Commons:Administrators
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This page explains the role of administrators (sometimes called admins or sysops) on Wikimedia Commons. Note that details of the role, and the way in which administrators are appointed, may differ from other sites.
If you want to request administrator help, please post at Administrators' noticeboard.
There are currently 178 administrators on Commons.
What is an administrator?
Administrators as of May 2025 Listing by: Language • Date • Activity [+/−] |
Number of Admins: 178
If 178 is not the last number on this list, there may be an error or there are some users assigned temporarily. |
Technical
Administrators are users with the technical ability on Wikimedia Commons to:
- delete and undelete images and other uploaded files, and to view and restore deleted versions
- delete and undelete pages, and to view and restore deleted revisions
- protect and unprotect pages, and to edit admin-protected pages
- block and unblock users, individual IP addresses and IP address ranges
- edit less-restricted interface messages (see also Commons:Interface administrators)
- rename files
- add and remove user groups
- configure Upload Wizard campaigns
- delete and undelete specific log entries and revisions of pages
- import pages from other wikis
- merge the history of pages
- modify abuse filters
- not create redirects from source pages when moving pages
- override the spoofing checks and title or username blacklist
- send a message to multiple users at once (massmessage)
- use higher limits in API queries
These are collectively known as the admin tools.
Community role
Administrators are experienced and trusted members of the Commons community who have taken on additional maintenance work and have been entrusted with the admin tools by public consensus/vote. Different admins have different areas of interest and expertise, but typical admin tasks include determining and closing deletion requests, deleting copyright violations, undeleting files where necessary, protecting Commons against vandalism, and working on templates and other protected pages. Of course, some of these tasks can be done by non-admins as well.
Administrators are expected to understand the goals of this project, and be prepared to work constructively with others towards those ends. Administrators should also understand and follow Commons' policies, and where appropriate, respect community consensus.
Apart from roles which require use of the admin tools, administrators have no special editorial authority by virtue of their position, and in discussions and public votes their contributions are treated in the same way as any ordinary editor. Some admins may become more influential, not due to their position as such, but from the personal trust they may have gained from the community.
Suggestions for administrators
Please read Commons:Guide to adminship.
Removal of administrator rights
Under the de-admin policy, administrator rights may be revoked due to inactivity or misuse of sysop tools. In a de-admin request, normal standards for determining consensus in an RfA do not apply. Instead, "majority consensus" should be used, whereby any consensus to demote of higher than 50% is sufficient to remove the admin.
Apply to become an administrator
All intending administrators must go through this process and submit themselves to RFA, including all ex-administrators who are seeking to return to their previous role.
First, go to Commons:Administrators/Howto and read the information there. Then come back here and make your request in the section below.
- After clicking the appropriate button and creating the subpage, copy the link to the subpage, e.g. "Commons:Administrators/Requests/Username", edit Commons:Administrators/Requests and paste it in at the top of the section, then put it in double curly brackets (e.g. {{Commons:Administrators/Requests/Username}}) to transclude it. Request a watchlist notice at MediaWiki talk:WatchlistNotice, or edit MediaWiki:WatchlistNotice to put up one if you are an administrator.
- If someone else nominated you, please accept the nomination by stating "I accept" or something similar, and signing below the nomination itself. The subpage will still need to be transcluded by you or your nominator.
Use the box below, replacing Username with your username: |
Voting
Any registered user may vote here although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted. It is preferable you give reasons for both Support and Oppose votes as this will help the closing bureaucrat in their decision. Greater weight is given to an argument, with supporting evidence if needed, than to a simple vote.
Promotion normally requires at least 75% in favour, with a minimum of 8 support votes. Votes from unregistered users are not counted. However, the closing bureaucrat has discretion in judging community consensus, and the decision will not necessarily be based on the raw numbers. Bureaucrats may, at their discretion, extend the period of an RfA if they feel that it will be helpful in better determining community consensus.
Neutral comments are not counted in the vote totals for the purposes of calculating pass/fail percentages. However, such comments are part of the discussion, may persuade others, and contribute to the closing bureaucrat's understanding of community consensus.
Purge the cache Use the edit link below to edit the transcluded page.
Requests for adminship
When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Administrators/Archive.
- Please read Commons:Administrators before voting here. Any logged in user may vote although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.
No current requests.
Requests for bureaucratship
When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Bureaucrats/Archive.
- Please read Commons:Bureaucrats before posting or voting here. Any logged in user may vote although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.
No current requests.
Requests for CheckUser rights
When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Checkusers/Archive.
- Please read Commons:Checkusers before posting or voting here. Any logged in user may vote although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.
Lymantria (talk · contributions (views) · deleted user contributions · recent activity (talk · project · deletion requests) · logs · block log · global contribs · CentralAuth)
- Scheduled to end: 14:08, 21 May 2025 (UTC)
The three active Checkusers nominate Lymantria for the position of Checkuser.
We believe that they are highly qualified and well trusted and will be an excellent addition to the team as well as adding languages we do not have.
Lymantria became a Commons Administrator in 2011, with 29 positive votes of 30. They have 133,000 edits on Commons and 19,000 deletions. They are also very active on Wikidata, where they are an Admin, Bureaucrat, and Checkuser and have made almost two million edits.
- . Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:16, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- --Krd 14:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 13:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you for nominating me, very special to be nominated by no less than three colleague checkusers. Of course, I accept the nomination. --Lymantria (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Votes
Support Taivo (talk) 14:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- im
ok with that request. modern_primat ඞඞඞ ----TALK 14:54, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Support -- DaxServer (talk) 16:13, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Support Queen of Hearts (talk) 22:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Oppose I don't like clubs who choose/deny (on) their new members alone. Inbreeding never was a good idea. So black smoke from me. --Mirer (talk) 23:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Mirer: As the person that led the search for a fourth CheckUser, let me illustrate the process, in case that helps: I went through every case filed at Commons:Requests for checkuser in the last 12 months and made a list of everyone that filed cases that were actionable (had proper rationales that justified using the tool, targeting accounts active recently enough for the tool to work). Then I removed anyone that wasn't an admin, because the community won't approve a CU that isn't already an admin. From there, I looked at who was regularly active on Wikimedia projects (CU isn't as time sensitive as OS, but it's still important that we have ample coverage because sometimes we need range-blocks to stop ongoing, high-volume abuse). Lastly, I checked their RfAs and searched for threads on the admin noticeboards to make sure we weren't putting forward someone controversial (no one was removed from the list at this step). This gave me a shortlist of three folks, and all three of us were comfortable with any of the three of them, so we reached out to all three to gauge interest. Lymantria stood out because they're already a CU on another project. (There really isn't much onboarding for CUs - a few pages on the CheckUser wiki, and asking existing CUs questions on the CU mailing list or over Discord - so knowing what you're doing from day 1 is a huge plus.) I haven't really interacted with Lymantria much prior to this nomination (just one CU case on Wikidata, IIRC). TLDR: This wasn't "let's pick our friends", it was "let's search for folks we think can do the job". The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Mirer: With all respect for your vote, I want to stress that I did or do not belong to the "inner circle" of the three CUs that nominated me. With neither of the three nominators I have had a lot of interaction at one of the projects. Their common action to find and nominate a new CU I interpreted as a sign of urgency/necessity to have more manpower. That convinced me to accept the nomination. --Lymantria (talk) 05:27, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Mirer: There's no club here -- as TSC says, the three of us believe that Commons will be better served if there are four Checkusers, so we went looking for suitable candidates. I have had very little interaction with Lymantria in the past, but all of it was positive. . Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 13:50, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Mirer: As the person that led the search for a fourth CheckUser, let me illustrate the process, in case that helps: I went through every case filed at Commons:Requests for checkuser in the last 12 months and made a list of everyone that filed cases that were actionable (had proper rationales that justified using the tool, targeting accounts active recently enough for the tool to work). Then I removed anyone that wasn't an admin, because the community won't approve a CU that isn't already an admin. From there, I looked at who was regularly active on Wikimedia projects (CU isn't as time sensitive as OS, but it's still important that we have ample coverage because sometimes we need range-blocks to stop ongoing, high-volume abuse). Lastly, I checked their RfAs and searched for threads on the admin noticeboards to make sure we weren't putting forward someone controversial (no one was removed from the list at this step). This gave me a shortlist of three folks, and all three of us were comfortable with any of the three of them, so we reached out to all three to gauge interest. Lymantria stood out because they're already a CU on another project. (There really isn't much onboarding for CUs - a few pages on the CheckUser wiki, and asking existing CUs questions on the CU mailing list or over Discord - so knowing what you're doing from day 1 is a huge plus.) I haven't really interacted with Lymantria much prior to this nomination (just one CU case on Wikidata, IIRC). TLDR: This wasn't "let's pick our friends", it was "let's search for folks we think can do the job". The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support ToadetteEdit (talk) 07:44, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support Being an Admin is a tough responsibility and this is more work. But Lymantria can handle the task. --Leoboudv (talk) 07:52, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:29, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support if it is Lymantria, for sure. No issues. Always seen them as doing what they are doing. signed, Aafi (talk) 08:36, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Strong support I've talked with TSC about the 4th CU in the past, and I think that 4 (or even 5!) CUs can only be a benefit to commons, especially someone who already has experience, is a huge benefit. The only possible downside is that the average checks done by an individual CU will go down, but that might not be a bad thing. Anytime we can avoid being dependent on 1 or 2 people for a critical task, I'm all for it. All the Best -- Chuck Talk 15:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support --— D Y O L F 77[Talk] 16:35, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support --Robert Flogaus-Faust (talk) 16:49, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support --Bedivere (talk) 17:46, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support -- per the comment from User:The Squirrel Conspiracy above. --Schlurcher (talk) 20:17, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support -- More hands make lighter work, and I trust the 3 nominators on this matter. Abzeronow (talk) 21:17, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support, I think that volunteering to improve Wikimedia projects is too valuable. Lymantria is an experienced user. As they are sysop here, and already have CU rights on Wikidata. So, they are familiar with the CU interface. It is beneficial to have one more CU here. No objections. --Kadı Message 22:12, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support per above. Would support more CUs if there are qualified candidates. Lymantria looks like a trusted user. --JackFromWisconsin (talk) 03:14, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Comments
- Do the current CUs feel that there is enough work for 4 CUs on commons? --Guerillero Parlez Moi 18:04, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, certainly. There is a great deal of behind-the-scenes work. . Jim . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 19:23, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Requests for Oversight rights
When complete, pages listed here should be archived to Commons:Oversighters/Archive.
- Please read Commons:Oversighters before voting here. Any logged in user may vote, although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted.
No current requests.