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Handling sockpuppets who abuse IP addresses

I have recently defended an article that was being disrupted by an obvious and persistent sockpuppet who has the ability to use a different IP every time he logs in. I logged an entry on WP:SPI but nothing was done until an edit war broke out six days later and an inexperienced Admin blocked both the sockpuppet and myself and placed a Semi-protection lock on the article for three days. On appeal my block was revoked.


Policy Shortcomings

The action taken by the Admin is, I understand, the correct action as per Wikipedia policy. Unfortunately blocking an IP address achieves nothing - in this case the sockpuppet need only log off, log back on (he will probably get a different IP address) and start disrupting another article, while blocking the entire range will block other IP editors who have no connection with the sockpuppet concerned. In this posting another editor explained how the current policy is counter-productive in that it is driving proper editors away. I would like more drastic action to be made available as a routine measure. There are two approaches:


Continuing to tackle the problem at source

The only way to tackle the problem at source is to involve the Internet provider concerned, either by seeking their cooperation against the editor concerned or by forcing their hand by blocking the entire range of IP addresses that they control. Neither is very satisfactory


Tackle the target end of the problem

At the current time the target end of the problem is only routinely tackled in a short term manner by locking the article for a few days to allow things to cool down. In circumstances where one party is intent on causing disruption, this only postpones the problem. My proposal is that the following be done as routine:

  • The article concerned is "pending changes level 1 protected" (“pp-pc1” applied). This will shift work from admins onto reviewers (who are often editors who have an interest in the article and a knowledge of the sockpuppet's history) and will remove the ability of the sockpuppet to make changes.
  • The sockmaster's account is endorsed with a note "This user has repeatedly disrupted articles since being banned. Administrators should consider pending changes level 1 protection for articles that are subsequently disrupted.
  • Reviewers should include the lockmaster’s name in their rejection comments.

I believe that such a policy will quickly convince the sockmaster that their disruptions will no longer be effective. Martinvl (talk) 06:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Pending changes level 1 protection

Is it appropriate to use “pending changes level 1 protection” to tackle Sockpuppets?

  • Support
  • Oppose

Sockmaster identification

Is it appropriate for Administrators to publically identify sockmasters who persistently disrupt Wikipedia in spite of being banned?

  • Support
  • Oppose

Discussion

Regarding the first one, I thought that was already allowed for articles receive a good amount of IP edits of which a significant minority are socks but a majority are legitimate. And can you clarify the second one? Of course administrators can publically identify sockmasters, if I understand your question correctly. Did you mean CheckUsers? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it is you hope to accomplish with this RFC. The usual answer to what form of protection should be used in a particular situation is "admin discretion, within reason." I don't see any reason presented here to change that, PC1 or semi protection are both reasonable responses to persistent socking. On the second point I have the same questions as King of Hearts. I don't mean to be rude but perhaps you should thoroughly review the protection policy and the sockpuppetry policy and perhaps modify or reconsider these proposals so that the goal is more clear. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:12, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Wording of sentence about semi-protection

The wording in the first paragraph of the "Guidance for administrators" section about semi-protection has always bothered me. Here is the current phrasing:


The second sentence unsatisfactory because the phrase "Semi-protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred" is confusing. It is only confidently understood in conjunction with the first sentence and does not stand on its own. On its own, it could reasonably be understood to imply that semi-protection should never occur (since semi-protection is always used to prevent vandalism that has not occurred). I think better wording is


Agree? Jason Quinn (talk) 19:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to unprotect Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items

Now that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right has passed, we will very soon have a new user right to allow editors to edit protected templates, plus a new protection level that will only be available for use in the template and module namespaces. However, editors with the new user right will not be able to edit cascade-protected pages. Because of this, I have made a proposal that Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items and other similar lockboxes be unprotected and the new protection level be used instead. If you're interested, please leave a comment on the discussion page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Template editor

Someone's begun a little bit on Wikipedia:Template editors, and that should probably be expanded. Please also note what I said at WT:RFPP. Nyttend (talk) 11:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on October 30

(simple word correction) The Danish word for "skál" should be "skål", this is true for danish/norway and sweden languages.

Your request appearts to be misplaced. This talk page is for discussing improvements to the policy page Wikipedia:Protection policy. Please use the talk page associated with the article that needs correcting. Rivertorch (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Permanent protection for transcluded pages

The following text appears in the section Permanent Protection:

Given that we now have Template Protection, should the line be removed? - Ypnypn (talk) 14:10, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Template protection is still "permanent protection" (though should probably read "indefinite"). I'm sure some templates will remain under full protection. John Reaves 17:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Announcing edit requests for template-protected pages

You may be interested to know that we now have a new template, {{edit template-protected}}, for making edit requests to template-protected pages. These requests can be viewed at Category:Wikipedia template-protected edit requests, and can be answered by any editor with the template editor user right. There is also an annotated list of edit requests automatically updated by AnomieBOT at User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable. You can put this on your watchlist to see when new requests have been made. Editors with the template editor right are enthusiastically encouraged to help answer the requests. :) You can see guidelines for answering requests at Wikipedia:Edit requests#Responding to requests. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Notice of RFC on preemptive protection of Today's featured article

The discussion. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 00:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC to add Pending Changes to all BLP with few or no watchers

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/RfC to add Pending Changes to all BLP with few or no watchers

The number of watchers of a BLP seems unrelated to the number of revisions it receives:

Perhaps 5% of BLPs are unwatched. The median number of watchers is somewhere between 2 and 4 (based on one limited toolserver query and one small sample). The question is: does this mean would ought to allow Pending Changes protection of these BLP purely because they're un- or under- watched? Josh Parris 05:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Which is wrong?

This page says:

Positioning the mouse pointer over the padlock symbol produces an informational tooltip displaying why, and for what duration, the page is protected.

However, when I hover the mouse over the lock at Burzynski Clinic it says the article is semi-protected, but doesn't say why or for how long. Does the policy wording need editing, or is there something wrong?--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:20, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The lock icon is placed by {{pp-semi-protected}} independent of actual protection, so verification is necessary to see if the lock is correctly placed.
To verify and see the actual protection settings, look at the logs:
The latter title shows that it was temporarily protected three times, before being given indefinite protection. I believe the protection moves with the title when it's moved.
Then you can update {{Pp-protected}} to give reason and expiry parameters. see that template's documentation. The template uses the WP:magic word {{PROTECTIONLEVEL}} to determine the protection level (semi- or full-) but doesn't know why or for how long unless it's fed parameters with that info. Regards, Wbm1058 (talk) 14:39, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Just a note to say that the expiry parameter is only intended for stating specific dates. If the protection is indefinite, that parameter isn't used. In the particular example given above, the protection is currently of indefinite duration. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:00, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 January 2014

76.19.195.18 (talk) 05:28, 25 January 2014 (UTC) cono!!!!

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. --Anon126 (talk - contribs) 05:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 January 2014

125.99.122.46 (talk) 09:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not requested a change.
If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to any article. - Arjayay (talk) 15:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 January 2014

The apple's website editor is called Hirbod Pirnia. He took charge as of 21/12/2013 and it is very diapointing not to see the update. please update the page.

195.194.19.66 (talk) 11:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Not done: There is no mention of Apple on this page at all, so I assume your request is mis-placed
As it says in great big letters at the top of the edit page:-
"Wait!"
"This page is not for proposing or discussing edits to protected pages, or for requesting protection or unprotection of a page."
"click "show" at right to see how to do that; please do not post such requests here."
Arjayay (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Miilenium Falcon clips Darth Vaders Tie Fighter

In discussing Darth Vader's gay sex role in Star Wars IV a new hope, it says that Han Solo's Millenium Falcon clipped Darth Vader's Tie Fighter. It never did!!

Han Solo shot Darth Vader's wingman's TIE fighter and it was his wing man who clipped him. Come on! You KNOW THAT!!

What made you think that this is the right place to post this? Out of curiosity. -- John Reaves 03:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Just pointing it out so you can remove this but correct the entry. I don't care about what you think. just fix it, please

What I'm asking is, what linked you to this page or gave you the impression that this is the place to request edits (it isn't, by the way)? Only asking to try and fix the problem. -- John Reaves 03:52, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Okay, sorry. I got a bit annoyed there. My apologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.250.183.191 (talk) 03:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)


Did you get that? clicked "New Section" and it opened the edit field. Saved it and the new section was rendered at the bottom of the page. Sorry, I got annoyed because I thought some random guy was implying I was thick. lol. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.250.183.191 (talk) 04:00, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 February 2014

In the first section, second paragraph the following opening sentence has been added: 

"Both the Pashtun people and the Pashtun language are considered to be Eastern Iranian. [21]"

Please change to: BLANK (erase)

This is a repeat of the opening sentence already explaining that Pashtun's are considered an "Iranian" people. It doesn't even fit the grammar and sentence structure of the second paragraph. Furthermore this is not a major characteristic of the Pashtun people nor do we consider ourselves to be "Iranian"

Repeating this is not only unnecessary it is borderline slanderous and insulting to the Pashtun who are not only an independent people but also a people who predate the "Iranian" culture. We are considered to be "Aryan" and that term came to be pronounced as "Iranian" however we are not Iranian people nor are we in any way affiliated with Iran which is what the term "Iranian" means today. We fought a war of independence against the Persian empire and won.

Out of respect for the 50 million Pashtun people worldwide this second occurrence of the statement must be removed.

Barakzai1919 (talk) 06:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

 Not done - as it said in huge letters at the top of the edit screen when you added this post:-

Wait!
This page is not for proposing or discussing edits to protected pages, or for requesting protection or unprotection of a page.

