I remember that Kirt (?) used to get very heavily criticised at RfA because he opposed all self-nominations. but there's a good case to be made that anyone who wants the job isn't fit to have it.
Really? Other than reinforcing the cliche, what are these good reasons? I bet Eric can't name any that aren't clear and obvious failures to 'assume good faith'. You can just imagine this prick seeing someone who says they want the Admin toolset to protect children or author's intelectual property, and saying, yeah but no dude, you asking for the tools is evidence you are lying.
I think that the differing standards voters apply at RfA correspond to their different perceptions of what it is that administrators actually do
No shit Sherlock. Wikipediocracy is not really known as the font if wisdom, but being the platform of choice for people who can merely state the obvious, that's not a good look, surely.
[Wikipedia Administrators] clearly don't administrate anything in any sense that would be recognised in the real world.
Really? I've worked in several places which had specific Officers chosen and trusted to mediate disputes, deny access to certain areas if not the entire building, and counsel new employees in the right and wrong way to do things. What a tremendous lack of imagination (or sheer persecution complex) for Eric to say such a dumb thing as this.
If administrators are perceived to be street judges like Judge Dredd, as they are, then it's not unreasonable to expect them to have worked at the coal face of content creation before they're allowed to pass sentence on other editors.
This, I really would love to see explained. Bonus points if it can be done with reference to Dredd canon. It is a total myth that content contributions are a good indicator of likely performance with the tools. It is about having good judgement and temperament, and Eric is living proof you need neither to be considered even an elite content contributor on Wikipedia. In fact, I think someone has even proven there is no relation, with hard data. It sounds like something SoWhy et al might have done at some point. It would hardly be the first time Eric says something that he firmly believes, that is objectively untrue.
Part of the problem that Philafrenzy had was that nobody really believes anything that any candidate says about what they intend to spend their time doing should they become elected. Vacuous promises about working on backlogs in areas that very few have heard of and even fewer care about cut no ice, at least only in the minds of the terminally credulous.
How is this a problem exactly? Since there are no technical means to limit Administrators to activities they specify an interest in before promotion, and since Wikipedia has no record of adequately running an honor based system even if the wider community had any mind to use it in this way, which they do not, then it make absolutely perfect sense to ignore the answer to RfA standard question 1 (why do you want to be Administrator). It makes perfect sense that the first thing they plan to do with the tools, is to block their enemies and protect their articles, so you approach the task as if an exercise in reassuring yourself they are not that kind of person (an idea that seems to also trouble Eric, as per the recent post in the fan board thread).