With all this hubbub about admins and making more admins with no criteria and why shouldn't we just bump everyone up a level! and all that jazz, I think it is high time we evaluate what admins need to be or do to be successful. Then from there, in my opinion, we can lower the bar, leave things as they are, or continue to pursue this everyone's an admin!!! deal. (Sorry if I've inserted my POV too much into the preceding paragraph)
So. This is how I see it.
Admins must: be neutral, above all else. when they block when they protect when they delete recuse when they are unable to be neutral have the understanding of policy to know when it is objectively okay to block/protect/delete be able to judge consensus not be a timebomb
Therefore, admin candidates must: demonstrate they can participate in discussions in which they have no personal invested interest, with positive effect to those who do have personal invested interest demonstrate they know the difference between their opinion, consensus, and the Truth (which doesn't exist on wiki) demonstrate they recognize their own bias and will refuse to act upon it
To be honest, I have no idea how they would demonstrate this. But perhaps if we switched to a system of vouching, whereby different people would say "I have worked with this user and they have always been neutral in disputes and blahblahblah." like the nomination, except more of them. And no edit counts and no FAs and no namespace distribution. If one is cautious enough to always work within policy, one will always check unknown policies before doing anything one has never done before. And then perhaps once the candidate has enough people vouching for them, they're promoted.
Or maybe something completely different. But in my opinion, adminship is not edit counts and vandal fighting; it's dealing with things as a neutral agent of the 'pedia. Well, at least when one has one's admin hat on.
--keitei