Metroidpedia:Protection policy

Administrators can protect and unprotect pages, including ones that do not exist, to prevent other users from modifying them.

The majority of pages on the wiki should remain publicly editable, and not protected. Pages may, however, be temporarily or permanently protected for legal reasons (for example, license texts should not be changed) or in cases of extreme vandalism or edit warring or abusive re-creation.

Uses

 * Protecting high traffic pages, such as the Main Page.
 * Maintaining the integrity of the site's logo and favicon.
 * Maintaining the integrity of key copyright and license pages.
 * Preventing repeatedly created vandal or spam pages from creation. See Special:ProtectedTitles
 * Protecting the interface and system messages in the MediaWiki namespace (these are protected automatically)

A temporary protection is used for:
 * Enforcing a "cool down" period to stop an "edit war", upon request.
 * Protecting a page or image that has been a recent target of persistent vandalism or persistent edits by a banned user.

There is no need to protect personal .css and .js pages like user/monobook.css because only the accounts associated with these pages (and admins) are able to edit them.

Usage
Most pages and images are unprotected by default, only the site logo and favicons are automatically protected. You can protect editing, moving, or both by checking or unchecking the Unlock move permissions selection box.


 * (default) means any user, whether logged in or anonymous, can edit or move the page.
 * Block unregistered users, or semi-protected, means anonymous users and new accounts cannot edit and/or move pages.
 * Sysops only, or fully-protected, means only administrators may edit and/or move the page.

Pages can also be cascade protected, this will cause all images, pages, or templates transcluded onto the page to be fully protected, even if the main article is only semi-protected.

Rules

 * 1) Do not make the common mistake of protecting pages unnecessarily and especially do not protect any of the main articles so that only administrators can edit them.
 * 2) Do not protect a page you are involved in an edit dispute over. Admin powers are not editor privileges - admins should only act as servants to the Nintendo Wiki's community at large.
 * 3) Talk pages and user talk pages should not be protected except in extreme circumstances such as the user experiencing constant harassment.

Attribution
The original policy page was written by the Wii Sports Wiki.