Administrators have the ability to "protect" pages or images such that they cannot be modified except by other admins. This ability is only to be used in limited circumstances.
Policy
- Do not edit a temporarily protected page except to add a protected page notice.
- Do not protect a page on which you are involved in an edit dispute.
See Wikipedia:Protection policy for more detailed advice and the purpose of protected pages.
Procedure
- Protect the page, supplying a reason.
- Add {{protected}} (or {{vprotected}} for vandalism) to the top of the temporarily protected page and make mention of the protection in the edit summary.
- List pages you protect on Wikipedia:Protected page; if it is protected due to a conflict, you may want to list all user names/IPs involved in the conflict.
- Consider encouraging a resolution between the disputing parties.
- Remove the protection (while supplying a reason) once the conflict has been resolved.
- Remove {{protected}} from the top of an unprotected page and make mention of the removal in the edit summary.
See also
- Requests for page protection - place to request protection; use when your involvement in editing a page precludes protecting it yourself. Also used by non-administrators who wish for a page to be protected.
- Protection log - automated log of protections and unprotections
- This page is protected
- Wikipedia maintenance section on maintaining this page
- Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages - please add pages subjected to repeated vandalism to this list
- m:Protected pages considered harmful - essay
- m:The Wrong Version - semi-humorous essay about revert warriors' perception of page protection
Rationale
Viewing the source of a protected page
To view the source of e.g. Main Page, use one of the following:
- //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=edit
- Special:Export/Main Page
The latter also gives metadata (see m:page metadata) about the last edit. It is an XML file; tags are coded in its source, and plainly shown when rendered by the browser. However, blank lines in the wikisource are shown in the xml-source, but not in the rendering.
List of protected pages
If you protect a page, or find a protected page not listed here, please add it to this list. Please also add a short description of ten words or less indicating why you protected it. If you need to say more, discuss on the talk page of the page you protected. Also see Wikipedia:Protection log for recent unprotections, which replaces the manual list of recently unprotected pages. The {{protected}} header automatically adds Category:Protected to the page, adding it to the Category's listing.
Pages protected due to edit wars or vandalism
latest at bottom
- Cultural and historical background of Jesus multiple user revert war. Theresa Knott (Tart, knees hot) 21:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Redirects at Jesus in a cultural and historical background and Historical reconstruction of the sort of person Jesus would be have since been protected to prevent article forking.
- Libertarian theory, Liberal Democratic Party of Australia, Libertarian Party, Libertarianism, Libertarian socialism—blocking the edit warriors for 3RR violations proved ineffective. —No-One Jones (m) 07:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Libertarian League - protected against massive revert war. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 14:10, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
- Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League - Systematic use of Wikipedia as a vanity press by VCML. First in a series of VCML-related protections. Tom - Talk 17:04, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
- British Committee for Free Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia & Burma - Vanity edit war. A VCML protection. Tom - Talk 17:04, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
- Marie de Roland-Peel - A VCML protection. Tom - Talk 17:04, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)
- Hasbara - edit war.
- Southeast Asia Imperial & Royal League - A VCML protection. Vanit edit war. Tom - Talk 19:58, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
- Dennis King - requested after edit war broke out again. Jayjg 02:21, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Clitoris blocked by User:Schneelocke, who apparently felt it was vandalism. Revert war at any rate. Cool Hand Luke 05:01, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Sino-Soviet split—revert war.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:59, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
- GameFAQs - vandalism.
- Phillips Academy. Yet another round of juvenile delinquent vandalism. (What is this, the third now?) Article has been basically static for a long time, please leave the protection on for a while (like a month) so they will (hopefully) give up and go away. Any necessary real edits can be posted to the Talk: page, and I will add them (left a message there to that effect). Noel (talk) 15:24, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Sollog again /sigh Sjc 17:11, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- you forgot to add {{protected}}. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 03:37, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Efraín Ríos Montt edit war, requested Everyking 05:06, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Images protected while on the Main Page
Images on the main page often become the target of vandalism, particularly being overwritten with shock site images, which harms the credibility of the project due to that page's extreme visibility. Also, it takes some time for sysops to determine what caused a main page change. As such, images have begun to be protected during their time there, and this has become a de facto policy since the second or third week of November 2004.
