User:Drek'TharSuperSword/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, such as removing unwanted pages or posts, highlighting forum discussions, protecting pages, the ability to edit other user's comments, the Plants vs. Zombies Wiki namespace pages (e.g. rules, staff page), and fully-protected pages.

Admin is a powerful privilege that not only allows them to perform actions that can be done by moderators, but also manage the wiki's internal contents, such as MediaWiki pages that are used to customize the wiki's appearance and features. Additionally, they can also warn and block offending users, and view the user rights management.

Bureaucrat is the highest level of privilege that combines Admin's features with the ability to promote and demote users, with the exception of demoting 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. 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, 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.