Xeno Series Wiki:Administrators

Administrators are users trusted with a few extra powers and responsibilities to keep the wiki running well. Users can request to be granted adminship at Xeno Series Wiki:Requests for adminship.

Administrator rights
Admins' extra powers include: Admins also have the rollback and patrol powers of a knight.
 * Blocking users and IPs so they cannot edit, in order to stop vandalism or punish those who continually break the rules
 * Protect pages so only admins can edit them, in order to halt edit wars or ensure high-risk pages cannot be changed
 * Create new accounts, to help those with technical difficulties that cannot do so themselves
 * Delete pages, to clean up obsolete items or erase vandalism, and view the history and contents of deleted pages
 * Edit the wiki interface (e.g. the names of the tabs at the top of the page), to improve usability if necessary
 * Edit other users' CSS and JS files, which is normally not allowed
 * Being immune to blocks made on themselves (in case that ever happens somehow)
 * Have various administrative tools for the Semantic MediaWiki extension

Administrator duties
The purpose of admins is to carry out the tasks that cannot be trusted to the entire userbase. Blocking other users is the obvious case - stopping someone from contributing (even if for a short time) is the most destructive action possible, and so it must be done with good judgement. Bluntly, most users cannot be trusted to make this judgement outside the most blatantly obvious cases. Thus, it is a power limited to the elected few.

Ideally, admins shouldn't be considered as "in charge"; the perfect admin is just a user that is trusted to have some extra buttons and press them effectively. This means that admins shouldn't be stepping into content discussions and using their position to decide what's right - only their opinion as a normal user is what should count, which should not get any extra weight just from being an admin. But on the other hand, admins are still obligated to keep the wiki running smoothly - if such a discussion gets out of control, they can and should decide how to sort things out, and the userbase should accept it. Admins require a careful balance between "trusted to not use their status as a vote" and "trusted to make tough or unpopular decisions".