Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Another way to present RFA as a vote.

This is a bit more complicated, but perhaps more fair way to approach RFA:

• The tally at the top would be removed.
• Each RFA would have one support section, and an oppose section for each objection.
• Each oppose section would be considered seperately with the single support section, with the current discretionary process, as if each oppose section combined with the single support section constitutes a single RFA "discussion"
• If none of the objections are strong enough, when considered individually against the supports, the RFA succeeds.

The net effect of this is that objections most of us would consider trivial will have little impact, as they won't gather enough consensus to override the supports, but strong objections should prevail.

Any thoughts on this one? - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 05:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I like this proposal. — Werdna talk criticism 06:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I worry that doing this could skew the process in favor of the unthinking and careless by giving even trivial objections undue prominence. For instance someone could object that someone had performed fewer than 100 edits in project space (which is really a pretty fatuous objection) but under this scheme the objection would get its own section. --Tony Sidaway 06:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

But would such a trivial objection as this get enough "votes" to override the supports when considered with the total weight of the supports? If only say, 4 people share a particular objection, against say 60 supports, that objection is effectively nullified. If on the other hand 30 people were to oppose versus 60 support, it would be a different story. I still think this helps turn aside the more trivial objections, even though it would give them more visibility. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 06:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think that if enough weight is given to a trivial objection it may acquire a spurious legitimacy over time. I don't see the advantage of doing it this way, in any case. We're not supposed to be into voting, so why would we want to go out of our way to make RFA into a vote? --Tony Sidaway 08:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the gist of what Steph's going into here is that each objection has a little miniature straw poll associated with it — and if an important enough objection stands up to a straw poll, then it can preclude them from adminship. I also think that opposing an objection should distinguish between Oppose as invalid concern and Oppose as irrelevant to adminship. — Werdna talk criticism 08:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Tony, I agree that it shouldn't be a vote, but like most "discussions", they attain the de-facto status of being a vote. I don't like it, but if that's what its going to be, lets at least fix the process so that frivolous concerns aren't given any weight. This would do that I think, because the supports would apply to the entire RFA - you would need a single objection to endorsed by enough users that they offset the supports, going by current standards by at least 20%, possibly by as much as 40%. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Ideological concerns about whether voting is evil or not should not be the issue here. It is quite possible that a "pure voting"-style RfA would do a good job at weeding out unsuitable candidates, while not turning into a rehashing of old arguments or a general policy discussion like current RfAs do. Most of the unpleasantness of current RfAs comes from the discussions, I think. It is quite possible that we lose good candidates who are not interested in this ordeal. Kusma (討論) 09:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree discussions can be unnecessarily hostile, but I think most people use the discussion to help form their view. Also, a pure vote could be gamed too easily. Stephen B Streater 09:25, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Many other language Wikipedias have pure votes, and their suffrage requirements seem to prevent gaming of the system. Kusma (討論) 10:30, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarification:

• The tally at the top would be removed.
• Each RFA would have a single support section.
• Objections could be raised, each in their own section, each consisting of a statement of why the RFA should not succeed. (Each objection could raise one or more reasons)
• Each objection raised could be endorsed by one or more users.
• At the conclusion of the RFA, each objection is seperately weighed against the total weight of the support "votes". If any objection can stand on its own with enough endorsements to counter the support votes, the RFA fails.

The net effect of this is that the burden to oppose is a lot higher. You need one objection that is strong enough on its own to turn down the user for adminship. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This is actually a lot more like consensus in some ways (at least the way I teach it), in that once an objection is made, it becomes up to the group to decide whether or not that particular objection is enough to block the proposal from moving forward. It doesn't "belong" to that one user anymore. (In the current system, we're very susceptible to "object per above", where the opinions above include valid, invalid, and insane reasons for opposing). That said, I'm not sure this is a good idea in toto, but it does make me want to revisit the "Discuss for a few days, then !vote for a few days" idea that got discarded when Discussions for adminship sank this spring. -- nae'blis 15:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The tendency with these proposals seems to be leading towards a process we already have; each successive proposal looks more and more like Requests for Comment. Perhaps we have the adminship method we need already? --ais523 07:47, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we do. RFC is a better model, and a model that we could strengthen for dealing with other issues as well. It may even be a valid model for sorting out this mess, as I recall policy can be RFC'd - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 06:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

1000 admins - some stats

The number of admin actions performed by each active admin in each month (on average)

The number of admins who performed at least one administrative action in each week

The number of admin actions performed per week, by number of admins

I was inspired when the admin clock recently ticked over 1000 to do some research into how many admins are actually active. As you'd expect, there are not really 1000 admins doing admin actions. The methodology was simple - get a list of admins from Special:Listusers/sysop and for each admin, retrieve and analyse all their admin logs (see me for the script or the data). For some reason, admin logs do not exist before 23/12/2004, and for ease I rounded the dates to actions between 01/01/2005 and 31/08/2006 inclusive - a period of 20 months. What follows is an analysis of active admins and their admin actions between those dates. It includes 1,388,273 admin actions. Admin actions are simply defined as: block, unblock, delete, restore, protect, and unprotect. It does not include other admin priviledges such as editing protected pages, nor non-admin actions such as commenting at AN/I or uploading images, nor additional rights such as bureaucrat actions. If a user has sysop rights and performed one of the admin actions then they are included here. See me for further methodological details.

This may not be the right place to describe this research, but since this is the main place where the number of admins is determined, I think it is appropriate to feed it into the other stats that have appeared here. Perhaps voters should be forced to read it before they reject applicants for "missing one edit summary" or "no featured article", and perhaps bureaucrats should read it before determining consensus in such cases. That is my hope anyway. Wikipedia needs more admins. This research however is objective and impartial (see me for details). Here are the prelimary results:

The number of admins active (have made at least one administrative action) since 1 Jan 2005 is 941. The number who have made an administrative action since 1 Jan 2006 is 873. The number who have made an action in the last two months is 705. In the last month (Aug 2006), 628 admins have made an administrative action. There were 232 admins active in January 2005. See graph for the weekly trend.

In terms of the number of admin actions, in January 2005 there were 19,101 actions (consisting mainly of 16,598 (87%) deletions), and in Aug 2006 there were 149,007 actions (consisting mainly of 123,413 (83%) deletions). Therefore in January 2005 each active admin performed on average some 82.33 actions, and in August 2006 the active admins performed some 237.27 actions each (per month). See graph for the trend.

As you'd imagine, the workload among admins is not spread evenly. Amazingly, the most prolific admin has performed 32,986 actions (mainly 31,952 deletions) since 22 June 2006. Only one admin has more actions to their name, at 33,500 (mainly 26,558 blocks, and 5,148 deletions) but this has taken over 74 weeks to achieve. Over half of all admin actions since Jan 2005 have been made by just 59 admins, and three-quarters of all admin actions have been made by just 169 admins. In order to take the length of time each user has been an admin into account we can calculate weekly and monthly rates. Only 147 admins average above 70 actions per week (the current average). Coincidentally, 147 admins average just one action per week or fewer, and 460 admins have averaged 10 or fewer actions per week since they were sysopped (this does not include admins who haven't done an action since Jan 2005 (inactive admins)). See graph for distribution.

I will leave it there for the moment. There is plenty more where this came from. Please ask me if you want the data or more specific analysis or details. Employ more admins. Discuss. Jim182 13:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I personally think the last one is funny. ;) Highway ^Daytrippers 13:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Note - I had to 'top' that graph at 1000 because of the single admin who averages 3000 per week (mainly image deletions) - the only one to average above 1000 actions. Without such adjustment the graph would look even funnier ;-) Jim182 14:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• If easy to do, could you plop the data on a subpage in your user space?
  This data looks good to me. A lot of admin actions take thinking and consideration. It is a mistake to measure the value of admins by the number of actions. I loved Curps' bot when it was around, but it would have been a mistake to assume each action that bot took was of equal value to all other admin actions. These graphs show that we have 500 to 600 admins who are doing good work. Part time admins are just as needed as full time ones, this is a volunteer project afterall. This looks very good, almost all admins are doing work except the ones that are actually on semi-active or inactive status. Excellent. NoSeptember 14:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I have dumped the relevant parts of the data here. I would also like to congratulate the active admins for a sterling job - the best indicator for that is the (low?) number of de-sysoppings or complaints against admin actions. This data has no relevance to that quality measure. As I said, this study was objective, but it does lead me to think what I thought before - that we need more admins. These stats really show one thing clearly - an increasing workload for each (of a select few) admin, and a quite-prominent levelling-off of the number of active admins depite ever-increasing articles and editors (and stuff to delete). Jim182 15:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Is editing fully protected pages included in your counts? This is an admin action as well. --Ligulem 23:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I mentioned above that it is not. The reasons are mainly methodological, since these edits are not recorded in the action logs, but equally they are likely to represent a small number as editing fully protected pages is in many cases discouraged. Additionally, it is unlikely to affect the number of active admins (since in most cases the editing admin is quite likely to have been involved in protecting the page). Nor have I included Wikimedia edits, viewing deleted histories, nor edits such as "do that again and I'll block you - I'm an admin don't you know", for similar reasons. It would have been nice to include them, but they are unlikely to affect the trends seen here. Jim182 00:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry. My bad. I didn't read carefully. Nice data presentation. Per the editing protected pages I was thinking about fully protected templates and editing in the MediaWiki namespace. These things tend to get overlooked. There are not only articles that must be maintained. More and more templates are getting used broadly and more of them are fully protected. --Ligulem 11:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You could measure our use of rollback. Just look at our contributions and count them. hee hee hee ;). NoSeptember 02:56, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

This is really interesting data, Jim. Thanks for taking the time to compile all this. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Define the problems first?

