Wikipedia talk:Main Page featured article protection

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection page.

This policy originated from a subpage in User:Raul654's user space.

Contents

[edit] Discussion

I wasn't actually suggesting that; I just wasn't paying attention. El_C 07:17, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hehehe [I'm amused that you didn't notice it was on the main page - never thought I'd hear that one :) ]
I didn't mean to imply that you asserted we should protect main page featured articles - I was just pointing to this because it is the clearest explanation of why we shouldn't protect them (because I have to answer that damn question so many times) →Raul654 07:21, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Heh, I know you didn't. Don't mind my spammage, just a means for me to divert attention away(?) from my incompetence! :D El_C 07:24, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
It's not that unusual to not notice an article is a main page FA; I've done it myself (acted on a request on WP:RFPP without noticing it was on the main page). Some people jump directly into their watchlists or recent changes and do not even look at the main page (if you asked me which is today's FA, I'd have to look before answering). --cesarb 16:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Semi

Any plans to update this to include semi-protection? It doesn't need to be rethought too much, but a mention of the new situation and your thoughts would be helpful. -Mysekurity(have you seen this?) 20:40, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Raul654 20:51, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Policy

[edit] Why not promote this to policy?

Why not promote the contents of this page into a Wikipedia policy or guideline? I think perhaps it belongs in the Wikipedia namespace instead of a user namespace for both authenticity and visibility reasons. As it is a summary of other established policies anyway it shouldn't be too controversial. -- stillnotelf has a talk page 03:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I never envisioned it as a policy; I was just really, really, really tired of typing the same response over and over again :) Raul654 04:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Making this a policy is even more absurd than not protecting the main page FA in the first place.Rlevse 02:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Policy

So, this is a policy? It's being treated like one, and I've been told it's one. WikiFanatic 06:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be a condensation and restatement of existing policy. So, if it's not technically policy, it agrees with policy in every way. -- stillnotelf has a talk page 03:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Exactly - it's not policy, as much as it is an amalgamation of policy. Raul654 03:28, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Pretty much. Because some new users didn't seem to understand that, I've moved this page to mainspace and flagged it as such. Comments welcome, and if you can think of a better title please do so. (Radiant) 14:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I see this as a memorialization of long-held practice of the community and with significant community assention to its validity ∴ a policy :) --Trödel 20:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree. Because this page is an isolated and codified snippet of existing policy, this page should be policy as well. --Ryan Delaney talk 20:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rewording

Now this is in the policy space, I've reworded it a bit to be more policy and less essay-like. I think I've stuck to the contents pretty much, but if anyone disagrees with the rewording I'd be happy to discuss here ;) --Robdurbar 23:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Looks reasonable so far. Thanks. (Radiant) 09:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dissent

I think this was promoted to policy without enough input from the community. --evrik (talk) 19:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree that there has not been enough input from the community, yet I support the promotion none the less. KOS | talk 05:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
It could be argued that the fact that many were treating it as policy means that there was an implicit conesnsus. --Robdurbar 09:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Indeed. It has been existing practice for years now. I would be interested to see instances where the Main Page FA was protected, and of the likely-ensuing debate. (Radiant) 09:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Well really the only user's who could put this policy (remember it wasn't always policy) into effect were admins. I'm fairly certain that there are more editors without the extra tools than editors with them. Still as stated above, I do support this being promoted to policy. My point is that though it may have been accepted practice for years now, and that it has been treated as policy does not mean that it has implicit consensus, since only admins have been able to enforce this policy. KOS | talk 00:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC) If this comment is unclear just let me know and I'll try and clear up anything that is confusing about it. :) KOS | talk 00:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

One only needs to look at the plight of today's featured article, San Francisco, California, to see to folly of this policy. One of the many times that the page got replaced with a homophobic vulgarity did not get reverted for seven minutes.--DaveOinSF 19:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

But the policy doesn't state 'never semi-protect'. For example, look at between about 23:07 and 23:37 on 17 November - those levels of repeated vandalism from a number of users can be adequate for semi protection. But the idea, or spirit of this policy, would then encourage such protection to be in place for say, 30 minutes or an hour (as it was that example was the end of the day, but ignore that for now). But over the last few weeks, semi-protection has been left in place for 5 or 6 hours... this is what this policy wants to prevent. --Robdurbar 00:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
So one clueless admin unprotects San Francisco and two minutes later the vandalism recommences, with the vulgarities replacing the main page five times in the next six minutes before a separate admin steps in. Another clueless admin unprotects again, only for the vandalism to resume immediately and trash the page 13 times in 11 minutes, leaving it to another administrator to clean up the mess. If an administrator is going to unprotect a page, he or she is OBLIGATED to 1. learn why it was protected in the first place and 2. stay around to ensure that the vandalism does not immediately resume. Otherwise, they are being irresponsible.
I do not know how many people come to Wikipedia, click on the link Today's Featured Article and were instead greeted with a vulgarity. Blind adherence to policy by clueless administrators unconcerned as to the consequences of their actions should be punished.--DaveOinSF 06:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Well San Fran had an usually high level of vandalism. But, let's look at what happened, shall we? Knowledge of Self's protection at 08:04 was fully justified - it should have just been lifted more quickly. After I unprotected, there were no vandalising edits for well over half an hour, and only 4 within 2 hours - hardly the picture that you're painting. Vandalism maintained at a steady, but manageable, level till the evening when Glen S quite rightly protected it. After that, the page was twice unprotected and then quickly reprotected when the vandals were still about.
All I can say is that the policy was followed perfectly - it's intended to be used like that. Its just unfortunate that by the nature of the topic, San Fran was unusally open to vandalism. Robdurbar 11:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Pretty low standard for perfectly here. THe admins who unprotected then didn't pay any attention to the page, even though the vandalism recommenced almost immediately, and allowing the vandalism to take over far longer than it would have. They acted irresponsibly. And by the time someone else came in, the damage was done - complaints on the talk page about the vulgarity and who knows how many potential visitors turned off to Wikipedia. We should strive to do better.--DaveOinSF 18:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The same thing happened to Eagle Scout, more than 250 edits in a day, most of them vandalism and reverts.. --evrik (talk) 16:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the language forbidding full protection of the FA... it's too binding for Wikipedia. It's not too hard to think of ways a premedidated attack could compromise even a semi-protected article, and there certainly could be (and at least once, has been) a situation where even strong adherents to "Don't protect the FA" end up full protecting the FA. The language is too binding and could lead to the only admin around not dealing with a serious attack on the FA correctly, because the page says "under no circumstances"... even though there are at least some circumstances. --W.marsh 21:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

  • People who object to the wording, or believe they can improve it, are of course free to edit the page. (Radiant) 23:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • You don't say! I just thought I'd discuss it first... --W.marsh 23:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes to this policy

A few proposed changes to the policy. Remove emphasis on "NEVER" and include administrators' responsibilities when deciding to protect the featured article or when deciding to remove protection. Removed text is stricken, added text is underlined.--DaveOinSF 20:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Policy

Wikipedia's Main Page featured article is one of the most visible and heavily edited on the site. For this reason, it receives a lot of vandal edits from unregistered users visiting Wikipedia.

It has been suggested many times in the past that the featured article should thus be protected or semi-protected. However, Administrators are advised never to use extreme discretion when deciding whether to protect, semi-protect, or unprotect this page. and to only semi-protect it under certain extreme conditions.

[edit] Rationale

There are several reasons for this policy.

  • Almost without exception, featured articles are improved by their time on the main page (some of them greatly improved). Check out these before-and-after diffs from September, 2005: [1][2][3]. Protecting the featured articles means that these pages may not be improved.
  • A featured article is supposed to "exemplify our very best work, representing Wikipedia's unique qualities on the Internet". This includes being editable by anyone. Visitors often tend to look at our most visible articles, and having those articles editable helps attract new users to the project.
  • Vandalism (especially to highly visible articles like the main page featured article) is cleaned up very quickly, often in only a matter of seconds, helped by automated bots such as Tawkerbot2.
  • Although the more visible featured article of the day attracts more vandals than other articles, it also attracts more curious and good faith editors. A lot of vandalism on the day's featured article is reverted by other anonymous or recently-registered users (e.g. [4]),
  • This is codified in the page protection policy: 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. - Wikipedia:Protection policy
  • The featured article receives many page views from non-editing readers as well. It is damaging to Wikipedia to encourage new readers to visit a page that is under a severe vandalism attack.

[edit] Protection

Protection prevents anyone without administrative powers from editing an article. This should almost never occur on the day's featured article, and should only be used in rare situations where semi-protection is ineffective.

[edit] Semi-Protection

Semi-protection prevents all unregistered or recently registered users from editing a page. The main page featured article should also almost never be semi-protected in only rare situations. However, it is recognised that there are some extreme circumstances in which semi-protection can be introduced for a limited amount of time. This could occur when, for example, a range of dynamic IP addresses are being used to vandalise the featured article page in quick succession; where personal information or potentially distressing content is being repeatedly placed onto the article; or where a few minutes of protection are needed to remove harmful vandalism from a page.

Semi-protection can be introduced for a limited amount of time; it is preferable to give vandalising users a brief block, rather than semi-protect the day's featured article.

[edit] Notification

Should an administrator deem that protection or semi-protection of the Main Page featured article is necessary, a notice should be placed at the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard and the page's talk page as to the reason and rationale behind the decision to protect or semi-protect, and whether there are any recommended steps for the unprotection of the page.

[edit] Unprotection

Because protection or semi-protection is not a step that is taken lightly, administrators should use caution when they discover that the day's featured article has been protected or semi-protected. Such an administrator should check the page history, the talk page and the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard before deciding whether to unprotect the page. Should the administrator decide to unprotect the page, she or he must continue to monitor the page for a resumption of vandal attacks for a minimum of 30 minutes following the decision to unprotect the article. is encouraged to continue to monitor the page for an immediate resumption of vandal attacks.

[edit] Move Protection

To qualify for featured article status, the day's featured article will be at a stable and agreed-upon title. Therefore, in the event of page move vandalism, it is acceptable to protect the article from being moved. For housekeeping and process reasons, this protection should be lifted at the end of an article's stay on the front page

[edit] Other front page articles

These are covered under the semi-protection policy. Although they can be semi-protected, admins should generally be more cautious in applying protection to these pages. To qualify for semi-protection, front page linked articles should have a higher frequency of vandalism than other articles need.

