Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 208

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Transferring over "filemover" tool

Per suggestion, moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Transferring over "filemover" tool

Sven Manguard Wha? 21:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

adminship to post image

Request adminship to post image.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbtrend (talk • contribs) 21:56, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jbtrend, and welcome to Wikipedia. You don't need to be an admin to upload an image to Wikipedia - but you do need to be autoconfirmed which takes 4 days and ten edits. If you pop over to the helpdesk a volunteer there will be able to help further. (cross posting to users talk) Pedro :  Chat  22:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, ya beat me to his talk page. I was going to point him to WP:Files for upload. 28bytes (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah - now you see I didn't even know that existed...! Hopefully that will help Jbtrend out as well. Thanks 28bytes. Pedro :  Chat  22:11, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ha, I forgot all about this. I used it when I first started years ago to have some images uploaded. – SMasters (talk) 12:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Or Commons. Don't need to be confirmed for that.  Chzz  ►  18:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Drat. I saw Chzz and Requests for adminship appear on the same line on my watchlist, and it got my hopes up. Alas, it's back to waiting. Will you please just run already? Sven Manguard Wha? 18:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

• Strong Support Chzz, would make a great admin...oh wait, this is the talk page. (sigh) Alpha Quadrant ^talk 02:00, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
• How weird, I was just thinking that myself, and then came to this page.--SPhilbrickT 22:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

User:Addihockey10/Admin-by-function

Yet another proposal for unbundling the Sysop tools, I don't think the Anti-Vandalism admin is going to go anywhere (personally), however, I believe the commons helper "right" has some potential as there is a HUGE commons backlog (dating back to 2008). --Addihockey10 ^e-mail 04:26, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Please comment, criticize, and/or make suggestions on the draft. Thanks. --Addihockey10 ^e-mail 04:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Lessening the need for administrators by giving most content-related tools to "trusted and experienced editors."

Perhaps we need a trusted and experienced editor that has all admin-level editing privileges except those that relate to deleted content:

These advanced editing abilities would include:

• Autopatrolled, rollback, and reviewer rights
• Edit and move fully- or move-protected pages
• Increase page protection levels for a limited time pending administrator review.
• View Special:Unwatchedpages to aide in vandalism-detection
• Any other tool I left out that is strictly an aid to editing and which does not allow access to confidential or suppressed information such as deleted content.
• A new "pseudo-delete" tool or script which would be a one-button "blank the page and replace it with a "deletion pending" text, fully-protect it, and log it to a "locked and marked for deletion"-patrol page, with a bot to undo the action for any page not deleted within a few hours. This would be the "trusted editor" version of a speedy-deletion nomination or second, the major difference being that the page would be fully-protected until an administrator reviews and deletes or restores it.

This would NOT automatically have privileges to delete or restore pages or see deleted content. It would NOT automatically grant non-editing privileges such as creating accounts, changing user rights, blocking and un-blocking users, changing the user interface, excluding bulk vandalism from recent changes, being exempt from an IP block, changing the text filter, or other rights not directly related to editing.

Benefits

• Less work for admins.

• The level of trust needed for these tools is much lower than that of some of the remaining tools. Basically any editor who had a few months' tenure and a few hundred edits and who says "I read the rules and the how-to for the tools, and am requesting access" would be granted access.

• A stepping-stone to full admin-ship that will all but eliminate "NOTNOW" nominations.

Risks

• We will have to deal with NOTNOW requests for this privilege level. We already have this issue with editors who prematurely ask for reviewer, rollback, and autopatrolled rights.
• Some editors will abuse the tools or simply make bad decisions. They are easily revoked. If this is seen as a major reason not to have these tools in the hands of non-Admins, a software change to limit the frequency of "uses" of each of these rights to a certain number per day or a certain number per 100 edits until the user has used them for a period of time will cut down on honest mistakes. It will make it harder for those determined to abuse the tools to get to the point that they can do large amounts of damage.

Additional notes

I am very aware that the idea of an "admin lite" is a perennial proposal. However, given recent trends relating to RFA, it's a proposal whose time has come.

Comments? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

• Page protection, edits to protected articles, and speedy deletion are not areas that have had significant backlogs lately. And I also don't see how it would stop NOTNOW nominations, which are usually users who are grossly unqualified, as opposed to "trusted and experienced editors." That and the other objections that are raised every time partial adminship is proposed. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Having more people who can work on these not-currently-backlogged areas will free up the admins currently working on them to work on other areas that are backlogged. As for NOTNOW nominations, a big-red-letter note saying "Nominations by people without the experienced and trusted user-right are almost always ended early under WP:NOTNOW. If you believe you qualify for this user-right, see page instructing users how to get this user-right. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:23, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, in most cases this proposal pushes the NOTNOW problem from RFA to the lesser privilege. Individual administrators will still have to say "no, you are new here, stick around and ask for this privilege in a few months" but it wouldn't clutter up RFA. This way it only takes up the time of one admin not that of everyone who monitors RFA. In a few cases over-eager new editors will insist on self-nominating for adminship but the number should go way down as most will request this lesser user-right instead. It's a worthwhile change. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

• On the plus side, there still is the issue of unbundling the tools (not that I'm any more confident than Beeblebrox is that there will be consensus for doing so). What strikes me as a partial shortcoming of this proposal is that there are two "big deal" powers: content deletion, as stated above, but also user blocking, which is every bit as much of a "big deal". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Any user who would want these tools, but would NOTNOW out of sysopship should not have the extra tools thus not really solving the NOTNOW problem. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 23:25, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

This proposal would not grant either of the big-deal tools you mention to non-admins. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

IMO, I don't think adminship should be unbundled. At least in the areas you mention, there are not too many backloggs. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 23:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Tofu. At the very least I give a strong no to the suggestion "View Special:Unwatchedpages to aide in vandalism-detection" as that one requires a higher level of trust than most others do. The only unbundle I could see as getting enough support would be a creation of the Commons "filemover" right on Wikipeida, as it is a) a low risk tool to give out, b) already functions elsewhere (Commons) and would be easy to transfer over, and c) is rather useful to a select group of people (myself included) that deal in files on a regular basis. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I really dislike the idea of giving out a "blank and protect" button as lots of speedy deletions are for copyvio or because the first attempt at creating an article was unsourced and didn't explain why the subject is notable. In my view there are way too many errors at speedy deletion tagging to unbundle anything there. I'm happy to see a proportion of attack pages get salted but don't like the idea of salting speediable pages become the norm and the power to do it be unbundled. I have given one or two RFA candidates tools like Rollback, but my experience is that apart from the notnow candidates most RFA candidates already have Rollback, Autopatrolled or both if they qualify for them. However there were lots of editors out there who should be made Autopatrollers and there is currently a big drive on to find and flag them. I suspect something similar could usefully be done for rollbackers, I wonder how many nonrollbackers regularly file AIV reports? ϢereSpielChequers 09:15, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I share the dislike for unbundling anything to do with Speedy Deletion, as it's possibly the area where I see the most mistakes - I often remove incorrect CSD tags from articles. (A lot of people just don't read the criteria properly, think "This needs to be deleted", and just pick from the most likely-sounding category title.) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• I am generally very supportive of proposals (perennial or not) to unbundle admin rights, but I don't think that NOTNOW rfas serve as any real motivator to do so. As was said above most NOTNOW rfas come from grossly un or under qualified candidates who wouldn't be given a specific user right anyway. The actual dearth of RFAs is arguably a combination of lower numbers of long term editors in the main and lowered conversion from long term editors to admins, with a healthy debate possible about causes for the former and the latter (I tend to see bots, EF, and rollback as substitutes for admins, so the introduction of those probably has a stronger effect on admin creation than we like to think at WT:RFA, but I digress). The only serious drawback to unbundling the tools is a paradoxical one. Once a big portion of the tools are unbundled, adminship will become MORE about social status and being a "super user" (not in the unix sense) than it is today simply because the purely technical reason to give all of the bits (the byte? Ok I'm done) will be less relevant. We may find that people who like be ing janitors will want to be admins once again but if you can delete pages or protect things or whatever and not be an admin than the social part becomes more relevant. I'm much less worried about admin rights being misused if they are handed out piecemeal. Protonk (talk) 23:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I just have a dislike for unbundling anything. I don't see how it would stop it SNOWing, and I don't see how it would improve the climate at RfA so that the experienced editors that are really needed and who are reticent of running the gauntlet will be more ready to come forward and run for office. Unbundling would need a catalogue of quals establishing for the various rights, and we would end up having an extremely granular system of prmissions such as you get on phpBB, for example, leaving, as Protonk suggests, admins with more of an aura of social status and being a "super user" - a bit like in a traditional British school where the prefects don't actually do much more than prowl around looking for issues they can interfere with where they can exert their influence. Kudpung (talk) 01:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess I am not convinced that closing RfAs early which will obviously fail is an actual problem. And I think that improving the climate of RfA is only important insofar as adminship is important. If we can diminish the functional importance of admins to the site, caring about who is naughty on a project page becomes meaningless. Protonk (talk) 01:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• The first three bullet points I agree with. There are several content editors that I would go as far as saying shouldn't be admins, but are unquestionably trustworthy when it comes to our content. On the other hand, I see no need for pseudo deletion, and Unwatchedpages probably ought not be handed out at the discretion of just one person, however respected that one person might be. —WFC— 04:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been fairly inactive over the last year or so, but whatever happened to vandalfighter? This seems to be an extended version of that proposal, one that makes sense primarily for those who are already rollbackers engaged in vandal patrol. I don't have a problem extending these rights to more people provided they be easily losable. Perhaps the ability to protect should be limited to semiprot to remove its chance of usage as an editwarring tool, but other than that it seems sensible. Throwaway85 (talk) 04:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• Actually, if we're going to wade down that path, here's my suggestion:
  • Requirements: Rollbacker, reviewer, etc.
  • Abilities: Semiprot 6 hours, block non-autoconfirmed 2 hours. I think that would handle 95% of the cases vandal fighters encounter, without having enough authority to do much damage.
  • Not integrated with Huggle, etc. Requires manual use.
  • Easily losable. Any admin should be able to both grant and revoke these privileges; having it revoked once should make regaining it very difficult. Throwaway85 (talk) 05:05, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

All valid ideas, but vandalfighter and this proposal (while similar insofar as both would involve unbundling) are two very different proposals, tailored towards two very different types of editor. —WFC— 05:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I just went back and re-read and saw I basically took the "this would exclude" part as the proposal. Don't know quite what I was thinking, there. Throwaway85 (talk) 00:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• From my perspective, this ExperiencedContentEditor is the first unbundling suggestion that makes perfect sense. I would, however, make autopatrolled, rollback, and reviewer rights a prerequisite for, not a subset of, these rights, and I would strictly map it to changing content--no deletion rights, no blocking abilities. In return, I would not restrict the time for which protection levels could be changed. An editor so equipped could work on some currently admin-only backlogs (e.g. DYK queues). --Pgallert (talk) 17:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I don't think it would make sense to make Autopatroller a prerequisite for this. Autopatrolled is only given to editors who create lots of articles, somebody could take twenty stubs to FA and never start a single article. ϢereSpielChequers 01:17, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
    • And then there are those like me. I've created more than 80 articles, and shephered more than 30 through FAC, but I have no rights at all. Malleus Fatuorum 01:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
      • There's some guy on RfA right now who created thousands. And do you know what? I see you and him as both being a net positive, because you're both such nice friendly people. It's the person that shines through, not the numbers. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
        • I wish him luck then. Unless you're taking the piss of course. Malleus Fatuorum 01:50, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we too kind sometimes?

I've been looking back over some repeat RfA failures, and something that's bothering me a bit is that a lot of us try to be very kind to newbies when opposing their WP:NOTINAMILLIONYEARS RfA runs, and I'm concerned that being too kind is perhaps setting them up for future falls. I know I do it - I write something like "I hope I'll be able to support a new RfA in 6 months or so", while in my mind I'm really thinking "There's more chance of my cat becoming Pope than you making admin". In other cases I've said such kind things when I'm talking to minors who I know will need at least several years more maturity before standing a chance. Obviously, I'm not suggesting we should be rude to no-hopers, but are we perhaps doing more harm than good by throwing them hopelessly unrealistic lifelines, and would it not be better to be more honest about their actual prospects? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I, for one, will throw lifelines to people that have spent six months doing good work, but will just politely oppose (i.e. saying something more than "NOTNOW", you know, like actual sentences) the ones that spend six hours doing good work. I would think that you can't be too kind, however you can toy with people's hopes by giving them unrealistic expectations. The kind thing to do would be to explain why they are not ready, using actual words forming a few sentences. However saying "come back in X time" to people who you don't think will be ready in X time isn't really kindness. Does that make sense? (Sorry if it doesn't, I'm kinda sleepy ATM) Sven Manguard Wha? 18:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

What Sven said. "Come back in three months" isn't helpful unless the only thing keeping you from supporting them is their length of time on the project. "Improve X, Y and Z and I will consider supporting next time" is much more useful to the candidate... if they prove unable to improve X, Y and Z, then at least you haven't given them any false promises when they come back in three months or whenever. 28bytes (talk) 19:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I also would love to mandate that all candidates read, cover to cover, Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list before they apply. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict):Probably only by pointing them in the nicest possible way to our suggestions of minimum requirements with an equally friendly hint about the maturity thing in the case of obvious minors who have appeared not to have understood that Wikipedia is not another 'cool blog' as I have seen it referred to by barnstar addicted-adolescents. I haven't checked back, but I would assume the majority of no-hopers to come from the lower end of the age spectrum. --Kudpung (talk) 18:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It's important to avoid setting false expectations. If somebody is doing good work and likely to be a productive member of the project but so far they've only worked in one particular area and notched up 200 edits, it would be silly to say "come back in 3 months". But how often does that happen? Promising future RfA support is probably setting an unrealistic expectation in many cases, but for every !voter who tries to soften the blow there's another who bluntly says "You're not good enough". Anyway, each candidate is different so we have to use common sense and judgement in this. I don't think we have an overwhelming problem of NOTNOW candidates coming here for a second RfA whilst they're still wildly unsuitable. So it's probably not worth much navel-gazing, as we probably have other bigger problems even if we'll never get consensus here on exactly what those problem are.

For the folk here who like to !vote on RfAs, the rare candidates who are both totally unsuitable and repeat-visitors must be grist to the mill; for folk here who don't like to !vote on RfAs, what are you doing here?

