Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy 2

WP:ECPP2

This page in a nutshell:

Extended confirmed create protection was accepted by the community, and may be used at the protecting administrator's discretion
Preemptive extended confirmed protection of high-risk templates was rejected by the community

Background/Introduction

Extended confirmed protection (also known as "30/500 protection" or "ECP") is a (relatively) new level of article protection that only allows edits from accounts at least 30 days old and with 500 edits. The automatically assigned "extended confirmed" user right was created for this purpose. The protection level was created following this community discussion with the primary intention of enforcing various arbitration remedies that prohibit editors under the "30 days/500 edits" threshold to edit certain topic areas. The Arbitration Committee recently passed a motion that established expectations for use of the protection within the scope of arbitration enforcement.

In a July 2016 RfC, consensus developed to allow extended confirmed protection to be applied "to combat any form of disruption (such as vandalism, edit wars, etc.) on any topic, given that semi-protection has proven to be ineffective". Since the development of that policy, several specific use cases have been brought up which weren't covered by the original discussion. This RfC attempts to find consensus on two such potential use cases.

Note: To prevent this from devolving into a mess, please do not propose additional use cases beyond those already listed below. These two use cases are put forward because many requests for page protection along these lines have been filed at WP:RFPP. If you'd like to propose an additional use case, please do so in a separate RfC.

RfC

Should we allow (i) use of extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates; and (ii) the use of creation protection at the extended confirmed level? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

High-risk templates

Should we allow use of extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates?

Closing per the snowball clause. There is a clear consensus against using extended confirmed protection preemptively on high risk templates. This leaves full protection, template editor protection and semiprotection as the three common protection levels, while extended confirmed protection can still be used when Arbcom specifies a 30/500 remedy, or when semiprotection has proven ineffective. Opposers commonly cited the increasing complexity of protection levels, and the lack of a pressing problem in their rationales. Additionally, there were concerns that the experience gained editing articles and other areas of wikipedia would translate poorly to editing high risk templates, where the syntax is often impenetrable, and mistakes will potentially affect thousands of pages. There was some support for using extended confirmed protection for medium risk templates in the neighborhood of dozens to hundreds of transclusions - I would encourage anyone looking to revive this proposal to focus their efforts there. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:32, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Support (High-risk templates)

Moral support. I'm not one of the main advocates of this idea that prompted me to launch this part of the RfC, and I'm surprised that particular editor hasn't shown up to make their arguments. I feel like their arguments should be displayed before this fully SNOWs, though, and I'm pretty neutral, so let's give it a whirl. By adding this tool to the administrator toolbox and turning things over the admin discretion, that doesn't mean we're lowering the protection level of templates. In many cases, we may be increasing protection. Right now, semi-protection is used on many medium- to high-risk templates, typically in the realm of about 1k–5k transclusions, but sometimes as high as 10k. This is often deployed on templates that are transcluded on lots of pages, but aren't particularly high-risk. For example, templates intended only for userspace or talk pages. Perhaps it's beneficial to swap some of that to ECP, since a vandal could still do a lot with a template transcluded on 5k talk pages. I would consider it a very poor idea to replace template protection with ECP protection, but that is not what the supporters of this idea have advocated in the past, as far as I'm aware. The idea isn't terrible. but I can offer only tepid support. I'm more concerned about the proliferation of protection levels around the site and I see this benefit as marginal. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:24, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a layer: All high-risk templates should be uneditable by anyone who does not meet the ECP criterion, but mostly should also have TE protection. ECP protection could be added to more templates that might not qualify for TE protection ("medium-risk template"). Hell, even a bot could be made to auto-apply this protection to all templates used on X number of pages. I of course oppose the idea that high-risk templates should only have ECP protection. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 22:57, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a modified proposal. I think the problem here is that the question has not been fleshed out enough to determine what this would entail. I would support a proposal something like this: Should we allow the use of extended confirmed protection, as an alternate to template protection, when a template is a borderline high-risk, or the high-risk status is uncertain? Of course HRT shouldn't be routinely protected with ECP, but there could well be cases which are borderline where ECP could be used in preference to template-prot., where there still is significant need for protection of some sort, but where ECP is maybe all that is needed. A good example of this is political infoboxes and navboxes during elections. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support by 500 edits, people are probably not a vandal, and (assuming they aren't exclusively using VE) should be fairly comfortable with wiki-code. However, templates still confuse a lot of more experienced editors. Having the majority of templates fully protected limits the ability of editors to gain experience with them. They don't know them, aren't comfortable with them, and hesitate to apply for template editor rights. Having some medium and lower risk templates under EC protection will allow people to edit them if needed and gain comfort and familiarity with templates and template markup while still protecting them from vandalism and rank newbies. My support would be stronger if there were some intention/ability to limit this to people who have made 500 wikitext edits, as opposed to visual editor - but EC doesn't work that way. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a logical extension to the original proposal of ECP. In contrast to the large number of opposes below, I can see this as an appropriate alternative to Template Editor protection for templates that are widely used but has simple wikicode. Deryck C. 00:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (High-risk templates)

