Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

RfA candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report RfB candidate S O N S% Ending (UTC) Time left Dups? Report No RfXs since 12:38, 30 April 2024 (UTC).—cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online

Current time: 20:11:42, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Recently closed RfAs and RfBs ()

Candidate	Type	Result	Date of close	Tally
				S	O	N	%
ToadetteEdit	RfA	Closed per WP:NOTNOW	30 Apr 2024	0	0	0	0
Sdkb	RfA	Successful	16 Feb 2024	265	2	0	99
The Night Watch	RfA	Successful	11 Feb 2024	215	63	13	77

Planning for a post-admin era

I wanted to bring up the topic of planning for the post administrator era. This was raised in a thread at WT:ORCP, and I think the discussion merits its own thread here.

I note that based on this, 2016 will go down as a new record for the greatest drop in total admins in any year since we began with just one caveat; July, 2011 when desysopping inactive admins came into effect. We've also seen the lowest number of restorations of admin rights in 10 years, and the lowest number of new administrators in the history of the project. See also User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month.

Ok, the sky isn't falling, and we've had these discussions before. I know. Nevertheless, the decline in active admins, overall admins, nominations to RfAs, successful RfAs, and re-sysoppings shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, all factors are arguably getting worse. We may see some dead cat bounces, but given declines showing consistency over these last many years, it seems unlikely to change. Given that our community has been incapable of replacing RfA, the status quo for how admins are made will remain, along with standards continually rising. Nothing significant will change.

For now, things are fine. We are operating just fine with fewer and fewer admins. Reviewing User:EsquivalienceBot/Backlog and especially its talk page (where prior months to July of this year are archived) shows the backlogs in those five areas have remained within tolerable levels. Eventually, there won't be enough administrators though.

The biggest backlog on that list is CSD. Looking at the last 25k deletions spanning nearly 2 weeks, just 25 administrators were responsible for 67% of deletions. 10 of those were responsible for half of all deletions. Theoretically, the project could probably be run with fewer than 100 active administrators. We are not down to that level yet. Eventually, we will be. This day is coming sooner than you might think. Losing highly active administrators isn't all that uncommon. Just one this year that we lost...Zscout370....averaged more than a thousand deletions a year. He was easily one of our top 100 most active admins. No more.

We need to begin considering how to respond to the coming situation; what to do when we do not have enough administrators. How do we respond to that? What processes do we come up with to fill the gap? What bots could we create that would assist us? Etc.

I know it will, but I'd rather not see this thread spin out of control on every possible subtopic related to RfA and administrators. Please, let's keep this focused on how do we respond to a post admin future.

The floor's open. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:03, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

This is an economics problem. En-wp has probably the best admins in the project and we have to have the best because we're the flagship encyclopedia with the most mature policies and procedures. In the workplace, when the skill level of the job goes up compensation has to rise, too. This is one reason offshoring happens, because skilled and efficient workers become too expensive. WMF in its infinite wisdom is still paying $0 for the professionalism we expect here. Those editors not labor conscious now want to find less skilled workers or replace them with automation. I, for one, am happy to let the backlogs grow out of control. Letting a fire destroy the factory is the only way the municipality will accept we need more than a volunteer fire brigade. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:13, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Ditto. I know I have absolutely no desire to do thankless bureaucratic drudgery for free. People continually say nothing about adminship needs to be changed because there's no crisis. So, let the backlogs grow until there's a crisis, and people will agree on something to deal with it. That's human psychology. It'll probably be poorly thought-out and hastily thrown together, but hey, at least it'll be something. Until then, don't bother worrying about running out of admins. Write and improve articles instead. --47.138.163.230 (talk) 00:20, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The question is a good one, and it's difficult to come up with a good answer. I suppose one possibility is that eventually the backlogs will grow until they start to look objectionable to large numbers of the kinds of editors who tend to participate a lot in RfAs. If that happens, then I would expect that more and more RfA commenters will decide that we need more administrators and therefore will be more inclined to support. It seems to me that the reason the community has resisted making adminship easier to get is that much of the community does not perceive a problem. And as long as that's the case, new proposals about processes will continue to fail. Once a majority of the community decides, instead, that there's an unmet need, and that the need is affecting them, then all of a sudden the attitudes will change. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I know it's a bit personal, but things like Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Yash! do not help the situation, with editors pulling up things said four and a half years ago that are irrelevant to his current skills, that caused us not to only lose a potential admin, but also an editor. Lourdes has apologised, everybody else, start putting forward admin candidates please, before we run out. I deal with CSD mostly, with a side order of RFPP and AIV, but some things like file copyrights and SPI make my head hurt. Because these backlogs don't generally affect people, and even could have a positive short-term effect (eg: an article about a WP:GARAGE band survives because there are not enough hands at NPP and CSD), the problem is just likely to continue - so, in the words of The Sun, will the last admin to leave Wikipedia please turn out the lights. As for how we can counteract that - I don't think there is a way short of dropping the RfA criteria and blocking a few serial oppose voters, which would cause a huge fracas and not necessarily get us the right admins anyway. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

This thread is not concerned with further RfA reform (again, and again, and again.....) Leaky Caldron 21:22, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• Indeed it isn't. Every attempt at RfA reform has failed to change the declines noted, even if such reforms were intended to do so. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:54, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I would personally like to see more appreciation of admin work. I am not yet at the point of burnout, and, in fact, still far from it, but having socks appearing from nowhere and making disruptive edits and subsequently laughing at me is very difficult to deal with, and getting regular lecturing on what I should do as an admin does not help either. I am not even hoping to see anybody named "Wikimedian of the year" or smth like this for their admin work.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps a "Excellent admin of the week" or something similar, much like the "editor of the day" award, but it would be a post about their efforts and their work. I don't know how much it will actually help to retain admins, but it could. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:46, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I do not think any appreciation would counter the negative effects coming from users unhappy with admin decisions, at least not for active admins, but every appeciation sign would help a little bit. Btw thanks (e.g. for page protections) help as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:58, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks are nice. I don't want any myself, but if you're a fan of a particular admin, you could nominate them for meta:Merchandise giveaways. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 22:02, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: Ok, I have two serious proposals. One, more unbundling. RfA is tight because of the immense power. If we could parse out pieces of mop to qualified editors who would only work CSD, or would only work AIV the community might accept this. It could allow non-content creators to pitch in on admin backlogs without having to please the folks that actually write. Two, start recruiting English-fluent admins from other wikis. These people may already work as stewards and with the prevalence of English as lingua franca I suspect there are Indian and Filipino editors who would be willing to serve time as admins on their home wiki before getting called up to the big leagues. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:04, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• Unbundling can and has helped, but there are limits. It can help stave off the day when we are woefully short of admins, but it doesn't change the matrix. The idea of recruiting fluent English speakers from other languages wikis is interesting, but I feel it may harm those wikis. Thanks for the ideas! --Hammersoft (talk) 14:16, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Supposing that it does reach this stage (I'm not yet convinced; at current trends it's too far in the future too predict due to other factors affecting the movement), I suspect that the community will notice the terrible backlogs and take action of some sort. General backlogs don't seem to bother people, but when WP starts going under from spam (you may think it already is), RFA may naturally bounce back. If not, we will need to unbundle rights currently too controversial to touch. For example, we would need a "deleter” group, so they can delete spam straight away instead of sending it to the CSD pile-up. This group already exists on some wikis. Blocking IP addresses and new accounts would also be necessary. The tricky question is how this would be overseen. Once the admin core becomes to weak to perform all the sysop jobs, I suspect they would become the overseers, for example using their viewdeleted right to monitor the deleters. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 22:11, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Hm, I could see the first working well, the tiers I think would work, are:

Tier 1: Full admin, can block peolpe and give rights, has every right that a current admin does.

Tier 2: Can delete and restore pages

Tier 3: can edit full protected pages

Most of the other rights could be split off into separatete rights. For admin only viewable pages, there could be "Extended viewer" for people trusted to be able to see such pages, the ability to move to and from sysop move protected pages could be grouped with the "up to 100 subpages" to become "Super extended mover" or something to that effect. What do you think? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:20, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

This has been discussed for ages, and the consensus has always been (rightfully, in my opinion) that this is likely to raise the bar for Tier 1, not lower the bar for Tier 2. (The Tier 3 you described is so niche that it functions like a new protection level, and I don't think anyone would support that.) Further, it would require Tier 2 admins to run the gauntlet of Tier 1 RfAs after already doing so once, since the WMF will not allow us to give editors the ability to see deleted revisions without a community process. From experience, I can think of no editors who would be willing to do that. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:27, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

As has been said above, this would primarily be backlog driven - other projects have specialty groups (e.g. technician, engineer, elimnator, etc) that can do a subset of admin work. So where is the unmet backlog? As far as WMF stuff goes - yes you need an "rfa like process" for viewing deleted content - but you don't for deleting things (yes this would mean that an admin would have to undo errors - but if the error rate was low it would fight backlogs). As far as vandalism fighting, compared to building a new software process - building a "rule" process is cheap (e.g. make a group that can block - but make a rule they can only block anons, or only block for up to 31 hours --- if they violate the rules - they lost trust and get access removed). — xaosflux ^Talk 22:43, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, my proposal was that "deleters" would not be able to undelete or view deleted content. The right would be a kind of über-rollbacker rather than partial admin. Potentially they could be given a new "small delete" right, allowing them to delete only new pages with few revisions. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 22:51, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

