Wikipedia:Administrators
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Administrators are Wikipedians who have "sysop rights". Current Wikipedia policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia 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.
Sysops are not imbued with any special authority, and are equal to everybody else in terms of editorial responsibility. Some Wikipedians consider the terms "Sysop" and "Administrator" to be misnomers, as they just indicate Wikipedia users who have had performance- and security-based restrictions on a couple of features lifted because they seemed like trustworthy folks and asked nicely.
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What's the deal?
The Wiki software has few restricted features, but they are quite important. Sysops can:
Protected pages
- Edit the Main Page, and other protected pages. For information and guidelines, see Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page. You can suggest changes there or at Talk:Main Page. The main page used to receive a lot of vandalism; protecting it is an unfortunate compromise to keep our welcome mat free of random profanity.
- Protect and unprotect pages. Pages are only protected in certain rare circumstances - for information and guidelines, see Wikipedia:Protection policy.
Deletion and undeletion
- Delete pages and their history. For information and guidelines, see both Wikipedia:deletion policy and (most definitely) Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. To suggest a page to delete (after reading the policy and guidelines pages!), see Wikipedia: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.
- View and restore deleted pages and their history. See Wikipedia:Undeletion for guidelines. To challenge an already made decision to delete a page, see Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion
- Permanently delete images. This is a non-reversible change: once deleted, always deleted. For information and guidelines, see Wikipedia:Image use policy. To suggest an image to delete (after reading the policy), see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. To challenge a decision to delete an image, make sure that you still have a copy of the image (else there is no way to restore it), then see Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Note that there is no particular reason that image deletion should not be reversible; this is simply the way the software works at present.
Reverting
- Revert pages quickly. When looking at a user's contributions, a link that looks like this [rollback] appears next to edits that are at the top of the edit history. Clicking on the link reverts to the last edit not authored by that user, with edit summary (Reverted to last edit by X). This expedites the reversion of edits by anonymous vandals.
Block and unblock
- Sysops can block and unblock IP addresses. This is meant to be used solely to deal with persistent vandalism. IP banning is not meant to be used against unpopular opinions, non-persistent vandalism, etc.
- If your IP has been blocked, then you can see which administrator blocked you when you try to edit, to challenge their decision, contact them individually (if they have provided contact details on their user page), or use wikiEN-L mailing list. In any case, IP blocks expire after 24 hours. Because dynamic IPs and proxies are so common with major internet providers, if you've been banned for things someone else did, please don't take it personally. To challenge a decision to block someone else's IP address, or yours after it has expired, use this page's talk page.
- As of September 2003, it is now possible for sysops to block usernames. It is important to note that sysops are not authorised to decide whether a particular case of vandalism warrants banning by username. The ability to ban by username has been made available for the purposes of enforcing a ban already approved by Jimbo. It may be used to block obvious reincarnations of hard-banned users.
- See Special:Ipblocklist for currently blocked addresses and usernames
Database queries
- Until July 29 2003, sysops were able to perform direct read-only queries on the English Wikipedia's database.The privilege was removed by Eloquence due to excessive load on the database and sysops were asked to request a developer run a query for them instead at Wikipedia:SQL query requests or to download the backup dump and a MySQL database and perform queries locally. At some point, sysop queries were re-enabled, perhaps accidentally, and since this there has been some dispute about whether or not sysops are allowed to run them. If you do choose to do so, Tim Starling recommends that you only do this when a developer is on hand at the #Wikipedia IRC channel to kill the query should anything go wrong. Please also be aware that Wikipedia:Database queries recommends not running any queries that would take more than ten seconds.
MediaWiki namespace
- As of 6 December, sysops can edit the pages in the MediaWiki namespace which affect the message that appears at the top of pages such as the Special:Whatlinkshere and the page that a blocked user will see when they try to edit a page.
Signed-in privileges
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 upload files or rename pages; see Special:Userlogin to sign up for yourself.
Becoming an administrator
If you would like sysop access add your name to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.
It's recommended that you write for Wikipedia 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 language's Wikipedia 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, to delete images (which is permanent!), and the ability to block IP addresses.
Developers
The other degree of access is "developer", for those who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and database. Check out Wikitech-L and Wikipedia:Developers.
List of administrators
Administrators are marked with "(sysop)" in the list of user accounts. If you need to contact an administrator, visit one or several of the userpages below. Administrators who have not listed their email addresses can still be contacted by using the "email this user" link on the page, if you have signed in with an email address of your own.The following users have sysop rights as of October 4, 2003. Seven of these (in very strongly emphasized text) also have developer status.
