What is protection?[]
By default, anyone can move or edit any page on this wiki. However, Administrators can protect individual pages against moving or editing, allowing only
- editors who are logged in and have been editing for a while (autoconfirmed) or editors who have confirmed an email address (semi-protection) or
- other administrators (full protection)
to edit or move the page. Protection can be extended indefinitely (until it is lifted), or for a limited time.
Pages that don't exits can be protected, this prevents the page from being created.
By default, all pages in MediaWiki: namespace can only be edited by administrators.
When is protection used?[]
- Repeated vandalism and spam. Pages that are targets for these are temporarily protected until the bout of vandalism subsides.
- Highly transcluded templates. A change in these would lead to a large number of other pages updating with the change, as would reverting the change; since the wiki is somewhat slow in performing these updates, an ill-considered chnage could leave a large number of pages in an undesirable state.
- Some non-descriptive filenames are protected to prevent users uploading files with these names.
Which pages are protected right now?[]
For a list of currently protected pages and titles, see Special:ProtectedPages and Special:ProtectedTitles.