Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

RfA candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report HouseBlaster 127 8 0 94 00:50, 23 June 2024 1 day, 19 hours no report RfB candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report Last updated by cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online at 05:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Current time: 05:49:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Questions to help the user

Most questions in RfAs are asked to test the user in some way or trip them up, or from an otherwise negative standpoint, usually trying to find a reason to oppose. I'm wondering if there has been any recent examples of questions asked deliberately (and not by the nominator) where the answer would promote the user and help others decide to support? -- œ^™ 01:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

My questions in Slon02's RfA weren't so much intended to promote the candidate as to give him a chance to address some concerns people had expressed. They were definitely not intended to trip him up, but to give him a proper platform to answer rather than having to reply to each oppose that brought it up. So they were intended to help, in a way; but more precisely, they were intended as a way for him to assuage my and other participants' concerns.

T. Canens' question at Gfoley4's RfA appears (to me) like a similar case of giving the candidate a platform to answer a question he'd otherwise have to deal with as a "badger" in the oppose thread. 28bytes (talk) 01:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Badgering often serves to entrench the views of people who might otherwise have been waivering, particularly when the badgerer has blown up a small point into a big issue, and when proven wrong, will dig deeper rather than accept that they were wrong. Staying focussed, 28bytes' questions in that RfA were good. I've also seen "How would you respond to the concerns raised about your content experience?" asked once or twice to very good effect. —WFC— 11:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I just came across this discussion, a short time after adding this question. Please let's not discuss the specifics of possible answers yet; let the candidate do that

I asked that, very deliberately, specific to the areas I felt were not clear from statement and contribs - to give the candidate the opportunity to demonstrate 'common sense' and good understanding of broad concepts.

I don't ask questions unless I've got a good reason to do so.

Another e.g. from today being, a gentle additional poke here - which did result in clarification, which is certainly helping me - and I'd suspect others - to make up their mind.  Chzz  ►  06:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Speaking of the question to JaGa, I sent the candidate a "you sure about that?" note on that one. I really hate for an RfA to turn on one swapped word (i.e. interpreting "a user page created in 2006" as "a user created a page in 2006") regardless of whether I support the candidate. Yours was a good question, by the way. I know some folks don't like to see "what if"-type questions, but I think they can be helpful in understanding a candidate's thought processes. 28bytes (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Ta. And yes, it was an unfortunate misunderstanding - but I think the candidate recovered well; and I quite like it when people just say "oops!" like that. Also, see User_talk:JaGa#4._A_user_page_created_in_2006....  Chzz  ►  10:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

My feeling on RFA questions is that they are asked to "find a reason to oppose" the candidate if they don't like the answer to a question. If you can't find a reason, you try to make one. It's not right -- but it happens. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 00:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there are other reasons:

• Laziness: "can't be bothered to look through all your contribs; "please show me the good stuff"
• Being smarty-pants, trying to win +adminpoints: "THIS meets THAT policy but contradicts THIS OTHER policy. So what do you do?"
• Trying to be smarty-pants for t3h lulz: "Are there too many questions?"

None of which are very helpful. But, given the current format, I don't think they're avoidable. Still - despite this discussion being pointless, it's interesting.  Chzz  ►  03:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You speak as if a question that could cause opposes for a bad answer is mutually exclusive with a question that could cause supports for a good answer. I, and I'm sure most others who pose questions, hope candidates will answer my questions well and get supports; but I won't hesitate to oppose if the candidate does badly. Suggesting that questions are asked to "find a reason to oppose" amounts to nothing more than a lazy accusation of bad faith. --Mkativerata (talk) 08:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Chzz or Tofu really meant that in bad faith. Most of those possibilities have certainly crossed my mind at some time or another (whether I found any actual examples or not is a different matter). It's only natural to consider all angles - having an analytic approach does mean examining all hypotheses. Kudpung (talk) 15:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely; I didn't mean to cast aspersions. I'm sure I could come up with specific examples of 'poor questions', but don't want to, precisely because I don't want to make this personal.

