Wikipedia talk:Protection policy

Protecting a redirect

Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages, a redirect to Wikipedia:Signatures, has been the the target of spam or vandalism regularly for years, apparently from the same person creating single-use accounts. Anyway, I've protected it. I know that some templates interfere with redirects, or don't show up, so I haven't templated it. I can't find any mention in the archive about templating protected redirects, nor is there anything in the policy about it. Any thoughts?   Will Beback  talk  07:09, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Template transclusions don't manifest visibly on redirected pages, so there's not much point to a protection template for redirects, which is why (to my knowledge) one doesn't exist. Protected redirects are categorized manually, by adding Category:Protected redirects. Indeed, there's no documentation for protection categorization and templates. Actually, there's barely an organized scheme. But it'll take an RfC to resolve that mess. --Bsherr (talk) 07:19, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added the category. Would you be interested in adding a sentence or two to the policy page in case this comes up again?   Will Beback  talk  07:29, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Ugh. I know it really needs to be documented, and I'm very tempted to do it, but I'm reluctant to patch this into the policy. Really, the entire scheme needs to be documented, and, frankly, some decisions have to be made first (when to use the "small" parameter, when to have the move protection icon visible). Also, it really doesn't belong in the policy, because actually the template scheme should be a guideline (not policy), and that requires separating it. Maybe it's time to take on the mess. --Bsherr (talk) 07:37, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

On second thought, I guess there's no harm adding it to the available templates section at the end. We'll just have to deal with it eventually. --Bsherr (talk) 07:42, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Great - that'll be a help to others, I'm sure.   Will Beback  talk  09:32, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Admins editing through full protection: proposed addition

I refer to today's kerfuffle at Gabrielle Giffords in which a number of admins, including myself, made substantive edits to a fully protected page. It appears there is a widely held view that such edits are inappropriate. It also appears that this did not occur to a number of admins (myself included). I see the merit in that view: admins are not super-editors. Accordingly, I propose amending this page to insert the bolded sentence below.

Any modification to a fully protected page should be proposed on its talk page (or in another appropriate forum). After consensus has been established for the change, or if the change is uncontroversial, any administrator may make the necessary edits to the protected page. To draw administrators' attention to a request for an edit to a protected page, place the Editprotected template on the talk page. Administrators should only make substantive edits to a fully protected article if there is consensus to do so.

Thoughts? --Mkativerata (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

So long as it's clear that uncontroversial or maintenance edits are OK, such as adjusting a protection template or messing around with punctuation (assuming it's not the punctuation in dispute) then looks good. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 21:33, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I'm trying to summarise with the word "substantive". --Mkativerata (talk) 21:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I certainly wouldn't count that as substantive. They sound like minor edits to me. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, although I think saying that they will be crushed by elephant if they fail to follow the policy would be more persuasive. I assume that implied action for violating the policy will have to suffice though since crushing by elephant would be considered a personal attack. Cat-five - talk 21:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support It already says that noncontroversial edits can be made without consensus. And correcting grammar and templates are clearly noncontroversial. --Kleopatra (talk) 21:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree with this change, although I'd always thought it was obvious. Trebor (talk) 21:42, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support sounds good. Admins are editors like any one else The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 21:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support however, it needs to be made explicitly clear. Dusti^*poke* 21:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support, but I don't believe for a minute it will work as a preventive measure. So long as this is understood as something to hold administrators' noses in and say "Bad!", after the fact, it's fine. A better approach would be to encourage reducing the protection level when it isn't actually preventing what it sets out to prevent. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:50, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Playing devil's advocate, what about when an administrator makes arguably non-substantive edits that are not addressing anything urgent? I think (?) some of the edits during this mess included some spelling corrections that were not related to protecting the page or correcting BLP issues or other substantive matters of content. It seems to me that admins should also refrain from making gnomish edits during full protection, if we really believe that they should not make edits that other editors could have made. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

