Wikipedia talk:Experimental vandalism protection

Discussion copied from Talk:George W. Bush/Archive 34#Protected...

I want to remind everone of something. From WP:PPol: "When a page is particularly gay profile, either because it is linked off the main page, or because it has recently received a prominent link from offsite, it will often become a target for vandalism. It is best not to protect pages in this case. Instead, consider adding them to your watchlist, and reverting vandalism yourself." This page is one of the most high profile. So, yeah, it'll get a lot of vandalism, just like the featured article on the main page will. But there's a very good reason we don't protect it. High profile articles are our face to the world. We need to present a "free encyclopedia" face, and not a "by-request only" face. Think of the literally thousands of people who find this page every day off of Google or Yahoo. What will they think when they click the "edit" button and only get the source? I would venture to say that much of the vandalism (aside from obvious anti-Bush ones) comes from new users taking that edit button out for a spin, just to delete a sentence, add "hello," or even do something a little naughty to see if it really saves your edits. While it's a pain, this is an essential part of Wikipedia, and actually healthy. And if we are going to be Wikipedia anywhere, this article is the place. I think long term protection is not the solution, and would be harmful to Wikipedia. Dmcdevit·t 07:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

That simply won't do for this page. Vandalism happens way too quick to this page, it doesn't matter how many people are monitoring it. The level of vandalism this article suffers is simply unacceptable, and some measures need to be taken. I estimate in any given day, a vandalized version of GWB is up for at least an hour per day. Yes, I understand wiki general principles and goals. Yes, such measures will undoubtedly take away power from anon ips. Regardless, something must be done than simply better efforts on our part to combat vandalism. --kizzle 07:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

For at least the immediate future, The Powers That Be won't be implementing "semi-protection" (edits by registered users only). As a practical matter, that leaves the choice between protection (edits by admins only) and normal treatment (open editing, with consequent vandalism and reversion of vandalism). As between those two, I favor open editing. Requiring non-admins to submit all proposed edits for consideration on the talk page would discourage them from contributing, and the need for admins to review and implement proposed changes would consume more Wikipedian-hours than the reversion of vandalism does now. Also, I'm not convinced it would reduce the total amount of vandalism of Wikipedia. Most vandals here probably aren't ideological Bush opponents; they're just adolescents (of whatever chronological age) who want to vandalize something and think first of the current President's article. If Gore had been inaugurated, they'd be vandalizing Al Gore. If they find they can't edit their first target, quite a few of them will probably go hit something else. Vandalism on less prominent articles would be seen by fewer visitors but would tend to stay in place longer.

Here's another alternative, which is only a bit anti-wiki: A small group of admins (one, two, or three) is designated to review the article once a week. They select the most recent version that contains no obvious vandalism. The main article remains universally editable, but the selected version is protected as George W. Bush/Nov14 or whatever. A note at the top of George W. Bush warns the reader that vandalism is frequent and that [[George W. Bush/Nov14|this version of the article]] is free of vandalism, though perhaps slightly out of date. Readers could choose to go there with a click. How would this GWB Editing Council deal with ongoing edit wars? I dunno, but any resolution of that question would be better than frequent (let alone semi-permanent) protection of this article. JamesMLane 08:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

