Pikipedia:Administrators

Administrators (also known as sysops) are Pikipedia users who have administrator rights.

Administrators are not imbued with any special authority and are equal to everyone else in terms of editorial responsibility. Some consider the terms "sysop" and "administrator" to be misnomers, as they just indicate users who have had performance- and security-based restrictions on several features lifted because they seemed like trustworthy folks. Administrators should not have power over other users other than applying decisions made by all users.

The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among these are keeping an eye on new and changed articles to swiftly remove vandalism, and meeting user requests for help with tasks that require administrator access. Since administrators are experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information.

For a listing of all administrators, including inactive ones, see Special:Listusers/sysop.

Administrator abilities

The MediaWiki software has a few important features that are restricted to administrators. Compared to regular users and patrollers, administrators have the ability to:

• Protect pages: Administrators can protect and unprotect a page, preventing it from being edited by certain user groups (generally unregistered users, or in rare cases non-administrators).
• Change the interface: Administrators can edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which controls the wiki's appearance and functionality.
• Delete pages: Administrators can delete pages and images, and can also view and restore deleted pages and their history.
• Block users: In rare situations, administrators can block (and unblock) IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts for a specific time or indefinitely.

See also

• Administrators' how-to guide on Wikipedia
• Administrators' reading list on Wikipedia
• Help:Group rights: A quick overview of the different types of user rights.