Permanently/semi-permanently protected pages and images
Visibility reasons
- Main Page (protect from vandalism). Discuss any changes to the Main Page at Talk:Main Page
- Image:Wiki.png and Image:Wiki.PNG (Wikipedia logo)
- MediaWiki:Sitenotice
- The template for the current featured article blurb - Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 26, 2025
Legal reasons
- Wikipedia:Copyrights, Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License (copyright and license pages)
- Text of the GNU Free Documentation License (redirect to the above)
- Press releases: January 2002, January 2003, February 2004 (should remain static indefinitely)
- Wikipedia:designated agent (see meta:designated agent)
- Wikipedia:Foldoc license
- Wikipedia:Donation addresses (It should not be possible to falsify donation addresses.)
- Wikipedia:General disclaimer (linked from every article. It also needs to keep its precise wording in order to protect us and warn our readers.)
- Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer - (linked to from the General disclaimer)
- Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer (same)
- Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer (same)
- Wikipedia:Content disclaimer (same)
System administration reasons
- Wikipedia:Block log/Archive1
- Wikipedia:Blocked IPs
- Wikipedia:Popular articles
- Village pump archive 2004-09-26 (to prevent page move vandalism of large history)
The following pages are automatically generated and are usually protected for system administration reasons:
- Auto-generated logs: Deletion log, Upload log, Protection log, Block log, Bureaucrat log and their archives
- Wikipedia:All pages by title (for Special:Allpages)
- Wikipedia:!Long articles (for Special:Longpages)
- Wikipedia:!Most wanted articles (for Special:Wantedpages)
- Wikipedia:!Orphaned articles (for Special:Lonelypages)
- Wikipedia:!Dead-end pages (for Special:Deadendpages)
- Wikipedia:!Short articles (for Special:Shortpages)
- All pages in the MediaWiki namespace except for the unprotected ones.
Various template pages
- Template:Cc-by
- Template:Cc-by-nc
- Template:Cc-by-nc-sa
- Template:Cc-by-nd
- Template:Cc-by-nd-nc
- Template:Cc-by-sa
- Template:Cc-nc
- Template:Cc-nc-sa
- Template:Cc-nd
- Template:Cc-sa
- Template:CompactTOC
- Template:CompactTOC2
- Template:CompactTOCwithnumbers
- Template:Controversial
- Template:Copyrighted
- Template:CopyrightedFreeUse
- Template:CopyrightedFreeUseProvided
- Template:CrownCopyright
- Template:Disambig
- Template:Disputed
- Template:Fairuse
- Template:GFDL
- Template:GPL
- Template:Ifd
- Template:LGPL
- Template:LandRegistryCopyright
- Template:LearningandSkillsCouncilCopyright
- Template:NHSCopyright
- Template:NPOV
- Template:NationalAuditOfficeCopyright
- Template:Noncommercial
- Template:PAphoto
- Template:PD
- Template:PD-US
- Template:PD-USGov
- Template:PermissionAndFairUse
- Template:QualificationsandCurriculumAuthorityCopyright
- Template:Sandbox
- Template:Sitesupportpage
- Template:TeacherTrainingAuthorityCopyright
- Template:Test
- Template:Unverified
- Template:Verifieduse
- Template:Wiktionary
- Template:Winad
- Template:Vandal
- Template:Vprotected
User pages
User pages sometimes become targets for vandalism, and may be protected upon request of the user associated with the page if this is a serious problem.
- User:RickK
- User:Danny
- User:Gerald Farinas
- User:Kaihsu
- User:Dori
- User:Olivier
- User:Neutrality
- User:GeneralPatton
- User:PMelvilleAustin
Subpages and boilerplates
Some users have created boilerplate pages in their user namespace and protected them from editing. The appropriateness of doing this is disputed.
- User:Eloquence/Boilerplate texts
- User:RickK/stuff
- User:RickK/temp
- User:RickK/Sam Spade
- User:RickK/EDGE
- User:Snoyes/boiler
- User:David Newton/Bird Dispute
- User:Blankfaze/Greet
- User:Blankfaze/VW
- User:Lupo/Do not copyvio
- User:Lupo/Img Src
- User:Lupo/Welcome
- User:Plato/Welcome
- User:Neutrality/Welcome
- User:Neutrality/Vandal
- User:Raul654/archive
- User:Cryptfiend64/for school
- User:Gerald Farinas/index
- User:Davidcannon/Index
- User:Davidcannon/Index-1
- User:Davidcannon/Honours
- User:Davidcannon/Biotable
- User:Rdsmith4/sig
- User:Arminius/olduserpage
- User:Silsor/Sam Hocevar
- User:Dori/Disclaimers
- User:Dori/Copyrights
- User:Taxman/Copyrights
User talk pages
User talk pages should only be protected in cases of persistent vandalism, and then only for as brief a period as possible.