Wikipedia:Protecting BLP articles feeler survey/Implement Semi-protection (SP) for all BLPs

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Implement Semi-protection (SP) for all BLPs

Support (SP)

Supports (SP) 1–100

I have to agree with 68 (see below). Only more controversial figures should get this type of protection. The only problem with that is who would decide which people are controversial? I think Adm. and any bios on living people that arent protected automatically, should be up to reg. users to decide. If they think that the adm. should review it again to see if its worthy of the protection, then just drop them a note.--D3t3ctiv3 (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Have always supported this. I'd also support a proposal made by Greg Kohs (comment on the proposal not the proposer…) to experimentally semiprotect a subset of BLPs (for example, all those beginning with "A") and after a couple of months compare the vandalism & editwarring stats with the unprotected control group. – iridescent 19:28, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I find no compelling reason to not use a tool we already have, semi-protection, to protect the reputations of living people on whom our project contains articles. If an IP wants to edit a BLP, create an account. One of the main reasons I first created an account back in early 2007 was that I was sick of being shut out of editing semi-protected articles. It's not a big deal to place semi-protection, and the reward (less vandalism and general junk on BLPs) far outweighs the risk (less IP editing generally). SDJ 19:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
2nd, but I think Flagged is better. rootology (C)(T) 19:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Tired of people coming in and trashing BLPs and I have to clean it up, especially when I don't look carefully enough for a few weeks and bad and good edits get mixed up. Frankly, I think you should give IPs maybe 50 to 100 "free" edits and after that they have to register. It's not like they are protecting anything being anonymous or giving anything away being registered. (Or maybe it is, but I think most of them don't know what it is any more than I do.) CarolMooreDC (talk) 19:53, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The only risk is that article subjects who see defamation will not be able to fix it without registering. As long as we do this via a template or some such that also includes, in the sitenotice text, links to the OTRS email address and BLP noticeboard, there is no real reason not to at least test the idea. I know a lot of people make much of anons providing a lot of our content, but I think that is less true now than it was and should be balanced against the fact that they also provide rather a lot of vandalism. In the case of BLPs, vandalism is a more pressing problem than it is in, say, articles on Pokémon. Guy (Help!) 20:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your answer is more backlogs? Seriously? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree per CarolMooreDC. Willking1979 (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
BLP's should be semi protected, I have always supported thus, but again, it won't happen, Wikipedia and "change" do not mix well. — Realist² 20:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, but as a second choice. I would favor doing this if it can be implimented more quickly. It shouldn't be required once flagged revisions are implemented, however. Cool Hand Luke 20:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I have frequently called for indefinite semi-protection of BLPs suffering from inordinate vandalism -- Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, Neve Gordon, Joel Beinin, Uri Avnery and several more. This would prevent not only anon ISP vandalism, but also the constant vandalism by one-off throw-away acocunts that has characterised these and other BLP articles. This peoposal would contribute significantly to reducing this problem. RolandR (talk) 20:55, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to point out that one of those three articles is not a BLP... Everyking (talk) 05:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Amended my comment in light of the (correct) criticism above. RolandR (talk) 00:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. shoy (reactions) 21:21, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice, or step on the way where we need to be (Semi and flagged for all BLP, flagged for everything in article space) ++Lar: t/c 21:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. Actually choice 2.5, as the optimum would be stricter than just flagging. Collect (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Second choice. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Support this option. Thanks, SqueakBox 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
. Keep it simple. I prefer this marginally over introducing yet another layer (flagged revisions), but both have merit. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously I support something I have been saying for months should occur. MBisanz ^talk 03:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is the least radical of possible steps, and it should be tried first. It will certainly help the situation somewhat, and then we can judge what to do further. If we do try flagged revisions, we should try it for a very small subset first, as proposed by Cenarium and others in the section on General Comments. (I'd suggest US Presidents)DGG (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fundamentally changing the nature of a very, very large portion of our site is the "least radical of possible steps"? What on Earth? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. BLP issues are among the most significant facing this project, and reducing or eliminating vandalism on those articles - particularly on lower profile BLPs - is part of the responsibility the project has to its article subjects. If this means indef semi-protection on those articles, so be it. Pfainuk talk 00:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. It's simple without adding an unreasonable amount of extra work. EconomicsGuy (talk) 09:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support this or some reasonable variation (there may be a subset of BLPs that are lower-risk, for example). I'm closely following the discussion on this page, which is developing some nuances I had not previously considered; further thoughts to follow. But I've become convinced that the status quo is not acceptable. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This would do nicely. First choice. Stifle (talk) 10:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Preventing real-world harm is crucial. Everyone can still edit, though they must create an account first, so I can't see why the open-edit brigade have too many worries GTD 21:56, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK for a start as long as it does not preempt even stronger measures in the future – such as far more stringent standards for inclusion, default-to-delete for AfDs on bios, and opt-out for marginally notable people. All these little-watched BLPs are legal and ethical time bombs, out there ticking away. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At minimum. Plus, all BLPs need a little transcluded wikibox: "Are YOU the subject of this article? HERE is what you need to do, to edit it" Followed by simple autoconfirm directions for newbie IPs who find themselves bio'ed, plus a link to OTRS and [1].S B H arris 00:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Much needed. Everyking (talk) 05:46, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea. WP needs much higher standards of protection for living people. Lawsuits aside, this is something often mentioned in critical articles about WP. Remember the person whose article said he was the real killer of JFK? It makes WP look bad when that kind of thing is reported. Redddogg (talk) 19:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're recalling the Seigenthaler incident. Like the vast majority of problems, it came from an IP address. Wily D 21:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1st - I think this is an excellent idea. I would like to see it expanded to heavily-vandalised articles in general. That is, all BLPs, and an easy way to semi-protect an article without going through an RfA... and yes I reallize that may be impractical or a bad idea.sinneed (talk) 21:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that some form of protection is a good idea, and I support this instead of flagged revisions due to the concerns expressed by User:Jéské Couriano. SU Linguist (talk) 21:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Actually, I wouldn't mind having ~~semi-protection be the default article state~~ anonymous editing be turned off by default for all articles. But I guess I'm still in the minority on that. --Alvestrand (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Alvestrand. Don't most of the problems come from anonymous users anyway?Openskye (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, although I would also support the idea of testing it on a random subset of articles for a few months first to see if it really does have the beneficial effect that I would predict. Anaxial (talk) 22:35, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This makes sense. How many BLP issues are really caused by established editors? Jclemens (talk)
Weak Support, especially if this can calm down the unfounded BLP paranoia that seems to be propelling this entire survey. I think this option is in fact more democratic and inclusionary than the flagging option. It takes very little effort to register and get a Wikipedia account, so I don't think that this option is really antithetic to the "everyone can edit principle". On the other hand, it is an established fact that most vandalism, especially of the barnyard childish kind, comes from IPs and it would certainly be reduced by permanent semi-protection. Nsk92 (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a semi-newbie here, but from what I've been seeing anon edits do seem to do more harm than good. I think that it is too easy to romanticize the value of anons as a source of valuable edits and as a way for new editors to get interested. It's just not that hard to register (maybe there are good ways to make it even easier?). I support a small-scale test to see how it works. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some further thoughts as I continue to read the ongoing debate. Many of the opposing comments cite the "anyone can edit" motto as something that would be lost with implementation. Emotionally, this is a powerful argument (and almost won me over at first), but it is not really based in fact. We require all editors to go through several steps -- going to the edit-this-page screen, understanding any of the editing tools they wish to use, hitting the save button -- to edit, and that's just the way it is. Registering is just a few steps more, and very easy ones in my experience, certainly not anything onerous or unreasonable. Anyone would still be able to edit: just register and edit. Also, there are many references to "BLP paranoia." Again, this argument is emotional (and a bit personal), rather than factual. There is nothing objectively paranoid about wanting to respect the personal and legal rights of living persons. It is a fact that frequent vandalism of BLP articles (and many others) occurs, certainly not a paranoid delusion. I find it helpful to keep in mind that, as visitorship grows exponentially, people who come to use the encyclopedia are interested in obtaining accurate information, not in watching the internal workings of an editing process patrolling for drive-by edits. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also: I notice that many users point out the need for newly-registered editors to wait an amount of time and perform an amount of other edits first. I think this concern should not get in the way of evaluating the basic merits of the proposals, because we can always modify the logistics, which are really a separate issue. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think so. jj137 (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
By a long way a better idea than flagged revisions and should happen immediately. Personally, I would consider stopping all IP edits across the entire encyclopedia. Anyone can still edit the encyclopaedia, however they must first create an account . If anything is antithetical to the project, flagged revisions are, where a change can't be simply and easily made where needed. Agree with Short Brigade Harvester Boris that this should be a first step only and stronger action is needed to prevent further BLP problems which eventually will blow up in our faces, not to mention our ethical responsibilities. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support So much time is wasted on cleaning up vandalism/POV/agendas on BLPs that a lot gets taken away from other editing endeavors. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support...Smarkflea (talk) 03:10, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think is quite a good idea. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 03:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support §FreeRangeFrog 04:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. Too many BLPs are either semi-protected or full protected. When something like this gets messed up, people can be held responsible, just like when Steve Jobs' obit was published.... -- RandorXeus. Remember to Be Bold! 05:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Potentially dangerous for every kid at every school being able to add false crap about people who can easily take legal action. The Dominator^Talk_Edits 05:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a less drastic alternative to flagged revs. Semiprotection of bios is reasonable for PR and legal reasons. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:07, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tentative Support. I suppose it depends on whether the person is likely to be a controversial figure, and whether it would attract much attention. For an instance, someone with the likes of Osama Bin Laden should be automatically protected, but some conductor, such as Zdenek Macal, that few people, on English Wikipedia anyway, have probably heard of, should only be protected with the usual criteria for an non BLP article. Vltava 68 13:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I'm sooo tired of foolish vandalism. Almost enough to drive me away. It's endemic on controversial sites, but even shows up on less controversial ones. Problems of not knowing why IP'ers and newbies are being stopped can be handled, I assume and hope, by a bot telling them what's happening.Bellagio99 (talk) 14:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support - Possibly a step too far but I'm willing to back it... Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 15:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support anything that reduces bad IP edits in sensitive pages. I see some opposers are worried that these measures might deter potential future editors. But if an editor is to be even halfway good, then s/he must have a sense of responsibility, and should register. That's why I registered before I started, particularly as my interest was certain biographies at that time. Add to that the fact that you can only learn if an admin or bot has access to your talk page. -- ALGRIF talk 17:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support There is too much vandalism on BLPs, some of it hatefilled. It's bad for Wikipedia and bad for some good people that are hurt by this, in real life. Priyanath ^talk 23:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Thaimoss (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - I've gotten involved in a handful of vandalism-plagued BLP's. Almost all the damage is done by anonymous editors. One simple step will greatly reduce this. Lou Sander (talk) 03:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - If we know that new and experienced editors sometimes struggle with BLP standards, how can we expect IP editors generally unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy & guidelines to adhere to them as well? ←Spidern → 05:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support while I think it's unfortunate that we must do this I still think we must do it. Spidern's point says it all really, and I also agree with Guy--Cailil ^talk 12:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support yes.--EchetusXe (talk) 14:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pages such as Jon Holmes are repeatedly vandalised and now information such as accurate date of birth has been lost through various edits and roll-backs C2r (talk) 19:20, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't help when people LIKE Jon Holmes are actively encouraging vandalism of BLP articles on radio and television GooRoo (talk) 18:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think this is probably sane.
Support This will cut down on the majority of vandalism, while not providing a false sense of security. --omnipotence407 (talk) 03:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think that we may have to do something, and this seems like the least intrusive solution, in that the regular editors will still be able to edit and have changes show up immediately. I think that saying that people must have accounts is reasonable (and I have read the arguments on the other side). I think that there are some constraints on having an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and bios of living people seems to be one of them. Morris (talk) 04:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I have read all of the arguments on this page for all options, both support and oppose. Respectfully, I must add my vote to the immediate semi-protection of all BLP's. It takes one single vandal to go unnoticed, a tort-happy BLP article subject and Wikipedia finds itself in a libel case that could have devastating impact on the project as a whole. Anything that can be done to reduce that potential liability is a good thing. Wikipedia will still remain 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit', just with an additional layer of protection. Anarchy be damned, something needs to be done to protect the Wikipedia project from a potential death sentence. It's easy to say "it hasn't happened yet"... but when it does, then what? --Chasingsol ^(talk) 05:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support for the simple reason that i.m.o. by now the entire Wikipedia should be permanently semi-protected. DVdm (talk) 09:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have to ask, if the whole wikipedia was semi-protected how would any new editor make the ten edits they would need in order to be autoconfirmed, and thus be able to edit semi-protected pages? Davewild (talk) 10:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I believe this change would eliminate a great deal of vandalism to BLP. If I'm wrong, a few month's trial would have little affect in any case.--John Foxe (talk) 14:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Even though it sort of undermines the function of Wikipedia (everyone can edit it) but that sort of is just a marketing scam nowadays it seems, this would do a great deal to avoid vandalism and especially controversial edits involving death and suches. --Kaizer13 (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support. I would prefer a semi-protection for all non-stub BLP articles. We mainly need protection for well-established articles and I don't like the idea of flagged version. I want everything I do to be visible immediately. I think we can semi-protect for a test period and see how it goes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This should eliminate most vandalism. Cadan ap Tomos 22:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This eliminates driveby without imposing onerous usability restrictions. Orderinchaos 22:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is a fair and reasonable solution to a complex and multifaceted problem, and I suspect that it would eliminate more than 50% of current BLP vandalism. CJCurrie (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's the most functional way of tackling the problem, using a solution we already have and which already works. Rebecca (talk) 02:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It never hurts to have some protection, it will cut down on vandalism, and I'm almost sure it will not hurt Wikipedia in terms of quality edits. Makes it more of a legitimate encyclopedia. If someone wants to edit a page so damn much they can wait a few days. :) ~ [t] .: Flffy'd :. [c] ~ 02:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support per Magioladitis. There are plenty of BLP stubs in need of expansion (or even creation) that IP editors or new users might have the knowledge on that existing users don't.--J. F. Mam J. Jason Dee (talk) 03:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. First choice. This should have been done years ago. No sense in WAITING for the lawsuit. JBsupreme (talk) 03:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: First choice. I see constant vandalism, particularly along political lines. Registration is free and easy, so it doesn't preclude anyone from stepping out of the shadows. Niteshift36 (talk) 04:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Being scientific about it as User:Iridescent suggested sounds sensible (with a control group etc.). However, some of the negative side effects mentioned in the section below seem harder to measure (discouraging constructive anon IP editors etc.) Lanma726 (talk) 06:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: At least, we can ban accounts this way and it would greatly reduce vandalism. -- Lyverbe (talk) 14:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - way past due - Alison ^❤ 14:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLP vandalism is some of the most frequent I come across, and I've frequently seen IPs changing birthdates etc by a couple of years here and there - sneaky vandalism that very easily slips through the cracks. This would cut down on that and improve the quality of our information. --JaGa^talk 17:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support: Heck, I'm in the "registration should be required to edit articles" camp. As is said above, this would certainly help blunt a lawsuit, any which would accurately point out that Wikipedia right now takes no steps to prevent or deter libel of living persons, save for the (oft-erratic) vigilance of volunteers. RGTraynor 21:11, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - И i m b u s a n i a talk 22:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support (as 2nd choice). This option is probably less effective than the flagged revisions solution below, but on the other hand, it's much less complex. The problem with it is is rather that "any unregistered user can edit" has so much evolved into a Wikipedia mantra that semi-protecting large sets of articles is unlikely to find wide acceptance. (Below, some people are "shocked and dismayed" that this option is even being discussed - huh?) --B. Wolterding (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support as an extension of my stance on protection. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 00:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - it's great that Wikipedia is open for edits from everybody, but we need a bit of accountability too, the openness is preserved, everybody can create an account if he/she's serious about editing articles. There's minimum pain involved. In my opinion all the articles should be semi-protected, I don't know how popular is this opinion, but in any case this is even more important in case of BLP articles. man with one red shoe 00:21, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I spend a huge chunk of my time on Wikipedia reversing vandals. Imagine what could be accomplished with this simple measure, given the limited time most editors have to create content. Why not mandate registration for editing all articles? Ryanjo (talk) 01:04, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - I think the latter option is the better, but it is important to have some controls, particularly over libelous content. NoVomit (talk) 03:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - echo what Iridescent (support #1) said. Protecting a test group and comparing differences in edit histories for vandalism/edit wars is a great idea. It's long past due for us to take extra measures to protect the subjects of our BLPs. لenna vecia 03:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Having gone through an extended struggle on a BLP that an IP, (and then a succession of socks), wanted to add negative OR and attack-site sources to, I believe we definitely need to get control over this. I've never understood why IPs cannot get an account. New principle: Anyone can edit, just get an account. Evaluate how it works with BLPs and then consider other classes of articles (e.g., FAs). Sunray (talk) 07:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You should change that to Anyone can edit, just get an account, wait four days and make 10 edits to other articles. Don't forget that in order to edit semi-protected articles you must be autoconfirmed which requires 10 edits and a delay of four days. Davewild (talk) 09:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, why wouldn't a serious person wait four days for the privilege of editing Wikipedia? Sunray (talk) 16:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re-read Wikipedia:Introduction. Note the content and the tone. There's nothing there about it being a privilege. It's an invitation - and not an invitation to start after waiting 4 days, it is an invitation to start immediately. This is one of the core values of wikipedia. Kingturtle (talk) 06:11, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Unnoticed vandalism is a massive problem, but BLPs are the area where it has the most effect on real life and stuff. Semi-protection is a relatively easy thing that should reduce this. It's not as if we don't have plenty of other articles to edit. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 09:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's exhausting to both add content and fend off vandals, particularly persistent vandals. There are articles which I know contain errors & falsehoods re BLPs, but which go uncorrected because editors know that we "have to pick our fights", i.e. there are more anonymous trollers than there is time to combat them. This would be a useful tool in doing so. EylonTheGreen (talk) 11:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Support IPs have been a net negative for BLP articles for as long as I've been here. The percentage of IP edits to BLP articles that are vandalism is very high indeed, and the vandalism is not always reverted in a timely manner. This is my first choice. Enigma ^message 16:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support We don't have enough eyes on our articles. We need something like this to prevent vandalism from accumulating in obscure bios. Zagalejo^^^ 20:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support If we really have a problem that can't be handled by robots, we should take the lowest-impact and most wikipedian option. Drpixie (talk) 22:58, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Based on my own experience here and on other wikis, including ones where I'm an admin, 90% of true vandalism (as opposed to differences of opinion) comes from unregistered editors. If something really does have to be done, then this is the solution I'd support. However, I do wonder if this may scare off people wanting to make edits of genuine benefit, but who either don't want to register or can't do so due to their situation or circumstances. Emma white20 (talk) 00:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I think this is a great idea, it is important to be able to make these biographies un-vandalized. I do however suggest we also get robots on the job of watching these pages. Fully support this idea! Stealth (talk)
Support Wikipedia needs to show due diligence in not allowing itself to be a platform for libel. Beve (talk) 08:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support (also for all articles, not just BLP). mfc (talk) 09:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I agree with the point Sunray made. Also extend this to all articles, if possible; it makes our work much easier when we don't have to waste half our time reverting anonymous vandalism. SBC-YPR (talk) 10:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Would make wanton vandalism less appealing, although legal issues must be considered in relation to defamation. Definitely for BLPs or even those of the recently deceased. Probably not all articles as this detracts from the real point of Wikipedia - for everyone to contribute. Just my opinion... Ljm091 (talk) 14:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Dealing with the BLP issues far outweighs any idea that "anyone can edit" in any immediate sense. This won't solve the problem, but it will discourage a lot of drive-by vandalism and some of the more annoying sockpuppetry (in my opinion, of course). Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incredibly Strong Support. Since last "good" version is a terribly subjective term and can potentially remove constructive content, a semi-protection on all BLPs is a much more viable and fair solution to combat vandalism on these pages. --Amwestover (talk|contrib) 16:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support It just makes sense for these litigation-bombs-in-waiting to do some sort of protection. Timmccloud (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This will prevent the bulk of vandalism, without the problems of flagged revisions. And it's not a large burden to require people to register before editing some articles. --Alynna (talk) 17:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - While this certainly will not rule out vandalism its entirity, it is certainly a reasonable restriction to make, that will only help. I see no downside, and only the potential for it helping. --–m.f ^{(t • c)} 19:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This doesn't mean that wikipedia is no longer the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. You can still edit, you just need to register to edit BLP articles. Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend. --Kbdank71 20:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Supports (SP) 101–200

Strong support - BLPs are a special subset of Wikipedia articles in terms of need for sensitivity, legalities, and favorite targets of vandals. I think they need the most stringent protection available. Otherwise it's just a matter of time before we have another Seigenthaler incident, or worse. Ward3001 (talk) 02:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - "Anyone can edit" still means "anyone can edit". Registering is free. Having one hoop you need to jump through to edit these sensitive articles should not be a big deal for those who really have something to contribute. GreyWyvern (talk) 15:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support OrangeDog (talk) 16:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support It will help to improve Wiki's public perception.--Analogue Kid (talk) 18:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I do support the idea. I think like it was mentioned before that the real (flesh and blood) person should have a prominent saying with respect to his/her page, somehow... not losing objectivity and the social force of WP. I also think there is the issue of who is a living person, excuse the absurdity. How is some page removed from BLP status? What status should the page for Elvis have? --Consci (talk) 04:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Er… When they stop being in Category:Living people? The fact that Elvis Presley includes a photo of his grave should be a subtle hint as to his BLP-or-otherwise status. – iridescent 19:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elvis Lives: The grave says "Elvis Aaron Presley", but the death certificate used the name "Aron" (not the same) which Elvis had preferred until wanting to use the Biblical spelling "Aaron", plus I think that grave is empty (because Evita's body disappeared), so people claim "Elvis sightings". Consider also: "brain-dead", as in Bill Gates, "The Internet is a passing fad" (1995), or being in a coma as death. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Though maybe we could put a template on semiprotected pages telling new users of the register and autoconfirm processes. Quantumobserver (talk) 22:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was saddened to see this vandalism, an apparent outgrowth of the discussion here, which I reverted. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:16, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support I want to see the least restrictive solution implemented. Jmbranum (talk) 21:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cla68 (talk) 03:56, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. some auto boxed information about editing by the subject of the article, and a link to a standards and practices page would be good too. --Outlawpoet (talk) 04:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support including support for "semi-protecting" the whole Wikipedia: Creating an account is a click away in order to provide constructive edits by anybody. At the same time I feel that too much time and effort goes into tracking down and reverting IP vandalism instead of using the time for something more constructive; using the time for actually improving the articles instead, meaning improving the overall quality of Wikipedia instead of chasing after "hit and run" nonsense added by some IP editors.--Termer (talk) 08:41, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but then again I support restricting editing to user accounts, so that it not surprising. --Legis (talk - contribs) 16:22, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- with a caveat. It's been so long since I have registered, I don't remember how anonymous registering a pseudonym is. I do my editing as "billollib" rather that "Bill Oliver," for instance, and while I have no concern about people knowing that billollib == Bill Oliver, I don't know how hard that is to figure out without reading this sentence. I think that there is a place for anonymous editing -- paticularly in cases where a persion is knowledgeable about a subject but posting with an indentifier would be harmful to the poster -- the classic historical examples of American Revolutionaries, Deep Throat, etc come to mind. However, I don't see a problem with tracking pseudonymous posters for vandalism as long as the tracking to true identities is not done.Billollib (talk) 18:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support-I believe that this will help avoid vandalism on BLPs since autoconfirmed accounts are less likely to vandalize (after all, they did make enough "ethical" edits to become autoconfirmed, right?) -- Anon126 (talk - contribs) 06:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support In addition to other points mentioned, keep in mind that everytime poorly written, if not outright vandalistic text is present in articles, no matter how quickly reverted, Wikipedia loses credibility. At a slight disconvience to honest editors without an account, we can help preserve Wikipedia's legitimacy. --DisasterManX (talk) 06:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support-This will help reduce vandalism.TTC at 13:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support Prefer flagged revs on BLPs. GDonato (talk) 13:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support as per Nsk92 (32) Ngorongoro (talk) 19:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I don't see any problem with restricting newer or anonymous editors from editing BLP articles which have been subject to recent or ongoing vandalism. There are plenty of other articles out there to be created/expanded/improved which don't deal with living people. —Marchije•^speak/_peek 22:47, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - per user Termer.
Weak Support I invariably look at my watchlist and shiver at seeing any changes made by IPs. My fears are often justified, but I am occasionally surprised that the edits are not always vandalism. We already have a fair number of registered trolls and vandals on the project, so making an account obligatory would not necessarily stop the problem altogether. On balance, I believe it's better to semi all BLPs than do nothing to protect us from potentially libellous editing from school kids, other pranksters, and wanton vandals. However, not all bios are vulnerable. Perhaps a better option may be to classify bios as 'high-' and 'low- risk' biographies and protect accordingly. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I like Ohconfucius' point here (and it fits well with my own proposal below (#22)), though I am curious through which channels you feel problems should be communicated and decisions made. My own idea, if I may (and I should probably move this below, too, at some point): since en.wikichecker.com has an edit war feed, use a program derived from that to automatically alert all watchers (or maybe just watching admins) when a BLP seems to be becoming an hotspot of activity (assuming a similar system is not already in place; if it is, I haven't encountered it). This would allow a rather objective and easily referenced measure in determining risk. Ngorongoro (talk) 17:12, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support for semi-protection. I have long felt, just from looking at edit logs, that while there are outstanding IP editors out there, the lack of registration makes it too easy for the bad editors to vandelize WP. Having to register won't stop all vandelism, but it'll stop a lot of it. Biographies are a frequent target of this type of vandelism and there are numerous stories of how vandelism linked to ip edits has made the national and international news. Heck, I only recently found out that the comedian Sinbad wasn't dead. Why? Because the Wikipedia article was vandelized a few years ago and the national media picked up on it. If wikipedia is to ever be taken seriously as an information source, the vandelism issue NEEDS to be addressed. --Lendorien (talk) 17:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support. I have never been a fan of the 'foundational' right of IP editors and newly registered editors to make changes. Since I believe in allowing only established user make edits to all articles, of course I support the same concept for a subset of articles. Binksternet (talk) 23:34, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support from a volunteer at m:OTRS who sees the results of libel and vandalism on real people every day. -- Jeandré, 2009-01-03t14:54z
Support - there is a higher chance of an IP editor being a vandal than a constructive editor, especially on high-visibility BLPs (i.e. George Bush, Gordon Brown, etc). RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 16:28, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Not going to fix everything but I think it would be a great step in the right direction (just to second a few other's comments). Daniel J Simanek (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
'Support; in fact I would like to see it the General Policy of Wikipedia to require registration as I have been seeing a lot of deep, subtle vandalism lately that gets mixed in with good edits and last for months, thus propagating misinformation on all the mirror sites.Seaphoto ^Talk 21:49, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support. I myself have, within the past 90 days, reverted on BLP articles:
(1) A false report that a well-known, Hall of Fame baseball player had been arrested for DUI and the arrest report had been covered up by a police/political conspiracy;