The correct place to have posted this would have been Talk:Pashtun people but looking at the archives, similar suggestions have been rejected before. Arjayay (talk) 12:12, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 February 2014

Legislation: DECLARING WHATCOM COUNTY A SASQUATCH PROTECTION AND REFUGE AREA. Resolution No.92-043. Signed 6/9/92. Ramona Reeves, Council Clerk and Daniel M. Warner, Chair. Whatcom County Council, Whatcom County, Washington. SKAMANIA COUNTY ORDINANCE. Ordinance No. 69-01. Adopted 4/1/69. Board of Commissioners of Skamania County. SKAMANIA COUNTY ORDINANCE. (Amends & repeals a portion of Ordinance No.69-01) Ordinance No.1984-2. Adopted (after public hearing) 4/16/84. HayzelEyez (talk) 18:04, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Protection policy. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --ElHef (Meep?) 18:16, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Should we create Template:Editnotices/Protection/Wikipedia:Protection policy?

Creating Template:Editnotices/Protection/Wikipedia:Protection policy would override the standard "this page is protected" text on [1], which could be something like the edit notice on this page. You can see how it works by logging out (or activating "private browsing", "incognito mode", or the like in your browser) and visiting [2]. Anomie⚔ 12:41, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

We should definitely do that, but I'm not sure how much it would help, since users miss the giant editnotice here. Jackmcbarn (talk) 13:29, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
It would remove the "Submit an edit request" button that's in the default notice when they try to edit Wikipedia:Protection policy, so it should help a good bit. Usually what seems to be happening here is that people somehow get lost and end up at Wikipedia:Protection policy when trying to edit some page, and then they click edit there and see the "Submit an edit request" button which puts the requests on this page. The same used to happen at Template talk:Reflist with people wanting to edit references, but doesn't since the custom notice. Anomie⚔ 16:51, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
I went ahead and created the notice. Since you have templateeditor, you should be able to edit it yourself if you have any improvements to the wording. Anomie⚔ 00:21, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Looks good. I've unlinked a few things that looked too much like somewhere you'd go to submit the request. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

List of "protected pages"

Where can you find a list of "protected pages", for which reason they are blocked and how long the block will be uphold? 78.35.207.52 (talk) 15:50, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, that was fast. :p Special:ProtectedPages found it. 78.35.207.52 (talk) 15:52, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed: change some language under WP:SALT to indicate the available options

After discussing how a page could be un-"creation protected" at WT:AFC, it was discovered that the appeal options in the section are not clear. I therefore propose the following change

Pages that have been creation-protected are sometimes referred to as "salted". Contributors wishing to re-create a salted title with more appropriate content should contact an administrator (look for one who was previously involved), or use the deletion review process, or use the Requests for Page Protection Current requests for reduction in protection level section.

The goal is to make the section's wording more clear. Pending a objection, I intend to apply this change in 72 hours.Hasteur (talk) 16:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposed new "Google Doodle" policy

It will fail. Every time Google decides to make some person, place, or thing, the subject of their daily Google Doodle, we end up protecting that page for 12 hours or so (today's is Dorothy Height), because tons of people click on the doodle, see the Wikipedia page at the top of the results, click it and then make tons of test vandalism edits. Now I know the existing policy says, " Semi-protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred..." but I think that IAR, and therefore preemptive protection, is useful here because this type of vandalism is as predictable as clockwork. The other obvious problem is that we can't know what the doodle will be until it actually becomes that day's doodle. Nevertheless I think as soon as Google does put their doodle on their main page, we should protect it for, as I mentioned above, 48 hours, no exceptions. I have always supported preventive measures on Wikipedia even though it seems like essentially no one else does, but I still think this is a sufficiently clear-cut case such that most people should agree that since we already do this in practice, we should make it official too. Jinkinson talk to me 16:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Why not change the policy? As one of the people who often ends up clearing up this sort of mess, why is my time so much less important than the regular poop-minded gradeschoolers? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:58, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Support logical and reasonable for protecting wikipedia from drive by vandalism. I'd almost think that we could finesse this from existing policies on the books. Typically GoogleDoodle subjects are Good Articles or Featured Articles which have a lower threshold for vandalistic edits before page protection is added. Obviously for a deviation from preemptive protection, it would be better to have a ironclad consensus for this change. Hasteur (talk) 15:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
This seems like a great way to discourage potential new Wikipedians, along with the vandals.75.147.189.133 (talk) 05:50, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
I would prefer using PC1 instead. When new users visit Wikipedia, we want to showcase the best we have to offer - an article that is free of vandalism and editable by anyone. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:57, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussions on PC2 and protection in general

Discussions at Wikipedia talk:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2014/Closure may be about to migrate here, now that the RfC is closed. For the folks who haven't been down this road many times already: policy disputes that get stuck for years really screw things up. Policy pages are supposed to help solve good-faith disputes and decrease drama, not increase it. Also, the time to work on policy-related RfCs is before the RfC. During the RfC, people are generally more interested in getting a "win" rather than in talking things out and understanding different points of view. So, now is the time for productive discussions. I have to stay neutral, but I may be able to help by digging up past relevant discussions if people are having a hard time getting their point across. I voted "no" in a PC2 RfC almost two years ago, but that was over issues that have long since been settled. On the issues under discussion these days, I could easily live with the status quo or less PC2 or more PC2 ... whatever has broad support. - Dank (push to talk) 21:39, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Please let me add something that was discussed at the talk linked above. It's important that whoever starts work on a next RfC publicize widely the process of drafting whatever will go in the RfC, in order to make sure that a broad cross-section of editor opinion is involved in the drafting process. You want to find out about the opinions of those who disagree with you while the RfC is being formulated, not after it has already gone live. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
I think it may be useful to get one or more disinterested persons to guide the process, which should help balance discussions (personally, my vote is for Dank, but anyone with a good track record of moderating discussions even-handedly will be suitable). Also, as I suggested on the RfC closure talk page, I think we should take a page from how problem resolution is typically done in organizations, and define a clear problem to address, with ways to monitor the extent of the issue, then look for potential solutions, which could potentially include the adoption of pending changes, level 2. Further investigation and experimentation can be done to build up the list of pros and cons for each solution, and then based on a concise summary of each solution, a strategy to proceed can be developed. I encourage any interested parties to have a look at the link I provided to see a bit more detail regarding the steps of problem resolution, in point form. isaacl (talk) 22:55, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
Much appreciated, Isaac, but I don't see a use for any special roles here. If I think of something useful to say, I'll say it :) - Dank (push to talk) 00:46, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I was hoping some supporters would jump in with things they expect or hope PC2 will do, so that we could talk about whether we might be able to accomplish some of the same things with full or semi-protection. That's not happening, so does anyone mind if I post a list of things that have been called advantages of PC2, so that we can look at those things in the context of full or semi-protection? - Dank (push to talk) 20:45, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
As I mentioned, I think we should start with what are the problems under investigation, and how big are they? isaacl (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
Couple things:
  1. I could have sworn that there was an agreement to not have discussions about PC2 and how supporters could go about drumming up support for it for at least 6 months.
  2. If PC supporters want do demonstrate their commitment to respect the will of the community, they'd offer up as the binary option during the next window "This question being binding for the next year: Is PC2 endorsed by a supermajority (67%) the community." and no other questions. Hasteur (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Inaccuracy with PC2 listing

I'm pretty sure it got mentioned Here That pending changes level 2 got consensus for use on here after consensus is reached on a new vote that will decide criteria for it. Is it worth changing the page to update the details of that? LorChat 05:57, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

At present, there is no consensus for using pending changes, level 2 (see the first sentence in the summary of the closing statement on the page you linked to). This page describes the currently available mechanisms for protecting pages, for reference by those looking for what can be used right now. It's probably best to keep it to just this, and to put longer descriptions on the progress for a specific mechanism on a page dedicated to that purpose. isaacl (talk) 06:14, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-Protecting a Talk Page

I have a question. If an article is semi-protected, due to good-faith but wrong edits by unregistered editors, and the unregistered editors then clutter the talk page with walls of text, is it permitted to semi-protect the talk page as well? By the way, the article and talk pages are Cold fusion and Talk:Cold fusion. The alternative is to take the disruptive unregistered editors to Arbitration enforcement. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:26, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The question is who labels the unregistered users edits as disruptive and if it is indeed cluttering? From I what can see from those pages, user McClenon seems to suggest that unregistered users reasonable requests for clarification of some aspects for the improvement of the article are to be considered cluttering and thus disruptive. He also seems to suggest to discriminate the so-called disruptive unregistered editors by considering semi-protection of the talk page of a controversial article. I think that disregarding reasonable requests for clarification just because they come unregistered users is concerning and not wanted.--86.125.187.48 (talk) 15:29, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Well, the unregistered editors made many allegations of disruption by the registered editors, at such length that their complaints were themselves disruptive. They were not requesting clarification, but were requesting (sometimes demanding) changes to the article that they thought were for its improvement, but that went against scientific consensus and consensus of the Wikipedia community (which is to go with scientific consensus). Does an experienced registered editor have an answer to my question? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
This is a doubly interesting situation: a) firstly concerning allegations of disruption from unregistered users by registered users and b) secondly concerning requests for clarifications (or quotes from sources) that might challenge the scientific consensus.
a) If the allegations of disruption by registered users have been so lengthy, then they should be thoroughly examined to see if they are at least partially if not totally founded instead of being rather quickly dismissed as disruptive by length;
b) Is there any reasonable request for clarification or quotes automatically illegitimate if they might challenge the scientific consensus? A key aspect that should be considered is that consensus may change or 'it has been misrepresented from the beginning by using only certain sources which might have been given undue weight?--86.125.183.113 (talk) 18:05, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Did You lock Vietnam page to hide bear bile farming? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.208.52.42 (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Bold edit on the subject of semi-protection

