:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I would urge editors to review the edit histories of official policies themselves, rather than accepting the above claim without evidence. In any case, there's no assertion that edits by new and unregistered users to these pages are actually improving them. John254 03:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

(Tiny comment before I go to bed) - I think it's important to make the distinction between different policy pages. Some are still constantly evolving, while others are more static. I think we can safely say that the Semi-protection policy page has indeed seen almost completely anonymous IP vandalism, but other policy pages have had much more positive contributions, which is why it may be good to only semi-protect (or preferably full) protect those that are set in stone with close to nil chance of further necessary minor changes. Cowman109^Talk 03:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Many official policy pages have had almost entirely vandalism from new and unregistered users, as may be verified with a review of their edit histories. John254 03:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm reminded of what someone said above: "I would urge editors to review the edit histories of official policies themselves, rather than accepting the above claim without evidence." Sound familiar? I've looked through some, and I have found enough constructive edits by new and unregistered users to see little justification for this policy. You've looked through some and found the opposite. Where do we go from here, apart from assuming good faith and believing each other? Carcharoth 16:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Attempted enactment

There are several competing views as to what constitutes consensus for the purpose of amendments to official policies. Without attempting to resolve this issue and attempting to define exactly what consensus is, it is clear that under the two most common views of consensus, this amendment has consensus for adoption. Some users claim that consensus exists where a sufficient supermajority of established users have expressed support for a proposal. This view is supported by the numerous changes to official policies that have been effectuated as a result of votes, as discussed in detail in my comments on Wikipedia talk:Discuss, don't vote. If strong supermajority support for a proposal constitutes consensus, it is clear that this proposal has consensus for enactment. A total of 14 established users (SlimVirgin Stifle Jc37 Starblind Barno Ned Scott Xoloz Andrew Levine Terryeo Alex Bakharev Ligulem Karimarie Jayjg and John254) have expressed support for this proposal on this talk page and on Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. By contrast, only 5 established users (JYolkowski Cowman109 Splash Nagle and John Reid) have expressed opposition to this proposal on this talk page and on Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. This yields 73.68% support for this proposal, which is certainly sufficient for a relatively minor refinement to the the semi-protection policy to semi-protect official policies.

Alternatively, some users contend that Wikipedia is a "cluocracy" such that

disputes generally are, and should be, resolved in favor of whomever has the best reasoning - not in terms of rhetoric but in terms of knowing what works and what doesn't

Under this definition of consensus, this proposal also has consensus for enactment. Almost all edits by new and unregistered users to official policies are vandalism and/or obvious changes against consensus. It is thus clear that the current practice of permitting new and unregistered users to edit official policies isn't working. Semi-protecting these policies, by contrast, will work, since semi-protection is widely known to greatly reduce the levels of vandalism on pages to which it is applied. Furthermore, since almost all constructive edits to official policies are made by established users, semi-protection will allow almost all legitimate edits. Irrespective of which definition of consensus we choose, it is clear that this amendment has consensus for enactment. Thus, I am adding it to the the semi-protection policy. John254 01:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

(ec)73% is not consensus, and anyway you haven't counted some people who have opposed as opposing (John Nagle, for example). Furthermore, counting "votes" in a non-poll environment is just silly. JYolkowski // talk 02:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Nagle is the user who signs his posts as "John Nagle", so he was counted. 73% can indicate consensus. Creating a poll for this issue would simply be redundant. John254 02:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

No. Consensus means discussing and coming to a solution that everyone can agree with. There has not been enough discussion to do so here. JYolkowski // talk 02:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Consensus. This guideline does describe how a supermajority can help to indicate a consensus. Not once does it claim that consensus requires absolute unanimity (which would make it essentially impossible to achieve). John254 02:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Unanimity isn't the goal - you're right, that is quite difficult, but please look at the section you're referring to. It starts While the most important part of consensus-building is to thoroughly discuss and consider all issues - I think that's what JYolkowski is asking for. Just give it some more time and see what can be done about addressing the objections others have. Shell ^babelfish 02:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

There's not a large number of editors giving input here, have you tried the Village Pump or something similar? FWIW, I also agree that semi-protection makes sense for official policy/guideline pages; unlike other articles, edits to the policy pages are supposed to have consensus and support of the community first. Since you do appear to have consensus of the editors who have responded, I reverted your inclusion of this idea to the policy. Shell ^babelfish 02:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we need more input on this. JYolkowski // talk 02:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, JYolkowski did post information about this issue on the Village Pump ([13]). John254 02:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Once again I must strongly suggest that you revert your actions, John. There has not nearly been enough time to discuss this and I was preparing a suggestion for an amendment to this before you changed the policy page. There is no rush to get this policy initiated and it is best to make sure that all that needs to be said has been said. Give this another week or two before edit warring like this for the sake of our sanities - the Wiki won't implode if this isn't done right away. Cowman109^Talk 02:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to agree - looking back at the history and this talk page, it doesn't seem that all significant objections have been discussed. There's no hurry on things - building consensus isn't just about how many people think one way or another, its about cooperating to reach an agreement. Shell ^babelfish 02:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

One idea towards a possible compromise

Writing my post about the statistics above, one thought that occurred to me was whether there is benefit to making a distinction between policy pages that anons are likely to take their frustrations out on (WP:VAND, WP:SEMI, etc.) and ones that they aren't (WP:V, WP:NOR, etc.)? I'm kind of tired right now so I'll just throw the idea out and log off right now, but I'll throw this out and see what people think. JYolkowski // talk 03:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Overall I'd say that there isn't a great need for this, if an anon or new editor changes/edits a policy page well, editing a policy page is not changing the policy and the edit can be reverted if needed. This is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and all that. And if it's meant to reduce work, traffic on policy pages is a tiny percentage of the total amount of editing going on so it won't make a dent there. Overall, there's a philosophy at work here we should be very cautious about changing. Unless there's a screaming need for this, we shouldn't make such a fundemental change like this without a lot more thought and discussion. Rx StrangeLove 03:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

If edits by new and unregistered users are almost all vandalism and or changes clearly against consensus, they aren't making a positive contribution to official policy pages, and there's no reason to allow them. We allow new and unregistered users to contribute to articles because they often make positive contributions. The claim that Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that almost anyone can edit Wikipedia articles, not that almost anyone can edit Wikipedia official policies. Indeed, Wikipedia contains many non-article pages that even most established users cannot edit, such as the main page, and high-risk templates. John254 03:47, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's a compelling reason to limit pages that can cause actual damage such as high risk templates and the main page. Editing policy pages doesn't expose us to any real risk. We've never made any across the board distinction between name spaces like this when it comes to editing rights, and there's no compelling reason to do it now. If the bottom line here is to reduce the reverting workload, I don't see it as an important enough rational to make such a fundamental change in the wiki philosophy. Being a Wiki comes with a cost for sure, but in this case it's a pretty small one compared to making such an elemental policy change. At least without a lot more discussion among a lot more participants. Rx StrangeLove 05:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how semi-protecting official policy pages -- an extraordinarily small fraction of all the pages on Wikipedia -- represents "a fundamental change in the wiki philosophy". Also, the implication that official policies have their own namespace, and that semi-protecting them is an "across the board distinction between name spaces like this when it comes to editing rights" is factually incorrect. Official policies are relatively small part of the Wikipedia namespace. Then again, the claim that "We've never made any across the board distinction between name spaces like this when it comes to editing rights" is also factually incorrect -- all MediaWiki namespace pages are fully protected. John254 06:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The Wiki philosophy means that anyone can contribute and no distinctions are made between editors of different levels of experience. Also, our policy pages are not WikiMedia pages (as a general platform), they are Wikipedia specific pages and we've never made any distinction between policy and article pages when it comes to editing rights. Restricting content editing privileges by class of user is a fundamental change. We do have some minor restrictions for new users but nothing that limits them to this extent. I was using a general meaning of the word namespace and you can disregard it if you'd like, but the point is still valid. Semi-protecting policy pages (official or not) is a fundamental change in the way we do things here. They may make up a small fraction of the total amount of pages here but they are an important part of what we do here. Also, the fact that they do amount to a fraction of the total number pages argues against making a change like this in order to reduce workload...the number of pages are few in number. Rx StrangeLove 06:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

the idea is that anyone can edit / contribute to articles. -- Ned Scott 06:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The thing is that we've never made a practical distinction before, policy, along with articles have always been open to everyone. We should be careful in making a change like this...note that I'm asking for more thought and discussion before something like this is put in place. Rx StrangeLove 06:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think policy and articles are even near the same level of "editability". Apples and oranges, my friend, the distinction is obvious. -- Ned Scott 07:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Because WP:FAITH is a core principle of the community, we have always allowed anyone to edit anything, until clear evidence of disruptive editing is present. Protecting any page for which there isn't any real evidence of disruptive vandalism is a big shift from that core principle. JYolkowski // talk 23:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Response to "One idea towards a possible compromise" above

