Template talk:Pp-semi-indef

New template
Brilliant! This is just what we need for long-term high profile semi protected pages (I'm thinking George W. Bush. Any chance of moving it into the main template space? Perhaps, for continuity as sprotect2? (Barnstar pending)--Docg 14:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Perfect, indeed. I added a sentence restricting it to long-term pages, but you can take it off if you'd rather. Let's do this. Chick Bowen 17:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I've brought this up here. Chick Bowen 17:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd not be so bothered at restricting this to long term pages, as restricting the common one to short term pages.--Docg 17:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Great idea. Thanks, Moe. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Your welcome, my pleasure :) semper fi — Moe  21:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

My hats off to the one who made this. Brilliant! ☆ CieloEstrellado 22:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I think this is awful. Far too subtle. Just because we don't have an intention in the short-term to un-semi-protect the article, doesn't remove the requirement to give notice that it is protected. Aesthetics aren't that important. When I come across this in use on the 'pedia, I will change it back to the standard sprotected template. - Mark 06:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If they try to edit, they are told it is protected and what they can do about it. No need to muck up a clean article. —Centrx→talk &bull; 06:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

protection
this should probably be protected...216.37.131.119 19:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Could you state why? Theres currently no reason too, no ones editing it right now. semper fi — Moe  03:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It should be at least semi-protected, since all of the other semi-protection templates are currently semi-protected. Plus, it may be another way for anons/new users to edit long-term sprotected pages (if they're that knowledgeable). —Whomp (myedits) 23:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Good point, requested protection :) semper fi — Moe  23:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It's protected :) semper fi — Moe  23:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks. —Whomp (myedits) 23:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Too subtle
I think this is too subtle in appearance. Couldn't we at least make it so that you don't have to hover over the lock to see "This page is semi-protected"? We could add it as a small hatnote as well. - Jmabel | Talk 19:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If you want to take a stab at it to where it will be better looking, go ahead, but since the Image of the lock links to the semi-protection policy and the hover effect, it seems like it would be excessive. semper fi — Moe  21:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Not including a message stating that the page is semi-protected is confusing to those interested in editing and new to the game. This is a de facto attempt at preventing new editors from trying to edit via confusion, and this is contrary to the goals of Wikipedia. &mdash;  Rickyrab | Talk 02:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That makes no sense. Anyway you approach these protected pages, at all, you will get a link to the semi-protection policy. Clicking the padlock, hovering over it, trying to edit the page regardeless the protection, or simply asking why doesn't prevent anyone from editing. It's actually a de facto attempt to make articles less like targets with a big bullseye in the center and make them more tidy and theres nothing contrary about that. semper fi — Moe  23:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the best argument in favor of subtlety is that the majority of the people on this site are readers, and readers have little care about whether or not the ability of editing is semi-restricted. We should try to keep the site reader-oriented, not editor-oriented. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 • 2006-12-13 04:29Z
 * yeah, but aren't semiprotect notices intended for anon users? after all, experienced users aren't affected by the sprotect, so why are we putting this notice in a form that its target audience won't notice or understand?Borisblue 22:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I second Borisblue here. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of editors AND readers, and excluding one of those is contrary to the service of all Wikipedia stakeholders. &mdash;  Rickyrab | Talk 02:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If anons try to edit the page thats protected, they are meet with the same kind of message, and that one is automatically-generated when you try to edit the page. The template doesn't exclude anyone from anything. If you click on the lock Image (in the top right corner), hover over it, know how Wikipedia works, or try to edit the page while it's protected (either way) your going to find out it's protected. The old template provides a decent explanation, but doesn't a link to the policy page provide the same thing, even more in depth? And why would a bulky template that makes a page look like a target help? Readers aren't going to be bothered with editing, that doesn't excluded them from anything, but it just helps out in regards to the subtle template being more helpful and causes less confusion to the reader as to why it's there. And if you edit this site, then you have probabaly seen this template by now since it's on nearly every long-term semi-protected page. Report to me a real problem, not a hypothetical one. semper fi — Moe  22:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * They can't "try to edit" because they don't see any "edit this page" button. This template needs a text-based component, an obscure icon in one corner is not enough. Users deserver an explanation for why they can't edit an article. Haukur 16:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * A quick question would be why would someone just using this site for viewing want to know 'why they can't edit it?'. Since most websites don't offer the ability to edit it's content, readers aren't going to be bothered to look for a way to edit it. If they are familiar with Wikipedia, then they will know where to go to edit, then eventually see that it's protected (either by the template or, by being familiar with Wikipedia, see the instant message that appears when you try to edit a protected page). I think it's pretty guarrenteed that they will figure it out one way or the other and the subtleness of this template only enhances our ability to get straight to the encyclopedia entry and avoi the muck. semper fi — Moe  22:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

