Gamification Wiki:Administrators

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You sometimes see the term administrator, or admin, thrown around in discussions from time to time, but what is an admin? In the simple sense, an admin is a user with special powers over administration and management of the site. Due to these additional powers, they also have additional responsibilities (usually in mediating disputes, monitoring spam/vandalism, and site content maintenance). The fastest way to contact an admin is often by posting on their talk page.

Contents

Roles

What administrators are

Admins have several special abilities including:

  • Protecting pages (lock them from editing or moving)
  • Deleting pages and images (remove them from the public database)
  • Deletion review and un-deletion of pages
  • Suspending or banning users
  • Implementing certain policies
  • Editing protected and restricted pages
  • Creating new admins and flagging bots (bureaucrats only)

They are also empowered to break the spirit of a wiki, but only in rare cases. Being an admin is a privilege, not a right.

Note that admins are not "required" to use their powers, but when they do it is appreciated.

What they are not

Importantly, they should not generally be viewed as the leaders, or staff, of the wiki. If they are viewed as such, it should be based on setting an example by cleaning up problems, helping others, and being consistent about following guidelines or policies. The wiki is generally not hierarchical, and only very rarely can the title be used to win an argument. Unilateral decision-making should also be avoided as it can damage the trust that should be built up between all users of a wiki.

Becoming an admin

Every so often, users are asked if they wish to become admins or users may ask to be considered for the role. However, admins need to show that they can cope with a fair bit of responsibility. To request the position of adminship, please see Gamification_Wiki:Requests for adminship. Before doing so, it should be noted that prospective (and incumbent) admins should be able to:

  • Stay calm, mature, and rational at all times.
  • Be able to negotiate and cope with not always getting their way.
  • Have a high standard of reasoning and communication skills.
  • Demonstrate reasonable wiki skills (expertise in CSS, JS, MediaWiki stuff and templates is a HUGE plus!)

Types of administrators

System administrator

This is the admin (also known as a sysadmin) who sets up and maintains the actual infrastructure of the wiki, such as what computer is runs on, what internet connection it uses, how things get paid for, what software is used, etc. All major decisions about Gamification Wiki defer to the system administrator.

We currently handle this internally.

Bureaucrat

See also: Bureaucrat at meta.wikimedia.org

A bureaucrat is a type of wiki user able to rename users, as well as alter the group memberships of users. These groups include the "bot" right, the "sysop" right, the "patrollers group" right, among others.[1]

Wiki administrator

This is your more day-to-day admin (member of the "Sysop" wiki user group) who responds to issues in the wiki, like making special changes (page locking, blocking users, restoring deleted pages, large-scale rollbacks, importing pages, etc.). This is the user who you should appeal to when you have a problem, and they should also help resolve disputes and enforce policies.

Most active or semi-active administrators can be reached, at least by talk page. Activity in this case is how much said administrator makes changes to the wiki in some way, outside of certain page maintenance.

Patrollers

Patrollers (members of the Watchdogs group) are fairly heavy users and are able to revert vandalism more easily than most users. In lieu of an admin, patrollers may be able to help you.

Patroller powers:[2]

  • Have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol).
  • Mark others' edits as patrolled (patrol).
  • Quickly rollback the edits of the last user who edited a particular page (rollback).

Moderators

A new user group as of 2011, Moderators are users with improved wiki maintenance abilities. They tend to be very active users, but need not be. They help cleanup, correct, fix up, mediate, and set a good example.

Moderator powers:[3]

  • Moving and renaming articles (including
  • Protecting pages (lock them from editing or moving)
  • Deleting pages and images (remove them from the public database)
  • Editing semi-protected and restricted pages
  • Quickly rollback the edits of the last user who edited a particular page (rollback)
  • Have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol)
  • Mark others' edits as patrolled (patrol)
  • Deleting and editing comments (but they should always note if they do)

References

  1. ^ Via Special:Userrights: Add and remove admin, add bureaucrat, add and remove rollback, add and remove Patrollers, add and remove bot
  2. ^ See Patrollers section of Special:ListGroupRights.
  3. ^ See Moderators section of Special:ListGroupRights.
Categories: 
Admins
Gamification Wiki