Wikipedia:Vandalism is already semi-protected, and has been more or less continuously since February 2006. Since the set of "policy pages that anons are likely to take their frustrations out on" could easily be interpreted as the set of policy pages that would be semi-protected even under the existing policy, this isn't really a "compromise" at all. Furthermore, it fails to address concerns that new and unregistered users generally aren't contributing constructively to any official policy pages. John254 05:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, I strongly disagree with Cowman109's suggestion that we should fully protect any official policies on a continuous basis. Full protection of these pages should be strictly limited to a temporary protection used to stop edit wars, and where absolutely necessary to prevent severe vandalism that cannot be stopped with semi-protection. Full protection effectively writes most established users out of the policy making process, even when such users have extensive Wikipedia experience and a through understanding of our policies and practices. John254 05:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• The way I read it, the compromise would be to semi-prot policy pages that (judged by their history) are indeed the target of several bad edits by anons - as opposed to automatically semi-protecting every policy page. The current situation seems to be automatically never semi-protect policy pages. I think both extremes are bad in that they are examples of thoughtless application of the protect button. Rather, we should look at pages individually, and see how many good and bad anon edits a page gets. The spirit that "everybody can edit the encyclopedia" is not harmed by indefinitely semiprotting a policy page. It's a simple example of net benefit and making less work for ourselves. >Radiant< 15:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

  I can agree with that, and would support its implementation. Would someone like to make a list for discussion? - jc37 15:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

  Probably it makes sense to do two things. First, determine what sorts of policy pages disruptive editors will tend to get pointed to. For example, new disruptive users will often be told to stop vandalizing and that the page they're editwarring on is semi-protected (feel free to suggest other such scenarios), so may continue their campaigns of disruption on the linked pages. However, they are quite unlikely to be asked to, for example, ensure that their contributions are verifiable and to ignore all rules, so most anon contributions to pages like those are not by disruptive users and so are made in good-faith. Second, determine what threshold of disruptive editing we can no longer put up with. There seems to be general consensus that the vandalism that WP:VAND gets is so excessive that it's more or less permanently semi-protected. On the other hand, many policy pages only see one occurrence of vandalism every few days, which is no big deal. The ones that fall in the middle probably need more discussion. Having said that, I don't think this is necessary to do right now (although if others want to do it, I'm game). If users feel that an individual page gets too much vandalism, they can reach consensus on a page-by-page basis. JYolkowski // talk 23:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

  • If we are to implement this "compromise solution", I would suggest that, as a minimum, the official policies actually linked from the MediaWiki interface should be semi-protected, since they have a very high visibility to disruptive users. Wikipedia:Protection policy and Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy are linked from MediaWiki:Protectedtext; Wikipedia:Blocking policy and Wikipedia:Appealing a block are linked from MediaWiki:Blockedtext. I also suggest that the semi-protection policy be amended to specifically allow the continuous semi-protection of some official policy pages, which should be mentioned by name. "Reach[ing] consensus on a page-by-page basis" wouldn't really work, since the discussion would likely revolve around an application of the existing semi-protection policy, and seek to determine whether these pages received a sufficient level of vandalism to qualify for semi-protection under the existing criteria. Pursuant to the existing semi-protection policy, an official policy can qualify for semi-protection due to heavy vandalism under the same criteria that would be applied for the semi-protection of an article, or most other pages. The entire purpose of a "compromise solution", of course, is to effectuate a change to the semi-protection policy, and to semi-protect some official policies that presently do not qualify for semi-protection. John254 01:04, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Wording

The actual wording of this amendment to the semi-protection policy has not yet been discussed. This should be looked at clearly. I think we should stray away from words like 'should' and 'must', but instead use 'may', as some policy pages may benefit more from semi-protection than others. Any comments? Cowman109^Talk 04:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Is this a version of the proposed amendment that the editors who have opposed the old version of this amendment can support? If we can enact the amendment with the new wording, and use it to semi-protect Wikipedia:Protection policy, Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy, Wikipedia:Blocking policy, and other official policy pages that are subject to significant IP vandalism, but not enough vandalism to qualify for semi-protection under the existing policy, I would support it. Naturally, I am assuming that Wikipedia:Protection policy, Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy, Wikipedia:Blocking policy, etc, can actually be semi-protected under the new wording, and that the administrators who opposed the old version of this amendment are willing to perform the semi-protections themselves if necessary. John254 04:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Uh, there was no old version unless I'm mistaken? No offense, but you simply took words and put them on the Semi-protection policy page without setting them in stone first here, so I figured we can start that. I do agree that some policy pages should be semi-protected, just not all of them. Simple, yet not necessarily binding wording such as this will allow administrators to not be so afraid to semi-protect policy pages, at least. Cowman109^Talk 06:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

John254, you don't seem to understand that you face much opposition to the proposal outright. You revert people when they remove your undiscussed changes, you invent statistical countings that mean they don't matter, you repeatedly replace your preferred change despite people telling you that you don't have the support for it. I find it particularly insulting that you say earlier on that anyone who disagrees with you is clueless. Calling people and their opinions stupid and dismissing them does not build an agreement, and it does not magically mean that you can 'enact' whatever you happen to, in your vastly superior understanding, fancy.

You are proposing a change to the policy that does not provide any benefit. It wilfully, and declaredly further up, seeks to prohibit good faith editing, it throws out the notion that people can edit this project freely. It does no harm to policy to have minutes of vandalism that a small talk page message cannot repair. I repeat - there is no benefit to protecting policy pages and thus no reason to do so. -Splash - tk 13:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The claim that I am "Calling people and their opinions stupid and dismissing them"[14] is factually incorrect, and asserted without evidence. Nor did I "invent statistical countings that mean they don't matter"[15] -- I merely described the number of users expressing support and opposition to the proposal. Quantifying support from an analysis of a discussion avoids the substantial difficulties that are associated with attempting to hold an actual vote on Wikipedia. Furthermore, there is actually a great benefit associated with semi-protecting certain official policy pages, as such semi-protection will greatly reduce vandalism while continuing to allow almost all legitimate edits. This proposal is not intended to "[throw] out the notion that people can edit this project freely"[16] any more than Wikipedia:High-risk templates is intended for that supposed purpose. Semi-protection of some official policy pages, much fewer in number than the articles that are fully protected at this very moment (see Wikipedia:List_of_protected_pages#Full_protection), is hardly "[throwing] out the notion that people can edit this project freely."[17] John254 14:27, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

You were talking about "cluocracy". That is precisely the same as saying that people are clueless which is a partially civil way of saying someone is stupid. If protected article pages are a bad thing, then go and get them unprotected, don't protect policy pages to match. -Splash - tk 16:11, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The term "cluocracy" was used by Radiant!, who wrote Wikipedia:Cluocracy. Comments regarding the naming of this essay should be directed to its author. I merely cited the essay as an example of a theory regarding the nature of consensus, and not as an endorsement of the essay's name. Additionally, if unprotecting all of the fully protected articles listed at Wikipedia:List_of_protected_pages#Full_protection were advisable, we presumably would have done so already. John254 20:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Attempted enactment of new version

Since the new version of this amendment is supported by Cowman109, is consistent with the "compromise solution" proposed by JYolkowski and supported by Radiant! and Jc37, and would seem to be better than nothing from the perspective of the supermajority of editors who expressed their support for the original version (described on Wikipedia_talk:Semi-protecting_policy_pages#Enactment), it has consensus. I am therefore enacting the new version. John254 14:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any qualms with this in the current way it is said. I simply felt the previous form was too strict as it implied that all policy pages _must_ be semi-protected, but this should only be done where there is already a good deal of evidence that the policy page is (mostly) static in terms of minor changes and that there are indeed problems with anonymous editing. Cowman109^Talk 15:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Will you stop it. You found 4 people who agree with you. Big deal. Fix the problems with your proposal first; principally that there are plenty of well-reasoned objections, and then do your 'enacting'. Stop being a bully about this. Also, judging from the recent history of WP:SEMI you personally have reverted the page a good number of times in the last period of time, and are barely observing the 3RR. Stop edit warring over your proposal. -Splash - tk 16:09, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey, also, your enactment was a total fiction compared to the 'compromise' suggestion above. You simply said that any high-visibility policy pages could be indefinitely sprotected. That is emphatically not something that has anything like agreement here, and fails totally to be a representation of this so-called 'compromise'. -Splash - tk 16:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

You've also given this 'compromise' a grand total of about 36 hours thought and response-time. Please give people time to e.g. go out for a few hours before shoehorning policy changes. Take it slowly, and gently, and with the possibility that you might never actually get the change, and it will look much better. Splash - tk 16:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

• Splash's statement "Stop being a bully about this"[18] is a personal attack. Furthermore, a total of 14 established users (SlimVirgin Stifle Jc37 Starblind Barno Ned Scott Xoloz Andrew Levine Terryeo Alex Bakharev Ligulem Karimarie Jayjg and John254) have expressed support for original version of the amendment which would have resulted in the semi-protection of all official policy pages. Thus, there is rather substantial support for an amendment to the semi-protection policy to semi-protect at least some official policy pages. Of course, amending a policy doesn't just require consensus -- it requires keeping the amendment on the policy page. Since Splash recently removed it [19], and since I have reverted this policy several times myself, it may be necessary for another editor to restore it. John254 16:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Your newest version was a total fiction. You merely mentioned "high visibility policy pages" as if there is a "low visibility" opposite. Take Cowman's advice below; work the proposal out properly; then seek support for it; then once you have a strong backing for the actual proposal, add it to the page. Reeling off a list of names that once made a positive noise about some other proposal and citing them in support of your ficticious version of a compromise is entirely unfair. Splash - tk 16:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, I don't consider what Splash said to be a personal attack. I think he's just frustrated. Something this major needs to be well thought out, officially proposed and then voted on. And Splash is right. It has to be more than just "a few users have said they support this". I bet that if we asked them directly, some wouldn't like your proposal as it is worded. Not saying that as a slap against you. It's just how this stuff works. --Woohookitty^(meow) 16:45, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I, for one, disapprove of my name being used to support the addition to the policy, especially as worded and with insufficient discussion (two of the four people only commented once, I only commented twice). JYolkowski // talk 20:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems that this proposal is gradually appearing on people's radar. I'm notorious for turning up late, but since I've added myself to the ranks opposing this proposal, maybe some more people will turn up in the next two weeks. I'd give it some more time. For what it is worth, John's warning on Splash's talk page is what brought this to my attention. Carcharoth 16:45, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

What policy pages should be semi-protected?

