Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

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Rfacom

Inserted: my guess from the subsequent discussion is that the Rfacom proposal won't get consensus, so let's take this one off the table. - Dank (push to talk) 14:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

First: I hope people will go along with my suggestion to have an RfC with 5 proposed solutions to the RfA mess where everyone has to pick just 2 of 5 sections to comment in ... I really think that's the only way to do it that's fully respectful of the different positions. Some say that the problem is with what adminship has turned into, others say the problem is that the community can't demote admins ... and therefore, if we spend all our energy twiddling with the RfA process itself, we're actually hurting rather than helping, by diverting attention from the real problem. And there are several attractive proposals around on RfA itself. I have no beef with those other arguments ... it's just that when you have so many completely different perspectives all trying to talk at once, people haven't been able to figure out how to distill all that into an attractive, coherent proposal to vote on. So let's work kind of separately and kind of together.

Second: one proposal has been for what you might call "Rfacom", a group of 15 or so people elected every year to be the RfA voters for that year. [Disclaimer: this isn't self-promotion of any kind; neither I nor my closest wiki-friends (I think) will ever run for something like this.] The whole community still gets to participate in all RfAs, on the talk page ... but only offering relevant facts (or what they think are facts), not offering votes or opinions on the candidate or opinions on standards. Crats would continue to make the call on consensus, but only on the consensus of the 15 voters. Jimbo would have veto power in the yearly Rfacom election in case a nutjob gets voted in. (And just as with Arbcom, that role would very likely become ceremonial, as soon as it's clear that nutjobs aren't getting elected.) There are a lot of positives and negatives to this proposal ... but we haven't discussed it in a long time, for the simple reason that it's not going to get a strong consensus ... in part because, as I say, there are a lot of people who think the real problem is something else so the real solution needs to be something else ... but also because a significant number feel that the "wrong people" are already running the system, and that "crowning" the people already in power would just make a bad problem worse. But even though it won't get consensus at first, it might gain consensus ... if people see that it's working the way it's supposed to. That is, say you feel strongly about anti-religious userboxes (with apologies to you-know-who :) Say you have a tendency to bring it up once too often ... then everyone yells at you, and some potential candidate who once had a userbox you don't like decides that the environment at RfA is too toxic and doesn't run ... people not running and getting turned off to the whole system is a lot of the current problem. But if even one of the Rfacom members understands and shares your concerns, they'll bring it up (especially if you alert them on the RfA talk page about it) ... but they'll do it tactfully, and more important, only when it might actually make a difference to the outcome. So instead of voters bringing up the same points over and over just to make sure everyone is listening ... with the result that no one is listening ... you have a committee of voters sensitive to what the community thinks are important issues (because we have 10 years of RfAs telling us that!), bringing those issues up as needed. If done right, instead of the minority voices getting buried, the minority voices get even more representation than they have now ... because there's less being said during each RfA, and it's being said with more tact and gravitas. If people see that happening, then consensus for this proposal is possible.

As I said, this hasn't come up in a while because there was no point. But I think this is something Jimbo might actually go for ... and recent comments by a lot of people have suggested to me that the tide of opinion is turning, maybe not in this direction but in some direction close to this one. Any thoughts or pros or cons or alternatives would be very, very welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 20:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I entirely endorse your first proposal Dank. That's the most sensible proposal I've seen for some time. However, expressing alternative views about what the the admin system might be is becoming a fraught process on Wikipedia. I'm pessimistic that there is a collective will amongst admins to change anything much other than further consolidating their power over content developers. A recent arbcom decision included a reference to (in the context what I take to be my views about the admin system) "blind vitriol". I take that as a warning against dissent, and as an indicator that the new arbitration committee is gearing itself to clamp down on dissenting viewpoints. An arbitrator has also made a current assertion that arbitrators support the view that admin power comes as a single package, and is not to be unbundled. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

'I'm pessimistic that there is a collective will amongst admins to change anything much other than further consolidating their power over content developers.' Everyone is entitled to their thoughts but there is absolutely no evidence to support such a view. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

How can you possibly say that Kudpung. There is endless and compelling evidence in the form of admins and their retinues smothering constructive proposals for change, particularly if they might encroach on the existing admin power base. But backward-looking recrimination is not the way to go. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Although I don't necessarily agree that Admins are the source of the problem I mostly agree with Kudpung. The majority of the community seems, based on previous discussions on this topic, lacking the will to do any major changes to this. Kumioko (talk) 01:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Most participants in these discussions are admins and their retinues. People working to build the encyclopedia often want to focus on their work, and find these policy discussions too fraught and intimidating to want to participate. The power is too asymmetric. I participate in these so far unproductive discussions, because I want a better deal for dedicated content builders, and because I think Wikipedia is too important to allow a dysfunctional admin system to wreck it. That said, I think there has been a marked improvement over the last year, partly due to the influence of exemplary admins like Dennis Brown and Worm. --Epipelagic (talk) 02:30, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

If you would like to see changes enacted, perhaps you should try running for adminship yourself. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 03:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd likely support such an RfA, but I don't think that would help drive policy changes. It's not like admins get more votes or something. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if your talking to me about running for RFA or Epipelagic but I have already run twice and failed. I don't have any desire to run again. Someday maybe but not anytime in the near future. If the comments were for Epipelagic then I agree they should run. Kumioko (talk) 11:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The vast majority of mature, serious content builders have nothing to fear, do not need policing, and hence do not feel the need to be part of the background processes. A 'dysfunctional admin system' is rather a sweeping claim - there are some rogues amongst them indeed, but to tar them all with the same 'wrecker' brush is not really appropriate. Some users would prefer a Wikipedia without admins, but the result would be anarchy, crap content, and little reason for those of us who care for quality of content and collaboration to continue contributing at all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung, take a look at the system as it actually is. A system whose members are appointed for life, where most members were appointed years ago when standards for admins were very low, where members who have little or no experience with content building can block any content builder, no matter how experienced and able, on little more than whim; where those blocks, once made, remain forever as a red flag and indicator to other admins that they may now block again with less impunity, putting the editor on an increasingly slippery slope. A system where, as this thread is being written, another thread on the blocking policy is advocating that experienced editors, once blocked, should thenceforth be blocked indefinitely and without waning. One of the proponents of this approach claims that content editors feel no pain when this done, discarding the clear evidence from content builders on the same page that such treatment can be the most painful and humiliating experience that can happen on Wikipedia. Reminds me of two articles I wrote, the consciousness of animals and pain in fish. Admins should be assured that, however lowly we may be, content builders are still conscious beings and we do experience pain.

A huge sense of ownership currently runs through the admin ethos, even though most admins have done little to write the encyclopedia. As you know, there has hardly ever been a case where an admin has been sanctioned for insulting and/or punitively blocking content builders. Sanctions are, however, readily applied if an admin upsets other admins. And you are wrong if you are including me when you say "some users would prefer a Wikipedia without admins". I certainly want admins, and I want them better empowered, not less, but in ways that are sensitive to those of us who have come here to build the encyclopedia, instead of treating us as an inferior class and even as the enemy. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you mean "with more impunity", not "with less impunity", although a different word entirely might work better. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, from emails and comments on user talk pages (check my contribs if you're curious) and here, the vote is running 20 to 1 in favor. I think if we're trying to come up with (say) five proposals, this one should make the cut. Personally, I like the work that Kudpung and others did too. Wales said he'll have something for us soon. - Dank (push to talk) 04:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this Jimbo thing is being blown way out of proportion; Jimbo's trying to propose a way to get us out of corner solutions / constitutional issues such as the RFA situation. I'm sure his solution will look at the bigger picture rather than focusing on RFA. --Rschen7754 04:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I think Jimbo is our best hope at this point. We have proven incapable of fixing the problems, whatever they may be, ourselves. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 04:21, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• @Epipelagic I've taken a very good look at the system as it actually is and that's why I became Wikipedia's most fervent campaigner for reform. I am well aware there has hardly ever been a case where an admin has been sanctioned for insulting and/or punitively blocking content builders.

You would be surprised to learn that the very reason I became interested in admins (long before I even thought of becoming one) was because I was mercilessly insulted by an admin and finally bullied by him off one topic area of content work where professionally I had most to offer this encyclopedia. So I wanted to know more about who these 'sysops' are and how they get to become one. Lo and behold, years later that same admin who had never voted on an RfA before, left the most hateful RfA vote and comments - certainly blockworthy if coming from a 'lowly' editor - I have ever seen. That admin is no longer an admin although it took 7 long years to get rid of him. That RfA was mine.

So you see, I'm the last person to claim that all admins are angels. It is interesting to note however that the admin concerned was 'promoted' (36/9/5) in 2005 with only 5 (FIVE) namespace edits - and (I'll stand corrected) that's the period where most of the badmins come from. Ironically, with everyone screaming that today's bar for adminship is too high, is that what they want us to go back to while at the same time as making it easier to desyop? That's why I became an admin (after much badgering to run at RfA): to press for change and to protect 'inferior' people like you from the likes of admins like him, and good admins and RfA candidates from the likes of some non admins who persistently vote negatively (not to be confused with opposing for legitimate reasons), and disparage the work of the reformists. So you see again, that you and I are really on the same side, although our approaches are very different indeed. If you really want to know what adminship is like on my side of the fence, all you have to do is nominate yourself tomorrow, your RfA wouldn't - couldn't - be any more humiliating than mine was. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Let's assume from now on that, while we may sometimes disagree and come at things from different angles, we are both operating from essentially the same page, since it seems that is so :) --Epipelagic (talk) 07:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung, if you and Epipelagic are becoming good friends, can you please try to explain to him why hyperbolic distortions of the views of people he disagrees with don't really advance discussion? I've tried, but it's clear the point isn't getting across.—Kww(talk) 18:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

What distortion? --Epipelagic (talk) 20:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully, someone else participating in this discussion will try to explain it to you. I've tried, and apparently only succeeded in increasing the freedom you feel to distort my statements. Personally, I find it hard to take your protestations of ignorance at face value. Perhaps others can.—Kww(talk) 20:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I think Epipelagic should submit an RfA. I'm not saying I would support them, but I believe that if one wants to participate in these types of discussions about the future of RfA, it helps to have first hand experience with the process. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 18:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

No it doesn't and I find that statement truly divisive. I have no first hand experience and no desire to seek it. Non-candidates can still contribute effectively here, regardless what anyone thinks of their contributions, without experiencing RfA personally. Leaky Caldron 19:33, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

If you have never run for adminship, how do you know if it helps? AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 20:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it would help to have experienced an RfA in order to participate in discussions about reforming the process. You ran and withdrew prematurely. If that limited experience helps you participate in these discussions, fine but suggesting that running for Admin. would help any other contributor form an opinion on the process is presumptuous. Leaky Caldron 22:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, if you have never ran for adminship, then you really don't know if it would help anyone form an opinion. I'm not trying to discredit those who have never run, I'm simply trying to point out that it stands to reason that one would know a little bit more about a process if he had personally experienced it. The problem is, most people don't want to go through it because it is such a mess. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts

• see also: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_215#My_opinion

As long as RfA is about voting to indicate an individual's "trust" in a candidate, rfa will be what it is.

