Basically, your system to be made an admin on a site is wholly dependent on kissing enough butt to get an existing admin, no matter what his/her work or qualifications are, to like you well enough to get him/her to promote you, no matter how much work you have done or improvements you have made. For example, I had been editing the Dofus wiki anonymously for years, but a few months ago, I got tired of people making changes to what I had done, primarily stylistic changes - I used to be a graphic artist of signs and business forms, as well as some work on newspapers. So, I registered, and began to update the wiki, which at that time was at least two-years out of date in most cases. There are only three "active" admins: Gravestorm, who logs in at most once a week, but usually less; Saiftey, who is on once a month at best; and, Keij, the only active admin, who only became more so as I rose through the ranks, yet acts like a prima donna dictator.
For reference, I am the fourth largest contributor to the Dofus wiki, according to the point system (though now I am hidden).
Today I was banned on that wiki following a message I had sent to Keij, after not hearing from him for a week after a request to add discord to Dofus pages. Here are my two messages:
We need this done... Somebody needs to add "dev:DiscordIntegrator/code.js" to the MediaWiki:ImportJS so we can have active Discord on our pages. So we can do this: Discord Example
Thank you.
I am still waiting for the discord change. Do you really want this site to succeed? I think you must not if you are boycotting the simple changes I have proposed. What will happen when I want to implement major ones, as I have been talking about? At least man up and ban me if you are going to block my every improvement. Show me you have the big admin balls!^^ haha
Perhaps, I am gruff, but with good reason after this guy has basically ignored my every request for months, ever since I disagreed with his dictate that page names should be used in the lower-case. He has at times reversed my improvements, and at others blocked my access to templates that I had improved, because he is a control freak. Today, both before and after blocking me, he reversed a lot of changes, even simple ones that made the wiki better. You can look at my blog, message wall, profile, and all the other stuff I have done in communicating with Community Central, with regards to creating inter-langauge links, fixing bugs, and pushing for formatting changes in wiki in general. I have been the real admin of the Dofus wiki in spirit, but not in name.
In short, your antiquated system creates puppet leaders who can stay in office forever, just by being reasonably active (once a month, I believe), and they can even ban the best editors, just because they do not agree with those people. I urge everybody to look at my writing, as I tried to improve and promote the wiki of a game that is on the verge of dying, just to keep it alive and improve its notoriety, and I ask you that if somebody can care so much and work so hard, how a puppet dictator can ban him with such a message as this:
Editor's summary: "Intimidating behaviour/harassment: Kwismaskiller requested multiple times to be banned, so now he is."
Yes, I did ask, because I thought he would do what was best for the game. How is disagreeing harassment anywhere but a third-world nation? Instead, he has done what was best for his ego. In summary, the existing system of vampire transmission of administratorship is bad for the community, as it creates bad admins, who are accountable to nobody, even the best contributors.
Change the system. Make a threshold after which a contributor becomes an admin. At this point, aside form a few older wikis controlled by businesses, like Disney, most of the highest-rated wiki are new ones. This poor system is why. It kills development and innovation.