 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This is an essay that describes my feelings on adminship and various related topics.
The Point edit
This essay really makes one point: adminship is about not abusing the extra tools. If you fully understand that, you don't need to read further. (But you might want to anyway.)
What's the big deal? edit
It's hard to read through RfA nominations and come away with an accurate picture of what it means to be an admin. If you read some nominations you might get the idea that an admin is someone who makes a whole lot of edits. Maybe they're someone who can bring an article up to featured article status. Or maybe they're just nice people.
These things are good, but they're way off. Primarily, administrators have the following tools that most others don't:
- Protect pages, and edit protected pages.
- Delete and restore pages.
- Block and unblock users.
- Edit text of the interface.
There is no "secondarily." That's it. That's the big deal. Admins can do these things, and others cannot.
So what does that mean? It means that the only requirement there should be for becoming an administrator is that these tools won't be abused.
Of course, this requires some trust from the community, and some people have set up some guidelines they use when voting, a sort of test of trust. But where do things like helping write a featured article come into play there? I don't see anything in the list of tools that has anything to do with lots of editing.
Adminship isn't a big deal. Or at least it shouldn't be. Some people like to make it that way, and I'm not sure why.
Consensus and policy edit
While one of the roles administrators play is to enforce community consensus and the policies created through consensus, it is not mandatory that they do so. Remember The Point. Administrators are not abusing tools by refusing to enforce consensus. They should in most cases, but it's not a requirement.
There are times when I've seen consensus violated by a user, but I agree with that user. I can't in good conscience revert the user, but I can't fight tooth and nail against the community either. The solution? Do nothing, or ask another admin to take care of it. There is no policy that administrators must enforce every policy they see violated. Maybe the admin knows they won't be civil or cool when dealing with a user. That's ok, because nowhere does any policy or guideline say they have to.
Of course, this does not mean that an administrator can go against consensus. Remember that adminship isn't a big deal. That also means admins don't get a free pass; they're an editor like anyone else. But it also means that administrators are not obligated to use their tools to deal with a violation of consensus, just as regular editors are not obligated to use what tools they have to do the same.
In short, the tools should always be used to enforce consensus. But not using the tools at all isn't a crime either, and it's often treated as such.