Wikipǣdia:Administrators' how-to guide

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WP:AHTG

This page is a basic how-to guide to using your admin tools. This page explains how to carry out sysop actions, and does not cover the policies that you must follow before doing these. Please read the pages linked to from administrators' reading list and ensure you are aware of the relevant policies before doing anything described on this page.

Deleting a page

Click the delete or delete this page link on the page you want to delete. If you are using the monobook skin, you can use the shortcut alt+d. You will be shown a page with a box to type in the reason for deletion, and a confirm box. The box will often contain the first 150 characters of the page. For speedy deletions, it may be acceptable to leave the full text as the reason (unless the contents contain personal attacks or other content that would be inappropriate to show in the deletion log, which is permanent). In other cases, you should specify why you are deleting it. An example reason is "listed on AfD for 5 days with consensus to delete". This confirmation page will give you a warning if the page has more than one revision in its history. If something looks like a candidate for speedy deletion but has a page history, you must check the history before deleting it. The revision you are looking at could be just a vandalised version of a real article. After you have deleted it, check whether it has a talk page and delete this too; usually a prompt will show up on the action confirmed page. If the page is being deleted because it should not exist, check that nothing links to it to prevent it accidentally or easily being created again. If the page was listed on AFD or a similar page, follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Deletion process, which may include archiving the deletion discussion. See Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators and Wikipedia:Deletion policy.

Deleting an image

To delete all versions of an image, you can select the "delete all revisions" option, or delete the image description page in the same way you would delete an article. To delete individual revisions, click the del link next to that revision.

If there is more than one revision of an image, clicking the "Delete all revisions of this image" will do exactly that. You cannot delete the most recent one without deleting all older copies and the image description page as well.

After clicking Delete all revisions of this image, you will see a confirmation screen similar to that used for page deletion and the deletion will be logged. There is no such confirmation if you are deleting a single old revision, but the deletion will still be logged.

Undeleting a page

Pages can be undeleted for as long as they are in the archive. Pages that were deleted prior to June 8, 2004, are not recoverable, as they were lost in a database crash. Images deleted since approximately 04:30 UTC on June 16, 2006 can be undeleted.

If a page has not been recreated since it was deleted, there will be a message on the page telling you how many deleted revisions there are. Clicking on this will take you to a page which displays the deleted revisions. You can look at each revision separately. You undelete a page by clicking the restore button which appears on the confirmation page; this will restore all deleted revisions by default. If you wish, you can choose specific revisions to undelete by selecting the checkboxes that appear next to them. Undeletion occurs as soon as you click restore; there is no further confirmation screen.

For images, Special:Undelete has an additional section called "File history". This is analogous to the same section on ordinary image pages and contains links to view each deleted version of the image. You can restore the image page history separately from the file history by using the appropriate combination of checkboxes.

Undeletions are logged just like deletions; if you do not restore all revisions of a deleted page, the log will record how many you did restore.

If a page already exists but you want to undelete previous revisions of it, go to the page history. There you will see the link to undelete as described above. You can also type the full URL to undelete. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Foo.

Bysen:See also

Merging page histories

Merging page histories is a means of fixing cut and paste moves. Basically, it involves deleting a page, moving another page there and undeleting the original over the top of the one you just moved. This action can be reversed, but doing so takes a long time, so please do not attempt it unless you understand the procedure described at Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves.

Performing requested moves

Page moves that are controversial or require the assistance of administrators are listed at Wikipedia:Requested moves. For the procedure, see Wikipedia:Moving guidelines for administrators.

Protecting or unprotecting a page

Bysen:See also To protect a page, click the protect or protect this page link. In addition to full protection from edits by non-administrators, it is now possible to apply semi-protection from edits by new or unregistered users. If you are using the monobook skin, you can use the shortcut alt+=. This will lead to a confirmation screen very similar to the one used for deletion. Enter the reason for protection in the box, check the confirm box and press confirm. This will be logged, but you should also note it at Wikipedia:Protected page. In cases of edit wars, you should add {{protected}} to the top of the article you are protecting. In case of a result of recent vandalism, or to stop banned editors from editing, you should add {{Sprotected}} when applying semi-protection. Unprotect works in exactly the same way. Admins must not protect pages they are actively engaged in editing, except in the case of simple vandalism.

Editing a protected page

Bysen:See also Click edit this page in the normal way. The only difference is the warning at the top of the page reminding you the page is protected. Read the protection policy before doing this.

Protecting a non-existent page

Bysen:See also Sometimes, a page is deleted and recreated multiple times. In this case, you may protect the deleted page by adding it to Wikipedia:Protected titles/Current month.

Protecting or unprotecting an image

Protecting an image is mostly the same as protecting a page (see above). When you click "protect" on an image description page, both the page and the image are protected. The image description page will be protected, and non-sysops will not be able to revert the image to an earlier version, or upload a new version over it.

Editing the interface

Following consensus to do so, you can change the wording of the user interface by editing the protected pages in the MediaWiki namespace. You can change the design of the interface at MediaWiki:Monobook.css. These pages are editable in the normal way, but some require HTML rather than wikitext.

Block a user or IP

For IPs, you can click the block link that appears next to the IP on recent changes. For logged in users, you must go to Special:Blockip. Fill in the name or IP of the user you want to block in the first field, and the length of the block in the second. This is usually "24 hours", but can also be specific days such as "next Thursday" or a date. Add the reason for the block in the third field. This reason should explain to the user why he or she is blocked. Remember that some innocent users may be affected by the block and will see this message, so do not put anything offensive, confusing, or vague as the reason. Then click the block this user button. This will be logged and the user will appear in the list of blocked IP addresses and usernames until the block expires. See Wikipedia:Blocking policy.

Blocking a range of IPs

Go to Special:Blockip and enter the range in the first field (in CIDR notation [aka slash notation]). Then follow the instructions in the section above. Please do not block ranges if you do not understand the process. Read mw:Range blocks for instructions.

Unblock a user, IP or range

Go to Special:Ipblocklist, find the user you want to unblock, and click the unblock link. You will have a confirmation page where you must fill in the reason for the unblock. This will be logged and the user will be immediately unblocked. If a range is blocked, you need to unblock the whole range. It isn't possible to unblock a specific single IP from within that range of blocked IPs.

Using admin revert

Any user can revert a page. Administrators have a rollback (which looks like [rollback]) button to make this easier. To revert the edits of one user to the last version by the previous author, click rollback on the page history, the user contribution list, or on the diff page. Your revert will be marked as a minor edit and given the automatic edit summary Reverted edits by X to last version by Y. Using the rollback feature does not add an article to your watchlist.

In cases of large scale vandalism that flood recent changes, you may use "bot rollback". Add &bot=1 to the end of the URL used to access a user's contributions. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Vandal&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 Recentchanges display. See Wikipedia:Revert.

Dealing with abusive editors

An increasing number of admins have found themselves being threatened or harassed on and off-site, and in some cases in real life. This is usually possible because they have inadvertently left enough information in their contributions or on their user pages for abusive editors to be able to piece together who they are. If you find yourself being expected to deal with an abusive editor, and you're worried that s/he may identify you, there is a list of admins willing to make difficult blocks. You can contact any of these admins, by e-mail if you prefer, and ask them to take on the case. You can also add your own name to the list.

Being useful

Admin rights can be particularly useful in certain areas of Wikipedia.

Incidents that may require admin intervention
3RR violations
Intervention against vandalism
Copyright problems
Candidate speedy deletion pages
Admins will also find their rights useful for RC patrolling and New page patrol.
New user creation patrolling to block obvious vandals according to the usernames policy.

Related pages