FAMEPedia:Protection policy

In some circumstances, pages may need to be protected from modification by certain groups of editors. Pages are protected when a specific damaging event has been identified that can not be prevented through other means such as a block. Otherwise, FAMEPedia is built on the principle that anyone can edit it, and it therefore aims to have as many of its pages as possible open for public editing so that anyone can add material and correct errors. This policy explains in detail the protection types and procedures for page protection and unprotection and when each protection should and should not be applied.

Protection is a technical restriction applied only by administrators, although any user may request protection. Protection can be indefinite or expire after a specified time. The are different kinds of protection are detailed below, and they can be applied to the page edit, page move, page create, and file upload actions. Even when a page is protected from editing, the source code (text) of the page can still be viewed and copied by any user.

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

Types of protection
The following technical options are available to administrators for protecting different actions to pages:
 * Edit protection protects the page from being edited.
 * Move protection protects the page from being moved or renamed.
 * Creation protection prevents a page (normally a previously deleted one) from being created (also known as "salting").
 * Upload protection prevents new versions of a file from being uploaded, but it does not prevent editing to the file's description page (unless edit protection is applied).

The following technical options are available to administrators for adding protection levels to the different actions to pages:
 * Pending changes protection (only available for edit protection) means edits by unregistered and new contributors are not visible to readers who are not logged-in until the edits are approved by a reviewer or an administrator.
 * Semi-protection prevents the action by unregistered contributors and contributors with accounts that are not confirmed.
 * Extended confirmed protection, also known as 30/500 protection, prevents the action by users without 30 days' tenure and 500 edits on the English FAMEPedia. It is applied to combat any form of disruption where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective. It should not be applied as a protection level of first resort. Its use is logged at the Administrators' noticeboard.
 * Template protection prevents the action by everyone except template editors and administrators (who have this right as part of their toolset).
 * Full protection prevents the action by everyone except administrators.

Any type of protection (with the exception of cascading protection) may be requested at FAMEPedia:Requests for page protection. Changes to a fully protected page should be proposed on the corresponding talk page, then carried out by an administrator if they are uncontroversial or there is consensus for them.

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. Editors desiring the unprotection of a page should, in the first instance, ask the administrator who applied the protection unless the administrator is inactive or no longer an administrator; thereafter, requests may be made at Requests for unprotection. Note that such requests will normally be declined if the protecting administrator is active and was not consulted first. A log of protections and unprotections is available at Special:Log/protect.

Full protection


A fully protected page cannot be edited or moved by anyone except administrators. The protection may be for a specified time or may be indefinite.

Modifications to a fully protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes.

Content disputes
While content disputes and edit warring may be addressed with user blocks issued by uninvolved administrators, allowing normal page editing by other editors at the same time, the protection policy provides an alternative approach as administrators have the discretion to temporarily fully protect an article to end an ongoing edit war. This approach may better suit multi-party disputes and contentious content, as it makes talk page consensus a requirement for implementation of requested edits.

When protecting a page because of a content dispute, administrators have a duty to avoid protecting a version that contains policy-violating content, such as vandalism, copyright violations, defamation, or poor-quality coverage of living people. Administrators are deemed to remain uninvolved when exercising discretion on whether to apply protection to the current version of an article, or to an older, stable, or pre-edit-war version.

Protected pages may not be edited except to make changes that are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus. Editors convinced that the protected version of an article contains policy-violating content, or that protection has rewarded edit warring or disruption by establishing a contentious revision, may identify a stable version prior to the edit war and request reversion to that version. Before making such a request, editors should consider how independent editors might view the suggestion and recognize that continuing an edit war is grounds for being blocked.

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.

Vandalism
Applying page protection as a preemptive measure is contrary to the open nature of FAMEPedia and is generally not allowed if applied for these reasons. However, brief periods of an appropriate and reasonable protection level are allowed in situations where blatant vandalism or disruption is occurring by multiple users and at a level of frequency that requires its use in order to stop it. The duration of the protection should be set as short as possible, and the protection level should be set to the lowest restriction needed in order to stop the disruption while still allowing productive editors to make changes.

"History only" review
If a deleted page is going through 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 or a similar notice, and fully protect the page to prevent further editing. The previous contents of the page are then accessible to everyone via the page history.

Protected generic file names
Generic file names such as File:Photo.jpg is fully protected to prevent new versions being uploaded.

