Talk:George W. Bush/Fighting vandalism

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[edit] Protected...

until when? Matt Yeager 00:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

There is little point to unblock the article, as was stated in the post in which it was protected. 190 out of the 196 articles were vandalism. Is there any benefit in unblocking it unless some major event turns up? This may be one of those articles where it might just be safer to allow the admins to edit it. Cowman 00:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

it would be better if only admins edit this article too many people try to ruin it Yuckfoo 01:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

If it were possible, I would simply limit edits to this article to registered users. Guanaco 01:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to allowing only admins editorial rights here but not to a form of semi protection of the page in hich only registered users could edit it, since most of the vandalism is by anons of course.--MONGO 01:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Please, not an admin-only thing. I've made enough improvements personally (let alone the thousands of useful improvements by hundreds of registered users) to the article to make me upset at the idea of only letting admins edit.

Registered users only, though? That works. Matt Yeager 01:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

How do we get changes acted on if only admins can edit? This page is in need of work, minor and major. Is someone going to monitor and respond to talk messages all day requesting edits? (wouldn't it be easier and solve this problem too if there were more links to detailed pages (1st term, 2nd term pages exist, why here? Legislation, policy, etc could all be split out)? Then protecting the main page about W wouldn't be a big deal). -Jcbarr 01:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I suppose, the idea of allowing edits to this page only to registered wiki users in a way is the opposite of what wikipedia stands for, being a free encyclopedia for all to edit, but in some cases (such as this article) it may be a necesary act. I agree now that allowing only admins access to the page would not do much good, but would slow down the editing process, but only allowing members to edit this page would at least deter vandals. As it stands now, however, something needs to be done as this page lately holds little purpose but vandalism. And yes, I realize there are some of you out there who are contributing, but unfortunately the vandals are making it difficult for your thoughts to be properly noticed with the respect they deserve. Cowman 02:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Never going to happen. Believe me. That idea passed Wikipedia village pump, went on to Bugtraq, had a lot of support, but is just sitting there. --kizzle 05:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Plus, as we've already seen, registered users can still be vandals (see, for example, WoW), and a good number of IPs have good edits. Making this page editable only to registered users is what is sometimes referred to as anti-wiki. -Mysekurity 05:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Limiting to only registered users should only be used as a last resort and only on certain pages, and still isn't perfect. However, considering that an incredibly significant portion of vandalism is drive-by vandalism, this would greatly improve the vandalism rate and is in my mind worth giving up IP edits *on this page*, which in many cases get blind reverted simply because IP edits are often mistaken as vandalism. Don't blindly hold to a dogmatic belief if it doesn't make sense in some applications. --kizzle 06:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

To respond to all these concerns; I do not feel that admins alone should take over this article. As an admin, I have had to revert too may edits here, with very little coming as a result. I hate to see something as grand as Wikipedia going to beaurocracy, and allowing only admins to edit an article like this seems counter-intuitive. I propose, however, to create a temporary article, perhaps at George W. Bush/Temp, as has been done with copyvios. This would allow users to work on a newer version, and, after peer review and tweaking, the article may be uploaded to the main article page, thus assuring vandalism will be out of sight from the common reader, but the article will still be editable by interested editors. This would discourage vandals, as their work would not be visable, and encourage editors. This page needs to be pruned greatly, and any help users can give would be greatly appreciated. By splitting off the article into sub-articles, it would make this article much more friendly to new users. You may propose any major editing that needs to be done to this article either here, or at the talk pages of any one of Wikipedia's Administrators (such as myself, Who, and FireFox, and many others.) Thank you and good luck, Mysekurity 05:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that Bush is the current prez, so this article is going to be vandalized just because of that one issue. Then you add all the other issues in that make him also a relatively unpopular President, especially outside of the U.S. and it's a crapshoot. Kizzle is right...a bunch of us have tried to see if some form of semi-protection would be possible for routinely vandalized articles such as this one so that at least we could avoid drive by vandalisms, but it pretty much stalled in bugzilla. I am not sure that page protection is best, but then again, when 97 percent of the alterations are vandalism, it's hard to support unprotecting unless there is something important to add.--MONGO 05:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Based upon my own observations, vandalism to this page appears to range between 93–97% of all edits. While waiting for the much needed enhancements from Bugzilla, the best solution may be to have this article remain in a protected state while allowing the sysops to moderate article changes via the talk page. Yamaguchi先生 05:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. I understand all the vandalism stuff, but wouldn't it just make sense to prune the article before anything more is added? For christsakes, it's 90KB! I'd like to try and organize all those in Category:Wikipedian Programmers to help out with this, and if you'd tell me the language, I'd be happy to spam all of 'em. Thanks and good night, Mysekurity 05:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

