Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

RfA candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report RfB candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report No RfXs since 08:54, 6 September 2024 (UTC).—cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online

Current time: 20:37:45, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Recently closed RfAs and RfBs ()

Candidate	Type	Result	Date of close	Tally
				S	O	N	%
Asilvering	RfA	Successful	6 Sep 2024	245	1	0	>99
HouseBlaster	RfA	Successful	23 Jun 2024	153	27	8	85
Pickersgill-Cunliffe	RfA	Successful	15 Jun 2024	201	0	0	100
Elli	RfA	Successful	7 Jun 2024	207	6	3	97

Three Cs

This month, there are three RfA candidates beginning with the letter "C": CaptainEek, Cwmhiraeth, and Creffett. Were there any other months in the past with three (successful or unsuccessful) RfA candidates that all begin with the same letter or digit? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:57, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder that I need to unwatchlist WT:RFA again. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Lol, there was Cassiopia Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 17:10, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

In October 2019 we had Girth Summit, Greenman and GermanJoe – Kees08 and Nosebagbear spoilt things by also running in that month however. Fascinatingly when Cwmhiraeth ran the first time in May 2017 we also had Clpo13 and CookieMonster755 in the same month.-- P-K3 (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Pawnkingthree: - dammit, if only I'd known, now I'm permanently going to be wracked with the guilt! ;) Nosebagbear (talk) 21:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

This isn't exactly a groundbreaking feat in Wikipedia's history, considering that back in 2007 we'd have 60+ RFAs a month. bibliomaniac15 17:33, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Ugh, you don't expect me to go back that far do you?-- P-K3 (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

It sure shows Bibliomaniac15's and my wiki-ages when the era we became admins in is referred to as "back that far". :o Feels like yesterday it all happened! Acalamari 18:22, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Acalamari: If memory serves Wikipedia was in Black & White back then, only had three channels and finished at 11pm.... :) Pedro :  Chat  11:55, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Wait until you tell them we had to walk three miles in snow to make one edit! Acalamari 09:27, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Acalamari, And another three to revert it. Both uphill. S Philbrick(Talk) 20:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Though I registered in 2008, I can still attest to being active in a time when adminship was explicitly referred to as "no big deal". A complete absence of active RfAs was an infrequent anomaly, rather than the norm. Kurtis ^(talk) 16:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Records could be broken, unfortunately

I think that this has got to be one of the longest active RFA droughts since 2014. 139.192.206.157 (talk) 04:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

• Since 2014 (inclusive), we've had eight gaps between successful RFAs longer than this one. In a week, there will still be five gaps longer than this one. Yes, this is a long gap, but not anything to worry about. Also, we've had 10 successful RFAs this year so far. That's more than 2019, 2018, and 2016. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Have we actually broken an RFA record here guys??? 139.192.105.124 (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• No. The longest drought for a successfully concluded RfA was from August 21, 2014 to November 11, 2014. That was 76 days. This recent drought lasted from May 17 to July 30, which was 74 days. Close, but no record. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:57, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• However it's actually the longest drought between any RFA (both successful and unsuccessful). Right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.192.105.124 (talk) 02:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• It's not a fair comparison. In the era of RfA being EC protected, then yes but that's been only 2 1/2 years or so. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

A proposal

I have a proposal. Each year an election would be conducted for new admins, say eight or ten. This would be of an identical format to those for ArBcom.

• The election would be in addition to the regular RfA process, and would not replace it. Anyone would still be free to pursue the RfA route.

• Questions could still be asked of the candidates as is usual for an ArbCom election.

The idea is that this would less confrontational than the regular RfA process, and therefore that it would attract editors who are currently deterred by the current process.

Any thoughts? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:07, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree since a lot of people are deterred from RFA for reasons. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(You Asked?) (What I have Done.)} 00:49, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this would be less confrontational. There are no limits to the number of questions in an arbitration committee election. All the same discussion about the editor's suitability for administrative privileges would still ensue. isaacl (talk) 04:20, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we need to run them like Arbitration Committee elections, but I'm actually quite sympathetic to the idea that we could have set times of the year where we run a bunch of candidates in batch in the standard RfA format. Knowing that you won't be the only candidate subject to the sometimes intense scrutiny of RfA might be more comforting to some candidates. Mz7 (talk) 04:39, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Coordinating multiple RFAs should be possible right now already if you find sufficient candidates (and has already happened in the past). I think the lack of candidates is more of a problem here than the timing. Regards SoWhy 08:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• I don't really see what we would gain from doing this. Our issue isn't that we require a different passing route, it is that potential candidates are turned away by the stress and judgement that comes from an RfA. A better use of our time would be to make the RfA platform less toxic.

When I ran, most of the worry was self asserted - and I had little negative responses. I don't see how doing an election relieves this stress. I promote more rules on RfAs cutting out personal attacks, and generally making the criteria lower, as it is higher than ever, but we have less nominations than ever. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:03, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• Concerns I have with this proposal are:
  1) What if fewer candidates are fielded than places are available - do they all get elected? That doesn't seem sensible.
  2) Might this system be used by people who have failed RfA and who think it might be an easier way to becoming an admin, either due to the lack of strong competition in any single election's candidate field, or simply a paucity of candidates (related to point 1)? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  In Arbitration Committee elections, if there are fewer candidates than seats available, the candidates must still reach a minimum support threshold (currently 50%+1 I believe) in order to obtain the seat. Mz7 (talk) 14:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  I've always found it curious that the threshold to be an arbitrator is lower than RFA. Over the last 5 years, 7 arbs have been elected below the 65% threshold that RfA has. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:02, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  Different formats, different criteria. With only a fixed number of places I often vote against people who I think would be OK as Arbs but who aren't among the best candidates for that bunch of seats. But there are no limits on the number of available mops, so when I !vote for or against in an RFA I am simply saying whether I think the candidate is ready and suitable for adminship. ϢereSpielChequers 16:12, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• I assume that the same consensus criteria would be used as for any other RFA, as no alternative has been specified. If this is correct, what is the actual benefit to the candidate and to the community? I think this would be a fairly large and concentrated load on the crats when the time was up, which might be an issue. I also don't see an immediately obvious format which would not be simply running a group of RFAs in parallel. There is nothing stopping a group of RFAs starting at the same time by accident or design, and overlap is reasonably common already. Are there any stats on whether this makes any discernible difference to anything? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  Don't worry about us Crats. If the RFAs are uncontentious it is likely to be less than one closure per crat. RFAs so tight that they result in cratchats are rare, so rare that I think you are unlikely to see more than two in the same election, and two cratchats at the same time is only double minimal activity when something significant happens that requires multiple crats. ϢereSpielChequers 16:18, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• I like the notion of advertising flights better. I didn't know one was leaving the station just before my RFA until I was in the situation that I knew I would be too busy to join that one directly. A "hey, we do groups of RFAs once every 3 months" kind of thing might be cool. --Izno (talk) 15:35, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear, I don't really support baking this into a process. Let's see if the informal flights idea that's been baking for a year or two can, er, take off. --Izno (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
• I like it as well, FWIW. -- puddleglum^2.0 16:18, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
• I don't see anything wrong with this proposal, in fact, I'd clap if I weren't typing. - ZLEA _T\^C 16:39, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support - worth a try. Why should it be easier to get elected to Arbcom than to get selected as an administrator? Deb (talk) 17:01, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
• I think we should have elections every three months with five or six seats. Geekpotato24 (talk to me!) 17:27, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
• Our format has been the same for a long time, and it's worth trying something new. Even if it's a disaster, we'll still learn what didn't work and how we can make further improvements. Even the simple idea of coordinating nominations into flights is something that would be interesting to try. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:52, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support but I would like the following question answered:

How would this be an improvement in terms of RFA inflation? The criteria is ridiculous right now and certainly needs to be lowered due to a lack of new admins; the most suitable ones don’t want to do it because of the stress of RFA.

I honestly was hoping we could try something new so I would be definitely be willing to support a second option for adminship. Eternal Shadow Talk 22:34, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• I’m assuming this would still have the 75% de facto minimum. If so, I have no real objection. If we’re talking it being a 50%+1 type thing... that’s a bad idea. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:36, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  50%+1 would make it useless and could lead to bad unqualified candidates succeeding. Eternal Shadow Talk 00:00, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm against the proposal, as changing the effective minimum criteria depending on who else is running doesn't make sense to me when we are adding to a pool that doesn't have either a maximum or minimum number of positions to be filled. I'm pro a flight-push. I've no complaints about semi-formalisation - either quarterly, or just when a nominator is in a position to state a likely run date (as below). So long as we push, firmly, against any questions that challenge a "lone-runner" candidate on why they didn't wait for the next flight. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
• If you think standing for ArbCom is less confrontation than standing for adminship ... you and I have had very different experiences of the two. WilyD 07:25, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
• This has been discussed before but nothing came of it. One aspect which would be good is that the voting process for a batch of candidates would tend to be similar to that used for arbcom elections and that's a secret ballot. That's a reason for setting the threshold lower at 50% because you're much likely to get opposing !votes when they are secret and there's less risk of reprisal. Arbcom candidates typically get hundreds of opposes. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:00, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
  • And that's supposed to encourage more people to run? —Cryptic 18:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
  • {{citation needed}} ——Serial ^# 18:31, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
    • See archive 255 for a previous discussion. RfA discussions are quite repetitive and that's why there are so many archives. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:51, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

      A practical process would be to do them in batches so that the voting form and mechanisms would resemble the arbcom one, with a selection of candidates. If this were done monthly, or quarterly, then there would be a regular cycle and process which might encourage people to come forward. My impression of the current process is that the business of preparing nomination statements is quite intimidating because each one is isolated. If candidates were grouped in bundles then you'd get economies of scale and safety in numbers. The assessment process might also be fairer as candidates would be compared with each other rather than being judged against an idealised, abstract standard.
      — User:Andrew Davidson 14:18, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

• I can understand grouping RfAs into batches, but I don't see why that has to be done as an election. There are a limited number of places on ArbCom and if we have more good ArbCom candidates than places then we can afford to pick the best ones. There is no limit to the number of admins, and if we get more than 8-10 qualified candidates then we presumably want them all to become admins and not just the best 8-10. Conversely if we get fewer than 8 qualified candidates then we don't want to have to appoint 8 admins from them. ArbCom elections also feature far less discussion and reasoning than RfA, which I'm not sure would be a good thing. Hut 8.5 17:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Excellent summary by Hut - that's why the initial proposal seems a no-go but the flights are a positive (or, at a very bare minimum, worth trying out and not a negative). Nosebagbear (talk) 12:18, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

We are losing Admins and thanks to the hard work of 250 to 300 most active admins we have no crisis at this point.But majority of the Admins are editors from pre 2010 era.They are leaving or becoming less active over time.We had only had only 14 RFA at mid July out of which 10 got through the real issue is the lack of candidates.Here we can give this a try even make that those who are elected through Arbcom style have a limited term say 2 years as we selected them at 50% further only the top 10 get elected to be admins do feel more candidates will come out in the arbcom sytled RFA.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:26, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Do feel we can have a RFC on this.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

• Hate to rain on anyone's parade, but I think both of these ideas -- the "election" idea and the "flight" idea are very very bad, and I oppose both of them strongly. Putting up batches of wannabe admins at the same time simply means that people will not spend as much time on any one of them as they would if they were posted singly, and that means that the level of scrutiny needed will not be achieved. To me, that's formula for churning out bad admins.
  I, for one, am not convinced -- and have not been convinced for the years that people have been saying it -- that we're in the midst of some sort of admin crisis which needs extraordinary measures to be taken to churn out more admins. I just don't see the signs of this purported crisis.
  How do other large Wikis, like the German and the French, manage to get by with many fewer admins then we have? How about we spend some time and energy working to figure out if their systems are better than ours, instead of kludging ours up with proposals such as these? I see little opposition here, so it's likely that I'm a voice in the wilderness on this, but, frankly, "I've got a bad feeling about this." Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:59, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

• The French and German wikipedias are not so big as the English. If you look at the number of active users per admin then, currently it's

117 : English

121 : French

101 : German

Of the major Wikipedias, the Japanese seem to have fewest admins with 363 active users per admin. But how do we know whether these other languages are managing to get by or whether they have a crisis? Some comparative studies would be good. Do they exist already? Andrew🐉(talk) 09:02, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I know that Japanese has an unusually high proportion of IP edits, but I don't know if the other Wikipedias have done as much or even more unbundling of the admin tools as EN has. ϢereSpielChequers 11:35, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

So we and the French are essentially the same per capita, and the German is less. So... where's the crisis? What we've got is on the high end of normal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:45, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Good data. A question though, could a an admin be counted as an admin but not qualify as an active user? Depending on inactivity policies it seems like only active users and admins active by the same standard should form the ratio. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:09, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Not sure we can directly compare different wikipedias. Different cultures could affect admin needs on Japanese vs. German vs. French vs. English wikipedias. We could have different levels of vandalism or requests for protection. We could have different project-specific admin needs. —valereee (talk) 13:59, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Those wikis seem to have a greater proportion of active admins than us. We have 364 who made at least one logged admin action per week over the last year (on average). We currently have 1,137 admins, so that's about 32%. frwiki has 100 who meet that standard out of 155 total, or 65%. dewiki has 126 who meet that activity standard out of 191 total, which is about the same as frwiki. This means that enwiki must have a much higher ratio of active users per active admin. Possibly those wikis have stricter admin inactivity standards than us. Hut 8.5 17:34, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

One other factor may be the rule set governing the activity of admins. E.g., if a project allows indef blocking without warning for first vandalism, or routinely uses higher levels of page protection, or has more aggressive edit filters, then the amount of admin work may be significantly lower allowing the projects to get by with less admins. QuiteUnusual (talk) 08:57, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Mid-September Flight

I am planning to nominate a candidate in mid-September RfA. If you, or a candidate you are nominating, are interested in joining a flight at that time reach out. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

If anyone wants any impartial, helpful and honest response to chances at RfA and a potential nom, please feel free to email me. I think we should make this easier if we want multiple noms. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

To which I'll add that the list of potential noms at Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination is how my potential candidate found me and can be another place to turn for a private honest assessment. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49:, I'm talking to a couple of possibles, but any objection to me dropping this on AN (with a couple of other lines like the RRFA link)? While many of those most interested in looking for potential candidates watchlist this page, I imagine many of the potential candidates themselves don't, but might be interested. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:54, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

No objection. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:31, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I've had a couple people message me, thankfully, but no one specifically for September. If it gets added to AN, note I'm happy to have any emails pinged my way Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:54, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead and posted something at AN. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:59, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I read the above and I don't understand what the 'flight' is in this context. Can someone explain? Will this be a new type of election? Or just a bunch of usual elections clustered together in time? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Piotrus just several normal RfAs at the same time. --Trialpears (talk) 11:29, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

That's correct no election just the chance for several candidates to run together. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:06, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

If somebody can do this, this and this for September, it will make things .... quite interesting around here. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:46, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this proposal is going to help people with that level of profile. I hope instead it would be something of interest to the people who have been quietly going about the business of writing great content and otherwise creating the encyclopedia who'd make great sysops but for whom a week in the spotlight is enough of a deterrent to make them shy away. I've talked to a couple of such people about RfA recently so I know they exist, I just don't know if this would be attractive for them. Since finding out doesn't cost me much of anything I figure it can't hurt to see. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:57, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Fwiw, I would be up for getting any one of those to run. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:56, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: I'd love to see any of those editors run, but they're going to need to want to (or take some convincing). :) -- Dane ^talk 21:30, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Hmmmm, thank you for the explanation. I can see how secret ballots would be less stressful, but I really don't see how grouping nominations change do anything. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:05, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Why aren't the guys that Ritchie333 suggested already administrators? They're certainly worthy of the mop🧹. I'm imagining right now those RfA pages (closed as successful). 🐔 Chicdat ^ChickenDatabase 10:29, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Not everyone wants to go through an RfA. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:17, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Observations

@Lee Vilenski:@Barkeep49:. I hope you are doing well and being the great wikipedians you are. I just wanted to add my two-cents. I believe the ongoing pandemic and recession is responsible for the decreased activity on pages like this. Around 1 year ago, I ran for RfA and it was a rewarding, stressful, but very eye opening experience. I promised to improve and become a better person after the unsuccessful verdict of the request. The pandemic really messed up my job and made me have to do a lot of reorganizing and planning. I ended up getting the virus (probably from working in NY). I still get lingering symptoms. As you can tell, my activity has been very reduced, but I promise that I will be back at my potential. I am using my account as an example as for what could be going on with users. RFA requires a lot of preparation and dedication. This pandemic can throw curveballs that offset both of those.

I promise AA will be back. Probably once the pandemic finally starts to be under-control and things begin to normalize. I really try my hardest to do Wikipedia work. I am not going anywhere. It is just that the working and planning online really adds stress and time consumption. Hope to talk to you all soon. AA will be back. AmericanAir88^(talk) 21:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

AmericanAir88, sorry to hear you were sick and are facing ongoing complications. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:01, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49 Thank you. Fortunately, I would not call it a complication. More like lingering sporadic symptoms. AmericanAir88^(talk) 00:50, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

• People have been regularly discussing the alleged admin crisis ever since I first joined here about 13 years ago. But I see the sky is still up there, blocks and protections are still happening, and backlogs don't seem to be getting ever longer. I'll hold off worrying about fixing it until I see some evidence that it's actually broken. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  In 2011, there were 750 active admins; today there are 500, but twice as many articles. The admin backlogs should have exploded, but they didn't. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 22:09, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Two months without a single RFA...

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Guys, let's pray to God that we should have a request for adminship for this month. I hope so. 139.192.206.157 (talk) 14:23, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Please note, if this IP has a direct line on summoning RfAs, we should keep them around! Nosebagbear (talk) 16:50, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you jinxed it ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:39, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Lots of questions

Discussion

This is simply ludicrous.—S Marshall T/C 01:38, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. Given that the outcome seems assured, unless something extraordinary comes up, I hope the candidate will decline to answer further questions. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:28, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• I occasionally look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Skomorokh with a wry grin.—S Marshall T/C 10:35, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/331dot, I was pleased he didn't answer certain questions, and demonstrating he did not want to by answering other ones later that were more useful. It didn't do him any harm. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:15, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I also have found the number of questions absurd given the utter lack of concerns brought forward. But I agree with Ritchie that the best solution is for a candidate to not answer some questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• WP:ADMINACCT states that "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries...". If there are lots of questions then this is also a good test of diligence and patience. If a candidate fails to respond to good faith questions then this would therefore tend to disqualify them. As Red Phoenix seems to be doing fine in answering the questions, there doesn't seem to be a problem. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:12, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • RfA candidates are not bound by ADMINACCT, because they aren't admins. I think 21 questions is way too many and candidates feeling they have to answer them all just perpetuates the problem. I wish more candidates would have the courage to ignore questions (though I understand why they don't.) P-K3 (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • What WP:ADMINACCT states is that "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions". The overwhelming majority of the questions demanded of this candidate, as with those of most candidates, are utterly ignorable. —Cryptic 13:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I actually don't think it's an issue of number of question, but one or two of the questions are considerably out of scope. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Lee. The way I see it, I'd rather have a lot of questions being asked now, than a lot of questions being asked later, with the important proviso that those questions be on-topic, relevant, and vaguely sensible. We don't want to prescribe a "fixed number" of questions to be asked, either saying that there's a number that's too many, or that there's a number that's too few; sensible questions should be allowed, and ones that aren't oughtn't be. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:57, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

How much does the potential candidate owe the community and how much does the potential candidate owe each member of the community? These are different questions. By my count as I start to write this reply Red Phoenix has written 3,918 words answering 20 questions from 15 members of the community. 631 of those words are in response to 1 question which we can either choose to include, or not, in averages. 108 people have cast a vote (and I've used the word vote here because RfA, despite being a discussion, is a vote more than other places). 105 of those are in support. So this is basically someone the community uncontroversially feels should be an admin. Would we say that a potential candidate would owe the community 27,426 words if every member of the community asked a question before deciding on their position based on the average of RP's responses. If we exclude the long answer to SoWhy and suggest RP wouldn't need to answer a question from Ritchie, as nom, do we feel comfortable with expecting 25,122 words? I would be amazed if anyone would say the answer to either of those is yes.

Now that's not actually the situation. But it is the situation that 8% of the participants have asked question of a completely uncontroversial candidate. Some numbers of those answers are why the candidate remains uncontroversial, but even still I would suggest that what the candidate owes individuals, even when suggesting full ADMINACCT applies, is less than the 21,0000+ bytes in response that have been expended at this RfA. I'm not for limiting questions beyond the two we already limit. I am, however, in favor of creating a norm that suggests it is OK for a candidate to be picky with the questions they answer and having a candidate ignore your question as a reason for a neutral or oppose vote is one that crats should give little weight to when closing discussions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I can't speak for anyone else, but for what it's worth, I wanted to ask the questions that I did of the candidate precisely because they appear to be so uncontroversial, ironically. I normally want to watch and see the arguments opposing an RfA to vote in it, not just what the supporters say; with just one oppose !vote, which personally speaking wasn't an argument that swayed me at all, that is very difficult to do. I wonder perhaps if others have had much the same idea. For instance, Can you point to any controversial decisions you were involved in during your time on Wikipepda and how it was resolved? - someone who's taken many of them wouldn't get this question, but would likely get oppose votes from people who felt they came up on the wrong side of the decision. Now, clearly not all of the questions in the list fit into that criteria - in fact, I'd argue a fair few of them probably aren't really going to generate anything, and perhaps are from users trying to get name recognition rather than trying to actively participate, although I certainly wouldn't want to level that charge against any individual.

I imagine this goes without saying, but I agree with Barkeep49 that it's unreasonable to expect tens of thousands of words from each candidate. That being said, I really do think answering every good-faith, relevant, on-topic question (and that already narrows it down a bit) is quite important - personally, I'm of the view that all users, not just mop-wielders, should hold themselves to a very high standard of accountability. I appreciate that "very high" is a moveable bar, though, and my definition of that bar may be a lot higher than other people's (perhaps as a consequence of my being a bit of a "head-in-the-clouds" idealist...!)

having a candidate ignore your question as a reason for a neutral or oppose vote ought to be given little weight iff either the question was one of the "how are you today", "what's the meaning behind your username" type ones (which I can see an argument for just disallowing, although I don't think we need go quite that far just yet), or the sheer volume of questions made it completely impossible to even produce a sentence of response to each one. However, a candidate ignoring difficult questions because they don't know or don't like the answers is a different kettle of fish. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:13, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• Answering questions is not some awful imposition as most people are quite happy to talk about themselves. The general problem on Wikipedia is not getting editors to talk but getting them to shut up. This very discussion here is a good example. See also WP:LIGHTBULB. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, I'm sorry, but it looks like you've !voted in ~4 RfAs? You've asked questions in at least 3 of them. Most RfAs get questions from well under 10% of !voters. This makes you very much an outlier. I think you should think about why you are asking questions at so many RfAs. The explanation that you were asking a question because the candidate 'appeared so uncontroversial' is...well, to me it sounds like you might be rationalizing to yourself the fact you just want to ask a question. —valereee (talk) 18:05, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: I certainly can't fault your dedication to finding my flaws Not that I'm complaining, I asked for accountability! That being said, of the many flaws that I have, I'm not sure that this is one. Two factors are of note here; firstly, a small sample size doesn't say very much here. Excluding this one, I've asked questions in two other RfAs, you're right. In both of those two cases, I was within the first ten people to ask questions. More importantly, though, I accept that I should have been clearer above to state that the reasoning I was expressing was for this specific candidate, and offering potential reasoning for why so many questions had been asked. Not that it's required, but I'm happy to justify both of the other times.

At Cwmhiraeth's RfA, I asked a specific question about their intent to use their adminship in one of the encyclopedia's most prominent locations. At the time I posted that, all the other questions up to that point had been general ones, or ones regarding parts of the encyclopedia where the editor hadn't expressed any interest in working. I think that the Main Page is an incredibly important area for attention from everyone, because (although perhaps not as much now as previously) it is still a huge part of the Internet for many people, and what's on there matters. In particular, preventing factual errors from appearing on the Main Page is of a great deal of import, in my mind, and I was thoroughly satisfied by Cwmhiraeth's response about actively enjoying looking for sources where required to make sure what goes on there is valid.

The other time I've asked a question (or, in this case, two) was at CaptainEek's RfA. The first I asked having read through the other questions, and seen something that caught my eye in particular - the statement about asking what area to work in being "odd". To some extent, I've actualy come to agree with this; nonetheless, I noted that several opposes had already turned up, and wanted to get an idea of where Eek thought it would be inappropriate to use the tools. The second question was very much along the same lines - questions of their judgement appeared there, and I wanted to try and get an idea for how that judgement was shaped. Neither answer to the second question would have made me go "wow, this person is clearly unqualified to be an administrator" - but their justification was what was important to me. Establishing why someone would choose to behave in a particular way is, I think, one of the most important things that we can do as a community during an RfA; if someone's judgement has been called into question, especially by senior members of the community, I want to try and establish what that judgement is like for myself before !voting. I was satisfied with the answers that were given (following a short followup), and I !voted appropriately.

I hope that makes sense, let me know if there's anything you think doesn't in there! I'm very much open to feedback Feel free to drop me a message on talk if you like, as I'm not sure if this discussion is fully relevant to this page; equally, if you think it is, feel free to reply here. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: For me, questions at RfA are best used when there is a legitimate concern in the candidate's background that you are not sure about or you feel needs further clarification from the candidate. In general, I find that I am able to assess how qualified a candidate is without having to ask a question in the wide majority of cases. I feel that your Q21 is particularly problematic because either its wording is flawed or it is a trick question: A long-term editor breaks 3RR reverting a vandal. Well, if the edits were obvious vandalism, then explicitly WP:3RRNO states that the editor did not break 3RR. Perhaps you wanted to test the candidate's knowledge about 3RR exemptions—that's fine, I suppose, but was there any reason based on the candidate's contributions for this concern to arise? Mz7 (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mz7: I wasn't trying to write a trick question there, no - in fact, that was me being clumsy when writing. I should be more careful when phrasing things like that, that's on me; although, I'm pleased that the candidate caught me out! I didn't mean to pick an example which came under 3RRNO - rather, I was trying to get a feeling for the exact opposite; what would happen when the candidate came across something which wasn't written in policy. We trust our administrators to do a hell of a lot more than just carry out policy to the letter (whether it should be that way is a different question, but it is how it is) - we trust them to use their judgement and enforce policies appropriately. I've seen an awful lot of people equivocate on "net positives" and "net negatives", and for some users, it seems that their answer to the underlying question there (ignoring my dumbass mistake of using a 3RR-exempt premise!) would have been "well, the new user was bad, and the established user wasn't, so that's okay". As was noted I think by someone else further down in the RfA discussion, the candidate hadn't really taken part at ANI anything substantial, so judging their thoughts on this front was a bit difficult solely from their contribution history, which is why I thought it worthwhile to ask them directly. They didn't go the route of "user tenure is user value", which I was pleased by. I hope that seems reasonable! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: Thank you for clarifying the nature of your question. Your question certainly wasn't the worst question among the long slew of questions in roughly the first day of the RfA, and I don't want this thread to digress into a discussion of your questions specifically. Mz7 (talk) 19:54, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

User:Naypta, did my question seem like one of the silly ones? I had a specific purpose in mind when I asked it, but I don't remember it now and it seems like an awkward question. I'd be willing to strike it if necessary. It was my first time asking an rfa question, so I kind of didn't know what to do. Ghinga7 (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ghinga7: Looks sensible enough to me, but I don't think it's helpful to make this thread about individual questions in any case. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:16, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Should we have a 22 question limit? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Emir of Wikipedia, I don't think we need a hard limit on the number of questions we ask at RfA. There are occasions where a question is warranted, and we don't want to prevent the candidate from shining more light on a genuinely unclear situation simply because we hit a 22-question cap. Mz7 (talk) 19:02, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

What about a soft limit? Are we really going to find out anything useful for an RfA after 21 good questions and 21 good answers? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a bad idea because it will lead to unnecessary bickering over whether those 21 questions were "good" and whether a 22nd question beyond the "soft cap" is warranted. We already have the 2-questions-per-editor limit—an additional general cap strikes me as a little arbitrary. I think conversations like this thread are helpful though, because hopefully it will encourage users to give counsel to editors who ask bad questions. Mz7 (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

We might. More decent questions might take more time to compose - they might involve actually looking at the candidate first. The only thing a limit does is encourage people to get their questions in faster. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

For me it's not the number of questions, it's the silliness of them. Some of these questions I'm just reading as "I want to hear my voice!" —valereee (talk) 16:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

For me, it's the number. 22 questions is more than triple what I got asked before becoming an associate lecturer. And here we should need fewer questions, because (a) most mistakes on Wikipedia are trivial to undo, and (b) candidates' contribution histories let us see their past actions with almost godlike omniscience. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 05:06, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

S Marshall, I know it's been an ongoing conversation for literally the entire existence of WP that RFA is broken but for crying out loud I agree this is absurd. I'm glad that this one will likely succeed but I do wonder how many of us they are long time admins would succeed if the process was repeated now. It's become an absurd purity test. Question volume is insane. No wonder applications are few and far between. Glen 17:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, Red Phoenix's RfA at least has quite a few questions that specifically address things they've done, or positions they've taken. These are the kind of questions that are often actually helpful. Peering back into the mists of time to my own RfA in 2009 with 27 questions, a large percentage of the questions were boilerplates that certain people were asking at most or all RfAs, I genuinely don't think I had a single question that was in any way specific to my own record that couldn't have been (or indeed hadn't been) asked at another RfA. There are certain daft, nonspecific questions on Red Phoenix's RfA that can be dismissed as people just wanting attention, but as a general thing specific questions about this candidate are fairly healthy. ~ mazca ^talk 19:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

We might start by writing an info page that explains what's a helpful question and what's an unhelpful question, which we currently do not have. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:14, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• S Marshall (talk · contribs): My RfA has 29 questions. Some of which were multi-part. I found it a bit much as some overlapped. However, it was a good test of patience and determination. AmericanAir88^(talk) 16:38, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for linking that. Most hilarious question in yours was Why do you answer questions out of order?, although I also love the way you got two questions about your username and a slew of questions from people who seem to have thought they were interviewing you for a job.—S Marshall T/C 17:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

As far the total number of questions - something that should be considered is the goal of allowing questions. As I see it, one of the goals is to let an individual ask a question that will help guide their own support or opposition; in this case unless they are becoming repetitive it shouldn't matter if they are question number 5 or question number 45 - the question is about something they want to know - they shouldn't be penalized for not getting to the RfA on day 1. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Then we need to start calling out irrelevant questions. Whether or not a candidate agrees with all policies and if not why is completely irrelevant to whether or not a candidate is suitable for adminship unless you ALREADY believe the candidate would act in bad faith, in which case it's still irrelevant to informing your vote because if you believe they'd do that you should already have opposed, not asked which specific policy they'd violate if given the chance. —valereee (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• I have a significantly more permissive nature than many here. Questions generally win support, and we do generally hold candidates to admin criteria, so encouraging responsiveness isn't really a negative. I do think that removal of "gotcha" or some "damned either way" questions is beneficial. It's worth noting that questions in that trend often get picked up by chat fairly quickly (but candidates are often see them even quicker), so it's worth noting if they're unsure about the suitability of a question, leaving it for a few hours can be worthwhile. tl;dr, number is fine, only strip out truly stupid or deliberately attacking/damning questions. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:04, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• ...and we're at 24 now, with the addition of yet another silly question from an experienced editor who apparently is not reading this page. Gosh! Look at all the questions everyone's asking! What can I ask to get in on the fun?! I know: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? —valereee (talk) 11:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• We're discussing preventing bad questions but do we all agree on what makes a bad question? As I see it, questions break down into some categories:
  1. Questions about specific things that happened in the past involving the candidate (You disagreed with me last year. Are you willing to publicly declare I was right in order to secure my !vote?)
  2. Open-ended questions designed to let the candidate respond to something (usually something raised in oppose votes) (Are there any questions you were asked that you wish hadn't been?)
  3. Pop-quiz/testing knowledge questions (A train leaves London at 1:00 p.m. ... which CSD criteria applies to the article about the station?)
  4. Questions asking about a candidate's approach to a situation or general wikiphilosophy (If you had to pick only one namespace...)
  5. Getting-to-know-you questions (What doesn't your username mean?)
  6. Questions about voluntary admin categories (recall, refund, etc.)

I think it'll be easier and more productive to regulate the questions than trying to regulate the questioners. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 13:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Which category does "why do you have a normal sleep schedule" fall into? GeneralNotability (talk) 13:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Is this discussion being conducted by the CCP, seeking to find a way of ensuring The Correct Result? Look! Here's another stupid question from another unsophisticated person who doesn't understand that only we, The Hallowed We, are the True Arbitors of Valid Questions. Jeez. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

PaleCloudedWhite, no, this discussion is being conducted by users who would like to see more RfAs in the future. When candidates look at this one, they might (if my own experience is any indication) think OMFG...no way I am I ever putting myself through that. That is what this discussion is in aid of. —valereee (talk) 18:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

More questions indicates that more people are interested in the RfA process - this is a good thing. If candidates don't want to answer editors' questions, they perhaps can say so, and people can assess accordingly. Admins are selected by the whole community of editors, and if the community decides that the only editors who are fit to be admins are those who wear a woolly hat while sleeping, then that is up to the community. What the discussion here is doing is seeking to impose a filter over the selection process, so that only certain concerns are allowed to be expressed. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:01, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

PaleCloudedWhite, you can ask about any reasonable concern and I will not quibble. When you ask silly stuff, unless you are a brand-new editor, I'm reserving the right to call it out. When someone with 700 edits asks something stupid, I might (if I think they look at all promising) go to their talk page and engage in a way I hope to be constructive. When someone with 10,000 edits ask a silly question, I might just say publicly, "Hey, that's silly." Or similar. —valereee (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

What is deemed 'reasonable' and what is deemed 'silly' is a personal view. It is one thing for an individual to make a comment that a question is personally viewed as silly, it is quite another thing to seek to formalise such a view into a kind of law that prevents the asking of such a question. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 05:30, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

GeneralNotability, oh, that was one of my favorites! —valereee (talk) 18:06, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: Thanks for writing this up, I think the categorisation is useful. I think a question in any of those categories can be good or bad, but the only one which I think there is a convincing case for banning altogether (and perhaps permitting on the RfA talk page, but the RfA talk page only) is the category 5 questions. All the others can, in some circumstances, be genuinely useful (although to some extent I have my doubts about category 3, but I appreciate that others feel differently), but category 5 questions - well, I really don't see how anyone is going to change their vote based on someone's username being about dragons or printers. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:29, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks; I would agree about #5 but I was surprised when I saw questions and oppose !votes based on usernames at two RFAs (1 2). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 20:42, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

I think 26 questions might be a record. Why is Red Phoenix answering them all? "Hey, let's play Twenty^-six Questions!" yell the Wikipedia editors. 🐔 Chicdat ^ChickenDatabase 10:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Chicdat: August 2019, 29 questions. Simply saying Why is Red Phoenix answering them all? seems strange to me - if a question is reasonable, why would it not be answered solely because there had been a lot of others, assuming that Red Phoenix has the time to do so? It's a reasonable question to ask "should we make it clearer that the optional questions are optional to answer", in an attempt to make sure people really do have the time to do so, but "there's so many, why are they answering them all" seems a strange reaction to community participation in a community process. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 11:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's one with 33. --Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 11:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's pretty normal to have more questions when there's significant reasonable opposition. The 29-question RfA was a fail, and the 33-q RfA had a lot of opposes. The current RfA has no almost no opposition or neutrals. —valereee (talk) 12:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: As I mentioned above, it's plausible that other people also share the view that a candidate with no opposition should probably face more scrutiny than one that has received opposes. A candidate with no opposition could just be a fantastic candidate (which appears to be the case here, thankfully!), but equally, a candidate with no opposition could conceivably be someone who just hasn't done anything controversial enough or involved enough to generate any opposition - or someone particularly good at hiding it. Hence, more questions may be apt. That being said, that obviously doesn't track with the 33 questions at that other RfA, which was reasonably well-opposed. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:52, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, you just will not let this drop until someone agrees that your question and rationale were perfectly reasonable, will you? —valereee (talk) 14:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: I don't see what this comment has to do with the question I asked at the RfA here at all? You've made the argument that you think a lack of opposes should be a reason for few questions; that's a perfectly reasonable view, but I've set out why that might not always be the case, which is relevant to a discussion about the number of questions we should permit or not permit at an RfA. Heaven knows if I was looking for people to agree with me on something about me, I'd be on Twitter, not on Wikipedia(!) Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 15:03, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

There are 9 RFAs with 30 or more questions. About half are from before and another half are from after question reform (2 max, no multi-parts). Ironholds 2 and 4 stand out as the watermarks at nearly 50 questions each. The rest do not break 35. --Izno (talk) 12:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Effectively, there's 8, because one of them is an RfA for a bot, which would fairly clearly be an anomaly in terms of the RfA process. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:54, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

The problem with a search of that kind is that people used to number their questions 17a, 17b, 17c etc. I recall getting as high as "e" or "f" in, for example, MZMcBride 3 (which was an outlier for lots of reasons to be fair).—S Marshall T/C 11:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I alluded to that caveat with the second sentence. Either way, the assertion that recent ones are water marks can be evaluated as false with the search in question. --Izno (talk) 12:40, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

I think we should consider authorising sysops to topic-ban question-askers from RFA. The grounds for a topic ban would be:- (1) Needlessly prolific question-asking, and particularly asking the same question of candidate after candidate indiscriminately; (2) Asking vague or unfocused questions; (3) Asking trap questions, ambush questions, or questions about processes in topic areas where the candidate has no intention of working; or (4) Asking questions that need long answers.—S Marshall T/C 17:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Would it not just be better (and more usable) to strike questions like this? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:12, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski, that's what I was thinking. I think we need to just start striking questions, then opening a discussion to see if anyone objects to the strike. Seriously, how would you feel if Wikipedia were to shut down? Seriously? —valereee (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Do both.—S Marshall T/C 18:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

At least it's not "would you give your life for Wikipedia to live on" (paraphrasing, can't remember which RfA I read that on, but I'm sure I'm not making it up) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a bit of an over-reaction. Do we have many editors who are repeatedly abusing RFA questions, have been asked to stop, and have refused to stop, to the point that we need admin to be able to unilaterally institute topic bans? I'm not seeing that level of disruption. Our options for dealing with RFA disruption right now are: ask the problematic editors to stop, strike the question, remove the question, partial or full block as an ordinary admin (or crat) action, and community topic ban. I think the existing toolkit is sufficient. Plus, the optics. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:10, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

It is trivially easy for candidates to ignore any optional question they don't want address, some may find how the candidate deals with such things useful. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:10, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, why do you say it's trivially easy? My experience, as a candidate,as a nominator, and just as an observer suggests that there are a lot of incentives for a candidate to just answer a question rather than ignoring it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:17, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: they literally have to do nothing to not answer a question - but even if they want to they can give a short answer, especially if it is something they don't really know about or don't plan on doing. For example, if the question is about an obscure admin tool or process seeing an answer of "I don't know about X, and have no plans to work in that area" would be a fine quick answer. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:31, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, all due respect, your RfA got 4 questions and your RfB got 8. :D —valereee (talk) 16:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: true, my RfA was a long time ago, I was actually expecting a lot more RfB questions - most of the participants seemed to already be quite familiar with me though. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, indeed. My RFA only got four and at the time I was editing in some very contentious areas (specifically Scientology) where I had some pretty heated disputes due to being a fairly prominent critic of them. Nowadays I'd probably have scores of questions about my judgement (or lack thereof) though I'd like to believe I'm a fairly level headed admin. In fact I don't think I've had a single dispute since and specifically steer away from such areas. We say it's no big deal but 22 23 questions later? Anyway, not going to crack it here but I know of probably a dozen editors that would bring tremendous value to the project with the tools and yet I'd be fearful of putting through an RFA with what it's become. Glen 18:02, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, and I'm sure they were quite familiar with you and knew you're be great. The point I was trying to make is that because your experience was of many fewer questions than 22 23, you may not fully realize how much more stressful this already-stressful process is made by each additional question, which the candidate must think about, possibly research, compose an answer to, rewrite that answer, maybe walk away for a while to give it more thought or allow their thinking to gel, come back and rewrite again, all the while worrying they aren't answering fast enough. I've seen people whose answers attracted opposes because they seemed 'flip' or 'dismissive' and even because they were too polished. I got dinged for an answer that seemed 'arrogant.' I certainly would never recommend to anyone that they simply not answer a question. —valereee (talk) 18:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: Has anyone ever justified an oppose vote based in whole or in part on a candidate taking too long to answer a question? That, to me, would be indicative of a serious issue. We can't expect candidates to be available 24/7 to answer questions, and as you rightly point out, they do often take a fair bit of thinking about. Perhaps there should be a policy somewhere clearly indicating expectations of candidates in answering or not answering questions if that's a worry people are having. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:41, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, I think the optics at the moment are terrible. Questions to the candidate are being used as an adminship suitability test; but the people asking are self-selecting and, all too often, immensely unqualified to administer a test of that nature. And they don't know how unqualified they are, and they ask technical questions that don't matter because a candidate with the right temperament for adminship will make mistakes without doing harm, while a candidate with the technical knowledge but not the temperament will do harm without making technical mistakes. We need to bring RfA back to a review of the candidate's contributions.—S Marshall T/C 19:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

And let's not forget (though I'm not commenting on the proposal, sorry) that candidates with the right temperament will also recognise when they're not competent in a certain field, and defer to (or even actively seek help from) people more familiar with that particular area. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• This is hard to gauge, but is really a requirement. If a would-be admin is not willing to seek help going into something unfamiliar, they stand a high chance of failing. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:00, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• RFA is stressful enough as it is, without us asking the candidate to discern which questions are appropriate and which are not. Striking questions that aren't appropriate would be doing the community a service. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:11, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• As with most things, the devil's in the details. Trying to parse out which are and are not bad questions will generate enormous controversy. I'm reminded of Louis XIV saying "Every time I make an appointment, I create a hundred malcontents and one ingrate." Same sort of situation here. Before we begin to decide what questions are bad on current or future RfAs, we should review the past couple of years of RfAs and see if we can get consensus on what questions were bad. That might provide some basis for informing future decisions. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

  At the risk of being ignorant here, one Q that bugs me personally is asking a candidate if they're open to recall. The answer is non-binding, can be bluffed and many (most?) admins don't go on to add themselves to recall, including some that stated they would. It's a pointless question. It's also a little unfair, because a negative answer probably doesn't look great, so really it's just a trick question at the same time as being useless. Perhaps asking for a candidate's thoughts on recall in general would be okay. But in either case, imo, either establish a process (applicable to all admins) for community desysopping, or if that can't be done then don't ask individual candidates if they're open to recall individually in RfA. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:47, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Until we get a working community desysopping route, that question's entirely fair and reasonable.—S Marshall T/C 00:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Hammersoft, that's a valid argument, but I'd say that that's just a reason to give admins and crats more discretion in dealing with those questions, not to say that the candidate must answer them all. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I sometimes wish Wikipedia editors would step outside their discussions and view them from another angle. 'Let's ban certain people from asking questions', 'let's ban certain questions', 'let's delete questions we don't like', etc. How do such suppressive tendencies manage to emerge from people collaborating on an educational project? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• Suppressive tendencies would seem to emerge against people that aren't improving Wikipedia from people that are improving it. --Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 00:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Unless the OP can provide evidence that this as a long-standing problem, I don't see why we should react so strongly based on a single RfA. Once elected, an administrator is all but untouchable until they stop editing or get into trouble with ArbCom. This proposal would increase the power attached to admin status while making the process of attaining that status somewhat easier. That doesn't seem like a good trade-off. If someone has to answer a few extra questions as part of an RfA that is otherwise a cakewalk, I don't see why that's such a big deal. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Per Lepricavark, I see no evidence that this issue has been any sort of a problem, and it seems to me to be much ado about nothing. Questions are a vital part of the process, and voters have an absolute right to probe on any issue which they think is relevant to their assessment of the candidate. I was asked 15 questions on my RFA, and although I thought some of them were splitting hairs on minor content issues I was still more than happy to answer them. I knew I had signed up for a week of being scuritinised, and in running for a powerful job-for-life that's not unreasonable. I Oppose the proposed change, and I suggest candidates continue answering every question asked or risk being judged harshly, because if you're unable to deal with answering 22 questions in a week why should we think you're able to deal with complex and protracted admin issues. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 07:39, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Lepricavark and Amakuru, I'd agree with you if the questions were pertinent and incisive. But let's look at some real examples.
  1) If wikipedia ever shut down, how would you feel?: A job interview style question designed to elicit a long, detailed answer, asked by someone whose first edit under that username was on 19 July 2020.
  2) how will you tackle the sectarian biased and tensions on Wikipedia (talking about Buddhism and other religions) if you become an admin?: A political question designed to elicit a long, detailed answer on an obscure topic in which the candidate has not expressed any intention of working, asked by someone whose first edit under that username was on 20 July 2020.
  3) A long-term editor breaks 3RR reverting a vandal. You see it; the long-term editor acknowledges that they broke 3RR, but doesn't apologise, saying that they believe it was justified by WP:IAR. What do you do?: A trap question, asked by an editor who wasn't experienced enough was too careless to see that it was a trap.
  OK, this RfA is admittedly an outlier, but my position is that it warrants some intervention.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  @S Marshall: This is not remotely the point, but I'm a bit miffed to say the least at the suggestion that me making a mistake in wording comes from a "lack of experience". People do, from time to time, make mistakes, even stupid ones like that. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 11:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oh, I'm sorry: I see that you do have sufficient experience. I've edited.—S Marshall T/C 11:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  @S Marshall: Thank you. careless is perhaps more accurate criticism, although I still don't think the question is really comparable to the other two, even with the mistake... sighs Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not opposed to a rule that prohibits accounts less than a month old from asking questions at RfA, but that's about as far as I would go. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• This would be a wildly OTT countermeasure - in effect authorising partial GS on RfA. As there is a question limit, in the rare event of someone asking poor questions, being asked to stop, and continuing, ANI would be fine for the couple of possible TBANs. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Meh. This seems like a solution in search of a problem. I can't think of a single precedent in recent memory of an RfA that had that many questions that the community was opposed to. So, I don't really see the need to add red tape to RfA needlessly. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

There are undoubtedly questions of dubious merit that get posed. However privileged status within a community relies on the community trusting in the integrity of the system. I suspect the ancillary damage caused by trying to prevent some questions from being asked may be greater than leaving the questions in place to be dealt with as the candidate sees fit. If there is agreement to filter questions, though, then personally I believe doing it by either group moderation or selected moderators using an open submission process would work best. isaacl (talk) 00:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposal #2

All RfAs should be EC-protected.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm unconvinced EC protection is necessary or helpful; if a newer user wishes to partake in an RfA, they should probably be allowed to. I'd be more amenable to the idea of using the usergroup-show classes on MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages and other places where RfAs appear to restrict their advertising to more experienced users, whilst still allowing any user who wants to to participate, perhaps. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:33, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Tried that. --Trialpears (talk) 12:38, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  That was about watchlists; this is about questions. I wonder if there's a technical way to allow brand new users to vote, but require EC-protection to ask a question.—S Marshall T/C 12:49, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  I was responding to the second part of Nayptas proposal I'd be more amenable to the idea of using the usergroup-show classes on MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages and other places where RfAs appear to restrict their advertising to more experienced users. Require EC to ask questions sounds reasonable. It should be technically enforceable using edit filters. --Trialpears (talk) 12:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Possibly using a sub-page? Something like {{Wikipedia:RfA/User/Questions}}, make that page ECP, and include it in the main page. Kinda like how AfDs are done. That being said, I'm not sure limiting questions to ECP is a good idea. It's a bandaid to the problem. It should just be more acceptable to treat questions as optional, and not respond if the candidate feels they're ridiculous. Culture change is better than technical restrictions, as naive as this point probably is. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:32, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  RfA's are not "votes" they are a discussion - so you want someone to put "oppose - I'm assuming this person might do this thing I'm concerned about, but I'm not allowed to ask them about it".... ? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:22, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Would you settle for an attempt to bring about culture change by way of a technical bandaid and a guidance document for question-askers?—S Marshall T/C 14:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  S Marshall, you've seen this process and its problems for over a decade, and I haven't, so I'm not in opposition to your proposal by any stretch; you will know better than me what is likely to help here. I just wanted to raise my observation that I feel culture is the real problem here. If ECP would be effective I'm unsure; Levivich's comments below are interesting. But I guess this will never improve if everyone says there's a problem but there's never enough agreement for any changes, so perhaps something's gotta give.

  Of the ideas raised here, I like the idea of an essay on what's a good question, and sticking it into the RfA editnotice with a bright red background to make sure it gets attention (maybe even a warn edit filter for adding questions, to doubly-prompt people to read it, and make them think twice before they submit their question). Symbolic, yes, but I'd like to see if it makes a difference. As for restrictions, although I see the nuances I like Nosebagbear idea of questions needing 5 supports to be presented (after 5 supports, any editor may copy the question into the main page). As for ECP, as long as non-ECP question-askers can submit an edit request I don't think it's the worst idea. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:49, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• We could try an edit note or hidden comment in the question section to remind people that questions should be based on the research that a questioner has done of the candidate, and if you don't have a dif of theirs in the question, some will suspect that you are asking a question that isn't specific to that candidate. ϢereSpielChequers 18:11, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Good idea. After reading all that discussion above, I think we could use an edit note with a pointer to the guidelines Levivich suggests, and technical measures to EC-protect the question section. People who want to ask a question but aren't able to, can use the talk page to ask a EC-confirmed editor to do it for them. That way there will be guidance and screening to stop random newbies asking for 30,000 word disquisitions on wikiphilosophy.—S Marshall T/C 08:02, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  You know, do we have evidence that EC protection would reduce the number of questionable questions? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Strictly speaking, what we have evidence for is that newly-registered accounts are asking questions that I see as questionable. There are several such in the RFA that's currently open.—S Marshall T/C 09:06, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Do you mean something like this?—S Marshall T/C 13:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  I was thinking of something much shorter. But at this stage I think we need a little research, and I don't have the time to do it myself for a while. My assumption is that the questions, especially the ones that aren't based on research of the candidate, are mostly coming from experienced editors who are possibly contemplating their own run. It would be good to know how many are coming from editors who are not yet extended confirmed, if I'm wrong there would be enough of them to make a difference if they were lost. ϢereSpielChequers 15:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  I checked the last few to see who was getting questions from non-EC-confirmed editors. I see 3 questions in the current RfA (two from NYC Guru, including the by-now-famous If wikipedia ever shut down, how would you feel?, and one highly inappropriate one from Kakima minimoto. Creffett's and Cwmhiraeth's were clean. CaptainEek got two from MightyKid and one from BasicsOnly that was struck by KingofHearts. Lee Vilensky's was clean. So since May we've had four separate non-EC-confirmed editors asking questions at RfA.—S Marshall T/C 17:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  WereSpielChequers, wait, are you saying you think some people might think asking questions at RfA will somehow help them with their own RfA? Honestly I think if anything the opposite is more likely to be true. —valereee (talk) 12:13, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  If someone asked me my advice I would say it is a high risk strategy, and I'm not sure any RFA aspirants do it as conscious strategy (There are people who ask questions as a strategy, or at least I assume that of some of those who ask questions to promote a particular hobby horse of their's). My observation of RFA is that it acquires its own sub-community, a revolving group of regulars who !vote in most RFAs. As with other parts of the Wiki there is a natural progression of increasing involvement, !voting, !voting with an effective rationale, asking questions, asking effective questions, and potentially becoming a nominator or candidate - some of us go on to become RFA researchers or Crats. I'm assuming that !voters are more likely to support candidates who they associate with positive clueful contributions, and that could include questions. It has been a while since I ran, but I was definitely a regular before I ran. ϢereSpielChequers 13:24, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  I think this is a good idea. The way it is right now is pretty much inviting people to add a question. Should add a statement in red or something to psychologically discourage useless questions. Walwal20 (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• I don't mind needing EC for questions, I disagree for needing EC for (!)voting. Alternatively, given the comparative paucity of questions, we could set really high requirements to directly add questions and have most or even all reviewed. Make the questions subject to quick reviewing - 5 supports and no opposes and it can be added, any reasonable oppose and it can have a couple of hours to discuss. Candidates know the talk page, if they were confident something would make it through they could start prepping then, while leaving others for the process. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm. Sounds like it would work better than EC protection, but would require human clerking.—S Marshall T/C 09:40, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• Same as what I said for the first proposal: I don't see a need to add red tape to the process due to this unprecedented RfA. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • If it was unprecedented, I wouldn't have started this discussion. Bullshit questions have been commonplace at RfA for years; we've got dozens of editors who use RfA as a chance to imagine they're the hiring manager in a job interview.—S Marshall T/C 13:03, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)Hardly unprecedented; it's barely even an outlier.
    I think some language in the RFA instructions to the effect of "Optional questions really are optional. Bureaucrats assign little weight to opposition based on not answering unreasonable questions." would go a long way. —Cryptic 13:05, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    I don't think it will help to point this out as I don't think this motivates questioners. If we really want to filter the questions, we should do what's done in the real world and moderate them, either through a group process as suggested above or via selected moderators. isaacl (talk) 18:55, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    I've given up on curbing questioners as hopeless. The point is to educate the candidates, who by and large do read the instructions, that it's ok to ignore these questions. —Cryptic 18:58, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    Personally I think it's one of those "if you need to be told, maybe you're not ready" things, but I imagine some reassurance might be helpful. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    • I don't have anything more to add beyond what I've already said. I still think that additional red tape is unnecessary and a solution in search of a problem. That being said, I don't see any harm in amending WP:RFAV and WP:RFAADVICE as Cryptic suggested. OhKayeSierra (talk) 19:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Looking at this RFA, I'm not seeing that the poor questions are coming from non-EC accounts more so than EC accounts. Seems like an even split to me? Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 13:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• Yeah, agreed. EC-protection would help but, I think, not suffice by itself.—S Marshall T/C 13:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• I agree, too. There are two things going on here. —valereee (talk) 00:11, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Previous efforts

• Levivich, 'We might start by writing an info page that explains what's a helpful question and what's an unhelpful question, which we currently do not have': That's the kind of comment that makes me glad I retired from this circus, but as you've only been around for just over a year, you can probably be forgiven for making such a wild claim. Perhaps you should do more to get up to speed: here, here, and the 100s of hours of research which are as relevant today as it was then - if not more so. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  I don't expect RFA !voters to read an RFC, a UTP thread, and a project page, from nine years ago, prior to asking questions. I think adding some guidance about helpful/unhelpful questions at WP:RFA or a page linked from WP:RFA would be more likely to reach the intended audience. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 15:53, 28 July 2020 (UTC)boards

"No, Levivich, but for a relative newcomer who is active on all sorts of policy and behavioural noticeboards and serious discussions where you would like to make your influence felt, I would hope for you to be better informed rather than making sweeping statements and jumping to conclusions. FWIW, that research is as relevant today as it was then - perhaps even more so, because not much has changed and the documented issues with RfA, if anything, have gotten even worse, and that is why this perennial discussion keeps going round and round with the same old - same old , ad nauseam. WP:RFA2011 is linked to on the edit notice at the top of this page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

So is there an info page that clearly delineates between helpful and unhelpful questions? I didn't find anything of the sort in the links you provided. If something relevant to our present purposes is buried in there somewhere, please point it out and then maybe we can use it. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 20:26, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Lepricavark: Valereee has set something up : User:Valereee/RfA questions - feel free to check it out and suggest stuff. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:37, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Also see the essay that links to that page at User:Valereee/Should_I_ask_a_question_at_RfA? —valereee (talk) 21:42, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I'll take a look at both when I get the chance. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 21:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought you didn't expect this kind of Spanish Inquisition? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:22, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• Nobody expects it! --Hammersoft (talk) 22:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
• Bit too strong there, maybe, Kudpung? We can't expect joiners to read the whole history of Wikipedia before piping up, or else discussions will just consist of the same people saying the same things to each other because nobody else is qualified to join in.—S Marshall T/C 08:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, the pages linked by Kudpung are all nine years old and need to be updated; for one thing, there were orders of magnitude more RfAs then. I also note a principal target of complaints in those discussions was Keepscases~enwiki (talk · contribs) who has not contributed in 7 years. To forestall and answer a possible follow-up question in advance, yes I can look into researching RfAs from the past few years and see what questions were asked. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:46, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Those "outdated pages" are the largest RfA research and analysis project that has ever been undertaken, if not the only one. That project was prompted by Jimbo himself calling RfA a "horrible and broken process", had dozens of members, it ran for an entire year and it had the backing of the WMF. You're right, it's nine years old, it shouldn't be relevant today, but it is. RfA is literally no different than it was in 2011, and the endless discussions on this page which have literally never stopped saying the same thing prove it. You bring up one user whose name was apparently relevant at the time, as if they were the problem. As if we don't still see the same behavior to this day. As if it can't even be observed in the archives over the past few years, over this year, in the recently-closed table. You say there were more RfAs back then, which is humorous, because in 2011 there were already alarmingly-few RfAs. As if we weren't already worried about the decline of RfA and working desperately to do something about it. Yes, there were more RfAs in the past. Is that a good thing, in your view? There are about 1100 current administrators on top of another 1100 former administrators. How many do you think have been promoted since that ancient project from 9 years ago? It's 184. Not even 10% of the admin corps that has ever served has been promoted since then. Is that supposed to be a reasonable point? What has changed since then? Some superficial things have changed, without success. RfA is still the same infamously-horrible gauntlet it has always been. So I can forgive Kudpung calling out someone for bringing up some idea he was working on a decade ago, oblivious to the fact that it's all been done before. He may be harsh, he may be cynical, but he couldn't be more right. I've been watching this page for a decade, too, there's a reason I don't participate. I would not be able to contain myself if I did, so I have to just sit back and laugh. This page is literally a walled-garden of people talking in circles, regurgitating the same perennial ideas, over and over, ad nauseam, to the point of insanity, and they never achieve anything meaningful. It is a circus, and I don't say that out of cynicism or to be harsh, but because it really is a comically-nonsensical situation. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that RfA is no different from what it was in 2011. It might not have changed much, depending on your point of view, but there are a couple of important differences, particularly those proposed by Biblioworm in 2015. The weight of support required to pass RfA is lower, questions are limited to two each, and RfAs can only be started by extended confirmed editors. So while there are far less RfAs now compared to 10 years ago, there are also even less failed RfAs. Indeed, in 2010 there were far more failed RfAs than successful ones; by 2019 that trend had reversed and of the RfAs that did run, a supermajority were successful. The last RfA I can recall that I would describe as unpleasant was Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GRuban and that was very much an outlier; in most of the others I would describe the vast majority of the opposition as fair comment (and even for GRuban I understood where a lot of it was coming from). So I think it's reasonable to suggest that a piece of ten year old research might want to be updated. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

If I had tried to do something for ten years and was unable to do it, I would be happy if some new people came along to help me. I would welcome their input. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:53, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

But the change in ratio and the more collegial atmosphere is because applicant numbers have collapsed and only the shoo-ins apply. Most of our admin corps don't meet our current standards. Questions aren't the problem here; they're just a tiny part of the problem that we might be able to change here and now.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, it's either naive or disingenuous to point to the decline in failed RfAs as "making progress", that you can attribute to the 2015 proposals. If anything, those proposals should have boosted RfA participation, both successful and unsuccessful, if they were to achieve anything they sought out to achieve. There were no measures cracking down on candidates that could possibly fail, obviously we wanted the opposite, we wanted people to be brave and run and not be afraid of failing. It's hard to view those proposals as anything but superficial changes that were a complete failure. The lack of unsuccessful RfAs is not a good sign, it's a sign that participation has dried up, and that no one's running unless they're a shoo-in, which defeats the entire purpose of RfA. We were supposed to make it less frightening, less intimidating, less of a big deal. Now it's such a soulless, vapid, icy institution that virtually none even dare to run anymore, unless they are so confident that they are a preordained success that they enter expecting to be rubberstamped. And that's in spite of the 2015 reforms, you prop up, limiting questions, encouraging clerking, increasing participation, and lowering the passing requirements. So no, Ritchie this isn't progress. This is what we were afraid would happen nine years ago. This is the worst case scenario. The hostility of RfA won. The reformers lost, the community lost and the admin corps lost. No offense to Levivich for wanting to help, but the perennial, short-sighted, petty, endless mutterings on this talk page are not "helping" and have never been helping. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 19:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

  Everything you say makes sense, but this page is literally a walled-garden of people talking in circles, regurgitating the same perennial ideas, over and over, ad nauseam, to the point of insanity, and they never achieve anything meaningful: do you have any better ideas that might move the needle? Surely some discussion to keep some momentum for some meaningful reform is better than doing nothing, since it probably won't fix itself? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

  Also, I don't get it, the community lost: isn't the community (collectively) responsible for the current state of affairs? If everyone, or at least the majority, changed their view on RfA, this system would be different. Perhaps the current state of affairs isn't what's good for the community, but it's caused by the community nevertheless. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• RfA-reform is likely a lost cause, for now at least. I hate to say it, as someone who coordinated the largest RfA reform project in history, which was ideologically founded by Jimbo himself and supported with resources from the WMF. However the hostility of the system has caused the system fail to the point where no one but preordained shoo-ins run anymore, resulting in the "quieting" of the hostile environment that RfA promotes. This means that people are no longer getting fired up about "fixing" RfA. Normal imperfect users are not getting brutally savaged and quitting the project because they're not running. So we're not seeing the injustices play out. Others, ironically, and with broken, twisted logic, point to the fact that RfA has already been fixed because we're not seeing the same level of controversy anymore, akin to the Ocoee massacre happening and then the residents saying that "racism has resolved itself". And, yes, the community lost. If you don't understand how a communal entity can fail to resolve a situation to its own detriment, I'm sorry but I really don't have the time to explain the fundamentals of sociology to you. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 20:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• So it had been a long time since I'd looked at WP:RFA2011. What struck me were its objectives. Of the six that were laid out I think 2 were achieved (new pass range & elimination of SNOW/NOTNOW applications) and 2 were at least partially successful (fairer closing, nonsense votes). So on that front I would say those efforts were a resounding success (given the difficulty of achieving those objectives). In 2020, my objective, however, would be more bottom line: how many reasonable people are putting themselves forward. Ultimately I don't care about the number/quality of questions except as it impacts people choosing (or not) to volunteer for service. It's been 9 years - or roughly half the length of time the project has been in existance - since we had a big effort like that. I wonder what objects we'd have in a similar effort today? Would people be like me and look at bottom line (# of candidate) type objectives or would the consensus still be around process reforms? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• Wow. Every time I look at this talk page, it feels like being stuck in a time-loop, kind of being inside the episode Cause and Effect (Star Trek: The Next Generation). It surprises me that the discussion still remains so miopic. Let me throw in my 1c. The reason all these RfA reforms have had so little effect is that the continuing decling in the number of RfAs has very little to do with the RfA process itself. The main two factors driving this decline are: 1) Adminship itself became a highly unattractive and complicated job, primarily because Wikipedia itself has become a great deal more complex. 2) The explosive growth in the number of regular editors that Wikipedia experienced in its early years has stagnated and even declined. Nothing we do here, no procedural RfA reform of any kind, is going to make any genuininely significant impact unless one or both of the above factors are addressed. Even if, say, the RfA passing bar was lowered to something like 40%, I guarantee you that this would have only a modest and temporary effect on inceeasing the number of RfA filings. The only real way to address 1) requires comprehensive unbundling of admin tools. Yeah, I heard all the arguments against unbundling. In the abstract they make sense. But in reality they ignore the big picture and they basically led us to where we are today. To me a more interesting question is what to do about 2), even though I doubt that people at this talk page are likely to concentrate on that point. Of course, 2) is more a matter for WMF, but still. I think that if people are really concerned about the RfA decline, they should think about new ways of broad outreach in terms of recruiting and retaining new Wikipedia editors. From what I have seen, many of WMF outreach efforts have been pretty miopic too. They still heavily concentrate on college students and on events that mostly attract existing Wikipedia editors. Anyway, I thought I'd throw this in before people begin seriously discussing stuff like limiting the content of the RfA questions. Nsk92 (talk) 06:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  Hi Nsk92, one problem with unbundling as a solution to the RFA crisis is that each unbundling has removed another "need for the tools". In particular the unbundling of Rollback in early 2008 ended the era when you could pass RFA simply as a "good vandalfighter" and is closely correlated with the biggest decline in RFAs. As for the decline in editing, even at the 2014 minima, editing levels were more than half what they were at the 2007 peak, and today the project is old enough that we can divide the history into three roughly equal thirds, the exponential growth era till sometime in 2007, the gentle decline in raw editing levels until the 2014 minima, and the subsequent rally and era of editing stability. But compared to the decline in successful RFAs from 408 in 2007 to 10 in 2018, the level of editing has been effectively stable. A peak of less than twice as many edits than the minima is trivial compare to a peak of over forty times as many RFAs in 2007 as opposed to 2018 (as an aside, and despite having spent many days helping at outreach events, I'm aware that the biggest constraint on editor recruitment for at least the last decade is the growth in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices at a time when Wikipedia's mobile platform is dramatically less editor friendly than the desktop platform). Wikipedia today is largely a community of "desktop" editors rather than "mobile" ones, and that limits our pool of new RFA recruits, but that limit is not sufficient to explain why in mid 2020 we only have one admin account that was created in 2016, and that is a bot...... ϢereSpielChequers 07:19, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  Of course smartphones are an issue but that does not excuse our severe lack of imagination in terms of outreach and recruitment. Lots of people still have and use laptops and desktops at home and at work. There are large sectors of society that are still mostly untapped as a Wikipedia editing resource and that could be reached, probably via some sort of a social call. E.g. white collar workers, academics, business people, professionals of any kind. Few of them edit and Wikipedia never seriously tried to reach them. Yet right now it might be an opportune moment to do so, with all the talk about privilege, and privileged people needing to contribute to society in various new ways, communal ways, other than just making money or advancing one's own career. WMF might make a pitch to them that editing Wikipedia is one such way of giving back. Might even work, who knows. Nsk92 (talk) 09:46, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I've put through 25 successful RfAs in the last four years, and in the grand scheme of things this doesn't sound like a lot. If I included people who I thought might not pass, or who weren't interested, I think it would be closer to 50. For example, I have recently had discussions about:

• Prolific content creator, civil, many GAs, failed RfA many years ago, no interest in ever running again
• Superb copyvio spotter, no other concerns, has declined offers to run from multiple admins
• Old hand at DYK, many will think they are actually an admin now, refused several RfAs
• New(ish) user, 18 months experience, couple of GAs, wrote a few popular scripts, concerned about too many opposes for "inexperience"
• Good work at AfD, civil, clashed with some disruptive editors who I fear will crawl out of the woodwork and oppose
• Longtime outstanding content creator, couple of old blocks, not interested in running for fear of key opposes

I'm quite happy to talk about these more off-wiki to any interested nominators. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:14, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

