On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)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.
1. 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.