Guild Wars Wiki:Adminship/Draft 2008-Jan-12

The English language Guild Wars Wiki is administered by the community. Administrators are selected and given additional powers to help maintain and improve the wiki. There are two levels of adminship: sysop and bureaucrat.

Administration and ArenaNet
ArenaNet is not formally involved in the administrator selection process except where explicitly specified. Community decisions may not be appealed to them. ArenaNet staff may participate in the administrator selection process just as any other contributor in good standing, but their opinions are given equal weight as other members of the community.

Sysops
Sysops are administrators who perform cleanup tasks (deleting pages, undoing page move vandalism) and can block accounts and IP addresses according to the Guild Wars Wiki policies. Sysops also protect critical or unusually contentious pages from editing. Sysops are expected to enforce policy, but policy does not always cover all possible issues, and is not specific about every issue, therefore sysops are granted reasonable discretion, they are allowed to take action on issues not covered by policy, but they are not allowed to take actions which policy forbids them from taking. They are also expected to respect consensus.

Sysops are encouraged (but not required) to provide a publicly reachable e-mail address or other means of private contact.

Sysops are selected by a review process according to Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for adminship. They are appointed for life, but may voluntarily resign. Their status may also be subject to a reconfirmation process or formally examined by the arbitration committee.

For a complete list of sysops, see Special:Listadmins/sysop.

Bureaucrats
Bureaucrats are sysops with additional power and responsabilities. They have the power to appoint or revoke the administrative status of users based on community decisions as delimited under Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for adminship. Additionally, the group of bureaucrats, as long as there are at least two, form an arbitration committee, who are the final arbiters on the English language Guild Wars Wiki of user conduct (but not content decisions), including that of administrators.

Due to their important role in the community, bureaucrats are held to a higher standard than other sysops, both in behavior and accountability. Bureaucrats are expected to apply policy rigorously, leaving issues not clearly covered to sysops.

All bureaucrats are expected to provide explanations for the use of their powers, and they are additionally expected to respond to any questions about their actions from anyone, including via e-mail. All bureaucrats are required to list a publicly reachable e-mail address.

Bureaucrats are generally appointed for fixed terms of 6 months from their date of appointment. The terms are staggered to have at least one bureaucrat active at all times. New bureaucrats are elected to an open position by community-wide open elections. Bureaucrats may run for re-election arbitrarily often. Any contributor (even non-administrators) in good standing may run for an open position. See Guild Wars Wiki:Elections for a description of the bureaucrat election process and a list of current open elections.

Bureaucrats are considered members of the ArbComm based upon the date the request for arbitration is made. If a bureaucrat loses his seat during an arbitration, he still acts as a member of ArbComm for that case until the arbitration is complete. Similarly, if a user attains a bureaucrat seat in the middle of an arbitration, he is ineligible to participate in that arbitration.

Bureaucrats may resign at any time. Sitting bureaucrats can only be removed by unanimous votes of the other bureaucrats. While serving as a bureaucrat, a user is also considered a sysop, and this status is revoked when the term ends if not normally one otherwise.

The current bureaucrats in the Guild Wars Wiki are:
 * User:LordBiro (paul.boxley@gmail.com)
 * Term: August 1, 2007 – February 29, 2008
 * User:Xeeron (wiki@xeeron.de)
 * Term: September 1, 2007 - April 30, 2008
 * User:Aiiane (aiiane@aiiane.net)
 * Term: January 1, 2008 – June 30, 2008