Tardis:Protection policy: Difference between revisions

A locked article is one that you cannot edit. The number of locked articles on this wiki is extremely small, much smaller even than the number of protected pages. Most locked articles aren't really "articles" at all — they tend to be what are called "templates" — essentially shortcuts that allow you to use one word in the place of dozens of lines of [[help:wiki markup|wiki markup]]. The kinds of templates that get locked are ones that ''other'' templates depend on to work, or ones that have complicated code.

For instance, the template, {{tl|YearNav}}, is a constituent part of {{tl|Timeline}}. If {{tl|Timeline}} is on the page [[1987]], for instance, {{tl|YearNav}} tells {{tl|Timeline}} to display the ten years surrounding 1987. At the same time, {{tl|YearNav}} does nothing without {{tl|Timeline}} in pace. Thus both are locked because they're co-dependent templates. ({{tl|YearNav}} is also locked because it's a fairly sophisticated piece of coding.)

In addition to locking "code pages", we also sometimes — but reasonably rarely — lock down policy pages or help pages, too. These sorts of pages tend to get rather quickly locked if vandals attack such a page repeatedly within a short span of time. After all, we want people to be able to depend upon our help pages and policy pages — like this one — being in good, readable shape.

The rarest type of locking happens when there's a [[tardis:editing policy#Edit wars|edit war]] on a regular page. That is, two or more users might continually overwrite each other's contributions because they strongly believe the ''other'' person is wrong. In such cases we will temporarily lock a page to help both sides cool down.  

Finally, we also occasionally lock pages about stories that have not been released yet. You can read more about that case at [[tardis:spoiler policy|our spoiler policy page]].

Fundamentally, locking is not about an administrator trying to prevent useful editing; it's about preventing bad-faith editing. It's definitely not about an administrator using his or her power to make sure that his or her edits of an article are protected against ''your'' edits.

As with normal protection, above, locking is also not always obvious. The act of actually locking a page and flagging it with a red tag (as seen above and to the left) are two separate things. Also since most locked pages aren't normal article pages, most locked pages don't get a visible tag.