Wiki Law School:Protected page

From wikilawschool.net. Wiki Law School does not provide legal advice. For educational purposes only.

Administrators have the ability to protect pages so that they cannot be edited, or images so that they cannot be overwritten, except by other administrators. Administrators can also protect pages from moves only. Administrators have the additional ability to protect pages from being edited by unregistered or very new users.

These abilities are only to be used in limited circumstances as protected pages are considered harmful.

Admins must not protect pages they are actively engaged in editing, except in the case of simple vandalism.

If a page is protected because of an edit war, please do not ask for it to be protected in some other version than it currently is. A protection is not an endorsement of the current version. Instead, go to the talk page and attempt to resolve the dispute. Non-admins can propose changes to protected pages on the talk page.

If an administrator moves a protected page, the page will be protected at the new location, and the redirect will be unprotected at the page's original location.

Uses

A permanent or semi-permanent protection is used for:

  • Protecting high visibility pages such as the Main Page from vandalism.
  • Maintaining the integrity of the site's logo, press releases, and key copyright and license pages (for legal reasons).
  • Protecting certain "system administration" pages. This includes many editorial templates, such as deletion notices and stub templates.
  • Protecting the often-used texts in the MediaWiki namespace.
  • User talk pages and their subpages that are subject to repeated vandalism, following a user's blocking (note the fact that blocked users can still edit their own user talk pages).
  • Protecting deleted articles that are repeatedly created.


A temporary protection is used for:

  • Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war," upon request.
  • Protecting a page or image that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user.
  • Preventing changes to a page while investigating a possible bug in the MediaWiki software.
  • Allowing for history-only review during discussions on article restoration.


The protection of a page on any particular version is not meant to express support for that version and requests should therefore not be made that the protected version be reverted to a different one.

Talk pages and user talk pages are not protected as a rule, except in extreme circumstances.