What an outsatnding idea...I nominate JamesMLane to be one of the "small group of admins" :)--MONGO 08:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I like that idea too. I'd be glad to help. But I seriously think this thing needs pruning. Oh, how about this? We protect durring hours that most people are not online (admins included), and unprotect when we're back, so vandalism doesn't stay? Or would that put too much strain on the servers and be too much work? -Mysekurity 12:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, MONGO, but I think the tricky subject of edit wars would be easiest to deal with if the Council consisted of editor(s) with absolutely no interest in the article. No one on the Council should ever edit the article except to update the link to the saved version. If this is a clever ploy by you to prevent me from editing the article by sticking me on the Council, too bad, I've seen through you.  :) As for changing the protection depending on the time of day, I don't know whether there's a time at which vandalism tends to remain unreverted longer. A lot of people have this article on their watchlists, and their work is supplemented by the RC patrollers. JamesMLane 15:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Ummm... "only a bit anti-wiki"? That is an unreasonable idea. I do not have an answer to the vandalism problem, whether semi-protection, or this idea, but limiting the rights to edit articles is not that good. A small group of Admins might be good way to stop vandalism, but how would they be selected? (instruction creep?) How do we protect from some POV Admins from getting to control controversial articles? Just some thoughts. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 15:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not an unreasonable idea. There are approximately 300 admins who could help facilitate the moderation process until some other alternative is implemented. We do not need to elect a committee to do this, we already have one. Yamaguchi先生 15:27, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify, my suggestion wouldn't restrict anyone from editing the George W. Bush article. That article would remain subject to completely open editing. In fact, it would be more open than at present, because the occasional vandalism-protections would stop. No editors (whether registered users or anons) would lose any rights that they now have, except that the admins volunteering for this patrolling work would give up the right to edit the main article. The only change would be that we'd create a new page that would be available as a resource for those who wanted it. Certainly we have some POV admins, but my suggestion wouldn't enable them to control the article. My idea requires only that we find a small number of admins who don't press their POV about Bush. They'd perform only the weekly ministerial task of finding a recent unvandalized version. JamesMLane 16:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

No ploy, my man. Just chiming in that I thought your idea was a decent one. Obviously the vandalism is keeping good faith editors like yourself from being able to make a change without saving the alteration on a "wrong version" that has been vandalized. I like your idea of creating a subpage that is the also the mainpage for the article. I myself have tired of the vandalism to this page especially and am in favor of any idea that would "protect" nonvandalized editions for consumption by the casual reader. You idea sounds like the best one yet as semiprotection is not going to happen and is unwiki anyway I suppose.--MONGO 16:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd volunteer for this duty if I would be allowed to rotate out of (and possibly back in to) the "group" that deals with the unvandalized version. I haven't made any content-related edits to this article in a while, but if I want to in the future, I'd like to be able to. android79 16:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that would be a big problem, but we have hundreds of admins, and it would probably be just as easy to find a few who've never edited the article and never want to. They don't need any particular expertise in U.S. politics to recognize "George Bush is a jerk" as vandalism. JamesMLane 16:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

How strictly would we define vandalism for this scheme? Would it include obvious extreme POV edits of the kind that are so often reverted? android79 16:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

We have an existing discussion of what vandalism is and is not: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Apparent bad-faith edits that do not make their bad-faith nature inarguably explicit are not considered vandalism at Wikipedia." If someone writes, "Bush has provided exemplary leadership in the War on Terrorism," I wouldn't consider that vandalism. It's just somebody who doesn't understand the NPOV policy. JamesMLane 17:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

(Why I didn't think to review WP:VAND is beyond me.) I was thinking of POV edits even more extreme than your example, which would then be covered by the "bad-faith" clause in most cases. Okay, I'm on board for this. android79 17:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Now lets hope they don't get smart and go for the vandalism warning every time :) --kizzle 17:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Stop Vandalism (line break for easier editing)

The subpage idea might not be too great though. See Wikipedia:Subpages. And what happens if there is a major incident... do we have to wait until the little "council" agrees on a version? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

So that they may be addressed thoroughly, exactly what are your concerns Lord Voldemort? Hall Monitor 19:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "a major incident", but, no, nobody would have to wait for the "Council" to do anything. Once a week, a couple of admins would take a snapshot of the page, without vandalism; save that snapshot as a version of the article with a particular date; and update the link that would be at the top of the article. Then they would go away for another week. Edits by everyone else would continue exactly as before. If a subpage is a technical problem, it could of course be a separate page, George W. Bush 2005-11-14 or the like. In that case, the admins would delete that page when they created the November 21 version. JamesMLane 19:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

My concerns are thus:

