User:TomStar81/Becoming an Administrator

Wikipedia has a certain hierarchy with regards to user rights. The bottom tier is comprised of anonymous editors (or "anons" for short), above these editors are the registered users, and then the comparatively small group of people who hold "additional rights". These additional rights&mdash;so named owing to their technical origins, but widely considered across Wikipedia to be privileges rather than rights&mdash;are bestowed upon veteran editors who are judged to be of good character and therefore trustworthy. While there are a number of different users on site who hold additional rights, the largest group is those with administrator privileges.

The main administrator rights allow users to delete, undelete, protect, and unprotect pages, as well as block registered accounts and anonymous editors making unproductive edits. This is accomplished through additional tabs at the top of the page that provide technical options for controlling and/or regulating content on site. At present, active users have been granted admin tools through the process known as Request for Adminship (or RFA for short), and that number grows albeit slowly as more users end up successfully clearing RFAs and join the administrative group.

Administrator privileges have been held by a number of editors from the Military history project, including our regular contributors and a number of our coordinators. Adminship is useful to our project because it allows our members to help ensure a calm and productive atmosphere by blocking vandal accounts, protecting pages involved in edit wars, and appropriately deleting articles judged by the community to be unneeded on the site.

If your goal is to obtain adminship rights on Wikipedia, this essay will serve to cover points of qualification and the adminship process, administrative powers and when they should be applied, along with other relevant information.

Judging your Qualifications for Adminship


Officially, there are no formal requirements to become an administrator on Wikipedia, however there are some vaguely agreed upon criteria (essentially a fuzzy concept) by which most of the participating evaluators will judge a candidate during a Request for Adminship (RFA). Because the criteria is hazy and somewhat incomplete&mdash;remember, each person viewing a candidate for adminship will judge the user according to a set of personal and professional criteria&mdash;it can not be fully explained here, but in general candidates should:
 * Have a registered account judged to be in good standing: Adminship can not be granted to an anonymous (IP) account. You need a registered account with approximately one year of consistent, productive editing. The account must also be in good standing with the Wikipedia community. meaning no blocks for vandalism, sockpuppeting, edit warring, etc. If you have been blocked at any point, the details of the block(s) will need to be discussed during the RFA and, if applicable, you will need to show that you have not repeated any unproductive behaviors.
 * Have edited on a "regular basis": In the time leading up to your RFA, your account should be consistently active. The definition here varies, but it is generally held to mean that your account has been involved in editing without any long periods of inactivity. If you have a significant break in editing, the community may question your commitment to the project, voice reservations related to administrative backlogs, and/or doubt your ability to properly apply site policies and guidelines considering they are ever-changing. The community will also look at the total number of edits you have made. While there is no minimum edit count, if you have less than 10,000 edits, your RFA is unlikely to pass.
 * Demonstrate a working knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines: This is critical to the success of an RFA, as candidates for administratorship will be called on to correctly implement policy and guideline material in the course of protecting pages, deleting pages, and blocking users. If the community feels that you do not have a sufficient grasp of the policies and guidelines relating to these tasks, your RFA will fail.
 * Have a perceived need for adminship: This is arguably the haziest area a candidate will be judged on. It arises from a mentality that editors do not need admin tools if they are not going to use them. Addressing this concern is tricky, most users attempt to demonstrate a need for tools by involving themselves with processes where adminship tools would are helpful (such as by working at Articles for Deletion, New Page Patrol, the Counter Vandalism Unit, etc). Others forgo this option and instead attempt to demonstrate that in the course of their wiki-career, they have assumed additional responsibilities (usually within a WikiProject) and as a result could benefit from the addition of admin tools.

In addition to the above, you should brush up on policy and guideline material, and be prepared to answer questions relating how, when, why, and where you would use admin tools. Mentally preparing for these common questions will make it easier for you to respond during your RFA. It is recommended that your reading includes (but is not limited to): the administrators' reading list, the protection policy, the deletion policy, the blocking policy, and what adminship is not.

