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Tardis:Protection policy: Difference between revisions
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intermediate save; protection defined, etc.
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Our '''protection policy''' defines what protection is, the circumstances under which an article might be protected, and gives editors suggestions on how to contribute to articles which are protected. | |||
==Definition== | |||
An article is said to be "under protection" when [[Help:administrators|administrators]] restrict the kind of access other editors have to it. | |||
==Protected articles== | The vast majority of pages on this wiki — indeed, on ''any'' wiki — are not protected in any way. Anyone, regardless of whether they have an account here, can change the content of most pages. This freedom is one of the central philosophies of wiki editing. However, there are some pages which are so fundamental to the coherent organisation of this wiki, that administrators must defend them against frivolous editing, such as spamming or [[tardis:vandalism policy|vandalism]]. Thus, you may occasionally run into pages which have either been '''protected''' (sometimes called ''semi-protected'' ) or '''locked''' (sometimes called ''fully protected''). | ||
===Protected articles=== | |||
[[file:ProtectedTab.png|left|25px]] | [[file:ProtectedTab.png|left|25px]] | ||
When an article is protected, it cannot be edited by anonymous (IP) editors and registered users who are not logged in. It also cannot be edited by extremely new | When an article is protected, it cannot be edited by anonymous (IP) editors and registered users who are not logged in. It also cannot be edited by extremely new editors ''even if they '''are''' registered. | ||
The usual reason for placing this level of protection on a page is that an administrator has deemed it to be a page that might be vulnerable to attack by vandals. Many times, vandalism is carried out by people who think that the "anonymity" of the internet will allow them to "get away" with tearing things down. On other occasions, vandalism is the result of a thing called a [[help:bot|bot]] — a robotic programme that automatically trawls sites looking for vulnerabilities. In both cases, protection — or ''technically'' but confusingly "semi-protection" — is an effective deterrent. | |||
====What protection isn't===== | |||
Protection does '''not''' mean that you can't edit an article. It means only that you have to be logged in to edit the article. That said, if your account is less than a month old, you probably will '''not''' be able to edit protected pages directly. | |||
Also, a protected article is ''not necessarily'' obviously protected. The "protected" tag (as seen to the left) is the result of using the template, {{tl|semi-protect)). It is not the result of ''actually'' protecting an article. It is possible to have articles which ''aren't'' protected showing that tag, and articles which ''are'' protected '''not''' showing it. It would be great if the MediaWiki software which powers this wiki ''automatically'' placed a visible sign on a page when an admin protected it. But it doesn't. Our admin ''try'' to make sure that each protected page has a clear sign of its protected status showing, but they're busy people prone to mistakes, just like you. | |||
==Locked articles== | ===Locked articles=== | ||
[[file:LockedTab.png|left|25px]] | [[file:LockedTab.png|left|25px]] | ||
Full protection prevents all users (except admins) from editing an article or page. | Full protection prevents all users (except admins) from editing an article or page. | ||
