Semi-protection of a page prevents unregistered editors and editors with very new accounts editing that page. "Very new" is currently defined as 4 days.
A page can be temporarily semi-protected by an Administrator, in response to a serious vandalism problem. Administrators may become aware of the vandalism themselves and decide to apply semi-protection, they may be contacted through their Talk page, or they may respond to a request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection or the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, or some other relevant page.
Semi-protection is not to be used as a pre-emptive measure against the threat or probability of vandalism, such as when certain pages suddenly become high profile due to current events or being linked from a high-traffic website. It is also not an appropriate solution to editorial disputes of any kind since it may restrict some editors and not others. Only when there is evidence of a serious problem of vandalism should semi-protection be applied.
Note to Administrators: semi-protection should only be considered if it is the only option left available to solve the problem of vandalism of the page. In other words, just like full protection, it is a last resort, not a pre-emptive measure. In the case of one or two static IP vandals hitting a page, blocking the vandal or vandals is a much better option than semi protection as semi protection causes more collateral damage. Please remember to lift the semi-protection quickly.
To request that semi-protection of an article be lifted, a simple note on the article's talk page or the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents or Wikipedia:Requests for page protection should be sufficient. Requests to lift semi-protection should generally be unnecessary in the same way that unprotection after simple vandalism is generally swiftly handled by an Admin.
Articles that are semi-protected are indicated with {{sprotected}} and listed at Wikipedia:Protected page#Semi-protection.
When not to use semi-protection
Semi-protection is intended to allow good edits to be made even while there would otherwise be a serious vandalism problem on a page. This means that there are some situations that, whilst semi-protection would be technically possible, it is not to be applied. These are mentioned above, and summarized here. Semi-protection:
- Is not to be used to dispel edit warring or revert wars. See the protection policy for how to deal with this.
- Is not intended for pre-emptive protection of articles that might get vandalized. This includes the day's Featured Article which should almost never be protected.
- Is not intended to prohibit anonymous editing in general, and is thus not a solution to run-of-the-mill vandalism.
Talk pages and user talk pages are not protected as a rule, except in extreme circumstances.
How
- In the protection interface, choose "Block new and unregistered users" for editing and/or moving the page as appropriate.
- Add {{sprotected}} to the top of the article. This adds the article to Category:Semi-protected.
- List the page at Wikipedia:Protected page#Semi-protection.
In the exceptional circumstance that you protect a User or user talk page, use {{usertalk-sprotect}} instead.
Tools
- While the recent history of an article is most relevant to this type of protection, this tool is useful for tracking vandalism on a particular article over a longer period, to consider changing status. It's not perfect, however, and can be abused. For instance, it will show a high vandalism rate if a low traffic article gets just one instance of vandalism per day.
See also
- Wikipedia:Protection policy, which deals principally with full-protection, but contains much of Wikipedia's philosophy regarding protection.
- m:Protected pages considered harmful.
- Template:Editprotected, process for protected edit requests applicable to protected pages of any level.