[edit] Responses to proposed change

  • Well the clause about having to monitor with it for half an hour is unworkable. Firstly, its unprovable and slightly bizarre - I unprotect the FA, the phone rings and what - I ignore it? I appreciate what it's trying to do, but it could bring up all sorts of accusations. For example, I know that I've tried 'patrolling' the FA after I've unprotected it to avoid such accusations; but I have a slow internet connection and have been 'beaten to it' almost every time. It's instruction keep; perhaps retain the sentence about giving it thought though.
  • I like the notification process idea

--Robdurbar 21:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the proposed changes - we can trust the admins to protect when there is a special situation and do not need to outline it --Trödel 22:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the request to drop a line at ANI is a good idea. The other changes are pretty much semantics. --Robdurbar 23:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
True, but I think the semantics matters here in at least one case - we want to clearly favor semi-protect, not just carefully choose semi-protect or protect - --Trödel 23:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, the intent was not to equate protection and semi-protection, but to remove emphasis on the word "NEVER", promote greater communication, and to encourage caution for admins who might want to unprotect a protected article. Obviously, I've failed in that regard, and will give it some thought as to how to better do this.--DaveOinSF 00:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good thx!!!--Trödel 22:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] September 2005 diffs

I'm tempted to call "b---s---" on this (which is both the current and proposed policy): Check out these before-and-after diffs from September, 2005: [5][6][7]. Why bs? Because of those three edits, two were done by registered users. A semi-protect policy would have allowed those two edits to be made. No editor (I think) is arguing that an FA should be fully protected, so why offer evidence of how great the current policy is by citing two examples that would have happened even with semi-protect automatically in place?

And as for having those articles editable helps attract new users to the project, exactly what evidence exists for that? Why not argue the reverse - that permiting anonymous editors to vandalize FAs gives them their first taste of how much "fun" they can have on wikipedia, and encourages them to vandalize other articles? John Broughton | Talk 02:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Because of those three edits, two were done by registered users. - wrong. Look at the timing on the diffs - they cover the entire 24 hours the articles were on the main page. So they encompass all anon and non-anon edits for the day those articles were on the main page. (Side note - perhaps this should be made more clear in the description)
Also, notice the dates on those diffs were the 3 days immediately prior to me writing that particular statement. I did this intentionally to avoid accusations I cherry-picked the examples. Raul654 02:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I stand corrected, but remain convinced that these examples are being misused as a "evidence" of anything important. The diffs cover 5+ days, 2+ days, and 9+ days, respectively. What they "prove" is that a mixture of registered and anonymous users, over a two to nine day period, can improve a FA. Who would disagree? (Why not do diffs for just the 24 hours that the articles were on the front page, rather than for multiple days?)
The argument isn't - or shouldn't be - about whether an FA should be FULLY protected or not, it's about whether it should be SEMI-protected. For the purpose of that argument the three examples prove exactly nothing. There could be 100 anonymous vandal edits and no constructive anonymous edits (other than reverts/fixes), for all anyone knows, based on those diffs. What is needed (in my mind) to prove that anything would be lost by blocking anonymous diffs would be examples of specific anony edits that really added value.
So if the policy states "FAs should not be FULLY protected because their their time on the front page can result in them being improved", sure, that's almost certainly true. But who is arguing for full protection? What the policy now says I still think is BS: it says (implicitly) "FAs should be NEITHER fully nor semi-protected because - look - here are three examples". Yet the examples say NOTHING about semi-protection, because they fail to distinguish between contributions from registered users and unregistered ones. John Broughton | Talk 22:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Really, what you've brought up is that the 'rationale' section doesn't state anything about semi-protection, which is a weakness. --Robdurbar 15:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
If you're saying that the policy wording predates the implementation of the option of semi-protection, then the wording is quite understandable, and the example would have made sense at the time. But that was then, and this is now, and arguments against "protection" are now being taken - rightly or wrongly - as arguments against BOTH semi- and full protection. The proposed change to the policy (above), in its rationale section, does not separate out arguments for full protection versus arguments for only semi-protection. I think that's a serious flaw, as discussed in the Redux section, below, which might be a good place to continue this discussion (assuming no one wants to dispute my comments on the September 2005 diffs). John Broughton | Talk 15:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-Protection Redux

Having looked over the edits for today's Featured Article (Duke University) - I have to wonder about the rationale behind not semi-protecting the daily FA, at least for that day. Looking over the edits so far, rather than encouraging new editors to make constructive changes to the page, all that has happened is a rapid-fire string of vandalism and reversion, the latter sometimes involving the appropriate warnings and sometimes not (I have tried to supplement the nots). I agree with John Broughton above; I feel like the time and effort of the bots and the human editors could be better spent building an encyclopedia rather than protecting a high-profile page from anonymous vandals for just one day, and that new editors would get more out of seeing a featured article in the form that made it an FA rather than getting an introduction to WP editing that shows how easily editors' hard work can be temporarily defaced by vandals. I suppose I have just makred myself as a protectionist...whoah. DukeEGR93 14:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the vandalism in FA's is making me crazy. Every minute there are vandals, and people can't revert them. ATM The FA of the day's footnotes are screwed, and it has been like that for 20 minutes. People have reverted it after, but a lot of vandalism gets through. Then the reason for not to protect is that because few good edits by IPs have been dugged, from the millions of vandalism edits. To be honest. If there are so obvious fixes, they should have been fixed before making FA, or FA of the day in my opinion. --Pudeo (Talk) 15:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm beginning to think that some hard data (number of IP edits of front page article in (say) a 24-hour period, number of clear vandal edits, amount of time before reversion, number of constructive edits, categorization, etc.) might add some light to this discussion. Thoughts of others? John Broughton | Talk 16:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Well the page could be protected - indeed should be - to remove the vandalism if its been stuck on the page and can't be reverted. Then, when it's gone, unprotect. Simple 5/10 minute protections for those sort of problems are allowed by the policy. But the levels of vandalism to the Duke page really wern't that high for main page FA.
As for John's comments - this would smack of instruction creep. Do you mean that this page should stipulate a certain level of vandalism needed to require semi-pro? I don't think that would go down well. Robdurbar 17:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Apologies for any lack of clarity: I wasn't proposing to come up with a number/threshold for when a page should or should not be protected. I simply want to address the question: How much do anonymous IP edits of FA articles help, and how much do they hurt? ("Help" means improving the article; "hurt" means taking up editor time and presenting a vandalized article to other readers.) Let's suppose (for example) that of 100 anon edits, 20 were neutral, 40 helpful, and 40 vandalizing, and the total elapsed time for serious vandalism (however defined) was 1% of the viewing time in the period analyzed. Then most people might say that semi-protection of the article would have been a bad idea. On the other hand, suppose the numbers were 10/5/85, and 5% of viewers saw a significantly damaged page. That might be considered a strong argument that the policy against semiprotection (in most cases) should be revisted. John Broughton | Talk 23:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree that some hard statistics would be very helpful. The policy now states as fact that FA articles featured on the main page benefit from edits from IP and recently-registered editors. Like John, I suspect that the number of cases where this is true is far outweighed by vandalizing edits from IP and new editors. The policy states that any semi-protection of FA articles will end up discouraging new editors, and as existing editors lose interest, eventually there will be no one left. This is stretching things quite a bit, as there are about 1,300 non-FA articles for each FA one, and the ratio for FA articles on the main page to all articles is currently about 1,500,000 to 1. There is ample opportunity here to recruit new editing talent without relying on main-page featured articles.--Paul 23:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
This "policy" (how on earth did it get to be a policy?) is very wrongheaded. FAs are supposed to be essentially done—not to say they shouldn't be freely editable under ordinary circumstances, because there is usually still some potential for improvement, but we should be assuming that they are at a very high level of quality where they do not greatly need whatever random contributions come through that day, and changes can still be suggested on talk or simply performed a day later. I am not at all convinced that there is a general benefit to having FAs unprotected as a matter of common practice, and to have such a strict policy that basically makes protection impossible is in my opinion absurd. Semiprotection should be applied to FAs of the day automatically. Not only will it eliminate most of the vandalism, it will give a very visible impression of control that our naysayers are always saying we lack. Everyking 11:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whaaaaaa???

From rationales:

The featured article receives many page views from non-editing readers as well. It is damaging to Wikipedia to encourage new readers to visit a page that displays vulgar or offensive vandalism.

That sounds like a strong reason not to have this as a policy. Why is it on there in support of the policy? Grandmasterka 03:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It's meant to justify occaisional semi-protection. --Robdurbar 08:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Occaisional semi-protection is very different from the other points which advocate no protection whatsoever; being grouped with the other points doesn't make sense. "Whaaaaa???" indeed! The other points under Rationale is for "Don't protect Main Page featured articles". This point should be under it a separate heading. Goose 16:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

[edit] Gathering some numbers

This may already be recorded somewhere, but I suggest we get before and after diffs for every single FA of the day and post them somewhere. This would enable us to systematically review the trends and would help prevent cherry-picking of evidence. Everyking 10:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy in taking part in some sort of analysis - say all the FAs in December? Or over a shorter period? --Robdurbar 10:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I'm gonna try and create something at December Main Page FA analysis. All should feel free to participate. --Robdurbar 11:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for doing this. A great start. Three concerns:
  • I strongly recommend breaking up each day's edits into (say) four hour blocks, for the purpose of analyzing IP edits (but not assessing the change in the article). I recommend this because (a) it's pretty daunting for any individual to take on an entire day's edits (hundreds?); splitting the day into blocks encourages people to volunteer to take a smaller chunk of the work, and (b) it's a lot easier to check someone else's results if the results are only for part of a day, not a whole day.
  • Have you considered doing edit COUNTS rather than edit PERCENTAGES? Counts are easier to do (one less step); where there is a block, the impact is easier to assess; differences in counts (other than for blocks) may be useful to know; and, of course, percentages can always be calculated after the fact
  • The MOST important thing is to count the right things. If this doesn't happen, then it's possilbe that most of the effort will be wasted. Here are the five things that could be counted with regard to IP edits:
  1. Edits that are vandalizing
  2. Edits that revert vandalizing by another IP
  3. Edits that revert vandalizing by a registered user
  4. Edits that are beneficial, other than reverts
  5. Edits that are in good faith, but are not reverts and are not considered beneficial
You've combined 1,2, and 3 into one column; 2, 3 and 4 into another column; and 2 through 5 into a third column. Let's run a scenario: suppose that there 100 IP vandalizing edits, 50 reverts by IPs to such vandalization, 5 reverts by IPs to registered user vandalization, 10 beneficial edits other than reverts, and 40 good faith edits that are neither reverts nor beneficial. Then your columns would show: 160 vandal-related edits, 65 beneficial edits, and 105 good faith edits. What would one conclude from those three numbers, NOT knowing the detail?
By contrast, in this scenario, knowing the detail (all five categories) would allow this conclusion: if all IP edits were blocked, there would 100 fewer vandalizing edits, 5 more reverts that would need to be done by registered users to fix vandalization by other registered users, and 10 fewer beneficial (content-related) edits that improved the contents of the article. The second set of conclusions makes clearer, I think, what the real impact of semi-protection would be (given these five hypothetical underlying numbers), which is, I think, the entire purpose of spending the time for this analysis. So I really think you should reevaluate what people should count. [And if that is not convincing, try this: suppose the numbers were 100, 50, 0, 0, and 40. Then IP editing would clearly be totally without value'. But the existing three columns would show: 150 vandal-related edits, 50 beneficial edits, and 90 good-faith edits -- and that could certainly be interpreted as it being useful for IP edits to continue, even though - with these admittedly made-up numbers - such a conclusion would be absolutely false.] John Broughton | Talk 18:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Some reasonable points. As you note, its important to keep this doable and cut down the amount of work, in order for people to take part. I would propose, then, that 2,3,4 remain combined as all supporting ip editing. If we take 2 away from 1 then we have a clear figure for how much direct 'damage' ips are causing; we can then also isolate 5 and 2. I do see your point that an IP edit reverting an IP vandal could be worth counting seperatly from other beneficial ip edits as basically being IP-neutral; but, again, I was trying to keep the number of measurers down so that we can encourage people to take part. As a test, though, I'll try doing 1st December FA now and see how long it takes and I might get back to you! Robdurbar 00:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a great analysis you're doing. The latest FA that's been analyzed, Battle of Austerlitz, apparently spent a total of an hour and 21 minutes in a vandalized state during the 24 period. To me, this really contradicts the claims about vandal fighting being so instantly effective that the risk of readers seeing vandalized versions is negligible. Furthermore there was no significant editing aside from some rewording. It'll be interesting to see what the comparative results are for the upcoming FAs. Everyking 01:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

