Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

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User talk:Jimbo Wales#RfA decision

RFA regulars not already watching Jimmy Wales' user talk page should be advised that there is an ongoing discussion there (yet again) about possible RFA reform. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 03:43, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice if we had such discussions in the proper place where they can easily be found in the archives, rather than on user talk pages. Perhaps we can move the discussion here?--Pontificalibus (talk) 14:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Could we please make one simple change: instead of voting support/oppose could we change that to ready/not ready or now/not now? This will be kinder to the candidates. Everyone who wants to be an administrator should get the chance, when they are ready. If an editor is not ready, voters should explain what additional skills or experience are needed, or what change of approach is needed. Jehochman ^Talk 05:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that, although well-intentioned, this may not be best for candidates. With some candidates it's clear what needs to be done, and that is often made clear already. However, some candidates will never reach the standard that many !voters expect; some will spend a few years working on something that scores little RfA karma then they'll get bored and semi-retire; some have a serious error in their past and it's difficult to judge when they'll be considered rehabilitated by RfA standards; and so on. We could try to change the standards of RfA !voters so that the goal is within reach of every editor, including the non-anglophone ones, the drama queens, the single-issue pov-pushers, and the edit-count obsessed ones whose rapidfire edits leave a trail of destruction or degraded quality; but that would not be easy. ;-) bobrayner (talk) 06:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that the now/not now version would have the same problem. It doesn't require users to tell an editor that they will someday become an admin (later); however, it is a surface change that sounds slightly better than "oppose". A clear distinction would need to be made between a "not now" !vote and a WP:NOTNOW !vote. Ryan Vesey Review me! 06:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Bob, your comment exemplifies whatis wrong here. We should not be calling editors names such as drama queen or POV pusher. Even if an editor has problems keeping calm or maintaining NPOV, there is always hope they could improve and be promoted. Maybe it will take a long time. maybe they will retire before they are ready. It is not civil to label people and call them names. I wish our bureaucrats would be stronger about enforcing civility at RFA. Ad homeinim attacks should be removed. It is possible to raise any concern without the name calling. Jehochman ^Talk 14:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

As a non-controversial way of trialing the idea, perhaps those editors who wish to do so, and only those editors who do, could simply try using terms such as Not ready or Not now in place of Oppose in those instances where they think it's appropriate. No one is stopping anyone from doing so. If it works well, it will catch on, and if it doesn't, it won't. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:46, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I would like to edit the policy page and the template to replace Support/Oppose with something better. These words contribute to a hostile environment. In addition, I would like to add a statement that bureaucrats will (consistent with existing policy) remove (or strike) any votes that include uncivil statements, such as calling the user a name ("drama queen") or personal attacks in the form of a negative statement without supporting evidence. Jehochman ^Talk 15:15, 25 August 2011 (UTC) and (15:24, 25 August 2011 (UTC))

I would oppose the full removal of votes.--Cube lurker (talk) 15:20, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

RFA is not a zone where the normal rules of civility and no personal attacks are suspended. If something is removable, it can be removed. If the comment is not removable, but improper, then it can be struck out. Jehochman ^Talk 15:23, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

In theory at least, the crats already have the latitude to discount !votes that are not grounded in policy. So I think Jehochman's proposal is basically in line with policy and could be implemented right now. Richwales (talk · contribs) 15:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

(EC) My concern is with the vote itself. Reasonable redaction I don't have a problem with, but I don't want to see someone with 55% support get lifetime adminship because at the last minute a crat rolled through and entirely removed 15 votes because they felt the language was intemperate, and threw the percentages the other way. Your change may have addressed that depending on actual application.--Cube lurker (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The problem you're going to run into is that, by definition, the RfA process (and, by extension, the RfB process) calls for the opinion of the community, which makes it a unique venue in the entire Wikipedia project. Any other area where input from the community is requested also requires that input to be substantiated in some manner. While I agree that WP:CIVIL should be enforced throughout the project, and arguably even more stringently in RfA/RfB discussions and !votes, it's going to be a very, very hard climb to get some of the RfA regulars to separate personal opinion from the process. I'd even go so far as to say this may be one of the core problems of the RfA process as it currently exists, as those !voting aren't required to support their !votes, or their opinions or rationale for those !votes, with demonstrable logic and reason. So it's not unheard of that a user with whom a particular candidate has had a kerfluffle can pop up on that candidate's RfA and state their opposition to the candidate's acquiring the mop based solely on that one kerfluffle, instead of evaluating the entire body of the candidate's work on the project. It's up to the closing bureacrat to evaluate the merits of each !vote, of course. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (User:N5iln) (talk) 15:35, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

