Wikipedia talk:Protection policy

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Add new text under old text. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Start a new topic Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Shortcuts WT:PROTECTWT:PROTECT WT:PPOLWT:PPOL

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Should we perhaps lean a bit more into pending changes instead of semi protection? _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 00:05, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

No, it’s the single worst technical feature on the site. It is clunky, still creates an entry for the vandalism in the page history, and there are cases where good edits from established users get stuck behind it. I actually can’t think of a single use case where I would prefer it to semi. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

The only argument I have seen that I (mostly) agree with for PC is for short term rises in popularity for an article (usually breaking news) where there are a large number of valid TA edits mixed in with the vandalism. If a page is just being vandalised... semiprot. Nine times out of ten when I come across a PC'd article I end up converting it because it's only stopping the vandalism from appearing in the live article (and some of it needs RD and should never have been made in the first place). Primefac (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I think that the fact that an article is PCed strongly discourages vandalism. Plus, the PC line is quite short. Most things are responded to within an hour. Plus, in the few cases I come across vandalism, it’s easy enough to see that I can just dismiss within a few seconds (like when a TA changed one of the “goals earned” values from 0 to 9000). _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:30, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would invite you to browse through my PC log, from a random selection of five I found five pages with RD or OS-worthy content in the history (which, granted, is usually why I come across them, but the point is that it doesn't necessarily mean "less vandalism"). Primefac (talk) 19:33, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Wow. I’ve done, I think, 15-ish PCs, of which 3 were wrong and 1 was vandalism. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:35, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Could your perspective be shaped by the fact that you recently were granted PCR and want more stuff to use it on? PC is an extraordinarily ineffective technical tool that really should be depreciated. It’s a legacy from a different era of Wikipedia that never really caught on even after what was one of the most divisive debates in the site’s history. The permission itself also makes zero sense and should be bundled with autoconfirmed since the separate restriction makes PC more restrictive than semi, which was never the intent. It’s a truly terrible technical tool in virtually every circumstance. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:47, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

I had this belief before (started about 2 months ago), but I didn’t know the size of the “backlog”, or how hard it would be to check each edit. Also, I expected a lot more vandalism than I actually see. (My other suggestion for improvement of the tool would be giving it to anyone with EC status.) _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:52, 14 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Here we are again. Redrose64 reverted three of my edits without an edit summary (in blatant violation of WP:PGBOLD, I might add). I made sure that none of the edits were substantive; they were merely descriptive of either (a) current practice or (b) technical features, which is why I followed WP:PGBOLD.

I don't mind the revert of the position of the lock icons (they can remain on the right side, I don't care), but I would like to know if there's consensus to restore the other two edits. I can explain them in more detail, but I need to know which you disagree if and why. Of course anyone is welcome to comment. FaviFake (talk) 21:44, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would also like an explanation here as I am very confused how these edits are considered vandalism. They may not be right, and may warrant reverting, but Redrose64 can you please explain what part of these edits, which you reverted with zero explanation are considered vandalism? Where is the issue with these, first of all, and second how do these good faith changes constitute vandalism? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:51, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

FaviFake, don't give me that. You have been told, on a number of occasions, not to make undiscussed changes to pages in Wikipedia space (amongst others). As for "without an edit summary", here is the edit. It uses the default summary of the rollback feature, which is preset and not alterable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:47, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Redrose64, I am NOT familiar with this editor nor their history so can you please share? How was their edit in any way vandalism? Where is this history of them being warned? And surely you know that you can rollback WITH an edit summary... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:53, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

For the record, I'll note that less than a year ago, Redrose64 performed an almost identical revert of three of my edits on this exact policy page, again without explaining why. I immediately opened a talk page discussion and the following day an admin went ahead and restored one of my edits. Since Redrose64 never actually commented in the discussion, I restored the remaining two edits three weeks later. (To this day, I still have no idea why the edits were reverted; I'd love to know!!) However, last year they did not threaten to block me without further notice for "vandalising Wikipedia", so the situation is not exactly the same.

This also happened a month later at {{Humorous essay}} (of all places...): I made three minor edits, Redrose reverted them with the cryptic edit summary "I am fed up with this", so I created another talk page discussion. Redrose did not respond after multiple pings over two weeks, so I restored the edits and an admin commented "The changes here look like an improvement to me." FaviFake (talk) 22:56, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

@Redrose64: what am I missing? You must be seeing something the rest of us are not... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:03, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

I just found a fourth occurrence of this behaviour while scrolling through my contributions. Last year, on September 17th, Redrose reverted more than 10 minor edits by 4 different users that dated back to August 4th, with the edit summary "Enough. FaviFake, please STOP messing around with these pages". Again, I opened a discussion and pinged Redrose and another editor replied:

Hi, @FaviFake! I, too, am confused by @Redrose64's reversion and seemingly frustrated tone. ... Your edits seemed fine to me as well. They may be slightly wrong or violate an MoS rule (I don't know if they do; I'm just speculating reason for reversion), but that certainly doesn't constitute "messing around with these pages." @Redrose64, please explain.​​
— User:CoroneC0rnix-64 22:26, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

This pattern of behaviour seems concerning. I'm usually not the type of person that gives up easily, so I eventually restored these 11 changes after giving Redrose three weeks to comment. But I can easily imagine that an inexperienced editor might not want to go through each step of the dispute resolution process for their changes after being reverted, reprimanded, and ignored by a site administrator. FaviFake (talk) 00:08, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Basically, what Daniel Quinlan (talk · contribs) wrote below, plus: with all these rewritten sentences and paragraphs, changes of order and style, it can be very difficult to spot any actual changes of meaning, accidental or not, that should not have occurred. Things like strengthening or weakening of advice, negation of advice, important caveats being dropped or moved away from the guidance that they should be associated with.

It would have been better to start with a talk page thread, saying something like "I feel that the sentence [example 1] is unclear, and should perhaps be rewritten to [example 2]. What do others feel?". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:34, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Without going into great detail about why I reverted each of the edits from 9 August (three of the four edits by FaviFake), here are the primary reasons each edit was undone. While I recognize that these are good faith edits, I don't think they are improvements and the changes should be discussed before putting them into the policy.

1. Unnecessary bolding: A number of policies seem to attract unnecessary bolding and emphasis of random words. The meaning of and in this sentence is clear enough as it is.
2. Unnecessary rewriting: I don't believe the new text is any clearer, and it is longer which is not a plus. The explanatory note is also less clear now. I agree that the term registered users should be used throughout the article, though (so I will restore that part of the edit).
3. Icon moved to left: I entirely disagree that this is an improvement. It interrupts the start of the text in each of these sections and people are coming here to read the text.
4. More unnecessary rewriting: The changes as a whole aren't an improvement and now-defunct stands out as being more vague and less clear than saying the namespace no longer exists.

On the whole, the continual churning of the text and reformatting of this policy seems to be excessive, unwarranted, and unhelpful to the project. Most edits to the text should be focused on keeping the policy accurate and, where the text is more of a guideline than a policy, an accurate reflection of administrator best practices. Regards. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 17:29, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply