Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 124

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The request number

The previous rfa for Slgrandson was moved to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Slgrandson/archive. I thought standard new requests were meant to go as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Slgrandson, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Slgrandson 2 etc. Simply south (talk) 21:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

They are. Majorly (talk) 22:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

All fixed up. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

EVula to the rescue! :) Acalamari 22:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A bathrobe just isn't the same as a cape... EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, now I can finally say it. EVula is the shit sysop. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 15:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I know that's supposed to be a compliment, but it sure doesn't sound like one. And yes, I've heard the phrase before. Useight (talk) 16:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Heh, see #Some specific rules above; it's an inside joke at this point. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Useight. I shoulda explained myself better. Or completely refrained woulda been a good idea. Or gone to EVula's talkpage. Or put a smiley face in there. I'm the a shit sysop. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 17:08, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now I see the comments linked above. I guess that's why I don't really like that "compliment", a slight mixup between a and the makes a huge difference. Useight (talk) 20:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

SERIOUSLY good questions

I was thinking of improving (aka replacing) the standard questions with ... <drumroll/>

User:Filll/AGF Challenge ... now that's what I call good questions! :-)

Might need to muck around with the format a tad too, since these are rather larger than ye original short sweet version.

On the other hand, these are of so much better quality, I totally wouldn't mind.

Finally, the responses to the questions will be useful <big-cool-hollow-voice> FOR SCIENCE </big-cool-hollow-voice>

I mean, they're perfect! Is anyone opposed to perfection? ;-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yikes. Those questions are harsh. 99% of RfA candidates might run away screaming. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 18:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes well, we can't have RFA be easy right? We're looking for quality candidates. (/me says, well aware of arguments that are often made here) <very innocent look>

They're actually meant to help people gain more insight into wikipedia. (So not originally intended for RFA). But IMHO I think that these are basically the kinds of question an experienced wikipedia editor should be able to figure out in their sleep, and since RFA is really the only place where we get to quiz people ... --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Dam, I just read the first one, and I can say that these questions are a good mental exercise for long term admins too. _(1 == 2)^Until 19:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Not good questions for adminoobs. Those don't get answers, those get *back away slowly's*. (or they should.) Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

What? These are just plain fun! :-) And you can learn to handle these with just 1500 edits and 3 months experience... and if not then, then you probably never will be able to. I seriously expect an admin to behave rationally and handle such situations. Do you see what I mean by "falling admin standards" NOW? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I think all the biographies of major world leaders should say that they might actually be shape-shifting lizards from outer space. — Laura Scudder ☎ 22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I would love to see your answers to those questions. _(1 == 2)^Until 19:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Idem ditto vice versa! (aka. I'm curious as to your answers too :-) ) And I totally want to make some time to answer those questions sometime soon... maybe I'll walk through them for Wikipedia:Lectures. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I will find some time to devote to the exercise. And remember Kim, it is not enough to get the question right, you need to get it right in a way that the community will accept(we walk a fine line us admins). _(1 == 2)^Until 19:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

1500 edits and 3 months experience gets you adopted nowadays, not adminned. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Ha! you agree someone who can answer those questions should be insta-adminned though? ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Outside of the first question (which includes a discussing a legit legal threat) these are very interesting questions. The first one could possibly be included for theoretical purposes, but in reality, admins have no legal experience and should let higher ups deal with off-wiki legal proceedings. Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 19:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Completely agreed. Fine as a brain exercise, but admins are volunteers, not lawyers. GlassCobra 19:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Ignorance of the law is no excuse though. Admins should know a bit about copyright and libel. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, the correct answer would need to be "Let the foundation handle it" every time. Documented cooked-up legal guesses by total amateurs could quite possible be a big negative for the project. Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 19:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

<grin> I'm not saying you're wrong. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I would ¡support! someone with 150 edits and no contributions to WP:AIV if they came up with thoughtful answers to those questions. And if the questions are adopted, I'm glad I snuck in under the wire! Of course, they would be completely useless after the first RfA candidate successfully passed an RfA with good answers to them. --barneca (talk) 19:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Wow, yes. If someone had enough clue to figure those out, regardless of edits, they should be sysopped and put on OTRS. Barneca's right, though, they would be completely useless after one person successfully figured them out. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 19:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Not really, there's no single correct answer. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

My question drill is better. MessedRocker (talk) 19:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

We should replace the optional questions with those. ;) Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 19:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

we could do all the questions at once? It'd be a lot of questions though... --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
"Oh, for the love. Please dont' make me answer any questions. I'll end up desysopped and miserable....Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:57, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I lay you ten to one that such questions would 1.) Give the nominee a headache and 2.) Make the head's of the supporters and opposer's spin, to the point where most people would ignore the answers/questions anyway. RfA isn't an exam, ergo there shouldn't exist long-winded critical thinking questions. I suppose they are good exercises in one regard, but seriously, I think they would do a disservice and hamper the process rather than help it. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 22:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Eh? Don't we want to have people who can think critically and all that? Else we could just replace everyone with python scripts. (you realize we actually can do that, right?) Makes you wonder why I put up with these hoomons at all... ;-) ). What should we be selecting people on if not their ability to think? Their ability to eat pecan ice-cream? :-P <ducks> --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC) Like SRSLY, aren't these questions just fun? Goodness!

(reads questions, breathes sigh of relief that he got away very lightly in his RFA...) How to avoid copying? If anyone gives good answers, we delete their edits immediately so that non-admins can't copy too easily. Better still, oversight the answers so admins can't copy the good answers in preparation for being resysopped after doing whatever is the post-modern equivalent of deleting the main page. </joke> Bencherlite^Talk 22:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

How to prevent copying? Small changes to minor details (name of article, number of books, etc.). If someone's answers include a previous RfA's article name or number of books, you've got 'em. Of course, now I've just ruined my cunning plan. --barneca (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, hell yeah. Great questions. We should actually survey current admins with these, just cause they're such awesome questions. Justin^(Gmail?)_(u) 22:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I would be against the addition of such questions solely on the fact that they're not at all relevant to adminship. -- Naerii 01:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

These questions made me chuckle a bit. Interesting q's, but definitely not ones for RfA. The fewer q's the better here. Wizardman 01:48, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Umm, someone better go file an ARV on me, cause I'm not sure I could answer those questions Right today. MBisanz ^talk 02:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Damn, well, just desysop me. This requires Bill Clinton powers of word-shifting. bibliomaniac15 Hey you! Stop lazing around and help fix this article instead! 02:08, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

mmmmm me thinking WP:BEANS and WP:POINT anyone give me a barnstar for trying this out? BpEps - t@lk 02:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

If someone "figures out" the "correct" answers to these questions, then that is a good thing. First, there is no set correct answer to any of these. Second, if we come to some consensus for these as to the "correct" answer, that is useful as a training resource. Third, it is trivial for me to generate more questions of a similar nature; these were just a few I scratched out off the top of my head (with some help from User: Durova who provided one and kibitzed a bit). I have several more similar exercises I could add right now, but I do not want it to be too long. Anyone and everyone is welcome to try their hand at them.--Filll (talk) 16:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Bite the newbies and get rewarded with an adminship

At Wikipedia talk:criteria for speedy deletion, we find this:

WP:RFA culture now places much weight on accurate C:CSD tagging. So yes, sadly, it has become a race to place the tag first.

