User:Mr. Stradivarius/RfA criteria

This page contains the criteria I use to judge candidates at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. They are not absolute, however, and I may amend or ignore them as the situation calls for.

Must-have criteria

These are the essential things I look for in a candidate:

• 4000+ edits.
• Active 6+ months. Those months don't have to be consecutive.
• 18+ years old. (Or to put it another way, the candidate must not give me reason to suspect that they are under 18 years old.)
• 98% of edits from the last 3 months use an edit summary.
• No blocks in the last 6 months. If the candidate has any earlier blocks, I will need to be convinced that they have learned from them.
• No valid warnings on the candidate's user talk page in the last 3 months.
• No mass-creation of poorly-sourced stubs.
• A reasonable standard of English. The candidate doesn't have to be perfect, or a native speaker, but they need to be able to communicate clearly and write well.
• Good people skills. I need some evidence that the candidate gets along with people and doesn't crack under pressure. If there is a history of incivility, I will usually oppose, although isolated incidents may be excused depending on context.
• The candidate must show that they are capable of admitting their mistakes and learning from them. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and it's very important that candidates can show they are capable of patching up differences with other users and avoid creating unnecessary drama when those times come.
• Good knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, especially in the areas in which the candidate wishes to work. If the candidate has a faulty knowledge of any of the basic policies, then I won't usually support. The more specialised the policy/guideline, and the less related it is to the candidate's intended area of work, the more likely I will be to overlook this.
• Relevant experience in the area(s) in which the candidate wishes to work. It doesn't need to be an excessive amount, just enough for them to show that they know what they're doing.
• Some significant content creation. The candidate needs to demonstrate that they can write encyclopaedic prose, and that they have a good knowledge of the manual of style.

Optional criteria

I will be more likely to support the candidate if they can demonstrate the following:

• Dispute resolution experience is a big plus.
• Good articles and featured articles are a big plus, but not essential. I have a great deal of respect for featured article writers.
• The candidate's signature should include their full username, although if their username is excessively long, this may be forgiven. Also, the signature shouldn't be of a reasonable length and not too hard to read. This can be fixed during the RfA if necessary, though.