XfD pages with this template
I just ran into this, a bit ago. When closing an XfD that's been protected with this template, you'll need to move above  (or whichever), or else the nice archive color box will abruptly stop as soon as it hits the extra divs the sprotect template brings up. I don't have the technical know-how to say for sure, but I don't think there's an easy fix for that, so it's probably easier to just move the protection template (as in this example). Luna Santin 02:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Overlap
This template overlaps the template at Wikipedia (and probably other pages). Is there a way to make it like and not display in the same position as the spoken template? --- RockMFR 17:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved it, it no longer overlaps, you can fit all 3 (sprotected2, featured article and spoken Wikipedia templates on it now and it won't overlap. Thanks for bringing this to my attention :) semper fi — Moe  03:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps in the future we could create a single template to regulate all the corner templates, and instead of having each of them at some absolute position, it could display them starting on the right side, then moving over to the left (if you know what I mean). Ideally it would be called like this:


 * See what I mean? --- RockMFR 20:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can do, good thinking. :) semper fi — Moe  22:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

"This page is semi-protected"
I hate to say it, but this change is butt-ugly, and completely negates the purpose of this template as a way of reducing the visual noise at the beginning of an article that practically nobody cares about. If we're really going to have text transcluded into the article, we might as well just stick with sprotected and beat readers over the head with it. -/- Warren 18:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't mind that but I think there's a reasonable case for a separate template for a very limited number (fewer than a dozen at any given time) number of high profile, high traffic, high vandalism articles. Haukur 18:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Firmly agreed with Warren. The entire purpose of this template was to eliminate the amount of cruft people have to sort through to get to the actual encyclopedia.  —bbatsell  ¿?  20:11, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree with Warren and Bbatsell; the text should be removed. Ral315 (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I also agree. Please remove this text.  The whole reason to use this template is for long-term semi-protections, as you described, Haukur.  If we wanted a message displayed, we would have used the regular template.  Please undo this change. Vir4030 23:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I saw this "This page is semi-protected" comment at the top of an article, and I assumed it was a newbie's observation, so I went to remove it, but found that it was part of the template itself. This should be framed in a proper box or removed altogether. — CharlotteWebb 23:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Adding text completely destroys the purpose of this template. --- RockMFR 23:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * CharlotteWebb: I did exactly the same thing just now when I noticed this on Weis Markets. I don't understand why text was added to this template.  The entire point of  is to not show a message.  If someone chose to use, he/she did so specifically to suppress the message. Can we get rid of this, please? -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  00:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The template is being egregiously overused and applied to dozens of pages - only a small fraction of which need long-term semi-protection. There was an effort to change Template:Semiprotected to omit all text and it never achieved consensus - or even majority support because I and many others feel the text is necessary. Simply creating a fork and using that instead is not good.


 * That said I'm not claiming I should be able to have more say over this because I happen to be an admin and this template happens to be protected (against vandals, not because of an edit war) so I'll move it down to semi-protection for now and we'll have equal opportunity to edit it. Haukur 01:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it is overused. The point of it was to be used on articles that are huge vandal targets for months at a time (or indefinitely). Efforts should be made to remove this from articles that have not been protected for at least a month. --- RockMFR 02:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Just fixed about 20 cases where this was being used inappropriately (on the first page protection and/or short term protection). --- RockMFR 03:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Haukur: I use it for long-term protection, like Weis Markets -- Since last September, some idiot using dynamic IPs has made it his life's mission to repeatedly inject nonsense into that article. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs)  01:55, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that page needs to be semi-protected at all but if it does I don't see why we should hide the fact that it is from our users. Haukur 02:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * How about because practically all of our non-contributing readers don't care about whether or not a page is "semi-protected". Two articles I watch, Wii and Bill Gates, are protected almost constantly due to heavy vandalism and poor edits in general.  sprotected2 is one of the best things to happen to both these pages... now we can lead these very good articles with brilliant prose.  People come to Wikipedia looking for information on topics that interest them, not to hear about our problems with vandalism.  -/- Warren 03:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * See my reply to 32X below. Haukur 12:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Review the page history, Haukur, and see some of his comments on talk pages. We protected it for six weeks; he was right back when we unprotected it. And it's no more subtle than the lock icon on a browser when you're on an https page. -- Jim Douglas (talk)  (contribs)  02:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I have reviewed them and I'm not convinced. This is a single vandal, albeit with a dynamic IP. During December he averaged less than one vandal edit per day, hardly overwhelming. This can be handled by asking a couple of good people to add the page to their watchlist. I can understand a case for semi-permanent semi-protection on George W. Bush but I don't see anything similar here. Haukur 02:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