That's more time than I'd have thought... it would be interesting to know how many people viewed the FA that day, then we could know how many people saw a vandalized article (probably in the thousands). --W.marsh 01:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
It is proving interesting. Let's remember when reading this that some of the logic behind this policy is due to the ideology of Wikipedia, as well as the practicalities of the article. Looking at next two FA's, we've got Down Syndrome and Wierd Al; I would expect to see a lot more vandalism on these... --Robdurbar 10:39, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pros and cons

Ideologically speaking, I always felt that the goal of Wikipedia was to create a great encyclopedia, not just to allow anons to edit. Historically, anon editting has been more or less helpful, but we should always remember what we're actually here to do... it seems quite misguided when people act like the purpose of Wikipedia is simply to allow anonymous editting and fight the resulting vandals. --W.marsh 16:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Anon editing is undoubtedly a good thing for the project as a whole and I think it would be very bad to see any result from this analysis used to condemn anon editing in general. My concern is specifically with the circumstances of FAs of the day—the existing high quality of the page, reducing the need for further edits, and the visibility of the page, which has the duel effect of attracting very high numbers of vandals as well as very high numbers of ordinary readers who will be turned off to some degree by the vandals. I don't feel that the quality issue or the visibility issue would be sufficient to justify automatic semiprotection on its own, but being together in these instances, I think there's a strong case for it. Everyking 07:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Well I'm undecided about semi-protection of the main page and semi-protection in general, but I believe we should be openminded and not assume anything is totally off limits, like assuming we have to forever allow anon edits everywhere no matter what... that's just dogmatic. Of course I do understand that we're just talking about the main page FA here. It occurs to me that whenever the main page FA is getting heavilly vandalized, we usually see anons/new users begging for admins to protect the article... but when it's protected, we never see them begging for unprotection (except ones that seem like obvious vandals). I wonder how valid the logic is anymore that readers are more upset when they see the main page FA protected than when they see it horrifically vandalized. And how much damage we do by operating on an assumption that seems to be more in the minds of a few admins than readers at large. --W.marsh 16:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More on the statistics being gathered, and other analyses (data)

The column titled "IP Edits Beneficial", as I understand it, includes vandalism reverts by IP editors. Since these edits would not have been necessary were the article not vandalized, it's not really a measure of a substantive edit improving the quality of the article. Furthermore, as I understand it, semi-protection blocks not just IP editors but also newly-registered users, such as the ones which attacked San Francisco two weeks ago. The value of semi-protection would thust not be counted by the current methodology. I'll try to contribute to this project by adding in some statistics that take this into account later tonight.--DaveOinSF 19:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the new user one has come up. The main reason for not including new users in the survey was just a time thing - it would (in theory) mean checking the history of every single registered editor. If there is a substantial amount of new user vandalism, that can be mentioned in the summary.
As for the lumping together of beneficial with vandal-correcting edits; I do see the point in that too, but again we've been trying to keep down the number of things that are counted seperatly, to encourage people to participate. --Robdurbar 20:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Case study... Down syndrome is getting heavy vandalism and has been semi-protected twice, and it hasn't even been on the main page 2 hours yet. --W.marsh 01:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

After the San Francisco nonsense, I started a short analysis of this same subject here using a few randomly selected articles in the last six months. My original intention was to concentrate more on who added substantive content rather than how much vandalism was done and by whom, figuring that there is some balancing point at which the heightened level of vandalism is tolerable if substantive improvements are routinely made by anons. I haven't followed this through much, but I had the thought that using something analogous to Voice of All's old RfA edit analysis reports would be useful, as it seemed from what I recall to be pretty good at identifying major edits, manual reverts, etc. but would be less time-intensive to compile. Opabinia regalis 05:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I note that your review of six FAs found only one case where an anon editor seemed to make any significant contribution.
Re VoA's edit analysis, could you point to a specific page where one appears? My sense is that only a tool that sorted and listed edits (for subsequent editor review) would be userful; any kind of summary of edits without listed details (links) is going to mix registered user edits with IP edits, and the focus here really is IP edits (because, I think, no one is seriously proposing full protection of FAs).
That's correct, over six FAs I found one anon edit, adding one sentence, that added to the article. To be fair, I didn't count things like typo/punctuation fixes and interwiki links that are productive but minor changes easily delayed for a day, or easily done by a registered editor.
Here is a random RfA I found containing VoA's output. Obviously it would need to be changed to scan edits over a time period rather than a contributions list; sorting IPs vs accounts shouldn't be so bad (since account names aren't allowed to mimic IPs) but erroneous edit classifications could be a problem, and the lack of granularity compared to the manual analyses you guys are doing. Opabinia regalis 04:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Down syndrome may provide a point of examining another issue - while the vandalism is usually fairly obvious and fixable, how much of the text is deteriorating away from well-referenced medical consensus, and how much of that is from anons vs. registered users ? Are editing changes, for example, introducing problems in accuracy, POV or OR?. Sandy (Talk) 17:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
It's really difficult to categorize specific edits as other than beneficial/not (and even that is somewhat subjective); futher categorization (OR, inaccuracy, etc.) are really difficult, requiring an expert, I think, which most of us are not. I think we want to do some sort of analysis that is going to stand up to scrutiny by everyone; subjectivity becomes a real problem under such circumstances. Also, in general, it's best to do an initial (really good) analysis and then, if that provides interesting results, do further study of points that weren't covered or might lead to further useful conclusions. John Broughton | Talk 17:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
It will be very interested to see the stats for Down syndrome. The 24hr diffs show very little for all the effort put into reverting the hundreds of vandalisms (largely reverted by dedicated people like Sandy, not bots) Over 530 edits has achieved a little bit of copy-editing, which as far as I can see, was done by a few established registered users. Of the anon/newbie edits, I haven't spotted any that weren't vandalism - apart from a few attempts at reverting which almost always were incomplete. Surely more harm than good was done by providing a prominent graffiti wall to display the worst of human nature. Colin°Talk 00:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm more concerned about how far it has moved from an article reflecting peer-reviewed, medical consensus (also, most of the substantive improvements were done by us MEDMOS regulars, as several of us weren't around when it went through FAC - I was traveling, or some of those references wouldn't have gotten by me :-) We need a new review of the article now. It was fairly absurd for so many of us to have sit there and revert several vandals per minute, and vandalism of the most offensive type. Sandy (Talk) 00:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreed; users should have been blocked or the page could have been semi-ed sooner. Though its early days at the moment, when 'counting the numbers' I think a fairly common sense conclusion is coming: when pages that are obvious vandal targets such as Down Syndrome or Wierd Al are on the main page, there'll be lots of rude vandalism all day. When its 'Extratropical Cyclones' then there really won't be that much at all and most of it won't be so bad. --Robdurbar 19:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
VoA has kindly posted a breakdown of the edits to Down syndrome over the 24-hour period in which was on the main page; see the results here. The formatting could use some work, but I think it's a useful first look - would be even more useful to separately produce the percentages for anon and registered edits. Opabinia regalis 00:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More discussion on pros and cons

[edit] Part 1 (arbitratry subheading)

Anon users are important to wikipedia- and it is important that anons know that wikipedia is freely editable, that they will be attracted to the project. People who say we have enough contributors haven't been working outside WP's pop culture and computer science articles- in the humanities, social sciences, most sciences, and on articles about non-English-speaking countries WP is still very deficient. In this way, test edits are a good thing, because they acquaint people to the concept of wikipedia that they may contribute and share their knowledge. Secondly, persistent vandals will find an article to vandalize- it is better that they do it in an article that is receiving a lot of regular-editor attention, rather than a back-of-the-woods article that isn't heavily scrutinized, where misinformation can remain for weeks or even more. This policy should stand.Borisblue 04:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

