diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
index f761922a264..91a90cfdc04 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
@@ -468,12 +468,28 @@ If in doubt, go ahead and open a PR with your best guess and we can discuss this
 Joining the Development Team
 ----------------------------
 
-Anyone who has successfully seen through a pull request which did not
-require any extra work from the development team to merge will
-themselves gain commit access if they so wish (if we forget to ask please send a friendly
-reminder).  This does not mean there is any change in your contribution workflow:
-everyone goes through the same pull-request-and-review process and
-no-one merges their own pull requests unless already approved.  It does however mean you can
+Commit access is an invitation the development team extends once a contributor
+has shown a developed sense for the project -- its scope, its conventions, and
+what a change costs the people who depend on it.
+
+This section used to promise commit access to anyone who saw a pull request
+through without the team having to do extra work.  That bar was a good proxy
+for the real thing back then: getting something non-trivial merged in one go
+meant you had already built that sense.  It no longer works as a proxy, both
+because pytest carries far more responsibility today and because a pull
+request that looks clean is now much cheaper to produce than the judgement
+behind it.
+
+So there is no threshold you can clear on demand.  What we look for is that
+judgement shown over time -- in the changes you propose, in the reviews and
+discussions you take part in, and in a feel for which changes are not worth
+making.  We reach out when we think the time has come, so please don't feel
+you have to ask, and please don't read not having been asked yet as a verdict
+on your contributions.
+
+Commit access does not change your contribution workflow: everyone goes
+through the same pull-request-and-review process and no-one merges their own
+pull requests unless already approved.  It does however mean you can
 participate in the development process more fully since you can merge
 pull requests from other contributors yourself after having reviewed
 them.