[WikiEN-l] Re: semi-permanent protection of (very) contentious

Tue Jun 8 17:54:51 UTC 2004

> From: Magnus Link <ruhrjung at yahoo.de>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-permanent protection of (very) contentious
> 	articles
> 
> Is it maybe soon time to make a little modification to
> Wikipedia's policy on protection, to allow 
> contentious articles to be long-term protected - in
> order to stimulate the use of talk pages instead of
> edit wars?

If we start getting a lot of pages that are protected for this reason, I am 
afraid we will see creative bad behavior that it intended to bypass this 
protection. In order not to stimulate such behavior I will not give examples 
of some possibilities that occur to me.

Just as we make reversions easier for sysops, but not impossible for regular 
users... and just as some shareware does not require payment, but has an 
annoying countdown timer and delay before the program starts if you have not 
paid... I suggest we ask the developers for a way to "soft-protect" pages.

A "soft-protected" page could be edited by anyone, but would require some 
annoying, time-consuming and (wishful thinking) thought-provoking steps to be 
performed first. 

For example, if you get to a soft-protected page by any usual route and click 
"edit this page," it might take you to a screen that explains that the 
subject is contentious. The only option to proceed takes you, not to the 
article's Edit box, but to the article's Talk page. From the Talk page there 
would be the usual link to the article, but it would carry some special tag 
in the URL such that clicking on the article's Edit links _when reached via 
this route_ would allow you to edit as usual.

Or something like that.

"Slow down, fella, let's talk this over," instead of "admission to authorized 
personnel only."