Tardis:Guide for new administrators

If this is the first time you've gained administrative access on a Wikia wiki, you may be a little confused with the new options before you. And if you have been an admin elsewhere, you may be unfamiliar with the level of customisation we have here at w:c:tardis.

Therefore, we've prepared this little administrators' guide to help you with some of the basics of being an admin here. We hope it will help you be a stronger admin.

Before we get into specifics, though, remember the simplest rule of all: just because you're now an admin doesn't mean that you'll know the answer to everything. If you get stuck, ask another administrator for help. And don't forget to ask for help from the general Wikia community. There's a great forum, just for admin to which you now have access!

Communication with new users
Assume good faith in regards to edits made by new users. Everyone makes mistakes. Wven several mistakes one after the other may not necessarily be vandalism — just an overly enthusiastic new user.

Special pages to check
These two pages usually end of containing more than a few pages or images that new users have created or uploaded.
 * Special:UncategorizedFiles
 * Special:UncategorizedPages

Go through them and add the correct categories in the case of new pages, or delete them if they're vandalism (or created in error). Or with regards to images check them, add copyright tags if you're able to identify their source, tag them for delete if you're unable to.

If a user has uploaded several images without tagging them leave a message on their talk page, don't call it vandalism the first time, as it's an easy mistake to make.

Other useful pages
You can find the other Special pages on Special:Specialpages. While this page may be familiar to you, as an admin you have access to a few new page links.

There are also quite a few help files which pertain mostly to admins. These include: allowcachedresults=true category=admin help columns=3 shownamespace=false

Main page templates
The feature article nominations, Quote of the Week nominations and Tardis:DYK nominations are all nominations processes used to populate components of the main page. These modules are changed in accordance with their corresponding policies. While anyone can edit and update the modules — Doctor Who Wiki/Article of the month, Doctor Who Wiki/Quote and Doctor Who Wiki/DYK — it is often admins that perform the job.

Indeed, all admin should check the entirety of the front page at least monthly to ensure that its various modules are up-to-date.

Merging articles
Merging is a process bringing the content and history of two article pages together. It is a process that involves deleting and undeleting (or restoring) pages. Only admins can perform this task as it involves deleting and restoring pages.

See Tardis:How to merge articles for instructions on how to merge articles.

Deletion and restoration
You can delete practically any page on this wiki, be it an article page, talk page, forum page or an; image, video or other file. You do this by clicking "Edit" and selecting "Delete".

There may be situations where you have to restore (undelete) a page, it may have been mistakenly deleted or it may be part of a process of merging articles. You can see a list of the deleted pages at Special:Log/delete, from there you can click the "view/restore" link which will take you to a page which will explain the process of restoring a page.

You can also find this information by navigating to the page (by following a redlink) and then clicking "back to page" (if you're taken to the edit box). There you'll be provided with a box with a caption that reads "This page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page are provided below for reference." you can then navigate to the restore page.

Protected pages and titles
Both pages and titles can be protected, on the protect page you will be presented with two selections to protect the page and to move protect it. You can choose from a set amount of time to protect using the drop down boxes or set a specific time. To set a specific time click within the 'Other' field and use this format: time in 24 hour time, Month date, year, so for 1pm on the 3rd March 2011 it would be written as 13:00, March 3, 2011.

You can set the page and move protection independently or together, there may be occasions for instance when you may just want to move protect a page.

Special:ProtectedPages and Special:ProtectedTitles provide a list of protected pages and titles. Protected pages are pages that exist and have been semi or fully protected. Protected titles are pages that have been create-protected, which means they are redlinks and their create-protection prevents users from creating them.

Note: When a create-protected page is created (by an admin or registered user in the case of semi-protection) the protection is removed, the page must then be re-protected following its creation. This is noteworthy especially regarding articles that relate to recently broadcasted stories which are usually create-protected and then created, you must ensure to protect them after creating them in line with our various policies.

All articles that you protect should have the protection templates on them;
 * Use protect to prevent new and IP users from editing.
 * Use lock to prevent all but other admin from editing.

These templates will automatically put the articles into either the Semi-protected articles or fully-protected articles categories.

Note: It's good to check both these categories as the protection on articles may have expired but the protection template will still remain, this needs to be added and removed manually.

How to protect pages from being created
There are several ways you can create-protect a page, but the following is the easiest and most fool-proof: These steps will take you directly to the protection screen, which you then can change as you see fit.
 * 1) Copy the following text into your browser URL window: http://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=PAGENAME&action=protect&redlink=1
 * 2) Replace PAGENAME with the name of the page to be protected.  You do not have use underscores for spaces, or use any special characters for symbols.  Just highlight the word PAGENAME and type over it with the plain text title.  Don't touch any other characters in the URL — eliminate only the complete word, PAGENAME. For instance, if I wanted to create-protect Castrovalva (TV story), then I would put this into my URL bar: http://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=Castrovalva (TV story)&action=protect&redlink=1
 * 3) Press

One word of caution, though. Often, we try to create-protect pages we have just deleted. This is logical enough; we want to stop people from re-creating a page we've judged to be inappropriate. However, there is, as of late 2011, a bit of a flaw in the Wikia cache which doesn't allow this. If you try to create-protect immediately after deletion, you'll be brought to the edit-protect screen, which isn't what you want. You have to wait between 15 minutes and an hour for the cache to "catch up".

Welcome template
There are two welcome templates one for new IP users and one for new registered users. These are MediaWiki, and they operate automatically adding these pages to new IP or new registered users' talk pages when they make an edit on this wiki.

The signature portion is left automatically, the signature is of whichever admin made the last edit (anywhere on the wiki), so keep in mind that new users may be following this link and come asking you questions.

You can read more about how this works on this page.

Vandalism and abuse
It's an ugly reality but these two things will happen.

Your user page will be vandalised, I would encourage you not to protect your user page as this sets up an imbalance between regular users and admins that I feel shouldn't exist. It is very easy to rollback any vandalism on your user page.

Abuse, you will have abuse throw at you, again I would suggest keeping a cool head and not immediately going for the Block button. Some users get worked up but many will make good editors if given a chance. I'm not saying ignore our vandalism or no personal attacks polices but as admins we are in a more prominent position with regards to these things.

Other problems
Know that you're not alone when dealing with issues or problems on a wiki, you can leave a message with other admins or use the Special:Contact link to contact the staff at Wiki.

Problems with Wikia in general check out the Community Central Forums], these are forums of wikia central and users from across all wikis post questions and issues there all of the time, answers come from other users and are very often come within 24-48 hours.