Wikibooks:Protected page
 | This page documents an official Wikibooks policy that the Wikibooks community has accepted and Wikibookians must follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy. |
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Wikibooks administrators have the ability to "protect" pages such that editing of those pages is restricted. This ability is only to be used in limited circumstances, as described in this policy.
Appropriate use
This ability is used semi-permanently in some cases:
- Protecting the highly visible pages like Main Page from vandalism.
- Maintaining the integrity of the copyright and license pages.
- Protecting certain "system administration" pages.
- Maintaining the integrity of past press releases. (not needed yet)
This ability is also intended to be used temporarily in some cases:
- Enforcing a "cooldown" period to stop an edit war, upon request (see below).
- Protecting a page 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.
Admins should not protect pages when they have been involved in the edit war in question (either by actively editing the page or by holding strong opinions about the content). Administrative tools are not editor privileges - administrators act as servants to the user community at large. If you are an admin, and you want a page in an edit war in which you are somehow involved to be protected, you should contact another admin and ask them to protect the page for you.
In general, pages should not be left protected for very long, and discussion pages should be left open. Indefinite page protection should almost never be used.
Types and levels of page protection
- Levels of protection
- Full protection
- Only administrators may make changes
- Semi protection
- Users must be autoconfirmed to make changes
- Pending changes
- This is automatically applied to new pages: see WB:REVIEW for more details
- Types of protection
- Create protection
- Restricts page creation
- Edit protection
- Restricts page editing
- Move protection
- Restricts page moving
- Cascading protection
- Can only be used with full edit and move protection. This protects the page, and all pages transcluded into it, and all images used on it (if they are local).
Administrators can also edit MediaWiki:Titleblacklist, which can block uploads, edits, page move, and page creation matching regex entries.
Editing protected pages
Administrators should be cautious in editing semi-permanently protected pages, and do so in accordance with consensus and any specific guidelines on the subject. In many cases it is appropriate for an administrator to first raise the issue on the relevant talk page, as any other user would have to do.
In cases of temporary page protection, administrators should refrain from editing pages while they are protected. They should not continue editing content while people with different points of view who are not admins are unable to do so. There are, however, a few times when it may be appropriate to edit such a page:
- Adding a link to Wikibooks:Accuracy dispute or Wikibooks:NPOV dispute, or a similar disclaimer about the current state of a page.
- Reverting to an old version of the page from a week or so before the controversy started (see The Wrong Version)
List of temporarily protected pages
- Special:ProtectedPages provides a dynamic list of protected pages.
- For create-protected pages, see Special:ProtectedTitles.