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When a question is protected it requires a certain minimum reputation to answer it. At least on politics SE this is mostly used for questions that are highly politized or opioniated. And it works in preventing spam, low quality or opinion only answers which such questions are especially likely to attract.

But protecting doesn't do anything about editing the question or answers to it. This means any user with at least medium reputation (2k afaik) can edit the question and any user can suggest an edit and it requires 2 users with at least medium reputation to approve it. In general this works fine but for question that are protected this may not be enough to prevent editorial vandalizing. Again this is a risk for any question but highly politized or opionated questions are especially likely to attrack such attempts.

I would therefore suggest that protected questions also get much higher reputation requirements for editing or approving a suggested edit, possibly all the way to moderators only. After all, if the question is protected that means a moderator already looked at it and thought it is good as is. Otherwise they could have edited themselves (or closed it or whatever else could be appropriate).

While I hope my argument stands on its own, here is the question that inspired my to write it. In my opinion the edit suggested by the low reputation user would count as vandalizing, it removes context with external sources and totally changes the intent of the original question. But then of course I have personal opinions on the topic as well. I could just edit the deleted content back in but starting an edit war seems like the wrong way to go hence a question here.

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    After all, if the question is protected that means a moderator already looked at it and thought it is good as is. - questions can be automatically protected when there are 'too many' answers by low reputation users. And regular users with enough rep can protect questions as well.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Mar 5 at 17:53
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    @Glorfindel Thanks, I didn't know that, I just saw that the question I linked was protected by a moderator.
    – quarague
    Commented Mar 5 at 17:54
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    People abusing their privileges, especially when it comes to reviewing, is not soluble by blocking the positive contributions. The vast majority of problematic edits are already prevented by the lock. Exceptions either way are infrequent enough and require more context that a moderator flag can best resolve. Terrible request.
    – Nij
    Commented Mar 5 at 19:29
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    This goes against the main premise of protected questions. Per our FAQ What is a “protected” or "highly active" question?, protecting questions has a very specific purpose, which is to prevent answers from new users on questions that have attracted spam answers or "noisy" answers from brand new users. For the feature you request here, it already exists as a separate feature - see What is a locked post?.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Mar 5 at 20:16
  • Do you have any data on how often this is a problem? My guess would be that it's very rare that this is a problem.
    – D.W.
    Commented Mar 6 at 5:58

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For this request: I don't think this is a good idea. I don't see any evidence that this is a common problem. I think it would cause more harm than good, by suppressing many valuable edits. Meanwhile, I think there is little or no abuse. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you want to advance a proposal, it's important to provide data to show that there is a problem. You list only one example. Moreover, I find that example unconvincing, as elaborated below. So I don't believe that you've met the burden of showing that this change would make a positive difference.

Regarding the specific example you linked to:

That's my edit you're referring to. If you believe the edit represents vandalism, the appropriate recourse is to flag it for a moderator, or take it to Meta.Politics.SE. But since you've highlighted it here to support your proposal, I will share my point of view on why that edit was valuable and suppressing it would have been detrimental to the site.

To get some background, you might want to take a look at the suggested edit, if you haven't already. Take a look at who approved it, and take a look at the edit summary. That might give helpful context.

As stated in the edit summary, the purpose of the edit was to revise the question to adopt a neutral point of view. Our purpose is to have a place where we can collaborate to build a repository of knowledge. It is not the purpose here to create a soapbox where people are invited to express their views, whatever they may be. It is not a place to spread propaganda, e.g., that one side in this conflict is the evil side. On Politics, questions should adopt a neutral point of view. The purpose of a question is to ask a question that will contribute to our mission, not to advocate a point of view. "Push questions" (questions that appear to be pushing a particular point of view) are not appropriate.

Before the edit, that question contained a lot of material that was not necessary to articulate the question, and could be interpreted as attempt to advance or promulgate a particular point of view. My understanding is that it was generating controversy. I think a reasonable response would have been to close the original question, but I attempted to save the question by proposing an edit to adopt a neutral point of view. If the edit is inappropriate, then I think the next-best response would have been to close the question (would you prefer that?). But I don't believe the edit was inappropriate.

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    I did look at the edit history and the original question cited an external source, namely a poll of Israeli people that showed they support the policy. To me this is relevant, well sourced context that you deleted. So I personally still believe that you edited to make Israel look less bad even though there is external evidence that that is what Israelis want. Maybe this context would be better in an answer to the question but removing it entirely just feels wrong. Independent of that I agree that the issue is sufficiently rare so you get the check mark.
    – quarague
    Commented Mar 6 at 8:09
  • @quarague, Thanks. You can write an answer that includes that information if you want, and make the case for whatever your perspective is. I believe the appropriate place for advocating a particular view is in an answer, not in the question. I didn't do it to make anyone look less bad -- I did it to ensure a neutral point of view.
    – D.W.
    Commented Mar 6 at 19:30
  • But if you still disagree, that's cool, that's reasonable -- I would suggest that the appropriate remedy would be to take this to a Politics moderator, or to Politics meta, or suggest an edit that you think would improve the question while retaining a neutral point of view; or you could advocate that the question be closed instead of being edited.
    – D.W.
    Commented Mar 6 at 19:30

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