Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

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Time for some stats

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the drought at RFA has now run for 28 months, and its getting worse; 2009 produced very few admins compared to previous years, but each of the last 6 months has seen fewer successful RFAs than the same month in 2009. Our number of active admins has fallen from the peak of 1,021 in February last year to 802 today. I appreciate that some editors in the past have dismissed these trends as a statistical blip, or thought that RFA had seen this sort fluctuation in the past (it hasn't). So:

1. If people can't yet accept that we have a real problem, can we agree a number of active admins below which they would accept that we have a problem?
2. If people do accept that we have a problem, can we all try and pressgang a few likely prospects?
3. If you aren't yet a admin, and might be interested in running feel free to read User:WereSpielChequers/RFA criteria, and email me if you think you meet my criteria and would be interested in a nomination from me.
4. Of the various proposals to reform RFA that we've discussed here, the only one that I remember coming close to general acceptance was upbundling: Reducing the powers and importance of admins by restricting some of the most contentious parts of the admin role to crats only. Is it worth reopening that debate?

ϢereSpielChequers 21:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the problem is the lack of new admins, but rather the lack of motivation for becoming an admin. The drought is clearly real, but anecdotal evidence suggests that this is caused by a number of factors. For example, when I became an admin, Wikipedia had a lot more geek-chic cache attached to it. Since then, most intelligent people have learned that this isn't a real encyclopedia, and as currently run will never be an encyclopedia. The historical supply of admins was driven by a steady volume of new users joining a project billed as a compendium of knowledge superior to the biased or limited scope of traditional encyclopedias. Some years later, however, most people think Wikipedia is the playground of bored teenagers creating articles about themselves, con artists waging disinformation campaigns, and the Essjay's of the world. Perception of the project isn't what it used to be, and that's reflected by a lack of volunteers who see value in taking a beating at RfA for the extra tools to defend this place. Who wants to be ruthlessly mis-judged by irrational children and chemically imbalanced ignorants for anything, let alone a delete button on a website? Hiberniantears (talk) 21:27, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The pace of admin promotions is slowing. Promoting candidates who have not demonstrated their ability to judge when blocks and deletions are appropriate will stop the drought. Deciding against a more liberal approach to promoting and demoting admins is clearly going to solve the problem too. --WFC-- 21:41, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I think I've said this before, but I don't think there is a problem. If Wikipedia needs admins, Wikipedia will make them. I don't consider this a drought, but more like what it should be. While there is nothing wrong with lots of admins, there's nothing wrong with a few, and that's the way it should be. We should definitely not look at numbers because they can mislead. Bear in mind how many bots there are around nowadays, all the extra tools available to make things easier, and so on. We just don't need as many. It doesn't matter at all if no new admins are created, as long as the current ones are getting on with things. This will only become a problem if the encyclopedia starts to really suffer. And I don't think it's anywhere near that stage yet. Aiken ♫ 21:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Re: Point 1, the point at which we have a problem is the point at which jobs are going undone that need tools. Jclemens (talk) 21:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If we make removing admins much easier here (say, allow them to be removed by bureaucrats instead of stewards), we would be able to promote admins more liberally than we do now. Wikipedia is losing editors, as editors enter heated debates full of drama that make everyone angry in the end. Why do editors participate in these debates? Because most articles are mostly written already, editors do not have as many articles they can substantially contribute to. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 22:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

There's plenty more still to be written, but the way N is applied in AfDs tends to drive off many people who want to write about their own pet topics. THAT is an entirely separate discussion, and not part of any administrator shortage per se. Jclemens (talk) 22:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Jclemens (talk) poses the question that if there's no work that needs to be done going undone, then what's the problem? Clearly though there are many editors who need to be blocked, myself amongst them, and the present cadre of administrators just can't keep up. So that's clearly vital work that's going undone. Malleus Fatuorum 22:17, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, there is no problem, other than this strange idea that we have to keep creating new admins, regardless of need. Aiken ♫ 22:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It is indeed a strange idea. How many administrators would be enough? My own view is that there are already far too many, but I recognise that's an unpopular position in a "community" that encourages teen and pre-teen editors to apply for their sheriff's badge because they've been around for a few months and have a passion for zapping vandals. Malleus Fatuorum 23:03, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The main backlogs that are really worth looking at tend to be the CSD ones, especially things like attack pages and copyvios. If those are being left up on Wikipedia for long, that's bad. Anybody have any stats on how those have been lately? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:51, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about the CSD backlog times, but as far as copyvios being left up for long - feel free to look at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations for any of the tens of thousands of articles which need investigating; many of them requiring deletion or the removal of copyvios from history since they were introduced years ago. I'm sure there are plenty of other areas where extra admins would be beneficial. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It could be that Wikipedia is possibly worth more dead than alive. Most stuff is written, at least most high-profile stuff. There's less work to do and so fewer admins are needed. People run out of stuff to do (or at least stuff they enjoy doing), so they leave the site. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 23:06, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think wiki is becoming more reliable and more trusted than it was 2 or 3 years ago. Its a high traffic site on the web, and is being used more readily in academia. People are dropping by, and a considerable amount of article creation is still occuring. That said with the improvement in quality comes a bit more expecations in the RFa process. We get a healthy participation (nearly 100 people if a RFA runs its course). That is a healthy sign. But the process can be intimidating. I think alot of good candidates get scared off and decide not to run or run again. It can be very intimidating also if a candidate runs by themselves without any other open RFA going on, they are sure to get a high level of particiapation (and maybe increased scrutiny) occuring. That though is an additional side impact i think that comes with the decreased amount of RFAs. But mainly, Im also not to sure how many candidates (who just dont make it) we deem as being so close and encouraged to run again (soon) decide to, thats a stat id like to see. All that aside. Id personally like to see more admin candidates run and as mentioned above I think there are alot of issues pertaining to why the number is declining faster than we assign them. Ottawa4ever (talk) 10:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Guys, has anyone thought of this: Wikipedia has been around for nine years. In that time many people have become members of the site. This group has included many wonderful administrators. Maybe all the capable admins on the face of the Earth have already joined and gotten the tools. It's a novel idea but maybe it's the truth Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:40, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a novel idea in the same sense that believing you're a reincarnation of Joan of Arc is a novel idea. Malleus Fatuorum 22:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Malleus. The project is going to have contributors come and go, and so admins come and go. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 02:23, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course admins will come and go, but far more admins are going than coming, hence the 20% decline in active admins in the last 18 months. If RFA was producing enough admins to replace those who become inactive I would not have started this thread. ϢereSpielChequers 08:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You gave us stats on the declining number of active administrators, but are there stats on the fluctuation of administrative backlogs over the same period? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:45, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Good question. I'm not aware of anyone keeping tabs on that, but in my view this is a problem long before we start getting backlogs. I would be more interested in seeing how the number of admin actions per admin is changing over time. If we need to do fewer deletions, restores, protections, blocks and so forth then the average number of admin actions per active admin might not be increasing. However it is a complex equation as declining an incorrect deletion tag doesn't need the tools but typically takes longer than deleting per a correct tag. The level of editing has fallen back slightly from peak, but has been stable at ten million edits every 7 weeks for some time - which would imply a pattern for this year of a declining number of admins spreading themselves more thinly. If like me you think that admins should be members of the community who spend some of their time here doing admin stuff, then it makes sense to have enough admins around that none of them feel unduly distracted from other editing. Most of what we need admins for are day to day chores that if divided between many hands are easily accomplished, and as the active editing community is supposed to be stable at circa 40,000 one would expect that the proportion of admins amongst us should be rising rather than falling. ϢereSpielChequers 10:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that backlogs in key areas would be a good indicator - not a complete one, but a start on getting a handle on this ongoing discussion. Writing a program to determine wait times at WP:AIV or WP:RPP is way beyond my skillset, but I think it would be useful in numerous ways. I will add the anecdotal evidence that in my last year of active participation as a contributor at AIV, just as one example, I have noticed a gradual yet fairly dramatic increase in the average length of time it takes to get final administrator action when vandalism is reported. As for WereSpielChequers opening statement in this section regarding 'upbundling' of some admin functions to the 'crats to take a bit of the "charge" off of !votes on the Rfa pages, I think it is an interesting and worthy concept, but given how difficult it is to effectuate change in this type of area, I doubt consensus could be reached. The argument that current 'crats were not elected to have those additional powers would be raised, etc. In other words, it could just devolve into a contentious time sink. Jusdafax 16:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, as admins, current crats were elected to have those powers... before they even became crats in the first place. The Thing // Talk // Contribs 16:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) If someone was was prepared to code it I would suggest that as well as backlogs, admin actions per active admin would be interesting to keep charted - it would help to know how dependent we were on a few active admins. As for the argument that crats weren't elected for these powers - crats already have the full admin bit. Upbundling would increase the crat workload but would not give them any powers that they don't already have, it would just take some power off us admins. ϢereSpielChequers 17:04, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) Good point, Thing (and WSC), though I should have made clear that I believe that objections will be raised that current 'crats were not originally intended to be the sole holders of upbundled powers, whatever they may be. But my main thinking, rightly or wrongly, is that while WereSpielChequer's reasonable idea - of reopening discussion on what may well be the worthy concept of 'upbundling' some admin powers to the 'crats - may be a good one, I personally doubt it will bear fruit, given what I perceive to be resistance to change. Then again, I could still be in recovery from the failed WP:CDA proposal. ;) Jusdafax 17:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

While every successful bureaucrat candidate (to my knowledge) already had the admin bit, it isn't a de jure requirement. Administrators have far more rights than bureaucrats, who have a very limited set of rights (Special:ListGroupRights). –xeno^talk 17:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I suspect the contentious thing about upbundling would be deciding what admin powers should be confined to crats. I was hoping for some suggestions from those who consider that admins are currently overpowerful and would like us cut down to size. ϢereSpielChequers 17:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

• Without meaning to come across as critical to any thought or person in this thread, I find this whole thread quite hilarious. That aside, these debates routinely come up and will continue to do so as sure as the sun rises in the east. Just as surely as it will set in the west, there will be nothing to come from the debate. What will be a catalyst for change will be the project falling apart in a noticeable way. An event that is highly dramatic which is perceived to have been caused by a lack of administrators will be the catalyst for change. Intellectual discussions about whether there is or is not a shortfall will never foment change. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

My sense is that WereSpielChequers is concerned about the phenomenon of the Boiling frog. I have always admired those who can identify a problem that is gradually growing in magnitude, and who speak out long before the problem is dire. WSC has done much to track a 28 month trend that could well be a problem. I would argue that if the only way a serious issue with Wikipedia can be identified and targeted as such is by "the project falling apart in a noticeable way" then we as a community will deserve what we will get - at the least, severe stress to an institution I presume we all value highly.

There are two main points under discussion in this thread at the moment:

• 1. - Is there a need to reopen the discussion regarding 'upbundling' some unspecified current admin rights to the 'crats, and
  2. - Is there, or should there be, a tool to determine and track wait times at various admin 'bottlenecks' like WP:AIV.

On number one, I share a certain cynicism with Hammersoft regarding the current willingness of a clear majority of current admins to renounce any of their powers. Since I am not an admin, I hesitate to speak to which powers can or should be 'upbundled' in such a discussion.

As I say, number two gives us more information on which to draw conclusions. It will take some work by someone who knows how to write code, of course. Jusdafax 19:35, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

• You will never achieve consensus to implement point #1. As to #2, you don't need consensus to implement it and no discussion of whether there should be such a tool is necessary. Find someone willing to write it, and have it done. As to my cynicism, yes it is the boiling frog parable. I do not believe the community can sustain itself under the current paradigm. As we asymptotically approach the completion of the project, the ability of the project to manage itself will continue to decline. At some point, a transition will be made to a more steady state completed work, largely immune to the fluctuations of every day editing. The recent move to revision mastering is a step in that direction, but far from the last. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Hammersoft you are of course correct that this is not the place to request a database report. However I would be interested in knowing why you or anyone else objects to the upbundling idea. I appreciate that this is not the easiest place to get support for any sort of change - but I would really like to know what objections there are to this idea. I'd also be interested if anyone can either find fault with my statistics or an alternative solution to the problem. ϢereSpielChequers 20:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should first see if (the relatively small number of) bureaucrats are even willing to take on the role of "super admin": it's not the job for which they volunteered. –xeno^talk 20:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

• ... And that's just the first of many potential objections. I appreciate the invite WSC, but I'm not here to debate point #1 above, rather to point out that getting consensus on it will be impossible. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:28, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Heh it's worse than it looks. Admins who are not doing much in the way of admin actions will still appear as active if they are editing. Worse still you've got to consider whats happening to the admin population. You end up with a mix of aging dinosaurs and a handful of new hyperactives. If thats not bad enough admins are the main recruting ground for the more senior positions which means that without new admins comming in we would expect the quality of admins left who are not being tied up with stuff above admin level to decline.©Geni 00:09, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

"Senior positions" is a curious turn of phrase. Since when was "janitor" a senior position? Malleus Fatuorum 00:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

"janitor" is generaly reserved for admins and at no point did I refer to admins as having a "senior position".©Geni 00:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Who in their right mind would consider promoting "janitors" to these "senior positions"? Malleus Fatuorum 00:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Your exclusion of a qualifer is noted. Still if you would rather deal with the phrase "positions that allow greater acesss to features of the mediawiki software without providing direct database (post 2004) or shell acess, positions that the english wikipedia community have decided that for the time being have greater influence than mere admins and positions that the foundation has decided have some form of oversight role" feel free to do so.©Geni 00:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Just a note that WereSpielChequers has written a Signpost article based on these interesting stats that will appear in tomorrow's issue (comments about the article's contents are still welcome in the newsroom before publication, and on the article's talk page afterwards). Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

799 active admins

Just a note: our count of active admins has broken 800 for the first time in years [1]. Personally, I think it's time for Jimbo to make good on his promise to appoint some more. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think its time for one of the many proposals that move us away from voting for lifetime appointments-Cube lurker (talk) 13:09, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

...altogether now... "799 active admins, sitting on a wall".

I understand the thrust of your comment CBM (the conversation above refers too) - however it strikes me that it would be a terribly unwise idea for Jimbo to actually randomly add the admin bit to some people that have been here a while (that comment of his being several years old now) Pedro :  Chat  13:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see the distribution of administrative actions among the 800. As I understand it, the bot counts an admin as active if they are editing - that doesn't necessarily mean they are active in the administrative day-to-day (of course, there are some administrative activities that involve editing alone, so it wouldn't be a perfect metric). –xeno^talk 13:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• @CBM: Can you point us to where Jimbo made that statement? I'd like to see it. @Everyone; 5% drop in two months. Problem? Nah. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Here. That was in 2003, and Wikipedia was a very different place. If he did it now, the number of people resigning in disgust would likely outweigh any gain. – iridescent 13:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Interesting. Yeah, Wikipedia is a very different place from seven years ago. But, something has to change. RfA is badly broken. Looking at DeltaQuad's current rfa; there's people opposing there because they can't figure out if he's a decent, trustable person after he's made 7,000 edits. That's just insane. Yet, nobody is taking those opposers to task over it (except me now). The culture at RfA must change. Jimbo has the authority to do it. Even if we lost 100 administrators, there's plenty other capable people who will come in. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that the number of admins who are likely to resign in disgust is high enough to outweigh the number of established editors who could replace them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Then start nominating these fine candidates. You are forgetting that this is a volunteer project, and appointing people who evidently haven't taken an interest in being an admin does not mean they will actually become active admins. And I, for one, do not trust Jimbo's judgment. Resolute 15:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Hammersoft: "Insane?" No. Trust (or absence of it) need no evidence. It's there or it's not. Expressing simple "trust" or "no trust" is rational - saves everyone's time; the house rules mandating ritual decorum for oppose voices are, indeed, insane. East of Borschov 07:48, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Re Hammersoft: you said, "5% drop in two months. Problem? Nah." I updated the graph of active admins by month to bring it up to date. You can see that "two months" is not the issue here. Even though I take the average by month, there are still peaks and valleys, like the stock market. But the overall trend is easy to see. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That was Hammersoft (not Headbomb), and I believe he was being sarcastic. –xeno^talk 14:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I fixed that. Sometimes sarcasm is hard to detect, sorry. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah, it was sarcasm and out of context relative to the longer thread above. Sorry. :/ Thanks for the graph though. The frog (again, ref earlier thread) is indeed getting hot. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

As noted in the conversation above on this topic, the stats are interesting but don't mean much in a vacuum. What work isn't getting done? In what areas are existing admins getting frustrated because they're overburdened? Townlake (talk) 14:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd say CSD, AFC, AIV, UAA, and RPP are all areas where work isn't getting done. AIV needs to be pinged at AN and ANI routinely. N419BH 14:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Does AFC need tools? Seems like thats one of those areas that editors desiring of adminship could chip in prior to RFA.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no. Tools are needed for article titles which have been salted. It's also helpful to view any deleted prior versions to easily detect reposted copyvios and other types of trickery. N419BH 14:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The ability to see deleted edits would be useful at AFC, if someone wants to create an article that has been speedy deleted it would help having an admin who can quickly say "same name - different person". Also sometimes an admin could respond by simply restoring a prodded article and letting people reference it or update it because the band or person is now notable. ϢereSpielChequers 14:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Just throwing some other numbers into the stew pot. Over the last month of blocks (July 4th through now), I found the following (removing bots): 10,872 blocks. 376 blockers. 8,982 of the blocks (83%) done by 20% of the blockers, following typical Pareto distribution phenomena. 53% of the blocks done by the top 20 blockers. 24% of the blocks done by the top 5 blockers (Materialscientist 903, Edgar181 505, Dank 462, Tnxman307 397, HJ Mitchell 329). 3809 blocks by bots (3759 by proxy blocker ProcseeBot, and 50 by AntiAbuseBot) --Hammersoft (talk) 14:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

One can add black and whitelist to it, notoriously backlogged (but I am not sure if certain tasks, like that one, don't get done because there are not enough admins, some tasks are not really admin's favourites). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

And running similar on deletions (I gave up after 2 weeks; lots more deletions thank blocks!); Over the last two weeks of deletions by humans: (25,356 deletions. 447 deleters. 22,143 of the deletes (87%) done by 20% of the deleters. 56% of the deletions done by the top 20 deleters. 30% of the deletions done by the top 5 (Explicit 3734, NawlinWiki 1391, Athaenara 1001, RHaworth 952, Graeme Bartlett 659). 2,222 deletions done by 7 bots. Mostly CydeBot (1257) and Orphaned image deletion bot (833).

Across both blocks and deletions, 553 active administrators. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I noticed 19 unhandled unblock requests this morning, 12 at this moment. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the only really relevant question is: Is the work getting done in a timely fashion? If so, we have enough active admins, if not, we may need more active admins.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

When did active admins register their accounts?

Year account was registered	Number of active admins	Number of bureaucrats
2003 or earlier	119	19 (5)
2004	163	2 (1)
2005	221	9 (8)
2006	184	4 (4)
2007	69	1 (1)
2008	30	-
2009	11	-
2010	2 (both bots)	-
Total	799	35 (19)

One more interesting statistic, and I'm outta here. Here is a chart showing when the currently active admins and adminbots registered their user accounts (not when they became admins). Of all the users that have signed up since January 1, 2008, only 43 are admins (including new adminbots). That's two and a half years from January 2008 to today. I think this is key point: if I had to guess why our admin count is decreasing, I would say it's because the majority of our active admins have been editing Wikipedia for five years or more, and eventually they move on to other things. It's great that we have enough loyalty for people to stick with a volunteer project for that long, but without replacements the admin count is bound to decrease. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No, that's only two and a half years: 2008, 2009, and the first half of 2010. -- tariqabjotu 15:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed. Really I think the data speaks for itself, feel free to ignore my comments about it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a definite concern, thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 16:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've added data on bureaucrats, in case anyone is curious. Of course, we should keep in mind that some accounts may have been registered in a certain year, but only used regularly in a later year. From a strict registration date perspective, Anonymous Dissident (talk · contribs) has the newest account with bureaucrat privileges, but my account only became very active in 2008 (with less than 25 edits in 2006 and none in 2007). –xeno^talk 16:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

How many of those crats are "active?"---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

If we are defining "active" as a bureaucrat who made a logged bureaucrat action in 2010, see the bracketed values just added. –xeno^talk 20:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Tx that's actually more than I would have expected.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a suspicion from these figures that just as an unsuccessful RFA sometimes loses us an editor, successful RFAs and RFBs may increase the time that someone spends as an active member of the community. It would be an interesting thing to analyse. ϢereSpielChequers 23:51, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, though the difficulty is determining whether a person was offended by the RfA process and went away, or whether it was what I call a "cookbook candidacy" and the editor, balked in his quest for the brass ring for reasons which didn't really involve a desire to help the project, went away.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The sky is not falling

We have these threads every few months, and nothing changes. There have been some attempts to change RfA, and they have failed. I think that is partly because RfA isn't nearly as broken as some people seem to think it is. These threads have the effect of making adminship seem like a trophy, despite our best efforts to convince people otherwise. Well, it's not a trophy - that much is true - but by making a show of "we don't have enough", we are making it seem like it is a trophy. Where is the actual problem that will be solved by having more admins? Please don't tell me about backlogs; the fact is there are backlogs not because there aren't enough admins but because there aren't enough admins who are interested in the work to be done. When we get specialized RfAs to fill those voids, they are (at least sometimes) treated well. (I'm thinking in particular of Lustiger seth, for example, but there are others.) That doesn't strike me as broken.

Furthermore, counting admins is just as bad as WP:EDITCOUNTITIS, and we routinely as a community lambaste editors who use it to decide whether or not an editor is worthy of adminship. This version of editcountitis ignores several things:

• The volume of work each admin does
• The tools that are available to help the project, such as ClueBot, pending changes, and edit filters, which haven't all been available for the most of the time that graph spans, and which lessen the need for manual administrative work
• The edits per day to the project as a whole, which have changed over time

For as long as we've been bemoaning the shrinking "active admin corps", it seems to me Wikipedia's readership has increased, and without any major hiccups. Sure, an outage here, a rogue admin there, but...these things will always happen. Overall? We're fine. If there are backlogs to be reduced, how about finding people already qualified (and already admins) and asking them to dig in? Or, if there are specialized areas that existing non-admin users can fill, ask them to stand at RfA. But I think some overarching "there aren't enough active admins" line of thinking is very misplaced. What is the right number of active admins? Who decides that?

I would like to add that, with all due respect, the graph presented above is skewed to show a particular point of view. If the full magnitude of each data point were shown, instead of its magnitude-800, the graph would show a very different story. Like it or not, it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, and by cutting off the bottom 80% (almost) of that graph, the situation is being presented as far more dire than is warranted.  Frank  |  talk  14:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The point of the graph is to show the long-term trend, in case anyone thinks the decrease is just a short-term phenomenon. The overall magnitude of the change is about 20 percent since the beginning of 2008. My second set of statistics is meant to complement the graph by showing that, in demographic terms, our admin corps is greying very quickly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's the point of the X axis. I won't presume to know the point of the Y axis - it may well have been merely a shortcut - but the end result is that it makes things look worse than they are. There's no context until you examine it carefully and see that rather than moving from a relative level of 50 to 80 to 0, it's more like 920 to 1020 to 800. The percentages involved are very different. The thread also lacks some overall context; it announces to the world that the number of active admins is a statistic to be tracked unto itself, without much suggestion that it should be tied to other things around here. (Others have made this comment above; I'm not claiming originality or single-ownership of the idea.)  Frank  |  talk  15:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It takes two axes to show a trend. The number of active admins is a statistic that we track unto itself, if you weren't aware. That's why I can make this chart from Wikipedia:List of administrators. However, my real point was just to present the statistics. You can make of them what you will, or dismiss them if you like. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not dismissing the statistics; I'm questioning their presentation and the conclusion being drawn. Are you using Wikipedia:List of administrators to determine the count of "active admins"?  Frank  |  talk  15:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, there are mountains being made here unnecessarily. RFA serves its purpose well enough and that's all there is to it. Aiken ♫ 15:00, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

True, Frank, the image is skewed, it is not that bad. But truth is, there are admin tasks which are (notoriously or regularly) backlogged, and not many new admins coming in to help (and others get burned out on certain parts). If there is not a big refreshment of admins, then who are you going to ask, the admins who are here already for longer don't want to step in, and there are also things that I would prefer doing outside the admin tasks (on and off wiki). And it does seem to me that becoming an admin has become more difficult over time (can I haz a graph with 'new admins per month'?). I would love a handful of extra admins keeping an eye on the incoming spam and helping out there .. and those requests have been placed before, still it are the few that are always there, and the requests have not really helped. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by_month. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The sky is falling, but it is falling at a slow enough pace that we can take measured action now to resolve matters. Ignoring the longterm decline in our number of active admins has been tried repeatedly, but the problem has not gone away of its own accord, nor is it likely to. I suspect we could and probably will continue these threads for another year or two. But the sooner we accept that there is a real phenomena here and try to solve it the better the solution we are likely to get. ϢereSpielChequers 15:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

But the problem you refer to still hasn't been identified. The decrease in raw numbers isn't a problem definition; it's an observation.  Frank  |  talk  15:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Quite so. Yes, there's a drought of sorts, but is it affecting the encyclopedia? No. Aiken ♫ 15:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad we can now agree that there is a drought. The direction is clear, and if things continue in the same direction there will at some point be a problem that clearly does damage the pedia. I would like us to change direction well before we find we are struggling to get vandals blocked and attack pages deleted. ϢereSpielChequers 16:01, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

My opinion is that we will manage if the time comes. Could be done in a variety of ways - reducing support threshold, giving greater power to bureaucrats to irrelevant opinions etc. Aiken ♫ 16:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Editor count going up and admin count going down is not a good thing. Also, if you torture numbers long enough, they will confess to anything. So let's forget about numbers. The question is, why aren't people becoming admins in the numbers they were a couple years ago, and does anything need to be done about it? Is RFA broken? Are we not recruiting enough admins? (I'd like to run but I've been told I don't have enough article contributions and too many semi-automated edits). Personally I think RFA's fine, it's the recruitment and possibly the standards for a yes !vote that are the problem. N419BH 15:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Some people are very picky and have standards that do not reflect what it takes to make a good admin (e.g. two years editing, featured articles etc). But standards will go down when there is a need for more admins. Aiken ♫ 15:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Half of me wants to respond to this thread by taking the plunge on this project's main page. N419BH 15:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• As Malleus said, it's ritualized humiliation. Enter at your own peril. Personally, I'd sooner stick a hot poker in my eye. When RfA could promote someone like me, it'd be fixed. Until then, I'll happily laugh at the tar&feathering pit it's become. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The sky IS falling. So what?

As a group, the project doesn't care. We're a two dimensional being pontificating about the existence of a third dimension, attempting to prove/disprove that something is going to happen. We lack the ability to understand, much less evaluate, that the proverbial anvil is falling from the sky and is about to land on our head. No tools, just random numbers. No clear philosophy, just a bunch of raving lunatics with sandwich boards standing on a corner in Greenwich Village claiming the end is nigh and everyone else snickering at them.

Personally, I find RfA to be an hysterical diversion from the routine muck-a-muck of the project work. WP:AN/I is a good channel to flip to when you want some soap opera drama. WT:NFC and WP:MCQ are good for a Law & Order fix. WP:RFAR is good for a Court TV fix. RfA is sort of the Married... with Children entrant in the channel line up.

Whether the train is headed for a cliff with no bridge to take it over the chasm or not is actually irrelevant. The fact is, nobody is driving the train, and the project can't do a damn thing about it. Whatever fate lies for us in the future will happen, and all of us lemmings are powerless to do anything about it.

Have fun storming the castle! --Hammersoft (talk) 15:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Why the admin rate is going down. Well, one reason is that, since I caused some trouble almost two years ago, I can apparently not be an admin. The standards must go down. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 15:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Right. The standards for becoming an admin are so much higher than the standards for staying one. -- tariqabjotu 15:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The day we lower the standards to allow blatant drama mongers on board is the day Wikipedia dies. There's already enough of them with the tools, so there's no way in hell most of us are going to allow any more into the club. This is an encyclopedia, not Days of our Lives. Vodello (talk) 19:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

If there are already blatant drama mongers with tools (there certianly have been in the past) throwing in a few more is unlikely to cause wikipedia to die.©Geni 20:15, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying this site is free of constant internal bleeding, but it's not going to help to inject AIDS into the already mucky situation. I don't believe we have a process for voting admins out yet, so the least we can do is not vote more bad admins in. Vodello (talk) 20:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No you can't. You can eliminate the really bad admins but beyond that you hit issues with the law of diminishing returns (far to many false posertives). Worse still your standards increasingly select for political competance rather than the qualities most people actualy seem to want in admins.©Geni 21:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Round Robin

799 admins on the wall, 799 admins... you take one down, pass it around, 798 admins on the wall...---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• One eyed, one horned flying purple admin eater! --Hammersoft (talk) 16:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

798 admins on the wall, 798 admins... you take one down, pass it around, 797 admins on the wall... extransit (talk) 20:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

797 admins on the wall, 797 admins... you take one down, pass it around, 796 admins on the wall... Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 19:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I read the section title as being akin to a round robin tournament. Perhaps that would solve our problem though... Find four editors and make them face off against each other in a competition of some kind (I favour a dance fight, myself). Winner gets the bit. Resolute 19:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Some suggestions for pushing back against falling sky

Assuming that the sky is falling, albeit rather slowly, might a few possible courses of action be to:

• contact all completely inactive admins, possibly by e-mail, pointing out the current decline in the number of active admins & encouraging a return
• identify admins who have edited recently but performed few or no admin tasks and encourage a return to higher levels of admin work
• question the active admins on (a) tasks they currently engage in regularly & (b) tasks they would feel comfortable doing if there were a substantial backlog, so that when backlogs develop it's easy to ping admins who might be interested in/capable of working on them. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 16:42, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I like it, as well. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 16:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Good ideas Espresso Addict

1. I think is being done through the strategy project - they are doing various exit surveys of former editors. Interestingly one of the most common responses is that they haven't left, they are just on a wiki break.
2. One would have to do that with caution, but I think a bot note about the say the history merge backlog would be an interesting approach. "Could you help with backlog x" is a not unreasonable friendly thing to do once in a while, just don't start with "Dear inactive admin".
3. Good idea, some sort of newsletter could do that.
4. We could also try and save admin time and encourage them to do more admin work by telling people about the various scripts that are available, I suspect that quite a few admins don't have all the various scripts that give dropdown menus for blocking etc.
5. There are certain U1 and G7 deletions that we could create an admin bot for.

ϢereSpielChequers 16:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter, you say? Mind if I develop it? I helped develop both newsletters for last month's Guild of Copy Editors backlog elimination drive. You all could help, if you want. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 17:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

To WereSpielChequers:

(1) Exit surveys of admins who've left would be interesting. Where are the results published?

(2) Obviously it would have to be written rather tactfully, and might need to be a bit customised to the type of inactivity. It could also link to simple "how to" explanations of how to do the task in question and what to look out for -- I suspect many less active admins, such as myself, stick to tasks they're familiar with for fear of doing inadvertently something wrong.

(3) A succinct newsletter would be useful.

(4) For the technophobes like myself, a primer in how to load scripts might be useful -- I've tried several times and for some reason they never work. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You realise this is a flat admision that RFA is broken? If the only only way to increase effective admin numbers is to try to recall the dinosaurs from when RFA wasn't broken we have a problem.©Geni 21:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Increasing retention of experienced admins is clearly of benefit independent of whether recruitment is a problem. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Utahraptor if you are willing to edit a newsletter I'm sure lots will contribute. Espresso, I got NW to load a key script for me, perhaps we need to identify some admins who will help others load up scripts. As for the surveys one has run the admin is about to run. There's also strategy:Proposal:Study_administrative_contributions. To Geni, I've been arguing that RFA is broken for so long I no longer believe it myself. Reviving dormant admins is only one of several solutions or partial solutions to the problem, and I no longer think RFA is broken. Cracked yes, capable of batshit insane happenings, no longer fit for purpose, approving some admins who shouldn't have been and rejecting others who in my view should be admins, demotivating and driving away some good editors, deterring many from running including several who would pass even now, and otherwise badly in need of reform; But as long as a trickle of candidates get through, RFA is not yet entirely broken. ϢereSpielChequers 19:06, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you brought strategy:Proposal:Study_administrative_contributions up. I'm one of the co-organizers of that proposal. If we can get just a couple more editors to sign up, we can run that study. Anyone here interested in helping us understand administrator behavior better? If so, please check this proposal out and sign up to help. Even doing one interview would be valuable. I've signed up to do 5. ɳorɑfʈ ^Talk! 09:33, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Correlations

• According to Wikipedia:List_of_administrators#Active, the list includes admins who have had 30 edits in the last two months. I don't know if that is the source of the graph data (I've asked above), but assuming it is, my question is this: what does the number of edits by an admin have to do with actual admin activity? I have deleted well over 4,000 pages; not a one of those deletions counts as "activity". True, blocking is typically followed by an edit to the blockee's talk page explaining it, but not all admin activities will show up there anyway.
• WP:EDITS lists the top 4000 editors on Wikipedia by number of edits. Of the 799 active admins, at least 701 of them also appear on WP:EDITS, including 46 active admins in the top 100 of that list. (The number is probably higher, since you can opt out of being listed on WP:EDITS.)

So, what we have is a very high correlation between the folks who edit Wikipedia most and the ones who administer it. For better or for worse.  Frank  |  talk  16:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The current number of active administrators may be low, but it's not really a big deal. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 16:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I know of at least two admins who have opted out from appearing on wp:edits, so yes the active admins are highly likely to have high edit counts. But the correlation does not apply so strongly the other way. The majority of the editors on WP:EDITS are not admins, including at least four of the people I've tried to persuade to run in recent months. I suspect if we analysed a list of the editors with the highest counts for recent edits we would find a lower proportion of admins than in wp:edits - I'd bet a pint that the correlation between admins and editors with high edit count is weakening. ϢereSpielChequers 19:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts

Something I'm not sure anyone has considered is that this might not necessarily be an Admin thing, or even a Wikipedia thing, but a Web Community thing. This is quite interesting, and reflects some of my experience in Web community development. Web ideas wax and wane in popularity, and a lot of people who took an active part here when Wikipedia was "new and exciting" will have moved on as fashions have changed. Also, a number of high-skill web communities seem to have peaked in "expert" participation about the same time as the Wikipedia admin peak (sorry, I have no refs - just personal observations from ones I've been involved with). And one last thought is that perhaps community-based, consensus-based, management will only work up to a certain size or a certain level of maturity - I'm sure it's no accident that successful commercial organisations tend to be hierarchical rather than democratic communes. (I do hope I'm wrong on that last one, and Wikipedia has surprised my by its success so far, but we're actually still in the early days of a social experiment). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I blame Facebook. Excuse me while I go send energy packs to my Mafia....--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I have also been thinking something along similar lines. The real problem seems to be the general decline in the number of active WP editors: more such users are leaving than coming in. At the same time logistically and organizationally Wikipedia has become considerably more complicated than say, five years ago, which requires higher level of competence for being an admin. In longer term one would have to either significantly restructure the entire project to allow it being effectively managed by a shrinking group of people, or one could try to reverse the general trend of the project's shrinking and attract new editors. I am not sure if the latter is possible but if it is, it's probably something that can only be done at the WMF level. Maybe some kind of a publicity campaign directed at some specific classes of potential editors. E.g. perhaps the academics - my experience shows that only a tiny fraction of them actually participate in actively editing Wikipedia even though most of them read WP articles fairly regularly. Academics as a group are fairly sympathetic to the idea of freely available knowledge and information, and, for example, the open access journal trend is very much gaining in popularity. One can perhaps try to sell them the idea of editing Wikipedia if it is presented in terms of public service volunteering and outreach. Barring some sort of a large scale attempt to attract new editors, it seems to me that a significant restructuring of how the project is run will become necessary in not too distant future. Probably a lot of sacred cows would have to be slayed then... Nsk92 (talk) 18:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that last bit is my fear too. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

If we model wikipedia as a standard web community or as a mmorpg then our problem is that the time taken to pass RFA is now signficiantly greater than the lifecycle of the average user.©Geni 21:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Finding candidates

I personally don't think the sky is falling, but on the other hand, I do think that more good admins might be a good idea. That got me thinking, is there any way we could 'find' these candidates ? There are many people I interact with on Wikipedia, but I nominating them for adminship is not something that generally crosses my mind. Perhaps we can have tools that might help finding prolific editors that could be good admins. Can we datamine a list of 'prospects' from editbehavior so these people are more easily found by other editors ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

There's always Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls, though I don't know how many people there are serious candidates. N419BH 17:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Recognizing a couple names off that list I wonder if that isn't a better list to exclude candidates as opposed to include.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm on that list...N419BH 17:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Oops. Ok, but lets exclude the ones on the list that got an indef block in the last 24 hours.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You could also check Wikipedia:Admin coaching/Requests for Coaching. 67.136.117.132 (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Take those two lists, and use a bot to weed out the blocked and inactive users. Some manual clerking will be required. I'll help with that. N419BH 17:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Cube: There's a useful thought for that list: adding a few more columns. But what to consider? Hmm.
N419BH: I'm not sure we need a new list, much less a new bot. Perhaps we could see if the bot that maintains the current list could add a column or two for last-time-blocked and how many blocks total. --Izno (talk) 17:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm still interested, but I'm going to give it a wait until possibly September. Connormah^talk 17:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that currently active users who are both rollbackers and autoreviewers are generally good prospects for RFA, provided they have a 12 month clean blocklog. It is also worth looking at failed RFAs from more than four months ago. But I would suggest not listing prospects on wiki - generally I approach potential candidates by email. ϢereSpielChequers 17:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Am I reading this correctly? WP:ROLLBACK, WP:AUTOREVIEWER, and 12 months without being blocked, and you're a "good prospect"? And you think RfA is broken now? I know, "prospect" doesn't mean "nominate them all tomorrow". But still...  Frank  |  talk  21:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes you are reading that correctly, I've nominated two of the 44 people who've made admin so far this year, and I'm confident that there are a number of people out there who have a good chance of getting through RFA if they could be persuaded to run. I'm not convinced that simply going out and persuading people to run is enough to stabilise our number of active admins, but I do think it is still possible to get some people through RFA, and that a significant proportion of the people with WP:ROLLBACK, WP:AUTOREVIEWER, and 12 months without being blocked would pass RFA today. ϢereSpielChequers 23:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, that looks a lot like teaching to the test (why is that a red link???) to me. I don't think it's a good way to add people to the admin corps. (That's quite apart from my opinion that we don't actually need to do so.)  Frank  |  talk  04:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually I see it as the opposite of admin coaching. Anyone who is both a Rollbacker and what I should now get used to calling Wikipedia:Autopatrolled will have both defended the pedia and built it. In my experience that is the combination that RFA looks for, and while I'm not convinced we can get enough people through RFA to stabilise the admin corps, I do think it possible to get enough through to postpone the day when the decline in numbers becomes a crisis. ϢereSpielChequers 07:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• Re Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls; anyone who wants to be an administrator is out of their minds, making anyone on that list unqualified to be an administrator :) --Hammersoft (talk) 18:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I was looking back over the archives of this page and was wondering if we should consider a new parallel approach to how we get admins. I think it is right that de-sysoping is harder than confirming an admin due to the things that they do (decided close RfA's, blocks and the like) they will probably make enemy's along the way. I was also considering why for example Cgoodwin RfA's failed and it seems that we have the problem that we want to see in our potential admins evidence that they understand the WP policies and how and when to use the mop - but to prove that without the mop (if you follow me) maybe we need to look at a sort of "Provisional Admin Mentor program" where editors in good standing are given the mop on a temporary basis (for say 1,3 or 6 months) and are mentored by other admins during this time if they abuse it they could have the mop removed very quickly, then at the end of the temporary period they could then go through RfC and can demonstrate by there actions during the period there understanding. I would see this as an alternative path rather than a replacement and you would probably need to have some rules as to who was suitable for this "Admin Mentor program" may be even a "you don't ask we ask you" approach. - just the bones or an idea but adding it to the mix. Codf1977 (talk) 19:51, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

