User:BobHammero/Sandbox/Making the Policies Not Suck/Protection of Pages

Protection of Pages

Protection of pages is restricted to Moderators due to the inherent nature of the action — protections would not be useful if regular users could protect and unprotect pages at will. The following guidelines indicate the rules that govern Moderators and page protection.

Moderators may only protect pages that users have requested be protected on UDWiki:Moderation/Protections, or (for a short period, and without the need for a protection request) high-visibility pages that are undergoing repeated vandalism. Before a page is protected, it is expected that the Moderator will ensure that there is good reason for its protection — these include protracted edit wars, and constant vandalism by multiple users on a high-visibility page. Further, except in the instance of heavy vandalism mentioned above, Moderators may not protect a page that they themselves have requested be protected. It is part of a Moderator's responsibility to check these pages often and serve any pending requests, subject to the guidelines above.

In the event of protection, a Moderator is expected to protect the page in whatever state the page was in at the time the request is reviewed, regardless of its original state.

In some circumstances, protections on a scheduled basis may be required as part of a system on the wiki. In this case, it is not expected that each protection be requested through the Moderation pages. Instead, the schedule should be approved by the Community at the Schedules section of UDWiki:Moderation/Protections. Approved schedules are listed in the following Subsection.

Scheduled Protections

• Suggestion Day Page Protection - Each Suggestion day vote page will be protected after its given voting period, and after the intro template has been replaced. Approved 11 Dec 2005.
• Policy Discussion Protection - Polices on policy discussion for which voting has ended, and their talk pages, will be protected. Approved 23 Aug 2006.
• Historical Groups Protection - Groups that are listed in Category:Historical Groups, and their talk pages. Approved 8 Sept 2006.
• Suggestions Archives Protection - The suggestions archives of undecided, peer rejected (after voting for the days have closed) and the previous days archives. Approved 8 Sept 2006.
• Banned Users Protection - Users who have been banned should have their user pages, user talk pages, and any subpages of their user pages or user talk pages protected for the duration of their bans. For example, a user banned for 24 hours would have his or her pages protected for 24 hours, and a user banned permanently would have his or her pages protected permanently. Approved 11 Sept 2006.

Editing of Protected Pages

As a subset of their Moderation powers, Moderators also have the ability to edit protected pages. Given that Moderators and Bureaucrats are the only users who can edit protected pages, it is expected that Moderators take care to edit protected pages only in good faith, and not without good reason. Moderators are explicitly given the right to edit a page that has been protected due to constant vandalism, and changes are necessary to revert the vandalism. Requests for a Moderator to edit a protected page should be made on the specific page's Talk page.