On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Semi-protection seems to be a great success in many cases. I think that it should be extended, but carefully, in a couple of key ways.
- It seems that some very high profile articles like [[George W.
Bush]] are destined to be semi-protected all the time or nearly all the time. I support continued occassional experimention by anyone who wants to take the responsibility of guarding it, but it seems likely to me that we will keep such articles semi-protected almost continuously.
If that is true, then the template at the time is misleading and scary and distracting to readers. I propose that we eliminate the requirement that semi-protected articles have to announce themselves as such to the general public. They can be categorized as necessary, of course, so that editors who take an interest in making sure things are not excessively semi-protected can do so, but there seems to me to be little benefit in announcing it to the entire world in such a confusing fashion.
If the template is distracting, it should be replaced by a less distracting template, not removed entirely.
Nicholas Carr's criticism, while hyperbolic, is more right than wrong. Hiding information from users is not good.