Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/PC2 for Mangoeater targets

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After this thread started, Francophonie&Androphilie had his username changed to PinkAmpersand.
This was originally a single thread at WP:AN and was moved to this dedicated subpage on 4 February 2013

As anyone who monitors AN/I, SPI, CSD, AFD, or even, lately, RFA [1] knows, de facto banned Mangoeater1000 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · logs · block log · arb · rfc · lta · SPI · cuwiki) has been incredibly persistent in his disruption, generally in relation to articles on NYU Poly (promoting it) and Cal Poly Pomona (trying to minimize it). It got so bad that two weeks ago Reaper Eternal full-protected Polytechnic Institute of New York University and List of NYU Polytechnic Institute people‎ until March 28 and March 6, respectively. To me this seems unfortunate (though I completely understand and agree with Reaper's decision), especially as both articles are in serious need of improvement. So, I was wondering if we could discuss the option of implementing Pending Changes Level 2 protection (in conjunction with semi-protection, probably). While there was never any community endorsement of its use, neither was there, as King of Hearts pointed out at AN/I recently, explaining his decision to apply PC2 to 1948 Arab-Israeli War, any consensus against its use, meaning that there's nothing to stop the community from making ad hoc IAR decisions to apply it to certain articles. (Elockid has since applied PC2 to First York, Transdev York, and York Pullman.) Clearly it's better to let users edit an article, subject to review, than to not let them at all, and both articles are monitored by several reviewers and admins. Furthermore, Mangoeater has been active since May, had his first sock blocked in July, and has been indeffed since October, so there's no reason to believe he won't just start up again come March. I suggested at the Arab-Israeli War AN/I thread that we hold future discussions PC2 discussions here, as AN/I can be so hostile that well-respected community members steer clear of it, limiting the degree of consensus that can be achieved on anything policy-related. So, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Thoughts? — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 00:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Not because I don't think putting PC2 on as an alternative to full-protection is a bad idea to protect against banned socks (etc.) but because the community consensus in the PC RfCs doesn't endorse PC2 and use of it is likely to lead to accusations that we are setting off down a slippery slope, on an express train through some undemocratic wasteland. So, yes, support in theory, but in practice it seems like the community will excrete a brick. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Both PC2 and full protection are game-able by socks, but this won't be substantially easier for them, while this will be substantially easier for good-faith editors than it would be to force them to use editprotected requests all the time. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per IAR, even though I believe it would be more optimal to gain consensus for its use to avoid any possible shenanigans. I would also think an edit filter would be a good alternative in many cases, but here it seems that the behavior is not truly consistent enough for that.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:51, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, this seems to be one of those cases for which IAR exists. --Nouniquenames 04:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note, if anyone would like to reference the note I ended up leaving on the talkpage of the article referenced above, that kind of note should suffice to explain the reasoning for the PC2. As long as we don't go PC2 on everything, I think it's okay for a very select few articles. gwickwiretalkedits 04:47, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. A little ironic, because I like PC2 and detest PC1, but with the amount of dishonesty that went on with the original implementation of PC, I think anything that even smells of going against community consensus needs to be avoided. The primary opposition to PC was based on "slippery slope" style of arguments, and this just feeds them.—Kww(talk) 04:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is ridiculous. Maybe Elockid added PC2 by accident, but either way this should not be getting implemented like this, period. It can only create confusion for admins and reviewers. So I implore any admin to immediately remove the PC2 protection from any articles that have them. As far as I know this would just be the 1948 Arab-Israeli War article, the Transdev York article, the First York article, and the York Pullman article.