A newbie creates a new stub article. Then adds more to it ten minutes later. Then more still after another ten minutes. And so on. Right? Wrong: the way it now works is that the initial stub is tagged for speedy deletion and deleted within three minutes—often within two minutes. The newbie is disgusted and goes away and never comes back. The person who does this to the most newbies becomes an admin. That's how it works. And they don't bring any intelligence to the decision about what to tag for deletion. "I don't understand it effortlessly since I've never studied advanced physics, and it's too much work to think about it for a moment, so it must be crap. Delete! That's how to become an admin. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

So sad, and so true. The problem is by no means limited to RfA though. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 00:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Not that sad at all. If you actually look at new articles created by new editors, the majority are "Joe is crazy and his dog stinks" or "(Name of editor) was born July 15, 1992 and attends X high school and is really cool" or "Gnarpharg is a sound I make in my throat sometimes." These are articles that the second or third edit ten or twenty minutes later are very unlikely to improve enough that it no longer satisfies the criteria for speedy deletion. Edison (talk) 00:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict reply mainly to Edison) It doesn't just happen to newbies, though, as I found out around 2 months ago. I pointed out to the over-eager tagger that it might be an idea to give more than 3 minutes (the time it was) to allow someone to carry on editing the article, especially since his over-eager tagging had caused edit conflicts that meant I was unable to add sufficient detail to the article because of his speedy deletion tag! I got a lecture back about how to edit an article, which I thought amusing as it meant he had not attempted to look at my editing history at all. However, he did say he would wait 3 minutes which is all he had left anyway, and I had to point out that I said "longer than 3 minutes" and had suggested substantially longer than that. He just replied with "I got the message", but I note that later messages on the editor's talk pages are complaining about the same behaviour, so I guess he didn't get the message after all. I think this borders on the disruptive at times if it is done frequently, and I would certainly not shrink from pointing this out in any RfA.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Stretch, please tell me that your initial article, when you first hit the "Save" button, was not equivalent to one of the typical three examples I cited, which represent actual deletions I did in the last couple of days? Say it ain't so! Edison (talk) 02:58, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

No, it wasn't. I can't recall clearly now, and don't have the time to find it, but it had content, valid categories, a reference, and even an infobox.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Seeing how badly savaged RfA candidates get if they mistakenly tag articles for speedy deletion, I'm not convinced that tagging articles for speedy deletion incautiously would be a wise way to try and earn "points" towards adminship. Whilst it is certainly true that experience of tagging for speedy deletion is likely to benefit a candidate, I don't think more tagging equals more support. Similarly, fewer well reasoned XfD contributions are likely to be viewed in a more positive light than simply "voting" delete on hundreds of discussions. Those thinking of applying for adminship should be thinking about demonstrating the sound judgment they propose to bring to that role, not the volume of work they would do if appointed. WjBscribe 01:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

How do you know that happens? Maybe you've seen some cases of admins getting "badly savaged", but how do you know there aren't hundreds of cases of newbies going away quietly after there article is deleted, for every one where they complain? Is there any way to even attempt to keep track of this? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

If an article is even remotely useful, I am starting to userfy more often. This takes care of a lot of issues at once, and doesn't really piss anyone off. Experienced editors should already know to build their article to minimum standards in their userspace before "releasing into the wild". Tan | 39 01:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

But experienced editors should not always have to build their articles to "minimum standards" on their user spaces before they start to create them, and nowhere, when one fist creates a page, is there a notice recommending that one should have done this. In the case I was involved in, it was already arguably of a minimum standard for a stub article, dealing with a notable subject (a civil parish in a county within England), complete with references. I think that this option is useful, however, but I think telling people they should do this is not a good way to combatting a trigger-happy reaction to new articles without elementary checks on who was the creator of the new article. Or is this going to be another new means by which suitability for being an admin is to be assessed, without actually giving anyone a clue that is?  DDStretch  (talk) 01:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that most of the tags are fine to just slap on for most pages, but A3 should be used with caution. That's the one that can stop a newbie trying to create a good page --Chris 02:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Tanthalas, I would submit that your last statement is blatantly wrong, and in fact goes against the whole purpose of a wiki. Wikis are for collaborative editing. The wiki ideal is that articles do indeed start out with just one or two sentences, and as people come along and read it add a fact or two themselves, so that the article grows and evolves organically over time. Kurt Weber (Go Colts!) 21:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

As we all know, anyone who creates an article has a bold text box staring them in the face saying, "As you create the article, provide references to reliable published sources. Without references, the article may be deleted". Fair warning. It's hard to draw the line between overly aggressive tagging and letting no-context articles slip into the encyclopedia, I think. This is veering rapidly into a village pump type of discussion, but I wonder if there's a way to change how articles are deleted under A3. Instead of speedy (i.e. instant) deletion, if they could get a tag that stays on the article for a period of time like an hour or two, then can either have the tag removed or the article deleted. Complicated, but I think Chris points out a real problem. Darkspots (talk) 02:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

More new article I see presently added to Wikipedia that time is unlikely to improve. Should RFA potential candidates be wary of tagging them, so they have lots of time to add refs and rise to Featured article status? See The periodic table of elephants:"the periodic table of elephants is a table classifying pachyderms based on their size and plce of origin. it was created in 1920 by renowned german zoologist hans gubenmeister. it today is widley used in most countries in europe asia and africa." It was tagged for speedy deletion one minute later. Bless the tagger. Edison (talk) 03:09, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

As a non-admin, it's easy for me to say...over aggressive tagging isn't the problem. Over aggressive deletion is. Anyone can tag an article. Only people who have the confidence of the community have the buttons to delete. I try not to tag anything that I don't think qualifies, and I stand by the majority of tagging that I've done. At the same time, I hope that admins deleting pages I've tagged have taken an extra moment themselves to verify that the tags are legit. --Onorem♠Dil 03:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

As a rough estimate, I'd say that 90-95% of tagging is correct. I probably refuse about 5-10% of speedy deletion tags, and I always err on the side of caution. One thing I would say is that sometimes editors are too quick to use the G1 tag when "nonsense" actually has quite a narrow definition. Often such wrongly-tagged G1's are valid A1, A3 or A7's, but many aren't. Anyway, probably veering off-topic here.Black Kite 03:21, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec)For what it's worth, I do recognize that the tagging itself can be a problem. Even if the tag is removed, a new editor might be lost if they feel that their original contributions are about to be unfairly deleted. --Onorem♠Dil 03:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I think articles are tagged quickly because they have to be, or they will no longer be on the first page of special:newpages and harder to find and delete if they are never improved. Useight ( talk) 03:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Not going to deny this problem exists, but just three small points: 1.) Exactly what is the meaning behind the title of this section? Is it a common view that most candidates who are granted administrator status are excellent SD taggers, or is it just obnoxious sarcasm? 2.) Newbies are instructed to develop their articles in adherence to our guidelines before clicking the save button. They are given the opportunity to make a suitable stb. 3.) By far, the most common articles created are absolute trash/nonsense. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 04:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I will repeat it's not just the newbies... the other day I forgot to write an article in my user space. Saved it. Went in to edit it, before I had a chance to edit it, it was speedily deleted per A7. Needless to say, I was not pleased. A lot of articles do need to be speedily deleted, but not all. Discretion should be used to see who is creating the article (do they have a track record or are they a true newbie) and has enough time passed to give the article a chance.Balloonman (talk) 04:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

You're not going to get an argument from me about that. The tagging has become rampant. Goodness knows I've tagged rapidly a few times. In order to curb the problem, I suggest the following: 1.) Check the history and identify the author, check their contributions. 2) If you have any doubt when tagging for A7, don't (contemplate the relevant notability tag). 3.) People need to stop tagging every short article as "no context", as the subject can easily be ascertained. 4.) Add a stub template for short articles and add helpful article templates to identify potential problems. This isn't directed at anyone in particular, just my two cents, and more than likely written in the guidelines. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 04:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I tend to think there are 2 types of CSDs. One would be attack pages, blatant spam and copyvios, and genuine nonsense. But then there are the notability and context CSDs, which are an entirely different animal. I wonder how fierce the opposition would be to a 1 or 2 day PROD for all notability based deletion propositions? MBisanz ^talk 08:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's kind of what I'm talking about above. I think it would still need to be under the speedy rubric rather than PROD (PROD tags can be removed by the creator), but we could require that A3 and A7 tags to be placed on articles for a period of time before deletion. OR strongly suggest to administrators that any article with the remotest hint of merit be given a period of time for development (6 hours? 24 hours?), because there are plenty of A7 articles that probably should be deleted on sight. Darkspots (talk) 11:08, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

