Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 222

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your point has merit and I can see that it would address the issue of the dwindling admin population. However, what I would worry about is that the decision on whether someone should be an admin or not shouldn't be a popularity contest, it should be made on consideration of evidence that someone can (or can't) do the job. However broken the current process is, that is its strength: that editors can see the points raised by others and make their judgements according. I say this having voted at 1 RFA, where I was beaten to the SNOWBALL while pointing out that the character of the person at hand was radically unsuited to the bit. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 15:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
It's been suggested. My position (and again, other positions are valid) is that we need to be doing things that encourage a lot more people to learn admin stuff, establish a solid track record, and then run for adminship. But those efforts are guaranteed to fail if people think that they're not going to get promoted after doing all that work, and in the current environment, that's what they're likely to believe. Regular election of admins along the lines you're suggesting might be one way to convince Wikipedians that they really do have a shot at adminship if they do what needs to be done. "Rfacom" (above) is another way, and "heavy" clerking, of the kind that would require clerk elections to give them the gravitas and respect they'd need to make a significant difference to outcomes, would be another. Elections are the common element, and my suggestion FWIW is that we break off a separate page for people who are on board with the idea of elections to figure out how to minimize the downsides and maximize the upsides before presenting a proposal to the community, and maybe to Jimbo. - Dank (push to talk) 15:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I've always liked the idea of having a rigorous panel of clerks for RfA and think it could go a long way to ironing out the problems with the process. What I fear about the idea in this section is that having a large tranche of nominations to sift through in one go may well be too much for the community at its current size to handle. Inappropriate candidates are likely to slip through the net if scrutineers are more thinly spread, and I still don't think it would solve the problem of hostility and irrational opposes in the process. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 16:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Any proposal that could even entertain the remote possibility of a poor quality candidate chancing their luck and qualifying for life-time authority here is inherently a very poor solution (to whatever the "perceived problem" is). RFAComm as I understand it, is equally unacceptable. Basically any panel that doesn't include me (an ordinary editor) isn't acceptable. I don't want anyone representing my Admin. requirements. Leaky Caldron 16:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Looks like an excellent solution, especially the reduction of the threshold to 50%. If the Foundation or Jimbo imposed something along these lines there would be quite a backlash, but it would subside and in the long term we'd get much better outcomes from the process. I think it might even help reduce concerns about admin abuse, in a pleasing sideways way.
As for clerking, there was something approaching informal consensus for that back in October, and a crat with no less gravitas than MBisanz himself started striking votes that lacked rationales. But he got pushback including from a fellow crat and soon stopped. Some voters prefer the freedom not to have to back up their preferences with logical reasons. I'd predict that clerking would result in less participation and possibly even greater resentment and passive aggression. But would love to be proved wrong if it turns out that clerks can encourage voters to be more respectful and constructive. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I learned my lesson. There is no broad community consensus in requiring RFA commenters to provide rationales for their opinions. There is consensus that they cannot attack or otherwise disrupt an RFA through their comments, but "bare" supports and opposes are not strikeable. MBisanz talk 20:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I really like this idea. I can't see any reason not to support it. Everyking (talk) 23:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

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

It almost seems as if this proposal's purpose is to promote lower quality admins, just so that we can say we have more admins. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 01:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I think if we just lower the bar to >50%, one part of this idea, that would be all that was necessary--it would lower the bar to passing RfA enough that probably a lot more qualified people would run who just don't bother nowadays. I'm not dead set against the other changes but the more radical a change you propose the less likely it is to get consensus. And I'm also swayed by the concern brought up above about keeping users from being able to take much time to investigate a candidate. Also I don't think picking a set number is flexible enough since, as we've seen, participation changes over time (well, it declines, hopefully someday it will increase again). delldot ∇. 01:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Robofish and delldot, if >50% is good enough for ArbCom elections, then it should also be good enough for RfA. GabeMc (talk|contribs) 01:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Only if you assume the voters are stupid. OK, we are a little stupid and you could probably slip 2 or 3 incompetent admins through before we figure it out and adapt, but I predict the Why not? supporters will be a lot stingier with their support when they realize it only takes one of them to neutralize a But it's Christmas! oppose instead of four. In the long run, fiddling with the support% needed will have little effect on who is elected, but will merely cause weak supporters to refactor their votes into neutrals or weak opposes. Kilopi (talk) 02:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

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

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

(ec) That's what I worry about as well - are we then talking quotas etc.? I can't see an election addressing anything except adding more bureaucracy and competitiveness... Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I suggested something similar here (click). I no longer think RfA reform is ever going to happen. If you look at the first version of WP:RFA, written almost ten years ago, you will see that the RfA process has not changed in any meaningful way since then. --Surturz (talk) 05:38, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Scottywong's comment above reinforces my concerns. However, I'm not against the idea of an Arbcom-style election, perhaps quarterly (and without quotas), and I've made similar suggestions myself in the past, but one should guard against making it any easier to become an admin. For anyone who missed it, I'll just repost here the essential of something I posted a couple of threads back:

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

This comes back to why I don't think the actual process is broken, and by abandoning it we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What we need to do is potty train the voters.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I am still having difficulties understanding what we really want. Would the following statement: We (community) want to have more good candidates running for adminship but we are not willing to compromise on the selection quality threshold - express consensus?--Ymblanter (talk) 08:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Probably by a narrow margin, yes, but not enough to obtain a convincing consensus. It's not that difficult to understand - that word 'we' is the problem. Some of 'we' want it to be easier to become an admin by having probationary adminship, or even an unbundling of the tools at the same time as making it easier to remove the bit. Other 'we' want the bar maintained high and making it easier to remove the bit. In 2012 there were, IIRR, three RfC that attempted to unbundle the tools but they all failed on the basis that there would be a stampede of wannabe admins, and a whole new range of bureaucracy for according them all their little slices of the cake à la WP:PERM and taking them away again. Personally I would see such a system as being like an anthill with many different castes of 'moderators' all rushing around with their different tasks, getting in the way of each other, and generally creating an enormous bureaucratic confusion for the vast majority of editors who just want to get on with creating content without wanting to know how it's all managed, so I rule out having a whole priesthood of gatekeepers as a solution. What people appear to forget is that Wikipedia has grown and matured: I'm 7 years older now than I was when I joined - I was an old man then already ;) - and Wikipedia has about sevenfold more editors since then, meaning that if anything, we have a huge pool of experienced, mature editors to draw on for our admins, so do we really need to make it easier for the newbies to obtain something to brag about in the schoolyard? The good, mature, experienced editors of the right calibre are out there en masse, but because that's who they are, they're not prepared to put up with the immature shit at RfA that the kids will, and that's why not many editors of my generation and Wiki experience are prepared to come forward. It's completely understandable - certain generations need to fully understand that adminship is neither a trophy nor a power-tool - so as far as we reap what we sow, we can't have our cake and eat it.
For me, the choice is between either clerking or an Arbcom-style election. Ironically, if the Foundation would finally come up with the long promised landing page for new users/new article-creators that they offered as a consolation for rejecting WP:ACTRIAL, there would be a lot less work for all members of the 'priesthood', and a lot less interest in collecting hats. For the moment, I am enthralled to see those who were heckling from the sidelines while I was in the vanguard of RfA reform now concurring that many of 'us' are not willing to compromise on the selection quality threshold, and that it's not because we admins jealously guard our privileges and try to maintain a closed-shop - enough good admins have abandoned ship very recently to disprove that theory. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:12, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anyone would argue that good candidates are getting promoted. What this is about, IMO are:
  1. Good candidates are also not being promoted
  2. RFA is too much a popularity contest and not enough about the candidates ability
  3. Good candidates are not bothering to submit because the process is such a gauntlet
  4. Its too hard to demote bad admins. There are some out there, we all know a few. Its essentially a billet for life.
  5. The sharp increase in Admin workload, protected pages and funnctions requiring admin tools
  6. The various admin boards have frequent backlogs which gives an indication that either we do not have enough active admins, or we do not have enough admins with the knowledge to perform that task. In either case its bad. So it is extremely hard (for me at least) to have much simpathy for overworked admins when I am willing to do the work, have the technical proficiency and am told no. We do not want or need your help, submit the request and wait a week like everyone else. So now I rarely edit outside discussions.
So again, although I agree that good admins are being promoted. The process is deterring good candidates from even submitting, driving some of us away who are willing and capable of helping out and although it is borderline functional, the process has become a failure. Kumioko (talk) 14:52, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Kudpung and points 1-4 by Kumioko. As for points 5-6, I haven't seen any evidence that there is too much work for the current lot of admins to keep up with, but I think that there is a clear downward trend in admin promotion that will eventually need to be dealt with, and better to deal with it proactively than reactively (i.e. when there actually is a real problem). I honestly think that a simple RfA clerking policy would be all that is currently needed. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 21:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
It is evidenced by the frequent backlogs at the various admin forums. There are repeatedly pleas for help left at AN, ANI and other venues. In my own experience it would often take days to more than a week to get admins to do things like implement a change on a protected template, block a vandal, fix a problem on a Mediawiki page, etc. Of all the admins we have its the same 20-30 that always seem to participate in the admin work areas. That causes one sided discussions that frequently fail because the same group of people are always there with the same views. That to me is a problem. It may not be too you, but it is to me. It lacks social and technical depth. We need a wider range of people participating with differing skillsets, backgrounds, ideals and opinions. Kumioko (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Very accurately explained, Kumioko. In fact I doubt whether is is as many as 20 - 30. I have both admin noticeboards on watchlist and check them daily, but I rarely chime in there unless the plaintif or accused happen to be people I know of. There's probably a lot I could do by contributing to these boards but I don't, simply because they seem to be generally cluttered by what appears to be the same regular uninvolved non-admins/wannabe admins. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but stats would probably demonstrate some evidence of it. Most often, by the time I decide I should contribute to such a discussion, it has already suffered an NAC and been archived. Hence, the backlog is caused because the low hanging fruit has been picked, and the stuff that needs maturity and experience to be resolved gets archived, unresolved after 24 hrs in the cellar. When I ran for adminship, I don't believe I had ever participated in an ANI or AN except the one I was dragged to a long time ago by - yet another - desysoped rogue admin with an impressive block log, and forced to a close by another admin who (at least at the time) clearly did not understand the most fundamental aspects of our blocking policy. Neither of whom would have passed RfA at today's standards.
In 2011 & 2012 we lost 35 admins through voluntary resignation from a total of 80 new 'promotions' for the same period. So not only do we need more admins, but we want ones who are prepared to commit themselves to non-tool admin areas, rather than just routine tool-work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Frankly the only time I participate in AN or ANI is when the participants do not seem to understand or fail to follow, our policy. Often times the ones that are there have become cold and callous to the realities of editing and take the most extreme view in seemingly every scenario presented. You can almost hear the mob screaming "Burn them at the stake! Burn the witch!" before even taking the time to ask any questions. These discussions often fail to ask basic questions, Who is it? Why is it? How did it happen? What is the history of this problem? Being uninvolved is good, failing to take the time to perform due diligence is bad. I know from first hand experience that too often these folks block first and if they ask any questions at all, they come much later, after the individual has been blocked and cannot respond. That's why when I see this happen now it aggravates my Bullshit sensors and I go into a state of high Warble. Kumioko (talk) 14:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
I feel I could support this proposal if it was formally put. I think quotas would be a step too far, though. Deb (talk) 14:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Deb: theoretically, if we found out that one of the reasons that attractive candidates aren't running is that they don't think they'll pass, but their optimism goes up if we promote a bunch of candidates all at once from time to time, and if the crats are given power not to promote if such a process produces any clearly unqualified candidates, would that be acceptable? Everyone: I'd like to hear some reactions to Kumioko's "It is evidenced" paragraph. I could be wrong, but I get the sense that the "don't make it any easier to pass" folks aren't getting that there's probably a path here that would get everyone on the same side, if you'd be willing to follow it. The people who want more admins don't want immature or inexperienced admins any more than you do. About a quarter as many people passed in 2012 as in 2009, and for those of us who were around in 2009 (or just go back and read the 2009 RfAs if you weren't here), it was hard to pass RfA in 2009, much harder than in 2007, and roughly as hard as it is now. The only reason we have a quarter as many is that only a quarter as many really serious candidates want to run these days. I'm actually fine with the number dropping by half, if what's happening in Military History Project is a good guide: a lot of people just don't feel they need to get involved in admin stuff, they feel like what they're doing on the content side is working, and it's satisfying. But losing three-quarters of our pool of potentially attractive candidates is too much. Kumioko is spot on ... the low promotion rates risk taking us in the direction of a one-party system on Wikipedia. The argument that "We don't need more admins because the work is getting done" is just as invalid as the argument "We don't any new political parties, our party is running the government just fine". Disenfranchisement, keeping people out of the system by arbitrarily raising and lowering the bar, lowers quality. (There are a bunch of recent books on this subject btw ... I recommend Gladwell's Outliers.) So, to turn this into some kind of statement that might get "cross-party" support on this page: can we get some kind of agreement that we don't want to lower standards, but we do want to find a way to get twice as many good candidates, of the kind who were running in 2009, to run in 2013? Can we agree that the likely reason they aren't running is that they don't want to do a lot of work that doesn't have much to do with the good work they're doing already, only to get thoroughly pawed over at RfA and then not pass? If we agree on those things, then the next step would be to look at the WP:RFA2011 research, and ask around among potential candidates: what change to RFA would increase your optimism and make the process seem more relevant, and get you to run? - Dank (push to talk) 15:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
I'd like to think that "clearly unqualified" candidates would not be able to get 50% support. My main concern is that a candidate could get 90% support and still not be selected if there were more than ten good candidates - though I agree that's unlikely to happen. I'm quite sure the reasoning behind the proposal is correct, though. It's always difficult to find evidence in favour of an idea that hasn't been tried yet, and asking the candidates doesn't guarantee a correct answer - it's like when you ask people "would you buy" such-and-such product that's not actually on the market yet. Deb (talk) 15:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I may have misunderstood, I didn't think that was a problem ... I thought we'd continue to do RfA the usual way (to deal with the problem you're talking about, and also to let the community fine-tune the criteria in between elections), as well as electing candidates in bunches from time to time. - Dank (push to talk) 15:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
No takers among those who favor no change, or changes elsewhere before change at RfA? This seems to be the popular thread, and I'm hoping that you guys can find something here that seems promising to you. If not, it may be time to see if the "small change" and "big change" folks can find some common ground, and get to work. - Dank (push to talk) 12:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

RfA clerk RFC

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

Reminder

Two proposals are active, and I look forward to everyone's thoughts. Each of these proposals follow up many past discussions here at WT:RfA, and elsewhere. - jc37 00:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

