User blog:William Leonard/On Adminship Requests

There's been a lot of pages on the Requests for Adminship page lately, so I thought I'd write this.

It's fantastic that so many people want to become an administrator, and I'm not trying to deter you from trying to become one at all. Rather, I am asking you to try and push harder, as being an administrator requires many skills.

When I look at a request for adminship, the request goes something like this:

'' Hi, my name is [Name] and I want to become an admin. I promise to block spammers and to help out with other spin-offs, pages, etc. '''

Now, this is perfectly reasonable, especially if you fit the guidelines on the Requests for Adminship page, but if all you want to do is block spammers, then you probably don't understand what being an administrator is.

Blocking spammers and vandals is only part of the job. Being an administrator means promising to help the wiki, to try and improve it, to update the Community Messages page regularly, and the most important thing, understand how to use your powers. It's a democracy. If you want to change something very big, you should probably check to see if the other admins are okay with it first. Also, blocking spammers is one thing, but if it's just been a simple fight between users, don't ban them both indefinitely. Not only will your actions just get reverted, you will probably lose your administrator position. And when you lose our trust, it's very hard to win it back.

And don't forget that there are other positions than just an administrator. If you want to become an admin, but only want to revert bad edits easily, then maybe a Rollback position is right for you. If you decide that there aren't enough people keeping the peace on the chat, why not sign up to be a Chat Moderator? There are all sorts of positions suited to specific things.

Once again, don't let this stop you from becoming an administrator. If you really want to become one, I'm not trying to tell you that you can't do it. Try hard to help others and to prove yourself. If you really want it, eventually you'll get it.

That is all.

No, that does not mean you get more Cheerios. WL.