RuneScape:Administrators

From the RuneScape Wiki, the wiki for all things RuneScape

Shortcut: RS:ADMIN RS:SYSOP

Administrators, or sysops, are editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance. Those include protecting and deleting pages, blocking other editors, and undoing these actions as well. RuneScape Wiki's practice is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active and regular RuneScape Wiki contributor for a while, is familiar with and respects RuneScape Wiki policy, and is generally a known and trusted member of the community.

Any user can behave as if they are an administrator (provided they do not falsely claim to be one), even if they have not been given the extra administrative functions. Users doing so are more likely to be nominated as full administrators by members of the community and more likely to be chosen when they are finally nominated. From early on, it has been pointed out that administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community (See RuneScape:All editors are equal), but should be a part of the community like anyone else only equipped with a few more tools to do some chores that would potentially be harmful if everyone were entrusted with them.

The community does look to administrators to perform essential housekeeping chores that require the extra access administrators are entrusted with. Among them are watching the Votes for deletion debates and carrying out the consensus of the community on keeping or deleting these articles, keeping an eye on new and changed articles to swiftly delete obvious vandalism, and meeting user requests for help that require administrative access. Since administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral. They do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people with.

What can administrators do?

The wiki software has a few important features that are restricted to only administrators.

Edit fully protected pages.
Semi- and fully-protect and unprotect pages.
Delete pages, including images, and their history.
View and restore deleted pages, including images, and their history.
Block and unblock users, IP address, and IP ranges.
Revert pages quickly via the rollback method.
- One-click rollback is mainly intended for vandalism, spam, etc. Disputed content deserves an explanation, either in the edit summary or on the talk page, and it is not nice to omit that (either by rolling back, or by leaving the summary field blank).
Change the text and style of the interface by editing the pages in the MediaWiki namespace or MediaWiki:Common.css
Can view Special:Unwatchedpages to see pages which may be more vulnerable to vandalism.
Can flag reported pages as closed, fixed, awaiting, or need staff help.
Moderate the forums.

How do I become an administrator?

If you have been around for a while, other users will notice your good work. If another user notices this work, they may nominate you and add your name to RuneScape:Requests for adminship. Discussion will then take place by fellow editors in order to determine if there is consensus that you should become an administrator.

Be careful, please! If you are granted access, we ask that you exercise care in using these functions, especially the ability to delete pages and their history, to delete images, and the ability to block IP addresses. You can learn about your powers at the Wikipedia:Administrators' how-to guide. You should also take a look at the pages linked from the Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list before using any of your admin abilities.

I need help from an administrator

Sometimes in the course of editing content on a wiki you need access to some of the special protected functions of an administrator even though you haven't gone through the process of becoming an administrator yet.

For most reasonable requests that will be seen by all of the administrators (instead of just on their individual talk pages), please make a request on RuneScape:Administrator requests. You can also bring up issues that may require administrator intervention, or perhaps you've simply made a whole bunch of mistakes and may need an experienced editor to help clean up a bunch of pages you've created by mistake.

Be forewarned: Repeated requests to this page that demonstrate your maturity and competence in terms of features that can help improve this wiki will likely get you nominated to become an administrator to help out with these tasks.

Access types

Types of identified users, listed here in roughly ascending order of power, include:

IP addresses - Visitors who haven't "signed in" can still do most things, including editing articles.

Registered/Logged-in users can do everything IP addresses can do, but they can also upload files, move pages, hold a watchlist, maintain preferences, and mark edits as minor. Registered accounts four or more days old can edit semi-protected pages. See Special:UserLogin to sign yourself up!

Rollbacks are regular users that have been entrusted with the rollback button. All sysops, helpers, and Wikia staff also have this button. The rollback button automatically reverts all revisions by the last author of a page and is only to be used for obvious vandalism and not disputed edits which deserves an explanation. See Special:ListUsers/rollback for a list.

Bots have their edits flagged with a "b" in recent changes and whose edits are hidden by default. A minor edit made by a bot to a user talk page will not trigger any notifications. See Special:ListUsers/bot for a list and RuneScape:Bots.

Forum Administrators have full sysop powers on the forums (lock topics, delete posts, warn and ban users, and perform numerous other actions). In addition, they can create and modify stickies, announcements, global announcements, and polls. See Special:ListUsers/Forumadmin for a list.

Administrators (sysops) - see #What can administrators do?

Bureaucrats can turn other users into rollbacks, bots, sysops, bureaucrats, and forum admins. They can also revoke any of these powers except bureaucrat. Bureaucrats are created by other bureaucrats on projects where these exist, or by Wikia staff or Helpers on projects that do not have an active bureaucrat. Sysoppings are recorded in Special:Log/rights.

Helpers have global sysop powers, but are interns or volunteers working for Wikia and not regular editors. Helpers can make users part of the bot, rollback, and sysop groups. They can also revoke any of these powers except sysop. See Special:ListUsers/Helper for a list as well as Wikia Helper Group.

Wikia Staff are employees of Wikia Inc. They have global Bureaucrat rights, and therefore can edit the user right on all wikis. In addition, they can see the IP of any logged in user using the checkuser function. They can also use the oversight function to delete revisions of a page so that only other Wikia staff members can view or restore them. See Special:ListUsers/staff for a list as well as Wikia Staff. Staff can be identified by their tag which is

List of administrators

An asterisk (*) denotes a user with bureaucrat status.

Active administrators

Active forum admins

Inactive administrators

User	Last edit
Avian Maid	12 September 2008
AndorinKato	28 April 2009
Chaoticar	24 April 2009
Cool Spy0	19 October 2008
Couchpotato99	30 March 2009
Emosworld	25 June 2009
Endasil	6 August 2009
Eucarya*	26 June 2009
Gangsterls	4 August 2009
Hyenaste*	2 April 2009
Ilyas	2 January 2009
Malestro	23 October 2007
Megalodon99	16 May 2008
Merovingian*	16 April 2006
Oddlyoko*	23 January 2009
Pointy	26 January 2009
Sacre Fi*	15 June 2009
Skill*	21 October 2008
Syugecin	19 August 2009
Tarikochi	1 September 2008
Tesfan	22 August 2008
The evil dude	21 August 2009
Vimescarrot*	11 August 2009
Whiplash*	27 August 2009
Wowbagger421	2 September 2009
X1011	30 November 2008

Inactive forum admins

Former administrators

Shadowdancer was given sysop status in July 2006, but had it taken away by Sannse in August 2006 when he went on a blocking spree after a disagreement with other community members.
Dreadnought was sysopped in October 2006 and had his power taken away by Sannse in October 2007 due to flaming, personal attacks, incivility, and keeping his account insecure.
Puremexican had his sysop powers removed in February 2009 with community consensus after he abused his powers and blocked a fellow administrator.
Richard1990 requested to have his sysop powers removed in February 2009 after he decided to stop playing RuneScape and became inactive on the wiki. However, he still has all the powers of a sysop as he is a Wikia Helper.
Stinkowing's powers were removed after an outburst on the Yew Grove and his request to have them removed.
Bonziiznob requested to have his sysop tools removed after disagreeing with some editor's requirements during RFAs.

No big deal

A comment about adminship is the following, said by Jimbo Wales (the founder of Wikipedia and cofounder of Wikia), referring to administrators as sysops:

“

I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.

I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.

I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special thing.

”

— Jimbo Wales ^[src]