MarioWiki:Administrators

Administrators, sometimes called admins or sysops, are users who have been promoted and given additional rights and responsibilities. They are one of four ranks of wiki staff, although the two higher ranks, bureaucrats and the proprietor, also retain the lower administrator rank. Be aware that the term "administrator" is often used as an umbrella term to refer to all the wiki staff, rather than the specific admin/sysop rank, so unless otherwise stated, the one lower rank, patrollers, should always be assumed to be included in any discussions about "admins," as they are generally treated the same anyway, aside from a few technical limitations. A list of all current admins, along with links to contact them individually, may be found here.

Overview
Administrators/sysops are users who have a proven track record of high-quality edits and responsible, mature behaviour, and have had performance- and security-based restrictions on several features lifted because they seemed like hardworking and trustworthy folks. This includes the ability to block vandals or disruptive users, quickly revert damage done to articles, and delete unwanted images or pages (among other functions listed below). Users cannot ask to be promoted: all decisions on promotions and demotions are made by the current staff members, although users are free to decline when offered a promotion. Users will typically be made patrollers first, rather than getting promoted directly to sysop.

In general, sysops are not imbued with any special authority and are equal to everyone else in terms of editorial responsibility. Staff members' votes and opinions are given equal weight to regular users in proposals, featured article nominations, or any other democratic process or informal discussion. Sysops should not have power over other users other than applying decisions made by all users, but when they do exercise their authority to enforce established rules and regulations, users should defer to their judgement rather than arguing, edit-warring and making a scene. Sysops are not infallible, however any mistakes made by the wiki staff will be dealt with internally; Users should never attempt to give a staff member an official warning, but instead, voice any legitimate concerns to a bureaucrat in private, such as via a PM on the forum. While warnings given to users by an admin or patroller cannot be appealed, the other staff members have the ability to overturn any unwarranted warnings or blocks if they see fit. In addition, there are a few specific transgressions that only admins or patrollers can dispense warnings for, and the staff reserves the right to veto proposals and remove illegitimate votes if necessary.

Because of their experience, users seeking help will often turn to a sysop for advice and information. During vandal attacks or edit wars, users may contact any staff members who are online for assistance, or alternatively use the admin noticeboard in urgent cases. All admins must closely watch for changes or new incidents posted to the noticeboard. Although, admins and patrollers are expected to keep an eye on Special:RecentChanges as much as possible in order to notice incidents on their own.

Many essential housekeeping chores require the additional editing tools granted to sysops, and users should feel free to ask for assistance if they are not able to perform certain necessary functions on their own, such as having pages protected or unprotected, having redirects deleted to make room for moves, etc. For less pressing matters, can be placed on pages or images requiring deletion, and a sysop will get around to it sooner than later, as they are expected to periodically check and empty the "to be deleted" category.

It is mandatory that sysops and patrollers check the forum's wiki staff board on a regular basis, as this is where most administrative decisions are made. If it is possible, it would be convenient for administrators to also go to #mwikistaff chat channel, which is a faster and more effective way of discussing wiki matters, although important decisions should ultimately still be made through the forum. It is very rare that situations are pressing enough that there is no time for forum discussion.

If a staff member retires, they are usually autopatrolled upon their demotion, meaning their edits are still considered trustworthy and are automatically marked as patrolled, like when they were part of the staff. They also retain their access to the staff board on the forum and are encouraged to continue participating in discussions there if they so choose.

Administrator group rights
The wiki software has several important features that are restricted from usage by regular users. This page lists all the restricted features granted to administrators (and other user ranks), but a more comprehensive overview is provided below. Note that many, but not all, of these rights are also possessed by patrollers.


 * Protecting and unprotecting pages.
 * Directly editing or moving protected pages.
 * Deleting pages, files and their history.
 * Viewing and restoring deleted pages and page histories.
 * Hiding specific revisions of a page from public view, including the associated edit summary if necessary.
 * Viewing and restoring hidden revisions.
 * Instantly reverting the most recent edits made to a page via rollback (note that any user can manually revert a page to an earlier version, admins can just do it faster).
 * Looking up a user's IP address via CheckUser.
 * Blocking user accounts, IP addresses and IP ranges for a specific time or indefinitely; see the blocking policy for more information.
 * Unblocking user accounts, IP addresses and IP ranges.
 * Hiding inappropriate usernames from public view.
 * Marking edits as patrolled.
 * Having their own edits automatically marked as patrolled.

Current administrators
The following is a list of all current administrators. Bureaucrats and the proprietor are also in this list, while patrollers are listed here.