I've made a bold edit on the reasons why semi-protection can be used. I disagree wholeheartedly with the text as it now stands, but it does reflect reality. See Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 for an example where SP was applied very soon after article creation as a preemptive measure. There are many more such articles where admins and the community at large effectively disagree with the policy as it stood before I made the bold edit. The underlying feeling of these people is, of course, that all users should have to register. In some cases the feeling is that new users are "inherently untrustworthy", as it was stated by one registered user at the Talk page of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. UniversalBowman (talk) 14:34, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Ha, ha! My "bold" edit lasted all of three minutes. UniversalBowman (talk) 14:41, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Like any policy, there will always be exceptions and people that ignore it. That doesn't change the fact that erring on the side "anyone can edit" (see the Five Pillars) is the best bet for Wikipedia. Allowing preemptive protection leaves too much room for indiscriminate actions that negatively affect one of the core principles of Wikipedia. -- John Reaves 14:54, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Agreed. But there's a lot of it going on, with the M17 article being the most recent example I'm aware of. It's all very well having a policy, but it is not effectively policed. In fact, it's not policed at all. Having said that, I see you've time-limited SP on the article I mentioned, for which my thanks, but really it should be unprotected. UniversalBowman (talk) 14:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Another way that the policy and actual practice differ is that, in practice, semi-protection is imposed by administrators when there is a content dispute between registered editors and unregistered editors. That is done, mostly reasonably, on the grounds that, first, semi-protection is less extreme than blocking the IPs, second, blocking the IPs is not effective if the IPs are dynamic, and, third, the IPs have the privilege of registering and becoming auto-confirmed to edit the protected page. The policy says that semi-protection is not used to give registered editors a privilege in a content dispute. When there is a content dispute between registered and unregistered editors, administrators will ignore the policy. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:20, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Guidance_for_administrators

I've noticed an ambiguity in this section, comparable to the problem in the recent Halbig v. Burwell case. The Washington Post has an analysis here that may be a useful starting point for discussion of the ambiguity involved. Bearian (talk) 13:58, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm failing to see the connection. can you give a little more detail on why this is relevant to the policy page? Crazynas t 15:25, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

PC question

War in Donbass is currently on pending changes. It happens to be on my watchlist and it's been irking me a bit that it constantly seems to have edits needing review. So my question is what is the accepted threshold for "a very high edit rate" and does this article surpass that threshold? Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 11:52, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

*cough* Or should I be asking this somewhere else? Jenks24 (talk) 09:53, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any discussion that attempts to quantify very high edit rate. That article is definitely getting a pretty high edit rate though, I'd go talk to the protecting admin about it and see if you can resolve it to your satisfaction without having some formal quantification of the rate. Monty845 12:12, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough, I was asking here in case there had been some rough rule of thumb established. Thanks, Jenks24 (talk) 12:39, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
If they are unresponsive and you want the level changed, I'd suggest filing the request at WP:RFP. — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Suggested repeal of policy

What do you think about changing the section on user talk pages? Reading the discussion at User_talk:71.41.210.146#About_talk_page_protection convinced me that the policy on semi-protection "for short durations only" and the requirement to have a second talk page are not needed, and they're never enforced. --gdfusion (talk|contrib) 23:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps
User talk pages are rarely protected, and are semi-protected for short durations only in exceptional the most severe cases, such as sustained disruption of vandalism from IP users. Users whose talk pages are semi-protected should have an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good faith comments from non-autoconfirmed users. A user's request to have his or her their own talk page protected is not a sufficient rationale to protect the page.
Perhaps also updating the protection template for this page type to include directions for using notify? — xaosflux Talk 03:19, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. I left a message on your talk page about the template. I'd feel more comfortable if we had another opinion before changing the text, though, just because it's "policy". @Future Perfect at Sunrise:, would you like to comment?--gdfusion (talk|contrib) 18:49, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
As a practical matter, I've almost never actually seen an editor with such a subpage. And when it comes to short term semi-protection, it does seem like a waste of time. The problem is with long term protection that gives IP and new editors no mechanism to contact the editor. Admins and editors working in certain quasi administrative areas are the most likely to get talk page harassment, but are also the most likely to have a good faith IP/new editor have a need to contact them. If a {{ping}} is the only way to contact them, does that satisfy WP:ADMINACCT? Are admins required to respond to pings just as if they had been left a talk page message? Monty845 23:13, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect in comparison table?

Should an additional row be added to the {{Pending changes table}} to reflect the new Superprotect protection level? It would be pretty simple:

Unregistered, New Auto/Confirmed Template editor Reviewer Administrator Appropriate for*
Superprotect cannot edit Office actions by the Wikimedia Foundation

Although Superprotect is not currently used on en:wiki, it is enabled and the table (and policy) should reflect that. WaggersTALK 09:56, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

We do not have policy on how to use it, and none of its possible users are bound to Wikipedia policy. So I don't quite see the point in adding anything about it here. If it is added, it should not mention "office actions", as these have historically been confined to article space and related to content decisions affecting outside parties. Superprotect does not seem to have anything to do with that. —Kusma (t·c) 12:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect=office actions?

So, is superprotect the same as office actions or different. It sounds the same since that it only allows staff members to edit that page. Wikipedian 2 (talk) 05:26, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

"Office actions" traditionally refers to actions taken by WMF's legal department for legal reasons, as described on the linked page. While we've long had the concept that WMF's engineering department can also make "do not undo this" actions, it has never been given a formal name that I'm aware of. And as for the one use of superprotection so far (on the German Wikipedia), that's almost certainly outside anything that had been seriously considered by the community up until that time and so wouldn't have a formal name either. Anomie⚔ 11:01, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Regarding page limit for pending changes protection

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T74593
Resolved

Per a recent edit on the page protection request page, apparently, the limit for the amount of pages that can be put under pending changes protection is limited to 2000 pages at a time. I see this being especially problematic, especially since there are several occasions where pending changes protection is substantially more suitable than semi-protection, especially in cases of IP vandalism where all of the edits done by IPs are not vandalism. With this being said, I have a couple of questions that I'm hoping can be answered:

  1. Is there a specific reason why the limit is set at 2000 pages? And,
  2. Is it possible to either increase or remove the limit for the amount of pages that can be put under pending changes protection at one time?

– Steel1943 (talk) 21:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Pinging MusikAnimal since the diff I provided above was their edit. Steel1943 (talk) 21:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
The 2000 page limit was set when the pending changes protection was first put into a trial run. The limit apparently was never removed once the trial was over. I've filed a bug here. My assumption is the limit was not set out of concern of performance so hopefully the restriction will be lifted soon. — MusikAnimal talk 22:29, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Fixed! Hooray for super responsive and awesome WMF staff :) — MusikAnimal talk 22:57, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Delete Protection

I propose a new security type. It is dark navy blue (not purplish like the upload one) and restrict the removing of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phyton505 (talk • contribs) 16:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

nationalities

i suggest adding nationalities to this table, becuose languange doesn't mean nationality. --Winnetou14 (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

@Winnetou14: This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Protection policy. Please make your suggestion at the talk page for the article concerned. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, by mistake I've entered this site :) --Winnetou14 (talk) 20:29, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected and Pending Changes templates

Am I the only one who finds it very difficult to distinguish between the two padlock icons on protected pages? They're both grey and the semi is only slightly darker. Since Pending Changes 2 is never used, why not use that on pages requiring a reviewer? — BranStark (talk) 13:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, The two padlocks seem pretty far apart to me, one is very dark and the other is very light. That said if there is thoughts on changing the padlock, there are other padlocks that aren't used. See Wikipedia:Protection policy/Padlocks. I still think that the designs should be altered so that more then just the color changes, as we have editors with different forms of color blindness. PaleAqua (talk) 01:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
I think Turquoise or Mint would be the best fit. Kitty 56 (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
All of the padlocks on that page are plain-coloured. There are several at c:Category:Padlock icons which are in the same style but have additional markings, usually in black, such as File:Padlock-blue-X.png ; File:Padlock-bronze-slash2.svg ; File:Padlock-olive-arrow.svg ; File:Padlock-orange-fulldelta.svg ; File:Padlock-q mark.png ; File:Padlock-red-inf.svg - there are several others. At a small size, these extra markings are not always obviously present. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:30, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
I like the idea of using padlocks with symbols. Not perfect, but nothing is. The tricky bit may be choosing an appropriate symbol for each protection type. Yaris678 (talk) 13:34, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Question

It says don't use pending changes lv.2 except you are using it for Gamergate controversy. Antiv31 (talk) 09:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Antiv31: Yes, if you examine the PC log, you'll see that HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs) set it deliberately. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:09, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Protecting user pages query

Can users request their own user pages to be protected, even if it does not face any risk of vandalism or other disruption? Are such requests likely to be accepted? The policy given here regarding this seems too vague. SD0001 (talk) 15:20, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

See /Archive_15#Own_userspace_pages_protection_policy. As admins are busy volunteers and userpage protection requests usually concern trivia and time-wasting vanity, you may get a mixed response depending on the nature and volume of the request. -- zzuuzz (talk) 19:27, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Per the link you provided, there is consensus for users to preemptively request user page protection. I have updated the policy accordingly. SD0001 (talk) 10:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Correcting the release date

Currently the release date on wikipedia is May 1st. According to the latest trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQVEC1YGLK4) it's April 23rd. Can we fix this?


