G'day Gabe, The most important job for an admin is to interact with people on talk pages. Rightly or wrongly, admins are perceived to have special status on Wikipedia, and their words and actions will often have more impact on editors than the words and actions of an ordinary editor might. Admins[0] can mediate a dispute and prevent the need for blocks or protections. They can convince users to stop vandalising or spamming and become good contributors. They can calm users who have been improperly accused of vandalism or spamming. They can explain our policies and encourage users to become Clueful. They can also drive users away from the project. They can convince a tester that Wikipedia is not really a very nice place, and cause him to become a vandal. They can offend a good faith user by calling him a "spammer". They can spread misinformation about our policies and encourage users to become Clueless. Sooner or later, an administrator will interact with other users on their talkpages. We need to know: is this bloke an insensitive jerk? We do not know this if all that user has done is revert vandals, post to AIV, and use those silly {{testN}} templates. And that's before you even look at the concern SlimVirgin raised. I had not considered it, but it is true: if we don't know what the "voice" of an admin candidate "sounds" like, it's much easier for a Trojan admin to slip through unrecognised. [0] Any user, most of the time, but admins are more likely to be successful, because people pay more attention to us. -- [[User:MarkGallagher]]