Permanent protection


Administrators cannot change or remove the protection for some areas on FAMEPedia which are permanently protected by the MediaWiki software:
 * Edits to the MediaWiki namespace, which defines parts of the site interface, are restricted to administrators.
 * Edits to system-wide CSS and JavaScript pages such as MediaWiki:common.js are further restricted to interface administrators.
 * Edits to personal CSS and JavaScript pages such as User:Example/monobook.css and User:Example/cologneblue.js are restricted to the associated user and interface administrators. Interface administrators may edit these pages, for example, to remove a user script that has been used in an inappropriate way. Administrators may delete (but not edit or restore) these pages.
 * Edits to personal JSON pages such as User:Example/data.json are restricted to the associated user and administrators.

In addition to hard-coded protection, the following are usually permanently protected:


 * Pages that are very visible, such as the Main Page
 * Pages that should not be modified for copyright or legal reasons, such as the general disclaimer or the local copy of the site copyright license.
 * Pages that are very frequently transcluded, such as or, to prevent vandalism or denial of service attacks. This includes images or templates used in other highly visible or frequently transcluded pages. See FAMEPedia:High-risk templates for more information.

Template protection


A template-protected page can be edited only by administrators or users in the group. This protection level should be used almost exclusively on high-risk templates and modules. In cases where pages in other namespaces become transcluded to a very high degree, this protection level is also valid.

This is a protection level that replaces full protection on pages that are merely protected due to high transclusion rates, rather than content disputes. It should be used on templates whose risk factor would have otherwise warranted full protection. It should not be used on less risky templates on the grounds that the template editor user right exists—the existence of the right should not result in more templates becoming uneditable for the general editing community.

Editors may request edits to a template-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the template if necessary to gain attention.

Semi-protection


Semi-protected pages cannot be edited by unregistered users (IP addresses), as well as accounts that are not autoconfirmed (accounts that are at least four days old and have made at least ten edits to FAMEPedia) or confirmed. Semi-protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent sockpuppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when it occurs on biographies of living persons who have had a recent high level of media interest. 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.

Such users can request edits to a semi-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the Edit semi-protected template if necessary to gain attention. If the page in question and its talk page are both protected, please make your edit request at FAMEPedia:Requests for page protection instead. New users may also request the confirmed user right at FAMEPedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed.

Guidance for administrators
Administrators may apply 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). Semi-protection should be used as a preemptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred or to privilege registered users over unregistered users in (valid) content disputes.

In addition, administrators may apply semi-protection on pages that are:
 * Subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) if blocking individual users is not a feasible option.
 * Subject to edit warring if parties involved are unregistered or new editors (i.e. in cases in which full protection would otherwise be applied). This does  apply when autoconfirmed users are involved.
 * Subject to vandalism or edit warring where unregistered editors are engaging in IP hopping by using different computers, obtaining new addresses by using dynamic IP allocation, or other address-changing schemes.
 * Article discussion pages, if they have been subject to persistent disruption. Such protection should be used sparingly because it prevents unregistered and newly registered users from participating in discussions. A page and its talk page should not normally be protected at the same time. If a page and its talk page are both protected, the talk page should direct affected editors to FAMEPedia:Request for edit to ensure that no editor is entirely prevented from contributing.
 * Protection should be used sparingly on the talk pages of blocked users, including IP addresses. Instead the user should be re-blocked with talk page editing disallowed. When required, or when re-blocking without talk page editing allowed is unsuccessful, protection should be implemented for only a brief period not exceeding the duration of the block.

Today's featured article may be semi-protected just like any other article. But since that article is subject to sudden spurts of vandalism during certain times of day, administrators should semi-protect it for brief periods in most instances. For the former guideline, see FAMEPedia:Main Page featured article protection.

Creation protection (salting)


Administrators can prevent the creation of pages. This level of protection is useful for bad pages that have been deleted but repeatedly recreated. Such protection is case-sensitive. There are several levels of creation protection that can be applied to pages, identical to the levels for edit protection. A list of protected titles may be found at Special:ProtectedTitles (see also historical lists).

Pre-emptive restrictions on new article titles are instituted through the title blacklist system, which allows for more flexible protection with support for substrings and regular expressions.

Pages that have been creation-protected are sometimes referred to as "salted". Contributors wishing to re-create a salted title with appropriate content should either contact an administrator (preferably the protecting administrator), file a request at FAMEPedia:Requests for page protection, or use the deletion review process. To make a convincing case for re-creation, it is helpful to show a draft version of the intended article when filing a request.

Administrators should choose the appropriate level of create protection—autoconfirmed, extended-confirmed, or full. Due to the implementation of ACPERM, non-confirmed editors cannot create pages in mainspace; thus, semi-creation protection should be rare, used only for protection of pages outside of mainspace.

While creation-protection is usually permanent, temporary creation protection may be applied if a page is repeatedly recreated by a single user (or sockpuppets of that user, if applicable).

Move protection


Move protected pages, or more technically, fully move-protected pages, cannot be moved to a new title except by an administrator. Move protection is commonly applied to:


 * Pages subject to persistent page-move vandalism.
 * Pages subject to a page-name dispute.
 * Highly visible pages that have no reason to be moved, such as the administrators' noticeboard and articles selected as "Today's featured article" on the main page.

Fully edit-protected pages are also implicitly move-protected.

As with full edit protection, protection because of edit warring should not be considered an endorsement of the current name. When move protection is applied during a requested move discussion, the page should be protected at the location it was at when the move request was started.

All files are implicitly move-protected; only file movers and administrators can rename files.

Upload protection


Upload protected files, or more technically, fully upload-protected files, cannot be replaced with new versions except by an administrator. Upload protection does not protect file pages from editing. Upload protection may be applied by an administrator to:
 * Files subject to persistent upload vandalism.
 * Files subject to a dispute between editors.
 * Files that should not be replaced, such as images used in the interface or transcluded to the main page.
 * Files with common or generic names.

As with full edit protection, administrators should avoid favoring one file version over another, and protection should not be considered an endorsement of the current file version. An exception to this rule is when files are protected due to upload vandalism.

Pending changes protection


Pending changes protection is a tool used to suppress vandalism and certain other persistent problems while allowing all users to continue to submit edits. Pending changes protection can be used as an alternative to semi-protection to allow unregistered and new users to edit pages, while keeping the edits hidden from the view of most readers until those changes are accepted by a pending changes reviewer.

When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an unregistered (IP addresses) editor or a new user, the edit is not directly visible to the majority of FAMEPedia readers, until it is reviewed and accepted by an editor with the pending changes reviewer right. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an autoconfirmed user, the edit will be immediately visible to FAMEPedia readers, unless there are pending edits waiting to be reviewed.

Pending changes are visible in the page history, where they are marked as pending review. Readers that are not logged in (the vast majority of readers) are shown the latest accepted version of the page; logged-in users see the latest version of the page, with all changes (reviewed or not) applied. When editors who are not reviewers make changes to an article with unreviewed pending changes, their edits are also marked as pending and are not visible to most readers.

A user who clicks "edit this page" is always, at that point, shown the latest version of the page for editing regardless of whether the user is logged in or not.
 * If the editor is not logged in, their changes join any other changes to the article awaiting review – for the present they remain hidden from not-logged-in users. (This means that when the editor looks at the article after saving, the editor won't see the change made.)
 * If the editor is logged in and a pending changes reviewer, and there are pending changes, the editor will be prompted to review the pending changes before editing – see FAMEPedia:Pending changes.
 * If the editor is logged in and not a pending changes reviewer, then...
 * If there are no unreviewed pending edits waiting, this editor's edits will be visible to everyone immediately; but
 * If there are unreviewed pending edits waiting, then this editor's edits will be visible only to other logged-in users (including themselves) immediately, but not to readers not logged in.

Reviewing of pending changes should be resolved within reasonable time limits.

When to apply pending changes protection
Pending changes may be used to protect articles against:
 * Persistent vandalism
 * Violations of the biographies of living persons policy
 * Copyright violations

Pending changes protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against violations that have not yet occurred. Like semi-protection, PC 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. Pending changes protection should not be used on articles with a very high edit rate, even if they meet the aforementioned criteria. Instead semi-protection should be considered.

In addition, administrators may apply temporary pending changes protection on pages that are subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) when blocking individual users is not a feasible option. As with other forms of protection, the time frame of the protection should be proportional to the problem. Indefinite PC protection should be used only in cases of severe long-term disruption.

Removal of pending changes protection can be requested of any administrator, or at requests for unprotection.

The reviewing process is described in detail at FAMEPedia:Reviewing pending changes.

Extended confirmed protection


Extended confirmed protection, also known as 30/500 protection, only allows edits by editors with the extended confirmed user access level, granted automatically to registered users with at least 30 days tenure and 500 edits.

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.) on any topic. Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered/new users in valid content disputes on articles not covered by Arbitration Committee 30/500 rulings. Extended confirmed protection may be applied by an administrator at their discretion when creation-protecting a page. A full list of the pages under 30/500 protection can be found [ here].

Users can request edits to an extended confirmed-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the template if necessary to gain attention.

Office actions


Pages may be protected by Miraheze Rep in response to issues such as copyright infringement or libel. Such actions override community consensus. Administrators should not edit or unprotect such pages without permission from Miraheze Foundation Rep.