AFD? Like Wikipedia:Administrator for deletion? I thought we were trying to add administrators, not delete them! –xeno^talk 19:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Opps - corrected. Codf1977 (talk) 20:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

In a way, we already do this with rollback. Maybe it would make sense to split some of the other admin functions. I'll use myself as an example. I have a lot of experience in vandalism and determining blockable vandals, but relatively little experience with the criteria for speedy deletion. So perhaps I'd be best served by getting just the blocking bit, and could get the deletion bit later when I have more experience. I'm still an admin, but I'm getting the tools one at a time. N419BH 20:00, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Provisional adminship, unbundling, etc. have all been proposed. All shot down before. See Wikipedia:PEREN#Hierarchical_structures. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I know, but may be it now time to re-look at the Provisional adminship to address the declining numbers I suspect there a number of very good potential admins who would do a good job but need a methord of demonstrating it which the current RfC process does not seem to be addressing. Codf1977 (talk) 20:14, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• So we're back to the original question: how do we find suitable candidates? As for the "provisional adminship" question, we already have the coaching project. N419BH 20:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I am sure that there is a "bot for that" ! - off the top of my head something like anyone with 10K+ edits, active user over last 12 months, no major blocks (longer than 3 days) and no minor blocks in last 18 months would be a good starting point. But that still lives us with the issue of the gap between someone who may be a good admin vs one that can get through RfC as it stands. Codf1977 (talk) 20:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

What you all are saying suggests that RfA expectations are too high. Many great users have been granted admin rights with less than 18 months of experience. HJ Mitchell became an admin about a year (and maybe a month or two) after joining Wikipedia. Maybe this is why we have such a small number of active admins. Maybe users are discouraged to even try because expectations are so high? I'm not saying we need to give the mop away to some random newbie, but I am saying we should lower expectations just a bit. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 22:09, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I am not saying that if you don't meet those you should not be an admin, just if you are looking for potential admin's that might be a good starting point, I think that a system where candidates could demonstrate that they could be trusted with the mop might help. Codf1977 (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I pass your criteria in spades. But, nobody in their right minds would even nominate me, much less would I have the ability to garner even 30% of the vote. Yet, I've never intentionally damaged the project, am thoughtful and well versed in my approaches, frequently backed up by administrators, well versed in policy, etc. People have a certain idea of what an ideal candidate is, and that ideal includes many highly unrealistic things. Many of those things refuse to consider the possibility that someone might be different than you, yet never even begin to not cause damage to the project. But, speaking more to Utahraptor now; lowering standards is impossible. The standards continue to rise, and will always continue to rise. That's impossible to change unless RfA as a means of making administrators is thrown out completely. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Hammersoft, you're right in saying that RfA will never get easier. But this doesn't mean you will never become an administrator. I'm sure, given time and experience, you would make a great administrator. You must first prove to the folks with unrealistically high expectations that you can use the tools properly. This can (and usually does) take time, but I'm sure you can pull it off. Also, in addition to that, I think the expectations for an actual admin are much lower than expectations to become an admin. While Hammersoft made it clear that expectations will never be lowered, I still stand by my opinion that the expectations must be lowered a bit. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 22:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• If after ~17,000 non-automated edits (I don't use those tools) and three years of editing I haven't achieved someone's standards of experience on this project, I frankly don't want their vote. They're insane. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is here, as it's easy enough to find new administrators if you know where to look. Why not just round up every editor between the ages of 12 and 15 without a significant block log and lots of talk page/IRC friends? Malleus Fatuorum 23:05, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with being an under-age admin? There's no age limit, as far as I can tell. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 23:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Look at your question again, with clear eyes. I never used the term "under-age", you did. Malleus Fatuorum 23:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll word it differently. What's wrong with having admins between the ages of 12 to 15? Because unless I'm misunderstanding you somehow, you implied that they would not make good RfA candidates. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 23:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Has one of your logic circuits blown? I implied no such thing, I simply made a suggestion. Malleus Fatuorum 01:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, then it was a misunderstanding, and I apologize. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 01:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It's simple-don't beat them up so bad when they file an RFA, nor once they are an admin, abuse them for making a valid decision you don't agree with. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Forgoing all the "it's too hard", "never changes anything" etc commentary, and getting back to my original point, I think that there are more editors out there, that could be considered for adminship. I am the first to admit that nominating people isn't the first and probably not even the 5th thing on my mind, and I think that I'm not alone. Surely there ways to find and recruit more people. Datamining is one idea, but I think with a bit of a focused approach, we can do more. What about a "recruitment" week or something ? I don't know... how do other projects/communities/companies recruit people for roles ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

A recruitment week could work, actually. But the question still stands: how do we find people to recruit? The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 01:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not with the overall number of admins

Sorry for starting a new header. The problem is not with the number of active admins. You could run the project with just a handful of admins if there were more coordiantion of when and where they worked. For example, shifts of 2 or 3 admins in each area- 3 on CSD, 3 on AIV, RfPP, UAA, 1 on the Main Page and protected edit requests etc. So you could probably keep things under control with as few as 100 admins. It's not uncommon to see admins active in an admin capacity in one area while another is in desperate of just one admin to do something fairly simple. We need to find a better way of utilising the admins we have rather than complaining that we don't have enough. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Could we create an "admin homepage" showing the status of various admin projects? Perhaps providing automatic IRC updates to the admin channel? Perhaps this already exists and isn't being watched? N419BH 20:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Something like {{admin dashboard}}? –xeno^talk 20:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, kinda like that, only shorter. List those admin functions in a table (kind of like at the top, but everything). Have it change colors so backed up processes are red. When something backs up, send a message via IRC every 10 minutes. You then have one template an admin can put on their user or talk page that tells them at a glance what kind of admin work needs doing. N419BH 20:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

We could do with more unlockable permissions, in the same way that we now have rollback, autopatrolled etc. For instance a way of enabling medium-term commons admins to do related edits on en.wiki, rather than forcing a proven person to go through a full RfA. I'm sure there are other examples. As long as users wanting to do these sorts of tasks have to go through a full RfA, it's not unreasonable that they are going to be judged on their potential competence with the more contentious permissions. We could also do with a mechanism to remove admins who stick to the letter of a contentious policy, or to remove admins that use the tools to further their POV on an issue, hiding behind WP:BOLD. These two measures would help streamline RfA, so that the only people who have to go through it are the people doing the really controversial edits (assigning/removing mid-level permissions, blocking, deleting and protecting), and at the same time allow RfA !voters to give the benefit of the doubt in marginal cases. --WFC-- 20:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like too much of a bureaucracy to me. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• See WP:PEREN#Adminship. This has come up many, many times before. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

  I understand why you're sceptical, but I'll keep making the point. When a majority want change, but the end result has historically been "no consensus" due to disagreement over how to change, future change is still possible. It just requires a catalyst. Talking about it probably won't be the catalyst, but you never know. --WFC-- 22:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Where's the fire?

I do not find the statistics on active admins convincing. We can tell if we have insufficient admins--admin work not getting done, lots of AN/I incidents and no one taking care of them, huge backlogs at RM and so forth. I do not see this. None of the discussions of the shrinking admin population seem to discuss whether we need as many admins as we once did, bots for example do a lot anti-vandalism work, as do the rollbackers. I personally do not make major use of the tools, but as I warned the community at my RFA that this would be the case and I would spend much of my time on article work, I don't feel terribly guilty about it. If there were a crisis--but I don't see a crisis.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

In this case we can see that there is a crisis comming and it would be advisable to do something before we reach that point.©Geni 23:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

"We can see" is like "it is apparent", "it is obvious" "even a fool can see" and so forth, claiming something without needing to bother about little things like evidence.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you tag a talk page for NPOV? ;o) Resolute 04:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

If we start from the number of active admins in 2007-12 (data from http://toolserver.org/~cbm/admins.txt) the trend shows we are losing about 6 admins a month with a R value of 0.97. Since This trend has now held steady for 2 years there appears to be no reason to think that it will reverse on it's own. Thus we can see there is a crisis comming.©Geni 06:42, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Also there have been significantly fewer successful RFAs this year as compared even to last years drought. ϢereSpielChequers 07:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Parents struggling to feed their children is a crisis. An earthquake or tsunami is a crisis. Such dramatic language only serves to ensure that the supposed problem will continue to be treated with scepticism or cynicism, if it's given the time of day at all.

In short, if there is a "crisis", telling people that they are the cause of the problem is unlikely to solve things. I don't know how many people I speak for (going by one current RfA I would estimate a tad over 40%), but as long as wikimedia tells me that I am deciding whether to (barring clear-cut abuse) irrevocably give someone the block, delete and protect buttons, I will judge RfA candidates on their competence to use them (barring exceptional circumstances). If there is a problem, it would be worth raising it with the developers, as they are best placed to evaluate whether it is technically possible to re-structure permissions, and we could then decide whether we want to. Unless of course, the "crisis" is so severe that Jimbo sees fit to impose change, either by promoting people, or stating that he will restructure permissions himself. --WFC-- 12:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Crisis is the correct word, though no-one is arguing that a potential future crisis in the governance of a website is as important as an actual real life crisis involving a natural disaster such as an earthquake or a tsunami. But if this site continues to lose admins at the rate that has been happening for the last year or so then eventually things will come to a "decisive point or situation; a turning point." when action will have to be taken. The correct word for that is crisis. In my view the sensible response is to try and change course now when we have identified that a course change needs to be made, partly because the earlier we change the less dramatically we will need to do so. I've voted oppose in several RFAs and not supported a number of others that I've looked at, and I don't want to replace RFA with some sort of auto-promotion scheme whereby everyone gets the mop after x edits. But I do want to see RFA become less of a hazing ceremony, and I think if we can achieve that then more good candidates will be willing to come forward. As for adminship being irrevocable, that certainly hasn't been the situation under this arbcom, or previously, judging from the number of desysoppings that actually take place. ϢereSpielChequers 12:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Semantics aside, I agree that we need to change course. But for as long as adminship remains the same thing, people's approach to it is not going to change. It is therefore follows that we either need to make it possible for non-admins to do more of the ancillary tasks that currently require the bit, or lower the promotion threshold on the basis that it should also be easier to remove admins. Neither solution is popular, perhaps neither is workable. But both are simpler solutions than "changing people's attitudes", as these threads usually believe that they can do. --WFC-- 16:06, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

There's a crisis and you want to remove admin? I thought bleeding the patient went out with George Washington.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The Fire

Responding to Wehwalt's thread directly above. I do see some reference (and I added some as well), to places where there seems to be some backlog, notorious. Mentioned are:

• WP:AIV: does get regular on WP:AN (and the last time I posted there, it took a couple of hours before it did got handled ..).
• CAT:RFU: yesterday morning there were 19 editors waiting for an unblock request, yesterday afternoon there were still 12, at this moment there seem to be 14.
• notoriously backlogged is MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist
• slightly less, but editors are sometimes waiting long is MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist
• CSD
• AFC
• UAA
• RPP

You're all right, in the end all get done .. but there seem to be a load on the current admin corps, for which IMHO it would be good that we had some new blood .. (Note: these are just the cases where non-admin editors are keeping an eye and report them to the admin corps, or where the admin action needs discussion, or where editors request admins for other actions, I also just block editors when I notice the spam/vandalism, without discussion further. It may be that more of those are also just passing through the net; if you want a backlog for which it would be good that we do get new blood, see m:Category:COIBot_Local_Reports_for_en.wikipedia.org (11.342 autocaught spam reports for en.wikipedia, certainly not all spam, but quite some will be), for which I would like to see interested admins, but I have no clue where to find them; note that I already said that the current blacklist/whitelist is notoriously backlogged, and that has a higher priority than this).

And however we read the figures, I do not believe that all the admins who do not edit do a HUGE load of admin tasks (as edits would show up on unblocked editors talkpages, the black and whitelists, the XfD-pages and other actions which are regularly followed by an edit to user talkpages), and I do not think that we have promoted admins without a successful RfA. We can bicker about if it is the declining number of successful RfA's which do not make the admin corps grow, or an increasing number of admins who get less active .. and true, it does not make sense that we discuss why, but yes, I think there is some fire somewhere. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The final piece of information I'd like to see is how those backlogs have changed over time. A script should be able to extract such information from non-category request pages such as UAA, AIV, RFPP, etc. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to reconstruct the history of items in a category such as CSD, unless information on the historical size of such categories has already been recorded somewhere. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The only thing that I really notice is that CAT:RFU has more items than earlier (I am running the IRC bot that is reporting the editors to #wikipedia-en-unblock on freenode), it generally does not contain >5 editors waiting, the last two days it is 19, 12, 14 (now 12) .. blacklisting is a problem, the spamming sometimes goes on while waiting for blacklisting (and it is already a small group of 'specialists' who do that work ...). Further stats would indeed be nice. I can have a look if I can make unblockbot store some stats. But that they are flagged for backlog is already a sign that more editors (admins) are needed there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

There again, I recall in 2007–8 there used to be regular backlogs at DYK (solved by using multiple queues promoted by bot) & AfD (few over a day, and many of those are relists awaiting sufficient discussion to close as anything but "no consensus"), the prod process seems to have absorbed the new BLP-prods without generating significant backlogs, and the new reviewer status is being granted without much delay. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that the backlogs could not be resolved by improving the system, but I do think it would be easier if we would have a admin corps which would grow in time .. Some of these backlogs grow quickly bigger if one of the admins is not around for some time. Recruiting new existing admins for other tasks is one, getting more admins in total is another. The example you give here is by using a bot, but I would not trust a bot to do unblocks or blacklisting... that needs human admins. And some tasks take more time per handling than others, and some admin tasks are more rewarding than others, and hence have more admins handling them. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Noting as well, giving examples which have no problems does not really help, yes, there is enough that goes OK, and we are not (yet?) in a state where the whole system is collapsing. But some areas do seem to have problems, so there it is notable that .. more help would be needed (and note that some areas with problems may cost us editors; leaving people waiting for an unblock (of the type that is likely to be granted), might annoy them enough to never try and come back). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree (with your 2nd comment): the hypothesis under test is that the lower number of active admins in August 2010 is adversely affecting the running of the encyclopedia compared with, say, 2007–8 when there were more active admins. It seems relevant therefore to state that, while there are some backlogs now (which may well have also existed in 2007–8), there are also many areas which are not backlogged now and (as I recall) were in 2007–8.

If there are specific problem areas that are often backlogged, then IMO just recruiting new admins to the pool at random is unlikely to help significantly. Better strategies might include:

• Targeted recruitment of editors with experience in backlogged areas -- this might involve persuading RfA commenters, such as myself, who are critical of editors with limited content contributions of the need for specialised admins.
• Unbundling the right to edit the black and white lists -- which doesn't seem to have been much discussed.
• Persuading existing admins to do more work in backlogged areas -- as I suggested above.
• Brainstorming about how the problem areas might be rendered easier to deal with without extra admin hours -- though I agree it won't work in all cases. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:47, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, that some backlogs that were there and now gone indeed means that there a problem has been solved, and I do agree that some problems can be solved using automated means or a better organisation &c. (ironically, the problem of the abovementioned category is bot-generated .. mea culpa (though not really .. it's not me who adds the links in the first place)).

True, but some of these solutions may only work in specific area's. Unbundling black and whitelist edits would help, but would need specific editors to be trusted with editing the MediaWiki namespace (or protected pages in general), helping with unblocking would need blocking functions, etc. There are things that cán be done there, but hey, if we trust editors to edit black and whitelists in the first place, what is then wrong with them being an admin .. blacklisting, blocking and unblocking are not tasks that I would entrust to anyone, I'd prefer them to be admins.

That persuasion has been tried, I, for one, have asked before if editors could help more, to no avail, I am afraid .. as I said, some areas are wonderful and rewarding ... blacklisting is also wonderful, if you like to be trolled mercilessly (and I know several non-admins active there who just don't want to become an admin for thát reason .. they've seen it already). Granting review rights is more rewarding.

I am all for finding ways of getting the load lower (one solution: ask people to stop spamming; note that the solution "add '.' as the sole blacklist rule" does not solve the problem, it shifts, however)

But this to me is all trying to get rid of the headache by applying a dose of paracetamol, it might be more effective to take the knife, and cut out the tumor. I agree, recruiting admins at random is not going to help .. but if the number of admins is going down, then there is a problem. If we would have a steady, significant influx of admins, then every now and then one would join a certain team .. but for that you need a significant influx, if now one of the 4 - 5 actively blacklisting admins is leaving...

Needless to say, there are still 109 editors waiting to be unblocked, and some are already waiting for days. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Separating blocks & deletions has never found favour, but I think spam filtering is sufficiently specialised that debundling it might have an outside chance of gaining consensus. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:30, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I think you are wrong there. Spam blacklisting and whitelisting requires more than only editing the pages. True spam pages get deleted, so to get a full image of the situation, one needs to have also access to that. Once the full scale is visible on the request page, the spam-only editors are often also blocked (to discourage to .. find ways around the spamming). I think that also there the full set of admin tools, and their experience, is needed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

AIV and RFPP do have often backlogs (AIV being particularly bad in the case that there's a rampant vandal listed and is still out & about), I've also routinely been asking RFPP regulars on their talk pages to take a look at RFPP, which is also often backed up. Connormah^talk 17:55, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Outside the box suggestion

From someone who has opposed the last couple of candidates in this position. Ask Jimbo if he would consider closing the next RfA that finishes in the 65-74% range. Unless there are unusual circumstances, my thinking is that if he passes it, that would be a strong hint that he thinks we need to re-think our approach to RfA, and that if he fails it, he does not see an inherent problem with the current system. If he does the former there's a chance that the discussion might actually bear fruit; if he does the latter, it would could stop us wasting time on the subject for a reasonable period of time. --WFC-- 20:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that's a very fair suggestion. I am no great fan of a continued, hands on role for Jimbo in the governance of this project, but it's a nice hint to us. Frankly, I would ask him to close the next few that go between 50.1 and 79.9 percent and see how it goes. Then in two months, hand it back to the crats.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• A single RfA is not a good barometer on which to judge all of RfA. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I do not mean to be antagonistic with my next sentence, and readily include myself in the list of people guilty of this behavior. If people felt that way, they wouldn't feel the need to respond to oppose !votes, or support !votes criticising oppose rationales. In the unlikely event that my suggestion were to happen, it certainly wouldn't be binding, but it would be an interesting exercise and could feasibly serve as a catalyst for change. --WFC-- 22:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

No disrespect to Jimbo, but he is not consensus. This suggestion is nonsensical. Townlake (talk) 00:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

That's putting it mildly. Malleus Fatuorum 01:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course, twelve sections of discussion that we all know will never amount to anything without a catalyst makes perfect sense ;=) --WFC-- 03:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

13. Catalysis

OK, broken or not. Who cares. I think that above, it is established that we a) do seem have to have a steadily declining number of active admins (as I said earlier, even if this is based on edit count, a large number of admin actions is connected to an edit, and I do not believe that the majority of the ~200 admins that seem to become inactive over the last couple of years are only performing admin actions which do not involve an edit), and that some areas have a notorious backlog (and if that is due to misorganisation, and/or a lack of admins interested in the subject, and/or a general lack of admins, well, that stays debatable anyway), and that we do have a .. less significant influx of new admins than we had a couple of years ago.

