AHWiki:Administrators/Tools
The wiki software ("MediaWiki") has a number of technical and maintenance features that are restricted. Administrators, commonly known as sysops' (system operators), are AHWiki editors who have access to these features (known as "tools") that help with maintenance.
This page lists the details of the MediaWiki tools accessible to administrators, and what administrators are able to do with them.
Contents
List of tools
Protected pages
- Edit the Main Page and other protected pages. You can suggest changes at Talk:Main Page.
- 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 AHWiki:Protection policy.
Deletion and undeletion
- Delete pages, including images, and their history. For information and guidelines, see AHWiki:Deletion policy and (most definitely) AHWiki:Deletion guidelines for administrators. To suggest a page for deletion (after reading the policy and guidelines pages), see AHWiki: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 AHWiki:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops for guidelines. To challenge a decision to delete a page, contact the deleting administrator or see AHWiki: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 AHWiki:Blocking policy for more information on when blocks are appropriate and when they are not. See Special:Ipblocklist for currently blocked addresses and usernames.
Design and wording of the interface
Sysops 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 items of the software at places like MediaWiki:Common.js.
Other
Sysops 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 contributions of users
