Wikipedia:Hat collecting

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell: When making a request for adminship or any other rights, you must demonstrate that you will use these tools to help improve Wikipedia. They are not to be used as a means to show off or to boost one's ego.

Hat collecting is the process of gaining rights on Wikipedia (and other wikis) just to show off or to boost one's ego, rather than because you have any actual use for them. Voters in the request for adminship process need to decide whether or not the user requesting adminship actually has a use for those rights or is simply "hat collecting". This is why adminship candidates should have some clear idea why they want to become admins, rather than simply the feeling that this is what one does at a certain stage in one's Wikipedia career.

Not having a particular user right doesn't mean you are somehow deficient. Lots of people don't have file mover, but that's because there's only a small community of people who care about maintaining the file namespace. But on the converse, having file mover doesn't mean you are an expert on file moving, it just means you've been granted the ability to do it. For some administrators, handing out rights to a reasonably trustworthy user is a very simple way to prevent them from persistently making requests of that form.

Of course, one should be very careful before alleging that someone is hat collecting. Simply responding to everyone wanting rollback or even everyone wanting to become an administrator with the accusation that they are a hat collector marks a failure to assume good faith.

If you are applying for rights, be sure to show why you think you can improve Wikipedia by having those rights, generally by showing a positive record of actions and attitude. Don't just assert that you'll find the tool useful, give evidence of why you need the tool and you'll dramatically reduce accusations that you are simply collecting hats.

If you are applying for rollback, point to anti-vandalism efforts (AIV reports, RFPP reports, user talk pages with warnings on etc.)
If you are applying for autopatrol, point to the articles you created.
If you are applying for file mover, point to file namespace work, to use of the {{Rename media}} template. Don't assume that because you have a right on Commons, that means you automatically deserve it on Wikipedia too (and vice versa): while it is great that you do work on Commons, admins on Wikipedia want to see that you understand local policies before handing out rights.

Don't just collect hats, wear them after you get them!