Jpickar (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

@Jpickar: I don't know which release date you refer to, but I suspect that it is that of a film, music album or computer game. But please note that this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Protection policy: please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal

I would like to add some wording that addresses the impropriety of adding page protection templates to pages that are not protected. While this does not happen often, it should be enforced by this policy (in my opinion). If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions for wording? Mkdwtalk 00:29, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I find that it mainly happens in three situations. Most commonly, somebody has created a new article and has used an existing article for a related topic as an example of how it should be laid out. If you are a newbie, this is an "obvious" thing to do, particularly if your new article is one of a set or series, like a railway station, species of beetle or baseball player. It's better than simply guessing, but it doesn't actually tell you why a given method is used. When I come across pp icon templates on articles of this kind, there's always an infobox (it mostly happens with sports player biogs), and there are often some templates like {{use MDY dates}} or {{BLP sources}} with dates that are months or years earlier than the actual date that the article was created, so presumably they copy a big chunk from the existing article (changing names etc. where appropriate) and assume that all of the templates prior to the boldfaced text in the lead are necessary components of the infobox.
Then there are the ones where the pp icon template isn't on the article itself, instead it's in a transcluded template (one that is protected) but is not wrapped in <noinclude>...</noinclude>. It's not often necessary to add a pp icon template to a protected template, since many templates have either {{documentation}} or {{collapsible option}}, both of which will display a pp icon when appropriate. I left a note about this at WT:TW but it was archived w/o response.
Somewhat less common are the situations where somebody assumes that the pp icon template actually confers protection. When I have removed these I occasionally (less than 1% of the time) have been reverted by somebody who doesn't understand. In one case earlier this year, the protection had expired a week or so earlier but had not been removed by a bot; after I removed it manually (with edit summary like "prot expired 23:59, 31 January 2015" or whatever the date was), I was reverted with a comment like "this article still needs to be protected". --Redrose64 (talk) 08:52, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree that this fact is a good thing to note; that being said, the people who think the {{pp}} template actually confers protection are probably not reading this policy page — if they did, they'd read farly quickly that only sysops can protect pages. So the ideal solution to this issue probably includes some sort of other notice on the edit page or with the template as well. –GlottalFricative (talk) 11:39, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Edit request

The "blocked users" section still links to the old toolserver (i.e., toolserver.org). It should be updated to point to the new toolserver — preferably, to the unblock tool at the new toolserver, although I don't know the specific URL for that one. –GlottalFricative (talk) 02:44, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Partly done: just commented the link. Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:41, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! However, it looks like you also removed one of the brackets on the wikilink to WP:BASC. (Oh, and I also found the correct link to UTRS: it's now just WP:UTRS.) –GlottalFricative (talk) 15:04, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Done - fixed the brackets and changed the link to WP:UTRS. Alakzi (talk) 15:10, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Enabling full protection on semi-protected articles

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41038

Whenever full protection is used and then expires, the article is no longer semi-protected. Instead, it is unprotected and prone to attacks. Re-enabling semi-protection requires a request, which is bothersome. How do we resolve this issue? --George Ho (talk) 01:00, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@George Ho: This has come up before, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136#Page protection - reverting to previous protection when a higher form expires and phab:T41038. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Unprotect the page

You need to unprotect the page.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Coddan Ercin (talk • contribs)

Answered to the same question they posted on Talk:Google. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Why is there a smugness to Mariah's page

Moved to Talk:Mariah Carey § Why is there a smugness to Mariah's page
 – Redrose64 (talk) 19:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Superprotect question

According to Wikipedia:Superprotect#Superprotect, "It is currently not used on the English Wikipedia." How is this known? that is, is there a log of Superprotect usage? - User:Amgine/t · e 20:56, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

@Amgine: Yes, here. What that doesn't show is if any pages were superprotected once but no longer. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:26, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Creation protection text

The text under WP:SALT says "Contributors wishing to re-create a salted title with more appropriate content should either contact an administrator (preferably the protecting administrator), file a request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, or use the deletion review process". All well and good, but when I've requested unsalting (eg: Elvis' Greatest Shit), I filed a request on AN, and that's not the only time I've done it. Should we update policy to match? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:17, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

  • This needs discussion. I think if there is any likelihood of WP:Deletion review passing - such as a "salting" due to a fan-boy re-creating an article about a then-marginal/non-notable person, then you should follow the existing process. However, if it was salted because of clearly-non-notable A7's or persistent re-creation using copyrighted material or some other reason where there won't be anything to review, then "contact the deleting administrator or use WP:AN" is the way to go. But others should chime in before changing the document. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:26, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Nutshell

Just so I don't disrupt the Wikipedia page, I would like to discuss about what sort things I should write in a nutshell of this important official policy. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 23:34, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I could talk about the fact about technical restrictions in pages to prevent damage, plus the specific users who can edit certain protected articles, and the procedures and reasons for doing such protections. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 05:37, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Should 30/500 DS restrictions be included on this page?

Myself and Zzyzx11 added entries about Arbitration 30/500 restrictions for discretionary sanctions, which were unilaterally reverted by Cenarium. My logic in documenting this change, and I presume Zzyzx11's logic, was that this protection is now being enforced by a technical means, namely edit filters. Explaining it on this page allows for users who may be unfamiliar with the DS system to understand why they're being technically prevented from editing pages, and I'd be curious to see why Cenarium is opposed to documenting something that exists as an arbitration remedy, whether it's included on this page or not. Kharkiv07 (T) 21:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't exist (yet) in the form suggested at Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard#Two_new_disallowing_filters_as_arbitration_remedy. Currently, edits to a specified number of articles are prevented by Special:AbuseFilter/698, not the mechanism suggested there as was decribed in the edit I reverted. Hence my removal was justfied on factual grounds. There's no consensus (yet) for the new proposed mechanism, and there are other ways to enforce these remedies. Note that I didn't remove your edit which described this protection in general terms. Cenarium (talk) 21:32, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
@Kharkiv07: Your edits weren't reverted, they're still there. Cenarium only reverted those of Zzyzx11. --Redrose64 (talk) 01:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Icon for fully protected pages

We currently use red and gold padlocks for fully protected pages and there doesn't seem to be firm guidelines on when each should be used. There was a suggestion on Template talk:Pp#Red padlock that we should replace the red padlock with the gold padlock in all cases. This might make things simpler. What do people think? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:20, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is redlocks are mediawiki imposed locks that admins cant remove, gold locks can be implemented and removed by admins. Amortias (T)(C) 23:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
Gold lock if "fully protected" - "red lock" is also for full protection, but is meant to be permanent in nature - this includes admin-only fully protected templates. — xaosflux Talk 23:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
@Amortias and Xaosflux: per WP:MULTI, please discuss at Template talk:Pp#Red padlock, not here. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:31, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The discussion on Template talk:Pp has stalled. I am proposing to merge the red and gold padlocks so that we have one icon for fully-protected pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:09, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I have tweaked the order of the policies by moving permanent protection higher up the page within the full protection section. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:46, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
I have now removed the red padlock from this page. I will wait a few days before updating the templates which produce this colour. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
The red padlock has now been removed from the protection banners/icons. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Technical question about creation protection and upload protection

I'm not an admin, otherwise I could just find this out myself. Is it technically possible for creation protection on a page to be set for "templateeditor"? (Can only be created by template editors or administrators?) I'd like to know in case I find a reason to use protection level checks (most likely in templates) and have to know this to create accurate protection checks. I also have the same question for upload protection. Steel1943 (talk) 18:32, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes. See [3] or [4] or [5]. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:40, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
See Special:ProtectedTitles for a list of pages that actually have this create setting. They are normally either experiments, extraordinary things, or errors. — xaosflux Talk 19:19, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

about Arbitration 30/500

For the sake of completeness, can we add it? I can bring up a rather short list of the currently 30/500 protected articles so here it is: Nair, List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2002–06 and all "list pf palestinian rocket attacks on israel" articles, Vanniyar, Bhumihar, As'ad AbuKhalil, and Jat people. 96.237.18.103 (talk) 19:49, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration 30/500

We removed the Arbitration 30/500 protection section on this page due to lack of consensus. However, we did not remove it from the list of padlocks. Here is the current list: Template:Padlock list Since, as I have said, we have removed the section talking about Arbitration 30/500 protection, the padlock list should look like this (without the blue Arbitration 30/500 padlock): Template:Padlock list/sandbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.241.15.174 (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2016

It's not a good idea to copy whole templates to a talk page, far better to sandbox it, see WP:TESTCASES, so I've copied your suggestion to Template:Padlock list/sandbox. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:36, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I added the padlocks to the pages when testing the new template/filter-based enforcement. That has been put on hold, although we still have Special:AbuseFilter/698 blocking < 30/500 edits to those pages. If anyone wants to remove the padlocks, go for it. {{pp-30-500}} doesn't do what it says it does, but I suppose the visual indication of what is effectively a new level of protection is still meaningful — MusikAnimal talk 00:57, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I haven't been editing Wikipedia for a while, so I didn't know I should paste the padlock list in the sandbox. 67.241.15.174 (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2016 (UTC) Heads up. That was me unregistered. My account was just auto-confirmed so now I can edit semi-protected pages. I removed the blue padlock. Peter SamFan | talk 16:30, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Another 30/500 thread

Now that a new article protection level to enforce the 30/500 arbitration remedy has been supported by community consensus and is about to be implemented by the MediaWiki developers, it would probably be helpful to clarify in the policy that, at this time, the new protection level is only to be used to enforce relevant arbitration decisions and cannot be unilaterally applied on any page outside those covered by the arbitration remedies or by community consensus (per the discussion). Mz7 (talk) 02:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion - something between "no protection" and "semi protection"

I recently requested that two pages be either semi- or pending-changes-1 protected for a few weeks but frankly, both are stronger than needed (but "no protection" is worse than either one).

Proposal: Develop and implement a super-lightweight-protection, call it "pending changes level 0," which would "hold" edits by non-autoconfirmed/confirmed editors until an auto-confirmed/confirmed editor edited the page.

Differences between this and semi-protection: Non-autoconfirmed/confirmed editors cannot edit semi-protected pages at all.

Differences between this and pending-changes-level-1: If an autoconfirmed/confirmed editor without the "pending changes" user-right edits a page with a pending change, his change is also pending.

When this would be used:

  • Pages where edits that would routinely be reverted are neither so frequent that the workload of "declining" them is a high burden nor where having the edits in the article's edit history are candidates for this level of protection, provided they would be eligible for either semi-protection or pending-changes-protection (or, in theory, any level of protection that is at least as strong as this one for all users) if this were not an option.
  • Editors requesting this level of page protection must show why the page meets the criteria for semi- or pending-changes protection, just as they would if they were requesting the higher level of protection.
  • Administrators are encouraged to look at the totality of circumstances when deciding whether to use this level of protection, a stronger level of protection, or no protection at all.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:54, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

For super-lightweight-protection

  1. Support as nominator. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:10, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
  2. Support. It will be useful if using pending changes that is designed not to do protection against autoconfirmed users. At first, your suggestion was rather strange but I accepted your suggestion after reading deep in your descriptions. Your suggested "Pending changes level 0" would be useful if it is pending changes that does not involve any autoconfirmed user harm. (Personally, if your light-weight pending changes were to exist by consensus, I would call normal pending changes "Standard pending changes".) Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 23:42, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
I would prefer calling your "super-lightweight protection" as "lightweight pending changes". Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 23:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
  1. Agree--58.148.103.243 (talk) 10:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Against super-lightweight protection

Discussion regarding super-lightweight protection

When should protection banners be used?