That requires building something new to the software - though if there was community support that could be rolled out quickly using "administrative controls" (rules). At least one other project (ruwiki) has a "closer" group that can delete but not undelete. But is there a backlog demanding this? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:57, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Bigdelete already exists, so it shouldn't be too hard. In any case, I was responding to Hammersoft's hypothetical. CAT:G11 is usually kept under control. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 23:14, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• The good news is that once people become admins they usually stick around for a very long time. I'm just beginning an update on some retention stats. Of the 18 admins we appointed in the second half of 2012 15 have edited in the last month, many in the last day or two. So our decline may be long and gentle, but we have no idea how close we are to not having enough admins; and we are heavily dependent on a few hyper active admins. I'm not convinced that the increased arbitrary standards are a rationale response to the process, in fact I think it deeply flawed that if 40% of editors want to add "Username must contain exactly two vowels" to the de facto criteria for adminship that extra hurdle is then part of the criteria however silly 60% of us think that extra test is. But back to the issue of fewer admins. We have almost reached the limit of unbundling. Much as I would like to see "block IP and not yet extended confirmed" rolled out to vandalfighters, I'm aware that the community is too evenly divided into those worried about slipshod deletionism and those worried about admins blocking the regulars for another major unbundling to go ahead. We do have the option of an admin bot or better a mediawiki tweak that would do some U1 and G7s for us, by allowing anyone to delete their own work under certain tight criteria (no moving articles into your own userspace and then deleting them), I think we worked out this would be the equivalent of an extra admin a year. I believe some IT investments in smart blocking would give us a huge advantage against certain types of vandal, but that would take a willingness on the WMF part to invest in admin tools. We have over a thousand former administrators out there, only a small minority are dead. We could do more to welcome them back or at least maintain a link, emailing a New Year message every year with a "Hope you are well and happy, if you ever have the time to come back we now have a little refresher before former admins can resume the tools" might increase the number of returnees. ϢereSpielChequers 23:23, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I do think it's important to realize that this isn't a Markov chain. The probability of burnout increases greatly with time spent on-site. An editor who's been here a year is far less likely to decide to retire than an editor who's been here ten years, all else equal. Part of that is changing life circumstances, part of it is the disillusionment that occurs over long periods of time, and part of it is just straight-up boredom with the same stuff over and over. The "hump" of administrators from the "good old days" isn't going to peter out slowly, in my opinion. Almost all of administrators will rapidly leave or go at least semi-inactive over the next five years. This has already started happening. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:28, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
    • While there's no doubt people get busy/bored/burned out over time, I'm not sure it's true that the old-school admins are going to turn into pumpkins anytime soon ;) The distribution of registration dates for active admins is here - 75% of the currently active crop had registered by the end of 2006. To my mind this speaks to the opposite problem - most currently active admins have not the slightest goddamn clue what it's like to be a newer editor these days. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:34, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
      • Agreed. We only have ten admins who created their accounts in 2012 to 2015. There must be loads of qualified candidates from that era. In fact we might even be able to get someone from the start of 2016 through. A few months ago an admin passed with only 9 months activity and about 20% opposes. So maybe we have passed peak tenure requirements - I've been warning people not to run until they have a year of activity. Perhaps I've been over cautious. ϢereSpielChequers 22:36, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Should I close this now as consensus that a problem exists but no consensus on any solution, or do you want me to wait a couple weeks first? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:24, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

There is a backlog of editors who are prepared to answer your question. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Aren't we just falling back into RfA reform, and getting away from the proposal of "Post-Admin" era... So here is a BOLD take at that... what would it look like to have NO admins -- gasp! What might that look like to totally do away with RfA, and the entire process? Here is a stab at it... One thing we've seen is that we have the fantastic ability to quickly undo bad stuff -- both abuse or good-intentioned actions. We can completely wipe away the really bad stuff like it never existed. There is an existing process for consensus building and decided that is used in places like AfD, RM, COIN and others, and on the whole, it works really-really well, without someone utilizing their 'admin' tools or title. When we look at it, generally it comes down to two things: (1) experience; and (2) proper understanding and application of policy & precedents. Those are things which can be handled by most people. And there are a lot of people closing such discussions as NAC. We don't have too many instances, that I see, where a "bad" NAC was much more egregious than an ADMIN closure. (To be clear, I mean those who clearly understand closures and not just those who are acting without knowing what they're doing). What would it look like to not only unbundle the tools but further make their appointments either automatic (such as the ability to edit protected pages after 5k mainspace edits or ability to page protect after 500 RPP) to simple appointments for things like page deletion (similar to how we appoint bits for things like ACC, Template Editor, etc). Even to go BOLDER what if page deletion was available with say 500 CSD tags -- clearly if you've tagged that many pages you know what CSD is all about -- and if you really made that many bad judgements about nominations you'd already otherwise be run out of town, or community sanctioned from CSD'ing -- so it's not that we're really going to see many people with a big history of nominating pages really making bad calls on what pages to delete. It's not to say that we don't need to trust these people with these tools, but what if we assumed more good faith in the community and the process of consensus, and remember that we can undelete pages, etc. So this is more than just an unbundle and make things easier, but rather a proposal that we remember that 95% of the non-content creation work is already being handled by a set of highly trustworthy, consensus-minded individuals, the majority of whom, are not admins, but are acting in an authoritative role. And generally, the execution of those actions (actually pressing the delete, protect, etc., key) is really the results of consensus or other non-admin work taking place ahead of time. It's not to say that those with the mop are 'just' button pushers, but I'm sure many of you would agree that there are certain non-admin editors who nominate pages for CSD, that when you see their nom, you already know it's quality work -- sure you do your due diligence because you are the one pushing the button, but at the end of the day, you have confidence in their quality... How many frequent and experienced CSD nominators would you be happy to hand over the single bit to delete pages themselves? Or likewise AIV folks the page-protect bit.... Sure we open up more room for abuse, but I'd propose two things -- (1) it is a really small minority of these users (either automatically tools, or simply tooled) who would abuse it; and (2) with more people with tools, abuse can be faster curbed. Now there will still need to be some form of oversight, and that role might change very slightly because there might be cases where we need a really heavy-handed page protection (protecting against otherwise trustworthy and high edit count editors), but those will probably be the very small minority. There are some things still like viewing deleted data and others which the foundation has voiced strongly on about the community consensus on providing these rights, but does that intrinsically mean the typically very harsh RFA process many people endure? Instead those can still be more like the CheckUser appointments versus all full RFA. In summary: truely open source the RfA tools and let the community self-regulate those with tools, which come from experience. Tiggerjay (talk) 23:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• As I've said on previous occasions when this comes up, if you want more RfAs, make all admins subject to recall or set term limits. The idea of admins being super-users, appointed for life, not removable except in extreme circumstances, leads to fear and hesitancy at RfAs. Coretheapple (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

• And making all admins subject to recall is a good way to lose admins in contentious areas of the encyclopædia, where there are no alliances other than alliances of convenience and anyone against you is a nationalist who needs removed yesterday. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 03:54, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

• I think this is already the case. There are only a handful or two of admins willing to touch the various morasses. And while you can't be deadminned at AE, admins can be blocked, topic banned, etc. like anyone else. Every so often someone takes an admin to AE for doing something they perceive as supporting the "other side". I doubt admin recall would add much to the existing unwillingness of many admins to touch controversial areas. (You might argue that admins tend to get more of a "benefit of the doubt" at AE, and I would probably agree with you, but this is of course not a formal power or privilege included in the admin package.) --47.138.163.230 (talk) 00:20, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• There are several Wikipedias that have now introduced various forms of admin recall and or fixed terms. As one would expect various systems to get rid of more admins do have success at getting rid of admins, but don't compensate by producing new admins. I've never understood why anyone would think that getting rid of the current cadre of admins would bring more new admins forward. I think it is time to conclude that such proposals are flawed not just in theory but in practice as well. Time to divert such proposals to WP:PEREN. ϢereSpielChequers 08:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

RfA reform was a stupid idea to begin with, it was obvious from the start that the "very" good ideas will never be accepted and the "OK" ideas were just not good enough. It's a shame regarding Yash!, bullied off the wiki, not the first time mind you. Something I brought up on the discussion for Godsy's RfA was that we need to work on culling the admins and keep only the active ones instead of trying to continuously fix RfA which will never happen. We like to get new admins but we ignore the somewhat inactive older ones who only edit from time to time to protect their rights even though its possible for them to get it back via a request on WP:BN. It took us a long time to get a 'de-sysop' policy in place in regards to inactivity, a very long time and admin recall is also a failed idea. Most admins spend way to much time bullying newbies and creating vandals then actually contributing to the project and its because of that, that we have lost so many contributors or would-be contributors. Why not try to get more "contributors" to the projects by being more lenient towards new editors instead of the bully approach which sadly is the main reason for socking. An Admin Armageddon may not happen and the wiki may be around for another decade (or even longer depending on wars and technological advancements) but do we actually forsee the project growing just as fast? Just over 300k articles were created since we crossed 5 million articles on November 2015, that IMO is poor, we should be growing faster, maybe atleast half a million per year and then gradually going upwards. It took us 3 years and 5 months to get 1 million articles (From 4 to 5 million), we should have had atleast 5.5m articles before the end of the year but we won't because we are focusing too much on the nonsensical bureaucratic site of the project instead of the actual project side. Can someone compile a list of editors that have written say 250+ articles since 2001 and find out how many of those are still around? Isn't that what we should be focusing on instead of the other side of the project which deals with mainly bullying and removal of content. Once we start getting more contributors/creators, the RfA issue will automatically fix itself. When we start selecting admins based on their "Actual" work on the project instead of those who only focus on vandal fighting, maybe then we may actually start getting the right kind of admins who technically stay longer on the project than those that became admins through their vandal fighting work who generally get bored after a short while and sort of "drop out" (not necessarily leave but become less active than before they became admin)...I personally won't be around on the project for long since its not really going anywhere, the changes being made are usually unnecessary (VE and MW for example), too much dramah on admin related boards and the sub-projects are not evolving either. I think wikipedia probably was at pinnacle somewhere between 2005-2010 so its now either going to take a straight nosedive or smaller nosedives until we are left with a project of 2000 admins but less than a 1000 'actual' contributors.--Stemoc 05:29, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that there is too much process and bauble editing today, as opposed to basic adding of content, but new articles are a very poor way to measure this. We probably have too many articles already (which isn't to say that some new ones aren't needed). We certainly have too many biographies - much of our current editor base seems to see WP as essentially a biographical dictionary. What isn't happening enough is the improvement of articles on basic encyclopedic topics that have been around for years & get high views, but are largely crap. These are improving, but very very slowly and unevenly. Johnbod (talk) 14:27, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Non-admin closure / "open source admin"

I'm not upset with anyone that the thread so far has largely been focused on RfA reform or related subjects. It's what we've focused on for 10+ years, and it's very difficult to shift focus off of that. Nevertheless, we must. The 10+ years have only proven that RfA reform isn't going to happen in any way such that it increases the cadre of administrators or decreases the demand for administrators.