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 06:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • How do you suppose it will confuse admins or reviewers? --Jasper Deng (talk) 06:11, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know it confused me to see an article on my watchlist (1948 Arab-Israeli War) with PC2 protection when I knew the RfC did not get consensus for that level of protection. You may also have the old "other people are doing so it must be acceptable" reaction and then have admins imposing PC2 protection like any other protection under the impression it is now legit. Not to mention that we don't have a clear procedure set out for reviewing changes of the sort PC2 is being used to stop in these ad-hoc cases. Although not related to the above, the whole notion of half a dozen editors using AN/ANI as a workaround for an RfC that involved several dozen editors is not the sort of thing I endorse.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 06:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately, I don't understand your last sentence; could you clarify what you mean? Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe TDA is listing the four articles currently under PC2 protection (according to the relevant category; it's possible that others are, but haven't been tagged with {{pp-pc2}}, which auto-categorizes them). In response to TDA's general points, though, I, like, Jasper, don't really follow: This is about as visible a forum as it gets; if it's good enough to ban and unban users, I'd think it's good enough to apply protection to a single article. So I don't really understand what could be confusing about this. I don't see what's ridiculous about trying to stop a lone troll from permanently stalling the improvement of two articles in need of substantial cleanup. — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 06:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You may find this astonishing, but plenty of people edit Wikipedia without paying any mind to cesspools such as this page and certainly many edit without looking at it on a regular basis. Circumventing a broad and lengthy community discussion involving dozens of editors by using AN because you want to thump on the socks is not appealing to me at all.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 06:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not circumventing consensus; I'm seeking it. Circumventing it would be to find some out-of-the-loop admin and email them to ask if they'd mind downgrading it to PC2. Starting a thread at the board that we use for some of our most substantial discussions is seeking it. "No consensus" is not a valid reason to oppose a proposal, for rather obvious reasons. If the consensus here is that this really needs to be done by RfC, so be it, but WP:PC2012/RfC 1 closed as "No consensus", so it's really not circumventing anything to start a discussion in a prominent community forum as to whether we should apply PC2 to a particular article. — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 06:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd normally agree with you that you can't subvert a "no consensus", but since the original PC trial was marred by such blatant dishonesty and efforts to bypass our normal consensus process, I think we need to tread especially carefully.—Kww(talk) 16:11, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I have been a firm supporter of using PC2 in limited circumstances, and this is certainly one of them. But the PC debate has been a feculent clusterfuck of drama in large part because of the failure to end the initial trial on time. As such, doing *anything* new with PC, including any use of PC2, without an explicit and broad community consensus, seems foolhardy due to the risk of disrupting the community. It's "cheaper in the long run", to do this right, even if it means a few full protects in the meantime. Want PC2? I'll be there at the RFC supporting it. But not until. --j⚛e deckertalk 06:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Moving to Support in view of listing at WP:CENT, which I believe will reduce the probability of bad splashback. --j⚛e deckertalk 02:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support In this case, I believe WP:IAR applies. This is a wayyy better solution than full protection here since good faith editors don't need to make edit-requests all the time. It also protects against socks. It's a win-win situation, and it works extremely well here. Vacation9 13:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Gives editors in good standing better leverage against likely POV changes from socks. Binksternet (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Use this as a test case if necessary but the more countermeasures we use for persistent socks the better off we will be.
