Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 203

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Archive 200

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Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Terrasidius

Resolved

– Candidate withdrew. –xeno^talk 17:14, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Has this run past being constructive to the point of WP:Not now? Dloh cierekim 17:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I was considering closing it as NOTNOW but reflecting that even crats and admins are in the support-section, I think a crat should do it if needed. It's not as clear cut imho as many others and I think Terrasidius "deserves" a crat close, one way or another. Even if it shouldn't be, a crat (instead of one of us normal guys) closing an RFA is probably still some kind of seal of quality.

Regards So Why 20:04, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't really say this would be a "notnow" case because the essay is directed as 'newcomers' whereas the candidate has a lot of experience, just hasn't been consistently editing recently. Probably should be counseled on withdrawing and recommended to approach this again in six months with more consistent activity levels and familiarity with admin-related areas. –xeno^talk 20:08, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

IPs unable to vote?

The "Expressing opinions" subsection of the "About RFA" part of this page reads as follows:

Any Wikipedian with an account is welcome to comment in the Support, Oppose, and Neutral sections, but IPs are unable to place a numerical (#) "vote".

Why is this not possible? Couldn't I log out and add a # character and words to a nomination? I'm not asking about whether IPs' votes should be counted or not; this is strictly a question of whether the software permits them to vote. Nyttend (talk) 21:27, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The software permits it, it's just that the IP !vote will (almost certainly) be manually indented by another editor.--Mkativerata (talk) 21:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

(ec)The software allows them to !vote, but they are then indented... I guess the theory is that this is already a foul enough place that we don't want regulars to hide behind an IP.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It is a social restriction and not a technical one, the reasoning being to prevent socking to promote or not promote users. --Izno (talk) 21:30, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it is more about the accountability of the !voters, they can still participate in the discussion, but if you want to !vote, then you have to have the courage to log on.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

We have several IP editors who are unafraid to make their opinion heard and who have consistent IPs, so I don't believe the accountability you're suggesting is the reason to be the actual reason. --Izno (talk) 21:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that there's nothing to stop someone hopping from one IP to t'other and placing multiple votes. Granted, there's nothing to stop you from suing multiple accounts to do the same, but it's slightly more difficult and, I believe, easier to detect. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

That's why I say it is for !voter accountability. Yeah, you can do that with IPs and alternate accounts (Socks) but it becomes more apparent when you have 20 user accounts with little to no history !voting. Plus, by forcing people to log in, you force them to stand behind your comments. If you are vicious in your !votes, people will remember them when you run for admin/crat/arbcom/etc. If you are too easy with you !votes, people will remember them when you run for admin/crat/arbcom/etc. Yeah, you can have multiple accounts/IPs, but by forcing us to log in, it forces people to be more accountable for their online personas.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I like the part where you've got "suing" instead of "using". I laughed. Useight (talk) 22:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

[unindent] Per what everyone is saying, I've reworded the sentence. Thanks for the input; I thought it was some odd sort of technical issue, rather than imprecise wording. Nyttend (talk) 02:43, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I have reverted[1] your edit: the above discussion does not support the wording you used, plus for a change like this a longer discussion is needed. While "unable to vote" is a fairly bad wording, replacing it by "but numerical (#) "votes" by IPs are likely not to be counted toward the total" is not good either. IMO, IPs should not !vote in RfAs and I am not a fan of IPs commenting in RfAs (even without !voting) either. In my observations, most IP comments in RfAs come from experienced editors who clearly have an account but for some reason are not willing to disclose it. Allowing them to !vote in effect encourages a form of sockpuppetry in a forum where tempers often run high and it is particularly important to keep things cool. IP !votes would inevitably lead to ugly suspicions and accusations in many cases and increase the level of drama - the last thing that RfA needs more of. The language in the RfA instructions should therefore, IMO, reflect this point and say something like "Wikipedia users may only !vote in RfAs while logged in, and RfA !votes by IPs will be indented" or something like that. Nsk92 (talk) 04:06, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

For the time being, I replaced[2] "are unable to place a numerical (#) "vote" by "may not place a numerical (#) "vote" in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Front matter. I think this wording is closer to what the above discussion indicates and less confusing than the "unable to" phrasing; it also reflects the current de-facto practice of indenting IP !votes. Nsk92 (talk) 05:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Question about civility and personal attacks at RfA

Make no mistake. I'm pretty outspoken, have at least half a dozen truly shocking comments to my name, and accept on balance that I'm somewhat fortunate to have a clean block log. But when did posts at RfA become immune to the likes of WP:CIVIL and the no personal attacks policy? The tone of at least one of the last ten supports in Connormah's one (plus a diff linked to from a second one) makes some of my outburts seem kitten-like in comparison. --W F C-- 20:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

RFA is a feculent sinkhole of hatred and rage, the one place on Wikipedia where people are tacitly allowed to vent their spleens with no filters, and finally say what they actually think about someone without much fear of being blocked. This is, of course, a problem; RFA used to be a fairly simple process, and now it's much more of a trial by fire than anything else. The real problem, of course, is that everyone pretty much agrees that RFA is broken, but nobody can agree on how to fix it. Everyone has their pet theories on how to repair what's broken, and are uninterested in compromise. Then there's the bloc of people who just oppose any change to anything anywhere. What can you do, really? Not much. → ROUX ₪ 20:39, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Aw, come on, Roux, don't hold back, tell us what you really think. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

That's not a bad summary, but it's even worse than that. A candidate might reasonably be criticised by friend and foe alike, that goes with the territory, but it's now the case that opposers are equally targetted, and nobody tries to do anything to stop it. With Connormah's RfA, for instance, it is to the candidate's discredit that he has taken no steps to rein in his more abusive supporters. Malleus Fatuorum 20:47, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

There have been several RfA's that have failed for that specific reason... failure of the candidate from reigning in his supporters. One of the more notorious RfA's (which played a role in an admin resigning under a cloud) failed with many of the opposers pointing to the behaviour of the admin/nominator and the candidates inaction.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's true, that does happen, despite it being a little irksome. At least in this case, Connormah did say he's been kind of busy as of late, if that counts for anything. 174.52.141.138^{Also 67.136.117.132}20:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think this is an overall maturity problem rather than a Wikipedia problem. But who knows. Tommy! [message] 21:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Another example of poor judgement then, running the RfA gauntlet when you don't have the time to pay attention to it. Malleus Fatuorum 21:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't even know what any of this means... apparently I'm too stupid. – B.hotep •talk• 21:12, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Quite frankly, if people came up with valid reasons to oppose candidates, they wouldn't be lambasted for looking around for truly pathetic reasons to oppose. This is true of many recent RfAs, WP:Requests for adminship/T being a good example. Nobody was debating that the RfA was premature, so what does one achieve by writing "oppose. You don't have enough edits"? It's insulting to the candidate and does nothing for the opposer other than pad their edit count. RfA is supposed to be about whether someone is suitable to be an administrator, not whether they have 2 million edits or twenty featured articles. And people wonder why we can't get enough decent candidates to go through an RfA! Some of the opposers in recent RfAs should be ashamed of themselves. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:18, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
- Quite frankly many of the supporters in recent RfAs should be even more ashamed of themselves. I realise though that the trend at RfA is to eliminate all opposition as being worthless. Why not just block everyone who opposes for disruption, as some clearly want to do? Malleus Fatuorum 21:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
  - Malleus is spot on: if there's a quality gap between opposers and supporters, it's clearly the opposers who have the reasoning deficit. "Fully qualified candidate" and "Why not?" are entirely common and unremarkable support input. Jclemens (talk) 21:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC))
    - And "fixed concerns from last RfA too soon" or "didn't twiddle his thumbs for some arbitrary amount of time" is useful input? I'm not condoning incivility in the support section. I would love it if people could actually participate in RfA with respect for the candidate and fellow participants, but the incivility of supporters doesn't give opposers a licence to insult the candidate. Candidates submit their RfAs as good faith offers to help out, so the very least we can do is offer them a little bit of respect. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
    - At AFD it's the burden of those who want the article gone to provide good arguments. A no-consensus close results in the same fate for the article: kept. At RFA it's the burden of the opposers - most supports are just votes without any commentary. If all the opposers can up with is along the lines of "Not got a million edits", I don't blame people for supporting. Aiken ♫ 21:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the supports are generally civil, but many are frustrated, particularly on the RFA mentioned, of the apparent pettiness of some of the opposition. It's no excuse for incivility, but it seems some editors will jump on anything they possibly can to oppose somebody, whether it's actually a relevant reason, or just something pulled out of nothing. Once opposers begin to oppose with reasonable and logical commentary, the comments in the support section will probably stop. This isn't to say that all opposition is unreasonable - most of it is fine - but you'll find that the criticism is almost always for opposition that's petty or nothing to do with adminship. Aiken ♫ 21:46, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's also true to say that some editors will jump on anything they possibly can to support somebody. Have a look at some of them. – B.hotep •talk• 21:52, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

What's the problem with that? Someone is proposed to be an admin, so we assume they are qualified until proven otherwise. Or did AGF at the door of RFA? Aiken ♫ 21:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think Bubba said he had a problem with it, just that it goes both ways. ceranthor 21:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It is a perfectly logical and sociologically supportable position that those who seek power too much are the last to whom it should be given; some native North American tribes even chose their chiefs on that basis. That you or anyone else does not share that view, or believes that someone can transform themselves into a model wikipedian in a mere six weeks, does not confer the right to abuse those who hold a contrary view. Malleus Fatuorum 21:57, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

"Good faith" isn't a synonym for "competence". Someone can have the best faith in the world, but potentially be crappy at any given task. With no working desysop mechanism or probationary procedure in practice, adminship is effectively for life; it's down to the candidate and the nominator to persuade people that the candidate is competent. I don't know where this "default position is support" meme has sprung from over the last six months or so; in all Wikipedia processes (from AFD, to Arbcom elections, to policy proposals) the default position is "maintain the status quo", which in the case of RFA is "do not promote". – iridescent 21:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I chose the wrong word and knew as soon as I saved it was wrong. A better thing to write would be "Do we assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent?". People come looking to oppose, which is a bad outlook. It's needlessly negative. If someone wants to help out, we should assume they are suitable - unless proven otherwise.

It's been going on a lot longer than six months. Right since the beginning of RFA in fact. Aiken ♫ 22:09, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Again, Malleus is right. :-) The default position in RfA is "not pass"--there needs to be a preponderance, a clear majority, of users who trust the editor/applicant with a block button that works on them--even the other administrators. Jclemens (talk) 22:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

... and that's where I generally trip. One, administrators are scared rigid to block each other, and two, well you can probably guess what two is. I've got far too many admins champing at the bit to block me already, without adding another one. Malleus Fatuorum 22:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Malleus, don't get me wrong here, I like you, but you seem to be under the delusion that all admins are maniacal 12-year-olds just waiting for an excuse to block you. We have better things to do. If you don't do anything to get yourself blocked, you won't be blocked and the vast majority of admins are far more concerned with dealing with vandalism and BLP issues or protected edit requests or any of the other things that anyone vaguely competent could do if we just delegated a few of the abilities. Blocking you is quite low on the list of priorities for most admins, or did I just miss that memo after my RfA? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:21, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's no delusion. Malleus Fatuorum 22:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Well then it's no wonder there's always a backlog, all the admins must be just waiting to block you! Come on. Maybe there are a few who are out to get you, but most have far better things to do. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned default positions other than Iridescent. The default position is in fact neutral. We then have to decide what decision to actually make. I would assume the candidate was qualified, unless anything concerning came up. I assume you would assume they weren't qualified, unless their good points shone through? Aiken ♫ 22:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

"Nobody has mentioned default positions other than Iridescent"? You know we can read, right? – iridescent 22:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, nothing about default positions there. Aiken ♫ 22:19, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Someone opposes, so we assume they have thought about this, we then support (or oppose) of our own volition, we don't support because of the opposition. Do we? Seems hypocritical to say RfA needs fixing then willingly break it. – B.hotep •talk• 22:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

People consider RFA broken in different ways. I consider poorly thought out opposition of qualified candidates damaging to the project. Others, however, might consider lots of qualified people being promoted as being a problem. Aiken ♫ 22:13, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I can agree with that. Poorly thought out opposition is, well, poor. I think, somehow, that the percentage of poorly thought out opposition is in the minority compared to poorly thought out support. That is more damaging. – B.hotep •talk• 22:17, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

If the opposition was truely effective, then supporters generally switch over, and more people come and oppose. I suppose the same effect is sort of happening in the RFA mentioned, just the other way around. Aiken ♫ 22:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd be interested in anyone's views on what qualifies a candidate to be given the block button, which I frankly consider to be far more dangerous than a few wrong CSD taggings, but for which there can be no previous experience. Malleus Fatuorum 22:20, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

This is why I proposed Wikipedia:Vandal fighters, for people who want the block button to block people who actually need blocking (vandals). Unfortunately, barely anyone cared who wanted it, and I gave up arguing for it. Aiken ♫ 22:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable idea, but you can't change anything here, it's set in stone. Malleus Fatuorum 22:26, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

If that what you think, why didn't you say so on the VF talk page? We were pushing hard for a distinction between short-term blocks of IPs/unconfirmed accounts vs the power indefinitely to block established contributors. - Pointillist (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Even if he had done, it still had no chance of going anywhere. Too many people didn't like the idea. I think they didn't understand it fully, but that's my opinion. Aiken ♫ 22:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, yes, nearly everything on-Wiki is set in stone, even in the face of reasonable new ideas. But the solution seems to me to not give up arguing for good ideas too quickly, which, frankly, you did. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

That's because hardly anyone was helping me, and I was getting very frustrated. I decided to walk away and do something else - I wasn't interested in getting into a dispute over something so petty. Aiken ♫ 22:41, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

But Malleus Fatuorum should have participated in the VF debate anyway, given how deeply s/he has deprecated the current RfA process in the past—and to some extent influenced those of us who prioritise content contributions. I'm afraid that nowadays s/he is beginning to look rather like a shabby tiger - Pointillist (talk) 22:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I am not a "she", but on bad hair days I suppose I can look a little "shabby". I have seen so many of these failed proposals for unbundling that I don't see the point in wasting any more time on discussing them. It ain't gonna happen. Malleus Fatuorum 22:46, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

You can still comment on the proposal by clicking here. Thanks - Pointillist (talk) 22:54, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Remind me. Why would I waste my time? Malleus Fatuorum 23:26, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