Oppose The Template Editor role exists for a reason - highly visible/important templates should go through a discussion process before any major changes are made. Mike1901 (talk) 15:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC) Striking this - misunderstood the remit of this RfC. Mike1901 (talk) 16:06, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Template Editor rights are rather easy to obtain, all that is needed is a pattern of suggesting accepted edits or showing that one is comfortable editing templates. That few editors ever apply for these rights is a different problem entirely, but this is likely to make the frequency by which templates are broken rise. Frankly getting templates right all the time is difficult even with considerable experience, and using the test-cases and sandboxes will not always be enough as I have learned the hard way. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: 500 edits probably means that you're not a vandal, but does absolutely nothing to ensure that you have the technical knowledge necessary to edit Wikipedia templates without causing a mess. Either leave the template unprotected, if it's not really that high-risk, or template protect it, if you actually want to lower the risk of someone causing a problem. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 16:08, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Bilorv. KGirlTrucker81^{huh? what I've been doing} 16:21, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose – Way too much potential for unintentional disruption which might even go undetected in stable areas where templates haven't been touched for years. The current system of edit requests provides appropriate balance to implement good ideas from editors while ensuring prior review by another pair of eyes. Editors who have demonstrated technical competence and understanding of the encyclopedia goals can be granted template editor rights, and they gain helpful contact with fellow template editors through the vetting process. — JFG ^talk 16:27, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as above. The case where I could see it useful in theory is for editing WP:HRT that also fall within the 30/500 ARBCOM areas, with someone requiring both rights to edit. But let's face it: how often does someone not 30/500-eligible get the Template Editor right, anyway? What I could see is that templates that don't really qualify as HRT per se but that fall within an ARBCOM enforcement area could be allowed template protection—only Template Editors could edit—as if they were HRT. But that would require a change in the policy cited here. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose per Bilorv. TomStar81 (Talk) 16:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, we have template editor for that, I would much rather see those high-risk template being edited through a 'given right'. Even those editors sometimes make a mess of things (and I have done it myself as well). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because too risky. Pun intended, yet serious. - DVdm (talk) 16:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."-Bert Lance. Full Rune^{Speak, child of Guthix} 16:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as above; far too easy to create havoc through incorrect editing of high use templates. We saw this regularly with taxonomy templates being vandalized, which could then affect hundreds of pages, before cascading protection stopped this happening. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:08, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We already have something in place, no need to change. 🔯 Sir Joseph ^🍸(talk) 17:17, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I think Wikipedia:Template editor works very well for this situation. Plus, I agree with Bilorv's opinion. --Wario-Man (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Competence is required to edit high risk (which frequently (maybe usually) equals highly visible) templates, and the template editor right exists to ensure that only those who are competent can edit them. Thryduulf (talk) 17:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as use solely for high-risk templates. But if the template is not high-risk, and it otherwise makes sense to use ECP, one should not hesitate to do so — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose ECU right does not prove a technical aptitude. But then, I'm pretty sure there are admins without that either, except admins are held more accountable and hence more restricted in their actions. Will support for general templates that are frequently edited with simple syntax. --QEDK (愛) 18:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - as with all of the above, we already have a restricted user right for editing templates. This seems like a solution looking for a problem. PGWG (talk) 18:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per above. Competence with templates, especially high-risk ones, doesn't necessarily come with ECP-levels of experience. Unless there's evidence that there's a backlog of edit requests for templates, I don't see the need for this. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 18:35, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The 30/500 criteria is not adequate to prevent problematic edits to high-risk templates. Just because someone has made that many edits to articles does not indicate any awareness of the difficulties template edits can cause. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 18:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Too much potential for disruption. Funcrunch (talk) 19:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per above. Class455 (Merry Christmas!) 20:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. While there are sufficient grounds for broadening the use of 30/500 (not up or discission here), templates are adequately covered by the user group Template editor. Normal Full Protection can be applied uncotentiously to any template by any admin. Note therefore that this RfC is a minor solution looking for a minor a problem and was also notified to multiple users by the proposer in defiance of an established, observed guideline. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Noting that I notified every single editor of the past large RfC on this same topic, as explicitly allowed in WP:CANVASS. You're nitpicking over how the notifications were made, fine, but you were the one who requested wider notifications from me at a past RfC. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose The existing system of protected templates and requests to Template Editors is sufficient. Reidgreg (talk) 20:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Kudpung. A support more protection, generally, across Wikipedia, not less. This sounds like an opportunity to protect templates at a lower level when they should be fully protected. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose If templates need to be protected because of a high level of technicality, then the template editor user right is available. If, say, navboxes relating to a controversial subject require protection, use semi-protection. Most vandals don't bother with templates anyway, semi is enough for those who do. MediaKill13 (talk) 21:58, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It takes a careful, knowledgeable, editor to work with templates, which is why we have the Template Editor right. This proficiency can and should be demonstrated with good edit requests, etc, and then the Template Editor right can be requested. Edit count doesn't mean much as regards templates. I have 50k edits, but little experience creating or editing templates. lNeverCry 22:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is why we have template editor rights and admins, it's more harm than good allowing EC editors to edit high-risk templates. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 22:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose–I don't see a need for this protection level for templates since we already have the Template Editor user group that allows trusted editors to edit fully-protected templates. –Grondemar 22:51, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Semi-protection, template editor, and full protection are already enough for templates. No need for ECP. --Pokéfan95 (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose One thing is allowing extended confirmed right to edit high-risk templates on this lay down protection level, than those trusted template editor user group maybe no longer value available, so I won't thing this policy is perfectible. SA 13 Bro 02:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Oppose - An understanding of the adverse effects introducing an error into high risk templates can have is essential (e.g. because they may be transcluded on thousands of pages). I don't think most contributors registered for 30 days with 500 edits have that (I certainly did not at that point in my time editing here). Template protection is relatively new as it is, pages of this nature used to be fully protected. — Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 04:42, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Automated grants of editing rights has a place in content creation but is problematic in the "behind the scenes" area. We don't want automated access and the current system of human review is adequate. This looks like a solution in search of a problem. Drop it and move on with the current system. --DHeyward (talk) 06:49, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for high risk templates - these should be fully protected with only those with the template editor / admin etc. permissions able to edit them. But if we were to introduce some other categories such medium risk templates, ECP could be right for that scenario. Waggers TALK 14:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Editors that would be allowed to edit templates under this proposal, still need to "know" template markup/coding, which the current Template protection and screening by Xaosflux, are doing just fine in my opinion. - Mlpearc (open channel) 20:01, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Consensus seems to be building on this side and I agree with it. Editors who are able to obtain extended confirmed protection must also understand how to edit templates. This is not an automatic understanding that an editor obtains upon meeting the requirements of extended confirmed protection editing. Being sure not to break high-risk templates is much more difficult than making edits to other articles. - tucoxn\^talk 16:39, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There is way to much risk for abuse. If it's high-risk why settle for extended confirmed when we have full-protection and template-protection? We have template editors and trust them to edit and alter high-risk templates and to use good judgement in decisions and rely on community consensus in making large changes to high-risk templates, I don't think someone with 500 edits and 30 days is able to make those kinds of decisions. The rough guide for making changes to templates shows what is expected in making changes of templates. This means we have to place the same level of trust on extended confirmed users with templates and thus creating more problems then it solves. FockeWulf FW 190 (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Mlpearc. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:28, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
pile-on Oppose I see no obvious benefit to this over the way we're already doing it, and I'm very concerned that protection is becoming needlesly over complicated. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:24, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, instruction creep, and doesn't prevent disruptive actions by those with good intentions but not a lot of template parser skills. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:02, 26 December 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Oppose as I suspect it will just end up being an alternative to semi-protection. Templates which require template-editor protection require it because of the exposure they have and risk of damage they pose. The level at which TE protection is imposed won't change because of this, hence why I suspect it's likely they ECP will tend to replace semi on templates. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:44, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The template editor userright exists for this very reason. However, I find merit in what SMcCandish stated in his support !vote above; if there is a template which doesn't quite meet the level required for template protection, but is still quite visible or otherwise at "medium" risk, then ECP could be applied. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 11:52, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The Template Protection and Full Protection is a better option than Extended Confirmed protection. Gary "Roach" Sanderson (talk) 01:50, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as Template Protection would almost always be the best option for high-risk templates. Colonel Wilhelm Klink (^Complaints|_Mistakes) 22:05, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as inferior to Template Protection, per all of the above. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Not everyone should be editing templates, and there can be "gotcha" stuff even on edits that seem simple. Template editor rights require the editor who gets them to show that they actually know what they're doing messing around with templates that may be used on thousands of pages. If you want to edit templates, make good suggestions, and after you show you know what you're doing, someone will be happy to grant you template editor access. (Hopefully we can trust admins not to fiddle with high-use templates if they don't know what they're doing.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:08, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral (High-risk templates)