For the win

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

  • RfA is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that something is terribly wrong. Fixing RfA is like trying to fix the problem of canaries that die in the coal mine by buying better canaries.
  • If the way we do things now doesn't represent a happy consensus, it nevertheless represents the actual consensus. Attempts to push it in various directions have met with abject failure, for 10 years. Many of the proposals haven't been just bad, but pushing in the wrong directions for the wrong reasons. Enough already.
  • There's a Southern (US) expression: "so heavenly bound that they're no earthly good", meaning that some people tend to get very worked up about the big picture and can't seem to get it together to help out with practicalities. We had no difficulty at WP:RFA2011 (and subpages) in identifying some obvious, small problems and some obvious, small solutions; the only problem is getting people off their high horse long enough to join us in consensus-building.
  • Too little, too late. Jimbo has explicitly said he's going to propose big changes, starting with RfA, and the community may beat him to it; there's deep dissatisfaction with a process that produced only 28 new admins last year, without any apparent increase in the average quality of the admins over recent years (including 2009, which produced 121 admins). The current RfA process is going to be road kill unless we find a way to entice more qualified candidates. - Dank (push to talk) 20:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but how do you estimate admins' quality? BTW I have not anything against methane-proof canaries (and also coal miners) who would not require the oxygen supply. It is a nice idea. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
      • Any method you want to use is fine; I'm relying on my own experience, especially at RfA over the last 4 years. If you click on the link to get to successful RfAs at the top of this page and click on any year from 2009 to 2012, you'll find that the requirements to pass RfA were hard in all those years (though they've shifted in some ways ... you might need 3 more months experience now. But there were more hot-button issues that could sink an RfA back then.) Bottom line: whatever changes there have been since 2009 have in no way justified a drop from 121 to 28 ... people just don't like RfA or adminship in general as much and aren't running. (The complaints that RfA was not rigorous in 2007 and before at some earlier point are quite valid, though.) - Dank (push to talk) 21:02, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
        • 2007 is too recent. RfA changed in more like 2005; more or less, when Wikipedia went from being basically unknown to widely known. Some standards might've been a little lower (in particular, edit counts have probably gone up with the increasing use of automated edits), but all the complaints about the process now where true when I stood in 2007 (except that the number of new admins per year wasn't decreasing, it was still increasing, because the number of new editors was still increasing.) WilyD 17:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
          • Apologies, I didn't mean to undermine admins promoted in 2007. All I'm trying to do here is to rebut the argument that it's fine if just 28 admins are promoted in a year, because they're SO much better than what we got before. I think anyone can look at the 2009 RfAs and make reasonable comparisons to the 2012 RfAs ... harder in some ways, easier in others. - Dank (push to talk) 17:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
            • Oh, no, I wasn't offended. My point was that although there are complaints about the promotion rate, the process was pretty similar at the peak of the promotion rate. It was really only a wink and a handshake when nobody knew what Wikipedia was. WilyD 18:36, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
              • Makes sense, I struck and changed it to "at some earlier point". - Dank (push to talk) 18:45, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
          • @WilyD — No, today's common criticisms towards the process would not have applied back in 2007, Wily. It is true that RfA has been called "broken" since at least 2006, but the standards of today are much tougher than they were at any other point throughout the project's history. In 2007, the vast majority of legitemate candidates (i.e. anyone whose RfA would not be closed per WP:NOTNOW during this day and age) were successful in their RfA attempts; the minimum experience required was merely 3 months and 3000 edits (which were negotiable standards), a mostly uncontroversial tenure as an editor, and no major civility concerns. Consider the context of this August 2007 RfA, which passed almost unanimously for an editor who'd only been active since February of that same year and had a whopping 2500 edits at the time of her application; a user with a similar history submitting an RfA today would fail dismally. By that same token, this more recent candidacy from August 2012 would have passed pretty easily if it had been submitted five years earlier (although a couple people might have voiced concern with regards to the nonchalance of the opening statement, but they'd be in the minority). I'm not saying that stricter standards have been an entirely bad thing for Wikipedia, especially in the realm of diplomacy and experience; an administrator who is brusque and uncompromising has the potential to drive off many valuable contributors without even realizing the damage in which they cause, because no one really brings it up to them as an issue. But the vast majority of administrators that we've promoted since the start of the project have performed very well, are generally cautious about the situations they get themselves into, and we could always use more hands at AIV, ANI, UAA, RFPP, AfD, CSD, etc. The current output of RfA is a net negative. Kurtis (talk) 01:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
            It is interesting that the user you mention is still administrator despite having only two edits since August 2011.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

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

And the Hammer hits the nail squarely on the head... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:25, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

What to do with never-transcluded RFAs?

I've just discovered Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/CountryRadio, and while it was just created today, I'm already wondering whether it will be transcluded at all — the user answered all of the questions, placed {{RfX-notice}} on his userpage (that's how I found it in the first place), and went off to edit elsewhere. If he never return to transclude it, will it just sit in limbo indefinitely, or do we have some sort of procedure for deleting or closing it? Normally I'd simply advise the user to transclude it, but since this user has precisely 36 edits and just registered eighteen hours ago, I don't feel like putting him through the disappointment of a blatant NOTNOW situation if we could simply let it disappear after waiting for several more days. Nyttend (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure there are plenty of old ones floating about WikiSpace; any idea how we can track them all down? Personally I see no issues with deleting ones that have never been transcluded. GiantSnowman 17:08, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Suggest moving them to the relevant userspace without redirect, so the count won't be fouled up when the candidate stops contemplating how cold his toes got.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:10, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Here they are. Enjoy! Salvidrim! ✉ 17:11, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Check this out. The bot has listed all of the untranscluded, unfinished RfAs (as well as current ones) in wikicode. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC) Amended The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:45, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Usually they just get deleted if it looks like the person is unlikely to ever be an admin, but if people would like to move them as Wehwalt suggests, that would accomplish the same goal. MBisanz talk 17:27, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Abandoned RFAs now filed; it doesn't embrace all of the ones the bot listed, because Lord Roem's is obviously happening, and because I didn't want to presume that ones created since December were hopelessly abandoned. Nyttend (talk) 17:42, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
I forgot to mention that it includes current ones as well. Correcting... The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:45, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Such RFAs are speedy-deletable per past precedent. MBisanz talk 17:51, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
But that was almost five years ago! The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 17:54, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Haha, and you don't remember every single XFD from the last five years? For shame. MBisanz talk 17:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
I haven't even been here for five years . Actually, this search might have some useful discussions. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 18:25, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Not fond of using an MFD as precedent when it got no additional votes, because my concern is being able to un-upset these users. If one of them come back in a few months and is upset, I'd rather say that we deleted the RFA after discussion (and explain that we're happy with undeletion if the user desire to open the RFA) instead of explaining that one random admin decided to delete it; and if CountryRadio's is ignored for more than two months and G6ed by precedent of this new MFD, he could be told that it was speedied after people agreed with the idea. Nyttend (talk) 18:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Has anyone asked CountryRadio what his intentions are? I know it would be a SNOW/NOTNOW result, but if he wants to try it, let him try it. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:15, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Figured that he'd be happier if he forgot it than if he had to watch himself fail. What's more, see here, here, and here; he may well not be a good-faith user, and he's not behaving completely above-board either, so I didn't really want to bother. He seems to have created the RFA after the first of my three diffs. Of course, if you want to ask him, I'll not object. Nyttend (talk) 20:27, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
No, I agree with you, actually. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 21:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Fastily (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) was handling it by giving people a template and then deleting the RfA if they didnt respond within 7 days. That seems to have stopped when Fastily retired, but Im pretty sure there was no pressure on him to stop doing it. I deleted a few RfA's myself under the same process, but stopped paying attention a while ago. The template itself is gone now because he deleted everything in his userspace, but it shouldn't be too hard to track down if someone wants to start going at it again. —Soap— 16:43, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The template can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Alam567&oldid=427630174. —Soap— 16:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Looks like it got moved to Template:RfA query. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 01:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I usually do a speedy housekeeping delete when I come across such untranscluded clearly SNOWable RfAs. I leave a friendly message for the user explaining what I have done, usually with a link to this essay. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:AN#Need closers for WT:Requests_for_adminship/2013 RfC/1

Just a pointer; Seraphimblade and Basalisk have offered to close, so if there are no objections, we need one more. - Dank (push to talk) 22:17, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

We still need a third closer. Please see the discussion at WP:AN#Need closers for WT:Requests_for_adminship/2013 RfC/1. Round One was due to end 8 hours ago. - Dank (push to talk) 13:21, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

A "Request for Revalidation of Adminship" process

On the Spanish Wikipedia, a process called "Revalidation of Administrators" exists. The process is activated after a short discussion held in their Administrators' Noticeboard, where a user requests the revalidation by posting evidence of incorrect behaviour and other things that would be considered grounds for a desysop. After some time, if 12 users in good standing support the evidence and the revalidation, the revalidation proccess begins. In this process, similar to an RfA, users vote to find consensus to remove or not the sysop bit from the administrator in question.

I think we can take that example and design a similar process for en-wiki. The Spanish Wikipedia has 131 sysops and we have 1600 here, so, modifying a bit their design, we can have three users in very good standing (never blocked, 5000 edits, 1 year, preferably admins) requesting the revalidation, which has to be approved by 25-to-50 users in good standing (never blocked, 2000 edits, 6 months). If it is approved, then a new request for adminship is filed. If the user gets a support rate of 75% or more, they retain the rights; otherwise, the user loses the bit and the right is removed by a bureaucrat or a steward under a cloud (the user will only be able to regain the sysop through a fresh RFA).

If needed, we can also add that two or more bureaucrats are needed to certify the evidence and request to be legitimate before opening the new RfA. As we have a great trust on bureaucrats, I think they are the ones needed to certify the requests if this is needed. Also, this new request for revalidation of adminship will last for 14 days instead of 7 (It can last for 7 days, but es-wiki has them lasting for 14). If you want to see an example, an es-wiki administrator named Ganímedes is currently undergoing a request for revalidation of adminship which was requested by administrator Phoenix58 and supported by 16 users. Regards. — ΛΧΣ21 22:29, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Really interesting. That definitely has some potential. Go Phightins! 22:45, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
This is very similar to the WP:RRA process I have proposed. How it differs:
  • Afaik, the ability to ask stewards or bureaucrats to desysop rests solely in the hands of Jimbo Wales and arbcom, and so having arbcom be part of the process is necessary. To hear that that is not the case on another wikimedia wiki, is very interesting.
  • except for the arbcom part of the process, it just takes 7 days.
  • It just takes at least 3 admins to certify a go-ahead for the process (instead of the two tiered 3 + 12)
  • it adds the "advise" and "admonish" options that arbcom has used when assessing a desysop situation.
  • The percentage requirement is to be considered the same as RfA, rather than saying a set number like "75%".
Otherwise, it looks very similar.
I considered the 3 bureaucrats for closers idea, but since arbcom will review the close of an RRA, I didn't think it necessary. If arbcom wasn't there, then probably the "3 closers" practice would probably be needed. - jc37 22:58, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually, several WMF projects have community procedures for de-adminship. Commons has desysopped half a dozen users via RfA-style !vote, for example. ArbCom requests actually represent a small minority of the day-to-day desysoppings at meta:Steward requests/Permissions, most being either self-requests or results of community processes. There's certainly no requirement for ArbCom to be a part of the process if the community prefers otherwise. Jafeluv (talk) 09:58, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
For what it's worth, this is also rather similar to WP:GCDA. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
GCDA has some clear differences, including a lack of safety valves/gatekeepers (as I noted here). Which I suppose the es system does as well. - jc37 23:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
According to the above proposal, I'm not a user in good standing. Neither is Jimbo Wales. —David Levy 00:01, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Um. How? Jimbo has made >2000 edits and has been around for more than six months...Go Phightins! 00:13, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
You appear to have overlooked the first criterion. —David Levy 00:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, we can remove the "never blocked" part (although I have never been blocked). I was just adding what I believe was what community looked for in a user in good standing. Maybe "not blocked in the last 365 days"? I don't know... — ΛΧΣ21 00:43, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oh. Oops. How about we make it not blocked in the last 6 months or something? Go Phightins! 00:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
This is why I didn't use the term "experienced editor". you will never find a consensus on what that means, or even if we should make such a distinction. - jc37 00:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
That isn't a reliable metric, irrespective of any chronological constraints.
I've been blocked twice — once by an editor who abused the block tool in a content dispute (for which he was admonished by the Arbitration Committee) and once by an admin account hijacker after I undid his/her deletion of the main page. Those blocks were no more legitimate six months or a year after they occurred than they are now.
And even if we somehow could disregard improper blocks, many respected users have been blocked appropriately. "Users in good standing" needn't have flawless records. No one is perfect. —David Levy 01:01, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Then we should find another way to make sure that only editor wich are one way or the other in good standing with the community to be the ones who legitimately support the revalidation. I agree that noone is perfect and many users have been blocked inappropriately. — ΛΧΣ21 01:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
I am pretty sure if we can solve all other problems related to this suggestion then we will manage some way to define users in "very good" and "good" standing. This point is not even secondary, it is at best tertiary.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Hmm. Sounds good in practice and I'm sure it works for es.wiki - hhowever given the fact that there are a lot of faction/cliques/alliances (however you want to describe them) on here, I'm not sure this is such a good idea on en.wiki. GiantSnowman 00:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Before promoting an innovation, one should explain which problem will it intended to solve and how it is expected to solve the problem. Is ejecting a sysop really a big deal in this wikipedia? Even if it is, then "revalidation" flamewars may inflict more damage to this surprisingly strong community than few low-quality administration members. Administrative actions are invariably monitored. Systemic shunning of criticism towards the "ruling elite" and its incompetent members (modelled, say, on Russian Wikipedia) seems unlikely to happen here. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:15, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
  • The Spanish inquisition doesn't seem to be a bad basic idea. I didn't look into it when we were doing our research into RfA reform, but that was because we were looking for reasons why candidates won't come forward rather than making it easier to desysop. I'm still convinced though that a potential need for desysoping isn't foremost in the minds of those voting at RfA. We either pass them or fail them based on their performance as editors and their activity in meta areas, and a measure of trust not to misuse the tools. With candidates who appear to be of the right calibre and haven't done anything wrong, we have to assume good faith, otherwise it would be like a driving examiner who fails a candidate for a car licence because he 'thinks' the candidate might break the Highway Code or be the cause of an accident some time in the future. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not very familiar with the Spanish Wikipedia, though I know they have far fewer admins than us and that their Arbcom is smaller. Before concluding that this system is worth importing here it would be good to have more info. Like: How many desysops have gone through this system, and how has Arbcom been affected? At present we don't know whether this has been used at all, whether it has resulted in a purge of their admin cadre or whether it has simply replaced their Arbcom as the venue for desysops. ϢereSpielChequers 17:11, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • It seems absurd to require that a user has never been blocked before in order to be considered "in good standing" as part of this proposal. Some of us have been around for a while. How about requiring no blocks in the previous year or two? Everyking (talk) 18:18, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