To attempt to address Cube Lurker's concern, a 'crat should not pop up at the last minute and strike votes. If votes are improper, the voter should be notified and given fair opportunity to place a new vote. "Not trustworthy" can be replaced with "Actions such as [diff][diff][diff] do not inspire trust. You need to avoid doing that in the future." Language matters, a lot. Criticism without evidence should not be allowed. If we have become complacent about this, now is a good time to raise our standards and enforce existing policy. Jehochman ^Talk 16:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree, including calling RfA vote, votes. In XfD there is the presumption of !v, I do not recall there ever been an RfA closed with anything less than a super-mega mayority, clearly a democratic process.

An idea that might make the process slower but more focused, might be to have a three-phase voting process:

1. Initial votes, one week period, crats decide to close normally or that there is the need to enter extended voting process at their discretion.

1. One week evaluation period in which 'crats decide which votes are valid or invalid according to bright-line criteria, not 'crat discretion. As this happens the voters can also modify their votes according to the comments by crats.

1. One week reconsideration period - those whose votes were subjected to revision are given the opportunity to fix the issues, no new votes are accepted but voters can change votes. 'Crats close normally.

I hate being bureaucratic, but bureaucrats are in charge of this process for a reason, it is bureaucratic. :)--Cerejota (talk) 16:53, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I find that to be excessively over-complicated and a waste of time. Access to the admin toolkit is not powerful enough to warrant that kind of overkill; you're talking about three weeks of people's voluntary time. I favour the opposite approach, whereby admin rights are assigned like almost all other user rights, by simple request which is fulfilled or declined (by a bureaucrat at this point), and the de-adminship process can then come in an RfA-like discussion where the community can weigh in on every detail ^{Not the time/place for this proposal} Jebus989^✰ 18:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Read my exact proposal at Jimbo's its pretty much what you struck out. Am saying, in the mean time, lets do something. I see your point, but then what do you propose. Without directing it at you personally (hell it seems we are thinking some of the same thoughts) one thing that does grind my gears is the tendency shoot down proposals without doing anything else, even when acknowledging the need for change. And these process wouldn't take three weeks of people's time. It would take basically the same amount of time the current RfA process does, except it would be extended over a larger period of time - but the actual work at most would take at most 10 minutes more. Which is about half an hour of time a month at current rates...--Cerejota (talk) 22:06, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure the terminology is so much the issue, as the responses (how they are worded, the tone, etc) - and often that has to do with the editor in question (how many people they've rubbed the wrong way. It's a situation that tends to escalate. I, for one, had problems with only one oppose of mine; and that was due to lack of effort on the opposer to see why certain edits were labeled as vandalism (long drawn out discussions at AN/I promising the editors blocks for disruptiveness and content blanking as vandalism; MULTIPLE reverts/edits to blank, plenty of reason, and already discussed before-hand at ANI)... but that's not so much that opposer's fault; it would take a bit of digging through the talk pages to find all the details, the AN/I links, etc to realize the actions were supported and decided at AN/I and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, that brings up an interesting thing about the process. Extensive responses are "frowned upon" - yet snap judgments are often made at AN/I. And once one person makes such a judgment, others often "support" or "oppose" based on that without doing any of their own research. This is problematic in various respects, whether it helps someone achieve a successful RfA or they fail to.

The problem, of course, is that rationale is important - especially in weighing which !votes to include (such as "he reported me for being an ass! I oppose him being an admin!"). I'm not sure if a "clarification of actions" stage would be helpful (me as an example, since it's fresh in my mind and easily accessible; "Why did you mark these edits as vandalism?" !vote pending on explanation) - though I originally suspected that the "addtl questions" section was supposed to be used for that, but I've seen all too often (as well as experienced) such is not always the case. Obviously, this does not apply to all aspects ("You have no article edits"), but on actions where judgment is called for, I think it does. I think those are the most important ones to get answers for before passing judgment on a candidacy. The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is that a candidate accepts, one week (3 days, some time frame) is allowed for those who wish to contribute to the RfA to (a) ask the general questions we normally see, (b) ask the judgment questions such as "Why did you do this when this happened? What's your rationale?" - THEN the RfA candidate starts to answer questions (not before).