     — Berean Hunter (talk) 16:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, this is definitely the case for PC2 to be implemented on. A little concerned that PC2 had no consensus at the time of PC implementation, but in this context, I like it. Let's see if the community is willing to play ball. -T.I.M(Contact) 00:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose if we were to every use PC2, this would be the type of case. But A) there is no consensus to use it at all and B) as Kww and others have said, there has been way too much drama around this in the past to open up this can of worms now. Fully protect it if needed, but PC2 is a really bad idea as it will create more drama and work than it will save. Hobit (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. PC2 has never been approved for use on Wikipedia (outside of the trial a couple of years ago). That it was approved was one interpretation of the close in June to the big PC RfC, but during the September RfC specifically on PC2, the case was convincingly made that neither the voters nor the closers in the spring had given PC2 much thought. PC2 would be something not only new, but revolutionary, on Wikipedia (creating a class of Wikipedians whose job it is to decide which edits of everyone else are good enough to stay and which aren't), so turning it on would require consensus; the RfC was closed as no consensus. To use it now is to say that developers and not the Wikipedian community have the authority to decide how we protect pages on Wikipedia. Reading quickly, I don't see evidence that any of the supporters above have considered any of the problems with PC2 that were pointed out in the September RfC. In particular, this is a critical stage for PC1, which is new and unexpected for most editors ... and now, as a result of allowing the use of PC2 here, an editor has just changed the table which is supposed to describe PC1 back into a table giving two PC2 options, which is going to make it even harder for people to get comfortable with PC1. Having said all that: IAR is policy, and I'm always in favor of non-disruptive experimentation. If this were just treated as a lone experiment, with discussion about possible positive and negative consequences and requests for alternatives that might be better than PC2, and if there were no changes to the main PC page, I wouldn't have any strong feelings about it. - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd totally support changing it back when there are no article space pages with PC2, but it appears there are a couple currently [2]. Monty845 01:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've respectfully reverted you, Monty; if this proposal is successful, I'm planning on adding a few footnotes explaining that there've been a handful of IAR applications. But considering that the abbreviated table already links to the full one, I think it's unnecessary to revise policy based on the minority of cases. I'd like to make it clear to all who've opposed that I very much feel that a large-scale implementation of PC2 should only be conducted through an RFC, and that this noticeboard is not the place to establish binding precedent. Anyways, Dank, if I clarify that my intention, at least, as original poster, was only to, as you say, treat this as a lone experiment (and, looking through the support !votes, it appears to me that this is the general sentiment among those who support), would you perhaps reconsider your !vote? You make some very good points against PC2 in general, but you seem to concede that it could be effective here. — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 01:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • When this turns into an actual experiment ... with the supporters agreeing that the point is to try new approaches to a difficult problem, discussing pros and cons and alternatives on the article talk page, rather than taking the position that this is an approved protection tool that needs no discussion ... I'll strike my oppose, if this thread hasn't been archived. Note that a form of protection that would be obviously superior to PC2 (if used only for these rare cases of very determined socks) would be to make some pages require 50 (or 100 or 250) prior edits by new accounts; that wouldn't create a special class of editors charged with ruling on everyone else's edits, but it would succeed in frustrating the socks, and would make it easier for us to identify them, possibly before they can even edit their target pages. - Dank (push to talk) 02:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you mean as a sort-of ultraconfirmed usergroup, and corresponding ultra-semi-protection? gwickwiretalkedits 03:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You could think of it that way, though I'd want this to remain rare enough that it wouldn't make sense to talk on-wiki about a new "class" of Wikipedians ... just have the code exclude edits by people with less than 100 (or whatever number works best) contribs, for a handful of articles. Obviously not something we'd want to apply often, but it beats all hell out of PC2 ... particularly in this case, where PC2 is being used to let reviewers rule on whether edits are coming from socks ... when reviewers aren't being selected or encouraged to do any such thing, reviewers are supposed to be checking for vandalism and BLP edits. - Dank (push to talk) 03:06, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There exists, as of this posting, 125,500 active users, of whom only 7,000 have reviewer capability(reviewers + admins). Only 3600 editors are watching this page, and obviously many of those are admins. Even if we assume there are zero admin or reviewer watchers, that means only 117,000 or 3% of active editors are monitoring this page. To disable the effective editing capability of 97% of Wikipedia editors without notice is disruptive to the editing process. NE Ent 02:30, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't quite follow: Currently, there are only 855 users who can edit these articles, and very few of them probably ever will; if we implement PC2, any user (or, assuming we combine it with semi-protection, any autoconfirmed user) will be able to; yes, their edits will be subject to review, but I think it's safe to say reviewers will be very cautious before rejecting submissions that wouldn't fall under their purview under PC1. (In fact, we can explicitly mandate this, if desired.) I hate removing editing access to the encyclopedia that anyone can edit as much as the next guy, but that's why I'm suggesting this: Nothing less than PC2 will have any hope of being effective while