Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Cleaning backlogs

Wikipedia is a backlog, in and out. There's always plenty of work to do as an admin, and the best way to find an endless supply is via the noticeboards.

Your best friend for finding work to do is the admin dashboard. Many admins transclude this template {{admin dashboard}} in their userspace, providing it options to show only the venues and backlogs they specialize in.^[1] See the template documentation for more information.

List of noticeboards

The following noticeboards are those that do or might require administrator attention.

The citations indicate user scripts or gadgets that can assist you in responding to reports at that noticeboard. Usage of these is recommended as you may find yourself doing repetitive tasks, and anything to expedite your work means more work can be done and the project is overall better maintained.

Administrators' noticeboards

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard (WP:AN) – for anything that affects administrators; General announcements, discussion of administration methods, ban proposals, block reviews, and backlog notices
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents (WP:AN/I) – reports of incidents requiring admin intervention
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring (WP:AN/EW) – reports of edit warriors and violations of the three-revert rule
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure (WP:AN/RFC) – requests to have uninvolved administrators assess, summarize, and formally close a discussion

Urgent matters

These noticeboards fill up quickly, and usually involve matters that require immediate administrator intervention in the form of blocks, page protection, or deletion.

Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV) – reports of vandalism requiring immediate administrator intervention
Wikipedia:Requests for page protection (WP:RFPP) – reports of disruption to pages that may require protection as a preventive measure, or templates that are of high-risk due to high transclusion count
Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention (WP:UAA) – reports of usernames that are such blatant and serious problems that they may need to be immediately blocked
Category:Candidates for speedy deletion (CAT:CSD) – pages tagged for speedy deletion

Deletion

The following venues (not necessarily referred to as a noticeboard) are for pages or items that might require deletion or merging.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (WP:AfD)
Wikipedia:Templates for discussion (WP:TfD)
Wikipedia:Files for discussion (WP:FfD)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (WP:CfD)
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion (WP:RfD)
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion (WP:MfD)
Category:Candidates for speedy deletion (CAT:CSD)
Category:All articles proposed for deletion (CAT:ALLPROD) – pages tagged for proposed deletion
Note also CAT:BLPPROD for BLP-specific PROD articles

Other

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations (WP:SPI) – requests that we investigate whether two or more Wikipedia accounts are being abusively operated by the same person
Wikipedia:Requests for permissions (WP:PERM) – requests changes in user access levels
Wikipedia:Requested moves (WP:RM) – retitling (moving) of pages that may require an admin to delete the target page to make way for the move
Wikipedia:Copyright problems (WP:CP) – reports of possible copyright problems that may require admins to delete revisions from the page history, or the page altogether
Wikipedia:Requests for history merge (WP:RFHM)
Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard (WP:EFN) – coordination and discussion of edit filter use and management
Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested (WP:EFR)

How to respond to reports

Every noticeboard differs in some way. Specific instructions for any given noticeboard may be found at the /Administrator instructions subpage. If such page exists, you will see a link to it at the top-right of the noticeboard page. For instance, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Administrator instructions (notice the link to this page at the top-right of WP:AfD).

Instructions are sometimes also found in the edit notice.

Semi-automation

Working at some noticeboards can involve repetitive tasks, for which there are some useful scripts to expedite your work.

Notes

^ You could also add a link to your sidebar to your customized dashboard. E.g. if your dashboard is located at Special:MyPage/Dashboard, add the code mw.util.addPortletLink('p-navigation', mw.util.getUrl('User:MyUserName/Dashboard'), "DASHBOARD"); to your common.js and you will have a nifty link to it from anywhere you are on Wikipedia.

[1] You could also add a link to your sidebar to your customized dashboard. E.g. if your dashboard is located at Special:MyPage/Dashboard, add the code mw.util.addPortletLink('p-navigation', mw.util.getUrl('User:MyUserName/Dashboard'), "DASHBOARD"); to your common.js and you will have a nifty link to it from anywhere you are on Wikipedia.

[1]

v t e Administrators' guide
Articles	Advice for new administrators Blocking Cleaning backlogs Dealing with disputes Dealing with spam Blacklisting Deleting Edit filters Granting and revoking user rights History merging Protecting Reading list Rollback Tools, scripts and gadgets Viewing deleted pages and contributions
Policies	Administrator policy (WP:ADMIN) Banning policy (WP:BAN) Blocking policy (WP:BLOCK) Deletion policy (WP:DEL) Protection policy (WP:PROTECT) Revision deletion policy (WP:REVDEL)