This discussion is going a bit far afield, and I think my question was answered really well, so I’m going to close the topic. Conclusions:
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there’s a consensus that a hard age limit should not be used when deciding whether someone should be made a curator on iNat, but it should be taken into account along with the more important criteria such as expertise with iNat, solid decision making and behavior, and attention to detail.
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some people have suggested perhaps a mentoring relationship between a younger curator and a more, er, “life experienced” one. While I think that’s interesting and useful, I’m not sure staff have the bandwidth to set up something formal for that.
This is something I’ve been working on, and started a discussion about it [here](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/should-site-curators-be-allowed-to-make-another-user-a-curator/5308 a whlie ago), if anyone wants to weigh in. If implemented, I’d like to set up a formal curator application form that will streamline the “process” (such as it is) and that tells people up front what being a curator actually entails.