(2) A false report that a prominent, Oscar-winning film actor had died;

In both cases, the vandalism went undetected for 24 hours. We simply cannot allow such falsehoods to be perpetrated on such a high-visibility website as Wikipedia. Let's face it, Wikipedia is no longer just a hobby or novelty: it is now one of the most visible sources of information in cyberspace and we must get it right where real people are concerned. JGHowes ^talk 22:41, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support. The time saved not having to revert silly vandalism and using it more productively, when added up over all the BLP articles, would be tremendous, imho. --Ebyabe (talk) 01:51, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support. And I say this as a Living Person with a Biography that has been vandalized by IPs. -- Evertype·✆ 10:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. See the page David Ferguson (impresario) and associated talk to see that even a smaller biography needs some sort of protection from vandalism. Switchintoglide (talk) 18:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Per above, esp. JGHowes. Lithoderm 22:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. Per above — time spend on repairing anon vandalism is time taken away from productive work.Malljaja (talk) 23:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I actually think registration should be required for all articles, but bios seems to be big targets for vandals. TJ Spyke 06:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support it would raise Wikipedia's credibility (a bit); anyone with serious plans to contribute constructively could/should register and make everyone's life easier. It wastes too much time reverting stupid and ugly vandalism on some pages that are covered by this policy, besides that asking for page protection for individual articles is generally denied, unless a 'very good reason' is given by the user who makes the request. --Pan Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 08:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support for the reasons outlined above - particularly cutting out the more childish forms of vandalism.--Calabraxthis^(talk) 17:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am tired of asking for protection on these articles; it seems to comprise the vast bulk of vandalism I run across, always from anon ips. There are plenty of other articles to start out on.--2008Olympian^chitchat 23:42, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support this would get rid of a huge chunk of IP vandalism. --Hojimachong^talk 23:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support per some arguments above familytree101 (talk) 00:34, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sounds good. Yaki-gaijin (talk) 01:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLPs are probably the most politically and legally sensitive types of pages on WP. Newbies and IP vandals belong elsewhere. PabloZ (talk) 04:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLPs definitely require more protection than other articles for reasons outlayed by several editors above. Semi-protection seems like an effective and reasonable measure to take.Nrswanson (talk) 05:53, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support DJE (talk) 12:20, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support This would be better than nothing but I much prefer Flagged revisions and prefer it for all articles that currently have protection. Grika Ⓣ 15:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support Agree with User:Grika, and other controversial articles and talk pages should be assessed case-by-case for any need to implement this. For example an article about a late civil rights activist may be a target for heavy racist vandalism. --Marianian (talk) 15:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support Maybe a trial period would be appropriate, but it's a good idea. §FreeRangeFrog 21:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support, 20008Olympian and PabloZ summed it up pretty nicely. Cailunet^rawr 03:33, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support - I've long called for semi-protection, especially on the high-profile bios I edit - and have reached the point of advocating no IP editing at all. Contrary to some people's assumption that his would obviate "anyone can edit" - all it means is anyone can edit by setting up an account name which would allow one's edits to be followed, and provide a modicum of accountability for them. They can remain anonymous, and don;t even have to provide an email address, so I see no reason for not requiring at least registration. Semi-protection would reduce the rampant and often libelous drive-by vandalism that these articles are constantly subject to. Providing instructions for article subjects to submit corrections is a good idea as well. Tvoz/talk 08:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support per RGTraynor and PabloZ. Wiki needs to show that it is taking steps to prevent the site from being used to distribute libel, both from a lawsuit and a from a public relations point of view. The "gets reverted immediately" approach isn't one whose effectiveness is obvious to outsiders as it depends on volunteer effort. Semi-protect certainly beats flagged revision. What's more, IP editors can still put comments on the talk page. Kauffner (talk) 12:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support I think a trial period of protection on the most-vandalized articles and an equal number of stubs would be helpful in providing real data regarding the necessity and efficiency of protection. By how much was vandalism reduced? How many screams of anguish were emitted by new editors?
To address the most often stated basis for opposition to this --

The statement that "anyone can edit" is not strictly true. Access to a computer and basic knowledge of navigation about a computer screen are both necessary and the ability to type is a major benefit.

The statement that "anyone can edit" does not say that any "anyone may edit." There are thousands of persons who, for one reason or another, are no longer allowed to edit here. Considering the level of sensitivity that BLP articles have I do not think it unreasonable for new editors to demonstrate some justification for an assumption of good faith.

Did that make any sense at all?
JimCubb (talk) 17:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support I would like to see stricter regulations. Why should anyone be able to edit any wikipedia article without a username? Every time I see an IP address instead of a username I freak out. I am tired of reverting edits. People are less likely to take the time to obtain a username for a few seconds of vandal humor. I understand vandalism will never be fully prevented but this would be a huge step. Everyone should be able to edit talk pages and be able to view articles, however there should never be an IP address editing an article... NEVER!!! Rgoss25 (talk) 20:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hereford 22:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
First choice. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My first choice. Kaldari (talk) 00:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support ^ross ^nixon 01:18, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Any way to cut down on the silly insertions and unwanted comments is definitely useful. However, we should also note that some of the more persistent and reckless vandalism has been done by a few people who obtain accounts. Stepp-Wulf (talk) 04:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Very weak support I stand by my comment below, but screw it: we need to try something (all of it can be undone!), so I'm supporting everything.--Tznkai (talk) 16:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support why not? Lets try it! --Rockstone35 (talk) 01:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Since I think this should apply to all articles anyway (most of our vandalism, cruft and incorrect rubbish and not a lot of our productive edits come from anonymous editors), I definitely agree. -- Necrothesp (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - Of course, I also support elimination of any anon. edits & a 24 hour delay between account creation and the ability to edit any page except the individual's user page or the sandbox, and immediate blocking of users who engage in obvious vandalism. This proposal is a start. Radtek67 (talk) 21:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support for reasons that would be redundant to list. Ndenison ^talk 04:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support as the least intrusive method for accomplishing this purpose. -- btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 09:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Get rid of anon edits altogether for mine. Qemist (talk) 00:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Semi-protection would:
- cool those more "emotion oriented" vandals
- restrain "evil oriented" vandals
- and still be open to edit from everyone (but not immediately as determined by semi-protection policy)
Of course we talk about BLP and not others articles!

Yes freedom, but with responsibility. And responsibility is accomplished with semi-protection. Jonson22 (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - I have visited many User pages recently, and was shocked at the number of times that vandalism was mentioned. Give some nice people a break, and make BLP editors register, and perform 10 edits. -- Mitch3000 19:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. If you think this limits Wikipedia's statement that it is editable by anyone, then so does semi-protection or protection on any page. Free speech comes with responsibilities. Semi-protection doesn't bar anyone from editing; it just asks that a user demonstrates a modest level of commitment to the project before taking on sensitive and potentially libellous material. -- TinaSparkle (talk) 08:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Long overdue. BanRay 22:18, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I have been hoping for this for quite a while. Superman7515 (talk) 22:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I prefer a flagrev implementation, but, either way, BLPs should receive better protection from vandalism and trolling than they do now, in order to hopefully reduce distress to the subjects. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 19:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support It's not vandalism I'm worried, but rather people adding incorrect information. BLPs seem to be a target for this. Samuell Lift me up or put me down 22:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support If a person has an edit that necessary to change a person, registration shouldn't be a problem at all. LittleNuccio (talk) 00:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Since a living person will have a lot more people enraged with their actions, since they are working in the present. 05:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Weak Support I think it may be a good kind of pre-filtering for sensitive subjects.--Webwizard(talk) 14:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Management of living persons information should be carefully controlled to comply with WP:CSP. There are not enough knowedgable editors to mediate disputes, as much of the information on living persons is hard to verify. Jettparmer (talk) 20:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Wgsimon (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - if we can't get Flagged Revisions instituted, this would be the next best thing. Terraxos (talk) 21:43, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Unauthorized and potentially damaging modifications to a living person's article are things we need to avoid as best we can, on legal as well as moral grounds. Though anyone could, in theory, vandalize an article, there is reasonable evidence that most BLP vandalism is done by anonymous IP editors. If an anonymous editor really wants to make a valid change to an article, they can either enlist the support of another Wiki member or sign up, wait the appropriate time, and make the change themselves. Truthanado (talk) 01:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Will help curb vandalism --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 03:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support It'll motivate some people to desist, either by an appeal to conscience or by putting one's name on the record. Chonak (talk) 03:26, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Agree that it would help curb vandalism. --Funandtrvl (talk) 07:06, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support This seems to me to be the simplest and best procedure. --Dumarest (talk) 16:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support Although seems like a backward step in WP philosophy, has become more and more necessary. Jebus989 (talk) 16:22, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Support lots of time is wasted on cleaning up vandalism on BLPs.ReadQT (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It makes sense to require registration, and registration is easy enough. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"strongly support" curbing vandalism about living people should be of upmost importance Musicobsessed6 (talk) 02:58, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Allowing IPs to edit article leads is nothing less than just mean to people with articles. The hurtful crap added to these articles by IPs is completely unneccessary. 2005 (talk) 21:31, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I know the original idea of Wikipedia was to allow everyone to edit it, but I'm afraid far too many anonymous, unregistered editors have abused the privilege and have spoiled things to those who remain anonymous and edit in good faith. Lots of forums and other online services require registration, and I feel Wikipedia in total should require this (as should the various wikis and Wikia sites. I'll settle for at least preventing IPs from editing BLPs, especially given the legal and personal damage that can be caused by a bad faith or careless edit by someone with no accountability. Of course there are registered users to edit in bad faith too, but at least there is a more effective system of blocking and permabanning in place. 23skidoo (talk) 03:27, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The level of vandalism is enough to justify at least trying an alternative because what we're doing now doesn't seem to be working. Having a free sign up doesn't change the "anyone can edit" aim, it only changes the "anyone can edit now", and it seems like a small loss to achieve a bigger gain. Without trying it, we really don't know, but at least a trial would show whether it has any impact or not. Rossrs (talk) 15:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support since these are vandal magnets and also legally sensitive. --Philcha (talk) 16:14, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support, concur with SDJ, 19:29, 19 December, and Chonak, 03:26, 15 January. There are incidental costs, to be sure, but far outweighed by the benefits. Think about the damage to people's reputations by anonymous vandalism, and the lost contributor hours wasted correcting it. To the extent this change does violence to Wikipedia's model, as some have suggested, I suggest that it is the model that is flawed in those respects, not the proposal.Simon Dodd (talk) 21:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support Unfortunately, it's just too easy on Wikipedia for people to mess up others' hard work work with vandalism and bias. - The Fwanksta (talk) 02:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support This will be a simple and effective way to tackle vandalism of these articles. Quarkde (talk) 15:58, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's not the best solution but it could help lessen those unwanted vandalisms.
Support Best we can get right now MattAster (talk) 19:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support People should take responsibility for their edits to BLPs. Everybody can edit remains true. BreathingMeat (talk) 23:47, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Ãbout time. As said above, and I agree, people should take responsibility for their edits to BLPs. -- Alexf^(talk) 18:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support However, the talk page must remain open to all, so anon I/Ps can point out errors and have others make the corrections. There also needs to be a link at the top that explains exactly why the page is semi-protected, and that most of Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit. StuRat (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm a wiki-newbi but my 2 cents: The little "wars" between my employers and their anti-fans are wasting my time in a big way. I constantly have to fix my employer's entries. Sometimes the people who edit them put in really mean and untrue stuff. billyshake 19:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
SupportTrilobitealive (talk) 00:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Living persons seem to be the target of higher amounts of vandalism. The only drawback I can really think of is that it might encourage vandals to mess with more obscure articles.--Vercalos (talk) 05:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I bet 90% of complaints about, and to, Wikipedia are about BLPs. Spoonkymonkey (talk) 14:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Supports (SP) 201–