Neutral It makes sense, as an intermediate protection level. On the other hand, I never before felt the need for it. Debresser (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I like the idea, however I'm not sure its necessary, isn't this why we have the template editor user right? It does make sense, but I'm just not sure if the potential for disruption is too high. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 20:10, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I fully support 30/500 protection, so I would probably lean toward support, but I'm not as familiar with the editing and use of templates. I'm mostly a part-time content/copy editor so I should probably stay neutral until I learn a bit more. Foreignshore (talk) 20:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. In cases of disruption, I think people should have the option of using ECP. For example, throughout December 2016, {{Neill Blomkamp}} has already had four socks target it with the same hoax. It's semi-protected now, but if autoconfirmed accounts start targeting it, I would hope we could use ECP instead of unnecessarily high protection levels. The template is neither complex nor high risk in the classic sense – it's just the subject of vandalism from a rather dedicated hoaxer. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@NinjaRobotPirate: That's allowable under the current protection policy. It's the preemptive usage on high-risk templates that's under question here. While the editor who advocated that protection level hasn't come forward to make their case, it was quite a hubbub for a while, with an AN thread, dozens of RFPP requests in short bursts, etc., which is why this was advanced to the community. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (High-risk templates)

I just want to highlight that we aren't (and shouldn't be) attempting to rigorously define what a high-risk template is here. From what I understand, that's been done to death in the past, and it's always a mess. What warrants different levels of protection on high-risk templates has always been a matter of administrator discretion, and that system has worked very well. All we're deciding here is whether to add this tool to the toolbox, if that makes sense. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that this RfC doesn't alter the allowed usage of semi-protection and template-protection on high-risk templates in any way. In particular, this doesn't take over the role of template protection, but rather provides one more step on the spectrum from semi-protection to template-protection of high-risk templates. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- @BU Rob13: Is anyone arguing that our template protection is too stringent? I've always seen 30/500 as a countervandalism tool. As mentioned above, template protection is more than just stopping vandalism but prevents editors like me with no technical knowledge from screwing up coding. I have doubts that there are editors that could be usefully editing templates that haven't been able to get the template-editor flag. It seems like a solution in search of a problem. I get that there isn't consensus on what a "high-risk" template is. Are you looking to implement this protection on templates that haven't been identified as high risk? Chris Troutman (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Chris troutman: See this AN thread for some of the history. George Ho was the big advocate for lowering protection of some templates to the extended-confirmed level, to the point of pinging administrators on their talk pages frequently about lowering the protection level on templates that haven't needed to be edited in years. Numerous RFPP requests were filed. Largely because of that campaign, we currently have three templates protected as highly-visible templates at this level. Two others are protected at this level due to the ARBPIA3 topic area, which is outside the community's remit. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:35, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Noting here that there are 5 templates currently under extended confirmed protection ~~as high risk templates~~: see Special:ProtectedPages. Mz7 (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2016 (UTC) Correction: 2 are protected as "Highly visible template", another 2 are protected per WP:ARBPIA3#500/30 and the fifth was set to "lower protection due to request". Mz7 (talk) 16:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- ...I hate to break this to you guys, but I had my rights to edit ECP pages relinquished per my request at User talk:BDD, including the five mentioned above. That means that I can't edit those templates indefinitely... until I request the retrieval. I'll comment on this at later time. George Ho (talk) 16:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Question I may have missed something, but I do not see what the question has not much to do with ECP. The reasoning is see above is as follows: WP:HRT are visible on many pages, and should be protected from the (non-vandalizing, non-edit-warring) blunders of even tenured editors that lack competence at template edition, hence HRT should go under full-protection or template-protection. Fine.

But if that is so, the same could be said of semi-protection: that argument just says HRT should be full-protected or template-protected. However, if you look at the protection log, some templates are semi-protected with the HRT rationale, for instance Template:Automatic Taxobox‎ (probably not a vandalism target) or Template: Bill Clinton (probably a vandalism target). Is this because of a classification mistake on these examples (they are not HRT, whatever HRT means, or too low a protection level was applied)? If semi-protection should be used on HRT, then surely ECP could, no?

I realize this popped up because of a specific request, but it does beg the question of semi-protection. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 22:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Creation protection

Should we allow the use of creation protection at the extended confirmed level?

Closing per the snowball clause. There is clear consensus to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection when creation protecting a title. This change leaves semi-protection, extended confirmed protection, and full protection as available levels for salting - administrators should choose the appropriate one at their discretion. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:48, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Support (Creation protection)

Support Almost exclusively used to combat trolls and advocates from recreating spam-articles. Would be a net-positive if more users could recreate articles that were deleted years ago. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support – This would offer some flexibility with minimal disruption potential. — JFG ^talk 16:28, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. When I was drafting this originally, I was highly skeptical of this use case. Thinking upon it further, it does make sense. There's no real need for most instances of creation protection to restrict beyond extended confirmed editors. I don't like the general proliferation of protection levels, but in this case, it's beneficial. I'd rather see full creation protection become as rare as full protection and see this become the norm. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:32, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - disruption would be minimal, it should have a proper warning on the creation of the page though that it is salted, and why it is (to avoid that editors accidentally override oversight or ArbCom decisions. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Beetstra: For an ArbCom or oversight issue, we'd almost certainly use full creation protection. Note that this doesn't mandate that we use extended confirmed creation protection. It just makes it available. One more tool in the toolbox, etc. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:39, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I realise that, maybe the wrong example. The EC editor of course cannot see the deleted edits, so cannot see past problems. But I can hardly see that being a problem often. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:45, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This might actually be one of the most useful potential applications of ECP. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support: (edit conflict × 3) Useful alternative to prevent vandals and spammers from recreating spammy and vandalistic pages. KGirlTrucker81^{huh? what I've been doing} 16:39, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Yes, please. I'm often uneasy about having to choose between leaving creation open to any account four days old with ten edits and closing it off to all non-admins. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:54, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support – seems sensible. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very useful protection against spammers and disruptive users. --Wario-Man (talk) 17:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think this is already permissable with current policy, and I would likely IAR if it's use were to be forbidden. Using full protection when ECP works just fine doesn't make any sense and contradicts WP:PREEMPTIVE, where the duration of the protection should be set as short as possible, and the protection level should be set to the lowest restriction needed in order to stop the disruption — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support A very good idea. Most extended-confirmed users aren't likely to create non-notable articles. ThePlatypusofDoom (talk) ^{Happy Holidays} 18:18, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Works. --QEDK (愛) 18:28, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This would be good to prevent spammers from recreating their pet topics, but wouldn't hinder dedicated Wikipedians. A good intermediary step between any no protection and full protection salting. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 18:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm for 'anything' sensible that keeps me contributing, and not chasing vandals all day. We should have evolved way past the vandal issue by now.Pocketthis (talk) 18:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Quite a reasonable protection level for selected titles. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 18:39, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This has been working well to combat persistent vandalism and is a better solution than full protection.  Adrian^[232] 18:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - a good option where an article subject has the potential to become notable, but page keeps being recreated with useless (e.g. spammy) content. This lets the vast majority of users create the article in future with the minimum of fuss, while stopping it from being created by throwaway accounts. Yaris678 (talk) 18:46, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I'm convinced, though per User:BU Rob13, full creation protection should still be used on appropriate cases. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:30, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Seems to be a useful tool in vandalism prevention, and theirs really no way users can abuse it either Full Rune^{Speak, child of Guthix} 20:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Support Serves as a happy medium level of protection between unprotected and the current creation protection. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 20:07, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support it sounds odd to protect a page that doesn't exist, but makes sense. Reidgreg (talk) 20:43, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I will support any move to unbridle the 30/500 protection level from any of its current bureaucratic constraints. I have stated elsewhere on Wikipedia that the protection of articles is something we entrust to administrators who, theoretically, are unlikely to abuse this feature of their tool kit. Noting however that this RfC was canvassed by an admin in contravention of a widely observed, established guideline. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
Noting that I notified every single editor of the past large RfC on this same topic, as explicitly allowed in WP:CANVASS. You're nitpicking over how the notifications were made, fine, but you were the one who requested wider notifications from me at a past RfC. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I wanted an implementation of PC2 exclusive to the reviewer/rollbacker set but I guess this will have to do. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Makes sense. lNeverCry 21:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is a good alternative to full protection in cases where it's possible an article may eventually be possible. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:08, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - hell yeah. Current WP:SALT levels go from "please wait a few days before reposting your spam article" to "none shall create this"; any in-between possibility can only improve that. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 22:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support–this makes sense for theoretically-acceptable article topics that see repeated creation of spam pages. –Grondemar 22:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sounds like a decent middle ground to keep autoconfirmed spammers/vandals at bay Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 23:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hmm....for my observation, usually those extended confirmed users won't be a vandals, useless the person account get compromised. SA 13 Bro 01:32, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Support - ECP is a much-needed feature especially for relatively inexperienced users who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia's article creation rules. I would suggest also re-evaluating existing protected articles to determine which would warrant a switch from full-protection to ECP (example would include unannounced but forecasted products such as Samsung Galaxy S8). <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
support reasonable balance of rights. Staszek Lem (talk) 04:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as preferable to full protection. - Ne ll is 04:48, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - seems like common sense. Waggers TALK 14:50, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I originally opposed ECP in general because it seemed to create a group of first and second class users in routine editing, but for article creation where the patrolling system is already in place for good reason, ECP creation protection seems like it would complement and enhance the patrolling system and take some burden off the new page patrollers (while actually helping article creation a tad), without having to hand out autopatrolled rights to users who have EC but might not really have the article creation experience needed for autopatrolled. Jhugh95 (talk) 22:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as I understand it. The question is poorly phrased, and implies that ECP would enable one to SALT an article. I'm going with the flow of what I'm reading above, though. SALTing is used pretty much just to stop trolls and vandals, and few of them would achieve the ECP userright. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:00, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I strongly supported the creation of 30/500 protection for articles, even though I haven't yet reached 500 edits. Any tool that will hinder trolling and free admins and editors for more good work has my support. Foreignshore (talk) 01:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Furthermore I support this as a (soft) default when choosing a salt protection level. Auto-confirmed salting would be almost pointless, and full-protection salting probably isn't needed in most cases. Salting is generally about preventing nuisance articles, and it is not unusual for them to later become reasonable topics. Extended confirmed is well targeted to preventing nuisance creations without obstructing reasonable development. Alsee (talk) 10:43, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Again, consensus seems to be building on this side of the discussion. I agree that this is a good medium between no protection (or wait a few days before reposting this article) and full protection salting (no editor shall create an article with this name). - tucoxn\^talk 16:44, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Makes sense. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:30, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Yep, but using semi protection to prevent creation of a page normally works so I'd hope that semi is used as the least restrictive option more than ECP is. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:47, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Extended confirmed users are unlikely to be vandals, and are likely to understand the notability and sourcing requirements to write articles. I agree that this should be another tool in the box and that admins can reserve the right to apply full creation protection if required. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 11:56, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a better alternative to full protection. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:24, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support Can keep vandals from creating articles that aren't supposed to be on Wikipedia. Gary "Roach" Sanderson (talk) 01:46, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support on the condition that it only be used for titles that have a reasonable possibility of having a valid article. So, articles on people's bands or companies that have been deleted as A7 or non-notable - fine, because they could become notable or have a different entity with the same name become notable in the future. However, titles like "X on Wheels!", or titles that are, in and of themselves, BLP violations, and others that have no chance of ever becoming a valid article, should remain fully salted. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:32, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support per above. Using ECP will cut down on problematic creation by sockpuppets and vandals, while also opening up the possibility of the creation of a genuine article by trusted users (without the need for an unprotection request). A win-win situation. Colonel Wilhelm Klink (^Complaints|_Mistakes) 22:12, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the understanding that we must also retain full salting for many cases. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:06, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a logical extension to the original proposal of ECP. Deryck C. 00:26, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support, this would be a nice addition. Semiprotection is often ineffective, as a determined spammer or troll won't mind a bit clearing the low hurdle of autoconfirmed, but full protection keeps experienced editors from rewriting the page appropriately. I've been asked several times to remove full protection from an article I'd previously SALTed once an experienced editor was ready to write something appropriate. It'd be nice if they could just go ahead and do it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 10:12, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think that indefinite full protection is already overused for things that could with some effort make good articles. Using extended confirmed protection there instead can drastically reduce the damage that results from people who want to start a good article but can't find their way to the places to request unprotection. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Creation protection)