New RfC

Inserted: the first round of the RfC is up. Go vote! - Dank (push to talk) 13:34, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

There's a chance that we can use the fact that Jimmy will step in to dramatically increase participation in an RfC. There are plenty of people who care enough about making RfA work to handle any workload generated by an RfC, and if we had enough data, we might be able to craft something that could pass ... and even if not, the more relevant information Jimmy has, the easier it will be for him to play the useful role that he wants to play. I'm proposing that we begin a one-week RfC at WT:Requests_for_adminship/2013 RfC asking people to suggest broad categories of proposals and to pick between one and four of to support, oppose or discuss the categories suggested so far, considering changes to RfA that might result in more well-prepared candidates and thus more promotions ... allowing some adjustment, but not any major lowering, of standards. (Completely redefining what it means to be an admin ... even in the most optimistic view ... would mean big, time-consuming adjustments, at RfA and everywhere else.) When that part of the RfC is closed, four or more top categories will be selected, and the real 30-day RfC begins, with people refining and defining the options, and supporting and opposing. After 30 days, the closers will attempt to find consensus for one of the options; failing that, they will propose a final one-week RfC intended to represent a fair compromise among the positions that had the most support. If that RfC also fails, then presumably Jimmy will respond. - Dank (push to talk) 20:44, 20 January 2013 (UTC) tweaked 20:17, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

P.S. The reason that's a long post is that I'm attempting to put enough in one place so that people who know nothing about RfA will understand what we want to do. Suggestions on what to add or subtract are welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 21:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support What you're proposing makes sense. I agree that we need to refresh the aging RFA process, as it has gradually decreased in usefulness over the years. Wikipedia has changed, and RFA should as well. The current straw poll strategy isn't working out for us. People don't want to undergo this extremely grueling process. Previous attempts, as Dank said, have been fragmented and turned down because they don't address the issue at hand: RFA is turning away editors, even ones who would pass, and small issues can seem inflated in an almost competitive atmosphere. I think we should have an RFC where people can suggest solutions to this problem, then vote on the top solutions. Whatever it is, RFA needs changes, and that's final. Vacation9 23:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Makes sense and you have a lot of good ideas. Kumioko (talk) 01:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Can't be worse than at present (hopefully) - David Gerard (talk) 12:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I think you may be misunderstanding Jimmy's statement in December (either that, or I am). He's saying he's going to propose a new process for making constitutional decisions, since RFCs don't work. He's not saying he's going to unilaterally replace RFA with something else (or even propose a replacement for RFA). RFA was just an example of something the new constitutional process would be good for fixing. You can try and prove that RFCs do work after all, thus negating the need for a new process, but I don't see you having much luck - nothing has changed since the last time we failed to reform RFA through an RFC. --Tango (talk) 12:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
    • I've asked him for clarification. - Dank (push to talk) 13:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC) I've also removed the sentence: "What's different this time is: even if none of the options passes, we know that Jimmy will be looking at the results, and may (or may not) implement changes in line with those recommendations ... so this time, something is actually going to happen, for better or worse." I'd rather get clarification from Jimmy before saying even this much. - Dank (push to talk) 14:02, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. That kind of process should be able to deliver constructive results. Binksternet (talk) 12:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Okay, that's enough support to put it up and ask for comments and edits before it goes live. RfCs have to be signed, and often take the form of a personal statement, but anyone can edit my "personal statement". - Dank (push to talk) 16:16, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • After the event support. Even with Dank working tirelessly to keep the thing afloat, I think the chances of this leading to meaningful change are slim-to-none. That said, if it is possible for us to sort adminship out through good old consensus, this model gives us as good a chance as any of achieving it. —WFC— FL wishlist 21:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks. (And I'm sorry for taking more than my share of the air-time, but I just have to say this): This is an RfC to explore ways to fix problems while avoiding drastic changes to RfA standards. I'm not taking a position on whether drastic change is a good idea ... maybe that's what we need, all organizations need drastic change from time to time. But down-with-the-establishment types (like me, like many Wikipedians) tend to underestimate the costs involved with making system-wide changes, and if RfA fails and is replaced, that's going to mean an enormous time investment by all of us to cope with the cascading changes (to RfA, to adminship, to the tools, and to every procedure that depends on the tools), and we'll have to deal with a "dual" system for a long time, where some things are done the old way and some things are done a new way. So if we really can fix problems, we should save ourselves some headaches and do it. And if we can't fix problems, it would be very handy to know why we failed this time, so we won't fail next time. - Dank (push to talk) 21:25, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Some analysis is needed The fundamental problem is both process and definitional. A popularity contest / "did you keep your head low?" criteria is used to give out a big tool belt, and then the holders of the tool belt are given difficult responsibilities (e.g. closes, dealing with disputes, power to hurt people) and expectations which neither of those is relevant to / qualification for. With an un-acknowledged structural problem like that it and efforts to fix it are doomed to fail. North8000 (talk) 04:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - Now's not the time for naysaying, competent users are mostly afraid of going to RfA because of the battleground nature of the process. The censoriousness and cynicism needs to stop; otherwise qualified users are being pushed out because of the abundance of ridiculous individualised rationales and criteria. We need a basic criteria set in place, which would demonstrate competence and capability, which demonstrate a stellar history of contributions and a clean block log. What we don't need is an online rehashing of Whitehall-natured bickering, in-fighting and reams of bureaucratic red-tape. Change needs to happen and there's no better time than now, when we still have a sizeable amount of active administrators and bureaucrats. James (T • C) • 3:40pm • 04:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Some analysis is needed ??? What on earth do you think half a dozen of us spent hundreds of hours doing at WP:RFA2011? The problem is that people are too lazy to check it out and simply vote from the hip on these new RfCs. The indisputable evidence of what is wrong with RFA is all there - why does the community keep wanting to find new excuses for what's wrong with the system when the answers are staring us in the face, and don't need any alternative suggestions from Wales to resolve. Either introduce clerking (none of the opposes to that proposal were convincing), or introduce some minimum qualifications for voters and keep the fan clubs, children, and vengeance voters out of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
    Can you be more specific than "WP:RFA2011"? I've read over much of that, but I missed any compelling argument for the problem being a particular thing (what is it?) that will be solved by and only by clerking and minimum participation requirements. Thanks! And I find your rebuttal here to the clerks opposers here unconvincing :) ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
    Guys, I believe I can help mediate this, if you'd like to step into my office. Everyone else: the first round of the RfC is up. Go vote! - Dank (push to talk) 19:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • @Erik: Unless you participated actively at RFA2011 (I can't remember), I don't think you have read over much of it because to do so you would now need about 10 hours to get up to speed on it! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
    Yeah, that's kind of my point, Kudpung. I didn't participate much at all, but I've read enough to know that you all did a lot of careful analysis of a lot of data, etc, but if you want to show someone something specific you can't just say "people are too lazy to check it out" and "go to WP:RFA2011." I went there looking for "indisputable evidence of what is wrong with RFA" and I can't find it. More specific pointers would be helpful if you are inclined to help people uninvolved with RFA2011 understand these specific points. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 04:34, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I can understand that Erik, but it is in there, and repeatedly so among all the talk pages. The general consensus seemed to be that the only thing wrong with RfA was the inappropriate and disingenuous voting and commenting on RfAs, and that that is the reason for for the process being so unpopular among the potential candidates of the right calibre (at least that was the almost unanimous response from the dozens of suitable editors we asked by email). That's why the closest we ever got to a solution was suggesting the idea of clerking. Unfortunately, every possible solution seems to be being met with resistance, so we are still left with the question: What does the community really want? I'm still a firm believer that looking to easier desysoping is not a solution for reducing the evil behaviour. I don't think desysoping is even in the minds of most voters as I mentioned with my analogy: it would be like a driving examiner failing a driving licence candidate (who did everything right on the test) because he 'feels' the candidate would disobey the Highway Code in the future or have an accident, or even worse, add some penalty points on the new licence just for preemptive good measure (which would equate to adlminship by probabtion). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:24, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Erik I had this same conversation with Kudpung during RFA2011 (it's on a talk page somewhere...) and the answer was similar then: "have you read everything? everyone thinks this!", but (@Kudpung) it's just a handwaving type argument, and the evidence isn't coming out of the current RfC, with the "negative comments" section having more opposes than supports at the time of writing Jebus989✰ 10:34, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
It's sufficiently important to note that at least everyone appears to agree that there is something wrong with RfA. However, all this recent flurry of activity to get something done (due to Jimbo's comments) just dishes up the same same old perennial discussions with the same rehashing of facts and figures, and as you righly concur, although the community wants something done, up to now they have opposed every single suggestion for a solution. Rather than 'hand waving' I'm almost ready to support any solution that will keep en.Wiki in the hands of the community without interference, however well meant, by the Foundation. There were a majority of oppose votes against the suggestion for clerking, but a significant number of them were opposing some of the details rather than completely ruling out the idea. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:54, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, as someone who is unconvinced anything significant is wrong with RFA per se and opposed to clerking, I'm looking for data, and just not finding it. I kind of feel guilty opposing some of these proposals because I know others have spent a lot of time and effort researching and preparing them, but the bottom line is I haven't seen any compelling analysis. Still. it is in there—I believe you! I just can't find it. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:24, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support at least in spirit and principle. We need to get some kind of motion on this, though everyone seems to be quick to point out devils they see in the details of every proposal to do so. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks McCandlish ... it's a new format, and I want to know whether people think it works or not. - Dank (push to talk) 12:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Closing statement for the first round is up (follow the "Round One" link at WP:RFA2013); my reply is on the talk page (WT:RFA2013). Next round starts February 5 unless something comes up we need to sort out. - Dank (push to talk) 12:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal NOTAVOTE

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is a clear consensus against this proposal. Armbrust The Homunculus 13:39, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

The discussion is closed, and life goes on.

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

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

Discussion (NOTAVOTE)

For presumably obvious reasons, this rfc is not set up as a straw poll : ) - jc37 17:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I would suggest that RFA should be KINDOFAVOTE - the figures and percentages are useful, but we need clerks / crats to monitor the RFA and strike any !votes that fall into the "drive-by" category - no rationale provided, stating "as above", opposing because the RFA falls during a certain holiday/religious period etc. etc. This should be done while the RFA is still open so that the editor concerned can expand on their support/oppose, provide some proper rationale, and re-vote. GiantSnowman 17:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • This radically alters the nature of cratship, to one where we are very openly electing crats to exercise a quite considerable level of judgement and discretion. In principle I welcome that. But if we are going to do that, we should also look at other areas where these attributes would prove useful, for instance making calls on contentious blocks and closing sitewide RfCs or policy discussions. Relieving admins of these highly contentious de facto responsibilities would in itself make adminship far less of a big deal. Cratship couldn't be any more of a big deal than it is currently seen as, even with the added responsibility.

