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Is there any specific reason as to why Admins are not referred to as Managers? Has this been thought through? In other words does calling admins managers imply something wrong about their role?
Since real world managers, are usually seen as leaders of the organization, while in Wikipedia they're referred to as a janitor with a mop, is that imaginable for a manager? Xpander (talk) 18:04, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's been "administrator" for 20 years. I doubt you'll get consensus to change it to "manager". Also, "manager" is a bit corporate compared to administrator, which is more technical/website-ish. I don't think a corporate term would resonate very well with Wikipedians. The janitor/mop thing is to focus less on the power/hierarchy aspect and more on the "humbly keeping the Wiki clean" aspect of the job. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Simply put admins are not managers, we don't "manage" the project we administer it, we are simply editors trusted with extra tools not superiors, we don't set or otherwise dictate policies or guidelines - those arise from the consensus of all contributors. Separate from that, you're going to need to explain what the benefits of any change are (both a change in general and this change in particular) and they are going to have to be very significant: changing something that has been in place for nearly 25 years will inevitably cause a significant amount of disruption, even ignoring the natural resistance to change. Thryduulf (talk) 18:15, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The term "manager" usually means somebody who is in charge. The manager of a business will consider the various tasks that need to be carried out, and allocate each task to a team (or an individual if it's a small task). After the task is complete, the team will report back for the work to be checked and signed off, and then await the next task. If it's signed off and subsequently turns out to be a failure, the manager will be held responsible. Wikipedia operates the other way around: there are task lists of a sort (see for instance Category:Articles with unsourced statements from August 2025), but nobody is formally allocated these to work on. There are also many things that can be worked on that do not appear on any list. We each decide what we want to do, work on it when we want to, and if we can't do it, may abandon it or invite others to help. But regardless of level, nobody can make anybody else do anything that they don't want to. Administrators can prevent bad things from happening - perhaps by protecting pages or imposing blocks - but such actions are open to scrutiny by the community. Nobody "manages" anybody else. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:44, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Answering your questions in order: Yes. Yes. You'd have to ask the person who decided to describe X using term Y. I don't understand the last question, but since most things can be imagined, yes. isaacl (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey there. I don't think that page is protected from creation in the normal sense (WP:SALT). I think that page is protected from creation from users that aren't WP:AUTOCONFIRMED, which is a rule we apply to all article creation. In your case, if you don't want to log in and get some experience, I'd recommend creating it via WP:AW, which will put it in draftspace, where you can submit it for review by an experienced reviewer. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:37, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
