Out of curiosity, was it ever used again after that initial action? On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 6:13 PM Laurentius <laurentius.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:36 PM, John Lewis <johnflewis93(a)gmail.com> wrote: In my private opinion the technical part of Superprotect has a potential to be useful, it is the social background (who approves its use, how it can be used, etc.) that matters and that is the bone of contention (and justified concerns). I have a hope that we will have it resolved before the next anniversary or earlier :) best, dariusz "pundit"

My preference would be to have stewards applying Superprotect rather than WMF. There are cases where Superprotect makes sense, but given WMF's history with it, I would prefer that it become a community tool. Pine On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 12:46 PM, Magnus Manske &lt;magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com > So maybe it could stay, as a "technical office action" mechanism, if future > usage is clearly defined and accepted by "the community" (TM)? > > Not advocating either way here... > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:13 PM Dariusz Jemielniak &lt;darekj(a)alk.edu.pl&gt; > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:36 PM, John Lewis &lt;johnflewis93(a)gmail.com&gt; > > > > > > > > > Yes. It was used a few months ago to prevent editing the Germany item > on > > > Wikidata due to a very serious breaking issue. Also on several pages > > > following legal disputes. > > > > > > Superprotect in my opinion if used correctly is an essential tool which > > can > > > prevent legal and technical issues that can in theory cause wide > > > disruption. > > > > > > > > In my private opinion the technical part of Superprotect has a potential > to > > be useful, it is the social background (who approves its use, how it can > be > > used, etc.) that matters and that is the bone of contention (and > justified > > concerns). I have a hope that we will have it resolved before the next > > anniversary or earlier :) > > > > best, > > > > dariusz "pundit" > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > < > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.w… > > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> >

Can you clarify what you mean? If there are legal reasons for superprotecting a page, I think that the stewards could handle that. Pine On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On 12 August 2015 at 19:46, Gerard Meijssen <> wrote: -- ​ The only difference I can understand is tha​t the stewards/admins and their knowledge, skills and decision-taking power have been tested or verified​ by the community. We can not say the same thing for *all* WMF employees.

Using it for legal disputes is poor form. We had legal disputes before, and managed them with "office actions". If you don't trust the admins not to purposefully post libel or copyvios, then super-protecting a page or two won't help. Moreover it implies that the Foundation can or will take action in these matters to override the community, which opens them up to charges of discrimination, favouritism, nepotism, cowardice, corruption or at least stupidity. On 11/08/2015 19:36, John Lewis wrote:

There are situations where not even the administrators of a particular community should be allowed to edit a page. A good example would be the pages that describe the copyright and licensing of Wikimedia products. Individual communities cannot change that (it applies globally), and individual administrators should not modify it. If there is a problem with translation, that needs to be brought to the attention of the WMF, because there may be a similar problem with translation elsewhere. There are also some examples currently being discussed on the Wikitech-L list that may require significantly elevated levels of protection above 'all administrators on Project ABC', although they may call for another level of protection that can be customizable to allowing a much smaller group or specific individuals to be the only editors. Risker/Anne On 11 August 2015 at 16:43, Romaine Wiki &lt;romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Most of the time, admins behave as we would hope. Occasionally they don't, and on English Wikipedia when that happens often enough or seriously enough in the opinion of Arbcom, the offending admins are desysopped. I think that for legally sensitive pages, we'd be concerned about the possibility of having wheel-warring administrators or hijacked admin accounts. The latter can happen to anyone. Restricting certain pages to being edited only by Stewards via superprotect would help to protect against the former. Generally speaking I agree that standard "full protection" is sufficient, and superprotect should only be invoked in rare cases. I would trust Stewards to implement Superprotect at the request of the community, or upon hearing good cause for doing so from WMF. Pine On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:20 PM, Ricordisamoa &lt;ricordisamoa(a)openmailbox.org&gt; wrote:

What I would hope for is guidance from the WMF Board that specifically outlines when WMF invocation of superprotect is and isn't appropriate [1], and which I believe is already being discussed internally by the Board. With that done, my hope is that WMF will take a supportive approach to the community, instead of a combative approach. With those changes made, I think that the likelihood of another conflict between the community and WMF over a superprotect-like issue would be low. Appropriate uses for Superprotect upon community or WMF request could include (1) legally sensitive documents like the TOS, (2) technically sensitive pages that would otherwise be exposed to administrators who can edit through full protection and should only be edited with consensus, or because of urgent security or stability considerations, (3) pages which are currently the subject of wheel-warring among local administrators, and (4) pages which are currently the subject of a legal dispute that requires a level of protection greater than standard full protection. Pine [1] WMF's first use of Superprotect having been a serious misjudgement for which I would like to hear them more fully recant and apologize, and which I would like to see categorized as an inappropriate use of superprotect in the upcoming guidance from the Board. On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Risker &lt;risker.wp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

I agree with the first statement that the level should be removed. It has a trail of bad usage it is connected with. As to whether to renew it under some policy, I would trust such tool only in hands of stewards, not WMF. WMF which consists of considerable part of staffers who ain't even wikimedia project editors is very likely to do something like enforcing its new unwanted by community development by such means again. As to the problem of possible hijacking of sysop or even steward accs - well WMF guys' accs might be hijacked just as well so that's hardly an argument. I completely disagree with idea about precautionary protection of legal related policies. The mechanism proposed about fixing translations via request to WMF is probably the worst idea I have heard in a while. It both creates great complication to work (I'd rather not fix something than waste several days on that) and useless: e.g. I know only one person in WMF who knows my native Ukrainian so that she can review whether the fix is really needed (Maryana from Mobile fronted team). Well perhaps there were some changes in staff and now there are several more. But Ukrainian is quite a big language. We have wikis in 280+ languages. There definitely are languages which no one of the staff knows. The best thing WMF could you in this case by the mechanism proposed is to waste donors' money on hiring some translator to that rare language so that he takes a look. The translator would be non-wikimedian and have no idea what the text is about. We had a good bad example of what professional translations are like during this year's board elections. Besides fixing (or creating) translations there is a vast variety of other things editors might edit on these pages. Mark-up, design, categories, some explanations on how to apply the rule e.g. which templates are to be used for indicating violations and so on. On enwiki indeed such pages are usually quite developed to the point where all procedures about the rules are there for years. It is not so in smaller wikis so limiting editing of the pages there would be limiting development of the wikis. There were examples of dealing with legal issues without superprotected. Like Wikivoyage without much pain changed its logo. If there were a superprotect back then and it would had been applied I see it resulting in nothing but lots of hatred. Indeed sysops might start a wheelwar. There has been a mechanism of stopping it for ages. A simple desysop. If there is an issue where a whole community opposed WMF then perhaps the problem is not in the community. Even if it actually is I believe stews could find a way to settle it even without such harsh means. --Base On 12.08.2015 2:06, Nathan wrote:

We all know for what the tool was initially created. I am not sure if it is ethically okay to keep status quo. Maybe it is time to move on and remove the tool or to start a RFC to see if the community want the tool? :-) Not advocating - just some thoughts and either way here... :) Regards, Steinsplitter No comment about Gerard Meijssen's <grin> comment. It is explaining itself perfectly.

On 13 August 2015 at 06:51, Lucas Teles <> wrote: ​In my personal opinion, answer to ​all your question is "No". Superprotect is a part of OA (Office Action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_actions) (No, I am not endorsing the use of SuperProtect), I think WMF has kept it as a tool of OA (OfficeAction) to handle some of the most complicated situation which often lead to problematic legal issues.