I think you will all accept that we could find some questions that we'd all think unhelpful - and others that we agreed were helpful - without needing to actually dig them out. However, in-between there would be questions that some thought good, others thought bad. And that is the point I was making; whilst RfA remains in this open format, I don't think it possible to enforce anything on questions asked other than the most utterly blatant and disruptive cases (which is covered by existing policies). Chzz  ►  16:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Returning to the original topic - SandyGeorgia asked me a question about civility in my RfA which was intended as an opportunity to showcase my opinion (for what it was worth). Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Where SandyGeorgia knew what your answer would be and that it would garner supports? Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. I wonder why we don't see more of these kinds of questions intended to promote the candidate. Is it because some think it gives an unfair advantage and others would cry foul? or start shouting WP:CABAL? -- œ^™ 11:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Late response, but I I'm not sure how you could call what I said a Lazy accusation of bad faith; you have to think out of the box here. If your questioning someone on a controversial topic that's not written anywhere, and that you learn with time, aren't you setting them up to fail? You have to have the mindset that potential candidates aren't going to know everything from the start, you learn as you go. We sometimes forget that, and hold against them an answer to a very tough question. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 18:40, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion. I offer an additional perspective which garners from my own RfA, and wrestles comprehension of my own list, in particular the lack thereof. In preparation, I did consider the importance, but not the absence, of these questions. Had I known the first three questions could be the extent. I would have been better served answering with full essay. I feel certain, some middle ground is necessary. My76Strat (talk) 14:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Marker10

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Marker10 has been around a while, but doesn't seem to be complete. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It's only been there for six days, and Eagles 24/7 has talked to him about it. Just leave it for now. --Floquensock (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

