DrumCorpsWiki:Administrators

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Administrators, or sysops, are DrumCorpsWikiians who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. DrumCorpsWiki's practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular DrumCorpsWiki contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects DrumCorpsWiki policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. These privileges are granted indefinitely and can only be removed by high level intervention.

Request assistance - Full list of administrators - Requests for adminship

Any user can behave as if they are an administrator (provided they do not falsely claim to be one), even if they have not been given the extra administrative functions. Users doing so are more likely to be nominated as full administrators by members of the community and more likely to be chosen when they are finally nominated. From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community, but should be a part of the community like anyone else only equipped with a few more tools to do some chores that would potentially be harmful if everyone were entrusted with them. In practice, standards to getting appointed administrator have risen but there are still several administrators created every week.

The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among them are watching the Articles for deletion debates and carrying out the consensus of the community on keeping or deleting these articles, keeping an eye on new and changed articles to swiftly delete obvious vandalism, and meeting user requests for help that require administrative access. Since 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.

So, what's the deal?

The wiki software has a few important features that are restricted. Of those restricted features, administrators have access to the following. (New admins, see DrumCorpsWiki:Administrators' how-to guide.)

Protected pages

Deletion and undeletion

  • Delete pages, including images, and their history. For information and guidelines, see both DrumCorpsWiki:Deletion policy and (most definitely) DrumCorpsWiki:Deletion guidelines for administrators. To suggest a page for deletion (after reading the policy and guidelines pages!), see DrumCorpsWiki: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's a matter of cleaning up simple junk edits on pages with no actual content, or removing material that has been pasted in from another site and infringes copyright.

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.

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 by anonymous editors. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like: [rollback] – 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 to last version by Y) and marks it as a minor change.
  • Do not use one-click rollback on edits that are not simple vandalism; please use manual rollback with an appropriate edit summary.

Keeping vandalism out of recent changes

  • Admins 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, http://drumcorpswiki.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Example&bot=1. 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 don't like, but is meant only for simple vandalism, particularly massive flood vandalism.

Design and wording of the interface

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

Other

There are various other actions which only those with administrator privileges can perform:

Becoming an administrator

If you have been around for a while and you would like sysop access, add your name to DrumCorpsWiki:Requests for adminship according to the guidelines mentioned there, and a discussion will take place by fellow editors in order to determine if there is consensus that you should become an administrator.

It is recommended that you write for DrumCorpsWiki for a while before requesting administrator status, since other users will have to recognize you before they can agree on your promotion.

Although multiple user accounts are allowed on DrumCorpsWiki in certain circumstances, only one should have admin powers beyond being an editor.

Be careful, please! If you are granted access, we ask that you exercise care in using these functions, especially the ability to delete pages and their history, to delete images, and the ability to block IP addresses. You can learn about your newfound powers at the DrumCorpsWiki:Administrators' how-to guide. You should also take a look at the pages linked from the Administrators' reading list before using any of your admin abilities.

Places where admins in particular can assist

Admin rights can be particularly helpful for working in certain areas of DrumCorpsWiki.

Other access types

In addition to administrators, there are other types of identified users. See also DrumCorpsWiki:User access levels.

Signed-in users

Signed-up users can edit articles and help with Wikipedia maintenance tasks. They can also upload files, start new articles and move/rename pages. See Special:Userlogin to sign up.


Bureaucrats

Users with "bureaucrat" status can turn other users into sysops (but not remove sysop status), change usernames, and flag and unflag bots accounts. Sysoppings are recorded in Special:Log/rights.

Stewards

Users with "Steward" status can change the access of any user on any Wikimedia project. This includes granting and revoking sysop access and marking users as bots. Their actions are recorded at Special:Log/rights on meta. Requests for their assistance can be made at m:Requests for permissions. Normally, they will not perform actions that can be carried out by a local bureaucrat.

Administrator abuse

Administrators can be removed if they misuse their powers. 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.

Dealing with grievances

If you think an administrator has acted improperly against you or another editor, you should express your concerns directly to the administrator responsible. Try to come to a resolution in an orderly and civil manner. However, if the matter is not resolved between the two parties, you can take further action according to DrumCorpsWiki:Resolving disputes.

The original source of this article is from Wikipedia, used under the terms of the Wikipedia:GFDL. See this article's Talk page for details.

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