So... fear of failure is the big issue here? Here's a really awful idea that's never going to pass and probably suggested before, but still: how about instead of 'electing' admins, community elects a diverse 'committee' of sorts to bring forward admin nominations (ideally people with a track record of successful RfA nominations and good judgement), throw in annual reconfirmations for members of said committee to ensure continued competence/support. Any member can nominate someone internally, if there's a substantial majority within said committee after vetting a person for them being suitable for admin, they become one. Throw in the ability for the community to veto nominations so there's still a requirement of wider approval. X number of vetoes (backed with some diffs, ideally of temperament/civility/clueless isues) prevent a candidate from becoming admin. RfA can run as normal, for candidates that would rather this approach, or feel said committee is 'biased'. Slightly similar to how judges are nominated, at least in my country, plus the veto part. It would fix the big wall of fear, make it less high-profile, and it almost certainly wouldn't churn out poor admins. If you want to tighten the noose further, make it a probationary period, where the same committee can desysop any admin they've put through the process within the last 6 months (if they turn out to be iffy). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:51, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's a truly dreadful idea. Such a committee would by its nature only attract the worst kind of busybody Defender Of The Wiki types (no regular editor is going to volunteer for something that would take up so much time for such minimal benefit), so you'd be effectively delegating appointments to the pondlife that hangs around WP:ANI, WT:MOS, WT:RFA, User talk:Jimbo Wales and all the other safe havens for people who prefer to tell other people what they should be doing, rather than doing anything themselves. It would literally be fairer, more representative and less prone to abuse to abolish RFA and just have Arbcom choose five editors per month and unilaterally promote them. ‑ Iridescent 16:03, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I did begin with the "this will be awful" disclaimer for a reason ;p. I think my underlying point was more that direct election doesn't seem to work, not on Wikipedia and it isn't so great in real life either. No policy can change how a voter thinks and make them change the reasons for how they vote. But if you can proxy the choosing of candidates behind a competent body which can get elected, it would seemingly solve these issues, like some variant of Judicial Appointments Commission. And judges usually turn out better than politicians. I'm not sure it'd take up that much more of their time, since regular nominators presumably already vet their nominees. It would cause other issues of course, like the one you mention (lack of representation). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:05, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, what you write here aligns with my own thinking/experience. Do you have any thoughts/insights into what kind of reforms (if any) might entice the kinds of editors you enumerated to run? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:17, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@NSK92 Yes there are ways to do outreach and audiences we could yet tap, and when the current lockdown is over I hope to help with an outreach event running at a museum that a couple of us have been talking to. But we need to remember if an event is targeted at getting non editors to edit we are as HJMitchell once said "selling a hobby". Outreach focused on recruiting new editors is almost always a waste of effort, and a much less useful task than outreach focused on skillshares/surgeries and giving an opportunity for newish editors to get a bit more involved and run a problem by an experienced editor. Remember, we have never had a shortage of people making their first few edits, getting them to do more than dip their toe in has always been the best task for outreach efforts to address. But this page is focused on RFA, and our problem at RFA is that the number of people running collapsed from over 400 successful RFAs in 2007 to a low of ten in 2018. A drop of less than 40% in editing volumes does not explain a drop of over 97% in successful RFAs. ϢereSpielChequers 10:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• I've been staying out of this in part because of what Swarm point's out above: the constant wringing of hands and proposals on this talk page rarely achieve anything, and I'll add that "RfA reform" discussions have become a way for people to promote their pet grievance with Wikipedia's governance process using it as a theory as to why RfA isn't flooding with new people.
  At this point, I'm not entirely convinced a structural change will have any impact. If I were to ask anyone what the structural problem was with RfA that is preventing it from achieving the goal of having new admins, I'm not really sure anyone could provide a satisfactory answer that isn't someone trying to use RfA as a foil for another issue. There isn't anything fundamentally unfair about the process: it's a weeklong vote/discussion that's widely advertised and that allows for questions. What part of that format could be changed to make it more fair while also allowing for legitimate criticisms? I think you'd be hard pressed to find an actual structural issue at this point.
  That gets us to the the crux of the problem: it isn't the structure or the format, but what actually occurs in an RfA that turns people off. This is really a cultural thing. If you want to change RfA, you're going to have to change the norms for what is and isn't considered acceptable, and there's no policy proposal that is going to do that. Here's the other problem with that: like Ritchie333 pointed out, most RfAs these days are relatively tame, so there isn't that much you can do without getting rid of opposition all together.
  I'll end with the line I've been saying for years: the way to fix RfA is to ask more people to run, and for more people who think they might have a 50/50 shot of passing to run on their own. Yes, people will say no, but that is common in every volunteer organization and I don't think people saying "no" is unique to Wikipedia. If you have more people running, it will encourage further runs (see: January 2017) and get rid of this idea that only All-Stars and Shoe-ins have any shot of passing an RfA. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:34, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  TonyBallioni, indeed, WT:RFA is certainly less successful in achieving meaningful change at WP:RFA than WP:RFA is at producing new admins :) In addition to convincing people to run, the other thing that can be done within the current framework is vote support whenever the candidate would be a net positive, and to be as nice to each other as you can. —Kusma (t·c) 23:00, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  I agree we need to look at the supply side, and what would motivate people to become an administrator. If it's solely out of dedication to a global knowledge sharing project, then we may need to recruit from likely candidates such as retired librarians or historians. If it's feeling constrained from doing tasks related to what they're already doing, then we need to look amongst those involved in areas where this happens. On the surface, administrators have a lot of headaches for very little advantages. We need to look for those who would be good fit, and perhaps encourage editors to think of it as a temporary role: they can pick up the privileged toolset for a brief time, when they have time to spare, return it when they don't, and request it again later. If the community wants admins to stop thinking of it as an appointment for life, it has to be flexible as well on granting privileges. isaacl (talk) 23:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• I think Tony is right at least to the tune that there's nothing WT:RFA could feasibly do that would dramatically add to the candidate numbers. There is some nibbling that could be done, whether that be on flights, questions etc, but in general it's accurate. Community zeitgeist, and how that reflects in RfA is most key, and then hunting for good candidate efforts. To a comment above, I'm not sure I'd encourage a candidate who was 50/50 to run right at that point - a brutal RfA is likely which, if it fails, is likely to permanently discourage them. I'd prefer to talk through areas that can be improved and have them run a few months later. But in terms of getting 80/20 candidates to run, absolutely. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:58, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer to talk through areas that can be improved and have them run a few months later. But in terms of getting 80/20 candidates to run, absolutely.
    Not to pick on you, Nosebagbear, because a lot of people share this view, but I think this comment most succinctly sums up what I think is the biggest problem with RfA that we can actually change: telling people who have a decent shot of being elected that they shouldn’t run because there odds aren’t high enough. I wouldn’t really give anyone more than an 80% shot of passing because we all of diffs someone could bring up that could sink us. Telling someone to wait until they have an 80% chance of passing us functionally telling them to wait until they’re the perfect candidate. That reinforces what I’ve described as the All-star problem in the past: we’re only encouraging people who we think will get 99% support and passing 200 to run, and by doing so we’re losing out on completely adequate, if less visible, administrators. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
    • @TonyBallioni: and certainly this is reasonable - in fact this exact thought when through my head when I posted it, but though your point is completely valid, my concern remains that as well. Yes it is an issue that we only encourage "all-stars" but that doesn't mean there isn't the issue with non-flawless candidates risking a highly bruising time. That joint-problem is hardly unknown to us, we just haven't found a good way around it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: In the case of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Money emoji, I didn't think he'd get a high 90s pass, but I really wanted the RfA to run; IMHO he had a cast-iron reason for using the tools that filled a severely needed vacancy and helped reduced backlogs of up for ten years. I didn't comment as much on the RfA as I could have done, but some of the opposition made me bang my head against a wall - here was a guy willing to tackle the backlog that nobody wanted to do, and they're concerned about "content creation". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Let me say this again. It's not the structure of the RfA, and not what happens in the RfA itself that's keeping people away. It's the nature of adminship itself. The job has become too complicated, too demanding, too difficult to be reasonably proficient in except for a small number of people. Think about how much more complex Wikipedia is now compared with 2005. And what the admins have to do now. How much all the different policies and procedures have proliferated, spread out in all directions, how much more tecnical details, gizmos, gadgets etc there are now. Pending changes, I still can't figure out how that works. Copyrigt rules, images, all that stuff with files, caterories, books, DYK, ITN, SPI, and so on. Everything has gotten much more complicated and what admins do there has gotten much more complicated as well. Not to mention the aggravation of dealing with various disputes. Even being a specialized admin is more difficult now. But in RfA you are, at least in theory, expected to demonstrate your knowledge and proficiency in everything, all the policies, all the rules of the road, and most finer points too. Most self respecting editors don't think that the have the requisite knowledge -- and in fact they don't. Even if you start sensoring the RfA questions and discussion section, people still wouldn't apply, wouldnt want to participate in a process seen as obviously skewed. Plus even that would still leave the nature of the adminship job unchanged. If people who are only interested in NPP and CSD could get access to a speedy deletion button and nothing else, they would ask for it, in larger numbers. Same with vandal fighters, who might be interested in AIV and making short term IP blocks. Etc. Of course, I am talking about small elements of comprtehensive unbundling of admin tools. Apart from that, the only other change I could see as possibly having a non-marginal effect compared to the current system is dumping the RfA system altogether and going to a purely formal approval process for admin rights, granted by crats, based on some well defined set of formal criteria (edit count, age of account, no blocks for some number of years, no sanctions/restrictions for some number of years, etc). That would probably increase the number of applicants noticeably. Nsk92 (talk) 10:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  Nsk92, being an admin is still a volunteer position. You don't have to do anything, and you certainly don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with. For example, it is not compulsory to participate in or even read WP:ANI. I have been an admin for fourteen years and there are many admin areas that I have never worked in or haven't worked in for years, and I think that's OK. I feel reasonably competent in some areas and know in which other areas I don't have the background to use the tools. And that's really not a problem -- just like people specialise in just a few content areas, admins specialise in just a few admin areas. Wikipedia is vast, and learning a new area of it as an admin is not really different from doing it as a non-admin -- you lurk for a while, maybe talk to some people, then work on some easier tasks until you have the confidence to tackle anything in that area. It really isn't that difficult. —Kusma (t·c) 14:19, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kusma: But look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ergo Sum and look at all that opposition, such as only 2% of edits to project space, a lack of a CSD log, insufficient number of AfD debates, zero edits to AIV. Of course, neither of us considered that to be appropriate opposition, but there was enough of it to be on a knife-edge for a 'crat chat. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kusma: Of course I understand that once you are an admin, you don't actually have to do all the things that admin rights allow you to do. But the point is, those admin rights do allow you to do all those other things as well. That creates certain expectations in the minds of potential of RfA candidates, when they think about what they need to know/learn/be proficient in before they apply for adminship. The RfA voters have similar expectations too. Make the following mental experiment. Imaging that a certain type of license allowed you to drive a car, a truck, a motorcycle, an RV, and a bus. Would you really be comfortable showing up to the license exam if you only knew how to drive a car? Hoping to convince the examiner that you had no interest in driving a bus now and that if you were to learn how to do that in the future, you'd be real careful about it. That's basically the RfA system we have. Nsk92 (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

It's a conscious tradeoff made by the community: it knows it could break down permissions to a finer level, but that it would be a headache to administer. Accordingly it decides who it can trust to know their limitations and not use tools without becoming familiar with applicable procedures and norms. I do think most commenters at requests for administrative privileges are comfortable with trusting the candidates they support in this manner. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, I know that people expect much more from RfA candidates than from admins. I was talking to Nsk92 about what being an admin is like, not what becoming an admin is like. At RfA, people have used "lack of experience in area X" as an oppose rationale since time immemorial. Long term, experience in specific areas is less important than how you approach areas you are not yet experienced in. —Kusma (t·c) 14:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

As I've mentioned before, back when everyone knew everyone, they could rely on their personal knowledge to evaluate a candidate. Now that the community is too big for that, people rely on metrics to give them a sense of the candidate's overall characteristics. I believe they are looking for a few things: commitment to the project, evaluated through recent edit count and patrolling edits; good judgement, evaluated through participation at deletion discussions and other deletion-related matters; and experience in writing mainspace articles, evaluated through mainspace edits, articles created, and so forth. The big tools that concern editors the most are page protection, page deletion, and blocking, so commenters are looking for long-term behaviours that they feel are indications of trustworthiness. If we don't want them to use these metrics, we need to think of other ways for editors to demonstrate that they can be trusted. Maybe we can create a "good judgement" log where people can record their appreciation of instances of good judgement being exercised. (I wouldn't want there to be an equivalent bad stuff list, and I think it's fairly likely to get revealed anyway.) Perhaps make adminship easy come, easy go: let people request administrative privileges for a fixed time period, so they can schedule time to be more active in handling admin backlogs, and have it removed afterwards. If it works out, some time later they can request another short stint. This would capture the natural initial burst of activity when a new toolset is received, without worrying others that it will languish afterwards. I'm sure there are lots of other ideas people can come up with to encourage more people to take on the role for the first time. isaacl (talk) 15:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Note I'm not suggesting a probationary period or a junior adminship. I'm suggesting that someone might have a less busy month coming up and be willing to sign up to help out on a short-term basis. The community might be more willing to let them try it out, and they may become inclined to help out again later. isaacl (talk) 16:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I think Meta or MediaWiki have similar processes. If there's something you need to do that requires admin tools, you can request them for a limited period while you do what you need. I think something like that would be well used. We'd want similar limits in place as regular RfAs since I would expect a lot of inexperienced users trying to request tools. — Wug·a·po·des 20:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Actually, we kinda had one of those: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MGA73. --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 01:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Forgot to ping: @Isaacl and Wugapodes: --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 16:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Question for a crat (pinging Primefac because of a recent discussion at PERMs): do you have the ability to assign specific permissions or only permission groups? So if someone went through RfA could they only be granted delete/undelete on a technical level (not saying we'd want to just wondering how possible this even would be)? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Permission groups. If it's not in this table, it can't be granted. Primefac (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Let me try to bring this back down to tweaking the question guidelines. Yes, you're all correct to say we can't make a big difference by doing that. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make a small difference. The changes I think might be able to get consensus are: (1) Question-asking to be restricted to EC-confirmed editors; (2) Some text that tells the questioner that they should be reviewing the candidate's contributions and then asking specific questions with diffs -- not asking vague abstract questions about wikiphilosophy, or any question that seeks a mini-essay-format answer; and (3) More proactivity in striking inappropriate questions.—S Marshall T/C 23:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  S Marshall, I think point (3) touches many problems we have with behavioural improvement at RfA: the question of enforcement of any improved norms such as your proposal (2). I think there is quite a bit of support for increased "clerking", also at one the last bigger reform RfCs, and some bureaucrats have become more active at moving lengthy discussion to the talk page, but we need to make sure such actions do not generate too much heat and make the RfA appear "controversial". Question striking/removal might be best left to bureaucrats. I am opposed to (1) for ideological reasons, but don't think it makes a huge practical difference either way. —Kusma (t·c) 09:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding point (3), I think candidates would find RfA less stressful if they knew they didn't need to answer any questions, and were confident they would not get any significant opposition from not doing so. If somebody could put themselves forward and then have a break for a week, coming back to see if they were a pass or a fail, then RfA might seem less stressful.

