Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 257

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Lots of questions

Discussion

This is simply ludicrous.—S Marshall T/C 01:38, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. Given that the outcome seems assured, unless something extraordinary comes up, I hope the candidate will decline to answer further questions. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 04:28, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• I occasionally look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Skomorokh with a wry grin.—S Marshall T/C 10:35, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/331dot, I was pleased he didn't answer certain questions, and demonstrating he did not want to by answering other ones later that were more useful. It didn't do him any harm. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:15, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I also have found the number of questions absurd given the utter lack of concerns brought forward. But I agree with Ritchie that the best solution is for a candidate to not answer some questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• WP:ADMINACCT states that "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries...". If there are lots of questions then this is also a good test of diligence and patience. If a candidate fails to respond to good faith questions then this would therefore tend to disqualify them. As Red Phoenix seems to be doing fine in answering the questions, there doesn't seem to be a problem. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:12, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • RfA candidates are not bound by ADMINACCT, because they aren't admins. I think 21 questions is way too many and candidates feeling they have to answer them all just perpetuates the problem. I wish more candidates would have the courage to ignore questions (though I understand why they don't.) P-K3 (talk) 13:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • What WP:ADMINACCT states is that "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions". The overwhelming majority of the questions demanded of this candidate, as with those of most candidates, are utterly ignorable. —Cryptic 13:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I actually don't think it's an issue of number of question, but one or two of the questions are considerably out of scope. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Lee. The way I see it, I'd rather have a lot of questions being asked now, than a lot of questions being asked later, with the important proviso that those questions be on-topic, relevant, and vaguely sensible. We don't want to prescribe a "fixed number" of questions to be asked, either saying that there's a number that's too many, or that there's a number that's too few; sensible questions should be allowed, and ones that aren't oughtn't be. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:57, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

How much does the potential candidate owe the community and how much does the potential candidate owe each member of the community? These are different questions. By my count as I start to write this reply Red Phoenix has written 3,918 words answering 20 questions from 15 members of the community. 631 of those words are in response to 1 question which we can either choose to include, or not, in averages. 108 people have cast a vote (and I've used the word vote here because RfA, despite being a discussion, is a vote more than other places). 105 of those are in support. So this is basically someone the community uncontroversially feels should be an admin. Would we say that a potential candidate would owe the community 27,426 words if every member of the community asked a question before deciding on their position based on the average of RP's responses. If we exclude the long answer to SoWhy and suggest RP wouldn't need to answer a question from Ritchie, as nom, do we feel comfortable with expecting 25,122 words? I would be amazed if anyone would say the answer to either of those is yes.

Now that's not actually the situation. But it is the situation that 8% of the participants have asked question of a completely uncontroversial candidate. Some numbers of those answers are why the candidate remains uncontroversial, but even still I would suggest that what the candidate owes individuals, even when suggesting full ADMINACCT applies, is less than the 21,0000+ bytes in response that have been expended at this RfA. I'm not for limiting questions beyond the two we already limit. I am, however, in favor of creating a norm that suggests it is OK for a candidate to be picky with the questions they answer and having a candidate ignore your question as a reason for a neutral or oppose vote is one that crats should give little weight to when closing discussions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I can't speak for anyone else, but for what it's worth, I wanted to ask the questions that I did of the candidate precisely because they appear to be so uncontroversial, ironically. I normally want to watch and see the arguments opposing an RfA to vote in it, not just what the supporters say; with just one oppose !vote, which personally speaking wasn't an argument that swayed me at all, that is very difficult to do. I wonder perhaps if others have had much the same idea. For instance, Can you point to any controversial decisions you were involved in during your time on Wikipepda and how it was resolved? - someone who's taken many of them wouldn't get this question, but would likely get oppose votes from people who felt they came up on the wrong side of the decision. Now, clearly not all of the questions in the list fit into that criteria - in fact, I'd argue a fair few of them probably aren't really going to generate anything, and perhaps are from users trying to get name recognition rather than trying to actively participate, although I certainly wouldn't want to level that charge against any individual.