There are sensible-sounding but ungrounded arguments to be made in both directions; I'd rather have some empirical data first before deciding which way we want the evidence to point. It's just as sensible to say that expert editors in the traditional academic disciplines will be turned off by finding what is supposedly an example of Wikipedia's best work in a vandalized state, particularly if it's the usual juvenile penis pictures/'John Smith is gay'/replacing the text with 1000 copies of the word 'fuck'/etc. I sometimes poke in on Wikipedia at work but I don't look at the main page FA to avoid exactly that. Opabinia regalis 04:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
A lot of the costs/benefits are unexaminable by statistics. How do you quantify Wikipedia losing reputation from users viewing vandalised articles? Conversely, how do you quantify te number of dedicated users who got introduced to wikipedia by making an edit on the FA as an anon? Borisblue 05:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The statistics can help examine the extent of the problem, but the costs and benefits of front-page FA editing will likely be gray enough that people will form quite different conclusions based on the stats. Based on their... existing philosophy. So, I suggest that this is a philosophical issue. As I wrote on the Down Syndrome talk page, 'It's almost a form of wiki-[adoration] when editors promulgate the "anyone can edit" party line over the ostensible mission of creating an encyclopedic user experience. Which is the higher value?'. I find it farcical to present our highest-quality articles on the front page—to illustrate to visitors the benefit of Wikipedia—and risk having the "average reader" see a horribly vandalized article. (We're talking about what is now a very highly visited web page.) The average reader can't be expected to know what's going on, hit History, and view the previous revision. A good dose of end-user orientation and some concern with the marketing of this endeavor lead to the sound conclusion that the front-page FA is an exceptional circumstance that needs special treatment. I'm not that interested that the article improves by being on the front page—it has, after all, gone through a significant process to prove that it is already "excellent". Finally, on a lighter note, isn't it appropriate for an article that has risen to such heights to "take a day off", and let visitors just take it in, as they would a painting? On the front-page day, wiki rested. –Outriggr § 05:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Why can't users visit Britannica or Encarta if they are that put off by this kind of thing? What makes wikipedia unique is that users can participate- we have to encourage anon, new users participating in the project. It was this philosophy that has gotten us where we are, and we still need new participation if we are to improve on our flaws in coverage. The hidden cost of lost anon participation is something that we have to take into account when restricting anon access to the main page. Borisblue 05:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't really understand the question... those aren't free encyclopedias (to the same extent, at least). You also seem to be assuming an "omniscient" user who knows all his options. My point and my concern are that users are just users. They don't start out with grand ideas of contributing to an open-source encyclopedia, or knowing what vandalism is. To start with (and by definition, the front page is a staging area), they want to read an article of interest. If it's good, they'll come back. Gradually, they become interested in contributing. Vandalism of the front-page FA will ruin this experience for some statistical portion of users. So I see it just the opposite: not protecting the article is discouraging users, who are the future's potential contributors. –Outriggr § 05:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Which would discourage user participation more? Coming across vandalism, or being outright prevented from participating? Borisblue 05:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
You've successfully framed the question in such a way that only the answer you previously advocated is possible. Obviously "being prevented from participating" discourages participation. That's not quite the right question. "What's more likely to discourage readers from becoming productive editors?" unfortunately does not have such a simple answer. Opabinia regalis 06:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I am perhaps relying on anecdotal experience, but I have had anon vandals whom I warned for vandalism become involved enough to become administrators. Seeing a vandalized page will discourage a user from relying on wikipedia as a reference (in many contexts this is a good thing) but I find it difficult to see how this will prevent a user from eventually becoming a contributor. Giving anons an opportunity to fix FA vandalism means they are participating meaningfully in wikipedia. Even going on the talk page noting vandalism is a meaningful contribution to wikipedia, and means that an editor is participating in the process, making it far more likely that (s)he will contribute in the long run. The first step for being a productive editor is editing, not being impressed with a fancy article. Rather, if an anon user only sees polished, unblemished parts of wikipedia, it is not unreasonable for him or her to conclude that he has nothing worth contributing.
Furthermore, I don't see any benefit in whitewashing wikipedia's vandalism problem. This is something that will always be with us, I don't see why it is beneficial to present an illusion that vandalism doesn't happen. Borisblue 06:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Further thoughts (pre 06:49)... I'm not sure that question needs an answer. To me, it's a straw man, and the degree of "encouragement/discouragement" isn't at the heart of the matter. I see a lot of people focusing on editing. Before one is an editor (chronologically), one is a user, and the user's initial (passive) experiences with the project are surely important. When WP says "this is what we're featuring", make sure it leaves a good impression. Nevertheless, the proposal is to limit editing for one article out of 1,713,275. Can anyone honestly say that's "discouraging"? –Outriggr § 06:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, a featured article receives, say 100 test edits. Either the user then goes on to make a test edit/vandalism in another page, (which would then mean it takes longer for it to be discovered and reverted) or the user would not make a test edit at all, which would thus tragically deprive him of the opportunity to experiment with, and be introduced to the project. In terms of "putting up a good impression"- isn't it better to put up an accurate impression of what wikipedia is about? The message I want a curious new user to get it "this project is awesome, but has many holes that you can help fix- so please do!".Borisblue 07:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Let's keep the "allow anons to edit" discussion for a different time/place please. I think we all agree that there aren't enough editors and that there is good evidence that anons can become productive editors (though the anon-vandal to admin story is getting a little tired - and not statistically significant I'm sure). Of the other arguments, I disagree with most:
  • Yesterday's DS article was not an "accurate impression of what wikipedia is about" by any stretch of the imagination. If it is then I for one would surely give up in disgust, regarding it as a project fit only for bored teenage boys.
  • It is not better for vandals to "do it in an article that is receiving a lot of regular-editor attention". The worse effects of vandalism are on the visitors who view it. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people visiting the DS article yesterday would be presented with some truely vile text and pictures.
  • You ask how many editors started off editing a front-page FA? I'm sure someone could generate stats or do a questionnaire on "where did you start". Personally, I started on the unloved pages since editing a featured article is scary.
  • "Why can't users visit Britannica or Encarta [to avoid vandalism]" - that is so, so far from Wikipedia's aims. We are here to be an encyclopedia, not just build one.
  • Fixing vandalism is not "participating meaningfully in wikipedia" any more than wiping dog mess off your shoe is participating meaningfully in a walk in a park.
  • Nobody is asking for vandalism to be whitewashed - you'll find it soon enough if you click on a few links. We should, however, make sure we're not just setting ourselves up to ridicule.
  • Nobody (in this discussion) is a asking for anons to be "being outright prevented from participating".
  • I (and many other editors I'm sure) was put off doing any copy-editing or fact checking on that article yesterday. If I had, I'd surely get an edit-conflict. It would also be hard for other editors to review my changes amongst all the noise.
Colin°Talk 09:35, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Part 2 (arbitratry subheading)

Conversely, how do you quantify the number of dedicated users who got introduced to wikipedia by making an edit on the FA as an anon?

I suppose one could do a massive database dump/checkuser matching, but the likelihood of (a) getting approval to get the data generated and available; (b) doing the analysis, and (c) dealing with data difficulties like dial-up IPs, school and work IPs, etc, seem to argue that one shouldn't go there. So let me rephrase the question: How many anon users who start off by vandalizing the Main Page article go on to become dedicated contributors? Were you one? Do you know a lot of other wikipedians who posted obscenities on front page articles and then, realizing the error of their ways, became productive contributors?

I ask such questions because having done an analysis of a large number of anon edits, in the past two days, I can say that virtually all of the anon edits are deliberately damaging - blanking pages, inserting obscenities into images, dumping a large chunk of text about a local high school into the article, etc. These aren't "Hi mom" test messages, or tiny tweaks in the wording of a sentence, or anything that evidences curiosity with a mix of respect for others.

It may not be the right time to start discussing solutions, if there is no general consensus that there is a problem, but I want to note that there are technical alternatives to simply blocking anon edits - allowing anon edits but displaying only "stable" versions; allowing anon edits but storing the diffs for review by regular editors before they are posted; creating a wizard (along the lines of Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Wizard-Introduction, but simpler) that generates a comment on the article's talk page for another editor to review, and so on. John Broughton | Talk 13:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Borisblue. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not just be one. My first anon edits weren't malicious vandalism, but they were "Hi Mom" style test edits, that weren't productive. When I want to tell someone about the Wikipedia, I tell them to go to the front page, and many stop there, so if that page isn't editable, the "anyone can edit" loses much of its force. AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
So we should unprotect the main page? You gonna revert the 5+ instances of vandalism it would get every minute? --W.marsh 15:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
AnonEMouse - if most of the anon IP edits were "Hi mom" types, I wouldn't care. They're NOT. You might want to pull some vandal patrol of the Main Page article and see for yourself.
Wikipedia protects lots of articles, for a variety of reasons - see Wikipedia:List of protected pages; it's simply a balance between benefits and costs. In addition to the Main Page, you might want to suggest people look at Wikipedia:Quick index, where - like a library - they can browse the shelves as they want. Or that they also go to Wikipedia:Featured articles, and check out one of more than 1000 articles, in an area they're particularly interested in. John Broughton | Talk 16:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Not to be rude AnonEMouse, but I haven't seen you edit a main page FA in at least several weeks. I'm not sure you're really aware that the vandalism we're talking about is people inserting huge 3000x2000 pictures of... the kinds of stuff vandals find amusing... or adding GWB as the lead picture for Downs Syndrom (which got us mocked on Wonkette, where that kind of stuff was presented as what Wikipedia was about). Sometimes this stuff has stayed up for 10% of the time the FA was linked to from the main page. I just want to make sure you realize what you're defending here. It's not "Hi mom" style test edits. --W.marsh 16:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Final comments:
  • The idea that semi-protecting one article is going to discourage some imagined "potential contributors" and cause harm to the project is a red herring. Indeed, why not unprotect the main page? Think of all the editors we're losing by having the main page protected. Gosh!
  • Something like this is going to happen, if only out of the sheer technical necessity of stopping an unmanageable number of crap edits to the TFA, as Wikipedia traffic keeps growing (Alexa #12 and rising). If a proactive approach isn't taken, there will be more and more protect/deprotect wars among admins, as TFAs increasingly go to tatters—with some admins apparently preferring them in tatters based on a stubborn, contextless, and over-applied idealism. –Outriggr § 00:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] disputedpolicy

I removed this header as although things are being discussed, it is misleading to people who are referred here to explain current policy. --Trödel 02:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates

How about this one:

ALL templates in a main page FA should be semi-protected. As in, protect them before the main page goes up, and not unprotected until it's off the main page. I'm staring at that big penis on the Macedonia (terminology) page, and I see that they're scrambling to figure out in which template the image was stuck.

An new IP user making a good faith first edit really has no business mucking around in the Templates anyway.--DaveOinSF 03:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

As of now, 11 different templates were vandalized a total of 18 times in the first few hours that the Macedonia (terminology) page was the main page FA. The longest instance where it failed to revert was 21 minutes. There were several other instances of 5-to-7 minutes.--DaveOinSF 04:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking the "xx icon" templates for a start, and similarly widely-used templates, should all be semi-protected anyway. An anonymous or newly-registered user can always use {{editprotected}} on the talk page if they do have a useful edit to make – Gurch 10:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I too witnessed the large phallus photos, as well as my young daughter. I don't see why it is unreasonable to temporarily lock featured articles while they are on the main page. I mean, they garner the "featured" status because they are well constructed. Any improvements to the articles can certainly wait until they come back down. ZincOrbie 20:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other discussions on this topic

Other discussions on this topic are here, here, here and here. Please add more if you find them. Someone may wish to consolidate all these disparate discussions into one location. Carcharoth 12:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change on policy page on 5 December

This policy was changed on 5 December with the addition of a section that reads:

Templates included in the main page FA are sometimes vandalized, and it is more difficult to remove this kind of vandalism quickly. It is also less likely that casual readers would need to modify the templates. Admins may semi/full-protect the templates as needed.

