Wikipedia talk:Main Page featured article protection/Archive2

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(Discussion for the month of December 2006)

Contents

[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 occurred 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 [1], [2], [3], and [4] (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)