I think from comments by User:Durin and others that we need to define exactly what problems we have with RFA now. I think that the best way to do that is probably by subsections under this, with commentary under each subsection, so that as we progress we can see the whole list of problems clearly. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 21:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(I've started with a couple observations, PLEASE ADD MORE) - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 21:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

"Adminship shouldn't be a big deal"

Somewhere along the line, the "adminship is no big deal" text was removed from RFA. It really isn't a big deal, as admin actions are reversable. The process we have now resembles senate confirmation hearings. Its too complex, too political, and fails to focus on the main issue, which should be trust. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 21:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

That is, unfortunately, not the case (as a number of quite recent situations have amply demonstrated). While blocks may be reversible in the technical sense (although there are some subtleties even in this regard), the personal effects of being blocked on the subject of the block are often not. A great many of our problems seem to stem from certain administrators believing that blocking someone is "no big deal" and acting accordingly. Kirill Lokshin 21:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

In what way do you think people are getting rejected that does not relate to trust? Some people don't trust users with low edit counts, others don't trust users with civility problems, maturity issues for others and yet others lack of knowledge re: copyright etc. All of these relate to a lack of trust. The one criteria that might be questionable is 1FA but even those users invoke it as they don't trust a candidates editing knowledge enough for them to be an admin. Qualities in a editor that cause you trust some one are not necessarily reflected by others. Are there any good examples of RfA candidates being blackballed for a political reason? David D. (Talk) 03:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Experience and trust are two seperate things. Editors and admins with lack of experience make mistakes. Mistakes are no big deal, we revert them, discuss them, and move on. Trust is an issue of whether or not we expect someone to use the tools maliciously or abusively. There is a relationship between the two, but an editor with less experience may be very much trustworthy. The worst an admin can do accidently isn't very much - the worst an admin can do maliciously, well that's another story. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 04:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Further... meatball:PrincipleOfFirstTrust and WP:AGF should be required reading here. Trust and good faith should be the default in a Wiki. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 04:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I would still like to see an example of an RfA that you think was unfair due to politics. What kind of potential admins are not gettng through the process? Also, AGF and trust could mean very different things to various people. You're of the opinon that anyone that can edit and has shown trustworthy behaviour should be an admin, others have a higher bar. There is nothing that makes that higher bar unreasonable. David D. (Talk) 05:28, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it's wrong for me to use my self as an example, but: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/AzaToth _→AzaToth 15:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Not wrong, i'll take a look at it. David D. (Talk) 15:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out Ambuj.Saxena's RfA. — Werdna talk criticism 06:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The lines between rejection, no consensus, and acceptance are too blurry

I think this was an intentional part of the design, since this was originally not supposed to be a vote, however, with RFA having long ago turned into a de-facto voting process by its participants, this now causes heated debates whenever someone doesn't agree with the closing 'crat's interpetation of the discussion. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 21:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the line should be left blurred. One of this great things about Wikipedia (in all aspects) is that rules are not set in stone. Wikipedia is not mechanical (i.e. if the bar is set at 80% for consensus and the editor gets 79.9999% approval, the RfA fails), and should be allowed a decent range for individual interpretation. --physicq210 21:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. What's the problem with heated debates? If you get annoyed, discuss it. Ral315 (talk) 05:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

it is intentionally left to the bureaucrats to make an informed good faith decision. this has worked very well in the past. The guidelines to be observed by the bureaucrats is that 80% is sufficient for a consensus. I believe it happens more often that a 75% result is taken as a "successful" RFA than a 85% as a "failed" one, althogh both would in principle be arguable. Bureaucrats should be very careful not to indulge in opaque or partisan decisions. It wouldn't hurt to impose solid limits of 70%-90% on their good judgement: it would be very hard to justifiy failure in the face of a >90% result, or "success" in the face of a <70% majority. This did not need pointing out in the past, and in the sprit of "don't fix it unless it is broken", things worked fine. But now we have a precedent of bureaucrats considering a 61% majority a "success", so this needs to be addressed. Either RFAs are simple majority votes, in which case 61% is obviously good enough, or we stick with the "consensus" system, in which case it obviously isn't. Seeing that we are not in desperate needs of more admins, I think it would be a terrible mistake to move from "ca. 80% consensus" to "simple majority". And if bureaucrats begin to make too much of their power to interpret results, it will sadly be necessary to impose on it a fixed limit (such as the 70-90% range I mentioned). dab (ᛏ) 08:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I hate to be pedantic - consensus isn't about a defined value, its about general agreement on the action to take. Simple majority would mean 50% or greater. "Supermajority" is usally defined proceedurally as either 2/3 (66%) or more depending on the voting body. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Admin accountability

I believe that the RfA process is under many pressures partly because there is no similar organized way to hold admins accountable for their actions or desysopp them if necessary. If we answer this latter question, we will see more people ready to say "adminship is no big deal." The consensus issue will also become less sensitive, and I'm sure that stuff like the Carnildo affair won't happen. To get the ball rollin':

1. Blocks are serious, last resort measures. It can be useful to desysopp an admin who has been blocked (justifiably) by a fellow admin, but for just like a week or so to allow him/her to cool off - this is different than the "cool off" mandated by blocks themselves. The second block should result in a 30-day "cool off," and the third block should lead to desysopping.
2. WP:ANI should also become a place where admins can receive advice and suggestions on how to perform potentially sensitive tasks. There are many admins who aren't abusive but simply make a mistake - they need immediate guidance of more experienced admins.
3. Maybe a bureaucrat's committee can be created (subordinate to ArbCom) to look into cases concerning proposal no. 1 and cases of serious admin abuse. Rama's arrow 10:23, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
4. Perhaps admins should be encouraged/required to hold an editor review each year to receive suggestions and criticism.
5. More and more admins should be encouraged/required to help at Admin Coaching. This way, they get to improve themselves and learn how to help others.
6. Promote greater teamwork and coordination between admins. If you create a WikiProject Admintasks or a similar device to inform/coordinate admins on backlogs and serious issues, we will see greater efficiency as well as a culture in which admins don't feel compelled to make sensitive decisions themselves, in their own interpretation of policy. Rama's arrow 10:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

That said, this process should not revolve around the question of desysopping. Rather how admins can improve and learn. The same for RfA - every productive editor is a prospective admin, so the process should encourage learning instead of creating a contest, vote-like atmosphere. Rama's arrow 10:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think (1) and (3) are unnecessary, Arbcom is sufficient for such things. (2) sounds good. (4) has been discussed before and won't work - there are over 1000 admins, assuming each review takes a week, that means there will be around 20 going on at any given time. It works for smaller wikipedias but en is just too big. I'm open to pursuasion on the last 2, but I'm not sure they would have any great effect. --Tango 11:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually (5) and (6) are the more-difficult-to-implement points. (1) is necessary - there needs to be a line in the sand even for the most experienced admins. I think (1) is quite liberal in permitting as many as 2 blockings. I feel admins should be the last people here to have to be blocked. Rama's arrow 11:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

How would being desysopped help you cool off? Usually it's arguments and name-calling that cause people to heat up. This wouldn't address that problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

We need an active role for bureaucrats in this - it is important that they act in a system of checks and balances. Rama's arrow 11:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a need for fixed penalties - if an admin is getting blocked, then it's not routine and shouldn't be treated as routine. I think ArbCom should be left to decide punishments on a case by case basis as they do now.

Bureaucrats were selected to assess community opinion, not to be any kind of decision making body. ArbCom were selected for that purpose, so that's the body we should use for it. --Tango 12:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

My dear sir, reform has to start firmly. We need change, and we need to do what's necessary. Now I don't really care if we enact (1) or not, but the reform will be effective only if there is a line admins musn't cross at any cost. We can't expect the problem to rectify itself. Rama's arrow 12:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

There is also a set of suggestions proposed by Dab at WP:VPP. Rama's arrow 12:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Pasted from WP:VPP:

• we need a working WP:RFDA. We may not have needed it in the past, but we do now.
• CAT:AOR should be understood as a matter of course. Admins too enamoured with their position of power, or too deluded with their own importance to subscribe to this shouldn't keep their buttons.
• IRC is not part of WP. An editor's merits and admin-worthiness are exclusively a function of their on-wiki work and behaviour.
• admins are WP editors trusted with some minimal good judgement. Tendencies to re-cast them as some sort of separate caste need to be firmly countered. Admins who have ceased to see themselves as members of the community of editors should hand in their mop.

dab (ᛏ) 12:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• CAT:AOR is meaningless. By its present wording, an admin "open to recall" may decide suffrage in whatever way he likes, and if six people "with suffrage" want his recall he can still do whatever he likes, e.g. open an RFC on himself (but RFCs have no power to enforce anything) or send the matter to RFAr (which is doubly meaningless since (1) you cannot open an RFAr on yourself, and (2) it doesn't take six people to open an arbitration case). >Radiant< 18:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The core of CAT:AOR is that its members "are willing to stand for re-confirmation of adminship if six editors in good standing request it." The peripheral aspects—the precise definition of "good standing" and venue for reconfirmation—are flexible, but members are expected to interpret them in good faith. Proposals for rigid, mandatory recall have a poor track record; CAT:AOR has survived and flourished because it is voluntary and flexible. As it grows and as we learn from experience what works and what doesn't, it may be desirable to set more specific criteria. But even now, good-faith membership in CAT:AOR is an important and meaningful commitment, and I commend any admin who undertakes it. Tim Smith 04:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Any RFDA proposal that makes desysopping a popularity contest is inherently flawed. Administrators will often be expected to perform actions that make them unpopular. I strongly agree that administrators are expected to be part of the community and function well within it, but to expect that every good-faith administrative action will be agreed with by the community is unreasonable.

