[WikiEN-l] 172 protecting [[New Imperialism]]

Thu Jul 24 01:32:00 UTC 2003

I don't really want to write about this, but feel I ought to as it hasn't 
been mentioned on the list yet: before 172 protected [[Catholicism]] he had 
protected [[New Imperialism]], a page he is very definitely involved with, 
and also protected [[Talk:New Imperialism]]. I unprotected both as soon as 
I became aware of this and told 172 that protecting pages one is involved 
in is a Bad Thing, and that protecting talk pages is almost never right (I 
acknowledge I may not have been a model of politeness in how I put this, 
but I don't think I was actually rude - still, I should have been more 
restrained, I admit). As far as I know, he then left them unprotected.

The reason for 172 protecting [[New Imperialism]], as far as I can tell 
(and I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong about any of this), was that 
User:Pizza Puzzle had edited it. 172 suspects Pizza Puzzle is the banned 
user formerly known as Lir, and protected both the article to stop him 
editing it. The edits which Pizza Puzzle had made to the article were very 
minor and not bad in any obvious way, certainly not the sort of thing that 
would warrant protecting a page: adding a few links, moving a paragraph or 
two, a little light rewriting. 172 expressed the opinion that Pizza 
Puzzle's edits to the page would at first be legitimate, but would 
gradually take over the page and turn it into an incoherent mess. My view 
is that unless 172 has psychic abilities and can see in to the future, he 
cannot know this will happen, and that preemptively protecting pages is in 
any case a bad idea on the whole. His opinion on who Pizza Puzzle is seems 
irrelevant to me (and Pizza Puzzle has in any case been quite a good 
contributor of late, whoever he may be).

The reason for 172 protecting the talk page remains a mystery, at least to 
me. I've asked him why he did it, but haven't received a reply.

Also (this a little off-topic, but possibly of interest) ,172 put a lot of 
discussion on [[Talk:New Imperialism]] into an archive. The talk was all of 
one day old, and concerned a matter still very much unresolved. The talk 
page was not an unmanageable length and I saw no reason to archive it 
(though plenty of reasons not to). I therefore moved the discussion back to 
the main talk page. 172 archived it again. Somebody else unarchived it. 172 
archived it again. And so on, resulting in possibly the most ridiculous 
edit war I've yet witnessed.

On the whole I would favour being lenient on the question of whether to 
revoke sysop rights, but in this case I don't disagree with 172's sysop 
status being revoked (though I do think Erik should have brought the matter 
to the list or to some other forum first). I just hope 172 will agree to be 
more reluctant to use his sysop rights in future and his non-sysopness can 
be temporary.

Sorry to go on at such length.

Lee (Camembert)
Wikikarma: lots of fiddles to [[Music]]

PS - I don't subscribe to the list any more (I read it on the web) - that's 
why it's taken me a while to write about this.