I imagine this goes without saying, but I agree with Barkeep49 that it's unreasonable to expect tens of thousands of words from each candidate. That being said, I really do think answering every good-faith, relevant, on-topic question (and that already narrows it down a bit) is quite important - personally, I'm of the view that all users, not just mop-wielders, should hold themselves to a very high standard of accountability. I appreciate that "very high" is a moveable bar, though, and my definition of that bar may be a lot higher than other people's (perhaps as a consequence of my being a bit of a "head-in-the-clouds" idealist...!)

having a candidate ignore your question as a reason for a neutral or oppose vote ought to be given little weight iff either the question was one of the "how are you today", "what's the meaning behind your username" type ones (which I can see an argument for just disallowing, although I don't think we need go quite that far just yet), or the sheer volume of questions made it completely impossible to even produce a sentence of response to each one. However, a candidate ignoring difficult questions because they don't know or don't like the answers is a different kettle of fish. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:13, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• Answering questions is not some awful imposition as most people are quite happy to talk about themselves. The general problem on Wikipedia is not getting editors to talk but getting them to shut up. This very discussion here is a good example. See also WP:LIGHTBULB. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, I'm sorry, but it looks like you've !voted in ~4 RfAs? You've asked questions in at least 3 of them. Most RfAs get questions from well under 10% of !voters. This makes you very much an outlier. I think you should think about why you are asking questions at so many RfAs. The explanation that you were asking a question because the candidate 'appeared so uncontroversial' is...well, to me it sounds like you might be rationalizing to yourself the fact you just want to ask a question. —valereee (talk) 18:05, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: I certainly can't fault your dedication to finding my flaws Not that I'm complaining, I asked for accountability! That being said, of the many flaws that I have, I'm not sure that this is one. Two factors are of note here; firstly, a small sample size doesn't say very much here. Excluding this one, I've asked questions in two other RfAs, you're right. In both of those two cases, I was within the first ten people to ask questions. More importantly, though, I accept that I should have been clearer above to state that the reasoning I was expressing was for this specific candidate, and offering potential reasoning for why so many questions had been asked. Not that it's required, but I'm happy to justify both of the other times.

At Cwmhiraeth's RfA, I asked a specific question about their intent to use their adminship in one of the encyclopedia's most prominent locations. At the time I posted that, all the other questions up to that point had been general ones, or ones regarding parts of the encyclopedia where the editor hadn't expressed any interest in working. I think that the Main Page is an incredibly important area for attention from everyone, because (although perhaps not as much now as previously) it is still a huge part of the Internet for many people, and what's on there matters. In particular, preventing factual errors from appearing on the Main Page is of a great deal of import, in my mind, and I was thoroughly satisfied by Cwmhiraeth's response about actively enjoying looking for sources where required to make sure what goes on there is valid.

The other time I've asked a question (or, in this case, two) was at CaptainEek's RfA. The first I asked having read through the other questions, and seen something that caught my eye in particular - the statement about asking what area to work in being "odd". To some extent, I've actualy come to agree with this; nonetheless, I noted that several opposes had already turned up, and wanted to get an idea of where Eek thought it would be inappropriate to use the tools. The second question was very much along the same lines - questions of their judgement appeared there, and I wanted to try and get an idea for how that judgement was shaped. Neither answer to the second question would have made me go "wow, this person is clearly unqualified to be an administrator" - but their justification was what was important to me. Establishing why someone would choose to behave in a particular way is, I think, one of the most important things that we can do as a community during an RfA; if someone's judgement has been called into question, especially by senior members of the community, I want to try and establish what that judgement is like for myself before !voting. I was satisfied with the answers that were given (following a short followup), and I !voted appropriately.

I hope that makes sense, let me know if there's anything you think doesn't in there! I'm very much open to feedback Feel free to drop me a message on talk if you like, as I'm not sure if this discussion is fully relevant to this page; equally, if you think it is, feel free to reply here. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: For me, questions at RfA are best used when there is a legitimate concern in the candidate's background that you are not sure about or you feel needs further clarification from the candidate. In general, I find that I am able to assess how qualified a candidate is without having to ask a question in the wide majority of cases. I feel that your Q21 is particularly problematic because either its wording is flawed or it is a trick question: A long-term editor breaks 3RR reverting a vandal. Well, if the edits were obvious vandalism, then explicitly WP:3RRNO states that the editor did not break 3RR. Perhaps you wanted to test the candidate's knowledge about 3RR exemptions—that's fine, I suppose, but was there any reason based on the candidate's contributions for this concern to arise? Mz7 (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mz7: I wasn't trying to write a trick question there, no - in fact, that was me being clumsy when writing. I should be more careful when phrasing things like that, that's on me; although, I'm pleased that the candidate caught me out! I didn't mean to pick an example which came under 3RRNO - rather, I was trying to get a feeling for the exact opposite; what would happen when the candidate came across something which wasn't written in policy. We trust our administrators to do a hell of a lot more than just carry out policy to the letter (whether it should be that way is a different question, but it is how it is) - we trust them to use their judgement and enforce policies appropriately. I've seen an awful lot of people equivocate on "net positives" and "net negatives", and for some users, it seems that their answer to the underlying question there (ignoring my dumbass mistake of using a 3RR-exempt premise!) would have been "well, the new user was bad, and the established user wasn't, so that's okay". As was noted I think by someone else further down in the RfA discussion, the candidate hadn't really taken part at ANI anything substantial, so judging their thoughts on this front was a bit difficult solely from their contribution history, which is why I thought it worthwhile to ask them directly. They didn't go the route of "user tenure is user value", which I was pleased by. I hope that seems reasonable! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:44, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: Thank you for clarifying the nature of your question. Your question certainly wasn't the worst question among the long slew of questions in roughly the first day of the RfA, and I don't want this thread to digress into a discussion of your questions specifically. Mz7 (talk) 19:54, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

User:Naypta, did my question seem like one of the silly ones? I had a specific purpose in mind when I asked it, but I don't remember it now and it seems like an awkward question. I'd be willing to strike it if necessary. It was my first time asking an rfa question, so I kind of didn't know what to do. Ghinga7 (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ghinga7: Looks sensible enough to me, but I don't think it's helpful to make this thread about individual questions in any case. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:16, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Should we have a 22 question limit? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Emir of Wikipedia, I don't think we need a hard limit on the number of questions we ask at RfA. There are occasions where a question is warranted, and we don't want to prevent the candidate from shining more light on a genuinely unclear situation simply because we hit a 22-question cap. Mz7 (talk) 19:02, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

What about a soft limit? Are we really going to find out anything useful for an RfA after 21 good questions and 21 good answers? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a bad idea because it will lead to unnecessary bickering over whether those 21 questions were "good" and whether a 22nd question beyond the "soft cap" is warranted. We already have the 2-questions-per-editor limit—an additional general cap strikes me as a little arbitrary. I think conversations like this thread are helpful though, because hopefully it will encourage users to give counsel to editors who ask bad questions. Mz7 (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

We might. More decent questions might take more time to compose - they might involve actually looking at the candidate first. The only thing a limit does is encourage people to get their questions in faster. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

For me it's not the number of questions, it's the silliness of them. Some of these questions I'm just reading as "I want to hear my voice!" —valereee (talk) 16:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

For me, it's the number. 22 questions is more than triple what I got asked before becoming an associate lecturer. And here we should need fewer questions, because (a) most mistakes on Wikipedia are trivial to undo, and (b) candidates' contribution histories let us see their past actions with almost godlike omniscience. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 05:06, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

S Marshall, I know it's been an ongoing conversation for literally the entire existence of WP that RFA is broken but for crying out loud I agree this is absurd. I'm glad that this one will likely succeed but I do wonder how many of us they are long time admins would succeed if the process was repeated now. It's become an absurd purity test. Question volume is insane. No wonder applications are few and far between. Glen 17:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, Red Phoenix's RfA at least has quite a few questions that specifically address things they've done, or positions they've taken. These are the kind of questions that are often actually helpful. Peering back into the mists of time to my own RfA in 2009 with 27 questions, a large percentage of the questions were boilerplates that certain people were asking at most or all RfAs, I genuinely don't think I had a single question that was in any way specific to my own record that couldn't have been (or indeed hadn't been) asked at another RfA. There are certain daft, nonspecific questions on Red Phoenix's RfA that can be dismissed as people just wanting attention, but as a general thing specific questions about this candidate are fairly healthy. ~ mazca ^talk 19:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

We might start by writing an info page that explains what's a helpful question and what's an unhelpful question, which we currently do not have. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:14, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• S Marshall (talk · contribs): My RfA has 29 questions. Some of which were multi-part. I found it a bit much as some overlapped. However, it was a good test of patience and determination. AmericanAir88^(talk) 16:38, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for linking that. Most hilarious question in yours was Why do you answer questions out of order?, although I also love the way you got two questions about your username and a slew of questions from people who seem to have thought they were interviewing you for a job.—S Marshall T/C 17:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

As far the total number of questions - something that should be considered is the goal of allowing questions. As I see it, one of the goals is to let an individual ask a question that will help guide their own support or opposition; in this case unless they are becoming repetitive it shouldn't matter if they are question number 5 or question number 45 - the question is about something they want to know - they shouldn't be penalized for not getting to the RfA on day 1. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Then we need to start calling out irrelevant questions. Whether or not a candidate agrees with all policies and if not why is completely irrelevant to whether or not a candidate is suitable for adminship unless you ALREADY believe the candidate would act in bad faith, in which case it's still irrelevant to informing your vote because if you believe they'd do that you should already have opposed, not asked which specific policy they'd violate if given the chance. —valereee (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• I have a significantly more permissive nature than many here. Questions generally win support, and we do generally hold candidates to admin criteria, so encouraging responsiveness isn't really a negative. I do think that removal of "gotcha" or some "damned either way" questions is beneficial. It's worth noting that questions in that trend often get picked up by chat fairly quickly (but candidates are often see them even quicker), so it's worth noting if they're unsure about the suitability of a question, leaving it for a few hours can be worthwhile. tl;dr, number is fine, only strip out truly stupid or deliberately attacking/damning questions. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:04, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• ...and we're at 24 now, with the addition of yet another silly question from an experienced editor who apparently is not reading this page. Gosh! Look at all the questions everyone's asking! What can I ask to get in on the fun?! I know: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? —valereee (talk) 11:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• We're discussing preventing bad questions but do we all agree on what makes a bad question? As I see it, questions break down into some categories:
  1. Questions about specific things that happened in the past involving the candidate (You disagreed with me last year. Are you willing to publicly declare I was right in order to secure my !vote?)
  2. Open-ended questions designed to let the candidate respond to something (usually something raised in oppose votes) (Are there any questions you were asked that you wish hadn't been?)
  3. Pop-quiz/testing knowledge questions (A train leaves London at 1:00 p.m. ... which CSD criteria applies to the article about the station?)
  4. Questions asking about a candidate's approach to a situation or general wikiphilosophy (If you had to pick only one namespace...)
  5. Getting-to-know-you questions (What doesn't your username mean?)
  6. Questions about voluntary admin categories (recall, refund, etc.)

I think it'll be easier and more productive to regulate the questions than trying to regulate the questioners. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 13:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Which category does "why do you have a normal sleep schedule" fall into? GeneralNotability (talk) 13:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Is this discussion being conducted by the CCP, seeking to find a way of ensuring The Correct Result? Look! Here's another stupid question from another unsophisticated person who doesn't understand that only we, The Hallowed We, are the True Arbitors of Valid Questions. Jeez. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

PaleCloudedWhite, no, this discussion is being conducted by users who would like to see more RfAs in the future. When candidates look at this one, they might (if my own experience is any indication) think OMFG...no way I am I ever putting myself through that. That is what this discussion is in aid of. —valereee (talk) 18:09, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

More questions indicates that more people are interested in the RfA process - this is a good thing. If candidates don't want to answer editors' questions, they perhaps can say so, and people can assess accordingly. Admins are selected by the whole community of editors, and if the community decides that the only editors who are fit to be admins are those who wear a woolly hat while sleeping, then that is up to the community. What the discussion here is doing is seeking to impose a filter over the selection process, so that only certain concerns are allowed to be expressed. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:01, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

PaleCloudedWhite, you can ask about any reasonable concern and I will not quibble. When you ask silly stuff, unless you are a brand-new editor, I'm reserving the right to call it out. When someone with 700 edits asks something stupid, I might (if I think they look at all promising) go to their talk page and engage in a way I hope to be constructive. When someone with 10,000 edits ask a silly question, I might just say publicly, "Hey, that's silly." Or similar. —valereee (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

What is deemed 'reasonable' and what is deemed 'silly' is a personal view. It is one thing for an individual to make a comment that a question is personally viewed as silly, it is quite another thing to seek to formalise such a view into a kind of law that prevents the asking of such a question. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 05:30, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

GeneralNotability, oh, that was one of my favorites! —valereee (talk) 18:06, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: Thanks for writing this up, I think the categorisation is useful. I think a question in any of those categories can be good or bad, but the only one which I think there is a convincing case for banning altogether (and perhaps permitting on the RfA talk page, but the RfA talk page only) is the category 5 questions. All the others can, in some circumstances, be genuinely useful (although to some extent I have my doubts about category 3, but I appreciate that others feel differently), but category 5 questions - well, I really don't see how anyone is going to change their vote based on someone's username being about dragons or printers. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:29, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks; I would agree about #5 but I was surprised when I saw questions and oppose !votes based on usernames at two RFAs (1 2). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 20:42, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