You probably don't need reminding but: (i) you're concerned about the powers of admins; (ii) the current RFA process is driven by a supposed need for new admins because of vandalism; however (iii) the powers needed to combat vandalism are a small subset of admin powers; so (iv) it makes sense to distinguish between vandal fighters and full admins. You should express an opinion on this because otherwise it looks like you are sitting on the fence and attacking only when you can see an easy target. - Pointillist (talk) 23:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

You're missing the point. It will never happen, no how much gassing on whatever talk page. Turkeys never vote for Christmas. Malleus Fatuorum 00:22, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, off the top of my head I would say if a candidate, shall we say, "urges" or "promotes" people to be blocked when there is little or no chance of any right-thinking admin doing so within policy, that would be a red light for me. – B.hotep •talk• 22:28, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

At a simpler level, I would say bad reports to AIV and incorrect vandal warnings show a lack due diligence, suggesting the candidate is less qualified for access to the block button. Gimmetoo (talk) 22:30, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

That's obvious enough. Aiken ♫ 22:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that was simpler. :) But it covers ANI and 3RR also. – B.hotep •talk• 22:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

But what about the guy who reports a vandal who's had three warnings, but not the ten we seem to require these days? I frequently block in such cases, but I'm aware that many admins would decline the report until the inevitable 11th or 12th edit. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:40, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you might be exaggerating a tad. – B.hotep •talk• 22:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Besides, WFC, the reason you started this thread: was it because someone lost their rag, blew a fuse, couldn't stand it anymore... and managed to drum up one "per..." support? – B.hotep •talk• 22:42, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I started this thread for the reasons I stated. By all means, allow the !votes to stand, I have no intention of using this as an excuse to de-rail the RfA. But the sheer level of vitriol here is not on regardless of the substance of the arguments, and must not be allowed to continue. It's really that simple. --W F C-- 23:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Better question: How do we encourage civil and respectful participation at RfA? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
- That's an easy one. Voters address their comments to the candidate's qualities, not to their dislike of the awful opposers, who ought to burned in the fires of Hell. Similarly with the opposers of course, who ought not to mock the stupidity of most supporters. Malleus Fatuorum 22:57, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
  - Yes, but how would that be enforced? Something along the lines of WP:REFACTOR whenever someone makes an irrelevant comment? And what should be done about the votes that are simply votes without a valid rationale? (For example, in my own RfA, I got several "why not" supports, and one of the opposes used the rationale "deletionist tendencies" without elaborating further. Seemed like an irrelevant comment, to me.) ~Amatulić (talk) 23:09, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
    - Well a support is generally thought of as just an endorsement of the nomination, but I'm not a fan of the drive by "I can't be arsed to check and everyone else is supporting" type votes. @Malleus, I agree with you to an extent, but how do we get the opposers to oppose tactfully and focus their comments on what they see as the candidate's shortcomings and why they are unsuitable for the role. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:14, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
      - I could address that question on so many different levels, but let's just start by saying that anyone who appears to be overly keen to get his sheriff's badge probably ought not to be given one. Let me also say the incivility is generally from the supporters, not the opposers. And let's agree that Connormah has not shown many leadership qualities during the course of this RfA. Malleus Fatuorum 23:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
        This thread is not going well based on reading the comments above. Let's all remember why we are here and that this is just a website. No one here knows (or should know) what kind of person you are in RL. With that being said, we should not try to outright insult people in either the support or the oppose sections and we ourselves should not be offended when someone is trying to be insulting or posts a derogatory remark on an RFA :)--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine}00:47, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

Instead of sniping at each other in comments and filling the RFA up with noise, I think we should consider that all commentary regarding anything other than the candidate should be moved to the talk page. I definitely think we should allow reasoning to be criticised, but it ought to be done away from the page itself, in a critical way, rather than trying to persuade the voter to change their mind - which rarely works, and often causes friction. Aiken ♫ 22:55, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe—I haven't thought this through fully—the most popular tests of adminship should be decided on a separate page and then used in short form during actual RfAs. This approach would allow principles like content experience to be refined without humiliating any individual candidate. It might also help us to separate the proposed "VF" model from the current admin rights. - Pointillist (talk) 23:10, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm so glad you started a new section. I'm on my BlackBerry now and it couldn't handle the size above and crashed. Re:WFC, I wasn't really questioning your motives, it was a good question. I just thought I'd highlight a rather comical rant which had a debatable net result. – B.hotep •talk• 23:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Aiken. Why not keep it Support, Oppose, neutral only and have no comments? Tommy! [message] 01:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Ban the one thing that makes those with happy clappy tendencies to at least think, and RfA would be as much use as the North Korean elections. In that scenario, any old prat would be able to get the tools at a stroke. Getting back to the matter at hand, at least fifty, probably a hundred admins have seen the page develop. So why has not a single one done anything about this? It's a rhetorical question, but I'm sure it won't take a philosopher to work out what my answer would be. --W F C-- 01:17, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, okay. Not like there are any questions for candidates or any links to view their contribs. Tommy! [message] 01:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Glossing over the fact that this thread continuing enables admins to shy away from the salient part of my post, you're missing the point. Sure, those things are there. But if people are actually using them, why the vehement opposition to requiring people to briefly (or lengthily, if they prefer) summarise what they've seen? --W F C-- 01:55, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Could we allow initial comments but have discussions about them on the talk page? Alzarian16 (talk) 16:07, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposal taking the above idea six steps further

Admit RFA is a vote, lower the pass requirement to 60%, and end the required if you're opposing, vitrolic, zero-value-added "discussion" within the vote. Move all commentary about the candidate to the Discussion page. There, supporters and opposers can attempt to persuade if they so desire, each side can moan and groan about the other to their hearts' content, and neither side's voters will get pointlessly harrassed for putting their name next to a vote number anymore. Townlake (talk) 00:55, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd support lowering the automatic pass rate to seventy percent and calling it a vote. I still think opposers should provide some justification for opposing, though. Otherwise, how is the candidate to know what he needs to improve on? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:58, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The candidate can ask. To make a "vote" work, you have to remove the absolutely ridiculous one-way requirement that opposers defend their votes while supporters don't. Thus the concession to 60% - still requires a clear majority for passage, doesn't allow 25% opposition to block a successful RFA under any circumstances. Townlake (talk) 01:16, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

If, and only if, supporters were required to give some sort of rationale, I'd be open to lowering the threshold. My opinion is that the reason you need 3:1 or 4:1 support is that 60-70% of support rationales are non-existant, and therefore ~75% truly is the required mark to establish consensus. --W F C-- 01:22, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

You beat me to it, Townlake. Restrict comments on comments to the discussion page. That doesn't address WFC's point of incivility (which shouldn't be allowed anywhere), but it would keep the vitriol off the project page. Tiderolls 01:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC) Sorry, Aiken...I see that was your idea, too. Didn't mean to snub your post.

You're missing my point. Aiken says restrict comments on comments to Talk. I'm saying restrict all comments to Talk. Aiken's proposal, while well-intentioned, would be completely impossible and unreasonable to enforce. Picture "OPPOSE Candidate suckz ballz and made horribul edits to Britney Spears article (insert diff here) and now it suckz ballz." But nobody's allowed to respond to that. Would not work. Townlake (talk) 01:20, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I have more faith in the bureaucrats than some. I think some allowance to offer a rationale should remain. Tiderolls 01:24, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Then you disagree with my proposal, which is fine, but I continue to say the "discussion" embedded in the vote provides more harm than benefit. The unpredictable results you get depending on which 'crat closes represent a different but related fairness problem, which this would address by allowing no "discretion" to the bureaucrats. Townlake (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Modify Accept that it's just a vote, but keep auto-pass at 80%. Jclemens (talk) 01:22, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps a better idea is to eliminate nomination statements, thus forcing supporters to state rationales or risk being disregarded by the crats.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Some interesting ideas. I still do think there should be nomination statements, but I support just making the process a vote, with comments on the talk page. Airplaneman ✈ 02:19, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Something like these? Dloh cierekim 02:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey, make it a straight vote and then we can get some fun people with their Socks to pass.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:51, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Old timey problem. Considering the number of voters who participate in today's contested RFAs, the risk/reward on socking isn't compelling. Townlake (talk) 03:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Based on the numbers for recent unsuccessful RFAs, a 70% threshold would have changed the outcome of just two RFAs in 2010: Rami R (withdrawn at 72%) and Connormah (no consensus at 75%). That's assuming no change in voting behavior based on the threshold being lower. An additional seven RFAs were above 60% at close, most of them withdrawn by the nominee. The vast majority of the 115 unsuccessful RFAs this year were either WP:SNOW/WP:NOTNOW closes or withdrawn in the face of strong opposition. I'll grant that sometimes people support or oppose with reasons that seem trivial or stupid to me, but the majority of cases close with clear consensus that is not subverted by the concerns of minority, valid or not. Moreover, the whole point of a high threshold is to allow the concerns of a significant minority to block someone from admin status. I don't see any good reasons being offered to change that. Uncivil comments and a climate of hostility are another matter entirely. I see little valid relationship between concerns about civility and proposals to change the approval threshold. --RL0919 (talk) 13:58, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it should be a straight-up vote, but something close to that. Even if we don't say the numbers matter, they always will, so RfAs are already a semi-vote. But what if an RfA ends with, say, 60% support, 40% opposition, but the majority of the "Support" !votes say something like "Support per above/nom" and the majority of the "Oppose" !votes actually raise some good questions/objections? What if it's the same deal, but the percentages are 65%/35%? I agree, the percentage of !voters supporting/opposing a candidate matters, but it shouldn't be the only thing that matters, because Wikipedia is not a democracy

Oh, also a question (the answer's probably written down somewhere but I can't find it)! Are non-autoconfirmed users allowed to !vote in RfAs? I know they usually indent votes made by IPs, but what about new users? For one, a new (few days old) user isn't going to know much about Wikipedia policy, etc. Also, I'm guessing that newer users !voting have a higher chance of being socks than the rest of us... --- cymru lass ^{(hit me up)}⁄_{(background check)} 15:47, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

On interesting circumstances like the ones you've outlined, that where there bureaucrats come in. There have been RFAs to pass in the 60-69% range. To answer your other question, yes, non-autoconfirmed accounts are permitted to participate in RFAs, but their comments are often noted as "This account has few contribs outside this topic" or something to that effect. 67.136.117.132^{Also 174.52.141.138}16:31, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

So are we suggestion that because some people use poor !vote rationales, all of us should be forbidden from offering them? I oppose making RfA a straight vote with no explanation allowed, because the reasoning offered is really very important, especially as consensus is supposed to be what Wikipedia decisions are about, not majority. I've found support rationales very useful, and have found oppose rationales very useful - both have helped me find and understand things that I would never have found on my own, and I have changed my mind in both directions by being able to follow the reasoning of others. Yes, sure, some reasoning is bad (I've seen both bad opposes and bad supports), and I've seen unwarranted badgering of opponents and supporters (though mostly of opponents). However, we're supposed to be a community in which we decide things by discussion and consensus, and yes, I know I'm a critic of consensus being ineffective for some kinds of decision when a community gets too large - but come on, babies and bathwater and all that. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Commentary can always be made on the talk page. Forcing it into the vote itself just satisfies the morbid curiosity of busybodies who would rather criticize each other than work on articles. Townlake (talk) 19:20, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

But there's a big difference between the clearly laid out RfA page, where it's very easy to see which rationale goes with each !vote, and a Talk page with its long individual threads and replies and indents and arguments. Of course, the Talk page could be formatted the same way as the RfA page so we could tie the two together, but then that would just make it like the RfA page as it is now and there'd be no point in splitting them. If there's something useful in the !vote comments (and there is, as that's the whole point of consensus) then I really don't see anything to be gained by splitting them out from the !votes - and a lot to be lost if it discourages people from reading it all (cos it's harder to follow) and taking time about their own rationale (cos that's more complicated if it goes on a different page). I honestly don't see what anyone hopes to gain by this idea. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Whenever I support, I always ensure that my vote has a meaningful and descriptive rationale of it. Same for opposition. The thing that people don't realize is that it takes 2 extra minutes to write a detailed rationale, at most. People really can afford to take 2 minutes away from their 10-hour-long vandal fighting sessions to offer a useful opinion, can't they? (X! · talk) · @865 · 19:44, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

We're all volunteers. Requiring people to waste their time explaining their votes to the bored and curious, when the vote is what actually matters, is simply unreasonable. Townlake (talk) 03:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't like the idea of disallowing reasons. I think they should be allowed, but as per my suggestion above, comments about votes should not be placed underneath, but on the talk page instead e.g. in a new section entitled Aiken's oppose, or whatever, where its merits can be discussed. This takes away the impression that it's badgering/hounding the voter, and instead analysing their comment, which is perfectly reasonable. Aiken ♫ 19:59, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd be fine with that, as long as there was a note placed under the support/oppose indicating that I should see the talk page. Useight (talk) 03:08, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Debate and discussion need to remain a part of RFA. What is not needed is so much shrillness and the all to frequent personal attacks. I won't point out specific examples, 'cause I'm not picking a fight with anyone. Unfortunately, personal animosity from off RFA sometimes becomes a reason for snarling at RFA. Also, commenters seem to forget that other people actually have feelings. Some seem to want to display their eloquence in either flaying the candidate for having the nerve to submit an RFA, or proving there cleverness by flaying each other in the discussions. There's a difference between honest appraisal and frankness and what I'm talking about. We've all seen it. It drags the debate down and turns it into a brawl. We should not throw out the debate with the brawling. Dloh cierekim 18:27, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I've said it before i'll say it here. Good faith opposers are in a no win situation. If they go into detail about why they oppose it's a "shrill personal attack". If they try to spare the feelings of the canditate and be tactful then it's "just an unconvincing oppose without a good reason".--Cube lurker (talk) 18:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Well said. The easiest solution to this, removing all the unnecessary commentary from the vote, is a non-starter for the folks around here who thrive on the animosity of the current system, and those who've invested time in it and need RFA to continue to seem like a daunting gauntlet so the process of getting three buttons still feels like a Big Deal. Townlake (talk) 19:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Really don't like the idea of not requiring a rationale to oppose. Look at the fiasco that was the spring CU/oversight elections. We got hundreds of opposers with no explanation whatsoever and only one candidate got promoted, leading to arbcom re-running the entire process just now. Therefore the anecdotal evidence suggests this could actually lead to fewer admins being promoted. Some complain that RFA is a popularity contest. Thsi proposal would ensure that it was instead of having the intended effect of making it easier to get in. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
- In my industry, one data point about a different process than the one being examined, and explained in vague terms, is not enough to reach a conclusion. Your industry may be different. Townlake (talk) 19:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
  - As it stands there are already many people who make their stand based on what is already on the page. Eliminating the arguments behind the opposes to a separate page would make it even more susceptible to people just "jumping on the bandwagon", and discourage people from reading the rationales, writing their own, or giving them weight in their own decisions-having them disjointed from the summarised stance of the person makes it hard to keep track of things. Discussion is a fundamental part of the process. ."Requiring people to waste their time explaining their votes to the bored and curious" is not what it is about. We are supposed to evaluate the candidate and part of that is assessing how much of other people's experiences and opinions matters to us. I, for one, don't frequent all the admin-related areas, nor many more of the maintenance areas. Should the candidate make a fundamental error in one of these places, it is probable I may not select it (or find the fallout) when reviewing their contributions. There the comments of others who have had experience with the candidate there is invaluable to me. I like to think I don't read through the comments just because I have some "morbid curiosity" and am a "busybody". I'd actually venture that a responsible !voter should consider the preceding comments before making their choice. This proposal makes that significantly harder. sonia♫ 19:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
    - What Sonia said. I look ath oppose section first. If I see well reasoned opposes, I look a lot closer at the candidate than if I do not. I may or may not agree with them, but I consider them. I would also like to see stronger support arguments. I also don't mind someone telling me where they think I missed the mark. That causes me to reassess. Dloh cierekim 20:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
    - Discussion is not a fundamental part of a vote. RFA is a vote. The exclamation point thing is silly. Townlake (talk) 00:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
      - Oppose disallowng comments; Oppose comments being placed on a separate page. What Sonia says is very true for those of us who bother to do more than drive by voting. Ironically however, someone has to start the voting - what would happen if we all wait to see what the others say first?. It's not the commenting and voting that needs to be fixed - it' the voters. Possible solution would be for the moitoring 'crat to very quickly delete any uncommented votes, and edit out any silly comments, off-topic chat, and PA. --Kudpung (talk) 02:09, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to lower the passing percentage

