Applications
The wiki is managed by a handful of staff members with elevated rights, who keep it from falling into disrepair. If you would like to help manage the wiki content, please read below on the what is expected of you before applying, then use the application form to submit your request. The wiki staff will review your application and respond on the talk page.
This wiki page refers to the currently logged in wiki user as "you," and the wiki staff team as "we." If you are not a logged in wiki user, please create an account before applying, because temporary users cannot have elevated user rights.
In general, we are looking for staff members that fulfill the following:
- You have shown good intentions that require elevated rights. You do not need special rights to contribute to the wiki. Make sure you explain why you need the elevated rights that you're applying for in your application.
- You are a team player. You understand that your opinion may not always be the right thing to do on the wiki, and you start discussions to resolve disputes rather than edit wars. Being a staff member does not mean your opinion is valued higher, and it is very important for a healthy wiki that its staff members serve the community, not the other way around.
- You communicate professionally. You treat people with respect, assume good faith of others and don't jump on new editors for simple mistakes. No matter the position you apply for, communicating is a part of your role, and you will be a role model for others.
- You are known to wiki staff members. It is hard to judge an application of a user that we've never seen talk. Please participate in wiki discussions, whether on talk pages, Discussions, or the wiki's Discord server.
- You have an active channel of communication with other staff members. We hold private staff discussions over our Discord server, and it is the most convenient if you join it too. We don't want to exclude anyone from discussions, but it is also time consuming to synchronize communications between multiple platforms. We therefore expect you to join the wiki's Discord server, if not before your application then at least after you've received a positive response.
In comparison, here are some of the things that we aren't specifically looking for:
- You don't have to possess technical knowledge. We don't require you to have extensive knowledge of wikitext or other technologies used on the wiki to be a staff member, although these skills are appreciated.
- You don't have to have a high edit count. While significant contribution often correlates with a high edit count, everyone finds their own way to contribute to the wiki, and someone does in 1000 edits what someone else could've done in 200.
There are no explicit minimum requirements to become a staff member other than showing you've read and understood this page.
Moderators have various tools to moderate wiki content, such as page and file management, including their deletion, undeletion, and protection. Their primary role is to help with wiki maintenance, by resolving various maintenance reports using their tools, more efficiently combating vandalism, and ensuring wiki content is up to standards.
If you have significantly (in your opinion) contributed to the wiki's content, whether that is by writing articles, uploading files, performing standardization tasks, annotating maps, or otherwise, we encourage you to apply, provided you enjoy doing wiki maintenance tasks, countervandalism, or patrolling. We also expect you to understand the wiki's standards, a willingness to follow them to ensure consistency, and intuition for when they might need to be changed to adapt to new content.
Administrators, aside from moderating content, also have the ability to moderate discussions, change the wiki's design and interface, and manage users, including blocking and promotion. Their role is to help and encourage new users to contribute, weigh in on wiki discussions, resolve disputes, organize editors towards the most important wiki tasks and overall have a bigger picture of what the wiki should be striving for.
This is a huge role to fulfill! We recommend first becoming a moderator, both to familiarize yourself with how things are done currently before jumping into organizing for the wiki's future, and to give us reassurance that you can use your tools responsibly. However, this is not required in case maintenance tasks do not interest you.
Administrators are expected perform a lot of tasks, but not all of these tasks can be performed only by administrators. For example:
- Helping editors: new editors are frequently confused about how things are done on the wiki, and either post about it in Discussions, on the Discord server, or even in their edit summaries. If you notice someone needs help, and you are experienced enough to help them, give it a shot!
- Encouraging editors: readers of the wiki are often not confident in their ability to edit wiki pages, and first start discussions about it. If they are willing to, helping them make their first edit is one of the best ways to help the wiki, as the survival of the wiki depends on its ability to convert readers to editors.
- Starting proposals: the ability to identify a problem on the wiki, propose a solution, discuss it with the community and then implement the changes that everyone agrees with is an important part of being an administrator. Showing us that you have this ability is not mandatory, but would significantly help your application.
- Leading projects: big changes on the wiki don't happen overnight, and are usually done by many editors over many days. Coordinating these efforts is very important work, because it helps make the changes sooner and better.
In general, we expect an admin candidate to be bold, empower others to contribute, and act as a role model to others.
At the end of the day, the wiki staff need to work together as a team and each of us has our own opinions on whether you would be a great fit for the team at this time. If you are rejected, don't let this discourage you! We would, in any case, like to see you continue contributing to the wiki, and we hope that our feedback to your application would help you determine which aspect of your participation in the wiki community you need to work on.
Please try not to reapply soon after a rejected application, and leave at least a month to address the feedback you received in your rejected application.
To apply for a staff position, click the button below, fill in the fields as instructed by the <!-- comments -->, remove the comments, and submit your edit. Make sure you have read this page! Showing a basic lack of understanding of what this page is talking about may lead to swift rejection.