RationalWiki:Bureaucrat guide

Congratulations, you have been further demoted to the rank of Bureaucrat. Having been here for a while, you have gained new powers, mostly for maintenance. As with your demotion to sysop, becoming a ‘crat does not make you a "better user", it simply means that you have been here for a long time.

There are at present Bureaucrats on RationalWiki.

What looks different
As a Bureaucrat, nothing looks too different at first glance, you still have the red ''' ! '''’s, and you still can patrol recent changes. The only real difference is in the Special Pages, where you now have two new abilities, and at the intercom, where you have one more.

Editing the interface
As a bureaucrat, you can change the wiki interface by editing the pages in the MediaWiki namespace. You can see a complete list at Special:AllMessages. Some of these pages are simply labels for buttons, while others are more complex and may contain wikicode or even HTML. Please be careful when editing them, and make sure you have consensus before radically altering things.

Deleting pages
Only bureaucrats can delete pages that have more than 2000 revisions.

You'll probably never need to do that anyway, and should certainly discuss the reasons for doing so beforehand and seek a consensus. The reason for restricting this ability to bureaucrats is that, once deleted, a page with a vast number of edits will be very difficult to restore, and attempting to do so could cause the whole wiki to break down. This has happened before.

Suppressing revisions
Bureaucrats can hide revisions from sysops as well as normal users. You will see a new option labeled "" in the revision delete interface. Since these deletions are logged in the suppression log, which doesn't show up on recent changes, you should first delete the revision without using the option, then check the option and delete again.

Renaming user
Looking around, you now have "User Rights Management" and "Rename user". The second one is innocuous enough, if someone asks to be renamed, simply follow this procedure:
 * Reply wherever the request was entered.
 * Click on the "rename user" link.
 * Enter the current username, and the user's desired username.
 * Click on "submit"
 * Confirm that the user has been renamed, and follow through.

Demotion
This is likely to be the feature you will be using the most. At the user rights management page (the link above), you can enter a user's name, then tick or untick boxes to change their membership of user rights groups such as sysops and bureaucrats.

As an established user, you probably already know our loose policy towards sysopship ("mostly harmless") as well as the meme that users given sysop powers are said to be "demoted". While you can demote a user to sysop at any time, it is generally recommended that you let three days go by, observe their edits, and demote accordingly.

Eventually, though, you might notice another user who is particularly established in the community, and you feel is ready to make the same calls you are making. Unlike sysopship ("mostly harmless"), there are no set criteria for demotion to a Bureaucrat, but in general, new bureaucrats should be an established user who has reacted gracefully to pressure, has been around for a while, and has made many contributions. Your individual criteria can, and probably will, differ from this very generic set of recommendations.

It is generally recommended that you nominate candidates for bureaucrat at RationalWiki:Bureaucrat nominations, and let the mob decide, rather than demoting them without prior discussion. It is also a good idea to announce the nomination on the Saloon bar and/or the Intercom.

Promotion
As a ‘crat, you will likely demote several users, but there is the possibility that you may have to "promote" a user, from sysop to editor, or bureaucrat to sysop, or, in extreme cases, from bureaucrat to regular editor.

Promotions happen rarely, and are usually because a user has been abusing their administrative abilities (such as excessive blocking or repeated deletion without discussion). The user should only be promoted following the results of an Administrative Abuse hearing. At the Abuse page, outline why you think the user should be promoted, citing examples (with links) of how they have abused their abilities. Allow time for others to discuss the abuse and the proposed promotion - at least 24 hours is recommended. If the majority favour promoting that user, then a bureaucrat can make the necessary changes in the user rights log.

Bear in mind that no matter how annoyed you are at someone, you are not allowed to just promote them out of rage or spite. This is something that you are trusted, as a ‘crat, not to do.

However, if someone is blatantly abusing their powers in a destructive way (such as a deletion spree or blocking rampage), you can strip them of their powers immediately to prevent further damage, but must still file an Administrative Abuse case to discuss whether they should stay promoted.

Intercom
As a bureaucrat, you can send intercom messages to the Site wide (urgent) group. These messages appear to anonymous users, registered users receive them by default but can opt out. You can also hide messages sent to this group from anonymous users by clicking "mark as read for anonymous users".

Template
If you want to, you can add to your userpage, which produces