Wikiquote:Administrators
Administrators are Wikiquotians who have "sysop rights". Current English Wikiquote policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Wikiquote contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. "This should be no big deal," as Jimbo has said.
"Sysop" and "administrator" are really misnomers, as they are just Wikiquote users who have had performance and security-based restrictions on a couple of features lifted because they seemed like trustworthy folks and asked nicely. Sysops are not imbued with any special authority, and are equal to everybody else in terms of editorial responsibility.
What's the deal?
The Wiki software has few restricted features, but they are quite important. Sysops can:
- Edit the Main Page, which is protected to prevent vandalism. Anyone can suggest changes to it at Talk:Main Page.
- Edit other protected pages. They can also protect and unprotect pages. For information and guidelines, or to challenge a decision to protect, see Wikiquote:Protected page.
- Delete pages and their history. For information and guidelines, see Wikiquote:Deletion policy. To suggest a page to delete (after reading the policy), see Wikiquote:Votes for deletion. Sometimes deletion is a technical matter, in which a redirection page has to be removed to make way for renaming an article, or a page whose history has been broken up has to be deleted and the pieces recombined. Other times it's a matter of cleaning up simple junk edits on pages with no actual content, or removing material that has been pasted in from another site and infringes copyright.
- Undelete pages and their history. After having been deleted, pages remain in the archive table, and a sysop can undelete the whole pages or parts of their revisions. To challenge a decision to delete a page, see Wikiquote:Deletion review.
- Revert pages rapidly & quietly. Though every user can revert a Wikiquote page, a quicker way is available for administrators. Once they click [rollback] botton on a user contribution page or diff page, it is reverted with a message automatically generated. For recovering vandalism, administrators can revert pages in quiet, adding a bot flag to their reversions. Adding &bot=1 to the url of a user contribution page, and reversion from this page doesn't appear in Recent changes. Administrators should never use this quiet mode to hide reversion for their own personal purposes.
- They were previously able to block IP addresses. However, the use of IP addresses for editing was discontinued and now uses temporary accounts.
Users with ordinary access, including visitors who haven't "signed in", can still do many things, including the most important: editing articles. But only signed-up users can rename pages; see Special:CreateAccount to sign up for yourself.
Becoming an administrator
If you would like sysop access, add your name to Wikiquote:Requests for adminship.
Current English Wikiquote policy is to grant administrator status to anyone who has been an active Wikiquote contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. Most users seem to agree that the more administrators there are the better.
It's recommended that you write for Wikiquote for a while before requesting administrator status, since other users will have to recognise you before they can agree on your promotion.
Also keep in mind that each other language Wikiquote has its own policies for administrators, which may differ somewhat.
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 and when deleting images.
Removing an administrator
Inactive administrators
Administrators that have made zero edits and zero logged actions in the span of over one year (or more) will be listed for removal, where they are given one week to respond in order to retain their rights, unless they specify otherwise. If one week passes and no response is received, a request will be created under the removal section of Steward requests/Permissions on Meta-Wiki, where a steward will remove the rights.
Votes of confidence
Restricted access depends on the continued support of the community. This may be tested by a vote of confidence, in which a simple majority (50%+1) must support the user's continued access for it to be retained. (What access a discussion concerns should be explicitly noted in the discussion's introduction.) Any user may propose a vote of confidence, but at least three established users must support the need for one before it can be called.
In the case of an unscheduled (called) proposal, the user may not use the restricted access for any non-trivial action at any time until the vote is closed. A bureaucrat will eventually archive the discussion and, if so decided, request removal of restricted access by a steward.
CheckUser and oversight
There are some additional privileges that are not directly related to adminship. CheckUser is a user holding the privilege to access information about the combination of user accounts, the IP addresses behind them, and the edits made by IPs under various accounts. For privacy reasons this information is not publicly available. Checkusers are bound by two global policies, Privacy policy and m:CheckUser policy.
Checkuser actions are recorded on the Wikiquote checkuser log, and only users with CheckUser access can check the log.
Due to the seriousness and sensitivity of the task of handling private information of users, CheckUser status has some additional restrictions. A given project must have at least two users granted CheckUser access, so that they can check the other's behaviors. Also the users granted CheckUser access must inform the Wikimedia Foundation of their identity and age, in accordance with the Access to nonpublic data policy. Also they should be over 18 years of age (or over the age of majority in the jurisdiction they reside if it is higher than 18).
There is also an access called "oversight". See m:Hiding revisions for further information. Oversight status is under similar restriction as CheckUser access. Currently no one holds oversight on this wiki; for emergencies, a steward must be contacted.
Bureaucrats cannot give or remove checkuser or oversight status from users. It must be done by stewards after a request on m:Requests for permissions.
Developers
The other degree of access is developer, for those who can make direct changes to the Wikiquote software and database. To contact developers, see either wikitech-l for a mailing list or #wikimedia-tech for an IRC channel.
Import
The import function allows editors to upload specially formatted text into Wikiquote, or to transwiki such material after it is exported from another Wikimedia project. Only a Meta steward can add or drop any user's importing right. After requests are approved here, they will be reported to m:Requests for permissions.
List of functionaries
If you need to contact an administrator, visit one or several of the userpages below.
Administrators
Active administrators can be also contacted by using the "email this user" link on their user page, if you have signed in with an email address of your own. ("Active" means they have made at least one significant edit on this project in the past few months.) A system-generated official list of admins is available at Special:ListAdmins.
The following users currently have sysop privileges on the English Wikiquote:
- BD2412 (en, fr-1, zh-CN-1) (bureaucrat)
- Codename Noreste (es, en-4)
- GreenMeansGo (en) (bureaucrat & VRT agent)
- HouseOfChange (en, fr-3, de-2)
- Illegitimate Barrister (en)
- IOHANNVSVERVS
- Kalki
- Koavf (en, es-2)
- Lemonaka (en-3, zh-1, no-1)
- Ningauble (en)
- Saroj (ne, en-3, hi-3) (bureaucrat)
- TunnelESON (zh, en-3, fr-1, ko-1)
- UDScott (en) (bureaucrat)
List of former administrators
The following users are former administrators.