User:Ral315/WTHN
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Why The Hell Not? is a reason to support a user running for adminship.
Adminship should not be a big deal. It can be used for misdeeds; however, the clear misuse of the tools results in desysopping. With the Arbitration Committee showing the willingness to desysop users, this should not be a major concern.
Obviously, when there are legitimate concerns, I oppose a user. And, in fact, the astute Wikipedian will notice that my RFA contributions are sparse and usually are in opposition to adminship. This is because I do not comment on "runaway" discussions- those that are clearly going to pass or clearly going to fail- unless I have a specific opinion on the user in question. However, in close nominations where absurd editcountitis, XFDcountitis, et al. rule the day, I sometimes feel the need to respond.
A while back, I saw a user oppose an adminship request because the user was only averaging 450 edits a month over a 6 month period (do the math- that's 2700 edits just in that six months). In another case, users were opposing because the candidate had an abnormally high amount of image edits, and very few mainspace edits. 7,500 image edits and 500 mainspace edits doesn't bother me; in fact, the image work shows me that the user is willing to deal with images, an important part of being an admin. Image work helps Wikipedia just as much as mainspace edits do, and in fact, the two go hand-in-hand.
When I became an administrator in September 2005, I had nine solid months of contributions, and over 2,800 edits (probably an average edit count at that time). I'm honestly not sure whether I would pass RfA with those contributions today, and frankly, that bothers me quite a bit.
Adminship should not be a big deal. All I require is a trust that the user will not use the tools for misdeeds. 500 XfD edits doesn't show me that, 4,000 edits doesn't show me that, 450 edits per month doesn't show me that.