One general concept brought forth by Tiggerjay is the idea of devolving administrator tasks. This is a completely different concept than unbundling.

I've been thinking about this for the last day and have imagined a number of scenarios along this line. For these scenarios, we'd need a new class of editors that grants abilities automatically. Arbitrarily, let's say two years, 5k non-automated edits, no blocks within a year. Let's call this class something random; "Prefects". I don't care what we call it. Just useful to have a name for it.

Just one scenario; speedy deletion. In the vast majority of cases, speedy deletion cases clear through without objection from anyone but the original author. A Prefect would be permitted to tag an article for speedy deletion. Of course, anyone any do that now. Where it becomes different; if the speedy deletion is uncontested for 24 hours, a Prefect supporting bot would check to see that the article was tagged by a Prefect, that it wasn't contested, and maybe add something in like whether the article was was not more than 60 days old, and then delete it. No administrator would need to be involved. I've no idea of actual figures, but I would not be surprised if this would encompass 80-90% of speedy deletions. A further enhancement; the bot could check to see how many times in the last two or three months the article had been speedy deleted and if it was at least three times, it salts the article for six months or a year.

Another scenario; a Prefect places a {{uw-vandal4}} on the talk page of a vandal. The vandal continues to vandalize. The prefect places a request to block the vandal at WP:AIV. The Prefect supporting bot sees the report, checks that a vandal4 or vandal4im warning has been placed on the talk page of the vandal, and that editing continued afterward (which trusts that the Prefect saw vandalism after the vandal4 warning), and then blocks the vandal.

Another scenario; A prefect closes an AfD as delete after an AfD has run for at least 7 days. If the close is not contested via re-opening (removal of closure) within 24 or 48 hours, the Prefect supporting bot checks that the AfD ran for at least 7 days and deletes the article.

I could layout several more scenarios. There would be details and criteria to work out to be sure. But, the basic idea is that Prefect status is automatically granted to users who have been here for a while without attracting a recent block, and whatever other criteria. Once they have that status, an admin bot would trust them to have done due diligence, and they can perform uncontested admin actions by proxy, through the bot, which checks to various criteria being met. Prefect status is readily removed by an actual administrator temporarily blocking them for whatever reason. It's regained automatically after the block is at least a year old (or whatever criteria).

Don't get stuck in the details here (we are very good about quibbling over details! :)). Consider this more abstractly; imagine a paradigm where most of the admin work is done by a bot, supported by notionally clueful editors tagging things, closing things, reporting things. This would remove a very large percentage of the work that administrators do now, eliminating the need for a wide swath of administrators. Administrators would shift into more of an oversight role, a check against Prefects going south. There would still be some admin work, and we'd still need to occasionally promote new admins, but losing an administrator (for whatever reason) would not be a catastrophic loss as it would be now to lose, say, one administrator who does 10% of all deletions (there is such an admin now, who does just shy of 11%).

Regardless of what you think of the above idea, consider this as a way of thinking beyond our current paradigms. I encourage you to come up with other paradigm shifting ideas, that eliminates the need for administrators for the most part or even entirely. We can do this. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:55, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I like the idea of temporarily autosalting pages that have been multiply deleted. But I'd be loathe to see CSD deletion unbundled, we have too many errors there already. I've met taggers who literally think "would probably be deleted at AFD" should be a CSD criteria. I'd be very happy to have some experienced article creators given a useright that lets them see deleted edits and hand out autopatrolled userrights (you have to look at someone's deleted edits before you know they are ready for autopatroller). We have a long prospect list there and it would be a useful unbundling. ϢereSpielChequers 15:37, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

• Well, I see this as radically different than unbundling. The details would need to be worked out. Abstractly, this paradigm is potentially a way forward. The details might derail certain aspects of it. I'm more concerned about the overall paradigm than the details right now. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

• Personally, I think the system must break to change for the better. Right now, our resources are severely strained. When things break to the point where we simply can't cover basic areas, only then will people be ready to come to the RfA reform table and work something out. (And I do classify something like this proposal as RfA reform.) As far as non-admins in general, we should be aggressively expanding their roles wherever possible. For instance, non-admins can close TfDs and CfDs with any result (including delete) as per the current instructions pages and past large-scale discussions. Non-admins can and should get involved there if they are competent enough to do so. We should be expanding that to RfD, in my opinion, but a large-scale RfC failed to find consensus for that. I wouldn't object to PRODs being auto-deleted by a bot if "checked" by a set of approved experienced editors, but I doubt the effort to get such a program off the ground would be justified by the minimal time saved. CSD takes more discretion, so I'm loathe to unbundle that. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:41, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Personally I think the ability to use the CSD and block you mentioned shouldn't be automatically given. I think that like most other rights, it should be requested, and a sysop would grant it. While the lack of block, and edit count is a good addition, edits dont necessarily mean experience, so, hypothetically if it were to become a thing, I would want them to be admin granted rights only. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:55, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• One aspect that caught my attention was the bot that would monitor AIV and enact blocks. Blocking anyone is a very serious matter, and I would not be comfortable with it being done by a bot that depends on prior checks done only by someone who has not passed something like RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• The point being of course that RfA is not passing sufficient administrators. Which would you rather have, an active vandal blocked by way of recommendation of an experienced editor or an active vandal allowed to continue vandalizing with abandon since there are no administrators around to block him? There are no easy choices here. In a perfect world, we'd have enough administrators. We already don't. --Hammersoft (talk)

• Yes, that's a very good point, and I agree. I guess that what I believe is that I remain very concerned about bad blocks, to the point where I would actually prefer the vandalizing with abandon, because the result of so much vandalism would be that the community would react by making RfA easier. The way I see it, having too few administrators may be inevitable, and the community will be deadlocked until that happens, but once it happens, the community will react. It's like nothing focuses the mind so much as the prospect of the gallows.

But I have been thinking about the bot idea, and I think that there are plenty of other tasks that bots could be good at. For example, WP:FFD is chronically short on admins, and the overwhelming majority of cases there are obvious and uncontested deletions. A bot could readily identify threads where the nomination received no reply, and then delete the nominated files. That would leave a very small number of threads that attracted discussion, which could be closed the old-fashioned way. And if enough admin tasks can be handled sort of like that, then the few remaining admins (I'm assuming there won't be zero, and I think that's a safe assumption) could actually handle the tough issues like blocks. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Having a bot do FFD would be a terrible idea. It is called Files for Discussion for a reason. Many of the images brought there are not up for deletion. But are there for other reasons. Fair use compliance, copyright license investigations, etc. Automatically deleting those, even if there are no comments, would be contrary to the point of bringing it to FFD in the first. place. --Majora (talk) 20:09, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Thing is, the community won't react. Just as you would rather see the house burned down to get the community to react, there are those who would rather burn down the house then grant admin status to people they are opposed to. Social status on this project is immensely important if you want additional privileges. I've eschewed additional privileges for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I know that if I stood for RfA I would fail miserably. This would have nothing to do with the fact of my editing experience here and everything to do with that I don't subscribe to the social paradigms here, and don't care about people's opinions of me. I have every reason and every trust to be an administrator. There's no way in hell I would ever intentionally damage the project. Yet, I can't be an administrator. You can't shut down that social paradigm. It won't happen, no matter how many houses we burn down. Every effort that has been done to avert the long, slow, painful decline of administrators has utterly failed. NOTHING has changed that has stopped this trend. We either plan for an era where there are woefully insufficient administrators or we might as well pack up shop, shut out the lights, and leave the project to the vandals. The community will NOT respond to this house burning down. They won't care. It's more important to them to prop up the ridiculous social paradigms than it is to save the project. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• You both may very well be right. (And interestingly, Majora's comment actually supports Hammersoft's prediction.) If, and I say "if", it goes the way that Hammersoft predicts, then the simple reality is that Wikipedia (as we know it) will progressively cease to exist. And that's a real possibility. Just think of all the other IT products that were once big deals, that subsequently were made obsolete by something that replaced them. It's foolish to think that this could not happen here. Everybody feeling cheerful now? But I really do believe that it is more likely than not that some significant number of community members will reach the point of saying that things must change (but we aren't there yet). And if things do change, there will probably be a result where editors like Hammersoft will be granted some sort of tools if they ask for it. But I doubt that we will get to that point without first hitting rock bottom. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:43, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Nice to know I'm below rock bottom for an admin candidate ;) --Hammersoft (talk) 22:03, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Ha! Well, after hitting rock bottom, there's no direction to go but up! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for adapting my idea. The thought of a bot is an interested prospective, basically indirectly giving non-admins the tools and would be a lot easier to implement. For those that are concerned about an automated task taking place such as deleting pages, user blocks, etc., I'd like to re-stress the fundamental is two things (1) long term users can generally be trusted; and (2) we can quickly and easily undo just about anything. Here is a bit of a theoretical situation. What 10% of the long term users cannot be trusted to do the right thing -- and every thing they do is 'bad'... Which is more effort and more harm, having 90% of the work done by trusted people, leaving only 10% of the mess to clean up. Or leaving 100% of the work to those with a mop? Now I get that there might be a hidden point of 'self-worth' for existing admins that need to be considered. After all, anybody who has gone to great lengths to achieve something, is very reasonably 'hurt' to see someone else achieve it with much greater ease. But remember if we're serious about discussing a post-admin era, then that writing is already on the wall. Tiggerjay (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Crowd tagging

This is just brainstorming, but: What if there were these "prefects". Someone speedy tags an article. Prefects come along and add some sort of 'endorse' mark to the page. If the page accumulates a certain number, a bot comes along and deletes it. Admins monitor.

