Howtopedia administration

access types

Here are the different types of identified users, listed here in roughly ascending order of power.

IP addresses

Visitors who haven't "signed in" can edit articles on howtopedia. But it is encouraged to sign in. See Special:Userlogin to sign up.

Signed-in users

Signed-up users can edit articles and help with the maintenance of howtopedia. They can also upload files, move/rename pages, create their own user page, start new articles and watch the modifications occuring on their selection of articles.There is no restriction to sign in, see Special:Userlogin to sign up.

Bots

The edits of users with bot status turned on do not show up in recent changes, usually only used for mass edits by bots.

Administrators

Users with Administrator status have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Administrators can *Protect and unprotect pages, *Delete pages and their history, * View and restore deleted pages and their history, * Permanently delete images,*Revert pages quickly,* Hide vandalism, * Block IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts, for a specific time or indefinitely,* Unblock IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts, * plus some other rights helping the maintenance of howtopedia. Howtopedia's practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular howtopedia contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects howtopedia policy, or to recognized specialists in the field of practical knowledge and simple technologies.

Bureaucrats

Users with bureaucrat status can turn other users into sysops (but not remove sysop status). Bureaucrats are created by other bureaucrats on projects where these exist, or by stewards on those who don't yet have one. Sysoppings are recorded in Special:Log/rights . Sysoppings by stewards are recorded at Meta:Special:Log/rights.

Stewards

Users with steward status can change the access of any user on any Wikimedia project. This includes granting and revoking sysop access and marking users as bots. Their actions are recorded at Special:Log/rights on meta. Requests for their assistance can be made at m:requests for permissions. Normally, they will not perform actions that can be carried out by a local bureaucrat.

Developers

The highest degree of technical access (actually a group of levels, the difference between all but the lowest of which isn't really visible to users) is "developer", for those who can make direct changes to the MediaWiki software and the Wikimedia wiki farm and databases. These people, by and large, do not carry out administrative functions, aside from sock puppet checks and reattributing edits.

They can be contacted via the wikitech-l mailing list. See m:Developer for a list of developers and further information.