[Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

Sun Sep 8 20:05:43 UTC 2002

On Sunday 08 September 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> I don't recall ever having a problem with people
> changing policies unilaterally, so I guess I don't see
> any good reason to have these pages frozen. I do,
> however, see some problems with it.
>
> Stephen Gilbert

Yes there has been a problem with this in the past (albeit relatively minor - 
but that was back when we had 1/3 the edit volume). Off the top of my head; 
an anonymous IP tried to add a new naming convention unilaterally without 
discussion; 
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Naming_conventions&diff=68608&oldid=59909

24's additions to rules to consider (admittedly not a policy page but very 
similar); 
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Rules_to_consider&diff=52895&oldid=52894

And there are probably others that could be found by digging a bit more. 

Then there is 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 
which for legal reasons can't be edited by anybody and also 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

As Karen said anybody who has been around for a while can be a sysop and we 
can't have just any anonymous IP changing policy pages. 

If you have noticed when I refactored the naming conventions page I spun-off 
the majority of the text in sub-articles which /are not/ protected - just 
watched by little old me. I think something similar should be done with NPOV 
which has become a monster. That way the amount of protected text is at a 
bare minimum and anybody can copyedit the majority of the text yet the short 
policy statements on the protected page are not changed.

In fact all of our policy pages should be as short as possible with separate 
but linked unprotected pages which go into in-depth discussion and 
explanation. See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions

We might want to have some type of boilerplate block at the top of each 
policy page stating something to the effect; 

"[[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines|Wikipedia policy]] has evolved over time 
and continues to evolve as the project matures. Policy changes must be agreed 
to by consensus however. If you want to help us refine our policies please 
add to this page's talk, join the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia-L|mailing list]] 
and/or ask to become a [[Wikipedia:Administrators|Wikipedia administrator]] 
(which is granted to any logged-in user who is generally known and trusted by 
the community)."

It has been stated before that we can't trust any anonymous yahoo with meta 
functions (and changing policy is one of these functions).

PS I've heard several people chim in that "Ignore all rules" is a policy. 
That's plain wrong; it is just a rule to consider. See: 
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)