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

  • I'm afraid I don't think this is the solution. Something should be done, but completely taking out the !vote idea gives the closing crat far too much jurisdiction. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 17:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Facepalm Facepalm This is at least the third RfC you've recently started on the topic of RfA, and in my opinion, two of the three (including this one) are proposals that don't appear to have been well thought-out. Any chance we can slow down on starting new RfC's? Instead, perhaps consider just starting some feeler discussions first to gauge interest/support before starting a full-blown RfC. Since an RfC could actually change the course of policy, people feel compelled to comment on RfC's so that policy doesn't change in a way they don't like. Starting a bunch of poorly thought-out RfC's at the same time, therefore, can waste the time of a lot of editors. ‑Scottywong| confabulate _ 18:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • This doesn't remotely address the problem with RfA. It doesn't put more power in the hands of the closing 'crat either, it just makes his/her work more difficult sorting out the consensus. The current system is not broken, and by abandoning it we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What needs to be done is to potty-train the voters. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • This could be a very good solution, but first we would need to agree a criteria for adminship against which candidates could be assessed. This is a system that works pretty well for Rollback and AutoPatroller, and in my view it is the lack of agreed criteria that makes many individual RFAs so toxic. Recent discussions in RFAs have seen a candidate with featured content described as not a content contributor, and I can remember one oppose that described someone as "not yet part of the community" because they'd started editing little over a year earlier. Though I'm pretty relaxed about tenure, and would happily support good candidates who had only been here a few months, if we could agree an arbitrary criteria of at least twelve different months in which an editor had made over 100 edits it would make RFA a much more congenial and effective place. IMHO if opposers had to actually come up with diffs of a candidate being incivil or making excessive mistakes then RFA would not only be less toxic but would be more likely to screen out potentially bad admins. I'd also like to see this combined with some clear process for marginal candidates to resolve the community concerns and achieve adminship. For example I consider that adding reliably sourced content is a basic skill that all admins should have mastered, and if someone failed purely on that criteria it would be good if they could have that issue reconsidered as soon as they could list a bunch of edits that adequately demonstrated that skill. ϢereSpielChequers 01:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - If straw polls are that bad, then why create two of them in 3 RfCs in a quick burst? Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_removal_of_adminship/Straw_poll diff, Wikipedia talk:Moderators/Straw poll diff And then: structured discussion is good, clearly marking the editor intention is good for everyone reading it - Nabla (talk) 01:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • That seems like a very bad idea—it would totally disempower the community and transfer all the power to the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats would simply read whatever outcome they preferred into the community's comments, and that wouldn't be healthy at all. Everyking (talk) 06:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • There's also the problem that such a system would, as part of its checks and balances, require a means for challenging the bureau's close (similar to what we have in place at DRV). That basically means any new admin's appointment could be quickly challenged, just what they need after the stress of RFA... Yunshui 雲‍水 06:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • It isn't a terrible idea, but you'd need to go a bit further. First, to give bureaucrats that much power, you'd need to enhance their accountability. Perhaps annual elections (all candidates display their thoughts on what makes a good admin) - the top 5 successful in the election are given +crat, and at the end of Community comment phase the five vote on whether the individual should be a sysop or not. No need for appeals, if the community don't like their judgement they vote them out at the next election.--Scott Mac 15:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Why would it be a good idea to have elections for bureaucrats to choose the admins, but not to just have elections to directly elect the admins? Everyking (talk) 16:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
      • Well, for a start, RFA isn't an election. I don't mean that in a !vote vs vote way, but in an election you choose between candidates. RfA is a vetting process, and it may not be the only way (or even the best way) to vet people who offer themselves as admins.--Scott Mac 19:21, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This would make the bureaucrats' job more difficult, and could potentially create more discontent among !voters who were against the final outcome. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, actually this is 180 degrees from the needed fixes to RFA. The problem with RFA isn't in the votes people cast, it's in the attacks on character and the out-of-line personalization of the process that drives otherwise good candidates away from it. If anything, limits should be placed on the sorts of things people can say about and to a candidate, not limit the vote. Not that I think this is the best solution, but a raw vote with zero comments at all during the voting process would almost certainly be better. I don't think that's a good solution either, but it would certainly be better than this proposal. --Jayron32 21:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Pile-on oppose actually, it doesn't matter if I support or oppose, because the closer gets to interpret my vote how they want, right? --Rschen7754 22:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose quantifying debate is important when there are more than half a dozen or so commenters. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The bad part of RfA is not in the "votes", it's in the words. This proposal takes out the good part and leaves the bad part. (And what Kudpung says) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I would be prepared to support something along these lines. I think that if we're going to fix RfA then we need to look at how similar processes such as AfD work. While the vote count is usually considered in such processes, it doesn't have to be the only or main determining factor. Something like this would help discourage people from using dodgy rationales as they would be discounted entirely (as opposed to the current system where they do help determine the vote percentage and hence place restrictions on what the closing bureaucrat can do). I take the point that AfD does assess things against fixed criteria, and we would probably have to adopt some fixed criteria for what makes a good administrator. Hut 8.5 10:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose discontinuation of support/oppose/neutral. However, IMHO all (support/oppose) votes should be accompanied by rationales and at least one diff. Per User:Example shouldn't be permitted unless that other user has provided a diff substantiating his/her vote. -- Trevj (talk) 11:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't always agree with Everyking's strong deferrence to the numerical aspect of measuring level of support when determining consensus, but in the area of RFA I agree with his viewpoint. There is no policy that mandates that an editor be granted or denied adminship, the decision is entirely up to subjective judgement. To determine the result, I strongly prefer that the decision be decided by a community consensus than a committee consensus. At least two of the cases where bureaucrats promoted over serious objections and below the 70% threshold ended up with the candidate in question being desysopped for misusing the tools, so I don't think that a small closed pool of bureaucrats is better at determining which candidates are suitable than the community at large is. Sjakkalle (Check!) 18:23, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This would put more pressure on the reviewing Crats and really isn't a solution at the current point. The votes make an easy decision and make the outcome obvious. I do agree though that we shouldn't be allowing massive amounts of pile-on votes, like "Support agree with above" or "Oppose Some problems". Completely agree with Zebedee here. I think that pile-on votes should be discounted entirely, but I most certainly do not agree with NOTAVOTE here. Vacation9 16:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose the problem with RfA is mindset and standards for trust, not whether one votes this way or that way. And that cannot be changed by policy, as if our community doesn't feel that user X is trustworthy enough to handle the sysop toolset, any policy that would assign him that toolset would be fair. To dump on the 'crat the job of solving this by weighing the comments and discussions is unfair to them and would only divide the community further. Snowolf How can I help? 09:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, even though valid concerns with prospective administrators such as a complete lack of content contribution are ignored by bureaucrats, as they stated in public a few years ago. Is there a list available of all opposition rationales bureaucrats will automatically discount and outright ignore? I don't like having to hunt through old RFAs with approval ratings in the high 60s/low 70s for disturbing precedent. Agent VodelloOK, Let's Party, Darling! 19:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Snow Oppose: People should state their views, not hide behind text without a clear conclusion.--Milowent • hasspoken 23:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment - As I noted in the now archived thread, I didn't think that this had any chance of passage simply because there are those who are addicted to voting and percentages of votes. And as I look above I see a fair amount of that. (Perhaps one of these days, we should nominate WP:CON for deletion, since policy is to reflect common practice, and it's becoming more and more clear that Wikipedians prefer voting in straw polls to actual discussion.) - The surprise for me was seeing some opposes which were supporting what the proposal was suggesting: That everyone should express substantive opinions. But perhaps I am misreading the comments' intent. I'd welcome further clarity. - jc37 21:30, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
  • A) What ScottyWong said; you are going a bit ape with all these RfCs and other policy processes (not just on the RfA topic). As for this proposal, it doesn't address the real problems. The underlying issues are that RfA is a popularity contest dominated by a comparative handful of RfA regulars (many of them admins with a "good ol' boys club" attitude about adminship), is an adversarial process that basically operates as a special little Hell in which WP:CIVIL is suspended, and is severely broken because virtually any accusation is believed, repeated like viral gossip, and exaggerated, with zero to little evidence, because there is no standard of proof, and candidates are double-damned if they dare to verbally defend themselves against blatant lies, personal attacks and character assassination. Anyone who has been on WP long enough to possibly be useful as an admin knows this about RfA and is unlikely to want to go through it. The common exception is people who might have the skills/knowledge, but see adminship as a power platform (e.g. for POV-pushing or advancing some other agenda), and will do whatever it takes to gain the perceived power. Thus, a) good admin candidates stay far away (entirely, or after having been savaged at an early RfA for some perceived transgression), and b) RfA is flooded with requests from clueless (or worse yet, system-gaming and sneaky) candidates who should certainly not have the tools. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 16:39, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Agree with most of the sentiments aired above. Like it or not, these things are SORTOFAVOTE. NickCT (talk) 13:32, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfA in 2013

For all the talk about how RfA is declining every year, let it be noted that we have had four successful RfA and zero unsuccessful so far in 2013. Also, the active one appears to be leaning towards making the total five successful to zero unsuccessful. If it is true that RfA goes in cycles (and it probably is), right now we are going through a positive cycle. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 18:30, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you're so tempting fate! :D KTC (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
I know. Still, this might be a good time to run for anyone who's seriously considering it. RfA's biggest problem is the bad PR it has with prospective candidates. If this good streak can continue for awhile, maybe the PR improves a little. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 18:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Whilst I wonder what has happened to the unsuccessful ones, as far as successes go 4 isn't actually a good month by historic standards. In Jan 2006 we had 44 successes and as recently as 2011 we averaged more than 4 a month. If it is cyclical then the decline since 2008 will eventually bottom out and bounce back. But I'm not holding my breath. Every year since 2008 we've had a third to a half fewer RFAs than the previous year. Another twenty successes this year and I'll accept that it might have bottomed out at an unsustainably low level. But the current picture doesn't look to me like positive and negative cycles, more like the last year has been randomly fluctuating between 0 and 6. Have a look at User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_by month and tell me if you can spot a cyclical pattern at RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 00:58, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I was remembering that there was a good spot this summer and then maybe a little bit of another one around November. However, I guess there's nothing to demonstrate a cycle. Everything has been dropping, it's that simple. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 03:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
If the current RfA (Jason Quinn) is successful, it won't increase the number of active admins. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
If anything, though, the support comments on JQ's RfA have given me renewed faith in the RfA system. Can we have an equivalent common sense eruption every time from now on please? — Hex (❝?!❞) 11:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
And, unless I missed smth, it would be the first successful self-nomination in years.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:27, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
AutomaticStrikeout, if you do a fast rewind to about 3 or 4 years ago (mostly before you joined the project), then work your way slowly forward through the RfAs up to the present, you'll probably see that there is no such thing really as 'cycles'. The only cycle is the bike on a downhill road of new candidates. The situation over the last 2 years is such that there are now too few nominations as to provide metrics for drawing any conclusions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:53, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
To Hex: the promotion of candidates who then don't use the admin tools is unlikely to help the situation, except perhaps to create a (false) sense of security. This makes me cynical about the RfA process. Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Eh. If JQ hits an admin tool button even once, that's one less thing for someone else to do. This is a good thing. — Hex (❝?!❞) 12:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I would guess there will be a cycle, but we haven't necessarily completed the first iteration yet. If you ignore the immature years when the culture and structure of the project was forming, Wikipedia isn't really that old. It's really like an adolescent suffering mood swings from hormone changes. Once it reaches adulthood it might well change. QuiteUnusual TalkQu 13:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
While I still hesitate to admit to any 'cycles' or changes in trend, it's interesting to note that there have been 5 successful RfA in first 5 weeks of this year, and in particular, the fact there there has been a relatively high turnout and all were 100+ supports. What does need to be done however, is to encourage more candidates to come forward who have a clear intention to make significant use of the tools and admin judgement, otherwise the issue of admin attrition will remain unaddressed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Maybe all of this has been triggered by the recent "RfA Reform Scare". All of the recent RfCs for RfA reform might have made people realize a few things about the system and caused them to change (in a good way, it seems). The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 05:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I think it's likely that RfA has more or less bottomed out and can't really get worse. I mean there were only 28 successful RfA's in all of last year, following the pattern of it going down by about 40% each year we'd expect to see only about 20 RfA's if the decline truly had no bottom. —Soap— 20:36, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
The relief that RFA has seemingly bottomed out (it's definitely not cyclical, as just one glimpse at WereSpielChequers' graphical representation reveals) provides little comfort, however, because I don't think it's enough to sustain an active admin corps of a healthy size. Sure, we might not have a shortage now, but it's time to begin thinking about where we're going to be in terms of active administrators five years plus down the road. I don't know off the top of my head how many administrators we're losing annually to inactivity, but it's a net loss vis-a-vis annual promotions. So I'll state the obvious: we've got a problem, folks. Tyrol5 [Talk] 23:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
Sadly it is too soon to assume it has bottomed out. In accordance with the Heisenburg principle or something similar the pattern seems to be that as Anonymouse thought major discussions about RFA can prompt good candidates to run and thereby bring brief rallies that break the pattern. In August 2010 after this article we had 13 successful RFAs in one month, none of the subsequent articles or other promotions of RFA have been that successful, but I do try to make sure that there is at least one a year. Last Summer we had ten new admins in a two month period, this rally isn't quite that big yet, and it would need to be bigger and longer before we should assume that things have bottomed out. Of course the flipside of that is whilst there is no maximum number of admins needed on this site we really don't know the minimum either. We can of course reduce the minimum if we implement things like WP:Pure wiki deletion system, I'd prefer to reform RFA, but realistically we need to start thinking how we can operate with fewer admins. ϢereSpielChequers 10:05, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Four RfA all active at one time! Can we keep it up? AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 18:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

RfA RfC round 2

Hi all, the second of three rounds of the RfA request for comment has started. Please comment with your proposed solution there! Thanks, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for requesting tasked temporary adminship (RFTA)

Closing RfC early per WP:NOTBURO, WP:SNOW, etc. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 17:00, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

  • This is to propose that someone can request adminship for a time limited duration to perform a specific, clearly delineated task.


Ok, so it's not like this isn't done already - stewards do this fairly regularly. Granting themselves or others (or bots) extra tools for a specific task.

What I'm suggesting is to give this option to any editor by creating a process for it.

In requesting the tools, the editor in question will need to explain specifically what task(s) they need the tools to accomplish.

This process only grants tools for a specific editing purpose. It does not grant the additional tasks which can go along with the tools, such as closing deletion discussions, assessing CSDs, or protecting pages due to requests at WP:RFPP. (My guess is the majority of requests will be to edit protected pages or to help implement an already closed discussion/XfD, such as helping with some mass redirect retargetings per a closed WP:RFD.)

For the initial discussion, I'm suggesting the minimum discussion length be 7 days. Of course if there is substantive ongoing discussion, the bureaucrats can decide to let it remain open, just as they can now for RfA. This process should generally follow the RfA process, including the normal process of bureaucrat assessment of the discussion for a successful request. And with that in mind, WP:RFA will be the venue for requests.

I was going to suggest 7 days as the maximum time limit for having the tools (if granted), but after considering some (waaaay too many) WP:AN (and subpages) and WP:BAG (and sub pages) discussions concerning such tasks (and to allow time for a renewal discussion), I think 10 days is optimal. If the task is completed before then, a note at WP:BN and the tools are removed. If the task will take longer, then simply request renewal for an additional 10 day period. And of course, the requester can obviously request granting to be for a shorter period of time as well - 8 days, 6 days, etc. whatever the task requires, as long as it's less than 10 days. A maximum time limit is just simply necessary, for one thing this proposal would never gain consensus, and also to prevent "indefinite" situations. If the tools are wanted indefinitely, then they should just request full (non-temporary) adminship at RfA.

Since there was already a confirmation of the task(s) previously by the community, I'm suggesting the renewal discussion be a minimum of 3 days. This allows for discussion without overly wasting the community's (and the editor's) time.

And there is no limit on the number of times the editor can request renewal. It just requires the community approval. Note that the 10 day time limit is a hard limit. Even if the renewal discussion is ongoing, the tools are to be removed no later than 10 days (240 hours).

To request this for a bot or some large automated task, the bot owner must first request this of BAG, and if BAG approves (with a bureaucrat closing the request process as normal), then the editor can then request the tools of the community through this process. And subsequent renewals proceed as normal. Though BAG should at least be notified of all such renewal requests. And presumably a different bureaucrat should close the community discussion than closed the BAG discussion.

The idea is to try to keep this within all existing policy and process.

If anyone feels that the editor is abusing this trust of the community by not using the tools in the way approved, then they should drop a note at WP:BN. In an "emergency" situation, any bureaucrat may remove these tools at the bureaucrat's discretion. And of course any current policy, such as (but not limited to) abuse of adminship or malfunctioning bots, applies as normal.

I'm not going to even try to list all the possible emergencies which may require removal. We can leave that to the current policies/current practices. In general, if in doubt (if there are legitimate concerns), remove. At that point the 10 day time limit is "paused", and the community can discuss the situation (roughly comparable to blocking a malfunctioning bot to prevent potential disruption, and allow for discussion). Preventative, not punitive should always be the order of the day. And if the eventual consensus is to restore, then the tools are restored and the previously approved task(s) may continue to be pursued for remainder of the 10 days (or whatever the duration was determined to be in the initial request).

As already noted, the idea is to keep this within current policy and practice.

