Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship

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So you think you want to be an admin? Well, you better read through this page - then you decide. In the early days of Wikipedia, you could just make a few edits, request for adminship, and you would likely be accepted. Well, times have changed now - a lot. Nowadays, if you're not absolutely perfect, the community is likely going to oppose you... and if you are absolutely perfect they're going to oppose you just as much, as they'll say you made yourself look like a perfect editor just to succeed RfA.

Basic criteria

1 million billion edits
Been registered for at least 15 ~~years~~ decades
Made at least 500,000 mainspace edits
Made at least 200,000 Wikipedia namespace edits (except the sandbox)
- No more than 15% of them can be WP:AIV
Made at least 100,000 talk namespace edits
Must have created at least 20000 articles
- Not a single one can have been deleted!
You have to have added 5000 bytes of content to at least 1000 different articles
Helped promote at least 100 FAs
Helped promote at least 400 GAs
Helped promote at least 600 DYKs
Your AfD percentage stats must be at least 99%
- You must always have been the first or second one to comment - otherwise people will think you're just copying everybody else
You must have participated in at least 5000 AfDs in total
You must have participated in at least 10000 XfDs in total
You must have closed at least 1000 XfDs
You must have created at least 5000 XfDs
You must have participated in at least 3000 RfCs in total, in which you created at least 1500
- At least 500 RfCs are in WP:RSN
Any kind of block log at all is an absolute no-no. Did you get blocked 20 years ago and have completely changed since then? No one cares.
No warnings that have ever been on your talk page! Doesn't matter if you were a newbie and knew nothing about Wikipedia - they're still warnings. Even if an oversighter oversighted that warning, they can still see it.
No declined CSDs. If you added a speedy deletion template to any page anytime where it was declined, you're going to get bombarded over it and likely not going to end up becoming an admin.
You must have tagged at least 1000 pages for speedy deletion.
Must have at least 12 user rights.
If you've ever had a user right revoked... say goodbye to adminship.
You must have requested protection for at least 10,000 pages
You must have made at least 5000 edit requests to fully protected pages
You must have edited the Main Page at least twice
You must have requested at least 10000 history merges
At least 500 successful PRODs.
Mark at least 2024 (the current year) really bad translations as machine-translated.
You must be older than 50. If you're any age younger, you're simply too young to be trusted.
- Nobody is older than 50, they'll have retired.

Common opposes

Do you meet all those criteria? Congratulations, good for you! Unfortunately, we regretfully have to tell you that you're still probably not going to become an admin. Everyone will somehow always find a reason to oppose you. Here are some of the common ones:

They're a hat collector!
They want too much attention!
They prepared too well, padding their resume just for the RfA!
I expected them to make their resume better before they applied for adminship!
We have too many admins already!
They would be a better editor if they weren't an admin!
They're a sockpuppet!
Everything everybody else has said!
There has to be some reason!
They aren’t over 50 years old, they’re just pretending to be!

Overview

So just ask yourself, is it really worth it? You're probably much better off just being a normal editor with maybe just a few extra user rights. Report incidents requiring administration on the appropriate noticeboards - and leave the actual administrative tasks to the existing administrators: the lucky devils who applied for adminship back in 2040.