Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy/Archive 8

A good idea
This is likely a good idea. I especially liked this discussion from Wikipedia talk:Semi-protecting policy pages:

What about people like User:68.39.174.238?-- MrFish  Go Fish 13:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 * User:68.39.174.238 could create an account. Or, barring such a drastic measure, he could propose edits to official policies on their talk pages.  Almost all established editors edit with accounts.  While User:68.39.174.238 is welcome to continue editing as an unregistered user, by doing so he is necessarily giving up certain privileges that are normally afforded to established users -- not the least of which are directly creating non-talk pages, directly moving pages, voting in RFA's, and the possibility of becoming an administrator himself. John254 00:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * One thing he doesn't give up is the privilege of editing Wikipedia. You shouldn't be so keen to take that away from him, too. -Splash - tk 23:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The privilege of editing Wikipedia articles is not synonymous with the privilege of directly editing official policy pages. Editing these policies is at least as sensitive a function as pagemoves; so, if we can restrict pagemoves to registered users with accounts older than four days, we can certainly limit the editing of official policies in a similar manner. John254 15:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It is vastly less important than page-moving. See my comment above for why. The privilege of editing Wikipedia extends to just about all the 13ish (?) namespaces. Mediawiki: being the only exception, because that actually does have the potential to send something really truly belly up. -Splash - tk 16:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should create an RfC about this, rather than have it spread among the talk pages. - jc37 21:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Please don't! That's just another pair of pages for it to appear on. Doing it here's fine; it should never have been hacked off into a seperate page anyway. THis is what policy talk pages are for. -Splash - tk 23:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with both Splash and the proposed amendment. Stifle (talk) 19:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Changing the criteria?
Would it be possible to bump up the criteria from "less than 4 days old" to "less than 4 days and at least n edits", with n about 20 or so? Otherwise its trivial for a far sighted vandal to keep the account creation going. I know knocking up 20 edits isn't hard but it would raise the bar a bit William M. Connolley 19:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I would definitely support such a change - where would the proper place be to propose this, though? This is more something to bring to the attentions of developers rather than on this one page of the English wiki.. Cowman109 Talk 20:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The devs said that this would require database changes to do at the time we originally worked out this policy, since edit count information isn't actually stored by MediaWiki. See Wikipedia talk:Semi-protection policy/Archive 3. By way of asking for as little as possible, and keeping the barriers to editing as low as possible (I confess to this policy having been an abject failure on that count), it wasn't sought at the time. -Splash - tk 20:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Question
Is there a length on how long something can or should be semi-protected. I just found an article that had been semi-protected since September 22 and was rather stunned that no one had bothered to check back and see that the protection was never lifted. semper fi — Moe  23:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, Voice of All seems to be forced to do much of the work, but administrators are encouraged to unprotect long-protected pages by looking at Protected pages from time to time. Usually just a week or two is good enough unless there's a major problem. Cowman109 Talk 23:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * How about adding a category like in cleanup-date adding all semi-protected pages into a category for how long they have been protected? semper fi — Moe  00:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that's a great idea. Rx StrangeLove 15:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Would be a great tool. --Robdurbar 17:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Examples
I have never particularly understood why the 'examples' exist on this policy page, when we have WP:PP which is far more functional. The reason the examples should not be on the page is that they then appear to be policy to protect those pages forever. In the case of Wikipedia, I am not able to fathom why it suddenly replaced Jew (is it a better example? is Jew a worse example? does someone need to justify protecting Wikipedia so having it in the policy, hey, that's handy?). George W. Bush is about the only example that belongs on the policy page: permanent protection is highly toxic, and this page should not become a surrogate of either that toxin or WP:PP. Splash - tk 17:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't really see the need for any examples. Most policy pages don't need them.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  12:46, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Four days?
Is this number entirely arbitrary, or is there a reason for its selection? -- Littleghostboo [ talk ] 02:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It is the same limit as applies to being able to move pages around. At the time of instituting the limit for semi-protection (and earlier for moves), 4 days corresponded to something like the newest 2% of accounts. So essentially arbitrary, but handy because something like it already existed in the Mediawiki code at the time WP:SEMI was being developed at a policy and a technical level. -Splash - tk 09:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Template for long-term semi-protection
The question has been raised at WP:AN whether it makes sense to use sprotect for pages that are semi-protected more or less permanently. In response to that discussion, Moe Epsilon very kindly created User:Moe Epsilon/Semi2 as an alternative template for high-profile, long-term semi-protected pages. I am very much in favor of this, but I wanted to bring it up here and see if there are any objections before we start doing it. Chick Bowen 17:16, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm aware, this discussion has been done to death before. One of the counter arguments to this is that new users might get confused (or something) because there is no obvious way to edit the page, as the "edit this page" link would instead display "new source", and may think they can't edit all the pages. To be honest, I really don't care either way. --Lord Deskana (swiftmend!) 17:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Somewhere on one of the Wiki mailing lists I seem to recall Jimbo favoring the removal of the sprotect template in those very rare and unique instances where semi-protection isn't all that semi. Does anyone have a way to search through the archives for this?  RFerreira 06:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That template is now being used far beyond its original specification on dozens of pages that are neither high-profile nor need long-term semi-protection. Haukur 16:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Semi-Protection of Day's FA
I've noticed two occaisions over the last week on which the day's featured article has been semi-protected for a number of hours. My understanding of the policy was that the day's FA could be semi-ed for a few minutes only to remove serious vandalism and provide time to check that the article was back in shape. On the first occaision I raised this with the protecting admin, who dissmissed my concerns; I passed it off as a one off (the admin who protected had done a lot of work on the article to remove vandalism that day). However, I noticed again on the 14th November that Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) had been semi protected for a number of hours.