Do we have suggestions for which policy pages should indeed be protected? Cowman109^Talk 15:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

None of them. You don't get to find what, 4 people? who agree with you and say oh yes, we can make it up as we go now. -Splash - tk 16:10, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm disappointed that after a mere 36 hours from proposal, this is being even considered. Splash - tk 16:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait, he put it on the semi-protection page? Oh I didn't read that far. We are still supposed to be discussing this... John I would highly recommend you leave the adding the amendment to someone else instead of doing so yourself, as you're clearly subconsciously biased in favor of this. It would be better for a third party to go ahead and add this once a clear consensus is driven. Once again, policy changing takes time, and we should give this at least 2 more weeks. The wiki won't implode in the process. Cowman109^Talk 16:33, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I assumed, of course, that Cowman109 offered the new version of the amendment, and that JYolkowski offered the "possible compromise" in good faith, not as a deliberate attempt to disrupt this discussion by suggesting a "compromise" that even the users proposing the "compromise" are unwilling to support or help to effectuate. It wouldn't be appropriate to use the "compromise" to defeat the original proposal, if the "compromise" itself can't be enacted. John254 16:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll rephrase the question then: If we were to semi-protect only certain policy pages, what criteria would there be and what would examples be? Cowman109^Talk 17:11, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that the criteria would be that the pages are receiving significant vandalism from new and unregistered users, but not enough vandalism to justify semi-protection under the existing criteria. Such pages may also be linked directly from the MediaWiki interface. For instance, Wikipedia:Protection policy and Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy are linked from MediaWiki:Protectedtext; Wikipedia:Blocking policy is linked from MediaWiki:Blockedtext. "Support[ing] or help[ing] to effectuate" the "compromise" may mean semi-protecting the pages, as administrators not involved in this discussion may not wish to take action on a matter which is perceived to be disputed. Similarly, if an editor insists on reverting the language added to the semi-protection policy, I obviously can't add the amendment by myself. John254 17:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

You may not get your compromise. One way you can be sure of soundly discrediting it is by forcing and demanding and editwarring over it. You seem to be determined to press on, right now, at all costs and somehow to run roughshod over any - and all - disagreement. You cannot possibly demonstrate the kind of broad consensus that rewrites policy if you go about it like that. Now in the section one up, I described the way to make policy. You'd well (or at least better) to follow that advice. Splash - tk 19:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

John, I am quite upset that you used my attempt to compromise to try to implement a change to the policy that I would strongly disagree with. Is this going to make me more likely to attempt to compromise with you further in this discussion? Not likely. Also, please assume good faith on the part of those that disagree with you; this hasn't previously been evident on your part. JYolkowski // talk 20:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

JYolkowski hasn't explained why he would disagree with the language I attempted to add to the semi-protection policy, or why it is inconsistent with his "possible compromise". Obviously, not changing the policy at all is the same outcome that would occur if the proposal were defeated, and is thus not a "compromise". Furthermore, Wikipedia:Assume good faith states that

Accusing the other side in a conflict of not assuming good faith, without showing reasonable supporting evidence, is another form of failing to assume good faith.

John254 20:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

If you really want to squabble about that instead of discussing your proposal, [20] is a more recent example. JYolkowski // talk 21:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:AGF doesn't require us to accept an unreferenced statistical analysis in a policy discussion. John254 21:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The meta-wiki way

I may have missed it, but has anyone suggested the meta-wiki way? I used to get really annoyed when I came across Help pages that had the "Do not edit this page. It will be updated from the master copy at meta:whatever and all edits will be lost at the next update". I've never been bothered enough to register a meta-wiki account to go and edit those pages, but the concept of having the policy pages another step away (ie. transcluded from another wiki) seems to be what people wanting semi-protection want. I would oppose this as well, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Carcharoth 16:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

For example, Help:Page_history. I realise that help pages, like MediaWiki pages, are different again from policy pages and high-risk templates, but the different approaches show that a one-size protection policy doesn't fit all pages. Anyway, is the proposed "stable pages" thing any closer, and will that invalidate this proposal? Carcharoth 16:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"This is beneficial ... by preventing good-faith ... edits"

Would someone explain this to me? -Splash - tk 16:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The full, unexpurgated quotation is "This is beneficial by helping to prevent vandalism, and by preventing good-faith but terribly misguided edits by new and unregistered users." The problem is new users making changes to official policies that are obviously against a consensus which they do not have sufficient experience to ascertain. John254 17:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Instructive, no?

But this is better fixed by education and editing or reversal of the bad change. It's like editing an article and messing up the syntax or something: someone hopefully comes along and rescues you, and you're a better editor for it. The same is true of policy pages, only more strongly. Since the change does not actually affect the policy unless it has wide approval, the page is readily fixed and never displays e.g. broken formatting, or whatever. And, since we're now in the business of preventing good-faith edits, it doesn't even serve to reduce vandalism. Noone should be making proposals to wilfully prevent someone making a good-faith edit. Splash - tk 17:11, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

And furthermore, admins and experienced users are not immune from making "terribly misguided edits" either. The whole "good-faith but terribly misguided" bit comes over as horribly condescending, to the point of WP:BITE. If someone is not the sort of person that has the patience to deal with new users, then I would respectfully suggest that they leave that sort of thing to those who do have the patience required to welcome newcomers. Carcharoth 17:49, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The question here is whether new and unregistered users can make substantive edits to Wikipedia official policies in manner consistent with consensus. If, almost invariably, such users lack the Wikipedia experience to ascertain consensus, they shouldn't be editing official policy pages. Moreover, the unceremonious reversion of nearly all substantive edits to official policy pages made by new and unregistered users, often with administrative rollback or its javascript emulations, might be considered a greater violation of WP:BITE than requiring users to wait a mere 4 days after registering an account before participating in the sensitive process of editing official policy pages. Both a reduction in vandalism and a reduction in ill-advised edits that are obviously against consensus are the laudable goals of semi-protecting official policy pages. Moreover, "admins and experienced users" almost never make "terribly misguided edits" to official policy pages in the sense in which I am using the term. Though it is often disputed whether edits to official policies by such users have consensus, "admins and experienced users" very rarely make edits that are so obviously against consensus that there isn't any plausible claim that they could possibly have consensus. John254 20:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Your opinion is significantly out of line with the fact that this is a Wiki, and the fact that it is one of our core principles to assume good faith. As this is a Wiki, anyone can by default edit any page. We do not permanently protect pages against vandalism until there has been significant demonstrations of bad faith. The Main Page used to be editable by anyone if you knew what templates to edit (and some time before I started, it was probably editable by anyone). After people started adding goatses to the main page with increasing regularity, it was decided to protect it, not before. High-risk templates are similar. As vandals hit upon the idea that they could reach a much wider audience if they penis images to these templates, individual templates started to be protected, until this protection was codified. However, with the exception of WP:VAND, no such evidence of disruptive vandalism on any of our policy pages has been offered. JYolkowski // talk 20:46, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Rather than asserting that the principle that "anyone can by default edit any page" must always be adhered to, I would suggest a consideration of what will actually improve the quality of official policy pages. Allowing edits by new and unregistered users that are known to reduce the quality of official policy pages is seriously inconsistent with the philosophy of WP:IAR, which suggests that improving Wikipedia's quality is such an important goal that it might actually be necessary to ignore a rule to effectuate the improvement. John254 22:09, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Playing devil's advocate here, is there any evidence that IP users are destroying the quality of policy pages? All I've seen is drive by obvious vandalism which is removed shortly thereafter that don't do a thing to the policy page in the long run. All other IP contributions I've seen are positive. If I may give a list of positive IP contributions once more,

• [21] An IP reverting misguided edits by another user.
• [22] An IP fixing formatting issues.
• [23] Interwiki linking.
• [24] More interwiki.
• [25] Correcting a broken interwiki link.
• [26] Addition of quotes by Jimbo that still remain on WP:IAR today.
• [27] Very positive rewording to the protection policy.
• [28] Typo fix.
• [29] Another interwiki.

These are all examples of extremely positive contributions by anonymous IP addresses. There will always be interwiki linking that needs to be done and minor grammar/clarity issues that need to be fixed. Cowman109^Talk 17:26, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Links to the numerous examples of the acts of vandalism committed by new and unregistered users on official policy pages would fill this talk page. Given the extremely small number of constructive contributions by new and unregistered users, it is entirely possible that the nine edits linked above were made by established users who simply forgot to log in, and who would have made the edits after logging in had the pages been semi-protected. In any case, only two of the examples provided above [30] [31] involve substantive improvements. This edit is actually a reversion of an edit made against consensus by another new user, who would not have been able to edit the policy had it been semi-protected. Furthermore, established users are quite willing to handle the addition of interwiki links to semi-protected official policy pages, as seen here. There's no reason to permit thousands, if not tens of thousands of acts of vandalism by new and unregistered users on official policy pages, simply because on extraordinarily rare occasions such users make an extremely small number of constructive contributions, even if we assume that none of the positive contributions by IPs were made by established users who forgot to log in. John254 22:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Poll

A poll has been opened to assist in the determination of consensus for this proposal. John254 16:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This at the same time that you are continuing to try to force this onto the WP:SEMI page, now with a tag, before there is even a proper proposal, before it has consensus and while you are trying to force things even further by dumping a poll all over this. You need to give this some time, and understand that you are possibly not going to see your proposal fly, and for good reason. Splash - tk 17:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The poll has been blanked and redirected by Splash. [32] John254 21:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I've revived the poll. I don't like the idea of holding a poll right now either, but that doesn't give me the right to arbitrarily throw it out. Instead, I say this: John254, you should take it down voluntarily and wait for more debate to take place on this issue before attempting to show that a consensus has been reached. And Splash, just abstain from voting in the poll. That's best way to show that it's unwarranted right now. -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 23:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Discredited?