There's one repeat visitor that I'm looking out for; certainly not a WP:NOTNOW but somebody who has been through many previous RfAs and appears to have attempted a clean start recently. I expect their new account will RfA sooner or later too. I also expect that they will not disclose their personal history when they apply. That's the kind of candidate that we should worry about, not the occasional affable newbie who has two months experience and lays it all on the table. bobrayner (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're right that it's probably not a big issue - it just struck me that I was guilty of the "3 to 6 months" underestimates, and I'm going to try to be more realistic. I guess what really counts is explaining *why* people fail, and if they can grasp that then the actual timescale shouldn't really matter - although I do see some who seem fixed on the "Has it been long enough yet?" notion. (I also suspect I have the same person on my "watch out for" list too ) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... I wonder if it's the same one I have on my list. Kudpung (talk) 07:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes think the Wikipedia community is not nice enough to less experienced users, especially in this neck of the woods. It's bad enough crushing someone's present hopes, even if it is a case of WP:NOTINAMILLIONYEARS. So give them as much encouragement as possible to spend more time getting to grips with things (if they can be bothered with it). Otherwise, they just won't, and then people will ironically moan that there's not enough RfAs. Treat people as you would like to be treated yourself, especially if you were brave enough to submit yourself to being hung, drawn and quartered by the (all too often) vicious, quarrelling and bitey RfA community...have a heart. Orphan Wiki 17:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: "So give them as much encouragement as possible" - Yes, I agree, but it must be realistic encouragement. Saying "come back in 3 months" when they clearly still won't have a hope then? I think that is likely to do more harm than good. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, yes, that can be unhelpful. But realistic encouragement can't be in short supply, ever. Nor must we ever regard ourselves as too kind in this area, when we're just not. Orphan Wiki 17:34, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not a boolean, black-or-white choice. It's perfectly possible to say "Sorry, I don't think you have the kind of experience necessary to be an administrator, but the work you're already doing is really good". That approach doesn't set false expectations and it encourages competent editors to go away and do more competent editing. Sadly, I've seen a veteran here criticise !voters who offered such moral support; I cannot fathom the reasoning that we might somehow improve wikipedia by being mean to enthusiastic new recruits, when it's already clear that the recruit won't be granted the mop. bobrayner (talk) 18:07, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Oooh, I've been zinged. Boy has that remark been twisted around a few times. My point was and is that giving "moral support" to someone who is doing something manifestly ignorant may encourage them to do it again. Since you aren't actually supporting them it's a lie as well. It's possible to be honest, fair, and friendly at the same time without the silly fiction of "moral support." They need to be encouraged to keep editing Wikipedia, while being discouraged from nominating themselves when they are grossly unqualified and have obviously not even read the RFA page. "Moral support" doesn't do that. Personal, non-templated messages in your own words can. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:30, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I broadly agree with your comments, and my frustration stems from much older (and harsher) comments by a different editor. But let's not rake over old coals; and I apologise for inadvertently burning your ears. bobrayner (talk) 19:38, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue, of course, is we're rather nice and overly kind to newbies and like a bunch of baying harpies to reasonably well established editors. And that goes for all aspects of RFA. Challenging "vested editors" supports or opposes is close to wiki-suicide. Pedro :  Chat  21:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: "My point was and is that giving "moral support" to someone who is doing something manifestly ignorant may encourage them to do it again". That's a good point that I hadn't really thought about. I've done it. I've given "Moral support" !votes intended to mean that I'm offering support for the candidate as an editor - but of course, it's easy to see it as moral support for a future admin run! Doh! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Despite my own hatred of the sheer nastiness of the RfA process, I agree w/ Sven that a 'moral support' doesn't help. An oppose does not need to be cruel; it can simply, and clearly, give good reasons - and in doing so, can explain what would need to change, in order to pass at a future time. To become an administrator, a user should be perfectly capable of accepting appropriate constructive criticism - including an oppose at RfA; if they can't, they're not a great candidate anyway. Kinda "firm but fair".Having said that, someone will probably dig through my contribs and find me making a 'moral support', and thus hypocritical. Meh; Consensushzz can change.  Chzz  ►  17:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I've always been baffled by the touchy-feely Moral Supports that some regulars gift in the support section to obviously unqualified candidates. Since Moral Supports posted in the Support section count as Support votes in the tally, they force extra community members to cast Oppose votes to counterweight them to ensure that the RFA will close early, as is appropriate when consensus is clear. Townlake (talk) 20:45, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

If we start from the assumption that a closing 'crat will interpret moral supports of obviously unqualified candidates as genuine support, and that nobody will close the RfA as NOTNOW... then perhaps the only way to prevent new-but-idealistic people polluting the project is to ensure that 90% of their rejections are direct and explicit. But those may not be entirely appropriate starting assumptions. bobrayner (talk) 23:52, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I've never known an RFA to rise into the possible pass area through moral supports. So I'm not sure Townlake's statement is something which is a real worry.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Limit questions to one per user

Just seen this and think it is completely inappropriate to post that many questions to an RFA - especially as they are all bog-standard questions that can be found on any RFA. What is the point in asking all those questions? I'm particularly interested in the purpose of question 11, which seems to just be adding yet another question for the "fun" of it. I propose we limit questions to one per user, and if users have any genuine questions they can ask the candidate on the talk page. RFAs are long enough without loads of questions, which many people don't even read. AD 13:46, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest a maximum of two per user as a compromise. That wouldn't necessarily prevent an RfA being overloaded with silly questions. However, it would have prevented the problem you refer to. In addition, some of the sensible/useful questions at RfAs do sometimes seem to come in pairs (either both at the same time or with one initial question then a supplemental question from the same user) and I don't have total confidence that the same coverage would be achieved by more editors stepping in with similar questions, if editors were strictly limited to one each. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:52, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

The idea would be to lower the number, not keep it the same, so one would be plenty. Follow-up questions would be fine, but any person can ask a question on the candidate's talk page if they are genuinely interested. If they are not interested, and just posting for "fun" or to boost their edit count, we don't lose anything. AD 13:56, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I don't necessarily see a need for an arbitrary limit, but I do think people need to think harder about whether questions are actually useful, or just trying to be clever. I've mentioned why I don't like one of these questions, and no 11 is equally silly. Does it really tell you anything about the quality of a potential admin? Clearly not.--Korruski^Talk 13:57, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternative idea: how about not putting a limit on the overall number of questions each user can ask, but instead put in a guideline saying each user can only ask a question at a time and can't ask a follow up or a new question until their first/previous question has been answered by the candidate? Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 14:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd go with that. My concern is people seem to have so many questions to ask, but often don't even bother voting or refer to the questions again. Questions should be asked considerately, it takes time to answer carefully, and when many enjoy putting trick questions so that they get to oppose, it needs even more time. AD 14:09, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I like that idea too - it means people can still ask valid extra questions if they need to, but it will help prevent the kind of flood we're seeing in the latest RfA. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

"Optional" questions should be banned entirely. The candidate's record should stand on its own merits. The standard RFA gauntlet quiz, be it one question per user or six, presents voters an easy pathway to reshape the voting process into a mini-job interview, contributing to RFA's perceived difficulty with little real offsetting value added to the process. Legitimate questions should appear on the RFA talk page as discussion items; talk pages exist for a reason, which isn't solely to be a repository for user statistics. Townlake (talk) 14:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

As much as I like that idea and would support it wholeheartedly I doubt it would gain much traction because some people live for asking questions at RFA. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 14:46, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

That strikes me as an additional reason for, not against :) Anyway, people will ask questions in their voting rationales if they can't ask questions in a Q & A section. I'm generally in favor of experimentation followed by fact-based discussion of the merits, and this is an experiment I'd support; even if it didn't work as planned, at least we'd know a little bit more about why it didn't work. But if we can't get consensus for the experiment, I can definitely support the suggestion that we require questioners to wait until their first question has been answered before they ask a second question. - Dank (push to talk) 14:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think the beauty of the "One question at a time" idea is that it is a relatively minimal change, and would stand a much better chance of gaining consensus approval than anything more drastic - a journey of a thousand miles, and all that -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:53, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Perenially bad idea this suggestion is brought up ever few months and is always shot down as a bad idea. Are too many questions being asked? Yes. But limiting the number of questions asked by participants is not the way to fix the problem. We have too many people asking questions instead of reviewing candidates. The questions, and ability to ask them, are necessary to help people who have legit issues/concerns/questions about candidates. They should be, IMHO, relevant to the candidate in specific, not a generic question that gets recycled every RfA or completely irrelevant to the candidate. But if I have 3 legitimate questions for the candidate based upon investigating his/her edits, then I should be able to ask those 3 questions.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

When have we had a straw poll on requiring a voter to wait until the first question is answered before they ask a second question? - Dank (push to talk) 15:58, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Ask them on the person's talk page if you have so many. Limiting "canned" questions, such as the example I gave, probably won't fix the problem, but it will at least be a step in the right direction. AD 15:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Asking on the users talk page is not a good solution. If the questions are relevant, we want the questions preserved on the RFA as part of the record so that people can determine if the issue has been addressed. It isn't that important on RfA's that pass, but can be an issue on RfA's that fail and the person comes back in the future.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:32, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

PS wheeling out the "perennial topic" argument in an attempt to end the discussion isn't helpful. So what if it has been brought up in the past, until you mentioned it everyone so far was positive. AD 15:04, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree on both accounts. Limit the number of questions and make people look at the candidates actual editing history instead of relying on a quiz. Second, while WP:peren can be used effectively at times, there are times when it's not appropriate. If it were up to me I'd ban optional questions. RxS (talk) 15:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Questions can be useful - such as asking about a particular incident, or an edit the candidate made. However, the vast majority of questions add nothing useful to the discussion. AD 15:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably right, but I agree that the vast majority are pretty vacant. RxS (talk) 15:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Are the vacant ones harmful? I don't think I understand the problem. I find the useful ones very useful, so I would hate to discourage them. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:28, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)But that is not something that would be solved by imposing artificial barriers on the number/frequency with which people can ask questions. It has more to do with our allowing canned questions. I personally find more value in some of Keeps' ridiculous questions than I do in some of the canned questions that get recycled every RfA. Any proposal to limit/infringe upon legitimate questions will get an oppose form me... if you want to address the issue, the we need to limit canned questions.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:30, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

They are harmful because it leads to editors judging candidates on single issues when they should be judging them on the larger editing history. A recent RFA ran aground on an off the cuff answer on cool down blocks. It's not a bar exam. If you can't review the editing history you shouldn't be expressing an opinion on the basis of an exam question. There are exceptions of course but overall the value of lots of extra questions is minimal and leads to editors not taking a deeper look into a candidtate. RxS (talk) 18:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Therein is the reason for candidate specific/legitimate questions. Personally, and I've been saying this for years, questions need to be candidate specific. Generic "exam questions" I have a problem with. Like I said, I see more value in Keeps off the wall questions because they are unique, than I do in some of the questions that are regurgitated on every RfA. But when a person does do their due dilligence and has specific questions based upon the candidates edit history, then those questions should be askable. Telling a person with specific questions about a candidates history that they can't ask more than one question is not the answer.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:22, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

No overall limit, but one question at a time per user?

Originally proposed above, re-proposing this down here in its own subsection since I think it's a more viable way forward than the original idea. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 15:25, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternative idea: how about not putting a limit on the overall number of questions each user can ask, but instead put in a guideline saying each user can only ask a question at a time and can't ask a follow up or a new question until their first/previous question has been answered by the candidate? Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Editor review) 14:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd go with that - to start with. AD 15:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd support that.--Korruski^Talk 15:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd oppose that per creep and babies and bathwater.--Cube lurker (talk) 15:54, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not exactly throwing out the baby. More just saying that even for those of us with a beautiful set of triplets, it's better if they come one at a time. :)--Korruski^Talk 15:58, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well then why don't we make it a law that you're only allowed to have one at a time.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:01, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a terrible thing to say :( Actually, my point was really that nothing is lost by this proposal, since those people with worthwhile questions still get to ask them. After all, RfAs last a week - there's no hurry to ask all your questions in one go. So no babies need be harmed in the making of this proposal.--Korruski^Talk 16:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

My point was that even if in most cases it's "better" if they come one at a time it's not something you legislate. Just as I would oppose restrictions on your 2nd and 3rd baby I'd oppose trying to legislate and police someones 2nd or 3rd question.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:08, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, but that goes more to scope creep than throwing out babies, I suppose. In any case questions are not babies, and the reasons we don't legislate to prevent people from having babies, even when having babies might be very foolish, are largely not applicable here. So perhaps this metaphor has outlived it's usefulness...--Korruski^Talk 16:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, So we can boil it down to the metaphorless Idea that everytime we see something that isn't optimal we don't need to outlaw the ability to do it productively as well as unproductively, and doubly so when it doesn't impact on article space.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:15, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I echo my support here, from above -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Support, as an experiment, with a caveat: people will ask questions in their voting rationales if they can't ask questions in a Q & A section, so we'll just have to see how the candidates and voters respond if the extra questions wind up in the voting sections. - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, definitely - it seems like a low risk thing to try. If it works well, great, but if it doesn't, it won't do any harm and we can easily drop it. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. It will create unnecessary drama, when one user asks a two part question and we debate whether a two part question is allowed. A two part question might well be a good question, and might well be best structured as two questions asked at the same time.--SPhilbrickT 17:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Why don't we just collapse the questions section (starting with #4) and be done with it? People who want to ask can ask, people who want to read the questions can uncollapse and read them just like they uncollapse the RfA/RfB toolbox, and people who don't want to see the questions don't have to. 28bytes (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose if you have legitimate questions, there is no harm in asking all of your questions at once. There may be harm/gaming the system if we require questioners to wait until their first question is answered or limiting questions to 1. "I'm sorry X that you didn't get to ask your pertinent question because I didn't answer your first question." Or, "Why didn't you ask THAT question first, if I knew about THAT, then I would have opposed. But you chose to ask another question first that isn't as important." No the problem is not with the timing of questions nor with the number of questions. If a question is valid and pertinent, then there should be zero restrictions on who/when the question can be asked.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
  • There may be, but there's only one way to find out, and finding out probably won't break anything. This certainly isn't directed at you, Balloonman, but I think WT:RFA is going to continue to be an unpopular page as long as it continues to contain mostly arguments about whether something might or might not work, rather than a place to set up experiments and discuss the actual results of the experiments. If we know we're unlikely to get consensus for something, then let's not waste the reader's time; but this latest proposal seems reasonably benign and inoffensive. However, if we don't get consensus for it, then let's propose something similar that doesn't require consensus; for instance, we might agree as a group to leave messages on the talk pages of voters who post a large number of simultaneous questions to an RFA, and see if the results are helpful or not. - Dank (push to talk) 17:46, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
    • If a person has legitimate questions, then I oppose any effort to limit/relegate them. The problem isn't with legitimate questions, but rather with the canned regurgitated questions that can be used on a multitude of persons. If a person has legit concerns, based upon a review of a candidates, then there should be zero restrictions to his/her asking questions.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:57, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Who decides what is legitimate, and what is not? I think most questions could easily be not asked, but others who ask them will no doubt disagree. Point is, candidates are overwhelmed with silly questions, on a process that's stressful enough. Five questions at once, all of which are "canned" from other RFAs, is completely unacceptable. The only way to stop this is to limit questions being asked. I have never known a case where so many questions were desperately needed to be asked in one go by one person. I've already said several times, but such questions can be asked on the person's talk page. Most people don't care about questions or the answers, unless the answers are horrifically wrong. All this "no harm" is complete nonsense too - it's a stressful situation, and when a candidate sees there are 10 questions that need answering by impatient people who might not even bother voting, it makes it worse. AD 18:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Therein lies the crux of the problem. I agree, we have entirely too many questions---most of which do not need to be asked. If I were to throw out a definition of what I consider ot be legit, it would be the ones that are specific to specific users based upon the specific user's history. I don't ask too many questions at RfA, but when I do they are based upon the user's history and are always specific to the user. I'd be much more willing to try to go after the generic questions that get asked every RfA. If the same/similar question is asked on 3 RfA's then it should be vetted by the community for merit. If it is worth including as a standard question, then we add it as a standard question.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:13, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

(EC)All things seem benign and inoffensive when you agree with them. If I or I Imagine Balloonman felt it was benign and inoffensive we wouldn't be wasting out time opposing.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

huh????---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:01, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

That was in response to Dank above you where he said but this latest proposal seems reasonably benign and inoffensive.--Cube lurker (talk) 18:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, now it makes more sense, I thought it was a response to me and that I was too dense to comprehend it.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Cube lurker, sometimes I add "to me" after my opinions and sometimes I don't; either way, I mean "to me", I didn't mean that your POV was invalid. The reason it seems benign by comparison to similar proposals (to me) is that we're not stopping anyone from doing anything ... they can still ask 5 questions inserted: in the voting section or even in the Q&A section, as long as the candidate chooses to reply, and as long as they space the questions out.

