Wikipedia talk:Protected Page Editor/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Personal statement

The closing statement will come shortly. A suggestion was made here to allow non-admins to edit protected pages, and in our view, there's no consensus for this, and no evidence in the rationales that this result is going to change any time soon. That's fine with me ... I understand there are dangers. But for me to be involved in future similar RfCs, I need to see evidence that there's some new program being contemplated that would involve non-admins in decisions involving tool use, that would give them a serious role and value their opinions, and of course, create optimism that they can be admins too, if they work at it. There's a trend over the last few years to regard admin work as separate, almost holy ... so it's not a surprise that RfA nominations and promotions are way down, and I don't see things working out well if that trend continues over the long term. I don't have any preconditions on what form this participation might take. There's a wikiproject for admin nominators now; perhaps that will be successful. In the last RfC on Pending Changes Level 2, the closer asked for another RfC within 9 months, after we had a chance to get some relevant data ... and the clock's about to run with basically no relevant data, so I've suggested a limited trial over at Milhist, my "home" wikiproject. FWIW, I've been vocal about opposing Level 2, so obviously this isn't my first choice for a tool to hand out to non-admins ... but, as I say, the clock is about to run, and RfC voters seem to be firm in regarding blocking and deletion as "nuclear" options, and there doesn't seem to be a role for non-admins with those tools. Apparently, we need to find some kind of a role regarded as "non-nuclear", so that non-admins can get useful experience where they have to think like admins, where they get useful feedback, and where they're valued for their work. Maybe some kind of clerking position? I have no idea, and I don't even have a proof that it should happen ... I can only say that my general observation is that, these days, even in the most active wikiprojects, all this talk that we've heard in RfAs and RfCs over the years about how admins are so special and so different and about how their work is so unsuitable for anyone else has had the effect that ... no surprise ... fewer and fewer non-admins are interested in what admins do or in becoming admins. If I don't see some kind of option in an RfC that seems focused on pulling non-admins into the picture, then I'm not optimistic about what happens in the long run, and I doubt I'd have anything valuable to offer to the process. - Dank (push to talk) 16:05, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Here, here. Well said. Kumioko (talk) 20:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Question

We (the closers) have arrived at the completely unsurprising result of "no consensus", and we have a little list of some points that were made. We would also like to say what the main point was on the main question, and what the main response was ... but we're not sure about either. Supporters, were you saying that we don't have enough admins to cover what you regard as admin work now, or that we may not in the future, or that ~~you believe the admins have it covered but~~ (striking in response to complaint below - Dank (push to talk) 00:01, 13 May 2013 (UTC) you'd prefer to see some non-admins doing this work anyway (non-admins for whatever reason: they don't want to be admins, they wouldn't pass RfA, whatever). We get the sense that there's a working assumption here that wasn't stated, at least by most of you. Similarly, people who were opposing: if you know or can guess the main working assumption of the supporters, would you like to offer any rebuttal at this time that you didn't offer during the RfC? (Please don't respond to things people are saying down in this section, the RfC is over ... it's just that we need a little more before we're prepared to offer a summary of the main line of thinking on both sides.) - Dank (push to talk) 19:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

(Disclosure: I opposed the proposal) From the discussions I've seen and taken part in on this matter, my impression is that it's primarily the second option ("that you believe the admins have it covered but you'd prefer to see some non-admins doing this work anyway"). It seems some (many?) of the supporters like the idea of being able to edit protected pages but do not want the full set of admin tools to be made available to them, as they believe becoming a full admin will adversely affect their interactions with other editors or force them into carrying out other admin duties they don't want to take part in. WaggersTALK 10:53, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The question about whether "the admins have it covered" creates a subtle bias in the range of likely answers. Consider this analogy; Imagine that we have a rule that says that anyone who has a "Q" in their real name be not allowed to edit Wikipedia on Wednesdays. I run a RfC for removing the rule, and there is no consensus. The closers then ask, "Supporters, were you saying that we don't have enough non-Q editors to cover the work of editing Wikipedia on Wednesdays, or that we may not in the future, or that you believe the non-Qs have it covered but you'd prefer to see some Qs doing this work anyway?" Asking that question guides the discussion by assuming that covering the work is the main issue. It leaves little room for someone named Quentin who just wants to edit Wikipedia -- not because he thinks that there are not enough non-Q editors, but because he personally thinks he can do a better job with that restriction lifted. It also leaves little room for someone who just thinks the rule is stupid, no matter how may non-Q editors there are.

Re: "becoming a full admin will adversely affect their interactions with other editors", becoming an admin has very little upside for an editor who follows the rules, stays out of trouble, and quietly improves the encyclopedia. When admins do their job and block misbehaving editors they are often subjected to quite nasty attacks. On the other hand I have observed that when admins misbehave they are treated differently than other editors. They are given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to do things that would get an ordinary editor blocked. In one recent case, an admin decided that the guidelines at a noticeboard didn't apply to him because he disagreed with them, used reverts to force his against-the-guidelines text into the noticeboard, and posted an AfD on the noticeboard itself when these actions had the predictable result. Any ordinary editor doing that would be warned and then blocked, but because he was an admin, some of those who should have blocked him for clearly disruptive behavior instead joined him in his demands that the guidelines be changed. Any ordinary user would have been told that he is free to push for changes in the guidelines but must follow them until they are changed or be blocked.

Because Admins are treated worse when they enforce policy and treated better when they violate policy, can anyone blame an editor who follows the rules for wanting just the tools that would help him edit better without the tools that allow him to enforce policy? --Guy Macon (talk) 11:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)--Guy Macon (talk) 11:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

(I did not participate in the RfC, but I do have some comments.) First of all, Guy Macon seems to be right about the current system. Adminship shouldn't be and isn't a big deal, but treating admins differently than non-admins is what makes it a big deal. If the admin is following consensus (and therefore policy), deletion and blocking should be totally uncontroversial. But if an admin doesn't follow consensus and policy, that's when drama happens.

Here's a simple comparison: a user with rollback does something very uncontroversial—reverting obvious vandalism (I know, rollback can also be used for a few other things), within policy and consensus. However, if the user misuses the tool by using it in ways other than reverting of vandalism, the rollback right will be revoked (and the user might even get blocked). However, with admins, the system is not the same. Admins are looked at differently, and there isn't an easy way to remove adminship. Rollback is easily given and revoked by an admin. But adminship is (sort of) easily given by the community, but cannot easily revoked by the community.

I think there are many admins that just want to (and non-admins that would like to) do uncontroversial admin-y stuff, but it's the attitude of the rest of the community towards admins in general that causes all this controversy. The big problem is that the community cannot agree on a solution, no matter how many RfCs there are. Just my 2¢. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 04:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that it has been repeatedly stated in multiple venues that Admins are exempt from many of the fundamental policies and rules such as WP:Harassment and WP:Involved. It appears that not matter how harassing an admin is to a non admin or how "involved" they are, the admin isn't harassing or involved. It really makes no sense to me but that's the way it is. Additionally, there are many of us that are capable and willing to do many of the admin tasks but aren't allowed too because we aren't trusted. If an editor who has been here for 5, 6 8, 10 years isn't trusted, then they should just be blocked and told to go away (including me). It should be made clear to them that neither their edits nor participation in the project are wanted and that the project is better off without them. That way, the hundreds or thousands of us that have no chance of ever getting the tools will be gone and the project will see how much we non admins really do. Its a fundamental insult to tell someone who has dedicated years to the project that they cannot be trusted but then tell some nube that has 1 year and a couple thousands edits welcome to Adminship because they gamed the system. It clearly makes me very angry and I will continue to fight this foolish and unfair system until the us and them mentality that has established itself between admins and editors is gone. There are a lot of really lousy admins that make horrible decisions that need to be desysopped but since adminship is for life, we are stuck with them. Nuff said.Kumioko (talk) 21:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

So, I think there were different undercurrents to this proposal.

One, which we see reflected in several of the above remarks, is basically the position that we must unbundle something from the admin toolset and grant access to it to non-admins because admins are all corrupt and above the law. Right, because editing protected pages is so glamorous and it fills one with a sense of god-like power to respomd to a request to make an edit.

The other was the desire to allow non-admins to edit protected templates. On its face this makes sense. Most users are in fact here in good faith and our high-use templates do not need to be protected from their edits. The problem lies in the fact that they would also be able to walk right through page protection everywhere. Part, a big part, of what people want to see at RFA is a "temperment suitable for adminship." That temperment has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge of advanced template coding and many admins simply cannot reasonably resond to request to edit such things because they don't understand the issue. This was the crux of my alternate idea, to allow us a way to protect those templates from outright vandals but to allow most non-admins to make needed changes without having to wait for someone else who may not actually understand what they are doing to do it for them.

If it was "protected template editor" I could see supporting it, but since it was an all-or-nothing "can edit through all forms of protection" proposal I don't think that is wise. Generally, admins know better than to edit a full-protected page for any reason other than minor edits or edits supported by a clear consensus on the talk page. If we open that up to users who have not been vetted by the community we might as well just stop having full protection at all. Many users who are otherwise great contrubtors sometimes have a lapse in judgement and enter into edit wars. That is ithe main purpose of full protection, it gives us an alternative to simply blocking the edit warriors and it provides time for discussion with all interested parties, not possible if some of them are blocked. But if one edit warrior is a "protected page editor" and the other is not, we loose that ability to use a "middle road". This is the same reason it is not appropriate to use semi-protection to stop disputes between "established" users and new or unregistered users, it's patently unfair.

So, to sum up, I see two different issues from the other camp:

One is a perfectly reasonable desire to be able to do something the user is skilled at without having to ask permission, where it is just the method proposed for doing so that is flawed and some other more nuanced proposal may be able to rectify

The other is run-of-the-mill admin hating and imagining that admins live in some universe of unimaginable power where they are never held accountable for their actions no matter what

The first position has merit, the other should just be ignored. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

With respect that all or nothing as you put it is exactly what we have now. We have 650+ admins with a pile of tools that most of them do not use giving them the same problems you identify above. And it does happen even with this "trusted" group. The problems are compounded by the fact that only the arbs can remove the tools so if they do something wrong its usually brushed aside because its a huge hassle to go through a multi month arbitration hearing to get an admonishmont (whatever that is). So if you don't trust a long term editor to not break the rules when the right can be easily removed, what are you saying about admins who have a whole toolbox that are admins for life? Troubling to say the least IMO.

Certainly not all admins are corrupt but a lot are and a lot are POV editors who push their own agendas in subtle to non subtle ways. Just like the editors you speak of in your reply.

Also to respond to the comment at the beginning that something needs to be unbundled, that's partly true. There are lots of things that could be removed. Template editor as you put it would be useful, as would the ability to pull in more than 25000 articles into AWB, or to be able to see the protected reports like Unwatched pages. My point in all of this is that there are a lot of things that us lowly editors can and would do if the attitude that admin status is just below heavenly ascension were changed. We need to go back to the days when admin was no big deal and if someone does something to break the rules we take the tools away again! Kumioko (talk) 22:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, the above "admins are all corrupt and above the law" paraphrase does not reflect what I actually wrote, which was that when admins do their job they are often subjected to abuse, and that when admins misbehave (which really is rather rare) they tend to be given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to get away with minor bits of misbehavior that would get an ordinary editor a short block. It is important to consider the above two easily-observed phenomena together, because in the vast majority of claims of admin abuse the claims are bogus. Except those few cases when they aren't. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:28, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

The problems I have with that are, to begin with, that an admin should be held to the same or a higher standard than an editor. So if the action would warrant a block on an editor then it should be a block on the admin. What happens all too often though is that the admin is told to be nice, or to stop, or they are admonished and sometimes for fairly sever violations of policy and the editor is blocked. To me this is unacceptable and this sort of acceptance that there is a different set of rules that apply to admins are the exact problem I have with the admin vs. editor mentality. People don't like a lot of my comments but the honest truth is I act and talk in most discussions just as an admin does. But I'm not an admin so I just make people mad, because I have no authoritay. You are right that when some admins do their job they are subjected to abuse but often times that's because they don't follow policy, pick one side over the other, do something extreme like give a month long block for a minor infraction, etc. The admins aren't all to blame and its really just a fairly small percentage I have a problem with. The problem is that 90% of the admin actions are done by the same 20 - 30 of the 650+ admins and of those about 25% should be reeled back in or desysopped. I believe if this happened and the community was shown that admins weren't above reproach it would make editing a lot more enjoyable, it would cause some of the 650+ absentee admins to step up because the usual cabal isn't pushing them back and some of the editors would run for RFA. Kumioko (talk) 03:37, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion heading

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closing statement: We find no consensus for either version of the proposed edit-protected user right.

Assertions by supporters:

It is a milder tool than blocking and is useful for "content editors".
It helps with problematic BLPs.
It is a "good fit for technical/template editors"
It is useful for wikignomes. Edit-protect templates are a hassle for small requests (small grammatical corrections or fixing spelling errors).
It will reduce the backlog of edit-protection requests.
There are many trustworthy editors who don’t wade into Wikispace or contentious discussions.
It would help editors display admin potential.
It will decrease the admin workload. There is plenty of routine maintenance work (DYK for instance) that could be done by any trusted editor.
Some people who would be good at this and want to help out aren't or don't want to be admins.

Assertions against:

Adding more people to the list of those with a privileged position increases bureaucracy, inequality, and the overhead and drama inherent in maintaining and vetting that bureaucracy.
The supporters haven't defined a problem that needs a solution. There is no unmet demand in evidence that would justify the extra bureaucracy, nor is there a ready supply of vetted or trained editors.
It might lead to greater use of long-term article protection if lots of people have this right.
Unanswered edit requests are not a big problem so we don’t really need this.
It would increase the number of mistakes made on these pages, including to templates.
Protected pages should not be edited by anyone until the underlying reason for protection is resolved.
There is potential for more drama with editors petitioning friendly admins to take away the right.
If the user right is easy to obtain, there is a danger that some who want to cause trouble will get the user right.
Rather than granting this new user right, it would make more sense to semi-protect some problematic pages, then take away the right to edit semi-protected pages from problematic users.

- Dank (push to talk) 23:01, 15 May 2013 (UTC) --regentspark (comment) 23:19, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

A few months ago, a major proposal was started for a new user right. It had garnered quite a significant amount of participation, with majority of them supporting. There were also extended discussions on it. The end result was no consensus, just short of support. I am hereby re-proposing this new user right. On the main page of this talk page, there is a drafted proposal about its use, abuse, how to obtain, and what warrants the removal. This user right will have the combinations of editprotected and tboverride included in this right. This allows access to title blacklists, such as blacklisted page names or access to the edit notices. It also allows access to fully protected pages. It does NOT allow access to cascade protected pages, like the main page, nor does it allow access to the interface. It also does not allow access to the user and site js and css pages. The draft on the main page of this talkpage, is merely a rough draft of a proposed policy. It will be finalized via a follow-up RfC, should this come to pass.

The big question: Should the community adopt this new right? 23:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes

Support and a Question: I think if the user can be trusted with other user rights, then having access to this one should be no problem. This would also take some of the weight off of admins when asked to edit locked pages. I do have one question, will this allow users with this user right to protect pages or just edit protected pages? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 23:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
It will not allow users to protect the pages, just edit them.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
That's what I thought, just wanted to make sure I understood. Still support. Thanks Cyberpower. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 03:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support If this will give me a chance to edit the wrong version of a problematic BLP that was fully protected by an admin, I'm all for it. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 00:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong, Longstanding Support. I'm a writer. I don't want to have an admin's power to block or unblock my fellow editors-- it might chill editing discussions. But I would be happy to help out with the non-confrontational, wiki-gnome chores like editing protected pages when necessary. And there are many others like me. Not everyone has the courage to wear a sheriff's star-- but we don't mind lending a hand, picking up a broom, and helping sweep up the place. --HectorMoffet (talk) 00:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Technically, that's what adminship is supposed to be, just picking up a broom and helping out. But I understand the sentiment. E123 (talk) 04:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Technically yes, but culturally adminship has become the Aristocracy of Wikipedia...with a Sherrifs star. All one needs to do is play along and get along and then once they get the admin bit, they can act however they want because it can almost never be taken away. However if you try and stand up to the foolishness and abusive admins then you are branded as untrustworthy and refused the tools. That's why proposals like this are so important to the project. It reduces the status of admins by allowing others to do some of the tasks that were once only able to be done by the elite. Especially as more and more content is protected and more and more veteran editors are leaving. We need to change the culture here to show the longterm contributors that they are trusted and encourage them to participate. Not run them away. Kumioko (talk) 22:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Sounds like something good. Openskye (talk) 00:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support as a non-admin-template-monkey. —Theopolisme (talk) 01:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Cyber makes a good point about people being able to update fully protected templates. Hadn't thought of that. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 01:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support There are a lot of trusted non-admins who I feel should be able to edit protected pages. T C N7JM 01:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Trustworthy non-admins should definitely be able to edit protected pages. --ceradon ^talk_contribs 01:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. - Glad to see this moving forward. Obviously, you do not need to be an admin to be trusted with the right to edit protected pages. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:31, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Per above, especially regarding protected templates—I often see putting in an edit request as often more trouble than it's worth (in improving templates).—Kelvinsong (talk) 01:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support per above discussions. It would allow admins to have some of their load lightened off, as well as make minor non-controversial edits. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 02:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support provided that it doesn't actually cause MORE work for the admins if they have to revoke a lot of these should they be misused. I certainly hope not. --JohnDBuell (talk) 02:09, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I trust that the administrators will see warning signs before handing someone this right. Besides, removing this right is simply a flip of the switch.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 02:17, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support this seems useful for template editors. I know I've decided against requesting some minor template fixes just because edit protected can be a nuisance, especially if the change is minimal. Just to need make sure those that get this right are trustworthy enough to not try to use it to end run around legitimate disputes. PaleAqua (talk) 02:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
If it is possible as Beeblebrox suggested below to split this so that it only applies to templates that seems like a better approach. Even if it was just to see how it goes at first. PaleAqua (talk) 06:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support for our template gnomes who don't care to dole out internet justice. Kilopi (talk) 02:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support per above, sounds great! Davey2010 Talk 02:45, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I feel that protected pages usually get too hot to handle because other users start owning articles and unjustly use the protection to their benefit... This is a great step towards ensuring a better check on articles and goes by the pillar: anyone can now edit Wikipedia... The Wikimon (talk) 03:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC) Indented indef'd user ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:36, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, I think – at least, I know I've passed by a few pages where making an edit request for the sake of something small has felt out of proportion. If it doesn't work out, it can be revoked. But, from the sound of it, I hope it does. CsDix (talk) 03:19, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Like the last time. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 03:43, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes. Zach 03:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Back when I joined Wikipedia, I asked for confirmed status to edit a semi-protected page. I still edit this page from time to time to address issues, full protect pages can move very slow. Having this permission allows more freedom to trusted users without adminship. Adminship is supposed to be no big deal, but it is now. Giving more 'admin' level permissions without the entire toolkit will be good for those who don't want the hassle of the RFA process, but are already upstanding and good members of the community. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 03:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Edit requests not being quickly answered is off-putting to editors. While I'd prefer a reduction in the use of full protection, this might be a step in the right direction. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Agreed - full protection is a fire extinguisher - good to have around but only to be used when things are seriously out-of-hand. If there has been a trend to heavy-handed usage of FP that is a concern. Manning (talk) 11:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - it's not something i'd be interested in (i prefer just being a humble contributor), but I see the need for something like this. --ColonelHenry (talk) 04:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support for editors in good standing (enough edits that it's probably not a fly-by-night account, low history of edit-warring). Ray^Talk 04:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support with caveat, this is a great idea if there is no change in the abuse level necessary for full-protection, however, this level of abuse must not be lowered due to the existence of this userright Tazerdadog (talk) 05:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support for editors with a couple of years experience on WP and an edit history that shows that they know both what to do, and what not to do. Thomas. W (talk) 05:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support the concept and rationale. It should be deployed and turned on as a science experiment to see if it works. If not, disable the feature and rethink the approach using the new behavioral data. My feeling is that it will work just fine. —EncMstr (talk) 05:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I think one can handle the right to edit fully-protected pages without being an admin. Green green greenred 07:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support trial only. I think it's a good idea, though I, like Tazerdadog and the opposers, am worried that this would lead to more liberal usage of full protection. Unfortunately, I don't think the caveat "this level of abuse must not be lowered due to the existence of this userright" is enough. I propose running it for an extended trial (e.g. 6 months), and if at the end of the trial, people feel that no reduction of the standards for full protection has occurred, it can become permanent. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Sounds pretty reasonable. If it causes problems, turn it off. — Hex (❝?!❞) 09:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support per Hex. If it's passed, sign me up! :D So a print encyclopedia, a strawberry shortcake, and a sycamore walk into a bar - wait, have you heard this one? (talk) 10:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. In response to Surturz: I have noticed that there has been a lot of doomsdayish, worst-case-scenario thought in RFCs and proposal discussions recently. (It's what killed the RFA RFC.) Statements like "I oppose this because it could lead to X. " are frustrating: editors are not giving these new ideas and proposals a chance to prove themselves in action. I can understand the concerns, and if they do turn out to be accurate, then further discussions can be had down the track. But in front of us is a sensible unbundling proposal that is a good fit for technical/template editors. Simple as that. Let's do it and watch how it goes. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:13, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I have for long held that it would be useful for me to be able to edit protected templates or do reference fixing in protected articles. No need to be an admin for that, just an experienced user. This proposal addresses precisely this issue and I support it wholeheartedly. Debresser (talk) 11:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support - This would greatly benefit everybody in the project. Admins wouldn't have such a load on them to handle protected edit requests, and editors who have experience can answer these and give admins a bit of a chance to tend to other areas. At times there are extreme backlogs in this area. Editors would also be able to help out in other areas such as bypassing the title backlist to create edit notices. There are quite a few users who are trustworthy and know quite a bit of template coding but aren't an admin yet. Vaca tion 9 11:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support: I think this is a good idea because to become an admin here a person must generally engage in a lot of talk. I have seen multiple RFA's (disclaimer: including myself) where at least one commentator said something like, "This person doesn't actively engage in 'Area X' (an area where people discuss things at length, such as articles for deletion or usernames for administrator attention), which are key areas I look for in potential admins, so I oppose. " For those of us who generally don't care to get involved with contentious discussions like that but instead buckle down and actually get to work fixing things that are broken, this is a great idea. Banaticus (talk) 13:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Yes: it would relieve Admins of some pressure whilst allowing others to demonstrate trustworthiness & Admin potential etc, if they so desired. Basket _Feudalist 14:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Sree-t 14:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support— I support the alternative shown below. ~~Although Wikipedia is open to everyone, vandalism is rampant - therefore some pages are protected. Users shown to be productive must be given the said editing rights.~~ CHeers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Tentative support - it's definitely a good idea, my one concern is: what happens when a "protected page editor" (we need a snappier title) is engaged in an edit war (even admins fall into this trap occasionally, so this isn't exactly a crazy idea), the page gets fully protected, but they can still push their edit in? Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Methinks that some people aren't reading the proposed policy.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 16:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I missed that bit: L Still a tentative support, for now. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:14, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support: There are many editors who can be trusted and for them this right will be helpful. To explain, they don't need to wait for admins to make minor requested changes in full-protected pages. Recently in an article, a deleted image link was not removed from the article for days, since we did not have an admin among us. Also, as Vacation9 says, this right will decrease admin workloads. Another thing we can do, bundle/include the right with "reviewers" flag! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC) In addition, there should be a clear note that this right should not be used for a) controversial edits, if the edit is b) reverted c) requested to be undone in talk page by other non-FPP editors! --Tito Dutta (contact) 16:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Seems reasonable, logical, and sensible. — Cirt (talk) 17:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. I'm not convinced by the opposers, and BatteryIncluded puts it well. Yes, this will mean the occasional breaching experiment of someone who gets this right in order to vandalise pages, but those will be rare, and removing the right will be easy. Someone needs to modify the no-cloud part, however, because right now the proposed policy says that you can't get the right back if you want to use it non-controversially. Nyttend (talk) 17:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support The tools to edit a protected page would be very useful to established, judicious editors. It would cut back on the problems associated with "freezing the wrong version" of a problematic BLP, per FreeRangeFrog. It would ease the burden on admins to respond to request to edit protected pages, per Johnny Au. I agree with the many comments from non-admins who don't want the panoply of admin tools, but would like to help out. I am such an editor. I've always taken Groucho's position of not wanting to be a member of any club that would have me when it's been suggested that I submit an RfA. I probably always will. But if my edit history is deemed appropriate for giving me the tool, I'd welcome the opportunity to ease the slowness of implementing non-controversial edits to protected pages, moving us back into the "anyone can edit" mode. I'd also like to help with the "freezing the wrong page on a BLP" problem, a situation I've encountered far too often. Even if I'm not deemed judicious enough to weild this tool, I know many editor's whose judiciousness is beyond reproach (at least by the rational.) I'd like to see them have this tool. I'd be very surprised if it had to be revoked very often. David in DC (talk) 18:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. As for edit wars, I don't see how this would be any different to regular edit wars. Warnings or temporary blocks by an objective admin would settle the matter until people calm down. The only difference would be that there'd probably be fewer edit wars, since there would be fewer protected page editors, who probably would have fewer interests (subject-wise) in common. I still think protected page editors should show hesitation and consider posting potential changes on a talk page for certain templates or articles first. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 18:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. This seems to be a useful level of permission granularity between adminship and editorship. —me_and 18:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. There was a recent off-wiki discussion (they actually used an obsolete method called "face to face speech" -- how crazy is that?) among some Quakers. The majority opinion was that accepting a position as a Wikipedia administrator would violate the Quaker Testimony of Equality by giving one person power over another. Like being a police officer, this is something that (some) Quakers have no problem with someone else doing, but choose not to do themselves for religious reasons. Previous discussions have made it clear that multiple Wikipedia editors share this philosophy. Also, the "let them make a request for an edit to a protected page" argument has a problem; editors will certainly do that for major changes, but when the edit in question is an uncontroversial rewording for clarity, typo correction, or improved citation -- the exact kind of edit that we need the most -- the editor is unlikely to bother making a request for an edit to a protected page. --Guy Macon (talk) 3:21 pm, Today (UTC−4)
Support' We need to move more things away from pure admins. However I do have a worry that it will encourage more lock downs. JASpencer (talk) 21:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support. I'd have concerns about misuse of this right, but I think the proposal offers enough in terms of removing it under a cloud in the case of abusing full protection to get the upper hand, for example, that my concerns have been answered. I'm not interested in templates, but I am interested in content. I really dislike the way administrators get to make edits of full-protected pages, while the rest of us have to plead via edit requests. Either implement this proposal, or require administrators to request agreement on the talk page before they can make "non-controversial" edits under full protection. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. There is a lot of completely routine maintenance work - for instance, prepping DYK queues - that currently can only be done by admins, creating a wholly unnecessary blockage (the number of active admins doesn't scale to cover the amount of protected template work that needs to be done). This is a very necessary and sensible step. Prioryman (talk) 23:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
'Support The ability to edit protected pages and templates shouldn’t just be left in the hands of admins who most of the time cant handle the other things that their tasked with. By allowing trusted users who have in the past shown to the community that they can be trusted with the task of making good non controversial edits then let them. Why should we have editors sit around waiting for there good edits to be added by someone else whey they themselves can add it.--Dcheagle • talk • contribs 01:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support This will allow me to fix fully protected double redirects. - Camyoung54 talk 01:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Less restrictions equals more trust. Ultimately the goal is knowledge here so I hope the power wont be abused.--Surge1223 (talk) 06:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I don't see any reason to doubt a trusted and reliable editor. If he is willing to contribute valuable and good contributions, what for place a barrier in front of him? Arctic Kangaroo 04:58, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. There are plenty of pages that are full-protected because of the possibility of vandalism—highly-used templates. Many times the maintainer of the template is a technical non-admin who has come up with a useful bit of code. If it catches on and ends up on a lot of pages, then they are rewarded for their ingenuity by being shut out of directly editing their code. Not good. This will put the ability to maintain code like this back in the hands of the technical people and not require an intermediary admin, who may not be as adept of a Parsertongue, to try to judge if the proposed code should be accepted and where to splice it into the existing code. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
SupportThe admin-user gap should be bridged with stuff like this.--Seonookim (What I've done so far) (I'm busy here) (Tell me your requests) 05:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Not perfect, but not terrible either. It would be nice to see something more clearly delineated on how the removal process should work. NW (Talk) 14:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. It would make a lot of sense to have a user right that allows non-admins to edit the large number of commonly-transcluded templates that we have protected. Editing them is really not an admin job, it's an expert job - as it stands, it's admin-only because that's the only level of protection available. Concerns about misuse of the right are valid, but they can be addressed the same way as current admin rights. Admins are not allowed to edit through a full protection to impose their view in a content dispute, and the same should apply to the new user right - anyone abusing it to win a content dispute should lose it. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support There have been several times when I need to make a trivially small edit to a protected page and it was really not necessary to get an admin to do it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Would make edit requests more viable and better allow for trivial edits that would just be tedious to fix with edit requests.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 15:10, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes Per above. Protonk (talk) 17:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
" I mean, if we propose and pass this, there might as well be another new user right called "auto-administrator" while we are at it. Passing out rights that are supposed to be exclusive to administrators both tarnishes the importance of administrators existing on Wikipedia, and opens up the floodgates for users to start proposing more types of rights that are supposed to be exclusive for admins, such as article nuking. I mean, this could lead to a point where more of these discussions start, and then there will be a user with every single Wikipedia editing right provided by the Administrator user right, but not actually be an administrator, which can impair some editors from trying to be on their best behavior on Wikipedia in order to pass a administrator nomination; what's the point of being an administrator if all the administrator rights can be granted separate of the administrator title?"...... can't tell if sarcasm or just stupid... -Nathan Johnson (talk) 17:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. I've often found grammatical or semantic errors in DYKS that are not corrected for 1-2 hours despite being reported. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:23, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
This actually wouldn't be covered under the proposed right, as Template:DYK is cascade-protected. All the things appearing on the main page would still have to be fixed by admins. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 17:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Which is as it should be. Load more and more work onto the buggers until they begin to come to their senses re unbundling, which is why I voted to oppose this proposal. Malleus Fatuorum 17:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Sounds very reasonable. Ashleyleia (talk) 17:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. As an admin who regularly patrols CAT:EP, I find that the same names pop up again and again making requests to fully-protected templates. Many of these are editors who are highly technically competent, and who I would fully trust to make the edits directly, but who might have a hard time at RfA because they spend most of their time dealing in technical areas and may not have the broad experience that successful adminship candidates need. Adminship candidates are frequently opposed if they don't have experience in several areas of Wikipedia, for example content creation, AfD, recent-changes patrolling, etc. This breadth of experience is important for editors who request the admin toolset, as protection, deletion, and blocks require good judgement and the trust of the community, but it doesn't have all that much to do with template editing. The proposed user right would go a long way towards addressing this mismatch. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 17:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Unbundling FTW. The really good way ahead in page protection is using FlaggedRevs instead, but unbundling of the sysop right must happen in any case. Pretty much any step in that direction is welcome. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:14, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Great idea. nerd fighter 21:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Modalities I leave the regulars to work out - to prevent abuse, but I support this. Manojpandeyanarchocommunist (talk) 19:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Sure! I'm all for breaking up the admin toolkit so that people who just need one specialized function don't need to be torn apart in a full RFA. About breaking up the admin toolkit, note that we have already done that to an extent. ^King Jakob _C2 01:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. This is perfect for those of us who don't like having our hands held to get locked templates edited, especially when the sysop doesn't know what they're doing. –Fredddie ™ 02:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, as I always support unbundling measures and anything similar. Nothing problematic with this one, so another perennial support for a perennial proposal. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. It's a good idea, would be a good preventative measure in case of an overload/busy situation, and wouldn't cause any sort of disruption. dci | TALK 02:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support trial only, if PC2 can not be implemented. I am convinced by those who want to edit but not admin, and by User:King of Hearts' points below. — Sebastian 06:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Sure why not Sounds Good ;) Fox2k11 (talk) 09:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Like the idea, with the mass of data that is flowing through Wikipedia right now, it is important to broaden and distribute the filters over a wider area. This also accounts for some information change over time, something that is notoriously difficult to incorporate into any referential compendium. Ed42311 (talk) 14:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support: I see this as the better option at this time. PC2/3 may be useful at some point, just not now. Technical 13 (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Unbundling this right from the general duties of admins seems sensible to me, although it needs to be given with care. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Hmlarson (talk) 17:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. The hassle and delay entailed in creating an edit request discourages many minor edits of protected templates from ever being proposed, let alone acted on. This looks like a reasonable solution. —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Tentative Support. This does seem like a good idea, but I think this permission should be used judiciously. I do fear the idea of edit wars erupting on fully protected pages, as do many other people here, but as long as the permission can be revoked without much of a hassle by the admins in those types of cases, it shouldn't be too bad of an issue. It would be very helpful in fixing the massive amount of typos and grammatical mistakes I tend to find on fully protected pages that I don't find as much on semi-protected ones, but I still am not too sold of the idea of edit wars erupting in pages that are fully protected for a reason. impinball (talk) 19:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. It seems like a good idea. I trust there are good people who are interested purely in copy editing, grammatical corrections etc and not edit warring without wanting to become administrators and have powers over others. Many pages, especially those locked after being subjected to edit warring, are very ugly and read very badly. It would also seem to separate off those purely interested in content from those interested in managing others and, given that it is a less responsible status, should be quicker and easier to acquire. --Januarythe18th (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Seems like a good idea. But with restrictions, any case of breaking 3RR or edit warring behaviour on a protected page and it is revoked I think will be a good place to start. I for one hate not being able to make constructive edits to a page because a bunch of fools have edit warred on the page and caused it to go into protection. So yes, with firm rules in place. MisterShiney ✉ 21:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Any abuse of this new privilege will be easily noticed and corrected. I'm not worried about it leading to more protected pages. The potential burden on admins from edit requests does not seem to be much of a consideration in protecting pages now. The PC2 proposal would be fine with me as well.--agr (talk) 21:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support per above. This would help resolve the question of capable editors who are stymied in their editing abilities because they can't/won't undergo the gauntlet that is RfA. Imzadi 1979 → 00:13, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Smacorder (talk) 02:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support per above. If there's a growing concern that this power is being delegated from proper administrator duty, I'd to hear proper discussion of why administrators seem unable to handle this task themselves. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:54, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, I would support most unbundling of admin functions, as there are plenty of contributors who could use some of them well and not necessarily all the others. Similarly be quite happy to deal with one subset, but wish to avoid getting involved with others. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:38, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:49, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Then I could copyedit Emily Ovenden without having to keep asking other people. Rothorpe (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support This could be useful for people like me who notice mistakes, but can't change them. And if someone with the right abuses it, take it away from them. Scientific Alan 2 ^{(Click here to talk)}^{(What have I done?)}^(Me) 14:38, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - should be useful for those of us who are responsible users but don't have the time or energy to become admins. Mr.choppers | ✎ 18:03, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - with the proviso that there should be some level of required and responsible editing required before granting. • Astynax ^talk 02:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
support Pending review should never have been instituted, it simply results in yet another layer of special people approved by special people--all editors with a long enough history should have the ability to approve edits--not just the university students who have enough friends who are already admins. μηδείς (talk) 02:30, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. I would like to not have to wait a week for template edits to go through. 117Avenue (talk) 04:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Wikipedia should strive for openness.--Spannerjam (talk) 08:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Stongly Support the proposed user right. Faizan (talk) 09:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. I think its a great idea. Qantasplanes (talk) 11:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support this makes perfect sense. Our current system makes it very difficult for any non-admin to do any work maintaining high-use templates, however qualified they may be to do this. The ability to maintain such templates is not necessarily correlated with abilities required for prospective administrators, such as knowing when to block people or delete pages, so RfA is not really an option for such people. To make things worse many administrators do not have the technical skills required to understand or process requested changes to complex templates. I don't see how this could lead to an increase in the number of protected pages since we're not modifying the protection policy, and the risk of vandalism to protected pages arising from this is negligible. Hut 8.5 13:29, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support seems a useful idea. --Chris.urs-o (talk) 15:01, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Having high-use templates and editnotices as an admins-only territory is incompatible with the openness of the site, in which technical measures for editorial restriction are implemented only when absolutely necessary. Full protection of heavily used templates, an unfortunate necessity, should not result in even highly trusted non-admins being locked out. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 16:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Makes sense. GSK ● ✉ ✓ 18:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Good way to take some of the load of admins and it is a good way for a user to show that she can be trusted with admin related rights.Lee Tru. (talk) 21:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Good proposal. David. S 04:36, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, and I would support further unbundling of admin-like abilities. RFA is a joke, and needing to be an admin to edit on Wikipedia runs counter to having a trusted community that edits the encyclopedia. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:26, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Sounds like a good idea to me. Mick Knapton (talk) 16:14, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Strongly Support I like it with this new right. 𝕁𝕠𝕣𝕕𝕒𝕟 𝕁𝕒𝕞𝕚𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕟 𝕂𝕪𝕤𝕖𝕣 20:34, 10 April 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by JordanKyser22 (talk • contribs)
Support Most admin user rights don't make sense to do separate but this one makes sense to me - especially in light of the extreme difficulty of a successful RFA. If someone were to abuse the user right in even the smallest way, then it needs to be stripped. Royal broil 23:55, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Support No additional comments to what so many have already said above. Although I am also inclined to agree with Malleus's comments below! Kumioko (talk) 01:18, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Should be useful. - Chandan Guha (talk) 05:43, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support The additional user rights should be useful in adding and correction of information, especially on Category pages.Vhincze(talk) 05:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Good Idea. Trinidade 11:55, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak support Like the idea of being able to edit through goldlocks, don't like the idea of limiting it to templates. Also don't like the ramifications of an edit war with no technical way to intervene except UAC castration, but hey, it is what it is. -T.I.M^(Contact) 21:34, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Many of the edit requests I have seen have been minor, such as spelling and grammar. TFD (talk) 04:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - There is a risk of undermining the purpose of fully protecting pages, but I believe if this new useright is handed out carefully and swiftly removed in cases of abuse, then there will be few problems. It's very difficult at the moment for non-admins to maintain high use templates and other such permanently protected pages - expecting users to ask for admins to make edits for them is tiresome and wastes times of both the requester and the responding administrator. I also support this in light of the difficulty of passing RfA these days - at the very least, this will help users demonstrate they can be trusted with all the tools of adminship. CT Cooper · talk 13:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - no need to add much to what's already been said. This is a logical addition to the userrights which would help to bridge the gap between admins and other users, and allow those who only want to edit protected pages to do so without having to go through RFA. Robofish (talk) 15:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Anything that takes some of the weight off the admin's shoulders sounds good! I'm for it. KoshVorlon. We are all Kosh ... 16:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. All things considered, why not. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:33, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Support- Why not? Users need more rights as it is and this seems perfect! (Adventuretimeluver123 (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC))
Support - Well, it won't do any harm, and although I'm not sure we need this exactly, why not? ~ Anastasia (talk) 00:31, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - This could potentially allow me to provide better service to Wikipedia by letting me make minor changes instead of asking admins to do it. GoingBatty (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support: simple, practical, elegant solution to the Wikipedia:WRONGVERSION problem. Non-admin editors can already apply for a number of permissions. Trusted editors are granted them. I think this permission would be particularly useful to non-admin users who work in the BLP area.--Shirt58 (talk) 10:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support mabdul 11:44, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I don't see a reason not to give this a try. If it works out then great and if not then nothing is written in stone. We'll just find another solution(s). Jobberone (talk) 14:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - This will be useful. — Ganeshk (talk) 15:10, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I think it should be given to registered users, but I also think that should this privilege be abused, a higher form of editor (Maybe an admin?) should have the ability to unprotect the page. I say this because then anybody could create a page about anything, even if it doesn't meet Wikipedia standards, and then protect it. Aleksandar Bulovic' (talk) 18:56, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, but what are you talking about? Did you read the proposal? Legoktm (talk) 00:25, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - There are a lot of people who may not be "trustworthy" from an administrative point for various reasons (deletionist tendencies, too hasty with CSD tagging, doesn't know the ins-and-outs of username policies, etc.), but is entirely a fantastic editor when it comes to substantive edits. This would enable them to edit pages when they've proven themselves to be good editors, and it would be great for protected templates. I've had suggestions on a couple templates, and only one of them has been implemented over the past few months simply because nobody has responded on the talk page to the template that hasn't been changed. It's an entirely non-controversial edit, but people often don't pay attention to the templates. Inks.LWC (talk) 04:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I think it would be a great idea. It would take some weight off the shoulders of the admins. It might also encourage editors who want to help out more, but don't want to take on the responsibilities of admin-ship to step up. Shoeless Ho (talk) 04:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Support – will be useful for some people, especially for templates (not only admins know what they are doing with templates and can be entrusted to work on important high-use templates, and I can see how it would be kind of frustrating to be unable to make those changes yourself even if you know it will come out right.) Double sharp (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Support – No problem with this, anything to reduce load on admins and give responsible users the tools they need to edit. Comes with a similar level of responsibility to rollback. Fraggle81 (talk) 16:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I support splitting tools up. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 19:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Definitely support — I think it's a good idea. However, I think that when a user (I'm assuming that this new right doesn't apply to IP users) tries to edit a protected page using this new right, that a background check should be run first in order to see what percentage of the user's edits have been undone or flagged as vandalism. I'm not certain what percentage would be reasonable, though. Also, I think that there should be a minimum edit count (say 10 or 50) before this privilege would be granted, to ensure that newbie users that may turn out to be vandals (like Special:Contributions/Koltsnya...gasp!) don't get immediate access to this feature. —Techie007 (talk) 16:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
If it is implemented, then the minimum edit count should at least 1000, across multiple articles, including substantial improvements. Martin451 (talk) 18:01, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Overall edits or in a specific namespace? Considering it appears one of the largest considerations here is that the editor have some template proficiency, I would rather see some requirement of 500 article edits, 1,000 template edits, and/or 2,500 overall edits. Technical 13 (talk) 15:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
That's stringent! And it is probably best that way; protected pages are protected for a reason. Given those requirements, I definitely support it; I think that editors with a past history that good could be reasonably expected to behave properly on protected pages, too. In his post below, Jus da fax expresses my feelings on the subject exactly. Just to show my total lack of “conflict of interest,” it may be a while before I get to 1000 edits! —Techie007 (talk) 16:52, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Great idea that should be adopted by the community. Not everyone wants or needs the power to block other editors, but the ability to be a trusted editor is a key distinction. I am most unimpressed by the opposes, many of whom in my view have an obvious conflict of interest. Jus da fax 06:46, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Support --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:34, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
SupportRwenonah (talk) 21:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Support ZooPro 07:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Support – MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 10:40, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes - Popopo8776 (talk) 9:15, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Support – Transmissionelement (talk) 22:02, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I think it's worth trying and could save admins some time to focus on other tasks. Sosthenes12 (talk) 00:28, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Sosthenes12
Support Then I could copy/edit without having to keep asking other people.GraceSmileyface (talk) 16:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Support This will be a benefit to project maintenance, improving the spectrum of maintenance capabilities and better involvement of non-admin users. No evidence evident that enhanced PPE deployment will be harmful. Note that the universe did not implode when rollback rights were expanded to the regular editorship on a reasonably managed basis. Dl2000 (talk) 03:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support - per HectorMoffet and ChrisG et al, above. Admins have become a 'thing' for good or ill; I'm one of those who doesn't (now) want to join that particular cabal but still feel willing and able to pick a broom as needed. Let's let those who can, do! EeBee 04:15, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong support Page protection is designed to guard pages from vandalism; once an editor has proven themselves, they ought to be able to circumvent said protection. — TORTOISE WRATH 16:18, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Other userrights like rollback, reviews etc. appear to be functioning well, and I think this will to. To some experienced editors this may be a useful tool that will take away some unnecessary frustrations that may be present now. Iselilja (talk) 16:38, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

No

Weak Oppose I simply have a hard time supporting any type of unbundling proposal and I frankly don't know that I see the need for this. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 23:01, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not really unbundling. It's one right from accountcreator, and a seperate unused right. This is helpful for the technical editors to routinely update fully protected templates. It's also useful for certain bots.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, (not making a statement about the current proposal) why don't we just add the editprotected permission to the bot flag? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That would be open to potential abuse.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 19:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose This will encourage long-term full protection of pages only editable by a trusted set of editors. Wikipedia should go back to its roots as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. --Surturz (talk) 02:31, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
So you're saying you want everyone to be able to edit protected pages? What's the point of that? You know they're protected for a reason, right? T C N7JM 02:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
1) No. 2) Better content. 3) Yes. --Surturz (talk) 02:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Then what exactly are you saying? T C N7JM 03:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
If I'm reading surturz's opposition correctly, I think it's a fearing that this power will eventually be abused as if it were an insidious form of article ownership. I find the user's answer "Better content" as a cop-out non-answer, but the rhetorical question was overly broad.--ColonelHenry (talk) 03:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. Those last two questions were rhetorical. Anyway, if the right is abused, an admin can just revoke it. T C N7JM 03:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose — I definitely agree with Surturz, and what logical basis does this proposal have?
A. its just not necessary. If an editor wants to put in an edit inside an edit-protected article, he may put in an ~~{{edit request}}~~ {{edit protected}} and have faith instead of petulance. If he feels he should be given the right to edit protected pages he should try at RfA. The permission to edit protected pages needs same amount of trust as an admin is bestowed with.
B. it will perhaps provide an extra stimulus to protect more pages for longer period of time, accelerate ossification and eventually, bias. How are we going to determine who is entitled to such a user right? This should call for another RfA-like structure, nothing less will be acceptable.
C. The most important thing is that protected pages could do well without much editing, it's precisely why they are protected in the first place. In certain cases where it might be useful, interested editors better get admin rights if it's possible. Till then NO WAY. Mr T ^(Talk?) ^{(New thread?)} 04:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
The most important thing is that protected pages could do well without much editing, it's precisely why they are protected in the first place—au contraire. Have you read WP:PROTECT? In the lead paragraph: some individual pages may need to be subject to technical restrictions...because of a specifically identified likelihood of damage resulting if editing is left open. Hardly like you put it. —Theopolisme (talk) 11:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I have read it in fact. I never claimed that I reported it verbatim. Act of protecting a page is done with a motivation to curb edits in general, especially since acting admins are usually not prescient persons. We tend to try to stop editing in pages temporarily. Protected pages don't need much editing while they are protected and this tool or right (or whatever you may want to call it) will create more problems than it will solve, period. Mr T ^(Talk?) ^{(New thread?)} 05:52, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I think you are still misconstruing the purpose of protecting pages; it is not to "curb edits in general," but rather to "curb unconstructive edits," with the added side effect of constructive edits having to go through another hoop. —Theopolisme (talk) 01:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
@Mrt3366 Just curious: when did you answered last time a semi-editprotected request or a {{help me}} request? That is exactly the problem why we need an additional right: It simply takes up too long. Template requests take up to two weeks until they get answered. And these are mostly the same few admins. Or you have to poke somebody in IRC to get it on the "fast" way... mabdul 06:01, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I don't believe we should make yet another user right for hat collectors to ask for unless there is some huge, pressing problem that would be solved by it. Right now, out of over four million articles and however many templates and other pages, there are .... seven unanswered requests for edits to protected pages. Only one of them is a bit stale and the reason for that appears to be that another user had a question about the request that has not yet been answered. And this right is so ripe for abuse. what we don't have is the admin manpower to police yet another userright. It also seems to me like this rather defeats the purpose of having full protection. While it technically limits editing only to admins, the real effect and intent is to stop any editing, admin or no, until a consensus is clear. If there is evidence that there is a specific problem with backlogs of requests to edit fully protected templates I would prefer some sort of solution that was technically limited to an the template namespace but as of yet I have not seen evidence that such a problem exists in any namespace. Seven out of four million is pretty damn good if you ask me. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:13, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I for one think that the main reasons are templates and technical fixes like reference errors to protected articles. Especially the first is enough of a reason for this special status, since becoming an admin is rather difficult, but I edit templates better than most admins. Debresser (talk) 22:11, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I share the concerns of Beeblebrox and I agree with the points he makes. Also, I can think of some editors who I'd consider "trustworthy" and experienced enough to take on this suggested new right, and with all of them I'd prefer seeing RFAs (which would likely be successful) instead. INeverCry 06:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per same reasons as Beeblebrox and for other similar reasons, and I'm saying this as a non-admin. I mean, if we propose and pass this, there might as well be another new user right called "auto-administrator" while we are at it. Passing out rights that are supposed to be exclusive to administrators both tarnishes the importance of administrators existing on Wikipedia, and opens up the floodgates for users to start proposing more types of rights that are supposed to be exclusive for admins, such as article nuking. I mean, this could lead to a point where more of these discussions start, and then there will be a user with every single Wikipedia editing right provided by the Administrator user right, but not actually be an administrator, which can impair some editors from trying to be on their best behavior on Wikipedia in order to pass a administrator nomination; what's the point of being an administrator if all the administrator rights can be granted separate of the administrator title? Steel1943 (talk) 07:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for reasons similar to Surturz. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. The more lock-downs or other bureaucratic nonsense we have, the less free is the content. If you're afraid of vandalism, then edit faster. Teply (talk) 07:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Because other users start owning articles and unjustly uses the protection to their benefit... it will perhaps provide an extra stimulus to protect more pages for longer period of time, I'd prefer a reduction in the use of full protection; this will encourage long-term full protection of pages only editable by a trusted set of editors, fearing that this power will eventually be abused as if it were an insidious form of article ownership. This right is so ripe for abuse, It’s just not necessary. If an editor wants to put in an edit inside an edit-protected article, he may put in an edit request ; Right now, there are.... seven unanswered requests for edits to protected pages. In certain cases where it might be useful, interested editors better get admin rights if it's possible. Seven out of four million is pretty damn good if you ask me, I don't believe we should make yet another user right. KhabarNegar (talk) 08:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Was open to supporting but Beeblebrox makes several good points, as well as Surturz' more ideological one. Overall I think additional hierarchical userrights have a negative impact on the community, so should only be taken on when there is evidence of a pressing need Jebus989 ^✰ 10:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose If an editor is sufficiently trustworthy to have this right, they're sufficiently trustworthy to have the full admin toolset; they're either trustworthy or they're not. I don't see any need to separate that toolset out into its constituent parts and start creating separate user types for each one, which is ultimately what proposals like this would lead do. This proposal alone would add a great deal to the administrative/bureaucratic workload without adding anything much of value to the encyclopaedia. WaggersTALK 10:29, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Just consider-- some of us don't want to have the full admin toolset. I may be trustworthy to be an admin, but I'm not willing to be one. Having the 'block' power over my fellow editors-- that would disturb my "wikipedia experience". I don't want to be an admin, charged with enforcing behavior. But I am willing to help out with boring template edits and boring non-controversial edits to protected pages, if you guys need more help. --HectorMoffet (talk) 12:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I find that opinion to be baffling. Becoming an admin doesn't obligate you to block anyone or enforce behavior, in fact, it doesn't obligate you to do anything. If you became an admin and didn't block anyone, no one would ever come over to your user talk page and ask you why you're not doing your duty. Passing an RfA only means that you're trusted with the extra tools, not that you're obligated to use them. ‑Scottywong | confabulate _ 13:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
It's not the obligation to use admin tools that troubles me-- it's the mere ability. I don't want some "admin" icon/status to bias objective content debates. A "debate" isn't the same if I can block my opponent in the debate. It's idiosyncratic, I admit, but since when have minor idiosyncrasies interfered with improving the project? --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:31, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
"A "debate" isn't the same if I can block my opponent in the debate." - Wrong, you cannot block your opponent for merely disagreeing with you because then you're involved. Also blocks are not to be used as means of retribution. I don't think you understand what burden adminship is. Mr T ^(Talk?) ^{(New thread?)} 06:00, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
I think Hector meant that he didn't want his status as an admin to sway a debate in his favour simply because he's an admin, and not because of the content of his argument. Samwalton9 (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Neither do I, or indeed any other admin worth their salt. I don't wade into discussions saying "hey, I'm an admin so you'd better listen to me". Admins' opinions don't carry any more weight than other users most of the time. And wouldn't you worry about partaking in an argument if you have privileges to edit blocked pages and other users don't? By Hector's logic, "a debate isn't the same if I can edit the page we're discussing and my opponent can't". If the ability to block can sway a debate (and it shouldn't) then surely the ability to edit the blocked page in question can sway it just as much. WaggersTALK 11:32, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Opposefor templates, these need greater scrutiny. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for articles as per most of the reasons above. For templates, I might be persuaded on the need for a technical role. Although I'm an admin I stay well away from editing templates, as even though I have the necessary permissions, I lack the competence. But that is a different discussion. Plus "might support" does not mean "would support" - I'd need to really think it through. Manning (talk) 11:46, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beebs. I'm not convinced of the need.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak oppose mostly per Beeblebrox, yet another solution to a non-existent problem. Most protected edit requests that go unanswered are either poorly constructed or moderately contentious. Non-contentious edit requests where the requester clearly lays out exactly what the change needs to be are generally answered quickly. I could probably support some version of this proposal if stricter guidelines were drafted regarding who is eligible for this user right. If this were ever enacted, I don't think it would be a good idea to hand it out to a lot of editors. ‑Scottywong | express _ 13:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as per Beeblebrox. A solution looking for a problem. This will likely result is more pages being protected, lessening the editability of the encyclopaedia, not increasing it. LukeSurl^{t c} 13:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox. Killer Chihuahua 13:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I cannot support a proposal involving user rights where the details have yet to be fully worked through. This looks like a hat. It creates Admin. overheads in establishing & managing credentials. The sum of effort on Admins managing the requests could outweigh the effort currently required to manage the problem this solution is intended to resolve. The right could be abused to advance a position in an article content dispute. Being an upstanding member of the community can go out of the window when an editor becomes too focused on a subject. It has been known for Admins to edit through full protection to a favoured version and this could easily lead to AN/I overload. I don't understand the method of requesting this right, namely "Users are to state what they intend to edit with that right and administrators will assess based on that statement." Once granted the user can use the right on any article so the question "what they intend to edit" is irrelevant. I don't see the net benefit for a relatively low volume issue. Leaky Caldron 14:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Wikipedia already suffers from vested interests that control articles to promote their (or their employer) slant. Why create another avenue to propaganda?32cllou (talk) 17:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Beeblebrox said it best. This is a solution that solves no actual problem but might create more problems itself. Regards So Why 17:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This is a solution in search of a problem. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 17:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I'm not sure I understand the proposal completely, so perhaps my opposition to it is a bit hasty; however, in general, I would like to see LESS rights for us editors. The problem on this site is Vandalism. I spend about 10% of my editing time reverting idiot posts. I'd like to see everyone registered to enable their editing privilege, and limit ANY editing by a user with under 100 edits to edit anything except requests for an edit suggestion on talk pages. When a new user has completed 100 talk page edits, then he can be a full fledged editor; plus, we get to see just who we're dealing with by seeing his/her proposals. It's not fair for those of us that really care about the content in an article here, to have to spend so much time policing the site. (my two cents) thanks Pocketthis (talk) 18:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
I think I agree with you that you do not fully understand this proposal. Imagine if this proposal did pass. This right would need to be requested at PERM and obviously it won't be granted if you are new or a vandal. You can edit fully protected templates, and edit other kinds of protected pages. If you abuse this right, it is almost immediately revoked from you and you will no longer be able to edit protected pages.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 18:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
The #Alternate idea below to use pending changes level two seems far superior, requiring no technical changes and resulting in no drawbacks from a new level of permissions. EllenCT (talk) 19:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I don't think it will make administrator's jobs any easier; in fact it will just give them new lackeys to watch for transgressions. Administrators are not babysitters; if someone is trustworthy enough to edit protected pages, why aren't they trustworthy enough for other privileges (even if they choose not to use them)? Equivamp - talk 19:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, largely per Beeblebrox. Ironholds (talk) 19:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, I was leaning towards "support", but not after reading Beeblebrox's reasoning. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 19:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. WP:IDIOT pages are protected for several reasons, e.g. vandalism, content war, and to protect wikipedia. Vandalism and content war can be sufficiently covered by the PC2 suggestion below. But giving more editors the chance to make changes to e.g. protected templates, just increases the chances of an editor snarling up by mistake. It will probably lead to a higher level of protection than the current one for certain things. What I would suggest is implementation of PC2 as suggested below, with possibly another level of protection created for high level templates. Putting all these groups into one basket just seems wrong.86.25.24.66 (talk) 20:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I agree with Beeblebrox 100%. United States Man (talk) 21:10, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Pages are protected for valid reasons, such as edit warning, vandalism and such, to assist the article's content. If really need to made an edit, then just submit a request, and if you want to edit it yourself, run for adminship. If you feel free can handle this, you should be able to be an administrator. Beeblebrox's brings up some valid points. TB randley 00:13, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose mostly per Beeblebrox. This proposal creates more hierarchy without significant benefit. Beeblebrox's alternative idea, below, seems viable. - tucoxn\^talk 03:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose due to edit warring. However "If you feel free can handle this, you should be able to be an administrator." and similar comments are nonsense since RfA is not just about content submissions.Cptnono (talk) 04:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I can see how this could be abused. If a page is protected, let it stay protected. There needs to be that cool down time. If a page is reporting on big news, there are so many editors watching it that there is no need to worry about vandalism because it is reverted in minutes or seconds.Mr. Straub (talk) 06:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for badgering, but I can see this proposal being most useful in template space. "Cool-down time" might be a problem in article space, not not in template space. Large numbers of highly-visible templates are protected, and editors are currently forced to use the often-backlogged CAT:PER queue to have changes made. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:15, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose basically per Beeblebrox. Spencer^T♦C 06:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, Beeblebrox is right. There is virtually no need for this, and it will be extra trouble to administer, so the cost/benefit (business case if you like) is all wrong. There are risks to the proposal, and no good reason to go ahead with it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose An unnecessary user right in my opinion. A protected page should not be edited until the underlying reason for the protection is resolved -- this proposed user right will cause more problems than it solves. Pol430 talk to me 09:00, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Agree with Beeblebrox. As of now. there is not a regular, urgent, long backlog on Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests. And even then, some of them usually require discussion before actual implementation. Zzyzx11 (talk) 09:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. If the feature is included then protection is quite useless. The page protection feature is there to protect vandalism, so if this feature is added then the page will be vandalised. Suggestion: Implant semi-protection Level 2 which only allows users with *this* number of edits to edit the page. Saves the trouble of admins given the permission to people. Hz. tiang 10:11, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - As per above and if vandalism/edit warring continues to be a problem on semi-protected pages and there's not enough justification for fully protecting the page then perhaps the question is whether the requirements for auto-confirmed rights should be reviewed and whether temperamentally disruptive editors who target specific pages(COI/POV/stalking/etc) should be stripped of their user confirmed status. - Food for thought there as I believe confirmed rights are under appreciated and lack maintenance. PPC2 seems to address the issues I raised above though. YuMa NuMa ^Contrib 11:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Not quite there - unbundling admin tasks makes sense, but the threshold that any admin can give or take away the right would create too much drama and chaos. It could encourage a dysfunctional landscape where certain admins with political positions could start to stake out important articles they've full-protected for the benefit of their minions, while searching for excuses to revoke the permissions of their opponents' minions. It would make more sense to give the right out based on a 'weak RfA' with a lower percentage of support required. Wnt (talk) 13:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose although superficially attractive (why not have users who can edit protected pages but can't block?) I have two big concerns. First it's not needed: I have no problems with the existing mechanisms for getting protected pages changed, and the existing levels of protection + pending changes work very well. Similarly if a trusted user wants to make a difference to the project by taking on more responsibility including editing protected pages they can become an admin. They may not use the other tools but they are safe with them. The other concern is it will generate more contention; more protected articles as e.g. editors protect them to work on them. More arguments between users, complaints over users, a whole new class of disputes needing resolution. That is unless protected page editors are held to the same high standard as admins, in that they can only use their tools if uninvolved to avoid disputes; in which case they should be admins.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Reason stated in my support for PC2 below. Arctic Kangaroo 15:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. All user rights should be removed from regular editors and concentrated in the hands of the elite administrators. Malleus Fatuorum 15:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - per Beeblebrox, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Seven edit requests is not exactly overload for the admin pool. Jonathanfu (talk) 23:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - It isn't really necessary. - Al Lemos (talk) 01:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - After careful consideration and disregarding a personal desire for this right, I share an assimilation of many of the above opposition views. Full protection is only placed on those pages that really need it. Users can still request changes to these pages. Administrators tend to be fairly picky as to what gets full protection, and semi-protection/pending changes protections already have other users (such as reviewers) that can help edit. Full protection really needs administrator review in many cases. Opening up another user category increases the likelihood that something will go wrong rather than reducing the burden on administrators and editors, in my opinion. I do explicitly reject the notion that administrators do not have to utilize their toolset, as mentioned earlier, though; it is expected that admins remain active or risk losing their user rights. I also reject the idea that "hat collection" is as widespread a problem as indicated by some above - hat collection is not possible without the permission of granting administrators, and they always ensure that the user meets criterion for a right. This is a volunteer effort, and I hate seeing users called names for helping the community. However, again, I reiterate that this right seems to me as though it will cause more problems than it will solve. --Jackson Peebles (talk) 01:49, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Will be like asking for vandalism at higher level --Adamstraw99 (talk) 06:21, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - per This will encourage long-term full protection of pages only editable by a trusted set of editors. Wikipedia should go back to its roots as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. First, I've edited in controversial areas where admins had strong opinions and would LOVE to just protect the page and allow only them and their friends edit and I have no doubt these individuals would abuse that privilege. Also, being constantly attacked by a persistent AnonIP and New Editor sock lately (with the same POV as those editors) and one who has registered two and three new handles a day! - I see the need for temporary protection from AnonIPs and New Editors. And in cases where there are 6 editors going nuts (which I've seen a few times), sure protect it from everyone. But even in these extreme situations, protection has lasted only two weeks and people have been properly chastened or chilled. I think instituting this will cause a lot of distrust and rancor in the community as some people are allowed to edit and others are not and as protection periods inevitably grow longer and longer. You know, like the income tax was only supposed to take 1% of millionaires' income and now it takes a big chunk of everybodys'. Resist this destructive move. CarolMooreDC🗽 06:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Hello Carol, I know and respect you from our time together in conflict resolution, so I read your words with interest. You probably have a point that each additional hierarchical level will make people further down feel more disempowered. I also see what you mean when you say that the level of protection needed at the level of anons and new SPAs does not need to be duplicated at higher levels. But the fact is that we currently have a considerable number of pages that are protected at that level. I believe this is a step towards more openness; I don't see the slippery slope you are afraid of. — Sebastian 07:52, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Examples of "considerable number of pages that are protected at that level" would be helpful for those of us who have not seen that level of protection that often and/or to see if there already is some pattern to be aware of. To answer my own question found Wikipedia:Lists_of_protected_pages and Wikipedia:List_of_indefinitely_protected_pages. I have a feeling the list will explode if this proposal is passed.

Also, it would be helpful if the proposal included a clear and speedy method of challenging administrators removing some one "under a cloud". Like immediate appeal to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Without it POV editors will become admins even more frequently to exercise (and possibly abuse) that authority. Editors must be assumed to be innocent unless proven guilty. I'm sure there are a number of editors who edit only occasionally in one "controversial" area with POV admins but may decide to skip editing there if certain admins might remove their ability to edit in protected articles in a completely different area.

Given my experience with a sock (the infamous Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/JarlaxleArtemis) who vandalized ALL my recent edits and articles for weeks and led to most of them being protected, I can guarantee he'd keep doing so, assured an editor with his POV would find some excuse to ban me, and then he could basically get me kicked off Wikipedia for weeks at a time!

You must look carefully at how the most destructive editors will abuse this process and in the last few weeks I've seen exactly how or it would not even have occurred to me. CarolMooreDC🗽 15:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! I see where you're coming from. It's often hard to know how a policy change can backfire, which is why I voted for a trial period. BTW, there seem to be currently about 2000 articles at Special:ProtectedPages. — Sebastian 05:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually Special:ProtectedPages seem to be mostly templates (which often need it since so easy to screw up) and user pages. Found Category:Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages. CarolMooreDC🗽 13:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. If really needed it could/should be combined with reviewer (which is granted to trusted users in a similar fashion), so I don't think we should create a new separate group. Also I'd like to see same usage analysis supporting the need. How many longterm fully protected pages do we have that have uncontroversial maintenance issues?--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I believe I opposed it last time as well, for similar reasons that Beeblebrox raises. As a non-admin I don't mind waiting a day or two to have my edits fulfilled, and it gives the chance for another person to look at them. Legoktm (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Beeblebrox makes very good points. Although fully protecting an article technically allows admins to edit it, they should only do so rarely. In the majority of cases, an article is protected because of edit warring; the protection exists to prevent anyone from editing to and thus encourage discussion of the issues. An uninvolved admin is entitled to edit the page if it is necessary for them to implement an established consensus. The ability to edit protected pages thus assumes the community trusts the individual to judge consensus. That kind of trust is something we need an RfA for: except for uncontroversial cases, we generally expect admins to judge consensus because they are trusted and supported to do so. To give this right out to other editors will leave the judging of consensus in the hands of people not supported by the community (either that or the process to get the right will be equivalent to RfA, and we might as well make them an admin). ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 18:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose - Wikipedia doesn't need more admins deciding who’s evil and who edits. Moagim (talk) 18:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - While the principle may sound alright, it is an invitation for "sleeper editors" or just people who have a definite view of what an article should be to come in and use it as a means of changing that article as they see fit, going against what Wikipedia stands for. --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - As per Beeblebrox. Samwalton9 (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Protected articles are protected for a reason. I think that allowing more people to edit them would devalue the protected nature and make Wikipedia itself less stable. I would suggest that a better solution would be to create yet another tier of protection and move non-critical articles there. Regardless, I don't think that this would lead to a large benefit to the community, and could reduce the quality of Wikipedia were it abused. Risk/reward = too dangerous. Korlus (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Seems like a classic case of a solution in search of a problem.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Springboard page requested edits to protected pages is working fine. I don't see a compelling need to create this new role. The lack of a deadline for this project leaves me comfortable with content-dispute-resolution methods in place, with no need to add this additional means. --EEMIV (talk) 00:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Protected Page Editors, who shall controll them?? - there are already too many uncontrolled admins running around .... Let's get rid of some of them first. Tonton Bernardo (talk) 02:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Per Surturz and Beeblebrox. Just doesn't seem very useful, and I'm definitely afraid of corruption. E123 (talk) 04:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Another role is not necessary and creates additional hierarchy without any demonstration of it even being required (no data?!?!). Further, as already stated, protected articles are protected for a reason and expanding the number of parties with this right is counterproductive.--Labattblueboy (talk) 05:13, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox . I agree with his analysis. -- Alexf^(talk) 09:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per above reasons. Not in support of Beeblebrox too. - Jayadevp13 12:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose per Beeblebrox. One support argument was "There are a lot of trusted non-admins who I feel should be able to edit protected pages". Make them an admin then? Problem solved. If they're not trusted enough to be an admin, then they don't deserve to have similar editing rights? Leiservampir (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose; unnecessary. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 14:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Autoconfirmed users can already edit semi-protected pages. If you want lots of users to still be able to edit protected articles, semi-protect them. Or set up pending changes review. If you want a certain user to be able to edit fully protected articles, make him an admin. We need more bureaucratic half-measures like we need a hole in the head. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 15:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose If you want to push the mop on protected pages (template or otherwise), or if you know of a user who you believe should have the access to do so, RfA is thataway. Personally I'm all for the unbundling of admin rights and only granting users the tools they will actually use. However, the granting of rights which could be abused as this one can require the trust and support of the community, not just of one admin. Show me a community approval process which grants smaller rights like this and I'll back it 100%. If you can't pass an RfA, then you definitely shouldn't have this right. If you could but choose not to, that's your choice - making an end-run around RfA to get the rights you'll use isn't the way to do it. --ElHef (talk) 15:45, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose what are admins for? This does not fix a pervasive problem as requesting edits from sysops is not difficult. Hekerui (talk) 19:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per E123. If a protected page wants an edit, submit an edit request, or wait until you're a full admin. There's too many user rights as it is. Rcsprinter (talkin' to me?) @ 20:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose - solves what is barely a problem by creating a worse potential problem. I'm not thrilled with the idea of creating "lite admins" where the creation of these "light admins" is not strictly controlled (i.e., bureaucrat-only). If this process were such that only bureaucrats could grant it and then only after a "mini-RFA", I'd be okay with it ... but not with hoards of admins having the ability to grant it. If you'd like to edit protected pages, seek adminship. --B (talk) 22:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose - I think this is the wrong solution for the problem. Typically there are a few users tend easily get in edit wars on these types of pages. Rather then protect the pages fully and then create a new class of users that are exempt from this protection, semi-protect those pages and determine the typical edit warring users and take away their rights to edit semi-protected pages. Basically this would be replacing the carrot with the stick, and putting the finger on the sore spot. _W^\|/_haledad (Talk to me) 22:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose mostly for the reasons stated above. It is not too often that an edit request can't solve simple wiki-gnome maintenance issues. However, the proposed privilege can and will lead to unbalanced editing by cabals on certain controversial articles. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 23:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose In my opinion this will cause more problems than it solves. Most pages are not long-term protected, and it is always m:The Wrong Version anyway. Matters of urgency are handled by dropping am {{edit protected}} on the talk page or a note on WP:ANI. If someone finds that they are constantly needing to edit protected pages, is that because they are trying to help other editors? Then become an admin, that is exactly who we want. But if it is because they tend to focus on tendentious articles on which consensus breaks down so badly that locking is required, we do not want more people editing the article; we want the problem solved. So I feel this will cause more harm than good. -- Avi (talk) 00:00, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, I like the idea of this, however I like the idea of communism and socialism on the surface too...but in reality it's just not practical. I think that it will cause more issues then it would solve, yes Admin attention would and could be other places without protection issues, but think about the trigger happy deletion review editors or potential edit wars to envision the chaos. So reluctantly I have to oppose a brilliant idea. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 02:57, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Oppose unbundling anything that needs care and trust. If an editor can be trusted with this, they can be trusted with full adminship. They should ask for it, or be nominated, and we should give it to them. If they don't want to block, fine. Having the blocking tool doesn't require you to use it. It requires that you don't misuse it. Also note the lack of evidence of backlog in editprotect requests that should be fulfilled. Also note that often page protection is used where editor blocks were more appropriate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. While I think it's unlikely that unbundling this would cause frequent, significant problems, and while I'm sympathetic to the plight of editors who have a need for certain tools but fear the gauntlet of RfA, I don't see a pressing need for unbundling here. On occasion, experienced editors who lack the mop would be able to make uncontroversial fixes to fully protected articles before an admin gets around to it, but I don't think it has been demonstrated that there's been a real problem with backlogs or delays. As for templates, I rarely mess with them (being a ham-fisted klutz) but can't help wondering if it would be technically feasible to establish a user right that afforded access to protected templates but not other protected pages. If so, I probably could support that. Rivertorch (talk) 06:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Concerned this will lead to pages being protected so that "trusted" editors can edit them. Better to keep full protection as it is, and to use it more sparingly. I'd rather more of our problematic editors were banned, but that hardly seems likely to happen. Number 5 7 09:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per first two sentences by Number57. --Dweller (talk) 12:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I don't support creating additional user levels/classes/whatever at this time unless undisputable great need can be shown, and I don't think it is. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Good faith idea. But the current system seems to be working (for me anyway). I rarely see a page fully protected. Semi-protect usually does what I need and that seems to be used sparingly enough. Editors who run into this situation often might ask themselves if their lives (and articles) wouldn't be as well off, if you stopped watching some of these pages. Let other editors fight the good fight. Other articles need your help! Student7 (talk) 16:29, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox and Malleus. I don't see much of a problem as is, and Wikipedia does not need new administrative caste. Hillbillyholiday ^talk 17:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose You'll wind up with a new echelon of super-users, and that's not necessary. Current system seems to be fine and there's no compelling reason to change it. I don't like the idea of certain users being anointed with having greater editorial judgment and fairness than others. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - I continue to oppose breaking up admin rights. If a user would like a protected page edited, they may use the editprotected tempalte, or better yet ... work towards adminship. Rjd0060 (talk) 18:42, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - This just adds more bureaucracy and room for drama...more drama for who gets the tool; more drama for who loses the tool; more drama about users trying to own articles. Keep it simple as possible: Go through the RfA process (yes, yes, that process can have its own drama; but I'd rather keep the drama contained, and not have it spread). To the editors who don't want to be admins because they don't want all the tools: Then don't use the tools you don't want to use. Kingturtle = (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I consider editing through protection to be the most controversial tool in the admin suite. The times when it should be done to article space are vanishingly rare. I would support this proposal if and and only if it was restricted to template space, which appears to be the sole justification for the proposal.—Kww(talk) 20:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Too much hierarchy already. Nonexistent problem, or wrong solution to existing problem. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Would likely result in pages that are perpetually protected, with only a select cabal of selected editors able to edit these pages. It would be better simply to solve the extant problems causing a page to be protected in the first place. Miguel Escopeta (talk)
Oppose. There are enough admins to deal with edits that need to be made to protected pages. If there weren't, we should create new admins. Existing difficulties in stopping admins from editing/moving edit/move protected pages are another reason why I'm not keen to expand those with this ability; it's a pervasive "low level" misuse of the admin toolset as it is. WJBscribe (talk) 22:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. For me, this a very unusual course of action for me to oppose because I have fundamentally believed in a greater access of rights for proven editors. That said, Beeblebrox's argument that the introduction of this user-right does not seem to fix a major problem affecting the community, while the pages that have been rightfully protected due to circumstance and protection will be opened up again. Proven editors do edit war, and do abuse user rights, and the problem seems so inconsequential that I could not foresee the introduction of such a system. Mkdw ^talk 23:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Enough wiki-hierarchy as it is. Leave it at that. DDima 23:54, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose As above. Paul S (talk) 00:52, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. There is enough very poor editing on physics subjects by self-appointed 'owners' of articles. There may be a case for voting such editors "in" as long as they may not vote for themselves, blackballing should apply! (That means no!)--Damorbel (talk) 07:08, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Opposed Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:20, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Djh0013 talk 20:00, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox, just not necessary. Snappy (talk) 22:34, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Speaking from personal experience as a relatively new editor, I found the social stratification of Wikipedia one of the more daunting aspects of contribution. Newbies tend to feel pretty powerless here, and this discourages fresh editing. Adding any new user right increases Wikipedia's stratification, and in this case I just don't think the potential benefits (per Beelbebrox) outweigh the potential costs (further stratifying Wikipedia). Brycehughes (talk) 00:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Please get real.--Canoe1967 (talk) 07:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Reviewer right is for what then, don't create messed up hierarchy. Gaurav Pruthi ^talk 09:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This would inevitably lead to a large subset of articles being indefinitely protected and open only to a privileged class of users. I assume I have enough of a track record to join this privileged class, but if this policy had been in place when I was a new user, and every one of my edits to a major article required a manual {{edit protected}} request, would I ever have had the patience to obtain that track record? For articles which attract large amounts of vandalism and unhelpful edits, a much better solution is the pending changes system, which is fully-automated and much easier for all concerned to use. – Smyth\^talk 13:52, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I don't see the need for it and I feel that the negative aspects of this outweighs the potential positive ones. Mike V • Talk 18:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
For articles, the idea of full protection is that nobody should be editing them; for non-articles such as protected templates, the editprotected template works better by drawing more eyes to the changes. Allowing editors to edit fully protected articles destroys the ability to use full protection to stop edit wars. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Brycehughes. Keep it simple Wikipedia, the project needs new blood. Increasing the number of editors is the way to overcome delays. Istobe (talk) 02:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, for the reasons so eloquently listed by Beeblebrox above. MeegsC (talk) 14:29, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - same as above. DS (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose and suggestion - As per Beeblebrox. I also propose a solution which adresses many of the comments in this discussion; enter into the policy for request for adminship that RfA leeway should be given to users who intend to edit templates and have a history of doing so. The more advanced edits/skills the better, and less weight is put upon how long they're been an editor and the total number of edits. No changes in the "framework" of WP is needed ("template admins" are under the same scrutiny as everybody else) and although there are some comments to the opposite, I think that if you can handle the pressure and responsibility of effecting 10.000+ articles, you can handle being an admin ("No, you're not going to block a user by accident"). And possibly; if you were granted admin under this "template" provision/policy, it should be easier to take it away again ("less leeway") Katana (talk) 15:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I am very surprised that supporters are treating the distinction between fully protected templates and fully protected articles as somehow trivial. If there is a large number of protected page editors--I'm assuming it would quickly be far larger than the current number of active admins--there will be abuse of article full protection, in many cases unintentional but still violating protection policy. Policing that is going to create more work for admins, not less. On the other hand, one thing I hope will come out of this discussion is that some unnecessarily full-protected templates are changed to semi-protected. Chick Bowen 17:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Per Beeblebrox. Will potentially create more problems then it will solve. – Connormah (talk) 23:22, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose An unnecessary creation of a new special class of editors. No evidence has been presented that a problem exists which the present admins are not able to handle. Edison (talk) 01:09, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - From what I have seen, the administrator backlog is not that big for edit requests to fully protected pages. Further, fully protected templates are protected for a reason (and if one doesn't have a reason, it should be unprotected or stepped down to semi-protection). Beeblebrox states the issue well. The point of the matter is that this is completely unnecessary and only gives people more hats to wear. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 01:26, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - splitting users in a myriad of ill defined (and most likely impossible to define) categories is of no help, quite the opposite. PS: And I can't see how giving more work and more discretionary power to admins would be a good thing (that is, check users for suitability for this right, granting and revoking it) Nabla (talk) 11:05, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Unnecessary and unhelpful user right. Zheek (talk) 17:25, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose – Likely to cause as many problems as it solves, in my view. Tim riley (talk) 09:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. Per Beeblebrox and Wnt and others. This proposal is ripe for abuse. I've had too many experiences with admins that have abused their status on highly controversial articles and whole categories of articles under certain topic areas in the past as it is. Allowing them to grant special editing privileges to editors they may prefer will just put POV article ownership abuse into an even higher gear (or restart article ownership problems on controversial articles and topics where removal and replacement of admins has been marginally effective). Too many good editors simply "check out" of the effort to produce NPOV articles altogether as a result. I've done so on certain topics myself. CarolMooreDC also makes good points on abuse potential based on past experience. --John G. Miles (talk) 21:25, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose No, no, no. Pages are not just protected from vandalism but from edit-warring, giving users time to calm down and achieve consensus, if an established user has this right it will give them far too much power. There are already too many editors looking to wear as many hats as they can and this just adds to them. GimliDotNet^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 10:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose This will actually increase the workload of the admins rather than reducing it. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^Talk ^Email 10:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I don't know that this has ever been a big issue. If anything, the current process encourages discussion on pages that could probably use it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose See my rationale from opposing PC2. Agent Vodello^{OK, Let's Party, Darling!} 14:48, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This is why we have Edit requests, this would make the situation worse JayJay^{What did I do?} 15:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose This is a bit that should be exclusive to those the community has vetted. If the main page or anything transcluded on it is indeed changeable by users in this class that may be an issue. Articles that are fully protected are on lockdown for a reason beyond semi-protection and users that could edit these should be able to survive RFA and prove they have the community's trust. Valley2city^‽ 22:48, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. As discussed above (and every time something like this is proposed), we already have a user access level for editors regarded as sufficiently trustworthy to edit fully protected pages (administrator) and a protection level for pages whose editing needn't be restricted to administrators (semi-protection). We don't need "Protected Page Editors" or "Super Protection" (restricting editing to admins again), followed by "Super-Protected Page Editors" and "Ultra Protection".
As I've commented in the past, we shouldn't make RfA worse by reinforcing the misconception that adminship is a big deal and shouldn't be granted to trustworthy editors without a demonstrable need for every tool. ("You can just become a Protected Page Editor.")
And why are we still using Title Case for this? —David Levy 00:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Surturz and Beeblebrox. Also, anybody trusted enough to edit million-transclusion templates can be trusted to delete pages, and should be an admin (and this right should be given by the community only, maybe more liberally than it currently is). The admin package makes a lot of sense the way it is and does not need to be split up. —Kusma (t·c) 07:31, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong 0ppose -Ab_18 (Amod Bhagwat 07:03, 18 April 2013 (UTC))
strongly nope I'm contrary. I also think that greater hierarchy generally is a bad idea, and will reduce the strength of the community **** you, you ******* ****. (talk) 13:28, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose thoriyan 14:19, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Already "admin" actions are prone to be disastrous, we needn't have another level of heirarchy. Semi-protect is good as it prevents IP attacks, many of which are socks. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: Suppose this user group is created. Now the people who will be able to qualify to be a part of this group, I think, will need to be as experienced as an administrator. Page are protected merely because you don't want inexperienced people to edit them (who might intentionally or otherwise make controversial edits). So this user group is useless because administrators can already edit protected pages and the only people who should be allowed to edit these pages should be as experienced as administrators. smtchahal^(talk) 07:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: I think that Beeblebrox voices my own thoughts perfectly. The argument may be quite tiresome by now, but if i trust an editors capacity to edit fully protected pages and high visibility templates i implicitly trust their usage of the full set of tools as well (Same the other way around). Having said that i am not a fan of unbundling tools in general unless there is a clear practical reason for a separate privilege (Rollback is an example). In this case, i think the hassle of creating and maintaining this privilege outweighs its added value. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:06, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: per Beeblebrox. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:15, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - User: Beeblebrox couldn't have said it any better. Before you know it, the way we're going, everybody will be entitled to have the "tools" that have been entrusted to only to administrators. Tony the Marine (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Hopefully, and the sooner the better, which is why I've opposed myself. Malleus Fatuorum 00:07, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per same reasons as Beeblebrox. --Pmsyyz (talk) 03:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per the same reason as User:Higgs boson on the ground that less is more and keep it simple. Some wikipedians have a lust to create more and more legislation- constitutions, ammendments and moral codes- then a defense policy- the laws of physics- redact DNA and to codify death. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 08:44, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I also think that adding another level of hierarchy seems like a bad idea - and I would rather see this harmonised with the WP:PC changes than a completely new approach. TheAnarcat (talk) 14:31, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose - As someone else said, this "solves what is barely a problem by creating a worse potential problem." -- Rediscoverer (talk) 21:05, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per User:Beeblebrox and User:Surturz and User:Rjd0060 and User:Edison and User:Kusma and others, all of whom see more issues raised by this proposal than could be solved by it. Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 04:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per the same reasons as Beeblebrox. Mjeromee (talk) 05:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This would be yet another nail in the coffin of the flat organisational structure upon which WP was built. It would reinforce the now well-established notion of a hierarchy editors controlling the content of the enyclopedia. 80.174.78.102 (talk) 08:07, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. After doing some heavy research and discovery, I do not feel this will help overall as it would only impose more work on Admins. Papabur (talk) Papabur 10:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. per SmokeyJoe. Yintan 14:49, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The current system works well. BigDwiki (talk) 14:50, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The place is stratified enough. Marteau (talk) 22:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose - Fully protected pages are protected for a reason. Handing out permissions like this would be a disaster not only on articles and templates, but the community, especially if they end up in the wrong hands. Command and Conquer Expert! ^{speak to me...}_{review me...} 23:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, unnecessary instruction creep. VQuakr (talk) 05:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Surturz. -down load ׀ talk 05:23, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose -- if the problem is not having enough admins to fix these templates etc., appoint more admins. If the problem is that fully protected templates need to be edited often, lower the protection level. Too many user privileges already. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:59, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I don't really think this solves the problem it's aiming to solve. I don't particularly like giving certain editors more privilege over other editors. I like the PC2 proposal. Esox id^{talk•contribs} 20:03, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Unless I'm missing something, I fail to see what this will achieve other than yet another class of 'special-wikipedians' and further creep. Meetthefeebles (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox — Iune (talk) 02:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Hierarchy creep. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:38, 24 April 2013 (UTC).
Oppose Why fix a system that isn't broken?Antiochus the Great (talk) 16:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. There are enough Administrators to take care of any fully protected article edits. Its a pretty unnecessary user right. STATic message me! 17:35, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - can't add much to the discussion; essentially I agree with Beeblebrox's argument against this. David (talk) 19:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Beeblebrox. – Ypnypn (talk) 00:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This is just asking for it to be abused. Beeblebrox above I think put my rationale most eloquently, but I also want to add that this really defeats the purpose of having full protection. It should mean an absolute, full lock-down of an article until the dispute has been resolved. If one of the quarreling editors has the permission to edit it, could you imagine the fallout that would occur? Nomader (talk) 02:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Why aren't cascade-protected pages and interface pages included? -- Ypnypn (talk) 23:12, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

In the last proposal, almost the entire community was opposed to allowing access to interface pages to non-admins because of the potential for site-wide damage. Cascade is also not allowed because the right doesn't allow it which makes sense because of security reasons.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:21, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Can this be done on a page by page basis though to keep an editor who may just happen to have this ability, and who may just happen to be in an edit war, from abusing the privilege? That would be my only concern. --JohnDBuell (talk) 00:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That would likely require some technical modification to MediaWiki Core. As proposed in the draft outline, if they are caught using this right in an edit war, the right would be revoked after a stern warning.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 01:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The qualities needed to edit protected templates and those need to edit fully protected contents pages are considerably different. I'm just a little concerned that those with the ability to do one aren't necessarily able to properly do the other (I'm thinking ofthe RfA nominations for people who wanted to edit templates, rejected because of insufficient content editing experience. (Of course this applies to admins also) But I don't want to propose yet another complication. DGG ( talk ) 04:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That, indeed, is the crux of the issue for me. That and I have yet to see the evidence that there is a serious issue with edit requests to protected templates not getting the attention they deserve. However, consider the filemover right. Anyone who is autoconfirmed can move a content page, but they can't move files without being granted this separate right. Thi ssuggests that it is possible to tailor user rights to specific namespaces. If we could change this to a template-space only right I think I could easily see my way clear to supporting it, but if it is a blanket ability to edit any page that now would be restricted to admins only, not so much. The potential for misunderstandings, abuse, drama, etc is just too great. If it were templates only it would be less "sexy" and would more boring, like filemover. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:26, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I might point out that the backlog at CAT:PER is often quite bad (it can often get up to 30 items, although it is under control right now) and the edit requests tend to be answered by one of a small group of admins. There are plenty of non-admin users (such as myself) who would be able to help out with most of the more mundane requests, if we belonged to this proposed user group. I, for one, would not be interested in editing fully protected articles (other than to fix protection templates, etc.) — This, that and the other (talk) 10:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with TTO here. Backlogs are usually large, and when they are they go unnoticed or unaddressed for weeks. Template editing is also an interest to many editors, including myself. Vaca tion 9 12:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Does this mean there will be more fully protected pages instead of semi-protection for busy controversial articles? I would rather see edit warring than most editors locked out because a few can't behave. EllenCT (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

For one, the intent of this proposal is to allow users who are trusted enough to edit, but not quite trusted enough to be an admin, to edit the pages that are protected. Protection should be applied as if this right didn't exist. That's not what this right is for.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 12: 01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I have two different comments. Firstly with articles, for any editor with a decent track record, why would they need this? Why not just go to RFA? I'm ruminating on the sort of attributes I'd want to see in a decent candidate, but I just can't see what would be different from an equally good RFA candidate.

Second comment - the idea of having a "protected template editor" is a different, but quite intriguing idea. As an admin I have the permissions to edit all the templates but would never dream of doing so - I simply don't have the technical competence. I could easily envision an editor who has no desire to be the sort of "all-rounder" who ends up passing RFA, but otherwise brings good technical skills to the table. (How we would select these technical candidates is best left to those who ~~administer~~ maintain the current templates, not someone like me). Manning (talk) 12:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

"for any editor with a decent track record, why would they need this? Why not just go to RFA? "

Because I don't want the power to 'block' or 'delete', not under any circumstances. It's like carrying a gun-- I may be responsible enough to carry one, but I choose not to. Call us 'conscientious objectors' -- we want no part of "adminship" and policing editor behavior.

I might use the "trusted wiki-gnome rights", but not if it means I have to carry the burden of the "user policing rights". I think there is something useful in flagging the users who are "trusted", regardless of whether or not they seek the role of admin. --HectorMoffet (talk) 12:14, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) First of all, consider editors like me. I failed my RfA mostly because I've only been here 6 months. That said, I have quite a bit of technical skill and ESP experience so answering EPs and editing templates would be great for me. This right would be great for people who haven't been around long enough to be an admin but still are trustworthy to have this right (not saying I am). In that sense, it's like rollbacker. To address your second point, it's not technically possible to do this I don't believe, but that is an interesting idea. Vaca tion 9 12:17, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

What should be the conditions for granting this right? I think there should be some strict conditions that should be met before this right is granted. That should include, atleast 3000 edits in Mainspace, have never been blocked and should pass most of the criteria of being an admin. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 13:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That's a bit too strict. They aren't an admin. They can't block, delete, protect, edit the interface, edit user css/js, or the site css/js. If any criteria, I propose technical template knowledge, policy knowledge and at least 3000 edits in general, and most importantly, AGF.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 14:43, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Question: Is there any intent to use this group as a probational pre-promotional requirement to becoming and administrator? Technical 13 (talk) 16:10, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That's up to the community to decide if this should be a pre-requisite. I hadn't planned on it though.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 16:13, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

General Note

I get the impression that half of the people here aren't reading the proposed policy based on the comments I'm seeing.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 16:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

This may help you with that concern. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. There's no harm in trying though right? ;-) Besides I can handle insults and tough criticism.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 16:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Question, is there a reason why not just having Admins conduct these edits, as is the present case, isn't sufficient?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:31, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I second it. Why not just let admins handle these changes? Put in {{edit protected}} or something in the talk? If one wants more, then ummm, then just file an RFA. This needs same amount of trust as admins get. Mr T ^(Talk?) ^{(New thread?)} 06:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

See my response above. I suspect most editors raising these concerns have not made {{editprotected}} requests on a regular basis. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Small point, but since you use the Main Page as an example in the introduction, users with this right would be able to edit the Main Page. Cascading protection applies to pages transcluded on the protected page, so they wouldn't be able to edit, for example, the TFA blurb. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- ~~No: the main page is cascade protected through its transclusion on Wikipedia:Main Page/1 through Wikipedia:Main Page/5.~~ ... I was wrong, but anyway, those pages should transclude the main page even though they don't right now. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:20, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  - Slightly off-topic, but I thought we couldn't transclude mainspace pages? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:52, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
    - Yep, you can transclude them using {{:Main Page}} syntax; you can even substitute them if you want. See User:This, that and the other/transclude. — This, that and the other (talk) 05:05, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- To answer your question, you cannot edit any page that has the cascading property according to the developers. That means direct protection and protection resulting from transclusion. previous unsigned comment was added by Cyberpower678, 21:32, 7 Apr. 2013.

Boston bombings example

Could I point people to this edit history as an example. An admin decided to fully protect the article citing BLP concerns. In the 70 minutes after that, six different admins decided to edit the article (one undid his edit), making edits that were not to do with the concerns and had not had consensus reached on the talk page. Now if admins are going to ignore rules like this what happens if this is implemented. People will be asking for pages to be protected so that they can own them. People will be supporting this proposal, with the intention of getting protected page edit permission just for cases like this. If we cannot trust admins, then can we trust those who have not had an RfA?Martin451 (talk) 13:15, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Hear hear. Great example! Looks like I can safely unwatch this page now that numbers for an against are about equal and there's no consensus.

CarolMooreDC🗽 18:24, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I look at this a different way. If 6 different admins violated policy as you say and nothing was done about it based on the very lengthy ANI discussion that followed. Then how is it that an editor who has edited here for 8 years, with 400, 000 edits, can't be trusted to also be able edit the article because they are not an admin. I understand the point of your argument but its also true that Admins currently already show severe article ownership over articles by protecting them ensuring that only they and in some cases members of their WikiProjects can edit them. You are focusing on a very narrow example and I would point out that if anyone acted innappropriately with this right they would very quickly find it removed. On the other hand its almost impossible to remove the tools from an admin who violated the same policy. So you say there is going to be a problem, I say there already is. Kumioko (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes. This. EeBee 04:17, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Granting

It is proposed to ask what the editor intends to do with the right. What is the precise point of this? Once granted the editor can edit any article, including any that they might have an interest in establishing a position on. Leaky Caldron 14:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Just like requesting adminship, the candidate is asked what they intend to do with that right. Removal of the PPE right is easier than adminship and if caught abusing (subject to what the community believes is abuse), they're given a warning and then it's removed from them. If they are caught edit warring and the page gets protected and they continue to edit it and the other person can't the right can be flipped off. I hope I'm clearly expressing myself here.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 14:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

So, how about this situation: Two users are in an edit war. Nobody has breached 3RR. Normally at this point protection would be preferred to blocking as it allows discussion to continue. But wait! Both users have this right. The protection will not stop them. As an admin who works with protection issues I'd like to know what I am supposed to do at this point. Block them both? Just ask the edit warriors to stop since there is no technical way of actually stopping them? Protect and hope for the best? Crazy drama at ANI? Beeblebrox (talk) 16:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Remove the right and leave a warning on their page.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 16:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

... in addition, as rollback flag is removed if used in editwarring, this one can be removed if (continuously) misused. --Tito Dutta (contact) 17:15, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

In my scenario nobody had yet abused the user right, just edit warred on an unprotected article. So, just so we are clear, you are saying that if two users with this right are edit warring we should protect the page and preemptively remove the user right to stop them from ignoring the protection? Beeblebrox (talk) 17:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought you had protected the page already. If they know what warrants removal of the bit, such as edit warring through protection, then protecting the page should be sufficient. If they continue, and some admin discretion is allowed given the nature of the warring, warn or block and remove the right.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 18:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Seems like the words "involved" and "uninvolved" need to play a part in the conditions of use. Leaky Caldron 18:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

involved.. uninvolved -Good point! --Tito Dutta (contact) 18:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Great points from Leaky indeed.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 18:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Some clarification/elaboration on what would constitute "trusted" seems necessary. I'd suggest that any recent history of being blocked (other than the rare abusive blocks, or those for simple technical reasons) should be reason enough not to grant it. "Recent" should be relative to edit activity level (e.g. 25% of non-minor edits and 25% of account duration, at least 2000 edits in 6 months, to pick some figures from thin air).LeadSongDog come howl! 15:52, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Asking for closers

Does anyone mind if I ask for closers at WP:AN, for a close roughly one week after the start? (For RfCs relevant to adminship, the one-week RfCs seem to get more discussion and more attention.) - Dank (push to talk) 17:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

This RfC like most RfCs will stay open for 1 month.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 17:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Most do, yes. Your call. - Dank (push to talk) 18:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Just an hour ago, I learned about this discussion from notice above MyWatchlist. More editors will join eventually! --Tito Dutta (contact) 18:15, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Just my two cents: when an RfC can get you a definitive answer on something, 30 days is fine. When there's no chance of that ... when one RfC starts something, and another fills in details, and a later one will be needed for adjustments ... you'll get people opposing just because they don't want to greenlight something that takes that long to set up, because they don't want to spend that much time keeping track of it, and because that offers too many opportunities for things to go wrong. - Dank (push to talk) 18:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Just approving this RfC is a huge change to Wikipedia. The discussion should go on for a bit. If this does pass, subsequent RfCs will be shorter to set it up faster, but right now, it's still uncertain if this will pass or not.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 18:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good job. There's active discussion on both sides. - Dank (push to talk) 19:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I've been updating a list at Wikipedia talk:Protected Page Editor/Tally which is just an ordered list of signatures and timestamps. If I've missed your vote on this page, feel free to inject it there, as there were a couple votes on this page that weren't signed or dated, and got cut. I find the other list a little easier to read and more clear cut. Do with it what you will, I'm indifferent other than it is easier on my eyes (short of some of the exuberant signatures. ZOMG! people...). Technical 13 (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clear here that both the original proposal and my alternate idea have failed to gain consensus for implementation. With these numbers it seems unlikely to me that waiting 11 more days will change that. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:00, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
But it adds input. Valuable input.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 20:03, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
Interesting coincidence (and yes, this one looks like it really is a coincidence)... I have been checking this every day or two wondering which position is slightly ahead (not that it matters; it is clearly a 50:50 no consensus result either way). Every day I have seen "No" still behind but gaining ground. Then on 21 April "No" pulled ahead and quickly gained a 5-vote lead. Then suddenly one of the "No" voters called for closing the RfC early. Coincidence? Yup. Sometimes there really are coincidences... (smile)

The reason I generally dislike early closings is that some folks may have noted the scheduled closing time and might be waiting to vote at the last minute. I am going to predict that in 11 days we will have 300+ total votes and that "No" will be ahead by at least 10. Otherwise knows as "no consensus". --Guy Macon (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

It's of no importance, but are you watching the count on this page directly or the Wikipedia talk:Protected Page Editor/Tally I've been updating every couple days? Technical 13 (talk) 22:26, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I have been counting this page. I took the liberty of going through both lists and making them the same, going to the page history whenever I found a discrepancy. Of course we all know how errors can be invisible to the person doing the work, so please review my changes and fix any errors you find. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 23:32, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

You know, we need to make an experimental Enwiki

It's not 2003 anymore. Wikipedia (enwiki) has become an essential reference for the entire internet population. There was a time when we could easily take risks to improve the project, trusting that if it doesn't work out, we'll just change it back. We were explorers in an unknown land, we could afford to be "experimental".

When I read the opposition to this proposal, the main emotion I see is "Wikipedia is too precious to be this experimental". The status quo is an incredible success, and even a relatively minor tweak to our operations might degrade the project-- a price that's too high for us to pay.

Unfortunately, that means we don't have the luxuries we had in 2003, when an RFA really was WP:NOBIGDEAL. Wikipedia is now 'mission critical'-- it has become too important to innovate.

The opposes here raise a lot of "What if" worries-- what if we try this and something bad happens or things get worse. Wouldn't it be nice if we had an "experimental" version of enwiki where instead of worrying about "what if", we would have the freedom to change anything we want and actually see how it goes, instead of just guessing and reading tea leaves.

