Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Wikidata/Partial and multi-item protection for Wikidata items

Random proposal ►◄ Wikidata The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Partial and multi-item protection for Wikidata items

Problem: (by Man77) It is (still) my firm opinion that the control of incoming data and of changes to the data stored in Wikidata does not work as well as it should. What is a tiny edit on one of Wikidata's ~ 52 million items can cause wrong information to appear in many thousands of pages in more than a hundred other projects, even those which chose to have flagged revisions as part of their quality control. There are many examples where the threat of vandalism not being detected is significantly higher than the possibility that the information provided actually needs to be changed (for instance: Chiapas is located in Mexico); some information is actually timelessly true (such as population numbers from a census at a specific date in time). Allowing such stable data to be actually stabilized and only be changed under circumstances yet to be defined could not only increase Wikidata's reputation as a trustworthy database but also increase its usage, while reducing its vulnerability.
(added by Jc86035) Wikidata's core editor base is also quite small in spite of the large amount of content, and unlike on other projects, some items may never be edited manually because of the breadth of this data. Directly because of this, some vandalism can go unnoticed for months. On the other hand, it would be impractical and problematic to e.g. semi-protect large groups of items in their entirety, because this would prevent a lot of page moves and deletions from being reflected on Wikidata by the user performing the page move or deletion, and it would prevent anonymous and new contributors from adding valuable data (particularly translations of labels and descriptions).
Who would benefit: Wikidata as a whole (reputation, usage), Wikidata volunteers, other projects' volunteers (lessened workload), readers (wouldn't see wrong information)
Proposed solution: Allowing partial protection of items, and protection of classes of statements across all Wikidata items based on their content (i.e. usage of properties, qualifiers and references), would help with preventing needless vandalism. Users might be deterred from vandalizing (due to the additional effort required) or might be encouraged (or forced) to discuss potentially problematic changes with other editors.
More comments: Originally flagging of problematic statements was part of this proposal's solution. This is now part of a separate proposal.
Phabricator tickets: T189412, T209243
Proposer: → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 15:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

@Man77: This is quite similar to part of my proposal (page protection for classes of statements and statements with references; gadgets for WP and WD users to add maintenance tags). I think it might be beneficial to either merge the proposals together or distinguish them in their aims, due to the rule that only the top ten proposals will certainly be looked at. Jc86035 (talk) 16:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I did not realize your proposal was rather similar to my idea. Please feel free to merge them. → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 16:19, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The other proposal is too sprawling, so we're going to close that one but retitle this one to mention the solution suggested in the other. Hope that makes sense. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  @Ryan Kaldari (WMF): Would it be fine to only keep the parts of the proposal focused on issue tags and showing references with the Wikidata Lua modules? There are clearly at least a few editors (who I did not canvass) who think the topic is important, so I think it would be somewhat inappropriate to close it outright; and I think those things would be fairly doable. Jc86035 (talk) 06:20, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  Sure, if it's trimmed down to be more focused, we can keep it. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notifying everyone who supported the similar proposal from last year (all issues still apply, although the proposed solution's focus is narrower and more feasible). Jc86035 (talk) 15:12, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support HHill (talk) 21:33, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jc86035 (talk) 04:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mahir256 (talk) 06:07, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Acamicamacaraca (talk) 08:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Libcub (talk) 11:40, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 11:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wostr (talk) 15:16, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mike Peel (talk) 15:16, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support M11rtinb (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ederporto (talk) 15:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Very needed! Micru (talk) 16:17, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support This would be potentially very helpful in handling vandalism. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Rs chen 7754 16:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Crazy1880 (talk) 17:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support ~Cybularny ^Speak? 19:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Metrónomo-Goldwyn-Mayer 21:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kpjas (talk) 22:32, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Epìdosis 22:50, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:51, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jklamo (talk) 03:40, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Richard Nevell (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wolbo (talk) 12:20, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Beat Estermann (talk) 16:29, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Viswaprabha (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jmmuguerza (talk) 23:38, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vulp here 13:01, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Gareth (talk) 13:24, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 13:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 22:59, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Laboramus (talk) 07:08, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support β₁₆ - (talk) 10:08, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 15:12, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support MartinPoulter (talk) 12:12, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jinoytommanjaly (talk) 06:27, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support BugWarp (talk) 14:55, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ayack (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support James F. (talk) 22:45, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Redalert2fan (talk) 12:46, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Pasleim (talk) 21:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 03:03, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support abi án 20:30, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Izno (talk) 01:11, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Minihaa (talk) 17:24, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support MiguelAlanCS (talk) 19:58, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support -jem- (talk) 20:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ghilt (talk) 18:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support NicoScribe (talk) 11:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Schniggendiller (talk) 16:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]