While we have the ubiquitous padlock topicon, we also have the larger banners implemented by {{pp}}. When should these be used? --Nathan2055talk - contribs 01:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

They're actually produced by the same templates, and depend upon whether |small=yes is specified or not. For a few protection types (such as {{pp-semi-indef}}), the parameter is ignored and the small version is always shown. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:53, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Yes, I understand that, I was wondering what the proper *usage* for the banners were. I was personally wondering because it seems like if an article is being put under unusual temporary protection to solve a problem, it would make more sense to make that clear with a banner, but I was wondering whether that was the correct usage of those or not. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 00:37, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

(Suggestion) Possibility for making a new type of protection

I feel it would be useful for certain articles to have a mix of Semi-protected and Pending changes protected (level 2). What this would mean is that only those meeting the criteria for editing a semi-protected article would be able to make edits, but those edits would still have to go through the pending changes validation process before being publicly visible. This could, in my opinion, help keep in check articles subject to vandalism from auto-confirmed members while not requiring full protection. If this were implemented, I would suggest calling it "Pending changes protected (level 3)" to reflect its stricter nature while still being a type of pending changes protection.2602:306:C559:8860:841F:1F31:C02:B274 (talk) 02:30, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

This is already possible, by applying PC2 and semi-protection simultaneously. While this configuration would probably be useful on pages subject to severe vandalism/BLP problems, its use is limited by the fact that only PC1 has a consensus for implementation. Per WP:IAR, I would suggest the use of this protection configuration on articles that would otherwise need to be fully protected. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 02:35, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I personally am a big fan of pending changes level 2, but as mentioned above, and see here, consensus is not to apply it. Itried to keep one article under it by invoking IAR, but was told it is just not done :). Lectonar (talk) 09:21, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Why is it that I can't post

Why can't I post to the Hebron talk page or the Hebron page. I've edited on wikipedia since 2007 and even before that. Did that page get hacked so that only a small group can post on it? Mrbrklyn (talk) 02:15, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

@Mrbrklyn: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Protection policy. If you are having difficulty editing another page and its talk page, please post at Wikipedia:Request for edit. You might prefer to post at WP:HD. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:52, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I've changed the links in the WP:SEMI section from WP:Request for edit (which currently redirects to WP:Edit requests, the information page) to WP:RFED, which I assume is the correct location. One or more redirects may have gone wrong, so other changes may also be required. Tevildo (talk) 21:43, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

List of protected pages

The special page "Protected pages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ProtectedPages seems to have many inaccuracies: many of the pages that it lists as fully protected are currently semi-protected (e.g. Quran, LOL) or not protected at all (e.g. Éire, Grand Unified theory). I don't know how that page is administered—sorry if this is the wrong place to be posting about it. Kajabla (talk) 17:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Pages can have multiple kinds of protection applied, for example LOL has semi-protection applied for editing the page, but full-protection applied for moving (renaming) the page. — xaosflux Talk 17:19, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
An easy way to check these on a page is to go to history, then click logs for this page. — xaosflux Talk 17:21, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Extendedconfirmed padlock colour

At the moment, I believe the current padlock colour for the new 30-500 Arbitration Committee padlock is too obtrusive, it's too there, unlike the other padlocks, which blend into the white a lot better. I feel as though it should be changed from the dark blue padlock to a nice, light blue padlock. All the files are already here and nothing needs to be changed, except the templates; is the current one, and is what I'm suggesting. Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Actually, as for now it is only allowed to be used when authorized by Arbcom, it should be a bit more obstrusive (like the office-action protection, which is black). I'd say leave it like it is. Lectonar (talk) 11:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
The rfc suggests that while this can be added by arbcom, it can also be added "by the community" akin to topic bans etc. — xaosflux Talk 11:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I was following the policy-page here which still states:"....This level of protection can only be used when authorized by the Arbitration Committee...". Actually I would be happy to have it at my fingertips as a new kind of protection for "special" cases. See also our little braintsorming at Wikipedia talk:Requests for page protection#new options. Lectonar (talk) 12:04, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

New 30/500 section

Since the new extendedconfirmed user level will be activated relatively soon per this I thought it was necessary to add an explanation as to what exactly 30/500 protection is for anyone looking for that information. I have done so. Please feel free to add in any information you think I missed. --Majora (talk) 23:13, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Do we really want to start a "list of articles" on the protection page ? Mlpearc (open channel) 15:04, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Probably not; but I would suggest that we do want to make it clear that this level of protection is not for general use. Suggest This level of protection is intended for use only in limited topic areas, where its use has been approved by either ArbCom or the community or similar. Thoughts? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:28, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@Mlpearc: Hopefully this level of protection will not be authorized for many (if any) more articles. I understand where you are coming from though and it certainly wouldn't be feasible to list articles under different types of protection. I was following the lead of WP:OFFICELIST that has a list of articles under that level of scrutiny. Also, I listed the articles covered since it will give a little bit of information for those looking for what 30/500, extendedconfirmed, or the blue padlock means. A lot of editors don't venture anywhere near GamerGate or the A-I conflict so if they stumble upon a page that has the blue padlock the section can quickly explain what other articles are under 30/500. Feel free to remove it if you think otherwise. --Majora (talk) 21:25, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@Majora: Maybe more pages than you think. :P Mlpearc (open channel) 23:53, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Disgusted with new 30/500 rights group

I've previously complained about the slippery slope problems that 30/500 engendered. The standard response was that it was used in very limited circumstances, such as GamerGate etc. People couldn't imagine, or didn't want to believe, that it would ever become a big enough thing to cause problems. Now, it's a new rights group, a new tool to discriminate against new users who are the very life blood of the project. We've gone from a limited scope to a new user right in blinding quick fashion. I'm already seeing proposals crop up to apply this level of protection in areas where there isn't a problem. The whole notion is antithetical to what Wikipedia is supposed to be. There's no stopping it now, and I'm sure lots of you will say "tut tut, this won't be an issue". Wikipedia's gone insane. The very people who built this project are now being demonized as the people who are trying to take it down. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:59, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Motions regarding Extended confirmed protection and arbitration enforcement

The Arbitration Committee is considering a series of motions regarding the 'extendedconfirmed' user group and associated protection levels seeking to determine logistical and administrative issues arising from the implementation of the new usergroup. Your comments would be appreciated at the below link. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 14:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions#Extended confirmed protection and arbitration enforcement

Proposal

I'm proposing a larger scope for template protection. Currently, template protection is used on highly visible templates. I'm proposing that it can also be (temporarily) used for pages that have a lot of vandalism from autoconfirmed users and possibly other users. Thoughts? Peter Sam Fan 16:12, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely not. It's explicitely not the protection level is designed for. WP:30/500 might become what you're seeking (once community consensus approves its normal usage). Otherwise, short-term full protection, PC2 (for special cases), an edit filter or rangeblock is what we use. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:02, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Bulleted and numbered lists

@Voidxor: I'm willing to go with the bulleted list here. As I read the guideline in the section below WP:ListFormat, bulleted lists are preferred in this instance. One small point. The bulleted items may be in sentence case or lower case. I prefer lower case simply because they are not complete sentences. Are you good with my changing the items to lower case?--Bbb23 (talk) 12:27, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Bbb23: I've actually come to prefer that all list elements begin with a capital letter. The reason is consistency. As you said, while complete sentences must be capitalized, sentence fragments may go either way. I've seen hundreds of lists that consist of both complete sentences and sentence fragments intermixed; obviously they should be capitalized as they would look ridiculously inconsistent otherwise. But then, if you expand the scope, you could argue that all lists within a given article should have consistent capitalization, even when some lists contain sentence fragments and others contain full sentences. Then, to expand the scope further, you could argue that all articles should be consistent. Since they can't be consistently lowercase because of complete sentences, the only consistent format would be uppercase. Not only is that my preference (I'm a fan of consistency), but it also seems to be the prevailing format for sentence-fragment list elements across the 'pedia. Anyway, partial revert me if the capitalization bugs you. I mostly wanted to style the list for what it is: unordered. Assuming good faith of course, I'd remind you that what you're "willing to go with" doesn't hold water when there's already a consensus guideline. Nobody owns these policy pages. – voidxor 18:54, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Responding to your last point, a change pursuant to a guideline may be reverted and would still need to be discussed on the Talk page. That would be true with an article, but policy pages, no matter what you think, are different from other beasts, and administrators may have quite a bit more to say about changes to policy pages than non-admins. After all, we have to apply the policies when it comes to using our tools. Somewhere it says that policies are different from ordinary pages, but I don't remember where, and I'm not going to spend my time hunting for it. I'm in favor of consistency as well, but it's very hard to achieve on this project, and it's just as hard to determine what is most prevalent. I'll partly revert you because the guideline says so and because I think that option makes more sense. Thanks for your input.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:02, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
And there we go with the trump card! Again, I wasn't changing policy—just the formatting. For the record, the guideline does not "say so"; it says that either is fine for sentence fragments. Admit it, you just prefer it the other way. You haven't bothered to explain why. Our preferences differ so we discuss. I make my case, but you're an admin and needn't make yours. So you win. Okay, I'm feeling rather bit and done interfacing with you. Have fun lording over your watchlist. – voidxor 21:33, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
One final try. You're more than welcome to my watchlist; it exhausts me. I really think we're talking at cross purposes here and you don't understand what I'm about and I'll just assume I don't understand what you're about. Meanwhile, I'm making comments that irritate you and you're making comments that irritate me. I have a feeling that we'll never become good buddies (smile), but I don't think we're as far apart as you seem to think we are. In any case, I don't want to bore you with my Wikipedian amateur psychoanalysis. Nor is this the best forum for it. So I won't say any more. I'm perfectly happy (sincerely, no sarcasm) if you want to have the final word(s).--Bbb23 (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to clarify/update the wording at TEMP-P and UPROT

@Mr. Stradivarius, Evad37, MusikAnimal, Peter SamFan, Salvidrim!, Anomie, and Equazcion: (at least)

Hi, there was a brief discussion here (diff) about a request for indefinite edit template-protection on a page within my own userspace. I intended the page to be used as a substituted template for my signature (which is discouraged but permissible), and to keep copies of signatures my subpages in sync. The reason for the protection request is to alleviate the potential for the page to be a "vandal target", which the signatures page itself points out. Hence, the request is an example of a "user request within own userspace", and per WP:UPROT: User pages and subpages can be protected upon a simple request from the user, as long as a need exists, the request can be carried out.