I look forward to everyone's thoughts on this. - jc37 16:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion (RFTA)

  • All the usual objections apply here. The community has repeatedly failed to reach consensus to implement any sort of admin-lite proposal, and this one makes even less sense than some of the others. Adminship is granted, by the community, to those with the competence to use the tool set that goes with adminship; if a user feels they need to be doing admin tasks, they need to demonstrate that competence with all the tools to the community. WMF policy has long opposed anyone having access to deleted, etc content without them passing community vetting to judge their competence to see that content, but if this proposal went through, I could request "temporary" adminship to edit protected pages and then proceed to view and download every deleted page and edit on the entire project. I see nothing in this proposal that is useful, and a whole lot that's just a rehashing of already-rejected proposals. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    This isn't "admin-lite". And the community is granting this just as the community grants adminship. How is a time limited version a problem? (And as for your potential abuse scenario, I have little doubt the community - who entrusts adminship - is well aware of such things. And that could be as true of any admin.) - jc37 17:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    Well, either the users are being approved for their specific sub-usage of admin tools ("I need to edit protected pages" or whatever) - in which case they're getting access to deleted content without community approval - or they're being approved for access to all admin tools, even if they only plan to use a subset ("I really only want to edit protected pages, but here, I don't suck at the other stuff, either") - in which case this is just plain old RFA. It sounds from your proposal like you're trying to sort of mash the two together and say "We'll approve you only to use this one tool, but we'll sort of wink and nod that you won't misuse all the others, even the ones no one could tell you were misusing". The difference between your "temporary" admins and regular, current admins is that while both would have access to deleted content, regular admins get that access after having the community judge their competence with deleted content and approve their having access to deleted content via RFA. As for "I have little doubt the community - who entrusts adminship - is well aware of such things"...speaking as a member of the community, which entrusts adminship...I am indeed aware of the ways unqualified/unvetted admins could misuse their tools. That's why I'm concerned about your proposal to give them blanket access. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    So it's ok for the community to be allowed to entrust adminship for life, but the community cannot be allowed to entrust the tools on a time limited basis? So we trust the community but we don't trust the community? - jc37 19:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    Nothing I said had anything to do with time frames, Jc37. It has to do with access to admin-related tools and hidden content, and the process required to gain access to those things. If your goal here is to suggest an alternative to the idea of "adminship for life" that nevertheless fulfills our privacy/data requirements, that's fine, but it doesn't appear to be what you're actually proposing, and we're commenting here based on what you've actually proposed. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:42, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    What I believe I proposed was a process to request adminship for 10 days, with an additional requirement that the requesting person may request for a specific task only, similar to a botreq. What are you reading in the proposal that I'm apparently not seeing? - jc37 19:48, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    So you're basically proposing that we allow RFA to also grant temporary adminship and limit the domains in which the new admin can use their tools? Because what I read from your proposal was "let's create a not-RFA process, where people can request all the tools but promise they'll only use one, and we therefore give them a break on the usual requirements needed to be an admin and we can remove their bits a little more easily". That is, a process that's intended to be easier and less thorough, because the person will only use the tools one way. If your goal is simply to allow RFA a few more tool-granting options (pass, fail, pass but limit time, pass but limit tasks...), that's definitely not the way this proposal reads, at least to me, and you might get a much better response if you condense and clarify what you originally posted so it's clear to readers what processes and requirements you're suggesting we use. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 19:56, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    Yes, I am (though specific task(s), not domains), and ugh, no, I wasn't proposing any of that. I thought I made a point to note that this process should have WP:RFA as the venue, and it should be just like the rfa process.
    Rather than try to guess, let me just ask: how would you phrase it so that (to you at least) the above proposal would be clearer? If you and I can agree on a phrasing (and I presume we can), I don't think it would be disruptive to add it as a clarification to the above. - jc37 20:11, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    I think that could be much more clearly put as something like: "Jc37's Proposal: that we allow RFA to grant temporary, as well as permanent, adminship. Users who wish to use admin tools for a specific, finite task in a limited time frame may run an RFT(emporary)A. RFTAs will run for a minimum of 7 days and a maximum of 10. Upon the expiration of the time frame a passing RFTA approved, adminship rights will be removed from the user unless a re-confirmation RFTA has already been closed as successful. If a Temporary Admin uses their tools in a manner not consistent with the specific task(s) outlined in their RFTA, they will have their adminship removed and a discussion will be started at BN to determine whether to re-assign the bits." Does that phrasing address all your main points?

    Now, I also have some objections to this as a proposal, but they're less of the "restricted data" type and more of the "process for process's sake" and "I don't think there's a demand for this" type. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

    The discussion is (at least) 7 days (per typical rfa). The "10 days" (or less, if less is requested) is the duration from button pushed to grant til button pushed to remove. Otherwise, essentially. Though I do think several of the details noted in the proposal above are necessary (like allowing for renewal if things take longer than expected), while I do note that they apparently (unfortunately) clouded clarity.
    As for your other concerns, we've had these requests before, and I think that if we had a set process in place for this, I think such things might be accomplished more often. My goal here is to provide opportunity to increase contributions to the encyclopedia. And if a lack of process is in the way, then let's add such a process. - jc37 20:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose Can you please at least wait until your previous related RFCs expire before posting new ones? --Rschen7754 17:24, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • A sixth simultaneous RfC overlapping the same material is a bit much, and there's no need: this is in "category 3" in the big RfC. The first round closes in about 12 hours, and hopefully people will be discussing this in Round Two. - Dank (push to talk) 17:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Please hold back on making these. I think if you had just opened a normal discussion here it would have been quickly pointed out that this is a badly-timed and poorly thought-out proposal Jebus989✰ 18:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Just looking at the "bot" aspect of this, I don't think any bot operator wants to go through BRFA and then a pseduo-RFA process, and the discussion at WP:RFC/ZOMGADMINBOTS made that pretty clear. I don't think there has been any precedent, but I'm pretty sure the community would be open to one-time adminbot runs, just like we already have one-time bot runs. I'm not sure a discussion on that idea specifically will make any difference. Legoktm (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
    The stewards have granted the tools for tasks - you'll have to check the logs at meta. - jc37 19:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Strong oppose - Fluffernutter brings up a good point, handing out the Admin bit to users for a specific task, still allows access to areas of the project deemed off limits for non-admins ie.. deleted content, a miss click, say a block, can be fixed and the bit removed from the user before the "task" is completed, but how do we fix the deleted content the user could have reviewed or downloaded. Mlpearc (powwow) 18:41, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Contrarian that I am, I'm not as opposed to this as everyone else seems to be. I appreciate that maybe this should, instead, be discussed in the course of what Dank is working on. There's long been interest in finding a way to unbundle the tools. Maybe what jc37 is talking about could be modified by making it a limited-time and task-specific access to a subset of the tools, not all. That, along with only doing it after an RfA-like vetting by the community, might be a way to reduce the concerns about abuse. On the other hand, the flip-side of that argument is that one can just ask an admin for help, so I think there needs to be a clear explanation of when (if ever) it makes better sense to do some sort of RFTA. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It is more time-efficient for the community if the candidate asks admins to undertake the tasks rather than have, say, 100 people evaluate the candidate for the time-limited tools. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, for precisely the same reason as Axl. If a task requires admin tools to perform, it is far quicker and simpler to just get an admin to perform the task, rather than run the gauntlet of RFA-lite. A note at WP:AN takes less than a minute to compose, whereas getting a reasonable consensus to award someone admin tools - even a temporary subset - could feasibly take days. A quicker process increases the potential for abuse; when we don't have that many bureaucrats to begin with, locking down a user who runs amok with their newfound temporary sysop powers might easily take a half-hour or so: long enough for a sufficiently determined or incompetent individual to do considerable damage. Thus, you either end up with a situation where any old Tom, Dick or Harry can become a mayfly admin at the drop of a hat (and possibly crap all over the encyclopedia as a result), or you get a situation where users have to spend several days being scrutinised when the actual edit they want to make could have been done in two minutes by an experienced admin. Yunshui 雲‍水 14:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, per Fluffernutter. Not piling on, but it echoes my oft expressed sentiments. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:04, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Editor review discussion

A discussion on the future and potential of WP:Editor review has taken place here and also at the relevant talk page. dci | TALK 01:15, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Nominating

What happens to a user with low trust in the Wikipedia community when he/she nominates a user for bureaucratship/adminship? Cmach7 02:37, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Nothing. There's no penalty for having low trust and nominating someone. MBisanz talk 02:41, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Do you mean a user who doesn't trust the Wikipedia community much, or a user that isn't trusted much by the Wikipedia community? I'm tempted to say in either case, it's irrelevant, but I have seen people oppose a nomination over the nominator's poor behaviour. :) ·Salvidrim!· ✉ 03:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Does How to nominate somebody for RfA offer any useful help? -- Trevj (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
The worst that can happen is that a number of people will Oppose because of the identity of the nominator, and their Opposes then become about the nominator not the candidate (I've seen this happen); and that the RfA fails as a result, and the candidate or their more vociferous supporters blame the nominator for this (I've not yet seen this happen). Some would view this as being the responsibility of the candidate (to be careful who they accept a nomination from!), others might view it as an indication that certain people take Wikipedia and/or RfA much too seriously.
Interpreting the question the other way, a nominator who does not trust the Wikipedia community much probably does not expect that their nominations for bureaucratship or adminship will receive appropriate review (or the appropriate outcome). They might also be less surprised or disappointed if their nominations fail. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 09:50, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
We even recently had a candidate who passed with 100% support despite the fact that one of the nominators was under a number of sanctions at the time of nomination.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Demiurge kinda hits what I see as the intent of the question in the first paragraph - you really need to choose carefully who you "allow" to nominate you - as he noted, some of the best candidates have failed because of it, although rarely some have succeeded as noted by Ymblanter. When you fail your first RFA, it can actually make your second one tougher - although, you will be measured against the things people asked you to change the first time. However, if your first failure was more about the nominator, you may not have those yardsticks. As minimum, you've added 6 months and another 5,000 edits between your RFA's (✉→BWilkins←✎) 10:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Whilst I appreciate that there is a de facto minimum of three months between RFAs, I doubt that the community would be unhappy with a candidate who almost made it running again after four or five months, provided they'd addressed most of the concerns in their previous RFA. Maybe once someone has failed multiple times or failed badly they need to think of 6 months or longer before they run again, and sometimes you will see Opposes along the lines of "come back when you've had 12 months of block free activity". But if a major reason for failure was poor choice of nominator then I'd be surprised if they weren't close to meeting most people's criteria. As for the idea that admins need 5,000 edits, let alone an additional 5,000 before their next RFA, yes we do have an editcountitis problem at RFA and It has been quite a while since anyone passed with less than 3,000 edits. But I can't remember anyone opposing because a candidate didn't have an additional 5,000 edits since their last RFA. Yes there is an expectation that before an unsuccessful candidate runs again they will be active for at least three months, but one could meet that easily without getting close to an additional 5,000 edits. ϢereSpielChequers 11:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Did we break the trend in edit count inflation then? I'd like to see a fresh version of that analysis, if someone could do it. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I doubt very much. If you look at the plot, there are almost no cadidates with more than 10K edits (successful or not). Today, a candidate with less than 10K edits stands very little chances to pass (though some do pass).--Ymblanter (talk) 13:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
(EC) Sadly I don't think we've broken the trend and I think it only a matter of time before our editcountitis problem gets so bad that 4,000 and even 5,000 edits becomes the de facto minimum at RFA. But BWilkins was talking about an additional 5,000 edits, not a total of 5,000. Four of the last twenty successes had fewer than ten thousand edits, one barely 6,000. I haven't looked at the fails to see where someone has failed for insufficient edits, and maybe if I was to now nominate someone with fewer than 3,500 edits they'd fare less well than when I last did so - but the de facto minimum is somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000, nowhere near as high as 10,000. ϢereSpielChequers 13:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we are talking about the same thing. 80% of the last 20 passed had the edit count above 10,000, whereas almost nobody on the graph had the edit count above 10,000 (in other words, 100% of those who passed had the edit count below 10,000).--Ymblanter (talk) 13:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
(ec) I wasn't even aware of the fact that !voters expected a minimum amount of edits between runs, although it's apparently become a de facto requirement over the years. As for nominators, we now have some great resources for potential candidates to help them get connected to some fantastic editors willing to nominate them for RFA (Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination). That said, I'd find it difficult to believe that a well-qualified candidate wouldn't be able to convince one of those editors to nominate them. Most RFA's (though not all) that have been sunk due to unruly or poorly-qualified nominators were from candidates who weren't qualified for the mop anyway (and thus weren't able to secure a nomination from a more reputable editor). I've also seen editors oppose a candidacy once in a blue moon because it's a self-nomination, although I suspect that's code for "I just don't like this editor. Period." My RFA back in July 2011 passed unanimously, and it was a self-nom. There are outliers, sure, but the average for total edits in successful candidates when I passed was in the neighborhood of 20,000; I had just over 13,000. That leads me to ask, are these opposes (or some of them at least) because of the nominator (or lack thereof), the number of edits since past RFA, or just a general dislike of the editor? Tyrol5 [Talk] 13:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
@YMblatter The maximum and averages have changed, but then we have lots more editors with high edit counts, and one of the few sources of uncontentious candidates are those who have done lots of uncontentious edits. However my concern is with the minimum requirement as while I'm happy to support good candidates with insufficient edits to get through RFA, I'm not gong to nominate someone if I don't think that the community would accept them as an admin. My suspicion is that the standards inflation is not directly linked to time, but to RFAs, so as the number of RFAs has slowed almost to a trickle the editcountitis problem has slowed down. Hence we've recently had uncontentious successful RFAs with as few as 6,000 edits, if the graph had continued as sharply for the last few years we'd probably have people opposing for less than 10,000 edits. Fortunately though RFA is badly broken it isn't quite as bad as that. ϢereSpielChequers 14:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
This is probably also correct, but the real reason (as you have also written recently on the mailing list) that the voters somehow fail to go and really assess the candidate, and rely on some formal number instead. The edit count is one of these numbers. It has been told zillions of times that the edit count does not mean anything: Some users prefer to paste an article as one edit, and others prefer to build up sentence after sentence; 1000 edits may be quite a lot of experience, but at the same time it could be almost zero experience, if the users was just writing articles on a non-contentious topic and never interacted with other editors, etc etc. This is the real problem, and I do not quite see how this perception could change.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Passing thoughts and observations

In advance, I'd like to apologize if my opinions here echo any that have been brought up recently. I haven't kept up-to-date with RfA talk recently, so I don't know exactly everything that has been discussed

I've been away from Wikipedia for a long time. This has given me a chance to get away from the hodgepodge of everyday Wiktivity, and has allowed me to clear my head so that I can make more logical observations of activity on Wikipedia, particularly RfA statistics. A quick look at my contributions shows that I was working on a page about my own observations of the RfA process, but frankly I've given up on that page because it's taking up quite a bit of my time. So I'm just going to put some of my major thoughts here for community feedback (and probably abandon my RfA observations subpage in the process).

This year there have been 11 RfAs so far (not counting the one that's currently running), eight of which have been successful. In January and February of '12 there were only 10 RfAs, four of which were successful. The success rate of RfAs this year has increased over last year's, which may indicate that last year was RfA's worst year and that there's nowhere to go but up from here. Assuming that the current RfA passes (it's too early to call, of course, but it seems possible), we'll have a success rate of 9/12 RfAs, or 75%.