These two are very good ideas. --Relata refero (disp.) 15:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The fact is that far more often than formerly, I have recently seen good articles tagged for speedy deletion by people who were unwilling to know what the articles said before they tagged them. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:15, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and these are the people who eventually have failed RfAs because of overzealous CSD tagging. It's a problem, unfortunately, and when admins are asked "why did you delete my article" for the 50th time that day, we/they need to remember to be civil/polite. It's only fair - we were all newbies once too. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 07:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

This discussion really is getting into something that is more relevant to the village pump. Per the original poster of this topic though, bad CSD taggers tend to not pass RfA (don't know whether I was lucky or not :p). Sephiroth BCR ^(Converse) 08:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem has to do in part with the understatement in the first paragraph of WP:PATROL#Patrolling new pages. Is it meant to be an understatement? I guess that a lot of people don't read it as one and believe that tagging Crustaceans in Byzantine hagiography 15 minutes after its creation is OK if they have followed this process. Unfortunately this means that its creator, after a 2 hours' absence for breast-feeding, nappy changing and a few other household duties, will learn that we don't want her expertise.

There is also a psychological component. If someone patrols an article, they want to feel that they are being useful. They want to click a button. Not being allowed to press the "patrolled" button because they don't have the necessary knowledge to assess an article no doubt creates frustration in some editors. (This paragraph is speculative and based on introspection when I just patrolled a new article for the first time in my life.)

We need to change the process. Blatant nonsense and attack pages need to be deleted immediately. Other CSD articles need to be deleted before the author has invested too much time, to avoid drama when it is finally deleted. The current process is skewed towards the first problem and to radical concerning the second. Perhaps the ideal solution would be a technical one supporting a second stage of new pages patrol. Instead of marking a page as patrolled, it could be marked for repatrolling. This would occur, say, after 3 days or 10 edits to the article, whichever happens earlier. It would be inserted into Special:NewPages at that stage. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

...and now I just found the article titled Bochica. User:Excirial tagged it as patent nonsense. Then User:SatyrTN deleted it, saying there was not enough context to identify the subject. I'd never heard of the subject, but I identified it in seconds using Wikipedia and Google. Clearly these two users couldn't be bothered. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I highly resent being singled out for your example. The version I deleted was one sentence, thirteen words, some of them spelled wrong. It didn't qualify as a stub, didn't assert any notability, and was labeled by another editor as "patent nonsense", which it certainly seemed. Futhermore, it had been tagged for three hours, plenty of time for the article's creator or anyone else to have removed the speedy tage, added context to it, anything to make it suitable for keeping. I may agree with your arguments, but this is the wrong article to use as an example. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 18:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thirteen words with clear meaning doesn't qualify as a stub? Being a god of a culture isn't an assertion of notability? There are two types of patent nonsense, and the article was neither. It already had context, all anyone (including you) had to do was correct the typos and wikilink the relevant words. The fact that you've never heard of the subject means that you should look it up, or else refrain from taking any action. –Pomte 18:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The typo "mitology" was particularly unfortunate there, since it does make the article incomprehensible. I have to agree with SatyrTN's deletion.

We've known even before the Mzoli meats incident that every new stub should have at least one reference or external link to establish notability. The message presented when a new article is created directly asks the author to add references, or else the article may be deleted, so nobody should be surprised. Personally, I haven't had trouble with people deleting my stubs, even on highly esoteric subjects. [6] [7] [8] [9] — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Of the thirteen words, two were spelt wrongly, but their meaning was clear, within the context of the article using the word "god". Consequently, I do not accept that it rendered the article incomprehensible. Although I have only involved myself in nominating deletions occasionally, I thought it was only polite and sensible to do a web search, etc prior to nomination, just in case it was more a problem with my own knowledge rather than the article itself. I'm surprised that this elementary precaution is not almost universally done, and I suggest some appropriate guidelines be edited to include this advice, if it is currently absent from them. If the web search threw up references, then I would simply add them to the article in order to start it off with a good track record with referencing, but I am sure this is also not a universal strategy. Indeed, I've just added one! I think this particular case was unfortunate.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is unfortunate. But I don't think we can reasonably expect people looking at CSD backlogs to research each article before deleting it, especially since by all accounts 95% of the articles tagged as nonsense really are nonsense.

The 'nonsense' criterion has to be read as referring only to the literal content of the article, not to its possible content. In this case, the article was, for all reasonable purposes, indistinguishable from a random "Earloben is the god of corn, well known in Iowa" article. Did anyone ask the creator (politely) why he or she didn't heed the advice to add a reference? Maybe if we follow up on some of these problem articles, we can find a better way to inform new users about our requirements. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Carl, above, that spelling "mythology" as "mitology" made the original article incomprehensible enough that SatyrTN's deletion is acceptable. I don't want to call into question the experience of anyone participating in this discussion, but Special:Newpages is simply insane. Like tryin' to drink from a firehose, as the saying goes. We need to support new contributors, but watching this page for an hour or two justifies speedy deletion policy in a visceral way. If anyone here hasn't done this, please do so before singling out individual administrators for criticism. Darkspots (talk) 19:14, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

"Incomprehensible"?? It should have been obvious to anyone that "mythology" was intended. I saw that instantly and I'm as far from an expert as you can get on that subject. Obviously a non-native speaker of English wrote the article, and the misspellings were easy to fix, including that of "mythology". Michael Hardy (talk) 20:08, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree that it is often a difficult job, given the amount of rubbish one sees being added or created on occasion. I would think enquiring why the person did not include a reference would be useful, especially since I found one which was very simple to add in virtually no time at all. However, along with improvement in the behaviour of article creators, there are two more stages that need to be mentioned and clearly separated, since they can be mixed up together in ways which might hinder any closer examination: the first is the act of adding the Speedy Deletion tag to the article; the second is the action prompted by the placement of that tag. It does not take an administrator to add the speedy deletion tag to an article, and so perhaps we should encourage more responsible people to take their turns at the first stage or task, emphasizing that looking at some articles with a view to tagging them for speedy deletion might just mean spending short amount of time improving them. As for the second stage or task, if the workload is too much, then there probably there is a need to be able to create more people who can make decisions about speedy-deletion-nominated articles (as far as I am aware, one must be an administrator to be able to do this.) This need not mean creating more administrators if appropriate changes could be made, but it could mean this. And that brings us back to the issue of being able to better specify the characteristics of good behaviour one might be expected to see in good administrators. "Point scoring" on the basis of number of successfully nominated deletions, etc may not be the best way, if we think there is something at fault in the present process, for example.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(Outdent for readability) Good point, maybe we should think of adding an intermediate 'user level', I'll use me as an example: I'm pretty sure I will never be an admin, I've nominated myself twice, and the same things keep coming up, from years ago. I don't think 'the community' (those that actually vote on RfA's) will ever trust me (or at least a handful of influential editors won't) enough for adminship. However, anyone who is interested can see that I will invest huge chunks, albeit infrequent chunks) of time doing whatever scut work is needed. So anyway a non-admin user, but who reads fast enough and has a wide enough interest base to easily whip through a few dozen articles to accurately assess nonsensicality. I and many other similar editors might be able to pull some of the load, helping to determine if articles really are nonsense, allowing actual admins to spend their time more effectively. I have no real idea how this could be implemented best, but there are plenty of good non admin editors that would like to do something more to help. Identifying qualified editors seems to me the most difficult part of this. Something certainly needs to be done if there is a backlog of anything that only admins can resolve and for which there are not enough admin-hours to do so. It is a lot easier to stay on top of something than to deal with the consequences of letting it get away from us. But I think this whole thing is a Village Pump issue, not an RfA issue. User:Pedant (talk) 23:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Creating in user space

I have just one comment: People should not have to create pages in their userspace, to prevent them from being deleted. This is a wiki. A wiki is most beneficial when people can collaborate on articles to bring them up to speed.

