I'm writing from the POV of having just nominated somebody for admin
who did not succeed, and where the discussion was exceptionally
rancorous--an expoerience I think everyone on both sides found very
unpleasant.
I nonetheless think we are basically doing it right. As judging by
results, we have made errors in both directions, and corrected some of
them. Rejecting a good person is correctable, but some good people,
after being once rejected, never tried again. Accepting is--with
considerable more difficulty--correctable, but not all the ones whose
adminship ought to be removed haver in fact been deadmined ; some of
those accepted who need to be removed, and needed to be removed are
still there. But I don;t see how we could construct a much process
within our limitations.
I can think of improvements, of course: in particular, I would favor
permitting people only a limit number of questions or comments. I
might favor more active supervision of the discussions.
And one thing I am sure of: we do not need more admins. We need more
admins who are substantially active. We need more active people
willing to help. Most of what I do that occurs in the various
processes can actually be done by anyone who knows the rules.
The key step in getting more admins is in any case the first step,
getting more people to start writing Wikipedia in the first place. The
only actually necessary step to get more people actively involved,
admin or not, is to get them started contributing. All rules that
might discourage new contributors needs to be reworked, and the
priority for admin is to carry out their tasks to remove only the
trolls, with the action when undecided always being to encourage
anyone who seems like a potentially positive contributor. We need to
give new people every opportunity to improve their articles, rather
than the current tendency to our taking advantage of every opportunity
to remove it.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG