User:Useight/RFA Subjects/Badgering

Argue with opposer (Archive 77)

Is it so serious? Lawcourt does allow a defendant has a lawyer. Yao Ziyuan 21:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a court. The community seems to think we don't need overly argumentative admins. I agree. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with Deskana to a certain extent, but nobody should really Oppose without providing a brief explanation of why they're opposing out of courtesy to the candidate. Good reasoning is need to both help the candidate address the concerns and satisfy the closing bureaucrat of the validity of the Oppose. It's less relevant in cases where there is consensus is overwhelmingly against the candidate being granted sysop access but in borderline or vast majority cases, it's important to know if the Oppose is a matter of WP:POINT or made for a genuine well founded reason. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 22:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Then we have nominators discussing the oppose opinions. I prefer the candidate to back his position up than having someone else do that, but only if it is sensible to do it (in example, when a discussion would clarify whether the oppose opinion is erred or not). -- ReyBrujo 22:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Most certainly. It is possible to question an oppose voter in a such a way that it is not considered arguing. Such as "Thank you for your vote, perhaps you can clarify x, y, z?" --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 22:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I did not have many opposes and one really puzzled me. So I did ask for clarification and got a support. But with the others I felt is was not my place to argue, as they expressed the way they felt - and as such they were right. Agathoclea 22:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've never nominated someone, but sometimes I have brought up points regarding someone's oppose vote when there is something obvious to say, to save the candidate from having to do so and ending up looking picky or confrontational. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do it with good intentions of saving the candidate from arguing. -- Renesis (talk) 22:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I think finding fault with an oppose vote looks less bad when it comes from a supporter than when it comes from the candidate. I think it looks bad for a candidate to argue with an opposer when he (or she) is disagreeing with the opposer's judgement, but okay when it's to clear up a mistake. So "Oppose because the candidate was rude to User:A in this diff" could be answered by "You've made an error. It was User:B who wrote that" or "Actually, I know user A in real life, and it was just a private joke between us. He knew that it wasn't an insult", but not by "User A did this and this and this, so I was quite justified in posting what I did", or "It's unreasonable to oppose for one remark when you consider the huge amount of vandal fighting I've done." Grandad 23:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I think replying to opposers is a good thing - RfA is a discussion, not a vote, and discussing points is exactly what everyone should be doing. In my RfA, I got one oppose, I replied to it, explaining why things were as he'd described (I can't remember what he complaint was now), and he found my explanation good enough, so switched to neutral. Once you've !voted, it shouldn't be set in stone, people should be constantly changing their !votes as more information comes to light. That's how to actually get concensus, rather than just a supermajority. --Tango 23:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Per WP:RFA, a request for adminship is not a ballot. To my mind, simply stating "support" or "oppose" without comment is against both the letter and spirit of WP:RFA. Raymond Arritt 23:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Replying to opposers if their stated reasons are unclear or if you feel they misinterpreted something is okay by me. Arguing with them, as well as asking them to change their votes to support on their talk page, is not. —bbatsell ¿? 23:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a natural reaction to that one. As soon as someone finds out a candidate argued for a vote change on talk pages, they are done. -- Renesis (talk) 00:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

This is not a vote. It is a consensus gathering process. It is perfectly reasonable to negotiate with any person, be it support or oppose.

If anyone disagrees, we're going to seriously need to discuss the future of Requests for Adminship.

Due to the nature of at least one of the current arbcom cases, I'd say that the latter is long overdue, in fact.

