[WikiEN-l] Page protection vs. semi-protection

[The Cunctator]

On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Just allowing people to report errors isn't a problem.  The problems
> > > are acting on those reports without first verifying the true facts,
> > > and removing entire articles simply because some of the facts in that
> > > article are inaccurate.  Then of course there's the problem of
> > > protecting articles, though that one's probably arguable (now that
> > > semi-protection exists I can't personally think of a scenario where
> > > full protection is *ever* a good idea).
> > >
> > The argument is that since any form of protection is an unwanted
> > state, it's in certain senses better when it bothers more people -- it
> > motivates people to fix the underlying problems.
> [....]
> > If this doesn't make sense I can try to do a better job of explaining.
>
> No, that does make sense.  Though the way I see it, especially since
> the advent of the three revert rule, page protection only makes sense
> when dealing with sockpuppets, and semi-protection is a good
> protection against that which still allows established editors.
>
> And if page protection is only used in that way - in the face of a
> distributed sockpuppet attack, I really don't see how semi-protection
> hinders solving the underlying problems.
>
> But I suppose this presumes that page protection is only used in this
> limited sense, which doesn't reflect how it is actually used in
> practice.
>
> To my mind, a fully protected page is the absolute worst state a page
> can be in.  A vandalized but editable page is even better, in my
> opinion.
>
Do you see how a semi-protected page could be worse than a fully protected page?

Or, rather, having significant numbers of semi-protected pages could
be worse than significant numbers of fully protected pages?

The argument hinges upon the assumptions such as that it's important
to Wikipedia to a) encourage 1st-time editing or b) creating different
classes of users is a long-term bad thing.