It is here: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Proposal of August 31 2010 Herostratus (talk) 21:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The proposal is encountering an impressive range of unanimous opposition thus far, from a group of us who normally disagree about everything. Townlake (talk) 03:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I DISAGREE!!! We don't disagree about everything ;-)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:58, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

It does not matter so much that we disagree, so long as we agree to not disagree disagreeably. (Where do I get my "I !voted" sticker.) Dloh cierekim 18:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It's okay to disagree so long as we disagree in an agreeable way. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem with any attempt to resolve any issue with the numbers of Admins and the whoe RfA processes, is there is a significant number of editors who believe that before any move to make the admin bit easer to obtain we first we have to address the removal of it when an Admin turns bad. Codf1977 (talk) 18:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Why can't it be like any WP:CONSENSUS decision-- 75-80% (with the added feature of Crat discretion) to de-admin? Yes, I'm sensitive to the potential for frivolous/bad faith/revenge filings, but I don't think they will be that big a problem, and we can address that issue if it becomes a problem. If nothing else, they can be crat closed for snow and obvious abuse. Dloh cierekim 20:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Because, not to put too fine a point on it, most admins of those who participate in such discussions, which I would have thought was blindingly obvious to everyone else commenting here but instead they'd rather harp on and on and on and on that I made the mistake of thinking they were intelligent enough that I didn't have to spell out every bleeding word think they should never have to risk losing the bit. And thus object to any and all proposals calling for a community-driven de-adminship process. →ROUX ₪ 20:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

What a load of old cobblers Roux. At least have the decency to find evidence before making sweeping generalisations like that (which you can't find I may add - "most" etc. ???. Not Nerd : On WR 20:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I must admit that I disagree with most admins think they should never have to risk losing the bit - I know that I don't feel that way. I'd like to think that all my admin actions will be justifiable - and that the ones where I made mistakes (which, being human, of course has happened!) are understandable, even if ultimately incorrect. If it was shown that I was abusing the tools, I'd expect to risk losing the bit. Even though it may be a long or complicated process to lose the bit (other than an emergency de-sysop), it is possible (as has been shown before) - and I would never be so complacent as to believe that it couldn't happen to me if I did something to deserve it - or to be so big-headed and self-important to think that I should never have to risk it. I don't know how many admins feel the same way, but I'd be surprised if there weren't more than a few who did! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 20:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Disagree as much as you like. Then go look at the various de-adminship proposals that have been floated, and note where the majorioty of the opposes come from. Cobblers, indeed. → ROUX ₪ 20:47, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Roux, if we were sat in a bar, enjoying a nice couple of room temprature ales, a well chilled lager or indeed a nice glass of wine (preferably a tempranillo) my response would be this - "mate- you're talking bollocks - you can't back that up and it's just you hot headed opinion". As, however, we are conversing in a constrained medium I shall simply say I disagree with your assertion, in particular the generalisation of it. Not Nerd : On WR 21:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Amarone for me, with a few bruleed figs with gorgonzola. And one notes you didn't refute it. Again: go look at the various de-adminship proposals, and take note of where the majority of opposes come from. Yup.. admins. Power and special status (and let us, please, not pretend that admins don't have both) beget a possessiveness and reluctance to ever give them up. → ROUX ₪ 21:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Very little value refuting something clearly wrong;

"The earth is a big pile of pasta"

"Eh?"

The earth is a big pile of pasta"

"No it's not - you're mental"

"The earth is a really big pile of pasta and I should know"

"Actually, now you mention it - yep - you're not wrong. Sirens? I don't hear any sirens. Just relax for a moment"

et. al.

Not Nerd : On WR 21:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

So... you're just going to say "Nyaah nyaah, you're wrong thbbbbt" instead of actually looking? Oh well, that's your choice. It only makes one of us look stupid. Also, you meant 'et cetera'; 'et al' refers to people. → ROUX ₪ 21:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the et.al. was correct. Next? Not Nerd : On WR 21:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Um... no actually it wasn't. What you meant was 'and so on', implying that we can fill in the blanks. Et al is used, for example, when eliding the multiple names of people who have contributed to a work or a project--A study of RFA nonsense by Pedro, roux, et al would be a proper use of it. → ROUX ₪ 21:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Um, no, you really are not as clever as I thought Roux - you kind of answered it for yourself mate but never mind. Still, seven year plans - I see many beets. Not Nerd : On WR 21:57, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, you're just pissing in the wind. Got it. PS, take a look at the numbers... here is your petard, you are hoist. → ROUX ₪ 22:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I looked at the numbers and your concept of "most" is clearly at odds with the rest of the world. In English "most" tends to mean "a fuck of a lot more than some". You're seriously proposing that out of the 1,800 admins (and de facto 800) most have commented in those RFC's, ANI's etc? Next? Pedro Not Nerd : On WR 22:06, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Huh, I thought you were smarter than to put words in someone's mouth. Guess I was wrong. → ROUX ₪ 22:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Because, not to put too fine a point on it, most admins think they should never have to risk losing the bit.[3]. Roux, I don't know what your beef is here but try and keep it on the rail. You've made you point, it's in the history, so wrong headed and foolish remarks aren't going to help when we all have diff to see I've never put words n your mouth. Constructive criticism is good. Pedro. Not Nerd : On WR 22:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that supporters and opposers in de-adminship proposals are largely non-admins and admins, respectively? If so, do you have analysis to support that? Frank | talk 21:16, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm partial to Sauvignon blanc. I'm painfully familiar with the results from the most recent of those proposals. There was a significant trend towards more administrators among the opponents than among the supporters, but I was impressed with how many administrators supported it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yup. I never said that admins didn't support, but that the majority of opposition comes from admins. It's not too hard to figure out why. → ROUX ₪ 21:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I'll take a closer look to get some hard numbers together. I'm interested to see just what percentage of supporters and opposers of de-adminship are admins. I'll do that after I mail this letter. Useight (talk) 21:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The numbers have already been run: [4]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, good to see that. That's a lot easier than me going down a list and counting. Useight (talk) 22:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

And I'll drink to that! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

And the numbers show exactly what I said. Among the supports, approximately 19% (31/167) were from admins. Amongst opposes, 55% (106/190) were admins. So, Pedro, about that proof you said didn't exist? →ROUX ₪ 22:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

55% is hardly an overwhelming majority. But, as Malleus often says, Turkeys wouldn't vote for Christmas (or Thanksgiving). Aiken Drum 22:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

If you could point out where I said 'overwhelming majority' that would be great. Oh... you can't? Well then. → ROUX ₪ 22:21, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't recall claiming you said anything of the sort :-) You've certainly implied it though - "most admins think they should never have to risk losing the bit ...[a]nd thus object to any and all proposals calling for a community-driven de-adminship process". Just because slightly over half of those who voted are admins doesn't mean most admins opposed it. In fact, we should be seeing over 850 admins opposing, if we consider that "most" are against the idea - considering how many admins there are. I'd say most aren't even aware of it, or care. Even if we assumed there were 800 active admins, we should still be seeing at least 600 in opposition, which we don't. Aiken Drum 22:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

At least a few of the opposers of the CDA proposal who are listed as admins were not admins at the time. Granted that doesnt change the numbers by much, though. —Soap— 17:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Assuming that the list to which you are referring is the one I linked to a bit above, as far as I know, the categorizing as administrator or not was all done at that time, and has not been updated later. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

(medium od) Since I subscribe to the old adage 'there are many ways to skin a cat' or 'ye shall find only what ye shall seek', I thought I'd look at the numbers a different way. 39% of the supporting editors have more than 10,000 edits while only 68% of the opposing editors have more than 10,000 edits. Just saying. --RegentsPark (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

@Aiken re "'most aren't even aware of it, or care". Indeed. Dloh cierekim 22:34, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I for one would support at 75-80% consensus driven process, as we have with RFA, with safeguards against abuse. (Ultimately, there is still RFC and then ARBCOM.) Have not heard from the other 400-500, who seem to stay out of the debate. Dloh cierekim 20:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

So, probably, would I, although those "safeguards against abuse" are the rub. But in my, ahem, experience, the community is unlikely to ever agree to such a thing. Perhaps what we need is a better path to get to ArbCom, still leaving the Arbs with the actual decision-making power. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:45, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

How would that work? Dloh cierekim 21:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know. Just floating the general idea and seeing what comes back. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Being in the same boat as Tryptofish regarding having had a bit of experience with this topic, I'd say the idea is worth looking at but is unlikely to get farther than that. Jusdafax 21:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that boat sank. I'm always happy to take a look at new ideas, but... --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't look now... but WP:RFA is broken

Please treat this section as a light-hearted opportunity to unwind after the cares of the day, thanks.

Uh ho, we are down to just one candidate! Haven't seen that in almost a month ;-)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

You might like to take a look at Wikipedia:How to nominate somebody for RfA, then. - Pointillist (talk) 21:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

LOL---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

No seriously, the guy who wrote that really had his head screwed in—err, I mean down—no, that wasn't it! Anyway, there was some preposition that completed the sentence :-) Pointillist (talk) 21:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that he was on drugs or something...---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:20, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Whatever it was, that was goood stuuff. - Pointillist (talk) 18:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Meh, who cares? There's a huge backlog at WP:GAN if you didn't know... Aiken Drum 21:44, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear, maybe the backlog is all the potential admin-wannabe's desperately trying to get content credibility. If I knew how to do a GA review I'd help, but that's traditionally been the preserve of people who've already got GA's to their name. - Pointillist (talk) 21:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

@Pointillist - reviewing can be daunting, but there's no reason you can't jump in (WP:RGA). If you're really unsure about it, you can always ask a mentor. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it. I just don't see the point of threads like these - we don't need a nudge every time numbers are low or high. Reviewing GAs isn't hard - I seem to be able to do it :-) Aiken Drum 21:58, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure (well, I hope and pray) that Balloonman started this tongue in cheek. But if GA reviews aren't off-putting, why is there a backlog? - Pointillist (talk) 22:03, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think he did - see the note at the top. Still, I'm allowed to express my irritation at it in good-faith :-) I just think they clutter the page (not that this page is uncluttered, but you know...) GAs take time to create and time to review if you do it properly. Playing on Huggle, or discussing whether the RFA % should be lowered or raised, or in fact most things that aren't working on articles, are much easier and quicker to do. Aiken Drum 22:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Heartily agree. I'm banging my head against the wall trying to find references for a couple of minor articles that will never make it past B-grade, and dropping in here is just displacement activity. Oops, did I say that out loud? Damn! - Pointillist (talk) 22:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that reviewing GAs is hard, or at least it is if you do it properly. Malleus Fatuorum 23:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

They're time-consuming, that's for sure. It also depends on the article. Aiken Drum 23:11, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It depends more on the editor I find. Malleus Fatuorum 23:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

<-- @Balloman. Maybe we should put up a "help wanted" sign-- Job benefits-- unlimited power (mwa-ha-ha ha). Bad side-- ya gotta walk hot coals to get it. <slinks out the door and goes for a walk.> Dloh cierekim 23:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It's always seemed bizarre to me that those who determine wikipedia's best content are considered the inferiors of those who merely police it. Or at least it's seemed that way to me since one administrator threatened to ban me from reviewing GAs. Malleus Fatuorum 23:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that way, but isn't. You're globalizing, stereotyping, etc. Just because I'm an admin doesn't mean I won't be doing GA reviews any longer. But I agree, we need more GA reviewers. It's a pretty thankless job, and it takes a lot of time. I spend anywhere from one to eight hours to review depending on the condition and size of the article. As for admins, well, just do what Pointillist said. Erm… nominate someone! Airplaneman ✈ 23:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Pehaps you haven't been threatened in the way that I have, in fact I'm certain that you haven't. I'm just relating the facts, not "globalizing" or "stereotyping". Check it out. Malleus Fatuorum 00:07, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you could provide the diff containing the threat you are referring to, so we can "check it out". Frank | talk 00:13, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

If you care you can easily find it, and if you don't then why should I take the trouble to draw your attention to something else you will excuse? Malleus Fatuorum 00:16, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It's just disconcerting that you're berating or otherwise talking trash about administrators in general day in and day out, Malleus. It's getting old. Just stop it. Please. Airplaneman ✈ 00:25, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The truth may hurt, but it's still the truth. Malleus Fatuorum 00:27, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

To a troll it is… Airplaneman ✈ 00:40, 3 September 2010 (UTC)I'm referring to the specific statement that was made above, BTW. Airplaneman ✈ 00:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Malleus, if you care, you can easily provide it. Why should anyone else care if you won't take the time to provide diffs to support the claim? And if you don't care, there doesn't seem to be any reason to bring it up. Frank | talk 00:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I could provide the diffs very easily, you're quite right, unless you're implying that I'm lying, but what would be the point? What would change if I did? Malleus Fatuorum 00:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be around here. Occuli (talk) 00:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

What, from 21 months ago? Seems a bit dated, wouldn't you think? Jclemens (talk) 00:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

So we erase history. How convenient. Malleus Fatuorum 00:57, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not at all in favor of erasing history. I dislike it even more than dragging up old grudges and interjecting them into a tangentially related conversation. Jclemens (talk) 01:08, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not implying anything. I'm asking for the diff(s). Frank | talk 00:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, Malleus did have a good reason to be mad at Gimmetrow. Looked to me as if he was using his "position" as a sysop to do something unreasonable. The problem now is that he's generalizing, implying earlier that administrators were collectively like that. Oh well. Airplaneman ✈ 00:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not in a position to agree or disagree, because the diff(s) haven't been provided. Malleus may well have a point; I'm waiting for information with which to make an informed decision. Frank | talk 00:56, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Happily Raul654 and Karanacs are admins so the issue doesn't arise in their case. I'm not entirely sure what would happen to an admin foolish enough to treat SandyGeorgia as an inferior but I doubt it would end well for them.©Geni 01:33, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm so glad to see that this section is serving it's intended purpose to host a "light hearted conversation" and isn't just another pointless dramafest. Anyhoo, whether RFA is broken or not, we certainly don't seem to be short on admins at the moment. There are currently no users with unanswered unblock requests, and CSD has had the lowest level of pending items I've ever seen. I checked in there yesterday and nearly every single category was empty! Same deal at RFPP and UAA. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

There are backlogs, just not admin ones. Aiken Drum 17:09, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

So I guess we need a new page... Frank | talk 17:58, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Not to be a party pooper, but I should point out that there are still admin backlogs, just not at the popular places to hang out. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this conversation is a perfect example of where RFA went. I don't mean to butt in, nor do I wish to create conflict or contradict someone's points, I'm merely bringing up the fact that I was disheartened upon reading through this section. Tyrol5 [Talk] 22:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way. Personally, I've tried to lighten the tone and go off at an absurd tangent as far as possible in this section, but standing for election is naturally depressing because it highlights areas of weakness. If that is what is disheartening you, bear in mind that few editors have the time and stamina to both provide well-referenced content contributions and participate effectively in a quorum of admin-relevant areas, sufficient to pass RFA. If you're a medical student, nurse or recently-qualified doctor you probably have better things to do than jump through hoops to acquire a mop that you probably don't have time to use right now. - Pointillist (talk) 23:30, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I found that to be rather patronising. I'm curious though as to what it is that drives some towards policing the project as opposed to contributing to it by writing something, anything, but I sense that's a discussion for elsewhere, that won't take place anywhere. Malleus Fatuorum 23:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

What about those of us who do both? (Yes, I include myself among them.) Frank | talk 00:02, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

We're all forced to do both, which isn't healthy. Most vandalism isn't dealt with by administrators anyway, they're just the ones who deliver the coup de grace. Malleus Fatuorum 01:03, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Whilst I would agree that the level of activity we expect of RFA candidates does require Wikipedia to have been a significant hobby of theirs for sometime, I'm not convinced that a successful candidate has to "participate effectively in a quorum of admin-relevant areas", or rather I think that quorum can be fairly small. Yes it is difficult for a candidate to pass unless they give us some example where they would use the tools, and whatever that example is it is pretty much expected that they will have some related edits that give some assurance as to how they would use the tools. But if a wikipedian is otherwise an experienced editor the number of sensible AIV reports, CSD tags or AFD arguments expected by the RFA crowd is not in my view particularly onerous. Ϣere SpielChequers 23:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I seem to be stuck between multiple rocks and hard places here:

This wasn't intended to be a serious section, yet it is now being treated as such. That's not a good environment for interpreting posts.
Without being unnecessarily disheartened, Tyrol5 needs to see RFA for what it is, and that this might not be the right stage in his/her career to devote a lot of time to accumulating experience on Wikipedia. But I shouldn't be patronising, so if I got that wrong Malleus Fatuorum is right to challenge me.
I felt that "participate effectively in a quorum" would help Tyrol5 understand the need to select a balance of admin-relevant activities. You [WereSpielChequers] seem to be saying that the word "quorum" is misleading because it implies a lot, or a majority. I can only say I didn't mean to be ambiguous and would be worried if an RFA candidate could be mislead by the word "quorum".
Malleus Fatuorum seems to be suggesting that I'm driven "towards policing the project as opposed to contributing to it". I'm not sure how to answer that: I'm not an admin (so I don't police anything here); I've voted at only seven RFAs and maybe four AFDs in 3 years; I've never caballed by email; I rarely write an unsourced sentence and seem to spend most of my time fixing edits by those who think they are contributing by writing what Malleus Fatuorum calls "something, anything". The only reason I've been here at RFA talk recently is to argue that content experience is a necessary condition for all candidates.

If my recent presence on this page makes Malleus Fatuorum suspect I'm part of a purported admin mafia, he/she's mistaken. - Pointillist (talk) 00:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Malleus is male. Just for the pedantic. Useight (talk) 01:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:PEREN, yawn. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

@Pointillist: With all due respect, you seem to have completely misunderstood my comment and evidently believe that I have some sort of interest in putting myself in for RFA (I don't). The meaning of my comment was to state the fact that RfA just seems to have more drama than the past. I do understand, however, that you seem to have misunderstood my comment. I was disheartened for the reputation of the process of RFA, not myself (The comment really had nothing to do with my editing habits or my tenure as a wikipedian). And for the record, please do not assume that you know the ins and outs of my real life; I reiterate what Malleus said, I felt a bit patronised by your comment.For the record, I am a male. Tyrol5 [Talk] 02:04, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll AGF on Pointillist's PA - it's all too easily done in innocence - even I often sound cynical at the best of times;) Ironically though, whether Tyrol5 wants the mop or not for breathing space between working on breathing problems, he is far more qualified for it (all he needs to do is learn to put some clothes on his naked U8RLs) than many of the editors who have been 'elected' - even recently. The system is not broken; we don't need to lower the bar (that's been proven very recently); it's the !voters who need fixing! We might get more candidates if we can put the lid on the unqualified drive-by votes, the silly 'optional' questions, the BS, the PA, and the bullying. --Kudpung (talk) 03:07, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I surrender: I've obviously got this wrong. Tyrol5, please accept my apologies for offending you. - Pointillist (talk) 06:11, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Apology accepted, I understand completely that you misunderstood my comment. However, it was not in your position, regardless of the circumstances, to bring my real life (which you know nothing about) into the conversation. If I were you, I would be careful in the future with regard to comments like these. Clarify with their authors before making assumptions and making inappropriate comments (i.e. patronising other editors), such as you did here. In response to Kudpung, thank you for the kind words, but I did not necessarily assume bad faith. I just found it a bit irritating that Pointillist has made undue assumptions about my life and career status outside of Wikipedia (i.e. "...this might not be the right stage in his career to devote a lot of time to accumulating experience..."). Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:45, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I find it interesting that that Malleus' sex has generated enough discussion that it should be a subject for WP:PEREN---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:30, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow, look at how much discussion one assinine comment in sarcastic jest could make... perhaps, now that we are down to one candidate again, that I should repeat the statement??? Uh ho, we are down to just one candidate! Haven't seen that in almost a week ;=)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:26, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh no! Airplaneman ✈ 03:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Long term discussion

See Wikipedia:RFC on RFA Reform

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Ok. This issue has been going on for at least 4 years now, or at least since 2006. The fact that the "RFA is broken" conversation hasn't died is evidence enough that we have more than a small minority that really do believe RFA is broke. However, there are enough people that are happy with the status quo, feel that they benefit from the status quo, or are afraid of what may happen if the process changes, and that has been enough to systematically derail every discussion in the last 4 years about the scope of the problem or solutions long enough that the conversation gets archived, goes away, and starts back up again, over and over and over again - effectively shutting down any hope of consensus in this matter.

The current state is that RFA is a witch hunt, in which we have "regular" participants who aggressively seek to discredit candidates, for any conceivable reason - including their ideology and their record of participation in discussions.

The lack of a way short of arbitration to remove an administrator is often cited as rationale for being "selective" and "cautious" (in reality, bitter and uncivil) towards anyone that might display the slightest tendency towards a controversial decision, yet the bitterness of this process is also why there is such opposition to any form of community desysopping - primarily from administrators who feel that having to stand for RFA again at the whim of the lynch mob will cripple their ability to work for the benefit of Wikipedia by subjecting them to a vote the first time they close a highly contested AFD or make a judgment call to block someone.

Arbitration however has been decidedly effective at removing administrators who use their power abusively, and the wheel war policy has also made it very easy for an administrator who is "off the reservation" to attract the attention of ArbCom, as well as others with the power to desysop. To put it this way, it works, abusive administrators have cases filed against them, and they either correct their behavior to be within acceptable community standards, or the lose the bit. Completely out of control administrators are quickly demonstrated as such, and there are emergency proceedures under which either the arbitration committee, a steward, a developer, or Jimbo can and do desysop an out of control administrator, or a compromised account in very short order. No administrator as of yet has damaged the project to the point where it could not easily recover, and I really doubt it's possible for them to do so. Yes, an administrator can do small amounts of damage to the community by biting a newcomer, but so can anyone else here. It's dealt with, we move on, and we still keep functioning.

We don't currently have any "official" standard for what the requirements of an administrator are. That would be a good starting point, but I think the reason it's been opposed so often is that once we have that standard, it becomes very difficult to use "not enough experience" to justify an oppose that's really "I don't like this".

Anyway. this needs to get settled rather than getting repeatedly archived and rehashed. The process itself and the discussions about it have long since reached a point of being unhealthy to Wikipedia, so much so that I believe it stands a good chance that someone will send us all into Wikipedia:Dispute Resolution - possibly all the way to WP:RFAr if we don't reach some agreement as to what is broken and how to fix it. Triona (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd love to see everyone get together and break down the RFA process; but, let's face it, many will deny that it is even broken and others won't agree to what, if anything is broken. I think the first step to solving the problem is to present the evidence in an organized manner to prove there is one. Tyrol5 [Talk] 22:49, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The archiving process here on this page is harming the discussion, but without it, we'd be overwhelmed with comments here very quickly - so we need to get this discussion off this page and somewhere where it will continue all the way until it reaches actual conclusions. For the past several years, people have known that all they have to do is disrupt consensus long enough that the issue goes away long enough to fade out of notice, time and time again. Triona (talk) 00:08, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:RFC on RFA Reform started, intended to persist until we reach agreement. Triona (talk) 00:53, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Your conclusion that there is "more than a small minority that really do believe that RFA is broke" isn't necessarily correct. Yes, there is a vocal group of people that continues to beat the drum. What that actually means is open to interpretation...apparently for some number of years. And whether it's a small minority, more than a small minority...or whatever way we quantify it, the fact is that there isn't community consensus to make any significant change, and there hasn't been for years. Attempts to change things have repeatedly failed to gain consensus. Anyone is free to open an RFC (as you've done), but to presume in advance that some "agreement" will be reached is ambitious to say the least. I submit that the first thing to agree on is whether or not there is a problem to be solved. Recent attempts to even define the "problem" have failed to gain consensus that there even is one. (Note: I'm one of those who doesn't believe there is any crisis; that may be known but I'm just making it clear I have a specific and repeatedly stated opinion on this matter. I also believe an agreed de-RFA method and/or automatic term limits would be useful.) Frank | talk 01:53, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

To put it this way, my intention is to do everything possible within the bounds of acceptable conduct to make sure that this RFC runs until it reaches definitive conclusions on whether or not RFC is broken, including disputing any "no consensus" findings, all the way through the dispute resolution process if need be, and if it does reach a consensus that the process is broken, to follow through with the same to make sure proposed solutions are fully heard out. This has been a thorn in our side for too long - It may in fact be a minority view that problems exist, but if it was an insignificant minority, they'd have given up by now and gone home. Triona (talk) 02:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

May I, mildly, suggest that whatever procedure is followed to select admins, that procedure will be the thorn in someone or the others side. There will always be a vocal minority that dislikes the status quo whatever that status quo might be (not that there is anything wrong with that). (Also, you mean RFA above, not RFC.)--RegentsPark (talk) 02:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

To be clear, insignificant is your word, not mine. I'm only saying that there hasn't been consensus that RfA is broken enough to need fixing, and opening another RfC is unlikely to change that. You are intending to reach definitive conclusions; however admirable that may be, I think the fact that no consensus has been reached thus far speaks for itself. As Neil Peart wrote: if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Frank | talk 02:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (edit conflict) @Triona: How far back are we suposed to go back in all the archives in order to address the Phase 1 fact finding ? This might be onerous for some of us who have only contributed to RfA and its issues for a short period; some intelligent and former regular commentaators may have since retired, and plenty of us just simply can't remember. There is also, IMHO, a grave risk that the RfC will become just another cyclic rehash of the features of RfA and adminship already being discussed here. At some stage the RfC itself will have to be archived because it too, will become to large to load. There is the further complication that RfCs invariably have a parallel discussion going on on their talk pages.

@Frank:There is definitely a problem to be solved, otherwise we would't all be here discussing it. It's a silent, but significant minority (even possibly a majority) expressed by the fact that it's become increasingly rare for people who are ready to come forward and run what has become a gauntlet of nit-picking and incivility - sadly, nit-picking and incivility far too often perpetrated by existing admins. Oh what irony!--Kudpung (talk) 02:25, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a talk page; its purpose is to discuss things. That we use the page for its intended purpose does not mean that which we discuss is significant. Frank | talk 02:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

That essentially the same thing continues to be said is significant. Some analysis of who has claimed the process to be broken and why would help. As far as old discussions go, I think it's worth examining if only because of the pattern here that there is usually a very vocal group here to drown out any opposition to the status quo, and a lot of the past participants have gotten frustrated and moved on, or retired from Wikipedia altogether. Triona (talk) 03:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

This is slightly ironic, as I was supporting. But I think BigDom's RfA is a good indicator of why we musn't lower the threshold without introducing a recall process. Although at least two people were looking for any old frivilous reason to respond, and several others jumped from support to oppose off of the basis of one diff. But still, there were valid and quite significant concerns which did make that decision quite a close call. Even if he had fallen slightly below the magic 80, I think it still would have passed because there was an editing history to contradict the allegations that the candidate didn't understand BLP. But if we lowered the threshold, we would be opening the floodgates for people with far less mitigating evidence to become tenured admins. --W F C-- 12:22, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

It's significant! Not it isn't! There's a problem! No there isn't! Standards are too high! Standards are too low! Duck season! Rabbit season! Duck season! Rabbit season! --Hammersoft (talk) 13:45, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
- Put down the scissors. --W F C-- 15:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Just as a conglomeration of historical information on the topic, some may find User:Useight/RFA Subjects/RFA is broken interesting. It contains 44 threads about this very topic, and that only covers a time span of one year from September 2005 to October 2006. There are certainly many, many more threads about it, I just haven't gotten to them yet. Useight (talk) 16:20, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

So, does this mean anyone who wants to talk about how RFA is broken should be referred to the RFC? Cuz that would be swell, just keep that RFC open till it has solved all of RFA's problems and get back to us then. That would be awesome. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

My first post here in a while. Has anyone else noticed that whilst a certain minority express concerns over how broken RfA is, the encyclopaedia continues to expand successfully? Wow, the process must be really f**ked then. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat 16:40, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll throw some insight on that. There are different kinds of broken. There is broken, in which the encyclopedia isn't functioning properly. I don't think we have come close to hitting that yet, but could if we start to lose administrators faster than we promote them. There is also broken, as in "not a fair process". I think most of the "RFA is broken" people are in the latter camp. That does lead us to a good point though - do we have a responsibility to give the bit to everyone that can be trusted with it? is there any entitlement (meatball:FairProcess) to the bit for those that are qualified and trusted? Or is the only responsibility here towards keeping enough administrators that work gets done? As for right now, I'm interested in gathering a list of the complaints that have been brought up at Wikipedia:RFC on RFA Reform per meatball:NameTheConflict Triona (talk) 18:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Saying that RfA isn't a fair process implies that we have some bureaucratic bias in how our admins are selected. I don't see that at all. Our bureaucrats seem impartial and are very good at discounting invalid votes or votes just there to stir up tension. The whole "adminship should be given to anyone who can be trusted with it" is exactly what we're doing. We collect opinions from the community and then the bureaucrats read consensus into those opinions. As long as admins are being promoted regularly, which they are, then we haven't really got an issue. Yes, some people think that there are too many admins retiring but I don't think the number of admins retiring is greater than those being promoted. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat 18:53, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The issue at hand here is the fact that nit-picking votes (i.e. user doesn't have enough AFD edits) may sway the outcome of an RFA if there is enough of them. The solution is to alter the !voting rationale of the participants. Yes, some raise valid concerns in opposition. However, I don't believe having experience in nearly every area of WP, as well as a number of GA's and FA's, is necessary to becoming an administrator. I only think it is necessary to have a good, solid, intimate understanding of the areas one plans to use the tools. Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:37, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

But it's irrelevant what you think, just as it's irrelevant what I think and what everyone else individually thinks. Everyone is entitled to their own individual opinion and that's a fundamental right. Bureaucrats then judge consensus of everyone's individual opinion to decide whether or not the community as a whole thinks a candidate has the right to adminship. Just because you or even a certain number of people don't think GAs are necessary or whatever, it doesn't mean that the community as a whole thinks that. The only way to solve this once and for all is to get everybody to vote (yes, vote) in a list for or against a certain criterion, and then go with the majority. But of course, we don't like 'voting', so that'll never happen. Nothing will ever come of this discussion, so it's pointless even having it again. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat 20:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I did not issue a command for everyone to bow down to my opinion. The first step to reaching consensus is to collect several opinions on the subject in question and I was only submitting mine. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

If there is an active RFC on the subject why are we still clogging up this talk page with the same discussion? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Requesting the bit temporarily

Is the any reason why some RFAs couldn't be requested as temporary? That might resolve some of the concerns regarding tenure? Triona (talk) 18:43, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

FYI, there was a recent successful candidacy that was positioned as both "temporary" and "provisional" adminship (to help with commons backlog). IIRC, there was a general feeling that the pledge was unenforceable. –xeno^talk 18:47, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

On Meta, we often give temporary adminsh to people on small wikis. Then again, as stewards, we can summarily remove the bit as well. In my opinion, the easiest way to get this to work here would be to:

demonstrate that there is a consensus that this would be acceptable
Ask on Meta for the expiration dates to be interleaved with the current temporary requests at m:Steward requests/Permissions/Approved temporary
demonstrate that there is a consensus that the non-Enwiki stewards (unless it's an emergency) remove these bits automatically after the expiration date

-- Avi (talk) 18:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe that it is enforceable by a directive in the request itself that it expire at a given time, and have listed an RFA experimentally under such a directive, in hopes that we can create a precedent for temporary adminship here on the English Wikipedia. Triona (talk) 19:06, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

This is just another version of reconfirming adminstrators. Been there, rejected that. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, there is, as far as I can tell, a distinctive consensus amongst the enwiki community that if you cannot trust someone to be an admin without a time limit, you shouldn't trust them for a limited time either. Being trustworthy enough for adminship is usually not something that "expires" after a given time. But if it doesn't, it's, as Hammersoft said, just a reconfirmation proposal or a negative recall (i.e. you are recalled automatically but may keep on being an admin) in disguise, both of which has never found any consensus here. Regards So Why 19:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that a 'temporary adminship' is necessary, as you're still becoming an admin, just with a time limit and an unenforceable 'contract'. I think the solution is to alter participants' !voting rationale (see my comment here) and establish a quick, definitive recall process, thus allowing valuable, trustworthy contributors who would otherwise be rejected because of outrageous nit-picking, to get the tools. Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:45, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Yea, and we tried to formulate such a process, there were about six months of discussions, RFCs, polls, etc, and we got...(wait for it)...A big... fat... NOTHING out of it. I wouldn't expect anyone to be real excited about going down that road again anytime soon. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:05, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what else to suggest. There's obviously something wrong here, but no one can agree as to what it is. I mentioned above, we need to introduce a voting guideline to restrict nit-picking and non-constructive criticism. Many valuable administrators that went through RFA several years ago would barely have chance if they were to go for it today. Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but, I can think of a few (just a few!) who passed in the good old days, who wouldn't pass now, and who shouldn't have passed then. But I agree with you that this is something where no one can agree (tautology duly noted). --Tryptofish (talk) 21:32, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

@Tyrol5: I agree that we need a better recall process (I say a better recall process, because a process does exist here for desysopping through arbitration). However, we have to solve the problems with the past proposals if that's going to have a snowball's chance in hell of passing. The main concern seems to be that, for administrators, part of the job is to do actions which will be controversial, and to some, unpopular. Administrators have a legitimate fear that they will do such an action, completely within the letter and spirit of policy, and be subject to repercussions for doing so - a chilling effect on those who are here to a job. I've said before, because of this, a recall process can't be a popularity contest - it has to amount to a "fair trial" as to whether there was or was not abuse of the bit. Triona (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Speaking as a single administrator, I can say this: in over two years with the bit, I've never avoided doing something out of fear of repercussions. Any time I avoided doing something I could have done with the bit was because of being unsure it was the right thing to do. Also, I can't really think of a de-sysopping that has been undeserved, although some have been unfortunate, including the most recent one I'm aware of. But isn't this discussion best handled on the RfC you've created? Frank | talk 01:25, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Time limits are enforceable if we grant temporary adminship within meta's existing process, and it would allow us to have "trial" adminships - in other words, see what someone does with the bit. The existing steward process for temporary adminship is simple enough, the bit is taken away as scheduled, unless there's a new consensus formed to keep it (or renew the term). Right now, the process is used on smaller wikis that don't have enough of a community developed to allow the stewards to recognize a "tenured" administrator appointment as valid, and as far as I can tell, that process works. The temporary adminships are granted for up to 6 months, and from what I can tell, temporary admins lose the bit unless reappointed to another (also limited) term. I think having a "tenure track" and term-limited process in parallel can work, and can ease some of the concerns about being stuck with a rogue administrator "for life". Triona (talk) 00:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, there is a difference between this and the failed administrator reconfirmation proposals, in that someone appointed temporarily has explicitly been appointed to a temporary term, whereas existing adminships have been "until gross misconduct, life, or resignation". I do not propose turning any existing adminship into a time limited one, at least not at this point in time, I think it would be a much harder sell, because of the significant opposition in the past to such proposals. Triona (talk) 00:59, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of trial admins. Some of our best admins (and I definitely don't belong to that set) are out there taking hard decisions against editors who skirt the boundaries of wikipedia's policies but are generally disruptive to the mission of the encyclopedia (SPAs are one major problem). Many of these admins would have a hard time getting reconfirmed because of the way they go about dealing with these disruptive editors. One can argue that they are high-handed, or that they act in a unilateral manner, but, the reality is that, without them, wikipedia would suffer a great deal. We have to recognize that the encyclopedic mission is constantly under attack from people with very specific interests and agendas, and action against these editors is not necessarily popular. Trial admins will probably reduce the backlog on AIV (if there ever is a backlog to reduce) but, beyond that, any meaningful temporary admin would never get reconfirmed. --RegentsPark (talk) 02:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. This strikes me as, in effect, the usual proposal for admin reconfirmation and/or recall, in a new dress with plenty of lipstick.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:28, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Two points (one of which is itself two points), if I may:

We grant temporary adminship for up to one year at a time, not six months
There is one fundamental difference respectively between this suggestion and each of recall and reconfirmation:
1. Unlike reconfirmation, this is optional and decided upon by the candidate prior to running. A candidate can choose to run for "regular open-ended" adminship should they desire.
2. Unlike recall, this is automatic, without requiring some recall process, and the automatic result is removal of the bit, and not another RfA.

-- Avi (talk) 02:33, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess the question becomes, what need does this serve? We've been handing the bit out to qualified candidates fairly readily. Is there really a significant number of candidates who would need something like this?--Wehwalt (talk) 02:47, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there are a significant number of candidates who would need something like this. Where I see its benefit would be in opening up adminship to people with fewer edits than are now not accepted by RfA (for whatever reason, we've clearly had standards creep) and hopefully 1) get new blood in faster and 2) possibly identify potentially problematic admins at a point where an RfAr isn't necessary for a deadminship. -- Avi (talk) 04:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Completely unnecessary. Thank goodness the Chicken Little Run has run its course and people are no longer harping on the imaginary "admin shortage." Good candidates still pass RFA, and the system generally errs on the side of passage for the borderline ones. Townlake (talk) 04:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm thinking. The candidates who might benefit from this would benefit more from waiting three months or so, putting in solid work, and getting the full bit.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I too think it is unnecessary, those running for a temporary RFA cannot expect to get off any more easily than for a permanent RFA. I think if Triona is ready for any kind of RFA, the current permanent one is the one to choose, so make a stand. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

No open talk discussions?

....We can't be having that. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes we can! You've now gone and ruined it! That must meet some criteria for disruptive editing! ;-) Jclemens (talk) 22:50, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hey, didn't I do this same thing a while ago? :) ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 23:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Unbelievable. I just had this page cleaned. Useight (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Well I thought that vandals had stripped the page bare! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:06, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Yea, shame on MiszaBot II. I'm reporting it to AIV. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

If we don't have complaints at RFA, it might create a rift in the space-time continuum, so I've got a complaint. The recent experiments at UAA to create an environment where non-admins are more active and more valued are touch-and-go; I'll report back when there's something definite to report. If it doesn't work but the recent surge at RFA continues, no problem. If it doesn't work and if the numbers of active admins who start their careers in 2010 and 2011 wind up like the current numbers for 2009 (9) and 2008 (29), man are we screwed. I'm not going to follow this up with "therefore we have to make drastic changes" ... for one thing, it's not going to happen. I'm just reporting on where things stand, for me. - Dank (push to talk) 14:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

You missed an opportunity to spam WT:UAA ;-) While I'm here being silly, I have to take issue with Ryan Postlethwaite - there clearly is an open talk discussion... TFOWR 14:46, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

A simple solution to this "problem" would be to decrease the rate at which threads are auto-archived. ~~I have~~ Xeno has done so. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 15:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Undone, 17 days is way to high imo, and anyway, it was already moved up from the previous archival (by xeno), so no need to move it up again. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't notice that Xeno had just changed it from 3 to 7. I have modified my comment above. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 15:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

You should check out WT:UAA - Dank has proposed an exciting system whereby we can vote to give certain users the right to use a special template when commenting on reports of inappropriate usernames. This will solve a lot of the current problems at RFA. Szansztar (talk) 21:49, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't pay them, honest, I don't even know them. Obviously intelligent, tho. - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Who?

...is the RfA candidate who till now has got (1)the maximum supports (2) the maximum opposes (3)the maximum margin? Just was curious :) Thanks Wifione _.......^{Leave a message} 09:01, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

You might find Wikipedia:100#Requests_for_adminship interesting, at least for the first of those. Courcelles 09:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the first three entries on the list are the answers to your questions: DHMO 3 had the most supports (299), Danny 2 had the most opposes (118 ... but he still passed), and Phaedriel 2 had the widest margin (271 to 6). Note though that DHMO withdrew, and might have gone even higher on all three categories had the RfA run to completion. Also, I may be wrong about the most-opposes; RfA's aren't added to that list for having >100 opposes, Danny's is on there only because he had over 100 supports as well. —Soap— 14:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

All right. Thanks. Very interesting... Wifione _.......^{Leave a message} 14:31, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, that's not correct for the record of most opposes. It's actually MZMcBride's with 124. Useight (talk) 15:00, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Some RfA's with opposes MAY be added to WP:100. Some have been, but generally the person with 100 opposes chooses not to and nobody pushes the issue.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:40, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Torchwoodwho summary

Why does the Torchwoodwho summary show zero !votes, even though there are some?--SPhilbrick T 17:36, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I do know that it takes some time to update, but I don't know how long. Useight (talk) 17:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

It's supposed to update half-hourly, but seems to have skipped two cycles. Let's see what happens at 18:00. –xeno^talk 17:48, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

As Xeno said. If it does not change in a few hours, we can contact X! (talk · contribs) and tell them about it. Regards So Why 17:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm seeing votes there now, FWIW. --j⚛e decker ^talk 18:24, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Obligatory statement

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

<Obligatory statement about how a humorous statement should be posted here now>. NW (Talk) 02:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The potential candidates are inert. It doesn't make a bit of difference, guys. The Thing // Talk // Contribs 02:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Not this again. Ok, here's my proposal: let's make fifty random ip addresses admins and see what happens. We need more admins or the world is going to end, and this is a fast easy way to do it. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Or better yet, let's bug Jimbo into making good on what he said he would do at WP:DEAL. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe I'll come out of admin-nomming retirement and nom a bunch of people to fill the void. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 02:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice to see ya BTW!!!

Man, sometimes I wish there were no active RfAs just so I can see bored voters dig holes around themselves =) ResMar 03:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Uh oh...

