User blog:Lost Labyrinth/Administrators vs. Bureaucrats - what's the big difference?

 Administrators vs. Bureaucrats - what's the big difference? Here on The Sims Wiki, we have five user groups that can be handed out: rollback, administrator, bureaucrat, bot and chat moderator. I'm sure everybody knows what rollback, bots, chatmods and administrators are and that everyone has a rough idea of what a bureaucrat is.

What's the big deal about bureaucratship?
A common misinterpretation of bureaucrats across various wikis is that they are the users who hold all the power. Not exactly!

The main purpose of a bureaucrats job is to hand out user rights. Administrators and bureaucrats are decided on by the community via RfA/RfB respectfully while rollback and bot rights are handed out by the discretion of a bureaucrat.

Should the need ever arise, bureaucrats can also revoke a user right (pending a successful forum discussion) except for other bureaucrats.

What dominion do bureaucrats have over admins?
In short: next to none. We like to believe that all users are equal. Bureaucrats may have a few extra tools but that doesn't mean their opinions come first or that they're always right. Same goes for admins. They're human just like every other user here, except for these guys.

So why not just bundle the bureaucrat flags with the sysop flags? The tools entrusted to bureaucrats do take some personal discretion to use, such as determining consensus in an RfA or granting rollback. Admins can apply/nominate another user to become a bureaucrat over at RfB where a discussion of the same nature as an RfA would take place. A successful RfB usually goes to show that the user is highly trusted by the community, enough so that they can manage effectively with the tools.

What can admins do that bureaucrats can't?
Admins and bureaucrats mostly share the same rights and thus they can carry out any task that doesn't require the bureaucrat tools. Whether it's closing a forum thread, deleting a page, blocking a user or just general cleanup, there's no restrictions on what admins can do to help the wiki.

Lab, why did you even bother making this blog?
The purpose of this blog is to inform and it never hurts to go over things like this. I often see users who think, "It would be cool to be an admin someday but I'll never become a bureaucrat". This blog is also geared to show that bureaucratship isn't as much of a big deal as some may think it is, nor is it anything to be scared of.

I hope this blog has informed at least some of you. If anybody has any questions or if I've missed anything then feel free to ask via a blog comment. 18:31, July 12, 2013 (UTC)