Wikipedia talk:Administrators' guide/Archive 1

Comment
Nice idea!  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  14:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You can thank Ryan Postlethwaite and Jreferee for it! :) Acalamari 23:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Agree, this is great idea! Thx Ryan, Jreferee and everone who contributed.--Hu12 (talk) 19:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts
First of all, I think this is a great idea! I wish this had existed when I became an admin. It would have saved me some time coming up the learning curve.

Second, I would like to suggest that each page start with a pointer to the relevant policy. I have done this for blocking and protecting. The point here being that new admins should be familiar with the relevant policy but they might not be.

--Richard 06:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Exactly, it's all good and well know how to use the tools, but if you don't know when to use them, you get yourself into a mess. I'll look into adding a few statements from policy a bit later on.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  10:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Cool idea for the admins! Why not try to incorporate more admin-like things such as reverts as well? ('Course I'm not an admin, so what do I know? :)  ) Icestorm815 04:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I added a link for a Rollback and Undo course at new admin. I'll see if I can write it up in the next day or two. Jreferee 21:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Name change
How about "How not to delete the Main Page and Block yourself"? :) Dfrg.msc 07:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Viewing deleted images
Is there a way to preview a deleted image prior to restoring? → AA (talk) — 15:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup there is, like any normal page, click "3 deleted edits" - scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see two sections: Page history is the text of the page e.g. the rationales e.t.c. and file history is the history of all the images that have been there. Click on any of the file histories and you will see the image that has been there at that time.  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  15:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I added instructions at New_admin_school/Viewing_deleted_pages. -- Jreferee    t / c  21:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion
Maybe a course on "viewing deleted contributions" in "viewing deleted pages." And also, maybe a few images to help. --EoL talk 01:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a new section "View deleted contributions of an editor" to New_admin_school/Viewing_deleted_pages. I also added a few more images for practice. Feel free to swith them out in favor of more "interesting" images that may help keep the student's attention. -- Jreferee    t / c  15:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Instruction creep
This school only is about which buttons to push. It is not meant to go into when to push the buttons. There is a link at the top of each course that leads to when to push the buttons. Please keep that in mind when revising the courses. Thanks. -- Jreferee    t / c  15:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing the organization of admin instructions
I have proposed a standardization of the admin instructions pages. Feel free to join the discussion. This would not affect the new admin school directly in any way, but since you are all dealing with making life easier for new admins I thought you might be interested in giving your 2 cents. Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 13:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Lets all take a feild trip to wikiversity!
Is it possible to copy this to Wikiversity? There's nothing against teaching about editing and I have some expirence and an account (under the same name) there so I could help do that. Just a suggestion.--Ipatrol (talk) 02:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If someone wants this transwiki imported to wikiversity, just drop me a note. I don't even know if this project is active here.  FYI, also see How to be a Wikimedia sysop.  --mikeu talk 23:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for new module
The discussion from this thread at WT:U lead my suggestion (which seems to have support) to create a new module for the handling of violations of username policy. As with other NAS modules, such as the one on rollback, it will not only benefit admins, but it will also be useful to editors who are active in username violation reporting. Whilst the username policy provides a general overview of what's allowed, it does not give sufficient guidance or examples of violations and the best way to handle them. How do I do about getting the process started? I know of a few admins who would like to actively help in its drafting, so is it as simple as sandboxing it and getting consensus on whether it should go live or not? Cheers. Nja 247 14:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Pretty much! –xenotalk 14:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Upload image from URL?
It has been pointed out to me that Special:ListGroupRights indicates that administrators can upload images directly from a URL (notably a Commons URL). Is this true? If so, where's the secret key? --Orlady (talk) 21:22, 17 August 2009 (UTC) falishas daughter is my wife bra to be serious though i note that you have some capitillization errors your friendly neighbor makla — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whydowelovewiki (talk • contribs) 22:07, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

How to deal with Abuse Filters - Request for comment
Hi! I've posted a request here about help for new admins about abuse filters. As there in't a terrific amount of traffic there, I thought I'd drop a note here about it. Stephen! Coming... 15:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Administrator
A new initiative by admin Ched. Just thought it might be of interest to people here. Tony  (talk)  04:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