Support - Either this or flagging should be tried to reduce vandalism to BLPs. Rlendog (talk) 18:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support This would be helpful immediately. It takes too much effort to fix BLP vandalism that should go to making a better Wikipedia. I do however prefer Flagged revisions even more. N2e (talk) 20:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support As long as the process is briefly explained to users on the page. THINMAN (talk) 17:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong SupportThis would be really helpful, preventing disruptive edits.Siru108 (talk) 21:23, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support This will make protecting BLPs much easier, and make Wikipedia less prone to the type of controversies regarding BLPs we've seen in the past. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support because of the greater impact of vandalism in this area. R. S. Shaw (talk) 00:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support It is regretable that it has come to thisStarwars1791 (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Just do it, already! Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support ~Geaugagrrl^talk 02:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support While I do prefer flagged revisions, this is a very good security measure that should have been in place since day one. --Emc² • talk 16:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support Protection is needed for; 1. The subjects of BLP's. 2. Our reliability & consequent usability. (In the UK education system, WP is not considered a reliable source. It can be used as research guide, but citations must come from other sources.)-- dick (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
weak oppose - but I'd support it if necessary. I don't support it. However, if the community decides that something must be done, I think this is the least-worst option. This would continue to allow anyone to contribute without significant delay, unlike flagged revisions, but would still provide an extra measure of accountability. BecauseWhy? (talk) 03:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support – this would be my first choice and I would prefer this to the flagged revisions suggestion. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 18:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Against - Unfortunately, I feel that a lot of individuals use the Wikipedia site for blatant self promotion, self aggrendization, and simply to hawk their wares. Wikipedia should be used as a tool. To explain how and why subjects exist. It shouldn't be used to help promote a selfish few who want to sell items or see their names on a widely read site. Ego should not be part of Wikipedia. Only IMPORTANT relative facts.
Weak Support - Would prefer this as last option, and only applied in cases of extremely high priority and regular vandalism--Chaosdruid (talk) 02:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support, and think about requiring registration to edit Wikipedia. Wikipedia entries are being used more and more elsewhere, and we have a responsibiltiy to get it right. I've seen deep and long standing errors in BLP articles that have propigated into other sites, which then are used to justify the edit. It is time for Wikipedia to move to a more mature model.Seaphoto ^Talk 03:29, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - Prevents unknown vandalism to some extent, and makes it always possible to discuss & give good reason for all edits, specially when the living people have always the right to suie anyone who publishes faulty information about them
Support Given that the survey shows that 97% of all vandalism is done by unregistered users semi-protection seems to be the best compromise or at least the thing that should be attempted first. -Sensemaker
Strong Support - I may have been wiking for only a short period of time but the integrity of this amazing resource is at stake PKF8586 (talk) 22:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support will prevent much drive-by vandalism, without creating huge backlogs and bureacracy. I worry that it may eliminate good content as well, but hopefully people will be motivated to register. (though if really we want to minimize harm from BLP's, we should downplay our reputation for accuracy, so that people will see vandalism as an inevitable part of the wikipedia model rather than believe everything they read here) Wkdewey (talk) 03:16, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - I actually think semi-protection is a very good idea for all articles! Charlie Richmond (talk) 05:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - BLP's are a special kind of article and should require protection and registration to edit.--Captain-tucker (talk) 14:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - articles need not be rushed. Bluekieran (talk) 16:21, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - since living persons, existing states etc. have always caused vivid controversy and were more subject to "trolling", I'd say go ahead - decreasing effort on keeping articles clean. Only allowing accounts that have survived that small period should be the minimum in achieving this. • Lirion (Λιριων, Лирион, ليريون) ^wtf? • 19:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support but 2nd choice after flagged revisions for all BLPs. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:14, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - permanent semi-protection would prevent much drive-by vandalism and could protect wikipedia from much embarrassment. JoJan (talk) 16:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I'd prefer flagged revs for BLPs though. It wouldn't scare off the newbies so much. --Cameron * 17:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - As can be seen from the recent controversy over the edits to the two Senators pages, BLP pages are extremely vulnerable to attack (especially if the person is in the news) so semi-protection should be enabled automatically for BLPs, if nothing else. -BloodDoll (talk) 02:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I spend an inordinate amount of time reverting BLP violations on articles on my watchlist every day and have to request semi-protection for high profile articles too often. Almost all of it is done by IP editing. It is a waste of time, as would be reviewing flagged revisions. There is a clear difference between "anyone can edit" and "anyone can vandalize." Wildhartlivie (talk) 06:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Dy yol (talk) 08:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'd support switching every article to semi-protection (or requiring registration), but BLPs is a good start. пﮟოьεԻ 5 7 11:25, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support for a trial period. If it works, we should consider extending it to all articles. If it doesn't, we can switch back to the current semiprotection system. -- Nudve (talk) 12:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support - there is little reason not to semi-protect almost any article, after all. Perhaps a good policy should be the following: any editior can immediately activate semi-protection on any BLP article, as soon as he notices a substantial amount odf vandalism. (I.e., no need to go to an admin, and to have a "high" level of vandalism "right now"). Vmenkov (talk) 12:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC
Support Scaring away the kids that show up at night with the spray paint cans is a good thing. --Themshow (talk) 14:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - My first choice, and much better than Flagged Revisions, keep those IPs from vandalising Ronhjones (talk) 22:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Considering its not difficult to get a user name, I support this proposal in preference to all others. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 18:25, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support In regard to BLP, only, as BLP - unlike practically any other category - can hurt real people. I would however prefer to use flagged revisions rather than semi-protection, as the flagged revisions allow the possibilty of constructive contributions by IP-only users.Katana0182 (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - this is infinitely better than the "flagged revisions" idea, which is crap.--Protocop (talk) 22:52, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This seems like the most effective method of resolving the problem. I suspect that anonymous IP vandals will simply direct their efforts elsewhere, but keeping them away from the BLP articles is at least a good start. And requiring registration is not, IMO, an onerous hurdle for anyone who wishes to make useful edit. Anaxial (talk) 11:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Endorse the idea this is a sensible solution, and I prefer it to flagged revisions. Nmg20 (talk) 14:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This seems to be the most sensible option. --PenguinCopter (talk) 15:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This option makes the most sense to me. Rosiestep (talk) 15:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - living people are people too! They deserve a little protection, but the other option's way too radical and non-Wiki. People should see their changes immediately, that's what WP is about!
Strong Support - It is an eminently sensible idea and will go quite some distance in protecting BLPs.--Cynique (talk) 00:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - Allow registered users to assign protection to BLPs, blocking non-registered users from editing. Frankly, I'm spending a quarter of my time reverting vandalisim on BLPs and about half cleaning up uncited edits/additions to all types of articles by both reg and non-reg editors alike. IMOH, the credibility of W rises and falls on these two issues. Allreet (talk) 15:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - The potential reduction in vandalism and containment of fact (if one makes the effort to make an account, then edit, most likely the edit will be productive) is worth it. ~ ωαdεstεr16_«talk^stalk» 15:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - This measure would do much to cut the anti-vandalism workload. I'd like to see it extended to the recently diseased as well, but I suppose that's not quite on topic...Ordinary Person (talk) 19:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support We've got to stop this bad press. FR may or may not work out, but we know this would work. --JaGa^talk 05:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support The reputation of Wikipedia is at stake. There is enough bad press coverage already. But I would prefer Flagged Revisions. --hroest 13:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Would be great to curb the vandalism from IPs that I spend much to reverting when I would rather be editing. Jenafalt (talk) 13:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support It would vastly cut down on the amount of vandalism. I personally would love to see registration required to edit all articles. TJ Spyke 00:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support I would prefer this option to flagged revisions, so long as it is used sensibly. Orderinchaos 00:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support BLP articles get much of the vandalizm occuring on Wikipedia. Who really wants to contribute can create an account in less than a minute. Splette :) ^{How's my driving?} 04:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - It would be easy for the semi-protection template to inform the reader why the article is SP'd, and point them to a page on how to get an account. Then 97% of the man-hours spent by editors removing vandalism can be devoted to constructive purposes on Wikipedia (or even elsewhere!). — Lawrence King ^(talk) 05:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - It will probably prevent vandalism to some extent. --Popiloll (talk) 10:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support — I think most people here are basing their opinions on experience with articles about famous BLP subjects. Libel or biased portrayal of less notable BLP subjects is especially susceptible to being overlooked for a long time, its' difficult to adjudicate, and it's less likely to be well protected from future vandalism. When the BLP subject intervenes s/he often doesn't know the WP rules and culture, so is at a disadvantage. This step is needed right now. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 13:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. BLP entries are probably the area of Wikipedia that benefits the most from a familiarity with Wikipedia policy: without an understanding of notability and verifiability, even well-meaning edits are likely to be counterproductive. Rvcx (talk) 14:55, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is a far better solution than FR, which is too drastic and un-wikipedian. But this needs to clearly explained, so beginners understand why, and that there are other articles they can edit if they want to get their feet wet. Webbbbbbber (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support semi-protection or flagged-protection. - Mailer Diablo 05:41, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - IP edits are bad. Reality is "anyone can edit-&-get-reverted" because people feel they cannot pre-discuss reverts to an IP talk-page. IP users are treated as dogs. Also IP addresses can pinpoint people in small companies, so "anonymous" needs to be a set of alias usernames per account, where only admins would know which aliases are the same. Vandals could still create multiple email & wiki-accounts, but that is rare. Some wiki bios are over 90% reverted IP-hack revisions, clogging Wikipedia history-logs with crap. Instead, when an IP tries to edit, advise: "We know who you are, but to conceal your identity/location, please register using a secret alias to keep others from pinpointing you". I think it is sneaky to lure IP addresses into thinking they are "anon", and WP doesn't need to promote graffiti as millions of hacked revisions. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support, It seems like I'm reverting vandalism by IP's on BLP's at least 20 times every hour! Oli ^OR Pyfan! 03:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This would be a great idea. Implementing flagged revisions on all BLPs is better than implementing flagged revisions on every single article, but this is more manageable than both. Acalamari 23:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support: this will improve the quality, reputation and usefulness of Wikipedia. That's a good enough reason for me! Some Opposers are implying that this move would go against the dogma of Anyone Can Edit Wikipedia, but I disagree: even if this comes in, it will still be true that anyone can edit Wikipedia. Anyone can register, so anyone can become a registered user of a few days' standing, so anyone will be able to edit BLP articles.Ordinary Person (talk) 01:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (SP)

