[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report

[Erik Moeller]

Anthere:
> 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. Maybe not on all 
> projects ? Can you from your data gather such an information ? I mean, 
> are there situations when a long-protected article actually grow and 
> evolve during the protection ?

I can't automatically check it with the current script, though I could 
theoretically check for each article how many revisions there have been 
after the protected one. On the German Wikipedia, the general pattern 
seems to be that the article simply "dies" after the protection, with 
the exception of a few minor edits by sysops, like these:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=B%C3%BCrgerrechtsbewegung_Solidarit%C3%A4t&diff=6870084&oldid=5830880
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Verlag_Heinz_Heise&diff=6760055&oldid=6287323
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=P%C3%A4dophilie&diff=6769462&oldid=6167188
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erich_Honecker&diff=7926076&oldid=6592590
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vertreibung&diff=9105694&oldid=6084751
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Egon_Krenz&diff=6801089&oldid=6290728

These are often requested on the talk page, and sysops seem to stay away 
from controversial edits to protected pages. In that way, I don't think 
the German Wikipedia is fundamentally different from any other, it's 
just that the number of pages where sysops have to act as gatekeepers 
for long periods of time is[*] far larger. Speculating, I think this 
must give a different impression of the role and importance of sysops to 
newcomers.

[*] For the record, admins Bdk and APPER have now unprotected many of 
the affected pages on the German Wikipedia. I'll re-run the script in a 
week and report the results here.

Erik