Alternatively, we could deprecate the idea of formal questions and just ask them as part of the general discussion, without necessarily requiring the candidate to answer them. We ask questions because we aren't sure whether to support or oppose a candidate, and want to ask specifics to help us. There's no actual reason the candidate needs to give the answer to get this information; a well-informed nominator could reply on their behalf, and voters would be free to support, oppose or abstain based on the information provided. The fall out of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/RexxS shows that opposition must be well-founded and within policy to stop an RfA, which may placate some people if they get "Oppose candidate disagreed with me once WAAAAH" comments. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:04, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@S Marshall and Ritchie333: I'm sorry, I know you are both trying to help, but candidates have in general taken to heart the advice not to respond to opposes, leaving their answers to the questions almost the only way to judge the "cut of their jib". I want to see how a candidate responds to people who see things differently, not how many powerful friends they have who will answer for them. Particularly since I would like to see more candidates who haven't put in a lot of time at the drama boards opining, and since I believe we need more admins who can explain things clearly, not just admins who are going to press a lot of buttons. Also, it takes all kinds; I can tell you that some candidates are also kind of relieved to be thrown an essay question, because I was. As to inappropriate questions: I had rehearsed in my mind how I would respond to "Which digit would you chop off for Wikipedia" and decided to refuse to answer. I doubt the instructions have changed since then; candidates can choose to refuse to answer, and admins do have to make hard decisions where they will necessarily offend someone, so I advocate letting the candidate do so.Yngvadottir (talk) 17:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that I want to hear from candidates on their reasoning, and not others. I don't mind anyone making factual corrections, but candidates are the best ones to provide detailed explanations of their thoughts and actions. isaacl (talk) 19:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Over the last two years, I've offered to nominate a few dozen folks at RFA, and have been turned down by most of them. Speaking off the top of my head, most of them turned me down not because they felt RFA was too unpleasant, but because they didn't want to be admins, for reasons of stressfulness or preparedness. I'm not saying we don't have a cultural problem at RFA; we do; but what data I have suggests that's far from the only problem. @Ritchie333 and TonyBallioni: you've likely approached more editors than I have; does your experience agree with mine? If so, it would suggest that the shift we need is not just in the expectations of candidates, or perceived expectations of candidates, but also in the expectations, or perceived expectations, of administrators. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  Vanamonde93, I've definitely gotten that impression from multiple people, too. I understand it. Some people have mentioned wanting to preserve their volunteer time for content creation. I think some don't want the added visibility or added likelihood of attracting troublesome users/interactions. But that must have been true in 2008, too, surely? Do we think a larger proportion of editors feel that way now? —valereee (talk) 17:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  It's easier in a small community to find editors willing to take on unpleasant tasks for the good of the community. As the community has grown, and all the long-time hard core editors have already decided whether or not they want to be an administrator, it becomes harder to find people to take on work that seems to bring very little reward other than self-satisfaction, and on contentious days, not much of that. Short fixed terms might entice some to volunteer to provide respite for other admins. isaacl (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  If that was our problem I would expect our community to be awash with admins and minorities of the very new and those who have lost adminship or don't think it is for them. But what I am seeing is very different. Only 51 of more than a thousand admins have been here less than ten years. Over a thousand of our admins first edited over ten years ago. Now OK, nobody who started editing in the last 12 months is going to be an admin and it would be surprising if more than one or two of them became admins in the next 12 months. But we currently don't have a single admin who started editing in 2016. Our problem isn't getting the occasional extra admin from those who started editing over ten years ago. Our problem is in recruiting admins from among those with less than ten years contributions. ϢereSpielChequers 23:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  WSC, I'm not sure that we can draw the conclusions you're suggesting from that data. For instance, what year did I start editing? A query would say 2005. Me a human would say 2018. A similar question (though perhaps not a similar answer) could be asked of Red Phoenix and CaptainEek and that's just the recent successful RfAs. Plus you have GeneralNotability who started in 2018 or Lee Vilenski who started in 2017. Only Cwmhiraeth has, for me, an undisputed case of being a longtimer before gaining the bit among that group. So this, for me, returns to a topic you and I have discussed before: how can we get editors who have edited casually/seriously in the past to re-engage with the project. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I understand—I gave a reason why it's hard to find new editors willing to take on adminship duties, which is in line with your findings. And my suggestion is one intended to give newcomers an easier entry point to doing administrative tasks than signing on for life. isaacl (talk) 00:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

  • The notion that users decline to run RfA because adminship is "stressful" seems to be a red herring; an excuse. It makes sense that people do not want to put themselves out there, subject themselves to intense scrutiny and drama. It does not make sense that users would be open to the scrutiny and drama, but are otherwise averse to adminship. Adminship grants you more capabilities, tools, and powers, with no obligation. Would an heir turn down their inheritance? Would a lottery winner turn down their winnings? Would a cashier turn down a promotion to manager? Would a serf turn down a lordship? Would a driver of a 98 Camry turn down a brand new Lamborghini? Would a starving person turn down a feast? Would a homeless person turn down a mansion? No, of course not. It is simply not within the purview of human nature to turn down an advance in one's possessions and status, unless the percieved cost is too high. The role of adminship itself bears no cost or burden. The only cost is the immense emotional burden of attaining adminship in the first place. It's truly naive to believe that people don't want adminship by default. I'm sure that almost every user on Wikipedia would like the tools and privileges. However people who think they won't pass will make up other excuses 100% of the time. It's foolish to blame the nonexistent "burdens" of adminship while pretending that RfA is not the reason that these people don't want to run. Nobody is saying that they would not be able to deal with the burden of Rollback. No permission carries any burden. The only thing that makes adminship a burden is RfA. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 02:28, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
    • @Swarm: That's what I would have thought until I spoke to potential candidates, and many of them had no reason to be evasive about why they didn't want to run. Many of these conversations were over email, too, where I'd expect folks to be honest. I don't want to ping them here and subject them to a whole lot of scrutiny they didn't sign up for. To be very clear, I'm not exempting the culture at RFA, but I think it's part of a larger trend wherein people who hold, or express willingness to hold, positions of authority are subject to a barrage of criticism from people who have little to no idea of what those positions demand and are not interested in finding out. I think the nature of interactions we see or have seen at ERRORS, ARCA, or AE, isn't fundamentally different from the culture at RFA we're (correctly) identifying as a problem. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:05, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

      Public or private, it's easier to claim you don't want the "hassle" of adminship than that you're too afraid to run RfA. Who wants to admit to that? No one, that's who. If someone genuinely has no use for the tools and no intention to work in any administrative forum, that's one thing, but short of that, there's no obligation to work at one of the "drama boards" you mention. There's no obligation to work anywhere. That's why I don't buy a user's assertion that they want adminship, but the "drama" or "negativity" or "stress" of the extra tools puts them off. I'm a longtime PERM admin. For comparison, nobody has ever cared about the "stress" of any other permission. Yes, sometimes people don't want or need a tool, but they're never put off by the "stress" of having the tool. This is because there is no inherent stress with any permission, the only stress one can possibly find is that which one subjects themselves to. Same with adminship, same with no extended rights. Plenty of admins never get involved in "drama" or "stressful" administrative situations. With 1100 active admins, I'd venture to say the overwhelming majority keep out of the stressful and dramatic aspects of adminship, with "overwhelming majority" being an understatement. ERRORs, Arbcom, AE, AN, ANI, AN3, these boards are maintained by a couple or a few dozen admins at best, most do not concern themselves with it. So, I'm sorry, users who claim they won't run an RfA because they're willing to go through the RfA drama, but are not willing to subject themselves to the "stress" of adminship, are either misinformed, or they're covering up for their fear of RfA. Which it is depends on whether you're correcting their misunderstandings. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

      Swarm, we had an admin not long ago ask to be desysopped because it had started to feel like a burden. They eventually requested the tools back, saying the frustration at not simply being able to act had turned out to be a worse stresser <g>, but obviously that person sincerely felt at the time that adminship represented a more hassle than it was worth. So don't make assumptions about people's underlying motivations just because they're different from your own and you can't understand why someone would feel that way. I ran RfA not because I was burning to become an admin but because there were two very, very specific tasks I wanted to help with, and frankly there are downsides. I'm not saying there aren't upsides. I'm saying I believe people who say they don't want the downsides. —valereee (talk) 19:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't purport to speak for everyone. This is about the generalized notion of self-interest. Generally, people are interested in attaining more power, privilege, or status for themselves. Generally, most people would not hesitate to seize the opportunity to do so if there were no strings attached. Generally, if the only barrier to attaining this advancement in status carries a significant risk of personal harm, it is more likely that people's decision to not pursue it is due to the fear of personal harm than it is due to the fear of the advancement of status itself. I'm sure there are exceptions; there are exceptions to everything, but this gets to the most base fundamentals of human nature, and it's not particularly convincing to suggest that it doesn't apply the same way here based on what some people told you. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• • • I don't want administrative privileges because the tasks I am interested in don't require them. I don't want to hold privileges if I don't plan to use them, and the community doesn't like that, either. There is no expectation that people will use their rollback user right, once granted, but there is an expectation that admins be active for some period of time, thereby warranting the request and time spent by dozens of commenters evaluating the candidate and providing their reasoned viewpoints. isaacl (talk) 04:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

      And you are a rare case, to say the least. Been around since 2006, and never attained a single additional right beyond autoconfirmed. Even when the community took rights away from you, like screening edits in the case of PC protection, or screening new articles, you seemed to have no inclination towards any additional rights, ever, even though you're probably eligible for most. I respect that. But it's not normal. When you don't even have the slightest interest in PCR, nobody would ever expect you to have an interest in running an RfA. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

      There are plenty of editors who want to add and update content, and aren't concerned with having additional permissions that they don't plan on using in any case. I don't know if that's supposedly normal or not, but I disagree that almost every user would like to have administrative privileges. (And I can't recall anyone touting their pending changes review record as being particularly revealing of anything in their RfA.) isaacl (talk) 05:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

    I don't think RFA/adminship is an either/or; it's a trade-off. The difference between adminship on the one hand and large sums of money, a promotion, a lordship, a car, food, or shelter, on the other, is that people want money, promotions, etc. - those things have significant value, adminship doesn't. There's nothing that requires the admin tools that can't be done simply by asking someone who has the admin tools. We have fairly well-developed systems in place to process these requests, like RFPP.

    I agree that most editors, if you +sysop'd them tomorrow, would not ask for a -sysop. But that's because it was free and easy. It's not like turning down an inheritance. It's more like if somebody says, "Hey, do you want a nickel?" And you'd say, "Sure", if the person was just going to give it to you. But if they ask you to jump through flaming hoops for the nickel, you're going to say no. And if they say, "OK, we'll make them non-flaming hoops", still no.

    Being an admin doesn't benefit the admin or the admin's work very much; in fact, the whole thing is pretty much about helping others do their work (particularly because of WP:Involved). So when you ask someone if they want to be an admin, you might think you're asking, "Do you want to be vetted by your colleagues for a promotion?" But the candidate might hear: "Do you want to be vetted by your colleagues so you can have the privilege of processing their requests for page protection, etc.?" ^Lev!v^ich 04:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

    • @Swarm and Levivich: I don't want to put anybody off adminship; there are several editors I really wish would run so I could support them. But people do differ. Not everybody is ambitious; I had to be dumped into RfA, and I've turned down promotions at least twice. I don't believe adminship requires one to do scut work clearing backlogs unless one wants to, for whatever reason. I felt some obligation to make myself useful, but the aspect of it that I wanted was to see deleted pages, and that turned out to come with seeing and deleting some really nasty stuff; I had no idea (I don't hang out on that kind of social media). I never closed a single discussion, but I painfully learned how to merge page histories, and I found I could be of use at UAA and to a lesser extent fixing errors on the Main Page. There are several different kinds of admin, including those who just help out from time to time, those who spend all their time on technical things I don't even understand, and those who have very few logged actions but seem to be able to spread calm and understanding wherever they go, and there are lots of different reasons to want or not want the tools. (And as I discovered, and was told is not uncommon, I turned out to use adminship in quite different areas from what I'd expected.) This variety as I understand it is part of our greatest strength, which is that we bring together a staggering variety of people. And I believe it's why we don't just have moderators who go through a training course and then moderate. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• I must disagree that adminship is more akin to getting a free nickel than getting an inheritance​. Nice try, but no, just no. We're talking about the primary position of power on one of the largest websites in human history, as well as one of the largest academic projects in human history. The "no big deal" and "janitor" tropes are really nice, cute, and quaint but being a mod in a Facebook group is a big deal. Being a mod in a forum is a big deal. Being a mod on a subreddit is a big deal. Such roles are mostly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and yet they still have a very real power over thousands of people. Being a sitewide admin on one of the biggest websites in the world is a big deal. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Swarm, not everyone feels that way. I know from my own direct experience of at least three people who would easily pass RfA and aren't interested. Admin tools don't analogize to 'a feast to the starving' for everyone. To many they look like a PITA complication to a currently-enjoyable hobby. —valereee (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• @Valereee: I don't know what "a PITA complication" is supposed to mean, nor can I conceptualize any scenario in which your acronym is supposed to be an understandable reference. You're not off to a good start. But, let's pretend that we can just ignore certain things, like that, for instance. Okay then. Go on. Who? Who are you talking about? Go on, tell me! Please, tell me, who? Who genuinely wants the tools, is genuinely willing to run an RfA, is genuinely confident that they would easily pass said RfA, and is, in spite of all of this, unwilling to run? Such a user, I'd love to debate. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  PITA stands for "pain in the ass", I'm surprised you haven't heard that before. ^Lev!v^ich 04:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  @Swarm: I think you've misunderstood what Valereee wrote. She wrote at least three people who would easily pass RfA. You interpreted this as is genuinely confident that they would easily pass said RfA. These are not the same things. Someone could be seen by others as someone who would easily pass RfA but they themselves do not agree with that assessment. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

