Help:Editing

MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

Editing refers to the changing of a page by a Wikimedia user. Unless certain restrictions are in effect, such as protection, all pages are editable, by everyone. This is a brief overview of that process. For more information see the links below.

Most frequent Wiki markup explained

This page can be found at mw:Help:Formatting.
This is an interwiki redirect.

Restrictions

Some pages cannot be edited by everyone. A special function known as protection can be applied to a page by administrators, making the said page uneditable to certain classes of users. There are several degrees of protection:

If a page is semiprotected, it can be edited by everyone except IPs and accounts that have not yet been confirmed.
If a page is fully protected, only other admins can make edits to the page.
A page can also be protected so that it cannot be moved.
In some cases, an admin might see fit to protect a page from being created.
For very rare pages, such as the Main Page, "cascading" protection is applied, wherein every page that is transcluded onto a page is protected too.

There are various reasons why a page might be protected. Vandalism and spam can lead to semiprotection, while content wars and other severe cases can lead to full protection. There are other times where Office actions come into play. For the most part, protection is temporary and editing privileges are then restored. In any case, everyone can view the source of any page, irrespective of its level of protection.