• Subpages are not really kosher. Do we change policy just for a couple of specific articles? Having a subpage where people can edit, but having the main article protected seems to sort of "hide" the editable version, even if there is a notice placed on the main one pointing to the subpage.
• Having a protected version where only a few Admins get to decide what stays or goes is not very wiki-like. What if some Admins want it one way and others want it another? Then we have even more disputes. If Admins cannot decide in that weekly period, what version gets to be saved?
• We should be looking for ways to stop vandalism, not just move it off of the main article page. This just seems to be avoiding the problem rather than addressing it.
• If an incident happens, for instance an assassination attempt, should the "council" of Admins have to wait until the weekly period is up before that info can be added to the main article page? If Admins can edit the main article page, but regular contributors cannot (in a situation like this), then what is the pupose of having a subpage? People would be editing there, but an Admin may want to add that info directly into the main article page. It removes regular editors from the editing process.
• There is talk of instruction creep all around WP, and this is a good example; changing Wikipedia to suit a small group of articles doesn't seem to jive with the guidleline of no instruction creep.

There might not be an answer to suit everybody, and as I've said before, I sure don't have an answer. But I personally feel that this idea would not be good for in the spirit of "wiki". Hopefully I didn't forget anything. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

One temporary solution may be to created a hierarchical page structure at (for example) Wikipedia:Requested_changes/George_W._Bush and allow users to edit there until a semi-protect capability is added to Wikipedia. The change requests could be broken into 52 pages per year, one for every week, i.e. Wikipedia:Requested_changes/George_W._Bush/2005/Week 52. Anyone who is an administrator could then add each weekly page to their watchlist and incorporate requested changes into the article as necessary. Hall Monitor 19:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem I see with that is that, how is that any different than protecting this page and requiring changes to be requested on the talk page? Maybe I don't understand this latest idea. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

LV's concerns, in order:

1. The subpage policy is actually a guideline, and even if it were policy, WP:IAR would allow us to break it; we are trying to keep one of the most-vandalized pages on Wikipedia from becoming completely useless.
2. Admins will be reverting simple, blatant vandalism and bad-faith edits only. I propose a "when in doubt, leave that edit in" approach to settle disputes, of which I feel there will be few.
3. You've been around this talk page nearly as long as I have, LV, and we've both seen proposals, good and bad, for stopping vandalism. Those we've tried haven't worked. This might, even if it's "avoiding" it rather than stopping it.
4. If there's serious news about GWB, the "council" could be suspended until the new information is in a stable form. Keep in mind that this idea will not stop the main article from being edited at will, so readers can look to the "live" version for recent news.
5. I don't see any instruction creep here. This is a complex (but not overly so) solution to a serious problem. android79 19:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Lord Voldemort, please expand your page history to show the past 1000 edits to the George W. Bush page. This is an example of an article which is being habitually attacked by vandals, the majority of which are drive-by instances of vandalism made by anonymous editors who show no interest in improving this article. The suggested editing-by-proxy solution would be temporary until a semi-protection capability can be added by the developers. This would not be the first page or function to have a limitation placed upon it in order to protect the integrity of Wikipedia. For example, the Main Page of Wikipedia is protected from editing by the general public; only administrators may make changes to that page after a consensus is reached, yet we are able to keep it up to date without any issue. Another example is the recent implementation of new users not being able to move pages until their account has aged for a certain period of time. For now, this appears to be the best solution. Hall Monitor 19:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hall Monitor, yes, I know full well the amount of vandalism that takes place here. But the problem is, semi-protection may never take affect, so what started out as "temporary", might soon become "not-so-temporary", i.e. permanent. And Android, in some order: 1. IAR? Okay, let's just let vandals have their way. That would be ignoring the rules. There is some limit to using the IAR Defense™. 2. The idea is that there would be no Admin reverting of the main article page, because there would be no non-Admin editing of the main article page. 3. Yes, something should probably be done, I just personally don't care for this idea. 4. etc. 5. etc... I don't really want to fight about this anymore. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

