Stephen Bain wrote:
I would much more readily support a candidate who can link to, say, a couple of talk page discussions where they were able to contribute constructively even when people disagreed with them, or even better, discussions where they provided a third opinion which helped in a dispute between two parties, [...]
And by doing that, you are slightly skewing the permissible sets of attitudes in admins towards what *you* consider "constructive" or "an option which helps in a dispute". This is how we got into the current situation where newcomers perceive the community of admins as an abusive cabal.
Timwi