Guide to wikiHow Adminship
This is a user-friendly guide to using the various admin tools and functions on wikiHow, as well as best practices for using them in various situations.
Delete
Procedure
To delete a page or file in any namespace:
- Navigate to the page.
- Hover your cursor over “Admin”, located above the page title.
- Click “Delete” from the menu.
- Select an option from the “Reason for deletion” menu. This dropdown menu includes reasons for NFD, speedy, and maintenance.
- Under the “Other/additional reason” text field, you may optionally insert more information you feel is noteworthy or manually specify a deletion reason. This field defaults to “content was: …” if left unchanged.
- (Optional) Check-off the “Watch” option if you wish to add the page to your watchlist.
- Click “Delete page” to finalize the action.
The NFD process
Speedy deletion
For the purposes of consensus and fairness among the community, admins are encouraged to stick with the usual NFD process when deleting articles. However, there are a variety of scenarios where NFD can be bypassed. An immediate or on-the-spot page deletion is called a speedy deletion (“speedy”). In general, admins are not strictly bound to the NFD procedure. Many deletions are made based on the specific admin’s judgement, interpretation, and experience.
Some instances justifying speedy deletion include:
- Obvious instances of spam
- Gibberish, keyboard smashing, and nonsense which does not add any value to the project whatsoever
- Personal attacks or obscene content
- Test pages created by admins themselves or other experienced users
- Copyright violations (including images) and content farm submissions
- Rarely, at the request of the article’s original author if no one else have contributed to the page
- Maintenance such as with broken redirects
- Office actions by wikiHow staff, which should not be undone without explicit permission from staff
- Any sort of content which violates the Terms of Use including the illegal promotion or distribution of prohibited materials
Regular users can request speedy deletion by tagging a page with {{speedy}}, which adds a notice and places it in Category:Speedy.
Best practices
Protect
Procedure
Best practices
Block
Problematic users, including those without an account, can be blocked to prevent them from making further contributions. Blocked users lose the ability to edit pages, upload files, send talk page messages, patrol recent changes, use any of the Community Dashboard tools, or post on the forums. This tool is helpful when dealing with a vandal, troll, or spammer because it completely disallows their account from editing, essentially putting the site into read-only mode for them.
Procedure
To perform a block:
- Navigate to Special:Block for the intended user and confirm the correct username or IP address.
- Choose the actions to block.
- Editing: Disallow editing pages across all namespaces, except for the user's own talk page (see below). This is enabled by default and cannot be unchecked.
- Prevent account creation: Set an autoblock attribute to the IP address to disallow the creation of additional usernames.
- Editing their own talk page: Prevent the user from editing their own User_talk: page.
- Sending email: Revoke access to Special:EmailUser.
- Set the expiration. Use the calendar date picker, choose an option from the drowndown menu (see below), or manually enter a duration.
- Specify the reason. Choose a suitable option from the dropdown menu (see below) to explain the reason for the block. Optionally, you can use the text field to manually insert a custom reason, or to add further notes.
- Choose additional options and parameters.
- Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent addresses they try to edit from: Set a 24-hour autoblock to the associated IP address(es). This option only appears when blocking a registered username, rather than an anonymous IP address.
- Watch this user's user and talk pages: Add these pages to your watchlist.
- Prevent logged-in users from editing from this IP address: Apply the same block to additional users under that IP address in an active login session.
- Click the "Block this user" button.
COPPA blocks for underage users (Under 13)
Under the Terms of Use, users must be over the age of 13 to register an account on wikiHow. To ensure compliance with The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), admins must block the account and remove any personal information of any user confirmed to be under 13. Personal information can include: real name, age, location, grade level, details about school, social media usernames, or photos.
The expiry is based on the length of time it would take for the user to reach 13 years of age (e.g. if a user states they are 11 years old, block for 2 years; if 9 years old, block for 4 years). Choose the "Under 13" option as the block reason.
In addition to the usual block procedure, the following actions should also be taken:
- Delete and/or revert any content that mentions personal information. Because the RevisionDeletion MediaWiki extension is not enabled for volunteer admins, it's preferable to blank the default deletion reason to avoid further visibility of posted personal information and maintain discretion. When deleting, pay attention to the user page and bio, including User:Username/profilebox-aboutme, User:Username/profilebox-occupation, and User:Username/profilebox-live.
- Delete the user's profile picture through Special:AdminRemoveAvatar.
- Leave a {{under13}} message on their talk page. This informs them of COPPA and provides instruction on how to obtain parental permission.
- Submit an entry to the Under-13 Account Closure Google Doc. Since COPPA prohibits the site from collecting personal data, wikiHow staff will close under-13 accounts if no permission form is received within 3 days.
COPPA blocks are only performed on registered usernames and when their age is explicitly stated as being under 13. Anonymous users are not blocked because since there may be many people sharing an IP address, there is no way to pinpoint an individual user. Admins should only block when a specific age is revealed in an edit or post, not just "on a hunch" based on online behavior.
Best practices
Since blocks are intended to prevent further disruption and are not designed to be a punishment, these should only be given in response to continued spamming, trolling, or vandalism despite multiple warnings.
Move/Rename
Procedure
Best practices
Promote/Demote
Advanced functions and tasks
CheckUser
CheckUser (CU) is a MediaWiki extension to allow users with these rights to look up the IP address(es) connected to an account, and vice versa. This tool is used to investigate suspicious account activity, such as sockpuppet misuse, long-term abuse, or block circumvention. Only a small subset of admins have CheckUser rights and it's not routinely granted due to the sensitive nature of performing an IP lookup; admins requesting the rights must demonstrate an ability to exercise good judgement when dealing with confidential information.
It's recommended to have a basic understanding of IP addresses, proxies, and VPNs. To perform a CheckUser query:
- Navigate to Special:CheckUser via user links.
- Specify a reason as justification for the check.