Requests for Adminship
When you are ready to throw your hat into the ring for adminship, go to Requests for adminship. This page hosts the candidates and serves as the process by which consensus is established to grant or withhold the tools to or from those who seek to obtain them. Unless you have been offered a nomination by another user who feels that you would be a good admin, you will need to submit your own request for adminship&mdash;a self-nomination. You are asked to be familiar with the administrators' reading list, how-to guide, and guide to requests for adminship before submitting your request. In addition, you are strongly encouraged to read Arguments to avoid in adminship discussions to prevent yourself from making faux pas that the community has generally little patience for.

When you submit your request you will be asked three general questions, and the answers you provide will help shape community opinion of you. Although the initial number of questions stands at three, that number typically grows as RFA participants ask "optional" questions. These can range from general policy questions to detailed hypothetical situations in which the candidate is asked to explain how they would respond and why. There may also be humorous questions. While they are optional, it is generally frowned upon to leave seemingly legitimate questions unanswered. Remember to assume good faith with regards to all questions asked and towards all comments left during the RFA&mdash;editors are trying to evaluate you against stated and personal criteria, so the more you participate the better the reviewers will be able to judge you.

During your RFA you should refrain from confronting opposition (commonly referred to as badgering) unless you have a good reason for doing so. Badgering can lead participants to withhold or withdraw support, which can sink an RFA. And while the natural inclination can be to defend oneself against claims that can be made in an oppose argument (or to simply clarify a potential misunderstanding), it is often best to allow others (i.e. you nominator, if you have one, or vocal supporters) to comment instead.

DO NOT canvassduring your RFA. You will find yourself in trouble if you start campaigning for yourself outside of the RFA. To compensate for the inability to canvass you can leave a notice on your user page(s) announcing that you are a candidate for adminship. You can also notify the military history project coordinators, who will add a notice to the talk pages of relevant special projects and the to the main project talk page.

RFAs generally run for seven days, during which time a number of editors from different areas of the project comment (!vote). At the end of the seven day period a bureaucrat officially closes the RFA as either successful or unsuccessful. It takes a minimum of roughly 70% to be considered in the ballpark for passing, while 80% is considered passing.

If you should suffer a failed RFA, do not give up. Read the reasons listed in the oppose arguments, and work to improve in those areas. It is not easy to go through RFA, especially if it fails. It is important not to take the oppose comments personally. Sometimes that means stepping away for a few days. After a few months of editing in ways that do not repeat patterns of concern raised in the RFA, reapply for adminship through the same process.

If you pass, your user rights group will be changed to "administrator" by the closing bureaucrat. At this point, additional tabs will appear giving you access to the various admin tools. Traditionally, many editors who supported a candidate will offer congratulatory messages and/or admin regalia on the talk page of the successful candidate. This typically lasts about a week, more or less, so be prepared for it. In addition to the congratulatory messages, some users have sent messages of thanks to editors who participated in their RFA, whether to support or offer constructive criticism in opposition. This so called "RFA thank spam" takes many forms, but is generally intended to convey appreciation to the community for participating. In recent years this practice has fallen somewhat out of use, particularly due to the confluence of people who do not wish to receive the thank-spam; however, the decision of whether to use it remains at the user's discretion. In addition to thank spam, users who have been granted admin rights have the option of displaying a userbox or header image advertising their adminship to the community. This is not required, but can aid editors seeking admins for help. Again, the use of such regalia remains at the admins discretion.

Administrative Capabilities
If you're rfa passed then you will have access to three additional capabilities considered to be restricted to those who rate as administrators. These capabilities will allow you to protect pages, delete pages, and block users. While each of these capabilities is governed by an associated policy and/or guideline (sometimes multiple policies and/or guidelines) the basics for each will be outlined below in order to serve as an overview for these administrative responsibilities.

Page Protection
If you have cruised through Wikipedia's articles, pages, images, or other areas where the content was tied up in arbitration, vandalism sprees, edit wars, or generally considered to be controversial odds are good that you've encountered one of the various padlocks on the right side of this section. These padlocks denote that the page in question has been locked down to some greater or lesser extent, meaning that in a best case scenario only confirmed editors can edit the page and in a worse case scenario no one can edit the page. While the ability to edit such pages depends on your experience level on Wikipedia the ability to actually lock the pages rests solely with the administrators.