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 templates, images and other media that are hosted on the English FAMEPedia. Files stored on Commons are not protected by any other wiki's cascading protection and, if they are to be protected, must be either temporarily uploaded to the English FAMEPedia or explicitly protected at Commons (whether manually or through cascading protection there). Cascading protection:
 * Should be used only to prevent vandalism when placed on particularly visible pages, such as the main page.
 * Is available only for fully protected pages; it is disabled for lower levels of protection as it represents a security flaw. See T10796 for more information.
 * Is not instantaneous; it may be several hours before it takes effect.
 * Should generally not be applied directly to templates or modules, as it will not protect transclusions inside tags or transclusions that depend on template parameters, but will protect the documentation subpage. See the "Protection of templates" section below for alternatives.

Article talk pages
Modifications to a protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the 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 vandalism.

User talk pages
User talk pages are rarely protected. However, protection may be applied if there is severe vandalism or abuse. Users whose talk pages are protected may wish to have an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good-faith comments from users that the protection restricts editing from.

A user's request to have their own talk page protected is not a sufficient rationale by itself to protect the page, although requests may be considered if a reason is provided.

Blocked users
Blocked users' user talk pages should not ordinarily be protected, as this interferes with the user's ability to contest their block through the normal process. It also prevents others from being able to use the talk page to communicate with the blocked editor.

In extreme cases of abuse by the blocked user, such as abuse of the unblock template, re-blocking the user with talk page access removed should be preferred over applying protection to the page. If the user has been blocked and with the ability to edit their user talk page disabled, they should be informed of this in a block notice, subsequent notice, or message, and it should include information and instructions for appealing their block off-wiki, or, as a last recourse, the Arbitration Committee.

When required, protection should be implemented for only a brief period, not exceeding the duration of the block.

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

User pages
Base user pages (for example, the page User:Example, and not User:Example/subpage or User talk:Example) are automatically protected from creation or editing by unconfirmed accounts and anonymous IP users. An exception to this includes an unconfirmed registered account attempting to create or edit their own user page. IP editors and unconfirmed accounts are also unable to create or edit user pages that do not belong to a currently-registered account. This protection is enforced by an edit filter. Users may opt-out of this protection by placing anywhere on their own user page.

User pages and subpages within their own user space may be protected upon a request from the user, as long as a need exists. Pages within the user space should not be automatically or pre-emptively protected without good reason or cause. Requests for protection specifically at uncommon levels (such as template protection) may be granted if the user has expressed a genuine and realistic need.

When a filter is insufficient to stop user page vandalism, a user may choose to create a ".css" subpage (ex. User:Example/Userpage.css), copy all the contents of their user page onto the subpage, transclude the subpage by putting on their user page, and then ask an administrator to fully protect their user page. Because user space pages that end in ".css", ".js", and ".json" are editable only by the user to which that user space belongs (and interface administrators), this will protect your user page from further vandalism.

Deceased users
In the event of the confirmed death of a user, the user's user page (but not the user talk page) should be fully protected.

Protection of templates
Highly visible templates, which are used on an extremely large number of pages or substituted with great frequency, are often semi-, template-, or fully-protected based on the degree of visibility, type of use, content, etc.

Protected templates should normally have the documentation template. It loads the unprotected  page, so that non-admins and IP-users can edit the documentation, categories and interwiki links. It also automatically adds pp-template to protected templates, which displays a small padlock in the top right corner and categorizes the template as protected. Only manually add to protected templates that don't use  (mostly the flag templates).

Cascading protection should generally not be applied directly to templates, as it will not protect transclusions inside tags or transclusions that depend on template parameters, but will protect the template's documentation subpage. Instead, consider any of the following:
 * If the set of subtemplates is static (even if large), protect them using normal protection mechanisms.
 * If the set of subtemplates is unbounded, use MediaWiki:Titleblacklist to protect all subtemplates using a particular naming format (as is done for editnotice templates and subtemplates of Template:TFA title).

Note: All editnotice templates (except those in userspace) are already protected via MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. They can be edited by admins, template editors and page movers only.

Sandboxes
Sandboxes should not ordinarily be protected since their purpose is to let new users test and experiment with wiki syntax. Most sandboxes are automatically cleaned every 12 hours, although they are frequently overwritten by other testing users. The FAMEPedia:Sandbox is cleaned every hour. 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.

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

On redirect pages, use the Redirect category shell template, which automatically categorizes by protection level, below the redirect line. A protection template may also be added below the redirect line, but it will serve only to categorize the page, as it will not be visible on the page, and it will have to be manually removed when protection is removed.