New guide to checking open proxies
I've written a Guide to checking open proxies. It's not exactly noob admin level, but would be relevant here I think. Feel free to move it and/or edit it mercilessly. -- zzuuzz (talk) 22:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Much needed, thanks! :) --Elonka 20:59, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Viewing deleted pages and contributions
In the Administrator privileges section, it said that on a scale of 1 to 9 of severity, viewing deleted pages and contributions rates as 9. Why can it cause so much damage since no one but you actually sees what you do? --The High Fin Sperm Whale 03:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Revision deletion
Please add a revision deletion section to the new admin. I recently encountered a case in which three administrators all failed to completely delete inappropriate content from the history using the revdel feature. The scenario is as follows (problematic revisions are in red text ): Admin 3 quickly corrected this afterward. The important lesson is that all revisions with the problematic content (including the "revision in between"), not just the revision that introduced it, must be hidden. Although oversighters know this, WP:REVDEL does not make it clear. The result is increased visibility of the inappropriate content to all users versus a scenario in which no admin action is taken. PleaseStand (talk) 03:14, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Admin 3 Undid Admin 2's undo
 * Admin 2 Undid Admin 1's undo as a "dummy edit" (unnecessarily and incorrectly) hidden by Admin 3
 * Admin 1 Undid outing hidden by Admin 2
 * User 2 A revision in between
 * User 1 Outing another hidden by Admin 1

about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_guide/Deleting#Deleting_a_revision The tuto is useless (or not clear enough). I followed the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_guide/Deleting/delete&action=history but: 1/ there is no square boxe (but round box we can tick to compare) 2/ then there is no "Del/undel selected revisions".Nestashi (talk) 12:35, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Move
Clear instructions on how to move would be helpful--such as move over redirect, and move while preserving/merging histories. Drmies (talk) 02:21, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

BLP vandalism sandbox
I made this page for testing yomum poses a while ago and kind of forgot about it till just now. How it works is explained on the talk page. Might be a good addition to new admin. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Revision deletion question
I am not a new admin but I'm not sure where else to ask.

An IP address made a constructive edit to Bitmessage, an article I recently created. Then, a while later, the IP address mysteriously became hidden (diff). This action wasn't logged, as normally happens when an admin hides an identity or edit summary or what not. Also, the action cannot be examined (the checkbox in the article history is grayed out), as one can normally do with logged revdel actions.

I'm just curious how this happened. Is there some automatic detection of non-logged-in editors going on that causes the IP address to be hidden automatically? ~Amatulić (talk) 05:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That means the IP address has been suppressed by oversight, presumably because someone was logged out when they shouldn't have been and reported it to them. Suppression logs are not visible to sysops. -- zzuuzz (talk) 16:57, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting. First time I've noticed that happen. I've suppressed IP addresses myself but those actions are always logged. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 September 2014
Manutu2008 (talk) 20:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)http://about-diet.com/index.php
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Cannolis (talk) 21:23, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

"New admin" to become "Administrators' guide"
I should write here too about this big transformation I'm planning. I've gotten input on various other pages such as WP:ADMINGUIDE – which is the problem. There's too many pages, and fragmenting them makes it difficult to find the information you're looking for and keep it maintained. Leaving "New admin" as it is now means there's still much the admins have to figure out on their own. So, I want to create a new centralized point of reference for all admin duties, that documents the basic principles behind them and how to carry them out. In effect we're keeping our admis informed from day one, and "learning on the job" will become less of a problem.

A consequence of this is that the "school" aspect will be lost, which has already somewhat happened. We won't remove the practice exercises, however. E.g. WP:NAS/B will still document how to practice a block on the test accounts, etc, but we'll have other additional pages that do not have a way to practice the tasks (such as merging page histories and edit filters).

Thoughts? See also the discussion at WP:BN. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  20:54, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Needs a page on closing discussions
Many green admins really need help with doing this properly.

See Administrators' reading list for outline. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Missing a bit on imposing sanctions (other than blocks).
This needs a links to pages/sections on WP:AE, WP:AC/DS, and other topic bans, interaction bans, move bans, etc. This is an area where new-ish admins often make mistakes. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:01, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Main page related work should be added too. Might take a look at this soon. Sam Walton (talk) 23:15, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Adjust wording edit request
In the third sentence it opens with 'Administrative tools are very powerful...', however I feel that such a phrase may lean too much towards the idea that being an Administrator confers authority onto a user, when it should lean towards the idea that they are 'a servant of the Wikipedia' (to put it blandly). Therefore I propose the phrase be adjusted to 'Administrative tools have been granted due to the trust the community has in you...' or some variant of that. Thank you! 110.20.207.12 (talk) 20:47, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I've implemented your suggested improvement. I don't think the wording is ideal - there should probably be some better indication that the tools can do damage ("impact the entire site" as WP:RFA puts it) - but I've no better suggestions at this time. Thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2018
In Administrators' guide/Edit filters, please change the wording in 2nd heading from “Hidden filters are private to avoid abusive users from learning out how to circumvent them...” to “Hidden filters are private to avoid abusive users from learning how to circumvent them...” Current wording is awkward and grammatically incorrect, and is most likely just a typo. 24.39.251.50 (talk) 07:49, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done DRAGON BOOSTER   ★  08:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Avoiding Bias
Do we have a policy whereby an Admin should not protect an article that he himself has worked on as an author? --Edoe (talk) 12:27, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:INVOLVED--Ymblanter (talk) 18:44, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer missing from list
Is there a reason why the "new page reviewer" right is not listed under Administrators' guide/Granting and revoking user rights? Seems that info from New pages patrol/Reviewers should be summarized there. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 18:58, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't see it listed, but there is Requests_for_permissions/New_page_reviewer/Administrator_instructions.
 * that page is indeed a bit out of date, will see about making some additions soon. — xaosflux  Talk 21:17, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , shall I add something basic? I'm sure I could at least capture the broad themes based on our recent discussion, and maybe you or somebody else could review what I write in case I miss any nuance. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 01:46, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Go for it, that page is outdated and someone needs to do it :D — xaosflux  Talk 02:00, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