By the way ... we're not the first people ever to consider this question, and we don't have to operate in the realm of speculation here. If you watch legal dramas on TV, you know that in the Western tradition, the lawyer can't ask as many questions as they like without giving the witness a chance to respond, because asking a lot of questions without waiting for answers allows you to implant ideas in the minds of the jurors not based on facts in evidence, and also because every question has a small chance of going wrong in some way (such as, diverting attention from the witness to the questioner), and these small problems can stack up fast if a series of inappropriate questions are asked all at once. - Dank (push to talk) 18:38, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a different venue. The lawyer isn't going to be told he can't ask question #2 because 48 hours later the witness still hasn't answered question #1. The lawyer isn't going to be asking questions and logging off for the weekend hoping to have both answered when he comes back. There's absolutely no comparison to be made.--Cube lurker (talk) 18:45, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't agree with your last sentence. Rules of evidence (developed over hundreds of years by Western jurists and designed to frustrate people who try to manipulate the question-and-answer process to their own ends) may in theory be enlightening, or at least, more enlightening than what you and I can come up with in 5 minutes of thought. And no one has proposed telling the voters they can't ask as many questions as they like, only that their additional statements and questions will have to go in the voting section, along with everyone else's. Some people only got the idea that they have a right to have every one of their many concerns highlighted and spotlighted, above everyone else's, because our quirky Q & A section gave them that idea. It's not an idea we should be encouraging; the poor results speak for themselves. - Dank (push to talk) 19:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure there's a sentence in there that I do agree with. Except the first I guess which is your perogative. <shrug>.--Cube lurker (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I support this proposal, but given it seems to have run into opposition, how about this for a modification: after a user has asked a question at RFA, they may not ask another until either their previous question has been answered, or 24 hours have passed, whichever happens first. That would resolve the 'issue' Balloonman suggests of candidates dodging potential followup questions by refusing to answer the first ones; if they tried, the followup questions would get posted soon enough anyway. People would still be able to ask all the questions they want to at RFA, they'd just have to do it at a more reasonable pace. That might make them take more time to think about what they ask, and make sure they put the important questions first. Can anyone seriously object to this? Robofish (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that this is better. - Dank (push to talk) 02:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Like Balloonman I want to get rid of the boilerplate questions that don't seem to be based on the specific candidate, some of which I suspect are asked without even properly reviewing the candidate's edits. But I don't want to restrict questions that actually matter. However there is another drawback to this proposal, people could get round it by simply asking complex questions such as: "Using this or any other account, have you ever edited whilst intoxicated or in the pay of someone else, and in what way does this relate to your favourite colour?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by WereSpielChequers (talk • contribs)

I agree with your and Balloonman's objection that if you in any way reduce the visibility of the good questions, then a possible consequence is to increase the impact of questions that aren't helpful. So the question is: can you define one or more classes of unhelpful questions that almost all of us will agree are unhelpful, and can you define the classes precisely enough so that crats will know when to step in and remove a question? If it's any help, "rules of evidence" in the US often exclude: questions that are irrelevant in a prejudicial way, questions that badger, questions that assume facts not in evidence, and questions that are obviously designed to further some goal of the questioner unrelated to the matter at hand. I was thinking this would be hard, but maybe it's doable. (I don't think any crat would have trouble identifying your sample question as an attempt to game the rules.) - Dank (push to talk) 02:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree also with everything WSC and Balloonman have said above. It does appear as if the multiple questions posed by a single user have now have simply been condensed into single multi-element questions. The effect is the same as multiple numbered questions, but with the additional disadvantage that when the questioner gets the longer answer that addresses all the elements, they complain in their ensuing oppose vote that it's TLDR. Kudpung (talk) 07:26, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

One other very real problem for the candidate is not only the dilemma of answering policy question the right way to appease a deletionist or an inclusionist, to avoid an oppose vote, but also how to address one that is based on the questioner's personal philosophy, is a leading question, and is possibly not directly relevant to RfA. The candidate is left wondering whether he should give the answer the questioner wants, in order to avoid an oppose vote, or to give the correct answer that complies with Wikipedia policy and/or philosophy. To refute, however politely and accurately, for example, the questioner who clearly believes that bus drivers should only write articles about busses, and who suggests in his question that sysops should impose such limitations on other contributors, is going to court an oppose vote. How does one single out such questions before they are answered, to avoid possible pile-ons? We probably just have to rely on the closing 'crat's judgment on such votes.Kudpung (talk) 07:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

There can sometimes seem to be a fine line to tread at RFA. But in my experience an otherwise qualified editor who sticks to policy should be able to get through. Deletionists who fail tend to be people who try to delete articles that clearly shouldn't be deleted, or at least not without proper discussion and an opportunity to source them. Inclusionists who fail tend to be people whose views on sourcing or notability are clearly out of consensus. An isolated mistake in CSD tagging shouldn't scupper an RFA unless it reveals a pattern. There is a worse problem with saying whether you would be open to recall as I've seen people oppose for either possible answer to that question. ϢereSpielChequers 11:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose any restrictions Questions are optional for a reason, nonconstructive ones can be ignored, constructive ones are completely worth it. RfA is a one time shot, we shouldn't be limited to what we can ask the candidates. Swarm ^X 23:19, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

How big a problem is the question section?

I'm concerned that irrelevant or ill-considered questions clutter up the question section at the risk both of burying questions that matter, and also of distracting RFA !voters from properly assessing the candidate. My fear is that not only is RFA broken in the sense of producing far fewer admins than needed to maintain the number of active admins, but I also worry that the emphasis on stats and questions makes RFA less effective at screening out bad candidates than if the emphasis was still on checking the candidate's contributions.

One current RFA had eight "optional" questions within an hour and a half of transclusion, several of which looked to me as if they'd been asked without any more assessment of the candidate than reading their nomination. I'm tempted to suggest a restriction on asking questions in the first 24 hours of an RFA so as to prevent people asking questions before they've properly assessed the candidate's contributions. But it would be creeping bureaucracy and risk provoking people to oppose over a diff without first asking the candidate and seeing if there was an acceptable reason for it or lesson learned from it.

Also the increased number of questions and their decreasing relevance may simply be a symptom of something deeper. We have far fewer candidates running now than in 2004-2007, so the total number of questions asked per month is actually down, even if the number of questions per candidate is up. My experience is that asking lots of questions at RFA is a phase that many new RFA regulars go through, I certainly did. If that's the case this is something we need to gently guide rather than create complex policy on. I'd be tempted to write an essay on the subject of RFA questions, but the best examples are ones on which RFAs turn and it would be rather unfair to trawl them out again, whilst the worst examples are not things that editors should be pilloried over. So my suggestion re irrelevant, boilerplate and ill considered questions is that we talk to the people asking those questions and explain our concerns, and also that we lighten up somewhat. One "Keepscases style" question in an RFA isn't going to hurt anyone and can provide light relief - it also serves a useful purpose by satirising the cookie cutter ones. ϢereSpielChequers 11:53, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with all that, and well done, but as with any other suggestion, I can't get too excited until I see what it does in practice. - Dank (push to talk) 12:07, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It's not the same people asking the questions all the time, although they often use the popular boilerplates. Every single RfA has new names cropping up among the questioners and voters that we have never heard of. Should one ask them all as to their motives? Not everyone considers all those questions to be irrelevant. One Keepscases type question for example, can cause a lot of peripheral damage. In the absolute hypothesis that an RfA concludes on a majority of oppose !votes due to 'Don't like the answer to Question X;' irrelevant, boilerplate and ill considered questions, what is the 'crat supposed to do? Kudpung (talk) 12:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Problem is, the majority of participants do little in terms of research. I can think of at least one RfA in the last six months where the candidate was clearly treating AfD as an out-and-out vote, yet it took a poor answer to a deletion question for people who had previously blindly supported to realise that the user was unsuitable to close them. —WFC— 13:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

There are some interesting points made here, and I find myself with contradictory opinions. One current RfA did get a bit of a flood, with one or two blatantly silly questions. But then, I can't help feeling that candidates should transclude their RfAs when they have time to answer the early questions, and not transclude and then disappear for 24 hours - when I transcluded mine, I made sure I did it when I had a good 5-6 hours free that fitted in with US and UK time. I think the questions I've had have all been pretty good - and the Keepscases one was quite apt for me! Also, I can't help feeling that the overall quality of questions has improved in the past month or two - possibly related to Kudpung's analytical notes? The point that it's a widely varying set of people asking questions is also very pertinent. It means that any attempts at persuasion by discussion here may well only have a short term effect - who knows when we'll get a bunch of "trick question" people turning up? So I find myself torn. Sometimes I think the questioning process needs to be reformed some way, but sometimes I think it's best to just leave it alone - in part, at least, because it is always easier to identify problems than solutions -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:46, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

It's probably too soon to say that my notes have had much effect. Although the page has had nearly 500 hits in the short time its been up, it's generally only known to the regulars here, so because it's packed full of resources, the same people may be consulting it several times. I have noticed that I only have to put a blue link to it though, and the hit stats soar for that day. I've been accused of 'talking like a cracked record' on this talk page about RfA questions, and I'm more inclined to think that's got something more to do with it. Kudpung (talk) 14:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd much rather approach this subject from this angle than trying to limit the number or timing of questions being asked. Limiting the number of questions a person can ask or forcing them to ask one after another won't be affectived because we have too many people racing to ask the "cool" questions. Right now, the "Oppose/rebuttal" question is in vogue. There are currently 3 candidates running for Admin, and the Opposer/rebuttal question has been asked by 3 different people on those 3 RfAs! IMO, if a question is asked on more than 3 RfA's then it should be reviewed by the community to determine if it should be added as a "standard question." Questions shouldn't become "standard questions" because a handful of users insist on posting the question du jure on every RfA. I've said it above, but Keeps ridiculous questions are often more meaningful than some of the canned responses I've seen. I'd rather have one of Keeps irresponsible questions than to have the dozen text book questions that are asked of every candidate!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:59, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, the "Write something bad about yourself then contradict it with something good" question is nonsensical, to put it nicely. It doesn't help me as a veteran RfA participant – nor anybody I'm sure – assess the candidate. One person asks a clever-sounding question, which might very well have been useful for that particular RfA, and then it becomes a way to show off the accomplishment of being the first person to copy-paste it into a new nomination. Juliancolton (talk) 00:48, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I strongly agree with that, I've brought it up during an RfA before. The oppose/rebuttal questions are becoming some sort of standard RfA question, when they're really not helpful. Making the candidate jump through hoops in their RfA questions isn't constructive. Swarm ^X 04:36, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I would also note that I would rather have a dozen text book questions than to risk not getting a truly insightful question from somebody who has done their home work and needs a naggling point resolved. I'd rather have a person ask the question on an sticking point than to default to oppose because they didn't want to jump through some beaucratic hoops.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 05:08, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The oppose/rebuttal question is, IMHO, totally irrelevant - nobody is expected to expose their weaknesses at a job interview and run the risk of talking themselves out of the appointment, and that's what too many of the RfA question types effectively do. The questions are nevertheless answered to appease, and to avoid an 'oppose' vote. Asking plainly and civilly how they would address certain crises, is probably more constructive, but even then they should not be trick questions, or questions to which the posers do not have an answer themselves. The Keepscases type questions have been know to cause a lot of peripheral damage to an RfA. Kudpung (talk) 05:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The "what is your biggest weakness" or "What would your boss say is your biggest weakness" is a standard interview question. But anybody who has any clue is prepared to answer it... and knows to take an issue that isn't really a deal breaker and turn it into a positive.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 06:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure now where you stand on this. In response to one of your posts above, Julian writes: Agreed, the "Write something bad about yourself then contradict it with something good" question is nonsensical, to put it nicely. Kudpung (talk) 08:00, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

My criticism isn't with the specific question, but with generic text book questions that are asked in multiple RfA's. These questions don't add much in the way of resolving issues, but are intended to trip up the candidate. This specific question, is a play on a standard interview question. If you are ever thinking about interviewing for a job, you need to be prepared for this (or variations) of this question. The key the pros give is to come up with a problem/issue that really isn't a negative and made it sound as if you are the golden boy. "My biggest problem is that I am too much of a perfectionist" or "My biggest problem is that I work too hard." You don't really give your biggest problem, in the same vein, a person who is running aren't going to tell you about that one time where they told a newbie to take a flying leap off a building. They are going to give a raeson they can easily rebut, not real value added.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 08:17, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Kudpung, if you found that particular question to be useless, why didn't you either ignore it, or simply answer "No."? That's meant as a rhetorical question, but if RfA candidates only dignified questions that they deemed relevant with a proper response, useless questions would soon disappear. —WFC— 11:42, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm trying to convey below. If candidates don't feel compelled to answer every question, then silly questions or too many questions won't be a problem. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:05, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

If candidates don't feel compelled to answer every question then they'd better prepare to fail. Therein lies my biggest problem with the so-called "optional" questions; they are by no means optional in practice, and seldom even in theory. Juliancolton (talk) 13:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

WFC, Julian, Adrian, I agree wholeheartedly with all your comments, it's a suggestion I made in a long since archived thread. But who is going to take the risk and start the new precedent? I had lost a lot of sleep wondering if I should be the first, but the coward in me finally decided I didn't want to be a guinea pig.Kudpung (talk) 13:33, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

And if you didn't answer the questions, the response would have been, "Oppose, candidate appears not listen to consensus or work well within the community."---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:53, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should start a culture where, rather than putting the load on the candidate, other editors make short comments on the question like "Don't bother answering this one, it's silly" or similar. With 2 or 3 such comments, a candidate is more likely to feel able to ignore a question. Johnbod (talk) 04:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

So... Are the optional questions optional?

The above threads indicate widespread dissatisfaction with the number and type of questions admin candidates are asked, as well as some reluctance to deal with the problem by imposing limits on the questions. Beneath the discussion lies an unstated assumption: that candidates are obliged, in practice if not in principle, to answer every question. But is this assumption an illusion? I have a few hunches:

• If any candidate were brave enough to respond to this barrage of boilerplate questions with, "I'm sorry, but I don't see how my answering those five questions will help anyone judge my suitability for adminship. Perhaps you could ask a question about something from my editing history instead?", that candidate would garner more support, not less;
• Any bureaucrat would place little or no weight on a !vote that read "Oppose he didn't answer my question about the difference between a ban and a block";
• Most RfA participants would be perfectly happy to support a suitable candidate who had declined to answer a few generic questions.

Am I right? Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 08:29, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

A much debated question:

To the first one: I think that where any auto-confirmed editor can say (almost) anything on RfA, that a major problem is with irresponsible or unreflected !votes based on the questions. I am not personally offended one bit about your suggested answer, but there is a risk that someone, or several, will oppose with something like 'what a pompous, obtuse jerk', and others might well pile on their agreement. Would the closing bureaucrat discount such !votes?

To the second one: Are we sure? The grey zone is 80% - 70% where the pass/fail is subject to the closing bureaucrat's discretion where s/he can discount !votes, but what if a significant majority of oppose votes were based on such responses?

To the third one: 'Most RfA participants...', I think that apart from the regular !voters, who are often in the minority, the rest is an eclectic group of editors whose reactions are unpredictable.

Optional questions are a bit like "You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you say may be taken down and used against you" - and anything you don't say will be held against you.

Kudpung (talk) 12:13, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm a fairly active nominator, and my typical advice to nominees and anyone else running for RFA is to answer all questions in the order they are asked. But also to remember it is an open book exam. We want admins who will check the policy when they are unsure or unfamiliar with it, so take the time to reread the policy before answering each question; Especially if you haven't spotted the trick part of it. I also advise not transcluding when you've finished RFA and it is ready, save it for the start of your next editing session, give it a last read-through and submit it. That way you have an opportunity to answer some of the early questions fairly quickly, whilst avoiding the sort of 3am editing marathon I experienced on my second RFA.

