Wikipedia:Protection policy

This page in a nutshell: Editing or moving of a page can be restricted by administrators. As Wikipedia is built around the principle that anyone can edit it, this should only be done in certain situations.

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Administrators can protect a page to restrict editing or moving of that page, and remove such protection. Such protection may be indefinite, or expire after a specified time.

• Full protection disables editing for everyone except administrators. Fully protected media files cannot be overwritten by new uploads.
• Semi-protection disables editing for accounts which are not autoconfirmed.
• Creation protection prevents a previously deleted page from being recreated.
• Move protection protects the page solely from moves.

Any type of protection or unprotection may be requested at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Changes to protected pages should be proposed on the page's discussion page, and carried out once there is consensus to do so. A log of protections and unprotections is available at Special:Log/protect.

Except in the case of office actions (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. Contacting the administrator who originally protected the page is advised in unclear circumstances.

Full protection

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A fully-protected page may only be edited by administrators. The protection may be of a limited duration, such as seven or 14 days, or may expire at a certain time.

Any modification to a fully-protected page should be discussed on its talk page or another appropriate forum. Once consensus has been established for the change, any administrator may make the necessary edits to the protected page. Placing the {{editprotected}} template on the talk page can draw attention to discussions about edits to protected pages.

Content disputes

On pages that have become the battleground for an edit war, temporary full page protection can force editors to take their cause to the talk page, where they can reach consensus. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

When protecting a page because of a content dispute, administrators normally protect the current version, except where the current version contains content which clearly violates content policies, such as obvious vandalism or copyright violations. Pages protected due to content disputes should not be edited except to remove inappropriate material or to make changes for which there is clear consensus.

"History only" review

If a deleted page is undergoing deletion review, only administrators are normally capable of viewing the former content of the page. If they feel it would benefit the discussion to allow other users to view the page content, administrators may restore the page, blank it or replace the contents with {{TempUndelete}} or a similar notice, and fully protect the page to prevent further editing. The previous contents of the page is then accessible to non-admins via the page history.

Talk-page protection

Administrators may fully-protect the user talk page of a blocked user if the page is being used for continued inappropriate editing. This includes repeated abuse of the {{unblock}} template, or continued incivil or offensive remarks. The protection should be timed so as not to exceed the length of the block. If the block is of indefinite duration, then the protection may be likewise.

Office actions

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As outlined at Wikipedia:Office actions, pages may be protected by Wikimedia Foundation staff in response to issues such as copyright or libel. Such actions override community consensus. Administrators should not edit or unprotect such pages without permission from Wikimedia Foundation staff. A list of pages under the scrutiny of the Wikimedia foundation can be found here.

Semi-protection

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Semi-protection prevents edits from anonymous users (IP addresses), or from accounts which are not autoconfirmed. Administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages which are:

• Subject to heavy and persistent vandalism.
• Biographies subject to persistent violation of the biographies of living persons or neutral point of view policies.
• User pages, but not user talk pages, when requested by the user and when the pages are subject to heavy vandalism.
• Policy pages which have been persistently vandalised. Policy pages should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

In addition, administrators may apply temporary semi-protection on pages which are:

• Subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption, for example due to media attention, when blocking individual users is not a feasible option.
• Article discussion pages, when they have been subject to persistent disruption. Such protection should be employed sparingly as it prevents anonymous and newly registered users participating in discussions. A page and its talk page should not both be protected at the same time.
• Talk pages of blocked IP addresses which are being used for continued inappropriate editing, including repeated abuse of the {{unblock}} template, or continued uncivil or offensive remarks. The protection should be timed so as not to exceed the length of the block.

Semi-protection should not be used as a pre-emptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used solely to prevent editing by anonymous and newly registered users. In particular, it should not be used to settle content disputes.

Today's featured article is very rarely semi-protected, despite the increased vandalism that results from its presence on the Main Page, except in particularly serious cases. See Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection for guidelines on protecting articles linked from the main page.

The essay Wikipedia:Rough guide to semi-protection contains further information.

Creation protection

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Non-existent pages may be protected, for any length of time, if they are repeatedly re-created following deletion in line with the deletion policy. Administrators may apply protection to non-existent pages with the same procedure as with all other pages. A list of protected titles may be found at Special:Protectedtitles.

Administrators should not use creation protection as a pre-emptive measure, but only in response to actual events. Pre-emptive restrictions on new article titles should be instituted through the title blacklist system, which allows for more flexible protection, with support for case insensitivity, substrings and regular expressions.

Pages which have been creation-protected are sometimes referred to as "salted", after the process of salting the earth. Contributors wishing to re-create a salted title with more appropriate content should contact an administrator. As with deletions in general, the matter can also be resolved through the deletion review process.

Permanent protection

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Some areas of Wikipedia are automatically protected by the MediaWiki software. The MediaWiki namespace, which defines parts of the site interface, is fully protected; administrators cannot remove this protection. In addition, user CSS and JavaScript pages, such as User:Example/monobook.css or User:Example/cologneblue.js, are automatically protected; only the account associated with these pages and administrators are able to edit them. This protection applies to any user subpage with a ".css" or ".js" extension, whether an equivalent MediaWiki skin exists or not. Administrators may modify these pages to, for example, remove a user script which has been used in an inappropriate way.

In addition to the hard-coded protection, pages which are commonly permanently protected include:

• Pages which are very visible, such as the Main Page or Image:Wiki.png
• Pages which are very frequently transcluded, such as {{tl}} or {{ambox}}, to prevent vandalism or denial of service attacks. This includes images or templates used in other visible or frequently transcluded pages.
• Pages which should not be modified for copyright or legal reasons, such as the general disclaimer or the licensing policy.

Move protection

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Move protection is a possible solution for:

• Pages subject to persistent page-move vandalism.
• Pages subject to a page name dispute.
• Visible pages which have no reason to be moved, such as the Administrators' noticeboard.

By default, fully protected pages are also move protected. If a protected page is moved by an administrator, the page will be protected at the new location, but the redirect remaining at the original location will not be protected.

As with full protection, administrators should avoid favoring one name over another, and protection should not be considered an endorsement of the current name.

Other notes

Cascading protection

Cascading protection fully protects a page, and extends that full protection automatically to any page that is transcluded onto the protected page, whether directly or indirectly. This includes images and other media.

Cascading protection should be used only to prevent vandalism to particularly visible pages such as the Main Page.

Cascading protection is only available for fully protected pages; it is disabled for semi-protected pages as it represents a security flaw. See Bugzilla:8796 for more information.

Templates

The following templates may be added at the top of a page to indicate that it is protected:

See also

• m:Protected pages considered harmful
• Wikipedia:Requests for page protection
• Special:Protectedpages
• Special:Protectedtitles
• Wikipedia:List of indefinitely protected pages
• Wikipedia:Rough guide to semi-protection
• m:The Wrong Version