Next big (maybe biggest?) issue is criteria, of course. I personally think the most contentious one, edit count, actually is a win-win either way. An editor with a massive edit count/GA/FA count, etc, can be very helpful in helping other editors or fixing article issues for disputed articles. One without (but with an understanding of how things work) on the other hand, makes a great person to keep the backlogs down (and yes, there have been nights I've seen BIG backlogs - but then again, if you look at the times I edit, you'll see they are the wee hours of the morning). As well, they make someone most likely to be able to take impartial action based on the probability they have not edited any articles that there are conflicts on. Also, comparing the two, a high content contributor seems to tend to still concentrate on those areas moreso than they do on cleaning up backlogs or dealing with issues requiring impartiality. Someone who has the understanding of how to do so, but wants to concentrate on more of the back-end grunt work is the someone who will pick up that slack.

Point is, other than the most basic of criteria, and an aptitude test to test someone's judgment of what they will run into ("How would you tag this?", "Is this vandalism? How (or would) you warn the editor?", "Who is the person who should be blocked here?", or similar), most of the other stuff really doesnt seem to float in any way. I can find pros and cons for all the other "criteria" people have been applying. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 23:58, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

• Summary (via analogy) of my excessively verbose stuff above: If you're in college, you don't get graded before the test. You get reviewed, you get the questions, then you get graded. I'm not sure why (except for follow-up questions brought up due to concerns or !votes) other questions are not asked before !voting takes place, instead of during. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 00:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• Written College exams are not interactive so they make a poor analogy for RFA. I think a better analogy is a job interview, if it becomes clear that the candidate is unsuitable then you don't continue the interview unnecessarily. ϢereSpielChequers 07:53, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Changes to policy

Could we please make a few simple changes:

1. Reiterate WP:NPA: negative statements must be supported by evidence, otherwise they will be removed by any bureacrat (or administrator). Any removal of content should allow the voter to re-vote properly, if at all possible.
2. Reiterate WP:CIVIL: all comments, especially criticism should be civil and focus on the editing rather than the editor.
3. Change support and oppose to less confrontational terms, such as approve or not yet. RfA is not meant to be a struggle so let's not use conflict-laden language. Language has a strong effect on cognition and mood. Jehochman ^Talk 02:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with points one and two, but I don't think the current support and oppose terms are the cause for distress amongst RfA candidates. I think their concerns are more with incivility and borderline personal attacks, as you stated in points one and two. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 02:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Let me add on to this thought here real quick. If an RfA candidate fails, they may say, "I failed because I was offended by people in the oppose section." If we did change the words to "Sure/Approve" and "Not Yet", it wouldn't change the rude oppose (or in this case "not yet") comments the candidate would get, and as a result, the candidate would be equally as offended by the editor's !vote as they would if the words were "support" and "oppose". I agree that the power of language does cause a lot of problems (especially when you're on the Internet and can't judge the tone of a person because you can't hear their voice), but I don't see how it causes problems in this case. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 13:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

It's all one, and everything contributes to the atmosphere. I think changing the language can help and I thinks its a good idea. George Orwell knew the power of language. "Sure/Approve" and "Not Yet" are great. RxS (talk) 04:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts:

• Re #1-2 I agree with both points.
• Re #3: Well, it can't hurt, that much is true. But on the other hand, if "Support"/"Oppose" causes such consternation for an editor, I suspect they may not be admin material. I think the tone of the actual responses, no matter what they are prefaced with ("Not yet"/"Heck no!"/"Oppose"/"Sorry, try later"/"Whatever) is the core issue in that respect - and #1-#2, if monitored by a 'crat, resolves the true part of that issue. An admin will have a lot worse to deal with than "Oppose" on an RfA. Heck, as much as it makes for a hostile environment, how they deal with nasty opposes is actually a telling thing as to how they will deal with being an admin (ie: get pissed off and do something rash, or stay calm in the face of confrontation while using the tools responsibly).

