There are no criteria or requirements. It's strictly the whim of administerial fiat.

It ups the number of points their approval or disapproval affects a person when hitting insightful/trolling. The way it was described was "the type of people we'd like to encourage to have here" are given higher rankings, or some such.

And yet neither they or those with such higher ranks could understand why some people took offence at that description of "criteria."

(Any further attempt to define it is seen as the utter bollshyte it is by the sometimes bizarre examples of those given such higher privileges and "encouraged to be here." For instance, one elaboration was that they don't up the rankings of people who quarrel. But some of the biggest quarrelers and insult throwers have some of the highest rankings. While people who would never swat at a fly languish at "citizen." It's like what gets featured and what doesn't. No matter how much they give criteria an even casual perusal will show the supposed "criteria" is divorced from the reality of the actual selections. I feel sorry for the people dumb enough to read those delusional explanations who actually believe there are criteria. The truth in both instances is it's whoever/whatever tickles Wardel's fancy that day.)

Oh well, I suppose I'm one of the undesirables as I'm still a "citizen".

"the type of people we'd like to encourage to have here"

Yup.

It's the admin's decision, and I've also read that it's based on the "criteria" described above.

Personally, I think if you can get on Draginol's radar, he'll likely up your user status at some point because of the way you conduct yourself on here and the type of things you post.

Good luck.