Wikipedia:Edit lock

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.

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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 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:

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Also,. See Template talk:Inusefor for how to use and examples. This is still just to be used for a single edit session, specifying periods of several days is not acceptable, since it's impossible for one active edit session to last that long.

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Also,. It's the same as, 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.