You sometimes see the term administrator, or admin, but what is really an admin? In the simple sense, an admin is a user with special powers over administration and management of the wiki. Due to these additional powers, they also have additional responsibilities (usually in mediating disputes, monitoring spam/vandalism, and site content maintenance).
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 undeletion 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 policies of the 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 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 and templates)
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 the Like A Boss Wiki defer to the system administrator.
Wikia acts as our system administrator, whilst the technical system administrator role is filled by Wikia technical staff.
Bureaucrat[]
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, among others.
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.
Wiki Administrators[]
Moderators[]
Moderators are users with improved wiki maintenance abilities. They tend to be very active users. They help cleanup, correct, fix up, mediate, and set a good example.
- Moderator powers
- Moving and renaming articles and blogs
- Protecting pages (protect; lock them from editing or moving)
- Deleting pages and images (remove them from the public database)
- Editing semi-protected and restricted pages (blogs)
- Quickly rollback the edits of the last user who edited a particular page (rollback)
- Deleting and editing article comments (but they should always note if they do)
- Content Moderator powers
- Moving and renaming articles, blogs, and files
- Move with no redirect created (suppressredirect)
- Protecting pages (lock them from editing or moving)
- Deleting pages and images (remove them from the public database)
- Undelete pages (undelete; restore to public database)
- View deleted history entries, without their associated text (deletedhistory)
- View deleted text and changes between deleted revisions (deletedtext)
- Overwrite existing images and files (reupload)
- Chat Moderator powers
- Can kick/ban users from Chat