Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Recently failed RfAs?

I was looking for a list of recently-failed RfAs, like there is for recently successful RfAs, and I couldn't find it. Did this exist, or am I just imagining it? I was looking for this because I wanted to see which RfAs had been closed recently, without digging through the page history. I only managed to find an alphabetical list. I found exvicious at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful_adminship_candidacies/E, but only because I remembered the name. I eventually found a chronological list at User:NoSeptember/List of failed RfAs (Chronological), but this seems to be updated less frequently. Would it be possible to make this all clearer, rather than spread between 'official' pages and 'user' pages? Carcharoth 16:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

User:NoSeptember/List of failed RfAs (Chronological) is updated frequently; it appears just about up-to-date to me. If you're looking for a list of failed RfAs, sans the chronological order, you should take a look at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies, which is linked from the top of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. -- tariqabjotu 16:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info about the update frequency. I'll try and be a bit more patient. I was already aware of Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies, as that was where I found Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies/E... but thanks for that link as well. :-) What do you think about the material being split across Wikipedia and User space. Is that a problem or not? Carcharoth 17:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think NoSeptember's page should be moved to the Wikipedia namespace. It doesn't pose as a problem right now on NoSeptember's userpage, but I just think moving to the Wikipedia namespace would be more logical. Nishkid64 18:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with any of the pages in the The NoSeptember Admin Project being moved to WP space if people want them there, but I also don't want to create a bunch of WP space pages that others don't want. I think the amount of updating that other people do now may be an indication of how interested people are in a particular page. User:NoSeptember/Desysop and User:NoSeptember/RfA voting records get updated a bit more often by people other than me, so I usually consider these the most popular pages. Although I include User:NoSeptember/Admin stats and User:NoSeptember/List of Administrators as my favorites. Anyone who wants to update any page is welcome to do so. Curiously, now when someone gets desysopped, there are 4 (sometimes 5) pages to be updated (1 2 3 4 5) :). NoSeptember 14:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Request

I would like to be a Admin for Wikipedia. I stay up late at late and see alot of bad things happen on Wikipedia. I would like to power to block someone if they mis-use wikipedia. Thanks, Senator Heimermann 02:48, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk. Newyorkbrad 02:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I should be intermittently reloading that talk page to see what you are about to say... ;-) Maybe I'll be patient and wait for you to stop writing! :-) Carcharoth 02:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kafziel 2

Is there a reason this is not being closed for the better part of a day already? - crz crztalk 03:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I was also wondering that. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of adding a !vote, but am not sure if that is OK after the 'deadline' has passed. Regarding the closure point, I would have thought that borderline cases would be allowed to run further to allow a consensus to develop one way or the other, but the proper way to do this would be to have a bureaucrat officially extend the closure date so that people can see how many more days are left. If this was done, I would then add my comments and !vote. Carcharoth 03:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

NB. 4 support votes added after the 'deadline' and 3 oppose votes added after the 'deadline' (as of the 61/17/4 tally. Carcharoth 03:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

RFA lottery... - crz crztalk 03:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I am running for RFB. Right now... :) - crz crztalk 03:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, seems like an unfortunate coincidence, with all Bureaucrats absent for most of the day. Ok, in order to be fair here, in light of the fact that it's a close call and, quite importantly, that the RfA has been overdue for a significant amount of time — and the history shows that the candidate had 80% support closer to the original deadline, and that has dropped to 78% during the time past closing, hence impacting the outcome in a very effective way — I believe the fair action here is to grant a 24-hour extension, as of now (not counting from the original deadline). The only "problem" is that, at this time tomorrow, I'm not going to be here to close it, but I'm sure Essjay or Taxman can do it, and I don't think that it would be fair to close now, in light of the present situation. Hopefully, this will be enough to patch this up. Redux 03:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Erm... If it was above the traditional approval range at closing and is now within traditional range - how does leaving it open longer for more RfA Russian Rulette make sense? I don't understand. Please gauge the consensus - as of now or as of yesterday - and close it already. - crz crztalk 03:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The extension seems fair because the RfA was left open for a significant amount of time past the original deadline, and during this time, several people participated, impacting the outcome. And it is a fact that when a RfA is overdue, but not officially extended, that can have a very real impact on people's decision to participate. In this case, it seems to be a necessary remedy, in light of the circumstances surrounding the end of this RfA.
But furthermore, RfAs runs until a Bureaucrat closes it. Unfortunately, there was nobody to close it sooner, and a close call became even closer — and it is a very close call. Particularly, it caught my eye that there had been no opposition since the 24th, and then on the 27th, several new ones rolled in, most of them after the original deadline, dropping the support consensus to 78%; as well as that the number of supporters in the last day also picked up again. This makes it a very close call, and since activity picked up during the last day (and in fact, past the original closing), it should be helpful to allow the community extra time to develop consensus. Redux 04:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