What's "bugzilla"? Matt Yeager 06:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Bugzilla is an open-source bug reporting and software tool. I believe it was created by the Mozilla Foundation for use in the development of the Mozilla Suite, and eventually its other products. Presumably, its open-source as well, so that others can use and adapt. SterlingNorth 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

If we have very responsible admins, I'm down to setup a system till some developer comes up with a solution for two things.

1. Protect the page.
2. Any change must be brought up here and be supported by at least (2) other signatures, including changes proposed by admins (except for spelling/grammar changes)
3. If 2 sigs are present, any present admins enact the change.

Just a suggestion. --kizzle 07:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I want to remind everone of something. From WP:PPol: "When a page is particularly high profile, either because it is linked off the main page, or because it has recently received a prominent link from offsite, it will often become a target for vandalism. It is best not to protect pages in this case. Instead, consider adding them to your watchlist, and reverting vandalism yourself." This page is one of the most high profile. So, yeah, it'll get a lot of vandalism, just like the featured article on the main page will. But there's a very good reason we don't protect it. High profile articles are our face to the world. We need to present a "free encyclopedia" face, and not a "by-request only" face. Think of the literally thousands of people who find this page every day off of Google or Yahoo. What will they think when they click the "edit" button and only get the source? I would venture to say that much of the vandalism (aside from obvious anti-Bush ones) comes from new users taking that edit button out for a spin, just to delete a sentence, add "hello," or even do something a little naughty to see if it really saves your edits. While it's a pain, this is an essential part of Wikipedia, and actually healthy. And if we are going to be Wikipedia anywhere, this article is the place. I think long term protection is not the solution, and would be harmful to Wikipedia. Dmcdevit·t 07:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

That simply won't do for this page. Vandalism happens way too quick to this page, it doesn't matter how many people are monitoring it. The level of vandalism this article suffers is simply unacceptable, and some measures need to be taken. I estimate in any given day, a vandalized version of GWB is up for at least an hour per day. Yes, I understand wiki general principles and goals. Yes, such measures will undoubtedly take away power from anon ips. Regardless, something must be done than simply better efforts on our part to combat vandalism. --kizzle 07:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

For at least the immediate future, The Powers That Be won't be implementing "semi-protection" (edits by registered users only). As a practical matter, that leaves the choice between protection (edits by admins only) and normal treatment (open editing, with consequent vandalism and reversion of vandalism). As between those two, I favor open editing. Requiring non-admins to submit all proposed edits for consideration on the talk page would discourage them from contributing, and the need for admins to review and implement proposed changes would consume more Wikipedian-hours than the reversion of vandalism does now. Also, I'm not convinced it would reduce the total amount of vandalism of Wikipedia. Most vandals here probably aren't ideological Bush opponents; they're just adolescents (of whatever chronological age) who want to vandalize something and think first of the current President's article. If Gore had been inaugurated, they'd be vandalizing Al Gore. If they find they can't edit their first target, quite a few of them will probably go hit something else. Vandalism on less prominent articles would be seen by fewer visitors but would tend to stay in place longer.

Here's another alternative, which is only a bit anti-wiki: A small group of admins (one, two, or three) is designated to review the article once a week. They select the most recent version that contains no obvious vandalism. The main article remains universally editable, but the selected version is protected as George W. Bush/Nov14 or whatever. A note at the top of George W. Bush warns the reader that vandalism is frequent and that [[George W. Bush/Nov14|this version of the article]] is free of vandalism, though perhaps slightly out of date. Readers could choose to go there with a click. How would this GWB Editing Council deal with ongoing edit wars? I dunno, but any resolution of that question would be better than frequent (let alone semi-permanent) protection of this article. JamesMLane 08:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

What an outsatnding idea...I nominate JamesMLane to be one of the "small group of admins" :)--MONGO 08:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I like that idea too. I'd be glad to help. But I seriously think this thing needs pruning. Oh, how about this? We protect durring hours that most people are not online (admins included), and unprotect when we're back, so vandalism doesn't stay? Or would that put too much strain on the servers and be too much work? -Mysekurity 12:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, MONGO, but I think the tricky subject of edit wars would be easiest to deal with if the Council consisted of editor(s) with absolutely no interest in the article. No one on the Council should ever edit the article except to update the link to the saved version. If this is a clever ploy by you to prevent me from editing the article by sticking me on the Council, too bad, I've seen through you.  :) As for changing the protection depending on the time of day, I don't know whether there's a time at which vandalism tends to remain unreverted longer. A lot of people have this article on their watchlists, and their work is supplemented by the RC patrollers. JamesMLane 15:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Ummm... "only a bit anti-wiki"? That is an unreasonable idea. I do not have an answer to the vandalism problem, whether semi-protection, or this idea, but limiting the rights to edit articles is not that good. A small group of Admins might be good way to stop vandalism, but how would they be selected? (instruction creep?) How do we protect from some POV Admins from getting to control controversial articles? Just some thoughts. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 15:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not an unreasonable idea. There are approximately 300 admins who could help facilitate the moderation process until some other alternative is implemented. We do not need to elect a committee to do this, we already have one. Yamaguchi先生 15:27, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify, my suggestion wouldn't restrict anyone from editing the George W. Bush article. That article would remain subject to completely open editing. In fact, it would be more open than at present, because the occasional vandalism-protections would stop. No editors (whether registered users or anons) would lose any rights that they now have, except that the admins volunteering for this patrolling work would give up the right to edit the main article. The only change would be that we'd create a new page that would be available as a resource for those who wanted it. Certainly we have some POV admins, but my suggestion wouldn't enable them to control the article. My idea requires only that we find a small number of admins who don't press their POV about Bush. They'd perform only the weekly ministerial task of finding a recent unvandalized version. JamesMLane 16:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

No ploy, my man. Just chiming in that I thought your idea was a decent one. Obviously the vandalism is keeping good faith editors like yourself from being able to make a change without saving the alteration on a "wrong version" that has been vandalized. I like your idea of creating a subpage that is the also the mainpage for the article. I myself have tired of the vandalism to this page especially and am in favor of any idea that would "protect" nonvandalized editions for consumption by the casual reader. You idea sounds like the best one yet as semiprotection is not going to happen and is unwiki anyway I suppose.--MONGO 16:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd volunteer for this duty if I would be allowed to rotate out of (and possibly back in to) the "group" that deals with the unvandalized version. I haven't made any content-related edits to this article in a while, but if I want to in the future, I'd like to be able to. android79 16:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a big problem, but we have hundreds of admins, and it would probably be just as easy to find a few who've never edited the article and never want to. They don't need any particular expertise in U.S. politics to recognize "George Bush is a jerk" as vandalism. JamesMLane 16:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

How strictly would we define vandalism for this scheme? Would it include obvious extreme POV edits of the kind that are so often reverted? android79 16:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

We have an existing discussion of what vandalism is and is not: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia." If someone writes, "Bush has provided exemplary leadership in the War on Terrorism," I wouldn't consider that vandalism. It's just somebody who doesn't understand the NPOV policy. JamesMLane 17:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

(Why I didn't think to review WP:VAND is beyond me.) I was thinking of POV edits even more extreme than your example, which would then be covered by the "bad-faith" clause in most cases. Okay, I'm on board for this. android79 17:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Now lets hope they don't get smart and go for the vandalism warning every time :) --kizzle 17:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stop Vandalism (line break for easier editing)

The subpage idea might not be too great though. See Wikipedia:Subpages. And what happens if there is a major incident... do we have to wait until the little "council" agrees on a version? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

So that they may be addressed thoroughly, exactly what are your concerns Lord Voldemort? Hall Monitor 19:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "a major incident", but, no, nobody would have to wait for the "Council" to do anything. Once a week, a couple of admins would take a snapshot of the page, without vandalism; save that snapshot as a version of the article with a particular date; and update the link that would be at the top of the article. Then they would go away for another week. Edits by everyone else would continue exactly as before. If a subpage is a technical problem, it could of course be a separate page, George W. Bush 2005-11-14 or the like. In that case, the admins would delete that page when they created the November 21 version. JamesMLane 19:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