Four RfAs were successful last month, and four (which may increase to five) this month. If this trend continues, we'll break 2012's number of successful RfAs (28) by this summer (maybe not the beginning; the middle, perhaps). Unless something drastic occurs, we'll see an improvement this year over last year. But to my knowledge (and please correct me if I'm wrong), there haven't been any major proposals put into effect. Sure, there have been several discussed, but none have been initiated, not even for a trial run. So why are we seeing an increase in success if no major proposals have been put forth?

Well, the way I see it, the way RfA works is sort of like the boom and bust cycle that's prevalent in economics. RfA's early years saw more promotions and more RfAs, which would be RfA's boom. And later years have yielded fewer RfAs and therefore fewer successful candidates, RfA's bust. If this year's trends continue, however, they will indicate that RfA is on the rise again. RfA has seen its first boom and bust, and now it's slowly recovering and building itself back up again.

But how long will this last? Well, to answer this question, we have to figure out what's causing this boom and bust cycle. And, naturally, I remember several people coming up with some explanations before I left: Incivility in RfAs, general lack of interest in RfA, a decreasing number of new editors, poor de-adminship process, etc. My personal opinion is that we can't just look at one problem that may be there and try to come up with a solution for that particular problem. Rather, we should look at all problems that are there and come up with solutions for all of these problems.

This, of course, is difficult. Some people say that some issues brought up aren't as bad as some people make them out to be. Others say that these problems don't have any viable solutions, that we should just leave the RfA process as is and let it work out its own problems. Perhaps you, the reader, are one of these people. I didn't used to be; I used to be fired up about finding a solution to the RfA problem. But now I figure that a solution is out of our reach. We may be able to encourage some people to be nicer, and we may be able to encourage some qualified people to run. But the fact is, we're not going to be able to change the way people judge candidates. We're not going to be able to make up a potential candidate's mind for them. We can't completely change somebody's mentality; it's up to them if they want to change it, and even that takes time. Old habits are hard to break, after all.

In conclusion, this increase in success could last a while, or it could be short. Some booms are smaller than others, after all. But whatever happens, we can only do so much to bring it back up. There are things we can do to help, of course, so don't stop discussing solutions on my account (I highly doubt you would anyway, but it's still good to say this). But shift the focus more toward the small things we can do, and not the big things. The biggest thing that the success or failure of an RfA depends on is voter mentality and rationale, and there's ultimately no way of completely changing those things. The UtahraptorTalk/Contribs 23:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Nine in two months isn't as big a spike as the ten in two months that we had last summer. We've had several spikes in recent years, usually in response to major discussions about the RFA drought. If we don't fix RFA then my intention is to try and get such a spike every year. But I'm afraid we can't yet assume that RFA has magically fixed itself. ϢereSpielChequers 23:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Huh, I must have overlooked that. Nonetheless, it could be a temporary spike, but it also could be an indicator that a boom is on its way. The former seems more likely than the latter, but only time will give us a more solid answer. The UtahraptorTalk/Contribs 00:18, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
One positive thing I noticed so far was none of the three RFAs that failed were not WP:NOTNOW candidates, but rather experienced users which probably indicate that editors are willing to learn and become more knowledgeable with how the project works and do a RFA when someone offers a nomination, or if they feel if they qualify for our ever increasing standards. The three RFAs failed for different reasons, one because of bad timing as the editor just got off sactions involving AFDs, one because the community felt it was uncomfortable for the use of the tools just for participation in an ArbCom case, and the third request involved actions all sides were doing in the RFA the community simply considered unacceptable. None of those three editors were "newbies". Secret account 00:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
One thing I think that could have precipitated this influx of qualified candidates is the rush of discussion and requests for comment on this page and elsewhere (one of which is still ongoing) regarding RFA. It's been my experience that when discussion and publicity of this page is on the rise, so too is the number of candidates coming forward. Logic might dictate that it would have the opposite effect (potential candidates seeing the discussion about RFA being broken and running away from the process until a solution is implemented). I've also noted over the past few years that RFA's seem to be more prevalent during the summer months (although Spring 2011 saw a number of successful candidacies during the 2011 RFA reform discussions). There was a discussion above about the notion of "cycles" in candidacies at RFA), in which other editors also suggested that RFA could be "bouncing back." That's entirely possible, but I don't want to speak too soon. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Withdrawn

Just an FYI to closers - I have withdrawn my RFA. Thanks! dci | TALK 21:56, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done by KTC (talk · contribs) here. My sympathies on your RFA. If you heed the concerns of the editors there, you'll pass with flying colors next time. Good luck. Tyrol5 [Talk] 03:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Who would you renom from 2012?

Enough. AGF and CIVIL should never be left when logging in this website. Also, a discussion about something trying to get that something not mentioned is counter-productive. — ΛΧΣ21 16:19, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

2012 was a bad year, we all agree on that. But there were a few candidates from 2012 that really should have passed. Looking through last year's unsuccessful RfAs, I can find a handful that I think would pass today if they were nominated by a few respected community members. Are there any candidates from Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies (Chronological)/2012 that you would nominate this year? 64.40.54.147 (talk) 06:28, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm in favor of a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Theopolisme 2, a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Northamerica1000 2 and a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ryan Vesey 2 (won't happen), to name a few. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 22:35, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Just for that, you must run for cratship now. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 23:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
  • BWilkins, that comment was highly inappropriate considering the situation that editor is in IRL. --Rschen7754 22:27, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
What situation in R/L would that be? All I know is his editing history related to RFA and 4 recent RFB nom's (✉→BWilkins←✎) 00:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_220#Cmach7 --Rschen7754 00:58, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I know full well about high-functioning autism, and I certainly don't understand a) why you consider it a "situation IRL", and b) how it's related to his actions or, c) how it's related to my comments. Autism does not make someone run for RFA or nominate people for RFB. Period. Your perception otherwise is actually a rather distressing misunderstanding of the autism spectrum as a whole - one that merely reinforces sterotypes. If you're rather wrongfully accusing me of being insensitive to a specific disability, you should perhaps have a better understanding of that disability yourself. Good thing I have a certain level of respect for you as an editor, or else I might have left my WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL at the door on this one (✉→BWilkins←✎) 16:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
You say that "Autism does not make someone run for RFA or nominate people for RFB" but I can name at least three editors with autism who are very young and who have persistently tried to request any form of userrights that they possibly can on enwiki. I'm also aware of one additional editor under 13 who is going around to many WMF wikis and requesting userrights that they do not understand. So that statement is not backed by the evidence I've seen. But this is not something that we want to particularly draw attention to due to privacy concerns and out of sensitivity for the editor. And in fact, we've drawn way more attention to this editor and violated way more privacy than is necessary here. --Rschen7754 17:36, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
While the topic is on him (and sorry if this isn't warranted here), I just looked on his talk page for a bit and realized that I made the first edit to it. I was really surprised when I found that out because I don't normally keep track of that. If I had known that he has what he has at the time, I would've tried to get him to talk about it and help him with learning how to use the wiki. --Thebirdlover (talk) 05:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Kind request to stop to above discussion (or hold it elsewhere if you must), and get back to noms. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:11, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Idea on RFA's

First, if you had decided to table talking about changing RFA for now, I have not gotten any notice of that. Anyway, I have just recently changed my opinion on how we should change RFA. At first I had believed that we shouldn't change the system at all. Then, I read from (of all people), a post from Kelly Martin's blog from a while ago that really sounds good. I would put a few changes to it though. The quoted portion is an edited version of what Kelly originally proposed that puts in my changes to her system. The link will be supplied so you can all see the original. Objections are appreciated if need be.

Copyright violation removed - see below. -- Trevj (talk) 08:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Original link is here: http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2006/10/proposal-for-adminship-on-english.html --Thebirdlover (talk) 05:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for interrupting this thread but AFAIK such extensive copyrighted extracts/portions can't be pasted on talk pages or elsewhere (same reasons as article space). Therefore, the remaining copyrighted portion(s) (after your edits) should probably be removed per WP:TALKO because there doesn't seem to be anything on the linked blog indicating that the post is released under a free license. Of course, the contents could be paraphrased, if you feel like doing so. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 08:28, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I understand your points. I do think I need to clarify though. Some of the quoted portion has been edited from what Kelly originally posted on her blog by me. I would say about 2/3 of the writing posted, and the basic idea is Kelly's and about 1/3 of the writing is mine. Most of what I did was edit parts of what Kelly wrote to what I think is a feasible alternative. She has not posted a copyright on her page so I am not sure if she has limited her work. I think even if she has for some reason, this could count as fair use because I have only used around 42% of the original post in the sampled portion and only about 30-35% or so of the original post remained after I edited it. The post was also attributed to. About paraphrasing, I am not really good at it so I can't really do that although anyone else is free to. --Thebirdlover (talk) 02:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Just as one example, admins have to deal with copyright issues. Anyone who thinks there needs to be a copyright notice on a page to have a copyright is not qualified to be an admin. I deal with editors every day who think that. We don't need admin who think that.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
I was hoping that Kelly Martin's contributions may have included similar text here under a free licence. But apparently she made no contributions here during October 2006. Therefore, I'm removing the above copyvio. -- Trevj (talk) 08:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't know who Kelly Martin is, but that sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. One month's experience? A bit like allowing 10 year olds to stand for Parliament. Someone with one month editing who can find their way round this place is 99% certain to be a sockpuppet. Two months sit out if they happen to be away and don't get the message in the five days? I can be away from home for over five days - usually I manage to keep online, but not always. And go through the palaver every three months? No way. Something Kelly Martin mightn't know about is the ability of admins to read deleted material. Are you proposing that admins shouldn't be allowed to (leaving it all to Oversighters), or are you happy with an unknown here for a month (no mention of edit count) being able to do this and see the hidden stuff? I'm not happy about it at all. Peridon (talk) 20:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Kelly Martin is a former admin and arbitrator. 28bytes (talk) 20:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. Last seen December 2008. Peridon (talk) 21:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Did you read the responses before posting? Keep in mind that an admin has to have a solid grounding in policies and guidelines, then recognize that (for better or for worse) the size and complexity of policies and guidelines have probably doubled since 2006, then recognize that even in 2006 the median response was "are you nuts?"--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:45, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I did read the responses. Only 6 or 7 people responding in the original post can't really define consensus. I believe at least 20 people or more need to be involved in policy change debates to make consensus. Of course, some people will think differently about how many are involved. But major stuff like this would need to have wide consensus. I do think anyone with an experienced enough mentor can get a very good grip on policies in a month though. If someone would disagree, they could just say they disagree and then something similar to a current RFA would start with a time limit of 7 days. It isn't really that hard to do. --Thebirdlover (talk) 00:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  • One month is nowhere near enough experience, and having to rerun every three months would drive away most of our admins - this is the daftest suggestion I've seen in a long time here. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 05:15, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of rerunning at RFA once in a while, but I (and probably the vast majority of administrators) simply don't have the time to rerun every three months. Every year is probably the most frequent that would be feasible (not in terms of ability to gain consensus, mind you, but in terms of not mutilating the personal lives of administrators beyond recognition while they're tearing their hair out at RFA four times a year). Tyrol5 [Talk] 02:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
  • This is a really, really bad idea. One month of active editing is nowhere near enough to get the skills and experience needed for adminship. More generally I don't think that tenure or edit count are very good predictors of suitability - we have plenty of long-term editors with loads of experience who would make poor admins. That's not a problem, but it would be if people with X edits or Y months of experience were presumed to have the necessary skills. The idea of reconfirming admins every four months is just silly. If nothing else we'd have to have 90 RfAs a week to cope. Hut 8.5 19:30, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
This is just a terrible idea. I don't have high standards for admins compared to some people but I would oppose every candidate for lacking experience, and I'm sure I would not be alone. It's also very easily exploitable by sockpuppets. I don't object to the idea of a term of adminship per se, but 3 months is far too short to be practical. The workload on RFA would be enormous and lead to even fewer people bothering with it. If I had read this in 2006 I would have had the same reaction as I do now. The community's RFA standards in 2006 weren't vastly different to the present, but candidates had a lower edit count and a candidate who had less than 6 months experience was very rare. James086Talk 20:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
  • The suggestion is just as misplaced as it was 7 years ago - if not more so. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
  • It was an interesting proposal, not unlike many of the things that have been brought up on this page over the course of several years. However, I agree with many of the comments left there at the time and consider them relevant to this day; also, James086 above makes excellent points. It is simply not workable in present-day Wikipedia, where experience is extremely important to functioning effectively as an administrator. To those unfamiliar with Kelly Martin, she was an administrator from June 2005 until September 2006, when she resigned on the heels of a particularly nasty dramafest. She was directly appointed to ArbCom by Jimbo Wales on a temporary basis in October 2005 (alongside Mindspillage), but she resigned one month later; her subsequent attempt at re-election in January 2006 was withdrawn after it became clear that it would not be successful. She also retained checkuser and oversight permissions but relinquished them at the same time as her administrator rights. She was a deeply controversial figure throughout 2006 and 2007 for various reasons, not least of which were allegations of abuse and egregious incivility on her part. And how does someone who's only been here since June 2008 know all of this? Simple — I read. Why would I be interested in that? Long story. Kurtis (talk) 04:27, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
    • I've read about Kelly Martin too but not nearly to the extent Kurtis has and he explained about expertly. I was under the impression that she was controversial, but I thought she had a longer amount of service on ArbCom and had more support overall on Wikipedia than she actually had. I still like some of the system she had and still support it to an extent even though it would be really hard to carry out. I clarify in a revised version I have in the next post down. --Thebirdlover (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Kelly Martin? No, definitely not. I hate speaking ill of anyone, but her activities throughout 2006 and 2007 garnered her the resentment of a broad segment of the community, and for good reason. Her unilateral sysop actions and inability to take criticism of any sort led to the filing of three different RfCs regarding her conduct throughout 2006. She had an attitude of arrogance, condescension, and obstinance that rubbed several people the wrong way — from Kelly Martin's perspective, she was always right, and anyone who disagreed with her opinion either spoke from ignorance or was blatantly attempting to antagonize her. In 2007 she was barely active at all, save for her blanket opposition of numerous RfAs because the given candidate was "not endorsed by a WikiProject". She also tended to be extremely uncivil towards anyone who crossed paths with her. Just to give you an idea of how little respect she had from the community by the end of her editing tenure, this is her 2006 ArbCom candidacy, and this is her subsequent reconfirmation RfA. Kurtis (talk) 11:54, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
      • I think more people would be willing to support it if I would not put in that reelections had to occur every three months. In that case, admins would be approved unless an objection was made for a serious reason (this would remove sock puppet's, trolls, meatpuppets, and SPA's) by autoconfirmed users in which case, a 7 day voting period would start similar to the current RFA's except with a time limit. I would like this to be a revised compromise proposal. I paraphrased it so I don't believe it will be taken down --Thebirdlover (talk) 04:49, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
        • RfA is about much, much more than ensuring the candidate is not a sockpuppet, troll or SPA. Hut 8.5 10:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
          • I meant that would remove objectors who were sock puppets, trolls, and SPA's. I have no opinion on who could actually be nominated and the people nominated obviously do have to have some prestige but I don't want to get into that. The objections and the people who could object would need to have that standard though so they wouldn't be used for the wrong reason. It would also require clear policies to be developed to define how someone objecting could be a troll over someone who is objecting for a valid reason even though it is a minority concern. --Thebirdlover (talk) 04:37, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

What is easier?

A genuine inquiry from an interested anon: What is easier? (1) Taking a chance on an admin and being able to reverse his/her misdeeds, or (2) running the risk of losing motivated editors by nitpicking? 96.26.111.51 (talk) 16:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

P.S. - this is not a facetious inquiry 96.26.111.51 (talk) 16:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
It's just reflective of the larger shift toward the rejection the wiki principles that the site was founded on. The "trust by default, make it easy to undo" ideal has gone by the wayside. Gigs (talk) 20:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Potential admin candidates

Did a little digging in the user database. I looked for users who have 10,000+ edits, who aren't already admins, and aren't bot accounts, and who have made at least 100 edits per month in the last 12 consecutive months. I found 807 users. I then ran all 807 users through my admin scoring tool and put the results in a sortable table. If you're looking for editors to nominate for adminship, this table might introduce you to a wider range of editors you previously weren't aware of. You can find the table at User:Scottywong/Admin hopefuls. ‑Scottywong| comment _ 23:21, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Amazed that Johnbod isn't an admin (unless of course, he doesn't want to be, which I'd completely understand). A few more there I thought already were, as well. Some who probably should be ... and quite a few who wouldn't pass in a million years ;) Black Kite (talk) 00:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I think you missed me. I meet the criteria but wasn't listed. Not complaining! I have no intention of ever being admin, but I thought you'd like to know. Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 00:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I meet the criteria too (and my score is 770) but, as everyone knows, I'm not passing anytime soon :) — ΛΧΣ21 02:12, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Evanh, are you sure you've had 100+ edits for all of the last 12 months? You're not opted in to TParis' edit counter. Hahc, I think your edit count of 63 in Feb 2012 is what kept you off the list. When I started doing this analysis, it was still February (2013), so I didn't include any contributions from February, I started in January 2013 and went back 12 months from there. ‑Scottywong| soliloquize _ 02:26, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Just now opted in. Looks like I had a count of 80 last February, so that would account for it. Never mind! Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 02:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
@Scotty: That explains it, then. Thanks for the clarification. And Good work on that table :) — ΛΧΣ21 02:56, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I signed the don'twannabe box somewhere years ago, which still stands thanks (I rather like heading the table though....). Johnbod (talk) 01:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for going to all this work, Scotty. Very interesting. I see that I am somewhere in the top 100, but I wouldn't dream of applying as the process now stands. I also noticed at least two names on the list who DID try for adminship, and failed, within the past few months. Does this tell us anything? --MelanieN (talk) 01:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

All of this, of course, is based on the premise that your admin scoring tool is useful or good, which is something that is by no means agreed upon by a majority of the community. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:08, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I would argue that it's at least better than throwing darts at a list of names on a wall. In which case, it's better than anything else that currently exists. If you have suggestions to improve upon it, I'm all ears. Also, before considering future knee-jerk bashing of the things I spend my time on, please note that I was very careful to include a thoughtful disclaimer above the table that warns people about the limitations of the tool. ‑Scottywong| babble _ 02:17, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
The disclaimer isn't accurate. It says that the tool "generates a score for each user that indicates their readiness for adminship", when it doesn't actually do that; it indicates that the user has been compared against a set of criteria that have been coded into the tool. And while we all appreciate tools, Sven Manguard's reaction isn't exactly knee-jerk— the same criticisms arose the last time you advertised the tool. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I think it's a good starting point. I'd like it even more if I scored better. :-) GFHandel ♬  02:33, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I think that thinking that this tool is going to tell you how ready you are for adminship is a bit of nonsense. Every Wikipedian with some time here will understand that this tool is just a way to measure the technical capability for adminship; the behavioural and maturity readiness is assessed by the community, but this is a good point to start. I am sure that Scotty, when designing the tool, did not try to replace human judgement. — ΛΧΣ21 03:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm also surprised that Johnbod isn't an admin, but the list does have some key flaws, candidates who just failed a RFA, former administrators desysopped by ArbCom, or in two cases editors who were administrators but gave up the tools without controversy, other editors near the top who would never pass a RFA with our current standards, and so forth. I wouldn't fully rely on it. Secret account 03:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    • I also noticed editors who are scored in the 500s and 600s who I think will strongly pass a RFA any given day, heh on the scoring criteria. Secret account 03:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
It's a tool for finding potential candidates, in which it works perfectly. It doesn't find good sysops, it doesn't even find good candidates, it finds potential reasonable candidates which everyone is free to nominate or not based on actual judgement. Sort of like an admissions committee receiving a pool of students who were in the top 10% of their class. Nobody expects that to be the end of the application process, and the committee doesn't have to only take students from that pile, but it's not a bad place to start and it's awful hard to accept (and reject) students if you couldn't even consider them in the first place. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 05:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Weird list. Heavens, making some of them admins would improve the average quality of both non-admins and admins. Tony (talk) 09:07, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Why Tony, I do believe *you* are on that list. Now who can we get to nominate you....? —Neotarf (talk) 13:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting tool - may be good for potential prospects to indicate the areas of the project they may need more experience in. Is there more info that could be generated - like edits to policies and edits to RfC and help desk type pages?

  • Edit count: 63366 +125
  • Account age: 1510 days +125
  • Block count: 0 +140
  • User rights: reviewer rollbacker +8
  • User page: Exists +10
  • Missing edit summaries (article namespace): 2.1% +39
  • Average monthly edit count (last 12 mo.): 556 +45
  • Minimum monthly edit count (last 12 mo.): 238 +45
  • of edits to Article namespace: 29333 +40
  • of edits to Wikipedia namespace: 5865 +40
  • of edits to various Talk namespaces: 10503 +20
  • Non-redirect articles created: 28 +58
  • Edits to admin areas (AIV/RPP/AfD): 183 -10

Total Score: 685 Moxy (talk) 09:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Thanks for doing this SW, I hope nominators who have expressed concern about lack of candidates will take use it as a quick starting point Jebus989✰ 10:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Don't really understand all the flak directed at SW; this is a useful idea for throwing up potential candidates (which is more objective than the quasi-political system currently in place). It's a good place to start. Thanks SW Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 10:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I couldn't help but notice that Carrite scored the third highest on the admin table with a 927, but recently failed at RfA. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 13:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    The tool has the same weakness as nominating by straight edit count; namely that the statistics it produces cannot and (in my opinion) should not account for behavioral issues. That takes human assessment. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    An analysis of Carrite's recent RFA reveals that much of the opposition was based on the temporary nature of his request (getting the mop only to see deleted pages as part of an ArbCom case), but many of the editors who opposed on these grounds expressed their belief that Carrite would pass a full, regular RFA and that they'd likely support him. He likely would have passed a conventional RFA at the time, but he just didn't want the sysop tools (something that's very respectable and completely understandable, but led to the failure of his very unusual request). Tyrol5 [Talk] 14:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
  • SW, would you mind publishing the value you give to each type of item and the maximum for each item and associated maximum value where applicable? I have a feeling that might help tune the tool. Just a thought. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    I did that once when I first developed the tool, and created a survey where people could rank the relative importance of each criteria. I then averaged all of the survey responses, scaled them so that 1000 is the highest possible score, and that became the scoring criteria for the tool. There certainly are other criteria that the tool could look at to refine the score even further, but each additional criterion it looks at makes it take longer (and it already takes plenty long), so in the interest of striking a balance, I'll likely not add any additional criteria.
    I feel that the tool is perhaps more useful in this capacity of going through a large group of editors and creating a "short list" that can then be manually evaluated, rather than just looking up the score of a single editor. After all, the tool simply checks many of the same things that we all check in admin candidates: edit count, # of articles created, block count, recent activity levels, etc. It's a tool to help us do the basic checks more quickly, and narrow down a list of candidates to the ones who wouldn't likely fail an RfA on technical grounds. There is, of course, no practical way for an automated tool to judge the likelihood of an editor failing an RfA on behavioral grounds, and it was never intended to replace human judgment. ‑Scottywong| speak _ 14:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    Agreed. My question was more aimed at being transparent about the current considerations than the addition of new considerations. --Izno (talk) 16:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    In the interest of discouraging gaming of the tool, I decided to delete the detailed information about how the scoring algorithm is designed. Suffice it to say, it was crowd-sourced to some extent, and is not just a representation of my personal preferences. ‑Scottywong| spout _ 17:06, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    Sure, I thought this might be the case. I was aware of the development effort. Thanks though. --Izno (talk) 20:53, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Might be worth having a cut-off on the table, SW: I doubt that those sitting with negative scores would be enthused by their positions. I agree that this works best as a "fell through the cracks" spotter than as a general set of heuristics for finding random good candidates, not least because any admin-by-numbers system is easily gamed. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:42, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Probably not a bad idea. I'd be happy to remove everyone who scored below... 250? 500? I'm not sure what would be the appropriate cutoff. ‑Scottywong| converse _ 16:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
The page itself states that the users above 500 are generally the ones that should be evaluated. I imagine that the cutoff should be in the realm of 300 to 400. --Izno (talk) 16:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

While I still have some pauses about the list, I am looking at nominating several of these users with 600 and 700 scores, especially those I never heard of but a quick glances of their contributions looks strong. Secret account 16:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Please don't cut off the list below 400; I see that George_Ponderevo scored 352 but in his 1.7 years' worth of contributions he looks like a very steady person. Binksternet (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I cut it off at 250, which removed a few dozen rows. ‑Scottywong| spill the beans _ 16:49, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Oops! I had no idea until yesterday that George Ponderevo was "an undisclosed alternate account" of Malleus Fatuorum, a "shared IP" as the ArbCom puts it: Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Statement_regarding_Malleus_Fatuorum_and_George_Ponderevo. As such, GP would very likely not succeed in RfA. Binksternet (talk) 17:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • User:WhatamIdoing - in my opinion is one of the best Wikipedians period. We need to attract users of this caliber to this position and Admins should be the ones nominating this type of editor. Having Admin(s) directly backing a proposals does help the overall acceptances of prospects to have successful nominations and raises the willingness of those prospects to go thru the whole ordeal in the first place.Moxy (talk) 20:29, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Interesting list - plenty on there I know well and think would be good (one I even e-mailed a few weeks ago; he declined); there are also others who haven't made the list but I have faith in, given time. GiantSnowman 21:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Well we need to get RFA active again, I fully agree. I think once a few of these users gets nominated, and if all goes well, we should have a tick in RFA. The scoring criteria needs to be reevaluated though, especially the "adminwork" part in which many of our best content contributors got negative scores I have no idea why. Secret account 21:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
    I might use this list, actually, since I see quite a few near the top I've been considering nomming if I ever got back in it. I'm finding more admin backlogs these days, so... couldn't hurt. Well, it could, but you know what I mean. Wizardman 19:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
    I'm amazed I even score as high as I do (457), given I haven't been much active as of late, especially since the fight over pending changes not only royally pissed me off, but also pretty much assured I would be avoiding article space as much as possible (and in fact I automatically reject all RfA nominations because I do not support, let alone want to use, PC). That said, kudos to you, Scotty, for making such a tool, even if its intent is only to make a technical benchmark and not a personality one. —Jeremy v^_^v Bori! 10:44, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Aw c'mon man, it's not yet mandatory, although I had no idea that in addition to being an excresence it would defeat me and prevent my editing the article! There are lots of other things admins are needed for other than (trying to) accept or reject an edit in a PC article. --Yngvadottir (talk) 11:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Note that I answered your question at Wikipedia talk:Pending changes several days ago, the delay was bacause I was travelling.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:03, 14 March 2013 (UTC).
  • LoL. I very rarely see in English WP something so silly as http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/cgi-bin/adminscore.cgi?name=Incnis+Mrsi is. This machine scored me positively (and moderately high) for two things which are not my inherent virtues: an old account and zero blocks. The things which are, namely, high ratio of number of distinct articles edited to overall edit count, high number of edits in templates, low amount of (fully) automated edits, are ignored. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    That seems more of a difference of opinion than any outright hilarity, I'm not sure I've ever seen an RfA support on account of a candidate having a "high ratio of number of distinct articles edited to overall edit count"—I for one certainly wouldn't think less of an admin candidate for having 300+ edits to their FAs Jebus989✰ 14:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Do you actually understand what did I put to the numerator? There is nothing bad in 100 edits to one article – it just demonstrates a lower merit than 100 edits to 70 articles. A high number of distinct articles, especially if those articles were edited without AWB or so, is certainly a great bonus to a user’s experience and admin-readiness. An editor, like me in en.wikipedia, who made ~ 6200 edits and edited ~ 2000 articles, apparently has much more experience than an editor with 10,000 edits but only in 500 articles, not counting their talk: pages, Wikipedia: and user_talk:. I would not entrust the sysop to an editor with 12,000 edits and 10 featured/good articles if whose edits are spanned over only 200 pages, with 60 edits/page average. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    "There is nothing bad in 100 edits to one article – it just demonstrates a lower merit than 100 edits to 70 articles." is an opinion. Someone with 2 FAs and the associated density of edits to their name has slightly more weight at RFA than an editor with 3000 edits across 1000 articles and that associated density of edits. Just the way it is. Not that I share that opinion myself, but that is the case that it is an opinion, and hence why it is given more weight. --Izno (talk) 16:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Could you point to examples of RfA candidates with similar edit pattern (Save-reluctance and ★-disregard) who were (nearly) black-balloted due to it? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I strenuously object to being publicly named and shamed in this list of admin hopefuls. I am here to help build an encyclopaedia, a goal fundamentally at odds with the dysfunctional nature of the current admin system. It is true I occasionally participated on admin related drama boards, and maybe that behaviour boosted my "admin score", leading to this unfortunate predicament. My reason for participating on these boards was to try and find a voice for content builders on Wikipedia, so content builders can work with a measure of dignity instead of as mere potential criminals requiring "administration" by their betters. As those of us who manage to survive long enough eventually realise, the system is beyond repair. The levers of control are firmly in the hands of those who are here to "administer", in self serving ways, to the people who are trying to build Wikipedia. At no stage have I ever expressed a desire to be a member of such a body. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    I removed your name from the list.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
That doesn't alter the fundamentally misleading name of the list. It should be renamed something like "Editors doing things Scottywong thinks potential admins should be doing". Either that, or each person on the list should sign a statement affirming that they hope to become an admin.--Epipelagic (talk) 21:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I think if you want to accomplish smth in this direction, the best starting point would be to approach Scottywong. I did not compile the list and I am in no way responsible for its content, I just did what you asked.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Of course you are responsible for its contents if you are adding/removing names. It's your list now, not Scottywong's. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Fine, I reverted my edit.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree the name is a bit misleading, but that can be easily fixed. How about User:Scottywong/Admin scoring tool results, or something similarly boring? I'll ping Scottywong about this thread as well, just in case he's not still watching it. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 23:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Actually, given the banner at the top of Scottywong's user talk, I've just gone ahead and moved the page. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 23:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
That's fine. The reason for the original name of the page is because the first time I did this, I pulled users from Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls rather than finding users that passed a certain set of criteria. Also, Epipelagic, per the instructions above the table, I have explicitly allowed any editor to remove themselves from the list if they'd prefer not to be on it. So, go ahead and remove yourself if you want. It is not practical for me to contact hundreds of users to get their permission prior to posting the list. ‑Scottywong| chatter _ 00:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Noting the RfB section below this, any plans for another tool? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm...but what's the general "consensus" on what skillsets/measurable things make for a good RFB candidate? (✉→BWilkins←✎) 10:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Judgement of consensus, and I can't think of any possible way to measure that. --Izno (talk) 18:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The short answer is it can't, not really. We've got 34(?) 'crats, so the sample size is pathetic, and many of them have been around for a while, making modern norms not necessarily applicable, but as an exercise why not? You're not looking for required criteria, just folks to put on a shortlist to help nominators find a few good candidates. Examine participation at UAA, CHU, RFA, BRFA, XfD, but deeper. Participation at XfD isn't per se important, but complicated closures can be spotlighted (large votes) and even compared to DRV results. BRFA (and maybe CHU) could be a plus if present but not a major sting. Maybe even parse nominations at RfA? It will fail spectacularly, of course, but it will do no harm. All models are wrong, but some are useful. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:39, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

