On 11/08/14 16:54, Tyler Romeo wrote:
There are many legitimate cases (e.g., office actions
and copyright-related
issues) where I could see the superprotect level coming in handy. There are
some cases where the WMF simply cannot afford (usually b/c of legal
reasons) to trust the community, even if they're 99.9% sure nothing will
happen. Sometimes all it takes is one rogue admin to trigger a lawsuit.
With that said, it's obviously a political matter as to what the proper
uses of this new protection level are, but I do think the existence of the
level itself is appropriate.
But copyright- and performance-related issues don't need
superprotection. As administrators, we need to understand the importance
of these things (or just avoid them). Should we try to go against such,
that would be a more appropriate time for a blocking and/or deopping,
not page protection.
Similarly, if the WMF cannot afford to trust the community, that's not a
technical problem. That's a problem with a lack of understanding of what
it means to run a wiki (nevermind several hundred), because if it can be
edited, 'something' can and will happen. Lawsuits do happen. Perfomance
hits due to bad gadgets etc do happen. They are resolved as they come up.
I just don't see how such a right could ever be useful in the hands of
staff, especially in light of the trouble it causes.
That being said, it's not that superprotection couldn't be useful
elsewhere, indeed. Consider stewards - say there is a dispute between a
bunch of admins and it needs sorting out, so protecting the page to
prevent further damage while doing the actual sorting could simplify
things a bit. Even then, though, it's hardly necessary, since you can
also just chuck the specific folks out the window as they show up, but
options can be nice, perhaps.
-I