User:Eat me, I'm an azuki/Why I'm against superprotect: Wikipedia and the WMF

While I respect all that the WMF has done, there are points of friction between the Foundation and the community. The essay will show why I am, or was, against superprotect.

"Reserve powers" of the Foundation

"Limits to configuration changes" states that:

Rarely, a local community consensus will emerge for a particular wiki configuration change that is technically feasible to implement, but is rejected by the [WMF's] system administrators. Arguably this is a demonstration of a technocracy, or a necessity to preserve the founding principles and our mission.

The WMF has used the "reserve power" 12 times, the most controversial being ACTRIAL which passed local consensus but failed to be implemented. However, this did not reach the magnitude of superprotect.

How it happened

On August 10, 2014, a group of German Wikipedia administrators attempted to disable MediaViewer on the German Wikipedia as per a community poll. However, the WMF exercised its "reserve powers" and did not approve the change. The German Wikipedia administrators then edited the local MediaWiki page to force through the change, but they were reverted by Foundation staff and warned. However, the admins persisted with making the changes. The WMF then applied what is known as "superprotect" to the page, which means only Foundation staff can edit it.

The ensuing backlash was enormous. No less than eight consultations and statements were made by the WMF at meta:Superprotect. An open letter was signed by almost 1000 people against superprotect. The case was even taken to Arbcom. On August 27, 2014, superprotect was removed from the German Wikipedia's MediaWiki page; however, both superprotect and Media Viewer remained in Wikimedia projects.

Update: superprotect removed

Update: Due to the WMF stating that it has caused more problems than it has solved, superprotect is now officially gone as of November 5, 2015. More information at mw:WMF product development process/2015-11-05.

My opinion

This is why I'm against superprotect:

1. Foundation staff are not elected by the local (or, for that matter, global) community, while admins and crats are. Therefore, they can not be entrusted with powers greater than that of normal users. Admins, which are "elected" via consensus, can edit pages normal users can not, whereas Foundation staff should have enough powers to do their work-related duties and nothing more.
2. Superprotect gives editors the impression of a "cabal" - which is exactly what we don't want here. If pages are protected so that said "cabal" could edit pages ordinary editors couldn't - that cabal not being elected by the community in any way - then we should not give Foundation staff that privilege.
3. The Foundation should not introduce a new protection level to protect incomplete software from being removed into the beta. Since the software is incomplete, then it can first be on an opt-in basis. It's just a glitzed-up way of introducing "own versions" of articles - and that is a big no-no on Wikipedia.