Only two cups of coffee today... so I might be a wee bit off base, but those are my thoughts of the moment. ;-) ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:05, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Speaking as someone with no room to talk (according to 22 people and Steven Zhang), #1 and #2 are the big elephants. One particular extended discussion I took umbrage to yesterday was User:Malleus Fatuorum's, which devolved into insults and a flamewar. The discussion was moved to the talkpage (Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Jéské Couriano 2#pile-on/creationism/whatever it's off topic discussion), but its tone was overall inappropriate for an RfA, and two other editors called him out on it, only for him to dismiss them out-of-hand. It's nice to have civility police, but who polices the civility police? —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 06:19, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Your point #1 is old -- however, it emphasizes diffs too much in my opinion. Opposes without diffs have far less negative effect on the way the RfA will run, and so candidates should be happy when opposers don't include diffs that other people can take out of context even more and base their opinions on. (I think RfA voting should go like this: remember own interactions with user, check user page and talk page, look at user's contributions, then vote support if the users looks like they'll become a good admin, oppose if it is clear they won't be a good admin, and do nothing if the situation isn't clear. A major problem at RfA is people influencing each other's votes through comments and questions, and not enough people independently vetting a candidate on their own strengths and merits, based on the individual voter's admin criteria, not based on what other people say). —Kusma (t·c) 13:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

For point #1, I would just end it after the word "evidence", for the reasons stated by others above. For point #3, part of the issue is some who oppose may honestly believe "not ever", so any workable change must not put words in participants' mouths. How about: Promote and Not promote? That takes it away from being personal and focuses on the actual decision, while also being neutral as to the reasons why. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That wouldn't exactly work, Tryptofish. Based on what you said, they could turn that into "Never promote". The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 23:45, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, promote suggests that administrators are in a hierarchy above regular editors, when in fact they have been given a mop to facilitate maintenance. Perhaps Mop and Don't Mop (semi serious). Monty₈₄₅ 23:48, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Or Demote, come to think of it? Yes, you both make good points. But I would insist that any new language, if made mandatory as opposed to used ad-hoc as I earlier recommended, must not put words into the !voters' mouths. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you think about it, it's hard to avoid putting words into people's mouths. No matter what, if they're wanting to oppose you and if they're wanting to get their point across by being a bit rude, even if you're not trying to give them something to work with, it will most likely happen unintentionally. Nothing is going to stop them if they've got their mind set to opposing rudely like that. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 00:06, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Mop and Don't Mop are all well and good, but even if now/not yet or similar is used, there are some whose RfAs will garner never !votes. And I for one would be hard-pressed to censure that - quite frankly, there are those who should not ever be given any semblance of "power" over other editors. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:34, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The idea that it would be advantageous to change "Support" to "Promote", for instance, is yet another example of the rottenness at the heart of Wikipedia. In what sense is it a "promotion"? Malleus Fatuorum 00:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Only in the sense that I was wrong when I said it, as has already been pointed out and agreed to. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:06, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the original post, I have a few questions. On point 1, 'Crats are busy people and few and far between, it can take half a day before one closes an RfA (something they have a weeks notice on), I don't believe they would be available to remove items. So who would do it? If it was a free for all it would lead to accusations of gaming the system, similarly if it was just admins but with added cabal. I know, how about a new role - a clerk, if you will? That only leads to the problem of "what constitutes negative" - is any oppose without evidence uncivil? What if the evidence is unavailable, or intangible?

On point 2, focus on editing rather than the editor? Much of my vote is on temperment, I will look at 2-300 talk page interactions to see if I can get a general feel for what sort of temperment the editor has. Assuming that there's nothing so egregious as worth bringing up, but a general feel of "does not engage in discussions as well as I'd hoped for an administrator" are you saying that my vote would be invalid? RfA is one of the very few areas that should focus on the editor as a whole - as it is trying to predict how they would behave in the future

Finally point 3, people have brought up good comments, adminship should not be a promotion, mop seems almost facetious, not now leads to problems with not ever. However, I think that a new term for oppose would do wonders long term (even though it's just a surface change, it is a psychological one). Even agree and disagree would be an improvement, though I'm not sure it's enough of an improvement to warrant doing.Worm^TT · (talk) 07:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Policy changes

You may be interested to learn that a recently created active project to bring about reforms of the very kind you are discussing is located at WP:RFA2011. It's a highly structured area and any positive suggestions and support are most welcome in the appropriate sections. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

But it's going nowhere. Malleus Fatuorum 00:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the opinion Malleus. I'd agree it's going nowhere fast, but in my opinion progress is being made and changes (small at first) will happen at least in part due to it. Around Wikipedia, change is resisted - and the larger the change, the more resistance there is. Worm^TT · (talk) 07:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Malleus, sometimes it takes far longer to lay in decent foundations than it does to build on them. It's a bit like decorating - 90% preparation for 10% decoration! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:34, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

And then years of realising that it's not quite the right shade of peach. :) --Taelus (talk) 08:26, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The trainwreck of pages at WP:RFA2011 must have been set up by someone who was mentored by the regulars at DYK. No wonder it's going nowhere fast. As to the proposal here, I disagree entirely; negative comments should be supported by evidence to the same extent that positive are (they're not). RFA would work if it were like FAC, where the burden is to affirm that criteria are met, and the problem at RFA is pile-on supports without examination of candidates. Same ole, same ole. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:02, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Seriously, was your first comment necessary? If you prefer to have no affiliation with the task force, why take the time to criticize it? Ryan Vesey Review me! 01:27, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Question for Sandy: What criteria do you have in mind? James500 (talk) 02:36, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Ryan, we are lucky to have SandyGeorgia willing to comment. Let them speak unabridged, and presume good faith intentions. Sandy would be a great ally in moving this stuff forward, My76Strat (talk) 02:47, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason RFA is not like FAC is that they are two totally different scenarios. FAC is like asking, "Is the diamond ring polished and refined enough to sell?" This question is an affirmation request, so it will yield answers such as "Yes, and this is why." RFA is more like asking, "Can we trust this man/woman to mop the floor and wash the windows without making off with the rings?" This question is a de-affirmation request, so commenters will reply with answers such as "No, and this is why." Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record, in my view the most concerning problem with RfA is that it is producing genuinely silly rejections, and the only practical way to fix it is to lower the threshold for consensus. James500 (talk) 08:23, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I can understand how you come to that view, but I disagree. Firstly I would argue that silly rejections are rare, but the number of candidates successful or otherwise is far below replacement levels or what would be healthy for the community. RFA has become something that well qualified and experienced members of the community are loathe to subject themselves to, and that is a problem both in terms of daytoday running of the community and of community health. Three years ago the most active dozen or so vandalfighters were all admins, their current equivalents are mostly not, as the number of active admins declines problems such as this will grow until the community is forced to take action. Personally I would like to see RFA reformed before it gets to the point where an uninvolved steward has to dole out adminship to the most active vandalfighters. The movement has procedures in place to deal with the situation where an individual wiki has insufficient admins to operate, I think it would be embarrassing if they had to apply those here.

The emphasis on edit count, statistical analysis and the question section has in my personal opinion left RFA less likely to screen out genuinely problematic candidates than it used to be. There are candidates whose RFAs I have derailed after dozens of votes had been cast, that leads me to believe that there are relatively few voters like myself who actually trawl through a candidates edits before voting. Lowering the threshold would let in very few extra candidates, and by definition only candidates who a large minority of the community perceived as not ready for adminship. I somewhat agree with Sandy Georgia in that FAC would be a good model to base a reformed RFA process on. The first key change would be to agree at least some of the criteria for adminship - it is a farce that individual RFAs frequently degenerate into arguments not as to whether the candidate meets a criteria but whether something should be part of the criteria. At FAC if someone comes up with an erroneous objection such as "too many redlinks" it is much easier to deal with them. Agreeing an adminship criteria or at least a partial one will not be easy as the community is divided on certain issues, but if we can agree it then a lot of potential candidates will be able to look at it and get a pretty good idea as to whether or not they are ready to run. Dropping the voting element of per nom supports would certainly make RFAs shorter, but I suspect would be a step too far for the community. I like the current compromise whereby a support is only a third the value of an oppose but a supporter who simply agrees with the nomination can in effect add their name to it, but an opposer has to give a reason for their objection. Of course once one oppose has been written up others can agree with that oppose, but in my experience the least satisfying RFAs are usually those where the oppose is an unsupported borderline attack rather than a diff supported argument. Supports that don't disclose what the supporter has checked do no harm to the process, if something major emerges during the RFA then a lot of them will be reversed and it does give newcomers to FA an easy entry route. ϢereSpielChequers 09:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't entirely agree. I think that humans have quite a knack for remembering community members who they feel have violated community norms in the past (a human "feature" which probably causes half the drama on various noticeboards), so even without looking at a block log, somebody with a track record of problematic behaviour is likely to be remembered by somebody round here. (There's one previous miscreant-candidate who I fully expect will turn up here again with a different username, and even without really thinking about it I look through each RfA to see if it's them...) Of course, sometimes humans generalise about entire outgroups or fixate on a poor measure of contribution quality, but when that kind of thinking influences RfA !votes, it doesn't go unnoticed.

