What is an administrator?
editIf your viewing this article then it's very possible that your interested in becoming an administrator. Administrators are Wikipedia editors that have been entrusted with a restricted set of tools that allow them to preform a variety of common tasks as well as maintaince on the site. Several examples of tasks they can preform are redirecting pages, moving pages, blocking users, and protecting certain pages. These are just a few of the many tasks they admins can take part and they will be explained in more detail on the Tutorial tab.<br\>
How to prepare
editWhile there are no offfical qualifications for adminship, other than being registered, it is probably most important that nominee be a registered user of Wikipedia for a consierable amount of time. Because there are no qualifications time will be one of your biggest factors, among others, in the community determining whether or not they will approve your nomination. The more time you have spent editing documents and getting involved with the site the more experience you will gain to help you be a great admin if adminship is successful. The length of time you have been a member is not the only factor users look at though. A couple other things that users look for when reviewing a new nomination are how they handle difficult questions, tasks, a dispute with other members.
The Process
editIn order to become an administrator you must first be nominated for adminship or nominate yourself. When either of these cases take place a page must first be created as an RfA (request for adminship) subpage. The newly created page will allow the you or the person who nominated you to write a description of why you would make a good administator and explain the qualities that you possess. In a situation where you nominated, before the RfA can continue you must first accept the nomination for adminship. On a side note more than one person can nominate you for adminship. At a minimum the nomination for any user will continue for a minumum of seven days and can only be closed by a Wikipedia Bureacrat.
The next step in the process is to answers questions that Wikipedia has prepared for editors requesting adminship and questions that other users submit. It is important that when answering these questions that the user stay calm and do not get involved in arguments and other things of that nature. Keeping a calm when dealing with other users and not taking this personnally all the time will lower the stress and allow them to better complete the process wthout any issues. <br\>
The Decision
editThe decision process of whether or not the request for adminship will be successful or unsucessful is based on rating system as follows: support, deny, neutral. Typically, nomination with an 80% approval rate will pass and the user will become a new administrator. On the other hand, those nominations with an approval below 70% will fail. It's important to remember that bueracrats have the ultimate say becuase any nomination is subject to their discrection. If you aren't successfull that doesn't mean you can't try again at a later date. Typically most have a 4 in 10 chance in having a successful nomination, so it's not impossible.
Now That Your A Wikipedia Admin
edit- Please note that Wikipedia rates these tasks on the possible negative effect they can have on the rest of the community and they ascend in order of severity. Before doing any type of admin work on a namespace article, it is imperative that you take the time to review how each of these tasks are completed in a manner than will not harm the rest of the site or make other doubt your skills. And again remember these is just a small portion of privileges and that it may take time to hone your newly acquired admin privileges. A great site within Wikipedia that will allow you to practice these skills in a safe environment is the New Admin School
| Newly Acquired Privileges |
|---|
| 1. Granting and revoking acount creator |
| 2. Rolling back pages/articles |
| 3. Protecting specific pages |
| 4. Protecting deleted pages |
| 5. Rollback granting and revoking |
| 6. Deleting |
| 7. Dealing with disputes |
| 8. Blocking pages or user |
| 9. Viewing deleted pages and contributions |
Past and Present Requests For Adminship
editBefore appying to become a administrators we suggest that you take a look at a number of past and present successful/unsuccesful requests so that you have a good idea of what is expected structurally and strategically. Below are links to both the successful and unsucessful requests for adminship that go back a number of years. Further examples of parituclar RfA requests that we thought were great examples will be expained on the next tab.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_adminship<br\> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminship_candidacies_(Chronological)
Contents
editWikipedia:Requests for adminship/nominate<br\> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RFA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Nominate<br\> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators<br\> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_admin_school http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_reading_list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advice_for_RfA_candidates