Then we wouldn't have to guess about the effects of change, we could actually use A/B testing to evaluate policy changes. And it would be easier to adopt changes here once they've been tested in an experimental enwiki and met with success. --HectorMoffet (talk) 19:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

You raise a lot of good points, but I'm not sure how an experimental version would work. The whole point of this change is that it's related to how lots of users interact with Wikipedia, any experimental wiki probably wouldn't have this amount of users if I'm not mistaking what you're saying. Samwalton9 (talk) 20:15, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. A much smaller group of editors who are trying to make a Wikipedia that's even better than EnWiki. If it works, we could "discover" new tools and techniques that, once proven to work, could be incorporated here at EnWiki. (and of course, if an experimental wiki somehow turned out to be an overwhelmingly success, it might wind up being "the next Wikipedia".) --HectorMoffet (talk) 20:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

With the relatively small amount of users who edit regularly anyway, I'd be worried that unless the experimental wiki was made specifically for one big change that no one would ever edit it at all and so nothing would be 'discovered'. Samwalton9 (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the "big idea" is 'Wikipedia, but somehow better'. Maybe nobody would show up-- but that's the beauty of an experimental project, isn't it. It would have the freedom to fail. --HectorMoffet (talk) 20:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with HectorMoffet that this proposal is "too experimental" or exposes Wikipedia too too much risk. This proposal is careful and balanced, and can be implemented with what I expect to be success. Debresser (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I should clarify-- I personally support this proposal; It's not "too experimental" for me, it's "too experimental" for the people who oppose this. --HectorMoffet (talk) 22:39, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

My first reading of your post was too cursory. I apologize. Debresser (talk) 23:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Too many too's. :p—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 22:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I note that editors opposing this are ALSO "editors who are trying to make a Wikipedia that's even better than EnWiki". - Nabla (talk) 22:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternate idea

Ok, maybe this is crazy, but I think I may have a different proposal that would solve this rather neatly. It seems like this proposal is most concerned with the editing of highly-used templates. This is in fact an area where admins are sometimes limited in their ability help respond to requests because of the complex coding and parsing in some templates, but we can't just leave them unprotected because of the potential for massive-scale vandalism. So, what if instead of full protection we use Pending changes level two. This might actually be the perfect fit for this currently unused tool. The reviewer right is all that is needed to edit through it, and we already have a process in place for granting it. Simple, easy to implement, no extra processes or developer time needed to get it going, all we need is a consensus to use PC2 in this way. Frankly I always though PC2 was fairly worthless, but in fact it seems like a perfect fit with this particular issue. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Support using PC2

As proposer. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Nicer than a new caste and less likely to result in more full protection of controversial articles. EllenCT (talk) 19:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Seems sensible enough. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, looks like a good idea. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 20:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Probably pointless, since (as noted below) it's impossible to do at the moment, but this would definitely be helpful. Many good template coders who won't vandalise are unlikely to pass RFA (whether because they don't want to run or because many people think they won't be good admins), and this would permit them to edit more constructively. It would also help those who can't edit the templates, since this way they could perform the edit (and simply wait for a reviewer) rather than attempting to explain the edit to an admin who doesn't understand what's going on — not to mention editors who don't understand the "complete and specific description" requirement on the editprotected template. Nyttend (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Seems like it'll be almost the same. A group of trusted non-admins with the ability to edit pages that get a lot of edit requests. Support! T C N7JM 20:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak support I agree with Surturz's oppose that people editing such pages should pass RfA and I am one of those people who believe that splitting up the admin-rights on a number of sub-groups is the wrong way to proceed. However, should the community - despite Beeblebrox's well-reasoned oppose !vote above - still believe that such a right should be created, then I agree with Beeblebrox that this solution would be far superior than the creation of another user group. Not only does it use a system already implemented but it would also allow any editor to make such changes with a review system in place, thus removing the need to actually request changes on talk pages. Those arguing that this proposal will increase the work for reviewers fail to take into account that those editors who wish to request the protected page editor right as discussed above could also become reviewers instead, thus fulfilling the same role in a slightly different technical way. Regards So Why 21:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support! Protection is usually a bit exaggerated and sometimes backfires. This way people can still monitor and update the page. asdfawesomegreen (talk) 22:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support TB randley 00:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak support per SoWhy. - tucoxn\^talk 03:39, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Much improved. The solution more closely addresses the largely imagined problem while still allowing anyone to edit and seems to be the sort of function for which PC2 was intended. Teply (talk) 03:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak support per everyone above. My only concern is the fact that admins are handing out the Reviewer right to people with 3-400 edits. We'd need to drastically tone that down if this is to function as we want it to. gwickwire^talk_editing 04:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Support - Better than the "Protected Page Editor" right. With PC2, all autoconfirmed users can contribute, meaning more contributions, since some autoconfirmed users have not made too many "edit requests" etc to edit fully-protected pages/templates. Arctic Kangaroo 05:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Yes, this is sensible, unlikely to get dramatic, and the infrastructure already exists. Pol430 talk to me 09:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Per my previous comment made in the Oppose/No section of primary proposal. YuMa NuMa ^Contrib 12:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Good idea too. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 22:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't this just be a combination of the proposed user right with something like the Reviewer right? Anyone going through the process of requesting this right should be at least as trusted as our reviewers, so why not? Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:47, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- No, this proposal is to apply Pending Changes level 2 to pages in the template namespace, etc. Those with the reviewer right would be able to edit these pages directly and approve any changes. To edit PC2-protected templates, one would only need the reviewer right as it currently exists, so all existing reviewers would suddenly be able to edit high-risk templates. Something to consider. — This, that and the other (talk) 05:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for the correction. I still support the proposal. Most of our reviewers are trusted enough to be allowed access to those templates, in my opinion. Others are free to disagree, of course. Evanh2008 ^{(talk|contribs)} 02:15, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
+ — Sebastian 06:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, this appears to be a good compromise solution between leaving the edits to fully protected articles to only Admins and creating a new user authority type. This allows for some editing, with a trusted reviewer approving before it goes live, while not requiring an edit request template usage, which appears to be the primary reason why the first proposal was created.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Seems like a fair compromise.
Support. Don't see why there's a problem. 069952497a^{Comments and complaints}_{Stuff I've done} 20:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I guess I support this, but I'm not clear how this is an alternative proposal. I think we should have PC2 on all BLPs, for example, but the use case for PC2 has little to do with the use case for full protection. The original use case is to let users answer non-controversial or consensus edit requests during a dispute. That's not applicable here, but I do think we should implement and use PC2. --B (talk) 22:30, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Pending review should never have been instituted, it simply results in yet another layer of oh so special people approved by oh so special people--all editors with a long enough history should have the ability to approve edits--not just the university students who have enough friends who are already admins. μηδείς (talk) 02:32, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment On the plus side, I always thought PC1 was useless and that PC2 was the only useful feature that pending changes provided. On the negative side, Pending Changes protection doesn't actually work in the Template name space. It's only implemented in mainspace.—Kww(talk) 19:54, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support technically and politically a lot more sound than Goldlocking. Full locks should be reserved to Office action or Emergency intervention, anyway. -T.I.M^(Contact) 21:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support with a comment Seems logical, I will be posting a comment further down... --Cameron11598 (Converse) 18:42, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak support Sounds better than authorizing editors. Esox id^{talk•contribs} 20:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - This sounds a lot better than handing admin rights to the next guy in my phone book. Command and Conquer Expert! ^{speak to me...}_{review me...} 01:14, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - I was leaning neutral at first, but this seems like a good compromise. — Joaquin008 ^(talk) 09:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
For high-use templates (and the disclaimer etc.) only. Oppose for articles. – Ypnypn (talk) 00:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose using PC2

Strong opose Like other users have mentioned, this is open to abuse and goes against what the basic idea of wikipedia is.Sugar128 (talk) 06:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Admin rights are not Pokémon. Editors requiring this access should pass an RfA. --Surturz (talk) 21:15, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for templates. Editor 1 with reviews rights changes the wording of a template. Editor 2 without the review flag comes along and breaks the template. Editor 1 comes back, sees a typo in their edit, corrects that typo, thus confirming the edits of Editor 2. Wham the template is broken, it is then transcluded onto 1,000,000 other pages, despite the fact that Editor 1 was just trying to change the text. Second example, a mischievous editor adds to a large part of a template, and substitutes a ) for a }, someone who does not understand the change clicks accept. Template editing of high profile templates needs a separate user right if non-admins want to edit them.86.25.24.66 (talk) 21:46, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
That's not what happens, though. Unreviewed edits must be explicitly accepted. If an admin/reviewer edits on top of an unreviewed edit, their new edit will also be unreviewed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:14, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I missunderstood how it works, I have only made a few changes to pending pages. But part of my point still stands, there are too many people who don't want/need the right to edit templates, who already have the reviewer right. Templates have been moved to the core of wikipedia, and it is too easy to break them.86.25.24.66 (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
This is a weak oppose, not an adamant one. Mainly, I'm concerned that the reviewer right has been given out too freely, so that this would open up template editing to quite a few users who shouldn't be doing it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Reviewing PC articles and editing high-risk templates are quite different activities and shouldn't be lumped together. A good article reviewer might be a terrible template editor, etc. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:00, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose: At first thought I actually liked this idea but the more I think about it I have to oppose. First I have a minor worry that the editors that are best for editing protected templates and reviewers are not necessarily the same group of people. Furthermore, it seems that template specific sandboxes are a better staging point for potential changes then having them sit as pending changes on the template itself. At least with sandboxes, the effect of the desired changes can be seen on the test subpages. Not sure how PC2 would act with testcases. Seems like it might make it more work! "Okay someone has a pending change... let's start by copying the template over to the sandbox to see what it looks like in the testcases. Oh I probably should fix this when I'm them... Okay testcases looks good now lets copy everything back to the real template." I worry that PC-2 will encourage bad template practice. Template development for heavily used cases ( which are the ones that would normally be protected ) should be done with sandboxes and testcases, not just drycoding stuff directly into the final template. PaleAqua (talk) 04:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Nooooo! Here comes PC2 sneaking up on us yet again, after being decisively rejected last year (and proposed repeatedly since). If we're going to make major changes to the policy on pending changes, let's give it a full year from the date that it was implemented to actually provide a chance to assess it, and then let's give it its own RfC and not tack it on to a different proposal as an afterthought. Besides, Beeblebrox's oppose to the main proposal on this page was, I thought, sound (it gave me pause and made me rethink supporting, anyway), and very similar reasoning can be used to show this counterproposal as unnecessary. Rivertorch (talk) 07:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Rivertorch and PaleAqua. Templates are not broken by vandals - they're broken by accident. There's nothing in the magic reviewer flag to make an editor any better or worse at spotting or avoiding bugs. Protecting the template is not a way of saying "only admins know how to edit it" - it is a way of insisting that every user working on the template set up his own proofs on some other page that the new version works before an executive decision is made, and when that decision is made it is not by one individual quickly deciding on a yes or no, but at least potentially by a threaded discussion in which a series of initial refusals does not equal an 'edit war'. Wnt (talk) 13:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I'm still not convinced of the need. And with pending changes still controversial, I'm not sure it's the time to glom this onto that.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Wnt hit the nail on the head. This is the wrong solution to the wrong problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The sandbox-test-discuss-edit cycle works well for template editing, and using pending changes would get in the way of that. Plus, I don't think this would be a good idea from a technical point of view. For pages protected with pending changes, logged-in editors are always shown the most recent version even if it hasn't yet been accepted. If we used PC2 for templates, that would mean all of the transclusions would have to be updated every time an editor made an edit to the page, and all logged-in editors would see any mistakes that resulted from it. Each edit to the template would also put a strain on the job queue, and that doesn't happen if the edits are made to a sandbox instead. At the moment it isn't technically possible to use pending changes in the template namespace, and I suspect that whoever set PC up on this wiki had a good reason for doing it that way. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 18:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm worried that my point about the technical issues might not have come across too clearly, so let me be more concrete. Take, for example, Template:Location map. This template produces a map with a location marker, and it is used in 150,000 pages, mostly in the infoboxes of countries, cities, and other locations. It isn't protected with cascading protection, so it would be eligible for PC2 protection under this proposal. Now, let's say that this page was protected with PC2, and an IP came along and replaced the template code with [[File:Penis parts.png|1000px]]. This image is not in the bad image list, so it can be shown on any page. So straight after the IP's edit, a 1000-pixel version of this image would be visible to all logged-in users on all of the 150,000 pages the template is transcluded on. It wouldn't be visible to readers or IP editors unless the edit was approved, but it would result in a huge amount of disruption for registered editors.
Meanwhile, the IP's edit would mean that the servers have to update all of the 150,000 pages that use the template, even though the changes wouldn't be visible to readers. We have recently had outages because the job queue couldn't cope with the demands placed on it. That pressure may be eased when the new implementation of the job queue comes into effect, but even so, using PC2 for templates would cause work for the servers that really isn't necessary. This hypothetical IP edit would be presenting the servers with a queue of 150,000 articles to update, but the edit would only be reverted. And then the revert itself would present the servers with another queue of 150,000 articles to update, making a maximum possible total of 300,000 articles for the servers to process unnecessarily. All this work for the servers is avoided by the current system of full protection, sandboxes, and edit requests. To sum up, this proposal would be a technical nightmare and would have a large risk of disruption to editors, and I believe we would be foolish to implement it. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose NO NO NO noway should we use PC2 and even if we could considers this it needs to be done in its own RFC not tacked onto another RFC as its listed here.--Dcheagle • talk • contribs 18:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as per various arguments further up.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Personally, I dislike PC1 (I really don't see the point of it, and it's more confusing than the proper protection procedures), and given the furore around PC2, this won't work. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:27, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Wnt. INeverCry 19:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. - Let trusted editors edit protected pages, if they misuse the right, it will be quickly removed. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 22:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. - Not seeing the necessity for this. The only pages I've come across that were locked up were in the middle of edit wars, & should have been. If you want this, become an Admin. If you see something that really needs fixing & can't wait (& from some of the long-lasting mistakes & outright crap I've seen, I have trouble imagining that degree of urgency), put in a request for somebody who can fix it. As others have said, this is begging for trouble. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 03:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak Oppose since all reviewers need not be expert in complex template coding. At least I am not.- Jayadevp13 12:38, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Great idea, but unfortunately PC2 doesn't do exactly what we need for this purpose, per Mr. Stradivarius' explanation above. ‑Scottywong | spout _ 21:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as per Mr. Stradivarius. LukeSurl^{t c} 23:23, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Complicated and incomplete, not to mention no consensus for its use at all. -- Avi (talk) 00:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose (tentative) per Rivertorch and PaleAqua. Mr T ^(Talk?) ^{(New thread?)} 13:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I can't see how PC2 would work for this, and I am unhappy about piggybacking this onto the original RfC. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:22, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose (with regard to templates and editnotices only) Heavily used templates are just too dangerous to allow anyone with the reviewer right to start messing with them. If unbundled from adminship, editprotected needs to be a user group unto itself, so that we can properly evaluate whether the candidate can be trusted with the specific privilege in question. This may also be technically unworkable, if PC does not stop unreviewed revisions from being transcluded or substituted. Admins who assigned reviewer privileges to users did not contemplate that, by so doing, they would give the users the ability to vandalize > 10,000 pages in one fell swoop. There are certainly non-admins who can be trusted with editprotected, but it requires a much higher level of scrutiny than the reviewer right. I would, however, support using PC2 for BLPs which would otherwise require full protection. As important as BLPs are, a bad reviewer could only vandalize them one at a time, and would quickly be reverted and blocked. I don't believe that someone would edit for months to get the reviewer right, just so they could vandalize a couple of PC2 BLPs for a few minutes before being banned. Editprotected allows someone to vandalize all BLPs with a single edit, and needs to be handed out much more sparingly. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
What template is on every BLP? Gigs (talk) 18:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Template:! is probably on most of them. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 05:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Either go through RfA or find other things to do. Kingturtle = (talk) 19:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose for lots of reasons, not least the feeling that this needs proper discussion because of the community's views on Pending Changes, and this feels like an idea tacked-on to another discussion. --Dweller (talk) 20:10, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Adminship should be the bare minimum requirement for editing protected pages. This feels forced just because there are less successful RFAs than years past. I will never support this. Agent Vodello^{OK, Let's Party, Darling!} 22:49, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose If it's not broke, don't fix it. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 22:58, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak Oppose Unless the issue Mr. Stradivarius brings up with when changes are seen by logged in members is addressed, I cannot see this working considering how low the bar for auto-confirmed editors all while protected pages especially templates are critical to the system. Mkdw ^talk 23:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Weak Oppose This seems to be equally unnecessary to the first proposal. Djh2000 talk 20:07, 10 April 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djh0013 (talk • contribs)
I'm indifferent to the creation of a new right, but grafting editing protected templates into the over-handed out reviewer group is a bad idea. Add a new group if there is a need, preferably with a bar of entry of experience in the template namespace, but this fails on the second reason you protect a template. You protect them from vandals, which this idea solves, but they are also protected so a silly typo doesn't disrupt a million pages, and this idea just opens risk more for mistakes. Courcelles 22:42, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - Some merit but too risky for templates with how liberally the reviewer userright has been given out, and technically inadvisable per Mr. Stradivarius, as it could still result in massive disruption to established users. While I recognize that there is currently no consensus for use of PC2, I myself would still consider supporting it in combination with semi-protection for some troublesome articles such as high profile BLPs. CT Cooper · talk 14:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This would work fine if the reviewer right had been handled differently in the first place, but I don't see a way to start that over again now. Chick Bowen 17:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, see backlog at dewp. mabdul 12:02, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Not practical, and for this even to seriously be considered it needs to be split into it's own RfC. Legoktm (talk) 00:07, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Legoktm and others. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:15, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Conflating two separate issues. Please don't piggy back, have a proper separate discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Unnecessary. Al Lemos (talk) 22:42, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm totally against any use of flagged revisions, which includes camouflaged flagged revisions, on en.wiki.—S Marshall T/C 12:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm not a fan of PC1 to begin with, and this proposition is not really an "alternate option" since it still requires a second set of eyes for changes. Steel1943 (talk) 05:55, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: I agree with Wnt. smtchahal^(talk) 10:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose in line with Rivertorch and Mr. Stradivarius' explanation which, if correct (not questioning it, i just have no understanding of templates and the workings of their magic), is self-evidently unworkable. Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 11:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The right has been given away to freely and would be open to abuse. STATic message me! 17:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This is Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. NOT Britannica. – Ypnypn (talk) 00:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Neutral using PC2

