On 11/08/14 16:54, Tyler Romeo wrote:
There are many legitimate cases (e.g., office actions and copyright-related issues) where I could see the superprotect level coming in handy. There are some cases where the WMF simply cannot afford (usually b/c of legal reasons) to trust the community, even if they're 99.9% sure nothing will happen. Sometimes all it takes is one rogue admin to trigger a lawsuit.
With that said, it's obviously a political matter as to what the proper uses of this new protection level are, but I do think the existence of the level itself is appropriate.
But copyright- and performance-related issues don't need superprotection. As administrators, we need to understand the importance of these things (or just avoid them). Should we try to go against such, that would be a more appropriate time for a blocking and/or deopping, not page protection.
Similarly, if the WMF cannot afford to trust the community, that's not a technical problem. That's a problem with a lack of understanding of what it means to run a wiki (nevermind several hundred), because if it can be edited, 'something' can and will happen. Lawsuits do happen. Perfomance hits due to bad gadgets etc do happen. They are resolved as they come up.
I just don't see how such a right could ever be useful in the hands of staff, especially in light of the trouble it causes.
That being said, it's not that superprotection couldn't be useful elsewhere, indeed. Consider stewards - say there is a dispute between a bunch of admins and it needs sorting out, so protecting the page to prevent further damage while doing the actual sorting could simplify things a bit. Even then, though, it's hardly necessary, since you can also just chuck the specific folks out the window as they show up, but options can be nice, perhaps.
-I