RfA is broken again. There aren't any current nominations. Wikipedia is doomed... ~Nerdy Science Dude 13:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for a new "optional" question

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I propose to add the following question to the list of "optional" questions:

What gender are you?

This would alleviate all of the annoying problems of having to write things such as "they", "xe", "s/he", "the candidate", "the user" and whatever other strange things people come up with. I'm sure that this would solve the problem of not enough nominations, and it is most certainly worth it to stop whatever you are doing to argue about this new proposal. ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 03:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't solve any visible problem. In fact, it would be more of a headache to institute than any benign pronoun problem it might alleviate. Wisdom89 _{(_T / ^C)} 03:36, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you understand. This problem is most definitely the reason for the lack of nominations. We must argue endlessly about this, so that RfA can be saved. ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 03:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:SARCASM. (At least I hope) NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 03:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)r

(edit conflict)Why should any user be forced to identify whatever gender they are? The only thing that matters is how they interpret and apply policy and community norms. Gender is irrelevant. → ROUX ₪ 03:41, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Come now, don't ruin it. :) I wanted to see how far this would go. ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 03:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

It's very hard to tell for some usernames, such as mine :) Airplaneman ✈ 03:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Then I propose to add the following question to the list of "optional" questions:

"What gender are you not?" he he Wifione _.......^{Leave a message} 03:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

And if that question trips them up, they obviously aren't admin material. I like where this is going. ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 03:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Why don't you just use {{gender}}? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Why are "optional" RFA questions "optional"?

I have read the concerns expressed above at the lack of ZOMG BROKENZZ! threads here, so I thought I might try to fill the breach. I've !opposed at the Ron Ritzman RFA with a primary rationale of "not answering questions fast enough". Avi has quite reasonably pointed out that they are "optional" questions. But really, they're not. If you leave a whole bunch of Q's unanswered, then you will be judged as lazy or arrogant or both. No wait, being both means you are a good RFA cahdidate. ;) And if you choose to answer one of these "optional" questions and get it wrong, it could sink your whole ship. So why do we still call them optional? How long has it been since an RFA passed with the three standard quesions answered and all others ignored? I'm not saying that all questions are mandatory, I raised an issue here awhile back about asking a candidate to reveal whether they were under the age of majority, using a formal Q. But yeah, I do evaluate people based on how well (and over what time frame) they answer -all- the questions. And how they gracefully decline to answer ones they don't want to. So is there a better way to phrase how optional "optional" is? Franamax (talk) 05:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

They are optional because the candidate does not have to answer them. Granted, it might lead to some people opposing over it but anything you, i.e. the candidate, do or don't might. We had people being opposed for being X, for not being Y, for agreeing with a certain user, for !voting "wrong" in another RFA, for not being a certain age, etc. Anything you do on Wikipedia carries the risk that someone might disagree with you and then oppose your RFA. The questions are just another example of it. Regards So Why 06:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

So the questions are not optional then, right? If I drop it in front of you, you're pretty much obliged to offer up a response of some kind or people will be standing around saying "tsk tsk" - like I just did. For me, the crux of adminship is how well you can back up your actions with sound reasoning, or abandon bad ideas. Answering the Q's is part of the "examination", that seems plain. So why do we keep up the pretense of "optional" Q's? Note I'm not suggesting mandatory detailed responses to "Why are you such a jerk?" but even there, how well the decline-to-answer is made will be somewhat telling. Franamax (talk) 07:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a couple of issues here. The auto-generated first three questions are optional in name only - pretty much every candidate who has not answered them (or indeed answered them but only in a cursory manner) has seen their RFA sink. In respect of subsequent questions, which is what Franamax is refering to, they are perhaps "optional but best answered". Having said that I do get frustrated by people asking questions for what appears to be just the sake of asking them. There also seems to be a runaway effect that when an RFA gets 3 or 4 questions suddenly everyone wants to jump on and ask one too. Candiadtes would be quite in their right not to waste time answering great swathes of questions - as Franamax says by decling gracefully - particularly those where the answer could be gained by reviewing the candidates contributions. If people paused and really considered the value of their question, then perhaps the number might be reduced and answers both more forthcoming and detailed. My 2p. Pedro : Chat 07:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

In my view one of the problems at RFA is that there is far too much emphasis on it being an open book exam and not enough emphasis on actually looking at the candidate's edits. Removing the word optional would not only make this worse, it could even add further nonsense such as people posting a question late on the seventh day and then saying that the crat shouldn't have closed it as a success because a question was unanswered. Advice to a candidate is a different thing and I'm comfortable with the current "it is appropriate to respond to comments and questions raised on the RfA". Though I doubt if it would hurt a candidate to simply ignore the silliest questions. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:58, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Pedro, in the main, and respectfully disagree with you Franamax. The "boilerplate" questions are near mandatory. Everything else is optional. Some people may view non-answering as a lack of responsiveness. Others may empathize with feeling of being overwhelmed by questions and may judge responsiveness based on other criteria. I would not want to see editor questions be deemed, or even considered, mandatory. -- Avi (talk) 08:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with WereSpielChequers. I have found the answers to be nearly useless compared to edit history. I say get rid of all the questions in favor of the nominating statement and then straight to discussion. The candidate can respond in the discussion as needed. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

That was largely what I was eluding to above. I think there are times when a question needs to be asked (hypothetical situation - a candidate expresses a desire to work at AFD but has little experience there, but ample with CSD so the community feels confident in their ability to spot poor content but not to evaluate a discussion. A question may well elucidate information that it's not possible to find in the contribution history). In the main however a proper review of contributions should prevent a great many questions (with the excpetion of those that are often simply frivoulous) Pedro : Chat 09:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that some questions are useful and I'm not trying to abolish the question section. We need questions about particular troubling diffs, or indeed about the candidate's knowledge of an area they intend to work in but where they haven't demonstrated relevant experience. But such useful and relevant questions are often outnumbered by questions that leave one wondering why they were asked of that specific candidate. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that some questions leave you wondering "why?" - I can think of one which is about a deleted shortcut (which I was asked about in Feb) which has no bearing on the current candidate's ability to make decisions (that particular editor looks to be trying to get an admin-candidate to say "Oh, they were wrong to delete it, and it was wrong for that to be endorsed at the DRV"). On the whole, I find most questions to be pertinent (especially if they don't crop up time after time!) and a helpful indicator of the candidate's thought processes and understanding of policy/guidelines. I feel that losing the questions would be detrimental to the process - but I agree that the contribution history is far more important, and may answer potential questions (or may raise pertinent questions, rather than general ones). I do agree with them being optional (although I would still suggest that the 1st three be made compulsary, as they are de facto compulsary anyway!) Anyway, that's my 0.02 -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:41, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

How about only two mandatory questions at the top:

What administrative work do you intend to take part in?
Are there any contributions that you would like to highlight for others to review?

Then go to discussion sections for support, oppose, and undecided. The undecided section at the end is where I would expect that direct questions may be asked. The advantages of this structure are that it would take the focus off of the questions and allow other editors to guide the Q/A process. There are many times I would like to comment directly on a question to either improve it, jump on the bandwagon requesting an answer, or point out that it is silly. We already have many people start in Neutral, do some discussion and then !vote. What's the point of a neutral !vote anyway? It reminds me of caffeine free diet cola. However, the reality is that's where many meaningful, non-neutral discussions take place because there is nowhere else. —UncleDouggie (talk) 11:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The 3 standard RfA questions are perfectly fine as they are. I personally find the answers to these questions to be quite useful and see absolutely no need to tinker with them. If anything, I'd like to have Q4 added which, in some form, asks about prior/alternate accounts. Nsk92 (talk) 12:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The 3 standard questions are more than enough. In my opinion, the recent trend in hugely time consuming pile-on questions is one of the reasons why so few candidates are coming forward for the grilling. The bar for candidates is high enough already and neither needs lowering, nor does it need raising even more - which is effectively what the pile on questions are doing. --Kudpung (talk) 13:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

If you could poll readers and vanilla editors I think you'd find the majority would regard Q4 disclosure of prior/alternate accounts as a fundamental principle, at least equal to Q2 and Q3. - Pointillist (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

There is a time and a place for optional questions. The first three are pretty much mandatory. I believe any further optional questions should be specific to understanding the how the candidate might act as an admin. For example, asking them how they might close an AFD, or protect a page is probably ok. But asking them questions like "When should an IP be blocked indefinitely?" is just sneaky imo. Questions that simply involve reciting the policy page isn't going to add anything. And a further point, I believe that people should be restricted to one question each. I've seen some pile on five at a time and that's not acceptable imo. Aiken (talk) 13:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree that most of the questions should be seen as optional. Anybody can write a question. Also, there should be no shame on a candidate simply because they're having a busy day and don't have 2 hours spare to answer questions made up by people they've never spoken to before, who may or may not have an axe to grind - perhaps the candidate will get round to answering the questions later, but somebody !voting earlier in the process cannot read the candidate's mind and will only see an unanswered question.

I think it's important to group these questions into two categories. Many of them are along the lines of "What would you do in a hypothetical situation, if user X posted comment Y on talkpage Z?". However, some questions are more like "I looked at your history, and saw you did X on discussion Y. I think that was bad. Why did you do that?". Usually this is an excuse for the candidate to say "Sorry, I made a mistake / I was immature and have learnt my lesson" etc but if they don't give a good answer to questions like that it will really hurt their candidacy. bobrayner (talk) 13:54, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

In retrospect, I missed a third category of question: where a questioner has a bee in their bonnet about some issue elsewhere on wiki (a controversial article or, more likely, another editor with whom they are unable to interact civilly) and hence decides the best question would be some cherrypicked diff from their article or nemesis - "How would you deal with editing like this diff if you were admin, eh? Isn't it NPOV/OR? Isn't it passive-aggressive/uncivil? Validate my obsession, dammit!". There's no right answer for the admin candidate. We could do with fewer such questions but I can't think of a practical way to eliminate them. bobrayner (talk) 16:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Last time I checked, everything on Wikipedia was optional. This is a volunteer project. Obviously your choices will have a result of some kind, but whatever you do, don't do, answer, don't answer, it's all completely optional. Also, not a real fan of how Franamax framed this thread, essentially, "Look something needs to be changed because someone could do XYZ, and as evidence, just look, I've done XYZ." Not real impartial. I'd like to see some solid evidence over time of people opposing solely due to optional questions being unanswered. For example, in the RFA in question, he has five sub-questions left unanswered and only one person has opposed for it. Right off the bat, this doesn't look like a problem. Useight (talk) 14:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

He's left those quesdtions unanswered because at tis stage he knows he's going to get the bit anyway. It would be different if it were a margnial case such as GorillaWarfare's RfA. --Kudpung (talk) 15:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Why do you believe that? He's still got 4 days to go and he's at 85%. He only needs 18 more opposes to go below the borderline. Aiken (talk) 15:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

That'd still be a pretty big swing. Historically speaking, if you reach 100 supports, you have an 88% chance of passing. But I do wonder if it is the ones that reached 100 faster had a had a higher or lower likelihood of passing (i.e., how bipolar is the voting?) Useight (talk) 15:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've not done a cluster analysis (I could, if you wish), but I think while the support votes come in high and heavy upfront, the oppose votes slowly start piling up, and steadily increase in the end - but with only a small spike. In terms of day schedules, there is a period of 8 odd hours when almost no vote is put, then the east coast wakes up and voting starts off again till the west coast goes off work. Saturdays, Sundays are generally low voting days (as I suspect a majority use their work computers to work on Wikipedia). This is pure OR... Wifione _.......^{Leave a message} 16:52, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

First, the three standard questions are not labeled as optional, and offhand I don't know of anyone passing RFA in the last several years without giving the information they request. (In a few cases the information has been given without using the usual Q&A format.) Second, candidates have passed RFA without answering all the optional questions. Usually this has been in cases of "silly" questions (joke questions, or tendentious questions reflecting extreme minority viewpoints) or questions asked late in the discussion period. But in some cases, respected editors have simply chosen to be selective about answering regular questions, and they passed anyway. So, yes, the optional questions really are optional. --RL0919 (talk) 20:45, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Any analysis of RfA history is invalid due to the bias of the candidate pool towards those who so desperately want to be an admin that they are willing to subject themselves to the current process. Does anyone believe that an unqualified candidate, who is nevertheless above the WP:NOTNOW bar, can't invent acceptable answers to the three magical questions? The controversial answers tend to be from the honest candidates, but lack of a controversial answer shouldn't be assumed to be dishonesty. Therefore, I submit that we should be talking about how to improve the system to achieve the desired goal rather than giving future candidates a guide on how to game the current system. —UncleDouggie (talk) 22:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Four points:

Changing the standard questions, asking better optional questions, and how to deal with bad optional questions (and bad questioners who, as Bobrayner notes above, are trying to draw attention to a personal issue) are a perennial subject for meta-discussion at RFA. I'm sure that there must be a summary somewhere of the reams of past discussions on these points.
My RFA questions are optional, and always have been. They are in part are aimed at trying to provide good questions. One of the oft-repeated concerns with RFA questions is that candidates copy other people's answers in order to give the "right" answer. My questions are specifically designed for that to be very difficult to do. In the Ordinary Certificate version, I just choose a few current AFD discussions and ask the candidate what xe would do coming upon them, with administrator tools and were the discussion closable, without any prompting as to what the right answer would be. Often, there are unstated subtleties that I put in. Sometimes, for example, the right action for the candidate would be to not use administrator tools at all but rather remember that xe is also still an ordinary editor, who can just add to a discussion, and isn't required to close it. Sometimes, a candidate who didn't check the article being discussed and compare it against the discussion would be caught out. I try to pick a variety of discussions, and make them more than just "Well, that's a unanimous consensus. {{subst:afd top}} The result was X.".
My RFA questions at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ron Ritzman are the first time that I've asked the Advanced Certificate version of my question. The Advanced version is harder. (There's a Bachelor's Degree version of it, that's tougher still, that I'm reserving for the right candidate.) I'm not going to say what the subtleties that I've included are, yet. Ron Ritzman has caught some, and missed some; but xe's also reading this page, as you can see from the edit above. I'm not going to prompt xem with what xe's missed. But they definitely stretch Ron Ritzman out of xyr comfort zone, and deliberately so.
Sometimes the very way in which the candidate answers the questions is revealing. If you go to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Msgj, you'll note that the first thing that xe did was this edit. That said something about the candidate right there. Similarly, at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mkativerata the candidate did this. One can, too, read something into the order in which Ron Ritzman has answered my questions at xyr RFA, for which see the edit history of the RFA page, as well as into the relative timing of the answer edits compared to the times of day that Ron Ritzman has habitually edited for the past few months.