Sysop activity status was checked on October 8, 2003.
Active
- 168...
- 172
- Adam Bishop
- Ahoerstemeier
- Alex756
- Ams80
- Andre Engels
- Angela
- Anthere
- Antonio Martin
- Ark30inf
- Arwel Parry
- AstroNomer
- AxelBoldt
- Benjamin Esham (aka Bdesham)
- Brion VIBBER
- Bryan Derksen
- Camembert
- Cgs
- Chadloder
- Christopher Mahan
- Chuck SMITH
- cprompt
- Cunctator, The
- Cyan
- CYD
- Cyp
- Daniel Mayer aka maveric149 or mav -- (talk | email)
- Daniel Quinlan
- Danny
- Dante Alighieri
- DavidLevinson
- David Wheeler
- Deb
- Delirium
- Dgrant aka dave
- Dieter Simon
- Dori
- Dysprosia
- Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
- Efghij
- Eloquence
- Enchanter
- Epopt, The
- Evil saltine
- Fantasy
- Fred Bauder
- Fuzheado
- G-Man
- Goatasaur
- Hephaestos
- Heron
- Ihcoyc
- Ilyanep -- (email | talk)
- Infrogmation
- Jake Nelson
- James F.
- JeLuF
- Jiang
- Jimbo Wales
- Jimfbleak
- Jim Regan
- J.J.
- jnc (a.k.a. Noel) talk
- John Kenney (formerly known as jlk7e)
- John Owens | talk
- Jtdirl
- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen aka Cimon Avaro
- Jwrosenzweig
- Khym Chanur
- Kingturtle
- Kosebamse
- Kt²
- LittleDan
- llywrch
- Magnus Manske
- Marshman
- Martin Harper aka MyRedDice
- Marumari
- Mbecker
- Menchi
- Merphant
- Michael Hardy
- Minesweeper
- Mintguy
- Mirwin
- Modemac
- Montréalais
- Morwen
- Muriel Gottrop
- Nanobug
- Oliver Pereira
- Olivier
- Pakaran
- Patrick
- Paul A
- Paul Melville Austin
- Pete
- Phil Bordelon
- PierreAbbat
- Poor Yorick
- Pratyeka
- Quercusrobur
- Ram-Man
- RickK
- Robert Merkel
- Sannse
- Schneelocke
- Secretlondon
- Sheldon Rampton
- Slrubenstein
- Smith03
- Snoyes
- Someone else
- Stan Shebs
- Stephen Gilbert
- Stevertigo
- sugarfish
- Tannin
- Tarquin
- Taw
- The Anome
- Theresa Knott
- Tim Starling
- Toby Bartels -- Mail toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu if you're having trouble contacting an administrator by other means
- Tompagenet
- Tristanb
- TUF-KAT
- Vancouverguy
- Viajero
- Vicki Rosenzweig
- WhisperToMe
- Zanimum
- Zippy
Inactive
Special: Jasonr (Bomis employee) - inactive for indefinite period in terms of editing but was/is responsible for rebooting the server on what used to be an almost daily basis. He also performs hardware upgrades for us. (contribs)Sorted by length of inactivity
- Tim Shell (Bomis partner) - inactive since 15 Jun 2002 (contribs)
- Clifford Adams - inactive since 21 Jul 2002 (contribs)
- Manning Bartlett - inactive since 27 Sept 2002 (contribs)
- LC - inactive since 31 Oct 2002 (contribs)
- April - inactive since 8 May 2003 (contribs)
- Mark Christensen - inactive since 20 May 2003 (contribs)
- WojPob - inactive since 9 Jun 2003 (contribs)
- Scipius - inactive since 29 Jun 2003 (contribs)
- Khendon - inactive since 2 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- JHK - inactive since 3 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- RoseParks - inactive since 8 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- Peter Winnberg - inactive since 20 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- Sjc - inactive since 26 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- Lee Daniel Crocker - inactive since 27 Jul 2003 (contribs)
- Karen Johnson - inactive since 6 Aug 2003 (contribs)
- Zoe - inactive since 15 Aug 2003 (contribs)
- Notheruser - inactive since 17 Aug 2003 (contribs)
For those curious, some incorrect attempts to count sysop users also miscount Rambot, which is not a sysop but a specially marked bot account.
Former Administrators
The following users had sysop rights at one time but for various reasons are no longer admins. Some are no longer Wikipedians (See Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians).
![[Main Page]](http://web.archive.org/web/20031213130326im_/http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/wiki.png)