When I see a proposal being forcibly cludged over the community in the way that this has, I begin to feel that it is being pursued out of single-mindedness and pure muscularity. So far we have seen:

One, two, three, four attempts to simply paint this as already accepted, and [33]. All of these are from the same editor. All of these are in the face of a litany of people, including some moderate supporters of a possible compromise proposal, asking for slowness and consideration rather than haste and force.

One, two, three, four, five attempts at a live experiment of a process that so far as I can determine has never even been suggested about a policy that has no agreement;

A poll linked above

All from the same editor. Editing in this kind of way discredits the proposal more-or-less automatically because it is clearly being carried out without consideration and, more crucially, without consensus. Splash - tk 17:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This is indeed coming close to borderline disruption in my opinion. Make a post on WP:ANI if you would like something done about this, though, not here. Cowman109^Talk 18:06, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I've the buttons to do something about it myself, and the thought has crossed my mind. But posting here for these purposes is better, since it pertains directly to this proposal's lifespan/development and status. Splash - tk 18:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Let's not conceal the existence of this discussion

Since the policy proposal suggested the semi-protection of all official policy pages, the notices transcluded from template:Semi-protection proposal related to a proposed action that would be taken on the specific pages to which the notices were posted. I did not post notices concerning unrelated policy proposals to any official policy pages. Notices are frequently placed on various pages to notify contributors of discussions concerning other proposed administrative actions, such as deletions. Therefore, it should be permissible to place notices on policy pages to notify contributors of a discussion concerning the proposed semi-protection of those very pages. Indeed, I would suggest that such a method of informing users of the existence of this discussion would be the one of the few manners in which participation in this discussion could be increased -- information concerning this discussion has already been posted to template:cent and the village pump. Since it has frequently been contended that this proposal cannot possibly have consensus despite supermajority support because of the limited number of editors who have participated in the discussion concerning it, concealing the existence of this discussion would ensure that consensus, as the editors opposing this proposal define it, can never be achieved. Similarly, I opened the semi-protecting policy pages poll to address concerns that this proposed amendment could not be enacted without a vote. If we cannot enact the proposal without a vote, and we cannot hold a vote, then we can never enact the proposal, irrespective of how much support it has garnered.

Since the users who oppose this proposal accuse me of "coming close to borderline disruption"[34], however, it is quite legitimate for me to offer my own critique of the behavior that the users who oppose this proposal have employed in efforts to defeat it. I did not attempt to enact this proposal until five established users had expressed their support for it, and the only user opposing it, JYolkowski, had discontinued his participation in this discussion after all of his objections had been addressed. [35] When I first enacted this proposal, it was treated as valid policy by two administrators [36] [37]. Indeed, this proposal would probably be valid policy right now if Cowman109 hadn't lobbied both administrators to unprotect the pages [38] [39]. In fact, Cowman109 had to contact Jossi again to further encourage him to unprotect the pages [40]. When Jossi finally did so, he stated that he was unprotecting the pages solely because Cowman109 requested this action

I have unprotected, but I was responding to a request based on the underatsnding that policy pages should remain sprotected. I will leave this in your hands. [41]

Furthermore, Cowman109 requested the unprotection of these pages with an entirely procedural argument [42] which did not concern the merits of the amendment at all, but essentially asserted that the amendment couldn't possibly have consensus since he deemed the length of the discussion and the number of editors participating in it to be inadequate. I found this argument to be unpersuasive since JYolkowski, the only editor who, at that time, had offered any substantive objections to the proposed amendment, stated that

Regardless of the above proposal, it is absolutely not a requirement that changes to policy pages be discussed beforehand [at all]. This is a widely-held but incorrect belief.[43]

When I decided to enact the proposal again [44], the talk page had been entirely inactive for nearly a day and a half. Fourteen established users had expressed their support for this proposal, and only five had expressed opposition. Additionally, all objections to the amendment had been addressed. JYolkowski, having declined to participate in the discussion for several days previously, began to raise new objections to the proposal six minutes after I stated that I intended to enact it [45] [46]. Although Shell Kinney had recognized that there was consensus for the enactment of this proposal, and restored the amendment after JYolkowski had removed it from the semi-protection policy, JYolkowski encouraged Shell Kinney to remove the amendment from the policy, on the basis that the new objections to the proposal he had raised half an hour earlier hadn't been addressed.[47] Obviously, if users opposing a proposal withhold some of their objections for several days, allow a discussion to become inactive for a day and half, then suddenly raise new objections immediately after an attempt is made to enact the proposal, it will indeed be the case that their objections have not been addressed. However, it is unfair to demand that a proposal not be enacted because of unaddressed objections when the objections are withheld, then suddenly introduced immediately following an attempted enactment, as JYolkowski did. Indeed, Shell Kinney did remove the amendment from the semi-protection policy, on the grounds that the "significant objections" which had materialized on the talk page immediately following an attempt to enact the proposal, but couldn't possibly have been made in the days preceding it, had "not been dealt with."

I haven't even discussed how JYolkowski offered a "possible compromise" that wasn't, or how Splash advised me to "Stop being a bully about this" proposal[48], then proceeded to threaten to use his administrative powers against a user with whom he was involved in a content dispute [49], despite the fact that Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocking_may_not_be_used clearly states that

Blocking to gain an advantage in a content dispute is strictly prohibited. Sysops must not block editors with whom they are currently engaged in a content dispute.

So, far from this proposal being "discredited" by my actions, I would suggest that, if anything, the behavior of the users who have opposed this proposal discredits their opposition. John254 21:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I think there are still many objections that have been left unanswered, myself. And just for the record, the original reasoning I had for giving this more discussion was that I personally disagreed with it, but had not yet formulated a response to post on this page. John254, you are taking things way too quickly and aggressively, so that is why it is important for you to just take this slowly. The world won't end if this proposal gets discussed for another few weeks, as there are clearly some serious concerns. Policy pages cannot be enacted so quickly, and looking at your contributions it seems you've become detached from the article space, so perhaps just going back to editing in the article namespace for a few days and then coming back here with a fresh breath of air may be positive, as you are clearly getting overworked by this. It would indeed be inappropriate for Splash to use his sysop powers to block you anyway, which is why I suggested that any such complaints about user behavior either go to WP:ANI for neutral administrators to look over, or an RFC. Cowman109^Talk 21:24, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I didn't use my sysop buttons, and did not threaten to. I did say it had crossed my mind. That's tough. Wikipedia:Thoughtcrime is a redlink and could only turn blue if the year were 1984. Splash - tk 23:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, another user's private thoughts are clearly not my concern. However, what I take issue with is that Splash stated that he was considering using his administrative powers in a highly inappropriate manner. An editor's statements on Wikipedia are not thoughts -- they are actions. Furthermore, a statement that one is contemplating a certain action is tantamount to threatening the action itself. John254 23:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Confused

I'm confused about what's going on here. John has made a proposal that policies be sprotected. That they should be sprotected shouldn't be added to the semi-protection policy immediately (I agree with Splash and others on that point), but the proposal should be widely disseminated so that the community can comment on it. Yet Splash is removing information about the proposal from other pages.

John and whoever else supports it, please post a link to this page on other policy talk pages (or as a tag on the policy page if you prefer) and to the village pump. Then everyone can discuss it calmly without falling out. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

There is indeed an excess of Wikidrama here :). Dmcdevit also left a note on John's talkpage asking him to not make such requests directly on the policy pages as well, however, so I'm not sure what's going on there. This does seem to be a policy proposal that encompasses many (if not all) other policy pages, however, so making notes on their talk pages would indeed be a good step, and as this would of course involve administrators, maybe a WP:AN post concerning it may be beneficial as well. Cowman109^Talk 21:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The best thing is to post the proposal in as many places as is reasonable: to the mailing list, to AN, to the village pump, and on some of the key policy talk pages. No need for Wikidrama; not that that ever stopped us. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I removed the tag from the very top of the face of a number of policy pages which is absolutely not where the unfortunate thing belongs with all the import of it being a template at the top of a policy page. I didn't put it on the talk pages, because I didn't feel like it. Needless to say, John254 has ably done that for us. Splash - tk 23:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Widely disseminating a policy proposal means post it on WP:RFC and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), in addition to the talk page where it belongs, Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. —Centrx→talk • 01:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Centrx has been reverting the placement of these notices using administrative rollback. It's not surprising that the number of participants in this discussion is limited if it cannot be adequately publicized. John254 03:38, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Centrx blocked me for 20 minutes when I had reverted his removal. Totally not cool and unacceptable. He has given no explanation nor cited any policy or guideline to support his actions. Isn't this what they call censorship? I could understand that this might be seen as spamming, but to actually block me over this is.............. *deep breath* . It's totally disrespectful. If he had at least left something more than the small message on my talk page (that seemed to only indicate his preference), or even left a message here (I checked here before reverting the change, actually, since I figured he had a good reason, but he had given none) I would not have reverted his removal. There was no reason to block me whatsoever. -- Ned Scott 05:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

{{WikiProject DIGI}} (being used on the top of a few hundred talk pages, and having the same effect as posting to each but in a more efficient manner) currently not only contains a WikiProject box but also a separate box calling attention to a discussion about those articles. That's something that I personally added a while ago. I did the same thing with {{WikiProject LOE}} for a big debate on fair use images in lists a while back (since removed, by me, when the discussion had died down). (see also WT:LOE#Using our WikiProject banner for a notice, noting that I made such a change with caution.)

