On 3/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
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?
Or, rather, having significant numbers of semi-protected pages could be worse than significant numbers of fully protected pages?
Assuming all other things are equal, I think I'd say no (but as Geni reminded me, I'm only thinking about articles here).
Now, granted, all other things might not be equal. Maybe having semi-protection encourages more and/or longer lasting protections.
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.
As for a), whether a page is protected or semi-protected, a 1st time editor can't touch it.
As for b), maybe I'm arguing semantics here, but "classes of users" seems to me to imply that these classes are long lasting. Telling people they have to wait 4 days before they can edit a small fraction of the most controversial articles, that doesn't really create classes.
I dunno, I guess my base assumption is that any protection of articles should be very short-lived and only affect a small percentage of articles at any time. Maybe I'm too much of a dreamer right there :).
Anthony