A humble request

I know it was six years ago now, but if anyone ever gets the urge to try an RfA with a format like this again, please do me and everyone else looking through the archives a huge favour — don't. It is incredibly tedious to have to determine raw tallies from such convoluted discussions (although I know the whole point of that one was to try and avoid the straw poll process we've become so accustomed to over the past decade).

Thanks. =) Kurtis (talk) 10:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

While we're on the topic of experimental RFA's, the format of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ironholds 2 (questioning period prior to a !voting period) was arguably more successful and much less convoluted than the one you mention. Although, the experimental nature of the RFA itself was a source of drama during it, so I wouldn't suggest an experimental RFA for anyone, unless of course it is a candidate-consented and community-approved trial. Tyrol5 [Talk] 16:26, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't even have to look at that one to remember what happened — they talked about Ironholds for several days, with nothing negative coming up. Then it goes live, and Acalamari suddenly shows up out of the blue to oppose based on concerns regarding his temperament. As a result, Balloonman deemed it ineffective and arbitrary. Kurtis (talk) 06:19, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Ironholds' second RfA is occasionally mentioned here, but as you've named me in this instance, I'll comment. I regretted sinking his candidacy; while others said that the oppose proved that type of RfA wouldn't work, that didn't change the way I felt (and possibly how Ironholds felt either, as it was his RfA). :( I should have used the question period, as was the point of that RfA. I'm glad he passed a later RfA. Acalamari 11:34, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
As am I, despite having gone neutral in his subsequent successful RfA. Kurtis (talk) 14:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
@Kurtis: My point being that, while there is very little chance of an experimental RFA being successful or otherwise deemed successful (in the event of a failed candidacy), Ironholds' second was dramatically less convoluted than the one you've linked. It was more organized and, while very flawed, was an interesting trial nonetheless and one more streamlined and organized than Moralis'. The only different from the current process that I could deduce from a glance at the latter is putting all the !votes under one heading, rather than three, making it very difficult to follow (and, I imagine, would've been quite a time investment for the closing 'crat, but that's beside the point). Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:35, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, of course it was. The one I linked was so messy that it literally gave me a headache reading through it. Kurtis (talk) 14:56, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

RfB

Once again, I earnestly plead with the Wikipedia Admin Corps. Is there no one willing to run for cratship? As of now, there are only about 31 crats on the English Wikipedia. That may not currently be a problem, but can we expect to have no attrition from our current list of crats? There were a mere 5 RfB last year and none so far this year. Note that last year's two successful RfB were closed with talies of 125/0/2 (for WilliamH) and 135/3/2 (for 28bytes). There has to be somebody out there willing to give it a try! Somebody! Anybody! Well, okay, maybe not just anybody, but there has to be a good candidate who has the courage to try. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 18:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

31 'crats would be more than enough to handle the job if not for User:Snowolf/inactivecratstats. Snowolf How can I help? 18:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I apologize, but time and burnout have not been on my side. Useight's Public Sock (talk) 17:11, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Just a minor point, but I think your "lifetime" section for userrights might be incorrect. Have you included the data from the old log at: Wikipedia:Bureaucrat log? WJBscribe (talk) 19:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
That's a very good point, I have not. I have changed the title to "since 2005" as it is more accurate. Might end up doing a full update including that data at some point in the future. Thanks for pointing it out! Snowolf How can I help? 19:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
It's hard enough getting people through RFA, let alone RFB - most, if not all, admins will have pissed-off some ne'er-do-well(s) who will pop up and rear their ugly heads at the RFB. GiantSnowman 19:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I had thought about it a year ago, but I have pissed off enough vandals and uncivil-types that it would likely make an RFB look pretty ugly :-) (✉→BWilkins←✎) 19:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
In 2012's two successful RfB, the combined tally was 260/3/4. It can be done. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
In 2012, two successful RFBs - and three failed. GiantSnowman 19:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
True, but one of those can basically be thrown out (Apteva was not even an admin yet and he was SNOWED under). In the other two unsuccessful RfB, there were more than twice as many supports as opposes. It's not really as ugly as you might think. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't panic! There are many bureaucrats, such as myself, who are very active in other arenas, but not active as bureaucrats for whatever reason. I check daily to see if there any RfAs that need closing, and there never are because other bureaucrats have reached them first. Although there are many truly inactive bureaucrats, there are many such as myself who are not inactive as much as we are redundant. That's not to say that more bureaucrats would not be a good thing, of course. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 19:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, but more bureaucrats wouldn't be a bad thing. Especially if they could improve our dire bureaucrat gender diversity statistics! WJBscribe (talk) 19:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'm not really panicking, I'm just frustrated at the lack of activity with RfB. People complain about the situation at RfA and RfB is getting overlooked. Surely there is somebody willing to stick his or her neck out and keep the process from becoming completely stale. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Might have a go in another year or so, if the need exists and if I can increase my activity to the point of earning people's trust. Hey, it wasn't so bad last time. :P ~ Riana ⁂ 20:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Just please don't nominate Kelly Martin again during said year :P Snowolf How can I help? 20:53, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I might juuuust be able to avoid doing that. ~ Riana ⁂ 20:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Probably wouldn't be too hard, given the fact that she hasn't even edited since December 2008. Kurtis (talk) 10:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I have some good candidates for bureaucratship, but I'm not sure they'll accept just yet :) — ΛΧΣ21 22:18, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
A picture to illustrate Deskana's message. --Rschen7754 21:27, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I believe that Rschen7754 should run for cratship. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 22:25, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Thanks, but I don't think I would pass. --Rschen7754 22:46, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 22:52, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem seems to be a systemic fear instilled in all or most administrators considering a run. I commented two or three months ago that the rarity of RFB's seems to be the direct result of the rarity of RFB's, meaning we're inclined—as a community—to believe it must involve some unattainably high threshold because of the rarity of successful RFB's (or any RFB's) relative to RFA's. While this probably isn't true since some good candidates passed as recently as last year, it's that perception that induces fear in any potential candidates. I've given a glancing thought to running myself on one or two occasions—to delve into the mundane behind-the-scenes work 'crats do (RTV, CHU, etc. since that seems to be where help is needed) rather than closing RFA's—but am the first to admit that I'm subject to the fearful sentiment I spoke of at the beginning of my comment. I'd probably give it a second thought if it wasn't for the intimidating nature of the process (and my RFA a couple of years ago was approved unanimously—imagine the sentiment of someone who had a contentious RFA). RFB is really very intimidating. Tyrol5 [Talk] 00:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I understand completely, but you'd think somebody would at least try. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 00:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
You're right. I feel bad because I'm not one to sit on the sideline when there's something to be volunteered for and nobody is volunteering. It's a pickle. I adhere to the maxim that it's better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all, so perhaps I'll give it another thought (but it'd be months from now at the absolute earliest). It's not fair to write the possibility off immediately and it's worth consideration. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:09, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok. I wish more admins were at least wiling to give it consideration. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 01:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Ditto. It's tough sometimes to see past the intimidation and there's quite a bit of reading and studying to do for someone considering RFB. I'll have a look and perhaps revisit the possibility in a few months. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Are there backlogged crat jobs? Or is this just a fear that there may be in the future? Someguy1221 (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The second. After all, not all of the current crats are active and the number of total crats won't get higher if no one ever runs. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 22:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • AutoStrikeout, have you considered just going ahead and nominating people? They can always decline, but sometimes starting the process for them might be the proverbial kick to the butt they need to let the rest of the RfB process unfold. :) :) ·Salvidrim!· ✉ 02:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I have asked at least three admins about it in the past little while. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Don't just ask, make a nomination statement. Let them really see why you think they would make good crats, and maybe they'll be more convinced. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't know. Between this essay, another essay I haven't finished yet and a project that I'm trying to get going, I might already have enough without taking on an RfB nomination. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • What might make sense is the concept of a highly experienced, clueful non-admin being a 'crat. Free from the political pressure, and so on. One could expand the concept to ArbCom, for that matter. Jusdafax 03:50, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    • The problem with that is that non-admins have run... and have failed. --Rschen7754 03:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Were they serious candidates? The only non-admin I can recall ran for ArbCom but came away with a most dismal showing. Of course, he had a massive block log and was subsequently banned by the community, and I would not call him serious. Jusdafax 04:24, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
        • Apteva last year. While it's not a rule that crats are admins on enwiki, it is the expected norm, and rightfully so, since crats have the technical power to make themselves admins. --Rschen7754 04:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
          • True, and I see neither of us thought much of the idea of Apteva's candidacy. As you see, I totally forgot that one. Interesting how my attitude has come around in a mere six months... indicative of the sea change my thinking has undergone on the whole topic. Jusdafax 04:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
            • User:Pgallert stood for ArbCom last time round, and is not an admin. --Stfg (talk) 09:59, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I've been prodded by a couple people to run; I will eventually, but I'm just not up for it now. Still in the zone with my massive undertaking (can hardly believe a few more days will make it 3 months), and if I ever finish that I've got another not quite as huge one to go straight to. Not intimidated by RfB or anything, just feels kinda insignificant right now... The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Well bureaucrats do tend to play an inconspicuous role... and do seem insignificant. :P *runs off* --Rschen7754 07:54, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Like I said, it's just a matter of when. Right now my mind is definitely not where I'd need it to be for an RfB (I'd like to think my current work is a lot more significant, but that's for everyone else to judge), so I'll wait until whenever that is. In the meantime I'd encourage someone else to start an RfB, because a few more bureaucrats certainly wouldn't do any harm. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:18, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
Rschen, I don't think I can follow your argument. Technically I have the power to do quite a few things. I don't do them because it would do damage, most of us behave that way. I don't think a non-admin crat would ever even think of making themselves admin. That said, there is still the perception of not admin = not experienced or not willing to be scrutinised. Hard to say if and when that might change. --Pgallert (talk) 07:51, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, we have to be able to trust that they will not do that, and we also have to trust them in closing discussions, which admins do on a regular basis. --Rschen7754 07:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
So a non-admin who regularly closes AfDs and RfCs to the satisfaction of the crowd should be eligible, the danger is just that a handful of opposers is enough to sink an RfB, and a handful might always gather. That someone with X thousand edits and years of tenure would suddenly go berserk if given new rights is not an assumption we should make, per AGF. --Pgallert (talk) 17:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
  • The issue of having non-admins as crats is a very interesting one and it would certainly be informative to see what would happen if a non-admin submitted an RfB (although I very strongly expect the candidate would not pass). However, in order for us to find out if a non-admin has a legitimate chance to be a crat without becoming an admin first, we would need somebody to try. It would have to be someone who actually had a decent chance to pass at RfA. Otherwise, the person would certainly not have been a legitimate contender for cratship. Of course, this would mean that somebody would possibly have to give up, at least temporarily, any hopes at becoming an admin just to be a test case in a situation where he or she would likely fail, as any non-admin who had an unsuccessful RfB might have to wait a while before trying an RfA. In other words, the risk seems to far outweigh the reward for any ambitious non-admin wanting to become a crat first. I realize that the crat bit might actually carry less real authority than the admin bit, but the perception does not really align with that. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • AAPT) 15:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I became a crat in 2008. Generalising wildly, at that time, the crats who used their tools with any sort of regularity (see, for example, this analysis) were the half dozen or so who'd been appointed since mid 2007, with the odd notable exception. Since then, that 2007-> group has mostly remained active. We've sadly lost a couple through retirement but have net gained. I'm not sure there's any crisis now or looming, albeit I'm sure MBisanz would like more help with his heroic efforts at the CHU pages. Most of what we do is, as the name "bureaucrat" suggests, exceedingly boring. And with the small number of RfAs these days, I'd say the task has become more dull than it once was. I hardly ever get the chance to close an RfA. --Dweller (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Possibly a difficulty is that a newly promoted admin lacks the skill, or indeed the confidence, to go for RfB; whereas a long serving admin recognises that there are enough editors who will likely vote against that s/he feels it is pointless to try. I have been an admin now for a number of yesars and, while i do not think I have made any major mistakes, I am certain that i have incurred a degree of disfavour among some editors. It is difficult to do the job without doing so. And this makes elevation to 'crat, for many of us, beyond aspiration.--Anthony Bradbury"talk" 16:05, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
I'll second that opinion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, that was a very well-stated assessment. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • AAPT) 15:33, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
Anthony, that was very well written and introspective. Nevertheless, if you were to ever submit an RfB, there is no question in my mind that you would receive the broad support of the community. Kurtis (talk) 13:35, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for those kind words; I suspect that my skill-level here may be seen as insufficient. I will consider the (implied) suggestion. --Anthony Bradbury"talk" 15:21, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
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