Bulbapedia:Protection: Difference between revisions

	This is an official Bulbapedia policy. In a nutshell:
	Administrators can protect a page so that it cannot be edited. To make a change to a protected page, leave a message on the talk page.

As part of the MediaWiki software, pages on Bulbapedia can be protected from editing by users below a certain rank. Below are guidelines both for users and administrators for when a page is to be protected.

For users

Protected pages cannot be edited in any way by normal users; however, the source wikicode of the page can be viewed. Pages that are protected from creation are always protected for a reason; do not try to find a different title to create the page under. Ask an administrator, preferably the one who protected the page, for the reason for the protection.

If there is something on a protected page that should be added or changed, leave a message on the talk page. If nobody has replied to the message or made the change after several days, ask an active admin on their talk page.

There are two levels of protection from editing of a page: pages can be protected from moving or editing by users who are not autoconfirmed, as well as from all who are not on Bulbapedia's staff. The protection from autoconfirmed users is mainly to keep users who have not been around long from editing a page and inserting information which will have to be cleaned up; usually this is not used due to the relatively short time between registration and becoming autoconfirmed.

Protection restricted for administrators only is used most often on Bulbapedia. Protection of a page already created may be due to speculation added to or vandalism of the page, and should not be, in most cases, set to indefinite.

For administrators

Bulbapedia pages are allowed to be protected either indefinitely or with an expiration time. Pages protected with an expiration time are preferred in most instances, such as the case of edit warring or vandalism, though indefinite protection is often afforded to the high-use templates that appear on many of our pages, as well as to pages which should only be edited by administrators, such as pages on policy. A list of times that administrators can protect a page for is provided by default; however, administrators can also protect for arbitrary amounts of time ranging from one second to hundreds of years.

Pages can be separately protected from moving as well as from editing. All Pokémon species pages should be protected from moving, while protection for editing them should expire one year or less from the point of protection.

Always explain why the page has been protected in the protection log. In some cases, this may not be especially clear and it is important that those unable to edit the page know why they have been locked out.