Opposes (SP) 1–100

~~#Oppose SP. Not all the BLPs are huge targets for vandals. It's be better just to SP the ones that are subject to repeated vandalism.~~ Quantumobserver (talk) 22:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose semi protection. Flagged revs seem better. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Object. It's a cost-benefit thing. A fair number of people who want to exploit BLPs are sloppy and edit from static IP addresses. This would cut down on abuse somewhat, but it would also reduce accountability. Think how useful the Wikiscanner was at sniffing out trouble. Why would we want to make BLPs marginally less difficult to exploit, while shutting down Wikiscanner capabilities completely? Durova^Charge! 19:45, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose strongly, this would be a clear break with the ability of anybody to edit. Flagged revisions are far superior for the reasons I have commented in the flagged revision section ~~above~~ below. Davewild (talk) 20:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in the strongest possible terms. This would only
1. Create a false "don't need to watch this page anymore" sense of security.
2. Make determined BLP attackers more difficult to identify at a glance, because they have to build up a certain number of meaningless edits before doing deliberate damage.
3. Funnel drive-by BLP violations to tangentially related non-BLP articles which are unprotected and probably unwatched.
4. Leave good-faith newcomers unable to edit at all when their favorite baseball players (or whoever they're interested in) are s-protected and they don't know how to game the "autoconfirmed" criteria. Then if they figure out how to ask for help, we do what? Ask them to "just go edit asteroids or pokémon for a week"? Forget that! — CharlotteWebb 21:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose More BLP paranoia. We have a functioning and strict BLP policy. We just need to enforce it and edit accordingly. We don't need to invent these contrivances to "solve" this non-problem. And I oppose flagged revisions generally. Protonk (talk) 21:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not only "No" but... While we need to be responsible in our treatment of BLPs, a default position of semi-protect is antithetical to the basic premise of Wikipedia. It is obvious that a great deal of vandalism comes from IPs, but so do a tremendous number of constructive edits. In addition, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of us here first contributed as IPs before becoming sufficiently hooked to register an account. It is foolish to create an impediment to the contributions of those who would join this community. And consider, in many cases the way we find out that there's a problem on a BLP is when an IP (probably the subject or someone close to them) repeatedly tries to fix a problem and gets reverted. The need to protect the subjects of ~~this~~these articles would be addressed in a far superior way through the use of flagged revisions on problematic articles.Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 21:42, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Could serve to lock in vandalism, such that the subject who found something untrue in the article can't just fix it, while the benefits from doing this are largely obsoleted by flagged revisions. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 21:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
CharlotteWebb put it nicely. Let's not forget the point of Wikipedia. John Reaves 21:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Building a stable and reliable encyclopedia? Cool Hand Luke 22:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So why not semi-protect the whole mess? Protonk (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? Still the site anyone can edit, but no longer the site anyone can drive-by vandalize. BLPs just happen to be the most potentially damaging class of articles. Cool Hand Luke 00:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because it betrays one of the fundamental purposes of wikipedia: that editing be as open as possible. No one promised that these purposes were going to be concordant--the meat of good policy debates comes from situations where guiding principles conflict or are mute. WP:NFC is a compromise between our goal to be a free encyclopedia and to be a comprehensive encyclopedia. It would be unacceptable to betray either pillar through inaction or immoderation. Likewise we have here two competing principles, we need to satisfy both partially. Semi-protecting BLP's preemptively and indefinitely doesn't do that. It's lazy, it won't stop determined vandals, it will not stop real threats to BLPs (no one really believes obvious vandalism on a page but they can believe misinformation inserted by dogged SPAs), and it turns away too many productive edits and prospective editors. Protonk (talk) 01:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The fundamental purpose of Wikipedia is building and maintaining an encyclopedia. If any supposed principle gets in the way of that, we should ignore it. Cool Hand Luke 01:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, its not just an encyclopedia, its a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We can't toss away "free" or "anyone can edit" because it gets in the way of "encyclopedia" in some cases. Any idiot can see that you would get a stable encyclopedia by restricting who can edit it. Paper and other electronic encyclopedias have been doing it for years by restricting editing to their staff members. "Anyone can edit" is why Wikipedia is successful, and why we have 10 million articles in 250 languages. If you disagree with that principle, I hear Citizendium is recruiting. Mr.Z-man 04:01, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly I don't. You don't need to lecture me; I have a passing familiarity with the success of Wikipedia. Cool Hand Luke 05:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was confused by your comments suggesting we abandon the "anyone can edit" principle in favor of more stable content. Mr.Z-man 06:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you do. I voted for you. I don't think he was intending to lecture you, just make clear the point that the foundation issue of a free encyclopedia is in contest with the implementation of semi-protection for a class of articles. Further, since you alluded to IAR, he was probably hoping to show that this was an ends based argument, not some position taken merely out of advocacy or inertia. The real point is we can all go back and forth appropriating "what wikipedia is" for our end of the argument because the definition is too fluid and vague to serve as a decision rule here. I accept that wikipedia faces a tradeoff in anonymous editing. We may disagree on the magnitude of that tradeoff, but we agree that there is one. Protonk (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We absolutely agree. There's always a trade off. My first edit was to start a new article that was redlinked. We haven't allowed IPs to do that in a long time, and we've certainly lost some contributors who would have begun like I did. In this case, I just think we have particular editorial obligations to BLP subjects which trump volunteer recruiting.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to move some of this thread to the currently-redlinked talk page, I wouldn't mind at all. Cool Hand Luke 06:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Pointless when you can have flaggedrevs. Semiprotection can and should be used liberally but only when there has been a problem: pre-emptive protection of all BLPs is just overkill. Moreschi (talk) 22:18, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No - flagged revisions are OK, even necessary, for BLPs, but stopping all anonymous or non-autoconfirmed users from editing them at all is far too extreme. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 23:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the very good reasons outlined by CharlotteWebb and Xymmax. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Mr.Z-man 00:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; flagged revisions offer a much less intrusive way of protecting articles. — Coren ^(talk) 00:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
oppose per Charlotte, Xymmax and Coren. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - This chucks the baby out with the bathwater. IPs do work too, you know. - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Many useful contributors to BLPs are anons - protection should be on a case-by-case basis. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support a compromise solution. Any BLP should be automatically semi-protected for a period of time on a request from any established user if an IP is making reverts in the article.Biophys (talk) 05:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with compromise solution proposed by Biophys. -Exucmember (talk) 07:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Cost-benefit. Most BLPs do not ever attract disruption. Those that do can already be made subject to some sort of protection. Sandstein 07:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; this essentially and eventually becomes disallowing anons to edit and thus a Foundation issue, not a community one. It's too slippery of a slope towards Citizendium. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 07:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this is overkill. It would reduce the amount of vandalism on BLPs, but we have to weight this against the huge adverse effects. Hut 8.5 10:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, it would not cost wikipedia just the anon edits, but also a number of contributors, who started out as anons and got hooked on Wikipedia. bogdan (talk) 11:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose another kick in the face for anonymous editing. Antithetical. Skomorokh 13:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Studies have shown that the anon edits make up a significant amount of vandal reversions. Making it harder for anons to fix errors in BLPs is not beneficial to the project. It also goes against the whole idea of being an encyclopedia anyone can edit when the majority of BLPs pose no problems. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unnecessary. --Tango (talk) 14:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think a blanket semi-protection of BLPs will probably be more harmful than the vandalism it will prevent. Flagged revisions are a better solution. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose—any systematic protection of pages is effectively a way of categorically denying people the right to edit that page. That seems to me to be in conflict with one of our core principles, that anyone should be able to edit. While abuse concerns might even justify the use of sighted-revision-by-default FlaggedRevs (which I also intensely dislike), systematic protection of any level is simply unacceptable. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the autoconfirm barrier is way too high. -- lucasbfr ^talk 17:19, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
not strongly opposed - but not for this solution either. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Weak oppose~~ Too easy to bypass, too much collateral damage. Whacka-redlink isn't productive.--Tznkai (talk) 21:14, 20 December 2008 (UTC) Changed to very weak support.--Tznkai (talk) 16:01, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, do it only on those that have problematic IP edits on them. There are lots that don't --Enric Naval (talk) 22:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Per the valid reasons above. This is a wiki™. There are many, many valid edits to BLPs from IP users. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per Rjd, many valid BLP edits come from IP users. VegaDark (talk) 04:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen any real convincing evidence to support a measure this drastic. Is there evidence of anonymous users or brand new users causing significantly more harm to BLPs than autoconfirmed users? And if so, does anyone have a link? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Gurch had some stats somewhere based on what was being reverted by Huggle, I believe – iridescent 18:52, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would be a net negative. There are less crude ways of resolving the BLP problem without denying a substantial proportion of our contributors the right to edit a sizable group of articles. AGK 16:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are ways of "resolving the BLP problem"??? I'd love to hear them, please.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
[Points downwards.]

FlaggedRevs being one.

