Timwi wrote:
Anthere wrote:
This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.
Can't speak for Fr, but at least on En, sysops are allowed -- almost even encouraged -- to make minor edits to protected articles that are likely uncontroversial. Spelling corrections are a very obvious form of this, but edits can easily go a lot further. This isn't much of a problem on En because the community of sysops is vastly multi-cultural and of such varying opinions that even slightly significant edits are likely to spark controversy and are therefore avoided.
On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they become editors".
Timwi
Makes sense...
Could it be possible that certain pages are automatically unprotected after a certain time, while others (such as main page or site notice...) remain protected ? In short, two different types of protection ?
Ant