There are currently several areas of policy where community consensus doesn't necessarily apply. WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, WP:NPA, m:Right to vanish, m:Privacy policy, WP:C are among these policies - actions under them, if technically correct, aren't necessarily subject to public opinion, and there are cases where a position and course of action that violates these policies will be defended by popular support. Part of an administrator's job *IS* to enforce these rules, regardless of whether or not the community wants them to apply to a particular case. There are only a handful of administrators willing to get their hands dirty in such matters, but it is essential for the integrity of an encyclopedia that we have, and follow such rules, and administrators should not be subject to deadminship simply for following policy in good faith, regardless of how contentious the particular application is.

The current WP:RFAr mechinisms work, as does emergency action by a steward in the case of mass-disruption or security matters. I see no need to change this, although I do see a strong need for involving administrators in, and making administrators subject to dispute resolution. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 04:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Tim, I get that and it's a good idea in theory, but to me it seems that in practice it doesn't really work that way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiant! (talk • contribs) 08:39, 26 September 2006 UTC (UTC)

RFA is often a grudge match

Rather than being a test of whether or not someone can be trusted with the tools, its often a place where anyone with a grudge comes to air it, and people seem to hold grudges for a long time. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Pile-ons

One problem facing RfA at the moment is that of a pile-on; there are too many votes saying the same thing. Votes which don't bring up new points may be useful in gauging the proportion of RfA regulars who approve of a candidate, but they aren't very usefull in determining consensus. This is especially true of support votes; normally there isn't anything to say but 'per nom' or just 'Support', but the proportion of support to oppose votes is what matters in deciding the decision. --ais523 15:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Spurious reasoning

Occasionally, there are RfA votes based on reasoning much of the community would disagree with (the parody 200MWTE condition somewhere in the WT:RFA archives explains this better). It isn't clear how much discretion is allowed in ignoring these, or even whether it's fair to ignore them. This is especially true with spurious-vote pile-ons (for instance, inexperienced users opposing a candidate due to the candidate enforcing policy they didn't like); whilst rare, RfA would be better if this sort of thing didn't skew the outcome of votes. (One possible solution would be to move to a less vote-based system.) --ais523 15:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Insufficient research by participants

Many participants do little more than a cursory glance of the RfA before making their opinions known. This results in ill-informed decisions based on spurious, non-existent, or contextless evidence. Moving away from voting is a solution to this problem. — Werdna talk criticism 15:07, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm the opposite in that regard; I often do quite a bit of research and then can't make up my mind and don't vote. You have made a valid point, though; this is probably the reason why the fixed percentage that is designated to mean 'consensus' isn't lower. There are still too many users who have a fixed list of standards based on edit counts or suchlike, and just use various tools to find out whether the candidate satisfies them. (This is why recently, when I've use my counter on an adminship candidate, I've been generating diffs (encourages research and highlights areas) rather than just counting (even a detailed count isn't enough, and counts stifle further research).) I agree that moving away from voting will solve this problem more or less altogether. --ais523 15:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Lack of hard standards

The current adminship process is confused by the lack of firm standards for qualification. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Drift in standards

The unofficial "standards" of qualification drift increasingly torwards tougher and tougher requirements, with little rationale, and tougher standards tend to get adopted by participants over time without understanding if they are needed or why they are needed - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Removal of administrators

The process for removing administrators, while established, isn't well understood by the community, and is seen as an extraordinary measure. The percieved difficulty in removing an administrator leads many participants in the process to be overly critical, since adminship is rarely taken away. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

RFA as RFC

In response to a comment that a lot of the proposals are starting to look like RFC, I started on a mockup of what an RFA modeled after RFC would look like here. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 07:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Some RfAs do look like RfCs, but not all. Perhaps the RfC bit would be better suited to the talk page to allow for the more usual simple format where applicable. Stephen B Streater 09:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that defeats the purpose. RFC combines structured discussion with simple endorsement "voting" (I hate that word, but I'll call it that for sake of argument) of which statements apply. This would make it a lot clearer to see what the issues at work are, and a lot more readable, while being less vote-like. It would increase visibility for minor viewpoints, but it would also keep their relative strength in check. Most importantly, the RFC style helps keep temperatures down, by helping to keep discussion from progressing past debate into heated arguments and disruptive disputes, simply by keeping threaded discussions to a minimum on the RFC page itself. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 10:26, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Any more comments on this? I'm somewhat inclined to post it on VPP shortly. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• Just the same objections I've raised for every other proposal that's been brought forth here of late; it's a shot in the dark unless substantial work is done to evaluate where we are and where we want to be with RfA. It's just as likely to cause harm as it is to make things better. --Durin 13:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we need some evaluation here before we make sweeping change. I don't see how this can make things any worse though. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It solves my main problems with RfA (the 'support' votes rarely have much content, and can drown out a valid 'oppose' vote, and spurious opposes happen based on things like unrealistic standards). --ais523 09:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Two?

Do my eyes deceive me or are there only two concurrent RfAs? Are we running low on good candidates? -- tariqabjotu 22:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, yeah. I think people are just busy. Yanksox 22:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'll give it a whirl, but I'm not sure it would pass... - Mike 22:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'd wait a bit. People will find fault with 1700 edits in 10 months. Not saying I would, but a number of people would. --Durin 22:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That's an average of 5 or 6 edits a day.. and that's considered "bad"? - jc37 22:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't disagree with you, but based on recent history I can guarantee there'd be oppose votes based on that. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. That's why I'm hesitant. I have very much imcreased my activity level lately though. I didn't really plan on going for the mop before I got over the 2,000 plateau. There shouldn't be, but there are a lot of editcountitis votes on RfAs. - Mike 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• See, that's exactly why I proposed a mandatory suffrage for candidates that is reasonable, so that people won't make up their own that is not. >Radiant< 22:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• And it's ok for people to make up what standards they want. For us to blanket them would be wrong, and sets a bar that will always rise. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps now is the time for existing admins to put themself up for confirmation... do I see any volunteers? :) --ALoan (Talk) 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with reconfirmation is scalability. It's always been a problem, and will remain a problem. From my chair, one of the chief problems we have at RfA is the difficulty in analyzing a candidate unknown to you. This is exacerbated by what is usually (this week is a rare exception) a long list of 10-20 candidates up at any given time. We now have in excess of 1,000 admins. We know from the stats above that at least 450 of them are actively using their abilities. If we forced reconfirmation of all admins, we'd add another 9 RfAs per week to the list. I'm not in favor of admins being above community desire, but expressing that desire by forcing yearly confirmations is a process fraught with problems with scalability. --Durin 22:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking of starting a thread exactly titled "Two?". After a year-and-a-half I've literally never seen this. It would be interesting to correlate admin growth with absolute and/or percentage article growth on the Wiki itself (Durin, you do enough, but I'm thinking of you ;). Not to draw too broad a conclusion from one look at RfA, but a plateau here might indicate a larger plateau. Marskell 23:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• What in particular are you looking for? Ratio of articles to admins? That ratio has slowly increased over the last couple of years. Slowly. --Durin 23:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• You're probably looking for one of the first four graphs here. -- tariqabjotu 03:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Strangely the backlogs are probably somewhat better than normal at the moment.Geni 01:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's definitely not typical. Michael 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say everybody's sick and tired of the stupid bullshit that goes on on RfA. I think it's time for reform. — Werdna talk criticism 05:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

OK then. Present a specific problem that needs reformation, give a solution, and we'll consider it. Don't just make blanket statements like that. --tjstrf 05:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

See Triona's section above. That, and the fact that it is very harsh on candidates. As for solutions, there are a variety sitting around on this page. — Werdna talk criticism 06:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• See also this essay on the matter. >Radiant< 07:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of essays in all sorts of places (this, for instance; subpages of other users; various Wikipedia policy proposals, etc). It is clear that there are issues that need to be addressed with adminning (and de-adminning). The problem is building a sufficient head of steam, and consensus, to do something about it. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

{{sofixit}}. >Radiant< 10:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Sofixit? Well, I am entirely happy to unilaterally impose my "solution" on the community if that it what you really want, but I rather suspect that others might like to have some input into the process. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is, there are at least five proposals along these lines in Wikispace. If you think this is important, you can generate a head of steam from there using the best parts of all five. In my experience whenever there are multiple proposals for something, most of them are way too complex. Witness Wikipedia:AfD_reform as complex, and WP:PROD as a simple end result. >Radiant< 11:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's just go with the Dutch solution, that's simple and solves everything. As summarized by Radiant!: "Adminship is subject to yearly reconfirmation via this same procedure, but only if there are significant objections to the admin, which generally means about 4 or 5 dissenters." This means that there won't be a huge load of work in confirming admins everyone likes. And since the window of requesting demotion only opens once every year most storms in a teacup won't lead to a demotion !vote. Haukur 11:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

that's perfect. I voice my full support for this "Dutch solution". With 1,000 admins and a "reconfirmation window" of one week, there'll be about 20 admins "open to recall" at any given moment. Only a minority of these will provoke "4-5 dissenters", so that we will have maybe 3-4 open "reconfirmation requests" open. This additional yard of red tape is well worth the added stability and control, resulting in increased trust awarded the admin population, in my opinion. dab (ᛏ) 12:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I would support any admin being required to be reconfirmed at any time if, say, 5 other admins called for it, but this idea is much better than doing nothing. Will there be any sufferage requirements for the dissenters? Only admins? 100/500/1000 edits, 1 month/3 months?-- ALoan (Talk) 13:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

yes, the "yearly window" seems a bit arbitrary. Better set a minimal time between requests. It would be reasonable to force re-submission if 5 admins request it, but we have to be very clear that this adds another power to the admin population, setting it apart from the user base: only admins will be able to ostracize another admin (which then will have to be re-confirmed by the entire community). But to avoid needless bad faith ostracisms (anyone can conjure up five troll accounts), I would support a "any admin has to re-submit to RFA if five other admins call for it (don't do this to the same admin more than once every three months)" policy (especially since it will still be the community having the final say). dab (ᛏ) 14:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The important thing at this point is not to get overly bogged down in details or edge cases. A lot of us agree with the basic idea and I don't care that much whether it gets implemented with ketchup or with mustard. The Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages page shows several ways this is done in other languages. Some look like they might not scale well to :en: but the Dutch one looks fine to me. If we could get Radiant! on board here he could tell us more about the way this works over there. He's also someone who can make policy happen after the community has stood and scratched its collective head for a year. Haukur 15:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I've created a proposal at Wikipedia:Ostracism. I know we have a lot of these flying around at the moment. That's part of the process, it will boil down to something more simple. Please comment and improve. dab (ᛏ) 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Question: if you incorporate any process of "re-election or recall," doesn't it legimitize political behaviour and attitudes? Sure, there will be a sense of accountability but it still diverts attention and energy from building an encyclopedia. Are there holes here through which politics can build up? Rama's arrow 15:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Other Questions: if a large number of editors don't bother to analyze an RfA candidate, can we say that a process of re-call will provoke sufficient scrutiny? If a majority of 1,000 admins won't be hauled up in this process, will there be a real sense of accountability? Will admins feel comfortable in making tough decisions? Rama's arrow 15:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not opposing this idea, rather trying to check for possible holes. Rama's arrow 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I felt that a mistake made in the Carnildo affair was to start an RfA at all. ArbCom should not have asked for community opinion on a case it was handling itself - it should always complete doing its job. Consider Sean Black's recent RfA - he handed in the tools and then asked for them back after some time. Only 70% of the folks wanted to give his tools back. He was given the tools back, clearly breaking the RfA guideline. If it was only a short period of time, why couldn't the bureaucrats or ArbCom just hand the tools back themselves, albeit after a brief discussion at WP:BN or ArbCom? Perhaps there is a candid danger in asking the "masses" to hold individual admins accountable, no matter how selective or infrequently you do it. Rama's arrow 15:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I consider administrators to be those editors who protect the flanks of article/media editors, acting like minesweepers keep the path safe for the army to advance. Would it really help to introduce complex processes that take admins in a different direction from where the army is supposed to go? Rama's arrow 15:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Changes to instruction paragraph

I've made some changes to the instructions on this page. This included modifying the nomination process a bit, changing three-six months to four-six months, and stressing the neccessity to have read WP:GRFA. Does anyone disagree with these changes? Picaroon9288 01:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Not bad! Addresses in a much better way the (frustrated?) revision[1] made by Moreschi earlier today. However, you may wish to consider moving "All nominees must have carefully read the guide to requests for adminship before accepting." from its current placement up to "Nomination standards" or "Decision process". In fact, it might not hurt to have a mention of this in both "Decision process" (or "Nomination standards") and "Current nominations for adminship". Agent 86 02:17, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What worries me is that standards are becoming more and more rigid and more and more formal. While undoubtly it is not as easy to become admin as it used to, and adminship is indeed a big deal, having a statement in the RfA page which basically amounts to "don't even dare venture here unless you've been around for half a year" strikes me as too much. I preferred the old way of informal standards, even if that brought the risks of uninformed newbies venturing in some time. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• Why on earth four months? I've seen people pass with two. >Radiant< 08:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

  Indeed. /Archive_68#August_2006_WP:RFA_in_Review indicates that at least some RFAs by users with between 2 and 4 months experience succeeded. I don't think it's possible to calculate how many succeeded from that summary, we'd need Durin to look at the original data. --Tango 10:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• In the last six months, we've had 50 nominations for people with between two and four months time on Wikipedia. 8 were successful, 42 were not. --Durin 12:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • So can we infer that three months is reasonable? >Radiant< 12:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

    No, not unless Durin tells us those 8 had over 3 months experience. I would say "very rarely" means 1 or 2 a year, so if more than 1 person with less than 3 months has been promoted in the last 6 months, the intro needs to stick with saying you need 2 months. --Tango 13:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• Just one with less than three months experience was promoted in the last six months. That was Nacokantari, who also had 18000 plus edits at the time. That said, I'm not entirely comfortable with setting a bar. --Durin 13:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not sure what to do - if there had been none, the bar would probably have been justified, had there been more than 1, it wouldn't have been. Exactly one is a little tricky... Do you have data going back any further that might help? --Tango 15:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• I have data going back to June of 2005. But, I doubt going through data older than 6 months will help in this case, as standards have slowly risen over time. --Durin 18:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I think December 2005 (when the edit requirements were like 2,000 edits) saw a couple of admins under three months. – Chacor 15:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

In response to the above:

By changing three to four, I wasn't trying to set a bar. As you could see in my standards in that standards list, four months isn't even my personal opinion. But the general trend of opposes and neutrals (that I've read, at least) is that "3 months isn't enough," regardless of whether this is a fair standard. From Durin's comment, it seems that the statistics agree. Anyways, I was just trying to reflect what I've seen in various RFAs, and save new editors some trouble.

By adding the note on the guidelines, I was trying to stress the necessity of carefully reading WP:GRFA as close to the placement of RFAs as possible, albeit in a less harsh way than Moreschi. You can tell in many of the newbie nominations that they haven't read the guide at all, and maybe even not the top few paragraphs of this page. But feel free to revert my changes; I was merely trying to start a bold, revert, discuss cycle (which seems to have, so far, skipped the revert step.) Picaroon9288 21:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello, world. Yes - the idea behind my edit was basically that I was sick of seeing pile-on opposes in newbie RFAs, either because they'd been too lazy to read the guidelines or because they hadn't actually seen the links to them in the first place. I think Picaroon's edits are on the right lines, but it needs to be more emphasised how high the bar is set and bits have to be either in bold or in italics. It has to jump off the page at you. I wasn't trying to set a bar either, just to be realistic. BTW, I must point out that the distress caused by seeing some (perhaps) over-forceful wording is far less than the distress caused by your RFA getting slaughtered in a pile-on oppose. Best to all, Moreschi 21:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

We have a problem with no-one bothering to even nominate for RFA any more, and so the requirement guideliness get upped. Um. - David Gerard 09:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

AzaToth's RfA

Carl is eating his own dog food and runs his own second RfA using his proposed format (to my surprise). Could we please let this fly as a pilot? I understand this might be a bit shocking first, but why not? --Ligulem 16:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems like the answer has been given. Duh. [2]. --Ligulem 16:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend concensus be gathered for such pilot before starting it or else we would end up evaluating the format instead of the candidate in the RfA. --WinHunter ^(talk) 16:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added it back, with the normal format. --Alex (Talk) 16:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would note that the discussion section has been included in the most recent 10-15 RfAs and has been almost entirely ignored, showing that the practical consensus is for the use of the support/oppose/neutral sections. Gwernol 16:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Let's go with the old format. Thanks to Alex for fixing it :). --Ligulem 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to see how it was recieved by the comunity, but it wan't recieved as good as I was hoping for :( I though it wasn't any wrong doing that, becasue there isn't any policy how the process of nominating and administrator as I have seen. _→AzaToth 16:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

After all it was a nice try. And I applaud your courage! But let's run it now as it is. --Ligulem 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hang on. Can you just delete an RFA like that? I thought that once you withdrew you had to wait for a bureaucrat to archive it properly. I'm probably wrong, though. Moreschi 17:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh? Nobody deleted the nom. It's here. Carl has withdrawn it, which is in due compliance with current RfA standards. A nominee is free to withdraw at any time during the RfA. At that point, the RfA ends and is delisted. All within current process. And we don't need crats to archive withdrawn RfA's. They are not archived anyway, just listed on the recently failed/succeeded noms pages. --Ligulem 17:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That I really don't know anything about, as this is neither a failed or a succeeded nomination, but an aborted nomination, I feel that it's ok, just to delist it. _→AzaToth 17:29, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. Apologies for the misunderstanding - I thought he'd blanked it altogether. Moreschi 17:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Neutral Opposition. Stop it.

