On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam(a)vyznev.net> wrote:
However irritating this might seem to the person who
is told that, this
can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't
know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still
interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again
in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough
yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
Do people know me? Probably not. Even though I've edited a fair few
policy articles, I don't go out of my way to become "known". And I'm
not sure that egos are good for adminning.
sock. The six months or so between the two events
served not only to
familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin
rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly
desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it).
Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting
ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly,
inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights?
Sounds fishy to me.
To be honest, the more we proclaim that adminship is "no big deal", or
"not a badge" or "not prestigious" or a "reward for good
editing", the
more I suspect that all those things are true. Hell, the word
"promote" is even used on the "failed RfAs" page.
Steve