Difference between revisions of "Help:Sysops and permissions"

Revision as of 21:37, 12 January 2010

The way permissions are set-up on different wikis can vary, but in general...

Soft security - There are no permissions

Wikis are often set up to be freely and openly editable. This means anyone can edit the pages, often without even registering/logging in. This is only possible because wikis offer a unique kind of "soft security". By making it very simple to monitor edits, and revert changes to retrieve an older version of a page, a wiki doesn't need to be very restrictive at all.

There are no permissions. Everyone is an administrator. You don't need permission to edit, and you are encouraged to "be bold", go forth and edit!

...at least that is the theory. In practice MediaWiki software does offer many options related to permissions.

Sysops

By default MediaWiki provides extra functionality to a group of trusted users called 'sysops' (or known more generally as 'administrators') Most of the time this should go largely unnoticed by the normal users of a wiki community. Everyone can get involved in editing pages, and even undertaking drastic reorganisation of the wiki. The extra powers of a sysop user are intended for use in settling disputes and preventing repeated vandalism.

Who are the sysops?

You can find out who the sysops are at Special:ListUsers/sysop

What can a sysop do?

There are a number of extra features available to sysops. The key ones are as follows:

Protecting and unprotecting pages, and editing protected pages

'Protecting' a page prevents normal users from editing the page at all. There are several reasons why a particular page might be protected. For more information see Help:Protected pages. For sysop information see Help:Protecting and unprotecting pages

Deleting pages, and undeleting.

A page can be deleted semi-permanently, such that it is no longer available (even in the page histories) for normal users. Normal users do not have this power. See Help:Deleting a page. For sysop information see Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting.

Blocking a user or IP address, and unblocking them.

Users can be blocked from the wiki. This is a useful way of keeping out persistent vandals. Users are identified by their registered user name, or by I.P. address, and can be blocked permanently, or just short length of time to give them a "cooling off" period. See Help:Blocking users

Patrolling, and seeing patrolled edits.

This is a way of coordinating with other sysops, to ensure that every edit of the wiki has been checked over by a trusted user. See Help:Patrolled edits

Bureaucrats

Another level of permissions within a default MediaWiki set-up, is the 'bureaucrat' group.

The main thing a bureaucrat can do, which 'sysop' cannot, is promote users to be sysops (and demote sysops to normal users). See Help:Assigning permissions

See Also

• {{ #ifeq:

 gps.alaska.edu

| www.mediawiki.org | Manual:Administrators | Manual:Administrators }}

Template

Syntax

{{Languages|PageName}}

• PageName (optional) - the name of the page to display language links for. If omitted then the English version of the current page is used. This parameter can normally be omitted, as it is only required if you want to link to a page other than the one you place the template on, which is very uncommon. If this parameter is used on a sub-page make sure you supply the root name, not the full page name (e.g. on MediaWiki/fr you would need to use {{Languages|MediaWiki}} and not {{Languages|MediaWiki/fr}}).

Usage

The template should only be placed on pages that exist in more than one language, and it should be placed in the same location on each translation of the page.

The English version of a page is always the main version, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

For example, on the Main Page you would include the text {{Languages}}, both on Main Page itself, and on each of its language sub-pages. The template automatically creates links to any language sub-pages that exist, e.g. Main Page/ja<tt>, <tt>Main Page/fr, and ignores non-existant languages.

See Project:Language policy for further details about translating pages.

Supported languages

This shows you the name of each language's sub-page (using Main Page as an example). Other languages may be added easily as necessary. Please use the appropriate prefix, as used on Wikipedia when adding a new language. Please do not add languages for which no pages exist yet, as this will increase the time needed to include the template without adding any benefit (languages are only displayed to the user when the relevant page exists).

The link on the language names goes to the Wikipedia in that language. If no Wikipedia in your language exists, do not add pages in that language to MediaWiki.org! This wiki is not the place for language advocacy - please go through the correct channels, and once your language has a Wikipedia then please return to add content here.

Example

Here is how the language bar looks on the MediaWiki page: Template loop detected: Template:Languages