I don't want this to be an ideological - 'the FA should be open at all times' v 'we must do everything to stop the vandals' debate, but at the moment either: OR OR
 * Policy is being interpreted very differently by different admins - could we thus clarify it?
 * Admins are (unknowingly) breaking policy by giving the FA a lengthy semi-protection - so should we warn the protecting admins?
 * The policy does not reflect the consensus of the Wikipedia community - so should it be changed?

I'm not sure what the case is; but I'm putting it up for debate. I personally believe that we should clarify the policy to explain that the FA should only be semi-protected for very short periods to remove excessive vandalism (when rollbacks start rolling back to vandalised versions) --Robdurbar 10:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * See also WP:PEREN. Your first point is probably correct; it's also true that policy pages are edited all the time and most editors are unaware of the changes. By human nature, most people who read a policy once assume they know it, and won't see the need to read it again. ( Radiant ) 10:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To clarify what is happening at the moment, of the 14 featured articles on the main page in November as of today, 6 have had some sort of protection on them. Of these, Kochi(India) and Stuyvesant High School were protected only for a few minutes to sort out vandalism. Salvador Dali, Virtuti Militari and Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) were semi-protected by one admin, whose protection was removed later. Karen Dotrice was protected for a few hours and later protected for a few minutes to sort out vandalism. Robdurbar 10:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I appreciate the protecting the main page point and the comment in Raul's user space - whilst important, though, the latter is not policy and the former does not speak of semi protection. Bare in mind too that the semi-protection policy has never explicitly allowed for the protection of the featured article. --Robdurbar 10:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That page of Raul's is pretty much a guideline, though. WP:SEMI hasn't explicitly disallowed it either. ( Radiant ) 14:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Execpt that many people act like it does explicilty disallow it. Robdurbar 14:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The Featured Article of the day (the main page is permanently fully protected, so be careful with the terminology ;) ), should definitely not be protected for more than a few minutes unless there is serious vandalism that needs to be cleaned up. Mass penis-placement vandalism for example would merit semi-protection for some time, but other than that, it is is important to the foundation of Wikipedia that the featured article of the day, which I would assume attracts the most new users to Wikipedia, needs to be open for people to understand the concept of 'The encyclopedia that anyone can edit'. Sure, there's a good deal of vandalism, but I'm sure there are people who vandalize first eventually create accounts and edit positively. Basically, it's of fundamental importance that people can try out editing pages. Talking with the administrator who left the page semi-protected for several hours would be a good idea to see if there was a serious problem with vandalism at the time. Cowman109 Talk 20:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is in response to the question of whether different admins are interpreting policy differently--as I recall, no one ever semi-protected a main page FA until the admin's phone number vandal turned up, when it became quite obviously necessary. That created a precedent for doing it in response to extreme situations, but as far as I know no one has ever defined what those situations might be, and so it's not surprising that there's some confusion about them.  On the other hand, setting them out too explicitly would be a WP:BEANS-kinda thing to do.  So yes, they're being s-protected too much, and admins who happen upon them while s-protected should take the responsibility of unprotecting and then watching them.  But I still think we have no choice but to play it by ear.  Chick Bowen 20:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, that's kinda where my POV stands, and I was under the impression that consensus stood there too. If that is so - and I'm doing this all via talk so that at any later stage I can'tbe accussed of changing policy to suit my views - could we re-word the current sentence to state. "On the day's Featured Article, protection should last for a matter of minutes, not hours, and should only be used to allow serious vandalism to be reverted or prevented. Other pages linked from the Main Page may be protected if under attack" Robdurbar 01:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think specifying that it's for major vandalism only matters more than a time limit--one can easily imagine exceptions to that. You're right in principle, but I think specifying that it's not to be done lightly solves the problem without being overly restrictive.  Chick Bowen 03:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, I was just now alerted to this conversation I did not realize that we have a policy debate here. I semi-protected becuase of vandalism. I should probably unprotect as well... I sort of have been leaving that up to other admins as I have been busy on #wikipedia-spam. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 08:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

My impression is that s-protecting the main page featured article does much more damage than good. If there is need for a change in policy (or to frequently bend policy), it seems much more productive to simply hand out blocks like candy than to protect the main page article&mdash;much less collateral damage. Usually, spurts of vandalism that trigger semi-protection are really originating from just two of three IP addresses (sometimes only one), and nobody gets around to blocking them. The potential damage of "biting" blatant main page vandals with 24 hour blocks is much less than the main page featured article being protected. These articles actually do improve substantially during their time on the main page in most cases and they are basically the flagship of our open editing policies. savidan(talk) (e@) 20:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is true 90% of the time, and I agree in principle. However, we do get some fairly sophisticated vandals using dynamic IPs from time to time, and if (as has happened) their vandalism is particularly destructive (such as revealing personal info), we have no choice but to s-protect.  That is not to defend the amount of s-protecting that has recently been done.  Chick Bowen 22:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we need to allow for occaisional semi-protection. My suggestion was not really to set a time limit for such s-protection as such but to indicate that in general, when we say a 'brief period', most editors are thinking of, say 10-15minutes, and not 6 hours.
 * However, I've tried a different rewording on the article re some of the concerns above. I thought perhaps that now Raul's guidelines had been officially promoted to policy, that page may be expanded slightly to discuss this all in more detail. --Robdurbar 22:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

When the Today's Featured Article reads "HOME OF DICKSUCKING FAGGOTS WORLDWIDE" about 20% of the time, including an uninterrupted seven-minute stretch, as was the case for San Francisco, California, I would say common sense should trump blind adherence to policy. It is a disservice to readers to click on the day's featured article and be presented with a homophobic vulgarity instead.--DaveOinSF 20:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This has basically already been said, but there needs to be a balance between "everyone can edit" and "stop vandalism at all costs" and probably occasional, short, stretches of semi-protection to stop the most annoying vandals while leaving the article open most of the time is generally considered to be it. As for some article being protected for a long time, one of the reasons may just be that the protecting admin has forgot/isn't online anymore, not a purposeful attempt to lock down the article, and no-one's really noticed how long the article's been protected.  If you ever notice this, just go ahead and unprotect the article (or, if you're not an admin, ask one; I personally don't mind unprotecting if I'm online).  JYolkowski // talk 23:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If you are an admin and you unprotect a protected article, especially one that is the day's Featured Article, you are assuming the responsibility to stick around for an hour or so to make sure the vandalism does not resume. If you do not wish to take on this responsibility, DON'T UNPROTECT THE PAGE.  Some admin unprotected San Francisco and it was promptly re-subjected to "HOME OF DICKSUCKING FAGGOTS WORLDWIDE" vandal attack, including 13 attacks in 11 minutes.  Needless to say, it was left to some other administrator to unshit the bed.
 * Admins, please act responsibly.--DaveOinSF 06:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that sysops should monitor pages they unprotect, but unless I'm missing something, it looks like in that incident the vandalism did not return until more than 10 minutes after the unprotection. That seems like more than enough time to wait to see if the vandalism immediately ensues, as people do have lives, you know :). Cowman109 Talk 15:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Indeed, you are missing something. In one instance the vandal attacks resumed eight minutes later; in another instance, the attacks resumed two minutes later.--DaveOinSF 19:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Semi-protection / protected confusing terminology
When you attempt to edit a semi-protected page, a message says the page is protected. Any chance we could resolve this confusion? Even I'm not sure whether I can edit the page or not. Stevage 00:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've changed the message so it now says semi-protected. -- Steel 01:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Message is at MediaWiki:Semiprotectedpagewarning and the change looks good. By the way though, shoudln't the edit tab be displaying as "view source" if you don't have permission to edit a given page? --W.marsh 01:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Reasons for semi-protection
If a page is given semi-protected status, could the reason "if not obvious" be put on the talk page or somewhere. I cannot see why France for example should have this designation. (FA, some articles where there is much argument, and "topics currently under evolution" make sense.) Jackiespeel 17:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You can find protection reasons by going to the page history, then "view logs for this page". France was protected due to anon vandalism. -- Steel 18:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Some of us use "timed library sessions" and others may not be familiar with how to get locate the reasons: I was just using France as an example (having just come across it). Perhaps a link to the relevant explanation from somewhere on the page in question/talk page.