Let me repeat the key phrase: People should not have to create pages in their userspace.

Did I mention that the moment people start creating pages in their userspace... that's a really really bad sign, and whatever the cause is must be eliminated asap?

So you're saying CSD tagging is encouraging people to create pages in their userpsace first?

Ok, then let's kill CSD tagging. (Either that, or put a time delay on the CSD tags, so that they don't show up for admins until hours or days later... hey wait... isn't that PROD? Maybe other solutions could work too?)

Could I see a quick show of hands of people who create pages in their userspace?

--Kim Bruning (talk) 12:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I create articles in my userspace, because as an experienced editor I know that I need to satisfy wikipedia policy/guidelines. Although collaboration is what a wiki is about, if people come across an article that could be deleted, they are welcome to either improve it or tag it. You just have to rely on there being good admins who would choose to reject the speedy. Seraphim♥ ^Whipp 13:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I often write new articles on my own computer and then copy them here once I am sufficiently happy with them, but that's mainly to try to avoid inflating my edit count fixing all the errors I make when starting an article. I think that creating articles in userspace, rather than mainspace, is a practice we should discourage. Having the page in userspace has the effect of preventing others from improving the article, and goes against the point of a public wiki. If experienced editors feel they need to to it because of overly hasty CSD tagging, it's a sign the CSD system needs changed. I have advocated for a long time that the CSD criteria concerning importance, rather than spam, nonsense, libel, etc., should have a time delay like the image criteria do. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't create articles in userspace. I might have once or twice, but I have no clear recollection of doing so. I certainly hope that does not become expected behavior for newbies or any editors (except perhaps for reprobates attempting to salvage their reputations). And I might note, the problem with CSD is not only with newly created articles. On more than a few occasions, a vandal defaced an established page, someone else came along and tagged it for speedy deletion, and another editor comes along and "poof" no more article. In some cases, I happened to notice the vandalism or CSD placement on my watchlist and was able to rescue the article in a timely manner. In other cases, it wasn't until some time later I notice a redlink that I knew should have an article and looked into the history. What is worse, when I pointed out the faulty deletions to the editors, I got snarly responses, as if it such accidental deletions were acceptable collateral damage in the war against vandalism and spam. I think such editors have misplaced their priorities. older ≠ wiser 13:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I create articles in user space in order to avoid conflicts. This is based on what I heard and other people's experience, not my own. I don't mind doing it: Normally I only create articles on topics that I strongly care about, and I want to get them right before anybody else messes with them. I know this is not a good attitude, and I wouldn't do it that way if I didn't have a rational argument. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I create in my userspace for two reasons. One, I tend to write slowly, finding one source one day and another other days. So rather than put something live that isn't obviously notable, I hold off until I have something that seems to be good enough. Two, DYK's are based only on new article expansion. So if it took me 2 weeks to get an article from an unsourced one line stub in my head to something sourced, with formatting, etc, in the mainspace, it would be ineligible for DYK consideration. MBisanz ^talk 14:42, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I create in my sandbox because I like to get it right before I release it. I fix my typos, insert formatted inline references, edit copy, add categories, etc. Then after a few hours work I put it into article space. Sbowers3 (talk) 14:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I make my own sandboxes and lists of templates and to-do lists. I work from home, from work, and from cafes with wireless. Having these auxiliary pages helps me keep organized with my wikipedia work. They also help me work on articles not ready for publishing. Kingturtle (talk) 18:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I am curious what your question has to do with adminship. Kingturtle (talk) 18:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Experienced editors should already know to build their article to minimum standards in their userspace before "releasing into the wild" was actually used above in rebuttal to the complaint that RFA favors rabid deletionists who, following an easy promotion, gain the ability to more efficiently and more assuredly alienate the contributing poplace.
Of course the real issue is a vast fundamental disagreement as to what "minimum standards" are, and what a reasonable timetable is for achieving them. — CharlotteWebb 19:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

In terms of minimum standards, we can look at notability; experienced editors do know what needs to be done before submitting an article to mainspace. But in terms of a page created by a new editor, if you delete (on grounds of notability/advertising etc), I'm of the principle that you should be willing to explain to the author why you deleted. A friendly welcome note and a helpful explanation can reduce the BITEyness of a page deletion. Seraphim♥ ^Whipp 23:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I do it (in my sandbox) for the same reasons as Sbowers3. I just keep it there for a few hours while working on it. I also do this if I'm extensively changing an article. Both of these times, I do it when I need/want to make frequent saves, and that would needlessly clog up the page's editing history. нмŵוτнτ 18:41, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Rarely, and then usually for my own nefarious reasons rather than a concern about speedy deletion. I don't need to worry too much about <redacted> <inaudible> <redacted> tagging my work: it's marked auto-patrolled (and like rollback, I'd like to be able to add all clueful editors to the auto-patrolled group). If it's going to take a while, I always slap {{underconstruction}} on it, which should scare off a great many NPPs. But what annoys me most is not tagging per se, but things like the sorry history of Jane McAdam Freud (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and the messages left for the creator. Oh deary me! Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a similar problem: I have had to switch to creating templates in my user space and keeping them there for several days until I am sure I have tested them enough and thought enough about them that I am not that likely to do more changes to them. The reason is that admins have often protected the templates while I was still working with them and before they were deployed anywhere. It is very frustrating to not be allowed to finish ones work. Admins should use "semi protect" more and "full protect" less.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I have only created one article in my userspace, but I have worked on previously deleted articles in my userspace in order to get them in shape so they won't be deleted again. I think that we need to respect that the single value and core policy which Wikipedia is founded on is that we are working collaboratively to write a high-quality legitimate encyclopedia which anyone can edit, (my opinion is that all policies are derived from the 'anyone can edit' foundational policy) Generally speaking editors do not collaborate on pages in someone else's workspace, so the collaborative aspect is absent when articles are written in userspace. User:Pedant (talk) 23:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I try to only create articles in the userspace... because whenever I forget to do so, they tend to get deleted, because I write articles in stages with many saves in between. It infuriates me when I have an article deleted before I have the time to make even a second save!Balloonman (talk) 18:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

And yet that's the correct way to write articles... urk... that sucks --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Totally blindsided

Here's what the article said:

Bochica is the protecter god, social planner and benefactor in the chibchan mitology.

