This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Main Page featured article protection page. |
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This policy originated from a subpage in User:Raul654's user space.
OK, for about the 8 billionth time, I've decided to read the main article, just, you know, for fun. And, for about the 7 billionth time, it was vandalized, and it looked awful. Good thing I know enough about Wikipedia to read the page histories and revert, unlike the several people who decided to vandalize the vandalism in between (one wouldn't necessarily wonder why someone might decide to vandalize an article that had for several minutes claimed that that solar system was 6000 years old because the Bible says so).
My statement, and this is something I've believed since first editing Wikipedia in September 2006: this policy does far more disservice to the place than service. Does it show people they can edit and improve an article? Yes. But it also shows about 1/4 of the people who come to a page that Wikipedia can be vandalized and isn't necessarily reliable (anyone who maintains that lack of credibility isn't Wikipedia's biggest problem apparently hasn't been in any sort of education recently). Of course, Wikipedia's loss of credibility due to vandalism on the main page, which is pretty significant, might not even compare to the disservice done to the readers. It is a very editor-centric premise (of course, developed by editors) that we should encourage editing more than worry about vandalism and Wikipedia's credibility. I can nearly guarantee you that people who use this page for research and/or viewing would come to the opposite view.
Please, stop this disservice to our viewers. At this point, I can't even tell anyone to look at the main page on Wikipedia, because it would embarrass me as an editor, and they don't have the know-how to revert it, let alone look at a clean old version of it. The Evil Spartan (talk) 17:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
If users want to access an encyclopedia that can't be vandalized, they can just go over to Britannica. The wiki model is central to how Wikipedia works, and new users should be given every opportunity they can to contribute. Borisblue (talk) 07:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I firmly believe that the main page article should be semi-protected from the moment it becomes a main page article to the moment is ceases being one. I hope most editors will join me in this opinion. Bstone (talk) 16:13, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I just had to fully protect the current FA because Grawp got to it, and we all know he likes to use sleepers. Seriously, the FA gets a lot of hits, and is perhaps the easiest article to vandalize on the site. Kwsn (Ni!) 23:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
A new analysis of featured articles on the main page, similar to the one conducted two years ago, has been started by User:DrKiernan. Hope you don't mind that I moved it to a subpage, DrKiernan! Great start so far. BuddingJournalist 09:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not proposing semi-protecting the Main Page featured article (MPFA) as a matter of course, like BStone is above - and I agree with BongWarrior (also above) that we should 'put our money where our mouth is' and to daily assume that the majority of IP edits will be GF; but when the article does receive significant IP vandalism I think it is ridiculous that we are more lenient with our use of semi-protection for the MPFA than with other articles. Surely this lenience misrepresents WP just as much as default semi-protection does?
To put this in context, I was watching today's MPFA Samuel Johnson, which was getting vandalised once every five minutes at one point, and yet a semi-protection request was denied because this wasn't 'extreme'.
Now...I realise that my above suggestion is unlikely to receive much support and that the guideline is likely to be kept. But could I please ask that the guideline indicates somewhere what would be considered extreme vandalism. This way, people like me won't make pointless requests wasting both their own time and the admin who has to consider the requests. At the moment it says 'when a range of dynamic IP addresses are being used to vandalise the featured article page in quick succession', and to my mind the revision log of Samuel Johnson (see particularly between 11:00 and 13:00) indicated exactly this.
So if admins with experience on this matter could post below it would be much appreciated. 30 times an hour for two hours? More? (I'll also ask the admin who denied the request directly.)
Thank you. Hadrian89 (talk) 19:24, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I added a see also to WP:PC, PC1 may be another option to consider. Widefox; talk 13:23, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
This guideline was deprecated in April 2010, the discussion can be found at Wikipedia_talk:Today's_featured_article/Archive_5 section "RfC: Time to dispense with WP:NOPRO?" All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:13, 19 May 2014 (UTC).
14:13, 19 May 2014 (UTC)