Wikiquote:Protection policy

This page is a draft policy on Wikiquote. It is available for consideration by the community, but does not yet reflect community consensus. Editors and sysops may follow the policies proposed here at their own discretion. Please edit this page or make a comment on Wikiquote talk:Protection policy.

Edit +/-

Although we must change the ways we protect our
wiki, we must also guard against policies that
appear attractive but offer little real protection
and may even impede our ability to protect ourselves.

— After Richard Burr (original has 'country' in place of 'wiki')

Shortcuts

Administrators have the ability to protect pages or images such that they cannot be edited or moved. These capabilities are only to be used in limited circumstances.

Policy

A sysop may protect the following types of pages:
1. Highly visible pages, like the Main Page, to prevent casual edits.
2. Pages involved in move or edit wars, to halt the conflict.
3. Pages experiencing frequent vandalism, to suspend the attacks.
4. Pages created or edited contrary to Wikiquote policy or community will, to enforce such policies or community decisions.
Be aware the protection in situations 2, 3, and 4 should be temporary.

If a sysop is involved in an edit war, he or she should not protect the page.
A sysop may protect a page, if necessary, without discussion, following the procedure described in this page.
In general, a sysop should not edit temporarily protected pages, except to revert obviously vandalized pages to appropriate versions.

Types of protection

There are several types of protection below; the duration of each protection can either be temporary or indefinite (permanent).

Full protection

Full protection prevents a page from being edited by anyone except administrators.

Temporary full protection may be used on pages that are subject to an edit or move war (dispute), while indefinite full protection may be used on the following:

Highly visible pages, such as the Main Page.
Templates used in the system (MediaWiki) interface.

Autopatroller protection

Autopatroller protection prevents a page from being edited by anyone except administrators and users with autopatrol rights. This protection should be used when semi-protection has proven to be ineffective in combating persistent disruption (such as vandalism, sockpuppetry, edit wars, etc.). It may also be used to protect highly visible templates and Lua modules whereas full protection would otherwise be too restrictive.

Semi-protection

Semi-protection prevents a page from being edited by unregistered users (temporary accounts) or accounts that are not autoconfirmed or confirmed (less than four days old). This protection should be used on pages that are subject to significant vandalism or other disruption.

Move protection

Move protection prevents a page from being moved by anyone except administrators. Move protection commonly includes:

Pages subject to persistent page-move vandalism.
Pages subject to a page-name dispute.
Pages that have no reason to be moved, such as the administrators' noticeboard or the village pump.

Cascading protection

Cascading protection fully protects a page, and extends that protection through transcluded pages, whether directly or indirectly.

Creation protection (salting)

Administrators can protect pages from being created, which is commonly known as creation protection or salting. It can be used on pages which have been deleted but repeatedly recreated. Alternatively, an administrator may add a title entry at Wikiquote:Protected titles, or use the title blacklist with regular expressions.

A list of protected titles can be found at Special:ProtectedTitles.

Requesting (un)protection

If you think a page should (or should no longer) be protected, you may make a request at the administrators' noticeboard.