But I don't share the unstated assumption that you posit. I don't believe that the deluge of questions is deterring candidates, I've sounded out a lot of potential candidates and I can't remember anyone saying they won't run because of the number of questions. My concern is that the size and prominence of the question section in recent RFAs has reduced RFAs effectiveness at distinguishing between good and bad candidates. I don't like to see questions being asked unless they are based on the candidate's edits because I fear that means that the questioner and many of the !voters will be voting according to the Q&A of the candidate. In my view it would be much better if they looked at the candidate's edits and judged whether or not they would make a good admin. ϢereSpielChequers 17:02, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. This is not a closed book test. During my RFA, I checked policy freely. With one tricky question, I went to my nominator for advice, giving him my proposed answer and asking him what he thought (he thought well of it). We do not want admins who will reflexively act in a cowboy fashion. We prefer that they check the policies, consult with each other, share the responsibility.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Are the optional questions optional? No. If something is so terrible that it gets removed by another editor, it's not worth answering, but optional questions that remain on the AfD are not really optional. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

There has never been anything in the rules that states additional questions need be optional. I do not label my questions as optional. Keepscases (talk) 04:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Equally, there is nothing in the rules that say the additional questions must be answered - regardless of how they are labelled.--ClubOranje^T 09:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Everything on Wikipedia is optional. The right of a Wikipedian is to withdraw from any area or activity within the project at any time. After all, how can you force an anonymous computer user to do something? Juliancolton (talk) 21:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, at that level they're obviously optional, but that's not what people are asking - what we are discussing is whether the questions can really be considered optional if you want to succeed at RfA -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, which is a different story. If "optional" means blackmailing candidates into answering questions with the disclaimer that we won't hunt you down in your sleep if you opt not to respond, that's even worse. Juliancolton (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The way questions are answered gives a clue how a potential admin will respond to questions as an admin. So as it is important to respond to questions, there should be some response to good faith questions. But I agree excessive numbers of questions are a burden and do not match what happens in real life. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Adrian, you ask "Most RfA participants would be perfectly happy to support a suitable candidate who had declined to answer a few generic questions [....] am I right?". Well I think that's pretty doubtful. My personal opinion - and this is only a hunch but with a lot of experience added in - if a candidate ignored all questions (noting that the "standard" first three are "optional") I doubt they'd get anything like unanimous support. Memory says there has been more than one RFA where not answering questions has caused significant opposition. Pedro :  Chat  22:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

My guess is that people wouldn't mind too much if a candidate specifically declined to answer a question they felt was irrelevant or inappropriate, by saying something to that effect next to the "A:" prompt, but appearing to ignore the question and leaving the space next to the "A:" blank would likely raise eyebrows among some voters, no matter how bad the question is. 28bytes (talk) 22:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're right on that 28bytes. It's the appearance of being uncomunicative that is often the issue, not that one refuses to address a particular question RFA. Pedro :  Chat  22:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I caused some confusion here through ambiguity in my opening post. By "generic questions" I was referring to questions from RfA participants that were not tailored to the candidate; it hadn't occurred to me that the three standard questions are also, technically, optional. By "few" I meant three or four out of the dozen plus that are normally asked, and by "decline" I meant in the manner described by 28bytes, not flat-out ignore. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 00:25, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: we officially rename the optional questions (that are not optional) to additional questions. Thoughts? AD 22:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused about what problem this is meant to solve?--Korruski^Talk 22:50, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It's quite clear - the so-called optional questions simply are not optional, so the name is misleading. AD 22:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

All questions here are optional, as nobody can force you to answer them. Malleus Fatuorum 23:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The questions are optional, the questioners' support for candidates who decline to answer is optional, the supporters stating their displeasure towards questioners who have declined to support the candidates who have declined to answer the question is optional... it's turtles all the way down. Just a big ol' messy ball of free will. 28bytes (talk) 23:16, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Discworld? Malleus Fatuorum 23:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Russell. Discworld is on my to-read list, though. 28bytes (talk) 04:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Where exactly are the additional questions called "optional questions"? If questioners wish to label them that way, I think that should remain their right. Keepscases (talk) 23:12, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Why bother asking if you don't care whether they answer or not? There are enough questions as it is - we don't need extra ones that are just added carelessly with no thought put into it, and no interest in whether or not an answer is given. AD 23:36, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If I have to read about the "is it really optional" problem again, I'm going to scream. Bam.[1] No longer mentioned as being definitely optional. Let the instructions actually reflect reality for once. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:37, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Come on, you've been here long enough to know that these discussions follow a lunar cycle... once ever 28 days or so we reraise all of the issues we've discussed before and accomplish nothing.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

So perhaps I should have said that if I read about it again, I'd become a lunatic? Eh? Eh? No? Oh well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Become???? That ships already sailed.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 19:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

...damn, should have seen that coming a mile away. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I figured that I would toss in my 2¢ here: one of the reasons I've never nominated myself (or hinted strongly to another editor that I'd like to be nominated) is that I consider RfA to be marginally less painful than enduring a feeding frenzy with sharks, and posing optional questions is essentially chumming the waters. I'd be a bit less cynical if I saw more questioners posing relevant and thoughtful questions that require a thoughtful answer, and not just a policy scavenger hunt. I'm an intelligent man, and an oppose based on the fact that I couldn't wade through the maze of image copyright rules to answer a notionally "optional" question would probably make me so angry that I'd pull my hair out (in this hypothetical, if the !voter had considered more than just the answer to his canned question, he'd see that I freely admit my ignorance to image copyright, and owuld never meddle in it, instead passing off any issues to individuals who are knowledgable there). The pre-made template/form questions that I see some editors pose at every RfA really grind my gears: there is no consideration about who the nominee is, his or her editing history, or what thier intents and talents are. Worst of all, most nominees are smart enough to either do a bit of research, or get coached, and figure out how to feed back the same thoughtless drivel to satisfy what has become a process. These discussions should be more like a job interview than a questionaire, and this trend towards increasingly automated opinion-forming alarms me as to what kind of people are being given the mop because some of the !voters aren't considering things fully.
We can't realistically dictate how an editor is or is not allowed to consider thier vote, but I think that restricting editors from excessive questions, and discouraging thoughtless voting and questioning would make me happy. But as it stands, I would feel entirely comfortable with posting something along the lines of what A.J. Hunter suggested in his first question above, even if it did cost me consensus to succeed, simply because I wouldn't want the mop awarded based on the fact that I know how to do research, and garnered support without regard for my actual suitability for it. bahamut0013^words_deeds 16:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Admitting to being cynical about anything is only marginally worse than having a sense of humour. The sharks are getting hungry - when can I nominate you? --Kudpung (talk) 03:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I suggest: Requiring that questions are seconded. That is, a question in the question section requires two editors in good standing to pose it. I suggest a subpage for proposing questions. Editors may continue to ask individual questions in, for example, the neutral section (indeed, some of the better questions are already found there). We could agree to this as a rule, or a nominee could insist on this at the outset. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:16, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm afraid that would be unnecessary bureaucracy to the max. My best suggestion would be to give the candidate far more leeway in deciding which questions (subsequent to the initial three) he or she would like to answer. The point of RfA is to determine whether or not somebody has adequate judgment to be a sysop, so surely that good judgment should also apply to the RfA itself. Juliancolton (talk) 11:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Basically, leave it up to the second-dumbest person in the room to make the decision? That's not much of a step forward. I don't see all that much wrong with the candidate just answering the questions. If they become an admin they will have to deal with much sillier shit. Franamax (talk) 12:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I was assuming the premise that the silly questions are a problem requiring a solution. Julian and Franamax seem to reject the premise. I don't disagree with them. Perhaps if you can't face being asked silly questions, you shouldn't be an admin? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:04, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the issue isn't so much with "silly" questions as those that are simply unnecessary and unconstructive, and that simply contribute to the candidate's stress during RfA. Admins aren't expected to be drill sergeants. Juliancolton (talk) 03:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

But RfA can be the worst thing a person goes through since boot camp - not so much for the questions themselves, as for the iniquities in the voting process that follows based on them. Voters will still draw their opinions based on those simply unnecessary and unconstructive questions. At RfA you are supposed to let the prosecution and your defence attorneys argue it out - you're told not to poke your own nose in and Wikipedia's mantras about Good Faith go out of the window . Kudpung (talk) 02:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thankspam

I hope it's OK to post this link here - it seems better than spamming everyone individually -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Same same: To all the regulars and not so regulars here in the RfA dept. --Kudpung (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

This is a disgrace. In my day, we bent over backwards meticulously delivering thankspam to each and every participant, through rain, snow, sleet and storm, uphill both ways and with cardboard for shoes. Juliancolton (talk) 11:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

We used to dream of having card... no, no, I won't start all that ;-) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• Barnstar for laziness anyone? :) --Hammersoft (talk) 22:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

OMG! Don't mention barnstars, p l e a s e... --Kudpung (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• • <sarcasm>You know, this seriously makes me question your commitment as admins. This stinks of rogue IAR, you're skirting your responsibility to deliver a message to each and every voter. I move for admin recall immediately!</sarcasm> Oh, and by the way, when I do thankspam, I even create custom banrstars. Standards people, standards! Sven Manguard Wha? 22:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
    • God help us all if you made barnstars! Thank God you've limited yourself to banrstars! --Hammersoft (talk) 23:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
      • That's low dude. You totally ruined my dream of making more branstars. Sven Manguard Wha? 23:36, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
        • So long as you use wholegrain, and not that fake stuff! --Hammersoft (talk) 14:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Who is Pam, and why are we giving her thanks? jæs (talk) 14:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

• I think it's the western name for this popular girl. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:52, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Marker10

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Marker10 has been around a while, but doesn't seem to be complete. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It's only been there for six days, and Eagles 24/7 has talked to him about it. Just leave it for now. --Floquensock (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

AfD stats for RfA candidates

Discussion (closed)

