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

[jayjg]

On 3/13/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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?


Not particularly.

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


Let's try to quantify the problem here.  There are currently over a million
articles on Wikipedia.  Of them 14 (or 0.0014%) are currently permanently
protected, and 43 (or 0.0043%) are currently semi-protected.  Of the
semi-protected articles only two appear to be, for want of a better term,
"permanently semi-protected", George W. Bush and Jew; in the case of those
articles, the contributions by IP editors tend to consist almost exclusively
of vandalism, which usually starts up minutes after unprotection.  I can't
see how we're facing any sort of crisis at this point.

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.
>

Given that 99.98% of Wikipedia articles are editable by first time editors,
I'm not seeing the relevance.  As for "different classes of users", we've
always had them, and I can't imagine how we wouldn't have them going
forward.  There are admins, bureaucrats, stewards, developers, etc.  As
well, because of page move vandalism, IP and new accounts have fewer
abilities than established accounts.

Wikipedia is a project which is attempting to create a great on-line
encyclopedia.  That is the goal.  Creating an on-line democracy, or
libertarian anarchy, is not the goal.

Jay.