Note to Abe Sokolov (aka 172)
And I also found it odd that you
wanted to be an Admin so badly even though, in my experience, you haven't
done much Wikipedia Weeding or had a desire to edit protected pages.------------------
It is interesting (hum...who said what about that expression ?) you give (among other arguments of course :-)) as a poor justification for asking to be a sysop the fact 172 did not commonly ask to edit protected pages. I think it is a bad argument for not granting sysophood. Reading your comment, I reflected I long gave up the idea of having any impacts on the content of protected pages. I just avoir looking at them (I never look at the main page now), I consider I have no real right to edit them for each time the process required is to beg and convince someone to do it for me. Which I consider bad for a wiki.
Curious, but I miss Ed here.
Some time ago, he led a nice description of the different levels held by users in wikipedia.
I think these descriptions are changing or will change soon.
Imho, before, a sysop was a super user. Ie, someone who had super powers. The "normal" state (the regular user) being enough to work without much trouble, to give his opinion, and to generally participate in the decision making process. Usually super powers are restricted to a small class of people.
Now, I think that if most people are upgraded to the sysop status, the regular (standard) status will becomes the sysop status.
Ultimately, the only ones left in the simple user status will be a couple of weird people, questionables editors (per sysops estimate), newbies, trolls and vandals. Which probably means there will be more "bad" or "said bad" edits by simple users. Further instoring in every one mind that simple users have a low-trust status.
On one hand, it is quite good there are more sysops, for it could mean more balance ("could").
On the other hand, the simple user really get a lower-status, and I fear it will very soon have a very strong smell of "not to be trusted" by default.
I think a simple user will little by little see his own abilities to participate in the decision process shrink (potential e.g. very annoying users pages and talk pages being protected).
But right, some could argue that someone willing to participate in the decision process could ask to be a sysop.
Going back to what is basically the role of an simple user : editing then...I also think the editing moves of a simple user are also slowly being restricted and misconsidered, because of a growing bureaucracy on the english wiki.
"Trust me", french people are very accutely aware of bureaucracy when it begins to plague a process :-))))
More often than not, when I have a problem on the english wikipedia, either I just drop it by anticipated tiredness, or I feel like entering a french social security administration building (incidently, my whole country is on strike today on retirement issues...well, except me of course :-))
For so many barely interesting issues, a simple user needs to find the proper page, read all the rules and guidelines beforehand (not knowing the rules is an offense), check if the page is protected (if so, head for someone to unprotect it, justify your request for unprotection), head for the talk page, check if the talk page is not too long (if so, head for someone to clean it), add your request, wait, justify, wait, justify, wait, justify, wait...head for the pump (ask someone to clean it before), try to raise someone interest to make the sysop act for you, wait, justify again, head for the mailing list..., maybe propose a wikismile for the action (what ! bribing !)
At this point, either you are labelled "heavy" or you drop the topic.
And each time I am heading for one of these processes, when I see a sysop just do it in a couple of seconds without having to justify anything to anyone, I am accutely aware a simple user is a lower-user, with less editing rights than others and with less trust, even if it just relies on a little flag somewhere. And I wonder over little flag importance over just common sense.