Talk:Superprotect: an assumption of bad faith

actually breaking it

Thanks for this collection of quotes and thoughts at the bottom. Given it is the only bold part of the page, I can't help but point out that the bolded quote "actually breaking it" is not correct, at least for most peoples understanding of the term "breaking it". The feature was disabled, and a preference rendered inoperative, but the wiki didnt break; the readers kept on reading, the images kept being viewed; etc. We see far worse breakages on a regular basis from code deploys.

It would make me much happier if that was un-bolded, so-as to not give a falsehood undue influence on the reader. The bold was not in the original. John Vandenberg (talk) 12:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The linked email does put those words in boldface (using the very old and hallowed typographical convention of asterisks to delimit boldface). --Pi zero (talk) 13:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Ah, true enough. I was looking for HTML mode and only found raw text. Somehow I missed the asterisks. Thanks for correcting me, Pi zero. I still dont appreciate that it is the only bold item on the page, but maybe the answer is to add more visual components to the page to create balance. John Vandenberg (talk) 14:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

There is something odd about the way the typesetting comes out, I agree. A thought occurs... <goes to try it out> --Pi zero (talk) 15:10, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for this essay, Gryllida, and the one at Software. I agree with much of what you write.

I don't believe the design of this tool started from an actual assumption of bad faith: I recall a discussion about it from a couple of years ago, in the context of having a short-lived way to let wheel wars cool down without deflagging anyone. As you point out however, important intermediate steps were not taken in the one case where it was used, leading to that appearance.

From past discussions, it seems that such a tool should be available to stewards -- and, by extension, to staff (as staff have steward-equivalent rights for emergencies, but have almost always asked stewards or local admins to do things on their behalf). So I would be interested to hear more about your third bullet point in the last section: removing it rather than broadening its users and socially limiting its use. –SJ talk  19:09, 2 September 2014 (UTC)