Hurricane Wiki:Protection policy


 * Administrators have the ability to "protect" pages such that they cannot be edited except by other admins. This ability is only to be used in limited circumstances as protecting pages is considered harmful.

Policy

 * 1) Do not edit a (temporarily) protected page. If you edit one anyway, please stop when asked to!
 * 2) Add a message to the top of temporarily protected pages.

This ability is used semi-permanently in some cases:
 * Protecting the Main Page from vandalism.
 * Maintaining the integrity of the copyright and license pages.
 * Protecting certain "system administration" pages.
 * Protecting the often-used texts in the MediaWiki namespace.

This ability is also intended to be used temporarily in some cases:
 * Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war", upon request (see below).
 * Protecting a page that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user.
 * Preventing changes to a page while investigating a possible bug in the MediaWiki software.

Note that the protection of any particular version of a page is not intended to show support for that version.

Because wiki pages are supposed to be open to everyone, it's best to leave pages protected for as short at time as possible. Talk pages should never be protected.

Editing protected pages
The policy concerning the editing of protected pages does not apply to the permanently-protected pages. For pages that are only temporarily protected, administrators should never edit the page. Editing the page would constitute an imbalance in privileges between the administrators and the general community. Instead, discuss potential changes on the talk page first, and only make those changes when the page is no longer protected. (Discussing potential changes to permanently-protected pages on the talk page first is also a good idea in certain cases.)

The only cases in which an administrator may make changes to a temporarily-protected page are when he is adding a message or other, similar notice.