Help:Adopting a community

Sometimes, a community just stops. Editing dries up. The administrative staff leaves. No new editors arrive. It becomes inactive.

And then you discover it. You want to revive it. You want to edit the CSS or JS pages. You want to change a system message. But you can't, because you're not an admin.

In this situation, you can adopt the community.

This page will tell you how to do that — and what to do in cases when there's an otherwise active community but no bureaucrat.



What are the guidelines?
The guidelines are simple!

You need to be an active, good-faith contributor to the community who has worked to build content over a period of at least a week (or longer). You can only adopt one wiki per month.

The community that you want to adopt needs its former administrator(s) to have been inactive for at least 60 days; you can check this by going to Special:ListAdmins. There can be exceptions to this in certain cases, but generally, this rule is followed.

If other users have edited in the last month, you should first talk to them so the entire community has a say in who the next admin should be. You can find a list of contributors at Special:ListUsers. The best way to talk to one or two users is a message on their walls or talk pages; for more users, please start a blog or discussion thread. Be sure to include links to any relevant discussion(s) in the "Other information" section of your request. It is okay if you get no response to your message or post.

You can find the rest of the guidelines to adopt and create a request on the adoption requests page.

How do I adopt?


Follow these simple steps and you will be on your way to adopting a community!
 * 1) Read over the adoption guidelines to make sure you are eligible to adopt the community, and that the community is eligible to be adopted.
 * 2) If both are eligible, scroll down, enter the name of your community and click "Create new request".
 * 3) Answer the questions that appear so the staff member who reviews your request has a bit more information. If there is already a request for your community, simply put "Community Name (2)" (or 3, or 4...) as the name.
 * 4) Click "Submit" and your request will be online!

Once your request is made, please allow up to a week for a reply from a staff member. Official replies will come from a member of the Community Team, who will have in their signature.

When your request is reviewed by a staff member, it will be marked as "completed". If staff say that you need to do something else to meet the adoption criteria, you will need to message the staff member on their Community Central message wall to ask them to check back again when you are ready. Staff will most likely not see any additional replies you leave on the original request. If it has been more than 3 months since your first staff answer, please create a new request. Completed requests can be found here.

If you have any questions about the resolution of your completed request, please do not leave them on the request itself -- staff will not see them there. Please leave a message on the wall of the staff member who answered the request instead.

Likewise, do not "re-open" a closed request. Create a new one if you wish to re-start the adoption process.

Answers to frequently asked questions

 * You do not need to adopt a community to merge it with another, larger community on the same subject. For more information on how to merge communities see Help:Merging communities, or ask a staff member for guidance.
 * You do not need to adopt a community that you yourself founded. You already have admin and bureaucrat rights.
 * If you wish to adopt a community in a foreign language, check the "International Adoptions" section on the adoption requests page. If your language is listed please place your request on the linked language page; otherwise you can create your request on the English adoptions page.
 * You may adopt a community to gain bureaucrat rights when you already have administrator rights. Make sure to get support from any other active admins first.
 * If there are recently active administrators, but no bureaucrats to grant the rights, you can adopt the wiki with the administrators' support. Make sure to include a link in your request to where they supported your promotion.
 * More than one user can request an adoption together, but there must be clearly stated agreement as to what rights (administrator/bureaucrat) each person will get linked in the request.

Next pages

 * Administrators' how-to guide
 * Bureaucrats' how-to guide

Further help and feedback
ca:Ajuda:Adopció automàtica de:Hilfe:Adoption es:Ayuda:Adoptar una comunidad fr:Aide:Adopter une communauté ja:ヘルプ:コミュニティの移譲 pt:Ajuda:Adotar uma comunidade ru:Справка:Принятие заброшенной вики uk:Довідка:Прийняття спільноти zh:Help:認領站台