But the current wording at WP:TEMP-P says, "This protection level may only be used on high-risk templates and modules and possibly in rarer cases where pages in other namespaces become transcluded to a very high degree."

That line in policy on TEMP-P was written in this diff and this diff when the userright was in its infancy, and has not changed in 3 years. The policy on user requests on user pages was updated in this diff about 4 months earlier.

Hence, the request in discussion brings up several questions to consider:

  • Can a user request template-protection on a page in their user space?
  • If yes, shouldn't the wording at TEMP-P be updated to reflect the relaxation of its limitation?
  • If no, shouldn't the wording at UPROT be updated to clarify its limitations?

Note the current list current list of template-protected pages in the user namespace (from Special:ProtectedPages). If user-requested template-protection in their own space is disallowed, we potentially have a number of cases where policy has been violated.

There are about 2 things on this policy page to update in my opinion.

  1. Update the wording at TEMP-P to clarify cases when template-protected userspace pages, or other namespaces, are legitimate.
  2. Clarify or update UPROT on the protection levels that are allowed by policy. (Might as well take the opportunity to clarify what to do about ArbCom 30/500 protection requests (?))

Thanks for taking some time reading this. I hope this will help clarify some potential gray areas in current protection policy. :) — Andy W. (talk · contrib) 06:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

The "This protection level may only be used on high-risk templates..." was included only to prevent this protection from creeping into overzealous just in case scenarios where most general-use templates should rather remain editable by the general public. The spirit of that "clause" was never intended to prevent users from utilizing protection on something so personal as their own substituted sig page. I see no reason to deny a user this particular protection type there, if it's the most convenient one for their purposes (it does seem to be, until MediaWiki starts including some personal userspace protection right). The only reason to deny might be strict adherence to the "letter of the law" as currently written, which is really no reason at all. I'd say grant the request and add a disclaimer to WP:TED that subst'd sig pages can be template-protected on request. equazcion → 08:48, 30 Apr 2016 (UTC)

Αgree with User:Equazcion. Peter Sam Fan 13:36, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. On WP:TED, I moved a section that talks tangentially about template protection down to a new section "Template protection considerations" in case we do want to elaborate there. — Andy W. (talk · contrib) 15:31, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Also agreed. Given you are a template editor, adding template-protection to your sig page is harmless and I have done this exact thing for other users before. The policy doesn't say anything about fully protecting user pages for no good reason, but I've done that to my own, because I can still edit it. It's your userspace; your signature is not a collaborative page, and it indeed is highly visible. Template protection seems appropriate — MusikAnimal talk 16:28, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! In that case, I'll submit another protection request for it soon. — Andy W. (talk · contrib) 15:09, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Error message on my first PP

Hugh Bonneville is my first page protection as an admin. It looks protected to me. However, a bot added this message on the request: "One or more pages in this request have not been protected" What did I neglect to do in the process? — Maile (talk) 18:08, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

User:Yaris678 removed the extended protection you applied, and implemented pending changes level 1. So it is protected, but only pc level 1. For what it is worth, I agree that pc level 1 is sufficient. And the bot is time-delayed, so when it acted, the page wasn't protected anymore. Lectonar (talk) 19:08, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I only meant for it to be PC 1, and the error was mine. — Maile (talk) 19:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
@Maile66: extended confirmed protection may only be used in very special situations. Normally, you should ignore this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:07, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection (two ArbCom motions; May 2016)

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.

On April 5, the rollout of the new extendedconfirmed user group began. This group is being automatically applied to accounts meeting both of the following criteria: at least 500 edits, registered at least 30 days ago. A corresponding new protection level, currently called "extended confirmed protection", has been implemented that restricts editing to members of this user group.

Users
  • No action is required on the part of any current user. User accounts that meet the criteria will be automatically updated with the new user group on their next edit. User accounts that do not yet meet the criteria will be automatically updated with the new user group when they do qualify.
  • The extendedconfirmed user group can be added by administrators to accounts that do not yet meet the criteria. A process for requesting this has been set up here, intended primarily to handle the case of publicly identified legitimate alternative accounts of users whose primary accounts do meet the criteria.
Current uses
  • As of this announcement, this protection level is authorized for use in the following areas:
  • Any sanctions or other restrictions imposed prior to this motion passing shall remain in force unaffected.
Expectations
  • See proposals below (to be added as dot points).


Notes

  1. ^ As an arbitration enforcement action: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive173#TheRedPenOfDoom.2C_third_filing.
  2. ^ As an arbitration enforcement action: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions/Log#GamerGate.
  3. ^ As an arbitration enforcement action: log.
  4. ^ As an arbitration enforcement action: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive183#Caste articles and talk pages.
  5. ^ As an Arbitration Committee decision: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 3#500/30

Enacted - Miniapolis 16:01, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Support
  1. Just a factual summary to accompany the proposals below. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 23:23, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  2. Oops, I missed this subsubsubsection completely. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:34, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
  3. As a statement of fact, I suppose. --kelapstick(bainuu) 20:58, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
  4. --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 14:33, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
  5. Tarapia tapioco (aka Salvio) (talk) 12:52, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
  6. Not entirely sure it's necessary, but no harm to it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:56, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  7. per GW. Doug Weller talk 14:00, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
  8. procedural confirmation Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:47, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  9. DGG ( talk ) 22:09, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  10. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 23:50, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose
Abstain
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.

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.

Extended confirmed protection may only be applied in response to persistent sockpuppetry or continued use of new, disruptive accounts where other methods (such as semi protection) have not controlled the disruption. This provision does not apply to a page or topic area which has been placed under 30/500 protection by the Arbitration Committee.

Enacted - Miniapolis 16:05, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Support
  1. I think it's important to hold the line on this. I would like this protection level to be used - at least at first - specifically where there is persistent socking, SPAs, meatpuppets, etc., and not merely for "disruptive editing" that happens to be coming from relatively inexperienced users. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:19, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  2. Weekly my first preference, I'd like to see 30/500 used on pages where there is consistent socking and use of throwaway accounts rather than just new accounts occasionally breaking through the autoconfirmed barrier. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 23:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  3. very weakly, but if we are going to let admins do this in our name then we need real criteria --In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 14:41, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
  4. First choice. Tarapia tapioco (aka Salvio) (talk) 12:57, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
  5. Second choice. Doug Weller talk 14:11, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
  6. Yes, needs to be spelled out. This is main reason it would be used. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:57, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  7. If individual admins are going to be doing it, as seems likely to pass, it needs definite limits. The ones set forth here are appropriate. Other cases if necessary can be dealt with by arb com. DGG ( talk ) 22:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  8. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 23:54, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
  9. Keilana (talk) 17:53, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. Don't think it needs to be spelled out this thoroughly. --kelapstick(bainuu) 22:05, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  2. We already have a standing rule that this be applied to all pages in the I-P topic area. Doing this article-by-article with these rules is too burdensome to enforce an existing decision. Courcelles (talk) 17:02, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
  3. See my comments below. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:08, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Abstain
  1. Drmies (talk) 17:49, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
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.

30/500

The discussion above suggests that admins can use 30/500 when they want to, and it's available in the drop-down menu of protection options. I was about to add it to a series of articles yesterday where sleepers are bypassing semi-protection, but where long-term full protection would be inappropriate. I didn't do it because the section about it here isn't clear. Can we clarify that it's okay for admins to use it instead of full protection? SarahSV (talk) 17:51, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: in a nutshell - not yet; see various discussion at WP:AN, WP:AN/I about this topic (and I'm sure elsewhere) - my understanding is that the policy supports the use, when used according to community guidelines - however the community guidelines are not yet complete. If you applied a short-term ECP on a page under WP:IAR (just as if you were to deploy PC2) it would likely be supported if there was cause (expect to get dragged to the drama boards though). You are still able to use wider discretion when applying full protection (as it stops everyone, even admins by way of policy, from making edits without discussion). — xaosflux Talk 18:15, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Where the friction will likely come from is that that very small discussion above was not well advertised, etc - I'm all for getting a final community decision on the acceptable use for this level though. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
"Consensus is in favor of implementing this feature, with the noted reservation that it only is to be used with respect to pages where the ArbCom or the community has applied the 30/500 limitation, not in response to a request for page protection or any other reason."
I'm not sure the RfC responses supported that restriction. Some did, but most (after only a glance) didn't mention it, though maybe it was assumed. Perhaps we should create words for this policy to allow it to be used more widely, then hold an RfC. SarahSV (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, xaosflux, I meant to say thanks for the replies. SarahSV (talk) 18:42, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
In my opinion, in closing, I saw consensus to create the user group (privilege) to facilitate arbitration enforcement. However, some editors expressed concern about it being used as a general protection option. The some was enough so that I didn't see consensus in favor of letting administrators assign it to pages that weren't under ArbCom enforcement. That is why my close noted that. I didn't see consensus for giving it to administrators in general, but I did see consensus for using it as a tool to facilitate arbitration enforcement. Maybe this clarifies; maybe it doesn't. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Hi Robert, yes, it does clarify things, thank you. SarahSV (talk) 20:02, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy

Please see Wikipedia:Request for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy for an RFC concerning the use of 'Extended confirmed protection'. –xenotalk 20:14, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed tweak

Any objections to changing "Pre-emptive full protection of articles is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia." to "Pre-emptive full protection and semi-protection of articles is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia."? It makes it clearer to editors pointed towards the shortcut that pre-emptive protection is not permitted, period. --NeilN talk to me 04:07, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Remove "full". Specifying the protection level(s) seems unnecessary. "Pre-emptive full protection of articles is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia." — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Good call. --NeilN talk to me 04:35, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree, since we now have five prot levels (counting "Allow all users", i.e. "unprotected", as one of the five) which may be set by an admin, the latest addition being WP:30/500, and chances are that more will be added every couple of years. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:40, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

When to salt?

