Protected pages shows edit and not view source. This is very unhelpful to editors who do not know the page is protected, and as such, should be fixed.
I think you’re using Wikipedia as a reference for protection policies, but I honestly can’t recall anyone getting confused over this. There’s a pop-up note that says the page is protected when you go to edit it, and we have a Discussion page template that alerts people if the page is semi-protected. Pretty straightforward and you can just easily go back a page
Pretty much any wiki (including Wikipedia and Wikia) have “View source” for protected pages. Just view the page community.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
. This wiki has a View source Interface page ( wikihow.com/MediaWiki:Viewsource
), but it is not used on protected pages.
I’m not sure I’m following why this is problematic - it’s not breaking anything. People still get the note that the page is protected
As Chris H mentioned in another thread, we don’t operate the same way that Wikipedia (or any other wiki) does, and it’s typically for a reason. It might be jarring since we aren’t doing the same thing that other wikis typically do, but we already have our Edit and History tabs in different places than most wikis have them. I would suspect that the formatting of those links probably has something to do with why the text doesn’t change.
@Anna
, is there some engineering or other behind-the-scenes reason we do this?
Anna
5
There’s a behind-the-scenes reason in that, behind the scenes, the engineering team is always having to prioritize what they do to make sure our resources are used wisely. Changing a label like this, when it does no harm at all (and hasn’t done for 13 years), just to make it like other wikis would be a waste of our resources. It’s not something we’re going to do.
Remember, wikiHow isn’t Wikipedia or Wikia; the processes and layout will be different here. That is not a problem, and does not need reporting. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ;)
@UpsandDowns1234
As several other experienced users and admins here have already suggested, I’d
encourage you to stop asking for changes based on trying to make our wiki just like others and instead take the time to get to know ours, as it is. We won’t be making any changes just because features on other wikis might be different from ours. I know you’ve been blocked from Wikipedia for causing disruptions there, and you told me that your intention was to turn over a new leaf here. If that is still your intention and you want to contribute positively here (and not risk coming off like a troll and getting any kind of block here as well), I’d ask you to heed the advice already given to you. Please refocus your attention onto contributions that make articles more helpful, rather than making distracting experimental edits or repeatedly suggesting changes to our wiki/policies/software just for the sake of it.