No community would want to change documents issued by the WMF, if it did, the stewards would be crazy to do so. This is reaching. Why? On 11/08/2015 22:34, Risker wrote:

Who said the problem was on enwiki? On 11 August 2015 at 17:58, Robert Rohde &lt;rarohde(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On 11 August 2015 at 18:05, Robert Rohde &lt;rarohde(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The problem is most likely to occur on small wikis with comparatively few active administrators. That doesn't mean it won't happen on a large wiki, or that it hasn't. Just because something doesn't happen on English Wikipedia (whether good or bad) doesn't mean that it's unimportant or irrelevant, or that it couldn't eventually happen on enwiki. There's a certain irony, after all the years of (sometimes quite justified) concerns that this list is too enwiki-centric, that when someone makes a point that doesn't necessarily apply to enwiki....well, I have to admit I found it humorous. Risker/Anne

Laurentius wrote: I agree. It's a bedrock principle of MediaWiki and Wikimedia that local administrators are trusted users. "Superprotection" was hastily implemented on a spurious premise and it has no legitimate use-cases. It was never appropriate to deploy to Wikimedia wikis and it should be removed. And nobody should be in the business of trying to retroactively justify this misfeature's existence, in my opinion. MZMcBride

Is there actually any way that WMF could be prevented from access to the tool if and when they decide they need it? If not, this discussion seems a bit pointless. Do they not have physical access to the hardware and complete access to the software? If they decide they need to use it they will do so. They may do so for good or bad reasons, depending on who is doing the reasoning, and we all have the option of explaining after the fact why it should have been done differently. The person or group who authorises the action takes the responsibility. Cheers, Peter -----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W Sent: Thursday, 13 August 2015 10:26 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect's first birthday A few legitimate use cases could be: *Superprotection by stewards of legally or technically sensitive pages, to prevent damage caused by a hijacked admin account. The theory here is that admin accounts are more numerous than steward accounts, so the liklihood of a successful admin account hijack may be higher. Superprotection would proactively limit possible damage. Admins doing routine maintenance work, or taking actions with community consent, could simply make a request for a temporary lift of superprotect by a steward or ask a steward to make an edit themselves. *Upon community request, superprotection of pages by a steward where those pages are the subject of wheel-warring among local admins. *Superprotection of a page by a steward for legal reasons at the request of WMF Legal, for example if a page is the subject of a legal dispute and normal full protection is inadequate for some compelling reason. None of this is an endorsement of WMF's first use of superprotect. I would prefer that if superprotect continues to exist as a tool, that it be in the hands of the stewards and not WMF directly. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2015.0.6086 / Virus Database: 4392/10427 - Release Date: 08/13/15

The general trend in the past few months has been for WMF to be more respectful and supportive of the community, and I hope that this trend continues (for example, by empowering the grantmaking committees with more discretion and leadership responsibilities, and by placing more emphasis on supporting small affiliates that show growth potential). The WMF Board could legislate that no one on the WMF staff may invoke superprotect directly, and all superprotect-related actions must be reviewed and applied by a steward. (I am assuming that stewards will agree to implement superprotect actions that WMF is required to undertake for legal reasons). I do think that such a policy would improve WMF's relationship with the community. Pine On Aug 13, 2015 2:19 AM, "Robert Rohde" &lt;rarohde(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Hi, No, that's not what I'm suggesting. I needed to re-read my comments before I realized that they could be read the way that you seemed to have done, and I apologize if I was unclear. If an admin account becomes compromised, the current procedures for locking that account would apply. A use of superprotect could be to protect certain pages or settings against actions stemming from the hypothetical but possible scenario that an admin account is compromised. I hope that I've made my position clear now. I think that I've spoken my share in this thread, so my intent is to be quiet for the moment so that others can have airtime. If you have additional questions for me about this thread, please contact me off list. Thanks, Pine On Aug 13, 2015 6:54 AM, "MZMcBride" &lt;z(a)mzmcbride.com&gt; wrote:

Thanks for the (single) use case: Trouble is it just pushes the question further down the road. "inadequate for some compelling reason " On 13/08/2015 09:25, Pine W wrote: