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Contents 1 My thoughts... 1.1 ...on not voting for admins 1.2 ...on the minimum required standards for becoming an admin 1.3 ...on not involving myself in policies/further developement of Wikipedia/RFC's/etc 1.4 ...on anons 1.5 ...on newbies

[edit] My thoughts...

[edit] ...on not voting for admins

At the time of this writing, I've never voted either way for any RFA's. Although I might vote in the future, this will probably only happen if it is regarding a user I've worked with on several occasions, and thus has gotten to know somewhat. I generally don't like to go through the contribs of some user I haven't worked with to decide if he/she can be trusted as an admin, as this would take way too much time to do thoroughly, and as such would mean less time to contribute in other areas.

That being said, I do keep an eye in case someone familiar gets nominated, but I'm not going to nominate anyone in the near future, as I currently work mostly alone on whatever I'm working on.

[edit] ...on the minimum required standards for becoming an admin

Frequent use of edit summaries (with the exception of your own userpage)! As nothing is more irritating when looking through a page history with lots of edits that doesn't say a thing about what's been done.

Wide area of contribution. An admin should have experience with several areas of Wikipedia, and not just vandalhunting or writing articles. Any admin should be familiar with the concept of image licensing, and should have had at least some experience with this, as well as sorting stubs, creating templates and categories, as well as experience in writing/editing articles (although this isn't too important) and vandalhunting.

Wellbehaved. As the admins are portrayed as the bigwigs around here (like it or not), they should be civil and friendly towards all users, including vandals. Even if a vandal has somehow managed to vandalize your userpage 100 times, you should in a polite way point out that this is unacceptable, and that he/she risks a block if it continues. But an admin should at the same time not tolerate vandalism, and should revert and warn in a proper way.

Although the number of edits made doesn't say antything about the true value of the contributions, I feel that a prospective admin should have atleast 3000 edits, spread across several namespaces showing that the user has at least some knowledge about the various parts of WP.

[edit] ...on not involving myself in policies/further developement of Wikipedia/RFC's/etc

Although I contribute quite often, I try not to get into discussing policies, or any future developement. The reason for this is quite simply that I haven't got the time! If I were to involve myself in discussing policies, contributing to RFC's, developing stuff on the toolserver and so on, I'm afraid I'd run out of time to do other things! Don't take this the wrong way, I'd like to contribute, and I will if someone asks me, but don't hang around and wait for me to involve myself just out of the blue! If you need a comment on a RFC, ask me! The same goes for everything else!

[edit] ...on anons

Anons are great! I started as one, and so did many others. Although anons are responsible for much vandalism, they are also responsible for numerous edits, fixing typos, grammar, and sometimes even rewriting complete articles! The whole point about Wikipedia is that it's supposed to be free-for-all, which it still is, but it should also be possible to create articles for all, without any demand that they register (although this is simple and fast)!

[edit] ...on newbies

Don't ever bite a newcomer! If a newcomer starts a new article, and someone afd's it, or decides to speedy it (or do anything else that will ultimately result in the deletion/removal of the article) the newbie should be informed. A lot of newcomers write an article which gets deleted, and then they decide to recreate it (with the same result), and often end up with the original article being deleted, in addition to a warning for continued violation of some or other policy. This might just scare them away, and could be avoided if the editor nominating an article for deletion could give the newbie a little heads-up, and also tell him why the article is afd'd.