SmashWiki:Junior administrators

This proposed policy or guideline has failed to gain the approval of the community, and so has not been implemented. It remains for archival purposes.

Different users have access to different functions of the site. While anyone can do most things on the site, including reading and editing, junior administrators, similar to regular administrators, have access to a small range of additional abilities in order to maintain order in the wiki, though they are less powerful.

Abilities of a junior administrator

Junior adminstrators' abilities include:

• Deleting and restoring pages, page histories, and uploaded files.
• Locking (protecting) a page so it cannot be edited or renamed by non-admins, or semi-protect pages so that autoconfirmed users can edit it but new ones and IPs cannot.
• Blocking or unblocking IP addresses or user names from editing, and very quick "rollback" of undesirable edits.
• Moving pages over redirects/without leaving a redirect.

What's the difference between a junior administrator and a regular admin, anyway?

Unlike full administrators, junior administrators do not have certain abilities. These include:

• Deleting pages with large histories.
• Editing other users' CSS/JS files.
• Importing pages from other wikis.
• Checking other users' IP addresses.
• Editing the user interface.
• Viewing Special:UnwatchedPages.
• Accessing the SmashWiki email and YouTube accounts.
• Putting other users in probation.
• Changing the SmashWiki Status System without restrictions.
• Unblocking themselves.

Also, junior administrators may not block anyone but the most obvious and egregious vandals (as outlined in SW:VANDAL), or increase a page's protection level to anything past semi-protection except if a vandal constantly keeps recreating a deleted page. While the current MediaWiki system makes it impossible to physically restrict one from doing so, junior administrators are expected to follow these guidelines except in special cases. Additionally, a junior administrator should never set the block settings for a user so that they cannot edit their own talk page.

Not following these guidelines will result in warnings, followed by a demotion from junior administrator if the junior administrator continues this behavior.

What a junior administrator should not do

In addition to the guidelines set in the above paragraph, junior administrators, like administrators, should not use their power to settle editing disputes. The wiki generally has a lower tolerance for missteps by junior administrators than administrators, and protecting a page to settle an edit war or banning a user unjustly will generally result in a (one day to one week) block of the junior administrator, as well as an immediate revocation of their position.

Also, like administrators, junior administrators should not be treated as kings, and a junior administrator's say should not be weighted more heavily in a content dispute just because they have extra user rights.

How does one become a junior administrator?

Generally, positions of junior administrator are self-nominated before being approved by a bureaucrat. The candidacy for junior adminship is not nearly as stringent as requests for regular adminship, and only requires a short (about two sentences) blurb about why the user believes that he or she should become a junior admin. While it is not required, a nomination will probably only be passed if the nominee is a rollbacker with good community standing.

Community support will generally lead to the request being passed faster, and in case of extraordinary community disapproval, even the approval of a bureaucrat will not be enough to have somebody take junior administrator status.

One should only become a junior administrator with the intention of combating vandalism and/or helping clean up and doing organizational and janitorial work for the wiki. Do not request a junior administrator solely for the sake of being a junior administrator.