Now, there are four main solutions to this problem, apparently:

1) Organise the notoriously backlogged areas better.

2) Get some existing admins involved in the notoriously backlogged areas (maybe even running the risk that other areas start having a backlog).

2.1) Get help from interested non-admins, who can help administrate

3) Detach certain rights.

4) Improve the influx of admins.

These four solutions are, IMHO, not exclusive, all four should be followed. Some areas need really experienced editors (or even, experienced admins), while others could even be helped with some interested non-admins.

So, for the solutions:

1) That should be looked at at the notoriously backlogged parts themselves, WT:AIV, Mediawiki talk:Spam-blacklist, whatever.

2) Where 1) thinks that it could help, a 'cry for help' on WP:AN for other admins might work (though I think, that if an admin is not too interested at the moment, chances are that that is not going to help too much; and that is what I have seen in the past). Some areas could be helped by interested non-admins as well, no clue where to specifically recruit those (talkpages of editors who show some remote interest?)

3) This might be a solution for certain areas as well, I think that that also should be discussed by the own group as well.

But:

4) is something that we should discuss here.

• I do think, that it would not hurt to improve the influx of new admins, at least to a level where there is no decline in number anymore, preferably it should even go up. We know, that Jimbo said that it is not a big deal, and it is fine that it becomes harder over time, but I still think it is not a big deal. But the bar is high at the moment, the influx is minimal, and I see people decline nominations because they don't like the humiliation, they don't want the admin abuse, &c. The basic question for the candidates is, 'does they understand the majority/all of our policies and guidelines, does they collaborate with others, does they not get regularly into disputes, and do we trust them with using the tools appropriately', but criteria like 'you don't create too many articles', 'you don't have an FA', 'you don't have a DYK' .. those opposes should be moved to 'neutral', as those criteria do apply to the majority of the editors who have the bit. Having that would be a reason to be stronger in support, but opposing because of the lack of that .. Drop your bars, and grant the bit to those we trust, not to those who are the perfect editor. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from but I think there is a perception of a problem with people who don't do content becoming admins. There is a sense of division between adminny/wikignoming stuff and the basic slog of content creation, and a lack of understanding of the frustrations of content creators. Of course some admins do both, but ArbComs difficulties with dealing with civil POV pushing is part of the same problem. If prospective admins felt they didn't have to hang out at tedious places like AfD, AN/I and understand copyright issues and so on to be an admin you might get more takers.Fainites ^barleyscribs 09:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I have to say I do generally think that admins should have some content experience, but I think the insistence by some of GAs, FAs and DYKs is somewhat excessive - those are just small areas of content, and the vast bulk of Wikipedia has nothing to do with any of them. While they are great to see, Wikignoming is also good, copy editing is also good, fixing WP:MOS issues is also good, helping with content disputes is also good - and all of those can lead to great content knowledge too. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

As Fainites writes, the fundamental problem underlying "no content creation" opposes is the actual or perceived disjunction between those who create the encyclopedia content and those who administer it. This would be fine if admins really were still just janitorial -- mopping up recently created "my girlfriend is hot LOL!!!!!!" articles, blocking people who think it's funny to replace Mr Obama's article with an offensive word -- but it's not. Admins have the power to block established content editors for nebulous "civility" infractions; to grant and remove rollback/autopatrolled status/&c; to freeze pages to favour one side of a content dispute; to delete long-established articles, which non-admins then can't even see to check why they were deleted; and so on. If they don't understand at a gut level how it feels to have worked for days on an article only to have it deleted as "nn", if they've never had to walk round the block to prevent themself from reverting an obviously biased viewpoint one too many times, then they don't yet have sufficient experience to be administrators, imo. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I agree - but it has absolutely nothing to do with, and cannot be measured by, FA/GA/DYK. Perhaps we should instead be asking potential admins if they've ever had an article deleted? (I have, and I didn't like it - though it was correct). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Fainites, Espresso Addict. I agree, I do think that editors do need a good grasp of content editing ánd of policy/guideline. But what I am opposing to is that there are often (and see the oppose votes in one of the open RfA's for examples), where people oppose for lack of GA/DYK/FA articles, or not a lot of created articles. Sure, if all edits are just vandalism reverts, that would be reason to oppose, if it are all wikignome edits, I could understand, if there are not too many mainspace content edits .. OK. But don't put the bar too high, which I feel .. quite some opposers do. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I think FA/GA/DYK is often used as a short cut for assessing whether the editor can develop reasonable quality content, when really we should be assessing for ourselves, based on the articles that they've created/heavily edited. I think BsZ's question would be quite revealing -- too many of the usual optional questions can be answered just by paraphrasing the relevant section of policy, and don't give much of a handle on what makes the editor tick. I tend to look for at least some created content in candidates partly because there's nothing like the pain of seeing your lovingly crafted article driveby tagged for notability, and I don't think you feel that if you only copy edit or add references to existing articles -- even though these are, of course, extremely valuable activities. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It is a nice question, indeed, but I am afraid that it is similarly selective as the number of editors who have ever brought an article to GA/FA/DYK .. not everyone has that experience, and the lack of that experience again does not tell too much. By the way, if editors have helped bringing articles to GA/FA/DYK, then that is certainly an extra argument for a support vote. But a good/reasonable grasp of content editing ánd of policy/guideline .. but please, reasonable .. not perfect .. (anyone for bringing this notion to the !voters in RfA's? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I think Espresso Addict is absolutely right to say that we should be assessing people's contributions for ourselves. And I'm not actually denigrating GA/FA/DYK at all - in fact, I've watched the work of some of our best FA/GA people, and I've seen passionate and committed work of the highest quality. So if we see someone doing FA/GA/DYK stuff, that can be a great indication that they'd make good admin material. Likewise my suggested "Have you had an article deleted, and how did you feel about it?" question might help to uncover other good admin candidates. But my beef is that negative answers don't mean the candidate is no good - I think it's quite absurd to oppose purely because a candidate has no GA/FA/DYK credits. We should, to repeat Espresso Addict's point again, be assessing people's contributions for ourselves, and using specific questions just as pointers in various directions - we should not be doing checkbox analysis, because that is badly flawed (and it's one reason why I strongly disagree with having arbitrary sets of "admin criteria"). With the risk of offending (which I really don't intend), we need more shepherds taking part in RfA discussions processes, and fewer sheep. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

A Week-Too Long?

I would suggest changing the length of RFAs to 4 or 5 days, just because almost everyone who wants to !vote has usually done so by that point. This might even encourage more people to self-nom, because the RFA will be "4 days of hell", not "a week in hell." Thanks, Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 15:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This is an old idea, but won't fly. It's a week so that people who can only edit on certain days (sometimes once a week) can have the chance. Then again, I think that's just tough for those people and would support a shorter time period - with the option of extending to 7 days if the vote is close. Aiken ♫ 15:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The ones that turn out to be "hell" usually get closed early anyway. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Seems they're either a landslide or WP:NOTNOW. Don't think 5 days is going to help matters much. We need more recruiters! N419BH 15:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Not always - in fact, see one of the open RFAs now. Aiken ♫ 15:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You mean DeltaQuad's? At first it was a landslide , now it's falling apart. Still, 5 days would be much better. And this is a bit offtopic, but I think the reason fewer people are going for adminship is because so many people discourage self-nomination that they are afraid to self-nom. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 15:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, but nothing will stop those people polluting RFA with such ideas. Aiken ♫ 16:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Tossing in another perspective: RFA isn't just to separate the sheep from the goats, it also has a role as a kind of celebration and community acknowledgment; for that role, 7 days is better than 5. Also, many voting processes moved from 5 to 7 days when AfD did. - Dank (push to talk) 16:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Which are the sheep and which are the goats? Malleus Fatuorum 18:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Malleus poses a good question. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:22, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

7 is fine IMO. Connormah^talk 18:51, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree seven is preferable to five although I'm now learning it feels a lot longer when you're the subject of one! I know there have been RfAs that have turned in a signficantly different direction after the third and fourth days: they need to be given the time. And the comment above that some editors only visit WP on certain days of the week is very true. Compressing the period could only result in candidates being less rigorously scrutinised (of course, some would justifiably see that as a good thing).--Mkativerata (talk) 19:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Just wanted to add something - It's only been about two days and one RFA (Mkativerata's) has already essentially been decided; and the other one (DeltaQuad's) is pretty close to being decided, at the current rate. 5 days is more than enough. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 21:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't assume anything at RFA. Not that I'm saying that it will happen to Mkativerata, but sometimes information is discovered about a candidate just when everyone thought that the RFA was going to pass with flying colours, only for it to be torpedoed at the last minute. Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 22:05, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's not too unusual... Connormah^talk 23:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think 7 is the right number, but I must recuse myself due to COI.  7  08:15, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Haha! - Dank (push to talk) 12:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

All I know is, we need to do anything we can to get more people nominating themselves for adminship. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 18:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I think there would be many more self-noms if we admitted RFA is a straight vote, and turned it into one where 75% passes, below does not. Other language wikis essentially do this and it works fine. As it stands now, the bureaucrats require nothing of supporters, but require opposers to make laundry lists of why candidates are flawed for our opposes to mean anything; the results of such a policy are predictable. Townlake (talk) 19:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it's only fair that opposers are called on for more detailed explanations - after all, an oppose vote is worth three support votes. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Lots more people IMO would be passing if so many people didn't oppose for lack of content work though, IMO. Connormah^talk 20:47, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Which is why so many RFA's, like DeltaQuad's, get so many oppose votes. This basically gives vandal reverters like me near zero chance of passing their RFAs. Not saying I'm planning on an RFA anytime soon, but... well, you get the idea. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:55, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I think seven is right. Definitely not too long. PrincessofLlyr ^{royal court} 20:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

A week is just fine. -- Avi (talk) 20:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• Essentially, there is a problem with users posting opposes that are based on what many see as invalid reasoning. This is a cultural issue here on en.Wiki, where, if RFA is any gauge, we expect our admins to be at least modestly proficient at content work and to be able to prove it with some shiny awards on their shelf, to have a very solid grasp on a wide range of policies especially those involving deletion, and to have not done anything particularly stupid for at least 3-6 months preceding the RFA. Changing the number of days RFAs run for or limiting the number of questions, or any of these oft-repeated ideas will not affect these underlying issues. There is really no way to stop people from using their own personal criteria, no matter how ridiculous we might believe them to be. Look what happened with the straight vote in the recent checkuser and oversight elections. One user got in, everybody else fell below the 70% threshold, and with no rationale given for a single one of those votes, we don't even know why we got this result. If we don't give candidates feedback, they won't know what they need to improve if they don't pass the first time. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Feedback and voting need not be simultaneous. Or, option B, RFA could involve a discussion area atop a voting area, with discussion deliberately removed from the numbers. Thus, not every supporter or opposer necessarily has to think of a different clever way to say "per nom" or "here are all the reasons I don't trust this candidate." There can be no doubt the current system the bureaucrats maintain dissuades qualified candidates from applying. Townlake (talk) 05:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Given how much stick even a non-controversial admin gets to handle on a weekly basis, it could be argued that weathering criticism for 7 days at RfA is an appropriate character test. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with this point. For the most part, most admins don't get anywhere near the pressure and abuse that they're reputed to have. It's one of my pet peeves that people always stereotype the "normal" admins to be these people who anger the entire world on a daily basis, when in reality, most of us don't get any abuse at all. (X! · talk)  · @043  ·  00:01, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with X!. I don't believe the gauntlet beating of borderline RFA candidates resembles admins' community interactions much at all. At a certain point this system simply becomes unconstructive hazing; unfortunately, the bureaucrats' current expectations require verbosity from the opposition. Townlake (talk) 01:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

How about a probationary period for admins?

Perhaps RfA has become more demanding because we've become more aware of the difficulty of controlling bad admins (e.g. look at the time it took to de-sysop A Man In Black). To reduce the risk we ask lots of searching questions and analyse the candidate's past edits to death, which discourages people from standing. A better model for admin recall has eluded us so far, but how about having a probationary period instead? Maybe something like this:

1. Nomination and acceptance process as currently, but the candidate's nomination must be seconded by some small number of existing admins who promise to keep an eye on the candidate during the probationary period.
2. Candidate replies to a small set of standard questions (e.g. Q1, 2, 3, 7 and 9 from DeltaQuad's RfA, maybe splitting Q2 into content and non-content).
3. Editors vote on granting candidate probationary admin status. This vote doesn't allow comments or analysis, so the potential for humiliation is greatly reduced.
4. Probationary status is granted if there's enough support (e.g. at least 50 votes cast with no more than 20% opposing).
5. During the probationary period the candidate has full access to all the admin tools, the same as any other admin. If the tools are used unwisely, the admins who seconded the nomination are expected to remedy the situation (e.g. by undoing unwise blocks, moves or deletions).
6. At the end of the period if the candidate still wants to go ahead there is a confirmatory !vote. The candidate makes an opening statement about the probationary period and !voters are welcome to make comments directly below it. There's no minimum number of !votes required.

This is just an example—the details could be worked out in an RFC—but what do you think about the broad principle of having two smaller hurdles replace the single large one? - Pointillist (talk) 13:28, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I get the idea, but a few issues 1) we're doubling the work of getting someone the bit. 2) Anyone standing after their probationary period will get the same problem that admin reconfirmation entails - anyone they've hacked off by protecting the wrong version, blocking their IRC buddy etc. etc. will be here like a shot to oppose them. 3) I'm not sure about If the tools are used unwisely, the admins who seconded the nomination are expected to remedy the situation. We have no ability to locally desysop if that's what you mean; If you mean their nominators should show them the error of their ways - well I would hope any new admin would be open to suggestions and pointers (and more importantly will take things slow and steady with the extra tools in the first place).

Not putting the idea down but I see some pitfalls. Pedro :  Chat  13:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but it would be a large burden of work for the seconding admins. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I haven't put that very well. It shouldn't be a burden, unless the probationer goes manically rogue. Seconders certainly aren't expected to supervise in detail. It is more that they are prepared to stay interested in their candidate, maybe mentor a little and if necessary revert any unwise admin actions that are brought to their attention. Can you think of a better way of expressing it? Thanks - Pointillist (talk) 14:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:PEREN#Hierarchical_structures. Someone even proposed probationary adminship further above already. Over and over again this gets proposed. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but actually this isn't about partial admin powers. During probation the candidate has full use of admin tools the same as any other admin. The only difference is that at the end of the period the candidate will be de-sysopped unless they pass the second RfA. The idea is that we assume candidates are trustworthy and give them a chance of showing their worth. Then we !vote on what they actually did during the probationary period. Don't you think that would help attract more candidates? - Pointillist (talk) 14:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• You'll note that it says "Or, new admins should undergo a probationary period". Probationary admin status has been proposed a dizzying array of times, even right on this page. See User:Codf1977's 19:51, 4 August 2010 comment on this page and responses. There's nothing new about this proposal. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

But what Pointillist and I are talking about is not the same as passing a full on RfA and then being under probation it is about a probation before a full RfA. Codf1977 (talk) 16:33, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

20% opposing would make this harder to achieve than a full RFA unless you could persuade !voters to be more relaxed than they currently are at RFA. Also the admins who get desysopped are rarely newish ones, a few months ago when I looked through this it was the longer serving admins that tended to get desysopped, which is why in my view we need some sort of ongoing training/refresher program.

But a probationnary system as an extra route to adminship could increase our supply of admins. However it would only work if it was easy to become a probationary admin. One way this could work would be to appoint someone such as crats to appoint probationary admins. Probationary admins would have the tools for three months and then could either submit an RFA or hand in the mop. Crats currently have the button to hand out a mop, but I would suggest that the right to appoint probationary admins would require a fresh RFB (or even have the people doing this as a separate user group) - so not all crats would be entitled to do this, and no-one would be at present. I would suggest that the crat who has appointed a probationary admin also have the right to end the probationary period early if it didn't work out. I think that an additional route to adminship like this could solve the problem of the decline in the number of active admins - but I emphasise that this should be additional with the existing RFA process still also in place. ϢereSpielChequers 14:43, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Skimming everything on the page, and noting the many people who aren't participating, my wild guess is that we aren't going to achieve a consensus for any major change to RfA; I say this not to discourage people but just because I hate to see people working too hard on something that (I guess) isn't going to happen. I think what isn't being said, but is assumed by some of those who are sitting this out, is: leave well-established wiki-processes alone, it's too much trouble to throw them out and start over, and this current one at least works well enough to get the work done, for now; there's no guarantee that any substitute would work as well. (Indeed, imagine a large corporation electing officers by letting anyone walk in off the street and vote, any day of the week; what are the odds that would work? It's kind of surprising that admin work gets done efficiently at all.) If someone wants to come up with some new process that doesn't significantly change RfA, say a "clerkship" role of some kind that supplements admin work in some way, then I'll try to keep my eyes open and follow along. Otherwise, I'm not seeing much that's new here, although Carl's table does suggest that the admin corps is "graying" (me included!) and that's a concern. - Dank (push to talk) 15:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your feeling, but am a little more optimistic, that if we can find a solution that keeps the current level of scrutiny at RfA, but gives a way for prospective admins to show they can or should be trusted, it may go someway to help thoes editors who would fail currently due to concerns related to content creation or FA count. Codf1977 (talk) 15:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As Hammersoft pointed out this is similar to my idea higher up - but I would forgo the first vote, I think that two or three sponsoring admins agreeing to mentor a proposed admin (who met some basic but hard and fast criteria with regard to length of service, block history, and edit count) would be sufficient to have them made into a probationary admin, and then after the probationary term (as per Pointillist idea) they would go through a RfA as we have it now but with the advantage of being able to see how they have acted with the mop (perhaps at this point one option for closing the RfA would be an extension of probation). The curial point about this option would be that if at any time during the probationary term any one of the sponsoring admins felt the probationary admin was out of line they could withdraw support and that would be enough to have the admin bit removed with no need to go via arbcom - agreeing to that would be a condition of entering into probation. The current RfA system would stay the same for editors who did not feel they wanted to go via this probationary route. Codf1977 (talk) 15:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Hmm, if I am on probation in real life, I do not re-apply after it ends. I can be fired immediately for any misconduct during that period -- something that would be considerably harder for the employer afterwards -- but if I make it through I have the job. 3 months as admin, however junior, will have made you enough enemies never to pass another RfA. But if there is no re-application (maybe only a vote among the "supervisors") survival of the probation would heavily depend on who the supervising admins are. --Pgallert (talk) 15:46, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Valid point, but I think if was the case you had made enemies over perfectly acceptable actions your supervising admins would point that out in your RfA and it would be likely to be seen as a bad faith oppose. Codf1977 (talk) 15:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Your analogy to real life may be correct at your employer, but it isn't universal. We have a program at our company for promising potential employees. They join us out of school, have a formal rotation program and work assignments interspersed with intensive classroom work. At the end of the period, they apply for a job, and are by no means promised a position. While the likelihood of continued employment is high, the actual interview is as serious as any normal job interview, the only difference is that the interviewer has more relevant experience to aid in the decision process.--SPhilbrickT 16:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of allowing 'crats to hand out probationary sysop bits. That would overcome the objection that the process becomes two hurdles (while the intent was that it would be two small hurdles, in practice, it might evolve into two full hurdles). We've selected a very small number of 'crats, and the ability to recognize an editor with potential for becoming a sysop ought to be in their wheelhouse. After some period of time, the editor would stand for RfA, and rather than evaluating the potential for using the tools wisely, we could evaluate the actual use of tools. While there's no question it wouldn't be a perfect insight—one presume the candidate will be very careful during the probationary period, surely the review of actual actions is superior to the review of zero actions. --SPhilbrickT 16:04, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