AfD stats for RfA candidates

Discussion (closed)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows. Just testing the waters. It's clear there is no consensus for using this tool at RfA, so no further discussion is required here. I will only be using this only for my own purposes and will not post links to the results at RfA. I have also deleted the example page so as to not influence the ongoing RfA (but other example pages are probably available if you look hard enough). If anyone would like to request a report, feel free to contact me directly. Thanks. —SW— chatter 19:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I've been working on a bot script to collect statistics about a user's AfD voting patterns. I thought it might be useful as a tool to help people evaluate RfA candidates. It is still in a very rough stage of development, and is probably still making plenty of errors (i.e. reporting votes incorrectly) and omissions (i.e. skipping over AfD's that it can't parse), and it relies 100% on editors making bolded votes. It also currently only looks at AfD votes that were made in the last 5000 edits. There is much room for improvement. However, I'd like to get some input from the community on whether this would be a good tool to use regularly for RfA. I have created a sample of what the output of the script currently looks like at User:Snottywong/AfD stats/User:Peridon. I chose Peridon because he/she is currently up at RfA and has expressed an interest in working at AfD. Take a look and let me know what you think. —SW— yak 01:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Interesting idea. The green/red coding is a little off-putting, to be honest... if you voted 'delete' on an article that was kept, it would show up as "wrong" (since that's how many people interpret the color red). If color-coding is needed, perhaps an idea would be to code yellow as "!voted keep and the result was delete", green for "!voted the same as the AfD result", and blue as "!voted delete and the result was keep"... Would it be possible to have the script output the candidate's comments (a maximum of a couple lines if needed) as well? Seeing whether the candidate offers a bunch of "me too" "per nom" comments versus thoughtful analysis of the sources is a much better guide to their competence than whether their !vote matched the eventual AfD result, in my opinion. (Regardless, kudos on the work so far.) 28bytes (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the comments. The script was originally an idea for a tool to analyze my own AfD votes, to see how often I am "right" (i.e. how often I vote the same way that the article eventually closes) vs. how often I am "wrong", thus the red/green coloring. I could certainly do the blue/yellow idea to more clearly show the different scenarios (actually, I intended for any No Consensus AfD's to display as a light orange, but that didn't happen)(Fixed). If you look closely, you'll see I treat certain results as "right" even though they are not exact matches (i.e. voting delete on a speedy delete is considered right, even voting delete on a redirect is considered right at the moment, might change that though). I thought about including the voter's comments in there as well, but I think that would only enlarge an already enormous table. Plus, there are links there for you to quickly go to any of the AfD's and check out the votes for yourself, in context. —SW— communicate 01:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I personally think seeing at least one line of the candidate's comments for each AfD would be extremely valuable; not sure how easy it would be to script an option for including or not including the comments, but I know I would certainly love to see the "with comments" version. Maybe not as a separate column but as text under the AfD's page title? Regarding color, if you use a blue-green-yellow continuum you could have bluish-green mean "!voted delete and the result was merge", yellowish-green mean "!voted merge and the result was delete" etc. Seems like the speedy delete-delete-redirect-merge-keep-speedy keep continuum would map pretty well to that. 28bytes (talk) 01:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Very cool. It would be nice to have a "total" column so that we could see immediately how many total keep votes the candidate has made, how many delete votes, etc. --Danger (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Yup, that's next on the list of things to add. Totals of each vote type, as well as percentage of total votes. For example, "Keep Votes: 372 (36.2%)" —SW— chatter 01:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Love the Idea -- would also love to see it work. Tofutwitch11 (TALK) 02:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC) OMG, love it,. w00t. Do me, please - I wanna see it! Chzz rarely descends to saying 'OMG' but, well...this is w00t) Chzz  ►  02:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If this something that is needed, though? It seems to be based on the assumption that admins should predict consensus, but having a contrary view - if well supported - isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in the past I've noticed a preference for people explaining their reasoning over voting "per nom". To work at AfD you would need to fairly evaluate consensus, but that's not the same thing as needing to agree. While I think I can see where this is going, and the data has value, removing it from the context of the individual AfD discussions may risk losing something important from the evaluation process. Anyway, its just a thought - making quantitative data easy to get isn't always in the interests of a process. - Bilby (talk) 02:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I have no doubt in my mind that this will be abused, and that people will say things like "Oppose - more than 25% of AfD !votes were against consensus" or something equally asinine. Kind of like the way the automated edits counter is abused. But if a comment or two from each AfD are included in the report, this can be a valuable overview to a candidate's reasoning (or lack thereof) in deletion debates. 28bytes (talk) 03:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I agree that adding some qualitative data would help. :) I guess my concern is that, if this is used as it stands, it is in my interest (should I ever want to run for admin), to wander over to AfD, find discussions which are clearly going to be delete or keep, and toss in a late !vote along the lines of consensus. However, it isn't in my interest to spend some time evaluating tricky articles and come to a conclusion, if that conclusion isn't the consensus view, as it will show up on this report as a big red box highlighting that I was wrong. :) - Bilby (talk) 03:20, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I have that exact same concern, that if potential RfA candidates think they'll be judged on how "right" they are in an AfD debate, they'll just find a bunch of lopsided discussions and glom onto the "winning" side with a "per" !vote to boost their "green" count. That's why I'm hoping SW includes at least a snippet from each AfD so people can see what the candidates are saying at AfD, rather than how they're voting. 28bytes (talk) 03:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Hmm, the users above do make very valid points. But, any tool can be abused; this just provides a bit more openness. Whilst people will no doubt misinterpret the results...I don't see that as a good reason to hide them - if you know what I mean?  Chzz  ►  03:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Openness is good, and SW is to be applauded for his work on this. I just hope he considers the request for some qualitative data (i.e. comments) in addition to the quantitative. I for one would feel much more edified seeing that a candidate voted "Keep - all websites are notable" on a "kept" AfD rather than just seeing a green box to indicate s/he was "right". 28bytes (talk) 03:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Honestly I think it would be best if the user has to opt into the check like the edit counter. It seems a bit stalkish and likely prone to abuse. Alpha Quadrant talk 03:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Agree 100% on opt-in. (Then again, how many RfA candidates don't opt in to the edit counter? Kind of like those "optional" questions...) 28bytes (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I also agree it should be opt-in only. I also feel that it should only really be considered for candidates who expect to be closing deletion discussions. The tool is certainly not intended to encourage opposes based on things like "he's wrong too often at AfD", but rather to help identify patterns that might be worth looking into. In other words, if a candidate has an overwhelming number of AfD's where they voted to keep but the result was delete, then I might want to take a look at some of those cases to see if there is evidence of a policy misunderstanding or extreme bias. And, in those cases, I'd want to look at the candidate's votes in context, snippets wouldn't reveal much. Anyway, I'll be fixing some bugs tomorrow, and will also look into adding comment snippets, but can't promise anything. I'm not sure how easy it will be to implement the comment snippet thing with the way the script is currently written. Overall, I'm glad to see that there is general cautious support for the tool, so I will continue trying to improve it. Thanks. —SW— express 04:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If our plan is to allow RFA to descend into even more of a political bunfight over deletion/inclusion then this is a great idea. Personally I'd rather we evaluated the merits of the candidate then delved into their deletion politics. Please don't introduce this - especially with the wide disparities of how individual admins closes deletion discussions. Spartaz Humbug! 