This petty distinction makes no difference. If someone would easily pass RfA, then, still, name them. There's nothing to lose. If they would "easily" pass RfA but are not confident that they could pass RfA, then name them, so we can encourage them! I have to be honest, though, this current discussion seems gamey and disingenuous, this reeks of "bullshit", and I will not be played for a fool. Try me. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I have to admit to some surprise that you want to encourage them. Offering to debate a user is not very encouraging. Nor is coming into it with the idea that you might be played for a fool. I considered emailing you two names when I sent my first reply but I was concerned you'd actually engage them with that aggressive attitude. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:35, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

"Debate" is literally the fundamental system of governance the entire project operates on. I have to say, it's a bit bizarre you're suggesting that me merely asking to discuss an argument with the user(s) making the argument(s) is somehow aggressive. There is no privacy issue at stake here, I'm merely attempting to confront an alleged argument, and here I'm being told that I'm being "aggressive", merely because I am asking simple questions. Not a good look! ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

You're not asking to discuss (which is, as I read our principles the fundamental system of governance). You are asking to debate. To confront. Those are different things. And the difference between those users and me, is that I volunteered. I volunteered to be an admin for all the good and the bad (and btw I completely agree with you that being an admin on enwiki is a pretty sweet gig) and I volunteered to participate in this discussion. The people who I've approached didn't agree to be confronted/debated by others and in some cases indicated that being confronted/debated was why they didn't want to do RfA. This large discussion isn't about you and me - we both already are admins. It's about people who aren't admins and I don't find it hard to believe that other people have different values - like low-key doing what they enjoy for their hobby rather than being the center of attention on one of the largest sites on the internet. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:19, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

On the contrary, I'm not asking to discuss, or debate. Do you honestly think this is fun for me? To come here, point out that I don't participate in this board because it's a maddening, meaningless time sink, only to get mired in pointless debates about minutae that doesn't matter? I'm simply offering my opinions, I'm not demanding that anyone agree with me, nor am I asking for any confrontation whatsoever, indeed, I'd rather people just agree to disagree and not attempt to argue with me. I could care less whether people think I'm wrong. But if you're going to go out of your way to debate me, and are making deliberately vague claims about how you "know of people", then don't come after me for being "aggressive" when I merely ask for names. I have no interest in playing tedious games with people who demand my time and attention by engaging me in a debate and then waste it by not speaking plainly. Be as pedantic as you want about the differences between a "debate" and a "discussion", I care not, I'm speaking plainly, I'm stating the opinions that I have, I'm asking the questions that I have, and if you don't seek to speak plainly in return or answer straightforward questions I'd really rather you just don't reply at all. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 21:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Fair point that asking might have been the wrong verb. I am not making "vague claims". I am specifically stating I know two people who I could name who I think could easily pass RfA and who reluctance to run; I could name a further two who I reasonably believe would pass RfA (though not necessarily easily) who also refuse to run. I am not willing to reveal those names here because I respect their privacy and I am not willing to name them privately to you because I don't think you'll be respectful of those people if I were to name them. As to the rest of what you wrote, I don't think it sheds any light on the topic de jure and since you are not enjoying the conversation I will not continue with it at a user talk. In the same manner, I'm also happy to discontinue now and let you have any last word that might need to be had. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay now I'm just confused. You did not ever make "vague claims", nor was I ever referring or responding towards you. I was speaking to somebody else, and you inserted yourself, first saying that I misunderstood them, then saying that I was being aggressive, then saying that I am trying to "debate" rather than "discuss", whatever that means. From my reading, you seem to be trying to make my statements relevant to yourself, when they never were. Not sure what you're doing, it's a bit weird. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Swarm Can I offer my experience with one such user? I'm not going to name them because they approached me in confidence by e-mail about possibly running - I don't think I have the right to name them, but I can say that they have (a) written more more than a dozen FAs, and more GAs than you could shake a fairly large stick at, (b) have tens of thousands of edits, (c) have plenty of tenure and (d) have never, as far as I'm aware, been involved in any significant conflict or drama. I think they'd be a fine candidate for adminship, that their RfA would pass with ease, and I told them as much. Two issues gave them pause. (1) They wondered about whether they had what people call a need for the tools. It's true that they haven't been a prolific vandal basher, RfPP requester or ANI litigant - they just wanted to tools to help with cleaning up while gnoming, and to stop disruption when they come across it. They thought people might oppose on those grounds. (Personally, I expect that one or two might, but I am confident that the overwhelming majority would be swayed by the outstanding totality of their contributions.) (2) They did think it would be a burden. I tried the "it's a volunteer role - you can do as much or as little tooling as you want" argument, but they countered with "I feel that, if I am asking hundreds of editors to take time to review my work and make a determination, and they support me, I would owe it to them to make substantial use of the tools". After thinking about it for a bit, they decided not to run. I respect their decision, and haven't tried to persuade them to change their mind. GirthSummit _(blether) 10:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I actually don't even know that they themselves think they wouldn't pass. I just know of at least three people whom I believe would easily pass and who have been approached multiple times and have said very clearly that they aren't interested. And Swarm, I'm certainly not going to out them. I no longer even ask people publicly if they'd be interested. It's their own business why they either don't want to do admin work or don't want to run RfA. —valereee (talk) 11:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I think if people don't want to "name names" the privacy should be respected. However, I think I have publicly stated on-wiki that I have asked Yoninah, BlueMoonset and Crow to run for RfA, as have several other admins, and all have declined the offer. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:02, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Previous efforts break 1

Apologies for creating a break for myself, but the above section was getting difficult to navigate... Got a few pings here that I’ve been meaning to respond to, but have been avoiding because a lot of the back and forth. Vanamonde93, my experience is that when a “recognized name” tells someone they think they’d have a decent shot of passing RfA after they express reservations, they tend to be more confident and warm up to the idea of running. This slightly goes along with Swarm’s point above that people are probably more scared of the process than the results of passing RfA. (Swarm, it I’m mis-paraphrasing you apologies)

Nosebagbear, your point hits on something uniquely human which I think is important here. I’m not actually convinced that the current incarnation of RfA is that terrible; we have less people in the 70s and 80s running now so it’s hard to judge. I’ve been given a few recent and recentish examples of where the candidate didn’t like the experience and passed. In every case, I felt that the opposition was generally fair and civil, regardless of the side I fell on. Yet, these were held up as “bad RfAs” to me in private. Why is that?

I propose a simple answer: getting constructive criticism sucks. No one likes it, even if the overwhelming majority of things said about you is great. If you work for a large corporation think about the mandatory “room for growth” bits of your last performance review. Those stand out, even if the review as a whole was great. RfA forced people to open themselves up to that, and even if it’s done in the most fair way possible, it takes a lot of courage to do.​TonyBallioni (talk) 04:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

And I think there is certainly truth to this, most opposes have at least a reasonable basis to them - certainly all but 1 did in mine. However there have been RfAs where that is not the case, even in the last 2 years, and I suspect they probably have a chilling effect (AA88's and Eek's come to mind) - even where most opposes are fine, once a significant number aren't it massively outweighs the reasonable ones. To follow your example, if you get three pieces of "things to improve on" in your review, the unreasonable one outshines the others. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:52, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe there's merit in writing an essay on how to handle that (c.f. WP:MASTODON)? One thing you get good at in grad school is taking...less than helpful criticism of your work. There's a lot of helpful resources on how to handle negative reviews and submission rejections (some representative examples) that may transfer well to this context. No one likes getting constructive criticism, even if it's from someone who's good at giving that kind of feedback and that's uncommon. A for this kind of advice, we have User:Sven Manguard/Failed RfA Advice and a section of WP:RFAADVICE, but they really focus on how to action the review items rather than how to handle the review. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

In front of hundreds. :D I mean, really. It's a performance/promotion review in front of literally everyone you work with, and the 17-yo intern who started yesterday and your worst work enemy get to ask questions. —valereee (talk) 22:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

At least you don't have to defeat a snake — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we should add that? —valereee (talk) 21:02, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Constructive feedback is also normally based on what you did in the last year, rather than the office digging out your failures for your entire employment span. It's worth noting that "stressors multiply, not add", so as we add more bad facets, it gets worse rapidly. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:52, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

the "drought"

why is it a big deal? there are still TONS of admins and bureaus left from when there were alot of RFXs. i get that the site is growing but. so is the userbase who wont vandalize and wont be "jerks". i say we let it be. Clone commando sev (talk) 01:34, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Less than 50% of alltime admins are currently active. In other words, since the founding of this project, we've lost more than half of our admins. Less than 10% of these users have been promoted since 2011. In other words, somewhere around 90% of the admin corps were promoted a decade or longer ago. Wikipedia was founded 19 years ago. So, we can deduce that over 19 years, 90% of the admin corps was established in the first decade, and 10% was established in the second decade, and that's not factoring in any second-decade admins who went inactive somewhere along the way. That's just a broad generalization. So, if that's not a big deal in your mind, I guess you aren't really qualified to interpret statistics to begin with. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:18, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

i didnt actually know the statistics. wow. i have changed my mind Clone commando sev (talk) 00:27, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey

What's your view about brand new accounts asking questions at RfA?

1. They shouldn't be restricted in any way.
2. Nobody should be asking questions at RfA until they're autoconfirmed.
3. Nobody should be asking questions at RfA until they're EC confirmed.
4. Other, please expand.

This survey isn't meant to generate musings and pontifications on adminship in general; please could we have a targeted discussion on this specific question.—S Marshall T/C 18:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• option 1. Inappropriate Qs can be struck out, pointless ones can be neglected. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• option 1 ("They shouldn't be restricted in any way."). Veteran editors can ask stupid questions just like newbies can ask very relevant questions. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:38, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• option 1 / option 4 - Anyone who can !vote in an RFA should be able to ask a question. Personally, I believe !voting should be restricted to EC accounts, but so long as it isn't, neither should the questions. ^Lev!v^ich 20:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 ("They shouldn't be restricted in any way.") What constitutes a "pointless" question is very much in the eye of the beholder. Any attempt to censor the content of the questions and to strike good faith questions down would do much more harm than the "pointless" questions themselves could, and would make the process much more contentious. Moreover, there can always be some unexpected developments during the RfA itself that make some additional questions appropriate. It is neither reasonable nor possible to try to anticipate and regulate all possible types of "allowed" questions. Nsk92 (talk) 00:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 4. They should be asked to explain their history. If the question is reasonable, let it run. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1/4. AC/EC users can and do ask just as good or bad questions as brand-new accounts. Option 2 in particular especially is entirely worthless, 7 days is more than enough time to game autoconfirmed if someone wants to register a new account (or, if they have an account, make a sock). GeneralNotability (talk) 11:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2/(4) - While AC can absolutely be gamed with an RfA, it mitigates against someone just hearing about it and realising they can ask in front of a big audience immediately, so it mitigates some issues. There might be something to say for all (non-core) questions requiring review at the talk page, though I'm still inclined to think that the increase in BURO would outweigh the marginal gains. I actually think the current process works fairly well. But anyway, the deciding factor shouldn't be further user-right based. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:50, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
  • With some extra thought I realise I should also clarify I'm still happy for them to indirectly ask questions, and the general strength of my "2" should be viewed as weak, as there are a few very experienced IP editors who certainly shouldn't be ruled out of asking questions in any way. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:00, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2/4. Restrict RFA voting and questions to autoconfirmed/confirmed users. The bar for autoconfirmed is fairly low, so it isn't too restrictive. RFAs involve a certain amount of experience to decide if the candidate is capable or not; users who don't meet the minimal autoconfirmed requirements are unlikely to have that experience. It would also help with potential socking. Hog Farm _Bacon 13:47, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2 -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:26, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2 - and nobody should even be voting at RFA until they're autoconfirmed IMO. --Rschen7754 07:18, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1 - we should really be striking inappropriate questions on site. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:37, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1 – Admins are often required to deal with new users who unfamiliar with the project. Such questions are a good opportunity to see how the candidate handles such interactions. If a candidate needs protection from newbies then they are not fit to serve. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:54, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1/4. I think newbies should be allowed to ask questions. But I would expect that the majority of new accounts asking questions at RfA are not newbies. Troll socks need to be dealt with quickly without putting too much extra pressure on the candidate. —Kusma (t·c) 09:01, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1. It should be the nature of a question itself that determines whether it is appropriate, not the status of the questioner. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:21, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject / workgroup dedicated to investigate RfA candidates and provide assessments / endorsements

Hi wise RfA participants,

I am not sure if this is the best place to open such discussion, please triage / move / cross-post if not.

I wonder have anyone think of, or is it encouraged / discouraged to form formal/informal interest group who actively conduct due diligence investigation on RfA candidates. For example, there could be many different work groups / wikiprojects, and provide either full report or single perspective assessments and endorsements. E.g.

• an interest group focusing on checking CIRs such AfD participations / admin tools usage
• an interest group focusing on checking past discussion civility
• an interest group focusing on checking COI, paid edit disclosures etc.
• an interest group focusing on providing feedback on the content contribution quality such as GA, FA, DYKs etc.

The reports from these groups can be (actually should be) non-binding, non-monopoly - everyone can write individual opinions or forms collaborative opinions just like any open journalism.

The reason I ask is because, I feel like I am not particularly good to make individual assessments on all these different angles. For a civil and democratic process to be masure, I feel these are the components that could greatly help individual voters.

WDYT?

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 21:44, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Surely the last thing we need is additional more scrutiny at RfA. Literally hundreds of eyes on the candidate at that point. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:47, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I think the point would be less "everyone reviews everything (and we don't know who is looking at what)" as is today and more "someone reviews some things (and we know who and what)". (Of course we can't prevent the other state in any realistic regard.) Which is fairly similar to stuff I've seen Isaac writing about our decision making process. (There's also the "conveyer line" sense of improving the process.) --Izno (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2020 (UTC)