Help:Administrators

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This is stolen entirely from Wikipedia and is pretty much just here for kabl00ey's reference purposes.

Administrators are Wikipedians who have "SysOp rights". Current (de facto) Wikipedia policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. Generally speaking, standards have become harder in practice. However, there are several administrators created every week.

Request assistance - Full list of Administrators - Requests for adminship

"This should be no big deal," according to Jimmy Wales.

Administrators are not imbued with any special authority, and are equal to everybody else in terms of editorial responsibility. Some Wikipedians consider the terms "Sysop" and "Administrator" to be misnomers, as they just indicate Wikipedia users who have had performance- and security-based restrictions on several features lifted because they seemed like trustworthy folks and asked nicely. However, administrators do not have any special power over other users other than applying decisions made by all users.

In the early days of Wikipedia all users acted as administrators and in principle they still should. Any user can behave as if they are an administrator, provided that they do not falsely claim to be one, even if they have not been given the extra administrative functions. Users doing so are more likely to be nominated as full administrators by members of the community and more likely to be chosen when they are finally nominated.

The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among them are watching the Articles for deletion debates and carrying out the consensus of the community on keeping or deleting these articles, keeping an eye on new and changed articles to swiftly delete obvious vandalism, and meeting user requests for help that require administrative access. Since administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information.

So, what's the deal?

The wiki software has a few important features that are restricted. Of those restricted features, administrators have access to the following.

Protected pages

  • Protect and unprotect pages. Pages are only protected in certain rare circumstances - for information and guidelines, see Wikipedia:Protection policy.

Deletion and undeletion

  • Delete pages and their history. For information and guidelines, see both Wikipedia:deletion policy and (most definitely) Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. To suggest a page for deletion (after reading the policy and guidelines pages!), see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Sometimes deletion is a technical matter, in which a redirection page has to be removed to make way for renaming an article, or a page whose history has been broken up has to be deleted and the pieces recombined. Other times it's a matter of cleaning up simple junk edits on pages with no actual content, or removing material that has been pasted in from another site and infringes copyright.
  • Permanently delete images. This is a non-reversible change: once deleted, always deleted. For information and guidelines, see Wikipedia:Image use policy. To suggest an image to delete (after reading the policy), see Wikipedia:Images for deletion. To challenge a decision to delete an image, make sure that you still have a copy of the image (else there is no way to restore it), then see Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Note that there is no particular reason that image deletion should not be reversible; this is simply the way the software works at present.

Reverting

  • Revert pages quickly. Any user (logged-in or not) can revert a page to an earlier version. Administrators have a faster, automated reversion tool to help them revert vandalism by anonymous editors. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like: [rollback] – appears next to edits that are at the top of the edit history. Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by that user, with an edit summary of (Reverted edits by X to last version by Y) and marks it as a minor change.
  • Do not use one-click rollback on edits that are not simple vandalism; please use manual rollback with an appropriate edit summary.

Enforcement of Arbitration Committee rulings

Admins have the authority to enforce rulings by the Arbitration Committee.

See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Admin enforcement requested.

Hiding vandalism from recent changes

  • Sysops can hide vandalism from Recent changes. To do this, add &bot=1 to the end of the URL used to access a user's contributions. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Michael&bot=1. When the rollback links on the contributions list are clicked, the revert and the original edit that you are reverting will both be hidden from the default Recentchanges display (by using the marker originally added to keep massive bot edits from flooding recentchanges, hence the "bot"). This means that they will be hidden from recent changes unless you click the "bots" link to set hidebots=0. The edits are not hidden from contributions lists, page histories or watchlists. The edits remain in the database and are not removed, but they no longer flood Recentchanges. The aim of this feature is to reduce the annoyance factor of a flood vandal with relatively little effort. This should not be used for reverting a change you just don't like, but is meant only for simple vandalism, particularly massive flood vandalism.

Block and unblock

  • Block IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts, for a specific time, or indefinitely.
  • Unblock IP addresses, IP ranges, and user accounts.

Database queries

  • When special:asksql is enabled, sysops can run read-only queries on the database. When it is not enabled, or if you are not confident about using SQL, or you are not a sysop, you can request a query be run for you at m:Requests for queries. If users want to run queries that take longer than 30 seconds, they should download the backup dump and a MySQL database and perform queries locally. Wikipedia:Database queries recommends not running any queries that would take more than ten seconds.

Design and wording of the interface

  • As of 6 December, 2003, sysops can change the text of the interface by editing the pages in the MediaWiki namespace. This includes the text at the top of pages such as the "Special:Whatlinkshere" and the page that a blocked user will see when they try to edit a page (MediaWiki:Blockedtext).

Becoming an administrator

If you would like sysop access add your name to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship according to the guidelines mentioned there, and a voting will take place by fellow editors in order to determine if you should become an administrator.

It is recommended that you write for Wikipedia for a while before requesting administrator status, since other users will have to recognize you before they can agree on your promotion. Also keep in mind that each language's Wikipedia has its own policies for administrators, which may differ somewhat.

Be careful, please! If you are granted access, we ask that you exercise care in using these functions, especially the ability to delete pages and their history, to delete images (which is permanent!), and the ability to block IP addresses. You can learn about your newfound powers at the Wikipedia:Administrators' how-to guide. You should also take a look at the pages linked from the Administrators' reading list before using any of your sysop abilities.

Other access types

In addition to administrators, there are other types of identified users, listed here in roughly ascending order of power. (Administrators, clearly, go after Signed-in users.)

Signed-in users

Users with ordinary access, including visitors who haven't "signed in," can still do most things, including the most important: editing articles and helping with Wikipedia maintenance tasks.

But only signed-up users can upload files, move pages, create their own user page or rename pages; see Special:Userlogin to sign up for yourself.

Bureaucrats

Users with "bureaucrat" status can turn other users into sysops (but not remove sysop status). Bureaucrats are created by other bureaucrats on projects where these exist, or by stewards on those who don't yet have one. Sysoppings are recorded in Special:Log/rights Wikipedia:Bureaucrat log. Sysoppings by stewards are recorded at Meta:Special:Log/rights but the few stewards who actively sysop users on the English Wikipedia do so using their local bureaucrat status, making this distinction rather academic.

Stewards

Users with "steward" status can change the access of any user on any Wikimedia project. This includes granting and revoking sysop access, and marking users as bots. Their actions are recorded at Special:Log/rights on meta. Requests for their assistance can be made at m:requests for permissions. Normally, they will not perform actions that can be carried out by a local bureaucrat.

Developers

The highest degree of technical access (actually a group of levels, the difference between all but the lowest of which isn't really visible to users) is "developer", for those who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and database. These people, by and large, do not carry out administrative functions, aside from sock puppet checks and reattributing edits. They can be contacted via the wikitech-l mailing list. See m:Developer for a list of developers and further information.

Administrator abuse

Administrators can be removed if they abuse their powers. Currently, administrators may be removed either at the decree of Jimbo Wales or by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee. At their discretion, lesser penalties may also be assessed against problematic administrators, including the restriction of their use of certain powers. The technical ability to remove administrator status rests with the stewards.

Dealing with grievances

If you think an administrator has acted improperly against you or another editor, you should express your concerns directly to the administrator responsible. Try to come to a resolution in an orderly and civil manner. However, if the matter is not resolved between the two parties, you can take further action according to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. There have been a number of alternative procedures suggested for the removal of sysop status but none of them have achieved consensus.

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