HowTo:Become a sysop in 2008 or later

Let's be honest, we all aspire to these so called wonderful individuals, they can love or hate you. But really, wouldn't you love to become a sysop yourself? The glory, the adoring fans, the women! Sysops own the place, they can boss everyone around like they own the place and make life as easy or as difficult for everyone else as they please. So being a sysop is obviously the best thing that could happen to you.

Sadly, you should have gotten in here 18 years ago, because since then, the chances of becoming an admin have dropped significantly; in fact some say it's downright impossible these days. I for one am inclined to agree with them.

2005

The sysops of 2005, hard at work making everything run smoothly.

We all know that becoming a sysop of Uncyclopedia in 2005 was the easiest thing in the universe. If you couldn't gain control of the banhammer back then, you were either a vandal, a spammer, an idiot, or one of those annoying suck ups who "couldn't possibly accept such responsibility for fear of abusing its power". (Which really goes hand in hand with being an idiot in this writer's opinion.)

The steps for gaining adminship were:

1. Register
2. Make a remotely good article or maybe a couple (making a lot of stubs was also acceptable).
3. Ask a bureaucrat nicely (gifts of gold, fine jewellery or cheese may help).
4. You will most likely become a sysop.

In fact, it was so easy that even the n00biest of individuals became sysops, and as a result, Uncyclopedia is exactly what it is today. Sadly it isn't exactly that easy to become a sysop anymore. In fact, as soon as 2006 rolled around, we had plenty of responsible and reliable sysops that were here to help you, so everyone thought maybe we should slow down the traffic of adminship and thus VFS was born.

This was also introduced so that certain vandals of the day couldn't become admins and run amok.

Later on

In 2006-2007, it was becoming harder to become a sysop but wasn't yet impossible. The steps involved were not rocket science, however:

1. Register
2. Write plenty of quality articles and get some features.
3. Dob in some vandals and crap articles.
4. Whore on IRC and make the sysop love you.
5. You stand a 50% chance of being an admin on the VFS that rolls around every few months or so.

Where we stand

In 2008, chances went bad faster than oil prices. As it stands, 2008 was the last year that more than 2 two sysops have been appointed in the one calendar year. So really, unless you have something to offer, you will never become an admin on this site. Ever.

For those of you willing to try, here is the long and overly complicated guide to becoming a sysop. Failure to follow these steps exactly as they are printed and you will never become a sysop.

Step 1: Shortly after registration

Right, so you are an Uncyclopedia n00b with hopes of taking down this place becoming a sysop. First of all, before you do anything you should actually bother to read those boring links those admins and experienced users post in your welcome message. I know it's boring but bear with me, get a big bottle of scotch and read it. The content is known to drive people to drink.

Next, before posting even a single word, read some featured articles and other masterpieces and learn the style of those that write those articles. If you get at least one article on the front page, you stand a much better chance at becoming an admin than the n00bs with no features. Trust me on that.

Once you understand everything, have a go at writing your first article in your userspace. Make it lengthy with plenty of links and images and make it read reasonably well before submitting it for review. Instead of discarding that review that someone clearly spent days writing up for you, actually follow the advice instead of believing it only matters if you like it. The moral lesson is bullshit and will get you nowhere on this site. Of course, once the article is of a reasonable standard, mainspace it and repeat about three or four times. With a bit of luck some magic will happen.

This magic, of course, is winning the esteemed Noob of the Month award. If you manage to gain some approval off the community by winning this you are doing very well and stand to go down in the history books.

Step 2: Continue to write good articles

I IZ GOOD WRITER! FEECHER ME PLZ KTHXBAI!

Oh yes, don't just think because you are the site's new cool kid with that shiny blue badge on your userpage that you can quit writing yet! Oh no, you have to write many, many articles and have a few start showing up on the front page if you wish to succeed. I'd recommend chasing down at least 10 features before moving onto the next step (which might I add is about the worst fate on the internet).

