 | This is an essay on protection policy hints for new administrators. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Page protection is my main administrative activity at Wikipedia. These are some thoughts - philosophy, tips, etc. - about how I deal with page protection. They are distilled from "tutorials" I have given to several new admins over the past couple of years. I hope they might be helpful to new admins or admin candidates.
Everybody has their own standards for when a page needs protection, and for how long. This is just my own thinking; other people probably have different approaches. Just as we have "deletionists" and "keepers" at AfD, at protection we tend to have "decliners" ("not enough recent vandalism to justify protection") and "protectors" with regard to page protection. Personally I tend to be more of a "protector" - sympathetic toward the need for protection. That may be a bias from my own experience, when I was the person requesting protection.
I find Twinkle very useful for installing protection. It lists all the options to choose from, and it automatically adds a “protected” icon to the protected page.