If we ditch JUSTAVOTE and METOO, and just focus on each person's explanatory argument and/or examples, then we might get somewhere. But as it stands, it's support your friends, oppose your not-friends, with typically only a few actually looking in contribs, or bringing actual person experience of an editor to the table.

If you want to change it, change the expectation of what the closer is to assess. But as long as people are hung up on percentages, this will be what it is. - jc37 21:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I know one way to change this, but nobody would like this, including me. Instead of one vote (yes/no/neutral) make the whole table, with, I do not know, ten criteria: experience, content contributions, dispute resolution contributions, XfD contributions, familiarity with policies etc. Each point must be voted as yes/no/neutral, blank votes are not accepted (or become neutral). On top of this, there is a final vote which does not need to be a weighted sum of the partial votes. However, if the whole matrix is displayed, it is obvious who is voting for friends without looking at the contribution, and who actually did their homework. And eventually unjustified votes can be discarded whatever.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

How do you determine characteristics such as maturity, judgement and other non-button related attributes? I'm not interested how good someone is in some obscure technical area. I want rounded, mature, sensible and calm in a crisis Admins. I don't see a table determining that. Leaky Caldron 21:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, this comes back to the expectation of what we are asking the closer to assess and weigh and what to discount or ignore.

And thus, based upon that expectation, what we're asking commenters to bring to the discussion. - jc37 21:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

To take maturity as an example, it is determined from the search of contributions, answers to the questions and often from the reaction to the comments. It just takes time.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) - And drive-by voting typically does none of those things. - jc37 21:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, in my proposal it would be easier to have the partial votes without the final vote, and then let the closer(s) decide what is relevant. The problem with such approach would be that if I know someone is an asshole I would vote them down, but often it would be very difficult to break this into partial votes. Assholes can be mature, experienced with AfD or even familiar with the policies.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

How your voting "against assholes" is better for Wikipedia than their voting "for friends"? In both cases, social considerations overweight actual fitness of a candidate for the task. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not saying it is better, I am saying it is more difficult to split into partial votes. If I think someone would be a good admin, I should be able to explain why. This is what the partial votes are about. If I think someone will be a bad admin, it is sometimes notoriously difficult to pinpoint exactly why, and the problems, though real, are not always very well visible. I am sure you know some examples.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Certainly ☺ Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I support Ymblanter's suggestion. Under the current system, any little ignoramus who has chatted on IRC for ten days can amass enough support to become an admin, and attack long-standing editors of the highest calibre, driving them away from Wikipedia. That these people (who universities would fight to employ) are treated with such disdain by a pack of semiliterate high school kids is depressing, because it spells the writing on the wall for wikipedia. As a result, the vast majority of currently active sysops appear to be teens who, judging by their lack of interest in contributing content, fail at school and can't do Pythagoras theorem. Some seem to hate learning and hate knowledge. They spend most of their time chatting on IRC making infrequent appearances on Wikipedia only when rallied by other IRC admins to add their voices to a chorus of support. Hence my contempt for the Wikipedia officialdom. --Ghirla^-трёп- 14:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not seeing the "voting for friends and against non-friends" thing very much; I believe the pile-on phenomenon is more significant - someone finds something in the candidate's history, mentions something they are aware of as a rationale, and others are attracted to that point or issue, in either agreement or disagreement. And I see a lot of evidence that the size of the project means there are far fewer editors with a high enough profile to be generally well known; that issue often arises in current RfAs in the guise of "seen them around" notes, assessment of trust of the nominators as proxies, and points about inadequate experience ("I would have expected to have seen this person more at X, Y, Z" or "Yes, they don't have much experience, but I've seen them at X and liked what I've seen"). Also, starting with my own RfA (a contender for oddest RfA), I've seen a number of examples where quantification would have been difficult. I suspect formalizing criteria in such a manner would take us away from "Does this person seem low-risk" and I believe we want to move back toward that. Partly because ... and I hoped I wouldn't have to be the one to say this ... there's a real elephant in the room with large parts of the community fearing admin abuse. I found out after the fact that over the holidays, there were several cases that overall tempt one to use terms like "nuttery". The fall-out has included long-term editors leaving the project and admins hanging up their tools. Unless this fear is addressed, of course RfA is often going to be a gauntlet. Proposed solutions to the dwindling size of the active admin corps that don't address it can at best be deckchair arrangement, and - especially if imposed by the Foundation or Jimbo - may make that problem worse; and whatever one feels about the merits of the fear or the behavior of participants at RfA that may be a result of it, driving away either productive non-admin editors or active admins isn't helping the project. So there is clearly a whole additional dimension to this problem, and it needs to be taken into account. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Then you may appreciate my thoughts here. - jc37 22:12, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Not withstanding the time that would be spent on the elections, I think the RFACOM proposal has a lot going for it. My main question would be how would the vote work? If we ran it like arbcom, there is a real risk that a sleight of candidates who support specific RFA criteria may get elected and radically shift who gets made an admin. I would suggest each voter gets at most 1-5 votes, so that minority view points are more likely to be represented. As to the special rules RFC idea, I continue to believe we would need to first hold a conventional RFC on that, so that the result of the special rules RFC is clearly legitimate. Monty₈₄₅ 23:15, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Having voted on around 200 RfA and closely analysed 100s of others, I find the 'voting for friends and against non-friends' thing very much in evidence - it's not difficult to prove either. RfA is partly very definitely a popularity/unpopularity contest, but that said, I'm not sure that such votes actually have much impact on the end result - whether it's a nice place or not, RfA still does its job: those who should pass generally do, and those who should not generally don't; borderline cases are still extremely rare. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

@Leaky: 'I want rounded, mature, sensible and calm in a crisis Admins.' I believe that at the end of the day that's what we all want. The way to achieve it is to have rounded, mature, sensible and calm voters; but there are no tabular metrics than can express those qualities in candidates. It's very easy to demonstrate what RfA candidates have done wrong, but not so easy to express that most of them do in fact do most things right most of the time - this does not mean however that their RfA should succeed.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

What we actually need is rounded, mature, sensible and calm candidates (the type who, despite RfA these days, still pass without drama) and who, if successful have a 4 month probation period and a 2 year renewable tenure. Nominators need to be more thorough and willing to accept, when the need arises, that their preferred candidate is not quite ready, due to facts arising during scrutiny, rather than clinging to the idea that their protege is fail safe and needs some sort of protection from community scrutiny. Kids who arrive and immediately push themselves into the limelight in order to gain a following need to be put right to the back of the queue. If the benchmark for candidates is raised the clamour that surrounds RFA will diminish. There is no need to constantly blame those who challenge the competence of a hat collecting adolescent who is seeking powerful rights for life over the editors who actually do the encyclopaedic work here. Introduce moderators for RFA - provided we get the highest calibre, not the gun slinging, block threatening type I recently encountered in an ACE2012 discussion (might even have been a member of Arbcom). Leaky Caldron 12:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Isn't the lack of borderline cases actually a symptom of the problem? No-one goes near RfA unless they're sure of winning, either because they know they have substantial support, or because they're delusional enough to think they do. Those in the middle wouldn't go near it. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The success rate argues otherwise. Last year there were 28 successful and 68 unsuccessful. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Which over recent years irrespective of the number of RfAs, is fairly consistent: roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of all RfA fail for whatever reason. Some aren't even captured in the stats because they are deleted as non-starters immediately on transclusion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Final rates don't tell us much, because that's just counting pass/fail, not how close they came. My point is that current RfA candidates seem to fall into only two groups: those with a clear chance of winning (good, but rare) and those with no hope, but who don't realise this (we probably don't want them anyway). The process is thus excluding the middle ground, people who might pass but not obviously so, and who also comprise a large number of good editors who would make good admins. Our process is denying us these people as a resource. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I haven't nominated anyone for over a year and I stopped trying to persuade people to run some time before that; But in my experience the most common reason why qualified candidates don't want to run is that RFA is such a toxic and horrible process. If we can reform RFA and make it less toxic, less arbitrary and more focussed on whether or not someone would make a good admin then there are plenty of well qualified people out there who would run. ϢereSpielChequers 01:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

It so toxic precisely because the community cannot agree amongst itself what qualities indicate someone will be a good admin. Monty₈₄₅ 15:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that we can't agree on what to look for when assessing admin candidates; But I am convinced that RFA isn't structured for such agreement to emerge. If we had an RFC to settle at last some of the RFA criteria then we could decouple the two debates - does this candidate meet the criteria? and what should the criteria be? ϢereSpielChequers 08:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Another solution looking for a problem

1. Over the many years, there have been literally dozens of ideas for RfA 'reform'. Almost all of them (I can think of only one that didn't) were proposed as solutions without any careful analysis of extant problems. This proposal is no different. It perceives problems and suggests a solution. This, as opposed to careful research to identify problems first. I can't tell you a hammer is the right tool if I don't know what the job is.
2. This proposal would almost certainly result in RfaCom being comprised entirely of administrators. This will create an even greater divide between administrators and the community.
3. The notion that a mass of people can produce something good was tried in 2001. You're reading a page from it right now. Creating RfaCom effectively says that the mass of people are no good at this, so we're breaking the Wikipedia model.
4. Wikipedia already suffers from a bloat of bureaucracy. This just makes it worse.
5. As with anything, there will be unintended consequences. Where is the analysis of potential pitfalls, and strategies for managing them?
6. What methods do you intend to use to evaluate success of this proposal if it is accepted? This is probably unanswerable at this point because without identification of problems, there's no way to know if this 'solution' is fixing anything. I could be happily hammering away at all these nails I'm putting into the wall, not realizing the car won't start. That's what not identifying problems first causes.

I don't believe there is one golden spike, one golden solution to all that ails RfA. It's a broken system; everyone seems to be able to agree on that. Eventually, if nobody can figure out a better way to do it, you have to acknowledge that as broken as it is it's working better than anything anyone can come up with. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• Hey, I'm as shocked as you are, asking people to vote to voluntarily give up their right to vote is a little crazy :) But you and Jc37 are the only ones who have disapproved so far ... I've asked a few other people if this was or wasn't in line with their own proposals, and you can see the answers I've gotten so far on this page, and on their talk pages (User talk:Sphilbrick, User talk:Kumioko, User talk:Kudpung, User talk:Mbisanz, User talk:Ymblanter and my talk page). With this much support, it's worth at least keeping the conversation going until we can figure out whether we've got a lemon or lemonade here. And ... there's a chance that any proposal will fail, so I totally support building other proposals simultaneously ... it sounds like you're in favor of "small tweaks only" and "fix the real problem", which are both sure to get a lot of support. - Dank (push to talk) 16:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not in favor of anything because, like you, I haven't identified the problems that need to be solved. I like hammers. I really do. But, they make miserable tools for starting cars that won't start. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Point taken. As soon as the section opens up, I'll try to be quite specific about what problems this might solve. - Dank (push to talk) 16:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
      • I think it better to scrap voting on solutions and begin working to identify problems. Some of this work has been done in the past (though, not all of it) and is likely still relevant. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:49, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• This whole comment is brilliant. I've seen a lot of asserting there are well known, agreed upon problems. But rarely (if ever) are they articulated, and I suspect if people tried, we'd find there aren't any well known, agreed upon problems. Indeed, the only specific complaint I've seen repeated is that there are occasional nonsense opposes; but those don't influence the outcome, so I'd say it's a minor concern. WilyD 18:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• Most of us agree that there are RfX-related problems somewhere. However, there is no consensus as to what those problems are and therefore there is no consensus as to any possible solutions. Now, even if we knew what the problems were, I doubt that we could reach a consensus on solutions, but as it currently stands, I think we have the cart before the horse. However, it doesn't really matter, because we need consensus for both the cart and the horse and I'm not holding my breath on either. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, to continue the analogy; if we at least knew what the cart looked like, we'd know whether we needed a pony or Percheron :) --Hammersoft (talk) 19:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

AutomaticStrikeout, the problems with RfA have been examined in great depth and clearly identified. That's what 99.9% of the work of WP:RFA2011 comprised of: sheer objective research, and tons of it. The project never actually got around to making formal proposals for some of the solutions they suggested. Today, WP:RFA2011 is still an excellent handbook of relevant resources - it's a shame people don't read it before making sweeping statements based on conjecture.