If you've got a plan that involves the crats, ask them if they're interested, and to raise the chances they'll say yes, make it as minimal a change as possible that might get something done that people wind up liking. Much of what admins spend their time doing requires no extra userrights, so at least some extra "admin work" could get done without provisional adminships, and I don't think the crats would be interested in handing admin bits out solo. - Dank (push to talk) 16:33, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Good point, done here--SPhilbrickT 16:51, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well my version of the plan would be based on two or three admins agreeing to sponsor any provisional admin, and those sponsoring admins would be expected to act as mentors to the provisional admin (simular to WP:MENTOR) and correct any good faith mistakes or errors. However if any one of them felt the provisional admin was not listening or performing bad faith actions they could ask a crat to remove the admin bit without delay. So the crats would only act when asked to by the sponsoring admins this would be coupled obviously with the fact that such a change would have been agreed by the community at large. Codf1977 (talk) 16:56, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I like this idea. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 17:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC) Not anymore. Too bureaucratic. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:06, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Codf1997, sorry to have accidentally misappropriated your original suggestion. I searched various places for "trial" and "probationary" but I didn't think to check "provisional" – my bad. Anyway, if the community is happy to go with the 'crats decision rather than having a preliminary vote, so much the better. It might still be a good idea for the candidate to answer a small set of standard questions as part of the process, though. - Pointillist (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

No apology necessary but thanks all the same, I think that answering "a small set of standard questions as part of the process" could/sould be part of the process of geting the sponsoring admins to agree to sponsor. Codf1977 (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

@Codf199: Bureaucrats cannot presently remove administrative rights. –xeno^talk 17:26, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

We'd have to ask a steward to do it. 67.136.117.132 (talk) 17:35, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that there are two EnWiki 'crats who are also Wikimedia stewards, FWIW, myself and Rdsmith4. -- Avi (talk) 18:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you enjoined from using your stewardship on your home wiki? –xeno^talk 18:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)as per 67.136.117.132 or I had in mind that to aid transparency a new user group might be created (called "provisional admin" or something like that) that would mirror the rights of admin so that crats could be given the right to add and remove to that group. Codf1977 (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Gotcha. –xeno^talk 18:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Ah, so you're suggesting that the provisional admin be an actual, technical userright (with all the same functions as a regular administrator, I assume), rather than simply an academic exercise in which this group of individuals is given the userright of "admin" while we mentor and watch over their use of the tools. I had envisioned the provisional admins getting the regular bit and their just being some project space listing them or something. 67.136.117.132 (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in general, we are enjoined from using steward privileges on our home wikis where a possibility of a conflict of interest may occur. For example, Rdsmith4 should not answer a standard checkuser request on EnWiki by giving himself checkuser privs, whereas I may, because I am a locally appointed/elected CU. Similarly, I should not answer a standard CU request on the Commons. When it comes to removing rights, the Steward handbook reads "changing rights on home wikis (wikis where they are active community members), except for clearcut cases (such as self-requested removal or emergencies)." The question would be, if there is a clear policy on removal, is that considered "clearcut cases". If we ever get that far, I'd have to discuss this with the other stewards/the foundation/etc. -- Avi (talk) 18:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Without comment on the merits of the proposal itself, and with all due respect to yourself and Rdsmith4, I think it would be unwise to depend on local-crats-who-are-also-stewards in any new endeavour (the separate grantable/removable provisional right would be a better solution to address my concern). –xeno^talk 18:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I wholeheardtedly agree with you, Xeno. I think that local 'crats should be able to remove bits when other established decision mechanisms (ArbCom request, self-request) have been activated indicatin the bit should be removed, but that is a different kettle of fish. -- Avi (talk) 18:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(od) Note that this will be biased against content editors who become admins and rarely use the tools. We'll probably end up institutionalizing the 'professional admin' trend that is already sort of in place. --RegentsPark (talk) 17:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Content editors would still have the option of a conventional RFA. But I can see room for a content editor to do this in order to tackle a chunk of the merge backlog. ϢereSpielChequers 18:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I disagree, I see it helping both sides, for example the AfD for Cgoodwin if they had been using the admin mop in a provisional way then I for one could have seen how and where they were using it. Codf1977 (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I see now. I thought probationary RfAs would replace current RfAs but you're proposing that an editor (or nominator) can choose the type of administrator route they want to take. Right? --RegentsPark (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes either the probationary/provisional route or the current one - both would end in a RfA at some point. Codf1977 (talk) 18:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) Yes that's in my proposal, an extra route to adminship. Of course others might differ in that sort of detail. But this could for example mean that someone who only needed admin rights temporarily, say to write an admin bot could do this and then decide whether or not they wanted to run for an RFA. I'm sort of assuming that one should only have one temporary adminship, or at least have a certain gap between temporary adminships. ϢereSpielChequers 18:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose anything that will put people off applying to be an admin. --Dweller (talk) 18:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

how would this put anyone off, it is an alternative way to help editors gain experience and demonstrate that they can use the mop, if they don't want to go through the process they can use the already established straight RfA route. Codf1977 (talk) 18:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec x2) I could see people misinterpreting the "probational adminship" as being another hurdle to cross to become an admin, but I believe the true object here is to say, frankly, "Hmm, I don't think I could pass a regular RFA to jump straight into normal adminship, but maybe I could pass the less stringent PRFA and prove myself ready to be a regular admin." It would give people a second option, which, at least in theory, should get more applicants. 67.136.117.132 (talk) 18:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

A specific proposaldraft for discussion purposes

Here's how I see the process happening:

1. A 'crat appoints editor x as probationary sysop. (per codf1977, this is a new user-right, 'crat removable)
2. The 'crat simultaneously designates one or two existing sysops (from a list of volunteers) to shadow the new sysop, so that improper blocks or improper deletions can be undone without going through the usual channels.
3. After some specified period of time, the editor files a usual RfA, presumably, but not necessarily a nomination by the original 'crat or one of the shadow sysops.
4. The RfA proceeds normally, except now the community can review actual sysops actions in addition to the usual edits.

Some details:

• The original 'crat would recuse themselves from closing the RfA, but are allowed to !vote.
• The pool of candidates would come form three sources:
  • Editors personally known to the bureaucrat. The 'crat would clearly get the permission of the editor first, but the instigating event is the 'crat.
  • An editor recommended by an existing sysop or other editor. The 'crat would need to do some due diligence, but a smart sysop/editor would do some homework and share it with the 'crat. The amount of due diligence necessary is likely to depend on how much trust the 'crat has in the sysop/editor making the recommendation.
  • An editor can propose themselves. Some work on details is needed here, as a few dozen requests could overwhelm the number of bureaucrats. One possibility is that editors interested in applying do not approach an individual 'crat, but simply put their name in a list, and 'crats can review the list at their own time schedule, and or request that a sysop do a review.
• Some care must be taken to ensure that this does not become the only path, as it has some overtones of "it matters who you know". The existing path should continue, and care should be taken that no one opposes because they failed to use the alternate route.
• Reversal of admin actions by the shadow sysop(s) would be deemed not to count as wheel-warring --SPhilbrickT 18:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Largely agree. I would add that one shouldn't need to be an admin to propose a candidate, and of course there is no need for the candidate to proceed to an RFA if they don't want to. I personally would be OK with this being an additional role for our existing crats, but if they or others object we could revive my suggestion above that this either be a separately elected role, or one that only applies to new or reaffirmed crats. ϢereSpielChequers 18:28, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

By "new" are you referring to 'crats selected after this proposal became procedure (which, if the the future is anything like the past, will be few and far between), or are you referring to recently-selected 'crats (and if so, how would that be defined)? 67.136.117.132 (talk) 18:31, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Lets see if 'crats have an issue with this before crossing that bridge. Codf1977 (talk) 19:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think splintering the bureaucrats ("only applies to new or reaffirmed crats") would be unwise. If any bureaucrat doesn't want to take up a community-delivered mandate to do something, that's their choice (no editor is forced to do anything in particular). –xeno^talk 19:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

"New" as in having been entrusted to do this by the community. I.E. an RFB or equivalent after we agree to introduce this. ϢereSpielChequers 23:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I also Largely agree, would be happier if it was "two or three" to act as mentor/shadow/sponsoring admins (to help with timezones/wiki-brakes). Agree with the point about RfA opposes due to not being a probationary sysop should be strongly discouraged. Also to add to the detail that a 'crat can remove membership of this group at the request of one of those mentor/shadow/sponsoring admins if the admin feels the editor is using the rights with bad faith or not listening to advice. Codf1977 (talk) 19:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose This proposal is really no different than the umpteen probationary adminship proposals placed here before. It's creation of needless bureaucracy in the notional idea that it will somehow solve the problem of the admin pool shrinking. There's no hard evidence to suggest at this time that the admin pool shrinking is as yet a real problem (see the lengthy discussion above). There's also no analysis showing how this idea will grease the wheels of RfA, permitting more people to pass. LOTS of people come up with ideas around this project. Few, very few, actually do some analysis to figure out if it's good idea or not. This case is no different. I could propose a complete revamp of RfA (I even have something in mind), but without analysis, review, and input from a number of sources my idea is no better than your idea. It's just an idea. Nothing more. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:52, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I accept that it is another version of past proposals, but consensus can and often does change. I do however have an issue with the line that we do not act unless we see "hard evidence to suggest the admin pool shrinking is a real problem" as when we have that evidence it could well cause harm to the project while we then try and fix it, better to address the issue now while we can do so at an ordered pace rather than have to rush something through. I also accept that there is "no analysis showing how this idea will grease the wheels of RfA" I can't see how you could readily archive that sort of asking everyone who opposes a RfA very hypothetical questions along the lines of "What if..." all I can say is of the short time I have been watching RfA's it is the one thing that strikes me we are trying to judge someone on how they will behave with the mop with out actually seeing how they would use it. It is like trying to decide if someone is fit to hold a driving licence when all the examiner can go on is how the person acts as a pedestrian. Lets give them "L" plates and see if they can drive. Codf1977 (talk) 20:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll take the blame for a premature title - I meant to articulate specific draft for discussion, but didn't intend that it was ready for an up-or-down !vote. I agree that analysis is needed, but there's value settling on at least a draft so one knows what one is analyzing. As to the point that this is no different than unmpteen prior proposals—I won't claim to have the institutional memory that you have, but the prior proposals I recall were structured as mini-RfAs, and the problem is likely transmogrifications from mini to full-blown. The key to this one is allowing 'crats to create the provisional status without going through a full-blown RfA. I see that as very different than many (perhaps not all) prior proposals. I'll modify the title to remove the impression this is ready for !voting.--SPhilbrickT 20:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Creates new bureaucracy for a system that can only be improved with less. Townlake (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose Too much bureaucracy. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I notice you have struck out your support above, can I ask what bit of the bureaucracy could be removed to make it work simply and smoothly ? Codf1977 (talk) 20:16, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, this just is seeming unnecessary and overcomplicated to me. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:21, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It also could distract the "shadow admins" from doing their regular admin work. Access Denied^(t|c|g|d|s) 20:23, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, I don't think it would, but can see that as a risk. Codf1977 (talk) 20:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I actually think that could take up a ton of time for some of the shadow admins. Access Denied ^talk _contribs editor review 22:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, obviously. The logjam is because we're not going to have "easy come" until we also have "easy go", and too many vested interests are opposing that change. Adding yet another brass ring for wannabees to grab will do nothing to resolve the underlying problem. – iridescent 20:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
• Comment: I see a lot of enthusiasm, but no new groundswell of support sufficient to overcome the usual objections. I understand that "clerkship" or something, with no or minimal userrights (at the start, to avoid the usual "you can't do that" arguments), wouldn't be enough for some, but I think it might be the best we're going to be able to get agreement on. It would have the advantage that we wouldn't have to define what it means: many noticeboards requiring admin action could in theory benefit from trustworthy, experienced clerks; so could most large wikiprojects. You could leave it up to each noticeboard or wikiproject whether they need clerks and what clerks should do, thus crowdsourcing the problem of defining over time what a "clerk" is. I think extra userrights are only likely to meet with wide approval if you can first demonstrate that clerkship works, and doesn't have a negative impact on RFA. - Dank (push to talk) 20:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that there does not appear to be a groundswell of support. I think your clerkship point is one that does need to be taken up, however I fear that it might not address the issue of the content driven editor showing s/he is to be trusted with the mop. Codf1977 (talk) 20:23, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

That's why I threw in wikiprojects as well as noticeboards; if, say, a wikiproject wants to require or favor clerkship for content-related tasks, that's their business; clerkship could then be a matter of content as much as anything else. - Dank (push to talk) 20:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I won't speak for others who proposed the basic idea before I did, but my view isn't that this is solving the "problem" of not enough sysops. As extensive discussion has indicated, it isn't clear that there is a consensus that this is a problem. I understand opposing a "solution" is you don't buy the problem, but my interest in this proposal isn't the possibility that it might increase the number of sysops. My interest is in providing a better way to choose who gets the mop. How often, in real life, do we appoint some to essentially a no-cut contract without a single observation of the tasks we are appointing them to do? Do we appoint judges to an upper court without any lower court experience. Do we sign a baseball player to a contract by watching them play football? We don't even hire a janitor for a building without clearly noting they are on probation for a period of time, and can be removed without cause during that period (at least in the US). Yes, we elect president with no prior presidential experience but one, we often regret it and two, we know they have to stand for re-election.

The aspect of this proposal that is most important to me is the possibility to see an editor act as a sysop, and judge their ability to be a sysop by their sysop actions. Our current procedure precludes this, except for the rare cases of a de-sysoped admin re-applying.--SPhilbrickT 20:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Your general idea is good but I can't help thinking that RFA gets around this problem, generally: RFA rarely produces bad admins these days. (Whether it fails to promote people who would help us out is another question.) So there must be something in people's pre-admin actions that does help us figure out how they'll perform. What would be really helpful is if we saw more candidates who had more hands-on work with admin chores; however, most candidates have wisely avoided "butting in" on "admin work". I'm working from memory here, but I recall the issue came up during User:decltype's RFA: he had been turning down some CSD tags before he got the mop, and even though the quality of his work was great, the fact that he was "acting like an admin" generated some friction and probably made his RFA harder to pass. If he had been community-approved in some sense as a "clerk", and if the CSD experts had decided that there were certain things that clerks could do to help out with CSD admin work, then I think he wouldn't have gotten as much resistance at RFA, and the voters would have had a more complete track record to judge him by. - Dank (push to talk) 20:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly my feelings, happy for it to be as bureaucratic lite as it can. Codf1977 (talk) 20:32, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm really sorry to oppose, given the amount of thought that has clearly gone into this, but it's yet another idea for tinkering round the edges rather than fixing the actual structural problem. The problem, at least as assumed here, is that not enough people are going for admin because the process is too hard/fraught/stressful/etc. And the reason for that is that, with the effective "admin for life" culture, people are very wary of giving admin rights unless they're certain. The new proposal won't change that - even a few months of probationary adminship won't really make a candidate any more attractive, because it's not newbies who are seen as the problem - as far as I can make out, previous problems have been with long-established admins. So the real problem needs to be solved - either a better and quicker community admin recall is needed, or Wikipedia's sacred cows need to looked at and some kind of more conventional admin management put in place of community consensus. Will the community consensus approach to management survive long term? I hope so, but I really don't know - it's still working very well for content decisions, but it's starting to crack at AfD. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:33, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

  Boing, I appreciate there is a theory that despite it being longstanding admins who are most likely to go off the rails, making it easier to get rid of admins would somehow result in more admins being appointed (though I'm sure I'm not the only one who considers that at best it could be neutral and at worst it would make it even harder to persuade people to offer to be admins). But to focus on one possible partial solution to the point of opposing others is not very constructive. I don't know whether the probationary adminship idea would in practice make a minor difference or a major one. But if it made it easier to persuade people to come forward that would in itself be useful, as there are lots of well qualified people out there who are not prepared to run at the moment. ϢereSpielChequers 23:06, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

  Re "But to focus on one possible partial solution to the point of opposing others is not very constructive". I really don't think that's what I'm doing, and I'm not entirely pleased that you are accusing me of it - I'm trying to get across that dancing around with minor tweaks while failing to address the core problems is not going to result in a long-term solution. We shouldn't be doing what marketing people do - coming up with something designed to appeal to customers in the short term - we should be addressing what is actually wrong. And I think it is structural. If this proposal went ahead, I think post-probation admin candidates going for RfA would still face the same onslaught that they face today. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose If the probationer is worth his salt, he will make enemies while doing his job, enough to defeat him at an RfA, and if he doesn't make enemies, I wonder if he is doing his job.--Wehwalt (talk) 03:36, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep - probationary admins will be very careful not to tread on any toes (if they have any sense), as they would know that they still have the full gauntlet ahead of them. And at RfA, !voters will know that, will not be prepared to accept probationary activity as sufficient (because, unlike real life appointments, it is very difficult to get rid of an admin once appointed), and will subject the candidates to the same rigorous examination as now. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:08, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't quite buy the oft-repeated premise that the reason so many people are quick to oppose is because it's hard to get rid of an admin once they are in. Or rather, if that is the reason, I don't buy that premise exactly. It's difficult to get any very experienced and entrenched user removed, admin or not. If they can be shown to be making positive contributions and haven't made any of the "wikisuicide" moves it usually takes WP:RFC/U or ArbCom to get any lasting action. And ArbCom has in fact desysopped five admins so far this year. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Clearly this proposal is dead, but if this thread from the original oppose is in any way representative it demonstrates the root of the problem. Wehwalt is assuming that for an admin to be worth their salt, they have to participate in the discretion-dominated processes (predominantly AfD and page protection), a position that Zebedee endorses. Beeble then goes on to suggest that the current process of leaving admin matters to ArbCom is working, which is questionable, given the sheer number of hoops you have to go through to even get the right to ask the Arbs (incidentally, predominantly admins) whether they are willing to even hear the case.

