Wikipedia talk:Protection policy

Pending changes

Should we perhaps lean a bit more into pending changes instead of semi protection? _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 00:05, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

No, it’s the single worst technical feature on the site. It is clunky, still creates an entry for the vandalism in the page history, and there are cases where good edits from established users get stuck behind it. I actually can’t think of a single use case where I would prefer it to semi. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:57, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

The only argument I have seen that I (mostly) agree with for PC is for short term rises in popularity for an article (usually breaking news) where there are a large number of valid TA edits mixed in with the vandalism. If a page is just being vandalised... semiprot. Nine times out of ten when I come across a PC'd article I end up converting it because it's only stopping the vandalism from appearing in the live article (and some of it needs RD and should never have been made in the first place). Primefac (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I think that the fact that an article is PCed strongly discourages vandalism. Plus, the PC line is quite short. Most things are responded to within an hour. Plus, in the few cases I come across vandalism, it’s easy enough to see that I can just dismiss within a few seconds (like when a TA changed one of the “goals earned” values from 0 to 9000). _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:30, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I would invite you to browse through my PC log, from a random selection of five I found five pages with RD or OS-worthy content in the history (which, granted, is usually why I come across them, but the point is that it doesn't necessarily mean "less vandalism"). Primefac (talk) 19:33, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Wow. I’ve done, I think, 15-ish PCs, of which 3 were wrong and 1 was vandalism. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:35, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Could your perspective be shaped by the fact that you recently were granted PCR and want more stuff to use it on? PC is an extraordinarily ineffective technical tool that really should be depreciated. It’s a legacy from a different era of Wikipedia that never really caught on even after what was one of the most divisive debates in the site’s history. The permission itself also makes zero sense and should be bundled with autoconfirmed since the separate restriction makes PC more restrictive than semi, which was never the intent. It’s a truly terrible technical tool in virtually every circumstance. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:47, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I had this belief before (started about 2 months ago), but I didn’t know the size of the “backlog”, or how hard it would be to check each edit. Also, I expected a lot more vandalism than I actually see. (My other suggestion for improvement of the tool would be giving it to anyone with EC status.) _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:52, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

This might be late, but to put things bluntly, pending changes is a completely useless feature that does nothing whatsoever to stop disruption. I therefore think it never should've been created in the first place. We're better off abolishing it altogether and just giving semi-protection or higher to anything that currently has pending changes setting. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 16:52, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

I want to say "we should take this to an RFC" but I feel like in order to properly convince the staunch supporters of the tool we would need a healthy amount of data to support our position against it. For example, how many pages have PC? How many edits in the PC queue end up going through? How many rejected edits are later RD'd or OS'd? I'm not really sure how to answer any of those questions but if someone wants to set up Quarry to make an attempt I'd really be interested in the results. Primefac (talk) 14:59, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

The points of the editors have convinced me that my accepting edits have just been flukes. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 15:05, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Well, I think that kind of falls into my point, though; PC is "good enough" for most people because they go through the queue occasionally and find little if anything that needs rejecting, whereas someone like me comes across PC almost exclusively to hide edits that shouldn't have even been made in the first place. If we don't have statistics, any RFC will simply devolve into "I (don't) like it" because anecdotal evidence is all that will be available. That being said, I am glad to see this small discussion has given you the opportunity to change your mind. Primefac (talk) 15:10, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for you for being able to do it! I’m glad Wikipedia is one of the few remaining places on the internet where people actually say “your argument convinced me I was wrong”. Cheers, _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 15:13, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

What the supporters of pending changes have dubiously ignored how is such a setting cannot prevent disruptive edits from occurring. Trying to reject edits through that method is a band-aid at most that doesn't actually resolve problems/bad patterns, and whatever threshold they might have for "good enough" to support the use of pending changes is too lenient. I echo the stance TonyBallioni wrote here. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 23:11, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Rewrite technical explanation of SEMI, 30/500, and Superprotection

Here we are again. Redrose64 reverted three of my edits without an edit summary (in blatant violation of WP:PGBOLD, I might add). I made sure that none of the edits were substantive; they were merely descriptive of either (a) current practice or (b) technical features, which is why I followed WP:PGBOLD.

