Extension:ProtectSection

ProtectSection implements ... tags that prevent the enclosed text from being modified by editors who are not sysops or bureaucrats (or more generally, do not have the 'protectsection' user right). Attempts by unauthorized editors to edit text between protect tags, to delete protect tags, or to insert protect tags will result in an error message being displayed when the editor tries to save the page.

Usage
To prevent unauthorized editors from modifying a section of text, enclose it in ... tags: &lt;protect&gt;This is a sentence that cannot be modified.&lt;/protect&gt; Unauthorized editors cannot add protect tags, cannot delete protect tags, and cannot modify the contents of any text enclosed within protect tags. Optionally (see Installation), editors can also be prevented from adding text in front of a protect tag that appears at the start of an article (for example, to ensure that a warning on a user talk page remains at the top of the page).

The protected text can contain entire sections of articles, in which case the usual [edit] tags for those sections are disabled (for unauthorized editors only).

tags appearing within ...&lt;/nowiki> sections are effectively ignored (they do not trigger protection of the subsequent text). Similarly, HTML comments (&lt;!--...--&gt;) are also ignored. Note, however, that this can not be used to circumvent protected text: attempts to nowiki or comment out a protected section are treated as deletion of the protection tags, and therefore blocked.

Installation
The usual: Copy to extensions folder. Add the following to LocalSettings.php:

Optional steps:
 * Modify which groups have the 'protectsection' right (and are therefore able to add/remove/modify protected sections). By default, the right is given to the sysop and bureaucrat groups
 * Set $egProtectSectionNoAddAbove to true if you want to also prevent text from being inserted in front of a protected section, if the protected section is at the start of the article

Limitations

 * One way to effectively remove a protected section is to enclose the section in certain HTML tags that make the section invisible.
 * This loophole can be closed for protect tags that appear at the very beginning of an article, as long as $egProtectSectionNoAddAbove is set to true.


 * The 1.0.1 release of this extension included several bugs that made it possible to circumvent protect tags. These bugs are fixed in the 1.1 release, although upgrading does require MediaWiki version 1.12 (because of the EditFilterMerged hook used).

Alternatives

 * Extension:ProtectText allows users to add protection when they are the sole contributors
 * Extension:PageSecurity for page level granularity.