Help:Notes for admins

Help:Main page

Notes for admins

This page outlines basic instructions and tools for wiki admins. All Team Kodi members are admins (If you don't have access, poke Ned about this) and should have access to these tools, but please use them responsibly and with due caution. The way Mediawiki works, changes are applied live and right away.

Some options for the wiki are configured in the localsettings.php file on SRV1, which requires terminal/server access. For security reasons only a few members of Team Kodi have such access. However, most things can be changed by any wiki admin via the web interface.

In the same way that you can undo a page edit, you can also undo nearly all admin actions, so even if you make a mistake, don't panic ;)

Interface

These pages allow you to change the interface of the wiki. Like normal pages, they contain a history of all changes made to those interface settings, and you can even revert a change you make if it is a mistake, or view how something looked in the past. All users can see these pages, but only admins can make changes.

• MediaWiki:MenuSidebar - contains the links/formatting for the global side menu.
• File:Logo.png - To change the sidebar logo, upload a new version (135x135px) on this page.
• Special:AllMessages - These pages allow nearly every text string on the wiki to be configured. Most are set to the default, but you can filter the list by "Modified" to see anything customized for our specific wiki.
  • This includes both global and skin specific CSS files and javascript files for all users. For example:
  • MediaWiki:Common.css - Most of the CSS classes are defined here
  • MediaWiki:Common.js - Global javascript.
  • MediaWiki:Sitenotice - Display a global message on the top of every page, like when a new version is released.

User accounts

Approving and creating accounts

Main page: Help:Confirming accounts

Currently we use a system where users request an account and an admin approves that request. This is mainly just an anti-spam measure and not meant to regulate who can edit or not.

See Help:Confirming accounts for details.

Both admins and non-admin users can also make additional accounts, either for themselves (like when running a wiki bot) or on the behalf of other users. A user simply goes to Special:UserLogin and clicks on "Create an account" while logged in. This allows existing users to vouch for other users without having to wait on an admin. Anyone who does this for another person should be sure to ask that the new user change their password ASAP.

Making more admins

Admins can make other users into admins by using Special:UserRights.

Blocking and banning

In the unfortunate event that a user must be blocked, please consider a temp block before a permeant block, just as you would for the user forums or other account areas. Specific pages can also be protected as an alternative to blocking an entire account, in the event that there is a dispute over a specific page's content.

• Special:Block
• Special:Unblock

Spam

Since spambots have been pretty much stopped dead by the account request system, this really isn't used much anymore, but manual URL banning can be done using these pages. URLs can also be whitelisted. The master blacklist is taken from Wikimedia's global list (meta:Spam blacklist), then additional entries are applied from the English Wikipedia (wikipedia:MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist), and finally our local black/white lists are applied to that:

• MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist
• MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist