• Delete uploaded files

o There's also a revert-to-previously-uploaded-version feature, I'm not sure if this is sysop or everybody.

Anybody can revert, and anybody can delete a single old revision; but only sysops can delete the whole image and its description.

• Protect and unprotect pages (locking them against edit by other

users who are not also logged in as sysops).

Forgot about that one.

Traditionally this was in fact used only on the main page, but some of the policy pages are also locked, which I'm not sure I approve of. Here are all the pages currently protected:

      o Wikipedia:Upload_log
      o Wikipedia:Deletion_log

These are a special case: the software requires that they be in a special format so that it can add to them. While it would be OK to make certain edits (adding text, etc.), some would break things, so this is just a safety precaution.

      o Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not
      o Main_Page
      o Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view
      o Wikipedia:Copyrights
      o Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines
      o United_States_Constitution/Article_One (I'm a little

confused by this one; I've since unprotected it. It's just a redirect anyway...) o Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist o Wikipedia:Most_common_Wikipedia_faux_pas o

Wikipedia:Wikipedia_policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages

      o Wikipedia:Blocked_IPs
      o Wikipedia:Naming_conventions
      o Wikipedia:Administrators
      o Wikipedia:Policy

I think some of these may have had a history of vandalism, but I'm with you that most of them should be unprotected. Anyone else remember more details here--they seem to have been protected when my head was buried in software, so I missed a lot of discussion.

There are also a handful of 'developer' features available only to a few of the programmers for purposes of finding and fixing bugs: database queries, showing the PHP configuration variables, and enabling/disabling a read-only mode to prevent edits to the database in the middle of certain upgrades. --Brion VIBBER »

Sysops can do "SELECT" queries on the database. Only developers can do updates and deletes.