Help:Protection
 | This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines,and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus. |
Depending on its level of protection, editing on the page has beenrestrictedto eitherautoconfirmed users,extended confirmed users,template editorsoradministrators.We regret any inconvenience this may cause—we strive to protect pages only when absolutely necessary and to unprotect them as soon as possible. We usually only protect pages that, for whatever reason, show themselves to be particularly prone to vandalism. If you wish to experiment with editing Wikipedia, please try theWikipedia sandbox.
For more information on who protected the page and for what reason, see:
- Thetalk pageof the protected page
- Theprotection log
- Theprotection policy
The expiry of the period of protection is usually shown by a template that has been added to the article, independent of the actual protection mechanism. The template displays a message like "This article is currently protected from editing until October 13, 2015". The expirytimemay not be displayed, and is not in general midnight UTC; it can be found in theprotection log,a link to which is shown in the template message at the top of the article.
Most pages on Wikipedia are only protected temporarily, to preventedit warsor to controlvandalism.You should be able to edit the page when it is unprotected in a short while. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss the changes you want to make on the talk page of the page in question. However a few types of pages are protected indefinitely:
- TheMain pageand all pages and images included onto it, viacascading protection
- Pages in theMediaWiki namespace,which contain system messages and text for the user interface
- Pages which have legally defined wording, such as thegeneral disclaimerand thelicensing policy
- Templates which are transcluded on many pages, such as
{{tl}}and{{ambox}},which would make a tempting target fordenial of serviceattacks - Images which are tempting targets for vandalism, such asImage:Wiki.png.Some images are also restricted by theimage blacklist
If you discover a page that appears to have been protected and then forgotten about, you can request to have it unprotected by posting onWikipedia:Requests for page protection.If a page has only recently been protected, it may be best to wait a few days first, unless some resolution has been reached on the talk page.
If you think that an edit needs to be made to a protected page, please discuss the change first on itstalk page.If the page is only semi-protected, a logged-in user will make the change if necessary. If the page is fully protected, you can use the template{{editprotected}}to attract the attention of a Wikipedia administrator who can make the change if it hasconsensus.
See also