05:05, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oh PLEASE. Admin tasks ánd possibilities are way wider than AfD's. I am sorry, though this may be a nice thing for personal use, RfA's should be evaluated on personal merits. 'Oh, you gave too often a wrong interpretation of an article whether it should be deleted or not' is NOT a criterium - There are many areas where admins (sitting and to-be) have NO clue about what is going on, and I am sure that there will be to-be admins who have NO clue about AfD's. Introduction of a tool like this on one single aspect of admin chores (I, for one, am hardly ever around on AfD's!) is indeed just going to turn this even more into a real voting - Everyone can always !vote 'oppose' on any RfA with 'You have never participated in task X, which is one of the powers you will get when you become an administrator on this site', as for practically any possible candidate there will be areas where they have never participated. Oppose even for an opt-in, we don't need more RfA 'oppose' reasons. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Your intentions are excellent, but this is really a horrible idea. For one thing, it will lead to some RfA candidates making useless "me too" edits at AfDs and being afraid to voice real opinions. For another, being a dissenting voice is no bad thing for an admin. We don't want a cadre of yes men - admins need to stick their heads up. They need to do so with courtesy and in line with policy, but many AfDs are debated in the grey areas of policy. I've seen many AfDs where a bunch of people all !voted one way and along came someone with a different take on things and courageously opposed the rest - and sometimes they persuade the course of the AfD. Please do not continue with this idea. --Dweller (talk) 10:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I think that this tool is a great idea, and could yield some interesting results, but I don't think it would be appropriate to routinely point to it in RfAs, for the reasons mentioned above. bobrayner (talk) 11:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Well implemented and an interesting read, but as an RfA tool I doubt it's going to work. Low levels of AfD participation and !votes against the eventual consensus shouldn't by themselves be reasons for opposion, but that's what they would undoubtedly be used for by some participants. Alzarian16 (talk) 12:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I share many of the thoughts about this tool expressed above. AfDs are best judged qualitatively. As for the other claptrap, it is important to remember why RfA (!)voters (at RfA you're a voter if you support, and a !voter if you oppose; so much for balanced discussion) place so much emphasis on AfD. It's because admins, often those who were given the tools to do a job which had little or nothing to do with judging consensus, can get away with closing AfDs that are much less than unanimous practically however they like. Until such time as adminship is split into those with tools, those deemed capable of judging consensus, and those in both camps, poor or non-existant contributions at AfD will remain a valid reason to oppose. A good candidate can ensure that this isn't a problem by demonstrating elsewhere that they understand consensus. —WFC— 12:16, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oppose I think Dweller summarized it best, but the others who have opposed also prevail. IMO, this would encourage editcountitis. AFD !votes are more about the rationale used than the actual !vote and how it compared to the final result. I'd much rather see a person who got it "right" only 40% of the time, but gave consistently valid reasons and !voted early in the process than a person who got it "right" 100% of the time but always participated on AFDs after the articles fate was determined and said "per above".---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Goodness me no. We don't need another nonsense reason to oppose people's RFAs. Stifle (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Question: If there was an admin candidate who voted at 1000 AfD's, and their vote matched the resulting consensus only 250 times (25%), isn't that something you'd want to know about so that you could do further research to see what caused that disparity? Correspondingly, if the same candidate instead "got it right" 750 times (75%), wouldn't that fact make it easier for you to support them? Sure, there is room for people to abuse such a tool, by just glancing at the results and making a decision based on a single number. The same can be said for edit counters. Either way, it doesn't matter to me. I'm going to developp the tool for my own use, if anyone else would like to make use of it, just let me know. If it doesn't end up being something that is regularly used at RfA, then I'm ok with that. Just thought I'd ask. —SW— confer 16:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If somebody participated in 1000 AFD's then that person's history/practices would most likely be fairly well known by the AFD community. This is a short cut that doesn't really tell us anything about the actual candidate except to make new hurdle/way to game the system. Sorry, but zero support for this.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 18:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Strong Oppose "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This is a step on the road to labelling AFD applicants as "deletionist" or "inclusionist," then basing voting on that perceived affiliation. Also, there have been many AFDs where I was on the "wrong" side by this index, but was correct according to guidelines, but some canvassing system, project newwsletter, political, religious or nationalistic affiliation led to many editors who did not often participate in AFDs trooping in and voting for something they liked or against something their affiliation was against. In my own RFA, my AFD participation was cited favorably by 10 out of 60 supporters (there were no Oppose votes at the end), despite the fact that I was not always a go-along me-too !voter. I looked back at several days of AFD !votes leading up to my RFA nom, and I was "wrong" 15% of the time, but with well supported minority arguments. Does your software count it as "right" or "wrong" if someone !votes Merge but it is Kept, or he !votes Weak keep but it gete redirected? How about if there is DRV and the Deleted article gets restored? How about if the closing admin changes his mind 3 days later and changes to No Consensus, as in [1]? This indexing has a chilling effect on anyone who ever wants to become an admin going against an (incorrect) groundswell and making a well reasoned and good-faith minority argument. My dissents sometimes go on for some length, since I cite guidelines, AFD precedents and common outcomes, or bring in references I have looked up to support my argument, so including one line of comments as proposed would not be that informative. It encourages "me-too-ism" to jump on the bandwagon on pending snowball AFDs. It argues for giving up the ship in a losing AFD and striking (and "unbolding") the "losing vote to keep it out of the tally. It tends to stifle dissent in an AFD and encourage mob mentality. "Minority" is NOT NECESSARILY WRONG! A horrible idea, in general, and should not be implemented. Use of this tool should be blocked in RFA. Edison (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oppose It's an interesting idea, and if you can put it together and have it function properly you'll have quite the programming problem solved...but IMO it'll just lead to another variant of WP:EDITCOUNTITIS to nitpick at someone's RfA. Just my 2p worth. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC) DeleteOppose If an admin candidate got involved with an AfD early on and wanted it deleted, then it was cleaned up after the fact and then kept (but the candidate didn't go back and change their comment), they would, under this system, be marked as being "wrong" on the AfD. If a candidate comes at the end of an AfD and just goes with the majority, they get points for being "right" despite not knowing anything. If a candidate simply has a different opinion about the notability of a subject, they would come across as "wrong" just for having an opinion. Articles for Deletion is not about being right or wrong. You're trying to quantify policy knowledge into a nice little system that is easily looked at. That's another way to describe editcountits, which is why so many people are drawing comparisons. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elektrik Band

