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The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss on the talk page. Always remember to keep cool when editing. Changes to this page do not immediately change policy anyway, so don't panic.

This page is not for proposing or discussing edits to protected pages. All substantial edits to a protected page should be proposed on its talk page, and will be implemented if a consensus is found to do so. If the page is fully protected, you may attract the attention of an admin to make the change by placing the {{editprotected}} template above your request. Requests placed here will probably be removed or ignored. To request that a page be unprotected, see Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. To suggest that a move-protected page be renamed, see Wikipedia:Requested moves. To request that a salted page be recreated or restored, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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[edit] Re protection policy abuse to keep content out by starting edit to provoke an article protection

Resolved. Article is no longer protected. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Wasilla Assembly of God is the church attended by Sarah Palin and at which she gave a widely covered speech about a sermon at the church. The church, its pastor, and a frequent church guest pastor have been the subject of international news coverage since 1999, including for controversial sermons given at Wasilla Assembly of God in 2005 and 2008.

There was initially a dispute as to whether this article should be deleted. The article was kept. One or two editors then attempted to keep sourced information out of the article by constant deletions, vaguely citing “BLP” and “Coatrack” without specificity, and ignoring requests for specificity. They were successful, in that they created enough edit wars that they kept the information out by getting the article blocked.

There have now been three consensus suggestions for three sections for two weeks or so. All talk page suggestions made in them have been addressed.

The content of speeches and sermons given at this church has been the subject of almost a million web pages and thousands of news stories. Yet the information that is the subject of the international coverage, sourced with respected journalists and actual photos and video footage of the sermons is not in the article.

This article should be restored, with the three consensus sections as worded and sourced in the talk page, here[1], here[2], and here[3]. There are two editors who will object to any information about the speeches or sermons, but they have not made comment on the consensus suggestions for two weeks, and all concerns they voiced previously were addressed. If the three consensus sections are not added, a small number of editors who can engage in edit wars to keep information out by provoking an article protection by edit warring. Tautologist (talk) 19:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

In the future, if you believe there is consensus for a change to a protected page, you can use the {{editprotected}} template to call the attention of administrators to the proposed changes. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-Protection and 4-day blocks

The 4-day block on new accounts needs to be mentioned in the semi-protection section. Ywaz (talk) 12:47, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Technically it the limit is not just 4 days, it is for autoconfirmed accounts. That said, perhaps the article could give some clarification. Plasticup ^T/C 23:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Royalguard11 reverted my edit, saying that it was neither fair nor neutral. I have asked him to weigh in here were we can work on some alternate wording. The two qualifications for autoconfirmation are time (i.e. newness) and edit count (i.e. experience), so I quite like my version, but of course suggestions are welcome. Plasticup ^T/C 22:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Royalguard. The problem is not with the facts, which are true, but with the way they are presented. Yes, "inexperienced" is a vague way of phrasing the "less than ten edits" parameter, but it also has unwanted connotations of n00b-ism and haves/have-nots. Given that the section links to WP:UAL where the criteria are very clearly spelled out (and remember that they are not as simple as 4days/10edits), I don't see the need to spell out the criteria here. At the least, a more objective wording is required. Happy‑melon 22:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose "inexperienced" has a negative connotation. I was going for vague language because (as you said) the 4 days/10 edit limit is not true in all cases. Perhaps if we just said "new accounts which are not autoconfirmed". That is simple enough and captures the spirit of autoconfirmation, while the link provides the details. Plasticup ^T/C 23:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Even that is not true in all cases - edits from TOR nodes can be non-autoconfirmed after 90 days; I wouldn't call that new. If you're absolutely determined to put something in, "new accounts" is the least inaccurate, but again, why do we need to spell out the criteria here when they are explained in detail one link away? Happy‑melon 16:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

As for the necessity, 99% of readers will not click the link and many will leave having know idea which accounts cannot edit semi-protected articles. Accounts from Tor networks account for an extreme minority of internet users, and the detailed information of their treatment can (as you said) be accessed by a single click. And the phrase "new accounts" still implies that there is a time-related factor in the approval process. It is not a perfect description, but it really does get the jist of it. Plasticup ^T/C 03:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