The participants on this current series of discussions here on this talk page generally concur with those findings, and thanks to new initiatives here, are now taking some of the ideas from WP:RFA2011 forward in the hope of really getting something done before Wales or the Foundation does it for us. I admit that the retro-reading of that project would require the same time as a paperback, and some knowledge of reading stats and tables, but this thread summarises it in less than 10 minutes. The horses and carts are in the right order and have been for nearly two years:) --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

RfC

Striking the part that doesn't have consensus Okay, if there are no objections, I'll start an RfC in this section later today. It will run for one week, and have two main goals:

• Everyone is invited to post any RfA-related topic for discussion and vote. But please, use good judgment and only ask for a vote on things that have a chance of gaining consensus within a week. Bear in mind that it's been hard to get consensus for any single plan at RfA, for years. But don't let that stop you ... if you think the time is right, go for it.
• This RfC will be set the ground rules for a three-week RfC following right after this one that will
• [Let's] develop five different recommendations for RfA. At this point, it looks like they will be: "the same, maybe with some tweaks or lightweight clerking" (See WP:RFA2011), heavy clerking, some kind of elections, Rfacom (see above), "fix the real problem (community de-adminship, admin culture, whatever) before you fiddle with RfA", and "something else". If we can't figure out what the "something else" is during this weeklong RfC, then we'll let the voters figure it out as they go during the 3-week RfC. In the past, people have typically preferred just one of these approaches, so they've been positive about their approach and negative about all the others ... unfortunately, that's meant that every approach has generated a lot of negativity, and we've never figured out how to get past all that resistance and put together some well-developed plans that could gain consensus, so we largely gave up trying. To deal with that problem, we'll be voting in this RfC for a new ground rule for the 3-week RfC: each voter has to pick just two of the five sections to discuss and vote in ... and you can vote for or against and say whatever you want in the two sections you pick. - Dank (push to talk) 14:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think limiting individuals to discussing 2/5 of the proposals is reasonable. If I have strong objections to two proposals, I can't even comment on the others? I understand we may need to move away from the standard consensus formula, but I still don't think that is the right way to do it. Monty₈₄₅ 14:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Seconding Monty's comment. I understand the fear of no consensus, but this would tend to generate false consensus, which might well be worse. Perhaps a ranking system, where people state first to fifth preferences? Espresso Addict (talk) 00:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

• I propose as an alternative method of decision the following: We agree to a 5 week process, the first 2 weeks would be to layout and refine specific proposals. Proposals should be discussed and improved during the 2 weeks, each editor will be permitted to endorse one proposal. Proposals with 5 or more endorsements move on to the 2nd phase, which would be a 3 week vote using Support/Oppose voting. The proposal with the highest level of support, as calculated by support/(support + oppose) is implemented, subject to a minimum 60% support. If more then one proposal passes the 60% threshold, to the extent that the other proposals do not conflict with the top voted proposal or each other, they will also be implemented. Monty₈₄₅ 14:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • That's not bad ... I have a few reservations but it could work. The thing to watch for is whether the pushback on each possible way forward keeps overwhelming the discussion to the point where the proposals don't even get developed properly. - Dank (push to talk) 14:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Wonder where the 60% comes from? It is below the unwritten range that is considered "consensus", but more than a simple majority. Unfortunately I predict major drama will come from this(or any other threshold other than the elusive "consensus"). Perhaps an idea to put the acceptance threshold up to a strawpoll during the first two weeks (But what would be the threshold for that? Oh the humanity!). Yoenit (talk) 15:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
      • The 60% is I admit somewhat arbitrary. Certainly it should be at least 50%, but I think discussion on the exact threshold would be open for discussion. I went with 60% as a starting point compromise between simple majority support, and a percent stand in for consensus. Monty₈₄₅ 15:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• Is it too early to create subsections for the four general directions (not much change, heavy clerking, Rfacom, "fix the real problem first") while we work on a structure, and wait for Wales to clarify his position? I know people want to get started on working up each of the proposals. - Dank (push to talk) 16:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Any chance that this RfC can take place on its own page, or a subpage of this page? This is a very busy talk page, and I fear that staging a huge RfC on it will be a disservice to both your RfC and this talk page. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 16:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
    • No preference, really. If we do a week-long RfC just to set some ground rules for the real RfC, it wouldn't hurt to do that here. If we're going to start on the "real thing", I agree with you. - Dank (push to talk) 16:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
      • I think it would be preferable to have all of these discussions in one place for easy access, rather than having to link to the RfA talk page archives for one discussion, and to a separate RfC page for another discussion. ‑Scottywong| confabulate _ 17:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

That is precisely why WP:RFA2011 was created. Not, as some may imagine, to provide Kudpung and cohort with a private workspace. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• This is mainly a reply to Kumioko's comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 123#RfA (not again!). Kumioko is pointing to the proliferation of proposals here as evidence we'll fail once again ... but I just want to be clear about the goals here. There will be a vote at some point, and some proposals will get more votes than others ... but along the way, "stakeholders" or subcommunities will form, and that's just as important for what comes next. For instance, if either Jimbo or the community picks Rfacom as the first thing to try, that doesn't mean that suddenly everything else is irrelevant ... the people who feel strongly about clerking would still have a clerking job to set up, the supporters of the current system would still have a very important job of making sure that what works in the current system isn't abandoned, and of course the "fix the real problem" people would still have exactly the same real problems to fix. Bottom line: I hope the subgroups that form will work to find whatever might pass for consensus in their own group, and then make the case to the rest of us, and keep at it regardless of the outcome of any one RfC. There's really very little that's been said here that can't be fit in some way into a solution. - Dank (push to talk) 19:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the update Dank and I want to clarify my intent isn't to be a naysayer or to doom this discussion. I think its great that so many editors are again showing interest in the topic. I also think that in order to fix the RFA problem multiple things are needed and they don't all necessarily have to happen at once. Many are mutually exclusive. For example setting up an RFAcom is a good idea but I fear that the initial success of it would be quickly overcome as another Arbcom. I also think that many of the other ideas are good too, disallowing stupid Oppose votes but again whats a stupid one? I think its stupid to oppose self noms, others disagree. I think its stupid to oppose on the grounds that someone was blocked once 3 years ago but I have seen that one too. I also think its stupid to ask one candidate 28 questions but another slides through with the minimum.

I think in order for RFA to not suck in the future we need to lay some more ground rules for the process as well as an RFAcom. We also need to give RFAcom some teeth and set some rules for them.

1. Should they be able to ban someone from RFA?
2. Can they revert a comment or question? Can they cut off the questions at some point?
3. Can they just end an RFA if they feel the candidate doesn't meet the criteria?
4. Would they be required to be admins themselves?
5. Can they be on RFAcom and Arbcom or some other com at the same time?
6. Does a reguler editors vote still matter if we have an RFAcom?
7. Does their vote overrule the community?

These are all things to consider as we develop this new process. That is unfortunately why I think that it will fall to Jimbo. As we get farther into the process editors will start picking the proposals apart with what if scenarios. We have been down this road to many times for me to think that it will succeed. I do wish you the best of luck though and I am going to leave this discussion alone. Kumioko (talk) 19:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Kumioko, I'd like to put off responding to that until the different groups are working on each proposal separately. I agree with Kudpung that we already know quite a lot about the problems, and what we know is nicely written up, too. But I also agree with Hammer's main point, which I understand to mean: it's counterproductive to focus on solutions, focus on the problems. I think that's exactly right ... it's the main way we've gone astray in the past, everyone proposes solutions, but solutions don't allow consensus to form among like-minded people. To "come clean", I don't actually believe in only one solution ... Rfacom ... or even in just one view of the problem; there is huge support ... shared by all of us, probably, to one degree or another, for different views of the problem. The "status-quo" position isn't just what we're stuck with because we can't get it together to do anything else, there are good reasons for the status quo. The clerking proposals represent the view that the problem is that RfA can't work without additional rules. The "fix the real problem" position says the main problems are external to RfA, and that no amount of twiddling with RfA will fix the problems. I have some sympathy with all those views, and I hope we'll never let any of those views drop out of sight, no matter who happens to be "winning" at the moment. We need to hold on to what's working, we need to make rules, and we need to fix problems external to RfA.

• The reason I proposed Rfacom is that, IMO, there's always been a view that the problem is that RfA doesn't work well because it's hard to do it right, that is, we don't attract the right candidates in the first place, or we don't treat them right, because we let anyone walk in off the street and make up the rules in RfA as they go along. And a lot of people have said things recently that imply that they share that view to some extent. It may look like voters are doing a fine job, as long as they get to say whatever they want about whatever topic they want ... but when it gets harder than that, when we're forced to consider whether such-and-such a statement is fair, or if it's being applied in the same way to all candidates, or whether we might be acting out of some bias or vested interest of our own, or whether we're saying too much or too little ... that's not a trivial problem any more, and not everyone can do it well, particularly if they have little experience at RfA. I respect all the tough work that Arbcom does, of course, but think a moment about what RfA voters are asked to do ... is it really so much easier to figure out who should be promoted than to figure out who should be banned? What would happen if Arbcom proceedings were a community vote, with Arbcom stepping in like bureaucrats at the end to decide consensus? It would be a clusterfrak ... and not because we weren't enforcing the right rules, and not because the problems are external to Arbcom ... but because it's really, really hard to do that stuff, and takes some serious time and some serious experience to do it in a way that at least tries to take everyone's concerns on board and get to a fair result. So ... I'm actually not sold on just one solution, the main goal is to get people together who share that view of the problem and see what we can come up with. But I was afraid that if I just talked about the problem and didn't have any solution to offer that looked promising (and people have responded very positively so far), people wouldn't get interested enough to work on it. - Dank (push to talk) 21:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I do not think we can proceed without a dedicated page with the statement what the problem is. And we can not proceed until we have somehow consensus that this is a problem, otherwise every solution is going to be voted out whatever reasonable it could be.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:32, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

That's been the problem, but I'd like to suggest there are two possible ways around it: Jimbo hasn't responded yet today, but what he's said so far suggests he's going to be willing to pick something that doesn't have consensus in the usual sense (but unless something big has changed, he'll want to see some kind of supporting discussion online). Also, after the four groups (and there are probably more) have figured out among themselves what the consensus within their group is, there's always a chance people will be willing to compromise ... we'll vote for your solution, at least in part, if you'll vote for ours. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Btw, that may sound like politics, because it is, and politics should be the absolute last resort ... it would be better if any of the groups can put together something that's really persuasive and deals with a large chunk of the concerns of all the groups. But if that's not possible after putting in some real effort, it's not a sin to compromise, to acknowledge that I see it how I see it how I see it and you see it how you see it, so we might as well both get something we want. - Dank (push to talk) 22:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Have things slowed down a little? How about a straw poll where we ask people to agree with one of the following statements, with the idea that they will then spend most of their time talking with other people who share their views? Anything to add to this list? "I believe the main problem is that (pick one):"

• we need to elect someone for something.
• we need to enforce rules at RfA on what people can and can't say.
• we need to focus on the real problem, not RfA.
• since RfA usually reaches the right result and reform has never worked, we need to stop spending time on this.
• something else - Dank (push to talk) 14:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

  I see it slighly differently. Smth like this.