*This has been included in Template:Centralized discussion for wider input The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 21:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support should be obvious. --Rschen7754 22:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment: The policy already says "Pages that are protected because of content disputes should not be edited except to make changes which are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus.". This applies to administrators too, and I don't think duplicating the text will help. This is more about making sure that administrators understand - and follow - the protection policy, which in this case it appears they haven't been doing. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support. (edit conflict) I suppose it is restating the obvious, but could potentially be useful. Let "substantive" be at editor own discretion and exclude maintenance and uncontroversial edits. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. It doesn't say anything that the second sentence doesn't already say. Now, if you want to add something that emphasizes that cleanup edits, as non-controversial, are normally acceptable, I'd support that. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment I'd like to see a stronger reminder of what is and isn't allowed to come up when you seek edit the fully protected page. At the moment, there's only a note saying "WARNING: This page has been protected in accordance with the protection policy so that only users with administrative rights can make edits." Something like "Administrators are reminded that they should only make uncontroversial edits or those with clear talkpage consensus", should be added, preferably flashing on and off in some fluorescent colour. (Okay, the last bit is a joke) --Slp1 (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Would support but for the word "uncontroversial". It might be obvious to some but, looking at the OP, is doesn't seem to be obvious to everyone. I would add that I don't think "uncontroversial" edits by admins should be allowed either. If the article is locked from editing then it shouldn't be edited except where necessary to remove obvious vandalism etc. Admins do not have special editing privileges (okay maybe technically they do, but you get my drift) and should not be working on locked articles. --FormerIP (talk) 22:35, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support, but have no confidence that it will make any difference. If we could trust admins to behave decently it wouldn't be needed, as this blatant abuse of admin tools to edit through protection would not have happened. DuncanHill (talk) 22:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Support, but it doesn't actually change the policy, only how it's expressed: the policy is already that admins should only make uncontroversial edits or those with consensus. If it's necessary to make it this explicit then go ahead and add this sentence, but any admin should be aware of this policy and that edits to a fully-protected page is not at an admin's discretion, since admin discretion on content matters is no greater than that of any other editor. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 22:45, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment. I'd rather see the clause "or if the change is uncontroversial" removed. The place to decide whether or not an edit is controversial is the talk page. If it is uncontroversial, then consensus will be achieved very quickly. If consensus isn't achieved, then by definition the change is controversial.MoreThings (talk) 22:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The point in allowing uncontroversial changes is that it applies to removing BLP violations, anything which is blatant vandalism, correcting typos, and anything else which would be considered "minor" anyway. There's no point in wasting time by asking for consensus on whether or not "trhough" should be changed to "through" simply because the article is fully protected, for example; nor should we wait on consensus to remove a blatant BLP violation, copyright violation, or anything urge which requires urgent removal per policy. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 22:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

And of course, any user giving any good-faith reason why such an edit was not uncontroversial, makes it controversial and the edit should be undone (preferrably by the user who made the change) pending consensus. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 22:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about that. I admit that it's hard to oppose changing "trhough" to the correct spelling, but there's also something disturbing about administrators making edits of that sort—unrelated to page protection, or to correcting things that must urgently be corrected, such as BLP violations—being able to do so while other editors are unhappy about not being able to edit at all. Unlike semi-protection, full protection should be done in the spirit of preserving the proverbial Wrong Version until a situation has been resolved. Seeing this discussion, I wonder if the proposal would actually make the problem worse. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Well the only sort of edit appropriate for an admin to make, can also be made at request by any editor using {{editprotected}} just as good-faith IP addresses can use {{editsemiprotected}} to request a good edit to an article semi-protected due to vandalism. Regardless of the result here, forbidding admins from editing protected articles except with consensus cannot override other policies in important cases such as removal of potentially libellous information per WP:BLP or removal of blatant copyright violations; page protection is meant to prevent problematic editing related to a dispute (or in some unusual cases to persistent vandalism, such as in the case of highly-visible templates for example), and making a blatantly uncontroversial change is both constructive and doesn't violate the principle of page protection; but I hasten to add that it really should be clearly uncontroversial: typos, blatant BLP or copyvios, that sort of thing. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 23:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to a clause that specifically allowed admins to fix BLP infringements. Anything else should be sorted out on the talk page. Just make a quick post:"I intend to fix these typos..."; wait a few mins and make the change. Same thing with blatant vandalism, though I don't quite see how a page containing that would be protected in the first place. "Uncontroversial" is too woolly. MoreThings (talk) 23:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

But why waste the time of other users just to get approval to change a blatant typo? Uncontroversial isn't woolly: just like anywhere else, uncontroversial means an edit which no one else is likely to object to in good faith, and if someone else does object, then it should be accepted that that means it is controversial. By the time a user is familiar enough with policy that they become an admin, they should be well aware of what should be considered "uncontroversial". GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 19:32, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Admins should be allowed to make changes to correct policy violations. Other than that, everything should be sorted out on the talk page. There's no huge hurry to fix the odd typo, and we're not talking about a delay of hours here; we're talking about a few minutes. All of the typos could be fixed after a single post to talk. That slight delay is the lesser of two evils.