Kim Bruning 00:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Who is saying it is? -- Renesis (talk) 00:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)#

Having recently achieved a no consensus on an RfA, and hopefully learned from it, I would suggest that it is quite reasonable to clarify points raised bt oppose voters, but not to argue them. And certainly answering every oppose vote can only lead to massive disenchantment with the applicant.--Anthony.bradbury 00:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yao Ziyuan's mindset is a problem with RfAs currently. Adminship is not a law court, for that matter, it's only about you to the extent that you're the one getting the powers. Questions of fairness should not come into RfAs, because it's about what's good for Wikipedia, not the nominee or anyone else. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Only problem is RfA is failing Wikipedia in failing to grant adminship to dozens of candidates who could really help the project and giving adminship to a few who successfully game the system. It's obsessed with quantity over quality and people continue, in their !voting, to promote running up masses of WP space edits with no regard for any damage incurred to the project by baseless !voting on XfDs or needless why do 1 edit when 20 will do listings on images for deletion. In the past few weeks, I've found a few candidates who have thousands of WP space edits that are all fluff, duplication and sheep-like follow the nominator or follow the masses XfD !votes, yet they've got the numbers so nobody gives a stuff. Try Opposing and all hell breaks loose. Clearly, something is wrong with RfA and it's failing Wikipedia in both who it promotes and what is suggests prospective candidates need or should do in order to pass. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

For my reply to Renesis in this thread, see the #Issues with RFA subheading below, apparently some kind soul thought it was worth the extra heading, and moved it there :-) Kim Bruning 01:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Issues with RFA

Currently, RFA and our administrator system itself has at least six issues:

1. The administrator/user ratio has gone way way down. This is bad, because it means that people who have an admin flag can no longer take part in consensus based process as equals, despite ostensibly having been recognised as being experienced at same. (A notable symptom is when an admin is accused of having "acted unilaterally". A situation that previously would have been nonsensical, because there would be sufficient admins around to balance each other out.)
2. Admins are being selected based on arbitrary criteria, which are *not* linked with whether or not a candidate is actually suited to be an admin. (How many people still look at proven mediation ability, or proven encyclopedia editing ability, or skill with unusual situations as opposed to n edits. In fact people have recently often been opposed when nominated on the basis of such skills alone.)
3. Requests for Adminship apparently no longer uses consensus as the leading requirement, as per the previous discussion people have held in this section (see above) This also reduces the ability to check the quality of the candidate.
4. Admins are currently apparently not entirely trusted by the foundation, hence WP:OFFICE
5. Insofar as the foundation can trust admins, it may be such that the wikipedia community cannot actually trust certain people ourselves, wrt unmonitored offwiki activity Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano/Workshop#Fourth_suggestion.

So no single person is saying this, it's just that the situation in general warrents it.

Does that cover your question sufficiently?

Kim Bruning 01:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

WRT second and last points - unfortunately, some good former admins usually don't get their bit back. If this changed, I'd say RFA has improved. I know myself that I've been put off trying another RFA for the forseeable future. – Chacor 01:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really agree with the second and fourth, but yeah, there are problems. I now call RfAs votes, because they are. Unless an RfA happens to fall within a teeny little 10% margin, the result is entirely decided on vote count. It doesn't matter if everyone who opposed did so because the user has 24% mainspace edits instead of 25%, it has to fall between 70 and 80% for "bureaucrat discretion" to exist. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's a pretty big supposition. Where's your example where spurious !voters swung the percentage, and the closing 'crat explicitly said upon questioning that this was fine? I think you're postulating instead of citing, here, and what we need in any discussion of this type is facts. -- nae'blis 01:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Is that a question for Amarkov, or is it one for me? Kim Bruning 01:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ostensibly to Amarkov's specific 'example' though anyone is welcome to refute me. I think there's a general clarity of opinion on RfA that isn't necessarily what the candidates/nominators would like, but that's not the same as positing that bureaucrats are ignoring the rules of consensus altogether (a much more serious "charge"). -- nae'blis 03:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Amarkov: Fair enough. As to the two points you disagree with..

• If you do not agree with the second, in your view, how do current criteria link to the skills an administrator is required to have?
• If you do not agree with the fourth, please explain your view on the history and purpose behind WP:OFFICE ?

