Wikipedia:New admin school/Protecting deleted pages

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Administrators sometimes have to protect pages due to revert wars or vandalism, though occasionally, administrators also need to protect non-existent pages to prevent them for being created/recreated. This is known as salting, after the process of salting the earth.

For example, in the case of an article that went through a deletion discussion, the consensus was to delete, and it is continually remade after the AfD, the page will need to be protected from editing. Another example where salting is required is when vandals continue to create a disruptive page.

Contents 1 Salting a page 1.1 Transclusion 1.2 Protect tab 2 See also

Salting a page

Non-existent pages may be protected, for any length of time. Administrators may apply protection to non-existent pages with the same procedure as with all other pages. Administrators should not use creation protection as a pre-emptive measure, but only in response to actual events.

There are two ways to protect a non-existent page:

• Transcluding the page onto a page with cascading protection enabled
• Protecting the page by using the protect button

Transclusion

To protect a non-existent page using transclusion, we will use two test pages: NAS Transclusionist test page and NAS Transclusionee test page.

1. Ensure that NAS Transclusionist test page is fully-protected with cascading protection enabled.
2. Add "{{protected title|Wikipedia:New admin school/Protecting deleted pages/Transclusionee}}" onto the page.
3. View Wikipedia:New admin school/Protecting deleted pages/Transclusionee.
4. On the page, you will see a notice informing you that the page has been protected due to transclusion, and the page that is transcluding the protection to the non-existent article will be listed.

To unprotect the non-existent page, simply remove {{protected title|Wikipedia:New admin school/Protecting deleted pages/Transclusionee}} from NAS Transclusionist test page.

However, this form of protecting a page is now obsolete due to the "protect button" feature for non-existent pages, which was implemented in December 2007.

Protect tab

The way to protect a non-existent page is very similar to protecting a regular page. We will use the following test page: →Protect & salt test page.

1. Go to Wikipedia:New admin school/Salting/Protect salt.
2. At the top of the page, click the protect button.
3. On the next page, you will see a box: it is titled create which allows protection for creation of the article.
4. To semi-protect the article from creation, select block new and unregistered users in the create box. Although IPs cannot create pages anyway, registered users who are below the autoconfirmed level will not be able to create the page. Selecting block all non-admin users will prevent non-admins from creating the page.
5. In the box titled expires, you can type the length of time the page is to be protected for. For example, 1 week, or 6 hours. However, it is unlikely an expiry will be needed for the protection of a non-existent article.
6. In the box titled reason, type in the reason why you are preventing the page from creation.
7. Press the confirm button

To unprotect the page, follow the next steps:

1. Go to the article you wish to unprotect. For practice, we will use →Protect & salt test page
2. At the top of the page, click the unprotect button.
3. On the next page, you will see a box: it is titled create which allows unprotection for creation of the article.
4. In the create box, select Allow all users.
5. The expires box must be left blank.
6. In the reason box, type in why you are allowing the page to be open for creation
7. Press the confirm button.

Note: A related page to read is Wikipedia:Protected deleted pages.

See also

• Wikipedia:New admin school/Protecting

v • d • e New admin school Articles Accountcreator granting and revoking · Blocking · Deleting · Protecting · Protecting deleted pages (Salting) · Rollback · Rollback granting and revoking · Viewing deleted pages and contributions · Admin how-to · Advice for new administrators · Reading list Policies Administrator policy (WP:ADMIN) · Deletion policy (WP:DEL) · Blocking policy (WP:BLOCK) · Banning policy (WP:BAN) · Protection policy (WP:PROTECT)