Maybe this could even work for vandal blocks. Someone adds a "I think this account should be blocked" template. Prefects quickly pile on endorse marks. A bot or prefect with special limited rights to block such multi-marked accounts can block.

Just a thought. As is, a bad plan, sure. However, maybe it could spark another idea. I mean, the internet is all about crowds floating something to the top of the attention pile with "likes". Maybe it could work at Wikipedia.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:21, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

If we trust them to do blocks and deletions, though, shouldn't we just give them the mop? I worry about any system that relies on a crowd to do the work previously handled by a single person. What does that mean for the number of editors required to sustain our model into the future? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with BU Rob, if we are to implement the plan of cutting the mop into bits, which I personally support to an extent, having it require many people would be the epitome of counter-intuition, as it's meant to cut down on the number of people that need to run that blood, sweat, and tear stained gauntlet. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 05:32, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

But we do not completely trust them, yet. But we could trust five of them all in agreement. And a good track record could make them mop ready and solve the diminishing admin problem too. Who knows.

As for numbers of editors to sustain it, well, that has always been Wikipedia's magic. There are millions of editors.

And relying on a crowd? Crowds tend to get it right when all working together. Another bit of Wikipedia magic.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:29, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Not to WP:ABF (hehe) of the community, but that would be too easily gamed, unless we have a rigorous selection process...and then we're right back at square one, as the prefect promotion criteria grow and grow... ansh666 06:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Crowds can get it right only if they are aligned in their purpose, or there is a filter on their contributions to select those in alignment. The problem is that even among good-faith editors, there are disagreements in the priority of goals. For example, some people think every article should explain its key underlying concepts at a given reading level, whilst others are content with delegating further explanations to other articles. Neither viewpoint is wrong; they just proceed from different assumptions about what will best serve the readership (which can vary based on assumptions of the reader demographics, including their reading devices). Most disagreements on style also fit this category, as style manuals make arbitrary choices so writers can get on with the business of writing rather than flip-flopping between en-dashes and em-dashes. Add in editors whose goals are at cross-purposes with Wikipedia's mission, and solely relying on an unfiltered crowd is problematic. The lessons documented by Clay Shirky need to be understood by the community: consensus doesn't scale, and attempts to put rules in place to get by without a decision-making hierarchy end up collapsing as it becomes more work to manage the resulting morass of rules than to mitigate the disadvantages of having a hierarchy. isaacl (talk) 06:37, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I fear it could lead to an unprecedented amount of wiki lawyering. Some people already feel that there is a cabal on wikipedia, I feel that a group of unelected people (Draw your EU comparisons as you will) shouldn't hold the power to delete pages, because, as mentioned earlier, people have different standards. What if someone managed to game the system and get 5 accounts that could do that? It's unlikely but they could delete pages with it, and if they were smart they might pass them off as legitimate deletions. I fear that it would only lead to an increased need for deletion oversight, which would be very counterintuitive. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 07:14, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Sadly it is far from unlikely. Imagine a certain trolling group that was making life difficult for feminists not so long back, or a nationalist group speedy deleting anyone of a certain nationality. Auto empowering subreddits and 4chan trolling operations with admin deletion rights, what could possibly go wrong? ϢereSpielChequers 18:10, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

An even more radical idea (although it would need software development): have the software assign each user a reputation score. Once the endorsers of a certain admin action reach a certain total score, a prefect can do it immediately without a bot. (It should go without saying I think this would be a terrible idea.) 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 09:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• That is similar to the idea I proposed where specific tools require a specific number of actions, but a reputation score is even better. My thought is for example I do page moves and work that backlog. Over the years I've requested over 100 CSDs to make room for the page move, and they have always been deleted per my request -- someone like that should have the reputation to be able to delete pages (at least for G6) automatically. The same could go for other tools. Tiggerjay (talk) 19:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• Foxes guarding the hen house - and we've got enough of that already. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:39, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• I've recently been dabbling my toes on Quora which has elements of such a system. One key difference is that you don't know you've been downvoted, who has downvoted you and why. Not knowing about multiple downvotes is an important part of such systems - if you do know about every downvote you have made the system as toxic as RFA. But you lose transparency, and you lose the ability to handle things gently at an early stage, as the first you know of a problem is with a blocklike final warning. I'm not convinced that such a system could work for us, not least because of our one article per topic policy, instead of on Quora seeing that your answer is just getting less attention than some other answers to the same question. I'm not convinced that we could combine such a system with our one article per topic policy. Either the article on the best new grunge band in Cheltenham exists or it doesn't. ϢereSpielChequers 11:34, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• I dislike the idea of having any sort of rating system for editors, because it undermines the concept of the entire project (anyone can edit, etc.). As for having some sort of "quorum" of experienced editors serving in lieu of one administrator, there's one situation we would have to watch out for. If a page or topic has a smallish group of like-minded POV-pushers, they could get together and do a lot of harm. They could revert edits they disagree with, template the editors who made those edits, and the bot would be unable to tell that it was not vandalism. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• I like the idea, generally. The major problem I see with it is that the proposal makes CSD work like this: a user flags an article for deletion, some time passes whereby other editors can agree or disagree with the deletion rationale, then an account preapproved by the community comes along and carries out the result. Sounds good, but the problem is that I've just described AfD except with more qualifications. Not that this isn't a proposal worth considering, it is, but attention needs to be paid to keeping CSD a lightweight process. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:43, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• Interesting concept of using the crowd tagging, but that seems like it might slow down the process, not speed it up. With a declining number of admins, my CSD's must wait longer. Since the majority of those right now are just page moves, it's no great urgency. However, when I was active in AIV, finding an admin to act on a RPP was more time sensitive. Having to track down a few more perfects would be potentially slowing down the process. This might be a step forward with reducing the numbers of overall admins, but also in the process slowing down the mopping up.Tiggerjay (talk) 19:00, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Radical idea

Here's a radical idea. Currently, the problem isn't our RfA standards. It's our lack of candidates. Yes, there is a fringe of voters – roughly 10–15% of them – that have standards most consider absurd. But those 10–15% don't turn an RfA, since you only need 75% to pass. Take Godsy's RfA, for example. I was one of his stronger advocates during the RfA itself, but toward the end, there were some clear non-trivial issues brought up. I don't think they were a good reason to deny the mop, but I can perfectly understand why they led to a no consensus result. In the absence of the last-minute Infowars revelation, it seems likely that Godsy would have passed. Meanwhile, we have a candidate like Boson with relatively "weak" numbers (<10 AIV and RFPP reports combined), and they're doing well so far. I think RfA toward the end of 2015 and in the beginning half of 2016 was terrible. The standards were severely over-inflated. Several of the voters who I considered unreasonable have retreated from RfA a bit or adjusted their standards to something more reasonable given the realities of our existing resources and needs. Today, they seem to be more reasonable around the margin of what determines whether an RfA passes or not. We just haven't chucked all that many qualified candidates at the wall to see if they stick. Perhaps the problem here is at least partially a PR problem. If we took the shotgun approach and threw 10 roughly qualified candidates at RfA around the same time, some would get through. Maybe most, even. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:11, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Hm, I have noticed that there are people who are in one of two parties, the "If they deserved to be an admin they already should be" party and the "We need admins so I don't care about qualifications" party. Both are equally bad, the question being is there a way to stop them? Would it be reform or does it require social change, is the real question. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 07:17, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Iazyges: Neither group exists at or around the 75% support mark, so their standards don't determine results. That's my point. The only standards that matter are those of the editors who tend to fall in the 65-80% range or so in terms of how "strict" their standards are. I think that, at or around the 75% mark, the standards of voters have become a tad more forgiving since mid-2016. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 08:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I think one of the reasons we don't have 10 at a time or anything significant, is how much of a bloodbath it can be, take the brutalization of Yash! for example, as of now it can resemble the "roast me"'s of reddit, with the extra part of people digging deep into your past, people just aren't willing to have themselves be subjected to that. But that's a social issue and I don't know if any reform can really help that. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 07:20, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Clearly BU Rob13 is in the latter camp. Commenting "given the realities of our existing resources and needs" intones that there are no real standards, just a level of community desperation. It continues to rankle me that we have editors who suggest that we must let standards drop, as if that would help. As for the shotgun approach, you can nominate anyone you like, ideally with their consent. Sure, more candidates statistically would result in more admins, especially if you have more than one RfA going so there's less time to conduct oppo research. Chris Troutman (talk) 07:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: I !vote support for administrators I believe will be net positives. That doesn't mean I don't have standards. See the ongoing RfA, for instance, where I'm on the fence vaguely leaning oppose despite the amount of support. There are actual realities about what our needs are for administrators, though. It's better to have backlogs than a rogue admin, but it's better to have an admin who's still developing that last tiny bit of polish while working in uncontroversial areas than to have huge backlogs at RFPP and AIV. I'm highly likely to support a candidate with demonstrated clue who's still gaining some experience if they show an ability to learn, admit mistakes, and know when they're in over their head. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:33, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I fully agree that RFA has a PR problem and that there are lots of current editors who could easily pass RFA if they ran. I don't believe we have a "We need admins so I don't care about qualifications" party, if we had we would not be seeing RFAs withdrawn with zero supports and multiple opposes. What we do have is a lot of people who care about some criteria and not others, and two people with very different criteria could categorise each other as not caring about qualifications or having unrealistic criteria depending on the RFA concerned. We currently have people who care about at least seven different criteria for adminship, length of time someone has been here, editcount, need for the tools, can they be trusted with the delete button, can they be trusted with the block button, have they made quality contributions, do they communicate clearly online. I doubt if anyone actually cares about all seven, I suspect most of us regard at least a couple of those seven as bonkers and unhelpful. The problem is that each of those criteria has people whose !vote hinges on it and people who regard it as irrelevant to adminship. Those of us who are active nominators may look for candidates who can meet community expectations on all seven, including the ones we personally think are a distraction. I'd urge nominators and candidates to at least be aware of the criteria that they regard as irrelevant. ϢereSpielChequers 11:18, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Plenty of people have criteria for what they look for in an RfA candidate. Reality; I've yet to see any direct correlation between any of those criteria and actual performance on the project. For example, there's an assumption that N edits = experienced. Yet nothing has ever shown that a less "experienced" admin, on average, is less capable than a more "experienced" admin. The shake out of this is the criteria various people have are a direct detriment to promotion of people who are clueful enough not to do something they lack experience in without assistance, and trustworthy enough to fix the generated problem if they do screw it up. Instead, we create massive walls to adminship; <infinity> edits, 100 featured articles, 20 years on the project, last block 1000 years ago...yes I'm being hyperbolic to make the point, but the various criteria that people have are EVERY bit as hyperbolic in the absence of ANY connection between such criteria and actual performance on the project. A big, huge, massive step in a positive direction would be to delete every RfA criteria page that any user has. Sure, they might still maintain that criteria in their minds or even offsite, but removing them here would undermine the massive bloating of criteria that we abjectly suffer under now. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:01, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

• • • What Hammersoft said. There is absolutely no correlation with the various shopping lists of criteria (there are dozens of them out there) and the actual abilities of any individual to appropriately act in an admin role. There are one or two criteria that almost everyone agrees on and that are actually tied to some degree of success: at least 2000 edits, no blocks in the past year, and 6-12 months on the project. There is zero correlation with success as an administrator and: creation of featured content, high edit count, use of edit summaries, knowledge of arcane rules involving user names, tenure above one year on the project, more than 10K edits, frequent participation in discussion on AN, ANI, AE noticeboards, or a dozen other criteria I can think of. I'm pretty close to saying it's time to create voter criteria and restrictions rather than candidate criteria. I'd suggest that anyone with more than 50% oppose votes should be restrained from voting for a minimum of six months; either they're way too focused on RFA and are jumping in early all the time, or they're operating under wrong assumptions about adminship. Nobody should have more than 50% opposes. Risker (talk) 20:02, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
      • I agree with the first half of what you say, and with Hammersoft, but can't agree with the 50% thing. I probably come close to that, but it's not a case of serial-opposing; unless I'm already very familiar with the candidate, I consider it inappropriate to comment on an RFA without researching the candidate. If something is obviously destined to pass or fail, it's not a good use of my time to spend up to an hour wading through talkpage archives and dip-sampling contributions, so those RFAs where I do participate are those in the grey area where it's more likely there will be problems (since by definition, a number of respected people have already found grounds to oppose). I assume I'm not alone in that, since the only people who don't have the same "is this worth investing my time in?" issue will either be those who shoot from the hip without examining the candidate, or those working inflexibly to a set of arbitrary criteria. ‑ Iridescent 20:18, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

        (adding) One common criterion I do feel is sensible is what Wehwalt calls "skin in the game"; that the candidate has contributed something significant, be it an article that took some time to write, an image that took some time to draw, a template that took some time to code, etc. There's a very definite correlation between those admins who have no experience of actual writing, and a mechanistic application of the rules without empathy for people who get frustrated in disputes. ‑ Iridescent 20:23, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

      • Easily done if you have just three RFAs you've participated in, and if two of those were snow fails 66.666% oppose rate might be quite reasonable. But I agree that we should try to set criteria for adminship, if only to fossilise some of the arbitrary criteria like tenure and stop them getting worse. Of course one of the big advantages of individuals creating their own criteria is that it may fossilise their criteria and stop it increasing. ϢereSpielChequers 20:20, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
        • What exactly would said criteria be do you think? In my opinion there should be a minimum edit amount, probably 2,000. A certain time on project, perhaps 6 months, and a certain percent of edits on mainspace, unless they were highly specialized, such as Samtar. I would recommend at least these, but likely more to elaborate on. One possibility would be to have them perhaps be a "must have this or this" (in cases like the mainspace edits), to potentially help the rules not to seem arbitrary. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 20:31, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
        • I see your point about "too many opposes", especially given the limited number of opportunities. However, there are several people who seem to almost always find a reason to oppose. Anyone who's got a 80-90% oppose rate over more than 25 RFAs (or the last 25 RFAs) should be strongly encouraged to re-examine their position, at minimum; I'd prefer that the 'crats discount their votes to almost nothing, and a reasonable argument can be made that they're practically trolling and should be removed from participation on a more definitive basis. Risker (talk) 20:34, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
          • I agree with Hammersoft and Risker about many criteria having little predictive value about performance. I don't, however, like the ideas of either banning editors from RfA based on how frequently they oppose, or of forbidding opposes that are not based on agreed-upon reasons (unless, of course, an editor is actually being disruptive). Better to let editors say what they want to say, and find out whether anyone else thinks it's a good point. But I think a better approach is to make use of the fact that we have Bureaucrats to evaluate consensus, and they are quite good at it. So if the 'Crats were assured that the community as a whole rejects opposing based upon "X", the 'Crats can simply disregard such opposes. I think the best way to establish that would be to have some RfCs, asking questions like: "Is "X" a useful criterion, by itself, for evaluating RfA candidates?" If the consensus is that it is not, then the 'Crats can use their discretion about such opposes, and that could increase the pass rate considerably, as well as encourage more candidates. On the other hand, we have to recognize that there will be many criteria where it will be difficult to get such a consensus against, and that's just the reality of community norms. Another suggestion would be to further restrict the questions to candidates, which after all have gotten rather ridiculous. I for one would like to forbid any questions along the lines of "how would you deal (or have dealt with) the following situation?" or "state in your own words what the following policy means." Such questions are almost always really about "look at me! see what a smart question I asked!". I'd prefer questions to be limited to requests for clarification about things that the candidate has done or said. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
            • I don't think that the "How would you deal with this situation" ones are inherently bad, depending on the actual quality of the question it can show that the candidate had good judgement or bad judgement. While there is some bad "how would you deal with it" ones, like the entrapping ones mentioned above, I don't find any problem with them existing. The policy questions are however inherently bad, unless the user has shown to in the recent past not know or else be bad at applying a policy, however I suppose that falls into your "about the candidate" category. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
              • Actually, I think pretty much all "how deal" questions are just showing off, and one can find out about such judgment by reviewing the candidate's history (and if the specific thing isn't there, then utilizing the history to assess whether the judgment can be expected to be ok). But the fact that we disagree demonstrates how difficult it would be to change anything. As for "policy" questions, if the candidate has previously done something questionable and one wants to follow up on it, just ask the candidate to explain, rather than to recite policy. I really think that there are waaay too many questions, and all anyone really needs to ask is for explanation or clarification of the candidate's statements and actions. And I still think that the 'Crats can use discretion about dubious !votes, so long as they have a community consensus to draw upon. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:59, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I saw something interesting today. Some editor made an apparently disobliging !vote. 4 "senior" admins. with 28 years experience swarmed around the editor's TP like macrophages. Radical suggestion, spend more time dealing with Admin. work instead of complaining there are not sufficient of you. Oh, and ban yourselves from discussing this subject for 6 months. This is the 3rd current thread touching this boring topic. Leaky Caldron 21:02, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I have re-read your post several times and still have no idea what you are talking about, can you please clarify? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

No. Leaky Caldron 21:51, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Iazyges I think this is the relevant conversation. UNSC Luke is the one who has been opposing RfA candidates for not uploading a bunch of images and not working on 2+ WikiProjects (both of which are unreasonable standards to hold candidates to).---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 22:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

• Forgive me when I paste my well worn mantra one again:

Fix he voters and RfA will fix itself.

