User:Splash/Semi-protection analysis

This page is an entirely personal commentary on the first few hours and days of WP:SEMI. You are free to edit it, per Wikilosophy and the GFDL, but I'd very very much prefer comments on the talk page, and will move them there if they appear here. Splash^talk

Thoughts at 04:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a little more than 24 hours into sprotection.

High profile articles

I presume these were protected principally owing to their profile rather than a temporally localised vandal-spree.

George W. Bush. An interesting case for all the obvious reasons. Discussion about permanence of sprotection at WP:VPP. Hard to call immediately.
John Kerry. Protected same time as GWB, largely as a high-profile test of SP. Unprotected 19 hours later, with no edits apart from a vandal-move in the meantime. On unprotection, vandalism resumed quickly.
- Killing off of editing bad, no vandalism good. Need to study the vandalism rate before and after.
  - Reprotected within about 30 mins.
Adolf Hitler. Sprotection appears to have killed off editing to this article almost entirely (04:04, 23 December 2005 (UTC)), but then almost all previous edits were vandal-related.
Penis. Editing killed off as above; page-move vandal pretty much the only subsequent 'editor'.
Jesus. Most subsequent edits appear to be useful; edit rate substantially reduced as above.

Less high-profile but busy

Gerard Way. Bulk of pre-protect edits vandalism. At time of writing (04:04, 23 December 2005 (UTC)) not a single edit subsequent to sprotection.
50 Cent. Characteristics as for Gerard Way, but with a few edits after the protect.

Didn't need sprotection

This is my personal POV on these articles. This page is not an RfC in the making.

Homosexuality. Protected fairly arbitrarily, apparently as part of a "test" of a few pages and quickly unprotected with reason that there was no justification. I'm inclined to agree — the overall edit rate is low and thus the vandal rate is lower — signal-to-noise ratio arguments don't work in the absence of a serious problem. Receives many poor edits, but that's emphatically not what SP is to prevent.
Evolution. Much as above, but vandal rate lower in the first place. SP is not a means to improve the quality of general editing, only to stem an otherwise-unstoppable wave of vandals.
Wikipedia. Unprotected within 12 hours since linked to from the main page — philosophy as per the daily featured article.
Hurricane Katrina. No case for sprotection, imo. History does not show a high vandal rate, or a then-prevailing vandal. I unprotected this within an hour. Perhaps the __NOEDITSECTION__ is keeping a lid on things. If many anons aren't being reverted, that's better than locking them out wholesale.
United States. No case for sprotection, imo. As for Hurricane Katrina, with an added emphasis on the fact that many anon edits are kept. Sprotection not supported on talk page, but reapplied later in the day. Unprotected by me again, per the lack of talk page support and poor history-based justification.

To deal with a particular user/problem

These are pretty precise uses of sprotection to deal with highly localised, but possibly long-term problems. They exhibit some collateral damage as a result.

Bogdanov Affair. Interesting use of sprotection to deal with a sock-infested article subject to Arb rulings.
William Luther Pierce. To deal with a long-term Arb-banned user vandalising regularly. Hadn't forseen sprotect as a tool for enforcing arb rulings. Must be careful about this, since it has the effect of extending an Arb ruling to innocent anons and new editors, which rollback-and-block doesn't.
List of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes. To deal with a single wilfully hoax-prone editor. A good use of sprotect, probably, but exhibiting the same problems as the preceding two. Zero edits subsequent to protect, but virtually all of last 250 edits related to mentioned hoaxer.
History of Gibraltar and Disputed status of Gibraltar. To deal with an admin-banned irritant using dynamic IPs to POV push and vandalize. Range blocks attempted, but always undesirable. Vprotect was preventing good editors from working, and this was not a content dispute. Exhibits same collateral damage as above.

Exemplary candidates

This is my personal POV on these articles. This page is not an RfC in the making.

Jimmy Wales. A good candidate, and not because of its profile. Is/was being hit by a new-name vandal and was vprotected. That protect reduced quickly to sprotect, keeping editing open to nearly all. Also good candidate for 24h unprotect.
Japanese media. A model case. History shows a determined, dynamic-IP vandal. Exactly what my personal view of SP had in mind.