After reading User:Shanes/Why tags are evil some months ago and seeing how it was done in George W. Bush I was quite fine with a "silent" solution. A reader couldn't care less whether this particular article is editable or not, he's a reader, not an editor. The editor is still able to read "view source" and "discussion". Most people are smart. They don't need the additional "This article is not editable." message. Make it a silent information again. Or bring back template:sprotected3. --32X 04:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is open content - anyone can mirror and reuse the content for whatever purpose, for example to make a version 100% oriented towards readers. But for Wikipedia itself to remain functional it must be accessible and usable for people interested in contributing. We must especially think of newbies and people who are not technically savy but have a lot of knowledge to contribute. The creeping expansion of silently locked pages is an undesirable development in that light. Haukur 12:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You have some valid points here, but I have my reasons for being in favour of a "silent" tag. Yeast is one example, with the now deleted needimage being displayed I could only see the first paragraph of the article (1024x768, fullscreen, standard skin). Some authors tend to mess up the important screen space with templates and too often they are used in a too silly way (reference for a 2 sentence stub?). A silent lock template was the best sign for me that hope's not lost yet. And believe me, anons who want to edit the article know the place of the edit button. They don't need to read "edit", they just click and see the "oops! semi protected!" message afterwards. I talk from own experience with full protected pages ... ;) Again: I don't see a benefit in bugging a mass of readers with an information for editors who make 1/10th or 1/100th (or even less than that) out of them. --32X 11:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * One important point you make is that stuffing the top of each article with templates can be problematic. When new editors click the edit button we want them to see mostly easily editable text with some rudimentary formatting instructions they can pick up along the way. When an article starts off with a bunch of esoteric templates we're reducing the accessibility of editing. I know that finding "the edit button" is not a problem for me or you, even when it isn't there, but someone new to the MediaWiki software will have a problem there, especially if they're not a technical person with the meaning of 'source' at their fingertips. Making Wikipedia more accessible to new editors and non-technically minded editors is the most important thing we can do to broaden the scope and balance of our coverage. I know that experienced editors like me or you don't need to be told when a page is semi-protected - in fact we're not inconvenienced at all by such protection. But new editors are and that's important. We should think of Wikipedia as the encyclopedia that truly anyone can edit and think of every user as a potential editor. Haukur 11:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Have you actually looked at the list of articles that are semi-protected? Many of them are things of interest to juveniles looking to express themselves:  slut, homo, shit, your mom, kike, leet, bitch, nigger, anus, and so on and so forth.  Have a look through the edit histories of these articles, and see how much worse the page maintenance gets when protection is removed.  These articles will probably be semi-protected 'till kingdom come. I also highly doubt that there are absolute newcomers to the encyclopedia that are just itching to add some high-quality content to the faggot disambiguation page, but will be unable to figure out why they can't because the page uses sprotected2 instead of sprotected.  The text that is displayed when you hit "view source" does a good job of explaining why they can't edit... that is sufficient. -/- Warren 13:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It is not sufficient because hitting "View source" is a completely unobvious thing to do when you're looking for an edit button. It would be enough if that button had a more informative tagline like "View source (editing disabled)" but my efforts to change it that way did not meet success. Haukur 14:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a carefully selected set of examples you've chosen - would you apply the same logic to, say, Xiaolin Showdown, Dora the Explorer, Borehamwood, Dred Scott v. Sandford and Tottenham Hotspur F.C. - all of which currently have this template? But even engaging with your hand-picked examples your argument that these need permanent semi-protection doesn't hold up. I don't have time to analyze them all but let's look at your first example - slut. It has been unprotected for most of its lifetime though twice semi-protected by the same user, most recently on 27 October last year. Prior to that there were certainly many vandalistic IP edits to the page but they were always quickly reverted. Now look at the good edits - as recently as August an IP editor fixed the incoherent first sentence of the article, a change stable to this day. And some months earlier another IP editor basically rewrote the entire page based on an older version. , a very beneficial change. Since the page was semi-protected it has had almost no improvements This is your star example of a page that needs to be semi-protected from the evils of IP editors "till kingdom come". It doesn't. Research shows that most of Wikipedia's content is added by newbies and casual editors - we must not make it more difficult and confusing for them to contribute. This is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit - not the free encyclopedia that anyone who knows the secret handshake can edit. Haukur 15:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As long as we have two templates, then we have have these discussions on an article-by-article basis. It seems that sprotected is good for short-term semi-protections and sprotected2 is good for longer-term ones.  Which one is appropriate for an article can be determined by those articles editors.  It's nice to have both options, though. Vir4030 15:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Haukurth, I "hand-picked" examples of things we're all familiar with as being expected targets of vandalism by juveniles. I've no idea what any of the things you linked to are, except for the last one (which, as it turns out, is a great example of a page that needs sprotected2 -- have a look at the timbre of the contributions during the 4 days in December that the page was unprotected).  User:RockMFR has been changing some sprotected2's to sprotected today as appropriate, and I encourage you to do the same in cases where the article has not been the subject of lengthy & ongoing protections.  Your protestations about "secret handshakes" and "research shows" (*ahem*) bore me, so I'm not going to respond to them -- you're seemingly against semi-protection, fine, whatever, rage on for a lower-quality encyclopedia.  I'm only interested in making the encyclopedia more readable for people who actually come here looking for information -- that's why I do a lot of work on WP:LEAD sections. -/- Warren 21:24, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No, really, research *does* show - it's not just something I made up, see here for example. Your accusation that I am "raging on for a lower-quality encyclopedia" is absurd. We can disagree about the best method to get a high-quality encyclopedia without juvenile accusations like that. You think semi-protecting articles like slut results in better articles over time, I disagree and have told you why. Don't assign nefarious motives to people who disagree with you - address their arguments. Haukur 01:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * And, no, Tottenham Hotspur F.C. does not need this template, nor does it even need to be semi-protected at all. It had all of six vandalistic IP edits in the four day period you speak of, two of which were reverted by other IP editors. It also had a beneficial content edit from a newbie making his second edit. Vandalism was well below the level where semi-protection becomes desirable, let alone silent long-term semi-protection. Haukur 01:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Do not use on templates
As a side-note to the above discussion, this template's use on templates has always seemed completely unnecessary to me. Template pages are of use to editors, not readers. -- zzuuzz (talk) 03:25, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Just because they are meant for editors, doesn't mean that others can't edit them, especially now-a-days when template vandalism is high. semper fi — Moe  22:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Pp-semi-protected
Thank you for reverting this "deprecation" that title is horrible. Keep it simple or it's use will be even less. If there is consensus for a redisgn then redirect this and make sure the default option works. — xaosflux  Talk  01:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. I agree that we need to keep things simple, and once people have memorized templates we shouldn't change them without very good reason. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * If you had any objections, you could have commented on it before. → Aza Toth 13:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * /me looks up ^. I don't see any discussion to deprecate this template above, somehow I missed that a fork had been made, which is kind of easy to do considering the nature of forks.  Debating that process is a waste of time now, but if I'm expected to remeber the new esoteric tempalte name everytime I need to use this template, I'm rather likely to not use it at all. —  xaosflux  Talk  22:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Azatoth, how were we to know we needed to comment? The key to good template management is to keep them simple, short, minimalist in terms of numbers and functions, and stable so that people don't have to remember a thousand templates and a thousand changes whenever they want to write something. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

