User:ProtectionBot

ProtectionBot is a automated program designed by User:Dragons flight to protect templates and images appearing on the Main Page and today's featured article. It does this by reading Main Page, Main Page/Tomorrow, Template:Did you know/Next update, today's featured article, tomorrow's featured article and generating a list of all images and templates used therein. It then ensures these are protected and makes an internal list so that they can be unprotected when they no longer appear on one of the high profile pages.

Details
This bot is designed to run several times per hour (at semi-random intervals to avoid vandals trying to trap it). The intent is to protect the main page and today's featured article, but it also looks at upcoming content so that protections can be issued before the content is placed in these high profile settings. The result is that many images and templates will be protected from about 24 hours before they are scheduled to appear on the main page until slightly after they are removed.

When an image or template is protected by this bot, it will add

to the top of the image/template to note that it was protected by ProtectionBot, which also adds the image/template to Category:Protected by ProtectionBot.

When the protection is no longer needed, ProtectionBot will restore the previous protection state (e.g. open editing or autoconfirmed) and remove the template. Note that if any admin changes the protection before the ProtectionBot expects it to be concluded, then ProtectionBot will assume the admin knows best and not try to make any further changes to that image/template during the course of that appearance on the main page/featured article.

If the image to be protected resides on Commons rather than locally, ProtectionBot will first upload it to this wiki before protecting it. When this occurs the following message will be used instead of the one shown above.

and the image will be added to Category:Uploaded by ProtectionBot.

When the image no longer needs to be protected, ProtectionBot will mark it for speedy deletion by adding:

As is currently the case with all other c-uploaded images, it is the deleting admins responsibility to check for and restore any Wikipedia specific content that may have resided on the image description page. ProtectionBot does not delete any content itself.

Safety value
If there is any planned downtime for ProtectionBot, warnings will be posted at the Administrator's Noticeboard and Talk:Main Page. When operating normally, ProtectionBot will occasionally update User:ProtectionBot/Timestamp. If ProtectionBot has failed to do so for more than 90 minutes, User:ProtectionBot/Stopped will change to a large warning message as illustrated below:

If you see this message anywhere other than directly above, please ensure that administrators are notified so that the necessary pages can be manually protected. If you want to monitor ProtectionBot yourself. You may include on any page. This template will normally be empty as long as ProtectionBot is operating normally. Should ProtectionBot appear to malfunction, please notify User talk:Dragons flight. If it is really malfunctioning, it can be stopped by asking any admin to block it.