Why, you may ask, do I need so many features? Well, here at Uncyclopedia we don't just celebrate the achievements of n00bs, we love our writers too and, in fact, award them sometimes. But it isn't easy to win, there are heaps of writers out there working hard on new masterpieces every day and you have to compete with them. So don't even for a second stop writing good articles, you must sacrifice everything for this even if it means you have to spend the rest of your life alone. Because becoming the next sysop means much more than that.

So after a few ill-fated, haphazard attempts, you will win the badge for your userpage! Congratulations, it's time for the difficult phase where you start to abandon the act you have finally mastered and enter the horrible world of reverting vandals and reporting crap.

Step 3: Help with site maintenance

Say "hello" to your new home.

Oh fuck, you've finally hit rock bottom. You're actually bothering to help out with site maintenance which is about as interesting as a bottle of milk. Actually, it's quite relaxing: there is no panicking about whether or not people will like your articles any more, just worries that the vandals will never stop coming (They won't, by the way). Well, don't give up writing completely just yet. Get a good quality article up on the front page about once a month, but do plenty half arsed jobs. This way people will think you need a break and feel sorry for you. Sympathy is great.

Step 4: Abandon writing entirely

That's it. Whatever article you have stewing away in your userspace, leave it and dedicate every dying moment you possess to improving the site in any way possible. snitch on vandals, report shitty articles, vote on things, review articles of n00bs and veterans and generally look like that twit who thinks that quality here matters. You may even win another important badge for your troubles and be considered for rollback, which is basically going to make your job of reverting vandalism and getting your banhammer 100 times easier.

You should also start becoming involved so everyone knows who the fuck you are.

Step 5: Rollback

You're halfway there to adminship with this clever tool. You can now revert fucking everything in one click, instead of three or four and when you move pages you don't have to put up with those dumb arse redirects anymore. You also look cool in everyone's eyes and because the high lords upstairs can trust you with some rights, they automatically assume they can trust you with the full rights.

Fools.

Step 6: Hope for the best in the VFS

VFS is here at last! Finally, we either actually have a lack of admins, everyone feels ready for a power struggle or nobody who is against it bothered to vote for holding one this month. Everything is coming up win. What's more, you are the top candidate and laugh at all of those pity nominations placed by those who feel sorry for others. Well it won't last, everyone votes for the ones they feel would do a good job their friends and you have plenty of them.

But even if you survive the first round with the highest score, there is the much feared "admin only" round, where it is essential you get into every single admin's pants and/or made nasty threats if they didn't vote for you. Chances are that, even if you made threats, they will simply change their IP, move away, and ban your sorry arse. So maybe it's best just to be skilled at doing such boring tasks.

Step 7: After VFS

If you failed, abandon your current account and make a new one. Repeat steps one through to seven until you succeed. Your current account is tainted with failure and will never achieve anything. You hopeless loser.

If you somehow managed to get enough people drunk and actually vote for you, then rejoice. You own this joint now; write, delete, ban and do nothing as you please. What's more, if anyone dares question your authority you can ban them and humiliate them in a cruel yet satisfying way, and they can't do shit about it!

Other totally unethical methods that will totally work

• Wait for a bureaucrat to 'crat someone else who really shouldn't be a 'crat and then get him to op as many folks as possible; chances are the other crats won't find and de-op all of them and you may just survive with your ill-gotten ops intact.
• Hack an admin account.
• Blackmail a bureaucrat. (You may get banned for life for this)
• Create an army of vandal socks, which press the need for a VFS. And then whore about how you deserve ops for reverting everyone that was actually you all along. (This has been tried before and it failed).
• Claim to have an army of vandal bots, that you will use unless you are opped (They may cut off your IP for this, so be confident the bureaucrat you threaten is very stupid).
• I will quit otherwise.

See also

• HowTo:Become an Admin
• Strong Bad