There will always be vandalism and "creative reinterpretation/ rearrangement" (not to mention "getting one's fingers in a twist"), and some pages will need more looking after than others. Possibly a bit more explanation at times may prevent the discouragement of people (not only newbies) who are put off by vandalism or attempts to block it. (Like others I sometimes correct typos etc seen in passing without necessarily signing in - but if I get a "Your number is blocked because of vandalism" message I don't always pursue it, especially if time short.) Jackiespeel 18:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

My concern is that the page for Iraq is protected. To me, this phrase makes no sense: "...Iraqi nationalists that are fighting against what they view as a foreign occupation." I wanted to edit this out, because obviously it IS foreign occupation they are fighting, and not what they personally view as a foreign occupation, but the page was locked. I once added, to a page I cannot recall, that the Bush administration is just as much a terrorist regime as the al-queda. According to the definition of "terrorist" this was not a mistake, but was removed from the page almost as quickly as it was posted. This is obviously not what Wikipedia should stand for. This site should be a source for information that goes beyond politics and nationalism. If the current US occupation of Iraq is illegal, and if they can be considered a terrorist faction under the definition that wikipedia provides, then that is what every related page should say. It's pure ignorance to ignore these facts, and If I were family of one of the 650,000 people that have perished in Iraq since 2003, or family to one of the soldiers that have died as a result of this hopeless war, i would be utterly insulted to know that the hard facts were being shit upon by those who are not only supposed to stand for such information, but who are also supposed to be making this information available for the millions of people that demand it. This sort of information is available for people to uncover from various sources; hiding it on this site only makes Wiki look foolish and dominated by the corrupt system that we all writhe in.

Just for kicks
I think it would be fun to semi-protect this page, you know? Anyone want to get on that? --NEMT 02:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that all official policy pages, as well as important guidelines, should be semiprotected. It is very harmful to have those pages vandalized, especially when information is removed or when the text is rewritten to say the opposite of the original text. Such vandalism has gone unnoticed for relatively long periods of time (relatively because it is expected that vandalism on such pages will be quickly reverted). People can do a lot of damage if they do not know the rules or if they get rules that are the opposite of what they should be.


 * Also, I think semiprotection should be used for medium and moderately high use templates instead of full protection. The cutoff between semi and full protection would be when the template is used on so many articles or is in such high profile places that it would significantly affect site performance or cause significant disruption or embarrassment. In those cases, the templates would be fully protected. However, the vast majority of template vandalism that I have seen is from IP addresses, which are blocked with semiprotection. Using only semiprotection makes it easier for non-admins to contribute, and I think that full protection drives them away because they do not want to take the time to fully explain on the talk page and then wait around for an admin to see the message and then answer questions that the admin has and so forth. Finally, we could be less discriminating in what templates are protected since the borderline ones would only be semiprotected. -- Kjkolb 16:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Expired blocks
I suggest that semi-protection should apply to users who have a recently expired block. For example, if a user was blocked for 24 hours, semi protection should apply as if he was a new user. This will help cut down on cases where users who have a recently-expired block from immediatly pushing their POV onto an article (as it was done with Joseph Stalin and other articles pushed by the same user.) --Sigma 7 08:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I Agree--Vikas Kumar Ojha Talk to me! 17:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
 * While this is a good idea, it would likely require a lot more work to implement than you've probably assumed. --NEMT 07:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Just my line
There are perhaps some lines to add. "La Befana" should become only "Befana". "La" in Italian means "the", and we can omit writing it. 2007 January 6. In Italy, Sicily and Sardinia the Epiphany (Epifania) is the last day of Christmas time. On Twelfth Night, according to the ancient tradition, an ugly old woman (aka Befana) wearing a black shawl on her head, -often represented as a sort of good witch armed with flying broom -goes into the houses through the chimney to bring gifts, cakes or toys to the good children. On Epiphany day children wake up very early in the morning, and, very excited and curious, they hurry to discover what the Befana left for them. If children had been bad instead of toys they will find ash and coal in their socks. Many children believe the Befana is Santa's wife and that she lives on the South Pole. Since the XIII century, Befana's day is one of the most popular Italian feast long awaited by children and recalls the visit of the three Magi to the Holy Child. About Santa Claus. Once best known as Saint Nicholas, his relics and pieces of the body are kept today in the Basilica di San Nicola, Bari (in Southern-Italy). Some observers have reported seeing myrrh exude from these relics and are still studying them. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and is often called upon by sailors who are in danger of drowning or being shipwrecked. --Jack 13:45, 6 Jan 2007 (UTC)