Kim Bruning 01:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict; to Nae'blis) Obviously, nothing is that bad. It was an exaggeration, yes, and I didn't mean it to be really true. But except for things which are that bad, I have never seen a bureaucrat consider the worthiness of arguments. For instance, there's an RfA right now where the guy is being opposed because he doesn't edit articles enough. That may be good or it may not be, but is a bureaucrat going to figure that out? No, because the current process is simply to count the votes which seem plausible. If people tried some of the arguments they do here in an AfD (hint: vague statements which mean nothing), an admin would have no problem just completely ignoring them. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

So you are saying that on AFD (another notorious problem area), people actually have more freedom to figure out consensus than they have here? Kim Bruning 02:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 02:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh <insert string of irreplicable monosyllabics>. Do other people agree? Kim Bruning 03:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

And to Kim Bruning: the current criteria aren't what people should care about, but as the latest RfA shows, people do look at article editing, which I actually oppose using as a criterion. And WP:OFFICE is to make absolutely sure that things which could cause legal problems do not. I don't see any lack of trust there. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, there is no good consensus on what criteria we should use for admins. No one ever thought to discuss that :-)

WP:OFFICE is there to solve legal issues, but why can't that be left to admins? Similar for WP:OVERSIGHT, what is that doing that admins can't? :-)

Kim Bruning 02:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Oversight... I'm not entirely sure why it's not only above admin status, but above bureaucrat status too. That makes no sense. But WP:OFFICE does nothing but give Wikimedia officials the power to do things which are necessary for legal issues, does it? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 02:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason so few people are given oversight permissions is that, in addition to be able to hide certain edits, they can see the edits that have already been hidden. Edits are hidden so no-one will see them, having lots of people able to see them defeats the object. --Tango 02:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:OFFICE is there to solve legal issues, but why can't that be left to admins? I can think of four reasons: (a) need to act immediately, rather than to discuss; (b) need to act decisively, rather than have admins reversing themselves; (c) need to consider the larger consequences to the Foundation rather than precedent or consensus or other values that are important for the vast majority of ongoing article creation and improvement; and (d) having paid employees act, who will be around should there be subsequent legal action (as opposed to a volunteer, not-real-named admin), and who are covered by liability insurance (if you were an insurance company, would you want to provide full coverage for 1000+ anonymous admins?).

More importantly, exactly how does the existence of WP:OFFICE impact the RfA process? Do editors actually decline to run because of that? Drop out of active admin work? John Broughton | Talk 02:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

(to Tango) That makes sense, although in that case MediaWiki should just be updated to allow delete-only oversight acess to admins. I can't imagine it would be that hard, and having people to delete libelous material faster would be good. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 02:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

John Broughton: Admins also are trusted to act (a) immediately and (b) decisively. Admins are or should be capable of (c) taking the foundation into account, it's not that hard. Are we still promoting people who haven't even seen the m:Foundation issues yet?

As to (d) I have the impression that having foundation employees interfere might hurt common carrier status, but it's a legal grey area, so that's a so so.

As to "how does office impact RFA", the answer is mu (Jargon file definition). The correct question to ask is how can the en.wikipedia infrastructure be set up to require a minimal amount of office actions?

Many if not most office actions are really due to situations where admins have failed to deal adequately with a situation. Ergo, we don't have enough well qualified admins. Something which RFA is supposed to supply. Perhaps RFA is no longer sufficient and needs to be supplemented?

Oversight exists because certain people had (rightly or wrongly) been leaking admin-deleted information to third parties.

Kim Bruning 02:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That's why I dislike admin coaching and did detest Esperanza.

