Wikipedia:Edit lock

This page is about templates used while an article is undergoing a major edit. For locked accounts, see meta:Global locks. For the historical feature of Wikipedia that was active when it ran UseModWiki, see Wikipedia:Historical archive/Edit lock.

Not to be confused with Wikipedia:Protection policy.

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.

{{in use}} template

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:

{{intranslation}} template

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.

{{archiving}} template

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