Wikipedia:Edit lock

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut WP:INUSE

Wikipedia does not use pre-emptive software article locks on pages, because this would be contrary to the policies of Wikipedia and spirit of openness. Page protection is never to be used for closing down an article's normal development and community editing, and should be used only to prevent actual disruption.

On the other hand, we do have {{in use}} tags, which can be used to alert people that you are in the process of making a larger edit. The article remains open to editing, but courteous users should leave it alone until you're done. The template looks like this:

This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for a little while. To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed. This page was last edited at 18:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC) (7 months ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.

Also, {{intranslation}}. It's the same as {{inuse}}, but it's used when an article is in the process of being translated from another Wikipedia into the English one. Again, it should only be used while you are improving the article.

It also adds Category:Articles in translation as a category in the article, which of course gets removed once the notice is removed, too.

This article is in the process of being translated from another language Wikipedia. In order to reduce edit conflicts, please consider not editing it while translation is in progress.

If a talk page is actively being archived, add {{archiving}} to the top so the archival doesn't clobber edits.

This talk page is currently being archived. To prevent edit conflicts and to ensure your message is actually read, please don't edit this page until this notice is removed. This page was last edited at 18:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC) (7 months ago) by Cullen328. This template is just a polite request, and should be removed if left in place for an extended period of time.