Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gracenotes/Bureaucrat chat

This page is for bureaucrat discussion of Gracenotes's RFA. Any comments on this page by a non-bureaucrat will be removed.

• As Gracenotes has indicated the desire to either let the bureaucrats decide his RfA or else resubmit it in "a few weeks" more or less according to my suggestion, I am taking this here to discuss our options and see what resolution we can come to. Unless community sentiment has changed in the last year (and tell me if it has) Gracenotes would have the prerogative of a new RfA in a month's time anyway.

• Google provided me with this definition of "consensus": "A consensual agreement or win-win outcome of collaborative problem-solving and conflict resolution. A consensus implies that debate has taken place, the solution is generally accepted rather than a grudging compromise, and that agreement is deep-rooted enough that it can stand for some time without need to revisit the issue."

• That is pretty close to the way I understand the term, and it was more or less what consensus meant in 2004 when I first became a bureaucrat. Back then pretty much all the 200-some admins knew each other or at least who they were, and also either knew the RfA candidates or else knew (and trusted) the person proposing the candidate. Since then Wikipedia has gotten much larger, the admin poll (existing and proposed) has grown much larger, those participating in RfA are an order of magnitude or so less likely to know the candidate before the RfA and outside issues (like attack sites) are a real concern rather than nonexistent or virtually unknown and the process has, in some cases, become way more political. Whether the way the community now decides RfA and the bureaucrats interpret it fits any sensible definition of consensus today is an open issue to me; "compromise" or "preponderance of sentiment" in contentious cases seem like a more realistic definition.

• I bring up the above because I honestly feel that it will be, at the least difficult to determine consensus in this case; perhaps not even compromise. Why? Because so much has happened in the week's RfA that it is hard to gauge where the body of sentiment would lie if all had a chance to see the facts and the candidate's positions laid out clearly, and if we subtracted the "snowball" effect and some part of the intense emotion. Because of the above, I am at sixes and sevens to see how we can determine consensus based on the current RfA, but I'm open to being convinced. In this case I think we need a real dictionary-definition consensus among ourselves. I would also like you to consider the possibility that we could leave this undecided and bring up a new RfA for Gracenotes in a month's time. I will then defend the result as valid as we are, as several have pointed out, the Wikipedians chosen by the community to make the final decision. -- Cecropia 15:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

To my mind, the question is whether a consensus to make Gracenotes an admin exists, or whether it does not exist. It is pretty clear that there is not a consensus that Gracenotes should not be an admin, but that is not the question here - if no consensus exists on either side, then that is how it should be closed.

That said, we do have a pretty broad (and somewhat vague) definition of consensus, with the guideline that it can often be sufficiently demonstrated with 75-80% support, and generally cannot be demonstrated with less than 70% support. As this RfA falls in the gap in between, it will, of course, require particularly close study to determine whether a consensus does exist. Warofdreams talk 15:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that we should be determining consensus and nothing else. I will withhold my further thoughts on that issue until we've had a bit more input from other bureaucrats. -- Cecropia 20:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

*sigh*: So we don't have Taxman or Dan. Warofdreams, I suggest we start. We're both active and IIRC we've been bureaucrats since the Great Angela Request ;-). So I've already expressed the opinion above that fairly determining if there is consensus or not (as opposed to declaring that consensus does or doesn't exist) is problematic in view of the issues I outlined above. Please give my your sense of this. -- Cecropia 23:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern. However, we are in the position of evaluating this RfA, not an ideal one. Whether this RfA might have gone differently, given a different process, is not our concern, unless the actual process of this RfA makes it impossible to determine whether consensus has been reached. It is certainly difficult to determine whether consensus has been reached, but that is the task we are set, and if we cannot say that consensus has been demonstrated, I would be minded to close it as "no consensus". Closing as no consensus should not prejudice a future RfA, and it may be that further discussion on the genuine concerns around attack sites and links to them, on Gracenote's position on them, and on the relevance of Gracenote's position to suitability to adminship may clarify the position in a relatively short period of time. Warofdreams talk 00:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we are in basic agreement, but give me a little time and let's see if we have any other input and then I will propose a resolution if nothing has changed. -- Cecropia 01:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've had limited time recently, and that RfA is quite extensive.
Having read all the comments there, I've observed that, on the opposition side, the concern over the candidate's views regarding attack sites is drawing nearly 100% of the opposition. On the support side, there's also been a considerable number of people who have supported commenting specifically that they either agree with the candidate's position or that they would support regardless of his position.
However, even though part — this is in no way a blanket affirmation; in fact I reckon the larger part of the opposition that presented arguments (which excludes the "per X" comments) did present legitimate concerns about their ability to trust the tools to someone who viewed this particular issue, which is a sensitive one, as the candidate does — of the opposition seemed to fail to present convincing arguments as to how the candidate's understanding of a proposed policy and his interpretation of policy (namely WP:BLP) meant that the candidate would not be suitable for the job (boiling down to "oppose because I don't agree with him on this one and that means that he can't be trusted"), the ratio of general support against general opposition, as well as that between support and opposition specifically citing the attack sites issue indicates to me that consensus to promote the candidate cannot be demonstrated safely given the circumstances — it would be different if this issue was not accounting for nearly all the opposition, but as it stands, I must agree with the current opinion that a more elaborate debate over this issue, followed by a future RfA, would be helpful in determining a [at least] less controversial stand from the community, and hopefully render a more clear consensus on whether or not anyone with any given understanding regarding a sensitive issue should become an administrator. Redux 13:32, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The bureaucrat's job

First, what everyone is looking for: I need to hold my proposal for ending this RfA until this has been up for about 24 hours in case there is any additional discussion and to give me time to frame the issue. The denouement is not going to be anything so dramatic as the revelation of whether Dumbledore is really dead or not, but it won't evaluate to anything quite as simple as "consensus" or "no consensus." That is because this is a unique case that goes to heart of RfA, the concept of consensus, and Wikipedia policies. It is true that there are similar issues in some other RfAs, but this one is "writ large."

Now I want to comment on what I've been reading about "The Bureaucrat's Job." Some feel that "we trust the bureaucrats to do the right thing, that's why we picked them out." I believe that most believe this most sincerely, but it is not so simple. If a bureaucrat takes an action that someone dislikes, or seems illogical, or arbitrary, or inconsistent with earlier actions by the same or another bureaucrat, people want to know why. The bureaucrat is not bound to explain as a matter of policy, but very much of that will erode trust in the 'crat, and eventually in the process. Nor is the bureaucrat's job quite so simple as "determining if consensus is reached and then pushing the button to promote or not." As I pointed out in my opening of this "chat," this has not really been a truly consensus-driven process for at least two years. Nor is it a vote, although a vote is part of the process. Why? Because (barring sock- or meat-puppetry) each expression of opinion in an RfA represents the opinion, raw, half-baked or done to perfection, of a Wikipedian in a system which we believe gives everyone an equal voice. In fact the main way that this is not a vote is that, unlike most elections, a majority of one-half plus one does not rule and, unlike a ballot election, bureaucrats are empowered to consider the quality of the expression of opinion; but still a promotion with less than 70% of these raw "non-votes" is going to raise some eyebrows, and it has. So what do we have? I have described it elsewhere as a "preponderance of sentiment." That is more of a mouthful than saying "consensus," but it is more accurate because it describes better what actually has been happening.

So what is "the bureaucrat's job"? Here are some aspects as I have come to understand them and have applied them:

• To close RfAs and take action based on his or her understanding of the community's sentiment;
• To explain his or her reasoning if challenged;
• To see to the smooth functioning of RfA;
• To engage with other bureaucrats when necessary;
• To build confidence in the process, so that the bureaucrats' decision will be seen as fair and reasonable;
• To aim for consistency in his or her own decisions and in the overall body of RfA decisions;
• To be fair and unbiased in considering the issues in an RfA, forming opinions based on the concerns raised by the community;
• Except in extraordinary cases to refrain from expressing opinions in the course of an RfA or to try to mold sentiment. In cases where he or she feels so strongly that he or she enters the RfA as an advocate, to refrain from deciding on the outcome. This means that as a technical matter the 'crat can "push the button" (or remove) if no other 'crat has taken the initiative after the passage of time, but only if the outcome is completely unambiguous. The appearance of fairness is almost as important as the reality, or the community's confidence can be lost;
• To treat all candidates equally in determining an RfA. If feelings of friendship or dislike or the candidate's position in Wikipedia are an influence, let another bureaucrat do it.
• To make every reasonable effort to let the community decide for itself the outcome of a difficult RfA, rather than impose a solution simply for the sake of closure. -- Cecropia 05:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll see you folks tomorrow. Cheers, Cecropia 05:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)