[WikiEN-l] How wikipedia could link into File Protection.

Jonathan Hall sinewave at silentflame.com
Wed Jul 22 14:00:10 UTC 2009


OK - so I think a fair summary of this proposal (correct me if I'm wrong) is:
We should create a group of experienced BLP editors (or similar) to
edit a BLP that has been the subject of an edit war. The page would be
protected from editing by other (non-sysop) users. This would form an
alternative to or replacement for page protection, and would hopefully
lead to more editing than page protection.
We should also allow users to create draft articles in their userspace
that are (by default) protected from editing by other non-sysops.

I share FT2's concerns about the need to avoid creating a BLP cabal
with the first point, and I also have concerns about the second point
- it could lead to POV forks and encourage people to hide an imperfect
article in their userspace rather than it being more visible and
publically editable, which will lead to faster improvement. It could
also lead to greater feelings of article ownership - if you grew an
article to (say) A-class in your userspace before moving it to article
space you'll probably have greater feelings of ownership than if it
was in publically editablearticlespace from the start.

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 04:05, Jay
Litwyn<brewhaha at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
> Subject-Was: Re: A new solution for the BLP dilemma
>
> "Nothing new is under the sun", are among the most humbling of a preacher's words. If you hav ever right-clicked on a file that you uploaded to your website (and you probably hav one that you are not using), then clicked on "properties", you would be greeted with this menu of flags, all within your control:
>          R  W  P
>          e  r  e
>          a  i  r
>          d  t  m
>             e  i
>                t
> Owner:    X  X  O
> Group:    O  O  O
> Everyone: X  O  O
>
> Those would be appropriate settings for your user page, which is the only one that the system would let you own. Admins would be owners of all pages in main: and user: on wikipedia. That way, if you you refused to comply with one rule or another concerning how user space is used, then an admin would permit everyone to also be able to write to your space, so that a volunteer could show you his ignorance of those rules :-) I can almost see the author of "vandalproof" hanging his head and asking why he did not think of that.
>
> group permission is a special feature of protected file systems. Windows does not hav group permission in XP, TMK, and it does let you protect shared objects from being written to. My web server is NetBSD, so it does hav groups. Users can be added to groups, so that people who hav made applications for being included in a group -- applications to a sysop would let you write files in a particular project, because you were a member of the required group.
>
> In a series of occurances, here is how a biography might become authorized and get a special stamp of approval from the subject of the biography.
> Someone write's a biography about someone else on their user page.
> They let it out among their collaborators.
> Two of those collaborators want to fix it, so the starter permits everyone to write to it.
> An edit war breaks out, so the sysop (sysops always hav power to permit, as well as power to destroy, which is not displayed) retracts all permission, except permission to a group, then assigns three veterans to that group and solicits their attention to an article in progress.
> No blocks are issued.
> No significant flaws are in the wording or the evidence.
> The page is permitted for reading by all and writing by none.
> Occasionally, on the talk page, someone raises {{editprotected}}.
> The questions typically get an answer that could hav been found by reading three months of history.
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