If 99% of our readers don't understand the whole "more information about particular topics can be found by clicking on the little blue words" idea, then we really are failing miserably in our goal of enlightening the world! Happy‑melon 07:49, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I just thought it had a bad connotation. This actually was the balance I was trying to strike on the new-ish autoconfirmied level: somewhere between trying to make it harder for sock vandals and trying not to discourage good faith edits. "Inexperienced" could be easily taken as "we don't want your edits" or "you can't join our club". I think if they got here, they can find the full definition. -Royalguard11(T) 17:25, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Permanently semi-protecting redirects

Has it ever been discussed to have all redirects permanently semi-protected? Redirects seem to be easily overlooked on most users' watchlists (at least IMO). I was thinking about it, and I could not see many reasons why an IP or SPA would need to mess with redirects, other than subtle vandalism. If there is a legitimate reason for an unregistered user to change a redirect, there is always {{editprotect}}. As far as logistics, maybe a bot (with tools) could do it. Thoughts? --Tombstone (talk) 08:40, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I strongly support that idea. Earlier today I was dealing with vandalism of cash gifting and cash gifting program, which should redirect to pyramid scheme, but people have been editing them to promote them as legal and legitimate. Redirect pages are what they are because they are not expected to ever have any content, either because they contain spelling mistakes, are alternate names for the same subject, or otherwise duplicate the content of the page they redirect to. By their very nature, the only reason to edit to a redirect page is to vandalize it. Redirect pages should be at least semi-protected by default. DOSGuy (talk) 18:27, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Except that protection is not to be used as a preemptive solution. -Royalguard11(T) 19:05, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand that, but why enforce a bad rule? The purpose of rules is to benefit the community. A good rule is based on logic; if a rule isn't logical, it must be changed! What is the logical thing to do in this situation? Since, in all likelihood, any edit to a redirect page is going to be vandalism, it's logical to make an assumption of vandalism and semi-protect redirect pages by default. It wouldn't prevent established users from making changes, and unregistered users can always request an edit. This is one situation where it's logical to preemptively protect a page for the benefit of Wikipedia. DOSGuy (talk) 19:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

At the Tropical Cyclones Wikiproject we change dozens of redirects every month. I have seen several redirect pages turned into disambiguation pages by IP editors, and their valuable contributions would have been prevented by this proposal. Plasticup ^T/C 19:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

My own observation has been that edits of that nature by IP addresses are often experienced Wikipedians who are working at a different computer, or otherwise not logged in. A person has to be quite familiar with Wikipedia to know what a disambiguation page is and how to make one. DOSGuy (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It is also Wikipedia guideline to Assume Good Faith. The no preemptive rules has been around for several years now, so most in the community think it is logical. Taken to to the extreme, allowing preemptive protection would end up protecting the entire encyclopedia! Just because of "possible vandalism". I think people need to remember it's a Wiki. This is going to happen. If there were to be any policy change on this scale, it would need to have a large community backing. -Royalguard11(T) 21:34, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I absolutely believe in assuming good faith when it comes to articles. Redirect pages aren't articles. Many redirect pages redirect spelling mistakes, so there's clearly no chance of them ever becoming articles. Oddly enough, the nature of redirect pages makes it reasonable to assume bad faith in any edit. As far as your "taking it to the extreme" argument, this isn't a good example of a slippery slope. If I was talking about preemptively protecting articles, then you could argue a slippery slope. "Well, if we can preemptively protect Barack Obama, why can't be preemptively protect [name of page] too?" That's fair, right? It's not, however, reasonable to imply a slippery slope when someone suggests protecting a redirect page. A redirect page is not an article. It exists only to redirect; it has no content and never will. Even if the redirect page needs to redirect somewhere else someday, or in the unlikely event that it someday becomes an article, any knowledgeable Wikipedian can go ahead and do so. Semi-protection only protects the redirect pages from anonymous attacks. Since that is the only kind of edit such pages are ever likely to see, it's only logical to take a minimal precaution and semi-protect them. Since it's the logical thing to do, I'm not worried about finding broad support from the community. DOSGuy (talk) 13:20, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Even if 95% of IP edits to redirects are vandalism you would still be excluding many many good edits. Vandalism is easily fixed, but when you prevent an editor's contribution it is lost forever. Plasticup ^T/C 16:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I think redirects need to be as free to change as the rest of the encyclopedia. If there is a real problem with one then protect it, but I don't think we should just go and protect them all. One of the first things I did here was fix a broken redirect, and that was well before I was autoconfirmed. Redirects are not something new users do not get, there are clear instructions on how to do redirects and a button for them too. Lets keep it so we can work without admins unlocking doors for us, unless that door really does need to be locked. Chillum 14:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:AGF and the 'slippery slope' argument apply wiki-wide, it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. The protection policy is quite clear: we do not protect mainspace pages preemptively; it's as simple as that. While of course the overpowering consensus in favour of that policy could have changed, I can see no evidence for such a shift. Happy‑melon 20:21, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I have not seen a change on this issue either. We've also seen 2 examples from users here where freely editable redirects were directly helpful to the encyclopedia and I bet there are many more. I admit, I've seen some vandalism and changing of redirects, but it hasn't been too bad. You just protect it after it's fixed, it's not that hard. I've never seen anything to justify protecting all redirects. -Royalguard11(T) 23:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Misuse of policy

