MEpedia:Admin guide

This Admin guide is intended to provide new administrators with the tools and information they need to be successful admins. For more information on admins, see: MEpedia:Administrators.

Monitoring
An administrator may regularly patrol changes to MEpedia. When there are multiple administrators, an administrator can mark a change as “patrolled”, which simply means that an administrator has already reviewed the change, so that other administrators don’t have to review the change as well. The typical pages monitored by administrators include the following: For more information on “patrolling” changes, see MediaWiki's 'patrolled' edits.
 * Special:RecentChanges
 * Upload log
 * Move log
 * Articles to be deleted: Category:Articles for deletion
 * Contributors in need: MEpedia:Editor help desk
 * Websites to add to CAPTCHA whitelist: MediaWiki talk:Captcha-addurl-whitelist
 * Suggestions for admins

Spam, vandalism, and hacking
An administrator is the first line against spam, vandalism, and hacking. Developers can also provide assistance. More extensive information on spam, vandalism, and hacking:
 * Spam detector: Special:SmiteSpam and Special:SmiteSpamTrustedUsers
 * Blocking users (last resort):
 * Special:Block
 * Special:BlockList
 * Special:AutoblockList (for an explanation, see https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Autoblock )
 * MediaWiki’s Combating Spam Guide: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam
 * MediaWiki’s Combating Vandalism Guide: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_vandalism
 * MediaWiki’s Website Security Guide: https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Security

User maintenance (‘Bureaucrat role’)
The ‘bureaucrat role’ of administrators is concerned with maintaining the users of MEpedia: For more information on the bureaucrat role, see MEpedia:Bureaucrats.
 * Rename user: Special:RenameUser (is this right?)
 * Delete user: Special:CloseAccount (is this right?)
 * Add or remove admin privileges: Special:ChangeCredentials (is this right?)
 * Lists of admins, bureaucrats, and staff
 * Administrators: Special:ListUsers/sysop
 * Users with bureaucrat role: Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat
 * MEAction staff: Special:ListUsers/staff

User notices
An administrator may periodically update the user notices:
 * New user message: Template:Welcome
 * Site notice for non-contributors: MediaWiki:Anonnotice
 * Site notice for contributors: MediaWiki:Sitenotice

Developer info
An administrator may occasionally need to work with developers. Developers are individuals who perform technical maintenance on the software and hardware underlying MEpedia. Their main duties include regular backups of the website, regular performance-tuning of the database, and occasional implementation of fixes, upgrades, or improvements.
 * Suggestions for developers: MEpedia:Suggested_tasks
 * How to backup MEpedia: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215089918-How-do-I-backup-my-entire-account-
 * Software version and extension info: Special:Version

Learn more

 * MediaWiki Administrator's guide - Wikibooks