Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

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• Prior to June 2003, requests for adminship were made and discussed on the mailing list.
• For Archives of discussions from June 2003 to the present, please visit Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archives.
• Discussions about Requests for adminship can also often be found at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/9cds 2

Something seems to be wrong with the formatting of this RFA. When I run the RFA Analysis tool on it, it gives the following error:

There was an error parsing the RfA. It has 1 sections, even though 5 are expected.

I can't figure out what's wrong with it & Tangotango doesn't seem to be around. Due to the error it seems to be screwing up the display of the Reporting bot. Can someone help out? --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 05:02, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Reviewing the tool source code, I think the problem lies with the sub sections. The tool expects '''Support''', while the RFA has ; Support. I will be bold and try doing the replacement by hand. -- ReyBrujo 05:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently it worked. Since this is the latest added RFA, I am now worried that the generator is creating ; support sections instead of the expected '''Support''' one, breaking the tool. Can anyone with skills (and access if needed) check the autogenerating thing (if it exists, mind you) is generating the correct section headings? -- ReyBrujo 05:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It hasn't been changed. The whole RfA was probably created malformed by hand. --Rory096 07:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I changed those headers - I've always preferred that style - it's less boated and generally nicer. I didn't realise that it would be a problem, but I'll know in future. Regards, —Celestianpower ^háblame 10:06, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

If possible, sometime in the future the parser should actually probably be changed to generate ;Comments, etc. rather than '''Comments''', etc. It is a much cleaner and simpler style, yet has the exact same appearance. -Silence 10:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Easy enough. Just have to make sure Tangotango's tool can support it before it's done. --Rory096 20:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The semicolon syntax was already partially supported, but not one with spaces. I've updated the regex to handle this - it should work fine in the current version (RfALib 1.09d). Cheers, Tangotango 09:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted the change, as Mathbot doesn't support this format yet. --Rory096 21:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, Mathbot works. --Rory096 04:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Can a bureaucrat please archive Sean Gorter....?

I think that RfA is from someone who doesn't fully understand the rules and customs of Wikipedia, possibly a young person. The opposers seem to have all missed the point in that regard, and are piling on reasons to oppose, criticisms, and accusations of bad faith. I think this is sever, albeit accidental, newbie biting—which I think might lose us a potentially-valuable editor—and I really think someone should put a stop to it and smooth things over. -- SCZenz 19:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of this RfA, is it just me, or did Deskana list the RfA BEFORE the user accepted, then people opposed because the user didn't accept? --Rory096 03:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

No, the user listed it, I removed it, Deskana re-listed it. NSLE 03:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, k. Anyway, it was closed a while ago. --Rory096 03:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrat please archive Jake0geek

Similarly to above, I'm asking a bureaucrat to archive Jake0geek per WP:SNOW. Having it out there isn't good for the community's relationship with Jake, and he doesn't seem to be around to withdraw it himself. moink 21:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the RfA as impossible to succeed. But a good thing is we didn't clobber him with 30 oppose votes with no supports (which has happened before). Kimchi.sg 21:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Doktorbuk

This RFA has some formatting problems & this is messing with the RFA Analysis Report's display. Can someone fix it? --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 08:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it. It was someone using a different font face for their oppose vote. --Lord Deskana ^{I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS} 10:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Deskana. --Srikeit ^{(Talk | Email)} 10:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. --Lord Deskana ^{I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS} 10:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/68.39.174.238

• An IP has added their "own" "RfA" to the bottom of Doktorbuk's. (been removed now) Made by one ip, about another ip, and seems to be signed by a user, but that could be fake. Could someone.. uh.. do.. something. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 17:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
  • It's been removed from the page now, but this subpage still exists if something needs to be done to it. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 17:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

    • Bah, edit conflict. I was trying to say that I removed that: On the same request for adminship, 149.151.192.145 added a request for adminship of an IP address at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/68.39.174.238. I just wanted to make note that I removed this. I don't think much explanation is needed other than that... I'm assuming it was just some sort of joke. Cowman109^Talk 17:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

• From what I understand, it is not possible to promote IP addresses to adminship. Well, it can be done, but you would need to make all IPs sysops, you can't promote just one. Prodego ^talk 17:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

They added it to the bottom of Mtz206 or whatever it is. I would probably vote support for 68.39.174.238 (talk • contribs), but I have no clue who this 149.151.192.145 guy is. Kotepho 17:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

• IPs can't be promoted. Well, either promote none, or promote them all... so effectively, IPs can't be promoted. An IP who wants to be an admin needs to register first, then continue making good edits as that new user. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

  He could always log in as User:68.39.I74.238 (though it got blocked the minute I created it, I'm sure someone would unblock). I'd support for sure. --Rory096 22:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• I've closed it. I'm not yet convinced it needs to be deleted, but it's certainly not helping to build an encyclopedia, so I'm not against anyone deleting it if some others agree. - Taxman ^Talk 18:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Grey zone nominations

There are currently a number of close nominations. Please spend extra time looking into these candidates to discover if they can be trusted with the extra tools and give expanded reasoning as to why you think they should or should not be promoted so that a consensus can be developed. Thank you all for your efforts. - Taxman ^Talk 18:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Is RfA a vote?

I know we're all votephobic here, but consider the definition of the word vote... "A formalized choice on matters of administration or other democratic activities" (Wiktionary), "a usually formal expression of opinion or will in response to a proposed decision; especially : one given as an indication of approval or disapproval of a proposal, motion, or candidate for office" (Webster). Even with the ambiguous 75-80% thing, RfA still obviously is a vote. To call it purely a discussion is simply not accurate... it implies that vote-like qualities are not present. We can talk about consensus all day... but we still all know that 70% always fails and 90% always passes. That's about getting enough votes, and consensus is only an incidental byproduct of that at best. --W.marsh 15:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what's it about. This is a simple voting proceedure. Its all about a popularity contest and how many chaps you've got in the east box. To claim this is a "reasonable and concensus-based proccedure" is a blatent falsehood. -Zero^Talk 15:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You could say the same thing about all decision-making on Wikipedia, but it wouldn't make you very popular :). The idea is, though, that there isn't a set amount required to pass, and that pure "votes" without reasoning may not be considered as strongly as elaboration. You're right that if an RfA gets 100 support votes, with no discussion at all, its still gonna pass, even if it has, say, 5 well reasoned opposers. (In general. It would be up to the closing B, of course). A better example can be seen in AfD though, where there's generally only 10-20 people commenting - AfDs often go against the majority vote, because the other side has made compelling points based on policy - so the vote count isn't as relevant as that. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 15:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh fiddlesticks I say! Nonsense! I'm already quite an unpopular fellow; take a gander at my talkpage and "vandalism spree" I'll never be the popular lad again, despite my good looks and devilish charm. The work of us unpopular folk is never done, I tell you.-Zero^Talk 15:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my comment was to the original poster, an edit conflict got it mixed up. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 15:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Contrary to a "real life" votation, here you can switch your vote on the fly several times based on other's opinions. It is not as "pure" consensus as FACs or AFDs, but it is a consensus between the "voters" and the "candidate", and between the voters themselves. I would not call it a pure votation because people is able to switch from oppose to support based on a personal consensus with the candidate. -- ReyBrujo 15:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well that's what I'm saying. People (the very ones who say this isn't a vote) would be screaming for blood if a B'crat didn't promote a candidate with 100 support uh, comments, with no meaningful support arguments made, and 5 very compelling oppose comments. It's just not a possible outcome, and I've had b'crats tell me that no one over 80% (discounting socks and dupes) can fail RfA. With their hands so tied, it's hard to really buy that they're doing anything more than counting beans in RfAs not in the 75-80% range. Anyway most RfAs aren't in that range. And I don't really care about whether I'm popular or not :-) --W.marsh 17:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the main reason we say RfA isn't a vote is because not all opinions are treated equally. A badly explained vote by a newbie won't be given as strong a weighting as a well explained vote by a respected member of the community. The problem is that buros are generally too scared to go against the numerical result because they know it will cause a scandal - even passing on 76% (which the guildlines say is completely fine) causes problems (usually of the "if you passed him on 76%, why didn't you pass XYZ?" type). We need to give our buros more room to do their job - we selected them because we trusted them, so why don't we show it? --Tango 15:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

We have never denied that RfA has characteristics bearing a resemblance to a vote. But it is not really one. In a vote process, anyone who fulfills the criteria (enfranchisement) is allowed to cast one vote and have it count towards the final result. Our basic criterion for participation on RfA is being a registered user. If this were a vote, any registered account would cast a vote and that would have to count, and the only possibility of it being discounted would have to be sockpuppetry (because it would be the same individual voting twice). But that's not how it works (or at least how it can work) on RfA: a user's participation may be discounted in the end for various reasons, such as a user's history of disturbing Wikipedia (e.g.:WP:POINT issues). We often flag participating accounts that were created in the same day as they have supported/opposed a candidate, or accounts with only a handful of edits that suddenly find their way to an RfA. That's not how it works in a vote: if you have, for instance, a minimum age, it doesn't matter if the individual's birthday is on the very day of the vote, it can not be discounted because of that. Besides, in a true vote rationales are not relevant, since the percentage of support votes cast is really all that counts. To make a parallel with a very recent issue here on RfA, in a true vote it is perfectly possible to refuse a candidate because you have issues with his ethnicity or his religion (I'm talking about the reasons for voting: in most democracies, no one can be barred from entering an election for those reasons).
That being said, there is something that's quite accurate about Wikipedia's inner workings: the more people we have willing to participate in the decision-making processes, the more those processes tend to approach a vote system. RfA is going through a similar instance: over the last year or so, the number of people participating in the process of appointing Administrators has boomed considerably. It is up to us to keep it from becoming a simple vote process, which would not be good for Wikipedia. Redux 16:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I must disagree that various restrictions and disqualifications makes it cease to be a vote. In the US, felons are not allowed to vote in most situations, and people who registered incorrectly in any number of ways are also routinely denied a vote. Even people who forget to bring valid ID to a polling place can be turned away in some jurisdictions. Plenty of restrictions can be put in place and it's still a vote. It doesn't matter who is being allowed to vote so much as the fact that they are engaging in a process that is indistinguishable from a vote.

But I do agree with your assertion that as the number of people involved in a debate increases, it tends to increasingly resemble a vote. That is definently something I've observed all over the project. I'm just unsure of the wisdom of trying to bury our heads in the sand and say it's not a vote, when it obviously is. 6 months ago an RfA with 30 participants was average... now it hardly ever happens. In 6 more months, we might hardly ever see an RfA with under 100 participants. And I'm pretty sure it will blatently be a vote at that point (similar to the last Arbcom elections)... whether we like it or not. --W.marsh 17:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

In the US there are set rules for who can and can't vote. In RfA there aren't. That's the point Redux was making, I think. --Tango 22:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The trouble with RfA is that the 'crat cannot decide for sure if an argument carries weight. If an oppose "vote" for a candidate with 2 months experience is "Not enough experience", the 'crat cannot decide on its own if the objection is valid or not (unlike XfDs where criteria exist and debate is done on borderline cases). So unless the community comes up with a mininum qualification (which seems unlikely) and clear-cut definition of what constitutes civility (for oppose based on civility issue), the RfA is doomed to be a vote rather than a discussion. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 17:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ambuj Saxena, I think you have hit the nail on the head with your comment. The community has not agreed on a clear set of criteria for admin. This vacuum makes it hard for the 'crats to eliminate votes unless they are practically an abuse of the system type vote. Even then the votes are not necessarily publicly set aside, especially if the candidate has a clear margin of support. The system looks more like a vote than it would otherwise. FloNight ^talk 17:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, any attempt to define hard criteria that can or can't be a valid vote just seems like a bad idea. The whole reason we have humans making decisions in the first place is because you really can't pin down in a checklist what makes a good administrator... each candidate is going to be different. --W.marsh 18:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course you can:

• Minimum of 250,000 edits.
• Minimum of 100 featured articles.
• No history of blocks, warnings, complaints, or angry messages on their talk page.
• Is personally vouched for by Jimbo.

Now while these qualifications may not be the most permissive, I'm confident that enforcing them henceforth will ensure that our admins are only of the highest caliber. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Seriously now. : - ) Strongly disagree that no community-based criteria should exist. This leaves the possibility that some users are stating their opposition to a nom for the same reason that other users give for supporting the nom. The 'crats are left to either discount all voters that conflict one way or the other, or make a criteria decision that should be made by the community. This is happening on some RFA's that are borderline now. FloNight ^talk 18:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I was going to say that if there were set criteria, there'd be no need for a vote or discussion at all, since it'd just be a matter of if they pass the criteria. But I realized this isn't really true, cause there are set criteria for articles, and we still need AfD. (Though, to flip again, those are mostly about interpreting the criteria, which would be much simpler to lay out for admins than for all the various policy) -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 18:59, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

What we need to do is decide what types of arguements are valid (eg. can you oppose someone for insufficent portal talk edits?), RfA then decides if those arguements are true in this case, and if they outweigh the other true arguements. It's balancing things that should be the main job for people "voting" in RfA (are 3 barnstars enough to counter a block for 3RR 18 months ago? Does 15000 main space edits counter having only 10 WP space edits? etc). --Tango 22:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

What I was talking about the rules of enfranchisement in a real vote, and why RfA is not one: Those rules are set in advance, those who fulfill them have a right to vote, and to have that count towards the result; those who don't fulfill the requirements are denied from the start a right to vote. If you must be of a certain minimum age to vote, you will vote if you are at least that old, and if you aren't you will not vote. Picture this: if a vote system worked like RfA does, we could have people arriving at the pools and having the people who work there decide something like you are 18, but you are turning 18 today, so you may vote, but your vote probably will not be considered in determining the outcome of the election. The only such rule we have on RfA is that a person needs to be registered to participate. There are no limitations or predefinitions in terms of how experienced, well-versed, etc. a person needs to be in order to participate. In terms of building consensus, the community decides subjectively if a rationale should carry any weight, and be decisive for the outcome of the RfA. In a vote, every vote has the same weight: one person, one vote. In a vote, voters are not required to provide reasons for their position, it is a simple "yes" or "no" and then count the votes (be it a ballot cast or hands raised). In RfA, no one is required to provide a rationale either, but without it, that vote may loose importance, and, depending on the circumstances, even end up disconsidered. That can not happen in a vote. Redux 22:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

My point is on how much discounting of votes actually happens. In a hypothetical RfA with 81% support from non-sockpuppets with substantial edit histories, are you ever going to see it fail because nearly all of the supports gave no reasoning whatsoever, while every oppose voter did? I seriously doubt you ever will. This is where RfA is a vote... because the person succeeded by getting enough votes, pure and simple. If we want RfA to not be a vote, we'd need to somehow give b'crats a lot more leeway in making decisions and weighing arguments... though I don't know if we actually want to do that.
As for enfranchisement, I think we all know blocked users, those with <50 edits, and sockpuppets will always have their votes crossed out (if caught), I mean you're never going to see an RfA sunk because 5 people with no prior edits voted oppose, right? Even if these aren't written into policy... we know they're going to happen. --W.marsh 22:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It just doesn't happen that way. In an even more severe hypothetical situation with 80 some percent support where all the supports were weak support from very new editors and all of the opposes were well articulated and vehement opposition from longstanding editors with a history of evaluating candidates for RfA, then yes, I would fail that RfA, numbers be damned, and I hope everyone else would to. But that just doesn't happen. People don't get 80% support in that situation because people do take others arguments into account. And to the extent that people take other's reasoning into account, that's what makes this different from a vote. Because that scenario doesn't happen and will remain hypothetical that means there just aren't that many situations where votes need to be discounted. Do we reserve the right to do so when needed though? Of course. - Taxman ^Talk 23:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

What about the situation in the reverse ? Sam Vimes's RFA barely survived because some people thought that not warning the vandals is a major issue. IMNSHO, it is a frivolous excuse to oppose a prolific editor. All that was probably needed was getting an assurance from him that he would do so in the future. Has there ever been an instance of an RfA being promoted despite getting less votes than the threshold because the b'crats considered the oppose arguments not sound enough ? Tintin (talk) 06:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought that the only other 75-80% that ever passed were Karmafist and Freestylefrappe and they were later impeached in very high-profile cases. So I'm guessing that Sam survived because he had two arbitrators (who typically avoid RfAs) and a bureaucrat write long support statements and tried to rebutt some of the opposes. Also there were about 8 "weak" opposes, longer impassioned please from supporters. Also the opposes where not due to fear of abuse, but rather redundancy. Also I suspect that Anwar's recommendation was likely ignored. As for any lower numerical cases of 'crat inervention, I don't think so - see the AzaToth case, which I now regret opposing - got about 73%, and the opposition was because he edited templates rather than the mainspace directly - which lead to the resignation of Francs2000. Blnguyen | rant-line 06:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Same Vimes RfA didn't barely survive. He had a large amount of strong, very well reasoned support, while most of the opposition was stated as weak. And no, I don't see a reason to promote on the low end of the threshold <75% unless there were no solid opposes at all and all of the supports were extremely strong and well reasoned. But that doesn't happen either, even though I maintain that it would be right to promote if it does. Whenever there is less than 75% support there really are always substantial, well reasoned opposition comments. And I think the community has fairly clearly spoken that the less than the threshhold promotions weren't the greatest in hindsight. There really is a decent difference between 75 and 80% if you're counting. 75 is 3 supports for every oppose and 80 is 4. And Blnguyen I take it you were referring to the less than 75% supports being promoted, because freestylefrappe was in that category if I recall and there have been quite a number of people passed within the 75-80% range. And there I go talking all about numbers when that isn't what it needs to be about. It's about can the candidate be trusted to use the tools well and not abuse them. More well reasoned comments in the candidacies that make it clear the candidate has been well evaluated to determine if they can be trusted will always be given better weight. - Taxman ^Talk 12:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, would you say that Herostratus' RfA barely survived? There were long-time editors on both sides of oppose and support, and I would call it a close one. Kimchi.sg 14:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

This is somewhat disconcerting

The problem is not necessarily that someone would write something like this, but that they are probably correct in their analysis. BD2412 T 19:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The key point is that we should rely on some people known a user and his contributions, and we should weigh question #3 very heavily; a user who's never had a conflict isn't a good admin candidate anyway. However, I think we also need to end the culture of giving our fellow admins more of a free pass than other users; the personal cost of confronting another admin on rules violations is, unfortunately, often quite high. If we don't give admins who start to "correct the right-wing bias on Wikipedia," or whatever other agenda, a free pass when they start breaking rules, then here's what'll happen:

1. Somebody will make 1000+ useful edits.
2. They'll be noticed and forced to stop when they drop their "deep cover."

So no problem. -- SCZenz 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The only part I did not really like from that "essay" is the one stating that, in order to become an administrator, Two key points are to participate in Articles for Deletion and Request for Adminship fairly regularly. When you do this, you should err on the side of deletion and support votes respectively, but generally go with what others say. which goes completely against my beliefs. [1] But I trust voters will examine votes and realize when someone decided to join a waterfall just because. -- ReyBrujo 20:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If administrators were required to provide their identity to the Foundation confidentially, it would obviate this potential problem. I understand that anonymity has been a tenet of Wikipedia but, by the time a user becomes an administrator, s/he should have sufficient trust in the organization so as to be comfortable taking this step. Accurizer 21:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

And how hard would that be to fake.Geni 23:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

There are several errors in the person's methodology, which we don't need to detail per WP:BEANS, but most importantly is their failure to understand that admins don't have much special force in content arguments. If an admin tries to POV push they will be opposed and fail to gain consensus. Admins are opposed in their article editing opinions all the time. Any admin that tries to throw their weight around to push a POV will be discovered and if attention is drawn to it as necessary they will be unsuccessful. - Taxman ^Talk 21:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I haven't seen it personally, yet, but I would hope that an admin abusing their power to attempt to bypass policies would end up getting demoted before too long. On another note, do many people actually feel that Wikipedia leans to the right? I'm an opinionated moderate, so I've found that conservatives think I'm liberal, and liberals think I'm conservative. I imagine Wikipedia has some of the same problems when editors try to report facts without taking sides. Sxeptomaniac 21:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I would hardly take that statement at face value. If anything, Wikipedia has a politically negative and anti-establishment bias, by which I mean that it is much more inclined to report negative things that can be said about any politician than positive... then again, I think most politicians are corrupt, and have set up a system that feeds their corruption, so who am I to say? Cheers! BD2412 T 22:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it's basically an information inclusion bias. As long as they have good sources to cite, either side can keep the negative information about their opponents in an article. And we have enough people on all sides of the spectrum to ensure that everyone gets smeared ;-). I find it amusing that so many people think that negative information about a politician in a Wikipedia article is going to help defeat them, it has a lot less impact than people suppose. NoSeptember 15:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought this sounded familiar, it's from this thread on Wikipedia Review. the wub "?!" 21:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The funny thing is, if we made Colin an admin for a month and then took it away, and asked him to "earn" it back over the next few months, he'd probably decide to not bother to work for it, once he realized how little power an admin really has. (Let me know if I violated the official "admin secrecy pledge" here, I don't want to discourage people from working hard for adminship, we always need more workers ;-). NoSeptember 15:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

WHAT???!? Admins have very little power?!?!?? Oh man, I thought adminship would be my ticket to taking over the world, or at least to joining the cabal. *sigh* I'm going to have to rethink my adminship then. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Can admins even do any real damage? Maybe with image deletions, but I was under the impression deleted images can be retreived by devs. --tomf688 (talk - email) 15:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

They just took away our last significant power, now that images can be undeleted by admins, it doesn't even take a developer to do it :p. NoSeptember 15:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Not quite true. However any admin who did do something simular to what I'm thinking of would be neutralised instantly.Geni 23:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Block Jimbo? —Centrx→talk • 23:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh! Oh! I know what it is! It's AAAAAH THE WP:BEANS POLICE ARE BEATING ME WITH BLUNT STICKS oh ow ow ow help —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty pathetic when "knowing" what one can do is one's power, not actually doing anything ;). NoSeptember 01:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Blocking Jimbo is soooooo six or seven months ago. --Deathphoenix ʕ 01:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Given geni does a lot of image-related work, I think unprotecting all the images on the Main Page would be more like it. Kimchi.sg 01:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It's too late!!! You're stuck with the work, ha ha ha ha ha!!! BD2412 T 15:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Images can be undeleted by any admin, AFICT (haven't tried myself), but only if deleted after 03:35 June 16, 2006. So, the only unreversible action an admin can do is to merge page histories (this also can be undone, but not automatically). (Liberatore, 2006) 16:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

NOOOOOOOOO!!!! </ Luke and Anakin Skywalker mode> --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

We just have to fake it. We are admins at the 16th biggest website in the universe! We MUST be powerful. NoSeptember 16:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you not feel that aura of admin power? I can... it's... intoxicating. --Lord Deskana ^{I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS} 16:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you guys being funny? I think there's a policy against that somewhere... —D-Rock 16:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I like your boldness, being the only non-admin to join this sub-thread. Don't forget to file the permission slip you received permitting you to do so ;). NoSeptember 16:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we really need to bother if someone is trying to make his way to admin status. Just think about it...He will have to make atleast 2,000 non-minor edits to stand a chance at RfA. If someone did that, he certainly has helped Wikipedia a lot, even if it is addition of stray names and dates here and there. After he becomes an admin, he will realize how powerless admins are. He will either have the option of taking the janitorial route (which I think isn't what he looked for) or try to force POV in an article. Even the latter would be difficult in popular articles and since disputable content is added after discussion based on merits, he will feel powerless. He couldn't even block those who oppose him as most regular users know their way to ANI or some other experienced user. All he can do is bite the newcomers; again a risky thing to do. Overall, I think he will refrain from using it wrongly for the fear of losing admin power for something so cheap. What I feel is that he will leave Wikpedia as a satisfied user having satisfied his "ego" or just save it for the rainy days (i.e. some eventuality that actually would never arise), in which case he will need to keep coming back doing some serious edits. Hence, anyway it won't harm Wikipedia. If we can get 2,000 good edits per account in return of boosting a person's ego, is it really such a bad deal? I think we should welcome more COLINs. :D -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ambuj, how do you know that admins are powerless? wait till one of us blocks you ;) --Gurubrahma 18:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Gurubrahma, I am blocking you for 1 year for making a threat. Ah... that felt great! Better than coffee! --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, for that, I'm changing your username. See how long it takes you to get blocked and how much power you have when your username is Death on WHEELS!! - Taxman ^Talk 22:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

You don't have the guts... Death on WHEELS 23:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I seem to have lost my permission slip. Will you take an affadavit from my dog saying I'm more or less a nice guy? —D-Rock 02:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"16th bigggest website in the universe!" In the UNIVERSE??? Ahem. Here on Earth maybe but I challenge you to produce a cite for that outlandish claim!... ok, seriously, I've seen this essay and variants of it before... surprised it took almost month to surface after being posted this time ++Lar: t/c 16:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Winhunter's RfA

I am kind of bothered that people are still voting stricly based on edit summary use, even though looking at the original stats, you can see why that may not be fair. I went further so as to analyze the stats in more detail and explain why using major article edit summary use alone may not be such a good idea (and Mathbot's stats checked less pags and therefore turned out to be even LESS fair). The user is a vandalfighter, and the reverts are marked as minor, among most of the other edits. With only a handful of edits not marked as minor, missing only 1-2 will cause a very low % for article edit summary use for major edits. Stats are useful for a lot of things, but this kind of stuff is starting to appear more than I'd like to see.Voice-of-All 03:28, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• It happens. What do you plan to do about it? --Folajimi 17:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

RfA's

I know that is not a very desctiptive title, but I think RfA standards are dropping. I have noticed that everybody is becoming an admin. If that continues, the position "admin" will mean nothing because everybody will be one. I just have noticed that more people are voting support in rfa's. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 05:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, look at Kimchi.sg. There is a lot of scrutiny of one terse comment. In the old days people just said : "I nom this person. he is good. he has 3000 edits". You will get into trouble for that now. See also Sam Vimes2. I disagree actually. Blnguyen | rant-line 05:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It isn't supposed to be "mean something" except that we have confidence the user will use the tools for the good of the wiki. I don't believe our admin pool is growing faster than our number of users or our number of articles, either; if anything, I'd suspect it's growing slower. -- SCZenz 06:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

SCZenz is right. I was looking at WikiMedia statistics yesterday, the English Wikipedia has one of the highest articles/admin ratios of all Wikipedias. It's something like 1588 articles for each admin, whereas other version among the top 10 versions have something like a 600 article per admin ratio. RyanGerbil10 (Drop on in!) 06:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Which means, we aren't promoting enough admins? Kimchi.sg 06:31, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Probably an indication that en.wiki is getting loaded with cruft and the like. Most people who would add questionable articles will just cruise in, put some stuff on their favourite band, their CDs, favourite computer games, and then leave again - whereas in the other wikis, they are less populated so only serious people who put noteworthy info are there, so there is more admin material. I just can't see where to find another 1300 editors who are ready for RfA to get the ratio working.Blnguyen | rant-line 06:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I concur with your analysis, but not the diagnosis. If other wikis have more committed users, there is less need for *fds, deletions, protects etc and by extension, less need for admins. If en.wiki is getting loaded with cruft, it calls for more, not less, intervention by admins and hence we are woefully short of admins (assuming that other wikis have the right no. of admins, which need not be true). There are several people working dedicatedly in the nooks and crannies of WP, some of whom could definitely be good admins in future. --Gurubrahma 08:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

We do need more admins, but I think that we will never get enough, as now that WP is a part of culture, we will get more dumps, and the increase in the number of dumpers will outstrip the increase in serious contributors at any rate. It will simply mean that the serious users and admins will have to spend more time clearing the dump rather than putting proper info into noteworthy topics.Blnguyen | rant-line 08:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed, if you look at the page history there a lot of admin candidates that are opposed by everyone. To be honest, I think if every trustworthy user was an admin, it wouldn't be a problem, it would be the way it was inteded to be. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 06:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree, dear George. I've been looking at old successful RfAs from October 05 til now, and the editcountitis has severely increased both in the quantity of edits required and the importance given to numbers by many voters. New objections have appeared, like Mailer Diablo's test, and several candidates are being opposed because of a single incident in their entire WIki career. Combining this with the extremely high admin per article & non admin users that we have here at en.wiki, and the very big number of inactive admins, and I humbly believe that the current rate of successful RfAs is more or less appropriate to our needs. Just my 2 cents. Phædriel ♥ tell me - 11:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"Very ig number of inactive admins" appears to be just a myth, and one that I used to believe too. 89% of sysops are active (this month); I've anaylized the stats. Thats means there are about 840 active admins, if "active" mens "edited this month". 73% of admins are active if you define it as "edited 3 days ago at most". How active they are is another question. As Durin's stats suggest that the top active few admins do the majority of the admin tasks here.Voice-of-All 20:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

how about carried out an admin action this month?Geni 02:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

A lot of admins only use them if somebody "attacks their territory" - that's a bit of a problem as putting up rubbish which needs to be deleted isn't really attacking anyone's territory. The problem is not cleaning vandalism or blocking vandals, but mainly cleaning up rubbish dumping.Blnguyen | rant-line 02:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the monthly stats (Admin stats) it seems clear that admin approvals are going down and rejections are going up right now. Over the history of the project it has gone in cycles, so at some point we may start cranking out admins again (like the record 67 admins that were promoted in December). NoSeptember 11:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, the candidates aren't changing. If anything, we've had less stupid noms recently (and User:NoSeptember/List of failed RfAs (Chronological) seems to agree), and tons of perfectly good candidates getting rejected or barely passing (a userpage that displays your religious views too much isn't a reason to fail an admin). Look at Wikipedia:Recently created admins. There's 77% (Mtz206), 79% (Herostratus), 78% (Sam Vimes)— then immediately 99% (Pilotguy), 100% (Gwernol), 100% (DVD R W), then a bit shaky 87% (Cuivienen), but then 90% (IanManka), 100% (Silence), 98% (Samir (The Scope)), 96% (Fir0002) and 99% (Crzrussian). Coincidence that we're just having candidates that aren't as good recently? I think not. Even in the past week, our standards have noticeably risen. --Rory096 14:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The number of users is clearly increasing. That would imply that the number of users meeting any given criteria is increasing, which would in turn imply that we should be promoting more admins. This is not happening, in fact the opposite is happening. The only reason I can see for that is that standards are, in fact, rising. (The other possibility is that the distribution of users is shifting as total numbers increase, and we're actually losing admin-worthy users faster than they're getting replaced from the pool of users still learning. I can see this happening enough to hold promotions steady rather than increasing, but I can see it actually decreasing them.) --Tango 12:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

One thing to consider is that we don't promote many people who have been here under 4 months. So whenever there is a sudden surge in new members, we have to wait for a number of months before a bunch of users from that group are qualified to become admins. Right now, we are still mostly promoting people who arrived in 2005. The number one factor in how many people we promote is how many qualified people apply for the job. At this moment there are only 7 candidates listed at WP:RFA. NoSeptember 12:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Have we had a sudden surge? I thought numbers were increasing steadilly, so the delay before people are ready shouldn't make much difference. --Tango 14:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello? DLJessup was just denied adminship despite over twelve-thousand good edits, because he didn't have enough in wiki or talk spaces. Standards slipping? I think not! BD2412 T 21:03, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I share this concern that the standards are being ratcheted up, or appear to be. Some standards are good, but people almost seem to be coming up with new standards every day and I think it's a bit disheartening. ++Lar: t/c 22:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The question I would ask is "Are there enough admins to keep up with their responsibilities?" Does it really matter if standards are going up or what the statistics are if we have an answer for that question? Sxeptomaniac 23:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

From my experience there are a too many people manning the vandal bot output like VP and CDVF, but non-blatant vandalism is a problem due to not enough watchlisting. Also there is a general shortage of "investigators" who look out for hoax articles or examine articles for nn.Blnguyen | rant-line 02:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

One thing im finding a bit dis-conserting are pepole applying hard rules as to wether someone gets there support or not, take for example the 1FA, sevral holes have alredy been pointed out in that theroy, im not saying an rfa regular having guidelines is a bad thing but when your opposing a candiate that you belive would help improve the wiki because they dont 100% fit your hard and fast rules that is wrong, as is the opposite supporting an rfa when you believe they wont use there admin powers effetivley because they fit within your hard standards. Now personally i take great time in analysing someone before suporting or opposing an rfa and take great care not to be a pile on opposer here, consequently i dont vote comment on a lot of rfa's, but id like to think when i do its not because the stats look pretty. Benon 01:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

So it sounds to me, from the above two comments, that some of the concerns are not that the standards are too high, but that they are misdirected, tending to only promote certain types of admins (vandal-fighters). I have noticed that combatting vandalism seems to be particularly emphasized in RfAs. Sxeptomaniac 16:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Pure vandal-fighters often don't get promoted. A lot of people oppose for not having a balanced enough edit history. You need to do a bit of everything, really, or at least explain why you concentrate on what you do. --Tango 17:18, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Tell that to RexNL, he was a pure vandal fighter and made 20,000 contributions in month or so and was promoted instantly, he didn't have a lot of edits before that. — The King of Kings 07:16 June 24 '06

And me. I've never really written any articles. I've added information to articles, copyedited, but never really written any. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 08:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

RexNL got quite a few opposes for not doing anything else, but I think he work on the Dutch wiki was enough to counter that. Deskana, you might not of written many articles, but looking at your contribs, you're very active in the WP namespace. You don't just revert vandalism. --Tango 13:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Expanding the standard question area

Okay. I can't believe this didn't dawn on me prior to this evening, but better late than never. How is it that we don't have any standard questions on process or basic ideas surrounding consensus? Certainly, as an admin who'll be expected to close discussions, delete articles, and block users, those questions would be at least as important as "What articles are you proud of?" I'm not sure how to word them, but considering that they're such an essential part of the mop, why aren't they addressed? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:53, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Consensus varies on circumstances, forcing a potential admin to set down what he thinks constitutes consensus would violate m:don't vote on everything (as it may make him start vote counting) and discourages individualized judging of consensus. --Rory096 03:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally I think the extra questions way too often result in votes of the form, "I don't like or disagree with their answer to X so oppose". Opposes based on purely political issues like that are very bad, almost as bad as, oppose, less than x % of edits in my preferred namespace. Both amount to failing to evaluate the intangibles of a candidate and if they can be trusted to use the tools well. - Taxman ^Talk 03:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Woudln't one's ability to demonstrate their understanding of consensus and process be a reason to judge trust, though? It's certainly more worthwhile than what we're doing now, no? --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

But is one question really enought ot demonstrate understanding? It's best if users review the candidate's edits. --Rory096 03:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

no, but one question is much better than the none we've got right now. --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

With nothing, nobody opposes because the answer was too short. They just look at their contribs to figure it out. This also invites people only seeing if they understand policy from one question, and not look at their contribs at all. --Rory096 21:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree, and the "optional" (but you get opposed if you don't answer them) generic additional questions are almost as bad. If someone wants something answered, they should ask a direct question, not tons of uselessly general stuff given to everyone. --Rory096 03:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm completely against more questions. I understand that users want to get a good grasp of the candidate's experience and knowledge, but sometimes I feel people go too far. Some RfAs, like Alan Liefting's, will have ten or more questions, several laughably labelled "optional" (we all know a long unanswered question doesn't look well). Questions like "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." Expound in 300 words or less, with specific references to Wikipedia politics. (12 points) seem largely irrelevant to the process as they potentially could yield answers unrelated to Wikipedia. Also, I believe it's wrong for people to support a candidate, but then still ask questions since clearly the answers to the questions have nothing to do with the vote. I wish people would only ask questions to elaborate on certain things brought up by the candidate or voters (such as a blocking incident) instead of overloading the candidate with philosophical or especially abstract questions. This is a request for adminship, not an FBI investigation. joturner 12:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about others, but I don't ask questions to try to interrogate. I ask, such as in Alan's case, when I don't feel his required question answers give enough of an idea to decide on a vote. By asking more questions, it gives users a chance to explain themselves further. The subsequent oppose (such as mine in that RfA) is not because they didn't answer the optional questions, but because I didn't feel they answered the required questions sufficiently - the optional ones were to give him a 2nd chance, as it were. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 12:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If you ask questions about policy, people will expect candidates to give the "right" answer, which basically means reading the relevant policy page and summarising it. Anyone can do that, it doesn't say anything about your understanding of the policy. It's like the question for buros about when to promote - it's a completely stupid question because anyone can read the answer from the policy page (and worse than that, it encourages the idea that buros are robots that make decisions based on numbers and aren't allowed to think for themselves). --Tango 12:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The fact that this conversation is taking place calls suggests that the process as it currently stands fosters an environment for m:Instruction creep.

Perhaps NoSeptember was right after all... Folajimi 17:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I wrote that in a single day some three months ago, and I see it needs quite a bit of fine tuning. But thanks for reading it :-). NoSeptember 23:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm conflicted about the addition of a set of "standard" questions and/or whether nominees should feel obligated to answer "optional" questions. I felt that the optional questions asked during my RfA were very appropriate to why I wanted to become an admin (mainly to deal with images); however, I find many of the optional questions to be ridiculous and usually they are the person posing the question trying to make a point versus anything else. Sue Anne 00:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Moving around stuff in RfA

How about we move around the things in RfA to encourage reading of questions and discussion? I think we should move the comments and questions up above the actual poll. It would look similar to this, but they would still be bold, not subheadings (otherwise the main TOC would be huge) and the comments would be on top, like User:Rory096/BetterRfA (feel free to edit that with more suggestions). I'd also suggest that we make an opportunity for the candidate to make a statement if he wishes, below the nomination, where the long Lorem Ipsum is in my example. As it is, the only way for a candidate to express himself when it's not a self-nom is in the questions, which are completely general, and yet specific, so the candidate can't just say what he wants. I'd hope that this statement by the candidate may eventually even phase out the automatic questions, and only direct questions would be asked. This would discourage things like "Oppose, answers to questions aren't long enough." and would allow for more candidate-specific discussion. --Rory096 04:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

RFAs are too big to handle, I think we should just surrender and let everything happen. Although people seem to base votes on other peoples votes so perhaps they should get the facts before being thrown into the opinions, although changing stuff does confuse people. In other words: ignore me and do whatever you feel works. MichaelBillington 04:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Change might confuse some at first, but they'll eventually get used to it, and hopefully RfA will benefit. In the very beginning, we might have a <!-- --> comment to tell people that the RfA was created correctly and that it shouldn't be edited to be closer to the current version. --Rory096 04:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If you want to encourage reviewing the questions and discussions before voting, maybe you should collapse the votes with a Nav div. -- ReyBrujo 04:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, but it doesn't work in skins other than monobook, I believe. --Rory096 04:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, doesn't work in other skins. --Rory096 04:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Move the questions above the comment section AND collapse the comment section, even if it does not work in all skins, that's ok. ++Lar: t/c 05:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not that the collapsing doesn't work in all skins, the show button doesn't appear at all (but it still collapses), so if it was done, people couldn't view RfAs at all on other skins. --Rory096 05:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with most of what Rory has said. I reckon the first question that each candidate receives could be mentioned in a statement. We could have like some area which serves as a guideline and refers to what you should put in your introductory statement. The second and third questions are a bit more direct and should still be asked as questions. Nobleeagle (Talk) 06:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a very good idea. It would make people have a closer look at the candidate before getting overwhelmed by the votings. Collapsing is also a good suggestion, and even if it doesn't work in all skins, if things appears correctly, there should not be any problem. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 06:37, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of collapsing sections for RFA, but Rory's suggestion is good. While we're at it can we have the header changed to link to the RFA rather than the candidates userpage? (I brought this up before and it seemed to get support, might as well put all changes together if it all gets support.) Petros471 08:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Collapsing sections are out of the question for RfA's. We went through this trying to edit MediaWiki:Edittools. In other skins than monobook all you see is the title of the section and it is impossible to see the content. —Mets501 (talk) 23:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh right, I remember that proposal, and I meant to do it. I'll do that now. --Rory096 20:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm for Rory's re-ordering as well. It puts more focus on the discussion rather than "voting" aspect of requests for adminship. joturner 12:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

• Good suggestion Rory! --Durin 15:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It is either moving the discussion above the votation, or removing the "Discuss here" link. When you click it, you are taken to the RFA in "edit" mode, thus people find it easier to add their vote than read comments in raw wikitext (in fact, instead of "Discuss here" it should be "Vote here", exactly for that). Note that currently only two clicks (one on the TOC and another in the "Discuss here") are needed to cast a vote, and you can do that skipping discussions. If you remove the link, people would have to go to the RFA in "view" mode. That way they will have two opportunities to review (one at the RFA page, another at the candidate RFA) before they are able to edit the page to add their own vote. -- ReyBrujo 18:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Durin. ReyBrujo: As of right now, the discuss here (which used to be vote here, before a bit of vandalism by me) is basically the only way to go to the RfA's page (AFAIK, since I hit the edit button then click on project page; is there another way?). Once the header is changed to link to the RfA, it would be a lot easier to get there, so I guess it could be removed. Or maybe it should be moved down to where the poll is, next to where the tally is now, so people read the discussion before hitting discuss here (though they could always hit the section edit or edit this page buttons). --Rory096 21:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Introducing a candidate statement and moving votes to the bottom are fine by me. As Joturner said, proposal would make RfA extremely conducive to discussion. ~ PseudoSudo 00:21, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I support the order suggested by Rory as well; I think it will bring the questions/answers to more users' attentions before they place their comments. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 04:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. It seems only sensible. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Updating the edit count

Apparently a new phenomenon is emerging: updating the candidate's edit count during the RFA, like here: [2]. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons: it gives the impression that the exact edit count matters, and it causes a lot of editing of an RFA, which is not just pointless but also a bit irritating to the people who have it on their watchlist. I just reverted one of those incidents, then I realised that I made the situation only worse (another pointless edit ;)) - but am I completely missing the point of having completely up to date edit counts here? It doesn't really help that the links that are provided with some of them look like this:

• *See Where's _{(Talk ▪ Contributions ▪ Logs ▪ Block Logs)} contributions as of 21:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC) ^(Update*) using Interiot's tool*

where the 'Update' is read as a request by some. --JoanneB 20:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Update is now read as Source for a better interpretation. G.He 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What's the big deal about self-noms?

I don't understand. There are a significant number of votes that oppose one's RFA on the basis of a self-nom. Why should a user, who could do the community a lot of good as a sysop as soon as possible, have to wait for another user to discover them?--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 17:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Hunger for power is sometimes considered a bad thing. Other than that, a big part of Adminship (such as the power to block users) requires interaction with other users. If the Admin hasn't interacted with other users enough to be nominated by someone else, that's potentially a weakness. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. It's not like it's hard to get a nomination. You can go on IRC and mention you'd like one, and I'm sure someone will nominate you unless you have a lot of blocks or under 1,000 edits or something. How is that so much better than a self-nom? It's actually worse IMO... it's like you want to be an admin so bad you'll fish around for a nomination just so you don't get oppose votes for a self-nom. I'd rather someone just be honest and nominate themself. Anyone who accepts a nomination obviously wants to be an admin anyway... so I don't see the power-hungry thing. --W.marsh 17:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Basically, there is nothing wrong in self-nominating oneself. The user's intentions could be positive to Wikipedia in nature. For example, these users show a considerable amount of initiative to help Wikipedia. of course, this is NOT always the case as there are sel-nominations who nominate themselves for no serious purpose whatsoever. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 17:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Some people, including myself, actually prefer self-noms. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:36, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that helps. I'm thinking of applying after I help get an article to FA status.....though I'm not sure how to go about that...... The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 17:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Getting FA help? User:Linuxbeak helped me out with a few pointers when I asked him, it might be worth dropping a line. Also, try the IRC channel, plenty of helpful people there. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I would not worry about XFA votes. Someone who has never written a featured article, yet votes in many FAs giving solid justifications for his votes, should get (hopefully) a support vote even from them. The same goes for someone who spends his time tidying up articles, if not developing them, or someone who has expanded an article following the guidelines from a stub into a GA one. Spend a week checking the FA nominations, and you will be able to pick up four or five names of extremely intelligent people who know about the matter. -- ReyBrujo 18:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Drop me a line when you bring something to peer-review or FAC (or any other time for that matter) and I'll give it a thorough look. — Laura Scudder ☎ 18:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify: active involvement in the FA process is a criterion that some users adopt in deciding on whether to support or oppose a candidate, but it is not a prerequisite for Adminship. Other users have said that they, [obviously] on the opposite direction of those who place importance on involvement with Featured Articles, do not believe that being involved with at least one FA's rise to that status is essential for a solid candidate. If anyone wants to get involved with FAC, all the better. Absolutely go for it, we can always use more Featured Articles. But it is not a steppingstone for Adminship, and a candidate should not expect promotion especifically because s/he has been involved with FAC. Redux 19:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try to go thru with all of the advice given here.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Nothing - I just read their userpage and record more carefully to see that their statement is accurate, but I don't apply higher standars.Blnguyen | rant-line 03:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Morally I encourage people to self-nom once they're ready, but I find a lot of people who self-nom haven't assessed themselves according to the current RfA voting standards, so they aren't really "ready" yet, and hence more self-noms than other-noms get "thrashed". Per Blnguyen, no different standards here. Kimchi.sg 04:24, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed modification to RfA process.

Please provide your feedback on a proposed modification of the RfA process posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia jurors. Folajimi 03:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Failure of Rf Adminship

This way of creating admins is failing. It is dominated by geeks who love to vote, and the main criterion for adminship is the number of edits the particular user has. This discriminates people who

• work 8 and more hours a day
• prefer sports to sitting in front of a computer
• prefer doing anything to sitting in front of a computer
• have kids
• are not school pupils
• are not high school students
• are not lame university students

I think that the RfA should be considered by a special comittee, that would also take other characteristics into account. ackoz 18:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

An elitist proposal? --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 18:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

(this comment is to be taken less-than-seriously) LOL! I needed a good laugh, thanks! And I'm not against discriminating against those who like sports. Such people need to be shot :P. —Celestianpower ^háblame 20:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Heh. We elected a bureaucrat (Redux, see Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Redux 3) who in two years got only 5,400 edits. This shows that the complaint at the top of this section is baseless. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Given that admins need to be around the project a lot, and people who are not around the project a lot tend to edit rather than vandal fight or other sysop chores, to describe this as discrimination seems unreasonable. Just zis Guy you know? 21:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey Oleg, what are you doing rounding down almost a hundred of my edits?? But seriously, and in actuality, apart for one or two exceptions, all of them more recent promotions, Bureaucrats don't usually have amazingly high number of edits at the time of their promotions (and for the "older" Bcrats, that's not even easy to assess, since we didn't use to count edits and post the numbers at the time of their RfBs).
In general, both in RfA and RfB, we do tend to place more importance on the experience that the user's history suggests than on the sheer number of edits (recently, a couple of candidates with + 12 thousand edits received a lot of opposition because they had little experience in project space). Many users also feel that enthusiasm doesn't necessarily prepares for Adminship (users with five-digit number of edits, but who did it in only a handful of months, often receive opposition justified as "lack of experience"). Redux 21:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.. ok for the elders, but now the numbers matter right? There are always people who only look at the numbers. Personally, I think that having 50 edits per day or more for one year is a significant health risk. ackoz 22:05, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that RfA can be flawed at times, but in the long run, it's the lesser of evils. Having a 'committee' would simply be creating a cabal, and it would severely restrict the potential evaluation of a candidate.--digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 22:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

About having 50 edits a day being unhealthy. Well, it probably is, but on two occasions I managed to get 500 in one day and I didn't suffer any health problems, so I think were safe. — The King of Kings 12:59 July 02 '06

Related to the first comment: Is there a profile of a typical sysop? I know that most work 8 hours a day, so the first assumption isn't true, but the 2nd and 3rd... I hope they aren't true either, but I'm not too sure. :P As for assumption 4, we're all dedicated Wikiholics aren't we? Kimchi.sg 01:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I can debunk assumption number two, as I am a sportsaholic, both in the sense of playing and watching sports, and I know that there are several other admins of whom this is also true. However, many of us live in constant fear of Celestianpower's vigilante group. :oP EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 01:20, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFA/BJAODN

This somehow managed to alert me to the existence of this. Offhand I forget what the procedure is for this kind of thing, and as I'm connected to the net agonizingly slowly and expensively right now I'm not in a mood to investigate. -- Hoary 23:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Now I'm connected cheaply and quickly, but busy-ness means I'm still not in a mood to investigate. I'm inclined to leave an avuncular message about the reality of administration on this person's talk page, and then just to zap his extremely botched attempt at a self-nom. Any objection? -- Hoary 01:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Jkelly 01:28, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I notice that Konstable has already left a splendidly avuncular message. I'll let the RfA attempt live for a few more hours (while still not transcluding it, of course). -- Hoary 01:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

When we made you an admin, we expected that you would willingly dig into your pocket and pay those expensive connection fees if necessary as a condition of the job ;-). NoSeptember 18:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

So you did, so you did. I sit corrected! -- Hoary 07:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

A small tweak to the nomination process page

Please see Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/nominate and Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/nominate, there have been several cases now of people getting an RfA subpage (nomination page) made for them when they didn't necessarily want that, and it perhaps put them in a bit of an awkward spot, so I tweaked the page to suggest that one should ask first before creating the RfA subpage if there is any doubt... I am mindful of instruction creep as always so maybe the wording could be tightened a bit but I do think it's caused some people needless stress lately. ++Lar: t/c 01:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

We should also make it clear that it is ok to delete RfA subpages that are never used (not accepted and transcluded), and when the candidate is ready, they can start the page again (without restoring the deleted edits). NoSeptember 16:03, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, a very good idea. Of course the candidate will have to ask someone else to do it for them in almost all cases (reconfirmations excepted) as they're not an admin. :) Please enhance the text if you think it proper, and thanks for catching that. ++Lar: t/c 17:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

dab linkage

"WP:RFA" could be confused with a request for article... so perhaps a dablink at the top for WP:AFC and WP:RA ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.11.138 (talk • contribs)

So go ahead and do it. Be bold!--digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 18:30, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to make an account and then wait a week for it to cure. When it's no longer green, then I could do it, as the page is edit restricted. 70.51.10.208 05:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I forgot that RfA is semi-protected. I'll go do that now, if it hasn't been done already.--digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 22:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Not just yet.

Not yet, but I should be one by doing 100,000 edits. --RCT Locomotion Wikipedia 21:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

What do I have to do to be an admin?

What do I have to do to be an admin?I want to be one.I have a good attitude and always contribute to wikipedia.I am in the wecoming committe.Well,I guest I can wait. --Cute 1 4 u 21:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, regarding Adminship, I would suggest you see this as a consequence of good activity in WP rather than the aim.

1. Make good contributions in the article namespace (i.e. edit articles, create new articles, help fix articles, etc., categorizing articles. See Special:Uncategorizedpages, etc.)
2. contribute to the community in the Wikipedia namespace (i.e. contribute to WP:AFD for example or to any articles that start with Wikipedia:)
3. Fight vandalism of wikipedia by monitoring Special:Recentchanges

Once you have proved to the community that you care, then it will be very likely someone will nominate you for adminship. You will do fine, Just be useful, be always civil and help others. And most of all, be patient and DO NOT give up hope! --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 21:21, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Do good work
2. Get recognition for your work
3. Be nice to fellow editors
4. Stick around for at least 3 6 months --Mr. Lefty _{Talk to me!} 16:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC) That's more accurate.
5. Discuss issues in wikipedia-related workspaces
6. Contribute to editing articles
7. Show an inclination for janitorial work

=Nichalp «Talk»= 13:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Remember to apply only when you "need" it. Adminship is not a reward for work on Wikipedia. Most of the work on Wikipedia does not need Admin powers. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 13:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Please remember to have many friends on wikipedia as well. rfa is a beauty pagent of the like, so regardless if you are a valued contributor, your fellow editors will still oppose if they don't like you. -Zero^Talk 15:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to somewhat disagree with this comment, having "name recognition" doesn't warrant you an automatic admin. Look at Terrence Ong's latest one. Alot of people whom seem to be "big names," sometimes get shot down. Having a successful RfA, from what I have seen, comes down to: A) Will you use the tools for the benefit to Wikipedia, B) Have you shown habits that will indicate that the use of tools could be malacious and C) Have you contributed positivlevy (more specifically uniquely) towards Wikipedia? Yanksox 15:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It's often helpful to have someone respected nominate you. If it is too early, they are likely to say so, and if they support you, their voice can carry weight. Most of the failed nominations are rejected because of lack of experience, and this could have been spotted at the start by an experienced admin. OTOH, there are some people with lots of edits who don't need admin powers or who people don't trust to stick to policy. Stephen B Streater 15:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not recall using the term of name recognition. I commented that adminship certainly doesn't rest upon the qualities of our editors as it did previously. I will not cite names, but there are many successful nominees who passsed on anything but their quality as editors and their devotion to the encyclopedia. Its a popularity contest in my view. -Zero^Talk 15:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't like when editors who are going through RfA are rejected because they don't need the tools. My best friend has a key to my home; he's never been here when I wasn't. I doubt he ever will be. If he ever does need them, he'll have them. RfA should be asking, if I give this person the keys to my house, will he be throwing raucous parties when I'm not home? Will he come in while I'm sleeping and eat all my food? Will he break or steal my valuables? If those answers are "no," give him the keys. If any of the answers is "I don't know" or "yes," then hold off. If an editor can identify what a vandal is and isn't, participated in enough processes that you're sure he knows how they work, give him the admin flag. The strain on resources is negligible (nothing?—the database space required to have a flag on is the same as it is to have it off), and since you've decided you trust this editor, the cost to integrity of Wikipedia is also negligible. —D-Rock 16:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The RfA process

Megaman re your post above; if I may add my $0.02, without splitting hairs in actuality any democratic one user:one vote system by definition is based on the nominee's popularity - hence the term popular vote. But I understand what you meant. If you aren't attacking the individual personally then I see no reason why you could not name an example or two. Personally as that is a rather bold statement and I see no reason for you to make it without thought. Even if only to myself (and others who may ask perhaps) in the knowledge it would go no further. Thanks in advance, - Glen 16:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

We need to make a template for this: RFA is NOT a vote! It is certainly not "one user:one vote", so the entire rest of your comment is null and void. I have faith in our crats to know that one "Oppose because of these acts of vandalism" is worth more than one "Support - he's my friend". --Tango 16:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Worrying about the term vote is not necessary. Come up with a short term (4 letters or less) that clearly defines the process and we can use that instead. Otherwise, vote is a perfectly valid shorthand here. After all, the bureaucrats know what is going on. NoSeptember 16:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps calling the RfA a request for comment much like AfD? - Glen 16:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

In the context of "one user:one vote", it's clearly not a shorthand, it's a misunderstanding of how RfA works (or at least, is meant to work - whether it actually works that way isn't so certain, I personally trust the crats) --Tango 16:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

"Popularity" is a poorly defined term in this case. I consider a person who I think will be a good admin to be personally popular to me, even if I have never interacted with them. And of course I feel no obligation to vote for a friend if I think they are not suited for the job. NoSeptember 16:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It is popularity. The problem, GIen, as I see, is that adminship is really but a set of tools to allow editors to assist wikipedia to a higher level. This shouldn't be considered anything close to a nomination for a politicial posistion. I don't wish to use external examples, as I feel such could be construed as a personal attack or the like. Its essentially the growth of wikipedia, perhaps. The more editors we recieve, the less the nominations have been dependant upon the skill and devotion of our editors. Its about who likes who best. I rarely see nominations that pass without sufficient support on a person's charisma. Its cool to be a person everyone likes, but that's not what wikipedia should base upon. We're seeking reasonable, skillfull, experienced editors who aren't afraid to sometimes place their fat in the community fire to uphold the values of the encyclopedia, rather than that of the select populist's ticket.

And it is a vote. Plain and simple. People vote for stupid reasons, assume bad faith and the numbers are counted at the end of the day. This is a firm reminder of my high school gavel club. Despite being skilled speakers, the best lads were tossed to the side because they didn't meet the standards of perfection or they didn't have the spanking new blazers. And the school suffers becasue of that. Popularity is great. But it doesn't help the encyclopedia. -Zero^Talk 16:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

That is the way the system works, and has always done so throughout society (Look at the Gov of california, Jesus Bush is still president for God's sake - because of knowledge or skill? - nor popularity either though I might add! hmmm) Anyway, I digress... I think yes popular members get more votes, however - why are they popular? You mentioned your gavel club. Perhaps the speakers you cited were not suitable as they should have been aware to keep their blazers "spanking". Popular members are just that because of their social skills. If I may name names, take Tony Sidaway, great admin, but, most would agree that he could possibly improve the way he interacts with (new, but also older) users. Some have taken breaks or gotten upset because of this. However, naming names again, we also have the likes of Sam Blanning, Bookofjude, NoSeptember (3 chosen at random) and the rapore they have... I have enormous respect for Tony, and I certainly mean no disrespect here but if all admins were as cut to the chase by the book and, well, efficient in handling other users then wikipedia would be a much less enjoyable experience (and I think Tony would agree). Those users voted in because others like them are to my mind worthy for that reason alone. Thoughts? - Glen 16:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I honestly can't tell you how people are considered popular, GI. I've never been a popular person in my life in or out of the wiki. What I can say is that I'm generally a hated wikipedian and it doesn't bother me much provided I get to assist the encyclopedia to the best of my abilities. Many editors complain that I'm cold, I don't regard other feelings, I'm "too bold" and that I generally don't think about anything else other than the encyclopedia. This isn't entirely true, but I see how my objective way of thinking makes it seem that way.

In addition to my failings, I am a very experienced wikipedian. I took a personal mentorship under Tony Sidaway to learn what is proper, I've reviewed many policies, I make and greatly expand articles commonly, and I have a long and respected editting history of around 15,000 edits which are distributed evenly across every namespace. My general editting habbits are that of a consistent user [3], which on occasion has made me very depressed and stressful. Popularity is suitible in common society because everyday people aren't elected senator. This is wikipedia, a volunteer project. -Zero^Talk 17:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

As a sidenote, I have long had an idea for nomenclature here: rather than v-te, why not the "post which cannot be named"? For instance, "in my post which cannot be named (PWCBN) I supported his adminship." Marskell 17:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

<cliche>Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.</cliche> Essjay (Talk • Connect) 14:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

If you start doing that, you won't mind if I refactor your comments, will you? ;-) NoSeptember 17:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone call me? Oh wait, nevermind. --HWSNBN ^{(Dark Mark)}

I quite like the !vote term that was suggested a while back somewhere. It's short and to the point :) Petros471 22:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I have invented and repeatedly used the non-word "notvote" in this context. So far, no-one has laughed :/ -- grm_wnr Esc 14:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

My suggestion: people should calm down and not all panic-attack anyone who uses the word vote. I understand perfectly well why what we do isn't voting, but language itself is indifferent - 'vote' is a synonym of 'opinion' (fight with Mr. Theausaurus, not me). If someone does the correct thing (makes well reasoned arguments or discussion), and just happens to say the word vote, they really don't need 10 people yelling at them for it. Just having used the word does not mean they "don't know AfD/whatever is not a vote". If someone truly doesn't understand (all they do is go Support or Delete with no rationale), then it should be explained to them. But if someone is voicing their opinions just fine, and accidentally slips out a "vote", their only mistake is not realizing they're about to get beat up for using a dirty word. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 18:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

All well and good, but the first message of this section talks about democracy and "one user:one vote", which is very clearly a misunderstanding of how it works. Just because "vote" can be a synonym of "opinion" doesn't mean it always is, the usage of it in that message was not talking about opinions. --Tango 20:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree in this case. I just meant in general, there's a lot of paranoia over the word, rather than seeing what people actually are doing. Maybe this wasn't the place to say so, though, since as you say, "vote" is being used the non-wiki way in this case. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 21:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Should this news be true, it will of course be sad for all of us, and we would not want to say or do anything now that we would regret if the worst turns out to be the case. On the other hand, we have to suspend judgement, as we are surely used to all kinds of behaviour on wiki, until we can establish the truth; and that is a reasonable thing to want to ascertain. In the meantime, I suggest the RfA is protected, with a note to direct to this discussion and a request that the RfA is not edited. If HRE is not hurt, but returns, the RfA can be continued with extra time added for the time suspended. Tyrenius 22:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

A Suggestion

Why not make a Table for future nominations - so that we can see a visual charter of the votes (Support, Oppose and Neutral)? --HolyRomanEmperor 13:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Because RFA is not a vote, but consensus. Making a table would make it appear as if we only care what the user vote, not the rationale he had used. There are autogenerated tables for RFAs around, like Tangotango's one. -- ReyBrujo 13:30, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean a table like Wikipedia:RFA summary, or something else? If the former, then it already exists, if the latter, please explain more. --Tango 13:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I was trying to find the link to the summary, but couldn't for my life find it :) -- ReyBrujo 13:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a Wikipedia first..

What should we do about this? Apparently, an current admin candidate has just died. [4] — The King of Kings 21:00 July 03 '06

I'd say wait several hours to make sure someone isn't just playing a horribly sick joke, then close HRE's RfA. Of course, it would probably also be appropriate to post a message on his talk page and/or User:Sad News's talk page sending condolences. joturner 21:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

If it was a joke, then this person would have also been a hacker because he posted the same above message on HRE's account. [5] — The King of Kings 21:09 July 03 '06

I'll, unfortunately, have to agree that that confirms it. I presume that the person who made that post was HRE's brother, who knew his password. joturner 21:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

He didn't 'have' to know his password. Sometimes, if you don't log out before you leave the computer, the next time you get on, it will automatically log on under the name you were on previously. I do that all the time. I'm thinking thats what happened here. — The King of Kings 21:32 July 03 '06

In any case, that would only confirm he was very close to HRE to have access to his computer, which was why I chose to believe this is true. -- ReyBrujo 21:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Eh, this ruined my day.. :( — The King of Kings 21:38 July 03 '06

I didn't mean to make it sound like I was still skeptical; the method of signing onto his account is completely insignificant. By the way, could one of you post to my talk page a little bit of information on how to connect to IRC? I've attempted it previously on my own to no avail and it's times like these I feel out of the loop. Thanks in advance. joturner 21:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest a unification of these talks, currently this is talked in the Comments section of the RFA, the talk page of HRE's RFA, and here. Sad as it is, we should keep calm and direct all discussions about this matter to a single page to prevent cross posting, especially with matters this serious. -- ReyBrujo 21:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we should keep it here; talk pages of individual RfAs aren't as visible. joturner 21:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually the majority of the discussion is occuring on IRC. And at the moment the best thing to do would probably be take things slow and wait a bit. Cowman109^Talk 21:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

It could be a housemate, friend or relative playing a prank. I don't think it's usual to refer to one's "minimal accomplishments in real life" if someone you know has actually died. Homey 21:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of what is going on at IRC, WT:RFA (ie, here) should be the main venue for discussions relating to on-Wikipedia/RfA issues. This is indeed very serious and very sad. But we need to take it one step at a time: we must remember that there had been suspicions that HRE's password had been compromised in the past. For that reason, I can't take that post as undeniable confirmation of these terrible news. However, it is also true that HRE is a very active user, so I would propose this: if his account remains inactive for three days, I'd be fairly certain that something bad did happen, and then we can take the necessary steps about his RfA. Until then, if anything out of respect for HRE, we should keep it active. Of course, this is all subject to change, bearing the presentation of impressive evidence either way — such as HRE's return to editing. If this is acceptable, once the period of time elapses, I will close the RfA and archive it properly.
Furthermore, if we confirm HRE's passing, and being that his account has undoubtedly been compromised, I will block it indefinitely. Suggestions? Thoughts? Redux 21:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I was waiting for the 'crat to chime in (sad grin). I concur wholeheartedly. RadioKirk (u|t|c) 21:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. -- ReyBrujo 22:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

+ concurrence. joturner 22:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see anybody noting the posibility HRE is not dead. Now I'm doing that: what if he's not dead? --Dijxtra 22:08, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well there is the possibility of a compromised account, most likely by someone getting onto his computer which has autologin or something. If HRE returns to editing I'm sure he'll be very, very careful to log out properly in future. Otherwise I think we proceed as Redux suggested- basically wait a few days and see. Petros471 22:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Disclamer: I realise the thing that I'm going to say is highly inapropriate if HRE is dead. So, please read my following sentence baring in mind that there is no firm evidence that HRE is dead: What if HRE is alive and this is his way of leaving Wikipedia? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dijxtra (talk • contribs) . Sorry for forgetting to sign --Dijxtra 22:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to stop with the hypotheticals. Let's not come up with possible situations as it's horribly disrespectful whether he's dead or alive. joturner 22:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This discussion continues in several locations; this has been brought up (except for the "his way of leaving" possibility, last I looked). I have been looking over HRE's contribs and a long break during these hours is unusual (he's usually winding down about now), but not unprecedented (roughly 3 times in the last month). RadioKirk (u|t|c) 22:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, that would be great. Yes, for once I'd like to hope someone's account was hacked (and there's still a part of me that believes it's possible as the statement mentions that the poster received a list from HRE). I would like to see HRE show up here and say my idiot friend was messing around with my account; I'm not dead!, but I don't want to get my hopes up. Unfortunately, his contribution history shows that he often contributes around this time. But we haven't seen anything from him in nine hours. joturner 22:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Should this news be true, it will of course be sad for all of us, and we would not want to say or do anything now that we would regret if the worst turns out to be the case. On the other hand, we have to suspend judgement, as we are surely used to all kinds of behaviour on wiki, until we can establish the truth; and that is a reasonable thing to want to ascertain. In the meantime, I suggest the RfA is protected, with a note to direct to this discussion and a request that the RfA is not edited. If HRE is not hurt, but returns, the RfA can be continued with extra time added for the time suspended. Tyrenius 22:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. BTW, does (did) HRE have an e-mail? Orane (talk • cont.) 22:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that we respectfully ask for Sad News's understanding that we are often plagued with false messages on this encyclopedia, and we are worried about making a mistake here, as it is not usual for someone who has opened a new account to be so conversant with how to use wikipedia and send messages so quickly,[6] although we realise there could be a proper explanation for this. Also that someone logging on for the first time would not normally bother to create a user name, although again we see that this could have been done as a sign of respect to communicate grief. Furthermore, wikipedians do not usually keep lists of other wikipedians, as this is stored for them. If however he did do the most unusual thing of passing on a list, while he was dying, this only shows how much wiki meant to him. However, in order not to needlessly upset a lot of people and create a situation of bad faith, we need to move carefully at the moment, and we know that this is something HRE would understand and wish. Tyrenius 22:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

(triple edit conflict) Unluckily, the piece of news and the way it was informed has disrupted the normal flow of Wikipedia, where it is assumed that the edits made by an account have been effectively made by the owner of the account. At this point, if he is alive (wish I could say this as confirmation and not assumption), he cannot probe that by just editing with the HRE account, as his account integrity may have been compromised. A mail to the foundation or some admin/crat would be (not ideal but) more suitable to probe identity, as the last thing we want is to have someone else to edit under HRE's name. -- ReyBrujo 22:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Since we can't be certain either way, I would not suspend an RfA based on less-than-concrete evidence. I would trust users to use their better judgement when/if participating in the RfA. However, it is undeniable that this situation can affect the outcome decisively. So how about this (naturally, only if HRE turns out well): if this is resolved quickly, I will consider an extension matching the period of time during which we were sorting this out. If we end up having to wait a longer period of time to confirm the situation, and depending on how long it takes and how the RfA progresses during this time, I will consider restarting the RfA (again, only if HRE is well). Redux 22:56, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, and if his account were compromised with its password changed, he would probably log on with another account and let us know... since we have yet to see an announcement like that, we have to assume that, in one way or another, HRE has left Wikipedia. I truly hope that this is just his way of leaving, but I think we have to assume the worst. Maybe we can ask HRE's cousin to tell us his real name so we can have leave a proper tribute in his name. --Deathphoenix ʕ 22:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I proposed that to Cousin on IRC, but he didn't disclose HRE's identity. I also proposed guys on #wikipedia-sr to call the police and ask whether a anybody died in a car accident today, but nobody wants to do that. --Dijxtra 23:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether I refuse to believe this because I think it's false or because I don't want it to be true. I was only talking to him a few days ago... --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Call me evil but I don't believe it. How did cousin know to go straight to RfA, to use talk, to use edit summaries, and to speak of "distrustful admins on IRC"? I was here two months before I even heard of IRC. These posts are coming allegedly a few hrs after HRE died - and this makes absolutely zero sense. I just don't believe it. - CrazyRussian talk/email 23:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

No harm in waiting it out and seeing what happens, I guess. --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe HolyRomanEmperor's name was Igor. — The King of Kings 23:08 July 03 '06

As I see it, his cousin's name is Igor. --Dijxtra 23:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This is Sad News' 2nd edit. read the edit summary. Does this make any sense?? - CrazyRussian talk/email 23:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Sad News appears to be trying to prove that he has access to HRE's account, so is using his PC to access his account? It seems to just be an attempt to prove what he is saying is true. --Lord Deskana (talk) 23:12, 3 July 2006 (UTC)