Help:Page protection

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 arise.

Uses

The majority of pages on a wikia should remain unprotected to encourage all users to participate.

Places where you may want to use protection may include:

Protecting frequently vandalised pages, such as the main page on busy communities.
Maintaining the integrity of the site's wordmark and favicon.
Protecting community policies that have been set in stone.
Templates containing complex code or are necessary for a particular wiki.

Temporary protection might be 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.

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 wikia linked to on the page.
Move protection: protection of a page against moving by a non-admin.

Step by step

Protecting pages

To protect a page, photo, template, click on the arrow on the "Edit" button next to the title to produce a dropdown menu. Then click "Protect".
On the protection page that then appears, you can set the desired protection level.
You may want the page move protection to be set at a different level than the editing protection. By default, they match. 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 dropdown menu, or add in your own reason in the box below.
Click "Confirm" to save your changes.

Unprotect

To unprotect or change the protection for a specific page, use the Edit button dropdown to visit the protection page for it.
Remove or alter the protection options.
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.
Temporarily protected pages should not be left protected for very long.
Talk pages and user talk pages should not be protected except in extreme circumstances.
On a wiki where it is required to have an account in order to edit, be aware that semi-protected pages may not be useful. A majority of the editors on that wiki are likely to already have reached autoconfirmed status.

Next pages

Learn about protecting an entire wikia.
Read the administrators' how-to guide.

Further help and feedback

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