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This essay is in development, and contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion.

This page in a nutshell: A simple, but thoughtful advice for request for adminship (RfA), this essay also includes my criteria during an RfA !voting process.

Any questions, comments or concerns regarding this page please contact me at my user talk page.

When reading this essay, try to read it in your point-of-view, as if you want to become an admin.

Welcome to my RfA Advice and Criteria page!

Before for I start; I'm not an administrator on the English Wikipedia. However I do participate in request for adminship discussions. "Request for adminship (RfA) is the process by which the Wikipedia community decides who will become administrators (also known as admins or sysops), who are users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance." This page will help many user's willing to become an candidate for RfA and my criteria for Support in an RfA discussion.

How an Request for Adminship works

A request for adminship (RfA) has many components, and the components are:

Pre-Nomination
During Nomination
Transcluding
Closure
Aftermath

In detail:

Nomination (either you nominate yourself OR another experienced editor nominates you) and entering the discussion which expires in 7 days
Accepting the nomination (if an editor nominates you)
Answering the 3 main questions during an RfA
Transcluding (making the RfA live)
Community !votes AND optional/additional questions
Bureaucrat closing of the request for adminship after the voting time period expires
Depending on the discussion a bureaucrat decides if you either become an administrator or you did not succeed (RfA's with ~70% and higher will pass)

How does the discussion work?

An RfA is an optional community discussion which allows everyone to vote for a user to become an administrator, their are no declining
Their are 3 types of !votes a user could put in:

Support
Oppose
Neutral

(In some cases users may put Strong Support, Weak Oppose, Weak Support and etc. This is normal and is part of the voter's opinion.)

Candidates will be asked additional questions, additional questions are key to success of the request as the candidate could express their knowledge to increase support during the discussion

Type of Admins

Well if you want to become an administrator, the type of administrator depends on your experience and contributions.
Although an administrator is an administrator, however the admin work depends on what works you have experienced in. Remember admins have the abilities to block, protect and delete.

So maybe your a user who has experience in reviewing and tagging article under the deletion policy, then you might be a candidate for being a 'deletion admin'.
Maybe your a user who has experience deals with vandalism and recent changes patrolling, then you might be a candidate for being a 'blocking admin'.
Maybe your a user with experience and keen interest in article and heavy content contributing, then you might be a candidate for a 'protecting admin'.
In some case their would be 'technical admins' those are user who have experience in the technical field such as editing modules, although with template editor in place some users may want to have admin rights to have access in higher level pages.

Although all admins could do all, most admins stay on on field. Also remember that blocking, deleting and protecting should be done user the policies and guidelines. Failure to comply with the policies and guidelines, will result in removal of administrative privileges.

Advice

Above are some links to some guides and help pages related to a Request for Adminship. Before entering an RfA, here is some thoughtful advice to look at:

Above this section I stated the process of an RfA, now we go deeper to if your ready for this. Before for we start, an RfA has no substantial requirements, only being experienced and having a good view on the community is the 'bottom line'. As a regular at RfA discussions, I look at patterns and see the different candidates. The advice will be given as a perspective through my view and my experience of RfA-related discussions. A number of RfA's fail because the candidate never read the pages linked on top of this section. So lets start!:

Core advice

Ask yourself, "are you ready to become a candidate for an RfA?"
Are you experienced, have an understanding of the policies and guidelines and have a positive look to the community?
Have you placed an editor review on yourself?
Did you get any editor review feedback?
Did you look at the miniguides, advice pages and any RfA-related help page?
Have you observed previous or current RfA's and see the comments?
Ask a trusted or experience member of the community if your ready (asking users listed at Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination, would be a good idea).
Ask them to nominate you OR nominate yourself.

The criteria placed below is a good way to see if your ready at a technical standpoint.

Advance advice

If you have been blocked recently of a few months prior to your RfA, it will likely fail
If the Arbitration Committee has recently placed sanctions on your account, it will likely fail (actions such as topic bans, interaction bans and etc.)
If you repeatedly have multiple RfA's that has oftenly failed, you will likely fail until you have shown improvement
Being controversial, placing edits which are controversial, will often fail (being biased, edit warring at a page with controversy, disagreeing with certain editor's views & etc.)
Not assuming good faith will definitely fail
Oftenly biting the newcomers will definitely fail
Disruptive editing will definitely fail
Users with a high reported presence at Wikipedia noticeboards will likely fail
User with past issues such as conflict of interest and/or copyright violations will definitely fail

Into the details

Now we head on deeper and deeper!
After talking about an RfA, it's process and some advice, we get to the point where we look at the details.

An RfA is a place where you could open your opinions on things (both the !voters and the candidate). Since we all have opinions we could open up on them, no matter good, bad or ugly, the opinions could be very useful both to the voters and the candidate.
Some voters will go deep, when they go deep, the result could change drastically. I some RfA, some !voters will deeply observe your contributions and state some issues. This could boost your Support or bring in more Oppose votes. It is the best thing to open your mistakes or an incident during your nomination statement. Being truthful is a good thing and during a RfA, nominators who show honesty could gain trust from the community. Not sowing your mistakes or incidents in the past will bring up the Oppose votes. Even an edit that was made 2-3 years ago when you did something wrong, a !voter could bring that up and raise some concerns.
Talk page interaction, it is important that administrators show kindness and civility. Users who show hostileness and biting the newcomers will be an concern. An example would be an author of a page tagged under CSD and commenting on your user talk page, then you respond with, your page sucked.
The type of administrative work you are intending to do, your contributions should show long and active tenure on those fields.

My Criteria

My criteria for support is quite simple and basic:

Have a strong understanding on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines
Be an autoconfirmed user for 12 months
Have over 5,000 total edits (Make sure the edits are meaningful and are significantly positive contributions towards this site)
Have edited in many namespace (Article, Talk, User, User talk, File, File talk, Category, Category talk, Template, Template talk, Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk and etc.)
Have over 45% edits in the article namespace
Clean block log OR had a clean block log 6 months prior to the RfA
Have a clean warning log OR had a clean warning log 2 months prior to the RfA
Created 15 or more pages - Content creation is important since it involves Wikipedia's content guidelines such as BLP, Verifiability and etc. (Candidates maybe exempt from this if they have expanded articles, added references and etc., this is also content creating)
Understood Wikipedia's five-main pillars
Have over 100 good edits towards Wikipedia noticeboards such as administrator's intervention against vandalism, request for page protection and etc. *Good edits meaning reporting properly, bad edits would be being involved in a administrative noticeboard
Participate in Recent Changes
100+ New Pages Patrol
Participated in 10 or more pages for deletion (Articles for Deletion, Files for Deletion & etc.)
Reviewed 10 or more Article's for Creation pages/drafts
Participated in 5 or more RfA's
High usage of edit summaries
Knowledge about sock puppetry, making sure you don't have unauthoriz(s)ed multiple/additonal accounts
Assisted in community work (WikiProjects, Teahouse, Help desk & etc.)

Helpful links

Below are some listed links in which are relevant to an RfA (all links are on Wikipedia, Toolserver or WMF Labs, make sure you fill in the target filed with your username):

Check your edit count using the User Analysis Tool
Check your block log using the block log
Check your AfD stats using Scottywong's AfD Stats
Check your admin score using Scottywong's Admin score calculator (results may vary, results may not represent your RfA)

Some thoughtful links

Request for Bureaucrat

Request for Bureaucrat (RfB's) is the same process as Request for Adminship, however is for being a bureaucrat on the English Wikipedia. Bureaucrats have extra tools than administrators such as deploying bots and removing user rights. They are voted by community members.

My Criteria for RfB's

Be an administrator for a year
Have done a good amount of administrative work