90% of mopping involves no discretion at all. Speedies are pretty clear cut (once you have shown that you understand the criteria), as are the overwhelming majority of CfDs, TfDs, FfDs, obvious vandal and 3RR blocks, and to an extent decisions to give or withhold permissions. The mere mention of two-tier adminship is always met with vehement opposition, but the cold hard fact is that a higher degree of judgement is needed for AfD, DRV, exceptional CfDs and TfDs, protection, and blocks for reasons other than those given above. Sure, there are problems with the precise definitions, but for as long as these tasks are bundled together, a significant proportion of RfA participants will hold candidates to the higher standard. --WFC-- 18:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Poll

I've just done a quick read of this thread and, well, to be frank, it's not clear just exactly how many editors here think the above-mentioned concern is legitimately a problem. While indeed voting is evil, I believe in this instance, it would be beneficial if we could have a quick show of hands. -FASTILY_sock^(TALK) 09:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Those who believe the lack of active administrators is a problem

1. I think that both choices here are too black and white: it is not a huge problem, but it is certainly not not a problem. The backlogs are there, WP:AIV, CAT:RFU, the white and blacklists, &c. I'm also not saying that there are no other solutions possible left and right, but it remains that some actions need to be done by very established editors, and a lot of those things need to be done with an admin bit .. and I believe that that needs a steady, significant influx of fresh admins. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
2. In some areas, such as AE I see a fairly small circle of admins carrying a rather large and, I imagine, demanding workload. It takes time and ability to get sufficient reflexive command of our policies and a feel for 'what works' and how to ensure that actions are interpreted as being constructive that fewer 'new' admins could spell trouble down the road as we look for as Beetstra says very established editors. Unomi (talk) 10:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
3. It's already a problem and it will get worse. The lack of admins puts an extra load on the currently active ones and this can lead to admin fatigue. Sure, it would be nice to have more successful RfAs but one more question we should be asking ourselves is "how do we keep the current admin corps?" Also less admins means an increased perception of power. Pichpich (talk) 22:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
4. It is a problem insofar as it keeps causing lengthy discussions like this one, distracting people from improving the encyclopaedia. :) More seriously, I do think we could generally use more admins in many areas - we certainly aren't at the point where we can see 'we've got enough admins' - and in that sense, the dearth of admins is a problem. Robofish (talk) 00:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
5. Per Robofish. Often times, it takes hours to have an RPP request actioned, by which point, lots of vandalism and BLP violations have taken place. Paralympiakos (talk) 19:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
6. Intermittent backlogs; too much workload for dedicated admins; less patience for handling disputes and teaching our wiki ways to passionate but disruptive editors; danger of group think without a steady influx of newcomers. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Those who believe the lack of active administrators is not a problem

1. It is not yet a problem in terms of backlogs, though possibly in terms of community health. ϢereSpielChequers 09:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
2. It doesn't seem to me to be a problem right now, because everything seems to be working ok -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:35, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
3.  – iridescent 09:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
4. Not a problem (unless we consider the amount of time spent on this perennial discussion). It is overly simplistic to believe that the number of active admins is a useful barometer, especially when we see that at least 701 of those 799 active admins also appear on the list of most active users in the history of Wikipedia. If the project actually starts to suffer in a way that is directly attributable to the raw number of active admins, we'll figure it out then. In the meantime, we should pat ourselves on the back for being part of a project that continues to improve.  Frank  |  talk  12:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
5. Well I have just looked at my usual haunt speedy deletions and there is no backlog. Any daily backlog which builds up there always gets removed when America wakes up (recently the level for considering it a backlog was reduced from 75 to 50, I have no idea why). I then noticed someone commenting on this page about AIV backlogs so I thought I would have a look and I noticed AIV was empty and there is nothing for me to do there. Because I work on European time I only ever seem to get a small handful of really difficult AfD decisions left for me so I rarely close AfDs as a newish admin, unless I can devote a spare 45 minutes. Polargeo (talk) 13:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
6. I'm yet to be convinced that admin-related backlogs are currently any larger than previously, when there were more active admins. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
7. The decline in the number of active administrators is merely a consequence of the decline in the number of active editors. We should get used to the idea of wikipedia having fewer edits and fewer editors. Fewer admins is a not overly concerning result of that. However that does not mean that I don't think RfA "standards" can be a little high some times. --Mkativerata (talk) 18:26, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
8. Yet to see any firm evidence that there's a problem. We may not need as many admins as a going concern as we did as a startup, especially with advances in bots.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
9. Don't even see that there is a lack of admins. If there is a slight one, it is not a problem yet. Or at least no more so than it used to be. (X! · talk)  · @052  ·  00:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
10. I see the occasional backlog at some of the areas I look at, but even if we had 10 times the number of active admins, that will still happen. Some admins go away for a while and come back (for example, I've been away for pretty much the last month and a half, due to the birth of my son - that's been more important than Wikipedia!) - real life takes precedence over enwiki, but that doesn't mean that all our "non-active" admins will not be back! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If the number of active administrators continues to decline it will at some point become a problem.

1. Yes. We need enough admins to do things like delete pages and block vandals. ϢereSpielChequers 09:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes. Clearly it will, if it continues. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
3. I am afraid that this is obvious. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:46, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
4. Well, um, yeah. sonia♫ 09:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
5. -- Salvio ^{Let's talk 'bout it!} 10:24, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
6. Unless we find a way to replace them with a very small shell script. Unomi (talk) 10:45, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
7. It is hard to put one's finger on a "problem", but I find it problematic that a small number of administrators are handling a large majority of the tasks. We are all susceptible to burnout and if numbers continue to decline, increasing workloads will fall upon those that remain - in turn causing more burnout - in turn causing more to reduce activity or leave - in turn causing more burnout on those left - and so on - eventually we may enter a tailspin from which it will be difficult to recover. –xeno^talk 13:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
8. Eventually. However, I don't think it's simple to quantify how many we need, even as a proportion of the total number of active editors, due to increased automation of certain admin tasks and increased complexity of policy. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
9. In the longer term. We're at the stage where we have the luxury of actually experimenting with the adminship process (rather than contemplating) without the pressure of having to get it right first time. We don't have to take it, but if we do not, then as a collective we will be fools for not doing so. The notion that people will voluntarily lower their standards at RfA is nonsensical. Alas, the way wikipedia works, you will never get consensus on change unless all but two options have been categorically ruled out. And judging by people's attitudes to change, one of the options would have to be "do nothing", which is usually popular. --WFC-- 14:00, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
10. As of now, the number of active administrators is not a problem. However, if this decline continues it could eventually turn into a problem. The Raptor ^{You rang?}/_{My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions} 14:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
11. Of course it will become a problem. I think once we're below 500, we'll be in the shit. You can only ask so much of users before they crack. Steven Zhang ^{The clock is ticking....} 21:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

    That would be a good thing though wouldn't it? It would force the system to change to a more rational system of governance, which clearly won't happen otherwise. Malleus Fatuorum 22:04, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

12. Does anyone have any idea how much of the admin workload is fixing problems caused by IP editors and newly-registered accounts? If those problems ceased to happen, how many active admins would be sufficient? - Pointillist (talk) 22:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
13. Eventually. This is years away, though. (X! · talk)  · @052  ·  00:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
14. Eventually. Connormah^talk 01:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
15. It would. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 21:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
16. Isn't this stating the obvious? Even if the number of active administrators was declining by 1 a year, "at some point [it] will become a problem". However, I do not think that the problem is anywhere in the near future -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Neutral

1. The wording of the options above is faulty. There is not a clear lack of active administrators. Sure, if the number of active administrators fell to 4, one could assume problems would follow. But the wording of the first two options above suggest where this poll is intended to lead the reader. Townlake (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

   The last sentence is entirely true. --WFC-- 14:01, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

   Agree that the wording of the first two questions is flawed and intentionally or unintentionally comes off as a Push poll. Third question is pretty obvious. Going to have to decline to participate. Jusdafax 14:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

   I added the third option because I thought the poll with its two options was at best a distraction. Of course the difficult thing is that we don't and can't know when the decline will turn into such an embarrassment that the foundation will step in and appoint admins as I believe they've had to do on other wikis. There are so many variables - how active are the admins we have, how evenly spread are they in their hours of activity, whether we can somehow make admins more efficient, or use bots for some of the things we need admins for. My fear is that we will get over-dependent on a small number of hyper active admins, and when they get burned out or overwhelmed we will need a lot of new admins to replace them. But unless we change direction we will at some point hit a major problem, and it would be good to get that agreed or flush out the reasons why people disagree. ϢereSpielChequers 11:53, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

2. I agree with Townlake, and furthermore, insufficient research has been completed on the issue. We need more info on: "how many admins there are on Wikipedia in total", "how many admins have left Wikipedia", "how many admins took admin actions each month", "how many actions have been taken each month, and the reasons for any decreases or uninvolvement from certain areas by each admin", "the reasons why certain veteran admins have never entered certain areas", etc. etc. This data then should be compared with the RFA stats. If we were to elect more admins who are going to be unwilling to enter those areas where they are needed, or who are unlikely to have sound judgement in one or more of those areas, then I wonder what the point is in worrying about how many admins are elected each month. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

A view from outside the box

What I find quite striking about much of the discussion on this talk page is how insular and close-minded it is. For instance, there's much wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who rail against "editcountitis", yet often those same people will complain that a candidate hasn't taken part in any AfDs, or CSDs, or whatever the flavour of the month happens to be. The point about probationary administrators also singularly misses the point, in its underlying assumption that non-administrators do not perform administrative functions when they clearly do; all they lack is the delete and block cudgels.

Anyone looking for admin hopefuls could do worse than to look at GA and FA reviewers, who need a far wider appreciation of wikipedia's policies on issues like copyright, image use and licensing, NPOV and so on than most administrators have. But of course that's far harder to check than whether or not an A7 tag is reasonable or not, so it doesn't get done. Having said all that, I sincerely hope that most GA and FA reviewers would have the good sense to stay well away from RfA anyway. Malleus Fatuorum 22:45, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Give me a smile and explain how you join up nine dots with four straight lines. Pedro :  Chat  22:54, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

How many dimensions are you allowing? Malleus Fatuorum 22:58, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

2D. Grid of 3 x 3 dots. Straight lines. Cummon! Pedro :  Chat  23:00, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, in two-dimensional space the only way is the start from a dot outside of the nine you want to connect, which I guess is your point. Malleus Fatuorum 23:04, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Meh. Typically we have an article on it any way. I'll be getting my coat... Pedro :  Chat  23:06, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so where are we?

My guess is that if we had even 70% support, in any forum, for provisional adminship, more people would have jumped in here and supported; the usual strategy people take at WT:RFA if they don't like the options is to say nothing until there's a vote. I'm not taking a position on it, but I do think that if we create something that's a lot like adminship but isn't, it will necessarily affect RfA in a number of ways, and it's impossible to know whether the net effect will be good or bad until you've run the experiment for a while. I don't generally like to tinker with my car engine while the car is speeding down the highway.

The more I think about some form of 1-year clerkship (with no extra userrights until the community thinks that one or two extra userrights are clearly necessary and merited ... if ever), the more I think it's worth suggesting as an option at some of the noticeboards to see if anyone is interested. The problem is that we admins already have a lot to do; traditionally, we haven't been interested in creating specific clerkship roles, because that would involve an assessment of trustworthiness and competence for potentially a lot of candidates, then following up, deciding how and when to train them and/or fire them, supporting or fighting their decisions ... plus, the community gets pretty huffy when individuals think they have a role assessing other people; that's generally seen as something that either shouldn't be done at all or should be done by the community. I think everyone has dreamed of getting help with whatever they're doing but it's always seemed like more trouble than it's worth.

Fortunately, we have a bunch of voters at RFA who are pretty good at this kind of assessment, so maybe we could match the people we've got to the need we've got, and have some kind of community vote on "clerkship" candidates. Since I'm most familiar with WP:UAA, I think I'll suggest this first there, but I want to get feedback here first. A year ago, I considered encouraging some non-admins to take a more active role at WP:UAA, but didn't because of the problem I mentioned above about User:decltype, that the rare candidate at RfA who's actually taken on roles traditionally reserved for admins sometimes has a harder rather than an easier time at RfA. Are there other noticeboards or areas where admins are active that could use a community-approved clerk? Presumbly, someone who wants to be a clerk and is good at it anywhere wouldn't usually want to "go rogue" and clerk where they don't know what they're doing ... and even if they did, the admins would just start ignoring their recommendations. No big deal, and their term would expire in a year anyway noticeboards could choose to work only with those clerks that had been accepted within, say, the last year ... more than enough time for them to either get bored and leave or use their clerking experience to help them pass RfA, if they like. That's another point: RfA is hard enough to pass now that it's no longer providing the function of giving honest community feedback and recognition to everyone who's serious about janitor work, and probably all of these folks need the feedback and deserve the recognition, whether they're interested in adminship or not. Maybe clerkship could help with that. - Dank (push to talk) 23:01, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Not to jump in and shoot this down right off the bat, but 1) One year seems a long time; I became an admin eight months after starting to edit; and 2) Do we really need a "community-approved clerk"? People can clerk at UAA, AIV, CHU, etc, without a community mandate. The only possible advantage that my sleepy eyes see is that the community might trust them more if they were an approved clerk (like being a rollbacker, for instance) and this extra trust might get them through an RFA (more easily) down the road. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 14:20, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

We'll need a lot of tweaks to any proposal, which is why I'm suggesting "crowdsourcing" the problem rather than trying to settle on one solution ... I mean, different noticeboards and such will have different needs and we/they can work out for our/themselves what time period works and how valuable the input of RfA voters would be. I've started a conversation at WT:UAA that's going well at the moment. My first guess for clerking at UAA is that we'd generally want someone approved sometime within the last year ... longer than that and they might be too rusty to be useful ... but boards where things change faster might want more recently approved clerks. Despite all the disagreements at RfA, I think the RfA community is pretty skilled and diligent about poking into a candidate's track record; if we're voting on a clerk at UAA and we don't extend an invitation here at WT:RFA, I would worry that the regulars there wouldn't have the skills that you guys have, and some of us might be less objective and maybe not as, um, forthright, since we have to keep working with the candidates every day whether they pass or not. - Dank (push to talk) 15:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Question: I enjoy clerking things and making other people's lives easier, and would be very interested in that kind of position since my schedule doesn't allow long periods of editing. However, I would steer clear of volunteering if it meant I had to be committed to becoming an administrator. Would this clerking resemble the sort of drive-by thing that happens at WP:CHU, or is it more like SPI/ArbCom clerking? Is it specifically for training to become an administrator or just for people who want to help? I mean, I suppose it defeats the point if users who don't intend to run are clerks, but I think tying it too closely to adminship would be a bad idea as it would imply that any clerks are "almost ready" for adminship and become a status symbol in itself. Since clerking is by nature no big deal, this would destroy it. (Not to mention you'd get lots of new users applying if they see it as a status symbol, and that would create more work instead of less.) sonia♫ 05:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm in favor of letting each noticeboard or other admin area decide how "serious" clerking should be; I hope I don't bias the result by saying that we're pretty easy-going at UAA and a few good clerks would be welcome. You're welcome to join the discussion at WT:UAA if you're interested in usernames, it looks like we're about to get started ... if not, is there another place you'd like to clerk, including any of the boards that have clerks already? - Dank (push to talk) 05:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Something which may or may not work is having clerks for speedy deletion, declining incorrect tagging and fixing those tagged under the wrong criteria. I know the CSD off by heart and would be keen on doing something like that. RfPP and RfPerm seem to both have some non-admin stalkers who would be happy to clerk them, but I'm not sure how such a clerkship would work. Clerking AIV would be pretty much pointless, for sure. sonia♫ 06:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Objections have been mentioned in the past but it's worth discussing. I don't see why a useful clerk role couldn't work if the focus is narrow enough. Anyone want to weigh in before we take this to WT:CSD? - Dank (push to talk) 13:46, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

One of the things I learned from WP:NEWT was that quite a few incorrect speedy deletion tags are being declined/amended by non-admins. So yes I agree that there is room for a clerking role, and hopefully if that happens we would reduce the number of instances where people don't discover that their CSD tagging is controversial until they run at RFA. Hopefully the clerks would feel more comfortable telling people that they'd changed their tag. I think it would also help to have some clerks for BLP prod as a significant proportion of them are incorrect tags, and the ten day cycle lends itself to clerking more readily than CSD does. ϢereSpielChequers 14:11, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. - Dank (push to talk) 14:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

←The inevitable question about clerking in deletion work is that you have to put a tight limit on what clerks can do if they can't see deleted contribs. Mike Godwin (the WMF attorney) has said that only admins should be able to see deleted contribs, because of the potential defamation problem if someone complains to Wikipedia about their bio and we delete it but the info leaks out anyway. Just to move us along to the end of that discussion before it starts: if we've got 10 specific clerks working at UAA and CSD and elsewhere, and everyone agrees that the people we've got are trustworthy and that the competition for clerkship is rigorous enough that we're not ever likely to promote someone who isn't trustworthy, then it seems like a non-issue to me, when you consider how many old admins we've got who got promoted after a discussion that went: "Do you think we can trust him?" "Sure." I don't buy the argument that it won't be possible to assign just the userright of seeing deleted contribs. I also don't buy the argument that it's up to the Foundation whether to allow it or not; if the community clearly wants clerks to see deleted contribs and the Foundation says no, that's likely to piss off the community to the point where we promote the clerks in a regular RFA and ask them on their honor to stick to clerking rather than using the admin tools until they pass RFA a second time (which gets us one flavor of provisional adminship through the back door ... which I don't want and am not asking for, not unless clerkship doesn't work, and I don't see why it wouldn't. My only point is that it's clear to me that the community has the power to make the calls here, so there's no point in whining "we can't do that, they won't let us".) - Dank (push to talk) 14:32, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree that if we want these to be meaningful jobs then the clerks doing the jobs need to have the tools to do that job and if that meens we neeed to create new user right groups then we should do that. If we don't let them have the tools then how does that help any future RfA ? Codf1977 (talk) 14:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

"The tools" sounds to me like something more than just looking at deleted contribs ... and we haven't gotten any movement on that in years of trying. I don't have a preference on that and I'm not saying you should stop trying, but I don't want to scuttle clerkship by throwing random tools into the mix, I'm only talking about seeing deleted contribs. That might give Mike Godwin headaches but it wouldn't get us stuck in the usual arguments against unbundling any of the tools that actually do something.- Dank (push to talk) 14:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

sorry it came across as such was not meant to be it was just a turn of phase. Codf1977 (talk) 19:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you can clerk at CSD and BLP prod without being able to see deleted contributions or delete articles. ϢereSpielChequers 16:55, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed ... and anyway, until we've got an established set of clerks and people trust them and the promotion process, the extra user-right is not going to happen anyway, so we better make it work. I just want people to know that we know that the request is going to come up, we've thought about the problem, and we have ways to make it work if the community ever decides it needs to happen. - Dank (push to talk) 17:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Spam

The run-up to an RfA seems to be one time editors really like to use email. Typically, sending an email is followed by a post to the recipient's talkpage advising them that they've been sent an email. All very clumsy, if y'all don't mind me saying. Can I 'umbly suggest using the shiny new {{YGM}} template instead?

Apologies for the blatant advertising, please resume your normal "RfA is failing/working" and "too many admins/not enough admins" conversations. TFOWR 10:06, 8 August 2010 (UTC) I suspect there is at least one admin too many... ;-)

I, too, have seen the many "I pinged your e-mail" blurbs on talk pages. However, this kind of feels like WP:DTTR. I prefer the more personalized messages, myself. And, truth be told, I wouldn't need a talk page message at all; I check my e-mail accounts multiple times throughout the day. Just my two cents. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 14:24, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't really consider this "templating the regulars" (see {{Talkback}}, which I use all the time, for instance). Additionally, many Wikipedians, such as myself, have dedicated Wikipedia emails for a variety of reasons; these accounts may not be checked as often as their primary accounts. I have one so I don't give out my real name. I've been given this template already :) Airplaneman ✈ 02:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm familiar with talkback, but I don't think all that many of the regulars us it. But you definitely have a point with the exclusive e-mails, that's a common occurrence. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 03:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a note on talk page asking people NOT to leave such comments if they've emailed me. After all, they've emailed me because they want a little confidentiality, and it sort of gives away the game.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:45, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Assumptions

Looking over the above talk, and thinking on previous proposals for fixing the problem, I can't help feeling that attempts to come up with a solution are all based on untested assumptions. (My thoughts have been based on untested assumptions too, I'm happy to admit)...