It was completely irrational to label this article "nonsense" and to speedily delete it, but the person who deleted it is saying that the misspelling of "mythology" made the article incomprehensible. I was just completely blindsided by that claim. I would think that anyone who in those circumstances failed to understand that "mythology" was intended would be embarrassed to realize he had done that. Yet he's saying that in his defense. I am as far from an expert as you can get in the topic, and it was obvious to me that "mythology" was the word intended. I can understand it not being obvious to someone whose familiarity with the English language is limited. I can understand it not being obvious to a sixth-grader in at least some cases, even if the sixth-grader is intelligent. But when an admin asserts that he can't see such an obvious point, that makes it really difficult to sympathize with him. A person who is that mentally challenged shouldn't be trusted with an adminship. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but the above example is fairly ludicrous, and, frankly, alarming. The nomination is one thing, but the deletion is quite another. I'd say that an administrator that robotically deletes such articles should just be reprimanded (not with sanctions), but more of verbal admonishments. I'm sure after a few complaints, they'll start to pay a little bit more attention. No need to assert that they are unfit for adminship. Sometimes people get lazy. Wisdom89 _{(T / ^C)} 21:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

To Michael Hardy: I do see your basic point. I've pulled A3 tags off of enough articles myself to appreciate your frustration. I'm not saying that the article was incomprehensible to a careful reader, just that it was at that point incomprehensible enough to make deleting it understandable. I do think that calling a specific editor "mentally challenged" is not acceptable. Darkspots (talk) 22:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you commented first, Darkspots, as I've already left a note with Michael expressing my dispointment regarding this overall thread and didn't want to stir the pot, as it were. However, the "mentally challenged" statement is right in the zone of WP:NPA and frankly we are probably only giving lenience because he is an admin - which is upsetting and wrong. Other users have had final warnings for less. I hope Michael will be revisiting this and redacting that comment with due apologies. Unbecoming of any editor of this work. Pedro :  Chat  22:33, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

fictions posted in this thread

Someone wrote above:

by all accounts 95% of the articles tagged as nonsense really are nonsense

I think that is fiction. How does anybody know such numbers? An admin asserts that he's speedily deleted lots of articles and he's had only one complaint of an error. One out of hundreds. That's his failure rate. Pretty good. How does he know that? How does he know there haven't been hundreds of cases where he's deleted things that shouldn't have been deleted? The newbie user goes away in disgust and no one ever hears about it. How can anybody know?

Is it possible to look at an admin's deletion logs and see which items he's deleted? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Go to Special:Log/delete and fill in the admin's login. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to make this more conspicuous. On an admin's user page there should be a conspicuous button labeled "User's deletion log" or the like. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll repeat (with additions and modifications) what I wrote down below in the next section, since it is relevant: The difficulty is that 95% is a nice round percentage, comfortably close to 100%. I imagine that it was chosen as almost a figure of speech for "large amount" or "almost all, but not so much as to be easily and quickly challenged". I don't criticize the person who first used "95%", or the others who restated it, as this is something we may all do to varying degrees from time to time. But it does not represent the product of hard and good critical thinking about what we are doing here. I do suspect that it was not chosen as a result of some survey that counted and classified such instances. This is a pity, because unless we are careful, this discussion is likely, in my experience and opinion, to become bogged down because it will be based on suspicions, hopes, desires, etc, rather than being based on empirical facts. In these kinds of cases, we need hard facts and data order to get a sensible grip on the existence and scale of any problems so that we can then decide whether and, if so, how much effort needs to be placed in finding any solutions (that is, if a problem is found as a result of collecting the information.) Furthermore, it is not really up to those who question the figures to go away and try to find the evidence to support them, because that way gets the burden of proof completely the wrong way round. If someone asserts that 95% is an accurate figure, it is up to them to provide the evidence in its favour, and it would have to be free from any reasonable alternative explanations (in terms of bias, etc), of which Michael hardy is pointing out one such example.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Ahhhh ... y'know, I've been commenting for a while now on AfD my wonderment at some of these lightning AfD nominations, saying "What, is there a prize for being the one who gets the most articles deleted in three minutes or less?" Now I find out that this is true. For my money, for anything less than a blatant CSD candidate, there's no way any editor alive can take the time to assess the notability and verifiability less than ninety seconds after creation, and I will aggressively Oppose any RfA candidate who engages in this practice. Heck, I would be pleased as punch if a new rule was put in forbidding filing an AfD on anything short of a WP:BLP violation within 72 hours of an article's creation. We're supposed to be building an encyclopedia here, not treating WP:NPP as a bloody competitive video game.  RGTraynor  17:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Probationary adminship

With all of the discussion above, I thought I would throw in my two cents worth.

Usually the best way to learn something is by doing, i.e. on-the-job training. And one of the best ways to demonstrate trustworthiness is to be put in a position of trust and prove to be worthy of it. But safety requires that the apprentice not be put into situations that may be too difficult and that the trust not be wide-open - i.e. trust, but verify.

What I propose is that there be a probationary period for new admins. For three months (e.g.), the admin may not initiate action, may only respond to someone else's request. The new admin can delete pages but only in response to a CSD, PROD, or XFD. He or she may block but only in response to an AIV or AN3, may protect a page only for an RFPP request, and may edit a protected page only in response to an {{editprotected}} flag.

These situations are relatively straightforward and not too difficult for a new admin. He or she will be able to demonstrate good judgment and knowledge of policies and guidelines. By voluntary using the tools only under restrictions, the admin will demonstrate trustworthiness.

Any editor who meets some minimum standards, perhaps six months and 1,000 mainspace edits and 500 project space edits, could be nominated by one admin, endorsed by a second admin, then promoted by a bureaucrat. So there would be three sets of eyes examining the editor before promotion.

After three months there would be an evaluation of the probationary admin's use of the tools, with emphasis on judgment and adherence to policy. The result might be full adminship, continuation of probation, or loss of tools. During the probation period, any serious impropriety could lead to an immediate desysopping.

Having many probationary admins could free up time for experienced admins to concentrate on activities that require better judgment and greater skill. Sbowers3 (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Couple of problems - difficult decisions could often go either way, and we don't want to scare admins away from attempting difficult decisions or punish them because we disagree.
• Additionally - if we say, don't screw up for 3 months and you'll be good to go... Admins will just steer clear of anything likely to cause a problem for three months, and we'll have all the same problems beginning on day 91 that we might've caught three months earlier. Avruch ^T 23:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
• If this was edited and tweaked, I could go for it. Malinaccier (talk) 23:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

One serious issue with the idea is the assumption that responding to reports somehow requires less experience and discretion than noticing something and responding to it. Responding to other users reports often require more discretion because you have to see through the potential bias of the person making the report.

I also don't like the idea of taking the choice of who gets the admin bit away from the community and giving it to two admins and a 'crat to decide. _(1 == 2)^Until 23:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

zOMG, I can't believe I'm using this twice in one day....

Important Notice
	Everything you could think of saying here has already been said at some point or another, thus all discussion about adminship is futile. Please read through and outline our 120+ archives to understand how the community reacts to certain proposals, and if you're bored, start a new thread to see if they react any differently. Suggested topics: location of the tally; how many RFAs are currently open; omg there's an RFB!!!11!1!; adminship is no big deal; the closure of an RFA you find controversial (please split discussion between the RFA's talk page, here, and WP:BN); new threads stating that these other concurrent threads have been threaded before, how to prevent biting at newcomers' RFAs; the esoteric nature of consensus, !consensus, and variations thereof; people exercising a sense of humor on this most serious process; etc. Thank you for your cooperation.

Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 23:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that is very productive to the discussion. In fact it is in the way. _(1 == 2)^Until 23:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I have absolutely no opinion on anything except those freaky shocked Wikipe-tans. Please don't post them again, ever. As it is, they will give me nightmares. Thank you in advance for your kind consideration. ---Sluzzelin talk 03:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I still suspect some idea along these lines will get traction one day. The way we're doing rollback may demonstrate that such ideas are not as crazy as they might sound. Friday (talk) 23:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

(reply to Until 1=2, for clarity)I agree. My contrib isn't productive to the discussion. But, alas, I also believe the discuss in and of itself, because of how friggin many times it has been attempted and rejected, is unproductive in and of itself. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 23:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Friday, though I expect this will result from a need forming that is not here now. _(1 == 2)^Until 23:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how this revised process would change anything for the better. Even amongst themselves, admins can't all agree on what's good and what's not in an admin candidate. What is a deal-breaker for one could be just fine for another; placing the judgement on just two people is a little nerve-wracking. It puts the power in a very, very select few hands. We don't need an admin caste to decide who becomes an admin; it should always be the community's decision, and I would go so far as to say that any plan that didn't have that at its core is flat-out wrong. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What is the goal of all the discussion on this topic? I think it is to find a way to dramatically increase the number of admins. And I think there are two reasons for doing so. One is to help with backlog in various areas. The second and maybe even more useful part is to free up the time of some very talented people to contribute in other ways to the encyclopedia. Let's face it: parts of the mopping are relatively easy and are almost a waste of the valuable resource that is an admin. The majority of AFDs are easy closes; some are very difficult. Most AIVs are easy to handle; some may need more judgment. Having ten times as many admins would free up the time of some talented people to concentrate on the more difficult decisions, or to bring an article to FA, or just to patrol New pages. Do you know that there are roughly 14,000 articles each and every month that never get patrolled? If we freed up admin time from some of the mundane mopping chores, some of those admins might use their skills patrolling thousands of good, bad, or ugly articles.

Tweaking the current process is not going to result in a dramatic increase in the number of admins. So I'm suggesting a big change. To get more admins, tilt toward inclusionist rather than deletionist. Let almost anyone (subject to some minimal standards) audition as an admin. If they do badly, then give them the hook.

As to specific comments above, I didn't mean to put more power in a very few hands, rather to make it fairly easy to get the tools on a probationary status with minimal filtering of e.g. editors with an obviously bad history. I'm sure there is some other way to get the broad community to help with the filtering instead of just admins.

As for editors ducking the difficult decision during the probationary period, I would think that willingness to tackle the tough ones would be a positive factor during the evaluation. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

This is not an argument for or against, but I think it's worth mentioning that the idea of limited access for new admins is listed at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Hierarchical structures. (Full disclosure: I added the bit about new admins starting with limited access about a month ago.) szyslak (t) 06:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but the context is entirely different. What I am suggesting is a huge decrease in the "frictional effort expended at WP:RFA". Make it semi-automatic and then let them audition for a period of time. The probationary period is a way to find out whether we can trust them. Sbowers3 (talk) 10:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Simpler approach?

Here's a quickie stab at a less bureaucratic form of the above. It might require some software tweaks similar to what was done for rollback. Any admin can promote someone to provisional admin, at their discretion- like rollback. If they misuse the tools, we try to nudge them back on track by giving them good advice. If this fails and misuse of tools continues (or, if the misuse was grievous), any admin can remove provisional admin permission, at their discretion. If there is disagreement on this, I suppose we go to RFC to further examine the case. If, after some period (3 months, perhaps?) they've done well, they get the bump up to full admin. All without anything resembling RFA. This appears too simple to fail, to me, so please go ahead and shoot holes in it. Friday (talk) 14:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered the technical danger of letting an admin set the admin bit? A not so clever bot with one admin account can spider out creating more and more admin accounts. If you meant that admins get to decide but crats push the button, that is less dangerous.

Also, once again I don't think we should take the decision when to give someone the admin bit from the community trust and just make it an admin decision. The community has not failed in the selection of admins in my opinion, with few admins turning out bad, and a significant number of promotions. I don't think it should be up to admins to decide when someone gets the tools, this would lead to seniority based authority because it takes the control away from the regular users.

I will also point out that any admin on this probation will be a real target to trolls and anyone who likes to cry "abuse" when there is none. Lots of unneeded drama. _(1 == 2)^Until 14:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, let crats have the technical permission, then. They'd do it at the request of an admin. I consider this a minor implementation detail. Where the community has failed is that we spend lots of time with RFA, and a great many participants are still using completely stupid reasoning in their votes. Look at the obviously unqualified candidates who take up time and still get 50% support. We can't exactly throw people out of RFA for giving boneheaded opinions, so let's make RFA irrelevant instead. The troll-magnetism is a feature, not a bug. For someone to function properly as an admin, we need to know they can deal with completely unreasonable people, while staying reasonable themselves. Friday (talk) 14:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It is rather unfortunate that this will never be accepted: such a proposal is simply so far outside of the boundaries the mindset this community has entered into, with regards to the process of gaining the administrator tools. Having said that, I also held doubt about rollback, and it's now been rolled out (excuse the pun) across the community; perhaps Friday's proposal will one day be implemented, and indeed, I hope it does. To elaborate on that, I do, in principle, agree with this proposal, so long as it is the Bureaucrat team that pushes the button to promote to full status. Anthøny 14:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

:-( This is already the toned-down version, meant to be more widely palatable. My real plan also has a more radical step 2- this is just step 1. I guess it's best that I laid out only the first bit. Can you think of anything can be done to make this more acceptable? Or do we just wait for rollback to exist for a couple years, and maybe by then, the "easy come, easy go" model of permissions seems more sensible and less anarchic? Friday (talk) 14:57, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the inertia of the current process is simply too much for this (or any proposal) to succeed. However, something you could propose, (which will also no doubt be shot down, but which might at least come closer to succeeding) is that we be daring and actually experiment. Pick (say) 5-10 admins at random, have them choose one person each for provadmin, and give it a whirl. Before a 'crat sysops them, they could specifically state somewhere this is an experiment and they will voluntarily give up provadmin status at the end of the trial period, or whenever another admin believes they've used up their allotment of the learning curve. Then we see what happens, and discuss in a few months when we'll have more hard info, and less speculation.

Getting consensus to make wholesale changes to RFA will never succeed; getting consensus to try a limited experiment or two might, just possibly. --barneca (talk) 15:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

So what happens to the 5/10 provsops after the "experiement?" Do they get full 'crat approved admin status, or do they hafta then go thru an RfA? Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 15:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Theoretically, I'm not sure which would be best; there's value in both options. But to get consensus for this experiment, I suspect keeping the adminship at the end wouldn't fly. Still, RfA's should be a breeze afterward for provadmins who have proved their worth. --barneca (talk) 16:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

RfA's should be a breeze for any editor that has proved their worth. Adding an "extra step" of provsop (sorry, that's more fun to say than provadmin :-) could be easily seen as cabalism/cronyism if they are arbitrarily getting picked by compadres instead of by community consensus. So, they end up having an RfA (or modified to RfPA, I suppose it could be called) before the provsop access. So what have we accomplished? Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 16:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What we've gained is the ability to not have to guess. There is no better way to consider whether someone should have the tools than to observe what they actually do with the tools. RFA requires us to guess right now. But, not everyone has to see the value in the experiment. If some people do, and nobody gets in the way, it's a useful experiment. So, the question to ask is not "Do I think the experiment will be successful?" but rather "Do I have a reason to try to stop the experiment from even happening?" We can evaluate the success or failure after the experiment. Friday (talk) 16:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Mostly, what we would accomplish is (a) getting information on provship (compromise?) that we can actually evaluate, instead of imagined benefits and imagined costs, and (b) removing one brick in the wall of immovable, unchangeable policy. I'm not even necessarily of the opinion that Friday's proposal is the best, or vital for the future of the project; I just think we should be willing to try things, rather than shoot everything down because 25% of us can always be found to say new proposals aren't perfect as originally proposed, and might go wrong. If it were up to me, we'd try this, and a few other perennial ideas, on a very limited basis, just to get some useful info and to break the logjam. Friday's proposal just has the added benefit of being very simple. --barneca (talk) 16:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

<outdent, too many colons for poor keeper...> I'm slowly buying this. My concern with the experiment isn't the experiment itself (seems simple enough), but what happens to the mice after they've run through the maze. Obviously, if they break walls, throw cheese at each other, etc, the solution is easy, don't let the mice run the maze anymore. No sysop. But what if they get to the end successfully? (which is, IMO, ridiculously more likely - every editor can run a maze/act on his/her best behavior for a couple of months). So when they get to the end of the maze, do we give them the cheese or take it away? The answer to that would need to be in any proposal/experiement that would get my support. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 16:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

At first, we might be stuck putting them thru RFA- making the provisional adminship pointless, right? Well, anyone who did well with it should pass easily. My hope would be that once a few people have done this without burning down the wiki, we can just leave them promoted without causing a major outcry. (Some of this might depend on implementation details. Is provisional admin actually a separate permission that the software is aware of, or does this distinction only exist in the minds of people?) When in doubt, we take it slow, as radical changes are not likely to be easily accepted. Friday (talk) 17:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I would think that the easiest way would be to make it a technically full promotion, and a 'crat will just alert the stewards when they need to be demoted. A better system could be implemented after the experiment has run its course. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

And what happens if/when the experiment is a success? As noted, it's not hard to act nice while a provop. Will this come with an easier deop process as well? That said, I like the idea a lot. --Kbdank71 17:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, if this is an actual failing of the proposed system, why doesn't it apply to RFA right now? Isn't it a (theoretical) failing of the current system? If you know you're going to try an RFA in 3 months, in theory you would keep your head down and talk sweetly anyway. In practice, some people get in fights with others and sabotage it... --barneca (talk) 17:18, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a failing of both systems. Regardless of how we pick admins, we do need a better way to deop the bad apples. I don't think that's a reason not to try the experiment, though. --Kbdank71 17:23, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK, I agree with you 100% then, but that's a whole different perennnial idea. --barneca (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Who picks the mice? Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 17:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Mice, I'm guessing, will be fairly easy to find. What may be more difficult is finding a crat who's willing to be so brave as to play along, and deal with all the abuse he'll get for (gasp!) trying something new. Friday (talk) 17:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

That's assuming the Kremlin doesn't get them all.[10] EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

EVula is a shit sysop. Oh wait, wrong thread. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 17:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic from the above line, but in keeping with the rest of the thread above and in response to Sbowers3 initial thread, wouldn't this theoritical procedure make more people not want to be a sysop? If there is all this red tape around getting adminship, surely less people will apply (or want to be nominated) and then as the community grows, we'll find a slow but sure shortage of active administrators. Rudget (review) 17:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh, red tape? No, the entire goal is something more lightweight than the current process. Also, as an experiment, it would be, well, experimental. Nobody would have to do it. Friday (talk) 18:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

My problem with this isn't the trial run concept but of the idea in general. There's too wide a spectrum among admins (and general editors) as to what constitutes an acceptable potential admin. Because of that, provisional admins will be created that already are not acceptable to some part (whatever size) of the general community, admins or otherwise. So the problems comes at the end of the probation period. At that point there will exist a group of editors that will want to revoke the admin status. The argument will be made that their opposition to the editor becoming an admin was based on the editors history before the trial, and since presumably anyone can keep their nose clean for a month or two, the trial period didn't prove or disprove anything. Furthermore, if a single admin is able to confer admin rights, those admins that have significantly lower standards than the majority of editors will create a class of admins who won't (or wouldn't in a normal RFA) have community support. And since it all boils down to misuse of tools, for this to work there'd need to be a shared definition of what that constitutes. I think it's pretty clear that there isn't (and burning down the Wiki is only the worst case of misuse) and revocation of admin rights will be drama filled and another front in the RFA standards battles that have been going on. I respect the idea, but there's no way it'll be practical without splintering one RFA standards battle into a bunch of smaller probationary admin battles where everyone disagrees about what misuse of tools is. Sorry for the length here, I can never seem to say anything succinctly. But you get the drift. RxS (talk) 17:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

So, we may find problems cropping up eventually, much like if a particular admin had views on deletion that were out-of-line and he tried to put them into action by how be closed AFDs. I think we have existing means of dealing with this, starting with a couple people saying, "Hey, you, don't do that." Friday (talk) 18:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

But it's a little like that old joke, "who's we...?" Let's say an probate admin is a little fast/loose/inaccurate on speedy's. A couple people say something to him about it. Like clockwork a couple other people will show up saying that the speedy's were fine and there is no problem. There's no "we" here anymore...no single voice that can speak to an editor (outside of clear misuse of tools) and say they need to adjust something in their tool usage. It'll just be a case of a group of people telling him or her different things...and at that point it becomes a mini pie fight over deletion policy. The probate admin won't be the central issue. I think revocation is the sticking point here, and the potential source for a roving series of brouhahas and extraneous hoopla. RxS (talk) 19:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Some people go whoopee at the thought of brouhaha and hoopla. sowwy, couldn't resist :-P.

I guess our system should be brouhaha-resistant and hoopla-resistant (if not -proof). Any idea how to achieve that? --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

That's the 64,000 wiki question. People are drawn to hoopla like free food. If you mean promoting admins with a minimum of hoopla I think it already is...it's been quiet for a while no with only limited outbreaks of brouhaha, no? Or at least as free most other parts of project space that has a medium to high volume of traffic. It's not RFA that generates it, it's the nature of how we do business here. If you mean fixing it so we promote more admins, then I don't know. Maybe the discussion should be standards? RxS (talk) 21:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

No need to put people through RFA. If we have a consensus that they'll likely be good admins, we can ask a bureaucrat to promote. Remember, consensus has primacy, not % or rules. (there's also some unwritten dynamics that ensure that this would still work, even if there was an uproar. But naturally you can simply give people more than enough time to respond and to be heard and to improve on things, so I don't see that happening. ) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:05, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

No need to put people through RFA. If we have a consensus that they'll likely be good admins, we can ask a bureaucrat to promote.. Wait, isn't that what RFA is? Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha! Well, yes and no. It's what RFA supposed to be, in our dreams, eh? . Do you see why bureaucrats would have to obey consensus found elsewhere? (preferentially, even! ;-) ) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I think RfA is lacking. Eventually, though, it will inevitably, at some stage of an editor's life on wiki, come down to the other editors deciding if/when that particular editor, if he/she wants it, can have the tools. Consensus consensus consensus. RfA does that, mostly. It's a hack job sometimes. It's frustrating to see how gauntlet-y it can get. But I don't think it should (or even could at this point) get thrown out. (And I don't think that's what Friday is suggesting either). Instead of reinventing RfA with new acronyms and processes, how 'bout overhauling it instead? Make it better. And for the love, don't ask me how to do that. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 20:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Overhaul? Try do that Simultaneously! ;-) We'll race you. Then we take a time machine to milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe, and wait to see if you arrive in time for the big crunch ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

(Don't tell anyone, as it will get this branded as a radical proposal and thus undoable, but) I hope RFA eventually withers and goes away. But I won't try to kill it- I'd rather have it simply become irrelevant. If we have a way to easy-grant the tools and easy-remove then when needed, what purpose would RFA serve? I'd rather see us spending time discussing adminship when actually needed- i.e. when faced with an actual claim that someone has actually been misusing the tools. Focus the effort on things of practical importance rather than on speculation, as we do now. Friday (talk) 20:28, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Honestly though? The system you are proposing, although a different name, and with different steps, will eventually be RfA2. It just will. Too many editors. Too much inevitable creep. "Easy-grant"-ing the tools was exactly what used to happen, look at the first RfBs even. When there weren't so many damn editors in so many damn countries with all their own ideas it was simpler. Your ideas are grand, Friday. I support repairing the system we have more than throwing it out though. For example Spending time discussing adminship when actually needed is what RfAs are supposed to be. Fix RfA. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think RFA (and also perhaps DRV and one or two other locations) suffers from -to coin a term- the Esperanza effect. It started out fine, but somewhere along the line it's turned into a closed group resistant to change (who incidentally think they're important to wikipedia). The base realization is that if we delete RFA tomorrow, not only will wikipedia still operate, we will still even be able to hand new people the admin flag. Actually there are two problems with RFA, not one.

1. The first is the Esperanza effect, it can probably be fixed by just deleting RFA and starting from scratch with something resembling the original model. You are right that rebooting in this way is not a permanent solution, but it'll take a while for the Esperanza effect to muddle it up again.
2. The second is scaling issues. A pure restart might not work due to the sheer number of people who get dragged to a single page (scaling issue!) . To fix this, we need to split out rfa's and not use a central location. (for some reason, people who grew up in the 20th century have this horrible tendency to centralize centralize centralize. Helloooo, this is the 21st: web 2.0, wikinomics, webs of information and all that? Adhocratize, Decentralize, Diversifize! Or something somewhere is gonna suffer a meltdown!