I really don't see why we can't do the same.. I understand not making a habit of something like this, but this isn't just a proposal that would effect lots of pages, but it's a fairly good proposal. Support it or not, it's at least a well presented proposal with intelligent and rational discussion, so it's not like we're adding a notice for User:Hellotherewhatever who wants to make all text in policy hot pink. If there really is that strong of a concern about {{Semi-protection proposal}} being used, then ok, but I fail to see anyone having that concern other than Centrx. -- Ned Scott 06:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I understand a bit of the confusion now. I was under the impression that the template was being completely removed, instead of just being removed from talk pages of policy that were less likely to be affected. Actually, there are a few that I still think should have the notice, but the point being that I somewhat understand Centrx's point of view on the matter. Not that I totally agree with the removal, but it does help me see why he removed it. Now if only he actually mentioned this here, or in his edit summary, there wouldn't have been this confusion... -- Ned Scott 06:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Out of control

This page is out of control and the idea stinks; it should be tagged rejected and fully protected.

New editors do most of the real work around here; they contribute most of the content that survives from revision to revision. They also do most of the blatant vandalism: *shrug*.

Vandalism is part of the price we pay for an open door. I don't worry much about vandals; we have many editors who enjoy RC patrol and revert with great haste. It does absolutely no harm for somebody to stick a penis on Wikipedia:Semicolon policy; we just revert it off and move on. If RC patrol upsets you, move on; somebody else will take care of it. I guarantee this; I've failed to get in the first revert on RCP, sometimes within seconds after the vandal posts. RCP is a favorite activity of some editors; it may be the most useful thing they do. Meanwhile, while the penis is there, it doesn't mean we all have to take off our pants when we type a ;. This is not a game of Simon Says.

Statistically, the longer someone is on the project, the more likely he is to become interested in policy matters. Some do this constructively, some destructively. Fort-building and forum-shopping is a far greater threat to the process of policy formation than anybody's penis.

New editors tend to contribute, rather than edit. It usually takes editors a long time to get into policy; when we do, sometimes we never get out again. It's very tempting to shut the policy-room door on these new editors; they don't really have anything to say about the policies that we create in order to control them. Well, while we're at it, I'd like to propose that we close the door to all editors with red hair.

New editors have just as much of a right to amend policy pages as has anyone else. This is a foundation issue and none of us has the right to disrupt it on the basis of a few comments -- or worse, a divisive straw poll. I suspect that in order for something like this to become real policy, Jimbo would have to sign off on it, with very heavy participation from our community. This goes right to the heart of what we mean when we say Anyone can edit. 22:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

New editors do do a lot of the work, as you say, but not on policy pages. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

A significant controversy here seems to be whether, as John Reid claims

every policy page could be a reeking vandalism dump and it would not make the slightest difference to real community policy[50]

or whether vandalism is bad, and should be controlled. If we accept that vandalism is bad, then it would follow that if we somehow had the opportunity to prevent most vandalism, while continuing to allow almost all legitimate edits, we should avail ourselves of the opportunity. For articles, we cannot use semi-protection to prevent most vandalism without preventing many legitimate edits, since new and unregistered users make many legitimate edits to articles. Consequently, semi-protection of articles is limited to articles which are suffering from heavy vandalism that cannot effectively be controlled by other means. However, edits to official policies by new and unregistered users are almost all vandalism and modifications that are clearly against consensus. Thus, on official policy pages, we have the opportunity to prevent most vandalism while allowing almost legitimate edits, through semi-protection. I submit that we should utilize this valuable opportunity to prevent vandalism. John254 23:10, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would not make any difference to real policy. You are confusing the map with the terrain. Then you go on to present a false dichotomy. Of course, vandalism is not good; that's why we revert it. You are trying to paint me into some silly corner, upholding the value to the project of vandalism. I won't stand for it.

If you semi-protect a page, all you do is keep it from being edited by anons and very new editors. You do not keep it from being vandalized by anyone else. In particular, it's foolish and demonstrated false to imply that editors who bump over the semi-protect bar always, usually, or even generally make good edits. "Legitimate" is a hot button word that pretends to say something, but does not. Edits are neither legitimate nor illegitimate. They prove useful to the project or they do not, that's all.

You continue to argue that most edits to policy pages by new editors are vandalism. So what? Most edits to all pages are useless to us; we revert them out of hand, edit them over again, tag them, debate them and delete them, war over them. Most edits in particular by longtime editors are insubstantial and, of the substantial projectspace edits, most end up getting tagged and ignored. We are not the crown of creation here. New editors add most of the good content to this project and they must have a voice in policy formation, whether they choose to exercise it or not. We simply do not have the right to close the door on them.

If leaving the door open bothers you, I strongly suggest you consider one of the many forks which attempt to address this very issue by closing the door in some way. Wikipedia is NOT one of these. John Reid 00:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

We have already "closed the door" to new and unregistered users voting in requests for adminship and conducting pagemoves. Must we say that new and unregistered users can't move "well" to "well (disambiguation)", but they will be permitted to completely rewrite an official policy? John254 00:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Your examples are poorly chosen, facetious even. Page moving is known to be more disruptive and harder to undo than an 'ordinary' edit to the text of a page. Witness the Willy on Wheels vandal and his ilk. In contrast, reverting an edit to a policy page is easily done. In addition, you have exaggerated the threat. A "complete rewrite" would be noticed and reverted. Carcharoth 00:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course a complete rewrite of an official policy page will be reverted, after perhaps being displayed to some new users who won't recognize that the page has been tampered with. Page move vandalism will be reverted as well. The question here is whether a pagemove of, say, Wikipedia:Verifiability to "Wikipedia:Verifiability on wheels" which leaves a redirect and the original text of the page intact has a greater capacity to misinform new users than a rewrite of Wikipedia:Verifiability to mandate that information in articles be unverifiable. John254 01:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Ultimately, the wiki-process should be self-correcting. Any changes made by an editor who was misled by a vandalised policy page should be swiftly reverted by those who understand the policy. And the inherent instability of Wikipedia pages is a good lesson for new users to learn. They will learn to not automatically believe what they read on Wikipedia, to check the page history if things look a bit odd, and to give sources to stabilise their edits. Carcharoth 17:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Polarity

Let's try not to polarize this, and instead of saying that "all policy must be protected at all times" or "no policy must be protected at any time", we could judge pages individually and say that there may be some merit in semi-protecting some policy pages some of the time. >Radiant< 23:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that what WP:SEMI already says? :-) Carcharoth 23:54, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The idea underlying the "compromise solution" would have been to lower the threshold for the semi-protection of official policies, so that they could be semi-protected after fewer incidents of vandalism than would be necessary to justify the semi-protection of an article. Given the lack of constructive edits to official policy pages by new and unregistered users, we may certainly conclude that such users have an attenuated interest in editing official policy pages, in comparison to their interest in editing articles. Thus, if we are not going to semi-protect all official policies, it would be an excellent idea to lower the threshold for semi-protection of such pages. John254 00:11, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. This is somethign I'm not clear on. Suppose a policy page gets stung by a vandal(s) in such a way that rollback/block can't do the trick. Semi-protect it until they go to bed, or have to go home for dinner. But why, if one person is having a laff, should we from that moment on and forever lock the page down? Why not only until they bore? WP:SEMI is adequate in its current provisions. The fact that they are rarely invoked on policy pages is testament to the fact that it is rarely needed; and thus to the fact that a permanent protection isn't either. Splash - tk 00:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

There's no reason to allow official policies to remain in states like this for 8 minutes, where unregistered users generally aren't making constructive contributions to the pages. Vandalism by new and unregistered users of articles is simply a byproduct of retaining editability; for official policies, however, it doesn't have to be. John254 00:59, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

8 minutes? We are seeking this kind of change over 8 minutes? Splash - tk 17:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The point is that for certain policy pages, the anon edits create extra work for us for no discernible benefit. The question is not whether we can handle that work, but whether given our extensive backlogs our time might be better spent on work that does give a discernible benefit. You may argue that this is a matter of principle, but it should really be a matter of reality - is the net detriment (of anon edits to a certain page) far greater than the net benefit? If the net benefit is zero and the net detriment is visible (judged from the reality of the page history, as opposed to hypothetical situations), then this is obviously true. >Radiant< 12:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

