Template talk:WikiProject Texas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Texas, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Texas.
Template	This article has been rated as Template-Class on the quality scale.

Template:WikiProject Texas has been protected indefinitely. Use {{editprotected}} on this page to request an edit.

[edit] Protection

I don't see the point in protecting this template. Yeah, it's in high use, but it's on talk pages. Most vandals don't bother with talk page vandalism, and the history shows no vandalism. Seems a bit needless to me, and a bit of WP:BEANS. -- Ned Scott 06:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that vandalism of talk pages is not a regular problem.

I think WP:BEANS is a stretch though. WP:Beans refers to giving someone an idea to do something naughty when they otherwise would not have thought of it on their own. Who's going to get a naughty idea from this? If its not an admin, they won't be able to act on the idea anyway.

Given the frequency of use of this template, and the lack of need for anyone to go changing it - I think the protection is useful. I don't strongly object either way, but my recommendation and preference would be to leave it protected. Johntex\^talk 06:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't feel strongly about it as well since there's not much to update. I figured WP:BEANS was significant considering many might not have considered WikiProject banner vandalism, and might go looking for other high use ones that are yet to be protected (or look for the to do list of a high use one.. err, wait, forget I said that... beans!). I guess it doesn't really matter, but eh.. something about it.. -- Ned Scott 06:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

You'll be pleased to know there is no such "to-do" list. Another adminstrator ran a script to find the most highly-used templates and we protected them all as soon as we knew what they were – Gurch 12:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, that is a good point. They could see this protected template and then go looking for other templates which are not protected.

True, but by that logic we couldn't protect any templates, which would obviously cause problems. Best thing to do is quietly protect the most vulnerable ones and then not talk about it too much, which is what I was trying to do – Gurch 12:56, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really mind either way. As you say, this template survived until today without being protected and we had no problems.

It looks like the template was protected by User:Gurch and he also protected a lot of other templates today. There is nothing in his edit summaries or on his talk page to indicate his reasoning or criteria for what templates he is protecting. I will inquire of Gurch as to his intentions. Johntex\^talk 06:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have inquired on Gurth's talk page. I will post the reply when it arrives. Johntex\^talk 07:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. In fact my reasoning for the protection was given in the protection summary (high-risk, approx. 12221 transclusions), but I'll explain in more detail. I've posted this message on Johntex's talk page; I'm copying it here for the benefit of others.

Apologies for any inconvenience this protection may cause, however, it's part of an effort by myself and Misza13 to increase template protection in response to recent events. Most vandalism affects only one page and can be reverted quickly, but templates require special consideration because changing them will affect many pages at once, and features of MediaWiki markup such as transclusion and parser functions can caused problems if abused.

You may or may not be aware of the Main Page vandalism that's occurred over the past month; if not, what essentially happened was that vandals kept finding gaps in the protection of the Main Page (it's set up in a very complex way and although administrators are meant to protect everything, the occasional error is made), and inserting obscene images into it. This happened at least six times. Obviously this template is never going to be displayed on the Main Page, but these vandals were clearly trying to get attention, not just targeting the Main Page specifically, as evidenced by their attempts to do similar things with unprotected templates on the Featured Article of the Day. Protection of templates on the Main Page and the Featured Article of the Day is now being monitored much more carefully as a result; it is likely that the vandals will seek other ways of getting attention, and templates used on many thousands of pages are an obvious target.

Another worrying incident happened two days ago (9 January 2006); for several hours that day Wikipedia slowed to a crawl and the Spanish Wikipedia had to be temporarily shut down. I don't know the details, or whether it was accidental or intentional, but someone edited a template that was used on many pages and filled it with extremely complex markup; as a result, the servers spent so long rendering it that there was no capacity available to serve the other projects. The developers had to intervene and delete the template from the database directly. Template:WikiProject Texas isn't used on nearly enough pages to cause this, however by editing a large number of frequently-used, unprotected templates there is a chance that a vandal could cause a similar situation (especially given the much higher traffic to the English Wikipedia).

One template which was completely unprotected until yesterday is used on over 420,000 pages; editing it to, say, transclude another very complex template and inserting an obscene picture could easily have caused something similar to one or both of the above incidents had a malicious user found it. I've decided that all templates used on 10,000 pages or more should be fully protected to minimize the chance of abuse, unless there is a good reason not to. 10,000 is quite a large number – only 150 of our tens of thousands of templates are this heavily used, roughly half of which were already protected. As Template:WikiProject Texas is used on more than 10,000 pages (12,221 as of November 2006, probably quite a few more by now), I have protected it. Again, apologies for any inconvenience.

– Gurch 12:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that is a good idea. I suggest we archive or delete this discussion to "prevent it from falling into the wrong hands" and giving anyone bad ideas. Johntex\^talk 14:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's unlikely, though I'll leave it up to the members of the WikiProject to do as they wish – Gurch 14:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, had not thought about it that way (the templates being used to slow down the servers). That alone does seem like a good reason to protect talk page banners. Sounds reasonable to me. -- Ned Scott 18:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested change

I'd like to add the small bit of necessary code to make this template compatible with the new {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} template.↔NMajdan•talk 13:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Editprotected}} Please write the code in a sandbox and test it thoroughly; then I will be glad to change the template. CMummert · talk 13:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment changes

{{editprotected}}

I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas/Assessment and would like to change the template to this. Thanks Joe I 00:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please put the {{editprotected}} just beside your request, to make it easier for us admins. Has this been proposed to the project and achieved consensus there? CMummert · talk 23:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It was proposed, with no replies from anyone. Making a project Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team assessment ready should be a priority, not something questioned. Joe I 01:58, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Done by User:Titoxd. --ais523 11:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)