Steve Bennett wrote:
And the worst is "come back later, might
support you then". Not
because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this
can in fact be quite reasonable advice. The subtext is often "We don't
know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin. If you're still
interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again
in a few months." Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough
yet. Try again when you've been around longer." Or possibly both.
People do change over time, and more importantly, people also reveal
more about themselves as they interact with people. _I_ know I was as
trustworthy back when I registered my account as when my RfA was passed,
but for all anyone else knew back them, I could've been another WoW
sock. The six months or so between the two events served not only to
familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
got my admin buttons.
If we tell someone to come again later we need to tell him why, and what
he must do in the interim to qualify.
I also think that it should be possible for bureaucrats to desysop
someone more easily. There are always some candidates that seem
borderline, and where it would be good to give them a chance, but one
hesitates when there would be no easy chance to undo an error.
Ec