User:L235/Wanting to be an admin is a good thing


 * One common trope on Wikipedia is "Anyone who would be a good administrator doesn't want to be one."
 * This is just wrong, and has contributed to a culture of being afraid to say that one envisions running for adminship.
 * Very few of our admins actually got dragged kicking and screaming into the role, which of course is just not a good sustainable long-term strategy for getting new sysops anyway.
 * And we need new sysops, and we should celebrate when people want to step up, and we should equally celebrate when people think sysop work is where they could best contribute and plan to seek community trust for such a role in the future and would like to work towards that.
 * Now, there are two milder formulations of this sentiment that are a bit more reasonable:
 * A sentiment that people with those This user is not a Wikipedia administrator but would like to be one someday userboxes don't quite get it. Wanting to serve the community as a sysop is an admirable trait, but probably not one that one should build one's on-wiki identity around.
 * A sense that some users want to be a sysop not because they want to serve the community but rather because they like the idea and fanciness of being a sysop. That's a genuinely bad sentiment, though I think it's pretty rare among actual RfA candidates.
 * But, by and large, I think some community members genuinely think that the platonic ideal of a sysop candidate is one who "doesn't want" the role. That's just wrong to me. Every sysop is a volunteer and volunteered for the sysop role, and I would hate for most sysops to be serving out of a sense of obligatory duty. Being a sysop is a hard role at times, but it's also a rewarding one. And people who don't feel that the role is at all rewarding are better off not serving as sysops.

to expand

 * the five-point path of how this happened, possibly
 * a bit less negative on the userbox
 * normative vs. descriptive
 * what should be less stigmatized is "I think that being a sysop is how I could best serve the community, but understand that I don't meet the RfA standard yet. I'm therefore working toward meeting those standards.". But it is now.
 * descriptively, announcing that you want to be an admin also gives others a chance to collect diffs
 * normatively, I feel like a bunch of Wikimedians feel justified in their belief that anyone who wants to be an admin is suspicious, and I think that's wrong
 * "The "you shouldn't want to be an admin" is for like very immature people For everyone else, wanting more responsibility and scope is literally natural and normal"
 * There are good and bad reasons to want to be an admin.
 * Maybe valid: Adminship is service work and it's a bit weird to be very enthusiastic about doing service work. Not inherently bad, but maybe confusing and therefore suspicious?