Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, trusted and experienced editors may be appointed as administrators (also referred to as admins, sysops or janitors) by the editing community, following a successful request for adminship. There are admins on the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

. Administrators have some technical privileges not enjoyed by other editors, such as the ability to protect and delete pages and to block users from editing pages. On Wikipedia, becoming an administrator is often referred to as "being given r taking upthe mop", a term which has also been used elsewhere. In 2006, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' reported that administrators on Wikipedia, of whom there were then about 1,000, were "geographically diverse". In July 2012, it was widely reported that Wikipedia was "running out of administrators", because in 2005 and 2006, 40 to 50 people were often appointed administrators each month, but in the first half of 2012, only nine in total were appointed. However,

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

, Wikipedia's co-founder, denied that this was a crisis or that Wikipedia was running out of admins, saying, "The number of admins has been stable for about two years, there's really nothing going on." Wales had previously (in a message sent to the English Wikipedia mailing list on February 11, 2003) stated that being an admin is "not a big deal", and that "It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to

sysops A sysop (, an abbreviation of system operator) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community.Jansen, E. & James, V. (2002). NetLingo: the Internet dictionary. Ne ...

are not given out to everyone." In his 2008 book '' Wikipedia: The Missing Manual'', John Broughton states that while many people think of administrators on Wikipedia as judges, that is not the purpose of the role. Instead, he says, admins usually " delete pages" and "protect pages involved in edit wars". Wikipedia administrators are not employees or agents of the

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Requests for adminship

While the first Wikipedia administrators were appointed by Jimmy Wales in October 2001, administrator privileges on Wikipedia are now granted through a process known as requests for adminship (RfA). Registered editors may nominate themselves, or may request another editor to do so.

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

, has said the process is "akin to putting someone through the Supreme Court". Lih also said, "It's pretty much a hazing ritual at this point", in contrast to how the process worked early in Wikipedia's history, when all one had to do to become an admin was "prove you weren't a bozo". Candidacy for the role is normally considered only after "extensive work on the wiki". Unlike most of Wikipedia, which uses consensus-based decision making, RFA is basically a vote, although some votes may be discounted if the result is close or contested. The vote is described as a "consensus building process", but in practical reality those above 75% support will pass, those below 65% will fail, and those in between are in the "discretionary zone" and subject to further discussion by Wikipedia's ''bureaucrats'', another group of advanced permission holders whose role it is to determine and enact a consensus in certain situations. This may have been implemented as a result of RfAs attracting increasing levels of attention: Stvilia et al. quoted that "Prior to mid-2005, RfAs typically did not attract much attention. Since then, it has become quite common for RfAs to attract huge numbers of RfA groupies who all support one another". The record number of votes in one RfA, as of May 2022, was 468: The RfA of the editor Tamzin was supported by 340 users and opposed by 116, amidst controversy over that candidate's criticism of supporters of Donald Trump.

Role

Once granted administrator privileges, a user has access to additional functions in order to perform certain duties. These include "messy cleanup work", deletion of articles deemed unsuitable, protecting pages (restricting editing privileges to that page), and blocking the accounts of disruptive users. Blocking a user must be done according to Wikipedia's policies and a reason must be stated for the block, which will be permanently logged by the software. Use of this privilege to "gain editing advantages" is considered inappropriate.

Scientific studies

A 2013 scientific paper by researchers from

Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...

and

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...

found that after editors are promoted to administrator status, they often focus more on articles about controversial topics than they did before. The researchers also proposed an alternative method for choosing administrators, in which more weight is given to the votes of experienced editors. This corresponds to a modality of

plural voting Plural voting is the practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. It is not to be confused with a plurality voting system, which elects winners by relative lead in vote tallies and does not necessarily involve pl ...

. Another paper, presented at the 2008

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human–computer interaction and is one of the top-ranked conferences in computer science. ...

, analyzed data from all 1,551 requests for adminship from January 2006 to October 2007, with the goal of determining which (if any) of the criteria recommended in Wikipedia's ''Guide to requests for adminship'' were the best predictors of whether the user in question would actually become an admin. In December 2013, a similar study was published by researchers from the Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

, which aimed to model the results of requests for adminship on the

Polish Wikipedia The Polish Wikipedia () is the Polish language, Polish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. Founded on 26 September 2001, it now has articles, making it the -largest Wikipedia edition overall. It is also the second-largest ...

using a model derived from Wikipedia's edit history. They found that they could "classify the votes in the RfA procedures using this model with an accuracy level that should be sufficient to recommend candidates."

References

{{Wikipedia System administration

Administrators Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...