My concerns are thus:

• Subpages are not really kosher. Do we change policy just for a couple of specific articles? Having a subpage where people can edit, but having the main article protected seems to sort of "hide" the editable version, even if there is a notice placed on the main one pointing to the subpage.
• Having a protected version where only a few Admins get to decide what stays or goes is not very wiki-like. What if some Admins want it one way and others want it another? Then we have even more disputes. If Admins cannot decide in that weekly period, what version gets to be saved?
• We should be looking for ways to stop vandalism, not just move it off of the main article page. This just seems to be avoiding the problem rather than addressing it.
• If an incident happens, for instance an assassination attempt, should the "council" of Admins have to wait until the weekly period is up before that info can be added to the main article page? If Admins can edit the main article page, but regular contributors cannot (in a situation like this), then what is the pupose of having a subpage? People would be editing there, but an Admin may want to add that info directly into the main article page. It removes regular editors from the editing process.
• There is talk of instruction creep all around WP, and this is a good example; changing Wikipedia to suit a small group of articles doesn't seem to jive with the guidleline of no instruction creep.

There might not be an answer to suit everybody, and as I've said before, I sure don't have an answer. But I personally feel that this idea would not be good for in the spirit of "wiki". Hopefully I didn't forget anything. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

One temporary solution may be to created a hierarchical page structure at (for example) Wikipedia:Requested_changes/George_W._Bush and allow users to edit there until a semi-protect capability is added to Wikipedia. The change requests could be broken into 52 pages per year, one for every week, i.e. Wikipedia:Requested_changes/George_W._Bush/2005/Week 52. Anyone who is an administrator could then add each weekly page to their watchlist and incorporate requested changes into the article as necessary. Hall Monitor 19:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem I see with that is that, how is that any different than protecting this page and requiring changes to be requested on the talk page? Maybe I don't understand this latest idea. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

LV's concerns, in order:

1. The subpage policy is actually a guideline, and even if it were policy, WP:IAR would allow us to break it; we are trying to keep one of the most-vandalized pages on Wikipedia from becoming completely useless.
2. Admins will be reverting simple, blatant vandalism and bad-faith edits only. I propose a "when in doubt, leave that edit in" approach to settle disputes, of which I feel there will be few.
3. You've been around this talk page nearly as long as I have, LV, and we've both seen proposals, good and bad, for stopping vandalism. Those we've tried haven't worked. This might, even if it's "avoiding" it rather than stopping it.
4. If there's serious news about GWB, the "council" could be suspended until the new information is in a stable form. Keep in mind that this idea will not stop the main article from being edited at will, so readers can look to the "live" version for recent news.
5. I don't see any instruction creep here. This is a complex (but not overly so) solution to a serious problem. android79 19:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Lord Voldemort, please expand your page history to show the past 1000 edits to the George W. Bush page. This is an example of an article which is being habitually attacked by vandals, the majority of which are drive-by instances of vandalism made by anonymous editors who show no interest in improving this article. The suggested editing-by-proxy solution would be temporary until a semi-protection capability can be added by the developers. This would not be the first page or function to have a limitation placed upon it in order to protect the integrity of Wikipedia. For example, the Main Page of Wikipedia is protected from editing by the general public; only administrators may make changes to that page after a consensus is reached, yet we are able to keep it up to date without any issue. Another example is the recent implementation of new users not being able to move pages until their account has aged for a certain period of time. For now, this appears to be the best solution. Hall Monitor 19:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hall Monitor, yes, I know full well the amount of vandalism that takes place here. But the problem is, semi-protection may never take affect, so what started out as "temporary", might soon become "not-so-temporary", i.e. permanent. And Android, in some order: 1. IAR? Okay, let's just let vandals have their way. That would be ignoring the rules. There is some limit to using the IAR Defense™. 2. The idea is that there would be no Admin reverting of the main article page, because there would be no non-Admin editing of the main article page. 3. Yes, something should probably be done, I just personally don't care for this idea. 4. etc. 5. etc... I don't really want to fight about this anymore. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