Because Wikipedia prides itself on being the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" locking a page is always a last resort. It leaves people unable to edit the page in question, and it can create ill feelings on site. In difference to these facts page lock down is governed by the Wikipedia's protection policy, which lays out the do's and dont's of page lock down.

Broadly speaking, the following levels of protection and the cause for their implementation are listed below:
 * Full protection should be applied in cases of content disputes and certain high level vandalism cases.
 * Semi protection should be applied cases on ongoing, persistent vandalism. Unlike full protection, this protection setting allows autoconfirmed users edit the page freely, therefore anyone with an account old enough to have been autoconfirmed will be unaffected by the protection level.
 * Creation protection should be employed to prevent articles deleted via afd from being re-spawned if the editor(s) behind the article continuously recreated.
 * Move protection should be employed in cases of persistent move vandalism, page name disputes, and pages that have no legitimate reason to be moved.
 * Note: By default, employing full protection or semi protection will automatically result in move protection. In order to employ move protection only you will need to unlock move protection from edit protection box, to do this simply check on the box labeled "Unlock further protect options" and then click on the move protection option you wish to employ.
 * Upload protection should be applied in case of file disputes, file vandalism, or files that should not be replaced. Unlike other protection options, this one governs the use of media, and is seen most often in image namespaces.
 * Permanent protection is occasionally implemented for certain high profile pages (like the mainpage) or legal pages (like the Create Commons attribute license). Odds are real good that you will never employ this level of protection, but in the interest of disclosure it has been listed here to explain its purpose.
 * Office action protection refers to protection put in place by the Wikimedia foundation; while you will be unable to implement this level of protection its application overrides any Wikipedia related consensus on action, and therefore the protection should not be removed nor the page edited by anyone other than a foundation member.
 * Cascading protection refers to protection implemented on one page that carries over to all pages transcluded on the original page. This option is only available for full protection, and should be employed only when there is good reason to do so. An example of a page employing this type of protection is the Main Page.
 * Pending changes Pending changes was a protection system in place on Wikipedia that limited the availability of of the recent change made to pages under its influence until the change had taken place. It was and remains controversial, but the key thing as it pertains to this essay is that its use has been discontinued for now pending further R&D work and community input.

When you protect a page you will be called on to avoid exercising favoritism, so take care to check and ensure that you do not have a personal interest in the page, and that the page protection is employed on a version of the page that is judged to be vandalism-free. Regardless of which version of a page you protect you should be prepared to accept a certain level of animosity from the people whose changes were added/omitted when the page in question was protected; editors, as a rule, dislike it when their edits or changes are not present for the public to view in times of page protection.

In addition to determining the type of protection to be employed you will also need to set a timer for how long the protection lasts. Once the page is protected, the protection timer will tick down until the proverbial "ding", at which point the protection will auto-expire and the page will be open to all to edit again. As a rule, protection of articles should last only long enough to resolve underlying issues, so its best to set the protection to last for as long as you think it will be necessary for the problem to end up resolved. Most of the time, the issue(s) that result in protection can be resolved in a few days or a few weeks, but if protection lasts more than a month then you made need to raise the underlying article issues requests for mediation or in a worse case scenario arbcom to resolve the problem(s).

Page Deletion
The second administrative is deletion. All deletions on Wikipedia are carried out by administrators acting either on established consensus to delete a page or on their own authority and understanding of which articles should and should not be on Wikipedia as set forth by Wikipedia's deletion policy. The deletion policy describes how pages that do not meet the relevant criteria for content of the encyclopedia are identified and removed from Wikipedia. In the normal operations of Wikipedia, approximately five thousand pages are deleted each day through the processes outlined below.

Deletion of a Wikipedia article removes the current version and all previous versions from public view. Unlike page blanking, which can be performed (or reverted) by any user, deletion can be performed only by administrators. Administrators can also view deleted pages and reverse ("undelete") any deletion. All such actions are logged.

