Full protection disables editing for everyone except administrators. Fully protected media files cannot be overwritten by new uploads except by administrators. Pages may be full protected
indefinitely if they are heavily used images or frequently transcluded templates to prevent vandalism. Indefinite full protection may also be used for pages which should not be modified for copyright or legal reasons, such as
Commons:GNU Free Documentation License.
Pages experiencing edit warring as the result of a dispute may be
temporarily protected. During this time, administrators should only make significant changes if there is consensus to do so. Any proposed changes should be discussed on the talk page. Such requests may, if they are immediate and uncontroversial, be accompanied by the
{{Editprotected}} tag to attract administrators' attention.
Template protection is used on higher risk templates, such as those with a high transclusion count or those with licensing information. Templates under this protection can only be edited by administrators and those with the
template editor user right.
Semi-protection disables editing for anonymous users and registered accounts less than four days old. This is the most common type of protection and is commonly used to prevent IP vandalism.
Move protection protects the page solely from being moved. By default, fully protected pages are also move protected.
Cascading protection fully protects all pages
transcluded on the protected page, including any images and their file description page, and any templates. Due to the widespread and powerful nature of cascading protection, its usage should be kept to a minimum. On Commons, cascading protection should only be used in rare situations where there's a consensus to do so.
In the past, it wasn't possible to protect nonexistent pages from being created. As a workaround, these pages
were transcluded on a page that had cascading protection. It is now possible to protect pages using MediaWiki's built-in protection of nonexistent pages, which is applied in the same manner as ordinary protection. However, the old method has not been abandoned completely.
Cascading semiprotection is
disabled, because it enabled non-sysops to fully protect pages by transcluding them.
Upload protection might be used to prevent overwriting of files that are either heavily used across Wikimedia projects (e.g. template icons) or used in a dangerous location (e.g. wiki's main pages) in order to prevent vandalism. These protections might be indefinitely or temporary, for example only as long as a file is on a wiki's main page. For “heavily used” files [upload=sysop] and (to prevent malicious or accidental moves) [move=sysop] should be used. [edit=sysop] is not needed (and not useful since it, for example, does not allow category changes) if just the file's contents are important (e.g. if only very few views of the file page can be expected as it happens in non-linked template use).
