RationalWiki:Sysop guide

So you just discovered that you have extra buttons. Someone must have demoted you out of respect or in jest.

Congratulations, you are now a RationalWiki Janitor Sysop!

What looks different

There are five things you will see now that are different.

Patrolling

One which we pretty much ignore, but might freak you out at first, are the little red exclamation points (!) all over your "watchlist" and "recent changes", and the phrases "patrolled" and "mark as patrolled" turning up here and there. This allows a wiki's sysops to mark edits they have vetted, so other sysops know they aren't wandalism. If a sysop edits a page, it automatically becomes "patrolled".

Hiding revisions

RationalWiki has enabled the ability to "hide" individual revisions from the public view without having to delete the entire page history. It is generally used whenever someone posts personal information (e.g. street address, phone number, real name, place of work, etc.) without the subject's permission.

When you look at a page's edit history, next to each revision you will see a (show/hide) button. Clicking the button brings you to a screen, containing a list of options for hiding the revision from public view:

• Hide revision text — Checking this hides whatever changes were made.
• Hide edit comment — Obviously, checking this hides whatever the edit summary was.
• Hide editor's username/IP — Checking this hides the username of the person who made the edit.
• Apply these restrictions to sysops as well as others — Checking this applies any of the options above to sysops, as well as the general public. Given the large number of sysops we have, if your goal is to hide personal information (such as described earlier) then it is best to check this as well.

If you must practice using this ability, practice only on your own userpage.

Page deletion

You will see a new tab across the top of most pages, called "vaporize" (as of right now, anyway). This allows deletion of unwanted pages - useless redirects left behind after pagemoves, for instance. Talk pages have to be deleted separately, if they are still there.

If you delete a page that is pointed to by other pages it will create a "wanted page" upon deletion. It is best to click on "what links here" before deleting, to see if there are links to the page. Edit those pages to reflect that this page no longer exists. In other words, remove the [[ and the ]] from the pages that are pointing to the ex-page, or change the links to go to the new page name, if it was moved.

If you find one of those snarky "pretend" links, that conflates a word or phrase with the actual link target, putting "nowiki" tags around it will preserve the original joker's intent. This only applies to talk pages.

Blocking (how)

Most importantly, you will have the opportunity to slow down vandals by blocking them for long enough to at least clean up their mess. Usually an hour or so is plenty of time to make them go away since the fun has stopped. The "block time" box in the blocking screen accepts plain English descriptions of time - like "3 hours 1 minute 4 seconds", or you can select from the drop down list. The same is true for the reason for the block - you can write your own, or just pick from the menu.

When in the blocking window, you will also see the block history of the person you are blocking, which is quite helpful in deciding what time is appropriate.

Please don't block for long periods of time. Infinite blocks or blocks for periods of years are not necessary. In fact, it is highly unlikely that a block for more than a few days will be needed. Also, try to remember to uncheck the "block IP address" box, it is often pointless to block IP addresses as well.

In most cases it is not even necessary to block vandals. When you click on "block this user", you will also see a button that says "add to vandal group". The "vandal group" is a special user group that limits edits to two per hour, and works very well to make them get bored and go away, while allowing them to come back and edit to ask if they can be paroled. When you click on "add to vandal group" you will see any past activity in this area involving the editor.

Protection

Another tab you will see is used to restrict editing of a page. In most cases, it will say "capture", since very few pages here are protected. In the case of a protected page, it will say "release" (as of now). We generally find it unnecessary to do this, however from time to time a hot vandal target may be locked so only registered users can edit it.

Hiding

When looking at page histories, beside each revision there will be a button saying "show/hide". Click this to change the visibility. There will be four options: to hide the edit text, to hide the edit comment, to hide the user, or to apply to sysops. NOTE: this is only to be used in cases where personal information is compromised.

The role of sysops

• A sysop is not a censor. The task of filtering out inappropriate or irrelevant article content is the responsibility of every editor. RationalWiki does not censor opinions, and specifically not on discussion pages. That said, the Wiki generally tries to avoid being a platform for extreme fascist propaganda.

• A sysop is not a better kind of user. Access to certain functions of the wiki interface does not make any user better than others. A sysop is just a regular volunteer who must spend more time monitoring vandalism. As a rule however, users with a proven track record of consistent positive contributions to RationalWiki would usually be considered for the position.

• Nevertheless sysops are not the only notable users. Valuable membership is not a question of status but of the ability to collaborate with others to further RationalWiki's mission.

• Sysops are not governors. While sysops have access to functions like protection and blocking to help remove crazy wandalism, and other malicious stuff, sysops are not the regulators to break up fighting users. Mature conflict resolution is the responsibility of all editors, and sysops should not necessarily be the ones expected to step in and deal with editors with an attitude. However, they may need to make occasional judicious use of their blocking powerz to temporarily slow down abusive or offensive users and, perhaps, trolls.

• On RationalWiki, things are a bit "different" than on most wikis. As an editor once said, "where other wikis have editors, we have sysops. Where they have sysops, we have bureacrats". What does this mean? On RationalWiki, we trust everyone except "Fre" to not only edit, but to help keep the floor clean. Yup, we meant it when we said "janitor".

More about blocking

Blocking and cleaning vandalism procedure

Verify that vandalism is taking place. This is frequently quite easy as you will see a series of "Removing all content from page" messages on Recent Changes. In other cases you may have to look at the fossil record and compare pages.

When you are certain it is vandalism then use the RationalWiki:Vandal page to put the user in the vandal category. This will severely limit their ability do do more damage (it only allows them about two edits/hours). You could also block the vandal for a short period. The easiest way to do this is to click on "block user", and then look down a bit (ignore your power trip for a moment) - you'll see a link that says "move to vandal group" or some such. Click on it and you'll be taken to a page that allows you to move the user to the vandal group, along with any history with the group they already have. If they really pissed you off and you feel the need to block them for more than a few hours, please enter "I was angry, please unblock tomorrow" or some such in the "block reason" box, so someone else can dissipate your anger after you go to bed.

Anyway! After playing with all those buttong, click on the user's "contribs" which follow their name on recent changes. This will bring up a list of their recent actions along with a "rollback" option. If the entries are obviously vandalism then open the rollback in tabs in your browser - this will return the article to its state prior to their edit(s). If it is not clear that it is vandalism, then first review the posts using "compare pages". (This is the "janitorial" aspect of the job, and matters more than playing with the "block user" button - mostly these days we save that for friends!)

Blocking IP's

On the block screen block you will also see two check boxes:

• Prevent account creation
• Automatically block the last IP address used by this user, and any subsequent IPs they try to edit from

You should only check the first box, Prevent account creation.

Blocking (how not)

Please don't block in anger or spite. Please do not block just because you disagree with someone. And please keep block lengths as short as it takes to do the job (minutes).

If possible, try engaging the vandal, not blocking them. Obviously someone editing random pages to insert gibberish or blank them is not going to respond to kindness, but if an editor seems to be trying to say something, see if you can get them to go to the talk pages. If they make nasty articles, we can de-nasty them in most cases.

Pledge template

If you want to, you can add {{Sysop pledge}} to your user or talk pages, to include this:

As a confirmed mustard jar for taking on this job as a Sysop on RationalWiki: I pledge to only block users if they ask for it, or insert unfunny vandalism. I furthermore pledge that if I indulge in secret private conversations about you, we will make a formal report to the mob. Is that all? If you impugn my motives without warrant, or challenge my "AUTHORITY", er, there is nothing I can or will do.

See also

• Blocking policy
• Where people can complain about you

Notes