  • Do we have (a) systemic problem(s) related to the activity of administrators in the project (yes/no);
  • Is the (main) problem RFA related (yes/no);
  • If we have the majority for double yes, go for the options (enforce RFA rules; change the RFA mechanism; make trial admins; make admins non-permanent; other ideas)
  • If the first is yes, the second is no, open the discussion;
  • If the first is no, we are not yet prepared to discuss the issue.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

We need to encourage discussion among like-minded people if we're going to get anywhere, and it doesn't work to tell people under what conditions they'll be allowed to talk. (Actually, that's not quite right ... it works well for people in the fourth group, who believe we should stop spending time on this.) I know that it would be ideal if everyone were rowing in the same direction, but we're not. - Dank (push to talk) 14:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

But if the majority believes the problem does not exist or is not FRA related, we will be just wasting time brainstorming.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

That's usually a good approach on Wikipedia ... because usually, we're trying to decide something people haven't made up their minds on, and if they have, we just keep trying ... the odds are that eventually things will tip one way or another. That's not going to happen with RfA reform, so we need a different approach. We know for certain at this point that significant numbers of people have significantly different ideas about the goals and the problems. And, all of the major views are right, at least in their main points.- Dank (push to talk) 15:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

On the basis of lack of empirical evidence I do not accept the following:

1. That the current level of active & available Admin resource is inadequate to meet current and future (2 year) demand.

I would prefer to see evidence of a problem before considering how radical a solution is needed. However, I accept the following:

1. Evidence shows a steady reduction in RfA candidates
2. Evidence shows a drop over time in successful Admin applicants
3. RfA, despite problems, still selects good calibre Admins
4. Few if any rejected candidates were actually of sufficient calibre, despite the protestations of their supporters/nominators
5. The most suitable candidates are almost always unknown to the majority of the community until they arrive at RfA and have not spent their entire wiki life grooming a coterie of supporters via IRC or making comments at every discussion board
6. Too many candidates are unprepared, immature or lacking in effective communication skills but are still heavily supported
7. Admin is seen as community recognition / promotion and RfA itself as an election
8. RfA can be hostile
9. RfA is not managed
10. Admins selected on a nod and a wink in the old days may not be suitable for Admin activities in the current era
11. Admin for life is an obvious impediment to the reduction in antagonistic questioning of many borderline candidates at RfA
12. The supporting of candidates in droves before a question has been answered is a clear demonstration of a popularity pole via social networking and should be prevented by a simple block on voting until an enhanced set of questions have been answered
13. Simple solutions can be implemented to resolve these issues but there is little collective will to change the system
14. Imposed solutions from Foundation will not result in better quality Admins than currently selected by the community
15. Unfortunately the efforts on this page risk becoming a severe case of WP:TL;DR.

Leaky Caldron 15:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

As with many of the comments here, that seems very intelligent, Leaky, but I still think we're stuck. I'd like to see consensus that a straw poll is okay, as a first step to encouraging people to pick a direction and get to work. If the straw poll idea doesn't get support, then I'll invite everyone who's been in one of the recent RfA conversations to consider joining one of the 4 discussion groups. I don't know what else will work, at this point. tweaked - Dank (push to talk) 17:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

As Hammersoft pointed out and per my opening point, can those who claim that the reduced number of Admins being confirmed is actually a problem? Intuitively it should be, but is it in actuality? There needs to be a measure of demand and supply with regard to the amount of Admin work and the queues for the various services provided. Simply claiming an impending calamity because candidate numbers have reduced (for whatever reason) is not convincing when we have no evidence of resource demand outstripping supply. It doesn't mean that RfA reform shouldn't happen but it helps to determine how big a change or whether just tweaks is required. Leaky Caldron 17:51, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

At the extensive WP:RFA2011 discussions, there was consensus that the process could probably produce better results if some rules on what could and couldn't be said were added. There was no consensus that anyone was required to prove that Wikipedia would fall apart if no action was taken, only that any change should be a change for the better. Also: are you okay with the disenfranchisement an entire wiki-generation? (I'm guessing a wiki-generation is about two years, heh.) There were about half as many promotions last year as the year before, and about a quarter as many as three years before. As a basic question of fairness, is it appropriate to make it four times as hard for new Wikipedians to get to a place where they can close some of the most important RfCs, to pick just one admin function? (Note: the usual answer is "our standards were poor four years ago, and we're paying for it now, so we don't have a choice". But that's the wrong answer, because the number of candidates has also fallen dramatically, so there's a problem with the perceived nastiness, intrusiveness and/or unfairness of the process ... it's possible that if we fix that problem, the number of successful RfAs could jump with no lowering of standards at all.) - Dank (push to talk) 18:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

There is no doubt that standards must have been lax to have allowed some of our Admins to pass RfA in years gone by. I happen to think the current standard is about right but that if some of the simple points above were addressed many more good candidates would be willing to come forward. I'm not too bothered about disenfranchising a generation of IRC, social networking, hat seeking college kids - no. It is interesting though that you have confirmed what I suspected - the alleged numbers issue is a perceived one - not a proven one. I don't think it appropriate to consider radical reform when the perceived problem is more about concern for people's sensibilities rather than a genuine threat to stability due to lack of numbers. Leaky Caldron 18:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, changed "happy with disenfranchising" to "okay with the disenfranchisement" ... I'm not blaming you, of course. It sounds like fairness (along with the broader consequences of inequality) is a bigger concern for me than for you ... fair enough :) I don't want to fight with you. In order of what I'd most like to see: 1. Whatever solution I wind up supporting (of course :) 2. Any solution involving a consensus of people who roughly share my view that we can probably craft some kind of rules to make RfA better than it is 3. Any consensus by anyone ... or even a political solution, meaning that any two groups (who don't initially agree) decide to compromise in order to get up to 70% or whatever in a vote 4. A solution picked by Jimbo that at least follows the outlines of some proposal that some group has agreed to. 5. A solution that Jimbo pulls out of ... the air. We're still waiting on Jimbo to clarify, but since the last thing he said was that he was going to make a proposal that involves him stepping in when we can't reach consensus, starting with RfA, I'd rather assume that he meant what he said, and I'd rather beat him to it and come up with something that a big chunk of us can support, if we can. - Dank (push to talk) 18:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Not so sure about fairness not being as big a concern to me. WP is full of inequalities but what I don't want to see is a bunch of new recruits under an easier process mimicking their Admin nominators by threatening to block content rich contributors who occasionally step out of line in an RfA or other discussion. The existing process safeguards against that and with a few minor tweaks would be more welcoming. No need to reinvent the already round wheel! Leaky Caldron 18:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Quite right ... I didn't mean "fairness not being as big a concern" in the sense of being less moral or less enlightened ... sorry, I'm working fast. More on your talk page. - Dank (push to talk) 19:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Is (4) really generally accepted? Based on when complaints arise about the process, it seems pretty likely that the vast majority of concern is about candidates whose suitableness is disputed; people who've been around for a while, made some friends, but have questionable events in their past (especially when they get early support, which drops as questionable events are brought to light). Whether or not those candidates are suitable isn't clear (and indeed, I'd certainly oppose someone I thought had a 50-50 chance of being a suitable admin - but if such judgement is right, half the time I'm be opposing a suitable candidate.) WilyD 09:44, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Jc37's proposal is taking a beating ... but anything that gets people to express an opinion is good, because any complex negotiation has to start with learning, even in a vague way, where people stand. So, we need more bad (but plausible) ideas that generate a big reaction ... anyone? :) When this phase finishes, when everyone has had a chance to say something that suggests where they stand, the next step ... and this is where we usually fall down ... is to "go to our corners", to get people who basically agree with each other to figure out the best, most attractive proposal they've got, so they can try to win the skeptics over, without letting the skeptics bog down the discussion while it's going on (mostly unintentionally). - Dank (push to talk) 15:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

@Leaky Cauldron, I disagree with several of those points, but in particular the idea that the question section is so important. Personaly I think that reviewing the candidate's contributions is far more important and a !vote based purely on a review of contributions is generally going to be more useful than one based purely on a review of the q&A section. So I'd replace "The supporting of candidates in droves before a question has been answered is a clear demonstration of a popularity pole via social networking and should be prevented by a simple block on voting until an enhanced set of questions have been answered" with "One should always be suspicious of votes in the first half hour, unless the candidate and !voter have extensive interactions such votes imply that less than half an hour has been spent assessing the candidate". I'd also dispute the idea that RFA usually gets it right when it rejects candidates, judging from the number of useful admins who failed their first RFA or sometimes more than their first I think we have pretty good evidence that RFA does sometimes reject people who would have made good admins, and there have been plenty of rejected candidates who have never run again. ϢereSpielChequers 03:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal NOTAVOTE

Eliminate the support/neutral/oppose sections, and the sense that rfa is a straw poll, and entirely eliminate the idea that these are votes, and thereby eliminate the percentage threshholds.

And so, just have people post why the candidate might make a good admin, or why they have concerns about the candidate as an admin.

Then the bureaucrats assess the information in the discussion, assessing both the consensus of the discussion, and the broader community consensus concerning admins per previous consensus, policy, and such. All per WP:CON.

Should they probably not get the tools at this time? Then the button isn't pushed. Is there no significant reason to not give the tools ("they looked at me funny, and like the colour blue, which I hate" obviously would have little weight) - then the button is pushed.

The discussion is closed, and life goes on.

This puts an end to drive-by voting and "me too" votes.