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elektrik Band and the nom has no action since 6 March 2011. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Eagles247 questioned him on his talk page. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 18:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee appointments: Invitation to comment on candidates

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to to arbcom-en-b@lists.wikimedia.org.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with any other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 31 March 2011.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 00:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

Time limits on adminship

A discussion is taking place, over at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Time limits on adminship.

This message is for notification purposes only; I suggest any discussion belongs over there. Cheers,  Chzz  ►  18:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Are votes with no rationale "useless noise"?

I'm moving discussion of this over here, from Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Fæ, because the question does not specifically refer to that candidate.

Personally, I think a 'support' or 'oppose' with no rationale at all is pointless. It's not a vote, right? Therefore, such !votes should be discounted. Correct me if I am wrong.  Chzz  ►  02:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a disparity that I've always thought a bit odd, but as far as I've been around the stock line is that support is the default position and does not require explanation. I would be interested to see what the 'crats would make of an RFA where the candidate had clearly failed but most of the opposers had not supplied a rationale. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

That would never happen, because supporters always hound the opposers. The real disparity is that supports without rationales are considered to be an implicit "I agree with the nomination statement", whereas opposes aren't considered to be an implicit "I disagree with the nomination statement". Malleus Fatuorum 03:12, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(copied from my comment at Fae's RfA)Indeed no rules oblige a !voter to make a comment, but RfA is not a 'first-past-the-post' election, and one oppose vote equals three supports. Like all Wikipedia consensus gathering, it's supposed to be a discussion rather than a poll, and in a close run RfA the closing bureaucrat will evaluate the quality in the discussion. It's generally considered good faith to offer comment. Not saying anything suggests either no effort to do one's own research, "I just don't like him/her", or simply too little understanding of how Wikipedia works its processes and primary goals to be able to !vote objectively. Kudpung (talk) 03:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is that a "disparity"? Supporting means "you agree with the nomination statement and find no fault with the candidate." No questions arise from taking this position, and no additional info is required. There is very little difference between "Support." and "Support - Hey this guy's really cool and I like him and the articles he wrote." On the other hand, opposing means "you disagree with the nomination statement and/or find a fault with the candidate." Many questions naturally arise from this: What part of the nomination statement do you disagree with and why? What fault did you find with the candidate? How does that perceived fault affect the candidate's ability to be an admin? Not explaining an oppose leaves a lot of questions unanswered, while not explaining a support leaves no questions unanswered. —SW— ^chatter 03:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"Support he's hilarious at Editor for Deletion" vs. "Support he would make a capable admin." The difference isn't trivial. Townlake (talk) 03:29, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, but that's the difference between a facetious support statement and a typical support statement. We're talking about the difference between no support statement and a typical support statement. —SW— ^chatter 03:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