Admin coaching seems to produce a perfect candidate, but often without the necessary real-life experience of actually disagreeing with someone, having them vandalise your user page, or any of the other 101 things a really good candidate should have experience of. At the moment, it's editcountitis forcing this issue along, nobody wants to support a candidate who has worked especially hard in one field, they want a candidate that's the perfect all rounder. This tends to rule out the really good candidates who have found a niche and are quite happy to sit their plodding along and who can make a real difference to the project given a mop. Instead, some of us appear to only support editors based on their edit count, looking no further than that awful tool for calculating edit count and voting accordingly (yes, the !has gone from !vote, RFA's no longer a discussion, or sensible consensus, but a damn popularity contest almost anyway can waltz through by saying or doing the right things). Suggestions abound about gaming the system, I've had one comment where someone said it would be sad a candidate didn't get the mop because they didn't game the system, and instead we've got people continually tallying edits on RfAs, editing WP pages as often as possible (listing or removing items one by one instead of in groups) to generate WP "experience of policy" and of course, the pre-requisite sheepish follow the editor or follow the masses voting on XfDs. Generating the perfect candidate is easy, it just means WP ends up with a whole heap of admins who can't actually use the tools to edit Wikipedia for the benefit of the community, but use the little userbox as a badge of honour, who go around inflicting their ill thought out, ill conceived (ill)will upon the rest of us. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 03:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

You make some good points there. One thing I haven't seen anyone address is issues of scalability. With over 1000 admins, it is not possible any more to be aware of all the active admins. Does the current RfA process, and the admin set-up itself, scale well to a wikipedia with over 1000 admins? Carcharoth 04:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, my problems are in some ways the exact opposite of Heligoland's. As evidenced by discussions on my talk page, there are people who think that article editing is necessary to be an admin. That's bad, but more troubling is that people are offering to nominate me if I start doing more article editing. RfA should be evaluating what a candidate is, and it scares me that people are willing to support me simply because I will give the impression of article editing. Isn't it pretty obvious that if I don't like article editing, I'll cease to do it the instant my RfA closes? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Is easy to say "admins should be elected based on consensus, and not voting". The current system, however imperfect, at least provides some objectivity. Ideally a bureaucrat would ignore the votes and do very careful research of the candidate and of what people said, and come up with an assessment of whether a candiate should be an admin or not. In practice, that would take too much time, there would not always be enough info to judge reliably, the result would be bureaucrat-dependent, and more people would be pissed off with that system than with the current "dumb counting of the votes of the uninformed masses". Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

What you say it should be the rule is actually the exception. I am not against the current method, but would expand it to include the gray 65-80%, giving them a two month probation following Carnildo's precedent. Sure, it is not the same; sure, the bureaucrats would work more; and sure, many who have been rejected in this gray area may complain, but it would be a good way to demonstrate we need, want and welcome more administrators if either there is a great consensus in the community, or if they demonstrate those skeptical they can be good admins. -- ReyBrujo 06:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Admin Coaching was a good thing, at least when I was doing the coaching. To my horror, most Admin candidates didn't even know some of the very basics of wikipedia (to wit, knowledge of WP:TRI and m:Foundation Issues were often missing). At least with admin coaching you could make sure that the candidate met some minimum standard of quality.

Many older wikipedians wrote off RFA around the time of the failure of the Amgine request for adminship. During the last wikimania, Amgine was our press contact for the wikimedia foundation. He's one of the people who has done the most work for wikipedia, and is one of the best versed person about wikis in the world. And yet he failed RFA.

You know, right now I wouldn't be surprised if Ward Cunningham were to fail RFA, if he were ever to run...

... In fact...

... Hey! There's an interesting idea!

Kim Bruning 21:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course he would fail. His edit summary usage is awful. And he hardly has any projectspace edits – Gurch 21:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

:-P

That's what I'm thinking might indeed happen. See what I mean? Kim Bruning 22:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

If he didn't actually participate on Wikipedia, he probably would. Turing and Djikstra would fail too, unless they created a sufficiently clever AI bot that evaluated RFA requirements and then met them. —Centrx→talk • 22:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The difference being that Cunningham actually invented the wiki ;-) Kim Bruning 23:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

But not Wikipedia. Inventing the wiki does not necessarily translate to understanding Wikipedia. If he invented the wiki, he might think that Wikipedia should be completely open and nothing deleted, so he just restores every deleted page he comes across. Inventing the wiki would not even be enough to help for most {{helpme}} requests. —Centrx→talk • 15:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)