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Jiggywikki:Administrators
Administrators, sometimes called admins, are users who have been promoted and given additional powers and responsibilities. They are lower ranked than bureaucrats, who have the ability to change user ranks, such as making a user an administrator. Be aware that the term "administrator" is sometimes used as an umbrella term to refer to all the wiki staff, rather than the specific admin rank.
Overview[edit]
Administrators are users who have a history of high-quality edits, wiki quality improvement, and responsible, mature behavior. These users have had performance- and security-based restrictions on several features lifted because they demonstrated hardworking and trustworthy behavior.
Some of these abilities include the ability to block vandals or disruptive users, quickly revert damage done to articles, and delete unwanted images or pages (among other functions listed below). Users should not ask to be promoted: all decisions on promotions and demotions are made by the current staff members, although users are free to decline when offered a promotion.
In general, administrators are not imbued with any special authority and are equal to everyone else in terms of editorial responsibility. Staff members' votes and opinions are given equal weight to regular users in any democratic process or informal discussion, such as talk page proposals. Admins should not have power over other users other than applying decisions made by all users, but when they do exercise their authority to enforce established rules and regulations, users should defer to their judgment rather than arguing, edit-warring and making a scene. Administrators are not infallible, any mistakes made by the wiki staff will be dealt with internally; Users should never attempt to give a staff member an official warning, but instead, voice any legitimate concerns to a bureaucrat in private, such as on Discord. Warnings given to users by an admin cannot be appealed, the other staff members have the ability to overturn any unwarranted warnings or blocks if they see fit.
Because of their experience, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. During vandal attacks or edit wars, users may contact any staff members who are online for assistance. All admins must closely watch for changes or new incidents posted to the noticeboard.
Many essential housekeeping chores require the additional editing tools granted to administrators, and users should feel free to ask for assistance if they are not able to perform certain necessary functions on their own, such as having pages protected or unprotected, having redirects deleted to make room for moves, etc. For less pressing matters, {{delete}} can be placed on pages or images requiring deletion, and a administrator will get around to it sooner than later, as they are expected to periodically check and empty the "to be deleted" category.
Administrator group rights[edit]
There are some features that regular users cannot use:
- Blocking user accounts, IP addresses and IP ranges for a specific time or indefinitely; see the blocking policy for more information.
- Unblocking user accounts, IP addresses and IP ranges.
- Looking up a user's IP address via CheckUser.
- Hiding inappropriate usernames from public view.
- Protecting and unprotecting pages.
- Directly editing or moving protected pages.
- Deleting, viewing, and restoring pages, files and their history.
- Hiding, viewing, and restoring specific revisions of a page from public view, including the associated edit summary if necessary.
- Marking edits as patrolled.
- Having their own edits automatically marked as patrolled.
See the administrators' how-to guide for a guide on using admin functions.