I don't think the policy should make such protection MANDATORY (and it does not, as it now reads); that would be (a) telling admins what they have to do, when they are volunteers and, more generally, (b) it's instruction creep. But the policy clearly needs to state (as it does now) that administrators can protect templates while still complying with the policy. John Broughton | Talk 15:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This has been done in practice already anyway. Borisblue 16:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What now?

Now that the study has been completed with a week's worth of statistics, we need to determine what the feeling is about continuing with this policy. I don't agree with the policy, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one. Is it appropriate to have a policy that clearly doesn't have consensus support? Would it be appropriate for someone to simply remove the template saying that it's an official policy, citing the controversy about it on this page? Everyking 07:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Sorry, but where are the study statistics? I'm looking over this page and not seeing a link to them. I'm good at missing the blindingly obvious though. Anyway, my initial reaction is that having no specific main page FA protection policy might lead to wheel wars and general confusion... I think it would be better to improve the policy rather than simply negate it. --W.marsh 15:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I've been waiting for Robdurbar to return from a wikibreak (by Wednesday), to discuss posting some conclusions from the week-long study. The raw numbers are here: Wikipedia talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis.
I thought the "disputed" tag that was posted on 5 December (removed two days later) was a good way to go, rather than remove the "official policy" tag (since this policy admittedly still is, and is being followed). I admit to some confusion over the removal of the tag/template on the 7th - if I understand that editor's logic, a policy that is being enforced can't also be "disputed", which to me makes no sense - if the policy gets changed after some discussion, then (following this logic) the "disputed" tag would never be put on the article - it would just go from official version A to official version B without ever alerting anyone (other than those reading the discussion page) that a change was being considered. At minimum, I think a discussion of putting the "disputed" tag/template back up would be helpful. John Broughton | Talk 16:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You're welcome to put it back. However, note that I dded the tag to the talk page to clearly indicate that it was disputed. My logic for removing it is that, most often, those that ask about it are newer users, and if they see it is disputed they will waste peoples time continually asking that an article be protected, thinking that since it is disputed that means that it isn't enforced, or only enforced selectively. --Trödel 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Missed the template at the top of the talk page; I'm okay with that as opposed to being on the project page. John Broughton | Talk 21:40, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Another comment, I would like to hear from Raul654 before going forward with any particular decision since this policy originated from his userspace. --Trödel 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Experience with Photon

The Buddha's hand gestures signify "don't be afraid" (right) and "be welcoming and giving" (left).
The Buddha's hand gestures signify "don't be afraid" (right) and "be welcoming and giving" (left).

Ordinarily, I never comment on Wiki-policy, because I feel out of my depth; but Opabinia regalis asked me to comment on my experience with Photon, which was on the Main Page on 14 October 2006.

At the time, I had just freaked out after seeing the ~300 edits to Enzyme three days earlier and was thinking about protection or semi-protection of Photon as a defence against vandalism and a way to prevent the waste of good editors' time. However, talking it over with friends led me to a better understanding of Wikipedia and its community. Speaking just for myself, I agree with the old policy of almost never protecting the Main Page Featured Articles.

I can't claim to have clear experimental data. The amount of outright vandalism to Photon was relatively low (~30/150 edits) but the new contributors generally did not add much to its scientific content, either, with 1-2 exceptions. The bulk of the newcomer edits seemed to be relatively minor changes in emphasis or re-wordings; nonetheless, although incremental, I believe that their net effect was positive, especially for the clarity and tone of the article. Sometimes, when you've read an article too many times, you develop a tin ear and it's hard to imagine reading it for the first time. The day on the Main Page is a true "test by fire" that lets us evaluate how well our article "flies" with its intended readership, the legions of people who will read it for the first time; it helps our articles to progress more quickly.

Aside from practical encyclopedic considerations about readability, the lack of protection on the Main Page sends a powerful message, at least for me: "Wikipedia is beyond the reach of malice; we have nothing to fear." It may seem quixotic, or at least St. Francis-like, but it's also a thought-provoking lesson in the power of a community of good people, an example that may attract new well-meaning editors to Wikipedia. Willow 11:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Very nice. I really like this analogy in general, and the whole Wikipedia project can certainly be construed this way. What's frustrating for me is that this "process" perspective/philosophy has no end in its application here, and thus seems like dogma. The sanctity of the day's featured article is worth something too. Such a "process" perspective, after a certain point, fails to respect the goal orientation implicit in any project (where the project, in this case, is a single encyclopedia article about something). The last thing you do, according to some monks, is kill the Buddha. –Outriggr § 04:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Petition

Please see Wikipedia talk:Main Page featured article protection/Petition for a call to amend or cancel this policy. I believe it would be beneficial to gauge the number of users, in a straightforward list-of-names style, who are concerned about this policy. Thanks. –Outriggr § 01:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] some analysis

Ok, I know that this was originated in Raul654's userspace, but currently it resides in the mainspace, and thus should be treated as a mainspace policy. I think some ideas need to be drawn from the statistics. I created a simple table with the amount of time the page spent vandalized by anons.

Day * times (note * means look for more information below)
Dec 1 03:59 (16.6%)
Dec 2 01:21 (6%)
Dec 3 01:22 (6%) **
Dec 4 01:54 (8%) 8+ hours of protection
Dec 5 ??? ***
Dec 6 01:53 (11%)
Dec 7 02:15 (9%)
Total 12:44 (~8.8%) ****
*Links go to the relevant section of Wikipedia talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis
**Today was the first day of the study that saw a substantial number of vandalising edits by newly registered users, who would also be blocked by semi-protection of the article. (New editors are not included in the counts below.
***Very hard to gauge how long the article spent vandalised without per-second history.
****December 5, the time was not available. Therefore the percentage next to the total is calculated by taking 6 days (144 hours)
Note - Of course new users have been left out of this study. (this is only anons).
Note - Feel free to clean up and improve the wikitable if you want, it is fairly primitive.

From what is seen in that table... and from the total for that week (minus one day) the main page was in a vandalized state 8.8% of the time it was up. This is not counting new users accounts (who would be blocked when the article is semi-protected). That is quite high, I fear to say that our anti-vandalism efforts are not quite as fast as we like to think. At the very least this needs to be downgraded to a guideline. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 05:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

  • What was interesting in looking at the more detailed report was that just 11-12% of IP edits were beneficial. It seems, and the ammount of time the FA spent vandalized, draws into serious question two of the core rationales against semi-protecting the FA. Many will say "too small a sample size" but nevertheless these are hard numbers and the best we have so far, so I say we should treat them as a reliable picture of the main page FA activity until someone takes the time to do a more extensive study. Certainly more reliable than hunches and cherry-picked examples. --W.marsh 05:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
    • So you think we should move the {{Disputedpolicy}} thing back to the main page where it belongs? I mean right now there is nothing on that page showing any idea to people looking at the page to look at the talk page. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 05:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't be opposed to it. The arguments for protection are much stronger than the arguments against it, at this point:
        • Only 11-12% of IP edits to the main page FA are beneficial.
        • The FA is vandalized for an average of 8.8% of the time it is on the main page, or 2 hours and 7 minutes. This represents thousands of pageviews of a vandalized article on a typical day.
        • Many new and anonymous users come to the main page FA's talk page, the main page's talk, and other pages such as WP:AN/I to complain about vandalism and/or plea for protection, sometimes several each day. Few to no good faith new users are known to have complained about the page being protected.
        • Prominent sites such as Wonkette have mocked Wikipedia for vandalism that occured to the main page FA. There is no known reputable off-site criticism of Wikipedia for protecting the main page FA. --W.marsh 05:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved the {{disputedpolicy}} back to the main policy page. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 05:57, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much for doing that analysis, to all involved. Part of my continued interest in this issue is based on the numbers I saw when looking at the analysis page some time ago—and seeing the amount of time articles spent in the vandalized state. It appears this is still borne out.–Outriggr § 07:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, based on the arguments above, what do we all think about making this a guideline rather then a policy. Guidelines still have some force, but at least are not as much instruction creep as policy is (for this case). If the page is undertaking say, no edits (like todays featured article did through the period 9:06 to 11:21 UTC), there is no need to protect it. But the instant that vandalism starts to pick up, it is in our best interest, according to the stats information that we have above to semi-protect the page. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 23:14, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Just downgrading the current policy to a guidline will not accomplish anything. Based on the above, it needs to be rewritten to encourage semi-protection when the FA page is vandalized.--Paul 23:45, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Is the data above accounting for the vandalism that is not occurring directly to the article, rather is in associated templates and images? When a template was vandalized on Enzyme inhibitor, one (truly obnoxious) instance alone remained up for two minutes. If the analysis is looking only at article edits, it's missing a substantial source of current main page vandalism - data on that would require examining all of the image and template vandalism. Sandy (Talk) 23:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The data is collected by examining the history of the main page FA while it is on the main page. Template vandalism is something different, and much harder to research. The times given are the near exact amounts of time the main page FA was in a vandalized state. If we add in template vandalism I am willing to bet the statistics above would look worse then they do now. Do note that those stats are only tracking anon vandalism, and have left out new users entirely. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
In reply to Paul.h, perhaps that is the case, maybe we should start such a re-write as a subpage of this talk page? —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 01:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'm following still: if the analysis is analyzing only the actual article history, it is missing the main source of recent vandalism from the "penis" template vandal, who isn't hitting the article directly, rather vandalizing the article via the templates and images. Sandy (Talk) 01:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Correct, right now the main page is in a vandalized state an average of 2 hours and 7 minutes. With template vandalism that number only increases. But, remember we are talking about semi-protecting the main page itself. we know that in recent times (from December 1 to December 7) how long the page itself is in a vandalized state on average. (due to edits to the FA, not to edits to templates transcluded onto the FA). Basically I am arguing that this policy needs to be downgraded to a guideline, and or rewritten to more closely match reality. The idea of rewriting it comes from Paul. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 01:37, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My objections

Hello there, I have been following this debate for some time and would like to offer my thoughts:

  1. The Wikipedia front page is the "curb appeal" of Wikipedia. It should be neat, well kept, and free of vandalism.
  2. A main ideal of Wikipedia is "the Encyclopedia anyone can edit."
  3. This idea does not extend to blatant vandals.
  4. There is no fundamental problem of principle with protecting any elements on the Main Page.
  5. There is no need for a hard-and-fast policy regarding the protection of the Main Page. This is more than adequetely covered in the Protection policy.
  6. This policy represents policy creep.

