Anecdotally, I see a lot of people decline the opportunity because the RFA gauntlet is so obnoxious.
Looking around, reform of RfA seems to have been thought of seriously in 2006, but perhaps not since. [[Wikipedia:Admin coaching]] has offered one solution: is this not being productive? One thing that occurs to me is that a self-test page could be useful.
Charles
There's a self test that was developed in 2008, I found it useful but I think it is rarely used and might be out of date. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Filll/AGF_Challenge_2_Multiple_Choice
Admin coaching is pretty much dead after coachees started being opposed for going through admin coaching.
There have been no end of attempts to reform RFA mooted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship
Even if the crats started to ignore incivil !votes, opposes that are not supported by difs and opposes for supporting particular policiess, we still have a problem that expectations in terms of tenure and editcountitis have put adminship out of reach for most editors.
Personally I favour the on the job training option - increase the amount of training modules and expect admins to complete relevant modules before using an unfamiliar subset of the tools.
Another option is to agree a minimum number of active admins needed, and hold a monthly election to restore numbers to that level. This isn't ideal but it would have the advantage of negating the arbitrary inflation of RFA standards.
But the page has long become deadlocked and it seems to be difficult to get a consensus that we have a phenomena, let alone that RFA is broken and needs change.
I agree that a "lot of people decline the opportunity because the RFA gauntlet is so obnoxious". I think part of the recent downturn is the chill effect of some recent very unpleasant RFAs. But the escalation of standards and arbitrary nature of the process are also deterring or delaying candidates. I have two potential candidates who I have been speaking to, one has said he may run after he has done 10,000 edits and the other is concerned that his huggling might be counted against him (his >10,000 non huggle edits on their own would very probably get him through).
I think that the projects would be a good hunting ground for potential admins, as would be looking at currently active editors who have both Rollback and Autoreviewer. Lots of editors started editing in the last 30 months, it would be nice to get a few more of them as admins, and even with current RFA standards I'm sure we can find more than 2 candidates a month who can pass RFA. But if we want adminship to be the norm for all longterm clueful, civil contributors we will need a new method to appoint admins.
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