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Pending changes protection is a tool used to preventvandalism and certain other recurrent nuisances on Wikipedia from being viewable to the general public[1] while allowinggood-faith users to make constructive changes. This protection level can be used as an alternative tosemi-protection orfull protection, each of which fully restricts and disallows these users from being able to make any changes.
Pending change protection is intended for – and best used on – articles and pages that are experiencing a sudden high level ofdisruptive edits from new or unregistered users, but are rarely or infrequently edited otherwise. It may be used to protect articles against persistent vandalism, violations of thebiographies of living persons policy, andcopyright violations.
Any pages currently under pending changes protection that are edited byunregistered users ornew user accounts are saved, but are marked aspending changes that are awaiting review. Articles with any pending changes will display the most recentaccepted revision (orstable change) to the general public, while logged-in users will see the most recent pending change. When a pending change is reviewed and accepted by apending changes reviewer (also called a "reviewer") or anadministrator, it becomes anaccepted revision and hence becomes viewable to the general public just like a normal change would.
Pending changes are visible in the page history, where they are marked as "pending review". When editors who are not reviewers make changes to an article with pending changes, their edits are also saved as a pending change and hence are not visible to the general public until they are reviewed.Unregistered and logged-in users who click the"edit this page" tab will be presented with the latest revision to modify as usual. If there are pending changes awaiting review, there will be a drop-down box next to the article title pointing to the pending changes.
While pending changes protection can be used as a first resort when handling disruptive edits to an article or page, there are relatively few articles on Wikipedia with this type of protection.
| For the policy on applying pending changes protection, seeWikipedia:Protection policy § Pending changes protection. This section is intended to supplement or clarify the policy. If they disagree, please defer to the policy ordiscuss the option of changing it. |
Administrators may apply pending changes protection to pages that are subject to heavy and persistentvandalism, violations of thebiographies of living persons policy, or the insertion of content thatviolates Wikipedia's policy oncopyrights.
In addition, administrators may apply temporary pending changes protection on pages that are subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) when blocking individual users becomes an unfeasible option. As with other forms of protection, the expiration of the protection should be set proportional to the problem at-hand, as well as proportional to the likelihood that a high-level of disruptive edit attempts will have passed. Applying pending changes protection with an indefinite duration should only be used in cases of severe and long-term disruption.
When considering applying pending changes protection to an article or page, the following situations should be considered before doing so:
Editors without administrator privileges canrequest page protection if the above criteria are met. The removal of pending changes protection from a page can be performed by any administrator, or requested atrequests for unprotection.
| For the guideline on reviewing edits, seeWikipedia:Reviewing pending changes. This section is intended to supplement or clarify the guideline. If they disagree, please defer to the guideline ordiscuss the option of changing it. |
The process of reviewing pending changes is intended as a quick check to verify and ensure that they don't contain obviously inappropriate content, including:
Pending changes reviewers are sufficiently experienced users who are granted the ability to review and accept pending changes, which converts them into accepted revisions. Reviewers have a similar level of trust as users with therollback permissions, and are integrated as part of the administrator toolset. Potential reviewers should be able to recognize vandalism and contrast them from edits that arenot vandalism, be familiar with basic content policies such as the policy on the biographies of living people, and have a reasonable level of experience with editing Wikipedia. Proficiency with thereviewing guideline, where the reviewing process and the expectations for pending changes reviewers are detailed, is highly recommended.
Reviewers and administrators will see a yellow watchlist banner on their watchlist whenever there is a pending edit needing review. If a reviewer or administrator wishes to disable it, they can paste#mw-fr-watchlist-pending-notice {display: none} totheir common.css page.
The review and acceptance of a pending change by a reviewer is not to be considered anendorsement; it merely indicates that the edit has been checked for obvious problems such as those listed above.
The pending changes reviewer rights are granted upon request at the Wikipediarequests for permissions page. While any administrator has the technical ability to revoke or remove the pending changes reviewer permission from a user account, this removal should occur only as the result of consensus from a discussion, or when an editor requests the removal of the permissions from their own account. Any discussions primarily regarding the removal of the reviewer permission should normally occur on theAdministrators' noticeboard. A discussion with the involved editor and/or a request for a second opinion at thePending changes talk page is recommended before starting a discussion to formally request a revocation or removal of the permissions from a user.
Reviewing of pending changes should be resolved within reasonable time limits (at most a few hours). The pending changes backlog can be viewed atSpecial:PendingChanges, and backlog management should be coordinated at a community level. As of February 2025,[update] pending changes are rarely left unreviewed for longer than 1-2 days, and the pending changes backlog is usually empty.
In the edit history, accepted revisions are highlighted in order to improve the list's readability. Additionally, visible tags are applied to indicate why particular edits were accepted ("automatically accepted"/"accepted by [Username]"). This highlighting is still permanently lost for past changes on a given page whenever the pending changes setting is disabled or allowed to expire.[2] Because of this, when pending changes are enabled on a page again later, the highlighting will only be applied tonewer changes that were made afterwards. Therefore, it is generally a good choice toleave pending changes enabled when other protection levels are applied to the same page.[3]
| F | Protection level | New or unregistered editors | Confirmed | Extended confirmed | Template editor[β] | Admin | Interface admin | Appropriate for... |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Editing | None | Normal editing | The vast majority of pages.[γ] | |||||
 Pending changes | Can edit Changes are only visible to logged-in users until reviewed by apending changes reviewer or administrator.[δ] | Can edit Changes are visible to everyone if there aren't any unreviewed pending changes. Otherwise, they are only visible to logged-in users until reviewed by a pending changes reviewer or administrator.[δ] | Can edit If there are any unreviewed pending changes, the administrators will be required to review them before they can edit the page.[δ] | Infrequently edited pages with high levels of vandalism,BLP violations, edit-warring, or other disruption from unregistered and new users. | ||||
 Semi | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Pages that have been persistently vandalized by anonymous and newly registered users. Some highly visible templates and modules. | |||||
 Extended confirmed | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Contentious topics authorized byArbCom, pages where semi-protection has failed, orhigh-risk templates where template protection would be too restrictive. | |||||
 Template | Cannot edit | Normal editing | High-risk or very-frequently used templates and modules.Some high-risk pages outside oftemplate space. | |||||
 Full | Cannot edit | Can edit[ε] | Pages with persistent disruption from extended confirmed accounts. | |||||
 Office | Can edit[ζ] | Pages that the Foundation has determined to be exceptionally sensitive. | ||||||
 Cascade[η] | Can edit | Particularly visible pages, such as theMain Page, to prevent vandalism to pages that aretranscluded onto them. | ||||||
 Interface[θ] | Cannot edit | Normal editing | Scripts, stylesheets, and similar objects fundamental to operation of the site or that are in other editors'user spaces. | |||||
Creating pages | None | Cannot create[ι][κ] | Can create | The vast majority of page titles.[γ] | ||||
 Create[λ] | Cannot create | Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups. | Can create | Pages that have been repeatedly and problematically re-created. | ||||
Moving pages | None | Cannot move | Can move | The vast majority of pages.[γ] | ||||
 Move | Cannot move | Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups. | Can move | Pages that have been the subject of move wars. Pages that are edit-protected are usually also move-protected at the same level. | ||||
Uploading files | None | Cannot upload[κ] | Can upload | The vast majority of file names.[γ] | ||||
 Upload | Cannot upload | Adjustable It may be applied to neither, either, or both groups | Can upload | Files that have been repeatedly uploaded after deletion | ||||
Below is a list of past discussions and polls relating to the Pending Changes feature: