Admin Elitism (part 2)
Actually, the previous submission wasn't all I had to say; I got cut off because I had to leave.
The last sentence, "Why shouldn't adminship be a trophy", was never answered be me.
The answer is, "because it isn't".
Its original purpose was because somebody would use the tools. But it seems that not only does someone need to require the tools, they *also* need to write new articles. Which has jack to do with adminship.
That may seem to have little to do with the topic at hand, but in fact it is closely related.
Writing good articles and doing general non-admin things should NOT be a reason for adminship. An article-writer would have little to no use for the admin tools. And a recent-canges patroller who is turned down because she "doesn't write articles" would be rightly confused.
I think the root of this "adminship is a reward for writing articles etc" attitude is that people think just that and forget the core principles of being an administrator.
My suggestion to root all the unecessary sysops is to create two eschelons of "elevated" users.
The "writers" and the "sysops".
A sysop would be just like an ordinary sysop; delete, protect, block, and reverse all those.
But a writer would be more of an honorific and would not have some of the capabilities. The only capabilities a writer would have would be to delete OR protect (haven't decided yet).
A sysop's only responsibility should be to understand Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and be willing to use the sysop tools. I would actually be a writer since I don't partol RC or go to AIV.
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