User:MJ94/RfA Rationale

When I review candidates at RFA, in addition to browsing through the candidate's contributions, I will check to see if the candidate meets the following criteria.

1. At least 8 months experience as well as sustained, active editing throughout that period.
2. Approximately 1,000+ edits to the mainspace, and approximately 300+ edits to the project namespace. I'd like to see the candidate have at least, if not more than, 5,000 edits total.
3. In order for me to support, a candidate must be well versed in the policies and guidelines of the administrative areas he/she is interested to work in. This is very important to me. If the candidate is not well versed, that shows me that he/she does not understand the areas he/she wishes to work in.
4. Candidate must have a clean block log or no blocks within the last two years of sustained editing. Some exceptions may be made here.
5. There must not be any open arbitration cases, nor recent reports at AN/I regarding the candidate. Recent controversial incidents will also make me lean towards opposing.
6. Candidate must have accurate CSD taggings, and be very, very familiar with combating vandalism, as well as have knowledge on what AIV is and how it works. These points are very important in administration, as blocks and deletions are very common here. This is especially important if the candidate wishes to work in the maintenance aspect of Wikipedia.
7. Edit summaries are very important as they help users understand the intentions of one's edits.

Additional information

• I do not suffer from Editcountitis. Therefore, the number of edits one has is not of importance to me. I firmly stand by the saying "quality, not quantity". This means, I don't count the number of edits the candidate has. I check their quality of the contributions. I ask myself, "has the user successfully vandalized helped the encyclopedia?". However, this does not mean that the number of edits the candidate has is not important. The counts mentioned above are simply a baseline number of contribution a candidate should have in specific areas of Wikipedia, and are normally what I look for in a prospective candidate.
• The amount of automated/assisted edits a candidate has does not matter to me in any way. I believe that these simply help users to perform tasks faster than if they did it manually. The editor doesn't sit there letting to tool do the work, one has to have knowledge of how to do the task correctly. In fact, and this is just my opinion: using a tool is easier, faster, and more foolproof than manually doing the task. That being said, I expect the candidate (and any user) to think before performing an edit using an assisted tool.
• Please note: I may make exceptions to any of these for any candidate where I feel it is suitable. I also may oppose a candidate based on a reason not listed here. These are not set in stone as to how I support or oppose. I may change any of the criteria listed on this page at any time.