This page is a how-to guide detailing a practice or process on the English Wikipedia.

Shortcuts: WP:LOCK WP:INUSE

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.

[edit] {{inuse}} template

On the other hand we do have {{inuse}} tags, which can be used to alert people that you are in the process of making a larger edit (within 1 – 180 minutes). The article remains open to editing, 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:

This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for a short while. As a courtesy, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed. The user who added this notice will be listed in the page history. If this page has not been edited for several hours, please remove this template, or replace it with {{underconstruction}}. This message is intended to help reduce edit conflicts; please remove it between editing sessions to allow others to edit the page.

You can also specify a certain period of time as well as describe what part of the article you are working on using {{inuse|time (message)}}. Note that specifying periods of several days is not acceptable, since it's impossible for one active edit session to last that long.

This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for time (message). As a site main domain, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed. The user who added this notice will be listed in the page history. If this page has not been edited for several hours, please remove this template, or replace it with {{underconstruction}}. This message is intended to help reduce edit conflicts; please remove it between editing sessions to allow others to edit the page.

[edit] {{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 actively working on the article: leaving it up when you aren't may discourage others from 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 actively undergoing translation from another Wikipedia for a while. As a courtesy, please do not edit this article while this message is displayed. The person who added this notice will be listed in its edit history should you wish to contact him or her.