Wikipedia:Semi-protecting policy pages poll

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This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is kept primarily for historical interest. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should ask for broader input, for instance at the village pump.

This poll has been closed because there were more people voting against the poll than voting on the proposal.

Please instead join the discussion on the proposal here.

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This is a poll to assist in the determination of consensus for the addition of the following language to the semi-protection policy:

• All official policies should be semi-protected on a continuous basis.

Please see Wikipedia:Semi-protecting policy pages for an explanation of the rationale for this proposed amendment.

Support

1. Support -- Semi-protection is frequently an effective means by which to prevent vandalism. However, articles are ordinarily not semi-protected except where necessary due to heavy vandalism, because the interest in allowing new and unregistered users to contribute to articles is otherwise considered to outweigh the value of the vandalism prevention that semi-protection affords. Such a rationale for the avoidance of semi-protection is unpersuasive when the page in question is not an article. Indeed, there is a strong case for limiting the editing of official policies to established users, as official policies are intended to be edited in a manner consistent with the prevailing consensus. Only established users are likely to have a sufficient familiarity with Wikipedia to be able to ascertain the prevailing consensus. Consequently, the decision as to whether to semi-protect official policy pages does not involve balancing the interest permitting in good-faith editing by new and unregistered users against the interest in preventing vandalism by such users, as would be the case for semi-protection of articles. Rather, semi-protection of official policies is beneficial both by helping to prevent vandalism, and by preventing good-faith but terribly misguided edits by new and unregistered users. John254 15:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Polls are evil, discuss, don't vote Far too early to have a poll about this. JYolkowski // talk 16:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Comment -- Woohookitty suggested that

   This is a major policy change. It needs to be voted on formally.[1]

   (We have voted to enact many other policy proposals, as I explained at length on Wikipedia talk:Discuss, don't vote.) If this proposal needs to be voted on to be enacted, but yet cannot be voted on, it could never be enacted, regardless of the number of contributors supporting it. This "catch-22" is not an outcome that I favor. John254 16:15, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Unless we've actually discussed what options to vote on (which hasn't been done), having a vote is highly unlikely to produce any sort of consensus. JYolkowski // talk 16:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   If this proposed amendment wording doesn't achieve consensus, then we can hold another vote on some different wording. John254 16:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

2. Oppose the idea, not the wording. Policy pages are the most watched, and most reverted, pages on Wikipedia, sufficiently so that it can be difficult to get consideration for good-faith, coherent edits. They are the last pages to need semi-protection; and when they do, we know where WP:RfPP is. Septentrionalis 00:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

   There's no reason to allow official policies to remain in states like this for 8 minutes, where unregistered users generally aren't making constructive contributions to the pages. Vandalism by new and unregistered users of articles is simply a byproduct of retaining editability; for official policies, however, it doesn't have to be. John254 02:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

   When someone actually consulted the page, they reverted. So there was a short time when the page was not proper, and no-one saw it. So what? That's true of all WP pages, sometimes. Septentrionalis 20:49, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

3. Strong Oppose I actually support the idea of a poll at the present time because I hope that it is the fastest way to end this proposal. Per Thesocialistesq's arguments on the main talk page protection should always be the exception rather than the rule. Nothing that I have seen convinces me that anons or new users do so much harm and so little good that this principle should be discarded. While protection is a sad necessity on some pages (policy as well as articles) in a wiki as large as this, the mere threat (rather than the occurence) of vandalism should most certainly not be a reason to permantly protect an entire class of pages. Eluchil404 11:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Other

1. Polls are not to be used for this purpose. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 16:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

   Actually, we have frequently employed voting to enact and amend Wikipedia policy. For a few examples, see Wikipedia:Arbitration policy ratification vote, Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/G4, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/1, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/10, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/11, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/13, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material, and Expansion of CSD A7. John254 17:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

2. This is indeed not the way to go about doing this. We're supposed to come to some some of consensus, not vote on what we like the best. We were making progress with compromises already, and this really isn't necessary. Let's just take this slowly. Cowman109^Talk 17:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
3. Policy is not created by voting upon it, but by listening to concerns and reaching a compromise. The assertion that a proposal requires a vote to be enacted is false, per WP:POL. >Radiant< 23:24, 5 November 2006 (UTC)