Mangoeater's out there, and full protection is... awful. The question here is should we leave an article un-edit-able for three months over philosophical objections to the general theory of PC2? — Francophonie&Androphilie(Je vous invite à me parler) 07:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Full protection provides a clear and well known interface; PC2 does not, it provides a "fake edit" interface that makes it appear to autoconfirmed editors they're editing the current view of the page, but they're not. FPP is good because we know it's painful, which mitigates the temptation to overly apply it; because PC2 appears to be cheap there will be a tendency to use it more and more. Long term normal editors will have to become reviewers or the reviewers will have to spend more and more time reviewing. Now is the the time to address the question how will this scale? "Four" articles becomes 40 becomes 400... NE Ent 11:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Philosophical objections? Replying on your talk page. - Dank (push to talk) 11:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would support using PC2 on the pages only if we agree that it is a test case and the protection is temporary. (Having worked with Dank on some of the recent PC RfCs, I agree with many of his views on the matter.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 03:43, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, largely per Kww. Let's not go down this road. We just finished a seemingly interminable process involving multiple RfCs and much contentiousness. Enough is enough for a while. While it may be tempting to make "just one exception" here, exactly how long would it be before someone wants another exception, and another, and another? And if the rationale given in those subsequent requests is compelling, what then? Somehow we got by for more than a decade without PC1, and we seem to be doing all right without PC2 now. Anyone who'd like to modify a fully-protected article can make an edit request. Rivertorch (talk) 10:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with the condition that every registered (inserted edit - I meant autoconfirmed) user is given reviewer rights. Otherwise Oppose. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Maybe this is just a case of somewhat-too-deadpan reductio ad absurdum (in which case, well played), but granting all registered users "reviewer" status would not only make PC2 identical to PC1, but reduce both of their protectiony-ness to below that of the current PC1, since it would allow non-autoconfirmed but registered (and therefore reviewer) accounts to bypass the protection. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I knew I should have wink-smiley-faced it. One of the reasons PC2 didnt gain consensus was the argument that it would create another layer of trusted users/permission levels/senority, however you wish to word it. Setting the reviewer bar as low as possible would eliminate that concern. However I did mean 'auto-confirmed' in the above, not merely 'registered' so have clarified. But I was only semi-serious. I would support admins ignoring the lack of community consensus regarding PC2 only if the reviewer bar was low, as accusations of power-gathering/protectionism are irrelevant at that point. Otherwise if the 'community' is not going to be made reviewers, then effectively the lack of consensus should stand, otherwise its just another wedge between admins and non-admins. Either respect lack of previous consensus, or hold another PC RFC (yes yes, another one). Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm not usually a big fan of slippery-slope arguments, but in this case, it's compelling. We as a community have seen fit to keep PC2 from entering the admin toolbox. We've had one instance of PC2 slipping under the radar already; here we're asking for another. At what point are we admins just overreaching and ignoring the consensus of the community? I don't think this instance puts us over that line, but it's a line that we should be staying far away from. If it's not in our toolbox, we don't get to use it, period. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose obviously. WP:PC2012/RfC 1. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 19:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • So a lack of consensus is reason to oppose an attempt at getting consensus? Nyttend (talk) 17:22, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • With respect, I think you've got it backwards; it appears to me that the opposers are doing the things normally associated with trying to get consensus, such as pointing to past discussions and weighing pros and cons. I'm not saying that supporters don't know what they're talking about, and don't believe that ... but if I'm just looking at what's on this page, I don't see evidence that the people who supported before I weighed in were either considering past arguments or encouraging people to treat this as an experiment. OTOH, I'm not on board with "just say no", either ... the September RfC closed with a recommendation to look at this again in six to nine months, after we had sufficient experience with PC1 to be able to say something intelligent about where all this is going. Let's make it six months, and let's spend a couple of months looking at PC1, PC2, and alternatives to PC2. My preference, based on what I've seen so far, is stated in my thread above. - Dank (push to talk) 17:55, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's no problem attempting to get consensus, there's a problem with claiming consensus for so fundamental a wikitask as article editing on a page which bills itself as "This page is for posting information and issues that affect administrators ... Issues appropriate for this page could include: General announcements, discussion of administration methods, ban proposals, block reviews, and backlog notices." (emphasis original)NE Ent 18:15, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • But this does affect administrators because this thread is about a specific dane-braimaged sock and trying to effectuate countermeasures to halt him. Yes, Dank, my support statement above encourages this to be an experiment but one that needs done now not in one or three months. Mangoeater is wasting too much of our time and we are looking to halt him ASAP. This limited use on what, maybe 10 articles(?), probably would affect less than 100 regular editors. I'm not part of the discussions on PC and hold no particular opinions on them but my ears have perked up at the idea of seeing another tool in grasp for ridding us of some of the worst problem children.