Stop weaseling! This whole neutral section is usually full of insidious negativity, and it needs to go. If you are not supporting you are opposing. The following are examples of what gets placed under Neutral. If they were placed under Oppose where they belong we would have a clearer picture of what is going on here.

• "you need broader experience"
• "doesn't have the project wide experience just yet"
• "Great contributions, just needs more experience"
• "Neutral - Sorry you just dont meet my criteria for edit summarys"
• "Just need more experience"
• "the answers to the questions above don't reveal a requirement for admin tools on this Wiki at this time"
• "neutral because edit summary use is really quite necessary, and answers aren't that strong"
• "needs a few more enwiki edits and better summary use"

Jim182 22:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You have a point. But do you mean that the de jure neutrals that are de facto opposes should be placed in the more accurate column to begin with, while keeping the neutral section, or do you mean that we should do away with the neutral section altogether? I don't quite understand your proposal. Picaroon9288 22:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Sometimes, answers are vague and a greater explanation is needed. A user may not feel inclined to support a candidate, yet he may also not feel an oppose is essential. Michael 22:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What about "neutral leaning support" or "neutral leaning oppose"? A user may not feel strong enough on a topic to decisively support or oppose. Michael 22:38, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of people use the neutral section to avoid dog-piling a newbie candidate whom they are sure will lose, so that they don't feel bad. It's also used a lot to ask questions, or simply because they don't feel strongly enough or know enough about the candidate to give them full opposition. Also, your claim "If you are not supporting you are opposing." is false, as is its counterpart "If you are not opposing you are supporting." It's not technically a vote, so options other than a simple for or against are permitted. --tjstrf 22:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Prehaps the neutral section should be removed - anyone that wants to say something without "voting" can do so in the comments section. --Tango 22:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I hardly think this is important, it has the same effect either way, so just leave it as it is. If someone wants to vote neutral, it doesn't make them a weasle, it just means that they firmly believe the candidate is not ready - but would not be a threat to the project with the tools (at least, that's what I mean when I vote neutral). Themindset 00:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to disagree with most of the comments except for Themindset. I occasionally vote neutral myself. I want to be clear that my comments should not be taken by the closing bureaucrat to be either a support or an oppose. Simply adding a "comment" may not make this as clear, and a comment is more passive. By voting neutral I am saying "I explicitly do not want to my vote to determine the outcome of this vote, but I do have concerns that could sway my vote one way or another if new evidence comes to light." I do this usually because there is a single issue that is preventing me from supporting, but that I don't believe it severe enough to block. I will list my concerns about the user, but that doesn't mean that I won't go along with consensus either way. My concerns are therefore not sufficient to make a binding conclusion. I have at times waited as a neutral vote until more evidence has come to light to sway me one way or another. -- RM 13:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Neutral choices cannot be eliminated. I sometimes vote neutral with some comments.--Jusjih 13:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The Neutral comments, although often negative, are comments that someone feels they need to present, but that don't sway them sufficiently to make it into a support or oppose vote. I think we should respect that, even when they are downright negative - if they are that bad, then other people will oppose on those grounds. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:50, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes it's good to give constructive criticism without piling on oppose.Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 21:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

And an RfA is not the classic "if-you're-not-with-us-then-you're-against-us" sort of thing. One should be allowed to straddle the fence. And I agree with Dlohcierekim's comment above. --physicq210 07:51, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a silly proposal. Next thing, they'll be telling us that we're not allowed to comment on any current RfA. — Werdna talk criticism 08:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

<sigh> Elsewhere on this page, there is a complaint about drive by voting or not doing sufficeint research before voting. I dig around until I feel comfortable voting one way or another. I also trust the community to catch anything I might miss. Since RfA is not and never was a vote-- it is a concensus buidling/seeking process-- I believe I owe it to the 'crats and the rest of the community to give some sort of rationale. If I'm going to not support, I believe I owe it to the nom's to help them better themselves. Oppose reasons should not be a form of bullying or punishment. They should be a learning tool.Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 15:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Technical Proposal: add RfA listings to a separate subpage

Would anyone yell at me if I would move the admin listings into a subpage, let's say Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Current nominations for adminship and transclude that into Wikipedia:Requests for adminship? (example content: [3].) I could then put Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Current nominations for adminship onto my watchlist and unwatch Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. This way only the listing/delisting of noms would pop up on my watchlist, not the discussions here. Thoughts? --Ligulem 23:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

New listings should appear on your watchlist, but that does seem like a good idea. --Alex (Talk) 23:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What he's saying is that he wants to watch the project page, but not the talk page, which isn't supported by Mediawiki, so he intends to make them seperate pages. I can't see any significant disadvantage, and as this must be one of the busiest talk pages on wikipedia (at least, that's attached to a frequently edited page), it's probably quite a good idea. The other option is to create a Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship/Current talk page and make this talk page a simple redirect to it - probably less work and less confusing. --Tango 23:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, good idea. Can we do this? This wouldn't change the status quo of the instruction creep (Um, How do I have to list my RfA? :). Also this would change zilch for the crats. Yummy. --Ligulem 23:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I moved this talk page to Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA) as a proposal. --Ligulem 09:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't know. Seems more instruction creep to me. We already have well meaning, experienced editors tripping up trying to get their noms posted as it is. This change has the effect of removing a single line from someone's watchlist. I don't see the big deal. If your watchlist was mostly populated with multiple, multiple lines indicating many changes to this page I could see it. But, for the removal of one line? Doesn't seem strong case to me. --Durin 23:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't move this page as there a large number of the diffs on it being used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop. Fred Bauder 12:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC) A new page could be created at Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA), but please don't move the page as it causes all links to the history of edits to be bad. Fred Bauder 13:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

• There would be near zero additional instruction creep. The only thing that needed to be changed would be the target of "Add new requests at the top of this section." to "Add new requests at the top of this section.". So no additional burdon for the poor nominees :). The section edit links would remain as they are. --Ligulem 23:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree very much with Durin. This proposal will make it impossible to add new nominations by using the "Edit" tab on top and it is not worth the trouble given the sole goal of not wanting the RfA talk page on one's watchist.

If you really want to see only the nominations, try putting my bot's page, User:Mathbot/Most recent admin on your watchlist (you'll get the additional bonus of edit summary usage for each candidate in its history). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Too bad. I'm taking the whole thing off my watchlist now. After all, I am already an admin :]. There is way too much noise on this talk page for me. And even in the periods when I had it on my watchlist, I missed some Wikipedians RFA's in the past despite this. As a developer (not MediaWiki) I also do not understand what's the purpose of having a frequently changing section inside a page which is otherwise rarely changed. This stores the whole text of the page on the server each time a candidate is listed or delisted. Ok, it's compressed. And we shouldn't care about server load (that's why we have so many bots... :). Thanks for the pointer to User:Mathbot/Most recent admin, though. As usual: no consensus :/. Bye. --Ligulem 08:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean? Almost all the static text on WP:RFA is transcluded from a subpage. There's one paragraph of introduction and a couple of individual lines on that page itself - everything else is the noms. --Tango 15:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I struck the part about server thinking. You're right. I forgot we already do have the inverted situation. Almost all of the static parts are transcluded from Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Front matter. Anyway, I think your proposal is the better anyway. That's why I would favor to move this page to another location (my proposal was Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA)). Complete moving doesn't work, as Fred needs the diffs into the history of the page. --Ligulem 16:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't move this page as there a large number of the diffs on it being used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop. Fred Bauder 12:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC) A new page could be created at Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA), but please don't move the page as it causes all links to the history of edits to be bad. Fred Bauder 13:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I didn't know that there are diffs from ArbCom cases into this page. Too bad that diffs aren't redirected too when moving a page. If there would be consensus for partially moving this page here to Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA) (or wherever else), we could move just a part of the history (I tested the procedure for that in my sandbox). But that is too complicated to do per WP:BOLD and you already reverted me, so that's it for now :) --Ligulem 16:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested: A test for a partial-history move of a page can be seen at User:Ligulem/work/testdiffs. --Ligulem 16:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it necessary to move this page? Can't we just archive the latest discussions, put in the redirect, and create a new page for the new discussions? We don't need the history for the old discussions to be with the new discussions. --Tango 23:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with that. The move is not needed (although technically it would have been nice, because users wouldn't have had to adapt their watchlists — but the diff problem is a no go for the move). --Ligulem 23:17, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I may be beating a dead horse here, but for what it's worth, I don't think the move (even without the difficulty of fixing diffs) would be beneficial; it ruins the traditional structure of page and then talk page simply to gain a benefit of not watching the talk page. A more appropriate solution would be to enable watching of just a page without the talk page, something we could push for, if there's enough demand, in other venues. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As we already found out here: a move is not needed. And the devs won't "fix" the software because it can technically be perfectly solved by following Tango's proposal. The "structure" wouln't be damaged by a redirect. And yes, this is a dead horse. Deader than dead. --Ligulem 13:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: we have the same brain dead problem at WP:PP, just the other way round: noisy project page (several edits per day by bots). Seldom edited talk page. It's impossible to watch this talk page there nearly the same as it is impossible to watch new RfA candidacies here. Signal to noise ratio is generally a problem on this "blog". --Ligulem 14:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we are dancing around a dead horse here. But let me clarify what I meant: even if we did archive the page and create a redirect, it's still going against the idea that discussions for a page should go on the "Talk:" + pagename page. Even though it works technically, it would be a sloppy fix to an issue that would be better served with allowing talk pages to be watchlisted separately. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 14:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

