Classic WoW Wiki:Administrators/dev



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 via IRC or by posting on their talk page.

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 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. 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.

No user has ever been demoted on WoWWiki for inactivity since we know no-one can escape the World of Warcraft. :)

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 WoWWiki defer to the system administrator.

Wikia acts as our system administrator, whilst the technical system administrator role is filled by Wikia technical staff.

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.
 * Fandyllic A bureaucrat.
 * Kirkburn Spam, vandalism and "ickiness" cleaner; Main page, MediaWiki, and general stylist; developer of ClearFont; deletion machine. Not so very active on IRC.

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 or IRC. Activity in this case is how much said administrator makes changes to the wiki in some way, outside of certain page maintenance.

Active

 * Fandyllic (talk) One of the founding admins. A bureaucrat.
 * Raylan13 (talk) Assigned to WoWWiki primarily for Cataclysm updates and liaison to WoWWiki from Wikia.

Inactive

 * Kirkburn Wikia staff. One of the founding admins. Inactive.

Emeritus
These admins have not been active for a long time, but will retain their user rights until they ask to be demoted.
 * AlexanderYoshi Cosmos founder and initiator of the Interface Customization section of WoWWiki. Performing secret missions in a hidden land.
 * Rustak One-time leader of the wiki. Today he is very busy with projects outside of WoWWiki. Known as vlad_ on IRC. Inactive.
 * Sancus Rustak's support class, but also busy on other projects. Mostly EVE Online. Sometimes on IRC. Semi-active.

Former
These admins have either asked to have their admin rights removed or have decided to stop contributing to WoWWiki as admins.

By request

 * Deadlykris Former forum MVP, current active admin of The Vault, recruited to help out.

Inactive for a long time

 * Montag Active commentator and contributor; player character caretaker.

Moved to Wowpedia

 * A'noob New Images, Articles, Speedydelete, Double Redirects Watcher. DNP Enforcer. Lore Eater. Inactive on IRC (teach me how to!) In other words "This is gonna be legen wait for it dary!"
 * Baggins Crazy lore contributor.
 * Coobra Generally monitors images coming and going. A category for everything and everything in its category. Semi-active on IRC.
 * Schmidt Organizer, thoughtful editor.
 * Foxlit Also known as Starlightblunder (this is his actual admin account), foxlit runs User:Foxbot, plays with templates and whines as the general state of WotLK, BC, and WoW. Find him on IRC or your local wiki.
 * Gourra Adds and fixes that stuff that nobody else wants to. Obsessed with categories and boilerplates. Active on IRC.
 * Gryphon Cosmos staff. Wiki spam and vandalism cleaner. Battlegroup and Mal'Ganis stylist, tender of Servers. Active on IRC.
 * Hobinheim Navigation bar enthusiast and Hobinbot controller. Currently semi-active.
 * Howbizr Black belt raider. Blue belt theorycrafter. Green belt HTML/CSS/Javascript. Yellow belt categories. White belt lore. And oh ya, "token female admin."
 * Kaydeethree PTR and new-content fanatic. Active on IRC.
 * Mikk Policy wonk, sculpteur de monde de warcraft, wiki expert, template-maker, bot-coder, and voter extraordinaire.
 * Pcj Creator of WoWWiki's hover tooltips and other JavaScript functionality. Active on IRC.
 * Ragestorm Laird of the Lore. Slightly more than semi-active, and slightly more than semi-sane.
 * Sandwichman2448 Goes by "SWM2448" to shorten his signature. Hard-working and humble (most of the time).
 * Sky2042 Ultimate target is the Main page. Active on IRC.
 * Tekkub Member and wikimaster of the Ace development team, table stylist, and  stuff contributor. Active on IRC.
 * Teomyr Background worker. Developer of multiple extensions, maintains WoWTestWiki and more.
 * TherasTaneel‎ Image naming fanatic and NPC organization extraordinaire.
 * Varghedin Disturbingly active contributor, over 50,000 listed edits about NPCs, zones, and much more.

Demoted

 * Adys Icons, categories, item pages, deletions & cleanups, vandal hunting and more. Active on IRC.

Alternatives
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:
 * 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).