Help:Adopting a community

The process of adopting a community allows a contributor to any community that does not have active administrators and/or bureaucrats to gain administrator and bureaucrat rights. A user who already has administrator rights can request to gain bureaucrat rights as well.



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). 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. You cannot adopt more than one community per month.

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 forum post. Be sure to include links to any relevant discussion(s) in the "Other information" section of your request.

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 you are both 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 two weeks for a reply from a staff member. Official replies will come from a member of the Community Support Team, who will have in their signatures.

When your request is reviewed by a staff member, it will be marked as either "on hold" or "completed." A request placed on hold means that the staff member is looking for more information, or you need to do something else to meet the adoption criteria. On hold requests can be found here, and are considered active for an additional month or two. Completed requests are requests that have been approved, declined for not meeting the guidelines, or closed for some other reason. Completed requests can be found here.

If you have any questions about the resolution of your completed or on hold 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.
 * 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
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