Plants vs. Zombies Wiki:Staff crash course

So you just got promoted to a staff position, but you don't know what you should do next? This guide will help you understand the basics of wiki management.

Step 1: Know your job
Each and every staff positions have different tasks, with increasing responsibilities the higher the privilege is.

Rollback is the most basic privilege, but with a very simple job: to revert unconstructive edits and vandalisms.

Moderator has the ability to manage contents on the wiki.

Admin is a powerful privilege that not only allows them to perform actions that can be done by moderators, but also manage users and the wiki's internal contents. They can also promote users to moderator.

Bureaucrat is the highest level of privilege that combines admin's features with the ability to promote and demote users to any privilege levels, although they can't demote bureaucrats.

Step 2: Explore the features
Okay, suppose you already know your job as a staff member. Now, it's time to familiarize yourself with the features you get.

Rollback
The "rollback" button for undoing edits is available by accessing a page's history, then click "rollback" on the latest revision. Note that you should only use this on bad edits as this will rollback all consecutive edits made by that user to the last revision done by another user immediately, and you can't rollback your own edits (you need to undo them manually if you screw up).

Moderator
Moderators have access to a wider set of features.


 * Edit and rename fully-protected pages: You can notice this because you'll be able to edit pages that aren't supposed to be editable by regular users, such as the main page and most of the wiki's meta pages (e.g. rules).
 * Edit other user's posts: Having moderator privileges means that you can edit other user's posts, such as blogs, comments, or forum threads. This can be especially useful if a particular user's post violates the rules or contains personally identifiable information but could otherwise be fixed by removing the offending content.
 * For comments, this can be done by hovering over a user's comment and then clicking on "Edit."
 * For blog posts, you can click on the "Edit" button on top of the page.
 * For forum posts, you can click on the "More" button and then select "Edit" on the drop-down menu.
 * Rename files: Normally, files can't be renamed by regular users, because they could break articles that depend on them. Moderators can perform such action when necessary, although such scenario is rare.
 * Protect pages: You can do this by clicking on the arrow next to the "Edit" button and then clicking on protect. The protection levels are:
 * Allow all edits: This is the default setting which allows all users to edit a page. It is also the setting you should use if you need to unprotect something.
 * Autoconfirmed users only: This prevents the page from being edited by new users (i.e. users with less than 4 days of account age and less than 10 edits). Also known as semi-protection. This protection level is useful when a page is being vandalized continually.
 * Administrators and content moderators only: This locks the page so that only content moderators and admins can edit it. Also known as full protection. Use this protection level with caution. There are some scenarios where a full protection might be useful, such as when there is an edit warring on an article or when it is being vandalized by multiple autoconfirmed users. However, you should never set the protection length for this protection level to indefinite, as it will effectively prevent users from editing the article, although meta pages (i.e. the "Plants vs. Zombies Wiki" pages) and userpages of content mods and above are allowed to be protected indefinitely.
 * Delete content: Additionally, you can also delete unwanted content. This includes pages, files, blog posts, comments, and forum posts. Found a shitpost that doesn't belong to an ongoing discussion? Delete it.
 * For pages, files, and blog posts: click on the arrow next to the Edit button and click on "Delete" on the drop-down menu.
 * For comments: Hover over a user's comment and click "delete."
 * For forum posts: Click on "More" and click "Remove." You need to state a reason to delete a forum post, or simply type "a" (or pretty much anything) as the reason.
 * View and restore deleted content: If needed, deleted contents can still be viewed and/or restored.
 * For pages, files, and blog posts, you can click on the "view/restore" button. If all you want is to view a deleted page without restoring it, click on the revision history link.
 * Comments are much harder to view and restore; you will need to go to the deletion log and track down the deleted comment you want to restore, which can be tedious since they are only labeled with numbered IDs.
 * For forum comments, you can click on "show message" on a removed comment and click on "Restore reply." If restoring forum threads is what you're trying to achieve, you will need to track down the thread ID for that deleted thread and then restore it.
 * View user's deleted contributions: This allows you to see edits done by users on contents that have been deleted.

Admin
Admins have access to an even wider set of features, such as MediaWiki editing and user management, plus all the moderator's features.


 * MediaWiki page editing: This allows you to edit certain MediaWiki pages, such as Wikia.css, Wikia.js, or the wiki navigation. For security reasons, Fandom has restricted MediaWiki editing so that only whitelisted pages can be edited, and JS edits will require verification before the changes can be seen by the community.
 * Access to the user rights management page. This allows you to see the privileges of users, see the logs for their promotion/demotion, and promote/demote them to/from moderators (anything higher will require bureaucrat privileges).
 * Warn users: You will be allowed to warn offending users if you have admin privileges.
 * Block users: This can be done by going to a user's contributions page, and then clicking on the "eat brains" button. Specify reason and length.
 * Unblock users: This can be done on blocked users by clicking on the "unblock" button on their contributions page.
 * Modify abuse filter: This allows you to restrict certain terms from being used in a username or page, and even block the offending user when necessary, but requires the knowledge of using regex (regular expressions).

Bureaucrat
Basically it's just admin but with the ability to promote/demote users to/from higher privileges or rollback.


 * Promote users to rollback, admin, or bureaucrat: On the user rights management, you can choose to promote someone to rollback, admin, or bureaucrat with this privilege, in addition to being able to promote them to moderator. However, keep in mind that once you promote a user to a bureaucrat, you won't be able to demote them again unless if you contact Fandom, or if they are willing to demote themselves (which is unlikely to happen unless if you threaten them with a block warning should they not comply), so don't screw up in applying the privileges.
 * Demote users except bureaucrat: Simply uncheck the privileges to be removed and click on "Save changes." Again, demoting users from bureaucrat requires contacting Fandom.

Step 3: Do your job and maintain your activity
In order to prevent demotion, you need to maintain your activity to an acceptable level. A good activity can be done by editing articles, participating in the staff server, and performing tasks such as rolling back edits or warning offending users.

Staying in touch
Because staff members are required to be active and able to communicate with each other, they should join our Discord server. The benefits of joining the server include: To be able to join the server, you need to verify your identity. This is done by joining the main PvZ Discord server accessible from the sidebar, contacting a staff member via message wall and stating your Discord username and tag.
 * Being able to maintain constant communication more easily, because new messages are immediately sent as notifications on your device and on Discord itself.
 * A more organized place to discuss everything wiki-related, as everything has its own channels.
 * If you need to notify fellow staff members of something very important, there is a "notices" channel for you to do that.
 * Allows for an easier discussion of the community's feedbacks and concerns.
 * Relieve yourself with other staff members:
 * "#general" channel to talk about anything.
 * "#pvz-chat" for discussing stuff related to the game.
 * If you really want to, you can ask for access to our sandbox channel and do crazy shit with the bots.