I have a strong concern about a sudden use of preemptive full protection of highly trafficked articles, and propose that new wording to be added to te policy to alert new admins and less experienced Wikipedians that the protection policy cannot be applied as a preemptive measure.

Relevant discussions:

• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Should_the_election_bios_stay_full_protected_through_the_election
• Talk:Barack_Obama#Where_is_the_vandalism.3F
• Talk:Joe_Biden#Vandalism.3F_I_don.27t_think_so
• Talk:John_McCain#Where_is_the_vandalism.3F
• Talk:Sarah_Palin#Where_is_the_vandalism.3F

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Tough cases make bad law. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but there is a misperception out there and there is no harm in clarifying the fact that protection cannot be applied preemptively. No Bush doctrine in WP, sorry.  :) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid the BLP "special enforcement" provision can be used in that way, for better or worse. In the recent Sarah Palin protection incident, arguments were made by each side for and against protection similar to the current discussion on presidential articles. I opposed protection there, on the basis that there was no policy-based consensus to protect the articles. But Arbcom discounted that argument, and affirmed that the arguments in favor of protection there (which are, essentially, the same as arguments in favor of protection now) were strong enough for the BLP special sanctions to be invoked. I interpret this to mean that the overall consensus has moved away from my own anti-protection viewpoint, towards more frequent use of full protection for biographies. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd have thought it would make sense to apply protection preemeptively in rare cases like these. We already do it with high-use templates - why not for important articles? We shouldn't be guided by doctrine here, but by practicality. OK, if we allow semi-protection, I suppose that ought to be sufficient.--Kotniski (talk) 16:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Jossi, I think it's misleading to leave out all mention of the BLP policy in your new text. The standards for protecting BLP articles are not the same as the standards for protecting other articles. You were one of the parties in the Sarah Palin protection case, where arbcom reinforced that fact, so I'm certain you're aware of this. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Under the provisions of WP:IAR, consensus on a decision can in fact override accepted policy in special situations (I believe that the American Presidential Election would qualify as a special situation). ArbCom has also established special rules regarding BLP articles. Also, since there is an ongoing discussion of this issue at ANI, the discussion should all take place there and not fork to here. If you have concerns please discuss them and have them addressed at ANI. -Royalguard11(T) 03:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wording in semi-protection

This section says: "Semi-protection prevents edits from anonymous users (IP addresses), or from accounts that are not autoconfirmed. "

How does it decide which to enforce? Random? Decides one day we're preventing anonymous users and the next we're preventing non-autoconfirmed users? Stipulated by the person protecting the article?

Or is this language incorrect and it prevents edits from anon and nonautoconfirmed users while the article is protected? If so, why is the 'or' there? That would imply the varying restricted classes are exclusive of one another at a given time which really doesn't make any sense as policy (if your going to restrict nonautoconfirmed users wouldn't you retric anons too? What is the utility in failing to do that?).

Perhaps someone should explain how the software decides which class to restrict (random? user-specified at protection institution?) or should be changed to indicate it prevents both for the duration of the protection (change or to and). -Δζ (talk) 09:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should say and. In typical natural language English, people often switch ands and ors like that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's both at the same time. It was probably written as "semiprotection is used to restrict anon users or non-autoconfirmed accounts" to tell admins when to use it, but it does both indiscriminately. -Royalguard11(T) 19:09, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying and changing the wording. I think that section should be accurate , which it appears to be, now, since it restricts one of the principles wikipedia was founded upon.--Δζ (talk) 15:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Confirmed revisions as an alternative to full protection

See a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_revisions#Confirmed_revisions where it is proposed to use a system of flagged revisions as an alternative to full protection during edit wars and disputes. Cenarium ^Talk 22:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] lifting long-term semi-protection of featured articles

I'd like to request the attention and participation of those interested in this discussion over lifting long-term semi-protection of featured articles. Shiva (Visnu) 21:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-emptive creation protection

We have enshrined language stating "Administrators should not use creation protection as a pre-emptive measure, but only in response to actual events." I see good reason for this as a general rule of thumb, but I think pre-emptive protection for short time periods may be a great drama and work reducer for certain types of clear cut cases. I delete many A7s of the stripe "John Doe is a 13 year old who likes to ride his skateboard and has a dog named Max!" There is no possibility that by protecting this before recreation for 24 hours we will be cutting off a legitimate article by the poster, and the possibility that coincidentally, an attempt to create an article by the same title about a notable person by a third party will be made during the short time span of protection is vanishingly small.

It plays out like this, some significant percentage of these type of articles are recreated, a newpages patroller needs to visit and tag, warn the user, and then CAT:CSD is expanded by that article, meaning that the same or a new admin must visit the recreated page. This may rinse and repeat a few times before salting occurs. Meanwhile the creator sometimes causes drama far afield because they keep getting these in-their-face warnings (vandalism to the taggers user/talk page for example). And not infrequently, instead of being salted, the creator gets escalating warnings until they are blocked, when salting would have nipped it all in the bud. Meanwhile, the vast majority of these editors who persist in recreation are never heard from again (they do not come back after the 24 hour protection to try again).

I was thinking of just starting to do this, but brought this here on the possibility there is some other good concern that is behind the prohibition. Note again, that we are only speaking of blatant cases.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:21, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I think immediate no-warning blocks on creators of such articles (along with other vandals and blatantly unconstructive contributors) would be more beneficial. The chances of that person making any positive contribution to WP over the next few hours or days are at least as vanishingly small as the chances of the conincidence you refer to.--Kotniski (talk) 20:46, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks or the response Kotniski. Blocking new users in this manner would fly in the face of multiple explicit and tacit policies that have long-standing consensus and with which I agree. We only block immediately and without prior warning for extreme bad faith contributions (for example, vicious attack pages on living people). The example new page I posted about in the OP is not even vandalism, though it may be converted to vandalism if it is reposted after warnings. Carpet bombing new users with blocks isn't the answer:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Could you clarify? Do you mean you find an A7 page, speedy it, then it comes back later? -Royalguard11(T) 00:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Indeed that is the way of it. It is a cycle that plays out over and over as any admin who does a lot of CAT:CSD patrol can tell you. An article is tagged for speedy deletion-->creator warned-->article deleted-->recreated-->tagged and warned again-->recreated-->tagged and warned again-->recreated and so on, until, somewhere along the way, one of a number of things happens: the creator gives up, the article slips through the cracks, the user is blocked, or the article is salted.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