AGK 13:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose What ever happened to the "encyclopedia than anyone can edit"? I know that semi-protection is a necessary evil, but BY DEFAULT on BLPs is utterly ridiculous. ~the editorofthewiki ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 16:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A policy of this sort could far too easily evolve into semi protection throughout article space. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that IP editors do more harm than good in BLPs. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
New Main page greeting: Welcome to Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Just don't try it one BLP's, even if its a legit edit. Synergy 19:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose some good edits to BLPs come from IP editors. If the concern is people adding incorrect or slanderous information, I think a better answer is to have more editors closely watching BLP articles and have them be more hard-line about reverting unsourced or defamatory edits. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not so long as there's a chance that the flagged revisions idea will work. Wikipedia will succeed in the coming years only if we can (1) keep recruiting new editors -- who get interested in Wikipedia by discovering they can edit it, and are discouraged when they cannot; and (2) steadily improve in reliability. Obviously this points to a need to balance monitoring of edits with openness, but if we're capable of handling the work of monitoring edits, aided by flagged revisions, then I would strongly prefer that we do that and forgo as little openness as possible. — Dan | talk 21:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is just as effective at keeping vandalism in the BLP as it is at keeping vandalism out. Some BLP violations are discovered by the subject of the article, and I can imagine that they would be hopping mad if they find that the libel is protected. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest possible oppose. Are we so quick to compromise our foundation issues? TotientDragooned (talk) 23:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit Oppose --Dweller (talk) 13:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Dweller says it best. So Why 21:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeAnyone can edit wiki that is the theory in anyway and we should stick with that. BigDunc^Talk 22:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't feel this is the right solution. This won't help, it's however going to stop positive contributions from IPs Just because some IPs are doing it does not mean we should block them from editing BLP's. --Kanonkas : Talk 22:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for many of the reasons highlighted above. Page protection should be the exception, not the rule. --Explodicle (T/C) 22:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. This is an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. I strongly oppose anything which will take that away. Sure, semi-protection is needed often by default is ridiculous in my honest opinion. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 22:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose per above comments. It won't change anything. Majorly ^talk 23:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - It's all said above. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - I originally supported this idea, since, being a vandal-fighter, flagged revisions seemed practical. Then, the thought of Wikipedia's freedom, the singular "you-can-edit-this-right-now" quickly changed my mind. And speaking practically, I can't begin to mention the dramaz this would start. —La Pianista ^(T•C•S) 23:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - all users should be able to edit all pages. Bushytails (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose To quote Jimbo himself: "you can edit this page right now" should be a guiding check on everything we do. Net negative, by far. Steven Walling (talk) 00:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Default semi-protection for all BLP's would make Wikipedia lose its premise. And if you do that, you may as well just make accounts compulsory anyway. I say keep Wikipedia a place that anyone and everyone can edit! JS (chat) 00:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose: Whatever happened to the free encyclopedia that "anyone can edit"? Besides, whatever happened to WP:NO-PREEMPT? Oren0 (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Semi-protection should never be used preemptively, but only be used when there is a real problem with vandalism. --Itub (talk) 00:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - What happens if the BLP or the BLP's representatives want to update the article to take out any libelous information. I know that those people need to contact OTRS regarding conflicting information. However, in most cases, not everyone does so. miranda 01:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Will do more harm than good. Malinaccier (talk) 01:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think this will do more harm than good, and it would prevent good edits from being done by IPs or new accounts. I don't see any good or valid reason for implementing this which outweighs the bad that would come from it. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Limits presentation of potentially important information about a person Stampit (talk) 03:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose on principle that anyone can edit and on fact that many good editors first make anon edits to articles and resist registration until they are familiar with Wikipedia; even, I suspect, if that means not ever editing if faced repeatedly with you may not edit this article notices. DoubleBlue (talk) 05:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as demonstrated here, semi-protection will not stop established users from insert BLP information into articles. What is needed is immediate action if and when BLP information is found.
Oppose The current standard for semi-protection works fine.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's other ways for improving this place than protecting articles. aye matthew ✡ 13:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think controversial figures should be s-protected, but to sprotect all WP:BLP would violate the spirit of a wiki. Jonathan321 (talk) 15:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Very bad idea. I wasn't able to fix several bios before I registered and became auto-confirmed because of this. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Articles are semi-ed when needed now. To do it to all is anti-wiki. Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 17:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this would basically mean to edit one would require an account and would prevent people from editing from workplaces etc. It goes against the ethos of a wiki. Computerjoe 's talk 19:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Very Strong Oppose as others have said, what makes Wikipedia so special is the ability for everyone to edit. It is unfortunate that legal reasons have brought us to the point that changes to BLPs may not be seen immediately, but semi-protection is certainly not the way to go. It would ruin the whole point of the wiki. 2help (talk) 19:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. We should not be using more and more semi-protection period. Flagged revisions are the way forward. Protection creep threatens to undermine what made Wikipedia a valuable resource in the first place, the fact that it's a wiki. Doing this to biographies is particularly insidious, because biographies are probably the most important class of articles that need to change over time. You can argue there's not much harm if Physics or Mona Lisa is semi-protected once their respective articles are high-quality already, since those subjects aren't likely to change, but important events happen in the lives of notable people on a daily basis, and it needs to be possible for the widest group of people possible to work on keeping that up-to-date for us to retain our (widely-noted and very useful) timeliness on such things. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weakly oppose - if we can implement flagged revisions, then we shouldn't need semi-protection unless we receive lots of bad flagged revisions from anonymous users. ~~ [ジャム]^[t - c] 20:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Noble objective, bad solution. Semi-protection is a very confusing thing for newbies and a blanket s-protect across the project will inevitably drive away potential editors. Though semi-protection will reduce vandalism, it won't eliminate it. Actually, I think it would give us a false sense of confidence that the problem is solved. The current permanent semi-protection of particularly problematic articles is a smarter and more manageable option. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 22:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit—except biographies." It screams bad idea. DiverseMentality 22:58, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Simple — Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:37, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We don't need more "class distinctions" on this open project that anyone can edit. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:06, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unfathomably strong oppose. As per Charlotte Webb, Protonk, Xymmax, Nuclear Warfare, Totient, etcetera. We need to overcome our fear of lawsuits and continue with what's best for the community. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anti-wiki. Charlotte Webb covers the details. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:48, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Protection has to always be a final resort in response to persistent problems which cannot be dealt with by other means. Adambro (talk) 16:27, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Anti-wiki. Oppose BLP paranoia. Hipocrite (talk) 16:35, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We're already overdoing biography of living persons worries. If someone is notable enough for Wikipedia, they're probably notable enough that the "public figure" safe harbor in US libel law applies. --John Nagle (talk) 18:08, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as a matter of principle. And remember, we already have the means to address criminal behavior when it comes to BLPs. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 21:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, there are time an anonymous editor might have useful information on a particular person that a normal editor would not have that was not original research. Bear in mind that some of the information these IP users might have on a living person could make a difference in the article's readability on that living person. If we start putting semi-protection on BLPs, where will the semi-protection stop? Chris (talk) 01:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose, "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" Terlob (talk) 02:00, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unlike many of the above responders, I have no strong antipathy toward changing Wikipedia's policy of allowing anyone to edit almost anything; I just like the flagged revisions idea better. GrouchyDan (talk) 02:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose This is a free encyclopedia. By semi-protecting all biographies, it defeats the purpose of a "free-encyclopedia that anyone can edit". If there are any vandals who repeatedly vandalize some guy's page, we can just warn him/her first, and if he/she doesn't listen, we can block him/her. Simple. JoshuaKuo (talk)
Strong oppose Wikipedia worked because it was the encyclopaedia anyone can edit - if you take that away you will impede its development. Cedars (talk) 03:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Sloppy edits notwithstanding, IP edits also add great content. An example (from a BDP article) floated across my watchlist this morning [2]. The edit was unreferenced and in the deprecated trivia section. However, some kind 45 rpm enthusiast reading the Sean Flynn article realised that the article was missing his brief recording career. They took the time to add some information (thank you who ever you are!) They also added the info with enough detail for me to find a source and add it to the article. This particular piece of biographic information is missing from all the web biographies of Flynn that I have found - but now Wikipedia has it. Semi-protecting thousands of BLP articles will make this impossible and significantly slow the development of these articles. Hordes of Huggle enthusiasts are squabbling over vandal reversions, the vandals are losing ground, so where's the Net Positive in this suggestion? Paxse (talk) 07:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, blocking 33% of our editor base is not a good idear, my guess is that our base of people who donate to the project will decline at the same rate as the exclusion. Mion (talk) 07:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - it would make it more difficult for new users and IPs to edit and make corrections or improve content, and could cause problems on unwatched BLPs. With semi-protection only used as a result of vandalism, often the pages will be watched by the users reverting the vandalism or protecting the page, but with all BLPs semi-protected I think there would be too many for that to be effective. —Snigbrook 14:00, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification the reasons I mentioned explain why I would prefer flagged revisions, however if that proposal cannot be implemented (or is a failure), or if it is rejected in favour of semi-protection, I would not oppose semi-protection as an alternative (or in addition, if flagged revisions are not sufficient). —Snigbrook 18:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, against the fundamental principles of Wikipedia.Jezhotwells (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, there are some people who doesn't have an account and want to edit a BLP. They don't want to wait for 4 days and make at least 10 edits in other non-semi-protected pages before editing BLP. semi protecting all BLP is so unnecessary. Fangfufu (talk) 18:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I said elsewhere, it would be in complete contradiction with the spirit of Wikipedia, and would be far from a panacea anyway. Cenarium (Talk) 18:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's a bad idea to pre-judge contributors, and it goes against the spirit of the project. Most of the arguments for protection boil down to fear of lawsuits -- this fear can be used to justify anything. Besides, I've always been of the opinion that we should avoid defamation in BLPs not because of fear of lawsuits, but because it is the right thing to do. csloat (talk) 20:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this would greatly reduce the openness of the English Wikipedia. IP editors contribute a huge amount of useful content and tidying, and shutting them out would harm the project more than help. If there are BLPs that need protection, they should be protected on an individual basis, not as an across-the-board restriction for all BLPs. -kotra (talk) 22:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - We are supposed to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and protecting articles would prevent the majority of users from editing Alexfusco⁵ 00:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Slippery slope. --Jackieboy87 (talk · contribs) 01:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - charlotteweb's "just go edit asteroids or pokémon for a week" arguments certainly its a convincing argument. We are the encyclopedia anyone can edit.Pectore^talk 03:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - "Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. HEY, NOT SO FAST!" DragonflyDC (talk) 03:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Too many articles have been vastly improved by anonymous editing; that's why we allow it, right? Do not let us throw out the baby with the bathwater. I truly feel that if anonymous editing is restricted for BLP articles, it should be restricted for all of them (yes, all or nothing, I know). Magog the Ogre (talk) 08:36, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose I'm shocked and dismayed that this effort to partially close off the wiki even came to a poll. Current policies, focused on specific and easily identifiable issues with specific articles, works just fine. Cutting away at that to save administrators and the legal team time carries with it so grave a cost in potential new editors and new information that I am absolutely shocked that we're even considering this. I would not be at all shocked to see such a poorly thought-out move, in such direct opposition to the nature of the project, result in a successful fork. MrZaius^talk 11:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be editable by all? CapnZapp (talk) 19:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not by all who set up an account? Sunray (talk) 07:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why not by all who set up an account, pass a written exam, and donate 10 dollars? Editing a semi-protected page requires more than an account, you need to make 10 edits and wait 4 days as well. Mr.Z-man 18:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some people don't like joining clubs. Anyway, neither of those constraints are particularly onerous - an edit may be as simple as adding or removing a comma. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - camel, nose, tent, yadayada. We're not that out of alternatives yet. --Kiz o r 21:16, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - the registered editors do not have the sum of all known facts. There seem to be many types of vandalism that need to be countered. One type is where someone deliberately records incorrect information and this can be discouraged by constant removal and monitoring the people doing this. Another type of vandalism is to but barriers that stop people maintaining information on pages. This will discourage people not only from adding information, but from correcting errors (including spelling mistakes) and can only be harmful. Stellar (talk) 00:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opposes (SP) 101–200

