Special Features
Features and Locks
Many students think there's an office building full of Wikipedia employees who check all the articles being edited. Not so. Other people just like you participate in the online Wikipedia community. Called Wikipedians, they watch their favorite articles, participate in policy- and decision-making activities, vote on sites to improve or delete, and do hundreds of other activities.
Currently, Wikipedia boasts more than 2 million articles. Of those, about 2,000 are considered "Featured Articles," indicated by a bronze star in the upper right corner. Featured articles are those that Wikipedia "editors" (trusted contributors) rate as the best articles in Wikipedia.
The lock in the image above means that this page is semi-protected. Only users logged on to a Wikipedia account and a short history of edits can make changes. This protection is often applied to pages that are subject to vandalism.
On rare occasions you may see a page that's fully protected, meaning that only trusted contributors can make changes.