Administrators

Introduction

VS Battles wiki is currently one of the largest character statistics indexing wikis, having 34,515 pages.

Managing the accuracy of statistics and profiles of such an enormous catalog requires a great deal of regulation, oversight and maintenance.

Administrators are members who handle administrative work for VS Battles wiki, in effect, the backbone of the wiki's organizational system, supporting the wiki tirelessly through their work.

Administrators are provided with the following rights.

Responsibilities

The additional responsibilities to be maintained by Administrators in addition to member responsibilities:

• Monitoring edits made by users, and identifying:
  • Suspicious edits: Statistical changes lacking a reason.
    • In case of a suspicious edit, an Administrator should ask the member responsible for performing it about their reasoning/the relevant Content Revision thread.
    • If the edit is a valid one, the Administrator may politely remind the member that they are requested to post their reasoning in the edit summary when editing, in order to make the staff's work easier.
    • In case the edit is a faulty one, the Administrators should revert the edit, and either warn or block the user who made the edit, depending upon the severity of the edit (warning if it was a misunderstanding, block in case of irrational bias).
  • Malicious edits: Edits which are malignant (vandalism, spam, and those breaking the rules).
    • Administrators are required to revert such edits, and block users making such edits.
• Monitoring important threads, and contributing to them. Important threads include:
  • Staff threads
  • Wiki management
  • Content revision
  • Highlighted threads about topics that the Administrator has knowledge about.
    • Note: To follow all staff and wiki management threads, it is recommended that Administrators follow the linked forum boards instead, which will in turn follow all the threads posted within them.
• Participating in site-wide projects, if required to.
• Blocking rule-breakers in order to maintain a congenial atmosphere on the wiki.
• Administrators are role models for members, and should display temperament and behaviour appropriate for their positions.

Benefits

The benefits of being an Administrator are:

• Staff member: Administrators are part of the managing staff, and as such can take part in staff discussions. In other words, members have the opportunity to directly discuss the future direction of the site, and their opinions will be taken into consideration when creating/modifying site policies.
• Administrators are widely regarded as the most respected and capable members of the site. Their opinions are highly valued, and they are fundamental cornerstones for keeping the wiki running smoothly on a daily basis.
• Unrestricted page unlock privilege: When it comes to pages with administrator-level protection, members are required to provide a valid reason for unlocking a page. Depending of the validity, the page may or may not be unlocked, usually on a temporary basis.
  • Administrators, however, can unlock pages, edit locked pages, etcetera. In other words, they have administrator-level access to all pages.
• Unrestricted access to the Patrol feature, and the Rollback tool.
  • Administrators have the ability to edit the site's skin and format, as well as white-listed MediaWiki pages.

Appointment

The following pre-requisites must be met for appointment as an Administrator:

• The member must display intimate familiarity with the site's rules and regulations, in addition to understanding the mechanics of how the site fundamentally works.
• The member must display intimate comprehension of the concepts of VS Battles, in order to resolve queries brought to them by members. Notably, the member should properly understand the Tiering System, and other important statistics.
• The member must display leadership ability, logical reasoning and decision-making ability, adequate administrative contributions, and a healthy amount of experience.
  • Experience refers to the member's experience as a staff member. In other words, to become an administrator, the member should have a previous position as a moderator within the wiki.
• The member should have been active for a minimum of 6 months, with at least 3 months of frequent activity.
• Once promoted, the member must preferably remain similarly active. A period of inactivity over 3 month upon being promoted will likely result in the position being removed.

Removal

The Administrator position may be revoked under any of the following conditions:

• Severe violation of the wiki rules.
• Bad-mouthing the wiki policies.
  • Personally disagreeing with them is an entirely separate issue. In case of such a disagreement, it is recommended that the matter is resolved with a private conversation, instead of exploding publicly.
• Direct disobedience of a bureaucrat in case of a site policy.
  • Personally disagreeing with a policy is an entirely separate issue. In case of such a disagreement, it is recommended that the matter is handled via personal messages.
  • Publicly disagreeing about a page's content (such as a character's statistics, or the profile image) is, of course, permitted, as long as done within the confines of the site's rules.
    • Public argument is prohibited in cases of site policies only. In such instances, it is strongly recommended that the matter be handled via private messages.
• Inactivity for a prolonged period of time:
  • Complete inactivity for a period of three months or more.
• Misuse of powers to modify statistics of administrator-locked pages, to insert false and unmotivated ratings.