         — Berean Hunter (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose' even though it might make my specific job easier. I am currently dealing with an edit request for one of the related articles, which I am answering in good faith, though it is made by a new SPI, and consists essentially of a request to restore the old and inappropriately promotional material. It is I think easy to justify my edits and non-edits, but I am editing through protection, which is always an uncomfortable position. The reason for my oppose is very simple: irrelevant to the merits of PC2, doing it now is hopelessly confusing. We have enough problems with PC1 being unfamiliar. Let's learn to use it first, and then see if the community wants to make a trial of going to the next level. If the PC1 experience is good, they probably will, so what we should concentrate on is getting PC1 to be part of the accepted and understood routine. DGG ( talk ) 22:32, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a one-off test case. Much of the opposition to PC2 (IMO) was more about "let's not do this kind of complicated thing yet", with a three-month delay suggested before reviewing the issue again, rather than "absolutely never". The expected flood of articles listed at RFPP for PC did not materialize. The couple of times I've checked, the entire queue has had a single-digit number of changes yet to be reviewed. The predicted endless complaints haven't materialized (well, I haven't seen any, but I am behind on my watchlist, so perhaps I've just not gotten to the pages where the whole world is freaking out). So I think that reality has proven less dire than predicted, and we could probably cut short the planned three-month system for such an appropriate use. (I don't think that I'd support its use at this time with anything less than a significant discussion here at AN.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those of you who read F&A's linked discussion may or may not have noticed that my question was never answered. Now, I freely admit my ignorance: I am not very familiar with Mangoeater1000's case, and I don't know much about blocking account creation, but before I weigh in, I'd love to hear an explanation for why a hard block doesn't or wouldn't work on Mangoeater1000. Is he circumventing an account creation block, or is there not one currently in place? Full protection or PCPP 2 both seem excessive when they're essentially only there to thwart one persistent user. I can't disagree that semi-protection is probably insufficient here, but why is further protection the only answer? —Rutebega (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just realized I can see the user's block settings in his block log, sorry. He's justifiably been indef hardblocked since December, which does raise the question of how he's been circumventing that to keep on socking. I'll wait for further comments on this before I cast my !vote. —Rutebega (talk) 21:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Account creation blocked" only applies to the user account itself, and to its last-used IP address when autoblocked. However, after the autoblock expires, more socks can be created while logged out. Although CheckUser can help prevent this by find out and hardblocking the underlying IP address(es) for extended periods of time, IP hopping can and does occur.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:50, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pretty much everything has been tried. Skimming through a random sampling from Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Mangoeater1000, it appears that all (or almost all) of the 79-and-counting socks have been hardblocked. And according to the SPI archive, Avi and DoRD have now blocked at least 6 ranges. I don't know if those ranges were softblocked or hardblocked (or softblocked with account creation disabled), and I see that earlier on there was some hesitation to hardblock an NYU range that Mangoeater was using; if a CU is at liberty to comment on the degree to which IP-blocking actions have been pursued, I think that would be helpful to editors like Rutebega who want to be sure that PC2 is the only feasible alternative to full-protection before they consider supporting this. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 16:28, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If anyone is wondering my rationale for applying PC2 + semi, here it is. As you may or may not have known, getting autoconfirmation is extremely easy. So easy in fact that a number of blocked and/or banned users have decided to take advantage of this ease of attaining autoconfirmation and bypass semiprotection. In some cases full protection has been applied to deal with the disruption, but from what I have seen, editors tend to opt for allowing at least some people (not just admins) to edit an article. There are really no other more feasible means of preventing the disruption while minimizing collateral. Elockid (Talk) 21:31, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose Many school articles--I would say almost all school articles-are edited mostly or entirely by students or alumni. Obviously, they're the people most likely to be knowledgable & interested. We just can't rely on a 16-year-old high school dropout(PinkAmpersand)--Unitskayak (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mangoeater1000 for Unitskayak. 72Dino (talk) 22:26, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a fucking low blow, Pablo, even for you. If you comment here again, I'll initiate proceedings for a formal community ban with the additional rider that talkpage access be summarily revoked for all of your sockpuppets, provided that they're CU-confirmed. I don't know what else we can do to make it clear to you that you are not welcome here, since you persist in this delusion that you'll be able to show up here at AN or at SPI, insult me and/or other editors, and come up with lies to defend your own actions, and wind up with anything other than yet another block. Incidentally, if you're aware that I'm not attending school at the moment, you're also aware that I'm clinically depressed, in which case you might want to take a nice long look in the mirror, and review your priorities here, and in life in general. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 15:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC) (the grandson of a former NYU School of Engineering professor, by the way)[reply]
  • Too many comments here seem related to the use of PC2 as a standard form of protection. There's no consensus for it's use in that way, but it's use on certain articles may be beneficial to the encyclopedia. Maybe it can be used in some circumstances, but in each case should be reviewed to determine whether it's the most appropriate form of protection. Certainly protecting poor quality articles (such as Transdev York, which has now been nominated for deletion) isn't the best solution. Peter James (talk) 01:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The use of PC2 exclusively to prevent blatant sockpuppetry from autoconfirmed puppets (assuming this is what is going on here) seems useful, and a good application of WP:IAR. (I really don't think such protection should be for an indefinite duration, though.) Any further use of PC2 (such as to prevent edit warring) should not occur without broader consensus, as there are broader issues at play in those cases. — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:11, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two comments (nothing more, since I already spoke above) — first, Unitskayak's opposition is by itself a good reason to support this move. Second, I'd say that we should only use PC2 when full protection is the only other option; we might as well let reviewers edit as well as admins. Nyttend (talk) 03:43, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for the requested articles only. I believe that this discussion has been widely enough advertised (e.g. on WP:CENT) and open long enough that if there were any objections to using PC2 for this specific set of articles – rather than general concerns about a slippery slope – they would have been raised by now. I share the slippery slope concerns, and I hope that however this is closed, the close will not be interpreted as a mandate to adopt PC2 as a standard tool without a broad community mandate for it. But I think that the community, as represented by the editors interested enough to comment here, has the right to give this tool a try to address this specific problem. 28bytes (talk) 17:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support PC2 for one and only one article, to be selected by consensus. PC2 was originally put on hold pending data on PC1, now let's put it on hold pending data on PC2. A "trial run" of 3 months or so will allow us to better determine its efficacy, especially in juxtaposition to another article with similar issues. After a set period, we analyze what happened on each of the two articles and determine whether PC2 is worth using. —Rutebega (talk) 02:42, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support time-limited trial run on these specific targets, followed by a community discussion of the results. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although I've been vocally opposed to PC2, I seriously want to thank everyone ... I believe people are doing a good job with this. We do need tools to help with Mangoeater ... I sure wish the Foundation would give us different tools, but they haven't and it doesn't look like they ever will. If people want to experiment and come up with guidelines that minimize some of the downsides, I'm on board. The one thing I'm concerned about ... I don't want to set up a two-month "experiment" in which we apply PC2 to one or two pages without experimentation, then declare it a "success" after nothing happens. If no one objects, I'll ask over at WT:MIL what they'd like to experiment with ... I really have no idea what they think about this issue, and I'd like to know, we have a lot of people who are very clued-in on dealing with persistent, obnoxious socks. - Dank (push to talk) 15:20, 30 January 2013 (UTC) P.S. Since this thread is a vote, in part, when I ask for comments over at WT:MIL, I'll ask them not to vote in this thread. - Dank (push to talk) 19:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment as an aside: Cat Creek, Montana might be another article that could benefit from this, as it is the long-term target of sockvandtrolls, apparently from a California high school, who continually return to the article (and get it repeatedly fullprotected) after gaming the system for autoconfirmation. - The Bushranger One ping only 10:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks BR ... I've made my post at MIL asking people for feedback (but not asking them to vote here). If I learn anything, I'll report it here. It's a shame that we're still deadlocked after all this time ... deadlocks are bad, and I'm prepared to give in, if we can figure out some reasonable safeguards and I can bring some of the other opposers along with me. I believe we need more experimentation if the possibility exists that PC2 will survive the next RfC. - Dank (push to talk) 17:28, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No one ever said that PC2 would keep sockpuppeteers from editing. I agree, though, that it's a problem that the average reviewer probably doesn't know how to spot an AndresHeirutJam or Mangoeater1000 sock. I don't know much about Andres, but if others would like, I'd happily put together an LTA page for Mangoeater. Then, if there ever actually is a consensus to use PC2 on these two articles, the protecting admin could protect it with the summary "Persistent sockpuppetry; please see Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Mangoeater1000." Alternatively, we could just link to the SPI page - in fact, since you bring this up, would an admin mind quickly unprotecting and reprotecting 1948 Arab–Israeli War, this time with a link to AndresHeirutJam's SPI (and the SPIs of any other sockpuppeteers who frequent it)? In most cases SPI archives give enough detail that a reviewer can spot a sock, or at least realize that they should defer someone familiar with the situation. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 06:17, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If I understand what you're saying, I agree. Whatever we do with PC2, we don't want to hurt PC1 ... so it's important that we give explicit, easy-to-follow instructions for the reviewers, not a vague "if it looks like a sock, reject it" ... those are some of the hardest calls to make, but just about everyone who applies to be a PC1 reviewer is being accepted, because it's seen as a mostly anti-vandalism role. - Dank (push to talk) 13:57, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that, in general, admins rely far too much on default summaries with PC-protection. With semi-protection, a simple "persistent vandalism/BLP violations/spam/whatever" will do, but with PC, you have actual humans who need to make a judgment call. WP:RVW specifically gives reviewers leeway to reject submissions that fall under the grounds for PC-protection, but pretty much any time I invoke that right, I find that I have to go to the history to check what the actual issue was. So considering that this is already an issue with PC1 (I mean, I've seen articles where 5 consecutive reviewers go through the trouble of coming up with a detailed reason to reject a change, not knowing that it's the work of some IP-hopping troll whose repeat insertions of the content got the page protected in the first place), I think it's doubly triply [whatever reviewer divided by autoconfirmed is] times more important with PC2. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 15:02, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request close[edit]

There has been hardly any input provided in recent days and as it stands I do not believe there is consensus to take this step. I think this should be taken as also indicating that the PC2 protection that has already been added to other pages should be removed. Discussion about any implementation of PC2 should probably be left to a more stable and structured community venue.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 18:19, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Moved[edit]

As you can see I have moved this to a dedicated subpage to prevent the repeated archiving and un-archiving that has been going on. If it has not already been done, a request at WP:ANRFC might help get a closer. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:27, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Done by DA. NE Ent 19:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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