Invalid link
This link doesn't work anymore. Should it be removed from the article? Xiner (talk, email) 00:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Expiration of semi-protection
I've just noticed that an "expiration" tool was added to the semi-protection tool above the confirmation button. I am therefore wondering about the usefulness of this new tool as we already have WP:RFPP where users can request for unprotection. --  Szvest   -  Wiki me up ®  16:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotect articles featured on the Main Page
"Today's featured article" and articles "in the news" attract vandals like magnets. I think we should semiprotect them to stop the folly. --Smack (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * See Main Page featured article protection, and its talk page, for a lengthy discussion of this issue. Chick Bowen 21:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

wild memes
On a braod brush strokes view I think it would take the wind out of the sails of wiki to over (semi) protect all/to many/most articles, it would stop a lot of vigilence, and stop attracting new members, I think wiki would stullify and face instituional creep, as well as possible slow death by a thousand cuts and inbreeding of memes. Wiki needs to attract wild memes to keep alive, literally,  JUBALCAIN 08:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Pre-emptive semi-protection for highly sensitive pages
Following this discussion at the Village Pump, I'd like to propose tweaking the wording of the policy in order to allow permanent semi-protection on pages which, although they are not as frequently vandalized as George W. Bush, are typically vandalized in a particularly offensive way. In particular, this would allow for the semi-protection of Nigger, Auschwitz Concentration Camp and the like. Pascal.Tesson 00:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Though I understand the arguments for such "pre-emptive" protection, I would be strongly against such permanent (semi-)protection; protect the article only when needed. I've given my (lengthy) views on this matter a few times already, but I'ld be happy to explain my reasoning if requested. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note? ) 03:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The point which Pascal and I have tried to highlight is that these pages are the target of offensive and upsetting vandalism on an ongoing and persistent basis. Certainly George W Bush is repeatedly vandalised, but seeing an edit saying "George Bush, die" is less distressing, except perhaps to his family, than going to Auschwitz concentration camp and finding an edit saying "All Jews should have been burned". And there are much more offensive posts in the edit history. Hence the proposal for permanent semi-protection, which I would support.--Anthony.bradbury 11:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Lewis and Clark Expedition not working
Lewis and Clark Expedition has the tag for protection but not working. I just rv'd 3 unregistered edits in a row. --Xiahou 02:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Should be working now. It had an expired protection tag. Tito xd (?!?) 03:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * (And just a note: neither adding the tags nor removing the tags will affect the protection status of any page; only administrators can do so via the "protect" tab. The tags are placed there for convenience, but adding a tag will not automatically protect a page, just as a tag remaining on a page doesn't necessarily mean the page is still protected, though it should be - otherwise, the tag should be removed. Thanks!) Flcelloguy (A note? ) 03:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

How do I request that an article be semiprotected?
This page mentions no means of getting an article semiprotected, and it should. Someone please add it, and if you can, post to my talk page about how to do it because I really need to get Joe E. Newsome High School semiprotected (look at the history). Thanks. Steevven1 (Talk) (Contribs) (Gallery) 19:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Post a message to Requests for page protection, or WP:RPP (shortcut). --rogerd 19:18, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Correction to article.
Please note that Howard K. Stern is Anna Nicoles husband, not boyfriend.

Andrew Spice —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Spiceaj (talk • contribs) 04:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

Semi-protected pages without or
From time to time, I've come across pages which appear to be semi-protected, but do not include a sprotected or sprotected2 tag. My response is normally just to add a tag, but is there a possible explanation for this other than an oversight by the admin applying the protection? Could there be a legitimate reason for having a semi-protected article which is not marked or categorised as such? AdorableRuffian 16:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotection notice
If you would like to comment on doing away with the semiprotection notice on articles that are semiprotected by adding additional information elsewhere, please see this discussion. -- Kjkolb 04:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge with WP:FULL
It's been suggested that we merge this page with WP:FULL (see WP:LAP). I whipped User:Steel359/Protection policy earlier today and found that the two policy pages merged very easily. Constructive comments welcome (either at User:Steel359/Protection policy or WT:LAP). -- Steel 16:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Change of Protection template?
Why has the protection "info box" been changed to make it less apparent to users? I always found it a helpful feature... 216.220.15.211 19:28, 28 February 2007 (UTC)