My point is that with a one-word support, you don't know why the supporter is supporting. A bit naive to suggest that social networking doesn't happen around here, isn't it? Townlake (talk) 03:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're suggesting that RfA is primarily a popularity contest, you certainly have a point that I would find it difficult to disagree with. However, requiring supporters to make a brief statement wouldn't fix that. —SW— ^verbalize 03:39, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

RfA most certainly is a popularity contest, and if opposers are required to make a statement beyond "I think XYZ is a dickhead with a brain the size of a pin head", then so should supporters who make statements like "XYZ has always been very nice to me". Malleus Fatuorum 03:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Why? —SW— ^gab 04:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict):::I agree entirely, Malleus. The assumption should be that if a candidate (who has read all the RfA instructions, counsel, and essays) is nominated by a nominator who understands the process and has done their homework, there would be a fair chance of success. In practice the chances are 2:1 against because we still haven't resolved the issue of disencouraging NOTNOW and SNOW to run for office. Kudpung (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Yet should all the supporters have to brainlessly repeat "the user meets all of the criteria layed out at WP:ADMIN? It was met in circumstances A B &C." One can do that for any user, so although I would not disagree on the point that RfA can be a popularity contest, requiring rationale for support votes doesn't seem to help the situation a whole lot. NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure it does. Even if it's just going through the motions, it forces the supporter to demonstrate they've at least nominally thought why they're supporting. A solution doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. (I realize this change ain't happening and I'm tilting at windmills, for what it's worth.) Townlake (talk) 04:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What if two people have the same rationale? I admit that it might stop a certain number of drive by supports, but it's easy to drive by oppose as "per Malleus" NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

You may or may not have noticed that I've stopped taking part in any RfAs, either for or against, so I'm not your poster child. The process is obviously broken and there's no will to fix it. It will ultimately be the death of wikipedia, but not for the reasons you might immediately think, i.e., a shortage of administrators. Malleus Fatuorum 04:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

@Snottywong I have no problem with Support, per User:FOO, User:BAA and User:BAZ, above, who said everything I'd say.Support ~~~~. I do have a problem with Support ~~~~ ditto oppose.  Chzz  ►  04:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok then, Per intelligent opposition? NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict) :::Malleus hits it on the nail again (Why do you keep doing that?). Until some clear policy/guidelines are introduced for !voting, with a way of making sure everyone will read them and observe them, there will always be crap votes in either of the three sections. You can't 'force anyone to demonstrate they've at least nominally thought why they're supporting' - they can copy and paste the line just as easily. The worst 'support' !votes come from the canvassing that happens in the schoolyard. The worst 'oppose' !votes, IMHO, are possibly, but not always, from those who contest an RfA that has overwhelming support from genuine supporters and is clearly going to pass. I think those are the !votes that might conjure up notions of "I just don't like him/her." No one can stop people from thinking what they want - even if according to Wikipedia rules they have to find another reason for stating why they have !voted. Kudpung (talk) 04:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

My76Strat

Following the recent RfA for My76Strat (talk · contribs), xe appears to have announced retirement [2].

I will make no comment here other than to say, a) I opposed [3], b) I like to consider him a friend, c) his retirement is a loss to Wikipedia.

I'm not posting here for DRAMA; I just thought I'd let people know, who might not otherwise notice. Best,  Chzz  ►  03:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Tough luck! Monterey Bay (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent prose, but it seems somewhat like a martyrdom to me. Yet it cannot be denied that RfA exacts a toll on its participants. NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 03:50, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who puts themselves forward at RfA must be prepared to take the knocks. It's not nice to be told that you're not trusted, sure, but then just look at who's telling you that and be glad you're not one of them. Malleus Fatuorum 04:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"I am proud, having left record of my hand, across Wikipedian. Wishing the very best possible, even imaginable, continence, and peace abundant!" Righto. I'm not convinced this user has retired. Townlake (talk) 04:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I might be if I understood that. But there a few Wikipedians I'd like to leave a "record of my hand" across, that's for sure. Malleus Fatuorum 04:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)