Help:Protection
This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting. |
Depending on its level of protection, editing on the page has been
For more information on who protected the page and for what reason, see:
- The talk pageof the protected page
- The protection log
- The protection 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 expiry time may not be displayed, and is not in general midnight UTC; it can be found in the protection 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 prevent
- The cascading protection
- Pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which contain system messages and text for the user interface
- Pages which have legally defined wording, such as the general disclaimer and the licensing policy
- Templates which are transcluded on many pages, such as
{{
denial of serviceattacks - Images which are tempting targets for vandalism, such as Image:Wiki.png. Some images are also restricted by the image 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 on Wikipedia: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 its