Help:Adopting a community

The process of adopting a wiki is one where a user who contributes to a particular wiki can request administrator and bureaucrat rights in the absence of other admins and bureaucrats. This allows them to "adopt" the wiki and become its new administrator.

What is wiki adoption?
A wiki adoption is a process where a user who contributes to a particular wiki can become that wiki's new administrator. Using the adoption requests forum on Community Central, a user can put in a new request. If it is approved, that user will receive administrator and bureaucrat rights on the wiki.

What are the guidelines?
The guidelines are simple! You need to be an active, good faith contributor to the wiki who has shown activity over a period of at least a few days. The wiki that you want to become an administrator of needs its administrator(s) to have been inactive for at least 60 days, and you cannot have adopted a wiki in the last 60 days either. There can be exceptions to this in certain cases, but generally this rule is followed.

Additionally, if there are other users on the wiki, you should first talk to them so the entire community has a say in who the next admin should be. Once that discussion has been held, the request can be placed.

For a full list of guidelines, please see the adoption requests forum.

How do I adopt?
Follow these simple steps and you will be on your way to adopting a wiki!


 * 1) First, head over to the adoption requests forum.
 * 2) Once there, be sure to read over the adoption guidelines to make sure you are eligible to adopt the wiki.
 * 3) If you are eligible, scroll down to the "Add new request" box and add the wiki's name to the series of X's that appear in "Adoption request for XXXXXXXXXX Wiki."
 * 4) Click "Add new request."
 * 5) Once you are in the edit screen, answer the pre-loaded questions that appear so the staff member who reviews your request has a bit more information.
 * 6) Click “Publish” and your request will be online!

Once your request is made, please allow 2 to 3 days 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. 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.

Next Pages

 * Help:Auto Adoption, for wikis with the automatic adoption feature activated
 * Help:Administrators' how-to guide
 * Help:Bureaucrats' how-to guide