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. Just testing the waters. It's clear there is no consensus for using this tool at RfA, so no further discussion is required here. I will only be using this only for my own purposes and will not post links to the results at RfA. I have also deleted the example page so as to not influence the ongoing RfA (but other example pages are probably available if you look hard enough). If anyone would like to request a report, feel free to contact me directly. Thanks. —SW— chatter 19:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I've been working on a bot script to collect statistics about a user's AfD voting patterns. I thought it might be useful as a tool to help people evaluate RfA candidates. It is still in a very rough stage of development, and is probably still making plenty of errors (i.e. reporting votes incorrectly) and omissions (i.e. skipping over AfD's that it can't parse), and it relies 100% on editors making bolded votes. It also currently only looks at AfD votes that were made in the last 5000 edits. There is much room for improvement. However, I'd like to get some input from the community on whether this would be a good tool to use regularly for RfA. I have created a sample of what the output of the script currently looks like at User:Snottywong/AfD stats/User:Peridon. I chose Peridon because he/she is currently up at RfA and has expressed an interest in working at AfD. Take a look and let me know what you think. —SW— yak 01:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Interesting idea. The green/red coding is a little off-putting, to be honest... if you voted 'delete' on an article that was kept, it would show up as "wrong" (since that's how many people interpret the color red). If color-coding is needed, perhaps an idea would be to code yellow as "!voted keep and the result was delete", green for "!voted the same as the AfD result", and blue as "!voted delete and the result was keep"... Would it be possible to have the script output the candidate's comments (a maximum of a couple lines if needed) as well? Seeing whether the candidate offers a bunch of "me too" "per nom" comments versus thoughtful analysis of the sources is a much better guide to their competence than whether their !vote matched the eventual AfD result, in my opinion. (Regardless, kudos on the work so far.) 28bytes (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the comments. The script was originally an idea for a tool to analyze my own AfD votes, to see how often I am "right" (i.e. how often I vote the same way that the article eventually closes) vs. how often I am "wrong", thus the red/green coloring. I could certainly do the blue/yellow idea to more clearly show the different scenarios (actually, I intended for any No Consensus AfD's to display as a light orange, but that didn't happen)(Fixed). If you look closely, you'll see I treat certain results as "right" even though they are not exact matches (i.e. voting delete on a speedy delete is considered right, even voting delete on a redirect is considered right at the moment, might change that though). I thought about including the voter's comments in there as well, but I think that would only enlarge an already enormous table. Plus, there are links there for you to quickly go to any of the AfD's and check out the votes for yourself, in context. —SW— communicate 01:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I personally think seeing at least one line of the candidate's comments for each AfD would be extremely valuable; not sure how easy it would be to script an option for including or not including the comments, but I know I would certainly love to see the "with comments" version. Maybe not as a separate column but as text under the AfD's page title? Regarding color, if you use a blue-green-yellow continuum you could have bluish-green mean "!voted delete and the result was merge", yellowish-green mean "!voted merge and the result was delete" etc. Seems like the speedy delete-delete-redirect-merge-keep-speedy keep continuum would map pretty well to that. 28bytes (talk) 01:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Very cool. It would be nice to have a "total" column so that we could see immediately how many total keep votes the candidate has made, how many delete votes, etc. --Danger (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Yup, that's next on the list of things to add. Totals of each vote type, as well as percentage of total votes. For example, "Keep Votes: 372 (36.2%)" —SW— chatter 01:34, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Love the Idea -- would also love to see it work. Tofutwitch11 (TALK) 02:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC) OMG, love it,. w00t. Do me, please - I wanna see it! Chzz rarely descends to saying 'OMG' but, well...this is w00t) Chzz  ►  02:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If this something that is needed, though? It seems to be based on the assumption that admins should predict consensus, but having a contrary view - if well supported - isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in the past I've noticed a preference for people explaining their reasoning over voting "per nom". To work at AfD you would need to fairly evaluate consensus, but that's not the same thing as needing to agree. While I think I can see where this is going, and the data has value, removing it from the context of the individual AfD discussions may risk losing something important from the evaluation process. Anyway, its just a thought - making quantitative data easy to get isn't always in the interests of a process. - Bilby (talk) 02:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I have no doubt in my mind that this will be abused, and that people will say things like "Oppose - more than 25% of AfD !votes were against consensus" or something equally asinine. Kind of like the way the automated edits counter is abused. But if a comment or two from each AfD are included in the report, this can be a valuable overview to a candidate's reasoning (or lack thereof) in deletion debates. 28bytes (talk) 03:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I agree that adding some qualitative data would help. :) I guess my concern is that, if this is used as it stands, it is in my interest (should I ever want to run for admin), to wander over to AfD, find discussions which are clearly going to be delete or keep, and toss in a late !vote along the lines of consensus. However, it isn't in my interest to spend some time evaluating tricky articles and come to a conclusion, if that conclusion isn't the consensus view, as it will show up on this report as a big red box highlighting that I was wrong. :) - Bilby (talk) 03:20, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I have that exact same concern, that if potential RfA candidates think they'll be judged on how "right" they are in an AfD debate, they'll just find a bunch of lopsided discussions and glom onto the "winning" side with a "per" !vote to boost their "green" count. That's why I'm hoping SW includes at least a snippet from each AfD so people can see what the candidates are saying at AfD, rather than how they're voting. 28bytes (talk) 03:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Hmm, the users above do make very valid points. But, any tool can be abused; this just provides a bit more openness. Whilst people will no doubt misinterpret the results...I don't see that as a good reason to hide them - if you know what I mean?  Chzz  ►  03:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Openness is good, and SW is to be applauded for his work on this. I just hope he considers the request for some qualitative data (i.e. comments) in addition to the quantitative. I for one would feel much more edified seeing that a candidate voted "Keep - all websites are notable" on a "kept" AfD rather than just seeing a green box to indicate s/he was "right". 28bytes (talk) 03:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Honestly I think it would be best if the user has to opt into the check like the edit counter. It seems a bit stalkish and likely prone to abuse. Alpha Quadrant talk 03:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Agree 100% on opt-in. (Then again, how many RfA candidates don't opt in to the edit counter? Kind of like those "optional" questions...) 28bytes (talk) 03:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I also agree it should be opt-in only. I also feel that it should only really be considered for candidates who expect to be closing deletion discussions. The tool is certainly not intended to encourage opposes based on things like "he's wrong too often at AfD", but rather to help identify patterns that might be worth looking into. In other words, if a candidate has an overwhelming number of AfD's where they voted to keep but the result was delete, then I might want to take a look at some of those cases to see if there is evidence of a policy misunderstanding or extreme bias. And, in those cases, I'd want to look at the candidate's votes in context, snippets wouldn't reveal much. Anyway, I'll be fixing some bugs tomorrow, and will also look into adding comment snippets, but can't promise anything. I'm not sure how easy it will be to implement the comment snippet thing with the way the script is currently written. Overall, I'm glad to see that there is general cautious support for the tool, so I will continue trying to improve it. Thanks. —SW— express 04:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If our plan is to allow RFA to descend into even more of a political bunfight over deletion/inclusion then this is a great idea. Personally I'd rather we evaluated the merits of the candidate then delved into their deletion politics. Please don't introduce this - especially with the wide disparities of how individual admins closes deletion discussions. Spartaz Humbug! 05:05, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oh PLEASE. Admin tasks ánd possibilities are way wider than AfD's. I am sorry, though this may be a nice thing for personal use, RfA's should be evaluated on personal merits. 'Oh, you gave too often a wrong interpretation of an article whether it should be deleted or not' is NOT a criterium - There are many areas where admins (sitting and to-be) have NO clue about what is going on, and I am sure that there will be to-be admins who have NO clue about AfD's. Introduction of a tool like this on one single aspect of admin chores (I, for one, am hardly ever around on AfD's!) is indeed just going to turn this even more into a real voting - Everyone can always !vote 'oppose' on any RfA with 'You have never participated in task X, which is one of the powers you will get when you become an administrator on this site', as for practically any possible candidate there will be areas where they have never participated. Oppose even for an opt-in, we don't need more RfA 'oppose' reasons. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Your intentions are excellent, but this is really a horrible idea. For one thing, it will lead to some RfA candidates making useless "me too" edits at AfDs and being afraid to voice real opinions. For another, being a dissenting voice is no bad thing for an admin. We don't want a cadre of yes men - admins need to stick their heads up. They need to do so with courtesy and in line with policy, but many AfDs are debated in the grey areas of policy. I've seen many AfDs where a bunch of people all !voted one way and along came someone with a different take on things and courageously opposed the rest - and sometimes they persuade the course of the AfD. Please do not continue with this idea. --Dweller (talk) 10:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I think that this tool is a great idea, and could yield some interesting results, but I don't think it would be appropriate to routinely point to it in RfAs, for the reasons mentioned above. bobrayner (talk) 11:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Well implemented and an interesting read, but as an RfA tool I doubt it's going to work. Low levels of AfD participation and !votes against the eventual consensus shouldn't by themselves be reasons for opposion, but that's what they would undoubtedly be used for by some participants. Alzarian16 (talk) 12:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC) I share many of the thoughts about this tool expressed above. AfDs are best judged qualitatively. As for the other claptrap, it is important to remember why RfA (!)voters (at RfA you're a voter if you support, and a !voter if you oppose; so much for balanced discussion) place so much emphasis on AfD. It's because admins, often those who were given the tools to do a job which had little or nothing to do with judging consensus, can get away with closing AfDs that are much less than unanimous practically however they like. Until such time as adminship is split into those with tools, those deemed capable of judging consensus, and those in both camps, poor or non-existant contributions at AfD will remain a valid reason to oppose. A good candidate can ensure that this isn't a problem by demonstrating elsewhere that they understand consensus. —WFC— 12:16, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oppose I think Dweller summarized it best, but the others who have opposed also prevail. IMO, this would encourage editcountitis. AFD !votes are more about the rationale used than the actual !vote and how it compared to the final result. I'd much rather see a person who got it "right" only 40% of the time, but gave consistently valid reasons and !voted early in the process than a person who got it "right" 100% of the time but always participated on AFDs after the articles fate was determined and said "per above".---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Goodness me no. We don't need another nonsense reason to oppose people's RFAs. Stifle (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Question: If there was an admin candidate who voted at 1000 AfD's, and their vote matched the resulting consensus only 250 times (25%), isn't that something you'd want to know about so that you could do further research to see what caused that disparity? Correspondingly, if the same candidate instead "got it right" 750 times (75%), wouldn't that fact make it easier for you to support them? Sure, there is room for people to abuse such a tool, by just glancing at the results and making a decision based on a single number. The same can be said for edit counters. Either way, it doesn't matter to me. I'm going to developp the tool for my own use, if anyone else would like to make use of it, just let me know. If it doesn't end up being something that is regularly used at RfA, then I'm ok with that. Just thought I'd ask. —SW— confer 16:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC) If somebody participated in 1000 AFD's then that person's history/practices would most likely be fairly well known by the AFD community. This is a short cut that doesn't really tell us anything about the actual candidate except to make new hurdle/way to game the system. Sorry, but zero support for this.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 18:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Strong Oppose "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This is a step on the road to labelling AFD applicants as "deletionist" or "inclusionist," then basing voting on that perceived affiliation. Also, there have been many AFDs where I was on the "wrong" side by this index, but was correct according to guidelines, but some canvassing system, project newwsletter, political, religious or nationalistic affiliation led to many editors who did not often participate in AFDs trooping in and voting for something they liked or against something their affiliation was against. In my own RFA, my AFD participation was cited favorably by 10 out of 60 supporters (there were no Oppose votes at the end), despite the fact that I was not always a go-along me-too !voter. I looked back at several days of AFD !votes leading up to my RFA nom, and I was "wrong" 15% of the time, but with well supported minority arguments. Does your software count it as "right" or "wrong" if someone !votes Merge but it is Kept, or he !votes Weak keep but it gete redirected? How about if there is DRV and the Deleted article gets restored? How about if the closing admin changes his mind 3 days later and changes to No Consensus, as in [2]? This indexing has a chilling effect on anyone who ever wants to become an admin going against an (incorrect) groundswell and making a well reasoned and good-faith minority argument. My dissents sometimes go on for some length, since I cite guidelines, AFD precedents and common outcomes, or bring in references I have looked up to support my argument, so including one line of comments as proposed would not be that informative. It encourages "me-too-ism" to jump on the bandwagon on pending snowball AFDs. It argues for giving up the ship in a losing AFD and striking (and "unbolding") the "losing vote to keep it out of the tally. It tends to stifle dissent in an AFD and encourage mob mentality. "Minority" is NOT NECESSARILY WRONG! A horrible idea, in general, and should not be implemented. Use of this tool should be blocked in RFA. Edison (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Oppose It's an interesting idea, and if you can put it together and have it function properly you'll have quite the programming problem solved...but IMO it'll just lead to another variant of WP:EDITCOUNTITIS to nitpick at someone's RfA. Just my 2p worth. --Alan the Roving Ambassador (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC) DeleteOppose If an admin candidate got involved with an AfD early on and wanted it deleted, then it was cleaned up after the fact and then kept (but the candidate didn't go back and change their comment), they would, under this system, be marked as being "wrong" on the AfD. If a candidate comes at the end of an AfD and just goes with the majority, they get points for being "right" despite not knowing anything. If a candidate simply has a different opinion about the notability of a subject, they would come across as "wrong" just for having an opinion. Articles for Deletion is not about being right or wrong. You're trying to quantify policy knowledge into a nice little system that is easily looked at. That's another way to describe editcountits, which is why so many people are drawing comparisons. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:13, 11 March 2011 (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.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elektrik Band

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elektrik Band and the nom has no action since 6 March 2011. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Eagles247 questioned him on his talk page. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 18:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Questions to help the user

Most questions in RfAs are asked to test the user in some way or trip them up, or from an otherwise negative standpoint, usually trying to find a reason to oppose. I'm wondering if there has been any recent examples of questions asked deliberately (and not by the nominator) where the answer would promote the user and help others decide to support? -- œ^™ 01:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

My questions in Slon02's RfA weren't so much intended to promote the candidate as to give him a chance to address some concerns people had expressed. They were definitely not intended to trip him up, but to give him a proper platform to answer rather than having to reply to each oppose that brought it up. So they were intended to help, in a way; but more precisely, they were intended as a way for him to assuage my and other participants' concerns.

T. Canens' question at Gfoley4's RfA appears (to me) like a similar case of giving the candidate a platform to answer a question he'd otherwise have to deal with as a "badger" in the oppose thread. 28bytes (talk) 01:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Badgering often serves to entrench the views of people who might otherwise have been waivering, particularly when the badgerer has blown up a small point into a big issue, and when proven wrong, will dig deeper rather than accept that they were wrong. Staying focussed, 28bytes' questions in that RfA were good. I've also seen "How would you respond to the concerns raised about your content experience?" asked once or twice to very good effect. —WFC— 11:27, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I just came across this discussion, a short time after adding this question. Please let's not discuss the specifics of possible answers yet; let the candidate do that

I asked that, very deliberately, specific to the areas I felt were not clear from statement and contribs - to give the candidate the opportunity to demonstrate 'common sense' and good understanding of broad concepts.

I don't ask questions unless I've got a good reason to do so.

Another e.g. from today being, a gentle additional poke here - which did result in clarification, which is certainly helping me - and I'd suspect others - to make up their mind.  Chzz  ►  06:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Speaking of the question to JaGa, I sent the candidate a "you sure about that?" note on that one. I really hate for an RfA to turn on one swapped word (i.e. interpreting "a user page created in 2006" as "a user created a page in 2006") regardless of whether I support the candidate. Yours was a good question, by the way. I know some folks don't like to see "what if"-type questions, but I think they can be helpful in understanding a candidate's thought processes. 28bytes (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Ta. And yes, it was an unfortunate misunderstanding - but I think the candidate recovered well; and I quite like it when people just say "oops!" like that. Also, see User_talk:JaGa#4._A_user_page_created_in_2006....  Chzz  ►  10:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

My feeling on RFA questions is that they are asked to "find a reason to oppose" the candidate if they don't like the answer to a question. If you can't find a reason, you try to make one. It's not right -- but it happens. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 00:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there are other reasons:

• Laziness: "can't be bothered to look through all your contribs; "please show me the good stuff"
• Being smarty-pants, trying to win +adminpoints: "THIS meets THAT policy but contradicts THIS OTHER policy. So what do you do?"
• Trying to be smarty-pants for t3h lulz: "Are there too many questions?"

None of which are very helpful. But, given the current format, I don't think they're avoidable. Still - despite this discussion being pointless, it's interesting.  Chzz  ►  03:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You speak as if a question that could cause opposes for a bad answer is mutually exclusive with a question that could cause supports for a good answer. I, and I'm sure most others who pose questions, hope candidates will answer my questions well and get supports; but I won't hesitate to oppose if the candidate does badly. Suggesting that questions are asked to "find a reason to oppose" amounts to nothing more than a lazy accusation of bad faith. --Mkativerata (talk) 08:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Chzz or Tofu really meant that in bad faith. Most of those possibilities have certainly crossed my mind at some time or another (whether I found any actual examples or not is a different matter). It's only natural to consider all angles - having an analytic approach does mean examining all hypotheses. Kudpung (talk) 15:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely; I didn't mean to cast aspersions. I'm sure I could come up with specific examples of 'poor questions', but don't want to, precisely because I don't want to make this personal.

I think you will all accept that we could find some questions that we'd all think unhelpful - and others that we agreed were helpful - without needing to actually dig them out. However, in-between there would be questions that some thought good, others thought bad. And that is the point I was making; whilst RfA remains in this open format, I don't think it possible to enforce anything on questions asked other than the most utterly blatant and disruptive cases (which is covered by existing policies). Chzz  ►  16:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Returning to the original topic - SandyGeorgia asked me a question about civility in my RfA which was intended as an opportunity to showcase my opinion (for what it was worth). Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Where SandyGeorgia knew what your answer would be and that it would garner supports? Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. I wonder why we don't see more of these kinds of questions intended to promote the candidate. Is it because some think it gives an unfair advantage and others would cry foul? or start shouting WP:CABAL? -- œ^™ 11:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Late response, but I I'm not sure how you could call what I said a Lazy accusation of bad faith; you have to think out of the box here. If your questioning someone on a controversial topic that's not written anywhere, and that you learn with time, aren't you setting them up to fail? You have to have the mindset that potential candidates aren't going to know everything from the start, you learn as you go. We sometimes forget that, and hold against them an answer to a very tough question. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 18:40, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion. I offer an additional perspective which garners from my own RfA, and wrestles comprehension of my own list, in particular the lack thereof. In preparation, I did consider the importance, but not the absence, of these questions. Had I known the first three questions could be the extent. I would have been better served answering with full essay. I feel certain, some middle ground is necessary. My76Strat (talk) 14:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Time limits on adminship

A discussion is taking place, over at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Time limits on adminship.

This message is for notification purposes only; I suggest any discussion belongs over there. Cheers,  Chzz  ►  18:39, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Are votes with no rationale "useless noise"?

I'm moving discussion of this over here, from Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Fæ, because the question does not specifically refer to that candidate.

Personally, I think a 'support' or 'oppose' with no rationale at all is pointless. It's not a vote, right? Therefore, such !votes should be discounted. Correct me if I am wrong.  Chzz  ►  02:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a disparity that I've always thought a bit odd, but as far as I've been around the stock line is that support is the default position and does not require explanation. I would be interested to see what the 'crats would make of an RFA where the candidate had clearly failed but most of the opposers had not supplied a rationale. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

That would never happen, because supporters always hound the opposers. The real disparity is that supports without rationales are considered to be an implicit "I agree with the nomination statement", whereas opposes aren't considered to be an implicit "I disagree with the nomination statement". Malleus Fatuorum 03:12, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(copied from my comment at Fae's RfA)Indeed no rules oblige a !voter to make a comment, but RfA is not a 'first-past-the-post' election, and one oppose vote equals three supports. Like all Wikipedia consensus gathering, it's supposed to be a discussion rather than a poll, and in a close run RfA the closing bureaucrat will evaluate the quality in the discussion. It's generally considered good faith to offer comment. Not saying anything suggests either no effort to do one's own research, "I just don't like him/her", or simply too little understanding of how Wikipedia works its processes and primary goals to be able to !vote objectively. Kudpung (talk) 03:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is that a "disparity"? Supporting means "you agree with the nomination statement and find no fault with the candidate." No questions arise from taking this position, and no additional info is required. There is very little difference between "Support." and "Support - Hey this guy's really cool and I like him and the articles he wrote." On the other hand, opposing means "you disagree with the nomination statement and/or find a fault with the candidate." Many questions naturally arise from this: What part of the nomination statement do you disagree with and why? What fault did you find with the candidate? How does that perceived fault affect the candidate's ability to be an admin? Not explaining an oppose leaves a lot of questions unanswered, while not explaining a support leaves no questions unanswered. —SW— ^chatter 03:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"Support he's hilarious at Editor for Deletion" vs. "Support he would make a capable admin." The difference isn't trivial. Townlake (talk) 03:29, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, but that's the difference between a facetious support statement and a typical support statement. We're talking about the difference between no support statement and a typical support statement. —SW— ^chatter 03:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

My point is that with a one-word support, you don't know why the supporter is supporting. A bit naive to suggest that social networking doesn't happen around here, isn't it? Townlake (talk) 03:34, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're suggesting that RfA is primarily a popularity contest, you certainly have a point that I would find it difficult to disagree with. However, requiring supporters to make a brief statement wouldn't fix that. —SW— ^verbalize 03:39, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