And when the backlogs are cleared, we would remove semi-protection? Can you personally guarantee this? I feel this is another step on a slippery slope that it would be difficult to climb out of. The question might better be: should we reduce the workload (reduce the number of pages that will be vandalised), or should be increase the workforce (get more people watching pages and reverting vandalism)? Carcharoth 13:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The thing with relying on a kind of "reality/practicality" argument is that it dispenses with any kind of principles at all in favour of a purported gain that, for a given editor, exists for 72 hours. The principles matter, and it won't do to sacrifice them over a small issue such as 8 minutes of sub-optimal policy page. But if we really must set principles aside, then I do not really agree that the net detriment is "far greater". The vandalism to most policy pages is beneath the background noise, insubstantial, and highly temporary. The net benefit otoh, is not zero as pointed out with a fair list of small, but useful, contributions above. We would be throwing away a non-zero benefit for a small to zero gain. Anon edits to policy pages do not change policy if someone messes them up, and it simply won't do to institute a policy that declaredly takes the view that a certain class of people are simply unwelcome to make their edits, even if they are making them in good faith. If people don't want to educate newbies about why/not the policy is/not this/that, then leave it to others who do. Those who stand growling at the gates of the policies should expect to have their work cut out. Constant scrutiny is a good thing; accepting some background vandalism is part of the deal. -Splash - tk 17:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• Splash - I think we should just agree to disagree about our respective assessments of the situation. I do think you make a number of good points, but also some points that I do not see as such. This may well be mutual.
• Carcharot - at our current rate, the backlogs are getting longer rather than getting cleared. That's why efficiency would be useful. I fully agree that increasing the workforce would be a good idea; thus, I and some other people are trying to make WP:RFA less harsh to candidates (which appears to be working). If you know of a way to attract more editors, I'd like to hear it. >Radiant< 09:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The Real Question

...is not whether new and unregistered users are a bane to policy pages, or whether vast preponderance of them make the vast preponderance of stupid edits on Wikipedia. That is clearly the case, and to argue otherwise is to use a teapot as a submarine. The real question is whether or not we are willing to stop making semi-protected pages the exception, and start making them the rule; to stop asking why whenever we discuss abridging the principle that this is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and start asking why not. I can't and won't support this, or any amended or revised version of it. -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 23:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• If you must make a principle out of it, we have already abridged your principle a long time ago. There is something to be said for pragmatism. >Radiant< 23:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed. The statement that "this is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that most people can edit most articles. Pages in the project namespace, such as the main page, and high-risk templates, are often fully protected, and cannot be edited even by most established users. Some pages in the project namespace, such as Wikipedia:Requests for oversight, have been fully protected for purely prophylactic purposes, even though no actual vandalism or other disruption has occurred on them. Indeed, some project pages are fully protected for mere convenience -- for instance, Wikipedia:Reference desk was protected to prevent users from posting questions on the main reference desk page, instead of the appropriate sub-page. John254 00:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • What's stopping a banned person from editing freely, other than protection? Splash - tk 00:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

To respond to all of the above comments, I didn't call for the end of protection or semi-protection. What I'm saying is that pages should only be protected or semi-protected when there is a real, continuing threat to their integrity and usefulness because of vandalism or naive editing. The main page and the reference desk are fine examples of that. What I oppose is the protection of pages simply because they're "that important", because it might one day be vandalized. I think that there ought to be a very compelling community interest in protecting a page before it is restricted, and it is for that principle that I must oppose this. -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 00:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A cost-benefit analysis

I submit that the decision as to what level of protection, if any, a page should have should be based on a cost-benefit analysis which weighs the interest in editability of the page against the interest in prevention of vandalism or other edits which need to be immediately reverted. Since new and unregistered users often make constructive contributions to articles, the interest in editability of articles necessarily weighs against semi-protection, and properly results in a policy which only permits semi-protection of articles where necessary to prevent heavy vandalism, heavy WP:BLP violations, or other serious disruption. However, new and unregistered users almost never make constructive contributions to official policies, and, indeed, lack the Wikipedia experience necessary to ascertain consensus regarding matters of Wikipedia policy. Consequently, semi-protection of official policies results in essentially no loss of editability for constructive purposes, while resulting in a significant reduction in vandalism and other immediately revertible edits. For official policies, semi-protection offers substantial benefits with negligible costs. To actually increase the editability of Wikipedia official policies, we might consider the removal of full protection from Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia:Fair use, and Wikipedia:Username, which is preventing established users from editing these policies. Since these policies were fully protected due to edit wars, it would be necessary to resolve the disputes underlying them before unprotection. Perhaps we could ask the arbitration committee to authoritatively resolve these issues, just as it is now considered the status of Wikipedia:Protecting children's privacy. In any case, opposing this amendment is not going to improve the editability of official policies. Semi-protecting official policies offers great vandalism-reduction benefits, and it won't prevent anyone with a modicum of Wikipedia experience from editing them. John254 04:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• All three are now unprotected since the respective edit wars appear to be several weeks ago. I have no further comment on the amendment for now. >Radiant< 09:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
• And here, John, I think is where there is the disagreement. For some policy pages (WP:VAND) the amount of vandalism is sufficiently disruptive that it's just a lot easier to semi-protect the page. Most policy pages, however, are only vandalised once, maybe twice, every week or so, say. If it takes 10 seconds to detect and revert that vandalism, that works out to maybe two seconds per day or so. It seems a really poor tradeoff to disallow anonymous edits to save two seconds a day. Sure, you can multiply that two seconds by the number of policy pages, but you then have to divide it by the number of editors. At any rate, my suggestion to you is to look at a more pragmatic approach to this issue, propose that, and then give it some time. JYolkowski // talk 00:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Some official policy pages that are not presently semi-protected, such as Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy and Wikipedia:Blocking policy are vandalized with far greater frequency than once or twice a week. In any event, the time spent reverting vandalism, and warning and blocking vandals is not the only cost that vandalism imposes on the Wikipedia community. Vandalized pages are disruptive while they are displayed, and persistently disrupt the edit history of the affected page unless the offending revisions are deleted. For instance, in the brief period during which the semi-protection was removed from Wikipedia:Vandalism , the page was vandalized with highly uncivil edit summaries, as seen here. Eight such edit summaries are now prominently displayed in the edit history of the page for the end of August, and will remain visable to any user who views the edit history for this time period. Just as freedom and security are both compelling, and competing, interests in the physical world, we must balance the interest in editability with the interest in page integrity on Wikipedia. Where we have the opportunity to improve page integrity with essentially no diminution in editability for constructive purposes, we should take the opportunity. Thus, since almost all edits to official policies by new and unregistered users are vandalism, the case for semi-protection of policy pages is clear. John254 01:54, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
    • If the edit summaries are a big problem, let me know and I'll delete the edits. They don't need to be there forever. Anyway, one very important note: Your proposal does not have sufficient consensus to succeed as-is. In order for you to achieve consensus, you will need to find common ground with the people who oppose this proposal. This will likely mean making good-faith attempts to compromise. You haven't really demonstrated any such attempts up to this point. Until you do, this proposal will not succeed. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 03:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Instead of simply semi-protecting all official policy pages, then, suppose we consider the following alternative language for the amendment:

    In recognition of the attenuated interest in permitting new and unregistered users to edit Wikipedia official policies, such policies may be semi-protected on the basis of fewer incidents of vandalism than would be necessary to justify the semi-protection of other pages. Additionally, the semi-protection of official policies may be retained for greater periods of time than the semi-protection of other pages.

    There is a great deal of precedent for weighing the value of permitting editing by new and unregistered users differently for different pages in the semi-protection policy: In recognition of the heightened interest in permitting new and unregistered users to edit the featured article, far more incidents of vandalism would be necessary to justify the semi-protection of the featured article than to justify the semi-protection of any other article:

    Semi-protection should not be used... On the day's Featured Article, which should almost never be protected, in the interests of encouraging newcomers to be bold...

    If the Wikipedia community can have heightened interests in permitting new and unregistered users to edit certain pages, we can certainly have attenuated interests in permitting such users to edit others. John254 04:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

• • • This kind of reasoning still doesn't stack up for me, though. I do not see much agreement round here, for example, that there is an 'attenuated interest' in allowing them to edit. Certainly there is among a few editors, and not among several others. I do not therefore 'recognise' that as a particularly accurate characterisation. But let us suppose that it were accurate. I do not understand how that connects to needing sharper protection in the first place. Even once protected, I do not see why we should leave a policy protected for longer. The two assumptions don't seem to have any connection, other than that anons are bad and we hates 'em, precious. Perhaps a revealing conflation occurs in your final sentence: your phrasing moves from "the attenuated interest in permitting new and unregistered users to edit", to "they certainly can have attenuated interests in editing". Transference is easy to slip into, but not ever so applicable. Even so, let us suppose again that the transference was right. If 'they' have this attenuated interest, then in fact there is les need for protection, not more, since there are fewer bad edits. Once bad enough for protection to result (even at this purported lower threshold), a shorter duration should see the problem off, given the attenuated interest, with no need for a longer one. Whichever way this 'attenuation' argument is spun, and even when it is spun in several different ways at once, it is unpersuasive. Splash - tk 20:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I have clarified my comment to reflect that fact that I am describing the interest we have in permitting the edits, not the interest the editors take in making them. Furthermore, there is "an attenuated interest in permitting new and unregistered users to edit Wikipedia official policies" because edits by new and unregistered users to Wikipedia official policies are almost all vandalism, and new and unregistered users lack the Wikipedia experience necessary to ascertain consensus. Thus, there is less of a need to permit new and unregistered users to edit official policies (to which they make negligible constructive contributions) than to permit such users to edit articles (to which they often make substantial constructive contributions). Furthermore, since JYolkowski recently chastised me for failing to "[make] good-faith attempts to compromise", I am quite interested to read his comments on my proposed alternative language, and to read any proposed alternative language that he might write. John254 01:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm satisfied with the status quo. If you're not, the ball's in your court. JYolkowski // talk 23:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

What exactly *is* the status quo, anyway?

