Inactive wikis, with few articles, very sporadic edits, no community and no users dedicated to editing them, accumulate spam and vandalism and waste much time of those users who check these small wikis for such edits.
It is possible for a steward to lock an inactive wiki to prevent it from being edited whilst not removing any existing content. Locking a wiki is not permanent and can be undone by a steward at any time.
I would like to see whether there are any objections to this being done for the inactive Wikipedias, and other projects. I have proposed a procedure for this at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inactive_wikis and would appreciate any comments on it.
To see the message that would be shown when someone tries to edit a locked wiki, please see http://ba.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&action=edit
Thanks
Angela.