RfA most certainly is a popularity contest, and if opposers are required to make a statement beyond "I think XYZ is a dickhead with a brain the size of a pin head", then so should supporters who make statements like "XYZ has always been very nice to me". Malleus Fatuorum 03:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Why? —SW— ^gab 04:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict):::I agree entirely, Malleus. The assumption should be that if a candidate (who has read all the RfA instructions, counsel, and essays) is nominated by a nominator who understands the process and has done their homework, there would be a fair chance of success. In practice the chances are 2:1 against because we still haven't resolved the issue of disencouraging NOTNOW and SNOW to run for office. Kudpung (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Yet should all the supporters have to brainlessly repeat "the user meets all of the criteria layed out at WP:ADMIN? It was met in circumstances A B &C." One can do that for any user, so although I would not disagree on the point that RfA can be a popularity contest, requiring rationale for support votes doesn't seem to help the situation a whole lot. NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure it does. Even if it's just going through the motions, it forces the supporter to demonstrate they've at least nominally thought why they're supporting. A solution doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. (I realize this change ain't happening and I'm tilting at windmills, for what it's worth.) Townlake (talk) 04:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

What if two people have the same rationale? I admit that it might stop a certain number of drive by supports, but it's easy to drive by oppose as "per Malleus" NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

You may or may not have noticed that I've stopped taking part in any RfAs, either for or against, so I'm not your poster child. The process is obviously broken and there's no will to fix it. It will ultimately be the death of wikipedia, but not for the reasons you might immediately think, i.e., a shortage of administrators. Malleus Fatuorum 04:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

@Snottywong I have no problem with Support, per User:FOO, User:BAA and User:BAZ, above, who said everything I'd say.Support ~~~~. I do have a problem with Support ~~~~ ditto oppose.  Chzz  ►  04:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok then, Per intelligent opposition? NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:22, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict) :::Malleus hits it on the nail again (Why do you keep doing that?). Until some clear policy/guidelines are introduced for !voting, with a way of making sure everyone will read them and observe them, there will always be crap votes in either of the three sections. You can't 'force anyone to demonstrate they've at least nominally thought why they're supporting' - they can copy and paste the line just as easily. The worst 'support' !votes come from the canvassing that happens in the schoolyard. The worst 'oppose' !votes, IMHO, are possibly, but not always, from those who contest an RfA that has overwhelming support from genuine supporters and is clearly going to pass. I think those are the !votes that might conjure up notions of "I just don't like him/her." No one can stop people from thinking what they want - even if according to Wikipedia rules they have to find another reason for stating why they have !voted. Kudpung (talk) 04:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It is supposed to be a discussion, not a vote - or so we claim. Therefore, surely, Support ~~~~ or Oppose ~~~~ is fucking useless. It does nothing to help form consensus. If it is a vote, let's at least be honest about it.  Chzz  ►  04:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

It's paraded as a discussion rather than a vote, but it's a vote as anyone with eyes can see. Malleus Fatuorum 04:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

MF, I'm not denying that; it is what it is. I'm just asking that we be honest about it.  Chzz  ►  05:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Whether it is a discussion or a vote is not really the point. (Fact is that unless a candidate gets circa 70%+ the RfA will fail so it is at least a de-facto vote, but that is besides the point). The RfA process is to determine if there is general consensus of trust that the candidate will use the tools wisely and confidence the candidate has the competency to do so. There may be any of a thousand reasons a user doesn't trust the candidate, but not all of them will relate to specific "mistakes", some may be merely a personal opposition to a POV on the candidates userpage, or a perception of the tone of a candidates responses. Ultimately, if a user does not trust the candidate they will oppose, and if the reason is simply "I don't trust this candidate" that should be just as valid as "I trust this candidate". As I believe RfA is as good a place as any for visitors and candidates alike to learn better ways, I would generally not support or oppose without providing some rationale.--ClubOranje^T 08:59, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As long as some participants follow the debate after their !vote and amend, reaffirm or even reverse their position based on subsequent discussion then in my view it is no more a vote than it is a popularity contest. Also I'm not familiar with any form of voting which when it concludes with between 70 and 75% becomes a discussion where a crat has to weigh consensus, or that allows one to qualify one's position by prefixing it with weak. ϢereSpielChequers 16:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Malleus was almost there with his first comment, but I would say he missed one bit. In my view it is more supports without rationales are considered to be an implicit "I agree with the nomination statement", whereas opposes without rationales are considered to be an implicit "I disagree with the nomination statement, but I'm not saying why". There are two possible changes to that, accepting that people can simply vote no without explaining why they oppose a candidate, or requiring those who support "per nom" to add words to that effect. I don't think that either change would be positive for RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 16:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Whether someone should be an administrator is primarily a matter of confidence that they will be sensible. A statement like "support" means I have overall enough confidence. A statement "oppose" is a statement that one does not. This is a vote, a vote explicitly, and there are guidelines by which the bureaucrats should look at the proportion of votes. In doubtful cases, they look also at the reasons. What is the difference between saying "Oppose" and saying "oppose because I do not have confidence in them" ? they mean the same. The purpose of giving reasons is twofold: one is to aid the crats in judging borderline voting results, and the other and usually the more decisive, is to try to convince other people, and, sometimes, elicit a response from the candidates that may clarify the degree of confidence people hold in them. The only difference between a vote here and a vote for arb or the board, is that for the arbs or the board there are a fixed number of places to fill, so we do not need a fixed cutoff, but can pick the highest. Here, there are an indefinite number of places to fill, but we have ever agreed on what a cutoff value should be, so we let the crats muse their judgment if the vote is indecisive. DGG ( talk ) 18:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no more difference between Oppose and "Oppose I do not have confidence in this candidate" than there is between Support and "Support I have confidence in this candidate". None of those positions gives anyone a clue as to why you do or don't have confidence in the candidate, though with the supports we can reasonably assume that you agree with the nomination. I think that it is at least a matter of courtesy that one gives a reason for an oppose. If an editor says "Oppose, sandal wearing hemp clad *****ist with a grossly inappropriate anti penguin userbox" then other editors can weigh that argument and decide to support it, dispute it or even refute it if as occasionally happens an opposer has misread a candidate. If these were simply votes then I don't think that would be possible.ϢereSpielChequers 13:57, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't call them "useless noise" but they are an indication of opinion rather than a contribution to a debate. As the "oppose" side normally attracts fewer comments but more discussion, I think it is more important for the health of the debate that people opposing give there reasons why. Anyway, this discussion has prompted me to update my !vote in the RFA in question The Land (talk) 18:12, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Thoughts (from the second newest admin (at time of posting)). I've not taken part in many RfAs on either side, but I took it that supporters were assumed to be 'per nom' with optional extra remarks, but opposers and neutrals were raising points that could possibly be addressed, or being 'per xxx' who had beaten them to it (or raised something they only thought of when seeing it on the page). There is a nomination statement which can presumably be taken to be accepted by all the supporters (unless they disagree with a part of it). There is no anti-nomination statement as such. I feel that that makes an 'oppose' with not even a 'per xxx' of less value than a 'support' with no explanation. Unless a Devil's Advocate is appointed (I'm not volunteering...), opposers and neutrals should explain - with a minimum of 'per xxx'. I learned something from my opposers. Peridon (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I figure that if a person is opposing they have a reason... generally, if they don't have a rationale, I assume that it is more personal dislike.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Audit Subcommittee appointments: Invitation to comment on candidates

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Audit Subcommittee, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to arbcom-en-blists.wikimedia.org.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with any other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 21 March 2011 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 31 March 2011.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 00:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

Reading between the lines

Jimbo says on his talk page: "I am seeking feedback via email for some ideas of an alternative process to run concurrently with the existing process with an eye toward easier confirmation for highly experienced editors with no history of troubles who don't want to run this silly gauntlet. While we have no evidence that the current process actually works, we can design and implement a new process for a few months and see how it goes. The goal should be to have a lot of happy and kind and thoughtful admins. To the extent that the current process is emotionally draining and not obviously achieving that goal, we should consider adding a new process." [3] The thing is ... the only candidates who are going to pass RfA currently would be likely to meet these qualifications, and if a new process is less difficult and/or less painful, who's going to do RfA instead?

And he, or rather the Foundation through him, can do it of course; it's their website and their right to change permissions or not as they see fit. You might say that they'd never get away with it, that the RFA community will push back ... and that actually scares me more, because if it's a fight, then to make their case, people will come up with reasons why the RFA community sucks and shouldn't be trusted, to support their side, and they've got plenty of ammunition from bruised candidates. History gets written by the winners, and the winners will say: RfA was a horrible place filled with spiteful people who never were able to even improve the process, much less fix it, so the Foundation had to step in and stop them. That's not how I want to be remembered.

Does anyone have suggestions that will deal with Jimbo's concerns, before we lose the ability to make the decisions? - Dank (push to talk) 12:50, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The idea that there is an 'RfA community' who sees protecting their legacy as important seems a little worrying, doesn't it?--Korruski^Talk 13:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your point that we shouldn't encourage an us-against-them mentality; I'm only speaking for myself. - Dank (push to talk) 14:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

As long as any new system is run by the community, I'm interested to see what happens. I personally can't see how to resolve the two conflicting arguments that "The community should be able to trust the new admin" with "RfA is an emotionally draining and possibly spiteful place", but I would be open to the ideas that they come up with. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Personally I do not see change ever happening at RfA unless it is mandated from on high. The system is broken, very few people dispute that. The only thing that I would encourage the powers that be to consider is a mechanism to make it easier to de-admin somebody as well. Personally, I do not think taking away the bit should be as difficult/painful as it currently is. But neither process is likely to garner the popular support needed to become a policy... WP as a consensusology is encumbered by the shere number of people on it. Garnering consensus on major/controversial issues rarely happens.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 13:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I think (and this is me personally, not me as an Arb or owt) that the problem lies with the idea that "highly experienced editors with no history of troubles" have problems at RfA. I regard my own RfA as highly unproblematic (other that Wehwalt accusing me of strange practices with livestock - perhaps that was a misunderstanding), and cannot see otherwise than a highly experienced editor (which is more than I was) with no history of troubles would have much difficulty. The bloodbaths by and large don't fall into Jimbo's category anyway.

• new editors who have been here 3 months and think adminship is the next step
• editors with a past who claim to have reformed (rather regardless of whether they have or not)
• vandal and NPP patrollers, who think that's all there is to it
• editors who are in a clique which has an opposing cliqueElen of the Roads (talk) 13:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that, if Hypothetical-New-RfA started running with a mandate from on high, and if it had any participation from the community, then the first 20-30 requests would get a lot of protest votes from Old-RfA stalwarts. Perhaps some people would try to strictly apply criteria which would have applied if the candidate were at Old-RfA. Perhaps some !voters would investigate edit histories a little more closely for problematic CSD tagging or poor-quality content (whether or not these are important benchmarks in the new process). Perhaps less GF would be A'd when an old dispute is brought up at Hypothetical-New-RfA. Who'd volunteer for that?

I think the community is very good at writing an encyclopædia (which is the most important thing), and usually good at collaboration; but process change is not something we're good at. bobrayner (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, sadly. How about if admins are appointed by crats (who can ask for emailed input from the community) for two months, then we have the RFA, when we can talk about what the candidate has actually done (with and without the tools), rather than obsessing about what they might do? - Dank (push to talk) 14:10, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Not keen on that idea - how much admin work will a person get done in 2 months? what if it's 1 or 2 tasks? It would push for people gaming the system for those two months IMO. I've a couple of ideas, but is there any mileage in ressurecting WP:RfA Review? Worm^TT · (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it; if a person does 1 or 2 tasks, or if they do 100 tasks avoiding any difficult calls, or try to game the system in any other way, then they won't pass RFA. - Dank (push to talk) 14:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

If that's the case, it's worth a shot Worm^TT · (talk) 14:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a view I've expressed here a few times, that the community is impotent when it comes to fixing RfA, because there is always too large an opposition to any suggestion anyone makes. Consensus has worked very well for encyclopedia content issues, as Bobrayner says above, but it doesn't work for "management" and procedural issues when the community gets too large and polarized. I've opined that RfA can now only be fixed by imposition from those in authority - I'd still like to be wrong, but I don't see it -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree. I'm only making suggestions because I think the time is running out for making suggestions. I'd like to be able to say: we gave it a good shot. - Dank (push to talk) 14:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, I'd certainly be happy to help support "one last go" if anyone can come up with anything feasible -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Well... I'd appreciate some feedback on a few ideas I've got. My major issue with the RfA process is the vitriol, meaning that good editors who fail feel that they are not "worthy".

1. A standard set "requirements" to be an administrator. I see this as a very difficult one, I'm pretty sure there's a WP:PEREN, but worth mentioning.
2. A requirement to provide divs to support your vote, otherwise it goes on the talk page.
3. The only suggestion which I feel has legs is the role of an "RfA clerk", who removes votes which are considered unhelpful/vitriolic. Forcing criticism to be constructive.

All are bare bones ideas, and probably not worth persuing, but I thought they should be mentioned. Worm^TT · (talk) 14:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting suggestions. First thoughts...

1) I tried to get the community to add a warning that people shouldn't really apply if they have fewer than 1,500 edits or 6 months, but even something that innocuous was shot down - there are just too many people who won't contemplate any suggestion of imposing minimum requirements

2) That could be hard for Support !votes - supporters can't provide diffs for the absence of things that would cause them to oppose.

3) I think there would be zero chance of the community agreeing to any kind of "super !voter" who could decide which !votes to remove

-- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

1) I didn't say it would be easy ;) 2) Difficult, perhaps, but should not be impossible... 3)I was thinking more along the lines of someone who was authorised by the community to remove unconstructive comments, asking them to be refactored or at least provide specific examples. Comments such as "contributed so little" or "concerns with ... judgement" from Nick Penguin's RfA. Worm^TT · (talk) 15:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

So do we allow Keeps to make his opposes or not? There are a few people who firmly believe that Keeps' opposes/questions are idiotic, mundane, trivial, and show a disregard for WP. There are others who firmly believe that Keeps' opposes/questions are insightful and generate conversation. Efforts to silence Keeps have been (as far as I know) routinely shot down. My point is, what is unconstructive to one person might be constructive to another. Plus, the two examples you highlight are poor examples as they both show positions that have routinely been accepted. You may find them worthless, but that does not mean that others do not agree with them.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point. I was looking at this from the "there's no need to make the candidate feel worthless as an editor" point of view, but I can see this being abused. I suppose the solution there would be a clear, agreed remit - but I don't know how to write that without falling foul of editors who would want to remove editors like Keeps. I also do not find either of the positions worthless - I respect both opposes, I just feel they could have been phrased better so as not to make the "candidate feel worthless as an editor". Worm^TT · (talk) 15:29, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem I see is not in your suggestions themselves (I think there is merit in what you want to achieve with all of them), but that I don't think there's a chance of the community going with any of them - I've seen lots of related suggestions in the past get nowhere. There are too many people who want no minimum RfA requirements, and too many who want no restrictions on what questions you can ask and what comments you can make -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:36, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, now that is why I'm tempted to try and revive WP:RfA Review, which appears to have died a death a couple of years ago. As Dank said above, time appears to be running out for making suggestions and I'd like to say I'd given it a shot. I haven't been very involved in RfA until a couple of months ago, and whilst I've read people being shot down - perhaps one more attempt is worth it. (I don't doubt I'll be shot down as well, but hey ho!)Worm^TT · (talk) 15:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

←I think I buy the argument that limiting questions and comments won't work and we don't even want it to work on Wikipedia ... because if someone's got an axe to grind, RFA is exactly where we want that to happen, in the sunlight, with everyone watching. We don't want the guy who thinks an admin is grossly deficient to follow them around taking potshots at their decisions, opposing everything they say in discussions, trash-talking them behind their backs, etc. (and if they do that, what they said at RFA will help us see it coming.) OTOH, if crats appoint admins and the community votes later, the crats are in a perfect position to say that it's no longer a vote, that all they're interested in is evidence of whether the candidate has or hasn't followed the rules. Comments such as "Support, great guy!" are welcome because RFA is in part a chance for the community to have their say, but any comment that doesn't contain at least one small piece of evidence that the admin either has or hasn't acted in line with community standards for admins will be ignored, as will the vote total. - Dank (push to talk) 15:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)Striking this for the moment because it's not in line with what Jimbo is proposing, but I'll unstrike if it seems to me this is back on the table.