"Encourage," "Discourage"

Hey - see this[4] Why don't we take a cue from the UN Security Council and replace "Support" and "Oppose" with "Encourage" and "Discourage" respectively? Rama's arrow 13:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Well, "encourage" and "discourage" implies that the candidate can become an administrator without approval regardless of the "vote" - i.e. we discourage you from becoming an administrator infers that the choice is up to the candidate, when it clearly isn't. In addition, the U.N. secret ballot was also an "informal poll", not anything binding or meaningful officially. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 14:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• The U.N. has an "informal poll" to judge consensus opinion/sentiment - exactly what RfA is supposed to be (RfAs are not "elections"). Nothing empowers the candidate to make the call in the UN or here - I didn't say we change that rule of the process. The decision is made by bureaucrats (based on community consensus). Only this process will allow anyone to say "I discourage your nomination because...." Far better than the election format. Rama's arrow 15:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Basically "Discouraging" is the act of a respectful colleague, unlike "Oppose" or "Object" which makes one sound like a candidate's enemy. Rama's arrow 15:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

No it is opposing or objecting to the person becoming an administrator. When the formal vote comes around, ambassadors will be opposing or objecting, present reality-obscuring political correctness in an informal vote notwithstanding. —Centrx→talk • 15:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

But Rama's arrow is that we are encouraging or discouraging the candidate while the b'crat makes the final decision. If there are significant numbers of substantive "discouragements", the b'crat can choose not to grant adminship privileges. I like this idea. --Richard 20:53, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Crats don't make decisions, they simply determine the decision that the community has made. Put another way, they don't answer "Should X be an admin?" they answer "Has the community decided X should be an admin?". --Tango 21:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

At the least, they do have a veto in cases of serious problematic users. —Centrx→talk • 22:01, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

That is simply not the case given their recent clear and present demonstration that they do answer just precisely that question. -Splash - tk 22:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

As we are all volunteers, I think we should not be given quotas to meet-- we all do the best we can. Although featured articles are important, I think cleaning up marginal articles to encyclopedic standards might be better.Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 21:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If the language is the problem, then I propose "blue" and "yellow". -Splash - tk 22:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:1 featured article per quarter

Sorry to spam this page with something not strictly related to RfA. The above is an idea to have people sign on to create Featured articles with an informal deadline in place. Maybe of interest to those who use FAs as criteria here. Marskell 15:26, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps if we paid administrators this could be a requirement. —Centrx→talk • 15:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it would still be a bad requirement. Administrators must have the goals of the encyclopedia at heart, but that does not mean they need to be churning out featured articles on a regular basis. —Centrx→talk • 15:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Aargh! Whilst a worthy goal, I hope this is kept well away from RfA; WP:1FA was bad enough (I haven't seen it around recently). --ais523 15:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

No, no--I was not personally suggesting a requirement at all. I just think of this place as an unofficial village pump. The more eyes the better and all that. For those that do informally think of it as a requirement it might be a page to watch. Marskell 15:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't really understand what FA:s and adminship has anything in common. _→AzaToth 15:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's part of a larger opinion that work in the mainspace should be held in high regard when evaluating a candidate. FA creation is an obvious example of that. Marskell 15:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea is that to get an article to FA status means having a good understanding of the MoS as well as indicating an ability to collaborate and more importantly reach consensus. All these are good experiences that are desirable in an admin. My only problem is that editors can gain these experiences without ever bring an article to FA status. Nevertheless, there is a valid connection between 1FA and being an admin. David D. (Talk) 15:40, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

• Some kind of Featured Article Drive is always a good idea. It is, however, unrelated to adminship. I think people who write lots of FAs deserve a reward, but the only meaningful reward we have here is the Barnstar and some related sparklies. >Radiant< 15:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

A non-admin's point-of-view The whole 1FA idea is quite frankly, ridiculous. While it sounds great on paper, someone could have joined 3-4 years ago, made 10000+ edits, know Wikipedia policy inside and out, and not create or significantly help make a featured article. That's just unfair. Luckily, this idea and criteria is not taken as seriously (or seriously at all). --CFIF ☎ ⋐ 22:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just want to be clear: I did not raise this as a possible RfA criterion. I just wanted people to look at the page and figured people here might be interested given the volume on this talk and that FAs have been raised previously. That's all. (And that's a non-admin's point-of view as well, for whatever that matters). Marskell 22:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The talk page for RFA isn't really the place for advertizing FA efforts. That said, I do plan to try to work more on getting more FAs under my belt, and generally support the FA cause, as I feel more editors should. Best wishes in your efforts to promote FA creation. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 07:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Rory's RFA

Could someone please properly format this RFA? The current count is (41/32/4/17). Apparently there was a section for "Tangential oppose", and I don't think changing standard formatting is going to offset or change anything. If it's an oppose, it's an oppose an should be marked under the right section. If someone could fix this, it would be most helpful. — Moe Epsilon 02:08 October 04 '06

Why would you care? I do not see any harm. Let it be. FloNight 02:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It just seemed like "This section I've crafted for people who aren't piling on because of IRC over this supposed "bitch" remark." seemed like a rather strange reason to change standard formatting. — Moe Epsilon 02:16 October 04 '06

It could be helpful to the closing 'crat. Yanksox 02:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It could also cause problems for the bots. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Bots count votes. RfA is not (or should not be) a vote. The point is therefore moot. — Werdna talk criticism 06:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Surely if it's a problem for the 'crats they can fix it themselves? --Spartaz 07:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No-one's running, so up the guidelines

There's a problem with no-one bothering to run for RFA any more; presumably completely coincidentally, the process is observably poisonous in several directions and the requirements guidelines keep being pushed up and up.

Is there anything useful (or anti-useful) to fixing or tuning RFA at WP:PRO? It's supposed to be a not-a-guideline to process maintenance. - David Gerard 09:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Gosh, I guess the eight current candidates must all be mirages, then? Seriously it does appear that there are fewer candidates in recent months, but I'd like to see the real data before drawing conclusions. Also, which guidelines are you refering to? There are no RfA guidelines to get "pushed up and up". There are numerous editors who express opinions on RfAs' each has their own idea of what they are looking for in a candidate. Are you proposing that we add proces by standardizing RfA requirements and remove the element of individual judgement? I thought that was the opposite of what you were calling for in WP:PRO? Gwernol 09:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I see they're deliberately being phrased didactically, for example - David Gerard 11:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I've actually lowered my "standards" to better conform with the rest of the community. I don't think it's unreasonable to be able to feel comfortable about supporting a candidate. And some who failed recently clearly weren't ready. Perhaps we need a way to develop and encourage some of the long term users who would not otherwise consider asking for the mop. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 15:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I interpret this differently. Wikipedia's growth slowed in the early part of this year after what had been several years of essentially exponential growth. I suspect that the fall off in RFAs (now several months later) is in part a symptom of this more generally slowed growth, and not necessarily a manifestation of changed standards (though that might play a role as well). I would hesitate about looking at one variable (number of RFAs) and conclude that it implies the RFA process is suddenly much worse than it was 6 months ago. Dragons flight 15:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think Durin has some good statistics on the issue. I do agree with David that the RFA header is rather too verbose. But other than that, if the perceived problems are (1) too few candidates and (2) too high standards, the obvious solutions would be (1) to find someone suitable and nominate him, and (2) to support people on less high standards. Hm, come to think of it... >Radiant< 15:35, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if those are necessarily the problems. Other issues I can think of: For example, I hesitate to nominate Wikipedians for adminiship now, because I am not confident that they will want to handle the (sometimes unwritten) complexities of being one. Although being an admin can be simple, it is often not so. Many administrative actions (and even normal editorial actions) can be interpreted as ways to modulate behaviour, with the facilitator being the Wiki. This can be extremely sophisticated to handle, especially when the Wiki only presents an economy of partial information. Some Wikipedians I have talked to in person, say they do not want to deal with the consequences of being an administrator, even though they are confident they can carry the role. Additionally, after observing all the sorts of things that can occur as a consequence of using this Wiki, that has both myself, and other well meaning people constantly tiptoeing when contributing to this project. This feeling is relentless might I add, and to avoid exhaustion, it is sometimes more managable to be silent than to do the Right Thing. Concerning it is, and systemic it has become. We need a better mechanism of accountability and transparency, and we need better ways of seeking out those users who can carry administrative roles professionally to join the ranks. I might even cautiously suggest that administrators voluntarily classify themselves as being familiar with specific areas of Wikipedian policies and guidelines. These administrative communities would be effective at identifying current trends, and would provide the community with an implicit sort of leadership, without compromising the existing stratification of users. It could be as simple as setting up "WikiProject - admins who specialise with image deletions" et cetera. We have policy pages, but no cohesive and visible communities around them. It's probably more than time enough to grow them and recognize that such structures can complement that which already exists on Wikipedia. --HappyCamper 19:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's an awesome idea, HappyCamper (classifying Admins into departments or whatever). Anchoress 19:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

As someone who I know is a valuable contributor but presumably has no interest in adminship as it's currently constituted (based on conversations and statements on your pages), Anchoress, do you see yourself changing your mind if one didn't have to pass a "jack of all trades" test, as it were? Or were you just saying it's a good idea but still not for you? One of the problems (and I have no cites, just gut) with adminship is that it attracts people who think it's a merit badge and scares off people who would be willing to do the hard things it entails if it wasn't so unpleasant. ++Lar: t/c 19:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Anchoress, your comment made my day! :-) :-) :-) I thought it would be quickly forgotten in the digital ether. Well, that just might motivate me to start a WikiProject somewhere when I get the energy to do so. Stay tuned... - Lar, I find that some of the most interesting admins are the ones who are admin WikiGnomes. There are a handful who have been promoted, but have hardly used (or even completely not used) the tools at all. Instead, they use the perceived authority of an administrator to mitigate edit wars and diffuse complicated situations where the more vocal or abrasive approaches would not be effective. They also spend tremendous amounts of time helping new users, especially those who are struggling with the software, but are tremendously influential in real life. These admin WikiGnomes have such an capacity for patience and listening and work nicely in those niche places on Wikipedia, but would probably not survive the current RfA promotions process. The issue is that lack of perceived activity can be interpreted as inability in the current RfA climate, when this is not necessarily the case. The difficulty is that it is difficult and time consuming to properly identify and acknowledge these very different situations. --HappyCamper 20:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

So how do we recognize, groom, prepare and nominate those who would be good admins but might not consider running?Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 20:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder...how important is it to think about what a "successful" Wikipedian/administrator is? How important is it for the candidate to be able express this? What about...whether they can do this in a way which adequately represents themselves, and their feelings about this project? Everyone should share notes next time if chance allows us to meet, say randomly, at next year's Wikimedia conference. Or for that matter, any of the future meetups. --HappyCamper 21:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Question

I would like to nominate myself for a sysop, but I am having difficulty formatting the nomination because I have a prior unsuccessful nomination. The screen keeps going to the old nomination and I am not sure if I am supposed to delete that and replace it. What do I need to do to set up a new nomination? Ramsquire 16:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No, you are supposed to add a 2 after your name in the new nomination. Michael 16:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.Ramsquire 16:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

All you need to do is open up a new page with the postscript "2" or "(2nd nomination) or whatever, and fill in the {{subst:RfA|User=USERNAME|Description=YOUR DESCRIPTION OF THE USER ~~~~}} there. It's a little less automated, but it'll work about the same as the instructions at the top of WP:RFA (remember to link to your old RFA, and make sure the "Voice your opinion" link goes to the right page). Good luck! -- nae'blis 16:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Post-RfA thoughts about past RfA Reform suggestions

Well, my first attempt at RfA has finished. I learned quite a few things (as I hoped I might).
And with that in mind, let me response to several of the suggestions on this page (including the last 2 archives), in no particular order:

• I think the support/neutral/oppose system works well - though I would list them in that order, rather than support/oppose/neutral, and add a General comments section to the bottom (if the section becomes over-long, it can always be moved to the talk page, when needed). And helpful editors can always move accidentally mis-placed votes. I think the Comments section at the top (below the questions) should be for the nom's comments, and direct responses to them.
• Edit counters - In my opinion, most of the other tools I have seen, have not accurately described my edits. Though I have no idea what criteria they use, I presume neither do most other wikipedia editors. The following 3 are exceptions:
  • Mathbot's tool for edit summaries seems fairly straight forward.
  • I like interiot's counting tool (I even placed a version of it on my user page). It's just a simple edit counting tool, for those who wish it, with no judgements about those edits.
  • I strongly liked: "Random diffs from last 1000 edits (with ais523's edit counter):". (though not the adjoining edit count tool, for the same reasons as above, though I think the breakdown was better than most). I think giving random diffs on the nom's talk page is a great way to "nudge" editors to do a little research on the request. Is there any way to increase to the last 2000 edits (presuming the user has that many)?

    (Inserting a reply to this point here) Yes, I can change it to the last 2000 trivially; the diff-generator is quite timeconsuming (it takes about 1 minute with 1000 edits, and will take me about 4 minutes to run when checking 2000 edits), but I'll update it as such. I've stopped counting all the edits on RfAs for probably the same reasons as you disagree with them. --ais523 12:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• While I support the idea that a bureaucrat should be able to suggest that an RfA stay open longer than the 7 days, in order to more clearly determine concensus, I strongly oppose leaving an RfA open for longer than 2 weeks. I think could create a hardship for the nominee. During the whole time, I felt like there were things I couldn't comment on (such as this page), since my RfA was ongoing. (Whether it is true or not, it was how I felt.) The first day I only finished up what I was working on, and pretty much nothing else, though after a few days, I decided to continue on as if the RfA wasn't there, and just avoid this talk page.
• I have to admit, I was thinking a lot about my "block proposal" on this page, when seeing what another editor called a "pileup" concerning my response to a question about blocking. I think we should probably re-visit that discussion.
• That said, I am not against the adding of "extra questions". I think they can be potentially useful.

And two general proposals:

1.) That bureaucrats may ask any commenter to further explain their vote (like dropping a note on the commenter's talk page), and that bureaucrats may remove/discount unexplained votes, at their discretion. I believe that they already have this ability, but I think it should be re-affirmed, in order to re-affirm that this leans more towards concensus, rather than democratic voting. (I am thinking of several situations/examples on CfD when I suggest this.) I think that it should be limited to bureaucrats, though, to prevent possible harrassment or abuse.

2.) I think the "friendly notice"/canvassing issue should be directly discussed. Right now, it's "murkiness" of definition doesn't seem like a "good idea" to me. I think we should default to WP:SPAM, since those guidelines are fairly clear. People can still oppose on the grounds of advertising, if they wish, since that it their perogative, but the suggestion that it's a violation of "policy", in cases where it isn't, should be discouraged.

I have one further proposal but it's going to take me a bit longer to type up, so here's this, at least, for now. - jc37 18:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Documenting current removal process

See [5], trying to document the current means by which adminship can be revoked. Please feel free to edit this to more accurately reflect and describe reality. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:30, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why this is really necessary in the front matter, as this is the page for approving new ones, not removing old ones. That information is at WP:ADMIN#Administrator abuse. --Rory096 23:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Tried giving it a mention more discreetly. it needs to be there, because it has an effect of the decisionmaking process. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 03:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it'll fit in the quick mention, but people do need to be aware that the ArbCom has no compunction about deadminning if really needed - David Gerard 09:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Ending or due to end?

Should the timing at the top of RfAs say ending or due to end? Thing is, many RfAs finish early, and so the statement isn't true. Any comments? --Alex (Talk) 12:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Whatever it is, it should be consistent. I changed one such entry to "Ending" because a bot was not getting the time correct. --Durin 13:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This brightened my day

Wikipedi-tan using her admin bit, mucking out the wiki - David Gerard 11:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Wot, no Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wikipe-tan?

commons:Category:Wikipe-tan is slightly disturbing. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

What is RFA for?

This talk page is ... puzzling. Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", as pretty much all admin actions are reversible; the idea is that if you're not going to go batshit with the tools, there's no reason for you not to have them. (I've actually lowered my personal bar for adminship after a couple of cases where people I had severe qualms about got their admin bit and proceeded to do okay with a bit of peer pressure the collegial advice of others.) The social and technical skills required are about those of a message board moderator, and whereas there are adults you'd never want to have that job, the skills are easily acquired by e.g. a sensible teenager.

And particularly this year, the ArbCom has had no compunction in removing the admin bit from those who need it removed. Removal is a big deal, but the AC is there for the social decisions that are big deals.

So the ever-expanding lists of requirements don't make sense. The lists above appear to be marks of the ideal admin, who is a bit like the ideal editor with added technical powers (and similarly doesn't exist). And this stuff really doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether they are likely to go batshit with the admin tools. They make adminship into a much bigger deal than it should be.

I personally think most people need three months' experience to get a feel for the place. But beyond that, in an ideal world every Wikipedia editor who's been around enough to get a feel for the place would have admin powers.

Please enlighten me as to why it is good for adminship to be a big-deal artificially scarce commodity - David Gerard 09:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

See my suggestion along a similar line on WP:BN. 3 months and say 1000 edits. And a presumption that the admin bit should be granted, unless "material" issues are identified. Plus a simple recall mechanism. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:34, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

It's important that:

1. The RfA-dwellers look like they're doing more than rubberstamping RfA candidates. They need to look like they're "protecting" us from unsuitable admins.
2. The trolls and idiots can always hide behind WP:CIVIL when somebody points out to them, in eloquent and factual language, that they're batshit insane.
3. We constantly have backlogs, so the current sysops can feel as if they're relied upon.
4. The RfA-dwellers feel they have some control and influence on the project
5. The RfA-dwellers don't have to write articles.
6. The current admins can feel important as they're of fewer number.