I don't mind the revert of the position of the lock icons (they can remain on the right side, I don't care), but I would like to know if there's consensus to restore the other two edits. I can explain them in more detail, but I need to know which you disagree if and why. Of course anyone is welcome to comment. FaviFake (talk) 21:44, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

I would also like an explanation here as I am very confused how these edits are considered vandalism. They may not be right, and may warrant reverting, but Redrose64 can you please explain what part of these edits, which you reverted with zero explanation are considered vandalism? Where is the issue with these, first of all, and second how do these good faith changes constitute vandalism? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:51, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

FaviFake, don't give me that. You have been told, on a number of occasions, not to make undiscussed changes to pages in Wikipedia space (amongst others). As for "without an edit summary", here is the edit. It uses the default summary of the rollback feature, which is preset and not alterable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:47, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Redrose64, I am NOT familiar with this editor nor their history so can you please share? How was their edit in any way vandalism? Where is this history of them being warned? And surely you know that you can rollback WITH an edit summary... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:53, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

For the record, I'll note that less than a year ago, Redrose64 performed an almost identical revert of three of my edits on this exact policy page, again without explaining why. I immediately opened a talk page discussion and the following day an admin went ahead and restored one of my edits. Since Redrose64 never actually commented in the discussion, I restored the remaining two edits three weeks later. (To this day, I still have no idea why the edits were reverted; I'd love to know!!) However, last year they did not threaten to block me without further notice for "vandalising Wikipedia", so the situation is not exactly the same.

This also happened a month later at {{Humorous essay}} (of all places...): I made three minor edits, Redrose reverted them with the cryptic edit summary "I am fed up with this", so I created another talk page discussion. Redrose did not respond after multiple pings over two weeks, so I restored the edits and an admin commented "The changes here look like an improvement to me." FaviFake (talk) 22:56, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

@Redrose64: what am I missing? You must be seeing something the rest of us are not... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:03, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

I just found a fourth occurrence of this behaviour while scrolling through my contributions. Last year, on September 17th, Redrose reverted more than 10 minor edits by 4 different users that dated back to August 4th, with the edit summary "Enough. FaviFake, please STOP messing around with these pages". Again, I opened a discussion and pinged Redrose and another editor replied:

Hi, @FaviFake! I, too, am confused by @Redrose64's reversion and seemingly frustrated tone. ... Your edits seemed fine to me as well. They may be slightly wrong or violate an MoS rule (I don't know if they do; I'm just speculating reason for reversion), but that certainly doesn't constitute "messing around with these pages." @Redrose64, please explain.​​
— User:CoroneC0rnix-64 22:26, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

This pattern of behaviour seems concerning. I'm usually not the type of person that gives up easily, so I eventually restored these 11 changes after giving Redrose three weeks to comment. But I can easily imagine that an inexperienced editor might not want to go through each step of the dispute resolution process for their changes after being reverted, reprimanded, and ignored by a site administrator. FaviFake (talk) 00:08, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Basically, what Daniel Quinlan (talk · contribs) wrote below, plus: with all these rewritten sentences and paragraphs, changes of order and style, it can be very difficult to spot any actual changes of meaning, accidental or not, that should not have occurred. Things like strengthening or weakening of advice, negation of advice, important caveats being dropped or moved away from the guidance that they should be associated with.

It would have been better to start with a talk page thread, saying something like "I feel that the sentence [example 1] is unclear, and should perhaps be rewritten to [example 2]. What do others feel?". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:34, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for page protection § Can't RFPP entries be archived by day instead of month?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for page protection § Can't RFPP entries be archived by day instead of month?. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 11:54, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Page mover–specific move protection

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Page mover–specific move protection. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:50, 1 October 2026 (UTC)