Wikibooks:Editing guideline/Proposal

Anyone who wants to help improve our textbooks is welcome to edit here. It is a wonderful thing when someone adds a complete, well-written, final draft to Wikibooks. However, one of the great advantages of the wiki system is that incomplete, poorly-written first drafts of modules can evolve into polished, presentable masterpieces through the process of collaborative editing. This gives our approach an advantage over other ways of producing similar end-products. Hence, the submission of rough drafts (but not too rough) is encouraged.

There are also different editing styles in the sense of how bold people are willing to be. Generally, most of us think we should be bold in updating pages. Virtually no one behaves as though previous authors need to be consulted before making changes; if we thought that, we'd make rather little progress. Quite to the contrary, some of us think you should not beat around the bush at all--simply change a page immediately, when you see something problematic, rather than to discuss changes that need to be made. It may be only if others dispute the changes is there discussion.

Resolving editing disputes
An "edit war" occurs when text is reverted repeatedly to a previous form or when repeated changes or minor additions are made that amount to a repeated reversion of text. This shouldn't really happen. If someone reverts your text, you should explain on the talk page why you think it should stand and resolve differences there before re-inserting the disputed edit. If reversions continue to occur the reverters will be asked to comply with Be nice. If you want outside advice on how to resolve disputes, raise it in the staff lounge.

Protecting pages
Wikibooks users known as Administrators have the ability to "protect" pages such that they cannot be edited except by other Administrators. This ability is only to be used in limited circumstances.

This ability is used permanently in some cases:


 * Protecting the highly visible pages Main Page from vandalism, especially automated linkspamming.
 * Maintaining the integrity of the copyright and licence pages.
 * Protecting certain "system administration" pages.
 * Maintaining the integrity of past press releases. (not needed yet)
 * Protecting userpages that attract a high degree of vandalism.

This ability is also intended to be used temporarily in some cases:


 * Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war".
 * Protecting a page that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user.
 * Preventing changes to a page while investigating a possible bug.
 * Protecting userpages that are attracting vandalism in the short term.

Administrators should not protect pages when they have been involved in the edit war in question (either by actively editing the page or by expressing strong opinions on the talk page). Administrator powers are not editor privileges - Administrators should only act as servants to the user community at large. If you are an administrator and you want a page in an edit war in which you are somehow involved to be protected, you should contact another administrator and ask them to protect the page for you.

In general, temporarily protected pages should not be left protected for very long, and discussion pages should be left open.

Semi-protection of a page prevents unregistered users and users with very new accounts from editing that page. Semi-protection is only applied if the page in question is facing a serious vandalism problem.

Editing protected pages
Permanently protected pages should be edited by Administrators with care. Where pages are protected solely because of their high visibility, Administrators should be open to making amendments proposed by users who are not Administrators. In particular, Wikibooks portal is relevant to Wikibooks of all languages, although only English-language Wikibooks Administrators may edit it. The English Wikibooks Administrators essentially make edits to this page on trust for all Wikibooks.

Administrators should be cautious in editing semi-permanently protected pages (unless they are their own userpage), and do so in accordance with consensus and any specific guidelines on the subject. In many cases it is appropriate for an Admin to first raise the issue on the relevant talk page, as a non-Admin would have to do.

In cases of temporary page protection, Admins should refrain from editing pages while they are protected. They should not continue editing content while people with different points of view who are not Admins are unable to do so. There are, however, a few times when Admins may cautiously decide to edit such a page:

List of permanently protected pages
Note: To see the log for recent page protects/unprotects, see Protection log.

Pages that need to be protected due to their visibility:


 * Wikibooks portal (wikibooks.org & www.wikibooks.org)
 * Main Page (en.wikibooks.org)
 * Template:Stage
 * Template:Stage short
 * Image:100%.png
 * Image:75%.png
 * Image:50%.png
 * Image:25%.png
 * Image:00%.png

Pages that need to be protected for legal reasons:


 * GFDL -> GNU Free Documentation License (redirect)
 * GNU Free Documentation License (copyright and license page)
 * Copyrights (copyright and license page)
 * Designated agent (see Designated agent)

Historical pages that were previously generated automatically by MediaWiki software. These pages survived a Vote for Deletion in the past, and there is no reason to modify these pages directly by a user. Their status in the future should be decided by community concensus:


 * Bureaucrat log
 * Deletion log
 * Upload log
 * All pages by title (for Special:Allpages)
 * Long modules (for Special:Longpages)
 * Most wanted modules (for Special:Wantedpages)
 * Orphaned modules (for Special:Lonelypages)
 * Short modules (for Special:Shortpages)

Because Wikijunior is so prominent of a project, and because of repeated vandalism against the pages, the following main pages have been protected from moving and name changes. It is not anticipated that these books will change their naming convention without a significant discussion taking place first anyway:


 * Wikijunior:Big Cats
 * Wikijunior:Solar System
 * Wikijunior:South America
 * Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations
 * Wikijunior:Dinosaurs
 * Wikijunior:Languages

Additionally, some other pages that have been subjected to move vandalism, or should only be moved after consensus has been reached that there should be a move, are protected so that only Administrators may move them.

List of temporarily protected pages
If you protect a page, or find a protected page not listed here, please add it to this list. If you unprotect a page, or find a page listed here is no longer protected, remove it from this list.


 * Fully protected
 * (this list is empty)
 * Protected from moves only
 * Requests for adminship - protected at 15 April 2006 against moves from non-sysops; page was repeatedly moved by vandal