Page protection is the ability to limit who can edit a page. Administrators have the ability to both protect and unprotect pages should the need for either arise on a wiki.

Uses

The majority of pages on a wiki should remain unprotected so to encourage all users to participate. Places where you may want to use protection may include:

• Protecting highly vandalised pages, such as the main page on busy wikis.
  
• Maintaining the integrity of the site's wordmark and favicon.
• Protecting the often-used texts in the MediaWiki namespace (these are protected automatically).
• Protecting documents such as minutes or policies that have gone through a formal approval process.

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.

Protection levels

There are four protection levels admins can use when protecting a page.

• Semi-protection: protection of a page against editing by an unregistered or non-autoconfirmed user.
• Full protection: protection of a page against editing by a non-admin.
• Cascading protection: protection of a page from editing by a non-admin, as well as any other pages on the wiki linked to on the page.
• Move protection: protection of a page against moving by a non-admin.

Step-by-Step

Protecting a page

• To protect a page, photo, template, or other protectable page, click on the arrow on the “Edit” button next to the title to produce a dropdown menu. Then click “Protect.”
• When the protection screen appears, you can set the protection level, as talked about in the previous section. Do this by checking which level you want.
• You may want the page move protection to be set at a different level than the editing protection. By default, they are the same. To set a different level, select the check box in the “Move” section, then choose which protection level you would like.
• To set cascading protection, click the check box next to “Protect pages included in this page (cascading protection)”
• Select a default reason for protection in the drop down menu, or add in your own and/or additional reason in the box below.
• Click “Confirm” to save your changes.

Unprotect

• To unprotect a protected page, again click on the arrow on the “Edit” button.
• You can alter the protection level on the protection screen.
• Select a default reason for unprotection in the drop down menu, or add in your own and/or additional reason in the box below.
• Click “Confirm” to save your changes.

Cascading Protection

Cascading protection is a form of page protection which allows you to protect a page so that all templates and images on the page will also be protected without needing to protect them individually. When a template is vandalized, especially on a page which uses many templates, it may not be immediately obvious which page/template needs to be fixed, prolonging the amount of time that the page remains vandalized.

To use cascading protection, Just click the "protect" link as usual; cascade protect is there among normal protection options. The protection level must be "sysop" in order to activate cascading protection; it will not work at the "autoconfirmed" level, which only affects new and unregistered users.

Advice

• Do not make the common mistake of protecting pages unnecessarily.
• Do not protect a page you are involved in an edit dispute over. Admin powers are not editor privileges - admins should only act as servants to the user community at large.
• Avoid favoring one version of the article over another, unless one version is vandalism.
• Temporarily protected pages should not be left protected for very long.
• Talk pages and user talk pages are not protected except in extreme circumstances.
• 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.

Next pages

• Learn about protecting a wiki.
• Read the administrators' how-to guide.

Further Help and Feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Help:Wikia Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Help:Contacting Wikia for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article