Just my thoughts. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality) 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with any policy or guideline that discusses "policy creep". Did you mean "instruction creep"? I ask because a policy change to "Front Page Articles will always be semi-protected" would not be instruction creep -- it actually would be instruction simplification.
As admirable as the six items above are, they are in fact not all achievable simultaneously. A (relatively) low level of vandalism is, by the current policy (#5), acceptable (that is, does NOT invoke semi-protection), yet this (relatively) low level of vandalism results in numerous, quite visible failures to keep the Main Page article "neat, well kept, and free of vandalism" (#1 not accomplished); the current policy also does extend editing privileges to anonymous (or newly registered) blatant vandals (#3 not accomplished).
In short, I believe that whether we stay the present course or change policy, there will be both benefits and costs to whatever we choose. There is no policy that can accomplish all the goals of Wikipedia simultaneously. John Broughton | Talk 01:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Right. Personally, I think the FA should be semi-protected for the duration of its time on the front page. People will be impressed with Wikipedia from seeing an article that is well-written, not one they can edit but that is mucked up by vandals or other unhelpful edits (and it really does seem, from the above analysis, that that is almost all of what we get from IPs during the FA's time on the front page.) Just my opinion. Grandmasterka 02:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Appeal

Think of the new user that first comes to Wikipedia having heard about it on the news, or the radio. They will enter on to the main page and see at the top, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Then maybe on to the featured article, the first article they see, a high quality article worthy of any for profit encyclopedia. They will see an "Edit" button at the top, and on a whim, incredulously, they will click it, and they will be confused that they can't edit. But they won't be confused, it will reinforce their idea that, of course, only members can edit, surely, or only editors, like they always thought. Because, of course, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit can't survive. This is what they will think, and many will never click edit again. I didn't think I would feel strongly about this before reading, but I do. Please do not protect the single article on Wikipedia that has the most visibility. The vandal fighters can handle it, and if not stable edits can when it comes. We can find a way. We don't need to lock down everything that vandals might touch. This is not a good path to go down. - cohesion 04:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You make a number of assumptions that aren't necessarily valid:
  • A significant number of completely new readers will want to make constructive edits to an already polished Featured Article.
  • They are happy for thousands of people to see their first mistakes at wiki syntax.
  • The world interprets "anyone can edit" as meaning "edit anonymously" (which it isn't anyway since we publish your IP address).
  • The vandal fighters can handle it. It is very clear that on some days, they can't.
Using hyperbole ("lock down everything") doesn't help the discussion. This policy needs tempered with a little common sense. It is common sense that George W. Bush is semi-protected much of the time. Other articles on such magnets for schoolboy vandalism like Down syndrome seem to be handled by vandal fighers OK until they appear on the main page. Then they are just, frankly, an embarrassment to Wikipedia. So, I'd like the "for a very brief period" in the Semi-protection policy adjusted to allow for the possiblity that some articles will need day-long protection. It is surely not beyond the wit of our admins to use common sense (and ignore dogma). --Colin°Talk 14:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
They will see an "Edit" button at the top, and on a whim, incredulously, they will click it, and they will be confused that they can't edit. This is incorrect. I just checked a semi-protected page after logging myself out. As an anonymous user, I saw neither the "Edit this page" tab nor the "Move" tab. John Broughton | Talk 17:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I know people like minimizing infoboxoes, but maybe an infobox would be appropriate for the top of the daily featured article -- "This article is featured on the main page of Wikipedia today, December 19, 2006. For today only, this page is protected from editing by non-registered users. Other articles remain open for editing". Or, um, something. -- 66.88.193.125 19:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Our IP friend is thinking of a template to use with semi-protection, and a message for that template. I support the idea of adding such a template to the article's actual page, since it seems to me that the message pre-empts vandals while signalling to good faith anons that the action is limited to this one high-visibility article and limited in duration. That's a good balance to strike, IMO. -Fsotrain09 17:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's a wonderful idea. --Masamage 20:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ideas

A few thoughts I've come up with:

  1. I think it is not beyond Wikipedia's ethos to change the semi protection template (perhaps a specific one for Todays featured article) so that it is more of a welcome message, stating 1) that in order to protect the quality of the article, new users/editors won't be able to edit the article page directly, but if the care to go to the discussion page they can put their edit there and someone can add it in if it's useful; 2) provide a link to the sandbox in the template, so they can have a go without disrupting the article itself; 3) suggest there are many pages that may need their attention in the rest of Wikipedia and a quick search should bring up something they're interested in; 4) point out that Wikipedia isn't censored. I think this would allow us all the breadth we need to encourage new good faith editors.
  2. I think all templates should be semi protected because even as an established member, I don't even know how to use a template, let alone change one, and yet there seems to be a lot of problems caused by these being vandalised. I would think it reasonable to restrict template editing to seasoned editors generally.
  3. Semi-protection should be offered to the regular contributors to an article a short time before the FA ends up on the main page, leave it up to them whether they have enough time, energy and coverage throughout the 24 hours to cover any vandalism problems. You may find that some pages have sufficient people to cover the article that the article itself doesn't require any protection (I would still advocate template semi-protection in this case).

This could also include:

    1. Making sure editors know where to go for help if a problem occurs.
    2. Allowing editors to prearrange semi-protection for times when they don't have enough cover would also be helpful, as it may be that vandals come out more when they realise there are too few people physically watching the article.


I'm aware most of this would involve quite large changes to policies, not just this one, but maybe they would be worth testing at least. Terri G 13:02, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

In addition, I think it highly unlikely that a new user will be able to significantly contribute to an FA, just because they would probably find it too difficult to pass the verifiability criteria, paticularly adding citations on a first attempt, and are therefore likely to be reverted and get disheartened. Terri G 14:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Some good ideas Terri. Related to the sandbox, another idea would be to duplicate today's FA in the sandbox, and point new editors to that if they wish to improve the article, where an experienced editor can review the change in relation to featured article standards. (Sorry if that was what you meant; I didn't think so.) Here's where someone cries censorship, without recognizing that every reversion they do has the same effect. –Outriggr § 00:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I am not sure how feasible the "duplicating the FA" in the sandbox idea is, but the other ideas are very good. I have some worries about whether or not the sandbox would remain synchronized, with the main page. I think it is best to simply have newcomers suggest improvements on the talk page. I am still debating whether this policy is even needed, the protection policies seem to be enough. More thoughts on that in a bit. Though I would encourage everyone to look at the history of the policy, and see how and why it was created. Cheers —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 01:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of a special main-page protection template, as Terri suggests. And to keep down the storm of edit suggestions, maybe the template could have a link to, say, Talk:Bulbasaur/Mainpage--a subpage created just for suggestions on improving the article? --Masamage 02:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. It seems like a no-brainer to me that the featured article should be protected as long as it is featured article. Don't we already do that for the featured images? Let's face reality here. It is getting vandalized at with the number of hits we are getting, it is inevitable that too many people will see a vandalized version. Danny 03:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad my ideas seem to have been received favourably, particularly the separate template, I thought it would be nice to combine the main features/answers newbies are likely to want in one place.

Outriggr, I'm not averse to the idea of duplicating the main page as a sandbox, but I did intend just a blank sandbox, like you would get anywhere on wikipedia, which I presume would not need to be synchronised with the main page? In a duplicated sandbox, I would be concerned that the code for the various things like infoboxes etc could get a bit daunting to a newbie though. I am keen to maintain somewhere for the people attracted by the TFA to have somewhere they can edit and for their contributions to be added to the TFA if possible without too much difficulty, perhaps the specific talk page for changes, afterall for some people the knowledge that people around the world are looking at and using your info is part of wikipedia's charm. I'll go and look at that history now. Terri G 10:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates redux

I was thinking, what if we just subst'd all templates before a FA went on the main page? A) this ends template vandalism without adding a lot of admin work and B) no "collateral damage", the templates in the FA can be editted by anyone, and the templates themselves can be editted by anyone... but at the same time it's simple to revert main page FA vandalism again.

I don't really know how practical this would be, some templates might become very long when subst'd, but doing/undoing it would be relatively easy if someone wrote a simple script. Just thought I'd throw the idea out since I hadn't seen anyone suggest it. --W.marsh 17:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I hesitate to throw my support behind this excellent suggestion, lest I be accused of having mono-mania.
brenneman 06:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
And our poor newbie anon presses Edit and sees 100K of template code. He'd have a hard job adding his serial comma then :-) Colin°Talk 08:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the templates should just be protected. Leaving the article itself unprotected is one thing (although I don't agree with it), but leaving the templates open seems completely unjustifiable. How much editing needs to be done (or can be productively done) on any of these templates? Everyking 12:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think we already do protect the templates and have a provision in the policy for that. What I think we need to look at is this policy on protecting the main page. Have a look at this history to see how little discussion has gone into making this policy. (look at the edit summaries on the creation of this policy). I see a few links in the what links here relating to the discussion of this policy. Most of them don't seem to be real discussion about this policy, rather just linking to it as a justification for not protecting the main page. Looking at this, I can't even see why this was upgraded to policy to start with. I cannot see the discussion that made this a policy. Therefore I think some serious talk and perhaps re-writing of this policy needs to be done, as per the statistics given above. I think there is a case where protecting the main page is indeed needed, especially for controversial topics, and those that just seem to attract more vandalism then others. There has to be some happy medium. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 17:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Apparently there's been a huge amount of template vandalism recently affecting these articles, so I guess they aren't protected at least some of the time. Anyway, I guess it became a policy just because Raul is FA director and he's a big proponent of the view it represents. The policy definitely needs to be redeveloped to reflect community judgment on the matter. Everyking 11:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen some articles (the recent Definition of Macedonia was one) where parts of the articles, including text that people may want to edit, are trancluded onto the page as a template: Template:Macedonia intro. And I don't understand Everyking's comment about how people shouldn't need to edit "any of these templates". I suspect Everyking is referring to the administrative and widely-used templates, not the ones specific to a small area, or which might contain content that new readers might be able to constructively edit. In general, something to think about, as not all templates are the same. Carcharoth 21:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the need to edit them is much lower than the need to edit the articles themselves, and I don't even think there is much need to edit the articles themselves during their special day. That constructive editing might be possible doesn't mean that the negative side-effect of vandalism doesn't outweigh it. Everyking 11:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, this is absurd.