I came to this discussion after wanting to sprotect WP:CSD, since it has been subject to a rash of vandalism in the last week or so. I looked at the list of semi-protected pages, and didn't see any policy/guideline pages there, offhand. So I read WP:SEMI, specifically When not to use semi-protection, and there was no specific mention of not sprotecting policy pages. So, is there presently an unwritten consensus against sprotecting policy pages? Or is it just on a case-by-case basis, as with any other type of page? --MCB 21:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Case-by-case. WP:VAND is the only policy page that's currently more-or-less permanently semiprotected. Temporary semiprotection happens on various pages from time to time. JYolkowski // talk 21:52, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. That seems reasonable, although I personally favor the blanket semi-protection policy. --MCB 22:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

• Given the conversation on this page, I think it would be reasonable to add a line or two to WP:SEMI stating that policy pages may be semi'd on a case-by-case basis, and that the "standards" for doing so are somewhat different than those for articles (i.e. it's less big of a deal to semi a policy for a week than it would be to semi an article for a week). Still, if there's little or no vandalism, there's no reason to semi. (Radiant) 13:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Right now WP:SEMI says: "some articles with a history of vandalism, such as George W. Bush may be semi-protected on a continuous basis". Maybe it might be worthwhile to change "articles" to "pages" and tighten up the wording of that sentence so that people don't apply it to everything. JYolkowski // talk 14:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Which pages are semi-protected and protected?

Can anyone supply links to the categories for protected and semi-protected pages? Then the reasons for protection and semi-protection could be discussed here, along with an extension of the "trade-off" argument, which I think has potential. I'm thinking that maybe an actual bar for "vandalism rate" could be used to trigger semi-protection once the vandalism rate exceeds a certain level. Carcharoth 01:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Category:Protected and Category:Semi-protected, respectively. (Radiant) 13:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo's principles

Wow, this really needs archiving. Someone may have mentioned this but it takes less time for me to write this than to read all that.

Considering the amount of time it takes for vandalism to get reverted (I'd demonstrate, but I don't think that would go over well), this seems unnecessary. Indeed, this discussion appears to have taken more editing time than reverting does. I hate to be lame and quote Jimbo here, but as this is a fundamental principle of his:

"For example: rather than trust humans to correctly identify "regulars", we must use a simple, transparent, and open algorithm, so that people are automatically given full privileges once they have been around the community for a very short period of time. The process should be virtually invisible for newcomers, so that they do not have to do anything to start contributing to the community."

""You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred"

So editors are immediately and automatically given full priveleges. Obviously, those priveleges get revoked pretty quickly in cases of v andals, but for others, why exclude them? Besides, what better way to make a newcomer feel welcome than by letting them help make the rules (as I already have, in fact)?

Finally, unregistered (someone very wise once said that's a better way to put it than "anonymous") editors aren't always unregistered because they're still experimenting. Often it's because they don't want to edit with a name, for whatever reason. I've seen the talk pages of some unregistered editors that were chock full of praise, and no one hassles them about it. What this really comes down to is, "do unregistered/anonymous editors have the same leeway on Wikipedia as registered ones?" The answer, according to Jimbo's principles at least, is yes.

Now obviously there are some exceptions:

1. Page moving - well, that's because it takes more than a click or two to revert, and if the vandal is clever, can only be undone by sysops.
2. New articles - because those may take several steps by non-sysops to get rid of (tagging with PROD or SPEEDY), and require the watching of Special:Newpages or Special:Recentchanges to catch bad contributions (in contrast to policy pages, which can be watchlisted)
3. Deletion debates - prevents run-in voting by vanity article subject fans.

These are all things where anon editors definitely have more potential of being harmful than helpful. The first two cases above are to prevent vandalism that is more difficult to catch than is worth being possible by anyone who stumbles on the move button or a redlink. The third case, deletion debates, is because a person should show some level of commitment and judgement in Wikipedia matters to decide what is essentially a mandate to a sysop to perform an action. But edits to articles AND policy pages are usually different. They are usually a) clearly beneficial, and independent of a trust in a person's judgement, b)obvious vandalism or otherwise detrimental, and easily reverted in a few clicks by anyone or c) controversial edits decided by consensus in discussion and independent of the editor. So excluding unregistered users from editing them would only promote elitism and heirarchy, it would seem, and not really solve any problem. 66.231.130.70 01:58, 10 November 2006

• Since Jimbo Wales permits semi-protections to occur, they clearly are consistent with his principles, despite arguments to the contrary. The question here is merely exactly when semi-protection should be employed on official policy pages. Moreover, the example 66.231.130.70 offered of the supposed benefits of permitting unregistered users to edit official policy pages has, ironically, served as an example of why new and unregistered users should not edit official policy pages. On November 7, 66.231.130.70 removed a translation from Zhao Yun, claiming that the translation from the original Chinese by the contributor was original research. When Nck88 replaced the translation, and observed that

  You cite first person research as a justification for deleting the translation, however, Wikipedia:No original research makes no mention of translation, and Wikipedia:Translation states that translation from original sources is fine and encouraged as along as the original document is either GFDL or public_domain as this one is, because of its age.[51]

  66.231.130.70 responded by amending Wikipedia:No original research to support his position in the content dispute. 66.231.130.70's edit was inconsistent with Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources, which states that

  English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to foreign-language sources...

  thereby implying that English-language sources are not absolutely required, and thus that translations by Wikipedia contributors should not be characterized as impermissible original research. Furthermore, Wikipedia:Translation into English states that

  for copyright reasons, this page is not for requesting translation of sources external to any Wikipedia. The exception to this is if you can also show that the license conditions of the source page would permit its redistribution under the GFDL, e.g. if the page is public domain or itself GFDL-ed, or if permission has been obtained from the author.

  which would seem to imply the publication of the resulting translations of freely licensed works in Wikipedia articles is permissible. John254 03:27, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The larger question with respect to 66.231.130.70's edit to WP:NOR is why we shouldn't change Wikipedia:Verifiability to absolutely prohibit the use of foreign language sources. The short answer is that there is clearly no consensus for altering the policy in this manner. However, we can't expect new users to be able to ascertain this fact, as the characterization of what practices do and do not have consensus requires substantial Wikipedia experience. John254 05:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

But if they do _not_ make such edits, or by luck or something see that there is no consensus, then I fail to see the need for permanent semi-protection. Furthermore, an anonymous user could have a large amount of experience (note: the experience of the editor should not be used to judge their edit, rather the nature of the edit itself is what should judge it) and still be barred from adding stuff. PERMANENENT semi-protection I stand against. 170.215.83.83 00:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Tag as rejected

Given the tenor of the above discussion and lack of any new proposals since the close of the straw poll (1 in favour|2 opposed|4 voting is evil) I submit that this page should be tagged as rejected since there is no consensus to adopt the primary suggestion as policy. Interested parties can retire to the main Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy page to discuss what wording if any to add to the policy regarding policy pages. Eluchil404 08:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Consider this statement: "This poll has been closed because there were more people voting against the poll than voting on the proposal." - Followed up by a suggestion to continue to discuss on this talk page in order to attempt to determine consensus. Which is, what I presume, we should do : ) - jc37 11:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

(citing from earlier on this page, how about this):

• Given the conversation on this page, I think it would be reasonable to add a line or two to WP:SEMI stating that policy pages may be semi'd on a case-by-case basis, and that the "standards" for doing so are somewhat different than those for articles (i.e. it's less big of a deal to semi a policy for a week than it would be to semi an article for a week). Still, if there's little or no vandalism, there's no reason to semi. (Radiant) 13:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Right now WP:SEMI says: "some articles with a history of vandalism, such as George W. Bush may be semi-protected on a continuous basis". Maybe it might be worthwhile to change "articles" to "pages" and tighten up the wording of that sentence so that people don't apply it to everything. JYolkowski // talk 14:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Tagged as rejected. - 152.91.9.144 22:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This proposal really should not be rejected by an edit from an IP. One could get entirely the wrong impression. In any event, this amendment has substantial support, and may yet gain consensus for enactment. John254 00:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Please do re-think that comment. There does not appear, either on this page or on the now-defunct straw poll, to be "substantial support." - 152.91.9.144 04:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

What the hell? There was a poll about this? I don't think it's rational to use something only a handful of people knew about as a sign of rejection. I'd hate to think that I have to constantly watch every discussion I've ever been just so I can defend my support for something. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I never argued that the poll results showed that the policy was rejected. Instead, I relied upon the discussion on this page which I feel clearly shows that there is no consensus to change policy at this time. The reference to the poll was simply that it was closed explicitly in favour of coming here for more discussion but none had been forthcoming, so I suspected that people had little more to say on the matter. New arguments (or better actual datapoints) are of course welcome, but in my opinion nothing is gained by rehearsing the same arguments with a slightly changing cast of characters. It has been widely publicised and users have weighed in on both sides. There is (clearly in my view) no consensus in favour of the primary proposal. It may be possible to find consensus on a less drasitic rewording of the policy but I don't think that this page is the best place to do that. Eluchil404 07:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• Eluchil is correct. It is obvious (from this talk page, not the poll) that John's original proposal, to permanently semi-protect all policy pages, does not have consensual support and is thus rejected. However, there may be support for a weaker version as a compromise. (Radiant) 16:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Who writes Wikipedia?

