User:Worm That Turned/Magic Formula

Worm That Turned's Magic Formula to becoming an admin

Hi! I see you're looking to become an administrator. It's not a short process, if you've just started thinking about it, it'll probably take a good 6 months to a year from where you are now and you will need to gain some experience in lots of different areas of wiki. The most important thing is that you cover the following areas well, quality, not quantity in each area is what you want to prove during your request.

Content Creation

Many members of the community like to see some content creation in an administrator. That's not to say you'll have to have got an article to featured status. What the community wants to see is real evidence of high quality created content, well sourced, well written and reviewed by the community. It doesn't even have to be text content, though the other forms are often better at Commons. The purpose is so that you can understand how much work goes into decent quality articles, and you can gain a better appreciation for other members of the community.

Administrative work

It would be good if you could demonstrate some sort of need for the tools - for example:

• Regular commenting at WP:XfDs
• New page patrol with very accurate (better than 95%):
  • Page improvement tagging
  • WP:CSD tagging
  • WP:UAA tagging
• Recent change patrol with very very accurate (better than 99%):
  • Vandalism labelling
  • WP:AIV reporting
  • WP:UAA tagging
• Helping out at places like WP:ANI (offering useful advice)

Working well with others

An important factor for administrators is that you work well with others. Spending some time in the various help areas of wikipedia, like WP:EAR or WP:3O would be useful. Again, this only any good if you are actually doing the job well. You could also join in in different WP:RfCs, especially the ones listed at WP:CENT. This will have the joint benefits of helping you understand the behind the scenes part of an encyclopedia and will improve your profile.

Specialisation

If there's a part of wikipedia that you're good at, then focus on it. I was good at adoption, other editors are good at templates or file work or copyright. The more work you do in an area, the more likely it will be that you will be able to help out.

I hope that makes a bit of sense, it's what people mean when they say "go out and get some experience". The other thing people want to see is evidence of the above, which means that you should have a good few thousand edits under your belt to allow people to evaluate your work. Good luck!