LV, you've got it entirely backwards, based on your response to #2 above. Most admins would continue to revert vandalism on the main article, and anyone would be free to edit it. The only changes are thus: 1) a notice at the top of George W. Bush explaining the existence of George W. Bush/Scrutinized Version, and why that version may be more useful. 2) George W. Bush/Scrutinized Version, which is protected, is generated weekly by taking a snapshot of George W. Bush and, based on discussion, removal any blatant vandalism and bad-faith POV by a small group of disinterested admins. It preserves the wiki-ness of "anyone can edit" while maintaining a useful article on our president. Win-win, if you ask me. android79 20:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You know what, why don't we just have a bot watch this article? If it recognizes an edit to this article as clear vandalism, it will revert it immediately.  Denelson83  20:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll get right on it. It'll take a few decades, though, and lots of money. android79 20:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, just remember that "a watch bot never boils."  Denelson83  20:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Your comments are greatly appreciated by everyone, please do not mistake this as a "fight"; I welcome your criticisms and concerns. It is a good practice to discuss these matters before making any major changes. The way I see it, any administrator should be able to instantly incorporate any major change made to a subpage. Even if this were a non-temporary solution, what major disadvantages do you see in this style of consensus-based editing? Hall Monitor 20:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we could move this discussion elsewhere? I smell a proposal cookin' at Wikipedia:Experimental vandalism protection... android79 20:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... perhaps I did have it backwards. I was under the impression that there would be a subpage that would be the editable one, and leave the main article page protected. So this proposal is simply like the one for FAs? Have a preserved "good copy", but allow new changes to be made? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

And I know it wasn't a "fight", I was just a little tired of this discussion. It's been a long day and I am a little tired. I'll try not to get so upset next time. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll sketch something more concrete out sooner or later and link to it here. android79 20:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm really against protection of any kind on this article, it is high profile and vandalism will happen. We don't protect FA articles do we? Protecting it seems anti-wiki like, what does it say about us that this is a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" but our most high profile page, you can't edit. -Greg Asche (talk) 21:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Rough sketch here. It might be useful to copy this discussion to that talk page, but I've gotta run. android79 21:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

All this seems extremely interesting to me, and there are a multitude of good ideas here, but there are also a few ones that I think could be improved. I don't think we need to have a /week52 or /November 15 page, as we already have a history for that. We could just have /safe or something, and if one wants, they can view the history. I agree about the anti-wikiness, and it's really too bad, but I think this seems to be the best way to deal with all the vandalism. I don't know whether we should protect the main article page, or protect the subpage (the protected page is the safe version). If we allow the main page to be vandalized, we could lose readers. If we don't allow it to be edited, we could lose editors. There are other pages that they can edit that don't have these vandalism problems, and it will give users a chance to use the talk pages. Just my thoughts, I'd be glad to hear others. -Mysekurity 21:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Regarding protection: yes we do protect things which are highly trafficked, such as the Main Page, images which are slated to appear on the front page, and articles from being moved by anonymous editors. This was not always the case; these changes were made out of necessity. Unfortunately, it is now necessary that we enact some level of protection against highly trafficked articles like this one. I believe that those with good intentions understand why we need this change. Hall Monitor 22:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Would anyone object if I copied all or some of this big chunk of commentary over to here? android79 22:21, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Clearance has been received from the Department of Redundancy Department to copy this over. Hall Monitor 22:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Hall Monitor asked me to weigh in on this and I'm honored to do so. The way that article stands now with all of the rampant vandalism makes it pretty much useless as a reference tool. I happen to like the idea of a protected version to be kept under lock and key and simply pasted back over the article space, perhaps once every couple of days. As constructive edits are added, the "dummy" article(s) can be updated as well. Just a fact of life that an open-content article on an high-ranking politician is going to be targeted by some very small-minded people. I'm not saying that because I support the President (which I do), but because it's, well, basic truth. Heck, I just happily blocked an anon vandal who was wreaking absolute and total havoc on the Dixie Chicks article...and we all know what those three lovelies think of Dubya.  :) I like Android79's idea as well, BTW. - Lucky 6.9 22:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't give me credit! I just mocked up a proposal for it. JamesMLane came up with it, I just... got really loud about it, I guess. :-) android79 22:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Updating the protected version

