Bharatpedia:Protection policy: Difference between revisions

In some circumstances, pages may need to be '''protected''' from modification by certain groups of editors. Pages are protected when a specific damaging event has been identified that can not be prevented through other means such as a block. Otherwise, Wikipedia India is built on the principle that anyone can edit it, and it, therefore, aims to have as many of its pages as possible open for public editing so that anyone can add material and correct errors. This policy explains in detail the protection types and procedures for page protection and unprotection and when each protection should and should not be applied.

*'''Extended confirmed protection''', also known as '''30/500 protection''', prevents the action by users without 30 days' tenure and 500 edits on the Indian English Wikipedia. It is applied to combat any form of disruption where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective. It should not be applied as a protection level of first resort. Its use is logged at the Administrators' noticeboard.

Applying page protection as a preemptive measure is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia India and is generally not allowed if applied for these reasons. However, brief periods of an appropriate and reasonable protection level are allowed in situations where blatant vandalism or disruption is occurring by multiple users and at a level of frequency that requires its use in order to stop it. The duration of the protection should be set as short as possible, and the protection level should be set to the lowest restriction needed in order to stop the disruption while still allowing productive editors to make changes.

Administrators cannot change or remove the protection for some areas on Wikipedia India which are permanently protected by the MediaWiki software:

Semi-protected pages cannot be edited by unregistered users (IP addresses), as well as accounts that are not autoconfirmed (accounts that are at least four days old and have made at least ten edits to Wikipedia India) or confirmed. Semi-protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent sockpuppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when it occurs on biographies of living persons who have had a recent high level of media interest. An alternative to semi-protection is pending changes, which is sometimes favoured when an article is being vandalized regularly, but otherwise receives a low amount of editing.

When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an unregistered (IP addresses) editor or a new user, the edit is not directly visible to the majority of Wikipedia India readers, until it is reviewed and accepted by an editor with the pending changes reviewer right. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an autoconfirmed user, the edit will be immediately visible to Wikipedia India readers, unless there are pending edits waiting to be reviewed.

Cascading protection fully protects a page, and extends that full protection ''automatically'' to any page that is transcluded onto the protected page, whether directly or indirectly. This includes templates, images and other media that are hosted on the Indian English Wikipedia. Files stored on Commons are ''not'' protected by any other wiki's cascading protection and, if they are to be protected, must be either temporarily uploaded to the English Wikipedia India or explicitly protected at Commons (whether manually or through cascading protection there).  

Originally, two levels of pending changes protection existed, where level{{nbsp}}2 required edits by all users who are not pending changes reviewers to be reviewed.