Problem: Sometimes vandals will systematically work their way through a category, making changes to each page. In order to address this, admins are often forced to protect each page, one at a time.
Who would benefit: All users who fight vandalism
Proposed solution: Allow protection of all pages within a category with one action (perhaps similar to the Cat-a-lot tool).
A possible downside of this if that two non-admins were in a content dispute, one of them could add "their version" of the page to a protected category, thus preventing the other user from editing it. Voice of Clam (talk) 09:26, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Intentionally disruptive behaviour should see the user warned or temporarily blocked. Given that the other person in the dispute would presumably notice the edit, they could report it. — Bilorv (talk) 01:08, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We had in ruwiki similar thing. "Cascade protection" it called I think. It worked in a way that every page-link from page under such protection meant that all target pages are protected. How it must work with category protection? If i'm not admin/confirmed user, I can set such a category and then I can't remove it from a page or even edit it? Carn (talk) 22:11, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This needs to be re-thought Much better would be to create a list of articles from a category, then use that for protection. This list should be read-only to most users of course. Davidwr/talk15:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the same reason that editing through cascade protection requires protect and why the ability to semi-cascade-protect was removed. Even if protection was of pages in a category at the time, I'm still opposed to mass protections. In every case I can think of, blocks or abuse filters would be better than protection here. Wugapodes (talk) 23:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per Wugapodes (I don't actually buy Ahecht's oppose reasoning; any admin who enabled mass protection in an editwar-enabling/supporting manner other than through innocent error would be a good de-sysopping candidate.) — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 05:14, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose if you want to protect all pages that are currently in the category, it is easy to achieve with a script. I can help to write one if you need help. But if you want to protect pages that are and will be in that category, then it is no different from why we don't have cascade semi-protection — everyone would be given technical ability to protect an arbitrary page just simply by adding it to the protected category. --Base (talk) 20:06, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose That would be way too restrictive! Most categories are rather diffuse and unspecific in their nature. That makes them a terrible tool for measurements against vandalism. Preventively locking dozens of unaffected articles is unacceptable and a gross violation of our philosophy. Nachtbold (talk) 16:17, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support GlennByrnes6 (talk) 08:51, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Oppose This is only going to lead to edit warring over categories Ahecht (TALK