My proposal was that the responsible admins would update the protected version once a week, on a regular schedule, simply by taking a snapshot of the most recent unvandalized version of the main article. I suggested giving the protected version a title that incorporated the date, but if a generic title like "Scrutinized version" were used instead, then at the top it should note that it was the main article version as of thus-and-such a date and time. If there's fast-breaking news, readers would benefit from knowing exactly how out of date the protected version might be.

What if there's a major development, such as an assassination attempt? The admins responsible for the weekly snapshotting could decide to bestir themselves and do an additional mid-week snapshot. I don't envision that they or anyone would edit the protected version. Instead, they'd open the main article, which is being edited by all and sundry as per Wikipedia norms, and snapshot a recent version. Wikipedians tend to jump on breaking news, and it would take only a few hours before the article had pretty good coverage of something like an assassination attempt. Even without this refinement of mid-week snapshotting, though, date-stamping the protected version would mean there was no real problem. As of (say) November 14, 2005, no one had tried to kill Bush. No reasonable reader could complain if the "Scrutinized as of November 14, 2005" version didn't mention the events of November 18.

The real problem with the update, as I mentioned originally, is if there's an edit war in progress. Neither side is being vandalistic. Which version should be copied as the "Scrutinized" version? We wouldn't want a situation where the admins are supposed to copy whatever's in place as of midnight UTC, so the edit warriors are all online then and are constantly reverting just to try to have their version in place at the magic moment. The selection of a version to be copied shouldn't rest on the outcome of such a struggle. I suggest that the snapshot shouldn't incorporate any changes from the previous week's snapshot that are the subject of the edit war. For example, suppose the snapshotting is done each Sunday. A version is copied on Sunday the 13th. On Thursday the 17th, an editor adds several sentences expanding on the discussion of Bush's terms as governor (an expansion this article could definitely use, IMO). A revert war erupts over whether the new passage is too laudatory about educational changes or too condemnatory about executions or whatever. On Sunday the 20th, the admins would edit that section of the main article to restore it to the condition it was in on the 13th, then snapshot the article, then edit the main article back to where it was when they found it. The admins doing the snapshotting would not try to deal with the edit war on the main article. Edit wars would be dealt with as they are now. This method should work unless the edit war concerns the hypothetical major incident. The snapshotted version shouldn't entirely omit the assassination attempt or whatever. In that circumstance (probably very rare), the admins would just have to pick a version to be copied. One would hope that the ensuing week would be enough time for the resolution of the edit war, so that the problem wouldn't recur. JamesMLane 01:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Umm... I do believe you're missing something

How stupid are our vandals? Do you think they won't remove the little notice at the top of the page? -_- Matt Yeager 23:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• If they do, there's nothing lost. We just revert it like we would anything else. android79 00:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

what? The entire point is lost then! The whole idea is to have something there in case of vandalism... but the only time we'll actually need it, it won't be there! It will serve solely to clutter up the page. Matt Yeager 00:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

First, I think many of our vandals are indeed pretty stupid. They'll change the article to say that Bush's father is Satan and leave the rest of it alone. Remember, they're not trying to convince anyone that Bush's father is Satan; they're just being childish. Second, readers who aren't first-time visitors to the article would still know about the protected version, and could find it readily enough, without having to check all the recent changes for themselves. Third, if after a lengthy trial period the method seems to be working, then we could consider changing other pages so that "George W. Bush" links to the protected version. JamesMLane 00:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Would you prefer {{vprotect}}, which would clutter up the page and make it uneditable? Near-permanent protection is where George W. Bush is headed unless we try something different. android79 00:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer treating the page the same as we treat, say, cheese--no protection at all, and no annoying note (unless we bring in semi-protection, with registered users only). Matt Yeager 01:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I take it Cheese is still suffering the after-effects of being a featured article. Vandalism to that article will taper off eventually. I don't think we can say the same for George W. Bush, at least not for another 2+ years. android79 01:13, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The page with the template should be protected. George W. Bush should stay protected while the sub page George W. Bush/temp (or whatever) should be never protected. --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 19:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't make this general; confine it to Bush, at least at first

