User:Michig/Adminship criteria

To be given the admin tools, I would expect an editor to:
 * Have contributed significantly for at least six months (at least 5,000 manual edits, preferably more than 10,000) with a reasonable spread over different areas
 * Have demonstrated good communication skills, including appropriate use of edit summaries
 * Have demonstrable commitment to respecting consensus (no, really, you don't know better than everyone else)
 * Not have been blocked in the past 12 months, unless by mistake, or behaved in any way that should have resulted in them being blocked
 * Have made a significant contribution to article content, showing an understanding of how creating and improving articles works (which is the core purpose of this project)
 * Not have a record of inappropriate AfD nominations, Proposed deletions, or CSD tagging
 * Have shown through discussions in areas such as AfD that they understand when deletion is and is not appropriate (within a reasonable range of the inclusion-deletion spectrum), and that they appreciate that fixing and improving articles is not "someone else's job - you want to keep it, you fix it"
 * Demonstrate an understanding of deletion policies and processes, since getting this wrong can be highly damaging, and an understanding and willingness to consider alternatives to deletion
 * Indicate areas where admin tools are likely to be used
 * Not have had an unsuccessful RfA in the previous six months if the last one was close, or 12 months if the last one was a clear rejection
 * Not have altered their behaviour significantly in the month before the RfA starts
 * Have clue

RfA reform
RfA is sometimes seen as a hostile enviroment but the reality is that Wikipedia can be a hostile environment for administrators. The whole RfA reform movement seems to be based on the assumption that we are getting less admins solely due to RfA, ignoring other reasons why experienced editors don't seek the admin tools, or why existing admins give them up. We keep being told RfA is broken without any evidence that people who should be successful are not and without anyone coming up with anything better to replace it. Yes, it would be good if people were nicer in RfA discussions but that's true across the whole project. If people who could make good admins don't want the tools, 'reforming' RfA will not solve that.