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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it.

Shortcut: WP:WIHTW

This essay represents the opinions of the author, Trumpetband only. Although specific users and articles may be mentioned in this article, it is not meant to be offensive. If you feel I have treated you unfairly in my essay, let me know.

[edit] The Problem with Wikipedia

Wikipedia will soon cease to be a Wiki. Wikipedia is becoming less about allowing all to edit, and more about policy and procedure. In this essay, I will talk about some of the elements of Wikipedia I feel are destroying its status as a Wiki.

[edit] Page Protection

At the time this essay was written, there were 991 semi-protected articles, and 29 fully protected articles. That is almost 1000 protected articles. In our haste to fight vandalism, we protect articles left and right. How do we know that there isn't some ip user that doesn't have a positive contribution? How can we claim to be a wiki if we block so many pages?

How can we truly call ourselves a Wiki, or "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" if we block pages so quickly? We justify ourselves by saying that "anyone can make an account", but that isn't fair. They would have to wait 4 days before they could edit semi-protected pages. You have to be fairly determined to wait that long to fix something. People should be able to go to a Wiki and edit something without having to become a Wikimaniac.

Now, you're probably going, "but Wikipedia has almost 2 million articles!" and you would be right. But it isn't articles like Liverpool, New York that are getting protected. It's articles about notable things like Wii, Baseball, Chocolate, High School Musical, and Cheese that are being protected. These are the things people would want to edit, so in essance, we say "you can't edit about anything notable, but you can edit Liverpool, New York." Great. . .

We semi-protect so much that we need a small template so that we don't have to use that big ugly tag. We shouldn't have to even think about having a small tag. It is silliness that we semi-protect everything people care about and call ourselves "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

This essay is not yet complete. Trumpetband will finish it as soon as possible.