I've been cleaning up after PRODs a lot lately. Quite often these are promotional material that's been recreated and deleted repeatedly.

At what point do we salt these, and to what level?

I don't want to salt a page unnecessarily, but a lot of these are clearly just spam magnets. - David Gerard (talk) 10:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

In my understanding, there hasn't been discussion of salt levels, but fully prot salting seems to be the norm. There are about 2000 pages salted at "semi" level and about 54000 pages fully salted (as far as I can tell). — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 15:41, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Anything which was PROD-deleted shouldn't be PROD-deleted again if recreated; it should go through a full AFD diuscussion unless they are, in fact, speedy-deletable (including spam, which would be G11). After an AFD, any subsequent recreation becomes a G4 deletion, and would generally be SALTed after 2 or 3 G4-deletions. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:23, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Trouble is that's frequently not evident - the new versions are recreated without the history, and it's not apparent to anyone it was PRODed until come time for the second deletion. I've been zapping obvious and terrible PRODs that are this close to a CSD, and there's no indication that it was previously PRODed until the previous deletions show up after I've actually hit "delete". I deleted anyway, because arguably the recreated article is unlikely to be the same article as the previously PRODed text, even though it's at the same title. You could try to require people check the deletion log before PRODing anything, but that's likely to be considered onerous unless there's dev work to make it obvious in the interface. PROD was invented as a lightweight mechanism to avoid AFD for articles nobody cares about, after all - David Gerard (talk) 18:03, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Even non-admins can easily access a list of previous deletions from the history page, including the reason for deletion - follow the "View logs for this page" link at the top. For admins it's even easier to see that there had been deletions - look at the "View or restore ## deleted edits?" (## being some number), this is proof that there had been deletions. Every deletion, if course, has a given reason - and with PRODs, a link to WP:PROD is present. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:27, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
What Od Mishehu said. You're supposed to be looking at the page history anyway and the 'view X deleted edits?' is right up there at the top left. If it's gone through PROD before, you should decline it and tell the nominator to use AFD if they want. I usually do this in the edit summary, but a talk page section works too. As for the dose of salt, I fully salt the spam ones indefinitely; I'll almost always fully salt anyway but sometimes I'll limit it to one year. To me, salting with semi is pointless, and I do not believe ECP is authorized for salting under the last RFC unless we've tried semi first. Katietalk 19:59, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
You are, of course, both quite correct on past PRODs and spotting them - David Gerard (talk) 15:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

What are people's opinions on use of ECP for salting?

[moved from AN]

While we're here - if this was a use case that wasn't considered, it might be worth talking about.

After filing a lot of PRODs, I thought I should do my duty and help clear the backlog I was adding to. So I started clearing expired PRODs, and oh my goodness we have a lot of spammers, many of whom return (usually under other names). So I looked up how to salt things.

My reasoning for using ECP was: multiply-recreated spammy articles about companies or people. Autoconfirmed is too light to deal with the problem, full protection seems drastic (in general we want as little locking of articles as possible). ECP seemed a way to make sure it would be generally-sensible users at least, without requiring admin intervention. The alternative would have been fully locking. What do others think? - David Gerard (talk) 14:11, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent use case, but I think the discussion regarding that should be at WT:PP... --Izno (talk) 14:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Good point; I'll go there and see if you've started a discussion there. Nyttend (talk) 14:47, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
WP:MULTI--and as I didn't start the discussion, seems rude to steal the discussion away. --Izno (talk) 15:17, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
I think fully locking is better. I doubt that most of these multiply-created articles are ones we'd ever want; and an admin can always unSALT the few which are. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:20, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
In most cases I agree, but I've always had misgivings about salting titles that might plausibly be used for a different subject (personal names in particular), or which might be notable and so might get an article if created by someone with clue rather than a COI. In general, I salt these for a year instead of indefinitely, and try to tell myself that if there hasn't been a viable article created in the past fifteen years, another year's delay won't matter, but my first impression of ECP salting looks like a better fit. (I've on occasion noticed another admin salt an article I've previously deleted as create=autoconfirmed, and always thought that laughably inadequate for any purpose.) —Cryptic 18:45, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Gosh, gang, I apologize for not thinking of this when I put up the RFC. Self-trouted. :-/
As it stands, I think we're authorized as the RFC stated - in cases where semi-protection was ineffective. How we prove that? Well, we have to semi-salt it first, I guess. Not going to happen with this admin, though. I can count on one hand the number of semi-salts I've ever done (I think) because to me it's pointless. My practice is pretty much what Cryptic does – I'll salt for a year or six months sometimes, but I always give the max dose while it lasts. And you'd be surprised how many unprotect requests we get at RFUP from established editors with drafts they think are okay but aren't. Katietalk 20:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Semi-salting indeed seems rather pointless; most uses of semiprotection are due to problems with IP editing, and IPs can't create pages in the first place. How often do we have issues with not-yet-confirmed accounts creating the same page over and over again? And in those situations where a salted title needs to be unprotected (e.g. a minor politician's article is deleted and salted, and then years later he gets elected to the national parliament, or a random person's biography's salted, and we have a draft about a different person with the same name), most editors doing the work with moving the new page (or creating the new page at this title) will be extended-confirmed. My only concern was a continuation of the protection (the new page at the salted title would itself be EC-protected), but that's not an issue: I created a page, deleted it, EC-salted it, created another page, and moved it to the first title, and the resulting second page at the first title ended up not being protected at all. So overall I think this is a good idea, but only in cases in which full-protection is otherwise the only option we'd pick. Think of it like the template-editor protection, which is to be applied only to pages that previously would have been full-protected. Nyttend (talk) 00:29, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, on reflection if it's worth salting at all (in this discussion, as frequently-recreated spam or frequently-recreated BLP) it may as well be full protection, and maybe limit the time or not - David Gerard (talk) 15:51, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

To me, I think extended comfimed salting as very usefull, but back in July, an admin just applied EC-salting when I requested the self-promo article to be salted, but Nakon said it not authorized yet because the RFC is still ongoing, then the same admin just applied full-protect salting which is too restrictive. KGirlTrucker81 talk what I'm been doing 20:01, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Updated certain outdated icons

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Update certain outdated icons
 – Music1201 (talk) 21:54, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I think it's time for new icon and template-related images, specifically protection icons. Here is what I was thinking:

  • Semi-Protect:
  • Full-Protect:
  • Template Protect:
  • Move Protect:
  • Pending changes protect:
  • Many other ideas...


Those are the same icons used over at Wikidata. They appear to be more modern and consistent with the rest of the internet. The current icons occasionally appear blurry on some devices (I've seen it myself and even have seen a few complaints via OTRS). Does anyone agree, disagree, or have another idea? — Music1201 talk 01:29, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

If we're going to update the padlocks, we should consider if we can improve accessibility – specifically with regards to WP:COLOR: "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information". Note also that currently-used padlocks and a variety of available padlocks are documented at WP:PADLOCKS. - Evad37 [talk] 08:49, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
How about writing inside the lock the initial (S, F, T, M, P) for the kind of protect? This way we wouldn't need to remember the color code, and they'd work for the color blind as well. Diego (talk) 09:00, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
That seems a good idea, and would work much better with the simple padlock as opposed to the current versions. —  crh 23  (Talk) 09:01, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
Some mock-ups with letters:
Could probably do with a thicker font, but you get the idea. —  crh 23  (Talk) 09:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
@Crh23, I'd make the characters smaller and provide some margin (for example the "T" top bar is almost invisible as it nearly touches the page background). Diego (talk) 09:49, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
The meaning is embodied in the tooltip (which can also include a lot of additional information; see {{pp}}) and the link target. Sure, you could reinforce that meaning with the letter. And by all means fix any problem with blurriness. But using different colors would only serve to make things prettier, since few people would be able to memorize the meanings of the colors. I'd suggest a single, common color that provides excellent contrast for the letter, which would be quite small and would need all the readability help it could get. In my opinion this is too blue-sky for this page and should have started at WP:VPI. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:18, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Those are the same icons used over at Wikidata – Wikidata is an outlier. They appear to be more modern and consistent with the rest of the internet – MediaWiki, anyone? The current icons occasionally appear blurry on some devices – I get this sometimes on my phone, and so what? I can still recognise the meaning. This is very BIKESHED. Besides, the current ones are pretty. BethNaught (talk) 09:53, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
    This is very BIKESHED. All conversations regarding usability and accessibility tend to be. That doesn't make them any less necessary. I can still recognise the meaning. So, because you can, everyone else can too? ;-) The point is enhancing the icons for people who have problems recognizing the symbols. The current icon set is definitely against the WP:COLORS guideline, "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information". Sure you have information in the tooltip, but that is still harder to access for people with motor disabilities, and it takes longer to read. Diego (talk) 11:41, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
    I also think that all instances of File:Stop x nuvola.svg should be replaced with File:White X in red background.svg. — Music1201 talk 15:03, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
    FWIW, Windows 10 did abandon "3-D" icons and other UI elements and return to 2-D, apparently reflecting some wisdom that 2-D works better across various platforms. I liked the 3-D better, but then I'm entirely keyboard PC-centric. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:49, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
  • This is really a discussion for Wikipedia talk:Protection policy (that being the talk page of Template:Padlock list), where there have been previous threads, e.g. Wikipedia talk:Protection policy/Archive 16#Semi-protected and Pending Changes templates. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Pinging discussion participants: @Evad37, Diego Moya, Crh23, Mandruss, BethNaught, and Redrose64: The discussion has been moved here. — Music1201 talk 21:54, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Is it just me, or did moving this here kill this discussion? ―Mandruss ☎ 15:21, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Oppose - I suggest creating a user script with a panel like the Twinkles one. In This script you can set your preferances to the type of lock you want which will be much better because I already like the current locks. So we can have a script written by someone. VarunFEB2003 I am Offline 13:40, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Perhaps what we really need is to update Wikipedia's default skin again. The current padlocks work well with the new Vector and the old Monobook skins, and thus I don't see much need to change them. The suggested "modern" look above seems – at least for me – to clash with the overall look of Wikipedia. Mz7 (talk) 03:09, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Protect user pages by default

Please see new RfC on protecting user pages by default from edits by anonymous and new users. Funcrunch (talk) 17:13, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

ECP wording

  • The policy: "...nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered users in (valid) content disputes."
  • The template: "All IP editors, accounts with fewer than 500 edits, and accounts with less than 30 days tenure are prohibited from editing any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab–Israeli conflict."