There are four basic processes for deletion and two to review and overturn the outcome of these processes and other deletions. Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following (subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page):
 * Content that meets at least one of the criteria for speedy deletion
 * Copyright violations and other material violating Wikipedia's non-free content criteria
 * Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish
 * Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject)
 * Content forks (unless a merger or redirect is appropriate)
 * Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and articles that are themselves hoaxes (but not articles describing notable hoaxes)
 * Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed
 * Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP and so forth)
 * Articles that breach Wikipedia's policy on biographies of living persons
 * Redundant or otherwise useless templates
 * Categories representing overcategorization
 * Files that are unused, obsolete, or violate the Non-free policy
 * Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace.
 * Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia

Because many deleted articles are found to contain defamatory or other legally suspect material, deleted pages are not permitted to be generally viewed. However, they remain in the database (at least temporarily) and are accessible to administrators, along with their edit history unless they are oversighted. Any user with a genuine reason to view a copy of a deleted page may ask an administrator to supply a copy of the page, but as there exists a formal process for managing these requests you are welcome to pass if you feel uncomfortable doing so.

One last thing must be said here concerning deletion, and unfortunately while it is important to note it here it is something rather unpleasant to write about. All the same, in the interest of full disclosure, anyone wishing to be an admin, or a user who recently passed an rfa should be made aware of it.

On Wikipedia, deletion can be considered a form a death, and while it is unfortunate that articles here die, the deletion of articles, images, etc, is among the most necessary actions administrators take. However necessary this prossess may be a great many people feel strongly on the issue, and despite the fact that no one owns pages here many editors - especially the new ones - tend to take deletion of what they perceive as "their" article personally, and in some cases, will take deletion of "their" article very personally. Too a lesser extent, this mentality carries over to the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, who as rule are generally very reluctant to see material deleted when such material could be 'recycled' by merging or other method to keep it here on site.

This perception by certain editors that an "innocent" article has been terminated has resulted in a good number of admins being accused by scorned editor(s) whose article(s) have been deleted of being Nazis, or members of the Nazi party. As hurtful as this may be, if it happens to you, try not to let it get you. We have a saying here on Wikipedia that goes something like this: "If you are an admin and you have not been called a Nazi then you are not doing your job right." If you find that you are unable to handle comments like this then you may refrain from deletion; despite being an admin, you are not required to delete articles, the ability to do so is merely presented to you in hopes that you will help with the process.

Blocking Users
The last of the administrative rights to be covered is blocking. Basically stated, blocking involves the implementation of a technical method that prevents either an isp address anon or a registered user from editing Wikipedia. While drastic, this has been necessary in the past to help keep the peace on Wikipedia, either to insure that our policies and guidelines are observed during editing or to ensure that the editors who harasser, disrupt, or otherwise reign with fear and oppression on site are kept out of the site.

Blocking on site is governed by the Blocking Policy, which layouts out when you should be block. As a rule of thumb, when in doubt, do not block; instead, consult other administrators for advice. After placing a block that may be controversial, it is a good idea to make a note of the block at the administrators' incidents noticeboard for peer review.

Blocks should be used to prevent imminent or continuing damage and disruption to Wikipedia, deter the continuation of present, disruptive behavior, and encourage a more productive, congenial editing style within community norms. To that end, blocks are commonly issued by admins when the following are encountered:
 * vandalism;
 * gross incivility;
 * harassment;
 * spamming;
 * edit warring, especially breaches of the three-revert rule;
 * breaching the policies or guidelines, especially the sock puppetry policy;

Obviously, you're going to encounter some of these situations more than others, and in addition the above is just a sample list of the most frequent reasons given for blocks. When blocking make sure the allow the blocked editor to edit his or her talk page to ensure that they can if they like protest the block. Also, take care to explain why the block is being put in place. Some users may simple not realize that they were out of order in their actions, where as others are simply vandal accounts. Explaining the reasons for a block will help better gauge which of the two you are dealing with, in general those willing to learn will modify their behavior accordingly while those in the latter group will end up re-blocked for the same reasons when the initial block expires.