Neutral: Currently neutral to see replies of 86.25.24.66's oppose! --Tito Dutta (contact) 21:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC) Still neutral reading the arguments above (or count it as "no vote")! --Tito Dutta (contact) 23:19, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Neutral leaning oppose - I was just thinking about this! This would be a good idea, but PC2 has yet to achieve mainstream support by the community. Also, I am not seeing the bottom-line necessity for this. Templates that are transcluded on hundreds of thousands of pages can not only be targets for vandalism, but subject to good-faith arbitrary changes that can create a whole handful of problems. I think that the 'reviewer' right is too small of a trust for editing such high-risk templates. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 01:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of using PC2

Interaction of Wikipedia user groups and page protection levels
	Unregistered or newly registered	Confirmed or autoconfirmed	Extended confirmed	Template editor ^★	Admin	Interface admin	Appropriate for (See also: Wikipedia:Protection policy)
No protection	Normal editing						The vast majority of pages. This is the default protection level.
Pending changes	All users can edit Edits by unregistered or newly registered editors (and any subsequent edits by anyone) are hidden from readers who are not logged in until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or administrator. Logged-in editors see all edits, whether accepted or not.						Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism, BLP violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users.
Semi	Cannot edit	Normal editing					Pages that have been persistently vandalized by anonymous and registered users. Some highly visible templates and modules.
Extended confirmed	Cannot edit		Normal editing				Specific topic areas authorized by ArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, or high-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive.
Template	Cannot edit			Normal editing			High-risk or very-frequently used templates and modules. Some high-risk pages outside of template space.
Full	Cannot edit				Normal editing		Pages with persistent disruption from extended confirmed accounts.
Interface	Cannot edit					Normal editing	Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects central to operation of the site or that are in other editors' user spaces.
^★ The table assumes a template editor also has extended confirmed privileges, which is almost always the case in practice.
Other modes of protection: Create protection Move protection Upload protection Office protection Cascade protection view talk edit

I'm not seeing how this helps? The only thing that seems to change is it increases the workload of reviewers that would now have to review edits on PCl2 articles by autoconfirmed and confirmed editors that they previously didn't have to. Am I missing something or misunderstanding the proposal? Technical 13 (talk) 3:23 pm, Today (UTC−4)

This way, anyone would be able to edit high-risk templates, reducing the workload of admins who know intricate wiki syntax. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

PC2 would replace full protection for high use templates. Users who wish to edit those templates regularly would apply for the reviewer right if they don't already have it. So this would reduce the number of protected edit requests while still preventing vandalism as any non-reviewer edits would be held for review. Three months in to the redployment of pending changes significant backlogs have yet to surface although they were widely predicted. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:35, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah-ha... Beeblebrox's explanation makes sense. It is a replacement for full protection on the majority of those templates. It reduces requests from editors to administrators to edit these templates, but increases the backlog for reviewers. What about the comment below that says it can't be used in Template:? Technical 13 (talk) 19:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm impartial about the fact of adding a new user right. I had an RfC planned for the use of PC2 that I wanted to run after this one, but Beeblebrox beat me to it. The current problem with this is that it's technically impossible to PC2 a template as the software doesn't allow for it. I also seem to recall the devs refusing to put more development into this feature. Other than that, I wouldn't be opposed to using PC2 protection on templates.
By adding the word "instead" to this proposal, you have disallowed any votes from those who might find the original proposal and the alternate both to be acceptable. As written, only those who oppose the original proposal can vote on the alternative proposal. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Not really. "Instead" is just stating a fact; either full protection or PC2 can be used, not both. For example, a voter might support two different candidates for president, even though only one of them can win. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, really. :) Imagine that you are faced with four candidates for US president; , Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Aaron Burr, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Only one can become president. You think that either Adams or Jefferson would be good choices. Someone asks you, "Jefferson: support or oppose?" and you vote "Support." Then someone else asks you "Adams instead of Jefferson: support or oppose?" how would you vote? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
The proof is in the pudding. I supported the original proposal, and I supported here as well. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Put yourself in the closer's position. Confusion reigns. Having said that, this sounds like a neater solution all round. Leaky Caldron 20:11, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
We currently have 851 active sysops, of which about 700 are active. We have 8,023 reviewers, of which I guess a hundred at most will have an interest in editing high visibility templates. Is it really a good idea to allow that many WP:IDIOTs that level of access when they will not want or need it. 86.25.24.66 (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, historically, admins screwed up like the example in WP:IDIOT tells us. Any admin can break any highly-visible template and not even mean to, just because they were gone for a while and don't understand the code. We trust them not to do that. We trust reviewers to not allow potentially harmful material to be added as well and to keep their hands off if they are not able to determine an edit's validity. So why not trust them to keep their hands off templates they don't understand as well? Regards So Why 21:54, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

To address many of the opposers, who feel that being a reviewer has nothing to do with knowing how to edit templates, how about introducing PC3, where only admins can review edits? Wouldn't require the creation of a new class of users, just added on to the admin toolset and nothing else. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:13, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Is there a table like above for PC3? I understand things better with visualizations. Technical 13 (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
  Just imagine a new row in the table, where "Unregistered, New," "Autoconfirmed, Confirmed," and "Reviewer" are all yellow and say "can edit; changes will go live after being accepted by a reviewer," and "Administrator" is green and says "can edit; changes go live immediately; can accept pending changes." If semi-protection is also used on top of PC3, then "Unregistered, New" is red and says "cannot edit," "Autoconfirmed, Confirmed" and "Reviewer" are both yellow and say "can edit; changes will go live after being accepted by a reviewer," and "Administrator" is green and says "can edit; changes go live immediately; can accept pending changes." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Procedural concerns

Some of the opponents said that the PC2 proposal should not be piggybacked on the PPE proposal, and not be presented so shortly after it already failed on its own. These argument seem very valid to me. While I support the proposal based on how I see its merits, I would understand if the closing admin rejected it for this reason, especially if significantly fewer people voted this time than previously. — Sebastian 06:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Merely adding the question had a spoiler effect on the main question, and the addition of the words "instead of" reinforced the effect. I am sure that this was not intentional, but as a it did appear to bias the results. The additional question was posted at 18:55 on 5 April 2013. If you look at the votes before and after the additional question was posted, you see:

Before: 43 support (1-43), 20 oppose (1-20) = 68.3% support

After: 26 support (44-70), 24 oppose (21-45) = 52.0% support

I would also note that oppose vote #21 explicitly says that it was influenced by the added question.

Also see: Strategic nomination. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Until two more closers sign on (notice is up at WP:AN), I'll just say: noted. (And btw, I'll be deferring to the other two on PC2 stuff.) - Dank (push to talk) 14:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC) For a close in early May, I mean. - Dank (push to talk) 16:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Unless someone beats me to it, I will update the above numbers after it closes. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess i should comment here since I did it. As you can see from my comments opposing the new user right, I don't think this is the sort of huge, overwhelming problem that I would expect to see as justification of a whole new class of users with the power to edit through properly placed full protection at any time. So, I proposed a simpler solution using tools we already have. And frankly I could not object more strongly to the removal of "instead" from the proposal, since that is in fact what I proposed. They are mutually exlusive options. If we use PC2 only on curently full-protected templates and grant reviewr status to any responsible user who asks for it for that purpose, there is no need to create the new userright.

As to the recent rejection of PC2, I did not follow that saga too closeley, but if I recall it was related to using it against one specific banned user. This would not be in that vein at all, vandalism is not in the mix here so I see at a total re-purposing of what PC2 would be used for, not another attempt to use it n ways the community recently rejected. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Two comments. First, from your point of view instead was an okay word to use but from a neutral point, instead was an attempt to "sabotage" (forgive me for not having found a better word) the original proposal. I'm not saying you're trying to sabotage the proposal and I know you wouldn't try. Which brings me to point 2. PC2 would also need dev development to implement on Templates. That being said, the devs stated that they have no more intentions of tinkering with PC (I don't remember where I saw that but I do remember seeing it). Also, by reducing everything to PC2 with our current reviewers, that would be like handing PPE to all of those reviewers to edit fully protected pages. I see a great big red flag here. Either way, both proposals require the same amount of dev development to MediaWiki to implement.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 11:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The difference in the two numbers cannot be wholly attributed to a spoiler effect. Your people who are most passionately devoted to the proposal are going to show up and !vote on it first. The roughly 50/50 later support may merely indicate that people who don't have a dog in this fight but saw the site notice are evenly split. I can say of my own !vote that it had nothing to do with the alternate proposal and I am wholly opposed to this right and believe it will result in more problems/fights over protected articles. --B (talk) 22:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

That's a very good point. I would like to crunch some numbers on a couple of similar RfCs and see if the effect described can be found. Does anyone have any suggestions for RfCs that got site notices and a lot of votes? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

In open voting the bandwagon effect is more important than nearly anything else. Gigs (talk) 14:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I have heard that said. I just wish we had some actual data instead of just so stories. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:46, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Should only be granted by bureaucrats

I suggest that this new group only be assignable by bureaucrats, since it pertains to a traditional element of the admin toolkit, which could be used by a malefactor to quickly create massive vandalism. Otherwise, we will end up raising the bar at RFA for full adminship. For technical reasons and simplicity it might be easier to only allow bureaucrats to remove the right. Admins needing to quickly revoke editprotected on an emergency basis could still block users holding the right, pending review of the situation by a bureaucrat. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 16:34, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The assumption behind your suggestion appears to be that all non-admins are malefactors. An interesting insight. Malleus Fatuorum 16:51, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Most non-admins are good faith editors. We assign user rights at all because the danger posed by the tools falling into the hands of the few bad apples is just too high. Your grievance appears to relate to the entire system of user groups on Wikipedia. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 05:39, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Note on PC2 consensus

As someone who was involved with the PC stuff pretty heavily, I have to say there seems to be a misconception among the opposition to the present proposal that PC2 was rejected soundly in the past. The main discussion was at Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC_1, which was closed with a weak "default to no consensus to use for the time being". There was absolutely not a consensus against ever using PC2. The closer even mentions that we probably should revisit the issue after PC1 had been out for 3-6 months, which would be right around now. Gigs (talk) 18:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Ironically, as I recall I was the one who first said we should probably not use it at all because I couldn't think of a circumstance where it was preferable to other forms of protection. Then i saw this and it seemed to me we may have found one specific scenario where it actually would be.Beeblebrox (talk) 00:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Ironically also, I once crafted a proposal wherein PC2 was the only permissible form of PC. I still would prefer that to what we have today, but what we have is the result of hard-won consensus (or hard-won lack of consensus, if you prefer, Gigs) and I think it's much too soon to try to expand the use of PC. By my count, this is at least the third proposal to allow PC2 since the close of Wikipedia:PC2012/RfC_1, so you'll excuse me if this strikes me as a perennial proposal that never disappears for any meaningful length of time. Rivertorch (talk) 04:10, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Tangentially, I'd assert that most perennial proposals are perennial because they are, at least on the surface, good ideas. Gigs (talk) 18:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Huh. If you say so. Rivertorch (talk) 09:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternate idea 2: A new proposal for a right called "Template Editor"

After looking through the proposal votes, it looks like the present proposal, as it stands, might end up being closed to no consensus; the votes are about 50/50. I'm thinking the right should, instead, be called "Template Editor", simply allowing this permission:

~~Allow editing on fully protected pages in the "Template:" namespace.~~(see below)

From what I am seeing, it looks like most of the concerns above about pages in other namespaces that are under full protection being edited. If the right was exclusive to only pages in the "Template:" namespace, that might raise less concerns. Steel1943 (talk) 05:36, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

To expand on this possible option, here's some of the questions, answered:

This right would: Allow editing on any fully protected page in the "Template:" namespace ONLY ... EXCEPT for Template:Editnotices/Page and all of its subpages. (In other words, this right would NOT be for creating/editing editnotices.)
Permission for granting this right could be based on some sort of previous statistics of creating functional templates and/or constructive use of {{editprotected}} on fully protected templates that result in edits by administrators. Also, the normal conditions of trustworthiness (no blocks, issues with editor, etc.) would apply when granting this right.

...Honestly, there's the whole explanation of this proposed right. Steel1943 (talk) 06:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion "Template Editor"

I'm possibly interested, please expand. What would be the required qualification to apply for the bit? What would be the requirements to retain the bit (what would cause an editor to lose the bit?)? How would it be implemented (A new extension? A requested core change? Something else?)? Knowing that there may be templates in other namespaces (such as User: templates, WP: templates, Editnotice templates in any NS, and modules which are kin to templates), how would this right know what is a template and what isn't? Technical 13 (talk) 12:30, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Support "Template Editor"

Steel1943 (talk) 06:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose "Template Editor"

Opposed for multiple reasons:
- Too restrictive and doesn't offer any perks beyond the fact it would offer a quicker edit of a template as opposed to using {{editprotected}} {{admin help}} on the talk page of a fully protected template with the requested edits in the section or contained as a sandbox for the template
- Based on my knowledge of the MediaWiki core and system (which is not all inclusive, but I think I know what this would entail), this would be too difficult to implement without adding an extension or requesting the MWF to change/add to the core to make it possible in the first place AND the benefit of doing one of those two things is too low.
- The interest to obtain this bit will likely be extremely low because the benefits granted by it are too low in respect to the amount of work required to get it, similar to the RfB process^{[ WP:WikiProject Admin Nominators/Are admins interested in a RfB? ]}
- That being said, modifying your specifications of the right based on my objections may sway my opinion. ;) Technical 13 (talk) 11:55, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Technical 13, looks like you are going to have to keep your "Oppose" stance then; you essentially just pointed out all of the reasons why I support the proposal the way I wrote it.:

The "Template Editor" right should be very restrictive on who gets this right. Minus the fact that administrators get the ability to edit protected pages by default, editors need to be trusted by the community as a whole, and prove themselves competent, to edit a template prior to getting this proposed right. Otherwise, there would be the possibility of unqualified editors and/or undercover vandals who could have the capability to mess up Wikipedia by editing templates that are on several articles. However, I sort of agree that another possibility to "prove worthiness" could be proven competence via sandbox edits, given the fact that there are not several opportunities to utilize the {{editprotected}} template on template talk pages.
The point about the difficulty of MediaWiki to implement this change is trivial, given the long-term benefits of implementing the existence of this template. Also, consensus is not really based on MediWiki restrictions, but rather consensus of the Wikipedia crowd. If this was impossible, we shall know when it's brought to the table.
Yes, the interest in earning this right will be low, and that's the point. This right is essentially for expert template editors who have no desire to become administrators. If everyone had the "Template Editor" right, that would almost defeat the purpose of protecting templates at all.
Lastly, no, my original proposal was essentially spot-on to the reasons stated above to why I worded it the way I did.

I respect your point, but this should not be a "hat" that people feel they need to get to be happy. This right would be for community trusted template editors. Steel1943 (talk) 03:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

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.