I know this proposal is about policy pages, so the question should really be "Who writes Wikipedia policy pages?", but I thought this article (which some of you may have already read), might be of interest, particularly given the discussion about IP editing: Who writes Wikipedia?. Though actually, another article from the same source might be of even more interest and relevance to this proposal: Who runs Wikipedia?. Carcharoth 02:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

That new and unregistered users write much of Wikipedia's encyclopedic content does not imply that such users should directly edit official policy pages. Almost all of the content in Wikipedia's official policy pages was written by established users, who had sufficient Wikipedia experience to ascertain consensus. John254 04:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think that a single user should ever write policy (except from the Foundation, etc). To say that Anons write policy is not accurate at all. -- Ned Scott 05:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's lucky I didn't say that then! ie. I agree with your last sentence. But this is an example of how easy it is to "be sure" that you know who writes what, and to get it wrong. Carcharoth 09:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• There's a difference here: everybody writes (or at least, can write) policy pages, but only established users write actual policy, since edits by anons or novice users to policy pages have a strong likelihood to be reverted since they're either ill-advised, or vandalism. The argument here is one of convenience (semi-protection means we need to do less reverting) versus the wiki principle (that we do not protect pages if we can avoid it). (Radiant) 16:49, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

  And there's always edits that IPs can make that are positive to a policy page that aren't necessarily creating policy. I've already shown a bunch of links above from only a few policy pages of positive IP edits. The truth is there _are_ positive contributions from IPs, and we cannot shut those people out from policy pages. IPs are not evil (with the exception of AOL of course :) ) Cowman109^Talk 19:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Plate for Messiah

File:Plate by n yfe.jpg

Let me see if I can shine a little light on this from the side. You say the new editor is more likely to do damage than good to a policy page. I say maybe but a) we can fix it; b) no real harm is done meanwhile; c) it's only a policy page, less important than any article; and d) most of all, we leave the door open for the newest community member to participate directly in editing community policy because that's who we are.

Let me tell a Passover story from my youth. I was invited to a Seder, a Passover dinner, at which much good food was served and some interesting stories told about the Exodus. There was quite a gathering there, all ages. Yet despite the crowded table, there was an empty chair and place setting -- plate, glass, flatware, napkin, even a placemat. Who were we waiting for? Why did we start eating without him?

"Ah, that's a plate for Messiah!" Non-theologians may need to recall that the chief difference between Christians and Jews is that the former are waiting for the Second Coming; the latter for the First. I was younger then and questioned the sense of it. There's Hannah and Ruth sitting right on each other's laps; Uncle Milty's elbow is in the gefilte fish. Maybe Messiah comes next year; this year, it's a crowded table, no offense, glad you asked me. But --?

The Old Bull at the head of the table looked me in the eye. "Yes, but what if He should come right this minute? What if He should open the front door now and walk in? He shouldn't have a seat? He shouldn't eat with us, drink with us to celebrate our release from bondage? Maybe He doesn't want to come today, maybe He comes today, He's tired from the long trip, He just wants to lie down, take a little nap. But if Messiah comes today, to this house, and if He wants to share our table, there's His plate. That's who we are."

John Reid ° 23:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Policy pages are already watched like a hawk, so any sort of edit the anon makes will quite rapidly be seen. What if the edit is something very simple, like correcting a small typo? Barring that would be horribly unreasonable. 170.215.83.83 00:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Other unwikilike activities

Let me jump in before anyone else does, and ask you what the 'plate' analogy equivalents are of List of banned users and List of indefinitely protected pages? Carcharoth 01:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

What? You want me to stretch a little story into some monstrous comparison to... never mind.

It's expedient to permaban some user accounts because they demonstrate nil potential for good edits. It's probably a) unnecessary and b) unwikilike.

I don't believe that any vandal is going to go off with !!!!!!!!!!!!! (talk · contribs), get banned for a year, then come back and say, "Oh wow, they unblocked that account, I'll just go an another spree." Instead, we permaban and he comes back the same day with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (talk · contribs), !!!!!!!!! (talk · contribs), !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (talk · contribs), and so on. Even a year ban is probably foolish for such activity; I'd hazard that 3 months is the outside limit of how long a common vandal can possibly even bother to hang onto the password for a vandal account. Meanwhile, he's created a dozen more.

On the other hand, users who manage to get permabanned after a period of real editing -- whatever that may be -- do indeed have the potential to reform. It's unlikely but people do change. Any user coming off a year ban who doesn't show improvement can certainly go down for another year.

The idea of banning users permanently is not the wiki way. It moves us to a static worldview, rather than one that is forever open to improvement. Temporary bans are less objectionable -- but I still maintain, not nearly as effective as some might wish or hope.

Most indefinitely protected pages are so because of obvious considerations. Main Page is the front door; we leave the door open to the entire project but if we allow the door itself to be edited freely, the door will not always appear open. Thus the general case trumps the special. License and copyright-related pages can't ever be edited, by anyone, for any reason except the most minor. See, if I upload Foo.png today with {{GDFL}}, then no matter the legal imperfections of that template, it can never be edited to say anything else. To do so would be to cloud the original license. It might be best to substitute all license tags, then they'd be open to edit. But for a slew of reasons, that's unwise, too. Hey, we can always create new licenses. But the old ones must stay protected forever.

Category:Protected templates has grown to what I think of as unacceptable limits. We do this not because it's socially necessary; templates can be reverted like any other page. We do this from technical limitations. Templates are massive edit amplifiers; it's not unusual for a template to be transcluded thousands of times and some, tens of thousands. You make any edit to a really high-use template -- good or bad -- and the entire server coughs, sometimes chokes. The revert can be done as easily as the edit -- and the entire server stumbles again. In some cases, caching issues mean rendered pages may lag for days. In some cases, the costs are excessive when balanced against possible benefits. In other cases, I argue that it's just silly to protect. I don't think this issue has gotten right out of hand but it's good to keep an eye on it. If you see a template that doesn't need protection, protest.

The entire MediaWiki namespace is protected; this contains elements of the user interface. I've edited these pages (on another MediaWiki install) and it's no fun. Devs assumed nobody would ever really want to edit them at all; they took a good programming approach and made it possible, but it's still obscure or misleading in some cases. That's why so many unrelated MW installs call themselves "The Free Encyclopedia". Most editors don't even see the subtitle; I see it every day on Cologne Blue skin. Obviously, it's just too crazy to permit open editing here.

This leaves the whole issue of OFFICE protection, which is definitely unwikilike. In some cases it's a necessary evil; trouble is, we don't know if it is in any given case or simply an overreaction. We probably need to face up to the practical reality that some pages are going to be protected in m:The Wrong Version not because they were libelous but because their subjects are just way too powerful and threatening for us to deal with. In order to properly source negative claims, we need to collaborate and if we even discuss the issue forthrightly on talk, we open the door to the little weevils. Fortunately, our community is well aware of the risks of excess here and Danny is aware of us.

So, to sum up, both of your concerns are real -- but I don't think either have grown way outside acceptable limits yet. Keep an eye on these issues; it's only through community oversight that we keep these unwikilike actions to a minimum.

The evil of the current proposal is that it intends to slam the door across the board to all policy. We may as well hand out little serf hats at the door, give new editors links to sandbox and leave them there until they demonstrate they can edit wisely. If any of them do anything really great, we can fish it out of sandbox and put it in ourselves. Ahhh, isn't that nice! No more kids underfoot; we can turn up the teevee and slide in the porno from Germany. John Reid ° 10:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to add a little here, banning just because an account is used sparingly with few significant edits (is that what you were talking about by the "expedient banning"?) would prevent the person (I think banning bans the IP too, in any case WP:SOCK would seem to (unfairly) prohibit use of sock puppets to make legit contribs) from making any good edits, and any good edits, no matter how small, are still a benefit to Wikipedia!!! This is a _free_ encyclopedia and _everyone's_ positive contributions should be respected. 170.215.83.83 00:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Mgm's view

I don't see why anons should be allowed to edit policy pages to start with. People shouldn't even touch them with a ten-foot pole until they know why the policy exists and what effects their edits would have. Since vandalism to policy pages can have very nasty consequences, I don't see why we should make policing them hard. Just semi-protect the lot. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. -- Ned Scott 09:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Rejected Redux

Since no consensus exists to implement this policy proposal and the debate is moribund, the policy is rejected by the community. Ned Scott has reverted my marking of the page with the rejected tag so I invite further discussion as to what tagging {{proposed}}, {{historical}}, {{rejected}} is appropriate. Eluchil404 11:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• It is obvious that there is no consensual support for the initial proposal, and that debate has died down. Note that per WP:POL, a proposal with no consensus for or against is still rejected, since consensual support is required for a proposal to pass. Thus, either {{rejected}} or {{historical}} would be appropriate. Note that it may be a good idea for proponents of this proposal to make a new, different proposal that addresses some of the objections herein, and advertise that anew. (Radiant) 12:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree - at this rate, it's obvious this proposal has no chance of getting accepted. The variations of the original proposal should be moved to a new page, perhaps, and this one labeled as rejected, as it's clear that not all policy pages will be protected. Cowman109^Talk 20:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Some possible ideas for which agreement might be possible have been mentioned, and if anyone wants to revive these, they can do so at Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy. Meanwhile, this discussion has stalled and should be marked as inactive. JYolkowski // talk 23:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Now flagged as historical. I would not object to 'rejected' either but I don't see it making much of a difference. (Radiant) 09:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Historical is probably better than Rejected because part of the general concept, namely having relaxed limitations for semi-protecting policy pages, had much more agreement and was not completely "rejected". —Centrx→talk • 06:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Agreed. JYolkowski // talk 23:23, 3 December 2006 (UTC)