• The number of active admins is declining - we have proof of that
• It's because the admin process is too arduous. That's an assumption. Do we really know that's what's putting people off? I think it at least contributes (it's certainly seen as a stressful test by many), but I might be wrong. Does anyone have any feedback from editors they've approached but who didn't want to run?
• Why is RfA so arduous? I think it's partly due, based on various opinions I've read, to people not seeing an easy admin recall process. I might be wrong.
• Another assumption that I've seen is that the bar is higher now because it genuinely needs to be, now that Wikipedia is a lot bigger and more mature.
• And there have been plenty of other assumptions too.

Before anyone comes up with more proposed solutions - unbundling rights, clerkship, different levels of amdin, or whatever, I can't help thinking it would be worth trying to address those two questions...

1. Why are qualified people not going for RfA? It might be hard to find the people to ask (people who don't do things are trickier to locate than those who do).
2. Why is the RfA bar set so high? This could be easier, as the people to ask are easy to identify - they're the regulars at RfA.

-- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Can we start with you? More time and more edits than most who apply. Why haven't you nominated yourself?--SPhilbrickT 12:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

All explained at User:Boing!_said_Zebedee#Adminship. I don't actually find the "running the gauntlet" aspect of RfA off-putting myself (I have little left in the way of ego to damage these days), and so I'm not someone for whom procedural changes along such lines would make much difference. But it does appear that a lot of people do find it intimidating - people have come away saying they feel quite humiliated by the experience. Cheers -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Boing! said Zebedee, you do have a couple of interesting points there on the talkpage:

• "I've got a whole load of content work that I want to do, and I just don't seem to find the time to do it. ..."
  • Yes, we all have that, I don't think any of the admins here do full-time Wikipedia admin work. Any addition admin would take something of the load of their wikipedia admin .. possibly giving all admins a bit less Wikistress.
• "I do a lot of copy editing and general gnome work, and have recently joined the Guild of Copy Editors. I'm a writer by profession, and I can use my skills to good effect here. And there's a lot to be done."
  • Yes, there is a lot to be done .. any additional admin to do some part of some admin chore would free up other admins to do more non-admin work.
• "I do like to try to help with dispute resolution, and have done so a few times. ..."
  • Well, that is still possible. Other admins have their normal wiki-things as well. Every extra admin ....
• "I don't think there's as serious a shortage of admins as many people suggest - whenever I tag something for speedy deletion, report a repeat vandal, or request page protection, etc, it tends to happen pretty promptly."
  • True, but I believe that any helping hand would be nice. We all agree that things get done in the end (IMHO, some parts quicker than others, or should I say, some parts are slow, others are fast enough?), but with any additional hand, things may get done even quicker.
• "There's so much more out there that I can do without admin tools"
  • True .. but you might help the other admins just that little bit as well. And yes, reverting that continuous vandal is also good help, and the editor that does it should be given yet another barnstar, but if you block the vandal on sight they also can do other things for which they does not need admin tools

I've left out some other points to which I could respond, but that would make it too personal. Do I get the feeling right, that to-be-admins feel that they should be actively watching CAT:RFU ánd WP:AIV ánd CAT:SD ánd the black and whitelist, ánd ... (&c.) so they will make sure that there will be no build-up of backlogs. They are wrong, also that is collaborative, we all pick our unblock/block/protect requests, and together we (should) keep it small. If you are working on something else, fine .. the problem starts if all admins are working on something else .. but if I have to follow all the blacklist and whitelist requests (here and on meta ..) and properly research them, then indeed, I do not have time for CAT:RFU and CAT:SD (and in the latter the spam needs to be deleted, and in the former the spam username blocks do sometimes deserve an answer, or a namechange). And not blacklisting the rubbish means that some spammers will go on, and give more work to all the spam-fighters (hey, I reprogrammed XLinkBot for that, so that certain trusted anti-spam fighters could use it and not have the frustration of having to wait for the blacklisting while the spamming continues .. it is one of the proposed remedies, somewhere above, but it is merely trying to stop the symptoms (and there is still blood coming through, XLinkBot has its limits), while a few firm admin-stitches would close the wound properly).

I think that it would be good that if editors get to the level and expertise that they would be able, that they should run, and that the hurdle should not be too idiotically high (You do have at least one DYK on your name, Boing! said Zebedee, do you? Otherwise I would have to oppose, I am afraid</sarcasm>). I see in the above poll already, and you mention it on your page, that you do not notice the backlogs too much, and I think indeed that all goes still quite OK .. but I do see the fields which are backlogged, and it just depends what fields you follow to see how much backlog is where, and how you hence respond to the poll (so yes, this poll is evil!). I am sorry, backlogs may seem small, but they can put regular editors off .. if they have to wait for more than an hour for an unblock of an autoblock for which they have no blame .. some will go away and not return. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

There's a lot you say there that makes perfect sense, and with which I wholly concur - in essence, every little helps, and even doing just an hour of admin work a week is a hour more than would get done otherwise. That's the way I agree it should work, and it may well be the way it used to work, but from my experience of RfA's, it's not what most people are looking for these days. Yes, I think RfA !voters are looking for considerably more commitment than that.

Suppose I ran for admin and said "Look, I don't plan to do much admin work, but if I just block the occasional vandal myself instead of reporting them, and maybe protect the odd page once in a blue moon, I'll save other admins a few minutes work each time" - I wouldn't stand a chance of passing. "Not spending enough time doing admin-related work to keep up to date with all our policies" is an Oppose reason I've seen more than once, and it's no good saying you're not interested in some admin areas so you don't need to know about them - at RfA these days you have to prove you know everything that anyone chooses to examine you on inside out.

And to some extent I understand that - if I promise, say, to only do the odd bit of vandal blocking, and that I won't do speedy deletions so don't ask me about them, the Community has no comeback if I renege on that and start doing CSD without having been examined on it. And that's why I think the recall process is faulty - even if I'm not actually personally worried about it (if I passed an RfA, I simply wouldn't do anything warranting recall), those who I would be asking to support me have a right to be.

As for the size of the backlogs? I'm really not a hasty person myself, so I've never considered having to wait a few hours on occasion for an AIV or RPP to be done as much of a problem. Perhaps there are people who are too impatient and will go away, and ideally it would be great if requests were always done in minutes. But I honestly don't see any of that as a "sky is falling" problem, the way a lot of people seem to.

-- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

From my experience if you have a vandal on a spree and there isn't an admin to block them then it is very frustrating and timewasting for the newpage patrollers or hugglers. So yes occasionally it matters if you don't have an admin active when you need one.

I have asked lots of editors if they are willing to run, more decline because of the hazing involved in RFA than accept or decline for all other reasons.

As for how active an admin is going to be with the tools, I don't think that comes up at RFA. Yes a candidate needs to say they would use the tools and people have opposed if a candidate has no stated intention to wield the mop. But if you reread the last few successful RFAs I doubt you would get an idea which candidates would spend an hour a month using the tools and which would spend an hour a day.

ϢereSpielChequers 16:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the amount of work a candidate plans to do doesn't specifically come up at RfA, but I think the assumption is there - I've certainly seen opposes because a candidate is not seen to be doing enough admin-related work. It is interesting that people you have asked have declined because of the RfA hazing, and I think that goes a long way towards justifying the assumption that the toughness of RfA really is the problem. I think the next step is to identify why it is so tough and why people set the bar so high - and I don't think we can come up with workable solutions until we find the answer to that. Some have said it is because of the recall problem (but that might not be many - without some actual research, I can't know). I also suspect some of it is just newcomers falling in with the existing culture, and if old hands are tough on candidates, they have to be too (again, just a hunch, with no supporting facts, but fitting in with the existing culture does seem to be a common way for people to interact in web communities). Might it be an idea to try to survey RfA regulars and actually ask why they are so tough on candidates? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessarily that individual editors are hard on candidates, but that the absolute prerequisites for adminship held by different editors are so very different that to fulfil them all becomes a high hurdle. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that's an interesting thought, I'm sure there is an element of that there. But then, what I think that points to is problems with management-by-community in general - the more "managers" you have to satisfy, the harder it gets. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You hit the nail on the head, Boing! said Zebedee (I'm sorry, I am going to be a bit more personal, please read it as meant for anyone thinking the same). "I've never considered having to wait a few hours on occasion for an AIV or RPP to be done as much of a problem.", and that is how (apparently) everyone sees it here (also seeing the poll). Indeed. Those are not a problem per sé, but if an innocent (!) practically new editor gets caught by an autoblock on a vandal IP, and then has to wait for an hour for a response ([2]; the on-IRC unblockbot now says for the last 12 unblocks the average waiting time is 1 hour 42 minutes, the three accepted ones of these 12 are about 37 minutes on average; note, it may have one very long one to screw these statistics massively ...), then basically, everyone who does not see that there is a backlog, and that a backlog is not a problem, is basically accepting that biting an editor is something unavoidable (though, I am afraid that some will not return). Similarly, editors who, in good faith, try to add a proper reference on a heavily abused server are being blocked by the spam-blacklist, but at least follow the instructions and ask for whitelisting/de-blacklisting, then it would be nice as well for them to have a reasonably fast response (and not days: MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#www.nkavvadias.co.cc.2F). But the spam blacklist has a backlog notice already for months, first of all, there are not enough specialists to actually have a look (why should this one be declined? .. not sure, actually), and secondly, most admins don't seem to care. Same goes for AIV, if some annoying vandal is there for a couple of hours, waiting to be blocked, then >99% of the editors don't see a problem, but the couple of the editors who try to keep up reverting and cleaning do. And also there the blacklist question is fun .. do we know how much time a select group of editors is looking for spammers and cleaning the mess .. I notice editors cleaning really bad spam and warning editors, but not bothering to ask for blacklisting .. either they don't know it exists and that the links easily qualify .. or they don't bother as it takes too long anyway.

You, as regular editor with good knowledge of policy and guideline do not run into these problems (you may even not be affected by an autoblock ..), you don't feel bitten by an occasional hit by the blacklist (and you don't mind waiting a day or two .. you would simply come back and poke the request again or talk to a regular there to have a look for you; you might even already realise 'if this site is blocked, then maybe this is not a proper reference) or even a tag on the edit filter. The problem is not that most things run fine (the do .. fine, not great or wonderfully) .. the problem is that some things should run smoother and faster. And there are several solutions to it, but a growing (in stead of declining) admin corps would certainly help taking the pressure of it.

I'll add "Oppose - does not want to be too active with the admin tools" to my list of non-reasons which should simply be ignored by a bureaucrat, just like "Oppose - does not even have a DYK." We might want to add "Oppose - has never been blocked, never been affected by an autoblock, has never tried to use a blacklisted link, does not have enough edits being blocked by the edit filter and does not have any articles speedied or AfD'd, so does not see how annoying it can be." as a proper reason for opposing, though ...</sarcasm>. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Yep, those are fair points again (and please don't worry about being "personal" - any opinion I offer is intended to invite replies, and I prefer straight honest feedback). You are right, I see things from my own fairly experienced and unhurried perspective from which I know nobody is slighting me by not jumping the instant I ask for something. And yes, I also appreciate that many people, particularly newcomers, can interpret delays too personally and possibly be chased away. So OK, you've convinced me that some backlogs are causing some problems some of the time, and more admins would probably help - I'll amend my comment on that. But I still don't think the "Admin numbers are falling, how can we get more?" approach is necessarily the best solution to those. As we've seen, the RfA process has evolved considerably in recent years, and not entirely for the better - but I really do think that's a structural problem with management-by-consensus (which I expect is not a popular opinion round these parts), and not something there's a quick community fix for. Instead, I'm coming down more in favour of those who suggest some sort of expansion of clerkship appointments - if there's a specific problem with people waiting for unblocks of autoblocks, or not enough people doing spam blacklisting, can we attract clerks to those specific areas with specific permissions? We certainly don't need people with FAs, perfect knowledge of CSD criteria, and a full understanding of copyright law, in order to review and fix unwanted autoblocks or to blacklist or whitelist sites (and, like rollback, they'd be easy bits to remove should they be abused). But I really don't think we'll get anywhere trying to get the community to make RfA generally easier, without finding out why that same community has made it hard in the first place and trying to address the reasons. (And, you know, I'm tempted to add a "Stupid RfA Oppose reasons" section to my user page - though that would guarantee I'd never have a chance of passing ☺ ) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I am more of the point, that getting more admins is one of the solutions, it may not be the only solution (though I think that many of the admin tasks need more than only one of the functions, as I said for blacklisting, that often needs deleted revisions to be seen, and it needs often to be backed-up by blocking. Not that that is something that can't be done by others for the support, one might miss things, or not solve the whole problem; spam != simple vandalism). But any help is welcome in most of the areas. People removing speedy-tags as a decline and helping to clean it up also takes away admin work, keeping spam reports clear, up-to-date, and as easy as possible also helps. And there is more of that.

I am afraid you are right, the community is not going to make it easier (a bit of a clue-stick applied to too harsh opposers may be useful). I'd like to hear why certain editors put the bars so high, indeed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like we're actually pretty much in agreement really - I do agree that more admins would improve things, but I'm just doubtful of ideas to get more. Still, I think we can safely confirm the assumption that the tough time at RfA really does put a lot of people off running. And I think we next need to address why so many people place the bar so high. I'll ask a question below - it might give us some ideas. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem

Anyone wanting to be an admin or !voting in RFAs should read these: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-09/Admin_stats and Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-08-09/Admin_stats; and yes, also posted at WP:BN — Rlevse • Talk • 02:25, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if anyone's looking to have exactly the same discussion as the above on a different page, your dreams are one click away. Townlake (talk) 03:25, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but the signpost report is much better organized and written. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:01, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Excellent choice of colour! "Earth trembled in October 2005 as sixty-seven horsemen rode out as conquerors..." East of Borschov 04:25, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been skimming these debates for a while, and while I've seen many statistics on the declining admin numbers, what I haven't seen is the decline in active admins in comparison with the overall decline/incline in active editors, or more interestingly, the number of admin actions vs. the number of edits. I mean, while standards in rfa have no doubt increased, is it not possible that the decline in active administrators is mostly just a result of an overall decline in wikipedia, and that focusing on rfa reform is fixing the symptom, not the disease? Rami R 10:30, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Ditto that. I tried to note my view here which is similar. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:03, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do you place the RfA bar so high?

From discussions above, I think it is safe to deduce that the tough time candidates face at RfA dissuades a lot of people from running - and it definitely seems to be a lot tougher than it used to be. Various people have various ideas about why the bar is set so high, and a few have been forthcoming about their reasons, but I haven't seen anyone attempt a survey of assessing RfA candidates in general. So, here's an invitation to individuals who !vote at RfA - do you set the RfA bar high, and if so, can you tell us why? And would there be any change that could be made that would lead you to lower the bar and give candidates the benefit of the doubt a bit more? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:29, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

No. I'm a firm believer in WP:NOBIGDEAL. I'm not convinced I've ever opposed at an RfA, and neutral !votes are pretty minimal, too. There's only ever been one RfA where I'd have opposed, and I thought better of it ;-)

However, is it possible that higher standards at RfA result in "better" admins (excluding the one I would have opposed, obviously...) and that "better" admins offset the decline in the number of active admins? ("Better" here means more able initially: I am in no way suggesting that active veteran admins are in anyway "worse"). TFOWR 15:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I judge an admin's proven competence to exercise discretion. I will continue to do so for as long as adminship equals tenure, and for as long as adminship equals having a large degree of discretion over decisions such as whether to semi-protect or how to close an AfD. --WFC-- 16:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I very rarely participate in RFA, but I set the bar fairly high. My attitude is that, because it's de facto impossible to get rid of an incompetent admin (and damn near impossible to get rid of an actively abusive one—there have been 49 desysoppings in the entire history of Wikipedia), it becomes a case of "highest possible standards" rather than "hopefully you'll do all right". A single incompetent admin can do disproportionate damage; I'm sure everyone can think of productive contributors who've resigned in disgust after being incorrectly blocked, or given up because an admin insists an article remains locked in their preferred version. If there were a true easy-come-easy-go system (my ideal would be periodic compulsory reconfirmation, to take away the stigma of having a reconfirmation-RFA called about you), I'd be willing to support the "you haven't screwed up big-time but there's not enough history to judge" cases; until then, I won't. – iridescent 16:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Iridescent. I really don't believe that adminship is a big deal, in that everything an admin does can be undone; however, not all the consequences of a wrong decision can be undone. If an admin wrongly speedies a newbie's article or blocks them, the newbie can be scared away forever. But an established user too can leave Wikipedia because he's been disgusted by the actions of an admin (as Iridescent pointed out). That's why I tend to oppose a candidate, when they don't show me that they are experienced in admin-related areas. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's not even a matter of recall, even though I admit that would make my personal criteria a little less demanding. Salvio ^{Let's talk 'bout it!} 16:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

There are a few problems.

* Adminship is very hard to take away by design. Administrators are expected to take some actions as part of the performance of their duties that will be unpopular to segments of our community - the implementation of deletion policy being one significant example. However, the difficulty of removing an administrator leads to unwillingness to trust.

* As long as individuals are free to apply their own criteria, and any criteria no matter how ridiculous is ultimately given equal weight, there is a defacto policy creep towards the most restrictive criteria possible.

* It is nearly impossible to reverse policy creep with as much inertia as a process like RfA has. The inability to remove administrators compounds this by creating an unfounded fear of promoting a "bad" or "rogue" administrator - when in actuality, adminship is no big deal because all actions done by admins are eventually reversible, and the most controversial actions taken, deletions, protections, and blocks are very easy to "undo", as easy as making an edit.

* Heavy content editors are bad choices for admins. They are less likely to be interested in adminship, less likely to be active, and if they do become really active, it takes time away from working on content. We need WikiJanitors for admins, not WikiArchitects. Triona (talk) 16:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

"in actuality, adminship is no big deal because all actions done by admins are eventually reversible" <-- Not exactly true. As noted by iridescent and Salvio above, some methods of administration have great potential to bite newcomers or drive away established users. So while the action may be reversible, the effect (the loss of an editor) is often not. –xeno^talk 16:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

(multiple ec's) Largely agree with Iridescent, and was unaware of the 49 figure for desysopings, which is startling and telling. As I've mentioned here previously, my involvement at WP:CDA and the failed Rfc for it gave me little hope for change in that department, as it was the admin vote against Cda that shot down the proposal. I agree the best way is to have a compulsory reconfirmation vote and I would think a three or four year term would be a good marker. The issues of how to do this would be the rub, of course. From what I have seen in the past year, I doubt a consensus of the current admin community would support reconfirmation in any case. Reading this page, I believe we are stuck. I'd like to be proved wrong. Jusdafax 16:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

• (ec)Per Irri... as long as removing the bit remains nigh impossible and adminship is essentially for life, then bar will remain high.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
• As well as the 49 desysoppings there are also 30 admins who resigned but either arbcom has ruled that they need an RFA to regain the mop, or a crat has ruled so. We don't know how many if any of the other 92 resigned admins would be deemed to have resigned in controversial circumstances if they were to ask for the mop. But to my mind that figure of 79 reinforces the view that Arbcom is more than capable of acting if it needs to, and that any need to reform the way we deal with problem admins is at best a distraction from the issue of their declining numbers. ϢereSpielChequers 16:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. As I mentioned somewhere above, I don't buy that premise. Some admins have been desysopped for committing one "bright line" offense. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:52, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, one admin has been desysopped for committing one "bright line" offense, and that was explicitly temporary. It's not been reversed because the admin in question, er, resigned in disgust at having been blocked without warning. – iridescent 20:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree here that the bar should not be too low, it should even be high. But what I am objecting against is that there are oppose !votes in some of the RfA's that I have looked through where I think, that they are (way) over the top (numbers in this post are TOTALLY arbitrary):

• You even don't have a single DYK!
• You did not create an article and got it to FA
• idem for GA (sometimes with a higher number)
• You did 500 speedy tags, but this one is very wrong
• You never created an article
• You have never voted in an AfD (or fill in your specific field)
• You have never commented on WP:ANI
• You have less than 2000 non-automated edits out of your 5000 edits (which I think is already borderline, those 3000 automated ones must be of the type that can be automated, which means, they are policy/guideline based .. be careful with that counting).
• 'doesn't pass my admin criteria' (where there is a set of criteria similar to some of the criteria earlier in this list; of course, these are often incomplete criteria based on the editors POV).