BLPs
I've returned the reference to BLPs, because one of the reasons this template was developed was so that BLPs don't have an ugly, visible template suggesting there's a dispute. My recollection is that this was Jimbo's initial concern when he first raised it on the mailing list. I also removed "extremely long periods," or whatever it said, because it's not defined; longer periods gets the same message across. It's up to individual admins to decide when the tag is appropriate. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Old Image
Why was the old bronze padlock replaced with a gray one that looks like Protected2?  ~  St ep  tr ip   01:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Good question! Looks like it's part of the whole new "pp" scheme, whoever made that scheme up liked the new color I guess.  Apparently there was some discussion that many of us missed (see above).  This template is getting it's guts from  now though, so I'd check there. —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  02:19, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * They're now both deprecated. Bronze padlocks now indicate fully protected articles, while blue is for semi-protection; ideally Pp-semi-protected with a parameter of small=yes should be used instead of Sprotect2, because further parameters can be set. -Phoenix 19:34, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

template is too subtle (again)
The little icon is too subtle and it is confusing new users. Many anons who don't know why it is protected may ask "Where did that edit button go" since the "edit button" will be replaced by "view source". I think that there needs to be at least some text that at least tells the user that this page is protected and to link to a page that shows the reason why. Maybe a small note beside the icon saying "Page protected see (link to reason) for details" or something. -- Hdt83 Chat 23:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Query
Why are people saying this template is deprecated? SlimVirgin <sup style="color:purple;">(talk) 03:01, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I came here to ask the same thing. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 21:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Protection question
Why have "protection" if you say it doesn't do what it is supposed, to do: Protect? But my real question has to do with semi-protection I added to a small article subject to vandalism. I personally do not like having to monitor it. More specifically, the problem is that the address I wanted to block is a shared one. I'm assuming that light protection will stop someone who is not an established user, but not stop everybody who has the shared address? Brian Pearson 14:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit request
Go to Village pump (proposals)  EBE123  talkContribs 22:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * ❌ Come back when you have consensus... — G FOLEY   F OUR  — 05:31, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Semi-protection or full protection?
This template is about semi-protection, but it looks like it's about full protection. Does it need fixing, and how if it does? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:47, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 August 2013
Change: |small=yes To: |small=yes This allows use of the new pp-meta parameter.
 * demolevel=
 * right=
 * demolevel=

Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:39, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:39, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to convert this template to Lua
There is currently a proposal to convert this and other protection templates to Lua at Module talk:Protection banner. Please join this discussion over there if you are interested. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 23:48, 22 July 2014 (UTC)