User:EJF/Adminship standards

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

My adminship standards

In short...

At requests for adminship it is very common for voters^[1] to bring to the discussion complicated "criteria"^[2] that a candidate^[3] must fulfil before the candidate can, in the voter's eyes, be considered to be worthy of support. After a period of thought upon this matter I now consider that is arbitrary and bureaucratic to place demands and expectations upon an adminship candidate without due regard to their previous editing activity.^[4] In my eyes, the criteria for a candidate to receive my support in a request for adminship are very simple:

Does the editor have, in my opinion, enough experience^[5] and good judgement^[6] to be able to use the tools of deletion, protection and blocking without causing harm to the encyclopædia?
- Likely = Support
- Possibly = Neutral
- Unlikely = Oppose

Extended thoughts

^ Requests for adminship is not supposed to be a vote and is a discussion, although it is common for editors to simple write Support ~~~~ or Oppose ~~~~ to express their opinion - my promise at RfA is to try to avoid this. A simple "vote" adds significantly less value to the discussion than a well-thought-out rationale. I appreciate that in the instance of a "pile-on" RfA it is difficult to add value to the discussion, but I will still attempt to explain my reason for supporting or opposing candidate. I will never oppose an RfA without explaining why or naming the editors whose points of view I support.
^ These criteria are wide-ranging. Some editors expect the candidate to have significantly contributed to at least one good article or featured article to show the candidate's experience in encyclopædia building; for some, a few did you know? articles are sufficient. Others expect the candidate to have experience at dispute resolution. Wikipedia-space (or project-space) contributions are looked upon favourably by many editors, with participation at the help desk, the administrators' noticeboard, and the administrators' incident noticeboard seen as a definite plus. Due to administrators often being involved in deleting, blocking, and protecting, well-reasoned commenting at articles for deletion, appropriate tagging of articles for speedy deletion and proposed deletion, reporting sufficiently-warned vandals at administrator intervention against vandalism and making appropriate protection requests at requests for page protection are seen as signs that a candidate would be judicious with the tools. It also often expected that an editor has more than six months experience to show their commitment to the project, and are not simply trying to win the game and "level-up" to sysop status; such behaviour is strongly discouraged and is not looked upon kindly at RfA.
I would consider expecting an adminship candidate to meet some of these criteria would not be unfair, but I certainly would not expect a candidate to have a large amount of experience in all of these areas; this is a volunteer project after all. I admit that I find some editors' adminship criteria absurd, and therefore their reasons for opposing RfAs, such as "has less than 25% of edits in Talk space; does not show ability to collaborate with other editors" or "only 2500 edits in mainspace". There is of course the well-known opposition that editors can receive if they self-nominate at RfA – opposition from an editor whose mainspace work and out-of-the-ordinary AfD approach I greatly respect. I do feel that the opposition for being a "self-nom" is somewhat unreasonable - what power is there to be gained by becoming a Wikipedia administrator? Many (or most) editors are firm believers in the no big deal philosophy and do not feel that there is "power" to be gained by becoming an administrator; I feel it is best to assume good faith and only assume "power-hunger" where a candidate has explicitly made known that they wish to abuse the tools. Such as oppose to a timid newbie could be enough to drive them off the project.
^ I repeat, RfA is not a vote with "candidates" - they really should be described as "requesters". The fact that RfA is not a vote has been demonstrated by the many requests for adminship that have passed outside the supposed bureaucrat discretionary range of 70-80% support.
^ Should we expect a hard-core article writer to have made 100 reports to administrator intervention against vandalism? Or a keen vandalism reverter to have commented on 100 articles for deletion discussions?
^ This is not counted by my using the number of edits or time on the project alone, but also by exposure to different tasks, such as those named in note 2.
^ This is the most difficult criterion to assess; I will try not to allow my disagreement with editors on any issue, whether I have stated it or not, to affect whether I will support or oppose their RfA. Such opposition would be immature and unconstructive - only if I feel the nominee's opinion was illogical and showed poor judgement, would I oppose. Good judgement by the candidate when tagging articles for speedy deletion and reporting vandals at AIV is required.

My opinion on common RfA discussion points

Canvassing

Self nominations

Disclaimer

All of my above comments are based upon my own often-flawed opinion, and it is quite possible that I may make mistakes and not judge a candidate at RfA correctly. I apologise for any inconvenience or embarrassment caused. I also regret the repeated use of weasel words in this essay.

