Patrol

This page is for administrators and trusted editors who watch the open wiki. Most of the roster is historical; watch for spam, blanking, unsourced invention, and private living-person details that should not stay public.

Daily habit

1. Open Special:RecentChanges (sidebar link, or bookmark it)
2. Skim new edits and new accounts
3. Open anything that looks wrong: mass blanking, gibberish, promotional links, large unexplained removals of research notes, or new private contact details
4. Prefer rollback for obvious vandalism; use undo for a single bad revision you want to reverse carefully

Privacy and takedown

Treat these as urgent (same day when possible):

• Social Security numbers or other modern identity numbers
• Street addresses, phone numbers, or email for living people
• Gallery uploads that expose private modern documents (medical, banking, full modern IDs)

Remove the text or file, leave a short edit summary (“remove private contact”), and if the request came via Contact Us, reply that it was handled. Contested historical facts still belong on Talk; private contact data does not.

Public note for families: About#Corrections_and_privacy.

Rollback and undo

• Rollback (administrators): one click restores the last good version by undoing a user’s consecutive bad edits on that page. Use it for clear vandalism.
• Undo: reverses one revision and lets you leave an edit summary. Use when the page has mixed good and bad edits.
• Always leave a short summary (“revert spam”, “restore roster fields”) so the next patrol editor knows why.

Blocks

Block a user or IP when they keep vandalizing after a warning, or when the edit is clearly automated spam.

• Prefer a short first block (hours or a day) unless the pattern is obvious spam
• Block the account; block the IP only if abuse continues while logged out
• Leave a block reason others can understand
• Do not block people for good-faith mistakes — correct the page and leave a Talk note instead

Protect pages

Protect a page only when it is under repeated attack and rollback is not enough. Prefer semi-protection (registered accounts) over full lock. Unlock when the wave stops.

Uploads

Anonymous users cannot upload. If a logged-in account floods junk files:

1. Delete the files
2. Block the uploader
3. Check Special:Log/upload for related uploads

Sources and confidence

• Yellow Record status: unconfirmed banners mean class-roster match confidence is not high — do not treat those class fields as settled
• Research notes may be wrong; prefer a sourced sentence over silent deletion unless the note is spam
• Contested facts belong on the article Talk page until a source is added
• Inline {{Needs source}} marks a claim that still needs a citation

Featured Main Page portraits

The Main Page thumbs rotate automatically each week. To change who can appear:

1. Open Featured pool (administrators only — edit-protected)
2. Add, remove, or reorder bullets (one soldier page title per line)
3. Save. Purge Main Page only if the old set still shows after a refresh

You do not edit the Main Page itself to rotate features. Details and line formats are on Featured pool.

Useful special pages

• Special:RecentChanges
• Special:NewPages
• Special:Log
• Special:BlockList
• Special:ListUsers
• Special:UnwatchedPages (if watching is in use)

See also

• Contribute — public editing help
• Contribute documents — document OCR inbox (upload → review → Apply)
• Facebook OCR review — editors-only Facebook document OCR candidate queue
• About the data — disclaimer, what the import contains, and how to read confidence
• Featured pool — curated weekly Main Page portraits (sysop)