Help:Administer OutHistory.org

Administrators/Administration Policy

by Jonathan Ned Katz, Director, OutHistory.org.

This entry expresses official OutHistory policy, based on the consensus of its advisors, so it is closed to editing by the public.

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The following texts and policies were adapted from Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_administrator

What is an Administrator or System Operator?

Administrators, commonly known as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are OutHistory editors who have access to technical features that allow them to help with maintenance of the site.

OutHistory practice is to grant administrator status to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for at least a few months, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and who has gained the trust of the community, as demonstrated through the Requests for Adminship process. (For Wikipedia's Requests for Adminship process see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship.)

Among other technical abilities, administrators can protect and delete pages, block other editors, and undo these actions as well. These privileges are granted indefinitely, and are only removed upon request or under circumstances involving high-level intervention (see administrator abuse below).

Administrators undertake additional responsibilities on a voluntary basis, and are not employees of OutHistory.org or CLAGS.

Administrators should never develop into a special subgroup of the community but should be a part of the community like anyone else.

While the tools granted to administrators are technical and do not convey authority per se, administrators are people that are entrusted with potentially harmful tools.

Because administrators are expected to be experienced members of the community, users seeking help will often turn to an administrator for advice and information, or in a dispute. In general, administrators acting in this role are neutral; they do not have any direct involvement in the issues they are helping people resolve. Currently, there are ??? administrators working on OutHistory.

How To Administer:

To administer OutHistory.org administrators need to have a special "Administrative user ID" and an "Administrative password."

In June 2008, these are obtained from Rafi Dowla of the Cidamon team: rdowla@cidamon.com

Criteria for Becoming an Administrator

There are no official requirements to becoming an OutHistory administrator. Anybody can apply regardless of their OutHistory experience. However, there are some standards to be aware of.

Adminship is oriented to communal trust and confidence, rather than checklists and edit counts; each user will have their own way to assess their confidence in a candidates' readiness for the role.

While correct use of the tools and appropriate conduct is considered very important in an administrator, the title of "administrator" is not a big deal, nor should the process of acquiring it be presented as a big deal.

There is very little extra decision-making ability that goes along with adminship, and it does not add any extra voice in consensus decisions. In that sense, whether a person is an administrator is not, in and of itself, important.

However, it is also worth noting that the Arbitration Committee, in its attempt to deal with disputes on OutHistory, has authorized a small amount of additional authority to "Uninvolved administrators" in certain topic areas.

This authority includes a form of increased decision-making, meaning that the uninvolved admins can impose additional editing restrictions in certain situations. For an example dealing with disputes in the topic area of Eastern Europe, see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren#General restriction, and for a complete list, see Wikipedia:General sanctions.

Becoming an Administrator

If you are interested in becoming an administrator, you should first read the guide to requests for adminship and the nomination instructions.

When you are ready, you may add your nomination to the OutHistory:Requests for adminship ("RFA") entry, according to these instructions.

A discussion will then take place among fellow editors about whether you should become an administrator.

After seven days, a bureaucrat will determine if there is consensus to give you admin status. This concensus is sometimes difficult to ascertain, and is not a numerical measurement.

You should become familiar with OutHistory by editing for a while before requesting or accepting a nomination for administrator status. You need to know what you are doing, and other users will need to recognize you in order to agree on trusting you with admin tools.

Although multiple user accounts are allowed on OutHistory in general, only one account of a given person should have administrative tools.

Administrative Section of OutHistory

Note: Sysop (System Operations) status does not give you access to this particular administrative function, and a "User ID" and "User password" do not allow you access to this administrative function.

After an administrator gets an ID and a password he or she should click on the link below to go the the administrative section of the site:

http://209.200.244.13/wiki/manage/

That section asks for:

Administrative user ID:

Administrative password:

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Shortcuts: WP:ADMIN WP:SYSOP WP:MOP