Research:Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition/Definitions

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Admin candidacy requirements

Definitions

These are the definitions for terms used in Research:Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition. Many different definitions of these terms exist, but for that specific project, these are the definitions we will use in order to provide a unified basis for comparison across different wikis, and to compare to new and existing metrics.

Primary definitions

Term		Definition	Notes
Administrator		User with rights to make (at least some) administrative actions.	On most Wikipedias, this means membership in the sysop user group; however some wikis have additional user groups with admin rights, such as eliminator, closer, botadmin.
Active administrator		Admin who made 1 or more administrative actions in a specified period of time. (See definition of administrative action below).	E.g., Monthly active admins: number of admins who made 1 or more administrative actions in a month.
Administrative actions		Changes to user blocks, page protection levels, page deletion status, or the rights of other users (Per Movement Insights' definition of monthly active admins, used in their Wiki Comparison spreadsheet)	Administrative actions from the logging table: log_type log_action delete delete (delete page), event (delete event), restore (restore a page), revision (change visibility) block block, reblock, unblock protect protect, modify, unprotect rights rights (change user group rights)
Inactive administrator	Administratively inactive admin	An administrator who has not made 1 or more administrative actions during a specified period of time.	Folks who are both administratively inactive admins and editorially inactive admins meet the definition of “inactive admin” on enwiki
	Editorially inactive admin	An administrator who has not made 1 or more edit during a specified period of time.
Former administrator		A user who was once but is no longer an administrator	The user will fit both of the following two criteria: The user has [performed administrative actions] OR [belonged to an administrative user group] in the past The user does not presently belong to an administrator user group. We will identify multiple types of former administrators, including: Former admins who continue editing Wikipedia Former admins who stop editing Wikipedia
Prospective/Potential administrator		Users who meet criteria for adminship as set by their wiki, but who are not currently an admin	We understand these written criteria are bare minimums, and candidates are judged on an individual basis, but as a basis for cross-wiki comparison, we are relying on written criteria, guidelines or other publicly available advice.