In making this edit the admin clearly thought he was editing through protection. If one admin feels that "uncontroversial" allows that kind of edit, then it's reasonable to suppose that other admins interpret the policy in the same way. So the policy permits that an article remain protected while admins float in and out making uncontroversial edits as the story unfolds, and as other editors stand by, looking on. An article could be developed entirely by admins! That's a wonderful prospect, of course, and as admins are very trustworthy, and know all the rules, they would never put anything in an article that doesn't belong in it. Yet somehow that doesn't quite seem like the right way forward.

So what happens if we remove the "uncontroversial" clause? Well, protected now really does mean protected, as it should-—it doesn't mean protected except for admins. We also find there is a more general and pressing desire to downgrade the protection. This leads to a quicker return of non-admins, some of whom can edit almost as well admins, and it allows the latter to get back to their important work at an/i, and the like. MoreThings (talk) 22:20, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Just an observation. Today was a highly unusual situation in which there was something of an emergency situation going on. The reliable media widely and incorrectly reported that she had been killed, but there were other reports that she had been rushed to the hospital, etc. As far as I can tell, everything was really handled quite well here. There was thoughtful discussion, there was some sensible editing, there was protection of the article which surely cut down on the amount of accidental error. We can be proud of the overall situation. If there was a bit of WP:IAR going on, I say good, that's what IAR is all about: getting the job done well in unusual circumstances. :-) So we might or might not want to adjust protection policy to reflect this kind of case, I have no opinion really.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The reliable media widely and incorrectly reported that she had been killed. How sure are you that this is the case, though? There's talk of retractions on the talkpage, but I was on the BBC news website at the time and I'm pretty sure she was never declared dead there in the first place. I think she was declared "shot in the head at point-blank range", then people jumped to conclusions, then she was declared alive.

Whatever the facts are, I don't think its possible to judge from the talkpage, and the talkpage is bound to reflect a confusing situation in any high profile case of death by Wikipedia. --FormerIP (talk) 23:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

It was the case. NYT, CBS, WSJ, AFP, AP, NPR all reported she had been shot and killed. NPR then changed it to "conflicting reports" and CBS et al. began reporting her staff and a hospital official said she was in surgery and then said she survived. I wrote the corresponding Wikinews story and have been following this since it broke. She was certainly reported by most "reliable" news sources as having died. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:19, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, well if that was the case it explains a little bit of confusion. But it doesn't explain, IMO, extended reversion wars and admins continuing to just generally work on a locked article, which is what seems to have happened. Surely admins ought to abide by the general spirit of a lock? --FormerIP (talk) 02:05, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, hence this discussion. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support idea, would like better wording. Obviously anything controversial should not be done by an admin without consensus. It should be clear, though, that minor edits (fixing templates, copyediting, etc.) are fine if they are not the subject of an ongoing dispute and that BLP concerns (such as removing claims of death and possibly defamatory information that a source has retracted) may be removed first (unless there is clear, strong consensus to keep it in) and consensus for readdition established later. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

One possibility is to have Wikipedia purposely be 24 hours behind. Wikipedia is not Wikinews. Would this be a good thing that one must wait 24 hours? Hakkapeliitta (talk) 02:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

When even Jimmy Wales comes to Wikipedia instead of Wikinews to get the latest information, I think that ship has sailed. Powers ^T 03:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No, forcing us to be 24h behind is just a needless limit which will complicate things tenfold. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment Personally, I think administrators editing through protection should presumptively lose the bit - and if for some reason this basic rule hasn't occurred to them, we may start thinking about making passing an (open note) test mandatory before getting a sysop bit --Tznkai (talk) 03:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The gauntlet known as WP:RFA is not enough? –MuZemike 03:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Apparently not. Perhaps they're placing the wrong emphasis.--Tznkai (talk) 04:47, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment Why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over this? On a quickly changing in-the-news BLP article, the most important thing was to "get the article right". That was done as well as could reasonably be expected, and the page protection helped with that. So what if some of the more trusted editors, aka administrators, got to edit the article while us poor plebes were unable to edit? The important thing was that a highly visible BLP article was correctly handled. Congratulations, First Light (talk) 03:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

