[WikiEN-l] On protecting articles that are temporarily undeleted for the purpose of discussion

[Tony Sidaway]

Normally we're very parsimonious about protection. This comes from the
fact that Wikipedia's main strength is that articles can be edited,
and historically we have found this beneficial. I'm concerned about
what I see as officious protection of articles that have been
temporarily undeleted and are being actively edited, in good faith,
during the undeletion discussion. For instance, the article Patrick
Alexander (cartoonist), about a published cartoonist, was edited by
User:DollyD on 30 January after being undeleted during a DRV debate.
User:Splash than protected this article and covered it with a
template. DollyD's edits had added an external link and two paragraphs
about the cartoonist's history; it seems counter-productive to try to
prevent such productive edits, which might well have impacted people's
decisions on whether this article should have been deleted in the
first place.

Now I don't doubt that Splash believed that he was in some way
preventing some kind of harm being done to the article when he
protected it, but I cannot understand what possible form that harm
might have taken. Why was this done? Why are we preventing this wiki
from operating on articles during an undeletion discussion in which a
good faith undeletion request has been acted on for the purpose of
that discussion and an editor is actively improving it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#On_protecting_articles_that_are_temporarily_undeleted_for_the_purpose_of_discussion