I've participated in a few RFAs, so I might as well write down what I think about when I vote support/neutral/oppose in an RfA. Since RfA is a discussion, I'm fine if anyone presents a counter-argument to any of my voting rationales.
I perceive adminship as just maintenance work, but it's maintenance work that requires a combination of people skills and extensive knowledge of policy. I try to have reasonable expectations and I will almost always support if I think of you as a net positive.
Here are some other things I think about:
- Civility: it's one of the five pillars, so please don't bite the newbies, or the regulars. Incivility is pretty much a dealbreaker for me.
- Trust. Can I trust you not to do something like delete the main page? If you do do something like delete the main page, do I trust that you will you do your best to fix it and be accountable? I'm okay with mistakes in the past, as no one is perfect, but I do care about sincere apologies and not repetitively making the same mistakes.
- Knowledge of policy. There are many ways this can be demonstrated: answers to RFA questions, helping at the help desk/Teahouse, UAA, CCI, NPP, AfC, AfD, creating/improving articles, etc. If you're generally trustworthy and knowledgeable in the area you'd like to contribute to as an admin, I'm incredibly likely to support.
Regardless of the outcome, I appreciate the intentions of anyone who is willing to take on administrative responsibilities. If I oppose an RfA, I'm willing to consider changing my mind in the future.
Editcountitis
Edit count is often used as a metric in RfAs. I once noticed an !oppose vote that stated 20,000 edits was the de facto minimum for an RfA candidate nowadays. It is common for Wikipedians to state that edit counts do not reflect the value of any given editor's contributions. However, I do think that sometimes editors with higher edit counts forget what that can actually mean in practice. Therefore, I wish more people would consider:
- We're all outliers – Out of the millions of registered accounts, there's roughly 5,000 editors who make 100 edits every month and roughly 500 who make more than 1,000 edits a month. If we are evaluating RfA candidates based purely on edit count, the first group of editors would need to make 100+ edits a month with no breaks for 200 months (16.6 years). The second group of editors, if they kept their same pace of editing consistent, would only need 20 months (slightly less than 2 years).
- If someone in the first group took an average of 15 minutes to make an edit (e.g. reading comments on a talk page before writing a quick reply, adding a citation to a previously uncited sentence in an article, etc) and they made 100 edits a month, they would be dedicating 25 hours of their time every month to Wikipedia. If their edits took an average of 30 minutes, they would be dedicating an average of 50 hours of their time every month to Wikipedia. Over the 16 years it would take for them to meet de facto RfA edit count standards, they would have spent somewhere between 4,800 – 9,600 hours editing Wikipedia.
- Most people have lives outside of Wikipedia and can only dedicate so much of their time here. Personally, I work full time and sleep on a regular basis. I also have other responsibilities in my day to day life. Wikipedia isn't my only hobby, even if it's where I focus most of my attention. Realistically, there is only so much time the average person has to volunteer as a Wikipedian. People have varying experiences that can affect this too. For example, women generally have less leisure time than men.
I've participated in a few RFAs, so I might as well write down what I think about when I vote support/neutral/oppose in an RfA. Since RfA is a discussion, I'm fine if anyone presents a counter-argument to any of my voting rationales.
I perceive adminship as just maintenance work, but it's maintenance work that requires a combination of people skills and extensive knowledge of policy. I try to have reasonable expectations and I will almost always support if I think of you as a net positive.
Here are some other things I think about:
- Civility: it's one of the five pillars, so please don't bite the newbies, or the regulars. Incivility is pretty much a dealbreaker for me.
- Trust. Can I trust you not to do something like delete the main page? If you do do something like delete the main page, do I trust that you will you do your best to fix it and be accountable? I'm okay with mistakes in the past, as no one is perfect, but I do care about sincere apologies and not repetitively making the same mistakes.
- Knowledge of policy. There are many ways this can be demonstrated: answers to RFA questions, helping at the help desk/Teahouse, UAA, CCI, NPP, AfC, AfD, creating/improving articles, etc. If you're generally trustworthy and knowledgeable in the area you'd like to contribute to as an admin, I'm incredibly likely to support.
Regardless of the outcome, I appreciate the intentions of anyone who is willing to take on administrative responsibilities. If I oppose an RfA, I'm willing to consider changing my mind in the future.
Editcountitis
Edit count is often used as a metric in RfAs. I once noticed an !oppose vote that stated 20,000 edits was the de facto minimum for an RfA candidate nowadays. It is common for Wikipedians to state that edit counts do not reflect the value of any given editor's contributions. However, I do think that sometimes editors with higher edit counts forget what that can actually mean in practice. Therefore, I wish more people would consider:
- We're all outliers – Out of the millions of registered accounts, there's roughly 5,000 editors who make 100 edits every month and roughly 500 who make more than 1,000 edits a month. If we are evaluating RfA candidates based purely on edit count, the first group of editors would need to make 100+ edits a month with no breaks for 200 months (16.6 years). The second group of editors, if they kept their same pace of editing consistent, would only need 20 months (slightly less than 2 years).
- If someone in the first group took an average of 15 minutes to make an edit (e.g. reading comments on a talk page before writing a quick reply, adding a citation to a previously uncited sentence in an article, etc) and they made 100 edits a month, they would be dedicating 25 hours of their time every month to Wikipedia. If their edits took an average of 30 minutes, they would be dedicating an average of 50 hours of their time every month to Wikipedia. Over the 16 years it would take for them to meet de facto RfA edit count standards, they would have spent somewhere between 4,800 – 9,600 hours editing Wikipedia.
- Most people have lives outside of Wikipedia and can only dedicate so much of their time here. Personally, I work full time and sleep on a regular basis. I also have other responsibilities in my day to day life. Wikipedia isn't my only hobby, even if it's where I focus most of my attention. Realistically, there is only so much time the average person has to volunteer as a Wikipedian. People have varying experiences that can affect this too. For example, women generally have less leisure time than men.