Wikipedia talk:Protection policy

This page is not for proposing or discussing edits to protected pages.

To request or propose a change to a page that you are not able to edit, place a message on its talk page. If the page is fully protected, you may attract the attention of an admin to make the change by placing the {{edit fully-protected}} template above your request. Requests placed here will probably be removed or ignored.

If the page in question and its talk page are both protected please make your edit request at Wikipedia:Request for edit.
To request that a page be protected or unprotected, see Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.
To suggest that a move-protected page be renamed, see Wikipedia:Requested moves.
To request that a deleted page protected against re-creation be re-created or restored, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.
For information about protecting the main page featured article or other featured content, see Wikipedia:Main Page featured article protection.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Protection policy page.

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The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Please review policy editing recommendations before making any substantive change to this page. Always remember to keep cool when editing, and don't panic.

This page is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

"Full protected" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Full protected has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 7 § Full protected until a consensus is reached. mwwv ^converse∫_edits 13:05, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Semi-Protected" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Semi-Protected has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 20 § Semi-Protected until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 12:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indefinite semi-protection

I was wondering, is it in the 'spirit' of wikis? I mean, as generally, it says it should be applied to articles that "are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism", which is the norm with frequent targets, with increasing frequency if persisting, but some articles have been semi-protected for decades, even... so, technically, one can't even find out if they'd still be subject to such persistence, and even notable biographies in 2010 might not be as much in 2025 (and if they are they could always be re-protected)... I'm just wondering if this is sensible, generally, as there are quite a few with such long-term protections... ~Lofty abyss 16:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At one point last year I went through and unprotected a few thousand pages that had indefinite salting, mainly because the titles were either super-long (generally created by LTAs) or so highly-specific to an event or name from a decade+ ago that it made little sense to continue the protection. There are certainly live articles that should probably keep their semi, but I do agree that — provided an admin or interested editor will keep tabs on it — some of the indef semiprots on some of these pages from a decade ago can probably be dropped. It might be worth making a list of pages you think could have their protections dropped, if only to get eyes and to have a record of which ones were done (if they get unprotected). Primefac (talk) 12:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Outside of sanctioned topic areas, most indefinitely protected pages had a long-term pattern of disruption, usually years long, before they were indefinitely protected (and, well, that's basically the policy).

Anyhow, it's a worthwhile exercise to review possible unprotections and go through the unprotection process (which is mostly "go through the protecting administrator if they're still an active administrator") for indefinite protections that seem unlikely to be necessary. We actually have a fair number of users that do that already.

One issue I've seen is that pages will sometimes be unprotected because the protection seems to be unnecessary, but then significant disruptive editing resumes and nobody notices that the protection should be restored for months or even years. For that reason, it doesn't hurt to review unprotections periodically too. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:33, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redirection links (shortcut links)

Fix the redirect links that lead you to a redirect page to instead be the redirected page (not the redirection page)? Alimsts (talk) 13:56, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

shortcut links i mean Alimsts (talk) 13:56, 24 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Alimsts: Are you commenting about the protection policy? If yes, which links are an issue? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 01:38, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why are the links in shortcut boxes leading to redirect pages but the redirect shows a link instead of actually taking you there? Alimsts (talk) 09:58, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hold on I get it they loop round Alimsts (talk) 09:58, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When the link in the box takes you to the redirect page, this is an intentional feature of Template:Shortcut, and is nothing to do with the protection policy. Changes to that template should be suggested at its talk page, because this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:Protection policy page.

The behaviour of the redirect page itself is coded into the MediaWiki software at a fairly fundamental level; and not only is that also out of scope for this page, it is nothing that we can alter anywhere within Wikipedia. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:36, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

👍 Alimsts (talk) 07:53, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on extended confirmed

Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed definition. It is a proposal to change WP:XC from 500 edits + 30 days to 500 edits + 90 days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]