Bureaucrats would merely be weighing substantive reasoning and discussion. - jc37 17:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

For presumably obvious reasons, this rfc is not set up as a straw poll : ) - jc37 17:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• I would suggest that RFA should be KINDOFAVOTE - the figures and percentages are useful, but we need clerks / crats to monitor the RFA and strike any !votes that fall into the "drive-by" category - no rationale provided, stating "as above", opposing because the RFA falls during a certain holiday/religious period etc. etc. This should be done while the RFA is still open so that the editor concerned can expand on their support/oppose, provide some proper rationale, and re-vote. GiantSnowman 17:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• This radically alters the nature of cratship, to one where we are very openly electing crats to exercise a quite considerable level of judgement and discretion. In principle I welcome that. But if we are going to do that, we should also look at other areas where these attributes would prove useful, for instance making calls on contentious blocks and closing sitewide RfCs or policy discussions. Relieving admins of these highly contentious de facto responsibilities would in itself make adminship far less of a big deal. Cratship couldn't be any more of a big deal than it is currently seen as, even with the added responsibility.

  In summary, adminship would become predominantly about by-the-book use of the toolset: sysop candidates who genuinely just want to do the spade work would find obtaining the tools far less daunting as a result. On the other hand, those who actively want to do the aforementioned controversial stuff need to have thick enough skin to cope with something akin to the current RfA system: far better that their first experience of the "bearpit" is in a semi-controlled environment at a time of their choosing, rather than it being thrust upon them without warning after they do something contentious. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 17:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'm afraid I don't think this is the solution. Something should be done, but completely taking out the !vote idea gives the closing crat far too much jurisdiction. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 17:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• Facepalm This is at least the third RfC you've recently started on the topic of RfA, and in my opinion, two of the three (including this one) are proposals that don't appear to have been well thought-out. Any chance we can slow down on starting new RfC's? Instead, perhaps consider just starting some feeler discussions first to gauge interest/support before starting a full-blown RfC. Since an RfC could actually change the course of policy, people feel compelled to comment on RfC's so that policy doesn't change in a way they don't like. Starting a bunch of poorly thought-out RfC's at the same time, therefore, can waste the time of a lot of editors. ‑Scottywong| confabulate _ 18:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• This doesn't remotely address the problem with RfA. It doesn't put more power in the hands of the closing 'crat either, it just makes his/her work more difficult sorting out the consensus. The current system is not broken, and by abandoning it we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What needs to be done is to potty-train the voters. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
• This could be a very good solution, but first we would need to agree a criteria for adminship against which candidates could be assessed. This is a system that works pretty well for Rollback and AutoPatroller, and in my view it is the lack of agreed criteria that makes many individual RFAs so toxic. Recent discussions in RFAs have seen a candidate with featured content described as not a content contributor, and I can remember one oppose that described someone as "not yet part of the community" because they'd started editing little over a year earlier. Though I'm pretty relaxed about tenure, and would happily support good candidates who had only been here a few months, if we could agree an arbitrary criteria of at least twelve different months in which an editor had made over 100 edits it would make RFA a much more congenial and effective place. IMHO if opposers had to actually come up with diffs of a candidate being incivil or making excessive mistakes then RFA would not only be less toxic but would be more likely to screen out potentially bad admins. I'd also like to see this combined with some clear process for marginal candidates to resolve the community concerns and achieve adminship. For example I consider that adding reliably sourced content is a basic skill that all admins should have mastered, and if someone failed purely on that criteria it would be good if they could have that issue reconsidered as soon as they could list a bunch of edits that adequately demonstrated that skill. ϢereSpielChequers 01:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - If straw polls are that bad, then why create two of them in 3 RfCs in a quick burst? Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_removal_of_adminship/Straw_poll diff, Wikipedia talk:Moderators/Straw poll diff And then: structured discussion is good, clearly marking the editor intention is good for everyone reading it - Nabla (talk) 01:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• That seems like a very bad idea—it would totally disempower the community and transfer all the power to the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats would simply read whatever outcome they preferred into the community's comments, and that wouldn't be healthy at all. Everyking (talk) 06:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• There's also the problem that such a system would, as part of its checks and balances, require a means for challenging the bureau's close (similar to what we have in place at DRV). That basically means any new admin's appointment could be quickly challenged, just what they need after the stress of RFA... Yunshui 雲‍水 06:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• It isn't a terrible idea, but you'd need to go a bit further. First, to give bureaucrats that much power, you'd need to enhance their accountability. Perhaps annual elections (all candidates display their thoughts on what makes a good admin) - the top 5 successful in the election are given +crat, and at the end of Community comment phase the five vote on whether the individual should be a sysop or not. No need for appeals, if the community don't like their judgement they vote them out at the next election.--Scott Mac 15:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Why would it be a good idea to have elections for bureaucrats to choose the admins, but not to just have elections to directly elect the admins? Everyking (talk) 16:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, for a start, RFA isn't an election. I don't mean that in a !vote vs vote way, but in an election you choose between candidates. RfA is a vetting process, and it may not be the only way (or even the best way) to vet people who offer themselves as admins.--Scott Mac 19:21, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. This would make the bureaucrats' job more difficult, and could potentially create more discontent among !voters who were against the final outcome. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, actually this is 180 degrees from the needed fixes to RFA. The problem with RFA isn't in the votes people cast, it's in the attacks on character and the out-of-line personalization of the process that drives otherwise good candidates away from it. If anything, limits should be placed on the sorts of things people can say about and to a candidate, not limit the vote. Not that I think this is the best solution, but a raw vote with zero comments at all during the voting process would almost certainly be better. I don't think that's a good solution either, but it would certainly be better than this proposal. --Jayron32 21:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Pile-on oppose actually, it doesn't matter if I support or oppose, because the closer gets to interpret my vote how they want, right? --Rschen7754 22:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose quantifying debate is important when there are more than half a dozen or so commenters. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. The bad part of RfA is not in the "votes", it's in the words. This proposal takes out the good part and leaves the bad part. (And what Kudpung says) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• I would be prepared to support something along these lines. I think that if we're going to fix RfA then we need to look at how similar processes such as AfD work. While the vote count is usually considered in such processes, it doesn't have to be the only or main determining factor. Something like this would help discourage people from using dodgy rationales as they would be discounted entirely (as opposed to the current system where they do help determine the vote percentage and hence place restrictions on what the closing bureaucrat can do). I take the point that AfD does assess things against fixed criteria, and we would probably have to adopt some fixed criteria for what makes a good administrator. Hut 8.5 10:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose discontinuation of support/oppose/neutral. However, IMHO all (support/oppose) votes should be accompanied by rationales and at least one diff. Per User:Example shouldn't be permitted unless that other user has provided a diff substantiating his/her vote. -- Trevj (talk) 11:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't always agree with Everyking's strong deferrence to the numerical aspect of measuring level of support when determining consensus, but in the area of RFA I agree with his viewpoint. There is no policy that mandates that an editor be granted or denied adminship, the decision is entirely up to subjective judgement. To determine the result, I strongly prefer that the decision be decided by a community consensus than a committee consensus. At least two of the cases where bureaucrats promoted over serious objections and below the 70% threshold ended up with the candidate in question being desysopped for misusing the tools, so I don't think that a small closed pool of bureaucrats is better at determining which candidates are suitable than the community at large is. Sjakkalle (Check!) 18:23, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - This would put more pressure on the reviewing Crats and really isn't a solution at the current point. The votes make an easy decision and make the outcome obvious. I do agree though that we shouldn't be allowing massive amounts of pile-on votes, like "Support agree with above" or "Oppose Some problems". Completely agree with Zebedee here. I think that pile-on votes should be discounted entirely, but I most certainly do not agree with NOTAVOTE here. Vacation9 16:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose the problem with RfA is mindset and standards for trust, not whether one votes this way or that way. And that cannot be changed by policy, as if our community doesn't feel that user X is trustworthy enough to handle the sysop toolset, any policy that would assign him that toolset would be fair. To dump on the 'crat the job of solving this by weighing the comments and discussions is unfair to them and would only divide the community further. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 09:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, even though valid concerns with prospective administrators such as a complete lack of content contribution are ignored by bureaucrats, as they stated in public a few years ago. Is there a list available of all opposition rationales bureaucrats will automatically discount and outright ignore? I don't like having to hunt through old RFAs with approval ratings in the high 60s/low 70s for disturbing precedent. Agent Vodello^{OK, Let's Party, Darling!} 19:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• Examples of when content opposition votes are practically thrown out the window and ignored: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bsadowski1, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GorillaWarfare, and one more that I remember being around 68% but can't find. Agent Vodello^{OK, Let's Party, Darling!} 06:06, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Snow Oppose: People should state their views, not hide behind text without a clear conclusion.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 23:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Adminship and social skills

Admins' duties seem to be dividable into fairly straightforward tasks such as technical page moves and oversighting, and tasks requiring fine social judgment, such as page protection, and blocking for behaviour other than obvious vandalism, spamming and threats. By bundling these two tasks, technical adminship and social stewardship, into the one job description we set the bar too high for technical admins and too low for social stewards. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

It's the internet. No-one here has fine social judgement. DrKiernan (talk) 14:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

↑ This. ‑Scottywong| spill the beans _ 15:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Moderators/Proposal, user:Jc37 proposes a new user group, moderator, with all the sysop rights but those that involve the assessing of user behaviour. Jc37 proposes that admins who don't want to deal with the drama here, may renounce the behaviour modification tools and switch from admin to moderator. I think we should have separate selection processes for new moderators and administrators. That way we would have a larger pool of technical admins to choose from and could ensure the admins blocking, banning and protecting, are well suited to the task. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:27, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but a very awkward division. Boiling it down, it's a proposal to give a set of editors the delete button and the authority to use it in all the regular adminnish ways, but not the protect, semiprotect, or block buttons. I suspect that anyone thinking that the delete button is just a technical, content-only, not-at-all social or user conduct-related tool are not familiar with...well, the delete button. Admins using the deletion tool (whether responding to CFD and PROD templates, or closing AfD discussions) are probably the ones most likely to encounter difficult social situations involving potentially good-faith, possibly-recruitable new editors who nevertheless are angry (because their articles are being (considered for) deletion), and who lack sufficient Wikipedia experience to competently navigate a deletion discussion. Breaking out individual tools from the admin toolbox also invites "I only have a hammer, so the hammer is the tool I will use" problems. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

The rawness of the emotions at CFD, PROD and AfD discussions makes it more important that only editors with fine social judgement are wielding the block tool in those environments. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

"Administrators are expected to uphold the trust and confidence of the community,..." so it says here WP:ADMIN. For me, an obvious lack of empathy, knowledge and maturity etc. is enough to say, "no thanks, I don't trust you". Until Admin is removable in quick time without fuss, the higher standard needs to apply to all candidates. The one's choosing to work in a techy dungeon, if one exists, are not exempted. Leaky Caldron 16:36, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

We don't have the luxury of selecting only highly socially sensible people for all the tasks presently covered by admins because we need so many, and there aren't that many people here with demonstrated social sense. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Prove it. Show me the lengthening queues awaiting Admin intervention or the existing Admins complaining about creaking under the strain. Sledgehammers are rarely any use - other than for destroying things. Leaky Caldron 18:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I thought we had a shortage of admins. Sorry if I'm wrong there. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Leaky: en.wiki itself is stagnating at best, if not declining (the one measure on which one could argue we are growing is overall article count, but even then the rate of growth is slowing). If the very way the site operates isn't contributing to us levelling off, then what is? —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 18:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

IMO, it's dubious that the difficulty of RfA is a major factor in that, though. Much more likely is that this stagnation is be due to ever-rising standards and hoops to jump through to avoid summary deletion of new articles or reversion of new users' edits. And the fact that most interaction with new users is a "welcome" template full of policy links and templated warnings of whatever they do wrong; at least things like the Teahouse are changing some of that. There may also be some truth to the statement that much of the "low-hanging fruit" has already been picked outside of some niche areas. Anomie⚔ 18:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, RfA is a very small part of that, without question. Even adminship is only one piece of the jigsaw, albeit a sizeable one. But those other things you mention, as well as many others and indeed other permissions, are all interelated. IMO it is the very culture of the site (primarily SOP, to a lesser extent civility) which needs a complete overhaul, and it is meaningless to attempt to do so without all the main focal points being involved.

