Policy for selection of WE Admins and Bureaucrats

Workgroup to propose policies and guidelines for WE Administrators Project Home/Charter  |  Meetings  |  Workgroup report  |  LANDING PAGE - Policies and guidelines Draft Policies WE Admin page | Selection of Admins | Policy for page deletions | Policy for page protection | Policy for blocking users Draft Guidelines Page deletion guidelines | Guidelines for Blocking users  | Guidelines for protecting pages Also see & edit Consensus Policy (Draft under development) of inter-group interest

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.

Introduction

Mediawiki software provides for the development of a community governance model for wiki websites through its maintenance and support features. This is done chiefly through creating a hierarchy of users having specific user rights. All registered users will be eligible for such rights based on certain open standards. In open public wikies, the community of registered users has the power to revise and upkeep the above standards based on consensus. Among the various roles available, the role of Administrators/Sysops is very important in the system maintenance view.

The role of administrators/sysops has to be looked at as volunteers who assist the community in system maintenance rather than a position of power. Apart from system maintenance they also function as experts who provide necessary support and guidance in community building as well as OER development on WikiEducator website. In short, each Administrator/Sysop shall be an experienced and ideal member of the WikiEducator community.

This document contains policy statements on selection of Administrators/Sysops.

Criteria for demand

1. WikiEducator is a dynamic community of OER users and developers. This dynamic nature will necessitate frequent and timely system maintenance functions. The increase of workload in this respect will be the normal source of demand for more Volunteer WikiEducator Administrators/Sysops.
2. Group facilitators and teachers planning on leading groups of new wikieducators frequently, as a practical matter need sysops status. Problems such as deletion of redundant pages and copyrighted material may best be handled by such a local administrator who is in regular contact with a group of new users.
3. Substantial contributors to WE shall also merit administrator status to foster efficiency in managing large projects. This would also represent a reduction of workload for other administrators who would otherwise delete and move pages on a per-request basis.

Nomination and Approval

1. Any WikiEducator can nominate a candidate, self nominations also acceptable. However, Administratorship/Sysopship is oriented towards community trust and confidence (rather than checklists and edit counts) and considerable experience is usually expected.
2. Before requesting or accepting a nomination, candidates should generally be active and regular WikiEducator contributors for at least several months, be familiar with the procedures and practices of WikiEducator, respect and understand its policies, and have gained the general trust of the community.
3. When a member nominate another member, he/she should seek out the prospective candidate before adding the nomination. This will also prevent the candidate from declining the nomination.
4. Each WikiEditor will personally assess their confidence in a particular candidate's readiness in their own way.
5. Request for Administratorship/Sysopship is the means by which the WikiEducator community develops consensus on whether an editor should be given administrator/Sysop rights, such as the abilities to delete a page, protect a page, edit a protected page, and block a user.
6. Selection shall be done through open voting of the nominations (in favour of and against) by the WikiEducators. As usual the count of votes- in- favour- of should be higher for selection. At least two votes in- favour- of should be from existing Administrators.
7. Nominations will be open for discussions for 7 days and another 10 days for voting.
8. Detailed application and approval procedures for Administratorship/Sysopship will be developed based on this policy.
9. The application and approval procedures will be in an open and transparent manner through WikiEducator pages that will be created exclusively for this purpose.