Uncle G (talk) 23:01, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally: There's one unstated subtlety, that is directly and very important to qualifications for administratorship, that no-one has picked up on in my Ron Ritzman question, not even any of the administrators participating in the RFA, support or oppose. That's something to think about, especially when you realize what it is. Uncle G (talk) 23:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Given that well over 100 users have participated so far, I have to wonder whether it's something you've included in such a subtle way that it just isn't apparent to others. Needless to say, reading minds should not be a criterion for RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:29, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
- Nonetheless, this issue certainly is a criterion for administratorship, and one that has been discussed in other candidacies many times over. When you realize what it is, you'll see that reading minds has nothing to do with it. But you'll also be asking why no administrator spotted it. Uncle G (talk) 23:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
  - My point wasn't that this is or is not a valid criterion. My point is that a basic requirement of writing a good exam question is writing it in such a way that the question is clear to the student, not just clear to the professor. When the whole class gets it wrong, one has to consider the possibility that the question was flawed. (Well, OK, the whole class except Mkativerata.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    - This isn't a school test. Ron Ritzman isn't a student. Existing administrators are not "the rest of the class". And this is not some hypothetical scenario that could be "flawed". This is a real thing that exists on the wiki. Uncle G (talk) 01:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
  - I wouldn't assume that no-one has spotted it (I think I have), just that certainly no-one has commented on it (and I'm surprised at that). --Mkativerata (talk) 00:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    - Well I'm not trying to trick people with my questions, so I've given fair warning. If we're on the same page, then I'm somewhat relieved. Uncle G (talk) 00:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Enough with the mind games. RfA is supposed to be a productive discussion, not a test with trick questions. Uncle G, you admit that Ron could easily pass any of your standard exams, you support him in other discussions, and yet you haven't !voted. Are you waiting for him to trip up on how he answers you, when he answers you, or in what order he chooses to do so before suddenly jumping into the oppose column long after it's too late to persuade any of the supports that we've made a horrible mistake? I appreciate the subtlety of your Advanced Certificate course, and while it would make a terrific mentoring course for new admins, or serious candidates, I don't think it belongs in RfA. The problem with allowing dedicated user questions upfront is they inevitably devolve into exams, no matter what were the original restrictions on questions. To your specific points:
1. Agreed, but the fact that nothing has been fixed means that maybe we should approach the problem in a new way.
2. There has been opposition specifically for not answering your questions. You even seem to be hinting that you are withholding judgment until all your questions are answered.
3. Doesn't the fact that you feel the need to use the Advanced Certificate version qualify as automatic support? And if this is true, why even ask? Do you propose we fail Ron if he answers poorly while passing someone else not qualified enough to even be given the test?
4. Every time I try to read too much into these type of clues, I'm proven wrong in the end. Maybe you have a better track record, but I personally refuse to accept this type of evidence in making my decision.
—UncleDouggie (talk) 00:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- - But the use of admin tools day-to-day does throw up such subtleties. These are real examples, so it's good to test a candidate on them. In my own RfA, I picked up on one subtelty in Uncle G's quetsions that, had I not, ought to have sunk the RfA. There really aren't many better ways of testing. Of course, what the supporters/opposers choose to do with the "test" is another matter - for example I'm firmly in the support column despite the "subtelty" that Uncle G has warned of here. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:31, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    - Of course admins encounter such subtleties every day, but they don't all need to have a Master's Degree from Uncle G to survive. They just need the judgment to either make a call or to ask for help. I claim that judgment is best determined from edit history. —UncleDouggie (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    - (edit conflict)I left off the reason for not using an RfA test to determine judgment: What candidate is going to admit on an extremely public test that they need help? Instead, they will give a half answer, or no answer at all, and get marked down. This is not a reliable means to judge real-world behavior. If you want that, look at what they have done on the real project. —UncleDouggie (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
      - It's easy to have an uncontroversial edit history. It's also easy to game the system so that one's edit history looks very uncontroversial leading up to one's own RfA. So I don't think there's any substitute for being put on the spot. If I had answered Uncle G's question in my RfA by saying [5] should be closed as delete, it would be quite a clear indication of unsuitability for the job. Of course - the questioning system isn't perfect. First, it requires sensible responses by RfA !voters, not nitpicking. Secondly, it's also open to gaming - we can never know if a candidate gets off-wiki "help" to answer the questions and we can do nothing other than not think about that bad faith possibility. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        I remember one admin and crat who I otherwise respect saying that he doesn't usually look at the articles when he closes an AFD. I think that one should first see what he might be deleting in order to catch something like you caught. In any case, perhaps I'm not as smart as I thought I was because I haven't yet found this horrible RFA torpedoing mistake that I made answering uncle G's questions. Even if I do eventually catch it before somebody blows the whistle, it says something about me that I didn't even realize there was a problem until I read this thread :( --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:18, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        Ron, in your defense, it may be possible that it says more about the questioner, or about the process, than it does about you. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:29, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        
        The world isn't so daft as to read it in such black and white terms. Mkativerata knows what you've missed, and firmly supports your candidacy, for example. As I said, this isn't a trick. If it were, I'd have done what people do when they want to torpedo RFA, which is introduce damning diffs in such a way as to cause a pile-on. Instead, you've got warning that there's an opportunity to really shine, here. You've already spotted something that I, in my haste, didn't. I really hoped that you'd spot this straightaway. You didn't. And since it's come up, I'm prodding you. Moreover: Yes it's relevant even to someone who wants to be just an AFD closure wikignome, even though it's outside of your comfort zone. You'd need to know the basic underlying principles to enact the closure of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jonathan Kern properly, for example. Uncle G (talk) 01:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        
        (edit conflict)I thought we were just using your testing failure as a convenient example to pummel the RfA process. Failing a test that shouldn't have been given is not a true failure. No one has moved this discussion into your RfA (at least not yet). And if they do, take comfort in the knowledge that your sacrifice may someday lead to a better experience for all. ;-) In response to Uncle G below, of course I know that these tests don't have right and wrong answers, but you do seem to have a minimum bar for passing. —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        
        Anyone with enough experience to politely contribute to discussions for a year with the intent of getting a bit, while secretly dreaming of causing havoc, is probably going to survive a test. The key question is: How many candidates have been unmasked by testing alone vs. how many well-qualified candidates have been disenfranchised or passed over? —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- It's not a question that one passes or fails, with set "right" answers. That really should have been clear to you from just reading, as should the fact that I made no vote in the other discussions linked to. (I usually don't provide critiques, either, but I thought that I might in this case, because I've deliberately been harder on Ron Ritzman than usual.) But it is a question intended to elicit relevant things from the candidate, without either leading or the problems of boilerplate "good" answers, for people to draw conclusions from, whether positive or negative. You'll notice that indeed that has indeed happened in previous discussions. If someone draws a conclusion about Ron Ritzman's decision processes from this, either positive or negative, then the question has achieved one of its purposes. That's one of the things that it is intended to elicit about the candidate.
  Yes, I'm pushing Ron Ritzman harder, and I've been very explicit from the start that this is optional. I've also been quite explicit about something else: We know what xe does with AFD closures. Xe does them, and we can see what results, including the discussions of whether xe is right, and the "You made a fair call. This would be a lot smoother if you were formally an administrator, Ron." discussions. There are further questions of interest, though. What decision processes does xe employ elsewhere? If xe's going to have the tools, how is xe going to approach things outside of AFD discussion closures? If xe's going to be effectively an AFD closure wikignome, what might draw xem away from that? Everything about the question, including the very order in which Ron Ritzman has answered the parts, says something about that. The idea isn't to force a particular result. But it certainly is to ask questions that I think will give a good candidate an opportunity to reveal xyrself as such, almost without being able to help xyrself.
  Mkativerata, I have received your private electronic mail message. You are bang on. Uncle G (talk) 01:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

@Uncle G: IMHO after reading all the discussion above, what you are doing is posing trick questions. What I don't understand is why the RfA process is deliberately allowed to be so unbalanced: longish serving editors with a reasonable amount of clue and dedication come under fire and are subjected to psycho terror, silly questions from newbies who are trying to be clever, and pile-on opposes because someone has unearthed a slightly snarky comment in the dim and distant past, or a badly judged CSD in good faith, while others, clearly naïve and with little real experience and no attempt to clean up their earlier editing errors, get the bit just because they are nice people. Kudpung (talk) 03:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Ideally, IMHO, successful candidates should be both knowledgable and kind. Airplaneman ✈ 04:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- I must be an exception to that rule then. I'm kind and experienced (in my area)... yet I have had no such success in my requests. :P The Thing // Talk // Contribs 04:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- If they're trick questions, then the whole of an administrator's work is a trick question. Of course they're not trick questions. Some administrator is going to have to answer each one at some point within the week. Uncle G (talk) 22:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Kudpung, I agree - Uncle G is posing trick questions. However, isn't that the point? Admins are supposed to deal with tricky, non-obvious situations. Another point is: "why is an experienced editor getting harder questions"? Again, I don't really see that as a problem. Uncle G flagged the questions as harder-than-usual; Ron Ritzman could (1) cop out and refuse to answer, (2) answer poorly and be assessed by !voters who know that the questions were harder than usual (!voters, such as myself, who found the questions extremely hard...), or (3) answer the questions brilliantly. For my part, I think Ron Ritzman is somewhere between (2) and (3). Since I'm struggling with the questions, I think anything above (1) is ideal, and regard the (optional) questions as an acknowledgement of Ron's experience, rather than an attempt to catch Ron out. My only concern about this is that I've spent far too long looking at Uncle G's questions, and far too long beating myself up about my inability to spot the subtleties. @Mkativerata, do you have a pay-pal account? I have a proposal for you, before I go mad... TFOWR 09:34, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
- Paypal - does that mean the proposal involves $$? Sorry, I don't (but perhaps I should?) --Mkativerata (talk) 10:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
  - If you can help me with Uncle G's questions - even a hint would do - I'll ~~pay~~ ~~barter~~ be eternally grateful ;-) TFOWR 10:54, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    - 'Optional' question of the day : How many trick questions did Uncle G have to answer at his two RfA? ;) Kudpung (talk) 11:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
      - Aha! That's a trick question! The answer is "none". The three generic questions weren't trick questions ;-) TFOWR 12:25, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        That smart-arsed comment would have been more relevant if I hadn't edited it before posting. Originally I called them "mandatory questions", then changed it on checking what mandatory questions were called back in 2005... Jokes that need explaining tend not to be funny, and mine is no exception ;-) TFOWR 10:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
        
        Don't forget the RFC in between and all of the talk page discussion.
        Thank you for reminding me of them. I've finally located Senior Cambridge, which I've been trying to remember for a month. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 22:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Now that the fat lady has sung

Uncle G, I appreciate all your support and participation in my RFA but it's time to spill it. Which one of your questions did I screw up on? :) --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

As I wrote here, you didn't make a mistake, as much as miss something; and I was waiting until discussion closure to point it out, after first exercising my own tools. If you want more detail than I actually gave at User talk:Ron Ritzman as soon as the discussion closed, ask. I'll even let you know what you caught that I missed. ☺ Uncle G (talk) 02:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I should note the reason I supported despite the "miss". I assumed the best: that you had missed it because you simply didn't commence any enquiry at all into answering the AfC questions, which is fine. Had you tried to answer the question and missed it, there would have been a problem.--Mkativerata (talk) 02:42, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

My failure to answer the questions was due to my unfamiliarity with the AFC process though I did look them over and did see the one in question. Not to worry, I would not stick a a poorly sourced BLP into mainspace. However, I was tearing my hair out over the ones I did answer because that's where I thought the landmine was, Perhaps if you have time you can tell me how I did on those. For the record I later suspected that the trap was in the Lakeshore AFD (the one I "cheated" on). --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Hasty opposers

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

As Secret admitted to being a deletionist I had a closer than normal look at the candidates past closures and as secret stated it looks like they avoid letting their POV affect their closures. They seem to judge concensus very well. I also got the impression that if theyve been involved in an above average amount of drama its due to good character in that they arent the sort to walk on by. So I was all ready to add a strong support only to find the RFA was closed down and i cant even put a consolation message on their talk as theyve put it up for deletion. Even though support is the default position i took 20 minutes of my valuable time to evaluate the candidate, whereas going by the gap between their vote and their last edit some opposers hardly seem to be even taking 5 minutes to reflect. My message to hasty oppose voters would be that before you next drive off and dishearten another excellent editor you at least make some token effort to appear to have given your vote some though. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The candidate said themselves that they "expected it to be a bloodbath", so I am confused as to why they still submitted it, when they know they do not handle the stress of intense scrutiny well. That being said, this thread will only increase scrutiny so it should perhaps be closed. –xeno^talk 18:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Time to catch up on summaries?

