Wikipedia:Edit lock

This is an information page.

It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, but rather intends to describe some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

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WP:LOCK

Wikipedia does not use software article locks on pages, because some feel that this would be contrary to the policy and spirit of openness. Page protection is never to be used for closing down an article's normal development and community editing.

{{inuse}} template

On the other hand we do have {{inuse}} tags, which can be used to tell people that you are in making a larger change (within 1 – 180 minutes). Other people can still change the article, but courteous users should leave it alone until you're done. (This "soft lock" has been proposed as a built-in software feature in bugzilla:1510, and is already a feature of other wiki software.) If you do use such a "lock" please be responsive to any inquiries about the lock. The template looks like this:

An editor is changing this project page for a short while. This is called a major change.
Please do not change this article. The person who added this notice will be shown in the change history of this article. If this article has not been changed recently, please remove this template to let others change it. This message is to help stop change conflicts. This article was last changed by FusionSub (10-12-2024 · see diff)

{{simplifying}} template

Also, {{simplifying}} . It's the same as {{inuse}}, but it's used when an article is in the process of being translated or simplified from another language into Simple English one. Again, it should only be used while you are actively working on the article, leaving it up when you aren't may discourage others from improving the article.

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