Help:Protection policy

International Game Developers Association

Administrators have the ability to protect pages in order to prevent normal user editing operations. Administrators can also protect pages from moves only. Usage of content protection is limited to certain circumstances.

Non-administrators can propose changes to protected pages via the Talk page (or workspace) of the protected page.

Reasons for protection

A permanent or semi-permanent protection is used for:

• Protecting high visibility pages such as the Main Page from undesirable changes.
• Maintaining the integrity of the site's logo.
• Maintaining the integrity of key copyright and license pages (for legal reasons).
• Maintaining the integrity of press releases.
• Protecting certain "system administration" pages.
• Protecting policy documentation.
• User pages and their subpages that are subject to repeated vandalism.
• Enforcing policy.

A temporary protection is used for:

• Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war," upon request.
• Protecting a page or image 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 in the MediaWiki software.

The protection of a page on any particular version is not meant to express support for that version and requests should therefore not be made that the protected version be reverted to a different one.

Talk pages and user talk pages are not protected as a rule, except in extreme circumstances.

When a page is particularly high profile, either because it is linked off the main page, or because it has recently received a prominent link from offsite, it will often become a target for vandalism. It is best not to protect pages in this case. Instead, consider adding them to your watchlist, and reverting vandalism yourself.

Page move protection

Similar considerations apply to protecting a page against being moved, only. In particular, page move protection is appropriate:

• in cases of frequent or on-going page-move vandalism;
• for persistent page-move disputes, on request.

List of protected pages

Protected pages are listed at Help:Protected pages.