Oppose Overkill in most situations. Royal broil 04:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Inane paranoia. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 09:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't honestly get the paranoia over BLP. The only argument for semi-protection I kind of follow is the weight of vandalism, but in this day and age I can't see why wielding a nice heavy banhammer for offenders would do much harm. Calum (talk) 13:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as not needed or productive. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I feel this would move us to far away from the core message of this being a free encyclopaedia anyone can edit, is to much of a blanket hammer option, with far from all BLPs having a big problem with non-constructive IP edits, and some IPs will always be around to make constructive contributions in most cases. Furthermore, this will not stop more determined trolls/vandals which can do the more significant damage. Camaron | Chris (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Flagged revisions would be a much better solution to the problem. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 22:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose. There are many good edits made by IPs to BLP, I would rather see protection on a case by case basis. I would like to see it easier to protect BLP pages, perhaps allowing any established user to temporarily add semi protection to a page. Martin451 (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. As per most of the above. Key points: (1) not all anon IP edits are vandals (2) requiring registration just moves the problem without solving it; (3) I see plenty of registered vandals; (4) enforcing further automated requirements (e.g., edit count) again just moves the problem without solving it; (5) WP:BLP does not override the rest of the project; (6) vandalism to non-BLP pages shouldn't be considered any less severe; (7) not all BLP issues are obvious vandalism (but rather, people who don't understand BLP); (8) BLP is not a timebomb, because fixing discovered BLP problems is easy (it's a wiki!). • The only way I'd be willing to consider some kind of blanket semi-protect policy would be if someone had solid data satisfactorily demonstrating the vast majority (e.g., 70%+) of anon IP adits were vandals. At that point we might have to close the gates. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
'Oppose. Seems to be a sure-fire way to scare off new users. If they can't edit the obscure stub they've come to fix, even when they have bothered to sign up, are they really going to hang around? Not to mention the fact that I fail to see how they could be prevented from creating an article on the subject, meaning that new users may well create a new, excellent article, then be locked out of it. J Milburn (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Against fundamental principles ... Baby with the bathwater (per 14 above)... would also alienate potential new users. Bad idea. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If we do this, we might as well get rid of IP logins altogether. BLP have a particularly high percentage of interwiki edits, which are often done by IP accounts. (By interwiki edits I mean edits that are triggered by or connected to an article in one of our sister products, such as adding an interwiki link, or adding small bits of information from the sister article.) — Sebastian 03:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in general, the current system works well. If vandalism is common, semi-protection can be given on case-by-case basis.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 12:44, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - User:CharlotteWebb and User:Sanbeg sum up my opinion rather nicely. Kennedy ^(talk) 14:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose- Wikipedia, the community-driven encyclopedia, anyone?--EmpMac (talk) 22:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose given the number of BLPs we have, this proposal pretty much asks us to lock a significant percentage of articles from editing. Notwithstanding the amount of work it would take to have an admin protect BLPs as they are created, and unprotect them after the subject of an article dies. If you wish to go this route, far better, and cleaner, to simply require registration before editing. Reso lute 17:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the areas where I edit, IPs are actually fairly constructive (in comparison to elsewhere), so this would do more harm than good. Wizardman 17:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No. Agree with CharlotteWeb. High possibility of collateral damage—this goes against the whole reason Wikipedia was created. We are an encyclopaedia anyone can edit. While we do indef protect a select few, we have too many BLP articles to protect like this. It would be unconstitutional. —Mizu onna sango15^Hello! 19:07, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Use semi-protection on a case-by-case basis. I prefer to keep these articles open to anyone. --maclean 20:27, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Maclean's prefs.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Everyone starts editing as an un-autoconfirmed user. If we stop people from editing whatever they're passionate about (in this case, BLPs), we will drive those people away from ever making those articles any better.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 22:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as everyone has said, ruins the point of a wiki. Burnedthru 02:07, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
'Oppose since anyone can edit. Current procedure of requesting semi-protect for particular articles that get vandalised makes sense. Let's not create the next problem. Babakathy (talk) 18:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Case-by-case semi-protection is good enough. Jd4v15 (talk) 01:37, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. A gadgety technique that fails to address any real issues. Eclecticology (talk) 03:42, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this makes the presumption that ip editors are the primary cause of serious BLP issues, IMHO/E its the registered accounts that are the cause of the more serious long term problems. This also eliminates the ability of the subject to make a passing correction image seeing a piece of vandalism about yourself and having to wait 4 days and make 10 edits before you can correct it yourself, thats more likely to encourage BLP's to run to lawyers. Gnan garra 04:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. This is almost a bit ridiculous. BLP information changes from time to time, and not all IP edits to BLPs are bad, in fact sometimes they're the first to update information! This defeats the purpose of RFPP, and I would only support permanent semi-protection for high-profile BLPs with high levels of anon vandalism and low levels of anon contribution. ~A H 1^(TCU) 17:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We don't preemptively semi-protect wide swaths of articles. We want people to edit, we want new people to edit. We only prevent this as a last resort. That is the whole point of Wikipedia, without that we are just another collection of articles. Chillum 17:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The vast majority of BLPs have absolutely no need for this level of protection; they're not controversial enough to attract vandals' attention. It will dissuade unregistered users who instead should be encouraged. — Lincolnite (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Opposed. Denying access to editing will cause at least two unintended consequences; vandals who intend to cause problems will simple move to other targets and innaccurate information will linger longer as unchecked without the input of the vast majority of users. -- Banjeboi 01:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose This punishes anonymous editors who want to make constructive edits. The vandals will probably just go somewhere else anyways. I might even go so far as to say that semi-protecting a large swath of articles could lead down a slippery slope...? Furrybeagle 05:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No thanks. (a) Anyone can edit (b) makes it harder to fight determined vandals without checkuser help. Kusma (talk) 21:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per DragonHawk, DoubleBlue, csloat, and Piotrus. —Mirlen^Talk 21:04, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While I dislike some of the arguments given above (if there's a problem with IPs introducing libel into Wikipedia, then I say to hell with "fundamental principles"), any convincing argument for semi-protection must demonstrate that IPs are more likely to write libelous material (as opposed to silly vandalism) than registered users are. Nobody has done that. Lewis Collard! (lol, internet) 09:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Would slow down the construction of the encyclopedia a lot. We can't afford to lose the contributions of IPs. However, we should create a patrol system for BLPs edited by IPs. The form would be similar to the Special:NewPages (with highlighting of unpatrolled edits), but the content would be BLP recent changes pages, minus experienced editors' contribs. Nicolas1981 (talk) 11:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Yes, vandalism would be greatly reduced by implementing semi-protection on all BLP articles, but many IP users make very positive, constructive edits. I myself was an IP user editing the encyclopedia, including many BLP articles, for more than a year before I joined Wikipedia. Cutting these editors out of a large swath of articles cannot be beneficial. The solution should be to patrol these articles for vandalism more vigorously and to semi-protect them when need is demonstrated rather than by default. However, while I oppose it, I would say that semi-protection would be better than Flagged Revisions, which would be the worst possible change to make. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 16:28, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeMike92591 (talk) 18:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Semiprotection of a whole class of articles is blunt and unhelpful tool, contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia. You may as well semiprotect the entire encyclopedia, and I'm shocked to see otherwise reasonable editors advocating that. The justification given for compromising the "anyone can edit" principle is apparently "anyone can still edit, they just have to register first". Well, they won't, and Wikipedia will lose a valuable resource: the millions of readers who spot a typo or an incorrect fact and fix it. They are not going to register to fix a typo. Consequently, they won't discover that editing Wikipedia is not a great mystery, and the chance that they will decide to register and become regular editors drops significantly.
Instead semiprotection should be considered on a case-by-case basis, with WP:BLP and WP:SEMI strengthened if necessary to support and encourage further the semiprotection of problematic BLPs. Geometry guy 20:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per all reasons stated above, except that flagged revs are better. Especially since most important BLP articles are monitored by users anyway, and bots can take care of most vandalism.Corvus coronoides _talk 21:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeDougsTech (talk) 18:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose For the previously mentioned reason that this defies the primary "Anyone can edit..." tenant of Wikipedia. hornoir (talk) 13:01, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Protecting an entire class of articles regardless of whether they get any actual vandalism or not is completely against the spirit of Wikipedia. If we do this, we won't be "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" anymore. We'll be "The free encyclopedia where anyone can edit the articles that aren't biographies of living persons".--Unscented (talk) 13:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. There are no reasons to treat bios differently from encyclopedia articles, and the answer always is: throwing out good faith IP editors does more harm than good. Once you let the lawyers in, the next step will be to get rid of biographies altogether (or switch off all regular users, who had created that mess to begin with). It's so much safer, isn't it? NVO (talk) 15:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Would put off future contributors. Jacob Lundberg (talk) 16:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, would prefer to use flagged revisions instead.-gadfium 19:00, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Review on a case-by-case basis. Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, say, are the ones that should be protected, pages like David Hungate and Marie Serneholt definitely wouldn't need it and semiprotecting these is a waste of time. And not all BLP articles are vandalised, on the contrary very few of them are. Dead people are also targets for vandalism and would put off many would-be editors. Do you really need to protect an article that says something like "Pete Feet is the guitarist with Rusting Blood Enema and Dorkulon" ? Special K(KoЯn flakes) 19:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - semi-protection is a necessary evil on some articles, and I accept that. Blind adherence to dogma whatever the cost is silly. But the principle that 'anyone can edit' is part of the heart of the whole ideal. Semi-protection should never be applied by default, to any class of article. If an article needs it, fine. But the presumption should always be in favour of open, good-faith editing.Chrism would like to hear from you 19:11, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I cut my Wiki-teeth by working on a BLP as an anon, so I may be biased, but semi-protecting all BLPs because a few experience persistent vandalism srikes me as an overreaction. If IPs target an article, semi that one; don't throw out all the positive contributions that IPs make in BLPs. Giants2008 (17-14) 20:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - this would leave out a lot of good-faith edits. I feel that the current protection policy works fine. –neurovelho 22:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this essentially and eventually becomes disallowing anons to edit and thus a Foundation issue, not a community one. It's too slippery of a slope towards Citizendium. Rugz (talk) 00:35, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - vandalism and BLPs are not the core problem, vandalism is, it would be better to set rollbacker with a counter, and only those article that exceed a threshold value (say +2 in less than 30 days) have automatic semi-protection.--Bejnar (talk) 03:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
oppose. sure, semi-protect when necessary. Many BLP articles may end up permanently semiprotected. But there should be a reason to semiprotect, with unprotection the default status, not the other way round. --dab (𒁳) 11:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. The cost and harm done outweighs the benefit by a very large degree, not to mention voiding the "everyone can edit" principle. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 14:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This goes against the ethos of Wikipedia being the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I have no problem with semi-protection being used selectively, but it should not be used arbitrarily. The vast majority of BLPs do not need to be protected as they do not receive high levels of unverifiable edits. Flagged revision is much less intrusive. At a time when editor numbers are declining, I do not see how making BLPs a closed shop will help Wikipedia in the long run. Rje (talk) 18:47, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A) Anonymous editing hooks curious people and transforms them into regular users. Many of our regular editors today started as anonymous editors. B) Semi-protection alone doesn't stop people from creating accounts and vandalizing anyway. C) It is easier to track vandalism by scanning anonymous edits. D) We can already manually protect articles under attack, and Bejnar has an interesting idea on an automated system. Kingturtle (talk) 20:37, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose I began as an anonymous user myself. I made a mistake, got spanked for it, but got hooked. I had to get it right; and 500+ edits later, here I still am. My HS Pysch teacher once compared SSRIs to using cannonballs on house flies. I'd make the same analogy in regards to this messure. If we're really that concerned about getting that 6.8% vandalism time-figure down, then I'd say it's much more rational to take steps towards forming a task force, made-up of as many competing political philosophies as possible, charged with religiously monitoring certain contentious bios. It would immediately improve not only our quality, but also our reputation.--Leodmacleod (talk) 0:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Oppose BLP is stupid enough already. Prodego ^talk 03:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Semiprotecting them all would be mayhem. Might reduce a bit of vandalism, but would seriously affect genuine and good faith contributions, and discourage keen new editors from ever getting involved. Richard Hock (talk) 17:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose opens up a bad precedent, making editing Wikipedia a privilege of an oligarchical group. Wandering Courier (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose not a good idea at all. -- The Red Pen of Doom 21:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Should not automatically make every article about a living person semi-protected. There are so many articles and not all of them have problems with edit warring. Some articles about noteworthy people don't have a lot of editors and edits are made from unregistered users who are particularly interested in that living person. These unregister users provide additions even though they are active editors of wikipedia. But these unregisters users should still be allow to make edits to articles about living persons. It is me i think (talk) 04:41, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the precedent. --Rosiestep (talk) 05:04, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Semi-protection should only be implemented when there are instances of vandalism or edit-warring from non-registered users. It should only be done after the fact. --Fahrenheit451 (talk) 17:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Protect when NEEDED, 90% plus of articles work fine, don't punish discourage ips. --Tom 19:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Mild Oppose of the options presented here, this is the lesser of all the evils. But it's still un-Wikipediesque. Alohasoy (talk) 21:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - a bad idea, as outlined by Charlotte and numerous others above. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - the system is not (yet) broken. Bearian (talk) 19:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Mild Oppose Debresser (talk) 23:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - seems to be totally against the wiki spirit (and would therefore be damaging to the community) and is unnecessary. zazpot (talk) 02:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, manual protection is to be preferred. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 12:45, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I agree with Xymmax's statement above. I started editing wikipedia as an IP back in college. It is because of I was trusted then (with no reputation requirements) that I created an account. I think that regardless of the measures put in place, vandalism will continue to be ~5% of mainspace edits. I also believe that it is more prudent to protect those pages that are troublesome rather than immediately protecting all pages from start-up. This is the equivalent of using a javelin as a darning needle. —Archon Magnus^{(Talk | Home)} 15:57, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose The current methodology of locking pages that have received several recent defacements is sufficient enough. Implementing such restrictions for every BLP will likely reduce the number of useful/good edits, which I believe far outnumber the defacement edits. Raeky (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Wikipedia is already under fire for its protected articles as being against the spirit that "anybody can edit" this will be a blow to Wikipedia's credibility as an open community. Themfromspace (talk) 23:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Strictly as a practical matter, I see a lot of good edits to BLPs from IP accounts. The system isn't broken so why fix it? The primary BLP problems are from logged-in accounts: edit warring, inexperienced editors, COI edits, hoaxes, people promoting a POV. But controversial and vandalistic IP edits are quickly reverted - there's a cultural norm for the most part not to let unsourced / uncited / problematic edits stand if from IPs. Wikidemon (talk) 00:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose IP users make plenty of good changes, and how often is vandalism on BLPs not picked up almost instantly? BLPs are naturally one of the most popular things for people to edit, and encouraging anyone to edit has to be a good thing, and therefore stopping people editing some things is a bad thing. --Ged UK (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose WP:RFP is efficient and effective. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not to mention that this proposed fix strikes me as very non-Wikipedian. —Ed Cormany (talk) 16:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose BLPs should not be treated differently to any other WP articles.Vitaminman (talk) 20:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OPPOSE "Why ban assault rifles when its already illegal to kill the president?" For the love of Christ, stop overpolicy-ing on Wikipedia!! I regularly watch several hot BLP articles. BLP is well-maintained.Yeago (talk) 01:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose The vast majority of BLP's are non-controversial and are almost always helped more than hurt by anons. All this will do is move intentional slander and vandalism to non-BLP articles on related subjects. The current system works. Admins need to get out into the regular wikipedia and realize the good that is out there, rather than be so focused on the bad. When you work in the sewers, everything starts to smell like excrement I think. -Drdisque (talk) 03:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'd rather have flagged revisions. (Or even no change at all, for that matter.) GregorB (talk) 14:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose semi-protection for BLP's. The big name, established celebrities don't care about this one way or the other; their lawyers and publicists are cool-headed enough to handle Wikipedia slander by whatever means they can get the evidence. But what of recent, local celebrities, such as social activists, the real-life Erin Brockoviches and Lisa Simpsons? The only way they might be able to deal with Wikipedia slander might be for they themselves to edit their biographies to delete the lies. Willi Gers07 (talk) 21:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this is just laziness, trying to reduce the number of editors since that will be easier for us to manage. It's true that fewer edits will mean fewer vandal edits... but it will also mean fewer productive edits, which slows down the progress of creating a good encyclopedia. We need a critical mass of good faith edits more than anything else. Lots of other Wikis have a higher percentage of productive edits than WikiPedia, but vastly fewer overall edits, so a fewer raw number of productive edits. This is why they fail and Wikipedia succeeds. Quantity is actually more important than quality when you have 3 million articles and a world full of editors. Quality happens naturally from a sufficiently large quantity of edits. --Rividian (talk) 02:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, just too blunt and heavy-handed. We should use the minimum amount of torque that can accomplish what wa wish for. Flagged revisions is a technical feature which should obsolete nearly all needs for article protection and semi-protection. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 15:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, the majority of problems with BLPs are entirely due to auto-confirmed editors and admins being very lax about applying policy, this will not help those articles. The bios suffering from IP vandalism should be semi-protected when needed - it's not like it takes a lot of effort, and most BLPs have never even requested semi-protection, so the assertion that they need it seems unfounded.18:49, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Oppose, the worst vandals are the ones who register an account. Those are the dedicated ones. By "vandals" I also include people trying to promote or defame an individual with subtle means (rather than those who replace a page with "penis"). And I hate the idea of BLPs stagnating without the help of IP editors. -- Atama ^chat 00:58, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No compelling reason to automatically protect a whole HUGE class of articles. Problematic articles can be protected as needed via normal means ([{WP:RFPP]]). --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Frequently vandalized pages can be protected. My experience with the IPs is rather good. They contribute with a lot of useful content. Wikipedia is here for everyone, who wants to contribute constructively. --Vejvančický (talk) 10:58, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The controversial BLP articles which are most often targets, or very topical BLPs will get semi-protected anyway, and to have an automatic semi-protect closes parts of Wikipedia to new editors and will prevent new editors getting involved. DavidFarmbrough (talk) 13:17, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose While many new users may target BLPs for vandalism, they are also the source of MANY new contributing editors due to their popularity. Voyaging^(talk) 18:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose The message this sends to any potential casual contributor who might feel compelled to add to a fledgling BLP article is that Wikipedia is not the free encyclopedia it claims to be. Furthermore, any subject of a BLP article who feels misrepresented by the article is denied the most basic opportunity to seek recourse. The spirit of Wikipedia has always been one of trusting its users to create the best product in the long run, even though vandalism and other problems will mar it in the short run. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Feeeshboy (talk) 15:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Protecting should always be a per article measure and never an automatic arbitrary symptomatic measure for a whole range of articles -ErickAgain (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Oppose While I oppose this type of semi-protection, I think I would support protection of BLPs if any registered account (i.e. without a several-day waiting period) would be allowed to edit, while I.P.s wouldn't. That would preserve "Anyone can edit" (registering an account is easy, fast, and free) while getting in a higher level of protection for BLPs. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose blanket policy - instead make time-limited SPs on application easier (both BLP and other) --Rumping (talk) 12:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose consensus doesn't seem to pass for this proposal anyways, but I'll still comment. IPs can be helpful in certain places, like sports articles thus. Of course if it's a high-profile BLP or a OTRS issue, it could be protected. Flagged revs seem better. Secret ^account 13:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I've seen too many positive IP contribs on BLPs and other articles as well to make me support. Perhaps adding more BLPs to watchlists may help reduce the problem. Spencer^T♦^C 17:30, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Paul Beardsell (talk) 10:37, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I don't want to see a whole class of editors locked out on such arbitrary grounds. Gonzonoir (talk) 18:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone can edit. Period. Powers ^T 14:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - This would prevent new and anonymous editors from editing more than 10 percent of all Wikipedia articles. Much better to let them edit via Flagged Revisions, where the value of their edit can be quickly determined and either allowed or disallowed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose semi protection of all BLPs - Or why don't we just change our slogan to "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia with some articles that anyone can edit". Also, this is a slippery slope. Locking the database will stop vandalism, why don't we do that? --Anonymous101 (talk) 19:11, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Causes more trouble than it solves: more admin backlog, inconvenience for newbies, and most importantly, not enough inconvenience for the determined vandals. Flagged revs are a better idea. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Opposes (SP) 201–