We stopped summarizing the RFA archives sometime back, there's always catching up on that if it's a slow week. Triona (talk) 04:02, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

What summaries are you referring to? Frank | talk 17:19, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. They're here. Useight (talk) 18:39, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

So the next summary will contain a discussion about the summaries? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

General observations

Seriously, maybe we should unwind a tiny bit? The process is like a tightly woven spring: you succeed, or wiki-die from a flash mob. Perhaps the 'extremety of the drought atm will convince someone. ResMar 02:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The intermittent droughts are a recurring phenomenon that persuades noone of anything. There will be a new batch of lambs along soon enough I'm quite sure. Malleus Fatuorum 03:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure. Everyone knows how going through the meat grinder feels nowadays...Res Mar 03:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And sure enough someone is venturing in! Your prediction is uncanny. ResMar 03:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I expect some of the good faith editors that have registered in the past year (me inclusive) to run in the next two or three years. Buggie111 (talk) 03:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It's based on experience. Depending on the phase of the moon or the state of the tides, if you throw enough admin wanabees at the wall then some of them are bound to stick. There's no point in dwelling on it though, go write something or review something and forget about wikipedia's corrupt system of governance; it won't change until it has to, and then it'll be too late. Malleus Fatuorum 03:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

@Buggie111: Some, but not all, I think. Like, I fit in that category (started editing in earnest in late 2009), but I've not the slightest desire right now to become an admin--it's too much fuss for too little gain. Not worth going through the RfA process; I'd never have a prayer of passing, since I just don't fit in the mold of being involved with policy discussion and interaction. There's nothing to gain from becoming an admin. Sure, you now have a heavy hammer to swing around, but you're also in a much higher profile, and you will take abuse for that. Besides, RfA is just scary in general; the impression I get is that people will hunt for the slightest mistake you've ever made, and they will crucify you for it. Since very few people are perfect, it means that very few people will pass, and for everyone else, it becomes a matter of who has the thickest skin and can take the criticism before it gets to be too much and they withdraw. C628 (talk) 00:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You caught the snag in my statement. I did mean most good faith editors. some might fall along the lines of Snow/NotNow, and some, like you, won't pass for different reasons. Some might pass, and there will be more people like them the next time the flock of lambs comes round to the meat grinder, so the process will repeat, along with slight changes in the amount of appliers due to how many read the battleground-like RfA's in the past. Buggie111 (talk) 01:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I would not like to be an admin, because i make to many mistake and I am not ready yet.--Bad edits r dumb (talk) 03:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It upsets me sometimes how admins think that they are oh-so-amazing. ResMar 20:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that by-and-large admins do think that; it's the children who aspire to become admins themselves who do, as they want to become "oh-so-amazing" too. Malleus Fatuorum 20:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Same offput =| ResMar 00:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

time delay

Hi - if a nominee requests, can other admins/bcrats freeze voting for the first 24 hours so that the nominee can answer extra questions in full before people make up their minds? (I'm not proposing a procedure, just if an individual request is made). Shiva (Visnu) 10:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

My feeling is that this shouldn't be allowed. Answering the questions is part of the process, and if the editor does not have the time to do that, they should not put forward their candidacy until they have the time to do so. -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternate account of Phantomsteve]} 12:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, that means !voters who read the page early may see a bunch of unanswered questions (and could easily jump to assumptions about the lack of an answer, depending on which timezone they're in rather than the candidate's timezone, and so on); and !voters who read the page late see answered questions - but prior !votes that seem to overlook them. I think that's not ideal. If !votes are supposed to take into account the responses to questions (and not be randomly skewed by who has free time in what part of the day/week &c) I would support a move that gives candidates a little time to answer those questions first, although there might be other practical concerns.... bobrayner (talk) 14:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The original question wasn't about the 3 standard questions (which should be answered fully before the RfA is transcluded onto the main page), but for extra questions. If we said "yes" to this, does that mean that every time someone added another question, we'd put it on hold for another 24 hours? -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, if an RfA was open for 5 days and then an additional question was added, then the people who contributed to the discussion during the first 5 days would not have seen the latest question, let alone the answer. That's part of the process of RfA. The only way in which this would be feasible would be if we changed RfA, so that it is put up and questions can be added during a set time period (be it 24 hours or whatever the community thought), and no !votes can be registered during that period - and then after that time period, no more questions could be added. However, I would not feel comfortable with this - what if I only come on to edit once or twice a week, and miss the "question" period? What if I only log on during the "no !votes, only questions" period? In either case, I can't fully participate in the RfA. So in summary, I still think this would be wrong! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Those are good points, thanks. I was thinking of something more like your latter case(ie. rather than setting the clock back every time some random wikipedian wants to ask a question, there's a pre-voting period upfront when these questions are asked - similar to most real-world elections). Is there any need to shorten the period in which !votes can be cast? bobrayner (talk) 17:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Re: "The only way in which this would be feasible would be if we changed RfA, so that it is put up and questions can be added during a set time period (be it 24 hours or whatever the community thought), and no !votes can be registered during that period - and then after that time period, no more questions could be added" - the problem with that is that RfAs are open for a full week because some people work on Wikipedia only on specific days, and we can't assume everyone is here every day. So restricting the asking of questions to a shorter period is going to effectively prohibit some editors who don't visit on the special days from asking questions. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

FYI there was an "experimental" RFA last October that used this model. See also the discussion –xeno^talk 14:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, xeno, and did you see how many questions there were - 48! ... who'd want to go through that?! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep - looks (even more) grueling. –xeno^talk 15:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Blatantly ridiculous, wasn't it? As I have said many, many times, no wonder there are fewer and fewer candidates coming forward. If it were my RfA, I would just bin the lot and withdraw.--Kudpung (talk) 16:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, his last RFA (in standard form) attracted 45 questions. He may not have been the best test subject if 'level of scrutiny' was the key metric. Kuru (talk) 20:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts on this matter are pretty simple: if we had a period of time specifically for the asking and answering of questions, the number of questions would probably increase drastically. Ironholds is a prime example. Useight (talk) 19:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, not necessarily. As Kuru pointed out, I got a shedload of questions in non-experimental RfAs as well (mainly along the lines of "you're APPLYING? WHY!?"). It must be pointed out that a large number of questions in the non-experimental model were due to a troll; the results of the experimental RfA aren't, therefore, as unreliable as Kuru seems to think. Ironholds (talk) 21:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, did not notice that on first pass. Indeed a very large number were simple trolling. Quite the circus. Kuru (talk) 00:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The user is free to transpose his/her RfA whenever he/she feels ready to do so. Thus, if they want to wait until they've answered the bare 3 and transpose fine. If there are a number of other "optional" questions they want to answer before transposing fine. The things to take into account: 1) Answering a lot of questions or getting ANY supports before transposing could be seen as stacking the deck. 2) Having numerous people asking questions before transposing, could be seen as "canvassing." Generally, while it is possible, I wouldn't recommend it---unless the user foresees some questions and wants to take a proactive approach. EG they were blocked or in a bitter dispute, and want to address those issues in more detail. Or perhaps they ran before, was asked a question to which they answered poorly, and want to answer the same question again. Or C, they've ben following RfA, feel that some of the questions asked are fairly standard and want to answer those questions ahead of time. But remember, the more info added before the start, might work both ways.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:25, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that this proposal is necessary. in my experience most sensible !voters are aware of time stamps and time differences and don't feel ignored unless a reasonable time has passed and the candidate has disappeared or done other things without answering their question. That said I would recommend that any serious candidate pick a week when they are planning to be on wiki for a chunk of time daily, at least in the early days. I'd also suggest submitting your RFA at the start of a new editing session, not as I did at what I intended to be the end of one. PS If anyone out there is thinking of running and fancies a nomination, please drop me a line if you think you meet my criteria. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

When I see a new RfA, and it's for an editor that I'm not very familiar with, and there aren't any optional questions asked (or answered if asked) then I'll make a check of their contributions to see if anything leaps out at me as atrocious or fantastic. If the former, I oppose, if the latter, I support. If neither, then I'll wait a couple days for questions to be asked (or answered) or pose a couple myself if I can think of something relevant to ask. I've never opposed an editor early in an RfA because of unanswered questions. To be frank, anyone who does is an idiot. That's like watching a sporting match when it has just started and giving up on one side because they haven't scored yet.

I'll also second what WSC has said, it's good to have your RfA at a time when you're going to be around. RfA opposes have a tendency to snowball, where one editor will oppose for something you did, and then suddenly a half a dozen oppose for the same reason. If you can swiftly address the concern you might head off those opposes. Unfortunately, many people will oppose an RfA and then not look at it again, so even if you address the reason for the oppose quite adequately, the opposers may not be aware of it to change their minds. I consider it perfectly okay to leave messages for the opposers to inform them that you've addressed their concerns and they should reconsider (I've had a few candidates do so to me after I opposed, and a couple of times I've changed my !vote as a result) but others may see that as badgering your opposers. Some people also just don't want to change their minds. RfA can be a nerve-racking experience, but it's less so if you can keep an eye on it. -- Atama頭 16:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Blanking of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Secret

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

Is this a correct thing to do? User:Secret stated in an edit to it that he was quitting the project, but he's only "semi-retired" on his profile, and I'm not sure that it's exactly correct to blank an entire RFA, 'courtesy' or not. If he'd requested to vanish, then I could understand, but there's nothing stopping him from running for RFA again in the future, and even though the entire RFA is accessible via old revisions, I still don't think it's right to blank it. Thoughts? Esteffect (talk) 22:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I've never been happy with courtesy blankings except from in the rarest circumstances (such as a heated AFD on a BLP). Secret, who admitted he knew it would be a bloodbath and knew he handled criticism poorly, brought it on himself. Of course, if he had left I'd be more sympathetic, but if he's still here, it should stay up for all to see. I don't think RFAs are cached by search engines anyhow, and it just causes a nuisance when people want to look at it. Aiken (talk) 22:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Note: I didn't really blank the RfA, I just replaced the already-blanked RfA with the {{courtesy blanked}} template. I don't have any opinion on whether it should stay this way or not. —Soap— 22:20, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Too bad WP:COMPASSION is a redlink. Secret made an error of judgement, it seems, which could have been easily avoided. It is also equally easy to find if you're the sort of person who needs to find such things. Wikipedia loses nothing by being nice to people who had an oopsie and need a little empathy. Sleeping dogs. → ROUX ₪ 22:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Secret blanked his own RfA. For reasons I can well understand. I agree with Roux. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:43, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Meh, it's ultimately up the the 'crats, but unless he runs again, I'd say just leave it as is. What's to be gained by unblanking it? Courcelles 22:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Even if he runs again I have no problem with blanking, after all it only takes it out of Google. I expect that almost anyone voting in an RFA can go through an edit history and see what was once there. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:49, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Does this not, however, set a precedent? What is being suggested here is that, if an RFA does not go your way or includes comments and so forth that you're not fond of, you can simply blank it. We don't blank snowball closes, WP:NOTNOW closes, and others withdrawn only, but this suggests that it's acceptable. It'd be interesting to have a bureaucrat's word on this. I'm not all that privy to Secret's case so as to know whether or not there's special circumstances here, but others have withdrawn an RFA and left/went on a wikibreak before, and their RFAs remain visible. Esteffect (talk) 23:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
A look at the RFA indicates no real drama on it, in fact, and simply 18 supports and 8 opposes. Yes, the RFA was not looking promising, but I'm not convinced anything unique occurred on it to suggest courtesy blanking is appropriate. Esteffect (talk) 23:11, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of personally revealing details. → ROUX ₪ 23:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I see that now. I'm still against the blanking of RFAs (other debates are not blanked), but if it's within process I'll withdraw the objection. A bureaucrat should still perhaps note whether or not the process is acceptable, though. Esteffect (talk) 23:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I have left a not on WP:BN to that effect. Given that no bureaucrats (who watch RFA carefully, for obvious reasons) objected to the blanking, it would seem that they do not disagree. → ROUX ₪ 23:20, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this sets a precedent, I'm pretty sure that it actually follows precedent - this isn't the norm but similar things have happened before. Ϣere SpielChequers 23:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I have no objections to this RFA being blanked. I wouldn't like it to become the norm for all RFAs, but as Secret is a well-established editor, I don't have a problem with it. There have been other RFAs of well-established editors that have been blanked as well, but I'm making the courtesy of not mentioning them here. Often would-be SNOW'd RFAs remain open at the request of the candidate, particularly if the candidate is a longtime Wikipedian. Goes against the norm, but so be it. Useight (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

And would it really make ANY difference if it did become the norm? No, the RfA is still visible to anybody who wants to look at it. This whole thread as far as I am concerned serves no valid purpose other than to rehash old wounds.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:07, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm going with "Who cares?". I don't see much point in courtesy blanking it, but at the same time I also don't see any problems with courtesy blanking it. If he would like it courtesy blanked, then that's fine by me. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 23:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Unblank it, I blanked it out of frustration and to prevent damage to my health. I was upset that I was being labeled as a dramamonger, and I thought that was my reputation with the community, which isn't true though I did expose it with my later edits, that I am a drama when my health becomes affected. I plan to move on with the RFA and try RFA again in the future. Deskana knows my editing history well, that I tend to be like that when things doesn't go as plan especially with RFAs but I'm harmless to the community. Secret ^account 01:55, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Deskana, what does it hurt to have it blanked? It is not as if it hides the RfA from anybody who wants to look. If it makes the user/subject of the RfA sleep a tad bit better at night and feel a hair better about the project, why should we care? I can't think of a single valid reason not to adhere to somebody's request to blank it. It is not as if we are talking about Deleting the RfA. Anybody who is interested can go back and see what happened and what was said.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:05, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Bingo. It is the same as a waiter saying "Certainly, Ma'am, there must have been a computer error, let's use your other credit card." It is a courtesy to allow people to avoid embarrassment. Again, I am depressed that WP:COMPASSION (for fellow editors) is not blue. It should be. → ROUX ₪ 02:54, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not an RfA historian, but I have seen other courtesy-blanked RfAs (ex. DHMO's, I think?) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

This courtesy blanking doesn't seem to conform to WP:CBLANK, which is policy. As Secret notes above, the RFA should be unblanked. Townlake (talk) 03:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

And again, a significant amount of personal information was disclosed in the RFA. See WP:COMPASSION (which I have rewritten from a redirect) again to gain some idea of where everyone else is coming from. → ROUX ₪ 06:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Which part of "From time to time, a discussion will have its content hidden from view based on the judgment of the community, an administrator or another functionary. This is generally not done except under rare circumstances, where discussion may cause harm to some person or organisation." doesn't conform? I'm with Roux; there is no harm done in blanking it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:36, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It's long been well known that RFA is a stressful experience; these are hardly rare circumstances. Are we really going to start blanking RFAs because the candidate felt discomfort resulting from the process? (If we are, that's fine, but the policy should be updated and all candidates should be informed up front that it's an option - heck, it might boost RFA participation.) Townlake (talk) 05:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see an issue wit the blanking. Anyone is welcome to review the actual content if they wish. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:41, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Courtesy-blanking does not suppress any information, which remains fully available in the page history. I strongly request that the page remain as it is unless and until the user seeks a new RfA or otherwise is the subject of a privilege discussion. The circumstances here are such that little useful purpose will be served by further discussion of or dwelling on the matter at this time. Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed... so far we only have Townlake calling for the RfA to be un-blanked. Even the person who initially raised the question has withdrawn his concern. I think it's time for an univolved admin/crat to clost this thing down. There is no useful purpose in keeping this open other than to bring pain to the surface. If a person feels embarrassed by the results of his.her rfa, then it can be deleted/blanked. WP:BLP could be applied here. Anybody who insist on keeping it unblanked needto provide a valud reason to do so.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 06:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

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

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 203

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Terrasidius

IPs unable to vote?

Question about civility and personal attacks at RfA

Proposal

Proposal taking the above idea six steps further

Proposal to lower the passing percentage

Don't look now... but WP:RFA is broken

Long term discussion

Requesting the bit temporarily

No open talk discussions?

Who?

Torchwoodwho summary

Obligatory statement

Uh oh...

Proposal for a new "optional" question

Why are "optional" RFA questions "optional"?

Now that the fat lady has sung

Hasty opposers

Time to catch up on summaries?

General observations

time delay

Blanking of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Secret

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