Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:02, 12 October 2007

• WP:ADMIN
• WP:SYSOP

Administrators, commonly known as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are Misplaced Pages editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Misplaced Pages practice is to grant administrator status to anyone who has been an active and regular Misplaced Pages contributor for at least a few months, is familiar with and respects Misplaced Pages policy, and who has gained the trust of the community. They can protect and delete pages, block other editors, and undo these actions as well. These privileges are granted indefinitely, and are only removed on request or under circumstances involving high level intervention (see Administrator abuse below). Administrators undertake additional responsibilities on a voluntary basis, and they are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation.

In the very early days of Misplaced Pages, all users had access to many of those functions whose access is now restricted to administrators. While the tools that administrators are granted are technical and do not convey authority per se, the language used is that they are entrusted with tools that allow them to unilaterally affect the involvement and availability of the results of the work of other users. Administrators are encouraged to maintain an attitude that they are non-privileged members of the community. In that spirit, some have declared themselves to be open to recall. Although standards for administrator appointment have risen over time, several administrators are created every week. (There are currently 848 admins.)

Because administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral; they do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people with.

Administrator tools

The wiki software has a few important features that are restricted. Of those restricted features, administrators have access to the following.

===Protected pages===u suck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Edit the Main Page and other protected pages. For information and guidelines, see Misplaced Pages:Editing the main page. You can suggest changes at Talk:Main Page. The Main Page used to receive a lot of vandalism; protecting it is an unfortunate compromise to keep our welcome mat free of random profanity.

• Protect and unprotect pages, with different kinds of protection against editing by certain classes of users, and page moving. Pages are generally protected rarely and temporarily. For information and guidelines, see Misplaced Pages:Protection policy.

Deletion and undeletion

• Delete pages, including images, and their history. For information and guidelines, see Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy and (most definitely) Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators. To suggest a page for deletion (after reading the policy and guidelines pages), see Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion. Sometimes deletion is a technical matter, in which a redirection page has to be removed to make way for renaming an article, or a page whose history has been broken up has to be deleted and the pieces recombined. Other times it is a matter of cleaning up junk edits on pages with no actual content, or removing material that has been pasted from another site, thereby causing copyright infringement.

• View and restore deleted pages, including images, and their history. See Misplaced Pages:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops for guidelines. To challenge a decision to delete a page, see Misplaced Pages:Deletion review.

Block and unblock

• Block IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts, for a specific time or indefinitely.

• Unblock IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts.

• See Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy for more information on when blocks are appropriate and when they are not. See Special:Ipblocklist for currently blocked addresses and usernames.

Reverting

• Revert pages quickly. Any user (logged-in or not) can revert a page to an earlier version. Administrators have a faster, automated reversion tool to help them revert vandalism. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like: – appears next to edits that are at the top of the edit history. Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by that user, with an edit summary of (Reverted edits by X (talk) to last version by Y) and marks it as a minor change. One-click rollback is mainly intended for vandalism, spam, etc. Disputed content deserves an explanation, either in the edit summary or on the talk page, and it is not nice to omit that (either by rolling back, or by leaving the summary field blank).

Keeping vandalism out of recent changes

• Administrators can exclude bulk vandalism from Recent changes. To do this, add &bot=1 to the end of the URL used to access a user's contributions. For example, . When the rollback links on the contributions list are clicked, the revert and the original edit that you are reverting will both be hidden from the default recent changes display. (The bot marker was originally added to keep massive bot edits from flooding recent changes, hence the "bot".) This means that they will be hidden from recent changes unless you click the "bots" link to set hidebots=0. The edits are not hidden from contributions lists, page histories or watchlists. The edits remain in the database and are not removed, but they no longer flood recent changes. The aim of this feature is to reduce the annoyance factor of a flood vandal with relatively little effort. This should not be used for reverting a change you just do not like, but is meant only for simple vandalism, particularly massive flood vandalism.

Design and wording of the interface

Administrators can:

• change the text of the interface by editing the pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which includes the text at the top of pages such as "Special:Whatlinkshere" and the page that a blocked user will see when they try to edit a page (MediaWiki:Blockedtext);

• edit the style of the interface by changing the CSS in the monobook stylesheet at MediaWiki:Monobook.css; and

• edit some of the site-wide and skin-specific JavaScript of the software at places like MediaWiki:Common.js.

Other

Users with administrative privileges can also:

• move pages protected against moves;
• view Special:Unwatchedpages to see pages which may be more vulnerable to vandalism;
• view the history of deleted pages, and the deleted contribs of users; and
• create accounts with names similar to those of existing accounts

Becoming an administrator

If you would like sysop access, add your nomination to Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship according to the guidelines mentioned there, and a discussion will take place among fellow editors about whether you should become an administrator. After seven days, a bureaucrat will determine if there is consensus to promote you. Keep in mind that each language's Misplaced Pages has its own policies for administrators, which may differ somewhat.

Although multiple user accounts are allowed on Misplaced Pages in certain circumstances, only one account of a given person should have administrative tools.

Be careful, please! If you are granted access, you must exercise care in using these functions, especially the ability to delete pages and the ability to block IP addresses. You can learn how to do these things at the Administrators' how-to guide. Please also look at the pages linked from the Administrators' reading list before using your administrative abilities. Administrators and all other users with extra tools are expected to have a strong password, to prevent damage in the case of a compromised account. (See also Misplaced Pages:Security.)

If you have exercised your right to vanish, and return under a new name, your new name can request administrator access by contacting a bureaucrat privately and producing satisfactory evidence of being the same user, provided you did not originally request desysopping under controversial circumstances. This will not guarantee privacy, however, as new accounts which are granted sysop rights without an RfA tend to attract attention and speculation.

Places where administrators in particular can assist

Administrator rights can be particularly helpful for working in certain areas of Misplaced Pages.

• Incidents that may require admin intervention
• Three-revert rule violations
• Intervention against vandalism
• Copyright problems (advice for admins)
• Candidates for speedy deletion
• Administrative backlog
• Enforcing Arbitration Committee decisions
• Administrators will also find their tools useful for Recent changes patrol.

Dealing with grievances

If a user thinks an administrator has acted improperly against them or another editor, they should express their concerns directly to the administrator responsible and try to come to a resolution in an orderly and civil manner. However, if the matter is not resolved between the two parties, users can take further action according to Misplaced Pages:Resolving disputes. For more possibilities, see Requests for comment/User conduct: Use of administrator privileges.

Administrator abuse

Administrators can be removed if they misuse their powers. Currently, administrators may be removed either at the request of Jimbo Wales or by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee. At their discretion, lesser penalties may also be assessed against problematic administrators, including the restriction of their use of certain powers or placement on administrative probation. The technical ability to remove administrator status rests with stewards.

There have been alternative procedures suggested for the removal of sysop status, but none of them have achieved consensus. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see Category:Misplaced Pages administrators open to recall.

No big deal

An often paraphrased comment about adminship is the following, said by Jimbo Wales in February 2003, referring to administrators as sysops:

See also

• Administrators' how-to guide
• Administrators' reading list
• An essay on what adminship is not
• Misplaced Pages:Advice for new administrators
• Misplaced Pages:Former administrators
• Misplaced Pages:User access levels for other access levels like bureaucrat, bot, etc.

ru-sib:Misplaced Pages:Administrators

• Misplaced Pages adminship
• Misplaced Pages functionaries