Those are NON-criteria. Those !votes (which are solely based on this type of reasoning) should be removed on sight (or at least bureaucrat ignored, though it is difficult to ignore if the count crashes below 75%, while most opposers point to the single one mistake that is found), and such editors should not be allowed to vote in that same RfA again. From my own experience, if I (pointy) use similar criteria, then I should oppose all good and maybe suitable editors, because over 99% of the editors have NEVER significantly edited the spam white or spam blacklist (so, in other words, I could explain it as not having a complete view of our core policies WP:NOT and WP:COPYRIGHT, which is needed for being a sysop, right?). In simple words, hardly any candidate would ever pass my 'admin criteria' if I were to add that (and I know, I've seen a case where a very, VERY experienced admin did not have a single clue what the blacklist is for, and why the site they wanted to use was blacklisted! I've started with some admin questions .. :-) ) ...

They should be more (or maybe even better explained):

• Not too much content editing, e.g. no articles created ánd no significant stub expansion ánd not helped in a FA/GA drive, and not helped in any massive rewrite of articles; i.e. most edits are small upgrades.
• Less than 2000 mainspace edits, or less than 2000 non-automated edits out of your 5000 edits, the 3000 automated edits are all typo repairs.
• Not many edits in policy/guideline, or in the pages which relate to that (which includes AfD, ánd UAA, ánd RFPP, ánd the spam black/whitelists)

RfA should be about trust of how the tools are used. It needs a broad overview of the situations, but if single things are missing, that should not be used as a criterion. Also, we all make mistakes, and single mistakes may be a reason to !vote neutral .. but oppose... I mean, if an editor did not make an obvious mistake as an editor, that does not mean they will never make a mistake as an admin anyway; and as I said, editors may get bitten when no admin responds as well (if there starts to be a pile-up of mistakes mentioned in the neutral section, OK). If an editor reverts vandals and reports them to AIV (and when they get reported, most get indeed blocked), but does not participate in AfD discussions, then the former shows that there is quite a broad knowledge of what is policy and guideline.

Put the bar high, but in the current situation there are cases where the !voters are losing sight of realism. If you run a shop, you have to have stock, if you get more clients, you need more stock. If your number of clients is steady, but if your stock is growing, most shops get a problem of storage space (which is not a problem that would occur here, I think), if you keep it level, you're fine .. but if your stock is slowly declining (i.e., faster than the number of clients is declining), you will have to disappoint your customers (and if your number of customers is growing ...). Of course, you can say 'next week I have a new batch, come back next week' .. but some will go shopping at the neighbour. It is not that the backlogs are a problem, but the mere existence of backlogs may already be.

But if I read the above posts correctly (and this is in a way one point I found to personal, Boing! said Zebedee, so that one I omitted, but I can now state it in a more neutral way), the basis of opposing is simply: "I don't trust you enough, I am afraid we might need to be able to remove your bit again, and since we can't, you're not getting it." And actually, this is one that I could put in my list of 'good oppose reasons'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:07, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Excellent proposal. But if you suggest to remove or ignore the votes that you (or the closing crat) don't personally like, than please be also obliged to remove any meaningless or void "yes" votes. It must work both ways. East of Borschov 10:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I do agree, I did not look at that part .. though 'Support - good candidate' is maybe hardly explaining .. it just means that there are no objections found. Any typical Support !votes in mind? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:31, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

It should only have to work both ways once theres parity between the effectivness of support and oppose votes. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:35, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The default is/should be support, in my opinion, unless there are major concerns. I agree with the above in that things like "not enough edits to template space" are rather arbitrary criteria to oppose someone on. Opposes should be based on specific issues with the candidate's attitude or competence rather than some set criteria. The criteria may assist you in highlighting those weaknesses, but shouldn't be a measuring stick of their own accord. When I comment on RfAs, I tend to take out about an hour to read through the candidate's talk page archives and any emails I have, check a few hundred of their contributions, and run through a number of the edit-analysing tools. If any concerns are trivial or nonexistent, you'll always find me in support. I don't tend to go by any one set of criteria because my votes are influenced to a great degree by the general persona that the candidate conveys, and this can be the turning point for a candidate that otherwise ticks all the boxes, so to speak. sonia♫ 10:42, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Sonia, it is not to say that one could not have a properly tuned set of 'admin criteria', and those could even be based on the first set of criteria. But if the set contains 10 criteria, and the admin-to-be passes 8 or 9 .. well .. they don't pass all, do they? Opposition is then based on the 1 or 2 they do fail, and how 'bad' they fail it. If that again is coming back to one-criterion opposes (which it does, in a way) .. then it does not make a difference. That first set of criteria can be combined into a proper oppose ('has never created an article, and has never expanded an article in such a way that it resulted in a DYK, and did never work on a FA/GA drive, and .. and ..'). And I am sure, that the opposes that just say 'Oppose, you never had a DYK' often also have concerns in other areas .. but we don't know (or don't they have them?). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Oppose voter must say something convincing. It's just a ritual dance over simple "No trust". It doesn't look good at first sight, but IMO it's precisely how a healthy system should react to adverse, irrational constraints. A plain vote wouldn't work, a fair recall is out of question, the community adjusts accordingly... East of Borschov 11:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. The question is, whilst the tools are given as a package, should the would-be admin need to prove experience with all the areas where the tools are used? Objective evaluation is great to a certain extent but shouldn't be doled out in a one-size-fits-all. I'd be happy to support a candidate with under ten edits to, say, RfPP if they were competent, cautious and quick to learn. But I can think of a number of editors who would probably fit this set of admin criteria nicely that I would not support. The opposes that are "candidate has issues with spelling" should be prepared to clarify the "concerns in other areas"- otherwise, the comment neither helps the candidate improve and fix the concerns, nor helps the bureaucrat evaluate why you think the person is unsuitable. sonia♫ 11:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Dirk Beetstra: your store owner example is quite amusing. You placed the voters into store manager's shoes... but they are more like shoppers. Shoppers on an island - very small island - no choices other than building a raft and sailing away. Not even a box of matches to teach the shop owner a good lesson. This whole page is about shoppers teaching secrets of trade to each other, but the shop is still locked. East of Borschov 11:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

"Fixing" RFA

A lot of discussion has been happening here over the past few days about how the RFA process is broken and that we are losing active admins at an alarming rate because of users having almost impossible standards in the RFA process. I have heard several solutions like probationary adminship and having an easier way to remove administrators along with other solutions to help relieve users' fears about promoting admins that may go rouge. This RFC is to try to find a consensus on how we can fix this problem, or if there is a consensus that there is no problem. Techman224^Talk 20:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I write this we have five "there is a problem" vs nine "there is not a problem". A tiny sample, but so far it looks like there's not a great deal to discuss. – iridescent 21:10, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. There's plenty to discuss. It's just that the discussion won't actually shed any light or have any useful outcome... Pedro :  Chat  21:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's closer to what I meant. The "the sky is falling!" discussion has been going on as long as I've been on Wikipedia; since no change is actually happen unless the lights start going out, there's not a great deal to discuss. – iridescent 21:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If anything, this RFCtag should be moved up to that 'vote'. The opening statement doesn't really give much to go on. –xeno^talk 21:32, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If you want to move the RFC tag to another similar discussion, I have no objection. Techman224^Talk 21:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll leave it, in the naive, optimistic hope that it will attract some brilliant soul who comes up with the answer to RFA, The Universe, and Everything. –xeno^talk 21:54, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry Xeno, you got me instead! As for whether we currently have too few administrators to get needed tasks done, it seems to me that things work reasonably well, but it's a matter of speculation whether more administrators would mean shorter backlogs. From what I see at RfAs, there are always a few people with what I regard as unfair reasons for opposing, but, whenever it gets to more than 20% oppose, there are some legitimate concerns there, whether or not one agrees with those concerns. And I guess I won't surprise anyone by suggesting that, if we could have a better way to remove administrators who turn out to lose the community's trust, those who participate in RfAs would be less likely to be sticklers, and RfAs might become less intimidating. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

• What is needed is a better class of voter. If anyone has ever taken the trouble to analyse who the majority of the 'support' voters are, and who the ones are that ask all the stupid additional so called optional questions; they will realise that the average age is about 17 (with some only 11 or 12) and a great many of the voters have talk pages full of warnings, blocks, and CSD notices. It's like having a bunch of prison inmates on the jury of a high court trial. We don't need a set of higher or lower standards for adminship, what we need is a set of qualifications for voting on RfA., so that candidates can be sure of getting a fair trial. That said, generally those who should be promoted will be, and those who shouldn't will fail. But there are still too many borderline cases where the judges might make the wrong decisionL.--Kudpung (talk) 22:25, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you give examples of these voters with warnings, blocks and CSD notices? I've not noticed inexperienced voters, mostly admins or admin hopefuls. How exactly would you have qualifiers anyway? Paralympiakos (talk) 22:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems that you want to set an age when people can vote. That would be discrimination and I don't think the community (or even Jimbo Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation) would not allow it. Plus it will discourage young editors from Wikipedia. Judge them by their contributions, not their age. Techman224^Talk 23:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

You can find out about the voters by running the same checks as I do: the same ones you would make when voting on an RfA; ie, maturity, longevity, quality of prose, editing accuracy, sense of judgement, etc.
I do not necessary make an issue of age, it's often a lack of maturity that concerns me most. if lack of maturity goes with low age, then I suppose some will insist that it is simply an unfortunate coincidence. However, a review of the RfAs this year will probably show a trend as to who passes and who fails, and who the regular voters are. Probably the first and most interesting execrcise is to analyse the Oppose votes on RfAs that are absolute clear passes, and the Support votes on RfAs that are quite obviously doomed to fail. --Kudpung (talk) 05:19, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

* We need a community process for either desysopping, or at least sanctioning administrators that is not subject to a popularity contest. Good administrators in controversial areas will be unpopular to someone - that's why the admin community tends to oppose proposals for Requests for Desysopping.

* We need a common standard for eligibility, even if that standard is a minimum - I really think that only issues of misconduct/questionable editing/incivility should have a chance to get aired in an RFA. I've watched this process transform over my almost 6 years on and off the project from "no big deal" to something on the order of senate confirmation for a supreme court post. That's serious policy creep.

I think those are the big concerns. Fix those and RFA will start working as it should (Add: If anything, the length of this debate - it's been going on for years now, demonstrates the utter lack of consensus. I don't think we can question anymore if there is something wrong - if there wasn't, this debate would have died off. The question is what's wrong.. Triona (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Your first bullet point includes some things I think are important: a "community process", and "not subject to a popularity contest". The "popularity contest" issue was a major factor in sinking CDA, not, I would now admit, without good reason. I tend to think now that ArbCom would have to have the decision-making authority, but we need to have a better "community process" to get the case placed before ArbCom. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I am looking at what the German Wikipedia does here. They do have a dispute process which is equivalent to our RFC for admin disputes. Now for serious abuse, they can temporary revoke the admin rights for up to three months after community discussion and then have another discussion for permanent de-admin if they abuse them again within 12 months. We should look at how the German Wikipedia handles this. Techman224^Talk 01:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

There are two group on wikipedia that have a very high standard for confirmation, arguably higher than that for adminship - ArbCom and Bureaucrats. As such, these are likely the groups that are best suited to handle desysopping. I'd propose something like, a 'crat can certify a petition for desysopping based on the merits of the petition, rather than on the number of petitioners. Once certified, a panel of a given size of 'crats (selected somehow) reviews evidence, and makes a determination. as to whether desysopping is justified, with possibility to reprimand, temporarily desysop, or a full desysopping in exceptional cases. Sanctions of this type would be strictly for abuse of privileged functions - normal editor conduct rules and processes should apply to everything else. Desysopping actions would be subject to review and appeal to arbcom, and arbcom would retain the sole authority to create a disability from ever applying for adminship again. The right of appeal of permanent desyssopping by an admin so sanctioned would exist - and there would be a requirement for a full arbcom investigation if so demanded by that admin. Triona (talk) 01:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like what ArbCom does right now. The problem is that they can take a month or more to reach a decision. If this would to have any chance of working, there must be a system in place that lets ArbCom or Bureaucrats (or whatever group) make a decision more quickly (like in a week), and then implement those decisions. You would also need to create policies that define what is allowed and not allowed in a petition, and prevent abuse of the system. They should also have already tried the dispute resolution process before using this as a last resort. Techman224^Talk 02:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Our bureaucrats don't have a whole lot of responsibilities beyond permission requests. With a requirement that one of them deem the petition worthy of investigation, it's still going to have a high burden to even get the hearing, but if it's something that warrants one, I think we can trust that it will happen in reasonable timeframes. I'd also support emergency desysopping within such a policy once the petition has been "certified", for a reasonable duration to investigate if the activity in the complaint continues or if the abuse otherwise escalates. As for what can deserve such a sanction, verifiable patterns of abusive behavior that have defied dispute resolution or which are flagrant ongoing violations of policy Triona (talk) 03:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok. Here's a rough rough draft - User:Triona/Proposal for bureaucrat mediated administrator review Triona (talk) 04:04, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

RFA and De-Adminship Survey

It looks like the discussion is heading towards a way on desysop admins who abuse their tools. I have a feeling that lots of people have high RFA standards because it is nearly impossible to remove them unless they do something very serious, and even that could take a long time (as we see in ArbCom). So I want to start a survey that may help decide what we should do next. For the people who constantly oppose because of high standards or if you find some mistakes (everyone makes mistakes sometimes), is this because your afraid because it is hard to remove admins that are already added, and that if we have a procedure to remove admins in a timely manor, would your standards for RFA become more relaxed? Techman224^Talk 04:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe

• My standards are already relaxed, but I participate infrequently in RFA. 1) do they have decent rationale for wanting tools 2) is there evidence they will abuse them 3) do they have at least enough good edits and time on the project to outweigh the damage they could cause if the account proves to be a "submarine" vandal wanting tools for some nefarious purpose (balance of effort issue). If I like the answer to all 3, I'll support, otherwise, I'll oppose. Triona (talk) 05:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

My view...

(cross posting from the Signpost talk page)

I really disagree that there is a problem. Yes, numbers may be slightly dropping. So what? Is there any evidence that CSD's are taking longer? Users take longer to be blocked? Pages go longer unprotected? Until I see substantial evidence that any of these are happening, I don't think that there is a drought. We're in the age of editing tools now. There's less admins because there are more rollbackers. There's less admins because a few can do a lot more work than they did 3 years ago. I'm also convinced that always taking a negative view on this is unhealthy for Wikipedia and the RfA environment. (X! · talk)  · @216  ·  04:11, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The problem at RFA is that it's a mean-spirited poop-throwing contest, not that it's passing a lower number of requestors than it used to. You'll get more admins if you get more people to run, and you'll only do that by improving the blighted process and turning it into a straight vote with discussion / optional questions separately confined to the discussion page. (I know, it's a non-starter for the "voting is evil" crowd, but the current discussion-oriented process generates vitriol far out of proportion to its value.) Townlake (talk) 04:56, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

That hits it on the head. People are afraid to run because of the mudslinging and irrational "rationale" of participants. Triona (talk) 05:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

This brings up a good point. Given that Wikipedia administrative work has been expanding (by how much?), is each administrator doing more work now than in the past, in terms of administrative actions per month? Has adminship indeed transformed from a "level up" and "no big deal" to an obligation to take up the mop and divert a serious amount of work from content creation into overhead tasks? I know that it has been exactly that in my case. Jclemens (talk) 05:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I think what many believe to be a higher bar is one that is artificially set by nonense and/or deliberately tricky 'optional' questions. Many of the posers of those questions might not know what to do themselves.

I'll try to qualify my feeling on Townlake's post: Yes, it's definitely it's a mean-spirited poop-throwing contest; and yes, it's definitely a popularity contest. Many of the voters often seem to fall into one or the other of those two categories, and the handful of intelligent votes and comments by regular, serious, mature editors are overwhelmed by the uncommentated pile-on supports or opposes. I see no reason why totally uncommented supports should be given credence, where the opposers are dragged through the mire and suffer as much humiliation as the candidates. What is happening is that not only are fewer experienced editors running for office, but fewer experienced editors are motivated to even vote on the RfAs.
And that's why the system is broken. It's not a fair process. Candidates are not judged on the good work they do. If you've tagged someone in the past, they'll hold it against you and vote against you - those can ammount to hundreds. if you've made one single minor error of judgement in pasting a db template, you'll be dragged across a bed of nails for it - it doesn't matter that for every CSD you've issued, you've actually saved ten other pages from extinction by spending hours doing WP:BEFORE. The selection system for admins is the single, weakest feature of the entire en.Wikipedia. It needs a higher bar, but one that is objectively set, and a voting system of sysops in camera, and closure by a consensus of at least three crats. Do that, and remove the stigma of self nom, and we'll have a flood of new applicants. These are just my opinions and should of course be taken with a pinch of salt.--Kudpung (talk) 06:50, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd have to agree that Rfa's often seem to feature a lot of over-the-top vituperation that discourages prospective candidates. Heck, I've been threatened before I have stood for a !vote! Jusdafax 08:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The only feasible way to reduce the mean spirited negativity that infects RfA is to lower the passing threshold. Letting a single oppose counter 3 supporters favors the negative view. Negative comments are lent emotional force by the fact it so easy for opposers to block a RfA its because negative remarks are so easily coupled with what can feel like a formal community rejection that even mature and strong minded folk find failing an RFA harrowing.

Despite the excellent presentation by WSC and others, some seem to take the view that we need bullet proof that the declining admin Corps is hurting the project before we act. Fair enough, if a systems working the burden of proof is generally on those who want to change. In this case though, its those blocking a minor change in process who are taking the project into new and uncharted territory. Just because the rise in the number of opposers and the decline of active admins has been gradual, this doesnt mean it hasnt been a substantial change. The enlightened conservative approach to preserve the status quo would have been to scale down the threshold.

Rather than let skeptics frame the debate, they could perhaps be invited to provide evidence that relaxing the threshold would hurt the project. To my knowledge the few notable bad admins have mostly been elected by clear margins. Granted, bad admin actions can drive off good content writers, but this is no reason to oppose lowering the bar if theres no significant correlation between bad admins and passing by a narrow threshold. Intuitively, admin abuse is more likely to arise from a group thats over busy and where power is concentrated due to it being too small. Whether or not we get consensus on this page, I hope someone will soon start a Village Pump / Centralized discussion to see what the wider community thinks. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:31, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The point that has been missed is that there is no threshold. Any threshold is determined by the voters in each individual case. Take for example a (not so ) hypothetical case where a 14 year old is determined to become an admin. He/she canvasses all his/her classmates and rapidly you have a 80/20 consensus in favour of election. The closing crat is going to feel obliged to promote the candidate. The net result is that we do in fact have several extremely obnoxious teenage admins whose mop handle has gone totally to their heads, and causing mature , experience content writers to abandon ship.--Kudpung (talk) 11:24, 11 August 2010 (UTC)