That sounds very reasonable to me. I'll go and add my !vote now. Thanks. Carcharoth 04:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I support it. In fact, I wish RfAs that were in the "margin of discretion" were extended more often than they are, in the interest of gaining a better idea of community consensus. If there's no traffic for days, sure it makes sense to close it, but it's a discussion not a horse race. :) -- nae'blis 14:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

24 hour extension incorrectly implemented

Um, the proposed 24-hour extension "as of now" (ie. 03:40 28 November 2006) seems to have been incorrectly implemented by Redux. The extension should have been to around 03:40 on 29 November, not the 28 November. See this edit here (which granted a 1 minute extension, not a 24 hour extension). This is particularly unfortunate because the original reason for the extension was partially to avoid the "the deadline's passed, I won't vote" effect. I only noticed this when looking at the summary at WP:BN. Possibly another 24-hour extension from when this is corrected might be needed, though that could be incredibly messy. I also note that Redux said he won't be around tommorow, so I'm going to leave a note at the Bureaucrat's Noticeboard as well. Carcharoth 05:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

As it's clearly a mistake and the crat's intention is known, surely someone else can just correct the date? --Tango 12:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought about doing that, but at the time it still wasn't clear which way the RfA would swing (it looks clearer now). If I'd spotted the mistake a few minutes after it happened, I would have corrected it, but this was a few hours after the event. Also any actions that could impact on a close RfA (even if the action is technically correct) tend to get examined with a microscope. I left a notice at WP:AN and WP:BN, and seeing as no admin or bureaucrat responded if seems no-one else was WP:BOLD enough either. If I could have done this differently, I'd appreciate any advice. At the moment, as I've been accused of incivility and lack of good faith on the RfA page, I'm going to keep out of it (other than to correct a minor misunderstanding). I would appreciate some indication from others as to whether I went too far with my comments on the RfA, where I drew attention to what I thought was inappropriate behaviour by crz. Carcharoth 12:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for bringing it up. Sorry about the mixup; in my time zone, it was still the 27th when I edited the RfA... Redux 13:03, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

As Carcharoth requested, I'll clarify that it would have been perfectly fine for anyone to fix the date slip. As Tango mentioned, it was a clear, honest mistake (caused by the time zone thing), and the actual intention was clear to see (to grant a 24-hour extension from the time of my post). Redux 13:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Your doing a great job Redux, crats can use discretion and make mistakes. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear from my initial post (which was only pointing out the mistake and saying that it was unfortunate in context, not judging the action), I agree. Next time I spot something like this, I'll correct it. The other reason (in addition to the ones mentioned above) that I didn't correct the mistake was because I had read about this during the recent Doug Bell RFA. :-) Carcharoth 15:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Calling what Doug did there vandalism is a blatent misuse of the term vandalism. It did not look like a bad faith edit that set off the whole thing hehe. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

What's the obsession with %%?

Hold on a second here, what's with the obsession over a couple of percentage points? This is an exercise to determine consensus, not snout counting. There is not (and should not be) a firm number to apply to determine passing requests, otherwise we might as well remove any fantasy that this is not a vote. It should not matter if supports are at 78% or 80%, there should be enough data for a 'crat to close it just fine as is. The only reason I bring this up is that the above discussion seems to place an irresponsible emphasis (well intentioned as it may be) on refined numbers with clearly implied thresholds that should not exist. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the concern is that it is very near the point where historically failure is close. Of course it is not a vote, but it is a close race. I agree that the numbers need not be overemphisized. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Rough thresholds should exist - but the problem is that the perceived difference in the voting within the 12 hours after scheduled end - 81% to 78% - is too silly for words. It's within margin of error, within margin of sanity. The two or three extra votes did not change anything in the picture, did not deliver any powerful new arguments, no new diffs, no new nothing. I don't care if crats close it adversely to my nominee - that's fine - but I continue to protest against the senseless extension. Please do not penalize Kafziel for my opinion! Thanks. - crz crztalk 17:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The extension makes perfect sense to me. People were voting, and other people were not voting becuase it was past due. This creates a disparity, the solution is to officially extend the deadline and remove the abiguity. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:30, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, this is a "clean the slate" RfA. By this, I mean that a fair number of users have identified an issue that concerns them (civility in this case). If this RfA fails and the candidate addresses these concerns over the next few months, the next RfA will pass overwhelmingly. Although Wikipedia:Consensus != Consensus, it does seem that the way to achieve general agreement here is to close the current RfA as "no consensus", address the issues brought up by opposers over the next 2-3 months, and then start another RfA. SuperMachine 17:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

So go oppose it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with crat decisionmaking. - crz crztalk 17:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)