Commons:Protection policy
Shortcuts:COM:P •COM:PROTECT •COM:PPOLICY
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Administrators can protect a page or file to restrict editing or moving of that page. Such protection may be indefinite or expire after a specified time.
This ability is usually only used to combatvandalism andedit wars and the protection is usually temporary. Some exceptions include heavily used templates and archived user right request pages.
Theprotection log shows a record of which pages have been protected, by whom, and the reason they gave for protection. All the pages that are currently protected are listed onSpecial:Protectedpages. Nonexistent pages that are protected against creation are listed onSpecial:Protectedtitles.
Fully protected pages should be tagged with the appropriateprotection template to inform others and to auto-categorize the page underCategory:Protected. Semi-protected pages are generally not tagged.
Full protection disables editing for everyone except administrators. Fully protected media files cannot be overwritten by new uploads except by administrators. Pages may be full protectedindefinitely if they are heavily used images or frequently transcluded templates to prevent vandalism. Indefinite full protection may also be used for pages which should not be modified for copyright or legal reasons, such asCommons:GNU Free Documentation License.
Pages experiencing edit warring as the result of a dispute may betemporarily protected. During this time, administrators should only make significant changes if there is consensus to do so. Any proposed changes should be discussed on the talk page. Such requests may, if they are immediate and uncontroversial, be accompanied by the{{Editprotected}} tag to attract administrators' attention.
Template protection is used on higher risk templates andLua modules, such as those with a high transclusion count or those with licensing information. Pages under this protection can only be edited by administrators and those with thetemplate editor user right.
Autopatroller protection only allows editing for users with theautopatrolled right. It should only be used where semi-protection has been proven to be ineffective in combating disruption in cases such as persistent vandalism,sockpuppetry andedit wars.
Semi-protection disables editing for anonymous users and registered accounts less than four days old. This is the most common type of protection and is commonly used to prevent IP vandalism.
Move protection protects the page solely from being moved. By default, fully protected pages are also move protected.
Cascading protection fully protects all pagestranscluded on the protected page, including any images and their file description page, and any templates. Due to the widespread and powerful nature of cascading protection, its usage should be kept to a minimum. On Commons, cascading protection should only be used in rare situations where there's a consensus to do so.
In the past, it wasn't possible to protect nonexistent pages from being created. As a workaround, these pageswere transcluded on a page that had cascading protection. It is now possible to protect pages using MediaWiki's built-in protection of nonexistent pages, which is applied in the same manner as ordinary protection. However, the old method has not been abandoned completely.
Cascading semi-protection isdisabled, because it enabled non-sysops to fully protect pages by transcluding them.
Upload protection might be used to prevent overwriting of files that are either heavily used across Wikimedia projects (e.g. template icons) or used in a dangerous location (e.g. wiki's main pages) in order to prevent vandalism. These protections might be indefinitely or temporary, for example only as long as a file is on a wiki's main page. For “heavily used” files[upload=sysop]and (to prevent malicious or accidental moves)[move=sysop] should be used.[edit=sysop] is not needed (and not useful since it, for example, does not allow category changes) if just the file's contents are important (e.g. if only very few views of the file page can be expected as it happens in non-linked template use).