On 19/04/06, Ben Lowe ben.lowe@gmail.com wrote:
Is this really a surprise? I remember always hearing the best way to make a book popular is to get it banned; why should this be any different on Wikipedia? For people looking for controversy and scandal on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the two or three articles that *no one -- NO ONE -- can edit for fear of eternal exile *are way more interesting than the more-than-a-million other articles. I suspect more Wikipedians (and slashdotters) know about [[Brian Peppers]] than [[Jordanhill railway station]]. Is OFFICE necessary? Sure, probably. Wikipedia definitely needs to be responsible, both in terms of its own liability. But if Danny wants to use WP:OFFICE without controversy, he needs it to be normalized, not hidden. People need to simply get used to it. The only way that WP:OFFICE is going to become non-controversial is if it's openly used.
Here's another solution. Make it possible for Danny to silently protect a page without it being unprotectable. Communicate a policy to all admins that if an admin discovers that a page has been protected in such a way, that he should keep it to himself, or risk desysopping.
The ordinary user will simply see a protected page. Admins, unless they actually try and unprotect it, will be none the wiser. And if they do try, perhaps a message should alert them to keep it confidential.
But that's just breeding conspiracy theories, I know.
Steve