If you revive WP:RfA Review, I will participate in it to help effect changes. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:23, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, I'll do what I can to help with another shot at WP:RfA Review if people are brave enough to give it a go -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:29, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Can I ask if anyone else is getting email from Jimbo asking their take on his proposal? If he's sending out a bunch of these emails to get our input (and, I suppose, to make us feel good), then I encourage everyone to respond (but keep it short). If he's just talking to me, then I have to assume I said something he found attractive ... and since I try to say things that others will go along with, that might mean it's still possible to come up with something everyone can live with. - Dank (push to talk) 17:03, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

LOL----Should somebody warn Jimbo about wp:canvass---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:16, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

But it's the Foundation's website, and I think I buy the argument that things have gotten a little crazy at RFA and some intervention is needed (in which case, they should ask whoever they want to ask whatever they want to ask, in fact, it's their job). What I mean by "crazy" is: There are areas, such as deletion calls, where Wikipedians haven't done an adequate job reaching and enforcing consensus. Instead of working harder to make consensus-building work, they've looked to admins to make the decisions for them that they weren't willing to make themselves. They then blame RFA voters if the admins do things they don't like. It's classic crazy-making, and many RFA voters have internalized it, feeling responsible for making sure that admins never "go bad". If voters understand that they're not responsible for predicting the future, only for evaluating the candidate's actions, then I think that the research and rationales of RFA voters will come across as much more professional, and we won't get as much flak. - Dank (push to talk) 17:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo certainly hasn't asked me, but then I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone. :-) Malleus Fatuorum 17:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

From what I've read, Jimbo is missing the point. RFA is a gauntlet, that's undeniable. But it is the way it is because adminship is too broad. There are thousands of editors who are capable of using the tools, but far fewer who are suitable for the quasi-judicial role that comes along with them (a large degree of discretion in promoting guidelines, closing XfDs, whether or not to make difficult blocks, and so on). Anyone considering the latter role probably should be subject to the current gauntlet, whereas those who simply want to do the non-controversial maintenance should not. Problem is, at the moment all admins have tend to be judged on their suitability for both. —WFC— 17:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Kind of repeating myself, I believe that RFA and RFA voters are adversely affected by the peer pressure to elect people capable of making a variety of controversial calls ... because the end result is that people are escaping responsibility for reaching consensus themselves and blaming admins (and us) when the calls don't go their way. It forces us to talk about things that we're not the experts on, forces us to predict an unpredictable future, and sticks us with the reputation as the bad guys. Promotion should be based on performance in areas relevant to the tools where there community has already reached a firm consensus. (And I'm not saying that good judgment isn't important, it is, but we can tell "good judgment" from their actions in these settled areas.)

A thought: I groaned when I saw "RFA Review" because I don't think we can get it done in time. Could we quickly elect a temporary discussion leader with 3 jobs? 1. Keeping an eye on the discussions and giving a reasonable deadline to cut off discussion on each point. 2. Making a call on consensus, in the interest of time (appealable, of course). 3. Asking for a reboot of the discussion if the answer we got doesn't fall inside the bounds of what the Foundation considers acceptable? - Dank (push to talk) 18:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with all of that. And it's a strong argument for two-part adminship (one "part" being the tools, the other "part" being ability to make the tricky calls with current admins keeping both "parts" by default). But if I were to draft a serious proposal for two-part adminship on-wiki, it would be ridiculed and/or filibustered by those who simply don't like change. —WFC— 18:51, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm aware that a lot of people are working on ideas and have very good things to say. We need some way to prioritize, and reassure everyone that every point will be dealt with and we won't be cut off by a Jimbo-edict in mid-sentence. Would anyone object if we write Jimbo back (he asked for email in the linked thread, and I think he means it) and ask what he considers the main sticking point to be, the reason that he doesn't think RFA can work, so that we can fix that first? (From his tone, I'm guessing it's that Dusti and others have been turned off by the experience, but obviously it would be a very bad idea to put words in his mouth :) - Dank (push to talk) 19:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Since it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, I just emailed this to Jimmy: "if I could ask a favor, my gut tells me we're making solid progress at [WT:RFA] (people are bending from their settled positions), but we need time, and we need a way to prioritize. If you could tell us (either in the current thread on your talk page or at WT:RFA) what your top priority is (you mentioned hurt feelings, and the lack of any clear metric of success), and give us a deadline, I think there's a reasonable chance we can deliver at least on one issue in a reasonable time frame." - Dank (push to talk) 19:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem we have with our procedures - virtually all of them - is a mammoth case of instruction creep. What started off as an open, easy-to-edit encyclopedia is frankly anything but. RfA is particularly showing this problem. As Jimmy says, there is no evidence that it actually works in selecting good admins, just those who can put up with the minute scrutiny of the RfA process—which actually tells us very little about their personal attributes or their likely behaviour when they have admin powers. I am sure we can find a better structure and process than the current theatre of the bizarre. The Land (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with a lot that's being said here over the last hour or two - Dank seems to be telepathic about a mail I sent to Jimbo. What's needed is a compact and responsible task force with limited time frames for the phases to develop and get an optional trial RfA process up and running as quickly as possible. It shouldn't be a messy, drawn out affair like the BLPPROD from which good, active participants retired in despair (one actually left the Wikipedia from fatigue). It started with 400 users (far, far too many) and about six of us were left to finish it (a good dozen too few). Kudpung (talk) 19:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

You're telepathic too Kudpung ... I didn't want to be the first to mention a task force, but based on the BLPPROD and other experiences, it might not be a bad idea to notify everyone who we think might be interested in the discussion and ask them to get in small groups and select a person from each group who they think will do a good job of arguing their point of view. It can be exhausting to try to sort out 20 slightly different shades of what is essentially the same argument; having one person make the main points, checking in with the people who are basically on the same side, can save a lot of time. It also reduces the temptation to try to win by numbers. - Dank (push to talk) 19:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the task force idea may be better than RfA review, since RfA review did die a death - I'm assuming for a reason. I'm willing to put the effort in to revive it (though it might not be for a day or so - certainly at the weekend if we can wait that long), but it does depend on how long we have to do it. Worm^TT · (talk) 20:24, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

If WMF comes up with a new idea, I'd be curious to see what it is. But if we are going to make RfA easier, I think they also need to come up with an idea for making recall easier. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I want to make the case that if we can succeed in demoting or lightening up the admin role, that goes a long way towards solving the problem that many feel that it's not easy enough to recall admins. (Also, if we do the RFA two or three months after the crats promote them, and make it clear they need to work hard during those months to succeed at RFA, we'd be less likely to need to recall them, since we could evaluate their actual behavior.) Although in theory, you'd want to recall admins who are doing a lousy job with the basics, I'm not aware of any recall where that was the only issue ... the main issue is usually that the admin has used the tools as if consensus was clearly on their side when it wasn't. Of course, there's nothing we can do, or would want to do, about the fact that some people are more respected in some roles and can get away with more than others; Wikipedia has run on a "reputation-based economy" right from the start. It's annoying as hell sometimes, but it's what we're used to and what we know how to do. It's this "I'm an admin, I'm the decider" that is new and, arguably, process-creep and anti-Wikipedian. - Dank (push to talk) 20:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I for one will be glad to see the back of the current system, and I'm sure that I am not the only one. BigDom 21:39, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Speaking as a "highly experienced editor with no history of troubles", why on earth would I want to be an admin anyway, even without having to run a "silly gauntlet"? Ghmyrtle (talk) 23:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

For me was the realization that nearly every time I requested an administrative action it got done. I figured I'd cut out the middleman. It's a tough process to get through but i have yet to see a better idea. After the failure of both Wikipedia:RfA Review and Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator to achieve, well, anything at all I decided to focus on something easier like refereeing the pending changes debate. And that certainly hasn't been a picnic either. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yesterday, I felt like I was a good person to get this going because I'm generally sympathetic to a wide range of views. I've left messages on the talk pages of everyone who's commented in this section, asking if they want to participate in a task force. After doing a boatload of reading, it's become clear to me that I'm not sympathetic to a wide range of views, so I can't in good faith act as a sympathetic ear. I don't mind, though, saying what I believe and why I believe it:

• Every effort at reform so far has been derailed by people who have goals other than making RFA work well ... and the main two groups are people who would like to see admins have less power, specifically the power to block established users, and people who want admins to keep that power. My firm belief is that if our voting would have an effect either way on that wiki-reality, then our voting will completely lose the focus of improving RfA. I can only support proposals that apply to people who are promoted after some cutoff date, say May 1. Our deliberations should have no direct effect on what current admins should or shouldn't do.
• RFA voters tend to be more or less okay with the rationales in, for example, the current RFA Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/NickPenguin. RFA voters generally don't understand that we're in the minority in this view. Most Wikipedians believe that, if it's already clear that someone isn't going to succeed at something, it's un-Wikipedian to let them know in great detail exactly why they fail and exactly who thinks they're not worthy. I can only support proposals which ask candidates to start by submitting their application to the crats (or to some other elected group, if for some reason crats don't want to do it, which is fine with me). Feedback from the community would be emailed to the crats, and if it becomes clear the candidate won't pass at this time, one or more of the crats would post a message giving the candidate a reasonably clear idea of what areas they'll need to work on in order to pass. (Possibly, we could make this more acceptable to everyone by allowing the failed candidate to demand an open RFA if they choose, as long as they understand that the results are likely to be even worse if people have to vote a second time when the result is already clear.) - Dank (push to talk) 13:47, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oh, bottom line: if it looks to me like we can agree on doing these two things for a minimum of 6 months tweaked per Bob's point, below, I'm in. Inserting ... the "endorsement" proposal below might or might not work as a substitute, I'm open to it for now. Otherwise out, and best of luck. - Dank (push to talk) 14:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC) There's been enough progress that I'm not this pessimistic now.- Dank (push to talk) 14:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • • Emails to bureaucrats? Maybe I'm missing something (not really followed this thread) but how is that better than my Editor review-before-RFA proposal from a while back? Rd232 ^talk 15:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I hate to appear stupid, but I count a lot more than 2 points in there. I don't see anything objectionable, except "I can only support proposals ..." - that precludes quite a lot of proposals. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I'm not sure we should be limitting ourself so soon. I absolutely agree we shouldn't be be trying to solve other perceieved admin issues and any decisions should not be applied retroactively. Worm^TT · (talk) 15:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Replying to both of you: I'm saying that based on what's gone wrong in the past, I can't spend a lot of time on this unless it looks like I recommend we can agree not to apply new criteria to current admins (because that has always pulled in too many participants who don't know or care about the current workings of RFA) and we're agreed that RFAs will start off as "secret ballot", so that elected Wikipedians (hopefully crats) can summarize the results when it's clear the candidate won't pass. (Inserting ... or some version of the "endorsement" proposal below might work.) I'm concerned that Jimbo is close to shutting down RFA over the issue of the harm that's done all around when candidates fail. - Dank (push to talk) 15:33, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I think those two points are compatible with my realistic aims for the discussion. In the same way that BLPPROD was only successful because it was not applied retroactively, it stands to reason that current admins' powers should not be materially affected by any change. I don't like that, but accepting it as a precondition to any RfA reform is an important pragmatic step. —WFC— 15:02, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
    • It may be very helpful to set a clear (and not too generous) scope. A clause like "We think X will solve RfA's problems. Let's do X for 6 months, and the community feels that it's not working as well as we'd hoped, then we'll stop doing X" will win over just as many potential opponents as a decision to restrict the new mechanism to new candidates, or whatever. The scope has to be totally unambiguous, otherwise it could bounce back later with a positive-feedback loop of drama - just look at Pending Changes. I have my own ideas for what X should be (presumably we all do), but am trying to be neutral here. bobrayner (talk) 15:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
      • Excellent point, and I tweaked my bottom line accordingly. - Dank (push to talk) 16:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

One thing I always wonder when these discussions come up: if RfA had been "fixed", say, two months ago, which recent RfAs that didn't succeed would have succeeded under the "fixed" process? Or is the idea that the pass/fail results would be the same but the process itself would be less unpleasant somehow? I'm all for the latter, but if people want to alter the pass/fail ratio I think that ought to be explicitly acknowledged. 28bytes (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good point. However, it would be difficult to separate cause from effect, because it seems to be widely (though not universally) thought that the current mechanism deters some would-be candidates, and that seems to be a significant motivation behind the current proposals. Any alternative process would have its own pluses and minuses, so it would be reasonable to expect different candidates coming in... just like phone polls vs street polls have different technical merits to the pollster, but they also tend to get a slightly different demographic of respondents. bobrayner (talk) 16:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, people (including one person who can shut us down) have voiced strong opinions that we're making people unhappy and hurting their productivity, particularly failing candidates and potential candidates. - Dank (push to talk) 16:21, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I can empathize with long-term, clueful, experienced editors who would be willing to help out with admin tasks, but not willing to go through an RfA. I expect what will happen is that Jimbo will go ahead and "make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops", albeit in a more formal, structured way. People would e-mail him or otherwise make him aware of such long-term editors that ought to have the bit but don't, and he'll send the name to a group of 'crats or some other appointed group to vet them, and for those successfully vetted, he'd say something like "I will be making the following editors admins in 30 days. If you have any objections, e-mail me, and if I think the objections are serious enough, I'll ask the candidate to go through a traditional RfA instead." This is just idle speculation, of course, but the language Jimbo is using would seem to suggest such a thing will be put in place sooner or later, although he'd be likely to delegate all of that after a short time. 28bytes (talk) 16:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

• Having a (pretty low) minumum criteria to avoid clear WP:NOTNOW cases seems absolutely sensible. Could this be a relatively easy first change to get concensus for?
• It's hard to explain what I mean for this second point, but here goes: It seems as an opposer you're trying to do one or both of (a) tell the candidate why you oppose and give constructive criticism about how to improve their work, and (b) persuade the other voters that the candidate cannot be trusted with the tools. To best fulfill (a) you'd tactfully explain their specific weaknesses as well as a praising their strengths. To best fulfill (b) you'd collect as many examples of their weaknesses as possible, ignore their strengths, and add some rhetoric about why admins like the candidate would be bad for the project. The two aims are incompatible and pretending that both can be achieved in the same forum is just asking for trouble. But I'm not sure what to do about it.--Physics is all gnomes (talk) 16:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

  Splitting the two roles could be quite challenging, as a process change (though any suggestions are welcome).

  I face a comparable challenge in my day job, and we resolve it by having separate roles instead of just a mob of !voters (Person A writes a list of potential concerns like "Might be a drama magnet" or "What if they're too hasty at CSD?", and then gives the list to person B who will do the equivalent of looking through diffs; there's a third person C who decides whether the list of potential concerns is sufficient to give the organisation assurance against bad admins; and once a big pile of diffs is presented, there's person D looks through the diffs and decides whether any items on the list of concerns turned out to be actual problems which are a real stain on the proto-admin's character, and person E (who has a long-term familiarity with the candidate) then deals with remediation/mitigation for any item on the list which turned out to be problematic. This process gives a combination of depth, consistency, and assurance; but it's safe to assume we'd never go that far on wikipedia, although for RfA purposes, C and possibly A would be replaced by a standing policy/guideline document rather than a person.)

