I agree with the first statement that the level should be removed. It has a trail of bad usage it is connected with. As to whether to renew it under some policy, I would trust such tool only in hands of stewards, not WMF. WMF which consists of considerable part of staffers who ain't even wikimedia project editors is very likely to do something like enforcing its new unwanted by community development by such means again.
As to the problem of possible hijacking of sysop or even steward accs - well WMF guys' accs might be hijacked just as well so that's hardly an argument.
I completely disagree with idea about precautionary protection of legal related policies. The mechanism proposed about fixing translations via request to WMF is probably the worst idea I have heard in a while. It both creates great complication to work (I'd rather not fix something than waste several days on that) and useless: e.g. I know only one person in WMF who knows my native Ukrainian so that she can review whether the fix is really needed (Maryana from Mobile fronted team). Well perhaps there were some changes in staff and now there are several more. But Ukrainian is quite a big language. We have wikis in 280+ languages. There definitely are languages which no one of the staff knows. The best thing WMF could you in this case by the mechanism proposed is to waste donors' money on hiring some translator to that rare language so that he takes a look. The translator would be non-wikimedian and have no idea what the text is about. We had a good bad example of what professional translations are like during this year's board elections. Besides fixing (or creating) translations there is a vast variety of other things editors might edit on these pages. Mark-up, design, categories, some explanations on how to apply the rule e.g. which templates are to be used for indicating violations and so on. On enwiki indeed such pages are usually quite developed to the point where all procedures about the rules are there for years. It is not so in smaller wikis so limiting editing of the pages there would be limiting development of the wikis.
There were examples of dealing with legal issues without superprotected. Like Wikivoyage without much pain changed its logo. If there were a superprotect back then and it would had been applied I see it resulting in nothing but lots of hatred.
Indeed sysops might start a wheelwar. There has been a mechanism of stopping it for ages. A simple desysop.
If there is an issue where a whole community opposed WMF then perhaps the problem is not in the community. Even if it actually is I believe stews could find a way to settle it even without such harsh means.
--Base On 12.08.2015 2:06, Nathan wrote:
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 5:48 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
What I would hope for is guidance from the WMF Board that specifically outlines when WMF invocation of superprotect is and isn't appropriate [1], and which I believe is already being discussed internally by the Board. With that done, my hope is that WMF will take a supportive approach to the community, instead of a combative approach.
With those changes made, I think that the likelihood of another conflict between the community and WMF over a superprotect-like issue would be low. Appropriate uses for Superprotect upon community or WMF request could include (1) legally sensitive documents like the TOS, (2) technically sensitive pages that would otherwise be exposed to administrators who can edit through full protection and should only be edited with consensus, or because of urgent security or stability considerations, (3) pages which are currently the subject of wheel-warring among local administrators, and (4) pages which are currently the subject of a legal dispute that requires a level of protection greater than standard full protection.
Pine
[1] WMF's first use of Superprotect having been a serious misjudgement for which I would like to hear them more fully recant and apologize, and which I would like to see categorized as an inappropriate use of superprotect in the upcoming guidance from the Board.
Personally, I hope the Board has better things with which to occupy its time. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe