We just need to get rid of the bottleneck at the developer level. IMO there is no need to leave people in suspense after asking to be an Admin - this gives the impression that Adminship is something special and tightly restricted to a very select few. I can only imagine that such a perception would tend to make people think twice before asking. The only non-newbie users who should think twice before asking are users who tend to get into more than their fair share of edit wars and POV disputes or who are otherwise not viewed as being trustworthy.
Really :-)
One thing that imho differenciate sysop from developper is this
* developper have power to see and to make things, without the others knowing, and without them being able to reverse these actions. Such as looking for a user ip, and permanent deletions. These are necessarily people who have to trust strongly
* sysops have special powers over others, but no powers that cannot be tracked (sorry, checked) by other sysops, and no power that can not be "reversed" by other sysops. If a sysop ban an ip, this action can be undone by another sysop just as easily. If a sysop delete a page, this action can be undone by another sysop (not so easily though). Consequences : it is better to trust sysops, but that is not required, since any bad action by a misguided sysop can be repaired by another sysop. That is balance. And any user who feel he has been abused can ask another sysop to revert what was done by the first sysop.
But...knowing someone ip is not reversible. It is permanent.
If a sysop considers a person to be a vandal, and begin to track his ip; and that person ask another sysop to stop the tracking, and make the first one "forget" the ip, the second will be unable to do anything.
That's where I would draw the limit of sysophood. When it comes to know or to be able to do something other sysops have no leverage upon.
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