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.
 * Recent changes: Special:RecentChanges
 * New pages: Special:NewPages
 * New uploads: Upload log or Special:NewFiles
 * New moves: Move log
 * Articles to be deleted: Category:Articles for deletion
 * Contributors in need: MEpedia:Editor help desk
 * Task list for admins

Moderating discussion pages
Occasionally, an administrator may need to moderate a discussion on a talk page if the discussion gets out of hand. With the StructuredDiscussions extension, posts on discussion pages can be ‘deleted’ by administrators. (Posts can also be ‘hidden’ by regular users.)
 * Explaining ‘deleting’ and ‘hiding’ on discussion pages

Spam, vandalism, and hacking
An administrator is the first line of defense 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
 * Search MEpedia for suspicious links: Special:LinkSearch
 * Blocking users (last resort):
 * Special:Block and Special:Unblock
 * Special:BlockList
 * Special:AutoblockList (for an explanation, see https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Autoblock )
 * Temporary shutdown of MEpedia to prevent edits:
 * Have a developer "un-comment" the first line in the LocalSettings.php file, which currently says .  For more information, see: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Lock_the_database
 * Old way to shutdown and restart: Special:LockDB and Special:UnlockDB
 * 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

Protecting pages
Certain key pages may need to be protected from incorrect edits. Administrators can designate these key pages as 'protected', which prohibits non-administrators from editing them. Administrators can also designate a page as 'semiprotected', which prohibits new editors from editing them. (A new editor is someone who has done fewer than 50 edits.) Note: All pages in the "MediaWiki:" namespace are automatically protected by default.
 * List of protected pages: Special:ProtectedPages

User maintenance (‘Bureaucrat role’)
The ‘bureaucrat role’ of administrators is concerned with maintaining the users, groups, and rights of MEpedia. Users are members of groups, and each group has special rights. For more information on the bureaucrat role, see MEpedia:Bureaucrats.
 * List of groups and the rights given to each group: Special:ListGroupRights
 * Rename user: Special:RenameUser (is this right?)
 * Delete user: Special:CloseAccount (is this right?)
 * Add or remove admin privileges: Special:UserRights (is this right?)
 * Lists of users
 * Administrators: Special:ListUsers/sysop
 * Users with bureaucrat role: Special:ListUsers/bureaucrat
 * MEAction staff: Special:ListUsers/staff
 * Active users: Special:ActiveUsers
 * All users: Special:ListUsers

User notices
An administrator may periodically update the user notices: Note: Every time you update MediaWiki:Sitenotice, you MUST also increase the number stored in MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id. If you do not increase the number in MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id, then the notice will NOT be shown to users.
 * New user message: Template:Welcome
 * Site notice for non-contributors: MediaWiki:Anonnotice
 * Site notice for contributors: MediaWiki:Sitenotice

Search-and-replace text
An administrator can search for text in multiple pages and automatically replace that text with other text. This tool comes in handy for tasks such as renaming categories in multiple pages.
 * Search-and-replace tool: Special:ReplaceText

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.
 * Developer main duties include:
 * Nightly and monthly backups of the website
 * Upgrading the MediaWiki software and extensions every 3 years:
 * How to upgrade the MediaWiki software: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading
 * Any extension with a “compatibility policy” of “release branches” must be updated with any new version of MediaWiki. These include Echo, Scribunto, TemplateData, PageImages, Citoid, VisualEditor, Thanks, and StructuredDiscussions.
 * The Linux package Parsoid must also be updated every time VisualEditor is updated.
 * These updates will require a developer with specific MediaWiki expertise.
 * Although not required, it is advised to also update the Cite and ParserFunctions extensions, and the Pivot and Timeless skins as well.
 * Every 5 years, do “performance tuning” of the MySQL(MariaDB) database and “performance tuning” of the MediaWiki software as described in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Performance_tuning This will require a developer with specific MediaWiki expertise.
 * Occasional implementation of fixes or improvements
 * Task list for developers: MEpedia:Suggested_tasks
 * Software version and extension info: Special:Version
 * Dreamcompute dashboard: https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=cloud.compute& (is this right?)
 * Backing up MEpedia:
 * The Fullsitebackup shell script backs up both the MediaWiki files and the database. A backup is restored with the Fullsiterestore script.
 * Backup scripts are automatically run on a nightly basis, and each backup is kept for a week. There is also a monthly backup that is kept for a month.
 * Another way to backup MEpedia: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215089918-How-do-I-backup-my-entire-account-
 * MEpedia is occasionally ‘backed up’ by wikiteam to the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/wiki-me_pediaorg
 * Server info:
 * There are two separate virtual servers, a production and a staging server. Production server is https://www.me-pedia.org (208.97.133.164) and the staging server is https://staging.me-pedia.org (208.97.133.62).
 * MediaWiki software is installed directly into the web root directory: /var/www/me-pedia.org (production), /var/www/staging/me-pedia.org (staging)
 * In addition to the Apache web server and the MariaDB database, there is a Parsoid daemon service on port 8142 and a Memcached daemon service on port 11211.
 * The database name in MariaDB is "me_pedia_org_3" and the username and password are the same for the production and the staging servers.
 * Backup scripts are stored in the /home/cloud/backups directory. There are different restore scripts for the production and staging servers. (FullsiterestoreProduction.sh or FullsiterestoreStaging.sh)
 * Sign up to receive important email updates about MediaWiki software: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Learn more

 * MediaWiki Administrator's guide - Wikibooks