I'm glad to see stalwarts of Wikipedia, such as for example Risker, finally now agreeing. Difficult to say for sure, but judging by their level of participation around the Wiki, I tend to get the impression (a view I have held for years) that most of the votes (and questions) we suggest are misplaced come from users who are either very young or very new on Wikipedia, or both. We can't do much about the former, but we can certainly do something about the latter - most other Wikipedias already have. As for obvious serial opposers, including those who occasionally vote 'support' in an attempt to throw us off the scent, there's something that can be done about that too. Radically redesigning RfA or the way we choose our admins is not going to address these fundamental issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:15, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

An interesting proposal about seeing what will stick if we throw them against the wall... But I think that is what might be keeping some people away is that they don't want to be thrown up against a wall in the first place. For my own part, I've been approached a few times about RfA and continue to decline for various reasons, my various wikibreaks chief among them. I wonder how much we've done to evaluate why people are not going through the RfA process to begin with. Many good editors that I encounter here are not admins doing good backlog work themselves. I haven't taken the time to see how many of them have decided to attempt an RfA. But we might be missing a huge part of the equation if we don't understand why experienced, veteran editors are not putting themselves through RfA. If we think it is an intake/input issue, we need to understand why there are not more people running through the process. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:56, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Falling apart

I keep hearing people discuss that things will finally get fixed once things fall apart. I would propose that the statement doesn't really apply to open-source type projects like this. People must have a vested interest in something to 'rise up' to do something. The problem is, that if those people who care are leaving (even just natural attrition), then all that remains are those who don't care -- the users, the consumers. And by in large, they're only loyal to WP for what they can get out of us. And if our quality goes away, they will do. Leaving an even smaller number of people around to maintain it. I believe it is LOGICAL FALLACY to believe that it will get to a point where people rise up.

The question if the backlogs all triple, and many pages you go to have errors that only admins can address - what will happen? Do we honestly think that a poorly maintained wiki will

• Encourage individuals to step up to be admins
• Relax the existing criteria for adminship

Sorry to sound pessimistic, but I don't believe that a worn out wiki will solve the problems and encourage people to rise up. This is a tired rational to let a broken system persist until it 'gets worse'. Honestly that is the viewpoint of people who think too highly of themselves and their own personal contribution to the project. It is like the employee who says, "they'll miss me when I'm gone"...

Sure, perhaps it might get to the day that we're desperate for 'anyone' to have the mop. But my fear is when it comes to that, it will be simply too late to chance course and the fate is set for WP.

Instead, finding meaningful ways to avoid this are essential. This could be RfA reform, but more likely in a completely new approach... the post Admin era as people have proposed. Tiggerjay (talk) 18:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

In October 2005 we appointed 67 new admins, and another 68 that December. That's more new admins in those two months than we have managed in the last five years. That all happened before I had started editing, so I'm not sure of all the details, but I do remember someone once saying there was a bit of a spike because a change they were about to make was expected to increase the admin workload. I'm fairly sure that as long as our community continues to be numerous, and the 2007-14 decline doesn't resume, if we suddenly realise we haven't got enough admins we will appoint a huge batch of poorly considered ones; Most of whom will do just fine. My preference is that we fix things before we get to that stage, but I'm much more sanguine about the situation than I used to be. ϢereSpielChequers 20:35, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

2 requests for adminship in progress on my watchlist

At risk of getting shot for posting in the wrong place, I noticed this on my Watchlist: "Two requests for adminship are in progress. [dismiss]" I clicked on adminship, which took me to this page. However, I don't know if I've been nominated, or what this really means, because I didn't think I'd done anything to get nominated. I'm not sure where to get information on this, so I'm posting this here. If I have been remiss in doing that I am sorry. L3X1 (talk) 03:37, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

No, you have not been nominated. The notification is for everybody, in case they wish to comment on any of the candidates for adminship. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:41, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Don't listen to him! The fact is, we've had to introduce conscription. But don't worry, the term is only 5 years. Best wishes for the holidays, Johnbod (talk) 03:44, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok thanks I'll ignore it then. L3X1 (talk) 17:04, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

• Would it be possible to set that watchlist notice to only display to editors who have 100 edits? Or if that's not possible only to those who are extended confirmed? ϢereSpielChequers 20:13, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

• Since we allow anyone to !vote on RfAs, even if they have a brand new account, that would be counter to that philosophy. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:58, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

• It isn't likely that anyone that is not ext.conf. would be interested. No one is preventing them from voting, it is about preventing confusion, like the above. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:02, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
• In reality we don't allow everyone to !vote, if you have fewer than an undefined but low number of edits you will be treated as a sockpuppet or a returning troublemaker. The first time I looked at RFA I couldn't work out what the minimum voting qualifications were and I went away for several months before my first !vote. My belief is that defining a low qualification would be more welcoming to newbies; It could even mean we could send an automated message "congratulations on your 100th edit, you are now entitled to !vote in requests for adminship". But as Dennis says not sending out a watchlist notice that very few new editors respond to is about preventing confusion not excluding people. ϢereSpielChequers 11:34, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
• More participation is not always good. If it was, we would advertise RfAs on the main page. I honestly think the watchlist notice was a mistake. Putting RfAs on Cent is enough. If a user doesn't know about RfAs, then maybe they shouldn't be forcibly informed. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 02:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• There's a difference between advertising requests for adminship to every reader of Wikipedia and advertising them to every person who has expressed enough of an interest in editing to have an account and be looking at their watchlist. Sam Walton (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• I was similarly confused as to why I got the notice, and at the very least it should say something about voting to make it clearer. "There's an new request for adminship and your vote counts. [dismiss]" Max Nordlund (talk) 01:10, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• Max.nordlund The message is updated here:Template:RfA watchlist notice/text and can be discussed here: Template talk:RfA watchlist notice. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:23, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'll write something there then. Max Nordlund (talk) 01:46, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• I beleive I was looking at some stats somewhere and there seems to be a correlation between the number of RfA attempts inversely proportional to the number of !votes. Now that isn't to say that there is a direct correlation or causation here, but it is an interesting observation. And more doesn't always mean better. Tiggerjay (talk) 17:56, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• Note that this happened again. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 20:55, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

  Ah. That's what that was. I left them a message on their talk page regarding it with links to the help desk, the teahouse, and the IRC help channel. Perhaps we should figure out a way to limit those notices. --Majora (talk) 20:58, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Mostly general question about the 2-question limit

The RfC doesn't make this clear - do multi-part questions like the UAA questions asked by Class455 (e.g. Q5 at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Ivanvector) count as a single question, or many separate questions? The intent of asking these types of questions is obviously not to get around the 2-question limit, but it would be nice to have some sort of guideline (not WP:guideline) on what actually counts as a single question. ansh666 01:51, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I think handling it on a case-by-case basis is working and is fine enough. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 02:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, common sense works well enough. If it's all related, it's one question. If it's disparate things just mashed together to get around the limit, it's not. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:46, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, in this case it is all the same line of reasoning although I would say the number of hypothetical usernames is too many. Tiggerjay (talk) 08:03, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not bothered at the number of examples in the UAA question, just I get the impression it is being asked indiscriminately. That question would be very useful for a candidate who intends to be active at UAA but who hasn't been very active there or has only tagged some extremely inappropriate usernames. Or who doesn't mention UAA but long ago did some dubious tagging. We don't have consensus for a fourth standard question, and looking at that and another question where I've been left puzzled and wondering about the relevance to the candidate; I suggest we tighten the wording at Wikipedia:Advice_for_RfA_voters#Asking_questions to discourage people from asking questions that aren't specifically relevant to that candidate. Perhaps by requiring a diff to show the relevance of the question to the candidate? ϢereSpielChequers 11:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I too have found some questions, like this one, troubling for two reasons. First when they're asked to users who have shown no interest wanting to work in the area as an admin (i.e. in their Q1), and second because they often seem to be deliberately trying to catch the user out. One example I saw recently was a user asking the candidate about a mis-spelling of another admin's username. This requires the candidate to be aware of the existence of other particular users or else be caught out with a 'wrong' answer. Sam Walton (talk) 20:25, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Well stated! Yes, it would seem that these are "passion areas" of the person asking, but may not be relevant to the Q1 answers. As if they're more interested in getting their questions asked without regard to understanding the candidate in the first place. This isn't to throw the UAA asker under the bus, but rather those who are have their perennial question of all RfAs. Tiggerjay (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to single out anyone, but I do want to add a +1 to the advice to restrict questions to those that are relevant to the individual candidate. There are way too many unnecessary questions. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Additional question from 47.138.163.230 (talk):

42. Do you think there are too many questions asked at RfA? --47.138.163.230 (talk) 06:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The idea was to cut the burden on the candidate. Often the asker is just creating busy work for the candidate with no real interest for others in the answer. Most multipart questions would be counted as multiple questions, unless as BU Rob13 says its all connected. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:32, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

There are broadly six kinds of users who pose questions:

1. Those who are genuinely interested in receiving an explanation to some part of the candidate's history that may help the questioner and/or the community decide how to vote.
2. Those who are looking for an answer or explanation to something they do not know but should (requests for help masquerading as RfA questions).
3. Those who are trying to be clever by asking trick questions or ones for which there is obviously no right answer.
4. Those who ask questions that are unrelated to the bid for adminship.
5. New and/or younger users who are characteristically drawn to Wikipedia back-office areas.
6. Trolls.

Disquieting question types are often posed by the same regular voters. See more by checking out the research discussed below. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The questions they ask at RfA

As part of an extensive study into analysing the negative environment at RfA, a detailed, in-depth research was made into the questions feature of RfA at Question profiles and the discussion on the associated talk page. The comprehensive data may now be considered by some to be old but it is certainly not outdated - since then, there have been many more examples of silly, inappropriate, and/or disingenuous questions of the type in the long list linked to by the research. The entire 'optional' user question system is a feature of RfA that should come under serious review if we expect to attract more candidates of the right calibre. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It would be interesting to update that data to 2016 (I wonder how we could do that, maybe Opabinia regalis could throw in some ideas?) just to see what sort of question types come up. As you're probably aware, I don't often ask questions, and when I do it's because I am undecided about whether to support or not from simply looking at the contributions. Usually they take two forms : a) "A new user creates [non-existent but potentially suitable article] with the text [vague unsourced sentence that has just enough substance to be improved] - what do you do?" and b) An acrimonious edit war between an experienced editor and a newbie, with much incivility being flung around in the edit summaries. There is no "right answer" and it's more the way the answer is given, particularly the hints into how the candidate thinks, that make me decide. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:05, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Ritchie333, the data I've looked at is here; I haven't looked at questioners. That's a bit of a pain since parsing the RfAs themselves is harder than parsing lists of them, and question formatting varies, and it's more hassle to find things like someone's edit count at a particular time in the past than their edit count now. Unfortunately my experience with data analysis on RfA stuff - no, actually make that Wikipedia stuff - is that you can shout the results from the rooftops all you like and if it disagrees with people's personal perceptions, it'll never sink in. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

As the user who (I believe, though I'm happy to be proven wrong) has participated on more RfA than any other editor, I have in fact asked a question only twice (or perhaps three times). I believe the question system should only be used to delve into an existing issue that could well be influential in guiding other users. My own RfA garnered a negative neutral vote from a user who insisted that as a resident of Thailand I should be spending my time editing Thai related articles. Such behaviour should be allowed to go unnoticed particularly as the editor had obviously not done any research - I had in fact contributed extensively to Thai articles; needless to say, I haven't bothered much since. One vindictive admin who lied through his back teeth in an attempt to scupper my RfA later got himself desysoped - a pity his tag team were not also sanctioned. It's time for a clean up of RfA, I keep telling everyone it's only the voter behaviour that is discouraging candidates of the right calibre from coming forward. RfA needs a three strikes rule, and certainly a formal warning for even one or two inappropriate votes or questions. There's even been blatant trolling on Ivanvectpr's RfA by people who just can't abide to see a virgin oppose section.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:10, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Anecdotes. Not noteworthy, not interesting, not relevant to anything or anyone - other than you. I was once accused of being a multi-blocked editor who had missed a particularly "vindictive" Admin's. notice. Who says they were vindictive - me. Is that a fair description - maybe not. What you call a vindictive Admin from 5 years ago, later desysoped (so what), was someone with an opinion. People express opinions and should do freely. Your desire to continually regulate & exercise control everywhere you get involved is concerning, especially as the community shows little appetite for it. Leaky Caldron 11:49, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Leaky, I think you are going too far in so broadly dismissing Kudpung's comments as if you speak for us all. I believe that Kudpung is at least as entitled to express his opinion as you are to express yours. Kudpung is genuinely trying to solve the problems at RfA. Are you? Lepricavark (talk) 01:13, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I disagree with the extent of the alleged problems and most certainly disagree with his draconian proposals. Might as well let him and his cronies hand pick Admins. without any discussion and ban anyone who disagrees. Leaky Caldron 09:38, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

You believe a lot of things about yourself but that does not make it remotely true. You have participated in 318 Requests for adminship including yours. There are at-least a dozen or more active users on the English Wikipedia with over a 500 RFA participation record. The most recent flagged admin Fastily has voted in 429 RFAs, so stop with the grandiose statements, it’s getting old. 104.174.76.165 (talk) 20:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

You know what is also getting old? Users who hide behind a never-before-used IP address instead of saying what they have to say under their account name. Lepricavark (talk) 01:13, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Particularly IP hoppers and those who are evading their blocks. It's probably time for the WMF to expand on the rules they levied in 2006. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:50, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I've been saying for years we should be using CU tools under a continual fishing expedition to discover these gutless cowards and prosecute them. WMF has the tools and money to ruin these people's lives and meanwhile we have to suffer fools while we're trying to make this encyclopedia better. I, for one, cannot appreciate the thrill of making anonymous remarks beyond the natural aversion to being held responsible for your words. Write a GA and then tell Kudpung you think he sucks. If you're hiding behind an IP, your opinion is worthless while Kudpung's history of volunteerism is a platform upon which he can speak. I edit under my real name while letting people know where I go to school, which most editors can't handle. I'm also not a candidate for the mental institution so maybe I'll never understand. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:57, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Then you would be wrong. Whatever resources WMF has, it is not probable that they are in the business of prosecuting or ruining people's lives. WP is made up of all sorts of fools, live with it, stop whinging. No doubt if an anonymous IP posted something you are in complete agreement with but others were not, you are the sort of honest person who would nevertheless condemn the IP for remaining anon? Why do I doubt that? Leaky Caldron 10:53, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

@Leaky caldron: So you know, I have been against IP editors for almost three years now. I tolerate IPs because that's Wikipedia policy and I judge unhelpful editors by their edits, not merely their lack of a registered account. I'll continue to whinge, however, because if our goal was to write an encyclopedia (which it's not) then legally prosecuting our long-term vandals would (to my mind) be totally understandable. As our business is online I see no reason a private entity wouldn't exercise legal recourse to online harassment. If you had a bunch of anarchists interrupting the work of an NGO like the Red Cross it would be no surprise if the police were called to reestablish peace and order. Likewise, we need to maintain order. I can only assume you doubt my honesty and integrity because I disagree with you, which is a shame. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:44, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

@Chris troutman:Your honesty is not in question. I also do my bit, having assisted in clearing up after this long-term vandal, including many IPs not listed [1]. Leaky Caldron 08:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a phrase I don't find myself saying that often around RfA, but I agree with Chris troutman, at least on the subject of the WMF exercising their legal resources. Particularly in the area of paid editing, the Foundation could do so much by exercising their resources to shut down some of the problematic behavior that we're unable to manage on our own. I know they don't want to set that precedent or expend those resources, but seriously, it would be worth it to force people to think twice before engaging in this behavior. (On the other hand, I would strongly oppose CU fishing expeditions. They tend not to be effective, and they're a major privacy concern. They would likely have a chilling effect on positive contributors who do not care to have their privacy invaded.) ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:51, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

The WMF's pursuing legal remedies against the people behind the very worst long-term abuse accounts is something I've suggested as well, although what I had in mind were civil remedies rather than "prosecution." However, that's off-topic for this discussion about RfA, especially given that the IP whose edit triggered the discussion made just one comment here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:55, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure, reputations do matter. For example, what now comes to mind in association with the name "Chris troutman" is "oh yeah, that's the guy who just casually brought up 'ruining lives' in response to people being nuisances on a website". I feel like this should go without saying, but even in those rare circumstances where WMF action is warranted, the goal is to stop disruption, not to actually harm people. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

• Particularly in the area of paid editing, the Foundation could do so much by exercising their resources to shut down some of the problematic behavior that we're unable to manage on our own - the irony is, however, that they won't even let us do anything about it or support us in our search for solutions. A bit like rather a lot of our own volunteers.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:44, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

This goes back to why wiki can't keep editors, it's near totally dysfunctional--disruptive editors run amok with no effective control mechanisms, admins and good editors volunteer their time and get treated like crap, someone makes one goof and they're hounded off the project, edit bad day where you posted a comment you shouldn't have 5 years ago is brought up and your RFA is tanked, one person controls some facet of wiki with dictatorial powers...the list goes on and on. Good editors simply won't put up with this crap forever. Ergo, the lunatics run the asylum. 2600:8805:5800:F500:9C9D:6AB3:CBF8:A317 (talk) 19:49, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

RfA is about as dead as ever. :p

With RfA being about as lifeless as ever we should talk about some reform ideas. :p Any suggestions?</humor>—CYBERPOWER (Happy 2017) 22:42, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

• You are not speaking the politically correct line. Please report to the nearest re-education camp. </humor> Actually, I think it's a bit of a dead cat bounce. If it sustains somehow (highly doubtful), I'll be impressed. A few weeks/noms does not a pattern make. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:44, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
• The fact that there are multiple concurrent RfAs is highly intentional. It should be viewed as a lot of candidates choosing to move up their RfAs due to a "bliss period" of better standards, not an indication of lasting changes. If it persists for a few months, then we can talk. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

  It's actually making me consider re-running.—CYBERPOWER (Happy 2017) 22:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

• This rush of RfAs is causing me to experience some nostalgia and enjoy remembering the good ol' days of 2007, when 7-10 active RfAs per week was the norm. Ah, yes - those were joyous times! :D Acalamari 22:57, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
• I for one am not looking a gift horse in the mouth. We have five RfAs in progress and at a quick glance I think all of them have a good chance of passing. That said there seems to be a general consensus that we are understaffed which I am not questioning. Do we have an idea of how many active admins we need to be sure things are running smoothly? -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
  • How long is a piece of string? It's hard to say, especially because much of the concern is looking to the future - while it's true we need more active admins now, it's also true that we're gradually losing the ones we used to have, and want to make sure the encyclopedia will still be well staffed in the future (see the doomsday thread above). Sam Walton (talk) 23:13, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Maybe it's time to think outside the box. How about trying an old fashioned recruiting campaign? We could start posting "Help Wanted" notices in prominent places like the various Wiki-Projects. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Certainly the old chestnut about needing admins now than ever is alive and well; we all seem to be blind to the fact that with active editorial membership consistently and constantly falling, we are doing little more than welcoming more cowboys in with fewer and fewer Indians to play with. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 00:51, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Mildly, think active editorial membership seems fairly stable. But while some admin backlogs are certainly increasing (CSD and MFD are two examples) and it's great that we currently have a bunch of good candidates, the real delays seem to be in more routine tasks like page merges and RfC closes. These don't require admins, they just require more people willing to manage the "back of house." -- Euryalus (talk) 01:01, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

What I notice is simply the long-term conspicuousness frequency of a very few admin names. Sick with a mere cold, I have to wonder at the dislocations here if just two admins I'm thinking of got sick or worse. Do we *really* have enough admins loyal to each of the specific high-need tasks? I'm rather doubtful some of these tasks could be staffed up from the ready pool to the same *level* of performance over even the medium-term. I'd like to send some admins my appreciation, but not in the form of barnstars, rather cough drops. Enough admins? I don't think so. Shenme (talk) 01:13, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi cyberpower678, my dear friend. Your section heading and five RfAs at once made me just have to come and post here. Sure, it might be dead, who knows, but it sure is kicking! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:04, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• It appears that today has been brought to us by the number six. I have heard stories about this sort of thing from old timers, but in my comparatively brief tenure I can't remember seeing six RfA's going at the same time. Kudos to those who have been actively recruiting qualified candidates. I think I am going to take a photo of my screen in case future generations question that this ever happened. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:38, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ad Orientam:- hope you got that screenshot mate ;) O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 14:50, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Sadly I did not. I went to get my phone and when I came back the dreaded pink was there. On which note I think that Mike will make a good admin and hope he comes back after six months of filling in a few gaps in the resume. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Here you go: Special:PermaLink/758104824. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:27, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• We are back to five again. The last month when five or more (in fact, six) admins were promoted in one month was July 2012.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:49, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll give a prize to whoever can get Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cullen328 to turn blue. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:52, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I will second that. Ping Cullen328 -Ad Orientem (talk) 20:07, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words. What I will say at the moment is that my reluctance to put my name forward for RfA has to do with real life family issues which have nothing to do with Wikipedia itself. I have no major concerns about the process, or any on-Wikipedia issues. It is possible that I will change my mind in 2017, and if I do, it will be because my family approves, not because of any other factor. In the mean time, I will continue trying to be a productive contributor to the encyclopedia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:33, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Five RFAs on the go at once! And they all look like they might be good ones. What is this new year magic?  — Amakuru (talk) 17:04, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

This brings back good memories (circa 2007/2008) when Wikipedia was a much more friendier place. Never have I thought that I would see so many concurrent RfAs again. If non-admins are reading this, I would encourage you to run for it now while this is happening (hopefully it's a trend and not a fad). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

It was even friendlier in 2005 and early 2006. Candidates weren't grilled and trolled ad nauseam about irrelevant things back then. I can only imagine how it was in 2004. Gizza ^(t)(c) 22:08, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Sheesh, you should look at some of the original RFAs, just after it started being based on community consensus rather than a blessing from Jimbo. "Bob has some good edits, let's make him an admin." 10 people agree, and....done. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:00, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

See this successful RfA with two supporters, one of whom expressed concern about the user uploading images with no source or description to verify the copyright status. This supporter advised the user to start complying with the policies after becoming an admin. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 05:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Even more ironically, one of the two supporters is a blocked sock! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:21, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I think something's gone wrong with the categories. Wik is definitely the original sockmaster, not a puppet. If memory serves (though this long predates my time on the wiki), Wik was once a good contributor but went off the rails. He was banned by Jimbo personally and cast from the promised land back in the early days (about 2004 I think). He may even have been the first person to be banned who wasn't an obvious vandal/troll from the start... WJBscribe (talk) 10:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't looked into Wik's history in-depth, so I can't comment on that ... but my candidate for the first non-obvious vandal/troll to be banned would be Isis, now Isis~enwiki (talk · contribs), in February 2003. She was also the first admin to be desysopped for cause in the project's history. Graham87 12:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I think you're right - it was Isis. WJBscribe (talk) 16:37, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Huh. I do wonder what causes these users to go off the rails like that.—CYBERPOWER (Happy 2017) 13:35, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• Just to put this in perspective: Wikipedia:Inactive administrators/2017#February 2017 shows 13 admins on the chopping block to get their bits removed. Even if all candidates currently at RFA pass, we'd need to double that number and then some this month to actually see a net increase for 2017. -- Tavix ^(talk) 16:31, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

  Still, at least I see that "Lord Voldemort" is set to lose his rights. After all, ArbCom have been very weak for not desyopping him for heading up the death eaters, slaughtering muggles etc. Hopefully there will be common ground that such activities constitute (at the very least) "a cloud". WJBscribe (talk) 16:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

You dare to utter the Dark Lord's name? You fil*** muggle! 103.6.159.87 (talk) 17:37, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• @Tavix:13 non-productive admins do not need to be replaced. They are on the chopping block for a reason - they do nothing. So replacing the whole lot with one decent, productive admin. provides an infinite increase in productivity. The total number of "qualified" admins is the most misquoted, misrepresented and useless reference point for - well anything really. Leaky Caldron 17:00, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Whoa there, I'm just stating a fact regarding the raw number of admins. I'm not at all getting into productivity, qualifications, etc. -- Tavix ^(talk) 17:04, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

"we'd need to double that number and then some this month to actually see a net increase for 2017" - why would we need to see a net increase? These people currently do nothing in the role - they are finished. They have done nothing for years. Therefore they do not need to be replaced just to maintain a notional number of functionaries that existed before they were removed from the role. Leaky Caldron 17:14, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

And this, my friends, is what happens when people read too much into things... -- Tavix ^(talk) 17:36, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I see you are determined to prolong this using a snide edit summary. Okay. If you are going to bandy headline numbers around like you know what you are talking about - and do not produce even a basic analysis why such an attention grabbing value is actually relevant to any meaningful discussion - you will need to expect that your blandishments will be challenged. Now, I suggest you just drop it. Leaky Caldron 17:51, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

GOOD point. -- Tavix ^(talk) 18:15, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Leaky caldron: This assumes that the most recently elected admins will be more productive or be admins for longer. If on average an administrator will stop using their tools after the same amount of time as any other, a net decrease in number is not sustainable. Sam Walton (talk) 17:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

11 Admins (apparently) not productive for 3 years each? I would be more productive than that lot put together! Leaky Caldron 18:07, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• And now with 7 active RfAs....wow. See, what will happen is we will expend our entire quota of 2017 candidates in just one month, and the rest of 2017 will be devoid of RfAs. </pessimism> --Hammersoft (talk) 21:23, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

So I should apply now, while there are so many going on that nobody will particularly pay attention to my own? </humor> DonIago (talk) 21:45, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Many a truth spoken in jest, Doniago O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 21:50, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

There's truth at the bottom of every wine glass, and I had several... </hic> DonIago (talk) 00:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing.... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Oppose - less than 500 edits this year. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 00:04, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• I have noticed that RfA's tend to do well when there are discussions happening at the same time on RfA Reforms or behavior of opposers during an RfA so do not think this means that RfA has been fixed, far from it. There will be another slump soon, maybe next month and then we will have 2 or 3 RfA with either all failing or just one barely passing. Still a very long way to go before we actually fix the problem...--Stemoc 22:39, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• Excellent, it's settled. We'll have discussions to reform adminship every 3 months :) -FASTILY 00:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• Inactive admins remind me of a famous sketch where a parrot was discovered to be nailed to its perch. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• False analogy. To slowdown the decline in the number of admins we rely on a steady trickle of former admins returning to activity. Putting unnecessary obstacles in the way of their return damages the site. Pointing that out and challenging attempts to deter good admins from returning is time well spent. ϢereSpielChequers 10:07, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

The sketch didn't end there WSC. IIRC, the customer was offered one of these instead. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to modify administrator inactivity policy

I have posted a proposal to modify the administrator inactivity policy; see Wikipedia talk:Administrators#Proposal. Maxim_(talk) 12:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Wow, it looks like we will have 6 new admins soon

6 active RFAs with 4 (including 1 new-ish one) looking like sure bets unless there are last-minute surprises, and another running at 82% with less than half a week to go. Two of the 3 new-ish ones don't have enough participants to call them "sure bets" yet but they are both running over 90%.

To borrow (or mangle) a meme, I for one welcome our new mop-carrying overlords. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't tempt fate... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:50, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Let's set a new record, can we break doubt digits on passing noms at one time?--v/r - TP 23:55, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:RfATIGUE.. O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} —Preceding undated comment added 23:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Doesn't exist. This is refreshing.--v/r - TP 00:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
• Seven RfAs now. Did someone roll back the clock ten years to 2007?  — Amakuru (talk) 11:15, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I hope they didn't, I am off nappy-changing duty forever (until and unless I have grandchildren) Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

...And by then, slimline CDs might have come back into fashion ;) O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 11:51, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is dying! Requests for adminship is dying! &c. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:27, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm getting worried. What are we going to do to recruit more editors who do not want to be administrators? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• A few bunched together RfAs does not a pattern make. It certainly does not override the years long pattern of decline, across more than 300 RfAs and 5 years, we have been in. As I mentioned before, this could be no more than a dead cat bounce. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:22, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

• It is what we make it. I hope there are plenty of people out there twisting some arms to get a few more candidates to put their names forwards. WJBscribe (talk) 22:52, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

There are, there are, WJBscribe, you can rest assured of that. It all takes place off-Wiki - probably as it should - and while we don't always put our own names to the noms/co-noms, we certainly get the ball rolling. Also, without Anna Frodesiak's project at ORCP there would have probably been even fewer RfAs, because that's where we're often pushing other potential candidates of the right calibre to go,particularly the ones that might not be quite just ready right now. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• I am pleased to see a good batch of candidates brought forth and going through the process without much a disturbance. It's a fine start, but as previously mentioned, there are many years of damage to undo and administrators are desysopped for inactivity on a monthly basis higher than the number we promote up. Retention is the problem were facing. I feel like it might be because there's so little need for 1,200+ administrators. 10 administrators working on any one area of Wikipedia (like WP:AIV) is more than enough and some editors were given the bit for their expertise in one area. Whatever the reason, I hope our recently elected administrators are prepared to use their mop for a long time. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 00:19, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• It would be useful if we had an idea of why administrators are giving up their bits (other than inactivity). Exit surveys? --Hammersoft (talk) 15:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)