While casually browsing through old RfAs recently, I found a comment I'd made about adminship being no big deal. I basically expressed my philosophy as that if you won't do harm (or, more precisely, the harm you do is so minuscule that it is vastly outweighed by your positive contributions) with the mop and bucket, you deserve it.
I also realised, from looking at other comments made on that RfA, and from reading the opinions of people in present-day RfAs, that this philosophy isn't one adopted by many. People look for reasons to oppose, even if they don't have much to do with harm. For example, why should writing an FA or not doing enough vandalfighting be impediments to adminship? This is not evidence that the candidate will do harm with the tools, or that by approving the candidate, we will be harming Wikipedia.
It is true, of course, that these issues have nothing to do with some other problems with RfA and its culture. But this thing I'm raising seems very basic to me - adminship is no big deal in the sense that if you want it, you can have it, unless there is proof that significant harm will be done if you have the tools. Would it be worth noting this in big red <h1>-sized letters on RfA, so that at the very least, we won't reject people for silly reasons.
Just to pick one random example, many (half?) of the opposes at [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Navou 2]] (still ongoing) are literally along the lines of this neutral vote: "I would love to support you, as you are an established and experienced editor. However, as Tellyaddict has pointed out. You do not have enough edits in the section "mainspace"."
Bloody hell. The whole point we have standards for time and edit count is to have some measure of experience. If the guy knows his stuff sufficiently, why should having "only" a thousand mainspace edits, or "only" five months of experience be an impediment?
I don't know who Navou is - and there are valid concerns raised about him/her. My comments here are not comments on him/her, but general comments about the sorry state of RfA. The whole point of RfA is this: TO WEED OUT PEOPLE WHO DO HARM WITH THE MOP AND BUCKET. If there is no evidence that the candidate will do harm (assuming, of course, that the user has made enough contributions for there to be enough data to evaluate him/her), the candidate should pass.
We could get the 'crats to disregard opinions that do not pay heed to this basic principle of adminship being no big deal. I wouldn't rule that out. But this seems to be symptomatic of a basic problem with the culture of RfA, and the culture of many people caught up in our processes.
Coercion is pointless if it only addresses the symptoms, and not the cause. We disbanded Esperanza because it was reforming out of coercion, rather than an actual change in the culture it represented. We need to address this fundamental problem with RfA's culture - or rethink our entire process of appointing admins.
Johnleemk