A generalized proposal like this will, IMO, spark opposition. Who would decide which articles should have a protected version attached? What criteria would be applied to that selection process? How would the "snapshotting" admin(s) handle an article in the midst of an edit war among non-vandals? (The last question is a problem even if the device is confined to the George W. Bush article, but at least this thorny problem is less likely to arise if there's only one such article.)

The Bush article is unique. The cached list of "Articles with the most revisions" shows Bush in first place with 22,491 revisions, and Hurricane Katrina second with 8,167 revisions. That's quite some gap, and it will only widen. Furthermore, I'd guess that the percentage of edits that are vandalisms and reversions of vandalisms is higher on George W. Bush than on most or all of the other articles on the list.

In these circumstances, it makes sense to try to deal with the problem at this particular article, without trying to establish something that can be implemented on other articles. This article is where the problem is the worst. If, after a few months, the idea seems to be working well, then the Wikipedia community could consider whether to apply it elsewhere, and how to answer the additional questions that would arise from that approach. JamesMLane 00:52, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• I agree. I generalized this discussion only to have something concrete to point to if and when it branches out to other articles; GWB will be the test bed. android79 00:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Why not let George Bush be the main article and be protected, and have a link on top of it to the editable version. Unless this is what you guys actually are getting at, because after I glanced over this talk, it looks like you want the main article to be the open one, which means that people comming from Google will see a vandalized article half the time, possible with the link to the "scrutinzed" version having been removed.Voice of All^T|@|ESP 02:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The proposal, as you've correctly understood it, would leave the main article unprotected. This does indeed have the drawback that someone who types in "George W. Bush" might come to a vandalized version. (We might later consider changing internal wikilinks elsewhere so that a reader who clicks on a "George W. Bush" link would come to the protected version.) The alternative you suggest has the drawback of impeding legitimate edits of the main article. As between those drawbacks, the latter worries me more. Furthermore, if you look at the comments on this page, it seems that even the milder version that's being proposed -- with the main article remaining unprotected -- will run into some opposition. Let's try to get that one in place and see how it goes. Perhaps, down the road, we could revisit the question whether to switch them around. JamesMLane 02:59, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The editable version will be up to date, but "read at your own risk". The problem is that much of the vandalism is page blanking, so the link to the "scrutinzed version" will just be replaced with GEORGE BUSH IS A PENIS half the time...[sight]...this 95% vandal/rvv rate gets old pretty quick...Voice of All^T|@|ESP 03:03, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, the proposal is no panacea. I'm just very reluctant to inhibit editing by making admins into the gatekeepers of the article, so that no change could be made without their imperial approval. JamesMLane 05:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Imperial? Sometimes a hardliner stand is necessary, like in AotC, the Republic had to build up and give emergency powers to the chancellor...and a Death Star HAD to be built to keep order in the galaxy...CLEARLY it was a necessity that turned out for the better :-).Voice of All^T|@|ESP 05:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Yup, I guess it all does boil down to Star Wars. Matt Yeager 06:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't everything? -Mysekurity 06:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that the main George W. Bush article should be the one protected, and editors make suggestions on a talk page and let the sysops handle the requests. If it is opened up to vandalism again we know what will happen. Yamaguchi先生 06:50, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I am opposed to disallowing open editing by anyone but support a protected version that can be linked from a bolded link with a brief explanation at the top of the open version. The linked version would be protected. A council of 3 to 5 respected editors (not necessarily admins) would work to ensure the protected article gets updated as needed...in other words, during major situations, perhaps several times a day, and during lulls, perhaps only twice a week. The council should be people who are not vested in the POV of this article. If this can't happen, then I recommend we open this article and continue to revert vandalism as usual.--MONGO 08:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

