Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-4738647-20131129225241/@comment-188432-20131130231735

FortressMaximus wrote: How can I allow my bot account to work, because on my wiki, there are no actively contributing bureaucrats, I am an admin but I'm only a sysop which allows me to delete pages and do rollback but I can't change the privileges of other users. Functionally, there is a genuine need for every wiki to have at least one bureaucrat, but preferably two. This allows the wiki to continue without intervention from Wikia Staff. You need the ability to promote and demote admin without having to go to Staff all the time. Having two bureaucrats allows one to function at least as an emergency backup.

So if your wiki currently has other active admins, then you need to have a conversation with them to detrmine who is going to be the first bureaucrat. You can then submit a Special:Contact requesting bureaucrat status be granted to that person, on the basis of the conversation that you've had with your fellow admin. The newly-annointed bureaucrat can then make other bureaucrats as the need arises. Be careful though: once you make a new bureaucrat, you have no ability to take that power away from them. You need a backup bureaucrat, but you definitely don't want to make every admin a bureaucrat. You have to trust that they will make sound judgements about how to handle your wiki's staffing. A high edit count is probably a good indication they'll be a good admin, but it doesn't mean they'll be a great bureaucrat,

If there are no other active admin, then to be honest you're in a bit of an unusual situation. One approach would be that you formally adopt the wiki, by going to Adoption:Requests.

However, I personally think that you could just submit a Special:Contact and ask that you, as the last admin staniding, be given bureaucrat status. Then you could let Wikia Staff decide.

Either way you do it, though, it's important to at least start a thread on your local forums to say that you're applying for bureaucrat status and wondering whether there are any objections from the community. I'd recommend that you don't send in that request until you've let at least a week pass, so that you can say to staff that you tried to solicit community opinions on the matter.

Once you have achieved bureaucrat status then I'd definitely give your bot bureaucrat status. Although you can technically run a bot without 'crat status, I think it can be problematic. Other bureaucrats — and I realise this proviso doesn't apply to your situation yet — have the power to demote a bot from simple admin status, but they don't if the bot is a bureaucrat. This would mean that other bureaucrats could stop a bot run dead in its tracks. That could be extremely undesirable if the non-bot-using bureaucrat mistook a bot's actions for vandalism, when in fact the bot was making helfpul edits. It's always easier to correct bot runs if the bot is able to complete its run, so in most cases there's no real justification for a bureaucrat to stop a bot by de-sysopping them mid-run.