Administration has decided to enact a new category as part of their response to recent events.
This category will be called “Protected”. “PROTECTED” articles will have ratings disabled, but otherwise remain in their expected place in their organizational lists. There will be no wiki-bound big list of "Protected" pages. This category will be used only at staff purview.
Currently, we are using it on a specific article that staff have deemed to be the target of an offsite-instigated and persisting influence on our voting process, after individuals outside of the community brought attention to it. Said article has dropped by over 130 votes in a week, after previously having been a reasonably popular article, if divisive for some readers. Previous attention (Reddit threads, Facebook attention, and occasional mentions on other platforms) have brought some negative attention, but never more than 10-20 votes in either direction. This is clearly a brigade.
A definition of Protection and a guideline statement regarding When and Why future pages may be Protected will be appended to this statement in the future.
Protected is:
- Not Archived, and not synonymous with archival.
- Not to save a downvoted article specifically because a handful of Staff like it.
- Not to be used frequently.
Articles that qualify for a "protected:" category must be the subject of negative outside influences on our voting process. If legitimate brigades are suspected, they should be reported to Site Administration with reports explaining how they believe the article is being brigaded. These articles will then be reviewed by Site Administration, along with any external context surrounding these possible brigades, to determine if an article qualifies for a "protected:" category. These decisions are up to administrative discretion, and will be rare.
Ultimately, Protected articles are fully at staff discretion. Admin discussion is continuing, but this is our current plan.