LV, you've got it entirely backwards, based on your response to #2 above. Most admins would continue to revert vandalism on the main article, and anyone would be free to edit it. The only changes are thus: 1) a notice at the top of George W. Bush explaining the existence of George W. Bush/Scrutinized Version, and why that version may be more useful. 2) George W. Bush/Scrutinized Version, which is protected, is generated weekly by taking a snapshot of George W. Bush and, based on discussion, removal any blatant vandalism and bad-faith POV by a small group of disinterested admins. It preserves the wiki-ness of "anyone can edit" while maintaining a useful article on our president. Win-win, if you ask me. android79 20:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You know what, why don't we just have a bot watch this article? If it recognizes an edit to this article as clear vandalism, it will revert it immediately.  Denelson83  20:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll get right on it. It'll take a few decades, though, and lots of money. android79 20:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, just remember that "a watch bot never boils."  Denelson83  20:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Your comments are greatly appreciated by everyone, please do not mistake this as a "fight"; I welcome your criticisms and concerns. It is a good practice to discuss these matters before making any major changes. The way I see it, any administrator should be able to instantly incorporate any major change made to a subpage. Even if this were a non-temporary solution, what major disadvantages do you see in this style of consensus-based editing? Hall Monitor 20:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we could move this discussion elsewhere? I smell a proposal cookin' at Wikipedia:Experimental vandalism protection... android79 20:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... perhaps I did have it backwards. I was under the impression that there would be a subpage that would be the editable one, and leave the main article page protected. So this proposal is simply like the one for FAs? Have a preserved "good copy", but allow new changes to be made? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

And I know it wasn't a "fight", I was just a little tired of this discussion. It's been a long day and I am a little tired. I'll try not to get so upset next time. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll sketch something more concrete out sooner or later and link to it here. android79 20:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm really against protection of any kind on this article, it is high profile and vandalism will happen. We don't protect FA articles do we? Protecting it seems anti-wiki like, what does it say about us that this is a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" but our most high profile page, you can't edit. -Greg Asche (talk) 21:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Rough sketch here. It might be useful to copy this discussion to that talk page, but I've gotta run. android79 21:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

All this seems extremely interesting to me, and there are a multitude of good ideas here, but there are also a few ones that I think could be improved. I don't think we need to have a /week52 or /November 15 page, as we already have a history for that. We could just have /safe or something, and if one wants, they can view the history. I agree about the anti-wikiness, and it's really too bad, but I think this seems to be the best way to deal with all the vandalism. I don't know whether we should protect the main article page, or protect the subpage (the protected page is the safe version). If we allow the main page to be vandalized, we could lose readers. If we don't allow it to be edited, we could lose editors. There are other pages that they can edit that don't have these vandalism problems, and it will give users a chance to use the talk pages. Just my thoughts, I'd be glad to hear others. -Mysekurity 21:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Regarding protection: yes we do protect things which are highly trafficked, such as the Main Page, images which are slated to appear on the front page, and articles from being moved by anonymous editors. This was not always the case; these changes were made out of necessity. Unfortunately, it is now necessary that we enact some level of protection against highly trafficked articles like this one. I believe that those with good intentions understand why we need this change. Hall Monitor 22:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Would anyone object if I copied all or some of this big chunk of commentary over to here? android79 22:21, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Clearance has been received from the Department of Redundancy Department to copy this over. Hall Monitor 22:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Hall Monitor asked me to weigh in on this and I'm honored to do so. The way that article stands now with all of the rampant vandalism makes it pretty much useless as a reference tool. I happen to like the idea of a protected version to be kept under lock and key and simply pasted back over the article space, perhaps once every couple of days. As constructive edits are added, the "dummy" article(s) can be updated as well. Just a fact of life that an open-content article on an high-ranking politician is going to be targeted by some very small-minded people. I'm not saying that because I support the President (which I do), but because it's, well, basic truth. Heck, I just happily blocked an anon vandal who was wreaking absolute and total havoc on the Dixie Chicks article...and we all know what those three lovelies think of Dubya.  :) I like Android79's idea as well, BTW. - Lucky 6.9 22:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't give me credit! I just mocked up a proposal for it. JamesMLane came up with it, I just... got really loud about it, I guess. :-) android79 22:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I've copied the relevant stuff from here to Wikipedia talk:Experimental vandalism protection. In the interest of not fragmenting the discussion, let's continue there. <runs> android79 22:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)