Administrators

## What are **administrators**?

**Administrators** are trusted individuals who have been picked by the wiki community or ***wiki staff*** to receive specific rights that will allow them to access restricted technical features on the wiki. Such restricted technical features include, but are not limited to, blocking, the insights page, the wiki analytics page, announcements, and the creation and editing of CSS, JS, and special pages. Individuals who are **administrators** also have the ability to promote/demote users to/from rollback and thread moderator, but cannot promote/demote users to/from content moderator, **administrator**, and bureaucrat.

We recommend that you think of **administrators** as regular users with a little bit more power than that of the typical user so that they may keep the wiki safe, functional, and most importantly, fun! After all, these users are your best bet to removing trolls, reducing trouble via warning users, and making things a, mostly, smooth experience for everyone's time on the wiki. Now, how can an **administrator** best serve the wiki?

## Serving the wiki

    **Administrators** can best serve a wiki by listening to it's community and allowing the community to actively engage in policy creation, promotion of new moderators, and other things that affect a community overall. Allowing votes and feedback to decisions is an excellent way to do this, as well as permitting users to give their opinions when a community proposition or a moderator application is made; *never* immediately shut down a user whenever they have some form of feedback, as that's not allowing a user to contribute to such discussion, and that's also not listening to the community.

**Administrators** are not the bosses or owners of the wiki, and should not act as though they are. Fandom owns the wiki, and no singular individual should take claim to it or act as though they are taking claim to it; allow all users to contribute to the pages of the wiki and content being displayed, as Fandom is an open-edit program. Don't force users to follow any kind of protocal beyond the formatting of article pages, and even then, assume their edits are in good faith if not formatted correctly.

## Active engagement with the wiki

   Additionally, it's best for **administrators** to be active within the community and to understand the user's wishes, their concerns, and more; no matter what people say, you can't understand situations or individuals without actually being in those situations or listening and talking to those individuals. On another perspective, being active helps you witness and act in situations that require quick responses; such as raids, troll attacks, and other such things that negatively impact the community. Remember, ***administrators** are the only ones ones on a wiki who have the ability to block users beyond fandom staff*.

Now, what are good ways for **administrators** to communicate and become involved with a wiki's community? How can you contribute to wiki safety while also helping the wiki trust you and understand that you're there to help and actively contribute? Here are a few ways you can be active in the community.

* **Create posts for the userbase to comment on and view.** By actively posting, you're showing a wiki's userbase that you'll be there in it's time of need! It allows them to gouge out how quickly you'd be able to respond whenever they report something or there's trolls.
* **Engage on wiki talk pages and with users on their message wall when making edits, and when edit conflicts occur.** By engaging on wiki talk pages and talking to users on their message walls whenever you're making edits that change someone else's, you're creating a situation that's calm while also allowing a learning opportunity + communication.
* **Hosting projects and competitions for users to produce something with.** This certainly isn't a requirement, but it is fun to host something and be able to get users to collaborate on one big piece.
* **Encourage good faith editing and creating.** Whenever a user edits something or creates a page, maybe try to thank them for their edits! This feature hasn't been added to our wiki yet, but it'll be here eventually!

All in all, *engage* with users, participate in their discussions, encourage them and talk to them, and generally just do your best to help them realize that you're there for them. The best way to do this in a situation of conflict is to ***assume good faith***, and understand that your **administrative** rights should be treated as a last resort in a conflict. Now, what are your **administrative** rights and how do you use them?

## Understanding technical features

In order to be a good **administrator**, it is best to understand the features you're able to use and how to best use them. Now, these features are hard to explain, so it's best recommended that you reference the section below and see all of Fandom's help pages that have been provided. However, what can be explained is when and where these features should be used, to which this page will go down a broad path with rather than a specific one.

* **Whenever an individual needs to be blocked**, you can find a link to the blocking page in their contributions. This should only really ever happen when major rule violations occur, and a message should be left on the user's wall for why they were blocked and how long they were blocked.
* **Whenever you need to delete a post**, you'd be able to find the delete button for that post in the 3 dots of it.
* **In order to announce something**, there's a specific page you need to go to that is linked in the Admin Dashboard.

## Fandom help pages

* Please see ***Help:Common mistakes*** for common mistakes that **administrators** make.
* Please see ***Administrators how-to guide*** for help with technical features **administrators** have access to.
* Please see ***Help:Improving your community*** for ways you can help to improve the wiki and it's userbase.
* Please see ***Category:Administration help*** for all help that Fandom has to offer for new **administrators**.