Which is it? Can IPs participate in valid content disputes or are they prohibited from editing the article? --NeilN talk to me 19:30, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

@NeilN: Both. Consider the situation that an article which cannot be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab–Israeli conflict is in a content dispute between an editor with 500+ edits and 30+ days who favours one version, and an editor with fewer than 500 edits or fewer than 30 days who favours another version. Wikipedia:Protection policy#Content disputes indicates that whilst it is permitted to use protection to halt a content dispute, it is then a misuse of privilege for those who have a high enough right to then edit the article to favour their view in that dispute. Therefore, it is a misuse of protection to use ECP and then allow edits by higher-privileged editors over those who lack such privileges. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:37, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I prefer the change by NeilN, because the present wording is so vague as to be meaningless for purposes of guiding actions, and only serves as justifications to argue one's case by either side. Weasel word: "valid"; weasel concept: requires divining intent - David Gerard (talk) 10:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
So remove the word "valid", no need to remove the whole phrase. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
That would be worse, as it would cover invalid content disputes, i.e. not a content dispute at all but one side claims it is to get cover under this wording - David Gerard (talk) 11:26, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
What about: "Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered users in valid content disputes on articles not covered by Arbitration Committee rulings." --NeilN talk to me 13:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
That's clearer, though it basically makes ECP enough of a PITA for practical purposes that admins are always going to lock articles entirely rather than use it. (See above section.) Depends if that's the community will - David Gerard (talk) 18:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Any further comments before I implement the change? --NeilN talk to me 00:59, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm concerned that there's a valid reading of the text as it now stands which implies that it is ok to use extended confirmed protection to influence a content dispute where the article is covered by an ArbCom ruling. And not quite understanding, from reading the discussion above, the concern with the previous text. I'm going to revert this part of the change to allow more discussion. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 20:43, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
@Ryk72: "...nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered users in valid content disputes." directly contradicts the Arbcom decision. We are favoring extended confirmed users in Arab-Israeli conflict articles because other editors simply aren't allowed to edit them, valid content dispute or no. --NeilN talk to me 21:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
NeilN, Agreed, we are favouring extended confirmed users; but we are not favouring, hopefully, one side of a content dispute. The prohibition here is on using ECP to influence a content dispute; and that prohibition should not be limited. Can we work out some wording which covers both concerns? Perhaps even just "... should not be used to influence valid content disputes"? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 21:34, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Ryk72, certainly. I waited for a week to see if anyone had any input on my text and there were no concrete suggestions. I thought my disclaimer about how Arbcom-covered articles were excluded was clear and concise but if anyone has better wording I'm all for that. My main point is that admins patrolling RFPP should not use "content dispute" if declining to use ECP on AI-conflict articles. --NeilN talk to me 21:44, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
NeilN, I appreciate the week's wait for further input, and that I am truly late to the party; the vagaries of page notification. I also appreciate that the concern outlined (admins declining ECP on AI-conflict articles) is a valid one; and that there's a valid reading of this policy which implies support for such declination; and I thank you for articulating it. Concur that Admins should not be declining to ECP any article in the ARBPIA topic space, for any reason; the decision on those pages has been made. (In many ways, they are already protected, and Admins implementing ECP serve only as ArbCom's hammer.) With a terribly literally minded reading, however, the proposed wording covers more than the ARBPIA topic space; extending to all articles covered by all ArbCom decisions. (I do not conceive that explicitly naming ARBPIA is a good solution to this.) I'll try to come up with something which covers all concerns over the next couple of days. And in the meantime, will self-revert to the proposed wording. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:30, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
@Ryk72: Thanks. I see what you're saying now. What about: "Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered users in valid content disputes on topics not authorized for 30/500 protection by the Arbitration Committee." --NeilN talk to me 23:09, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Or, simpler, modify the existing wording: "...Arbitration Committee 30/500 rulings." --NeilN talk to me 23:15, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
NeilN, Thanks for the response. Happier with either of these; though inclined to "mandated" over "authorized". Mandated would cover ARBPIA, and any future decisions where ArbCom similarly decides "these articles are protected", but would not include any future decisions where ArbCom decides "these articles may be protected as a discretionary sanction". Authorized would include both. Thoughts? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:41, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@Ryk72: You're okay with the less wordy "Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered users in valid content disputes on articles not covered by Arbitration Committee 30/500 rulings."? If so, I think that tweak will be uncontroversial. --NeilN talk to me 15:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it's incrementally an improvement. I'm assuming, having proposed that text, you're also okay with it; so will make that change; if not okay, please revert. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:58, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

User Protection

Yellow Padlock

This kind of new protection will be used on User pages. Under this protection policy, only that user can edit its own user page. Yellow locks will be used. Wetit🐷 0 11:08, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Oppose This can be a serious method of vandalism. The user can get it protected and then do whatever he wants and nonody can touch it. Instead better methods are listed at Wikipedia:User_pages#Protection_of_user_pages Anyway I have left a notice at WT:RFPP about this. Wetitpig0 VarunFEB2003 11:41, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
Wetit, where is this coming from? The current RFC proposes nothing of the sort. --NeilN talk to me 11:50, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
@NeilN: This is not by any ways connected to that RfC but is instead another proposal, however I am moving this into that RfC soon! VarunFEB2003 14:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Clean up: Arbitration 30/500 -> Extended confirmed ?

Fellow editors,

With the RfC having closed in support of community approved use of the 30/500 restrictions, should we now go through the policy & clean up any vestiges of "Arbitration 30/500 protection" by moving to the "Extended confirmed protection" phrasing? If there's sufficient support, I am happy to make the changes. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:49, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@Ryk72: See Special:Diff/720423245 and Special:Diff/720425885. "Arbitration 30/500 protection" → "Extended confirmed protection" is probably okay, but "Arbitration 30/500" → "Extended confirmed" is not, I think. There are many pages (such as Hezbollah at semiprot, and Islamic State of Iraq with no protection) that fall under "Arbitration 30/500" sanctions that are not extended confirmed protected. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 16:51, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Technically speaking, is there any difference between the two? If not, we should merge references to one with references to the other, because continuing to use two separate terms makes the reader think that the two protection levels have different effects. Nyttend (talk) 01:19, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Technically speaking, they are just two different names for one of the five protection levels that are available. When an admin protects a page (whether for create, edit, move, or upload), they have to select from a five-entry list:
We're discussing the third of these five. As can be seen from following the link, the non-localised version of this is "Allow only established editors and administrators" (see mw:MediaWiki:Protect-level-extendedconfirmed), but for users who have selected the language "en - English", we have localised this to "Require extended confirmed access". For those with British English or Canadian English, it's left alone.
The term "Arbitration 30/500" originated in the early days of this prot level, before it was decided that other situations could merit a similar restriction. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
So in other words, there's no reason that I can see not to merge the references to one with the references to the other. Nyttend (talk) 11:18, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Guess not? (it's just that when it comes to protection reasons, one is ArbCom, the other is roughly when semi isn't enough) — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 02:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Clean up: Arbitration 30/500 -> Extended confirmed ?

Fellow editors,

With the RfC having closed in support of community approved use of the 30/500 restrictions, should we now go through the policy & clean up any vestiges of "Arbitration 30/500 protection" by moving to the "Extended confirmed protection" phrasing? If there's sufficient support, I am happy to make the changes. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:49, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@Ryk72: See Special:Diff/720423245 and Special:Diff/720425885. "Arbitration 30/500 protection" → "Extended confirmed protection" is probably okay, but "Arbitration 30/500" → "Extended confirmed" is not, I think. There are many pages (such as Hezbollah at semiprot, and Islamic State of Iraq with no protection) that fall under "Arbitration 30/500" sanctions that are not extended confirmed protected. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 16:51, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Technically speaking, is there any difference between the two? If not, we should merge references to one with references to the other, because continuing to use two separate terms makes the reader think that the two protection levels have different effects. Nyttend (talk) 01:19, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Technically speaking, they are just two different names for one of the five protection levels that are available. When an admin protects a page (whether for create, edit, move, or upload), they have to select from a five-entry list:
We're discussing the third of these five. As can be seen from following the link, the non-localised version of this is "Allow only established editors and administrators" (see mw:MediaWiki:Protect-level-extendedconfirmed), but for users who have selected the language "en - English", we have localised this to "Require extended confirmed access". For those with British English or Canadian English, it's left alone.
The term "Arbitration 30/500" originated in the early days of this prot level, before it was decided that other situations could merit a similar restriction. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
So in other words, there's no reason that I can see not to merge the references to one with the references to the other. Nyttend (talk) 11:18, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Guess not? (it's just that when it comes to protection reasons, one is ArbCom, the other is roughly when semi isn't enough) — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 02:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
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