[WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection policy

[The Cunctator]

On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> Semi-protection seems to be a great success in many cases.  I think that
> it should be extended, but carefully, in a couple of key ways.
>
> 1.  It seems that some very high profile articles like [[George W.
> Bush]] are destined to be semi-protected all the time or nearly all the
> time.  I support continued occassional experimention by anyone who wants
> to take the responsibility of guarding it, but it seems likely to me
> that we will keep such articles semi-protected almost continuously.
>
> If that is true, then the template at the time is misleading and scary
> and distracting to readers.  I propose that we eliminate the requirement
> that semi-protected articles have to announce themselves as such to the
> general public.  They can be categorized as necessary, of course, so
> that editors who take an interest in making sure things are not
> excessively semi-protected can do so, but there seems to me to be little
> benefit in announcing it to the entire world in such a confusing fashion.


If the template is distracting, it should be replaced by a less distracting
template, not removed entirely.

Nicholas Carr's criticism, while hyperbolic, is more right than wrong.
Hiding information from users is not good.