--Kim Bruning (talk) 10:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the tendency to centralize didn't start with the poor old misunderstood 20th century ;) But if the point is to reduce the number of participants (that at the same time doesn't limit it to the stakeholders), why not think about a jury system? That is if you really think RFA is broken, which I don't. But it's a popular opinion. In any case Wikipedia is littered closed groups resistant to change... RxS (talk) 15:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

If you can find someone from the neolithic revolution who is still living today, I'd love to meet them! ;-)

In the mean time, when *would* you consider RFA broken? When we start promoting firebreathing monsters? O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

IMO, this is a great idea. We should spend all this time either writing articles, doing admin work, or (if it must be related in some way to RfA) desysopping people. If we had a system like what Friday proposes, with a community-mandated desysopping procedure (e.g. like RfA...general consensus to desysop means desysopping, much more painless than the recall-RfC-ArbCom-RfC again-ArbCom-desysop route we have now) then I think the encyclopedia as a whole would benefit. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 21:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think this is worth a try after we get the rollback mess is sorted out. I wouldn't mind being a guinea pig for the proposed process. But let's actually do something this time. MER-C 12:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I know the person who started the rollback mess. I told them not to, because their chosen procedure was known to be disruptive. They did it anyway, I took cover... ;-) *sigh*. Safely having ignored all that mess, the fun thing with the new code is that we can now deal with other permissions the same way, so maybe we'll be able to no-big-deal-ize the lot :-). Possibly we should just bribe someone to put that live on enwiki, and take on the brouhaha like all bad-tasting-medicine: in one big gulp to get it over with. O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Come to think about it, this reminds me of a somewhat informal featured picture delist nomination, which was a rather interesting exercise on my part. To apply it to adminship (a quick sketch): a bunch of established editors/admins get together and recommend someone for adminship, somewhat like this. After the discussion becomes stale, the candidate asks a crat "Can I has the bit plz?" with a link to the related discussion. The crat decides whether the traineeship takes place (and possibly some other details e.g. length). If some established editors voice significant concerns about the trainee then it goes to a formal ratification, otherwise on expiry the trainee becomes a full admin. MER-C 13:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

You know, I've thought about that myself...sort of a WP:PROD style RFA. Most/many RFA's succeed without much opposition so there might be some value in short cutting RFA in some cases. You'd request the bit and if there are any significant objections off to RFA you go. But that doesn't solve any of the perceived problems some people see in RFA, or not the most common ones anyway. You'd still have the edge cases and the controversial nominees which is where all the problems come from. RxS (talk) 14:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Piggybacking a bit on that. We already have snow close and obvious fail RfAs. What about snow promotes?. There are currently a couple of ridiculously inevitable promotions that are happening right now. After, say, 3 days, if no significant opposition presents itself, close it. Hole punching begins...now! Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 15:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

No thanks, I'm sure candidates can wait an extra four days to become an admin and there have been cases where nominations have downturned swiftly in the last few days. Besides, quite a lot of people don't check Wikipedia every day, and check RfA even less. I don't think getting new admins 4 days earlier at the expense of a thorough review of a candidate and giving everyone a chance to have their say is actually worth it. -- Naerii 15:09, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

since it takes only a fraction of the number of opposing votes! to derail an RfA snow promotions would open up many fine cans of beans, it can take a couple of days for editors to look into various actions of an editor. I'd more likely choose to oppose in the first instance where I have a concern rather than take more time to make an informed decision. This would make RfA even more stressful and acrimonious especially in line ball discussions. Gnangarra 15:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't accept for one second that the community had failed to handle the selection of administrators. Sure, RfA is a gauntlet, but it should be. The people that pass make good admins, and those that fail do so for good reasons in the majority of cases. Now I have seen some RfAs turn out the "wrong way", but I don't think that can be changed by this suggestion, nor do I think it is all that common. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Bottom line, I couldn't agree more with this. I see nothing wrong with RFA that compels us to rewire it. Nothing a little good faith and civility couldn't fix anyway. RxS (talk) 15:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Man, I wish people didn't insist on seeing the current process as completely dysfunctional before they'll consider a refinement. I see obvious value in a process that lets us judge candidates based not on guesswork, but on actual observation of how someone has actually been using the tools. We didn't need to abandon AFD in order to use prod. Friday (talk) 15:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think RFA has to be completely dysfunctional before changes need to be made. But I do think a probate admin process is much more than a refinement. I may be in a minority but I think RFA runs pretty well most of the time. That is, it does a decent job of weeding out bad candidates. Could it do a better job? Sure, and judging candidates on how they actually use the tools would do that. But the devil is in the details, and I think that there are unintended consequences to this particular idea. I'm not trying to be obstructionist, I'm really not. RxS (talk) 16:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

To clarify my position. I denied it was dysfunctional because people above claimed it was. I disagree with the change not because we are not dysfunctional, but because I think the new system would be less functional, and cause real problems. I don't want to test admins by giving them the tools because when they do a bad block it scares off new users we will never get back. Admin actions can be reversed but they can still do damage to people. _(1 == 2)^Until 15:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Just because someone goes through RFA doesn't mean they won't make a bad block. And RFA will never uncover a situation where you can say "Oppose, he makes bad blocks". So how would the new system be different than what we have now? --Kbdank71 17:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm skeptical of the "proposed adminship" procedure. I assume that the way most people would handle provisional adminship is to not do anything interesting for the whole time. Admins sometimes have to make bold decisions, enter into conflicts (with the aim of resolving them), skillfully apply IAR, or upset some people for the overall good of Wikipedia. You would probably see none of these during a provisional adminship. If a provisional admin did such things, they would probably acquire enough detractors that they could not keep their admin bit.

RfA has problems, yes, but I doubt this would solve them. I much preferred a small proposed change to RfA that has been brought up at times, but which I suppose isn't interesting enough to get large numbers of people talking about it. That was to have 3 days of discussion (with no voting) followed by 4 days of voting. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:45, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

"Voting?" *Kim said, whilst carrying a big stick* --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, voting. When you count yourself as a support or an oppose, you're voting, by definition. Note that I can make that statement without saying anything about the ideology of RfA, such as how much the result should be determined by counting votes versus how much it should be determined by general discussion or bureaucratic whim; I'm just using an English word the way it's meant to be used. Which is a good thing to do if we're having a serious discussion about the direction of RfA. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I use voting as a term-of-the-art on wikipedia. Vote=binding decision reached by show-of-hands-or-what-have-you poll: a view of current consensus (to see if rough consensus has been reached yet)

It helps to use the same terminology. Notably, I've generally promised that if people turn RFA into a straight vote (as per term-of-the-art, not "plain english"), I would start pushing to get it killed off. And I'm not the only person. It's the clear white line test. This is why people all tippy-toe around the word "vote". It's become a bit of a silly game. Even though the clear line hasn't been reached yet, I figure we should just put the place out of its misery anyway. It's actually now *worse* than our widely-lambasted-in-the-press deletion system, can you imagine? --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure. The tippy-toeing just bothers me, especially when the common solution is to use exactly the same word but put an exclamation point before it.

I'll justify this digression now by bringing it back on topic. The "proposed adminship" system being discussed in this huge section would seem to avoid the problems of voting... but I suspect the voting would come later, and be much more unpleasant when it does. Person A says "OMG, this guy did a bad job, he shouldn't be an admin". Person B says "No, he did fine, you're just obstructing things." People C through Z chime in to agree with A or B. Now we've got a traditional RfA but with fewer standards and more drama. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Standards? I think elsewhere on this page we've already discovered that standards have dropped considerably since my day ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)