User blog:Étiolles/How to compose your administrative team

You are a bureaucrat and you are looking for new members for your admin team but unfortunately, you have no idea how to go about choosing them.

Well, you've come to the right place, I'll (try to) explain it all to you!

We'll start by identifying the needs of the community; if this appointment will be useful, how to make it more relevant; how to identify the most suitable candidates to help you with the special pages; and finally, how to appoint them.

Notes:
 * 1) Obviously, I say "you" throughout the blog but it’s the administrative team I’m talking about. Let everyone work and spot candidates, debate, etc. It’s up to all of you to choose, not one.
 * 2) If you don't feel like reading, I suggest you read the sections “To sum up”, located at the end of each major section.
 * 3) The links, especially for the special pages, are only accessible to administrators since they redirect to the Community Center. I advise you to look at them from the wiki where you are an administrator.

Asking the right questions
Before anything else, you should consider whether the community really needs a new moderator or administrator. You have to ask yourself the right questions: is the community under vandalism or spam attacks? Are we overloaded with administrative staff? And above all, what problem(s) will this appointment address? Indeed, it’s good to want new members but if it’s useless or you’re already a dozen, it will be more complicated for the users to find a good interlocutor AND for the team to coordinate or agree.

If, for example, the community is undergoing large vandalism attacks (to spot them, use Special:RecentChanges) or spam (idem: Special:SocialActivity), it would be important to think about promoting a content or discussion moderator quickly...

What about the current administrative team?
To find out if your administration has many members and if they are active, go to Special:UserList. Then see how many members you have in each group to see if the desired group needs to be strengthened. If, for example, you want to promote an active user on the forum but there are already ten discussion moderators, there is no point; or consider sorting through that group!

Balancing skills
In order to also understand the different needs, analyze the skills of your colleagues. If the two current administrators occupy between them the main areas of administration (let's take as an example those presented by Admin+: technical skills, community management and content development), it will necessarily be necessary for the new one to manage the third in order to balance the team.

For content moderators, one can create in mass content (editor), one can proofread pages and update them (proofreading), and the last one sets up templates, writes conventions, etc. (administrative/organization). It’s this kind of balance that will make members learn from each other and make the discussions meaningful.

To sum up…
To finish this section, I would say that the needs of the community are done on a case-by-case basis but it is essential not to forget the reason for the nomination because otherwise it loses its meaning. Don't hesitate to ask other team members or even to make a survey of the community in the forum if you are still in doubt. It’s also important to determine the areas that the current team members have difficulty covering: development, technical side, product promotion, managing a community, and so on... It is also important to keep in mind that each user should have an enjoyable and rewarding experience, otherwise there is no point in participating.

Identify the right candidates
Once the needs are well established, you may have doubts about who to choose: either the choice is too vast, or you don't know where to find the right users.

Tools at your disposal
Fortunately, Fandom comes to the rescue in these cases. Several special pages can help you with this task.

For starters, the Special:Insights page shows you which users are most active in discussions, useful for promoting to discussion moderator or administrator if you go to the second tab (Reported Content). In fact, you can see who reports the most but also who moderates the most in the discussion area.

Depending on the role, also look at the way the user acts: does the user use correct language on Discussions? Is he/she regular or does he/she make a thousand changes every three months (I'm exaggerating of course...)? Does he have a good writing style? Does he take time to respond to messages? It's a multitude of factors that make a person suitable for the role or not.

If your wiki has the Distinction system, you can use Special:Leaderboard (if your wiki doesn't use the extension yet, you can request it here. Click here for more informations) and its medals to find out what kind of editing they do. Use the edit badge to find out how many edits he has on articles or not. This is because it is issued based on edits on articles and not on all namespaces (for example, I'm at the five-thousand-five hundred edit level, but I have ten thousand edits in total; that means I only have half of my edits on articles....). On the other hand, there is no need to use Distinctions if you have Special:EditCount (obtainable by making a request to your WR/IWR), which allows you to have a complete inventory of the user's edits by namespace.

Core competencies required
It is important that the selected user, especially if it is for the administrator role, has knowledge in several areas such as:
 * Fandom in general, its internal organization, which members to contact, etc. ;
 * MediaWiki and the Wikitext, for templates and user support;
 * More globally on HTML and CSS (optional);
 * Communication inside AND outside the community. If he stays in his corner and, for example, doesn't welcome newcomers, he doesn't assume his role in my opinion.

To sum up…
In conclusion, identifying the right candidates may seem obvious in some situations, but don't be fooled, because it's harder to remove than to appoint. Good candidates should be ambassadors for the community and be versatile in meeting the needs of the community AND the wiki.

Procedures to elect/nominate candidates
Once you have identified your needs and selected your candidates, it is time to make appointments. First, what type of community are you? Is it a large community or are you a dozen or so? You should know that depending on the size of the community, the number of candidates can be more or less.

Depending on the size of your community and the way it is formed/organized, you can choose different ways of nomination. If you are the sole administrator and the community is dead, you can nominate candidates directly. On the other hand, if your administrative team is already in place, and/or if your community is large, active and not limited to the forum (users actively participate and are interested in the substance of the wiki), then I advise you to consult them.

In order to consult this community, Fandom provides us with a lot of means like :
 * Special:Announcements which allows you to make announcements to your community with a link (see below);
 * Blog posts to announce that you are looking for members and that you are going to proceed to an election (if the community feels close to the administration, it is more loyal).
 * Votes on Discussions, although not recommended because the opinion of the most present members is equal to that of the visitor;
 * A Discussion namespace page, which allows archiving the discussion and allows the same visibility to everyone.

To sum up…
In sum, there are a multitude of ways to choose and appoint new members, but it is important to match the different means with the different types of community and context.

Another mode, the democratic communities
There is also another type of community, original and interesting, which puts the community first and which "desacralizes" the function of administrator or such a role. These are the democratic communities (which I admire a lot by the way) which will, of course, proceed to an election, but where the members are hired for a certain period (usually 1 year, like on Wikipedia with the stewards). This allows the majority of users to participate and try their chances. I encourage this concept on large active communities; but it can be restrictive on small wikis or with small communities, both for the organization and for finding good candidates.

These same communities can be organized in different ways: administrators resign and the bureaucrat appoints others, etc. This system based on trust between the two main bodies (community and administration) can allow a better atmosphere on the wiki and equality between members, a way to guarantee the respect of fundamental and essential rules. But, like any system based on a fragile balance, it must be well organized and designed. For example, I advise you to orient your vote so that the team is mixed and productive. Despite this system, projects and work must be able to continue, otherwise the system is not beneficial to the community and serves no purpose. But know that you are never alone on Fandom and that users will be happy to assist you in setting up this kind of organization!

In conclusion
Thanks for reading this blog post and feel free to comment. I'm thinking of continuing with "How to maintain a good administrative team" as my next topic. But most importantly, never forget the main goal and your first idea. Don't hesitate to ask for advice when in doubt. A big thank you to Alastor the warrior for his proofreading!