[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report

[Timwi]

Anthere wrote:
> 
> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit 
> a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do 
> think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.

Can't speak for Fr, but at least on En, sysops are allowed -- almost 
even encouraged -- to make minor edits to protected articles that are 
likely uncontroversial. Spelling corrections are a very obvious form of 
this, but edits can easily go a lot further. This isn't much of a 
problem on En because the community of sysops is vastly multi-cultural 
and of such varying opinions that even slightly significant edits are 
likely to spark controversy and are therefore avoided.

On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of 
opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and 
since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since 
there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't 
matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than 
some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other 
things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops 
remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that 
dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops 
to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more 
relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they 
become editors".

Timwi