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During the early days of Wikipedia, in 2003, User:Jimbo Wales said, "I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*." This quote has been cited countless times since, and remains, to this day, a common argument. Admins have been referred to as "janitors" to signify the every-day cleanup they carry out. However, the times have changed. While administrators still have no additional editorial authority, it is a bit of a bigger deal.
"Sysop" and "administrator" mean the same thing. However, their connotations are vastly different. Sysop (system operator) is a technical term for the admin flag. Administrator is a term for someone who administers a certain endeavor; as such, this role has as much of a social aspect as it does a technical one. Initially, all administrators served as sysops, but the position has evolved in recent years, especially since 2006. Users with the sysop flag are now responsible for maintaining numerous community-driven processes, some of which have wide-reaching and real-world impacts.
Admin actions often stir up considerable controversy, some of which occasionally spills into the media. They are entrusted with the ability to block any user from the project, delete most pages, and mass-revert any number of edits by any contributor, just to name a few. Obviously some perspective is needed; most of what admins can do is confined to behind-the-scenes. Nonetheless, care is needed when selecting new administrators to prevent abuse or misuse, even if unintentional.
Requests for adminship is a process that has also matured significantly since its conception. Look at this revision of the page from June 19, 2003. Back before fancy signatures and timestamps, editors would nominate themselves with a one-line blurb and wait for a handful of editors to agree or disagree. Today's RfA involves a separate subpage, often with pages upon pages of discussion, numerous questions, and often well over a hundred votes. This advance in scrutiny was, and still is, necessary to keep up with the sensitive needs of the English Wikipedia. As the encyclopedia continues to grow, its readership closely following, the RfA process will likely continue to become more demanding.
So "no big deal" is no longer very accurate, and it really can't be used verbatim to justify particular views or opinions. Overall adminship is now more prestigious than it once was, for better or for worse.
NOTE: The contents of this page were retrieved from the page User:Juliancolton/No Big Deal, originally authored on 4 March 2010, but deleted likely under WP:G7.