Help:Permissions

Revision as of 17:12, 23 May 2025 by Sirdog (talk | contribs)

This wiki has different account permissions to assist in it's administration. Any person with an account may request any permission. Granting of permissions is at EDC leadership and bureaucrat discretion.

Bureaucrat

A bureaucrat can review IP addresses used to access wiki accounts (reserved for investigating a user account being compromised), delete material on the wiki in such a manner to where even administrators cannot see it (reserved for personally identifiable information), and can grant and revoke any permission listed on this page.

The following individuals in the Endurance Coalition are bureaucrats.

Administrator

List of administrators available here.

An administrator is a janitor. They are able to block user accounts (which restrict all editing and use of advanced permissions), protect pages from editing (and thus edit any protected page[1]), and are able to delete pages and revisions. This makes it much easier to control the wiki's organization.

Usage of the above tools are at administrator discretion (with an expectation of working nicely with others). The actual use of the tools are explained at Manual:Administrators.[2] Administrators should be aware that deletion is not permanent. All pages and files[3] can be undeleted. To delete specific revisions, see Help:RevisionDelete.

Blocking guidelines

An administrator is not a moderator; they do not exist to punish. A punitive block is prohibited unless asked of by EDC leadership (which should be clearly documented in the block reason). Usage of administrator tools are purely to protect and enrich the wiki. In this regard, blocking a wiki account should be because without the block the account will continually be disruptive. The account holder may be drunk, having an emotional episode, lashing out in response to some kind of falling out, or the account may be compromised. In such situations, EDC leadership should be notified and the account blocked. Block length is at the administrator's discretion, though doing so indefinitely until hearing back from EDC leadership is always an option.

When blocking, as best practice, please ensure the following.

  • Blocks should always be marked as Sitewide.
  • The box Editing their own talk page should always be ticked.
  • Blocks should always be given a legible reason.

Interface administrator

List of interface administrators available here.

An interface administrator can edit pages in the Module: and MediaWiki: namespaces and import pages from other wikis. The Module: namespace contains JavaScript necessary for certain templates to function. The MediaWiki: namespace contains text which changes the look of the interface (e.g MediaWiki:Upload-summary which displays the warning at the top of Special:Upload).

Edit filter manager

List of edit filter managers available here.

An edit filter manager is able to create and edit filters at Special:AbuseFilter. They can also view and edit the private filters. The abuse filter is a set of regular expression (sometimes called "regex) patterns that perform certain actions when triggered. This wiki uses filters to prevent certain behaviors which may cause harm. Filters are marked private by edit filter managers at their discretion. This permission is not bundled into another permission due to the technical knowledge needed to create, edit, and interpret regex.

Account specialist

List of account specialists available here. Note that bureaucrats are functionally also account specialists.

An account specialist can create accounts for users and edit accounts to assist with recovery. Account creation is done through Special:CreateAccount and editing is done through Special:EditAccount. All permissions account specialists have bureaucrats also have, and so they are also account specialists.

Creating an account

Creating the account is simple. Follow the interface at Special:CreateAccount. Leave the email and real name fields blank. Write a quick reason. Click Create account. That's it.

Verification template

After the account physically exists, there is one more step which is slightly more complicated, which is giving the account their {{Account verified}} template. Since emails are not stored for privacy reasons[4], there is no easy way — aside from word of mouth — to connect a wiki account to a particular person. The {{Account verified}} template fixes this. The downside is it requires some effort.

To begin, go to the new account's user page. This is User: followed by the exact name you gave them at Special:CreateAccount. For example, Sirdog's user page is User:Sirdog. You will be told the page doesn't exist since you just created the account. Create the page.

At the top of the page, copy and paste the following:

{{Account verified|name=|id=}}

After name= but before the pipe (|), just write the name they commonly go by. If creating an account for Fleff, you'd just write Fleff. After id= but before the curly brackets (}}), you'll write in their Discord ID.[5]

To get a Discord ID, you need to enable developer mode on Discord (Settings > Advanced > Developer mode), right click the account's name on any message they've sent, and click the button Copy User ID. You will paste this after id=. It should just be a long number. For example, Sirdog's Discord ID is 281589411962028034.

The following is an example of a properly filled out template.

{{Account verified|name=Sirdog|id=281589411962028034}}

After you've done this, save the page. Double check the template doesn't look wonky, then, you are done. Thank you![6]

Guidelines

  • Accounts should only be made for people currently in the Endurance Coalition Discord. Those who aren't are ineligible.
  • Never click Close account in the Special:EditAccount interface.[7]
  • To help recover an account, simply use Special:EditAccount to change the person's password to something random and give it to them. Instruct them to change it immediately.
    • Most of the time, account verification is simple sense the Discord account for most users are well known. But if there is even a sliver of doubt, use {{Account verified}} to be sure.
    • If there is even a sliver of doubt that a Discord account requesting recovery is compromised, forward the matter to EDC leadership, and do not do anything to the relevant wiki account.
    • If part of account recovery is that the individual has lost access to their 2FA and their recovery codes, an EDC @SYS:OP will need to assist them.

Footnotes

  1. Not strictly true. Certain pages are protected by an abuse filter and interface pages require being an interface administrator to edit.
  2. The linked page makes assumptions about the permissions administrators have. Some permissions may not be available on this wiki for a variety of reasons.
  3. In the interest of keeping the wiki's overall file size low, sometimes deleted images are pruned on the backend and thus cannot be recovered, so technically not all images are always recoverable. But pages are always recoverable.
  4. Also because to send emails and not be immediately received by most providers as spam requires way more effort than is worth it to do.
  5. Why do we use Discord IDs? Simple. Usernames can be changed. IDs cannot.
  6. Curious minds may wonder why this is enough if anyone can edit user pages. An edit filter stops editors without the bureaucrat or account specialist permissions from messing with the template.
  7. Nothing actually bad happens if you do this. It just scrambles the person's password and blanks their email field (which is already blank). But this just creates more work if the user ever wants to, ya know, login and edit. If a user needs to not be allowed to edit ever again, then that falls to an administrator (using Special:Block) to enact, not an account specialist. A properly setup block will perform essentially the same function.