In addition, blocking carries with it a few addition conditions that you should be made aware of. For starters, never block a user in retaliation against users, to disparage other users, as punishment against users, or where there is no current conduct issue of concern. To simplify, you need to ensure that blocks are issued for good cause, not for personal reasons or because the community says you should. In addition, for what should be obvious reasons, you should refrain from blocking a user you have history with to ensure that you can not be accused of having a conflict of interest. If you have any doubt about whether blocking a given user puts in the line of fire for a conflict of interest report then refrain and ask someone else to do it.

Secondly, there are different types of blocks employed for different contributors, these blocks are split along the anon/isp contributor and registered use lines. When you block an isp address, you are asked to refrain from making the block long since these isp numbers are shuffled to new people logging onto the net at a fairly frequent rate. If you block a user editing under one of these accounts today there is a chance that tomorrow some innocent passerby will end up with the blocked isp and be unable to contribute to the site. Moreover, a little know fact about isp blocking is that the blocking admin must exercise extreme care in these cases due to potential political fallout. Isp contributors have been traced back to the United States House of Representatives, Qatar, the United States Senate, the Government of Canada, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the Wikimedia Foundation. You are required to report the blocking of any of these isp addresses to Wikimedia Foundation Communications Committee IMMEDIATELY, and you must exercise care in formulating your blocking message since the words used can have political and public relations consequences.

When blocking a registered user you have the option of making the block longer or shorter to ensure that the person in question stay off the site, but note that you must set the time the user account will be blocked fairly, particularly with regards to the new editors. We as a community try our best not to bite the newcomers, so if you absolutely have to block them then pick a small time period. This block time can go up for editors who should know better, but should not last indefinitely.

Third, we do not sponsor accounts here, so if you see an account titled "User:Enterprise rent-a-car" or "User:Lowe's Hardware Store" or so forth in that matter you are required to block the account on site for username violations. In these cases please put emphasis on the name the user selected as the reason being for the block, rather than any editing actions the person behind the account has made. This is also true of inappropriately named accounts (ie "User:Penis" or something along those lines), and as before it should be made clear that at this point in their wikilife the accounts are only being blocked for violation of the name policy.

Fourth, blocking an account is sometimes necessary if the account in question has been subject to such sanctions from ranking board such as the arbitration committee or if the account is a sockpuppet from a user previously banned from the site. In these cases, you are authorized to block the violating accounts regardless of previous history, behavior, or in the latter case a conflict of interest. Be careful when enforcing sanctions or bans that you FULLY understand all terms and conditions applied to editors and articles, otherwise you may end up blocked yourself for admin abuse. The last thing you want to do is come off as trigger happy, so it never hurts to check twice then take the correct action once.

One last thing needs to be stated with regards to blocking users on Wikipedia, and as with the deletion explanation this is not something that is easy to write or easy to read, but in the interest of full disclosure for those who want to be admins or those who just became admins it is something you should be made aware of. Blocking is done to help enforce a sense of order on site, and it helps keep the peace for those who contribute and those who read. Unfortunately, though, there are users out there who either can not accept being blocked or who after being blocked feel the need to seek vengeance, and as with article deletion, these users make it a point to lash out at the blocking admin on the admins talk page, on youtube, on facebook, on internet blogs, or anywhere else they feel they can set up a soapbox and preach.

This harassment can be difficult to deal with, in particular because off wiki harassment of an admin is technically out of our jurisdiction to enforce with sanctions against said editor. In most cases this can make an admin uncomfortable, and in an effort to deal with the worst of the harassment users will resort to many different tactics, including (but not limited too) renaming their accounts and invoking their right to vanish. While these examples are extreme, and therefore few and far between, it has happened in the past. In light of this you should be mentally prepared for this in the event you decide to block. In the event that you decide you do not want to be involved in blocking users that is fine; as with deletion, you are provided in the tools to block in the hopes that you will be able to use them if you need to, but you are under no obligation to block users in order to remain an admin.

More Options: Please Be Seated
Now that the three key points have been covered you are basically set to go insofar as understanding what it use you have or want to have at you admin account. However, there are a few additional options that you may wish to consider when you officially obtain your admin privileges.

The first of these things is whether or not you will be open to recall. Some of Wikipedia's administrators have chosen to participate in a voluntary recall program, and have generated their own reasonable recall criteria. These administrators who are open to recall thus provide the community with a check on their power by ensuring that the community to initiate a process to have the administrative powers stripped from a candidate if the community ultimately determines that the admin in question acted outside his or her authority on a matter.

