Administrators

Administrators (also known as sysops or admins) are users with the technical ability to:

• delete and undelete pages, and view deleted revisions of pages;
• block and unblock users, individual IP addresses, and ranges of IP addresses;
• protect and unprotect pages, and edit protected pages;
• (if available) set the stable viewing level of a page (see here for an example)
• edit most pages in the MediaWiki namespace;
• import pages from other Wikimedia projects;
• perform other functions related to the technical maintenance;
• add and remove users from some usergroups, such as IP block exempt, confirmed, and autopatrolled.

Administrators can perform these actions only on a wiki on which they have been given adminship.

The role and expectations of administrators, as well as the policies surrounding their behavior, vary widely among the different projects. While administrators have more technical abilities than ordinary users, this should not be confused with authority, which is earned separately and given by the community. Some wiki sites may not even have adopted written policies for administrators or candidates for adminship. This is usually due to limited number of users and activities.

All "administrative" actions are logged and reversible by any other administrator. The same principle applies to all the special permissions on MediaWiki, although some are not publicly logged. This makes their activity closely scrutinized by the community at large.

Appointment

Administrators are appointed by local community consensus. After that, a user with the appropriate permissions will add the technical flag.

By bureaucrats

On wikis that have active bureaucrats, the bureaucrats will promote new administrators.

By Stewards

On wikis with no active bureaucrats, the Stewards will grant administrator access. In addition to local policies and consensus, Stewards use the following criteria when deciding whether or not to grant access:

• Appointments will be made by local community discussion. The discussion must be highly visible and open for at least 7 days. If any reasonable objections were raised in the local discussion, there must be broad consensus to grant access.
• For permanent adminship: The wiki must be large enough to require administrators. Stewards will make the final determination of this point based on factors including the size of the community, the number of administrators and bots, and the frequency of permission changes being necessary.
• If the previous criterion is not met, Stewards may still grant temporary adminship for a trial period. If there are no glaring issues after the trial period, and the administrator retains community trust, Stewards may then proceed to grant permanent adminship (regardless of the wiki size).

Removal

On some wikis, bureaucrats can remove administrator access ("desysop"). However, on most wikis, removal of adminship can only be done by Stewards. Stewards may remove administrator access in emergencies, according to local consensus, according to the inactivity policy (inactivity for 2 years), or according to other policies.