So can you explain why you want the "article is salted" option to be moved forward, but not the "user is blocked" option? The two changes seem to me to be more or less equivalent in terms of the degree to which they amend current policy. If we can do one, we can do the other (do both, as far as I'm concerned). --Kotniski (talk) 16:07, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Blocking a user is in no way equivalent to protecting an article against creation and there certainly isn't an equivalency with respect to the extent they amend policy. The issue I am addressing is, as far as I can tell, one of first impression, directed at one prohibitive line in policy which has no explanation about a subject (creation protection) that wasn't even available until earlier this year. When and when not to block users, by contrast, besides being a divergent subject, is extremely well-defined, long-discussed and there is overwhelming consensus against the actions you proposed above.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Just for my information, then, since you said you agreed with this consensus, could you explain the reasons for it? I've always found it weird that WP allows itself to be trolled and disrupted to the extent it does; I guessed it was a hangover from some past time when we were more desperate for contributors and had no great problem with vandals. (I'm not opposing your proposal about salting, by the way, just trying to understand why we don't adopt what to me is an equally logical solution.)--Kotniski (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not totally in the other camp. I hear you. We do have too much leniency for blatant vandalism. A person who replaces the content of an article with fuck doesn't need four warnings before being blocked. But vandalism is very much about intent. That person replacing content with expletives, naughty bits, adding intentionally false information, etc., has malicious intent; we know what they're about immediately. Even some of them reform and become valuable contributors though that's rare. But the person I posted about in the OP hasn't shown us they are a vandal at all (yet)—just (somehow) clueless of that this site is an encyclopedia and what that entails. Many of them can and do get the idea. And many of them are young and may become useful contributors when they grow up a bit if they aren't soured on the site. Blocking such users on sight would create a hostile atmosphere. However, stopping them from recreating an article on a clearly unsuitable topic by preemptively blocking the title stops them in their tracks without the need for any blocking, warnings, all the theatrics. And those who don't try to create the article again won't even know the article is protected against recreation because if they don't try to recreate, they won't get redirected to the screen which says they cannot.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm don't remember the salting policy changing recently, but I would say that what you describe would qualify. What you describe isn't preemptive. Preemptive would be choosing a random page you think will get created and salting it. If a page is created, deleted, created, deleted, then it would probably qualify for salting at that point. I think after one would be a bit extreme unless it seems to be part of some pattern. I remember it being very common after 3, and you can apply it after 2 in most cases (I can't think of any exception at the moment though). In my opinion it means deleted any way, so it doesn't have to go through any process and CSD is enough. I know that's what I did.

So I'd say after 3 create-speedy deletes you have the green light to salt. 2 you can probably get away with too. 1 I would tread cautiously. I think you're just misunderstanding what "preemptive" means; it means choosing a title with no history and protecting. Anything with a history would not be preemptive. -Royalguard11(T) 04:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Before about January of this year we didn't have the ability to protect redlinks. There was a software change which enabled such action. The section on creation protection thus didn't exist before then because the subject wasn't yet born (I actually was the first to add detail on the software change to the policy page). Sure, truly "preemptive" would be salting a title that never existed, deleted or otherwise. What I am using preemptive here to mean is preemptive against recreation In that sense, preemptive is exactly the right word. Anyway, forget whether the word is a misnomer here or not. The point is that the section states that we should only protect where there have been multiple recreations. But that grew out of a time when when we didn't have the ability to easily protect redlinks for short periods of time and when doing so left an article by the title cluttering the encyclopedia, which isn't the case with creation protection. You have echoed back the policy but not addressed the example I gave and why the policy should not be modified for such circumstances.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I was talking about what I did when there was no creation protection. I interpret "preemptive" to only apply to pages with no history at all (never been created, deleted, or anything). If preemptive meant anything else, it would forbid the very protection it's talking about. I'm guessing you mean the example at the top there, and I already gave a response. 1st time you just delete, second time you delete and salt (create-protect, whatever you want to call it). I don't believe that we should protect after just one creation because that encompasses every CSD article. We don't semiprotect every time an article gets a little vandalism. We don't create protect every A7/G1 page. If it's recreated, then it's a good idea to create protect. -Royalguard11(T) 05:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protecting user talk pages

After this discussion on WP:AN, I have add this to the semi-protection section:

User talk pages may be semi-protected only if they are consistently targeted for vandalism, and only if an unprotected subpage is available (and watched) for IP editors who legitimately need to contact the editor in question."

This merely formalizes what is apparently an already-existing practice. If you read the discussion over there, you will see some examples where this is clearly necessary.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 02:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)