Wikipedia:Protection policy

A protected page is marked at its top right by a padlock icon, usually added by the {{pp-protected}} template.

Exceptions include the Main Page, along with its templates and images, which are indefinitely fully protected.

Except in the case of office actions (see below), Arbitration Committee remedies, or pages in the MediaWiki namespace (see below), administrators may unprotect a page if the reason for its protection no longer applies, a reasonable period has elapsed, and there is no consensus that continued protection is necessary.

An alternative to semi-protection, it is used to suppress vandalism and certain other persistent problems, while allowing all users to continue to submit edits.

Pending changes is technically implemented as a separate option, with its own duration, and it yields to other edit protection levels in cases of overlap.

When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an unregistered editor or a new user, the edit is not directly visible to the majority of Wikipedia readers, until it is reviewed and accepted by an editor with the pending changes reviewer right.

Like semi-protection, pending changes protection should never be used in genuine content disputes, where there is a risk of placing a particular group of editors (unregistered users) at a disadvantage.

An alternative to semi-protection is pending changes, which is sometimes favored when an article is being vandalized regularly, but otherwise receives a low amount of editing.

Administrators may apply temporary semi-protection on pages that are: In addition, administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages that are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism or violations of content policy (such as biographies of living persons, neutral point of view).

[3] Where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective, administrators may use extended confirmed protection to combat disruption (such as vandalism, abusive sockpuppetry, edit wars, etc.)

[5] When necessary to prevent disruption in designated contentious topic areas, administrators are authorized to make protections at any level.

Placing the {{Edit fully-protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes.

This approach may better suit multi-party disputes and contentious content, as it makes talk page consensus a requirement for implementation of requested edits.

Fully protected pages may not be edited except to make changes that are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus.

Administrators who have made substantive content changes to an article are considered involved and must not use their advanced permissions to further their own positions.

When involved in a dispute, it is almost always wisest to respect the editing policies that bind all editors and call for input from an uninvolved administrator, rather than to invite controversy by acting unilaterally.

In cases where pages in other namespaces become transcluded to a very high degree, this protection level is also valid.

To make a convincing case for re-creation, it is helpful to show a draft version of the intended article when filing a request.

As the bot's response time varies, media should not be transcluded on the main page (or its constituent templates) until after it has been protected.

Cascading protection: The list of cascading-protected pages can be found at Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items.

Operational pages principally used by software, including bots and user scripts, may be protected based on the type of use, content, and other considerations.

Placing the {{Edit protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes.

Talk pages are not usually protected, and are semi-protected only for a limited duration in the most severe cases of disruption.

Confirmed socks of registered users should be dealt with in accordance with Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry; their pages are not normally protected.

An exception to this includes an unconfirmed registered account attempting to create or edit their own user page.

It loads the unprotected /doc page, so that non-admins and IP-users can edit the documentation, categories and interwiki links.

Instead, consider any of the following: Note: All editnotice templates (except those in userspace) are already protected via MediaWiki:Titleblacklist.

Those who use sandboxes for malicious purposes, or to violate policies such as no personal attacks, civility, or copyrights, should instead be warned and/or blocked.

Superprotect was a level of protection,[14] allowing editing only by Wikimedia Foundation employees who were in the Staff global group.

For several years, the Gadget namespace (which no longer exists) could only be edited by WMF staff, which has sometimes been referred to as superprotection even though it is unrelated to the above use.