On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen nospam@vyznev.net wrote:
However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
Do people know me? Probably not. Even though I've edited a fair few policy articles, I don't go out of my way to become "known". And I'm not sure that egos are good for adminning.
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I got my admin buttons.
The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be quickly desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it). Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly, inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights? Sounds fishy to me.
To be honest, the more we proclaim that adminship is "no big deal", or "not a badge" or "not prestigious" or a "reward for good editing", the more I suspect that all those things are true. Hell, the word "promote" is even used on the "failed RfAs" page.
Steve