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Administrators are regular Wikipedians who have access to maintenance tools which give them the ability to protect pages, delete pages, and block users. Administrators are given these tools following a request for adminship.
Although there are various standards that are applied when making a recommendation on an editor's application, meaningful contributions to articles are usually considered a prerequisite. However, after gaining use of these tools some administrators find that their contributions to articles decrease, and in a few cases stop altogether. We all have limitations on time, and there is a significant backlog of "janitorial" tasks, in addition to missing articles.
While the creation and refinement of articles is the principal aim of Wikipedia, the support work that administrators perform is also a useful contribution. In this context, administrators should remember the principal purpose is to write an encyclopedia. Similarly, other editors should acknowledge that there are some responsibilities for administrators which don't directly involve the article namespace.