 | This page in a nutshell: This is a proposal to reduce the auto-accept threshold for PC2 and establish criteria and consensus for usage. |
- 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.
- There is insufficient consensus for this proposal. Under WP:PROPOSAL,
Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to guideline or policy.
That standard has not been met here. A summary of our review of the numbers and issues in this RfC can be seen below.
- There is insufficient consensus for this proposal. Under WP:PROPOSAL,
- Numbers
- Numbers are easiest to talk about, so numbers first: With 52 supporting and 39 opposing, there is 57% support for the proposal. Although those commenting reflect a broad cross-section of the community, this would not be "high level of consensus from the entire community" in the absence of other factors.
- Summary of the discussion
- Criteria and usage
- The proposal offers two criteria for use:
- The criteria for autoconfirmed pending changes protection ("PC1") are met but the latter has proven ineffective, and blocks would be ineffective,
- And/or the criteria for extended-confirmed protection are met.
- The proposal offers two criteria for use:
- The combined criteria were more persuasive than allowing pages to be protected under one criterion alone. The combined criteria are approximately equivalent to “Articles with a low edit rate where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective against persistent vandalism or violations of copyright or the biographies of living persons policy.”
- Supporters listed five examples of articles that would benefit from PC2 under criterion 1: Jimmy Page, Hulk (comics), 2016 United States Presidential Election, Mike Pence and Donald Trump. In each case, opponents convincingly argued that semi protection was more appropriate. In addition, some opposers saw criterion 1 as allowing PC1 to be used “liberally”, which they objected to. One supporter stated that the support would not apply to protecting pages on the basis of criterion 1 alone.
- Supporters listed five examples of articles that would benefit from PC2 under criterion 2. In four cases (Ron Borges, Howie Schwab, Eric Nagler, Eric's World, Rihanna), opposers argued that PC2 would be inappropriate, based on the targeting sockmasters: they make edits that need RevDels or they make a large number of edits. Where this is the true, the articles in question would likely end up back on ECP. In two cases (Pooja Gandhi and 2016 in the Philippines) no counter-argument was offered.
- Some supporters agreed that the use of this would be rare; some argued that this meant that the proposal was no big deal.
- Complexity
- Complexity was a big concern for many of the opposers. To many, the proposal brings in extra rules with no significant benefit.
- This point relates to the potential use cases. Opposers questioned the wisdom of implementing a more complex system when there are seemingly very few cases where it can be useful.
- Backlog and delays
- The potential for long waits for changes to be reviewed was a concern for some opposers and one supporter. Other supporters pointed out that:
- The backlog (due to PC1) is currently at a reasonable level
- Where articles get a large amount of IP/new-account vandalism, they can still be semi-protected, in addition to the new PC2.
- The potential for long waits for changes to be reviewed was a concern for some opposers and one supporter. Other supporters pointed out that:
- Complexity of review
- Some opposers were concerned that if a user is dedicated enough to get an autoconfirmed account then any bad-faith edits may be more subtle than those of a new account or IP. This was combined with an assertion that some reviewers would not be able to spot such edits.
- Other
- MusikAnimal said "I would rather this new version of PC2 wait until all the other stuff - ECP, new page reviewer, deferred changes, etc... prove themselves"
- Some opposers argued that we need more blocking, not more protection levels.
- Some opposers like the current way that PC2 works
- Some opposers are against anything to do with Pending Changes
- Some opposers see this as unnecessary now we have ECP
- Some supporters are opposed to ECP and liked this proposal because it can be used to enable editing of EC protected pages.
- No consensus
- In reviewing the arguments, the closers found that the quality of arguments leaned toward the opposers, but still found no particularly compelling argument that would cause us to find consensus in either direction where the numbers suggest otherwise. Thus, the 57% in favor is insufficient to qualify as a high level of consensus necessary to enact this proposal.
- Given that there was still a majority for this proposal, some supporters of this proposal may be considering proposing something similar in future. If so, they should think carefully about how to address some of the concerns raised in this RfC. In particular, we would recommend:
- Thinking carefully about the criteria. The combined criteria, seem to be more persuasive than allowing a page to be protected if it just meets the one criterion.
- Try to identify a reasonable number of pages which the proposed protection could be applied to. Think about reasons why it might not work in each case so that you can be confident in arguing that it will work.
- Wait until deferred changes has been in use for a bit so people have a good idea of how that works in practice.
- Given that there was still a majority for this proposal, some supporters of this proposal may be considering proposing something similar in future. If so, they should think carefully about how to address some of the concerns raised in this RfC. In particular, we would recommend:
- The RfC initiators, Cenarium and Andy M. Wang, should be applauded for their initiative. To reiterate, however, there is insufficient consensus to adopt the proposal.
- Thank you all for your comments here; we will be glad to answer any questions about this close.
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