Kraftlos' criteria for Adminship
- Involvement in at least one Wikiproject, or has other significant community involvement
- Roughly 10,000 non-automated edits
- Should have vandal-fighting experience, but this should not be the bulk of their edits. If manual edits are still more than 10k, then this doesn't apply
- Super-majority of edits should be comprised of main space and article talk edits, or can be demonstrated to be strongly committed to content building
- Adequately answers policy questions, policy work preferred
- Does not promise not to work in specific admin areas, the recall process is difficult, we can't depend on self-restraint
- Preferably not a self-nomination, though for a longtime editor with a good history this is fine.
- Has specific work that they are involved with that would be aided by the tools
- Humility. They should be confident that they can do the job, but they should have a humble approach to their request
- Does not have incivility issues
- No blocks in the last two years, without a good explanation
- In most cases, a candidate should have been editing for over two years
I disagree with what Jimbo says, "becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*; it might not have been so important when this site was young and small, but we've grown and there's a lot to gain from a good admin (or lose from a bad admin). I want to trust that the person holding the tools has the project's interest in mind, and isn't just looking for bragging rights. The candidate should also have a solid history. Though it's sometimes hard to determine one's motivation, a user shouldn't appear to be padding their resume for a future RfA. They should do the right kind of work because it needs to be done, and because they care about Wikipedia, not because it's good experience for becoming an admin. That's what these criteria are designed to determine.
I don't think the tools should be handed out to people just because they've been here six months and haven't caused many problems. "Not breaking stuff" isn't really something of which to be proud. And, of course, these criteria eliminate about two thirds of all candidates. That is by design. I've had run-ins in the past with admins who don't know policy, and I don't want to put any more of those into our system.