User:Guest9999/Mop Stand

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"The mop"
"The mop"

Administrators, commonly known as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are Wikipedia editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. English Wikipedia practice is to grant administrator status to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for at least a few months, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and who has gained the trust of the community. They can protect and delete pages, block other editors, and undo these actions as well. These privileges are granted indefinitely, and are only removed upon request or under circumstances involving high-level intervention (see administrator abuse below). Administrators undertake additional responsibilities on a voluntary basis, and are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation.

In the very early days of Wikipedia, all users functioned as administrators, and in principle they still should. From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community but should be a part of the community like anyone else. Generally, the maintenance and administration of Wikipedia can be conducted by anyone, without the specific technical functions granted to administrators. While the tools granted to administrators are technical and do not convey authority per se, administrators are people that are entrusted with, if not used properly, very harmful tools.

Because administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information, or in a dispute. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral; they do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people with.

Request assistance - Full list of administrators - Requests for adminship

If you are granted access, you must exercise care in using these new functions, especially the ability to delete pages and the ability to block IP addresses. You can learn how to do these things at the Administrators' how-to guide and the new administrator school. Please also look at the pages linked from the Administrators' reading list before using your administrative abilities.

Administrator tools are also used with judgment; it can take some time for a new administrator to learn when it's best to use the tools, and it can take months to gain a good sense of how long a period to set, when using tools such as blocking and page protection in difficult disputes. New administrators are strongly encouraged to start slowly and build up experience on areas they are used to, and by asking others if unsure.

Administrators and all other users with extra tools are expected to have a strong password, to prevent damage in the case of a compromised account. (See also Wikipedia:Security.)


Contents

[edit] Administrator conduct

Administrators, like all users, are not perfect beings. However in general they are expected to act as role models within the community, and a good general standard of civility, fairness, and general conduct both to users and in content matters, is expected.[1] [2] [3] When acting as administrators, they are also expected to be fair, exercise good judgment, and give explanations and be communicative as necessary.

Administrators who seriously, or repeatedly, act in a problematic manner or have lost the trust or confidence of the community may be sanctioned or have their access removed. In the past, this has happened or been suggested for:

  1. Misuse of tools (deletion, protection, blocking in clearly improper circumstances)
  2. Breach of basic policies (attacks, biting/civility, edit warring, privacy, etc)
  3. Repeated/consistent poor judgment
  4. Fighting with the tools (known as "wheel warring"). Summary: With very few exceptions, as soon as an action using tools is reversed by another administrator, it should not be reinstated by the original user or any admin, no matter how good the intention may be, without consensus. But see also exceptions below.
  5. Failure to communicate[4] - this can be either to users (eg lack of suitable warnings or explanations of actions), or to concerns of the community (especially when explanations or other serious comments are sought).
  6. 'Bad faith' adminship (sock puppetry, good hand/bad hand, gross breach of trust[5], etc)
  7. Conduct elsewhere incompatible with adminship (off site attacking, etc)


[edit] Grievances by users ("Administrator abuse")

If a user thinks an administrator has acted improperly against them or another editor, they should express their concerns directly to the administrator responsible and try to come to a resolution in an orderly and civil manner. However, if the matter is not resolved between the two parties, users can take further action (see Wikipedia:Dispute Resolution). For more possibilities, see Requests for comment/User conduct: Use of administrator privileges and Administrator's noticeboard: Incidents RE :)

[edit] Reinstating a reverted action ("Wheel warring")

Administrators are strictly forbidden from fighting over the use of administrative tools by using those tools. .

Also, if a matter is blatantly, clearly obvious (genuinely vandalistic for example), then historically the community has sometimes endorsed any admin acting on it, if any reasonable admin would probably come to the same conclusion. However if there is doubt or a personal motive may be alleged, it is still better to pass it to others.

The wiki software ("MediaWiki") has a number of technical and maintenance features that are restricted. Administrators, commonly known as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are Wikipedia editors who have access to these features (known as "tools") that help with maintenance.

This page lists the details of the mediawiki tools accessible to administrators, and what administrators are able to do with them.


[edit] See also

Adminship
The tools

[[category:Wikipedia adminship]] [[category:Wikipedia functionaries]]


WP:WW redirects here; you may also be looking for Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words (shortcut: WP:AWW) or Wikipedia:WikiProject WikipediaWeekly (shortcut: WP:WWPC).

{{policy|WP:WW|WP:WHEEL|WP:0WW}}

A wheel war is a struggle between two or more administrators in which they undo one another's administrative actions — specifically, unblocking and reblocking a user; undeleting and redeleting; or unprotecting and reprotecting a page. Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it. Do not continue a chain of administrative reversals without discussion.

Sanctions for wheel warring have varied from reprimands and cautions, to temporary blocks, to desysopping, even for first time incidents. Wheel warring has been used as grounds for immediate revocation of adminship following Arbitration in a number of cases.

For summaries ands citations of relevant arbitration cases, and example scenarios, see /Examples.

[edit] Possible indications and alternatives

Possible indications of wheel warring are:

  • Administrators getting too distressed to discuss something.
  • An administrator undoes another administrator's actions without consultation.
  • An administrator deliberately ignores an existing discussion (often at the Administrators noticeboard/Incidents or Deletion review) and implements their own preferred action or version of an edit.
  • An administrative action is repeatedly performed and reversed (by anyone).

If you feel the need to wheel war, try these alternatives:

Wikipedia works on the spirit of consensus; disputes should be settled through civil discussion rather than power wrestling.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[[Category:Wikipedia user conduct]] [[ar:ويكيبيديا:حرب إدارية]] [[fa:ویکی‌پدیا:جنگ چرخشی]] [[he:ויקיפדיה:מלחמה ביצועית]] [[hu:Wikipédia:Adminháború]] [[nl:Wikipedia:Wheelwar]] [[pl:Wikipedia:Wojna administratorów]] [[ru:Википедия:Война администраторов]] [[tr:Vikipedi:Direksiyon savaşları]] [[zh:Wikipedia:車輪戰]]