So, if a "bad" candidate sneaks through, I think it's more likely to be because previous problematic behaviour has gone undetected - in other words, something like copyvio rather than AN/I drama. However, I'm not convinced that many candidates have got through who shouldn't. bobrayner (talk) 10:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Well very few candidates of any sort are getting through RFA at the moment. The rolling total for the last three months has dropped into single figures for only the second time since March 2003. I hope that there are relatively few bad ones that have snuck through recently, the acid test will be at some point in the future to look through desysopping trends in 2011/12/13. I accept your point that if someone has gained a reputation at AN/I then that will probably be remembered when they come to RFA, My concern is more at the sort of candidate whose edits indicate that they would be unsuitable wielders of the tools, especially the block and deletion tools, sometimes you need to trawl through people's edits to spot that. My fear is that the increased emphasis on the Q&A section and the stats has left insufficient eyes on the candidate's edits. ϢereSpielChequers 14:50, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I have to disagree - it's put too much emphasis on specific data points that, in and of themselves, are irrespective of the total behavior a candidate has shown throughout his Wikipedia career. As it did in my case, an incident or two of unmitigated stress will cause people to reject everything else that the candidate has done. —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 22:19, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the analysis of the extensive data gathered from several hundred RfAs has sufficiently demonstrated that in general the right candidates pass, while the community excercises caution in the few instances where 'established' users fail, or fail to be re-sysoped. There is no 'bar' or standard set of criteria; apart from a very small corps of regular voters who are mainly experienced and mature and whose criteria are also very different, the bar is set anew for every single RfA. There is a couple of individuals who rarely have anything nice to say at RfA, but their oppose votes appear to be directed against the concept of adminship rather than directed at the candidates themselves. The current system would work if it were not for the superficial pile-ons, vengeance, personal attacks, and incivility that are allowed with impunity. Fix the voters, and the shortage of candidates will fix itself. This we know. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:19, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The ludicrous pile-ons I see are usually in the support section, which you seem to have studiously ignored Kudpung in your quest to have everyone be nicer to each other. Malleus Fatuorum 01:23, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Historical perspective

Hey, I'd just like to point everyone at something I have been working on that you might find interesting: WP:RFABETTERBEFORE. jorgenev 23:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Your page says "even when candidates were being promoted at levels that we now think would think today are ridiculously too low to promote at people were complaining that RFA is too hard". Who is "we"? I am not convinced that the level at which candidates were being sysopped in 2004 was "ridiculously too low" even if it was substanially lower than it is today.James500 (talk) 00:56, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Idk. Candidates passed with ~500 edits in 2004. jorgenev 01:25, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Jorgenev, this is some very interesting research, which I had no idea about. Thank you very much and kudos for doing it. Worm^TT · (talk) 07:37, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

In the very early days, one candidate passed with one support vote. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:33, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Please tell me it wasn't a self-vote. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind, Wikipedia's population and media presence was not nearly today's size, so it makes sense. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 00:44, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Look at it through the other end of the telescope. That administrator is still an administrator, and that makes no sense at all. Malleus Fatuorum 01:19, 31 August 2011 (UTC)