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I have recommended several editors to be administrators by nominating or co-nominating them at a request for adminship. Some were successful, some weren't. You can see a full list below.

Anyone who would be a good administrator doesn't want to be one.

One of the main reasons I'm interested in looking for RfA candidates is that good, trustworthy and qualified administrators are unlikely to naturally present themselves, and need to be encouraged to run. Conversely, somebody with an "I want to be an admin" template on their user page probably won't be.^[2]

The procedure for selecting administrators involves publicising them for a week to the entire world, and let anyone and everyone comment. Trying to get the entire world to agree on something is impossible, and consequently RfA is often described as "a horrible and broken process", and attempts to find specific people or things wrong with it is doomed to failure. It's been looked at again, again and again to no avail, and I think that's because human nature prevents it from being an easy and fair process.

That said, the end result of an RfA that lasts the full seven days of discussion generally does end up being reasonable. If a candidate is unsuccessful, editors will often talk to them afterwards, distilling the opposition into a straightforward summary along with a word of encouragement.

My RfA nomination criteria

I don't have any specific criteria for who should be an admin. Different people can contribute different things. What I look for in an administrator is not what everyone else looks for, and consequently my personal opinion won't necessarily be enough for someone to pass RfA. However, when nominating these are a couple of basic things I look at, along with some examples of RfAs that I think passed because of those qualities.

• Communication - The most important thing is administrators must be excellent communicators. If a brand new user is upset because you deleted their article created in good faith, they're going to be completely nonplussed if you say "that's what the policy says, guv". I want to see a good example of where you said something profound or insightful - it's difficult to quantify this, but I know it when I see it. If we've worked on a GA review together, or helped close down a prickly ANI thread, that's generally a good sign. (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MelanieN)

• Controversy - No heavy editing in controversial areas, including but not limited to anything under Arbcom discretionary sanctions. No trips to ANI (unless it was from a "bad actor" or troll and quickly closed as "not at fault"). If this sounds unfair, it's because it is, but these sort of people don't pass RfA without a lot of other qualities and a great deal of encouragement. (eg. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Galobtter, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/EvergreenFir)

• Content - I think all admins should create content. FAs are great, GAs are sufficient, lots of DYKs will do. Even if you're passionately negative about the GA / FA process being unnecessarily bureaucratic, that's also fine. However, I start every nomination with a brief resume of what content the candidate writes about, and if I see lots of reverting and templating in your mainspace contributions, I won't be able to do that. A shibboleth is you have been awarded "Precious" by Gerda Arendt. Just writing content without taking part in any of the traditional admin areas is possible, but difficult. (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ergo Sum)

• AfD - Deletion debates are one of the best ways to see how an editor behaves around people who disagree with them. Around 50 debates is enough to gain an overall pattern. I pay particular interest to AfDs where the candidate disagreed with the overall consensus, as these can frequently get a good insight of an editor's dispute resolution skills. (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cordless Larry) I also like to see AfDs where the candidate improved the article resulting in a much clearer "keep" consensus at the end. (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Megalibrarygirl)

• CSD - Since the decision was made to require autoconfirmation to create articles, a track record at CSD is less useful to determine the quality of administrator. Nevertheless, I expect to see less than 2% of CSD nominations declined, and no declined A7 nominations in the past six months. (User:Ritchie333/badspeedies.py is a handy script for identifying CSD tags on articles that are still in mainspace) (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/331dot)

• SPI - I don't get involved at SPI; however I know that those editors who can write quality content and hunt for sockpuppets are the "secret sauce" that gets massive support at RfA. (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GeneralizationsAreBad 2, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/TonyBallioni).

Note that the criteria for nominating is substantially higher than simply supporting an RfA. For example, I am generally more tolerant of incivility if it's a rare one-off done in the "heat of a moment" and against a substantial amount of content creation and I tend to be more forgiving about old blocks for edit-warring. Conversely, other voters are less worried about templated messages.

Other criteria

Many other editors have their own RfA criteria. Here are some I pay particular attention to myself when looking at candidates:

• User:Kudpung/RfA criteria - widely used as a de facto set of standards, with recommended reading of suitable conduct during an RfA
• User:Chris troutman/My RfA criteria - concise and to the point; some of the information presented is harsh, but it's true
• User:WereSpielChequers/RFA criteria - good common sense

My nominations

Total : 40 Total successful : 32 Percentage successful : 80%