User:Velella/sandbox/RFA - yet another approach

Request for Adminship - yet another approach.

"This is not a wikipedia article - it is an essay and work in progress in the hope of catharsis from the mental effort of trying to understand both the WP:RFA process and what it is intended to deliver."

Editors who believe that they may be of value to Wikipedia may nominate themselves or be nominated by another to become an admin and thus wield the tools of power.

Others may covet adminship in order to wreak havoc (at least for a short time), others because it gives a (false) sense of power over others, and a final tranche seek adminship because they are hat collectors and this is one more hat to collect.

The current process requires a form of questionnaire to be completed followed by an inquisition by other editors who pore over the nominees recent and past (and very long past) editing history to try and assess whether this editor can be trusted with the tools of administration.

This process can be vicariously entertaining for both inquisitor and the serried ranks of watchers, but is generally considered no fun at all for the applicant. As a consequence, numbers of requests for adminship have been steadily falling, although the quality of those who are accepted remains generally high.

The issue is whether there is a different process which would yield the same or better results by producing an acceptable number of admins of a quality no lower that those currently working in Wikipedia.

Since any editor can lie through his or her teeth during the inquisition phase, it is doubtful whether this is of much help to the decision makers. The only certain measure is the past performance of the editor which is available for all to see in the history.