Further reading – other editors' adminship criteria and adminship related essays

User:Pedro/RFA Standards -- Common-sense standards that all RfA participants should try to follow.
User:Pedro/Net Positive -- Pedro's thoughts on the his oft-mentioned "net positive" rationale at RfA
User:Useight/RFA Standards -- 3000+ edits preferred as well as good conduct during RfA; writing good/featured articles or adding oneself to CAT:AOR seen as not important.
User:Dlohcierekim/On RfA -- Dlohcierekim's thoughts on the RfA process, as well as the opinions of Tyrenius and Dorftrottel. Includes Dlohcierekim's standards; 3000+ edits, some article building, as well some experience in AIV, AfD or CSD preferred. Good communication skills seen as essential.
User:Bearian/Standards#WP:RFA standards -- Supports no big deal philosophy. Includes links to other editors' RfA standards that Bearian agrees with.
User:Keegan/On administrators -- Keegan's thoughts on the role of an administrator.
User:Giggy/RfA criteria -- Giggy's mostly serious adminship criteria. Employs the use of lolcats.
User:Giggy/Passing RfA for fun and profit! -- An alternative partly humorous, partly serious view on how a newbie editor may attempt to "game the system" and "achieve" adminship.
User:Giggy/On Kurt and RfA -- Giggy's essay on how editors react to Kmweber's "Oppose — I view self-noms as prima facie evidence of power hunger" rationale at RfA. The essay does not dwell on the merits of Kmweber's opposition, but on the harsh and sometimes abusive reaction it receives.
User:Ral315/WTHN -- Ral315's reasoning for supporting requests for adminship. Adminship seen as not a big deal, only requirement for a candidate is trustworthiness.

[1] Requests for adminship is not supposed to be a vote and is a discussion, although it is common for editors to simple write Support ~~~~ or Oppose ~~~~ to express their opinion - my promise at RfA is to try to avoid this. A simple "vote" adds significantly less value to the discussion than a well-thought-out rationale. I appreciate that in the instance of a "pile-on" RfA it is difficult to add value to the discussion, but I will still attempt to explain my reason for supporting or opposing candidate. I will never oppose an RfA without explaining why or naming the editors whose points of view I support.

[2] These criteria are wide-ranging. Some editors expect the candidate to have significantly contributed to at least one good article or featured article to show the candidate's experience in encyclopædia building; for some, a few did you know? articles are sufficient. Others expect the candidate to have experience at dispute resolution. Wikipedia-space (or project-space) contributions are looked upon favourably by many editors, with participation at the help desk, the administrators' noticeboard, and the administrators' incident noticeboard seen as a definite plus. Due to administrators often being involved in deleting, blocking, and protecting, well-reasoned commenting at articles for deletion, appropriate tagging of articles for speedy deletion and proposed deletion, reporting sufficiently-warned vandals at administrator intervention against vandalism and making appropriate protection requests at requests for page protection are seen as signs that a candidate would be judicious with the tools. It also often expected that an editor has more than six months experience to show their commitment to the project, and are not simply trying to win the game and "level-up" to sysop status; such behaviour is strongly discouraged and is not looked upon kindly at RfA.
I would consider expecting an adminship candidate to meet some of these criteria would not be unfair, but I certainly would not expect a candidate to have a large amount of experience in all of these areas; this is a volunteer project after all. I admit that I find some editors' adminship criteria absurd, and therefore their reasons for opposing RfAs, such as "has less than 25% of edits in Talk space; does not show ability to collaborate with other editors" or "only 2500 edits in mainspace". There is of course the well-known opposition that editors can receive if they self-nominate at RfA – opposition from an editor whose mainspace work and out-of-the-ordinary AfD approach I greatly respect. I do feel that the opposition for being a "self-nom" is somewhat unreasonable - what power is there to be gained by becoming a Wikipedia administrator? Many (or most) editors are firm believers in the no big deal philosophy and do not feel that there is "power" to be gained by becoming an administrator; I feel it is best to assume good faith and only assume "power-hunger" where a candidate has explicitly made known that they wish to abuse the tools. Such as oppose to a timid newbie could be enough to drive them off the project.

[3] I repeat, RfA is not a vote with "candidates" - they really should be described as "requesters". The fact that RfA is not a vote has been demonstrated by the many requests for adminship that have passed outside the supposed bureaucrat discretionary range of 70-80% support.

[4] Should we expect a hard-core article writer to have made 100 reports to administrator intervention against vandalism? Or a keen vandalism reverter to have commented on 100 articles for deletion discussions?

[5] This is not counted by my using the number of edits or time on the project alone, but also by exposure to different tasks, such as those named in note 2.

[6] This is the most difficult criterion to assess; I will try not to allow my disagreement with editors on any issue, whether I have stated it or not, to affect whether I will support or oppose their RfA. Such opposition would be immature and unconstructive - only if I feel the nominee's opinion was illogical and showed poor judgement, would I oppose. Good judgement by the candidate when tagging articles for speedy deletion and reporting vandals at AIV is required.

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