Tony Sidaway wrote:
Deathphoenix said:
You'd probably need to have a small team of volunteers willing to act as moderators for each article (of course, people would be moderating much more than a single "protected article"). The current {{protected}} system is good for protecting the article so that only admins can edit it, so if the moderators were admins, that would work.
Create content moderators and you create a point of weakness. The best safeguard of content is verifiability. The existing dispute resolution process can deal with people who repeatedly make unverifiable edits.
I would think that part of being in a team of moderators would be to edit according to consensus (per the talk page) and by verifying the data. The existing dispute resolution is great for handling disputes, don't get me wrong. I've been looking at the process and have been very impressed. However, if a large scale, rapid attack *were* to become a reality, the dispute resolution process might be too slow. Now, I definitely like Jimbo's Calvinball, but if the worst were to happen, and even a small fraction of a group like the <s>Stormtroopers</s> Stormfront were able to stop dragging their knuckles long enough to organise a long enough attack, even our benevolent dictator might be overworked.
Having teams of trusted moderators (not necessarily the same team for each article) to overlook certain "risky" articles might be a good compromise. Part of being in a team of trusted moderators is the knowledge that the best safeguard of content is verifiability. The team can have disagreements, but I think it would be better to argue on the talk page than to get into edit/revert war.
Just an idea for if the worst comes to pass.
Cheers,
DP