Strong Oppose - Wikipedia will always be prone to vandalism as a wiki. As soon as we start semi-protecting articles we lose a huge ability to pool collective knowledge. Also, articles will have to take awhile for varification on whether the article is about a person and that person is still living, and then should be semi-protected. 75% of vandalism occurs to new articles, and if an article has reached all those stages, then its up to the vandalism patrol and the editors to correct any personal attacks with in the article. Mkdw ^talk 20:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Without the anons we would never have gotten as large as we are now, we wouldn't have as much information. You know what else would protect BLP articles from misinformation? Deleting all of them, but that's not a good idea either. Removing anons from the picture will stunt growth to an unacceptable level. -- Ned Scott 04:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Too restrictive and goes against the spirit of "anyone can edit". I think flagged revisions makes a lot more sense for BLPs. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:43, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose Fundamentally, we just have to trust that it is in the nature of the humans to improve themselves. In other words, a teenager who got a kick from inserting "ARSE" into an article might unconsciously be impressed by the capacity/ability to contribute, and might come back a month later to correct a typo, then a month later to add something meaningful. People tend to value and protect their work. Semi-protect all BLPs and then Wikipedia will destroy a valuable source of potential editors who might not be inspired by the Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone inside can edit - if you ain't in, go do something else until you have been approved by an overlooker model. 82.230.24.185 (talk) 21:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose anything that tries to paint IP users as "bad" and those with accounts as in any way "better". -Halo (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Flagged revisions may be useful; semi-protection is something we should resort to reluctantly for the fewest articles possible. Warofdreams talk 00:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - "Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit." This is why we try not to protect any pages in the first place.. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 18:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. This undermines the entire purpose of a wiki. --IdiotSavant (talk) 01:24, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I hate voting. Why not Extreme-O Abraham Lincoln Oppose with Hot Sauce if we let "strong" in? That aside, CW says everything I would say: Love the EyePees, for they are the future. - brenneman 06:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
'Oppose for reasons given by per Protonk above. Thehalfone (talk) 09:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose IP users have a lot to contribute, and this gives them the confidence to become registered and contribute more. I think we should have SP for frequently-vandalised pages, but purely on a case-by-case basis. PhantomSteve (talk) 11:35, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose At one time I was all in favor of increasing the bar to edit as an anti-vandalism measure, including eliminating anon editing completely. However, I now realize that anon editing has a place here. Semi-protecting all BLP articles would cause more harm than good, IMO. Continue to semi protect articles when they experience waves of IP vandalism attacks, but not systemically. However, I'm in favor of Flagged Revs, if a test senario works out. — Becksguy (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. "Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit." This must stay the basic rule and philosophy of Wikipedia. This is what made its success and is a revolutionary experience in writing. If this is suggested as an answer to prevent lawsuits, then it will ultimately lead us to a protection of all pages and the end of the project. Otherwise, same comments as Warofdreams. Gul-o-Khar (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Overkill to do this for all BLPs. -- Avenue (talk) 00:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. I oppose any use of a semi-protect for any page unless it is a highly trafficked and repeatedly vandalised page. We were all once anonymous editors too. Keep that in mind. Esox id^t 01:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Adding flagged revs would accomplish the same thing by scaring off fewer new users. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The joy of seeing my first IP edit marginally improve WP encouraged me to stay and contribute further. I'd not be here if blanket protection or FR had been in force. Let's only protect what needs protecting. Certes (talk) 23:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I wont be able to stand any level of protection blanketly applied for any particular category of pages, especially BLPs. It is discouraging, insults new users and is totally against my conception of a wiki. Flagged revisions are perhaps justified. prashanthns (talk) 05:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - This flies in the face of the concept of Wikipedia being an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Nutiketaiel (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - This is just silly, this is a solution looking for a problem, what we need are more competent editors not policy creep. L0b0t (talk) 15:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
oppose - I don't think protecting all BLPs is the right solution and would hamper the growth of the wikipedia. What I would support is allowing editors to more liberally apply permanent semi-protection, for example to articles that have been reviewed as being good (as is often suggested) or simply to names that draw frequent vandalism. Protecting all BLP is cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - This will not fix the problem RP459 (talk) 18:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. The whole purpose of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. Only allowing people who have registered and waited to edit BLPs would destroy the thing that makes us special and better than other online encyclopedias. – Joe Nu tter 18:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose I could support flagged rev.s, but not allowing unregistered/ not logged in users to edit is a very poor idea. Yes, some bad things happen, but making such a big deal about mistakes that are live for just a couple minutes is absurd. I always check the article history if I'm reading about something sensitive, or if anything suspicious comes up. If people use Wikipedia irresponsibly, then that's their fault. What about all the articles that have never been vandalized but have been improved my IP edits? What about editors like User talk:68.39.174.238? Dar-Ape 20:43, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose WP is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and that means instant results. We can handle petty vandalism just fine. Crum375 (talk) 23:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Semi-protection should be based on evidence, not the presumption IPs are up to no good, as apparently much of our content comes from the IPs. Fletcher (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Why destroy everything that has made Wikipedia so successful in the past? --Jannex (talk) 17:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Far to restrictive. Locks out many good edits. My personal experience with my 3,000+ watch list is that about half of the IP edits are valid edits. There are plenty of registered users who vandalize articles that would not be stopped by this method.Dbiel ^(Talk) 22:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose as per User:Gulokhar --Divide (talk) 08:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Doing this would go against one of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia...that anyone can edit an article at anytime. I am EXTREMELY disappointed in the article by the Washington Post as I believe it was completely one-sided and yet is still fueling this and related debates... from what I understand, the incorrect info in the Kennedy article was removed in less than 5 minutes... to me, that is an example of Wikipedia working as it is now as opposed to how the Washington Post tries to describe it. --Aka042 (talk) 12:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Goes against the basic idea of WP. Current implementation of SP is more than enough. Vandalism is a very minor nuissance, only the "professional" vandalism fighters make a big deal of it. -- Iterator12n ^Talk 03:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose So a new user can create an article and within minutes they can no longer edit it. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
weak oppose In my point of view semiprotection should be used only if proven necessary. I have not been convinced that it is necessary for all BLP articles. Debresser (talk) 13:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Protection should be used as a last resort. Vandalism should be handled by patrolling, reverting, blocking, and banning, with flagged revisions helping to reduce the visibility of the vandalism before it is reverted. —AlanBarrett (talk) 15:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - whilst this is the least objectionable way of fixing the problem, I honestly think it should be all or nothing: if BLP needs stronger protection to enforce Wikipedia's existing pillars, then every article does. JonStrines (talk) 15:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose. Semi-protection should only be used for articles that are vandalized frequently, except for a few obvious targets. As many have said, this undermies the purpose of a wiki. Tezkag72^{私にどなる}_{私のはかい} 04:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Semi-protection for articles that are vandalized frequently, but nothing else. -- Meister (talk) 16:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Flagged Revs is so much better, why prevent a large proportion of our contributors from doing valuable work when there is an alternative? --Tango (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While preventing vandalism of BLPs is a noteworthy goal, there are some major problems with this: new editors might wind up creating a page and being unable to edit it; gross vandalism like the one to Ted Kennedy is swiftly reverted anyway, and this thing seems to be an unnecessary knee-jerk reaction to a scandal, of the same type that gave us multiple life sentences for offenses in some states (surely one life sentence would be sufficient!), witch-hunting in Salem, and other overdone reactions. That being said, maybe we should try out flagged revisions on a trial basis (say, on Fuck or on Barack Obama). — Rickyrab | Talk 18:20, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose This truly goes against the very spirit of Wikipedia. This would make an entire class of articles that are uneditable by new or anon users. Just no. -Royalguard11(T) 01:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The anons who want to place problematic content will find other places to do it; this will make it harder for BLP watchers to find the BLP violations. Additionally, if an autoconfirmed user does place problematic content in a BLP article, the subject won't be able to remove it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - Anons with problematic content will be reverted anyway, why be so hostile towards newcomers? WP:BITE. Anyway, doing so removes the possibility in the case of sock puppetry of said sockpuppet accidentally revealing their IP address. Quite a few anons just correct minor grammar errors in their edits, why take away this crowdsourcing potential?ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 06:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose strongly - Not all BLPs need it anyway, e.g. Luciana Caporaso, Cheryl Cole, Julie Benz, Alastair Stewart, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, Richard Hammond to name a few. Those articles 'do not' need any semi-protection indefinitely; if so, just for short periods. (Personal bias here: These are also celebrities I like). Let's not forget that IPs contribute to biographies (I've got friends who did this here!)
As for flagged revisions, well, not for this wiki, not at all, they'd be more of use on other Wikimedia projects, like Wikisource or the main Wikimedia Foundation wiki, but absolutely not here. Maybe I'm onto something, but then again, this is just one Scouser's opinion... not that you all will agree with me anyway. --Litherlandsand (talk) 14:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose - I've been back and forth about this proposal. The current state of BLPs isn't a complete crisis, but I do agree that it's sometimes quite an issue. I'd be in favor of more liberal use of sprot on highly-viewed BLPs perhaps, but a blanket-SP is just a bit too much. I echo Durova's thoughts earlier, this is a cost/benefit question. I'm not convinced that semi'ing a bunch of articles would really help improve matters. Jamie^☆S93 15:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose on the basis that flagged revs should be implemented. Seddσn ^talk 03:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

I regularly create and contribute articles on relatively non-prominent living people - e.g. second level Iraqi politicians and such like - many of which aren't actually tagged as LP. Any actions that make these contributions more difficult for established and trusted users like myself would not be welcome. Semi-protection is something I could live with. AndrewRT(Talk) 00:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.