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The official policy related to applying and removing semi-protection is located at Wikipedia:Protection policy. This rough guide describes how the semi-protection policy is currently being applied by administrators. Every case is different, and 'passing' every criterion does not mean a page must be protected; administrators are at liberty to use their discretion.

General considerations

An editor considering requesting semi-protection for a page, and an administrator considering applying semi-protection must assess each situation individually before deciding on a course of action.

• Is the problem vandalism or an editing conflict?
• How much vandalism is taking place?
• Is the vandalism from a wide range of accounts/IPs?
• Are any constructive edits being made to the page, especially from unregistered users?
• Is the problem on a high-profile, widely watchlisted page?
• Does the problem have a detrimental effect on how Wikipedia looks to the public?
• Is the subject of the page a living person?
• What is the quality of this article? Higher quality articles are more damaged by vandalism than similar low quality articles, and there is also less likelihood that a given edit will improve the article. In addition, since higher quality articles are more complete, there is less likelihood that the article will need to be edited in the first place.

Criteria for semi-protection

Articles subject to heavy and continued vandalism can be semi-protected. There are no explicit rules that determine the level of vandalism that is necessary to trigger semi-protection. Administrators should use their best judgment to determine if semi-protection is warranted. Here are some criteria that may be helpful to determine if semi-protection is appropriate:

• All or almost all of the vandalism is coming from unregistered users.
• Unregistered editors should be making very few contributions to the article compared to the amount of vandalism coming from unregistered editors. The negative effects of semi-protection on discouraging positive contributions should be more of a concern than the positive effect of decreasing vandalism.
• There are regularly many new vandals, therefore it would be a huge unending task to notify and warn all the vandals individually.
• According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies#Conclusions from study 1, on average 5% of edits to a page are vandalism. So, 5% is the level of vandalism to be expected, and semi-protection should not be applied in this case. More than usual levels of vandalism occur when anything over 5% of edits constitute vandalism. If each vandal edit was followed by a revert, without any further edits to the page, then 50% of edits would be vandalism. More than 50% is rare, but may occur when multiple vandalism edits are reverted by a single edit. The higher the percentage of vandal edits, the greater the need for protection.

Determining the duration for semi-protection

If semi-protection is to be tried, its first application should be for a short duration, a few days or a week. If vandalism continues after the protection expires it can be added for a longer duration. At some point an administrator might determine that the semi-protection should be made indefinite. This is reserved for only the most vandalised articles, and any administrator is free to lift 'indefinite' protections.

• Pages that are indefinitely semi-protected must have been semi-protected previously. This shows that the problem is on-going, and that temporary semi-protection does not have a lasting effect.
• Vandalism that resumes very shortly after semi-protection is removed demonstrates that the page is a popular target for random vandalism. Such pages are likely candidates for indefinite semi-protection.
• If vandalism is related to a current event, the semi-protection should be lifted after the event is out of the public eye. Perhaps the protection will no longer be needed.
• The only way to determine if ongoing semi-protection is still necessary is to remove the protection and see if wide-scale vandalism resumes. For this reason, all pages that are indefinitely semi-protected can have their protection removed from time to time. After removing the protection, the administrator should monitor the page.