Administrator (SCP)

 

Infographic history of Admins at the SCP Wiki. Accurate as of 8/2021.

Administrator (Admin) is the highest position in the SCP staff structure. With it comes access to tools, permissions, and functions on the wiki. An Admin can alter staff (e.g. appoint or remove team captains), declare exemptions to rules and etcetera motions by fiat (e.g. making exceptions to the rules, whether for themselves or others, without the prerequisite for a staff vote), their word generally carries a lot of weight in matters of community direction, and they collectively determine the candidacy of new prospective Admins. With exceptions early on in the site’s history, an Admin will always have been a Moderator just prior. Generally, an Admin is seen as a reliable, hardworking, and upstanding member of the community who has proven their dedication through consistent involvement and participation on site and within staff for several years.

History

The first Administrator in the SCP’s history was “The Administrator” account, which created the WikiDot itself in 2008 and set up its rudimentary functions. This account was a sockpuppet of user FritzWillie.[1]

Shortly after enacting the migration from EditThis to Wikidot, The Administrator transferred Adminship to an initial pilot batch of prominent and respected users, who FritzWillie felt were dedicated and reliable. This rite of existing Admins selecting new and successor Admins who they deem to be fit for the role has been continued as a rite, with some modifications.

The bureaucracy of Adminship at SCP has evolved with time. The first semblance of a more organized protocol was in 2012 by AdminBright, when the need for a system was starting to making itself known, due to a growing pool of staff.[2] Shortly after, TroyL, who formalized much of the site and staff’s protocols, created a thread where this process was codified further.[3] (TroyL’s commitment and penchant for organization and protocol can be seen in his faithfully posting Admin promotion threads per quarter, even when there were none.[4][5][6][7]) This thread marks the start of standardized record keeping for Admin promotions in dedicated forum posts. It also clearly solidifies the exclusivity of the voting to admins, something that had been looser and open to “Senior Staff” previously; if other staff or users had issue with a candidate, they were instructed to PM a current Admin.

A 2021 proposal modified the process for new Admin promotions to include votes and official input by the greater staff (OS+, operational staff and above). This was previously relegated to unofficial representation via PMs to Admins. In the new policy, a candidate is organically proposed by and among the current Admin team, based on their opinions of said candidate’s fitness as a nominee. If unanimously approved as a fit candidate (but not necessarily as a fit Admin), the new process necessitates a 75% or greater approval vote from Admins, as well as a 60% or greater majority of participating OS+ vote in favor.[8] This policy change represents the departure from a decade-long policy of Admin-only voting.[3]

Lineage of Administrators

  • The Administrator/FritzWillie (2008)[1]
  • Dr. Gears, Lt. Masipag, Kraito, Kain Pathos Crow (2008[9]
  • far2 (2008)
  • Dr. Kondraki (2009)[10]
  • Dr. Clef (2009)[11]
  • TheDuckman/AdminBright (2009)[12]
  • Snorlison (2009)[13]
  • Dr. Gears (2009, Master Administrator)[14]
  • Pair of Ducks (2009)[15]
  • Waxx (2010)[16]
  • SophiaLight, DrEverettMann (2010)[17]
  • DrEverettMann (2010, Master Administrator)[18]
  • TroyL, TheRaven, Quikngruvn (2011)[19]
  • Photosynthetic (2012)[20]
  • Sorts (2012)[3]
  • Drewbear, thedeadlymoose (2013)[21]
  • anqxyr, Decibelles, Dexanote, Roget, Silberescher, SoullessSingularity, Zyn (2017)[22]
  • DrMagnus, Modern_Erasmus (2020)[23]
  • pxdnbluesoul (2020)[24]
  • DrBleep (2021)[25]
  • aismallard, TSATPWTCOTTTADC (2021)[26]
  • Jacob Conwell, ManyMeats, stormbreath (2021)[27]
  • YossiPossi, WhiteGuard (2022) [27]

For 13 years of promoting Admins on the site (2008-2021), 10 of these officially documented in dedicated forum threads with a vote-tally ledger style of records, each Administrator who was nominated for the position was unanimously agreed upon. Two instances of “abstain” occurred, but by no fault of character in those up for promotion-one cited “memory issues”; the other individual voting simply didn’t know them well.[28][29] Only the second of these was a vote from an Admin and after the voting blocks were initiated, so technically speaking, there is only one abstain on official record. Other than this, all those who have been voted on have passed, and have passed unanimously.

The “No” Vote Fiasco, 2021

The tradition of a nominated and voted-upon candidate for Administrator essentially being a formality into the position was ended in June 2021. There were two candidates for Admin in this round of promotions; ProcyonLotor and Jacob Conwell. In an unprecedented turn of events, the promotion to Admin was abruptly halted after Admin asimallard voted “No” for ProcyonLotor, the first such vote in the history of Adminship. At that time only 4 of the 6 administrators (DrEverettMann, Dexanote, DrBleep, aismallard, Zyn, and TSATPWTCOTTTADC) had voted. The remaining Admins did not cast a vote and the proceedings stalled with the thread becoming inert. Neither ProcyonLotor or Jacob Conwell would be promoted in this cycle.[30]

The event made clear the need for a protocol to exist in the event an Administrator vote stalled, or was decided against; something that had been theoretical prior to this actualization of it. Additionally, it brought up concerns with the current method of Admin promotions: that an individual Admin could single-handedly prevent any other Admins from joining into the ranks, and that the input of the greater staff (and to a lesser extent the userbase) was not adequately consulted. This “constitutional crisis” prompted a radical change in promotion policy and proceedings, and established that an individual who failed their Admin candidacy vote would not be able to re-apply and be re-voted upon for 1 year.[31]