As a subnote...the purpose of an open wiki is to ensure all can edit and we are only being hypocritical when we advertise that "anyone can edit" and then protect pages, disallowing this. I am agreement with everyone here and I think that JamesMLane's original proposal was the best one I have heard yet...--MONGO 08:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify, MONGO, my original proposal, and the one I still favor, would have much less of a role for the "council" than what you describe. They would just grab an unvandalized version. If something major is going on, so that the article is being rapidly updated, any vandalism would be reverted almost immediately, and readers would probably want the most up-to-date version available, so the "protected" version would be less important. For that reason, I don't think we need to worry about a Council that scrambles to update the protected version every time another administration official is indicted. The Council members would need to be admins because they'd have to have the power to edit the protected page, replacing the previous text of George W. Bush - scrutinized version with the new text. JamesMLane 08:53, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Then any admin with a NPOV should do. I'm sorry if I seemed to mischaracterize your comments. I was just hoping that if we must protect, then let's do something along the lines of your proposal. I'm not a fan of page protection anyway, but I have a "strong dislike" of the vandals actions.--MONGO 09:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Having only been here a short while, I am beginning to feel that this open wiki is failing and am seriously considering leaving. The vandalism here is really overwhelming to me and there are more important things in life than making sure a 13 year old isn't taking advantage of what appears to have been a great idea gone terribly wrong. Yamaguchi先生 09:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Please don't leave as then the "13 year old" wins...that is what they would like. The whole open wiki thing is deliberate to ensure that this forum allows all views, all voices to be heard. The unfortunate byproduct of that is we have to endure the adolescent behavior of a few.--MONGO 09:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

The vandals will win because they have the most time at their disposal, the loudest voices, and are greater in number, while we as a community are unable to agree on what to do about it. It does not matter if I leave. Yamaguchi先生 09:13, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You shouldn't judge by the George W. Bush article, where the vandalism rate is far above the average. Other articles are attacked much less often. I spend a small portion of my time reverting vandals, and so do many other editors. There are more of us than there are of them. It's usually just a minor annoyance, sort of like having to sit through commercials if you watch free television. If the vandalism starts getting you down, you're entitled to concentrate on constructive editing and let other contributors worry about the vandals. There are many ways to help build the encyclopedia. JamesMLane 10:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible to make an irremovable tag on the current Bush article that says that "this might be vandalized, please click the histor tab to view previous revisions"? Where are the devs?Voice of All^T|@|ESP 13:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Added some proposals for anti vandalism at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Anti Vandalsim proposal --AzaToth ^talk 21:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Everyone should download this anti-vandal tool. It is pretty fast.[1].Voice of All^T|@|ESP 07:40, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:This article is crap and not worth reading

Is about all this tag says. We don't need it and it won't achieve anything. Just press your rollback buttons and be done with. Most vandalism is corrected within 5 minutes, and within 1 minute on this article. We don't need to shout out lout about the public toilet analogy that is so popular with Britannica. I've removed the tag from GWB. It shouldn't be on such a high-profile article until the community has agreed to this. Try it out somewhere that doesn't matter. If there are no dont-matter pages that receive regular vandalism, then the tag need never be used. -Splash^talk 22:52, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Terrible. Ugly. Increases the number of protected pages. Taxes our scalability by making yet another task that only admins can perform. Plus it produces a fork. Rather than making a fork of the article it would be better to provide a link to an old revision... all frequent users of Wikipedia should learn to use the history in any case. The only objection I can see to linking a good revision is that people might change whats linked, but a bad user could just change the notice in any case. I think we should just consider a banner that says "WIKIPEDIA SUCKS. VANDALIZE THIS ARTICLE." since thats all the notice really says... plus the Wikipedia sucks notice would be less likely to get vandalized itself. --Gmaxwell 01:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

For once, I couldn't agree with you two more. Ambi 00:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)