With enough will, I think the community is capable of reforming almost any aspect of Wikipedia in a way that better meeds modern needs. This is the exception. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 18:44, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec)The principle behind all this (giving mops to janitors and gavels to judges), is one I've been pushing for ages. A combination of disagreement over the mechanism, and a vested interest from some, has always been the stumbling block. And it's no longer just a matter of believing that there might be a better way. There simply must be, and we simply must find it. The options appear to be to either do something radical, to do nothing and most likely decline, or to have someone turn us back into an autocracy. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 18:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Still, no proof that existing Admin capacity is unable to meet current demand for Admin. intervention is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A reduction in RfA candidates doesn't automatically equal an imminent shortage in terms of supply & demand. Why is it so difficult to measure what we need by way of Admin. resource, rather than assuming that we must have the same number of Admins coming forward every year? Leaky Caldron 18:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I didn't respond to your earlier call for a reason to reform. Not because I was ignoring it, nor because of any lack of respect for you – I didn't respond because I take it for granted that no-one seriously feels that everything is running hunky dory. Evidently I was wrong.

For me, the only pressing need for more admins is the same as it always has been – dealing with users whose only interest is to harm Wikipedia (I'm primarily talking about vandalism, but leaving it just that little bit more open-ended because there are other ways in which it happens). Whenever we protect a page that is not in the global spotlight (currently or perennially, an example of the latter being a living person on this list) for any length of time whatsoever, we do so because there is not a hope in hell of stopping the vandals through other means.

But the problem is that it's not as simple as saying "so let's get more admins". One decision by an admin can make a huge difference. It only takes one admin to close a policy RfC for instance. As a direct result of one tight decision by an admin with little understanding of the subtleties of the objections (closing on the assumption that there is either consensus for everything or consensus for nothing; a "black-and-white basis" as I call it) 5% of the entire project's articles now cover association football, and a massive proportion of those are 'biographies' of living people. The fact that we create more football articles every day is good in theory, but does an ever-increasing repository of stats and one-liners on ordinary people with low-profile careers bring us closer to fulfilling our purpose? [in my opinion this is something best handled through a combination of lists and Wikidata] Or does it fuel the perception that Wikipedia is not a serious attempt at being a comprehensive, balanced encyclopaedia? Regardless of your answer, surely the fact that one admin making one decision can have such a huge influence gives you pause for thought at RfA? That's a very specific example, but more generally and widely, whenever admins make decisions which seem ill-judged or improper at places such as ITN (and DYK to a lesser extent) – places in which qualitative arguments are significant factors – it drives newbies and regulars alike away from those areas.

Therefore, the point Anthony makes is spot on. It is madness that we could trust hundreds upon hundreds of people to block those who have never done anything but vandalise/harrass/attack/do exactly what a blocked user was doing a minute ago/etc on sight, but don't give them the means to do so because they haven't mastered the subtleties involved with closing a qualitative discussion. Or because they once called a dick a dick. We need more janitors, and while I won't comment on how many judges we should have, we should assess them in their suitability for that very specific, very difficult role. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 19:42, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone suggested this before: moving to a system of regular elections like ArbCom?

Firstly - this isn't meant as a formal RFC, I'm just throwing an idea out there which I haven't seen proposed before (although given the lengthy archives of this page, someone probably has) to see if there's any interest in it. If there is a reasonable amount of support, a formal RFC can be proposed.

It seems to me the number one problem with RFA, widely recognised as such, is a dwindling number of promotions. The main reason for this is not so much high standards (though that's part of it) but a low number of candidates putting themselves forward in the first place. This proposal is intended to do something about that. I've noticed that users are more willing to run for adminship when there are many other users running at the same time, and less willing to do so when there's only one or zero other RFAs running. So, the basic idea is, we would probably get a greater level of participation if, rather than having as we do now RFAs on an ad hoc basis whenever someone decides to run, we held them together in batches every few months. This would make the system more resemble the election system for ArbCom, which is generally considered to work well in contrast to RFA.

Here's how it would work. We decide on how many admins we want to promote in a year, and how often we want to promote them. My starting suggestion would be 40 admins, promoted in 4 batches of 10, but those numbers are pretty arbitrary and open to debate. Then, rather than having continuous RFAs as we do now, there would be one election held every 3 months, at a regular date. In between those dates, users would not be permitted to run for RFA but would have to wait for the next round of elections to do so.

Elections would be held on a simple support/oppose basis, as they are now, but the approval process would resemble that for ArbCom: at each election, the top 10 (or whatever) candidates by support would be promoted, regardless of their level of support, as long as it is over 50%.

Yes, this is a radical change: if not many candidates run in a given election, one could potentially be elected with as little as 51% support. But that's the clever part: such a system would encourage people to find plausible candidates to run, to avoid such a possibility. The more candidates who run, the better the quality of admins that would be promoted. If we can't find 10 good candidates in a 3-month period, and have to promote some mediocre ones to make up the numbers, that would be our own fault.

This system would guarantee a regular stream of new admins, which is what we badly need. Perhaps a drastic change like this is the only way to make it happen. Maybe it seems like a slightly crazy idea, but what we should be asking is: if this system is good enough to elect members of ArbCom, why isn't it good enough to elect new admins as well? Robofish (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Your point has merit and I can see that it would address the issue of the dwindling admin population. However, what I would worry about is that the decision on whether someone should be an admin or not shouldn't be a popularity contest, it should be made on consideration of evidence that someone can (or can't) do the job. However broken the current process is, that is its strength: that editors can see the points raised by others and make their judgements according. I say this having voted at 1 RFA, where I was beaten to the SNOWBALL while pointing out that the character of the person at hand was radically unsuited to the bit. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 15:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

It's been suggested. My position (and again, other positions are valid) is that we need to be doing things that encourage a lot more people to learn admin stuff, establish a solid track record, and then run for adminship. But those efforts are guaranteed to fail if people think that they're not going to get promoted after doing all that work, and in the current environment, that's what they're likely to believe. Regular election of admins along the lines you're suggesting might be one way to convince Wikipedians that they really do have a shot at adminship if they do what needs to be done. "Rfacom" (above) is another way, and "heavy" clerking, of the kind that would require clerk elections to give them the gravitas and respect they'd need to make a significant difference to outcomes, would be another. Elections are the common element, and my suggestion FWIW is that we break off a separate page for people who are on board with the idea of elections to figure out how to minimize the downsides and maximize the upsides before presenting a proposal to the community, and maybe to Jimbo. - Dank (push to talk) 15:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I've always liked the idea of having a rigorous panel of clerks for RfA and think it could go a long way to ironing out the problems with the process. What I fear about the idea in this section is that having a large tranche of nominations to sift through in one go may well be too much for the community at its current size to handle. Inappropriate candidates are likely to slip through the net if scrutineers are more thinly spread, and I still don't think it would solve the problem of hostility and irrational opposes in the process. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 16:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Any proposal that could even entertain the remote possibility of a poor quality candidate chancing their luck and qualifying for life-time authority here is inherently a very poor solution (to whatever the "perceived problem" is). RFAComm as I understand it, is equally unacceptable. Basically any panel that doesn't include me (an ordinary editor) isn't acceptable. I don't want anyone representing my Admin. requirements. Leaky Caldron 16:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Looks like an excellent solution, especially the reduction of the threshold to 50%. If the Foundation or Jimbo imposed something along these lines there would be quite a backlash, but it would subside and in the long term we'd get much better outcomes from the process. I think it might even help reduce concerns about admin abuse, in a pleasing sideways way.

As for clerking, there was something approaching informal consensus for that back in October, and a crat with no less gravitas than MBisanz himself started striking votes that lacked rationales. But he got pushback including from a fellow crat and soon stopped. Some voters prefer the freedom not to have to back up their preferences with logical reasons. I'd predict that clerking would result in less participation and possibly even greater resentment and passive aggression. But would love to be proved wrong if it turns out that clerks can encourage voters to be more respectful and constructive. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I learned my lesson. There is no broad community consensus in requiring RFA commenters to provide rationales for their opinions. There is consensus that they cannot attack or otherwise disrupt an RFA through their comments, but "bare" supports and opposes are not strikeable. MBisanz ^talk 20:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I really like this idea. I can't see any reason not to support it. Everyking (talk) 23:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I rather like the idea of maybe having specific periods of time, maybe say one given month out of every three months?, when individuals who wish to be considered for adminship more or less run as a group. I think it would probably increase the number of people who take part in the requests overall, and might for all I know maybe get a few more people to show an interest in, and maybe support, qualified editors who for whatever reason are not among those they have personally encountered before. Some like me might decide to, basically, take a day going over the nominees, as opposed to the current system, where people find their involvement potentially perhaps somewhat limited, depending on the number of crises breaking out at that time. I think it might increase the number of individuals who hadn't already made up their opinions, and I think that would be a good thing. John Carter (talk) 21:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

It almost seems as if this proposal's purpose is to promote lower quality admins, just so that we can say we have more admins. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 01:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I think if we just lower the bar to >50%, one part of this idea, that would be all that was necessary--it would lower the bar to passing RfA enough that probably a lot more qualified people would run who just don't bother nowadays. I'm not dead set against the other changes but the more radical a change you propose the less likely it is to get consensus. And I'm also swayed by the concern brought up above about keeping users from being able to take much time to investigate a candidate. Also I don't think picking a set number is flexible enough since, as we've seen, participation changes over time (well, it declines, hopefully someday it will increase again). delldot ∇. 01:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Robofish and delldot, if >50% is good enough for ArbCom elections, then it should also be good enough for RfA. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Only if you assume the voters are stupid. OK, we are a little stupid and you could probably slip 2 or 3 incompetent admins through before we figure it out and adapt, but I predict the Why not? supporters will be a lot stingier with their support when they realize it only takes one of them to neutralize a But it's Christmas! oppose instead of four. In the long run, fiddling with the support% needed will have little effect on who is elected, but will merely cause weak supporters to refactor their votes into neutrals or weak opposes. Kilopi (talk) 02:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

This is an interesting proposal that might be desirable if it were limited to four times per year, and if there were some reasonable requirement for voter eligibility. More frequent elections would greatly reduce the number of neutral/uninvolved voters (from exhaustion), and that leaves the likelihood of good candidates being rejected due to a preponderance of voters with very high expectations, or the promotion of poor candidates from a pool of friendly but short-sighted voters. What about voter eligibility? I think that should be fairly strict to avoid the enlistment of friendly voters with little Wikipedia experience. At least six months and 500 edits? Perhaps the six months prior to the election date should be block free? Re the pass level, I think many editors would find 50% too low for comfort—if a candidate doesn't achieve 60% they can always run again in three months. (Hmmm, more bureaucracy: need another rule of no more than two runs per year.) Arbcom can work with 50% as the vote is widely publicized and has hundreds of participants (so even 50 friends probably could not influence the outcome). Johnuniq (talk) 03:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't this proposal make adminship a type of competition against other users? I like it the current way: whoever is ready applies, and there's no competition/limited spots. We don't want to limit here, we want to open the door here. We REALLY need more admins. That's an understatement. This proposal would limit the amount of administrators and let in possibly non-qualified users. Vacation9 03:05, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) That's what I worry about as well - are we then talking quotas etc.? I can't see an election addressing anything except adding more bureaucracy and competitiveness... Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• I suggested something similar here (click). I no longer think RfA reform is ever going to happen. If you look at the first version of WP:RFA, written almost ten years ago, you will see that the RfA process has not changed in any meaningful way since then. --Surturz (talk) 05:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Scottywong's comment above reinforces my concerns. However, I'm not against the idea of an Arbcom-style election, perhaps quarterly (and without quotas), and I've made similar suggestions myself in the past, but one should guard against making it any easier to become an admin. For anyone who missed it, I'll just repost here the essential of something I posted a couple of threads back:

  ...I am well aware there has hardly ever been a case where an admin has been sanctioned for insulting and/or punitively blocking content builders. You would be surprised to learn that the very reason I became interested in admins (long before I even thought of becoming one) was because I was mercilessly insulted by an admin and finally bullied by him off one topic area of content work where professionally I had most to offer this encyclopedia. So I wanted to know more about who these 'sysops' are and how they get to become one. Lo and behold, years later that same admin who had never voted on an RfA before, left the most hateful RfA vote and comments - certainly blockworthy if coming from a 'lowly' editor - I have ever seen. That admin is no longer an admin although it took 7 long years to get rid of him. That RfA was mine. [...] It is interesting to note however that the admin concerned was 'promoted' (36/9/5) in 2005 with only 5 (FIVE) namespace edits - and (I'll stand corrected) that's the period where most of the badmins come from. Ironically, with everyone screaming that today's bar for adminship is too high, is that what they want us to go back to while at the same time as making it easier to desyop? ...

This comes back to why I don't think the actual process is broken, and by abandoning it we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What we need to do is potty train the voters.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• I am still having difficulties understanding what we really want. Would the following statement: We (community) want to have more good candidates running for adminship but we are not willing to compromise on the selection quality threshold - express consensus?--Ymblanter (talk) 08:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably by a narrow margin, yes, but not enough to obtain a convincing consensus. It's not that difficult to understand - that word 'we' is the problem. Some of 'we' want it to be easier to become an admin by having probationary adminship, or even an unbundling of the tools at the same time as making it easier to remove the bit. Other 'we' want the bar maintained high and making it easier to remove the bit. In 2012 there were, IIRR, three RfC that attempted to unbundle the tools but they all failed on the basis that there would be a stampede of wannabe admins, and a whole new range of bureaucracy for according them all their little slices of the cake à la WP:PERM and taking them away again. Personally I would see such a system as being like an anthill with many different castes of 'moderators' all rushing around with their different tasks, getting in the way of each other, and generally creating an enormous bureaucratic confusion for the vast majority of editors who just want to get on with creating content without wanting to know how it's all managed, so I rule out having a whole priesthood of gatekeepers as a solution. What people appear to forget is that Wikipedia has grown and matured: I'm 7 years older now than I was when I joined - I was an old man then already ;) - and Wikipedia has about sevenfold more editors since then, meaning that if anything, we have a huge pool of experienced, mature editors to draw on for our admins, so do we really need to make it easier for the newbies to obtain something to brag about in the schoolyard? The good, mature, experienced editors of the right calibre are out there en masse, but because that's who they are, they're not prepared to put up with the immature shit at RfA that the kids will, and that's why not many editors of my generation and Wiki experience are prepared to come forward. It's completely understandable - certain generations need to fully understand that adminship is neither a trophy nor a power-tool - so as far as we reap what we sow, we can't have our cake and eat it.

For me, the choice is between either clerking or an Arbcom-style election. Ironically, if the Foundation would finally come up with the long promised landing page for new users/new article-creators that they offered as a consolation for rejecting WP:ACTRIAL, there would be a lot less work for all members of the 'priesthood', and a lot less interest in collecting hats. For the moment, I am enthralled to see those who were heckling from the sidelines while I was in the vanguard of RfA reform now concurring that many of 'us' are not willing to compromise on the selection quality threshold, and that it's not because we admins jealously guard our privileges and try to maintain a closed-shop - enough good admins have abandoned ship very recently to disprove that theory. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:12, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would argue that good candidates are getting promoted. What this is about, IMO are:

1. Good candidates are also not being promoted
2. RFA is too much a popularity contest and not enough about the candidates ability
3. Good candidates are not bothering to submit because the process is such a gauntlet
4. Its too hard to demote bad admins. There are some out there, we all know a few. Its essentially a billet for life.
5. The sharp increase in Admin workload, protected pages and funnctions requiring admin tools
6. The various admin boards have frequent backlogs which gives an indication that either we do not have enough active admins, or we do not have enough admins with the knowledge to perform that task. In either case its bad. So it is extremely hard (for me at least) to have much simpathy for overworked admins when I am willing to do the work, have the technical proficiency and am told no. We do not want or need your help, submit the request and wait a week like everyone else. So now I rarely edit outside discussions.

So again, although I agree that good admins are being promoted. The process is deterring good candidates from even submitting, driving some of us away who are willing and capable of helping out and although it is borderline functional, the process has become a failure. Kumioko (talk) 14:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Kudpung and points 1-4 by Kumioko. As for points 5-6, I haven't seen any evidence that there is too much work for the current lot of admins to keep up with, but I think that there is a clear downward trend in admin promotion that will eventually need to be dealt with, and better to deal with it proactively than reactively (i.e. when there actually is a real problem). I honestly think that a simple RfA clerking policy would be all that is currently needed. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 21:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

It is evidenced by the frequent backlogs at the various admin forums. There are repeatedly pleas for help left at AN, ANI and other venues. In my own experience it would often take days to more than a week to get admins to do things like implement a change on a protected template, block a vandal, fix a problem on a Mediawiki page, etc. Of all the admins we have its the same 20-30 that always seem to participate in the admin work areas. That causes one sided discussions that frequently fail because the same group of people are always there with the same views. That to me is a problem. It may not be too you, but it is to me. It lacks social and technical depth. We need a wider range of people participating with differing skillsets, backgrounds, ideals and opinions. Kumioko (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Very accurately explained, Kumioko. In fact I doubt whether is is as many as 20 - 30. I have both admin noticeboards on watchlist and check them daily, but I rarely chime in there unless the plaintif or accused happen to be people I know of. There's probably a lot I could do by contributing to these boards but I don't, simply because they seem to be generally cluttered by what appears to be the same regular uninvolved non-admins/wannabe admins. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but stats would probably demonstrate some evidence of it. Most often, by the time I decide I should contribute to such a discussion, it has already suffered an NAC and been archived. Hence, the backlog is caused because the low hanging fruit has been picked, and the stuff that needs maturity and experience to be resolved gets archived, unresolved after 24 hrs in the cellar. When I ran for adminship, I don't believe I had ever participated in an ANI or AN except the one I was dragged to a long time ago by - yet another - desysoped rogue admin with an impressive block log, and forced to a close by another admin who (at least at the time) clearly did not understand the most fundamental aspects of our blocking policy. Neither of whom would have passed RfA at today's standards.

In 2011 & 2012 we lost 35 admins through voluntary resignation from a total of 80 new 'promotions' for the same period. So not only do we need more admins, but we want ones who are prepared to commit themselves to non-tool admin areas, rather than just routine tool-work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Frankly the only time I participate in AN or ANI is when the participants do not seem to understand or fail to follow, our policy. Often times the ones that are there have become cold and callous to the realities of editing and take the most extreme view in seemingly every scenario presented. You can almost hear the mob screaming "Burn them at the stake! Burn the witch!" before even taking the time to ask any questions. These discussions often fail to ask basic questions, Who is it? Why is it? How did it happen? What is the history of this problem? Being uninvolved is good, failing to take the time to perform due diligence is bad. I know from first hand experience that too often these folks block first and if they ask any questions at all, they come much later, after the individual has been blocked and cannot respond. That's why when I see this happen now it aggravates my Bullshit sensors and I go into a state of high Warble. Kumioko (talk) 14:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I feel I could support this proposal if it was formally put. I think quotas would be a step too far, though. Deb (talk) 14:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Deb: theoretically, if we found out that one of the reasons that attractive candidates aren't running is that they don't think they'll pass, but their optimism goes up if we promote a bunch of candidates all at once from time to time, and if the crats are given power not to promote if such a process produces any clearly unqualified candidates, would that be acceptable? Everyone: I'd like to hear some reactions to Kumioko's "It is evidenced" paragraph. I could be wrong, but I get the sense that the "don't make it any easier to pass" folks aren't getting that there's probably a path here that would get everyone on the same side, if you'd be willing to follow it. The people who want more admins don't want immature or inexperienced admins any more than you do. About a quarter as many people passed in 2012 as in 2009, and for those of us who were around in 2009 (or just go back and read the 2009 RfAs if you weren't here), it was hard to pass RfA in 2009, much harder than in 2007, and roughly as hard as it is now. The only reason we have a quarter as many is that only a quarter as many really serious candidates want to run these days. I'm actually fine with the number dropping by half, if what's happening in Military History Project is a good guide: a lot of people just don't feel they need to get involved in admin stuff, they feel like what they're doing on the content side is working, and it's satisfying. But losing three-quarters of our pool of potentially attractive candidates is too much. Kumioko is spot on ... the low promotion rates risk taking us in the direction of a one-party system on Wikipedia. The argument that "We don't need more admins because the work is getting done" is just as invalid as the argument "We don't any new political parties, our party is running the government just fine". Disenfranchisement, keeping people out of the system by arbitrarily raising and lowering the bar, lowers quality. (There are a bunch of recent books on this subject btw ... I recommend Gladwell's Outliers.) So, to turn this into some kind of statement that might get "cross-party" support on this page: can we get some kind of agreement that we don't want to lower standards, but we do want to find a way to get twice as many good candidates, of the kind who were running in 2009, to run in 2013? Can we agree that the likely reason they aren't running is that they don't want to do a lot of work that doesn't have much to do with the good work they're doing already, only to get thoroughly pawed over at RfA and then not pass? If we agree on those things, then the next step would be to look at the WP:RFA2011 research, and ask around among potential candidates: what change to RFA would increase your optimism and make the process seem more relevant, and get you to run? - Dank (push to talk) 15:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to think that "clearly unqualified" candidates would not be able to get 50% support. My main concern is that a candidate could get 90% support and still not be selected if there were more than ten good candidates - though I agree that's unlikely to happen. I'm quite sure the reasoning behind the proposal is correct, though. It's always difficult to find evidence in favour of an idea that hasn't been tried yet, and asking the candidates doesn't guarantee a correct answer - it's like when you ask people "would you buy" such-and-such product that's not actually on the market yet. Deb (talk) 15:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I may have misunderstood, I didn't think that was a problem ... I thought we'd continue to do RfA the usual way (to deal with the problem you're talking about, and also to let the community fine-tune the criteria in between elections), as well as electing candidates in bunches from time to time. - Dank (push to talk) 15:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

