Thank you Delphine and Walter for your feedback. After a half year attempt to recruit new admin candidates, here I try to summarize the situation. In my views the current situation on JAWP is: 1. The JA WP is suffered by shortage of sysops. 1a. some users don't recognize the situation, because they don't recognize the situation closely. 1b. other (or the majority in my view) know the shortage but don't think themselves as possible sysop candidate. 1c. except some users, including me (I had contacts over 20 users), almost no one recommended new candidates or urge them to request for sysoship. 2. Some users, not in a small number, misunderstand sysopship of our project. 2a. Some think it a sort of authority or a kind of honour. 2b. Some users who don't know how to work sysop previledges or who are afraid not to understand policies and guideline. Shortly they underestimate themselves. 2c. Some thinks sysops should do so-and-so activities which need no sysop previledges (like casting a Welcome message, voting on VfD, archiving talk discussions or VP ...). Perhaps it can be included to a phenomenon on #3, but I think it is a sort of misunderstanding what sysops are. 3. Misunderstanding around sysopship causes phenomena: like misunderstanding as if sysopship grants a sort of authority, self-descouragement to request for sysopship, gossipng, power conflicts (in my opinion JAWP has such conflict at least twice) and so on. 4. The cultural features of Japanese (because most of Ja contributors are Japanese in birth) , for example lack of trustness but strong demand for assurance (a Japanese sociologist pointed it out in his papter), gossiping ouf of wiki, strong afraid to make a failure or a keen sense avoiding a "shame"; fear to reject of request for sysopship (it could be a shame for him): Point 4 seems to be the hardest points to alter, so I try to think how other points could be changed. For 1c, I expect more users, particular current sysops recommend good users as sysop candidates. An user who I asked him to request for sysopship replied me a recommendation from only one person was not enough make him request for sysopship. Another guy who was already a sysop urged him, iirc, and now the user is a sysop on JAWP. Offering from plural persons would be effective for other people, I think. Since today I urged already over 20 people to request for sysopship. I hope others follow me. Point 3. is hardly deatl with by itself. Misunderstanding established for a long time - for two years - couldn't be easliy resolved. I expect here each user point out such misunderstanding by occasions. Particularly a sysop have misunderstandings like "a sysop can be allowed authoritative by his nature" or "a sysop without using any sysop previledge is still a good sysop". I suspect on JA WP even some sysops have such thoughts.(In my parts I believe in a good sysop should be an active users and use his previledge appropriately by occasion. ) And one of most effective ways to resolve Pt.3, is an appropriate information on what sysop preveledges are. That is, already Notafish showed us an example. I think such close explanations would be helpful not only avoiding misunderstanding but encouraging potential candidates: like Walter said on JAWP, there is no specially difficulties on doing sysop tasks. But it is sometimes unclear even for a newly created sysops in my experience. (Not every sysop knows what is MediaWiki messages, how to merge two files and so on) To encourage potential candidates, I think also DeWP provides us with an interestign attempt. There is an "official trainee" of Wikipedia (Wikipedia-azubi) ;-) A user requested for this position from his own idea. Under some experienced Wikipedians' instruciton, he is learning how to edit articles, make a discussion, deal with trolls and so on.... He said now he writes a coursebook to be a good Wikipedian by himself. On a communith which the shortage of sysops suffers possibly need such attempt to involve more persons into administrative issues, like a trainee course and/or guidebook. -- Aphaia (at) gmail (dot) com