UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archives/Protecting Templates

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Protecting Templates

Okay, so I've started protecting a few templates that might be vulnerable targets for the vandal bot, per Wrye's and Ratwar's comments above. (See So, great...) So far, I've just created a protection notice: Template:TemProtect, and put it on two pages, Template:! and Template:NPC Summary. (The {{!}} template was already semi-protected, but did not have a category stating this fact.) I've also moved NPC Summary's documentation to a separate sub-page, which seems to be another project we should be working on, due to the pre-expand limit issue discovered on some pages. What we need to do now is work up a list of which templates are most vulnerable and need semi-protection. Obviously, those that are used the most are the biggest concern, as are those with the most complex coding. Unfortunately, templates do not show up on Most linked to pages, so it may be hard to determine which are the most frequently used. Thus, I am opening this to suggestions. (Keep in mind this is only semi-protection, so anyone with an account older than a few days will still be able to edit these templates.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 11:20, 10 November 2007 (EST)

What about the quest header template? It seems like that could cause a lot of trouble too. --GuildKnight (Talk) ^contribs 18:07, 11 November 2007 (EST)

Sorry, took me a while to get around to responding here because I was caught up in a few other template-related issues (e.g., UESPWiki:Community Portal#Revamping Templates). Putting semi-protection on some of our templates probably is a wise move. The discussion at Template talk:NPC Summary#I Hesitate to Suggest This But... basically came to the same conclusion. Although another fix was found for the main issue that triggered that discussion, I felt that it still provided good arguments for why semi-protection was needed in some cases.

The trickiest part of this is likely to be just identifying how many templates we want to semiprotect if we want to try to be comprehensive. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of templates that get used on large numbers of pages. Nearly every template in Bread Crumb Trail Templates for example is used on many pages (and in a particularly high profile location right on top of each page). All the Infobox Templates are similarly high profile. Then there are the nearly invisible little templates that get used hundreds of times on a page (Linkable Entry, ID, FC,...). If we want some hard facts here, I could get NepheleBot to quickly scan through all the templates on the site and see how many pages use each of them (getting a count of how many times each is used would be somewhat more difficult, because AFAIK that's only possible by viewing the source of each page that uses the template).

As for Template:! I just added the semi-protection to that page last week. If NPC Summary was considered at risk from unwanted edits, I figured that a template transcluded multiple times into NPC Summary and dozens of other high profile templates was an even bigger risk. Plus the fact that there's no reason to ever edit it, especially with the new /Doc organization. I'd actually be in favour of full protection for a template like Template:! that are unlikely to ever need to be edited again. --Nephele^Talk 20:03, 17 November 2007 (EST)

Update: NepheleBot assembled a list of templates sorted by usage at User:Nephele/Sandbox/2. --Nephele^Talk 21:56, 17 November 2007 (EST)

I agree on full protection of Template:!. Wikipedia came to the same conclusion with their version of this template, given how common it is, and the fact that there's no need to ever change it. Likewise for any other templates that are "done", in that there is little or no reason why anybody would ever need to change them. Examples might be things like Template:ID, Template:FC. These are very commonly used, and any change to them could have a severe effect on a great number of pages. (Of course, we should use the /Doc thing on any such templates before protecting them.) Also, any template that is used almost exclusively by other templates should be at least semi- if not full-protected. That would be another thing to check for. Templates like breadcrumb trails, footers, and notes templates which are used directly by pages, even if they're used on a lot of pages, don't have nearly as widespread an effect as those which are used by other templates, which causes a sort of cascade ripple-effect whenever they are changed. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 23:29, 17 November 2007 (EST)

{{ID}}, {{FC}}, {{LinkableEntry}} and its redirect {{LE}}, all protected now. (Also sub-paged the LinkableEntry documentation - if any template needed that, this would be one of them.) Any others? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 11:57, 29 November 2007 (EST)