No takers among those who favor no change, or changes elsewhere before change at RfA? This seems to be the popular thread, and I'm hoping that you guys can find something here that seems promising to you. If not, it may be time to see if the "small change" and "big change" folks can find some common ground, and get to work. - Dank (push to talk) 12:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

For the win

Apart from a few outlier votes, I think most will agree that at least one of the following is key (and feel free to reply after each bullet point if you like). I am confident that we can put an RfC together that will have something to offer to people who are on board with one or more of these positions:

• RfA is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that something is terribly wrong. Fixing RfA is like trying to fix the problem of canaries that die in the coal mine by buying better canaries.
• If the way we do things now doesn't represent a happy consensus, it nevertheless represents the actual consensus. Attempts to push it in various directions have met with abject failure, for 10 years. Many of the proposals haven't been just bad, but pushing in the wrong directions for the wrong reasons. Enough already.
• There's a Southern (US) expression: "so heavenly bound that they're no earthly good", meaning that some people tend to get very worked up about the big picture and can't seem to get it together to help out with practicalities. We had no difficulty at WP:RFA2011 (and subpages) in identifying some obvious, small problems and some obvious, small solutions; the only problem is getting people off their high horse long enough to join us in consensus-building.
• Too little, too late. Jimbo has explicitly said he's going to propose big changes, starting with RfA, and the community may beat him to it; there's deep dissatisfaction with a process that produced only 28 new admins last year, without any apparent increase in the average quality of the admins over recent years (including 2009, which produced 121 admins). The current RfA process is going to be road kill unless we find a way to entice more qualified candidates. - Dank (push to talk) 20:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Sorry, but how do you estimate admins' quality? BTW I have not anything against methane-proof canaries (and also coal miners) who would not require the oxygen supply. It is a nice idea. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Any method you want to use is fine; I'm relying on my own experience, especially at RfA over the last 4 years. If you click on the link to get to successful RfAs at the top of this page and click on any year from 2009 to 2012, you'll find that the requirements to pass RfA were hard in all those years (though they've shifted in some ways ... you might need 3 more months experience now. But there were more hot-button issues that could sink an RfA back then.) Bottom line: whatever changes there have been since 2009 have in no way justified a drop from 121 to 28 ... people just don't like RfA or adminship in general as much and aren't running. (The complaints that RfA was not rigorous in 2007 and before at some earlier point are quite valid, though.) - Dank (push to talk) 21:02, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
      • 2007 is too recent. RfA changed in more like 2005; more or less, when Wikipedia went from being basically unknown to widely known. Some standards might've been a little lower (in particular, edit counts have probably gone up with the increasing use of automated edits), but all the complaints about the process now where true when I stood in 2007 (except that the number of new admins per year wasn't decreasing, it was still increasing, because the number of new editors was still increasing.) WilyD 17:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
        • Apologies, I didn't mean to undermine admins promoted in 2007. All I'm trying to do here is to rebut the argument that it's fine if just 28 admins are promoted in a year, because they're SO much better than what we got before. I think anyone can look at the 2009 RfAs and make reasonable comparisons to the 2012 RfAs ... harder in some ways, easier in others. - Dank (push to talk) 17:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
          • Oh, no, I wasn't offended. My point was that although there are complaints about the promotion rate, the process was pretty similar at the peak of the promotion rate. It was really only a wink and a handshake when nobody knew what Wikipedia was. WilyD 18:36, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
            • Makes sense, I struck and changed it to "at some earlier point". - Dank (push to talk) 18:45, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
        • @WilyD — No, today's common criticisms towards the process would not have applied back in 2007, Wily. It is true that RfA has been called "broken" since at least 2006, but the standards of today are much tougher than they were at any other point throughout the project's history. In 2007, the vast majority of legitemate candidates (i.e. anyone whose RfA would not be closed per WP:NOTNOW during this day and age) were successful in their RfA attempts; the minimum experience required was merely 3 months and 3000 edits (which were negotiable standards), a mostly uncontroversial tenure as an editor, and no major civility concerns. Consider the context of this August 2007 RfA, which passed almost unanimously for an editor who'd only been active since February of that same year and had a whopping 2500 edits at the time of her application; a user with a similar history submitting an RfA today would fail dismally. By that same token, this more recent candidacy from August 2012 would have passed pretty easily if it had been submitted five years earlier (although a couple people might have voiced concern with regards to the nonchalance of the opening statement, but they'd be in the minority). I'm not saying that stricter standards have been an entirely bad thing for Wikipedia, especially in the realm of diplomacy and experience; an administrator who is brusque and uncompromising has the potential to drive off many valuable contributors without even realizing the damage in which they cause, because no one really brings it up to them as an issue. But the vast majority of administrators that we've promoted since the start of the project have performed very well, are generally cautious about the situations they get themselves into, and we could always use more hands at AIV, ANI, UAA, RFPP, AfD, CSD, etc. The current output of RfA is a net negative. Kurtis ^(talk) 01:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

          It is interesting that the user you mention is still administrator despite having only two edits since August 2011.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

@Dank: For what it's worth, the Foundation's approach to declining editorship is to increase editorship. They don't seem to be particularly interested in why it's declining. "The car won't start!" is the cry, and the Foundation's response is "Shut up and keep pushing!" --Hammersoft (talk) 19:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

RfA clerk RFC

An amendment to the RfA process has been proposed which would formally define the role of an RfA clerk. Please see the RFC at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Clerks and comment if you're interested. ‑Scottywong| yak _ 00:00, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

New RfC

... unless you guys talk me out of it. Jimmy Wales said in December: "I'm planning in January to submit to the community for a full project-wide vote a new charter further transitioning my powers. Because the changes I hope to make are substantial, I will seek endorsement from the wider community." ... "One good example of this is the ongoing admin-appointment situation... a problem which I think most people agree needs to be solved, but for which our usual processes have proven ineffective for change." ... "What I can do is use my reserve powers to help put into place a community process for constitutional change in cases where we have tried and failed in getting somewhere in our traditional ways."

To the best of my knowledge, there is general agreement on the following bullet points ... correct me if I'm wrong.

• Some admins have at times behaved badly, and previous standards for promotion at WP:Requests for adminship (RfA) probably had a role to play in this problem. In recent years, including 2009, 2010 and 2011, it has been roughly as hard to pass RfA as it is now, but the number of "serious" candidates has been dropping, and thus the number of promotions has dropped sharply, from 121 in 2009 to 28 last year. There are slightly fewer editors now, but no one believes that the drop from 121 to 28 in three years is healthy for Wikipedia, or warranted.
• Despite enormous effort by many, no substantial Request for Comment (RfC) related to RfA has ever passed. We have a rough idea why that is; people have many different ideas about what "the problem at RfA" is, and vote against any proposal which doesn't address "the problem", so that any single-issue RfC gets heavy opposition right from the start. Also, RfCs tend to produce short, to-the-point responses, leaving us without enough information to figure out what a majority would be willing to vote in favor of.
• One option would be to make RfA substantially easier to pass ... in which case, whenever someone says "I'm an admin", the reply will forever be, "Old RfA or new RfA?" If we don't want to bifurcate forever what it means to be an admin, then it makes sense to try ... one last time, before Jimmy steps in ... to preserve the substantial investment that all of us have made in trying to get RfA (and adminship in general) to work.
• The most recent RfC, WT:Requests_for_adminship/Clerks, is currently failing.

There's a chance that we can use the fact that Jimmy will step in to dramatically increase participation in an RfC. There are plenty of people who care enough about making RfA work to handle any workload generated by an RfC, and if we had enough data, we might be able to craft something that could pass ... and even if not, the more relevant information Jimmy has, the easier it will be for him to play the useful role that he wants to play. I'm proposing that we begin a one-week RfC at WT:Requests_for_adminship/Jimbo asking people to suggest options and to pick between one and four of the options suggested so far, from a list of possible changes to RfA that might result in more well-prepared candidates and thus more promotions ... allowing some adjustment, but not any major lowering, of standards. (Completely redefining what it means to be an admin ... even in the most optimistic view ... would mean big, time-consuming adjustments, at RfA and everywhere else.) When that part of the RfC is closed, four top options will be selected, and the real 30-day RfC begins, with people refining and defining the four options, and supporting and opposing. What's different this time is: even if none of the options passes, we know that Jimmy will be looking at the results, and may (or may not) implement changes in line with those recommendations ... so this time, something is actually going to happen, for better or worse. After 30 days, the closers will attempt to find consensus for one of the options; failing that, they will propose a final one-week RfC intended to represent a fair compromise among the positions that had the most support. If that RfC also fails, then presumably Jimmy will respond. - Dank (push to talk) 20:44, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

P.S. The reason that's a long post is that I'm attempting to put enough in one place so that people who know nothing about RfA will understand what we want to do. Suggestions on what to add or subtract are welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 21:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support What you're proposing makes sense. I agree that we need to refresh the aging RFA process, as it has gradually decreased in usefulness over the years. Wikipedia has changed, and RFA should as well. The current straw poll strategy isn't working out for us. People don't want to undergo the extremely grueling process, known as RFA. Previous attempts, as Dank said, have been fragmented and turned down because they don't address the issue at hand: RFA is turning away editors, even ones who would pass, and small issues can seem inflated in an almost competitive atmosphere. I think we should have an RFC where people can suggest solutions to this problem, then vote on the top solutions. Whatever it is, RFA needs changes, and that's final. Vacation9 23:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support Makes sense and you have a lot of good ideas. Kumioko (talk) 01:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support Can't be worse than at present (hopefully) - David Gerard (talk) 12:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment I think you may be misunderstanding Jimmy's statement in December (either that, or I am). He's saying he's going to propose a new process for making constitutional decisions, since RFCs don't work. He's not saying he's going to unilaterally replace RFA with something else (or even propose a replacement for RFA). RFA was just an example of something the new constitutional process would be good for fixing. You can try and prove that RFCs do work after all, thus negating the need for a new process, but I don't see you having much luck - nothing has changed since the last time we failed to reform RFA through an RFC. --Tango (talk) 12:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)