[WikiEN-l] Re: semi-permanent protection of (very) contentious
dpbsmith at verizon.net
dpbsmith at verizon.net
Tue Jun 8 17:54:51 UTC 2004
> From: Magnus Link <ruhrjung at yahoo.de>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-permanent protection of (very) contentious
> articles
>
> Is it maybe soon time to make a little modification to
> Wikipedia's policy on protection, to allow
> contentious articles to be long-term protected - in
> order to stimulate the use of talk pages instead of
> edit wars?
If we start getting a lot of pages that are protected for this reason, I am
afraid we will see creative bad behavior that it intended to bypass this
protection. In order not to stimulate such behavior I will not give examples
of some possibilities that occur to me.
Just as we make reversions easier for sysops, but not impossible for regular
users... and just as some shareware does not require payment, but has an
annoying countdown timer and delay before the program starts if you have not
paid... I suggest we ask the developers for a way to "soft-protect" pages.
A "soft-protected" page could be edited by anyone, but would require some
annoying, time-consuming and (wishful thinking) thought-provoking steps to be
performed first.
For example, if you get to a soft-protected page by any usual route and click
"edit this page," it might take you to a screen that explains that the
subject is contentious. The only option to proceed takes you, not to the
article's Edit box, but to the article's Talk page. From the Talk page there
would be the usual link to the article, but it would carry some special tag
in the URL such that clicking on the article's Edit links _when reached via
this route_ would allow you to edit as usual.
Or something like that.
"Slow down, fella, let's talk this over," instead of "admission to authorized
personnel only."
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