The second thing to consider is whether or not to add yourself to the list of admins willing to make difficult blocks. This list serves as a repository where a precious few on site can be found who are both able and willing to block controversial isp addresses, users, etc, and are willing to deal with the consequences of their actions regardless of whether they be good or bad.

As before, you are under no obligation to list yourself in these groups, but if you would like to join these two groups you are encouraged to read up on and be familiar with all aspects relating to making difficult blocks and/or recall before you add yourself to the two groups respective lists.

Revoking or Surrendering Adminship
Unless there is good reason to do so, adminship is held by a Wikipedia user indefinitely, so once you pass adminship you will not need to stand for reconfirmation at any point in the future. That said, some people do desire to have the adminship revoked, and the community reserves the right to revoke adminship under certain circumstances.

In the event you wish to revoke you adminship you will need to bring the matter to the attention of a bureaucrat or a steward. Members of these two groups have the authorization needed to revoke adminship privileges on the English Wikipedia, and should be able to handle user requests for self removal of adminship.

In the event the community goes after you to have your adminship privileges revoked it will likely take one of the following forms:
 * Recall: If you are listed as an administrator open to recall then the community may take the steps you laid out to have you recalled based on your own criteria. In this event, depending on the outcome, you will either be expected to surrender your privileges or they will be revoked.
 * Emergency Desysopping: Occasionally an account with admins privileges on Wikipedia ends up compromised, resulting in a community move called emergency desysopping that leaves the compromised account admin-less. In the interest of full disclosure, this is often two stepped with the blocking of the account in question. Such accounts typically remain indefinitely blocked on the site unless its rightful owner can be conclusively determined through the use of a cryptography hash or other means.
 * The inactivity clause: If an admin account of Wikipedia has not been active for more than a year than the community will remove the admin privileges associated with the account. In this case, the user is explicitly informed that the only reason for the removal of the admin privileges is the long term absence, and thus a returning user whose admin privileges were revoked may ask that they be restored.
 * In accordance with a decree from a ranking body: This is extremely rare, but in the event it is judged necessary the Wikimedia board or the Arbitration committee may have user rights revoked if the board or committee deems that this is the best way to ensure the safety and security of the site.

Note that with the exception recall, each of the above cases should be considered special circumstances with which a user's admin privileges end up revoked, therefore you likely will not end up under one the above listed conditions unless you have managed to overstep your authority or abuse your privileges. In the event your are stripped of your adminship privileges odds are good that you will be unable to reclaim admin privileges since you will need to pass another rfa, and the rfa is intended to establish whether or not you can be trusted with the tools.

The Admin's Barnstar & The Trout


As with most groups on Wikipedia, administrators have their own unique barnstar, aptly named the Admin's Barnstar. It may be awarded to administrators who made a particularly difficult decision, did a tiresome but needed admin task, cleared some nasty backlog or just to show an administrator that someone thinks they are doing good work in a particular area of "the job" and that their work is appreciated. It is intended for use when other, more specific, barnstars do not apply to the reasons at hand. To hand out an admin barnstar to an administrator you can use the following text:

message ~

Make sure that you replace the "message" part with your reason for awarding the barnstar. Remember that while only administrators can receive the admin's barnstar, anyone can hand out the admin's barnstar, so do not be shy about awarding the barnstar to an admin who has done a good job even if you are not admin.

The other award given out to admins is a correctional award used in humorous situations in which an admin makes a good faith mistake that did not significantly impede Wikipedia in any way. Its known as the trout, and it is issued to admins open to receiving a trout for the purpose of making subtle adjustments to clue levels of experienced Wikipedians.

To whack a user with a wet trout, simply place trout on his or her userpage. An alternative, similar to the balloons, bubble tea, cheeseburger and cookie, is the troutalt. Note that the awarding of the trout is intended to be humorous, not malicious; therefore take care when you award the trout that the user receiving the trout is open to being trouted, otherwise your attempt at humor may come across as something closer to malicious than humorous.