There were issues with the article that weren't being handled in a timely manner because the editors who noticed them couldn't edit the article and the administrators who could edit the article weren't reading through the fast-moving talk page. For instance, the "Electoral history" section of the article had broken formatting prior to today's events, and even after there were many eyes on the article it didn't get fixed for hours. That sort of thing is the whole reason we like to let everybody edit our articles, because one of them will really want to fix the trivial stuff. I'm the first person to say that we must get reported deaths absolutely right, and today shows why, but that doesn't mean that every reported death is a reason to freeze the article in place. Even if it were, much of the dead/not-dead churn cam while the article was fully protected. — Gavia immer (talk) 03:49, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this was a common case of "every reported death". It was arguably the biggest news story of the last few months in the U.S. Admins should have done a better job reading the talk page, I agree. But I can't imagine that these issues would have been handled better if the page was left unprotected. All things considered, I still think congratulations are in order. First Light (talk) 04:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support and I'd love to see something go even farther and say only edits to revert vandalism or correct basic factual BLP information be made; such as dead/alive, POI/suspect, alleged crimes until proven innocent, etc. If admins can't be reasonable to that low a logical level there needs to be a "super-duper protect" mode of some sort. Wikipedia is not a news source, we have no time limit, and I can't ever see the need to make substantive edits on a "breaking news" matter. At the Fort Hood Shooting edit warring incident I asked for (and got for 72hr) full protection for a yet-to-exist page for the alleged shooter (was a redirect) just to avoid a BLP disaster before facts were known. If it were up to me, we'd always be that cautious on BLP, but I can appreciate that this is a minority viewpoint. ♪ Tstorm(talk) 04:06, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support Also a comment: Wikipedia is not a newspaper or an online news source, and not every article needs to be "up to the minute". Some time spent waiting for events to settle down would have avoided some of today's problems -- and that time can come during the discussions to determine consensus. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:29, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Yeah go ahead and add the sentence, I don't see anyone objecting or likely to object. Herostratus (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - has anyone read the second sentence, which says virtually the same thing? If people feel like the pre-existing policy is not working, we should discuss modifying the sentence and not add it a second time. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Ridiculous Is already in the second sentence. Debresser (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support - make the prohibition emphatic - we had far too many admins acting as super-editors on this article today. Exxolon (talk) 07:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• That is already policy, as noted by Chase me. Restating it does not hurt, but does not help much either. The problem is that the policy is not enforced. Edits that violate it are abuses of administrator tools and should be sanctioned accordingly by the Arbitration Committee.  Sandstein  10:11, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. As discussed above, this sentence ends up being redundant with the existing second sentence. And thinking about the discussion here, I've come to the conclusion that the proposed new sentence at the end would actually have an effect opposite to what is intended: instead of discouraging edits, it gives a pass to someone saying "yeah, but I didn't think it was substantive". I'm OK with leaving the paragraph as it is. Alternatively, one could better achieve the intended effect by adding, at the end of the second sentence: "; otherwise, no edits should be made." --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

  I'm supporting the proposal, but I'd actually prefer tryptofish's suggestion since it has the same effect and is simpler. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 19:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

  I'm also supporting the proposal, but I like this wording more as well. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:31, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support - I'd change the boldface to say a clear consensus to do so. Or change the original to bold. Bold is good. Looks official. Xavexgoem (talk) 23:05, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Well then you bold, I'll revert then we can discuss. (I won't revert, though. It's a good idea. --FormerIP (talk) 23:11, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose after reading through the comments; I believe Tryptofish is correct; the proposed addtion gives admins more leave than the existing text, which is the wrong direction. Warren Dew (talk) 04:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, redundant. Stifle (talk) 17:31, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose as unnecessary, and noting Tryptofish's note above. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:28, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
• It seems to me to be utterly bizarre that an admin could believe they have special dispensation from the community to edit a protected article on their own initiative. While I accept that these edits were made in good faith, they demonstrate a need for a clue level adjustment. The policy already says everything it needs to and we don't need further edits to it. What we might need is a programme of coaching and support for admins who can fail to grok this.—S Marshall T/C 12:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - the implication is that admins feel that policy can be ignored, and so admins need special rules. The policy wording is clear enough that modifications should be discussed first, and only implemented after consensus has been formed. I don't think it is appropriate to go through all our policy document to make special announcements that the rules also apply to admins. Of course policy applies to admins. That admins are not always aware of all policies is human nature - pointing to relevant policy should be enough. If an admin then wilfully and deliberately ignores policy in a harmful way, a trout slap is in order, but if an admin deliberately ignores policy in line with WP:IAR, for the better good of Wikipedia, such as substantially editing a fully protected article without first gaining consensus in order to remove clearly problematic material, that is fine. And in fact I would support such a statement being added. Such as "Where a protected article contains harmful material, an admin may make substantive edits to remove such material without first gaining consensus, provided the admin leaves a note explaining the action." SilkTork *^YES! 17:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. It would have to be written very differently, because often it's appropriate to fix an article you've protected, e.g. because of BLP issues, or where contentious material of another kind is unsourced. Articles sometimes have to be taken back to stubs during protection because of sourcing issues. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 14:57, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Alternative wording