  If I were coming here as a newbie editor with no prior knowledge, I would say that the current RfA process had been optimised for speed rather than quality. But we don't need speed. bobrayner (talk) 17:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC) (edited to add: sorry for the slightly tangential TLDR rant)

Arbitrary break

*Note I've renamed the section heading as an arbitrary one. The discussion so far has been open-forum, and surprisingly constructive and good-natured. If we start labelling sections as proposals, we run the risk of people starting to polarise their opinions, and/or !voting. At the moment I think this is all about generating ideas. —WFC— 21:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

As opposed to a "list of criteria" that editors would have to meet in order to file an RFA, why don't we make the initial 72 hours of the RFA be an "endorsement" time? What would happen is that an editor would create his RFA and then transclude it, exactly like what is done now. He would also answer the default three questions. During those 72 hours, nobody would be allowed to vote or pose questions. Instead, seven (exact number to be decided later, but let us assume for now that the number is seven) editors would "endorse" the candidate as worthy of adminship. If the requisite seven signatures are received within the 72 hours, then the remaining 96 hours would be spent in traditional RFA with people supporting, opposing, and offering diffs. If, however, they are not received, then the RFA would be closed as Insufficiently endorsed. This would eliminate butcheries like Dusti (talk · contribs)'s RFA, since he would not have been endorsed. This will also prevent people from creating RFAs the moment they pass the cutoff. This will not stop people from making RFAs that never have a chance of succeeding, but at least it may prevent butcheries. On the other hand, limits will not stop newbies with 20 edits from making WP:SNOW RFAs that get pile-on opposed since the new users ignore even the big, flashy editnotice on WP:RFA right now. This, at least, will stop the pile-on. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:19, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I feel like this might increase the risk of canvassing since it would be tempting for users to hunt around and find people willing to endorse, especially if one were on IRC. On the other hand, I suppose that in itself is a test of the editor in question, whether or not they are able to resist that temptation would be a mark of their suitability as an admin. Lastly, this doesn't eliminate the "clique" problem. An editor would easily be able to obtain 7 endorsements if they are in one of the various "cliques", but as soon as the RFA opens, an opposing clique can still shut the editor down just as harshly as before. Not that this wouldn't work, but I think it may need a little tweaking. Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 20:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think part of the merit of this proposal is that it encourages prospective admins to have a dialogue with experienced editors before they are nominated. I would much prefer that they spoke to 7 community members regarding an "endorsement" and perhaps got some useful feedback, than that they jumped in first. It may be that the experience of "canvassing" helps clarify their nomination, or persuades them now is not the time, or provides some additional moral support. I also think it could work well alongside a set of criteria. The Land (talk) 21:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I actually quite like that point of view. Together with a set of criteria I think this could work quite well. I wonder if there should maybe be an additional page. I will work one up in my userspace in a bit, and see what the group thinks. Similar to editor review, but specifically for RFA endorsements. This page would list the criteria and basically be a centralized location for the RFA to be posted prior to moving to the actual RFA space. Would this be worth it, or would it be just a bit creepy? MacMed^talk_stalk 21:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The idea has merit. But while I accept that seven is an arbitrary number, I'm not sure on the overall mechanism. How many non-NOTNOWs fail to get seven supports in 72 hours? —WFC— 21:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I could live with some version of this, but unlike most of the issues we're discussing, this one is about how RFA is perceived by outsiders, so we need to get feedback from outsiders on this one sooner rather than later. - Dank (push to talk) 21:42, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

WFC - I think that getting these supports/endorsements earlier on (particularly if they are well-written, essentially very brief co-noms) could give knee-jerk opposers some things to look at first, and have to actually prove incorrect, rather than just saying "Oppose - not enough _________".

Dank - I'm not a regular here, I think I am somewhat of an outsider. Additionally, as someone that is thinking about possibly running the gauntlet, I like this suggestion and I think that it could make the process much more constructive. In terms of other outsider opinions, once I get a mock up going, perhaps we could open an RfC on it? Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 21:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I support an RFC once we get something that we like. In the past, we've been leery of RFCs, and after doing some reading recently, I suddenly understand why: there are a lot of people who feel strongly about what admins should and shouldn't be doing, and we get more of those people in any RFC than we get people who care about, or even know anything about, RFA. But on this one question, we need to gauge whether this takes the "ick" factor out of RFA for the wider community, so an RFC would be great. - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so at User:MacMed/rfa reform there is a very, very, very basic outline. I'm not great at designing templates, and the RfA one is beyond me :p So anyone with more experience feel free to take a stab at creating one at User:MacMed/rfa template. That is the current location coded into the inputbox. I basically envision an RfA template with the same questions and a spot for the candidate to speak about themselves, with Endorsements instead of Support, Oppose, and Neutral. We essentially eliminate the nominator and allow each of the 7 endorsers to make a mini-nom in support of the candidate. Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 22:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Um, no. Basically, what you are saying is that we give supporters a 72 hour head start? If you support this candidate, "endorse" now. If you don't like this candidate, tough, you have to wait? Getting seven, hell getting 20 people to endorse a candidate doesn't take much effort. There are easily that number of people who feel that anybody who wants the bit should be given the bit. People who almost never oppose candidates. 4 of the last 8 unsuccessful RfA's that were not closed due to snow/notnow had more than 7 supports before they garnered their first oppose.

15 supports before he got his first oppose[4]

8 supports before the first oppose [5]

12 supports before the oppose[6]

11 supports before the first oppose [7]

If this idea were to pass, there would literally be 40-50 supporters on just about every RfA before anybody had the "right" to ask questions or oppose. Sorry, can't support this. Would rather just give the bit away.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:17, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

(EC) The difficulty with having up to three days for seven endorsements is that a proportion of RFAs fold fairly quickly after an oppose or question that brings up a serious issue. Waiting for three days before that sort of thing can be discussed strikes me as inefficient use of everyone's time. If an issue is going to surface that derails the RFA then in my view it is better to get that over and done with quickly and mercifully. It is also potentially unfair on the candidate, currently it is the candidate's choice of when to transclude, but if it depends on the timing of the 7th support the candidate could find that the process starts when they've just gone to work and won't be back for ten or more hours. ϢereSpielChequers 22:21, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I think Reaper Eternal was suggesting a hard 72-hour period rather than the moment the 7th editor endorses; if so, that would alleviate your second concern. Your first, though, is pretty hard to argue with; if there are 10 people set to support and 40 set to oppose, it's just a waste of everybody's time to have a quiet 72 hours then a bloodbath. 28bytes (talk) 22:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I didn't like the idea at first, but I can see some potential, I'd like for us to keep talking about it. Sure, some people will be quick on the draw to endorse, but there aren't a huge number of established (>1000 edits?) WPians who will do that, and we could say something like, anyone who's endorsing too many candidates who fail can't endorse any more. We also need to think about the important role RFA plays in noticing and praising what people are doing right, and candidates who eventually fail need this as much, and sometimes more, than candidates who pass ... giving them 3 days interacting only with voters who are trying to find reasons to support might be good for their ego, even if they can't find enough endorsements to qualify. - Dank (push to talk) 22:29, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

That is just so patronising. Malleus Fatuorum 03:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) I like this proposal and I don't see any major pitfalls except the time frame and support !votes needed to be endorsed. If a student were to run for a student government position at my school, he/she would need about 100 signatures before their name can be put on a ballot to ensure they have some chance at winning. I feel that RfA should be the same way, even though it is not a race. I suggest that the 72-hour timeframe be reduced to 24 hours, since, at the moment when RfAs are transcluded, a flood of !votes come in immediately. 72 hours is much too long for a preliminary process without any oppose !votes, and the candidate, if ultimately unsuccessful, would have their hopes up too high when the real thing starts, which could lead to some retirements. Decreasing the time frame to 24 hours would also decrease the opportunity for a candidate to canvass for endorsements. If they are going to be successful at the real RfA, getting 7 endorsements in a 24-hour (or even 12-hour) timeframe should be easy. I am assuming (and if incorrect, suggesting) that these preliminaries will still be transcluded to the main RfA page (maybe in a different section) in order for the same flood of users to see them. I also suggest the 7 support !votes to be changed to at least 10 if the timeframe remains 72 hours, or keep the same if the timeframe becomes shorter. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:29, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

MacMed: It's not correct to suggest that opposers don't have to think about their reasons for opposing. It is a fact that they are heavily scrutinised. While occasionally supports are scrutinised too, I've never seen evidence of non-existant reasoning in the support section being discounted by crats. I'd go as far as to say that the level of badgering that is acceptable in the neutral and oppose sections, occasionally bordering on or amounting to harrasment, contributes to the atmosphere at RfA. —WFC— 07:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

MacMed: People can canvass for support !votes now.

WFC: This is not an attempt to prevent the unsuccessful or no consensus RFAs. This is an attempt to reduce snow and not now RFAs. Every snow/notnow that I have seen has usually had at most two real supports and the rest are "moral support".

Balloonman: This is not an attempt to shut down opposers. Users would not be allowed to support or oppose until the seven endorsements had been received and the 'crat certified it for a go-ahead. Additionally, the endorsements would not count as support votes, although we can probably assume that endorsers will support. Finally, people would not be permitted to endorse after the seven are received to prevent the issues you mentioned. Thus "there would literally be 40-50 supporters on just about every RfA before anybody had the "right" to ask questions or oppose." will absolutely not be permitted to occur.

WereSpielChequers: The support/oppose portion of the RFA could start after the 'crat certifies it to go ahead and the candidate then agrees to proceed. That would prevent somebody's RFA from being pile-on opposed while they were at work.

Dank: If they cannot even manage seven endorsements, then they would have been massacred in a regular RFA.

Eagles247: The numbers I made were just "thrown out there", so to speak.

Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to ask some questions about the endorsements idea without distracting from the "Eureka" thread ... I've posted a question on a temporary talk page, User_talk:Dank/RFA. Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 00:06, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break (continue discussion of other idea above)

(edit conflict)Perhaps some sort of mentoring idea, similar to Admin Coaching but more in depth. Have a talk page set aside, and go through current discussions, block requests, etc that are not urgent. Mark them as reserved for a mentee. The mentee gives a decision on the talk, the mentor then corrects if neccessary and carries out the decision. The mentor can then recommend the user to the community with the talk page as a record of learning, ideas, etc. The only concerns I have with my own idea are that a) there might not be enough "non-emergent" situations to go around and b) the system could be gamed by the mentor and mentee communicating via IRC or another off-wiki method, so that the mentee makes the right decision and therefore presents a false face to the community. Any comments or suggestion? Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 22:33, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Adminship coaching with tools RfA reform proposal for one of the past discussions on this. I still think this is the best avenue to take.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I highly approve of this idea. I think the edit count requirement is a little high though. The prereqs should really be up to the coach's discretion. An extraordinarily clueful user that has helped out a ton but only has 1500 edits should really be just as viable. Especially considering the ease of desysopping and the fact that at RFA there will be admin actions to review in this situation. MacMed^talk_stalk 23:15, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Partly agreed; I'm also in favor of finding some way to let candidates have some experience with the tools pre-RFA; I think it would help to ground their RFA in the realities of tool usage. I'm fine with a coaching system if coachees put their names up somewhere, anyone can coach them any time, and all the coaches collectively feel responsible for all the coachees. I don't like the one-on-one idea; I'm concerned that others will "coach" admins to act in ways that further their own goals. No, I'm certain of it; relatively few long-time WPians feel strongly about the RFA process, but most feel strongly about other issues, especially issues of how admins should behave. It would also strengthen the (mostly false) impression that RFA is a closed, guild-like system. - Dank (push to talk) 01:27, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Note section heading removed; see rationale above. —WFC— 06:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Currently RFA has only two possible outcomes, pass or fail. A third and in my view very positive one would be "not unless". In this scenario the RFA would run much as it does today, but the closing crat would have the option of closing with a statement such as "Due to the mixup of the nominator picking up and responding from the candidate's PC, this RFA can only be closed as a success if a checkuser confirms that the candidate and their nominator are in fact different people." Or "Due to the concerns expressed at the candidate's AIV tagging this RFA can only be closed as a success if the candidate demonstrates an improvement in this area". This would give a crat the opportunity to promote such candidates if they subsequently met the relevant condition(s), and the discretion not to do so if they had also done something egregious. The candidate would still have the opportunity to submit a completely fresh RFA, and I would hope that in areas where judgement is concerned the crat would consult with the relevant opposers before promoting such a candidate.

One of the advantages of this sort of close being possible is that it would hopefully concentrate attention in the oppose section on the things a candidate would need to do in order to be suitable for adminship, rather than how little they are trusted or known. It might also make those who oppose for spurious reasons such as a high percentage of automated edits think twice when they worked out the implications of such opposes and saw themselves writing "Oppose 80% automated edits is too high. Candidate needs to give up Huggle and Hotcat and do 60.000 more manual edits in addition to the 20,000 they've already done to bring their Automated edits down to an acceptable 50%".

I'm one of those who failed my first RFA, I remember as the opposes came in, and again when I reread it before my second RFA it was much easier to accept the "not yet" type of opposes than some of the others. I think it could transform the RFA process if we were to focus the opposition section on the things the candidate would need to do to become an admin. ϢereSpielChequers 00:18, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps combine this with the idea above? "Not unless" candidates are provided with the bit for (2 weeks?) and work with a mentor to improve their ability in the area of question. MacMed^talk_stalk 00:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

"With all due respect", I think that's frankly naive. All that would happen is to mirror what already happens before the RfA is started, which is that savvy candidates pretend to go through the motions and keep their noses clean for however long is required. Any changes need to be much more fundamental, even a dismantling of the current administrator hierarchy for something more relevant and focused. Malleus Fatuorum 00:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Re Macmed. This isn't a probationary system but a way to appoint candidates who didn't make it for an easily resolvable reason - hence my example that would require a checkuser. I think we've also had someone who could have passed if he'd added some referenced content. ϢereSpielChequers 00:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh I gotcha. Basically a pass as long as they do x within a certain timeframe. MacMed^talk_stalk 00:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Like "be nicer". This is a ridiculous proposal. Malleus Fatuorum 01:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

That is why ANY meaninful change in the process to become an admin has to be tied, hand-in-hand with a process to remove the bit. As long as it is a big deal to remove the bit, then there will people opposed to lessening the standards to obtain it. The only way that we will get people to buy into a process to make it easier to become an admin would be if we make the mechanism to remove it easier/less painful/etc.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:38, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Although well-intentioned, I really don't see this proposal helping much. It would be difficult to administer and by definition could only help marginal candidates, who could succeed if they just overcame some minor objection. In my review of past RFAs, I've found that candidates usually either get the bit or go down in flames. Although they tend to get a lot of attention, proportionally there aren't that many marginal failing candidates. There's also the question of whether we should actually be encouraging marginal candidates to assume the admin role as it is currently constructed. --RL0919 (talk) 02:07, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• I think that this approach would be much more easily interpreted as "lowering the bar", and you could expect quite a lot of opposition on that basis, unless the idea was very developed & presented quite carefully.
• If this is a road we do go down, then it's not technically difficult to include a mitigation/remediation step in the process (you'd need a trusted arbiter who does a job slightly broader than the current role of crats in RfAs), but this kind of process would be pretty unprecedented on en.wikipedia (I think), and that novelty will encourage more pushback. bobrayner (talk) 02:22, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• On the whole, crats are crats because they are deemed to be very good at judging consensus, and because they are deemed to be a consistent barometer of consensus (with very occasional exceptions, such as a closure X! made a few months back, but even that was followed by an acknowledgement that it may be controversial and a lengthy explanation). But what this idea would effectively do is give crats the sort of discretion open to GA reviewers, provided that a candidate isn't a clear pass (overwhelming consensus) or a "quick fail" (NOTNOW/SNOW). Arbs would arguably be worse. Without wishing to tar everyone with the same brush, crats as a group seem to be held in higher esteem than the arbs. —WFC— 06:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

This isn't about lowering the bar, nor is it necessarily about marginal candidates in terms of amount of support. Taking my example where a checkuser was needed, if half the participants in the RFA were "Oppose unless " or even "support provided that " then the crats could have a clear close of "not promoted unless" after 7 days followed by an even clearer close as promotion once that issue was resolved one way or the other by checkuser. True this would only directly effect a small minority of RFAs, but a focus on what the candidate needed to do get get support would IMHO make a big improvement. ϢereSpielChequers 16:19, 25 March 2011 (UTC)