unprotection question
Just wondering if a protected page can be unlocked? Profzebra (talk) 00:11, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * you may request un-protection at WP:RFPP. — xaosflux  Talk 00:14, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikify "collateral damage"
Under "Blocking a range of IPs" I suggest linking the term "collateral damage" to WP:COLLATERAL. —DIV (1.144.111.80 (talk) 10:34, 1 July 2019 (UTC))

Dead links
I got a dead link (404 error) for:
 * blockcalc at https://tools.wmflabs.org/blockcalc ;
 * HelloAnnyong's rangecontrib tool at https://tools.wmflabs.org/rangecontrib.

Also xtools, which displays a link of https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/rangecontribs, actually sends me to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:User_contributions (I have no idea why!).

—DIV (1.144.111.80 (talk) 10:48, 1 July 2019 (UTC))


 * Regarding 'xtools' see Administrators%27_guide/Blocking. —DIV (1.144.111.80 (talk) 11:55, 1 July 2019 (UTC))

Semi-protected edit request on 7 August 2019
Put the {pp} template on there. 66.192.212.158 (talk) 23:39, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Danski454 (talk) 00:32, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Removing different rights in explanation
The "removing permissions" section has us de-ticking the recently added rollbacker right, but explaining why we're removing the user's accountcreator right.

Is there a reason for this or am I free to sync up the two?

Unless the reason is to see if we can train new admins to give confusing explanations to conceal something. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:37, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You passed the test! I presume a mistake. ~ Amory  (u • t • c) 00:56, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Multiple protection query
If I add both edit and move protection (especially if they were of different levels), is there a way to make multiple padlocks appear to indicate that?

The twinkle addition doesn't seem to offer the ability, but adding it manually just seems to overwrite the pre-existing lock. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:36, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * short answer: no. Smarty-pants answer: this is a wiki we can do anything :D.  Best answer: follow up at Module talk:Protection banner, I think it has been previously discussed and rejected. —  xaosflux  Talk 19:45, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There is no reason to add multiple padlocks. Given that a padlock is not a guarantee that protection is in fact in place, the best indicator is the message a user sees when trying to move a protected page. In some theoretical model, a better GUI would advise the user before the event, but everyone is overwhelmed with banners and what-not so a padlock is not much help in practice. Johnuniq (talk) 21:08, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

How to block when not a administrator
Can you do something such as requesting a block if you are not an administrator? User3749 (talk) 13:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It would depend upon the circumstances. For example, a persistent vandal might be blocked following a report filed at WP:AIV. See the notes at the top of that page for other noticeboards which may apply. See also WP:Sanctions and WP:Blocking policy. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Kudos
Thanks so much for setting this up! Barring a drastic change in my RfA, it looks like I may be going through the paces here in a few days. I'm really grateful I don't have to start cold as an admin using the buttons for the first time in real situations. I probably wouldn't delete the main page but I suspect there's still some practical learning I need to do before I'm a fit mopjockey. Cheers, Pigman what? / trail 21:50, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

To become an adminstrator
What is the school usually about. I'm interest on become and admin one day so I can block users, delete pages, and contribs, protect and semi-protect pages. Where in Southern California to attend school? I'm form South Orange County, California.-- Freewayguy ( Meet ) 19:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - from the reading that I've done, you need to submit a "Request for Adminship" or be nominated by someone else. You can read more about the process here -  Request for Adminship.  This "New Admin school" page is an set of instructions and procedures to assist new admins with normal processes.  Unless I'm very mistaken, there isn't any formal school that you would actually attend.  The RfA article will give you some additional references, like  Administrators' reading list,  Administrators' how-to guide, and  Guide to requests for adminship.  Best of luck.  Regards. --Daddy.twins (talk) 21:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You could also check out the Admin Coaching page and request a coach to help you learn what the role involves.  nancy   (talk) 12:42, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Mobile protection
How do I protect a page on mobile. Sw3aty G4mer (talk) 12:58, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Administrators' guide. Apart from that, requests for increases to a page's protection level should be made at Requests for page protection. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:04, 22 August 2020 (UTC)