I volunteered ages ago to try & reorganise naming conventions, and tie them in with things like presentation conventions, Wiki Projects and "basic topic" pages. I'm still mulling it over, and I'e got to the point where I'd like to start laying out ideas. There's no way this can be cleanly refactored overnight, so I'm thinking of using the Meta wiki, to first set out a page scheme and then start refactoring. That way "normal service" (!) won't be disturbed on the wikipedia: namespace. Any objections if I discreetly set up in a corner of MetaWikipedia? tarquin

tarquin wrote: As I wrote recently on [[User talk:Sjc]] « ...if this isn't already documented in a central and accessible place, please feel free to do so. The "sysop" powers are: * Block and unblock IPs o Related to this, ability to see the last octet of IP addresses in edits by anonymous users, which is normally hidden to discourage random people haX0ring your IP. (No ability to see the IP address of logged-in users, as this is not stored in the database -- compare with the old usemod wiki software, where both anonymous and logged-in users had their full unfettered hostnames listed to any scmuck who wandered by.) * Delete pages (there's an etiquette to this, see policy pages; but people do sometimes take shortcuts, deleting empty pages with no history more freely) * Delete uploaded files o There's also a revert-to-previously-uploaded-version feature, I'm not sure if this is sysop or everybody. * Move/rename pages preserving the edit history (planned to be allowed for all or most users, I prefer all) * Protect and unprotect pages (locking them against edit by other users who are not also logged in as sysops). 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:Article_deletion_log 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 If I left any "powers" out, it's by accident. 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 » -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Brion VIBBER wrote: Could I have sysop status please? I'd like to be able to copy wiki text from the policy pages. I might also need to rename pages on Meta. ... BTW, didn't someone mention a while ago that the incidents of crossed wires between the US admins of the 'pedia and the people on the European versions were due in part to differences in culture -- the Europeans perceiving the Americans as a little brash and pushy? I have a funny feeling we've just seen that in action again here: the above message I sent earlier is, in British English a fairly direct request ;-)