Based on the last several lines of the discussion above, I suggest this alternative wording, again with the proposed changes in bold:

Any modification to a fully protected page should be proposed on its talk page (or in another appropriate forum). After consensus has been established for the change, or if the proposed change is uncontroversial, any administrator may make the necessary edits to the protected page; otherwise, no edits should be made. To draw administrators' attention to a request for an edit to a protected page, place the Editprotected template on the talk page.

--Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Not needed. Adding the word "proposed" is trivial, but the addition "otherwise, no edits should be made" is simply superfluous. This is a guideline for admins, not a How-to page for imbeciles. Debresser (talk) 09:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

  The concern is that admins have recently failed to follow this policy, and the hope is that making it crystal-clear will remove any possible excuse for doing so again in future ("I have a different interpretation of the wording of this policy", for example). Not sure how likely it is to make a difference given the extremely low frequency with which admins are actually sanctioned or even warned for violating policy, but it's worth a try. GiftigerWunsch [TALK] 12:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

In a fashion, I actually agree with Debresser, sort of. As I said above, I would be OK with leaving the policy as is. And I certainly do not wish to imply that anyone is an imbecile! But the fact remains that, in the recent incident, some people whose intellects are most certainly not in question did seem to have views of full protection that were at odds with what most participants in this discussion have said it actually is. Wouldn't it be helpful (not patronizing, but helpful; not needed, but not harmful either) to spell it out, so that it's absolutely clear? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that my opinion is that it is not needed. In the alternative form, I would not oppose the proposed addition. I do think that admins who do not understand the way policy is to be applied, should be demoted immediately. Wikipedia, as any system, consists of writ and practice. Any admin who does not know both, is a liability. Debresser (talk) 20:11, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, it sounded as though you were essentially opposing, so thanks for clarifying that. But, wow, I'm just suggesting making the policy more unambiguous, not drumming anyone out! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• I would consider adding "Good faith edits made under WP:BLP and WP:COPYVIO policies are exempt from this requirement, however administrators are still responsible for justifying them after the fact if required." Exxolon (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps, per WP:KISS, if we really need to add that too, we might as well leave it as is. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I suspect a bit of the change in direction in this discussion may have been due to a conflation of "controversial" and "substantive". The current wording of the policy means any amendment needs to be proposed on the talk page. But if the proposal is non-controversial, the policy says an admin can edit it in without waiting for consensus to form. Why then couldn't an admin rely on WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY to edit through his or her own non-controversial change to the article without proposing it first? The purpose of this proposal was to clarify that those kind of edits aren't actually acceptable.--Mkativerata (talk) 23:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I actually like the idea of clarifying that, which is why I proposed the alternative. Since it's probably largely my fault :-) that the discussion changed direction, I looked back at what I pointed out about "yeah, but I didn't think it was substantive", and it seems to me that the same concept applies to "yeah, but I didn't think it was controversial". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. I'd also add that the use of the word "should", not "must", in the second sentence could also be a factor in leading admins to a non-bureaucratic approach. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:32, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean the first sentence, rather than the second? If so, perhaps that single-word change, of "should" to "must" in the first sentence, would be the best way to go. I'd support that. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:37, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we should ever use "must" on a WP policy unless there is very good reason to do so. We need to make it clear enough that both controversial and substantive changes should be proposed on the talk page, by admins and non-admins, while recognising there will be circumstances where that bureaucracy is inappropriate. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:40, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose for the reason I outlined above. Admins sometimes need to make changes to articles during protection to remove contentious unsourced material. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 14:59, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I've thought that over, and I don't think that this wording presents a problem in that regard, at least not to any greater extent than does the existing wording. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:05, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support alternative wording. I think it's a sensible suggestion overall. The bolding is probably not necessary though. -- œ^™ 02:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The bolding is only there to show what is added. I wouldn't actually include it on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• It looks like some time has gone by, and discussion here has quieted down. It seems to me that there has been some support for the proposals here, but not enough to justify changing the policy page. Let me suggest that it's time to move on, but perhaps administrators should give some thought to being sensitive to the issues raised in this discussion, when editing protected pages in the future. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:43, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - Something needs to be done about this, even if we don't use the exact wording proposed. I was rather upset by this admin edit of a protected page over a year ago. I agree that the change made wasn't related to the dispute that caused the protection. However, non-admins were prevented from making further updates to this massive edit. Many admins just don't get it. There needs to be a policy we can point to to tell an admin that their action is inappropriate. The edit in question was discussed here in the second to last thread in the section. The message I got was that the rest of us just don't matter. I agree with SlimVirgin that sometimes admin edits are needed, but this should be the exception. —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

• The edit warning which reminded admins to check they were following the protection policy was removed at the end of 2009. It has been restored now. I think that may help. SilkTork *^YES! 22:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

  It would help if the protection policy was more explicit. Perhaps we could add an example, that we can all agree on, of what is clearly not appropriate. —UncleDouggie (talk) 02:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The old templates are back

It looks like someone switched the templates back to the old file with just the lock instead of the lock with the symbol on it. I was wondering why? Inka⁸⁸⁸ 05:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Template talk:Pp-meta#More accessible protection icons. --Bsherr (talk) 17:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry and protection

Hello. Today I noticed a user requesting unprotection for Basmati. The merits of the request, which I happen to agree with, were

Protection after Nangparbat changed the order of the countries at the top on one occassion, which was over a year ago now.

To be fair, after investigating a little, I noticed that there were actually a handful of instances of this happening in a 1-month+ period prior to protection. Even so, this level of "vandalism" (actually, a content dispute) would not normally attract a semi-protection, let alone an indefinite one.

The protecting admin is on indefinite hiatus. The admin on WP:RUP duty declined the request, saying

I'm reluctant here. It was protected because of sockpuppetry, and, from, what I know of Nangparbat, this is a fairly typical target. Suggest raising it on the talk page to see if the article's regulars think it's worth a try.

Now, I respect the decision, and I understand the admin's hesitation. Just to be clear, my intention here is not to dispute this particular incident.

However, I would have thought that sockpuppetry is relevant to user blocking, not necessarily semiprotection. I think this issue goes beyond Basmati and needs further, high-level discussion with the community. Nangparbat has targeted a very wide variety of pages, from Cauliflower to Bus rapid transit. Roughly, the pattern seems to be, anything that links to India is fair game. This in my opinion does not mean that we should go around and instantly (and by the way, indefinitely) semi-protect all the pages they touch, otherwise "the terrorists have won", as it were.

Thoughts? 124.147.78.105 (talk) 13:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Good point. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:08, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I do feel that in this case the protection has more merit than in other equivalent pages, as there are no regulars at this article. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I could not see where in the policy it says that the number of watchers (which is not public, for good reasons) should be taken into account when protecting. If it should (I would disagree), or if this is current practice (I don't think it is), and if our policy doesn't say, then by all means let's also have that discussion, in another section, and see if we can include this point in the policy.

Incidentally, in this case, I can see that in the days just before protection three separate editors, plus ironically one IP, immediately reverted other "vandalism" (again, it's ultimately content dispute). 220.210.178.183 (talk) 23:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

True sockpuppetry isn't the issue here, it's IP vandalism. It doesn't matter if the vandalism comes from someone that has previously socked or not. The question is, will IP vandalism on the article resume if protection is removed? Hence, I agree that no policy change is needed. —UncleDouggie (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Four or so vandalism edits certainly doesn't justify protection for over a year the first time it occurs, sockpuppeting is definitely the reason this one is still protected. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

@220.210.178.183, while the number of watchers isn't in the policy it is taken into account when making protections, and its especially important with an article which has been attacked by a known sockpuppet, if only I and the unprotecting admin have it watched we might miss something. There are plenty more to choose from which may well have regulars. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:12, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

As I said, let's get an RfC on that then. There's at least one good reason why taking into account the number of watchers when semi-protecting is not a good idea, and that is that unregistered editors (perhaps the interested parties of a BLP issue) cannot remove vandalism, which has happened before. 113.197.209.20 (talk) 13:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Note for everyone: 220.210.178.183 (220.xx) is 124.147.78.105 (124.xx). This guy behind these IPs has followed all YM's past administrative actions for, AFAIK, at least eight days. More infos might be found at YM RFC talkpage or YM talkpage.--115.75.158.147 (talk) 08:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)