User:Sephiroth BCR/RfA Criteria

This page lists the criteria I utilize for judging candidates at the requests for adminship process. These are not hard and fast rules, but rather general guidelines that I use for viewing candidates. I reserve the right to abridge my own criteria in extraordinary circumstances; that said, I will follow them the majority of the time.

Criteria

 * Civility – an absolute necessity. The candidate must be able to consider situations and interact with other users with a clear head and an objective standpoint. All candidates at RfA have strong opinions in regards to article content, inclusionism, and so on and such forth, but must be able to express their beliefs in a civil tone, and be open-minded in regards to compromise.
 * Article contributions – the candidate must have worked significantly on several articles; while I do not require that the candidate produce featured articles, featured lists, or good articles, I expect that the candidate is familiar with these processes and what different grades of article quality constitute. Interaction on talk pages of articles in regards to article content is beneficial, as is participation in the relevant WikiProject(s). Exceptions to this criteria are often with WikiGnomes, who often make slight but beneficial changes to many articles, and editors who work significantly in the Wikipedia namespace. That said, article contributions show a candidate's knowledge of policies and guidelines relevant to guidelines that administrative tools may impact, especially neutral point of view, notability, undue weight, and biographies of living persons. Answers to questions posed in the RfA that show knowledge of these policies may sway my stance as well.
 * Administrative areas – the candidate does not need to have experience in all administrative areas, but should be generally familiar in the areas they seek to work in per their answer to the first required question. For instance, those wishing to delete articles marked for speedy deletion should be familiar with the speedy deletion criteria and have experience in tagging articles for speedy deletion. Candidates that wish to specialize in a certain administrative area at the expense of others are perfectly fine so long as they have the necessary experience. In general, if I assess that the candidate will be a net positive for the encyclopedia if he is given administrative tools, I will tend to give my support.

Causes of concern

 * Block log – any recent blocks will not reflect well on the candidate, whether they are for violations of the three-revert rule, edit warring, or disruption. I am willing to forgive candidates for past blocks if they show that they have made a genuine effort to repair the behavior that led them to be blocked. Candidates that mention the block and how they have changed in question three will be received favorably.
 * Recent mediation – if the candidate has been the subject of a request for comment, reported to the incidents section of the administrator noticeboard, or a party to a request for arbitration, these will generally reflect poorly on the candidate unless they can adequately defend their actions, express repetance for their actions, or if in my estimation, they were the wronged party.

Irrelevant issues

 * Self-nominations – I do not care whether the candidate nominated himself or herself or was nominated by another user. The candidate should be judged on his or her own merit. That said, nominations from users I respect reflect well on the candidate.
 * Stance on inclusion – whether the candidate is an inclusionist or deletionist in regards to the notability of articles is irrelevant in my book. So long as the candidate shows that he or she respects consensus and knows how to adequately gauge consensus, his or her own view on inclusionism does not concern me. That said, if the candidate's views on inclusion clearly affect their overall judgment and their assessment of consensus, then I will treat such a candidate in a negative manner unless I believe their stance is largely in the right.

On mistakes, skeletons in the closet, and other errors

 * Simply put, mistakes happen. All users make a moronic edit once in a while that causes them to lose respect in the eyes of the community. This does not mean that they are a bad editor. It is the job of the requests for adminship process to assess whether giving the candidate the administrative tools will benefit the project as a whole in the long run. As such, it is important to forgive mistakes, especially those that are singled out and not representative of the candidate's entire body of edits. Whether the candidate is a net positive in my book will have a large impact on whether I support or oppose.