Torchic is now the featured article. Thus, we have vandalism reverts flying right and left, because it's both Pokemon and featured. For that matter, Pokémon got subjected to page move vandalism, meaning that it's currently awaiting speedy deletion so I can move the history from Idiot262. AAARGH! -Amarkov blahedits 00:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The vandals are putting Pokemon on the front page now, are they? :-) Carcharoth 01:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Bottom half of a bloody naked dead woman. On an article that is directed at children no less. Classy. What I'm wondering is how long before Wikipedia gets sued?--DaveOinSF 03:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It's really agonizing. It's like throwing little cups of water onto a fire that's spreading across the kitchen, desperately hoping you won't have to resort to using the fire extinguisher. Everyking 11:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, we need to re-write this policy. How about Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Lets not get too picky with the wording, but lets get a general feel for what we want. I will copy the contents of the policy as is, and then see what we can come up with. I will redirect the talk page of that re-write here, so that we can keep all the talk in one location. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 12:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Haven't read anything else on this page, not going to read anything else on this page. Just saying here, the featured article of the day should be semi-protected for as long as it is on the main page if it starts getting heavily vandalised. Why should we be made to use a policy that prevents us from protecting a page just because it might be improved when most of a day's edits are vandalism? J Di talk 13:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have re-written it to meet what looks like we have agreed upon. Feel free to modify, Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Lets see if we can come up with something that is a happy medium. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 14:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday, 24th dec 2006, featured article got vandalised alot because it wasn't semi-protected. Is there some new rule that makes it impossible for admins to semi-protect the articles? I mean, todays too got vandalised as soon it was put on the main page. I showed a relative the featured article, and on the 24th, a big banner with "this article SUCK" parade over the screen. Very nice. And as DaveOinSF said, people aren't just doing ordinary stupid stuff, but pure evil vandalism like putting that bottom half of a bloody naked dead woman on a article for children. If someone doesn't want to contribute to an article just because they don't want to sign up, then the edit that he wanted to make, wasn't that important. Sry for my english, it's sooo late. Good night, and Merry Christmas!--NoNo 03:59, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template protection, including talk page

Just throwing a random thought out there that we should also be s-protecting the templates that get included on the talk pages of Featured Articles. After seeing a large penis appear on the talk page a while back (I think it was the "this article appeared on the main page on DATE" one), I suggested on IRC that templates such as Template:Featured be protected, but the prevailing opinion was that "no one cares about talk pages", and I was shot down. Gzkn 09:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

There's extensive discussion on template protection for MPAs going on at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Follow-up to Vandalism on Main Page. You might get a more receptive reaction there regarding protecting talk page templates as well. John Broughton | Talk 16:19, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] December 1-7 analysis

Here are what I consider to be ‘’facts’’ from the analysis of anonymous edits of Main Page articles (MPAs) for the week of December 1 to 7, as detailed at Wikipedia talk:Don't protect Main Page featured articles/December Main Page FA analysis. I’ve also added some additional information based on my edit-by-edit analysis of several of those days. John Broughton | Talk 23:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Composition of anonymous IP edits

  • About 75% of all anonymous IP edits of a MPA are vandalism on any given day (range: 70% to 83%).
  • About 10% anonymous IP edits are beneficial. (Range: 7% to 15%.) Of these, the majority are to negate vandalism, though often the corrections aren’t full reverts (that is, often further edits are needed to fully reverse the vandalism).
  • Less than 5% of anonymous IP edits are actually constructive content changes (wording changes, adding facts, etc.).
  • Of the 206 anonymous IP edits on December 5th, 10 had edit summaries indicated reverting or removing vandalism. Only 17 other anonymous users (8% of the total) added an edit summary to explain their edit.
  • The rare addition of apparently valid text by anonymous IP editors generally didn’t survive the time that the MPA is on the main page. That may be partly or mostly because such additions typically weren’t sourced, presumably because most anonymous IP editors don’t understand WP:RS.

[edit] Semi-protection

  • Semi-protection of MPAs was done four days out of seven. It was done nine times during these four days, for a total of 21 hours and 53 minutes. Average protection time was about 2.4 hours. For these four days, the articles were protected an average of 23% of the time.
  • Eight of the 9 semi-protections occurred between 15:00 and 24:00 standard time (9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Eastern Standard time, U.S.). The 9th was minor, lasting only for 20 minutes.
  • One of the major factors that apparently affects whether a MPA is semi-protected is the volume of edits for a given article. December 1-3 (never protected) MPAs all had less than 200 edits during their 24 hours. By comparision, the December 4-7 MPAs had between 266 and 535 edits (and, as noted above, these four articles were semi-protected an average of 23% of their time as MPAs).

[edit] Impact on readers

  • For the six days where editing where counts were recorded for portions of the day, the extreme case of anonymous IP vandalism was on 5 December between 01:00 and 02:00 standard time (7 p.m. to 8 p.m., Eastern Standard Time), when vandalism occurred 27 times – roughly every 90 seconds. By comparison, the total for December 4-7, during the non-protected hours, was 419 vandalizing edits during 74 unprotected hours, which is slightly less than one every 10 minutes.
  • The vast majority of anonymous IP vandalism is not of the "Hi mom" type. Rather, most of it is page blanking, replacing sections or pages with text obscenities, replacing images at the top of the page with pornographic images, replacing key words in the lead paragraph with nonsense, and so on.
  • For the five MPAs where the duration of IP vandalism was tracked, the articles were in a vandalized state due to anonymous IP edits for between 6 and 11 percent of the time the articles were on the Main Page.
  • The percentage of the time that readers saw vandalism during these 5 days is, of course, more than the 6 to 11 percent – perhaps significantly more - because that percentage does not includes:
  • Vandalism edits by newly registered accounts (such vandalism would also be blocked by semi-protection, but it was too time-consuming to check every registered account to see if it was new or not).
  • Vandalism by registered accounts older than 4 days.
  • Vandalism of templates (see [8], [9], [10], and [11] (same links as mentioned above). Vandalism of templates is being addressed by increased (but not universal) semi-protection of templates.
  • On average, it takes one-and-a-quarter minutes to revert a vandalizing edit. Between 20 and 40% are reverted in less than a minute.

[edit] Impact on editors

  • Of the 329 edits on December 5th that were done by registered users:
  • 201 revert and/or vandal-fighting edits (including 7 reverts by bots)
  • 8 paired post/reverts (good faith reversals, I assume)
  • 6 cases of vandalism (5 different users)
  • 114 other edits (35%).
Of the 114 other edits, 23 had no edit summary and so might have been included some vandal fighting.
  • During times of heavy edits, it may be difficult for any editor to make a beneficial change. For example, there were 43 edits between 01:00 and 01:19 on the 5th of December – one edit every 28 seconds – before the article was semi-protected.

[edit] Call it what it is...

Why doesn't the "Rationale" section simply say first and foremost, that this is a Honeypot and avoid a lot of the nonsense? And please, don't refer me to BEANS. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 01:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it is not, that is why. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 16:48, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opinion on draft

The current policy draft seems to be much closer to what I would have envisaged were I a new user, (and oddly, almost the opposite of what was there before), and importantly adds in the need to protect templates and use semiprotection when there are few editors on revert patrol. I have no idea though whether this involves more work for admins, who presumably would be the people involved in doing such work. Perhaps it is worthwhile making sure there are people prepared to do this work, (or set up some sort of bot?) before we get too far with this policy. The other thing is have we convinced Raul654 that the change in policy is necessary? Because I'm guessing that as featured article editor, if he doesn't agree, we could have a fine time trying to get it implemented. Terri G 17:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the draft doesn't represent any more work for admins. Templates are already being protected based on the existing policy. Putting a semi-protect on an article arguably results in less admin work, since most vandal-fighting goes away. And, of course, the proposed policy doesn't require admins to do anything, it simply encourages (and empowers) them to use semi-protection more often.
As far as Raul654 goes, I too hope that he is convinced that a change in written policy is needed (actual practice has been changing; if it had not, this discussion would probably have ended long ago). But Raul654 doesn't own the MPA, as I think he'd be the first to say - once a new MPA is out, any admin can semi-protect (or unprotect) it. (For example, it's getting pretty common to move-protect it pretty early in its life.)
My major concern is we don't get wheel-warring where one admin puts semi-protection on and another promptly removes it. (In the seven days in December that the MPA was analyzed in depth, this happened at least once.) The proposed policy, if you will, is simply to move the tolerance level for semi-protection a bit. The policy change certainly doesn't mandate 24-hour semi-protection -- something I'd personally support, but also realize is much too significant a change to realistically have a chance of gaining anything resembling consensus. John Broughton | Talk 18:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the new draft policy is great and trust there will be little difficulty in getting consensus and publishing it. Is anyone working on the new template? That would seem to be on the critical path for moving this forward.--Paul 18:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I am not sure where to take this to next, but I support the current draft. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 02:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps what is going on at Wikipedia talk:Usurpation#Votes as explained at Wikipedia talk:Usurpation#Can't we just... is a good model. In other words, it time to ask for a show of hands (support, opposed, whatever)? (The relevant guideline is Wikipedia:How to create policy.) -- John Broughton | Talk 21:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Any movement on this? Gzkn 08:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

(undent) No. I think it's time for someone to try to bell the cat, so to speak. I'm thinking of posting the proposal widely (without spamming, of course), and asking for any final constructive suggestions for changes to it, and then moving forward with a formal expressing of support/oppose.

One reason I've held off is that I wanted to review (but haven't had the time) the MPAs between 8 December and (say) yesterday - what number of them were semi-protected? If there were only 2 or 3, it may be difficult for this proposal to become policy; if (say) 20 of them were semi-protected at one point or another during their 24 hours on the main page, then it could be easier. John Broughton | Talk 17:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, with that amount of vandalism being done, (as in the 7 day study), we should adopt the draft version of this policy, or just scrap it all together. (and rely on our semi-protection policy to guide us. Cheers! —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 04:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course, we can still change the draft, but as it looks, we need to do something. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 19:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protection of templates used in featured articles

User:ProtectionBot and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/ProtectionBot might be of interest to those watching this page. It is an adminbot programmed to (among other things) protect the unprotected templates used on the daily featured article, and then unprotect the templates at the end of the day. Carcharoth 15:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks like now as a result of it we have "Cascading" protection. 19:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Case studies of notable IP activity on main page featured articles

(Section addition: –Outriggr § 03:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Notable cases of IP vandalism

[edit] Notable cases of IP improvement

[edit] Specialized Main Page FA AntiVandalBot? / "Newbie edits" subpage?

I really don't know how helpful this would be, or how difficult to implement, but what if there were a bot running whose only purpose was to monitor the Featured Article of the day? Would that decrease the amount of time that the FA spent in a vandalized state? The bot could revert vandals as needed, or possibly even semi- or fully-protect the article for a short time if the vandalism hit a certain level.

I personally have a general bias against protecting articles. I was drawn into becoming a Wikipedia editor by the desire to fix the vandalism that I encountered. The ability to successfully do that felt incredibly empowering to me, and has kept my interest in helping and editing Wikipedia. I would hate to see that experience blocked off for future newcomers. While the main page FA does get vandalized quite frequently, I hope that we can think of other remedies than protecting the article.

If we absolutely have to protect the article (and this policy could be extended to all protected articles), I would recommend that some sort of "recommended edits" sub-page (separate from the regular talk page) be linked to from the protected article in question. The protection template placed at the top would have a prominent link to the sub-page, which is where anon and new users could post their edits. An editor could then scan that page for helpful edits and add them. If we do need to protect or semi-protect the page, let's give the newbies some feeling of empowerment.

Gosh, but I got wordy!--Aervanath 17:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like User:ProtectionBot already does part of what I had in mind. Could it be modified to fulfill the rest of my recommendation?--Aervanath 18:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think each and every problem here on the page could be solved by a software update that allows certain pages to wait three minutes or so before edits are allowed to go through. In the meantime a bot or admins could check for vandalism and page blanking, and cancel any vandalism before it even appears on the page. Mithridates 17:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Copied here by Rlevse from the Scouting talk page, soon after the article's main page exposure.

Can't article editing be temporarily restricted to people with usernames? --Jagz 17:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandals are always a problem with the main page FA. I knew this would happen. Some feel like you and I that the mp FA should be protected, but others, lead by Raul654, do not feel so. There have been several debates about it. I always we should have to waste our time fighting the vandals, that it should be protected, but of course, no one cares about that, they think the vandals should be free to waste our time.Rlevse 17:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

After Eagle Scout went on the main page, I observed the next few main page articles. I guess I just needed to vent a bit, so I wrote User:Gadget850/MainPage. My experience is that if you convince an admin to semi-protect the page, another admin will come along and unprotect it and note Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, we shouldn't have to worry about it in the first place. More time and effort by all valid editors is spent fighting them than good is gained. New editors can simply move off the mainpage article to edit, it simply wouldn't be that big a deal. Rlevse 17:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Reversed vandalism on 06FEB2007, 12:37 EST I understand not what you say sir, but I will defend to the death your right to confuse me! 17:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

My point is we shouldn't have to fight vandals. Wiki should not allow them, wiki is too nice to them, everyone should have a verified account, etc. Thanks for fighting these scum.Rlevse 17:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Rlevse has a point, but if we block the main page from new editors then it could drive away new editors, since that is the first page they see. And I have seen a few cases of new editors reverting the vandalism they see, always a good thing. But yes, it is a hassle, thankfully lots of people have it on their watch page. Darthgriz98 17:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I beg to differ, how many of us had our first exposure to wiki via the mp fa? Few I suspect. Most people I know got to it by looking up info for school assignements, google hits on a topic of interest (my case), etc.Rlevse 17:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm hoping we implement the German solution soon [12]. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 17:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention someone vandalizes and then a new person sees vulgar stuff of the mp fa...I'll believe the German solution here when I see. This issue is one reason Citizendium has been started, where accounts are required.Rlevse 17:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

My two cents on vandalism is this: if a featured article is being vandalized repeatedly, it makes WikiPedia look bad. Case in point, when I first went to this article (after seeing it featured on the front page), I discovered that it will full of link spam. Had I been a first time visitor, I would have been put off by what I assumed was a lack of attention to the article. I'm just sayin'. --Douglas Muth 17:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

But the point is Wikipedia is for everybody to edit, if the first thing you see when you click on the page to edit and you can't it defeats the purpose. Although, I hate vandalism just as much as the rest of us (especially personal attacks.) Then again, if they can semi-protect my userpage to stop vandalism, sometimes I wonder why they can't protect the main page. So I guess I just see both sides of the issue. Darthgriz98 17:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
FA should get much less attention judging by their article merit. But we are inviting vandals to ravage them. We are frustrating a lot of people here. Mandel 16:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you PLEASE protect this page from vandalism?Anon 11:50, 6 February 2007 (PDT)

A guy with an IP starting with "69" keeps vandalizing this page and vandalized the Super Bowl XLI page as well. I think that IP address should be blocked immediately. -Daniel Blanchette 21:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Why Wiki does not block editing from unregistered people on the main page continues to amaze me. This article was reduce to garbage before my eyes at least 3 times in a matter of minutes. I propose that anyone that is going to offer anything helpful will be willing to register, it is almost to a point where I have to confirm other sources to verify if anything on Wiki is actually valid. Arzel 21:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Nice to see some interest in this topic. The most recent discussion about this "disputed policy", for those interested, has taken place here: Wikipedia talk:Main Page featured article protection. I honestly think everyone who disputes the "never-protect" garbage should at least make a comment on that talk page (that's what my "petition" subpage was for, but I was told that consolidated expressions of interest are evil, and that mine was especially evil). –Outriggr § 00:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
    • It's not really an honor to have an article that you worked on appear on the Main Page because if essentially exposes the people who have put in their time and effort on the article for free to harassment. An attitude that the article on the Main Page should not be protected from unregistered users is insulting and fails to consider the welfare of the people behind the article. If there was nobody behind these articles the featured article on the Main Page would consist of a photo of someone's buttocks or whatever else the vandals might come up with that day. --Jagz 02:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Proposal

As a newcomer to this page I ask two questions. One, why aren't all FA article semi-protected, and two, how can such a proposal be made feasible, via a standard guideline.

I give three brief reasons for FA article semi-protection. One, Belittling contributors' efforts. Contributors spend a sizeable proportion of their lifetime editing, writing and researching a FA Article. This time is not compensated in any form. Generally, an FA article is conceded to be a fairly well-researched piece of work. Would you throw your Masters thesis to the streets for punks? Doing what Wikipedia does now is to offer no respect for hard works done by editors. It places vandals, pranksters on the same level as a diligent writer.

Two, drives away quality contributors. Contributors are bound to be disappointed that their paintaking efforts could be so slipshoddily edited by anyone. Having spent like, say, 30 hrs of their lives scripting an article, they have to be convinced that any Tom, Dick or Harry may be qualified to rewrite them, after a panel judges it to be of high quality. Vandals are easily dealt with, but who has patience and 100 hrs to deal with a troll?

Three, wasting time and money of Wikipedian Foundation. Wikipedia is not Bill Gates's private treasury. It does not have endless funds. Every year so much money is donated to keep it running. We have a responsibility to utilize them in a socially responsible manner. This means not allowing people to vandalize quality articles. Vandalizing a back alley is not the same as breaking Taj Mahal or Michelangelo's David.

Semi-protection is an easy way to identify trolls, extremists, vandals and problem users. It costs nothing. A genuine user would certainly not think twice about registering. Almost every privately run website in the world requires some form of registration. Mandel 17:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit confused by "Contributors are bound to be disappointed that their paintaking efforts could be so slipshoddily edited by anyone. Having spent like, say, 30 hrs of their lives scripting an article, they have to be convinced that any Tom, Dick or Harry may be qualified to rewrite them, after a panel judges it to be of high quality."- this has nothing to do with semiprotection. If an edit is good enough to be accepted on consensus, then it certainly isn't vandalism. Borisblue 09:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm advocating for FA semi-protection to guard against vandals etc. Semi-protection does make it easier to track errant editors and to prevent them from making NPOV or inaccurate edits to Wikipedia. A disfigured FA is much worse than anything else, IMO.Mandel 15:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Regarding how can such a proposal be made feasible, via a standard guideline, the answer is that the reason this guideline is disputed is because of prior discussions that resulted in an alternate proposal: Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection/re-write. Note that the alternative proposal calls for making semi-protection easier, not mandatory; there simply is not enough support for the latter.
As for how to make this policy, see Wikipedia:How to create policy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The information a few sections above (December 1-7 analysis) is very persuasive. We are losing more (in the time of valuable contributors spending time reverting vandalism) than we are gaining (from actual positive edits from anonymous accounts). It is time to make it a policy that all Main Page FA's are to be semi-protected while they are on the main page. Johntex\talk 19:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Our time and money is not infinite, and yearly donation drives prove that. Vandal edits may be reverted, but at a cost. Admins regularly locked valuable contributors out by blocking a IP address; but comparatively, isn't semi-protection a much more effective way out. Maybe the German solution should be test-run on all FAs.Mandel 16:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Just watching yesterdays and todays featured article, I would have to say that I would not want to be an editor on a featured article the day it hits the main page. The volume of vandalism is enormous, and difficult to keep a top on. The editors of Californian Gold Rush let out a sigh of relief when the day was over. Many of the vandals appeared to have accounts set up specially for the fun. I say fully protect for the 24 hours, any serious editor will come back the next day. As someone said above, you just end up exhausting your volunteers. --Michael Johnson 02:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, more than that, I say that editors of a featured article deserve that 24 hours to sit back, enjoy a beer, and bask in the glory of their achievement. They shouldn't be run raggard by a bunch of vandals. --Michael Johnson 02:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
How abt this. For 24 hours edits will be accepted, but not immediately reflected. Then an admin weeds thru' the vandalisms. Aka a bit like the German solution. Sounds perfect to me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mandel (talk • contribs) 17:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] German solution

I'm interested to hear how well the German solution is going. I only noticed it on the talk page when searching for another term, perhaps this proposal should be mentioned on the article page? Richard001 23:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA vandalism policy

Considering the weakness of current policy with regard to vandalism, perhaps a related policy for FA vandalism should be introduced. If we had a policy 'Any user who deliberately vandalizes a featured article on the main page shall be blocked for 24 hours' it would deter vandals, and there could also be a small warning message when editing the page similar to when editing older versions (e.g. 'You are editing today's featured article. Please ensure your contributions are neutral and verifiable. Edits considered to be vandalism by administrators will result in an instant 24 hour block').

Regardless of what policy is decided on, I believe we need to do something to make the main page FAs more secure and reliable for our readers and hard working contributors. Perhaps the German solution combined with tough anti-vandal policies could be this solution - this way anyone could still edit, the vandalism would never make the front page, and vandals would give up or be blocked before their edits would even be seen. Richard001 00:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thought

Given that our featured articles are selected for the main page a few days in advance of their intended appearence, would it be possible (or feasable for that matter) to design an AntiVandalBot with the sole mission of watching todays featured article and reverting any vandalism it catches? Considering that articles slated for appearence on the main page now have the intended date of display on the main page printed on their featured article template, and assuming that someone could design a bot capable of reading the date on the template and instructing the bot to watch that page for vandalism for the 24 hours it will be on the main page may help keep the pages managable without protecting the page. This, of course, is just an idea. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{Disputedpolicy}}

I'm adding this back on, as I don't think anyone has replied to ideas about the draft mentioned about 3 weeks ago, and I still don't think the existing version is reflecting what I am seeing on this talk page. —— Eagle101 Need help? 23:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

A poll should probably be taken before any thoughts of removing the disputed template. Richard001 00:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
m:polls are evil, in any case, we need to get back to the draft mentioned above, and work on a new writing of this. —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:53, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Perhaps it would help to move that draft over the current version? That is, if it has more support than the current version. I am not fully familiar with the issues here, but it may be a way forward. >Radiant< 09:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
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