So you're thinking of become an admin? Good for you! We need more admins. First off, check how you shape up on my Magic Formula - if you are absolutely sure you want to be an admin, that's what you need to do (in my opinion).

However, if you are not absolutely sure - well, that's what this page is for. I'm going to try to define what you need to know - something between "new admin school" and "admin coaching". Both are great resources and depending on how much you like reading, feel free to click on them.

The admin toolset is large, and the vast majority you are unlikely to use. Many rights, when created, are automatically given to administrators. Below are the functions associated with administrators, with a basic description of each. You don't need to know what they all are, but if you're of that mind, it might be interesting - click show for more details.

Deletion is (in my opinion) the most important role that an administrator has. The foundation has made it clear that the deletion button is the reason that we can't just give out the user-right to all and sundry, there needs to be some sort of trust from the community. Deletion removes items from view, so that normal users cannot access them - but administrators do have the ability to restore those items. As an administrator, you may end up dealing with a number of different sorts of deletion

An administrator has the technical ability to delete most pages on Wikipedia. As with everything an administrator does, they should only use that ability with community consensus. That might be because it meets one of the speedy deletion criteria or there is consensus for deletion at a deletion discussion. There are other reasons outlined at the deletion policy. If you hope to work in this area, the community would expect you to have some experience in deletion discussions or successful nominating of items for speedy deletion.

Alongside deletion of entire pages, administrators have the ability to "delete" selected revisions from history. This might mean hiding the revision text, the edit summary or the username. The ability allows admins to delicately hide problematic revisions and is one of the most useful abilities available to administrators. There are certain criteria which must be met to delete a revision, and these should be well understood before venturing into that area.

Mixing two histories is a technical task that sometimes falls to administrators - when two histories should be read together for attribution purposes. In other words, it's the only real way to "fix" cut and past moves.

Blocking is considered the most harmful tool an administrator has. Almost everything an administrator does can be "undone" and blocking is no exception. What makes it different is the effect it has on users, whether or not they are unblocked. A "clean" block log is a matter of pride for many and the block log often taken into account when assessing a user (for example, at a request for adminship). The Blocking policy explains more.

Protection is an often requested activity for admins to perform, most obviously at Requests for page protection and ANI. There are a variety of protection options, but the common theme is they restrict the ability of some or most people to edit a page. Admins need to be able to balance the trade-off between preventing vandalism and disruption, and allowing as many people as possible to edit and improve the page. For a particularly heated dispute, protection can be an alternative to blocking, and a more welcome action as well, as unlike a block, editors can still edit pages elsewhere, including talk pages. There are a large number of protection levels that can be set by administrators. Administrators who focus on content would do well to understand the different levels of protection, which ones can be used and which ones should be used at any given point.

Administrators are able to edit through all protection levels - see the comparison table. This means that they hold the ability to edit fully protected pages, along with other pages protected by default, such as other users CSS or JS files.

The ability to add and remove userrights is something that's often forgotten about administrators. It's a relatively uncontroversial role. Generally each user-right has its own criteria for whether or not it can be granted (often a little bit wooly, to allow for admin discretion).

Administrators have the ability to move pages without leaving a redirect (effectively deleting the redirect as they go), which can be useful in a number of situations. They also have the ability to move categories, files and pages with subpages - all making life a bit easier.

There's a number of "benefits" that come with being an administrator. Generally, they're not things to worry about, if you needed them, you could probably get them through user-right requests. But they are benefits to being an admin - so if you want to know about them, feel free to ask.

• The administrator toolset gives a user the ability to do some extra stuff but not the right to do them. The right to use these tools remains with the community consensus. Lots of historical discussion does meant that an administrator can exercise a fair degree of autonomy - and the RfA process is designed to show confidence in the administrator's judgement to exercise that autonomy. However, it's worth remembering that an administrator should not act against community consensus.
• Administrators do not have any extra "voice" in discussions leading to the consensus model. In this manner - Adminship is not a big deal.
• Despite administrators not being more senior than other editors - there will be an assumption of superiority from a number of directions. This will include those who are not familiar with the Wikipedia structure - new users and non-wikipedians alike. Similarly, there are many who will not accept a lack of hierarchy, maybe because of the culture they live in or just seeing what they want to see. As such, it is essential for administrators to act as "pillars of the community", exemplifying the best behaviour of the community.
• Administrators need be aware of involvement policy. When an administrator is getting involved in a dispute, they shouldn't be taking administrative actions.