Same reason as before. BorkBorkGoesTheCode (talk) 17:57, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
BorkBorkGoesTheCode, can you elaborate? --George Ho (talk) 17:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

~~If Extended-confirmed users can't protect anything else, what makes salting so special? Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 22:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)~~ Misread the RFC[reply]
@Jjjjjjdddddd: Please read WP:Extended confirmed protection to understand what this is about. Extended confirmed creation-protection would mean only extended confirmed editors may create the page, as opposed to the usual salting that involves only administrators being allowed to do so. Only administrators would be allowed to place this protection level, as usual. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't see any sense in allowing ECP in creation protection. If the vandal/spammer repeatedly creates the article in the same name and circumvents semi-protection, then full protection should be used. It is rare for established users to create an article that has been fully salted, and if they want to do so, either they make it a draft, request an admin to unprotect the page, or give an admin the wikitext so that they can create it. ECP don't make sense at all in creation protection. --Pokéfan95 (talk) 01:51, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If the vandal/spammer repeatedly creates the article in the same name and circumvents semi-protection, then full protection should be used. - why? The lesser protection the better. The whole point of ECP is that it is fairly hard to circumvent, yet lets through a reasonable number of editors. If your argument is that someone who has the time to game the semi-protection system has the time to game the ECP system, then that's an argument against ECP itself, not as creation protection. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:12, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Same as my comment above. Mlpearc Phone (open channel) 20:04, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'm very concerned about excessive policy creep in the area of protection. It's simple enough to ask the protecting admin or file a request at WP:RFPP, we don't need yet another layer of protection. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:27, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral (Creation protection)

Neutral: I'm conflicted on this one, On one hand, I support the current idea of creating a draft and presenting it to an admin to remove create protection, on the other, I know this can be off-putting and seem tedious to other users, especially since if you're extended confirmed you're unlikely to cause damage. I'll have to consider this really carefully. MediaKill13 (talk) 22:05, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Creation protection)

Whilst not opposed in principle, I'm of the view that this may be more appropriate subsumed into the autopatrolled userright, rather than create-protecting for non EC users. Mike1901 (talk) 16:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't this allowable under current policy? If not, it seems to be current practice: see Special:ProtectedTitles. Mz7 (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- @Mz7: It's not currently allowed under the protection policy, although its use has been widespread. Some administrators have interpreted the absence of guidance on this specific matter as community consent to allow it, but the previous RfC to establish a protection policy surrounding ECP was very clear about only allowing use in one specific use case (active disruptive editing of some sort, where semi-protection failed to stop the disruption). The intent of this RfC is to either change the policy or make clear that we don't have consensus to protect in this way. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:45, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ah, that does make sense. Thank you for clarifying. Mz7 (talk) 16:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not sure about using ECP on templates solely because they are high-risk, that much is unclear; but I think current policy already permits use as create protection. Basically admins are now using ECP instead of full protection, which is very good. Forbidding this would be contrary to existing policy at WP:PREEMPTIVE (use the minimum effective protection level) — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - In theory I agree with MusikAnimal. Both because of WP:PREEMPTIVE and because it could be argued that repeatedly recreating an article is disruptive editing where semiprotection has proved ineffective - new accounts can not create articles, which is a bit like having a blanket semi create protection in main space. However, that is my interpretation, others may disagree. Therefore, I think it is still worth having this RfC. Yaris678 (talk) 18:54, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Yaris678: Actually, new accounts can create articles. Only IPs can't. See WP:ACTRIAL, which received community consensus but was shot down by the WMF at the time. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:48, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      - Yes. My error. IPs can't create new articles, but new accounts can. Yaris678 (talk) 12:26, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What if we split salting into the protection levels of semi-salting, extended-confirmed-protection-salting, and full-salting, like we do with existing page protection levels? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjjjjjdddddd (talk • contribs)
- That already technically exists. This is the RfC to determine whether we allow the use of extended-confirmed creation-protection (which is salting). ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm really not on board with expanding the use of EC protection, we already have semi, full, and PC. EC was supposed to be used only in limited cases to potect existing articles and I don't think we should expand it beyond that. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:34, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- I believe the intent here is to create a level of creation protection less than full-protection. Currently, the only choices are full-protection (only admins can create the article) or no protection (any logged-in user can create the article). This proposal would allow for extended confirmed users to be able to create the article, since they are likely to understand notability and sourcing requirements. — Jkudlick ⚓ t ⚓ c ⚓ s 19:49, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, semi create protection is entirely possible, it just isn't used much. I just don't see the pressing problem that needs solving here, and there is also the question of what to do with the thousands? Tens of thousands? More? Page names that are already fully protected. That doesn't seem to have been considered at all in this proposal. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.