QED. — Werdna talk criticism 10:24, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd challenge points 3 and 6, possibly caveat them with 'The admins who continue to hang around navel gazing central after being flagged'. Other than that I think it sums it up ;) ALR 10:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The practice the Arbitration Committee has adopted of using "administrators" as administrators of mechanisms such as probation is probably part of the problem. Considerable maturity and discretion is required. These mechanism were adopted to give us some alternative to banning, but have the effect of transferring day to day responsibility to administrators. With more power comes the concern that those who exercise it are responsible. Fred Bauder 11:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Administrator_s_ - the college of admins. Individual admins are constantly subject to peer review, so errors can be quickly spotted and dealt with (althougn the scars may not be so easy to heal). There is plenty of noise about admin abuse, but WP:AN and WP:ANI are reasonably effective, I think. A recall mechanism would help too. Adminship is not a badge - it is a set of tools. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of a recall mechanism that wouldn't be a troll magnet - David Gerard 11:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess using Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration is out then. Fred Bauder 12:00, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

With that logic, we don't even have a promotion mechanism that wouldn't be a troll magnet. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. I think we need to set the bar reasonably high - 5 (or 10) admins agreeing to the recall. Then we dump the person back into my new version of RfA (i.e. only material issues cause a failure). -- ALoan (Talk) 12:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

"troll magnet" -> "wikilawyer playground" - assume any process that can conceivably be gamed will be gamed to destruction - David Gerard 12:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Show me any process that can't be gamed. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:17, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

There are of course none :-) But some are more prone than others. If there is to be a mechanism, it needs the Hard Decisions Committee at the far end. Therefore it needs to be something to make their lives less busy, since committees don't scale. (When the AC was created because Jimbo doesn't scale, Wikipedia was #500 on Alexa. Today it's #12. Out of all websites of any sort.) - David Gerard 13:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

We already have an up-and-running recall mechanism which is not a troll-magnet and (so far) is not gamed in any way. In my opinion it runs far more smoothly than the ArbCom. Haukur 13:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

As discussed above on this page, it doesn't seem to mean a whole lot - David Gerard 13:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with voluntary recall is that the (few) admins for whom recall would actually be necessary could simply refuse to volunteer. AOR is weakly worded and easily gamable: an admin whose standards are "if at least twenty people with at least 7000 edits each complain, the admin will voluntarily submit to ArbCom proceedings" could be said to be open to recall even if his standards are so ludicrous as to make it a practical impossibility. >Radiant< 13:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, and in theory a freely editable encyclopedia wouldn't work. The recall process works fine, it has a bunch of high-profile admins in it with real committments. Would it be even better if it was a bit tighter? Sure, I think so, anywhow, but even just what we have is proof that recall procedures work and are not just troll-bait. Haukur 13:53, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

As I see it RFA has become a focus for those who appear to be social networkers more than content producers. Actually achieving the standard now seems to involve; lots of low risk edits, clearly lots of minors rather than anything substantive and running away from anything contentious because any conflict regardless of its management because conflict itself is am mistake. It's also becoming the classic vicious circle, as more of the social networkers get through then they're more likely to hang around rather than move onto actually working on WP.

In some ways the more effective potential admins aren't going to get through, it's clear that being an effective admin will rub some people up the wrong way (hence the issues around re-adminning), if someone hasn't done that before coming up then they haven't actually demonstrated the capability. Catch 22.

It may be that in some areas WP has now reached the critical mass where a quasi-democratic consensus approach is wholly inappropriate and should be more positively gripped to ensure effective delivery of output.

I'm sure there are reasons why all this navel gazing is useful, I'm damned if I can think what they are right now.

ALR 13:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Going back to David's original question, I think he's making several incorrect assumptions:

1. Admin actions are not entirely reversible. (Or, more precisely, they're reversible only in the technical sense.) Any number of recent incidents have shown that people will get very upset—and justifiably so—if an admin mistreats them, even if the actual use of the tools (the block, the protection, the deletion, etc.) is quickly undone. This goes double for blocking; being blocked is a big deal, and having everyone shoot from the hip because the blocks are "reversible" doesn't help things at all.
2. Admins not only need to avoid doing bad things with the tools per se, but also to avoid doing bad things in general (c.f. "Administrators are held to high standards of conduct, as they are often perceived as the "official face" of Wikipedia. Administrators must be courteous, and exercise good judgment and patience in dealing with others."). Some people seem to do fine with the tools themselves, but are so abrasive otherwise that they don't really need to use the tools to cause conflict.
3. And, finally, we have had some cases of admins going "batshit with the tools"; the extent to which the ArbCom's solutions in those cases have been successful is open to debate, I think.

Kirill Lokshin 13:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• • In response to (2), admins are said to be held to very high standards, but the mechanism by which they are held to these standards and consequences for breaking these high standards are rather unclear, and both seem to boil down to being chided by other admins who in turn get chided by yet other admins for chiding the standard-breaker. >Radiant< 13:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Possible causes

• First, while it is obvious that we should have some standard for admins, it is equally obvious that it is unclear what that standard should be, and there are widely different opinions on that. The lack of a clear standard encourages people on RFA to make up their own standard; since it is a large wiki, people will want to vote for candidates they do not know, and need a standard since they cannot fall back to familiarity with the candidate. The result is that some people tend to pick an arbitrary amount of months or edits (etc) and oppose everyone who falls below.
• Second, I think it's safe to say that some people have raised their standards because they perceive the unlikelyhood of admins being demoted if they turn out to be (perceivedly) unsuitable, except in extreme circumstances. As an example, RFA will strongly oppose a candidate for mild incivility, but the ArbCom does not generally do anything about incivility except warn against it. (I'm not saying either standard is correct, I'm pointing out the discrepancy). See also this comment about a perceived discrepancy between the ArbCom's standards and the RFA voters' standards.
• Third, it is obvious that factions exist on the wiki, e.g. groups of editors with contrary POVs, who have a tendency to oppose candidates from the other faction. Since every oppose-vote counters four support-votes, this is reasonably effective.
• The first could be solved by establishing a clear line for experience (e.g. 3 months, 1000 edits) and make it clear that arbitrary criteria are discouraged. The second could be solved by drawing up a consensual standard of adminship, and indiscriminately promote all that pass it, as well as demote all that fail it (this is the tricky part). The third could be solved by dropping the perceived 80% bar to something more closely resembling other consensus-based processes.
• >Radiant< 13:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
  • An additional point - the lack of an "official" minimum requirement for admins (e.g. x months y edits) leads to many nominations by enthousiastic but inexperienced novice users, which are (rather obviously) opposed a lot. This could easily lead people to think that RFAs in general are opposed a lot. >Radiant< 13:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest that another cause is that people in general will be less likely to vote support (and purlease don't start into its not a vote). People frequently seem to oppose for the most trivial of reasons, including perceived incivility, but won't support if they see no reason not to oppose. Huge number of support votes only appear to come on widely pimped candidates.

It just occured to me that the whole issue of civility or perceived incivility is a minefield given the number of social cultures, and age differentials, within which editors exist. As a Scot I'm cynical and use sarcasm and irony a lot I also have an extremely dry (arid) sense of humour, frequently I think that my SoH and use of irony/ sarcasm is lost on a great many editors and I've had one or two apparently teenage US colonials get really upset about flippant offhand comments. tbh if I could be bothered I feel sure that I wouldn't get through RFA.ALR 13:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty overreacted to, too. Administrators need to be able to communicate calmly and in accordance with policy. That's All. Manytimes, an editor will be opposed based on one incident, or a couple of harshly-worded comments. Civility is to make sure we get along, not to give trolls and idiots policies to hide behind when somebody points out that their arguments are crap in a decent and factual manner. I personally believe that the only incivility that's an issue is incivility that rises to the level of a block. The word is thrown around far too much, and this needs to stop. — Werdna talk criticism 14:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely amazing

Simultaneously sent to wikiEN-l

I just saw the current message above the backlog tag at CAT:CSD. It reads:

<!-- Remove the comments around the line below this message (Adminbacklog) to add a backlog tag. To remove the backlog tag, put comments tags around it. Usually, the tag is added if there are 100 or more articles (or 200 articles & images combined) in this category. -->

When did it become acceptable to have 100 articles or 200 total things in CAT:CSD? Since we now have backlogs more often, that means we should raise the criteria for what is actually a backlog? Is this why we're unnecessarily raising our standards on RfA, because if we don't have as many "backlogs," but still have just as many pages waiting to be processed, then we don't need as many admins? This is appalling. We might as well stop promoting admins and just delete the backlog tag, then we wouldn't have any "backlogs" and nobody would have to do anything! Wouldn't that be nice? Ugh. This is just silly. We need to stop dicking around and start actually being productive. We're here to run an encyclopaedia, not pretend we're doing so and accomplishing absolutely nothing. --Rory096 14:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Nor are we here to inflate our self-importance by thinking it's clever to oppose people on RfA. — Werdna talk criticism 14:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Getting more admins is always good. I encourage both of you to find a suitable candidate and nominate him or her - and encourage your friends to do likewise. (unfortunately the last person I wanted to nominate declined because he thought he hadn't done enough vandalfighting to not get voted down; I'm looking for others atm). >Radiant< 14:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• I am hard-pressed to find somebody willing to go through the chinese water torture that is RfA on english Wikipedia at the moment. Let alone somebody who'll actually pass the damn thing. — Werdna talk criticism 14:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)