Wikipedia:Criteria for Administratorship
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
 |
This page is a guideline on Wikipedia. Many editors agree with acting this way. It is a good idea to follow it, but it is not policy. Feel free to change the page as needed, but please use the talk page to suggest any big changes. |
Administrators are users who can do a few things more than regular users. This is to help Wikipedia run smoothly. Bureaucrats are users who can do even more, and who also help this project run better. You can find more information on what Administrators and Bureaucrats can do, and a list of who they are, on Administrators and Bureaucrats.
There are times when a user of Wikipedia thinks he or she can help more by becoming an Administrator or a Bureaucrat. Administrators and Bureaucrats are elected by voting. Although every user of Wikipedia can try to become an Administrator or a Bureaucrat, there are some criteria that must be met. These criteria have been developed by a consensus of Simple English Wikipedia users. They are listed below.
Contents |
[change] Criteria for becoming an administrator
[change] Definitions
- Named editors are those who log into Wikipedia using their username and password, before they edit.
- Anonymous users are those editors who do not log in to edit. They are known by their IP Address numbers.
- Administrators are named editors trusted by the community. Therefore, administration or administratorship (adminship for short) is about trust.
[change] Who can become an Administrator
- Any named editor can become an Administrator of Simple Wikipedia. Anonymous users cannot become Administrators.
- Users have to be active editors in this project for some time before they request adminship. There is no set time, but three months is preferred.
- Editors who want to become administrators need to have a working e-mail address configured in their profile. They also need to regularly read and respond to the e-mail sent to that address. This is because administrators are sometimes contacted by e-mail.
[change] Other requirements: Familiarity with rules and with editing
- Candidates must be familiar with the rules of the Simple English Wikipedia.
- Candidates should also be familiar with editing. For this reason, a user should have at least several hundred edits in this Wikipedia. There is no exact number of edits needed. In general, a lower number of high quality edits is better than a higher number of lower quality edits.
- There are different sections in this Wikipedia. To become an Administrator, it is good if most of the candidate's edits are in the sections that make this Wikipedia better. This Wikipedia is made better by adding or editing articles (in the "Main" section), by writing or improving Templates (the "Template" section), or by making the category system better (mostly in the "Category" section). Many editors do not support candidates who have made most of their edits to the "User" or "User talk" namespaces.
[change] Filing a request
- Possible candidates can file a request (ask for a vote) at the Request for adminship page. They can nominate themselves. This is called self-nomination.
- A named editor can nominate another editor to become an Administrator also, but the nominated person must meet these requirements. The nominated person must also accept the nomination.
[change] Who can vote
- All users, either anonymous or named, are welcome to comment in requests.
- Each named editor can vote. There are some restrictions though. They are outlined below.
- Anonymous users cannot vote.
- Named editors cannot vote in requests that were running when they created their account.
- An editor cannot vote in the request that proposes him or her to become an Administrator.
- People who use multiple accounts to vote ("sockpuppets") will be blocked. None of their votes will be counted.
- Users who are unable to edit articles at the time the vote was started cannot vote in a request. Votes of users who were disallowed from editing after they voted may or may not be counted.
- Votes made by users with very few edits may or may not be counted.
[change] Vote by the community
- The vote runs for one week. If the request is a self-nomination, the one week period is counted from the time the request is submitted. If the candidate is nominated by another editor, the one week period is calculated from when the nominated person accepts the nomination.
- Within that week, qualifying editors can say what they think about the request. A qualifying editor can either support or oppose a request. When voting, people often give a reason why they voted the way they did.
- Each qualifying editor has one vote.
- Sometimes it is hard to decide whether to support or oppose a request. If you do not feel strongly one way or another, please express your feelings in the comment section. Comments are not votes. Some editors may want to express this difficulty by voting neutral, but this should not be done, and such "votes" if they occur will be treated as comments, and moved to that section.
- While the vote is still running the editor can change opinions, and vote differently. The original vote should not be deleted, but marked with
strikethrough. Votes marked that way will be treated like invalid votes.
[change] Counting votes
- At the end of the one week period, votes will be counted.
- Some votes may be illegal. Illegal votes are not counted. A vote can be illegal because the editor who gave it was not qualified to do so. Votes can also be illegal because they were the old opinion of an editor. The corresponding editor will have marked them with
strikethrough. - Legal oppose votes and legal support votes make up all votes.
[change] A successful request
- A bureaucrat decides whether a request is successful. If there is consensus in making a candidate into an Administrator, a Bureaucrat may use his tools to promote the editor to Administrator, at any time after the voting period is over. The closing Bureaucrat should look for consensus, when making his or her decision.
- Bureaucrats make their decisions based on the consensus of voting users -- not simply on the percentage of supporting votes.
- Generally, at least 65% of the votes cast need to be in support of a candidate, to indicate a consensus for the adminship request to succeed.
- Requests with fewer than 5 legal votes total are considered to have failed.
[change] Criteria for becoming a Bureaucrat
- In general, the same rules mentioned above for editors becoming Administrators, also apply to Administrators who wish to become Bureaucrats.
- Only Administrators can apply or be proposed to become a Bureaucrat. The voting is the same as with administrators. Everyone who can vote for an administrator can also vote for a Bureaucrat.
- In general, a successful request for Bureaucrat status should have a consensus of at least 75% supporting votes.
[change] Criteria for becoming a Checkuser
- Checkusers are special users; they can see the IP addresses, and user agents of named users. This can be useful for vandal-fighting.
- The full requirements for checkusers are listed on the CheckUser policy page.
- In general, the same rules mentioned above for editors becoming Administrators, also apply to Administrators who wish to be granted the Checkuser status.
- Only administrators can apply for checkuser access.
- A successful request for checkuser must have a minimum of 25 votes, with at least 70% support votes (That is: 18 support votes for 25 total votes).