I think 26 questions might be a record. Why is Red Phoenix answering them all? "Hey, let's play Twenty^-six Questions!" yell the Wikipedia editors. 🐔 Chicdat ^ChickenDatabase 10:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Chicdat: August 2019, 29 questions. Simply saying Why is Red Phoenix answering them all? seems strange to me - if a question is reasonable, why would it not be answered solely because there had been a lot of others, assuming that Red Phoenix has the time to do so? It's a reasonable question to ask "should we make it clearer that the optional questions are optional to answer", in an attempt to make sure people really do have the time to do so, but "there's so many, why are they answering them all" seems a strange reaction to community participation in a community process. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 11:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's one with 33. --Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 11:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's pretty normal to have more questions when there's significant reasonable opposition. The 29-question RfA was a fail, and the 33-q RfA had a lot of opposes. The current RfA has no almost no opposition or neutrals. —valereee (talk) 12:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: As I mentioned above, it's plausible that other people also share the view that a candidate with no opposition should probably face more scrutiny than one that has received opposes. A candidate with no opposition could just be a fantastic candidate (which appears to be the case here, thankfully!), but equally, a candidate with no opposition could conceivably be someone who just hasn't done anything controversial enough or involved enough to generate any opposition - or someone particularly good at hiding it. Hence, more questions may be apt. That being said, that obviously doesn't track with the 33 questions at that other RfA, which was reasonably well-opposed. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:52, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, you just will not let this drop until someone agrees that your question and rationale were perfectly reasonable, will you? —valereee (talk) 14:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: I don't see what this comment has to do with the question I asked at the RfA here at all? You've made the argument that you think a lack of opposes should be a reason for few questions; that's a perfectly reasonable view, but I've set out why that might not always be the case, which is relevant to a discussion about the number of questions we should permit or not permit at an RfA. Heaven knows if I was looking for people to agree with me on something about me, I'd be on Twitter, not on Wikipedia(!) Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 15:03, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

There are 9 RFAs with 30 or more questions. About half are from before and another half are from after question reform (2 max, no multi-parts). Ironholds 2 and 4 stand out as the watermarks at nearly 50 questions each. The rest do not break 35. --Izno (talk) 12:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Effectively, there's 8, because one of them is an RfA for a bot, which would fairly clearly be an anomaly in terms of the RfA process. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:54, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

The problem with a search of that kind is that people used to number their questions 17a, 17b, 17c etc. I recall getting as high as "e" or "f" in, for example, MZMcBride 3 (which was an outlier for lots of reasons to be fair).—S Marshall T/C 11:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I alluded to that caveat with the second sentence. Either way, the assertion that recent ones are water marks can be evaluated as false with the search in question. --Izno (talk) 12:40, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

I think we should consider authorising sysops to topic-ban question-askers from RFA. The grounds for a topic ban would be:- (1) Needlessly prolific question-asking, and particularly asking the same question of candidate after candidate indiscriminately; (2) Asking vague or unfocused questions; (3) Asking trap questions, ambush questions, or questions about processes in topic areas where the candidate has no intention of working; or (4) Asking questions that need long answers.—S Marshall T/C 17:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Would it not just be better (and more usable) to strike questions like this? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:12, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski, that's what I was thinking. I think we need to just start striking questions, then opening a discussion to see if anyone objects to the strike. Seriously, how would you feel if Wikipedia were to shut down? Seriously? —valereee (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Do both.—S Marshall T/C 18:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

At least it's not "would you give your life for Wikipedia to live on" (paraphrasing, can't remember which RfA I read that on, but I'm sure I'm not making it up) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:53, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a bit of an over-reaction. Do we have many editors who are repeatedly abusing RFA questions, have been asked to stop, and have refused to stop, to the point that we need admin to be able to unilaterally institute topic bans? I'm not seeing that level of disruption. Our options for dealing with RFA disruption right now are: ask the problematic editors to stop, strike the question, remove the question, partial or full block as an ordinary admin (or crat) action, and community topic ban. I think the existing toolkit is sufficient. Plus, the optics. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:10, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

It is trivially easy for candidates to ignore any optional question they don't want address, some may find how the candidate deals with such things useful. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:10, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, why do you say it's trivially easy? My experience, as a candidate,as a nominator, and just as an observer suggests that there are a lot of incentives for a candidate to just answer a question rather than ignoring it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:17, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: they literally have to do nothing to not answer a question - but even if they want to they can give a short answer, especially if it is something they don't really know about or don't plan on doing. For example, if the question is about an obscure admin tool or process seeing an answer of "I don't know about X, and have no plans to work in that area" would be a fine quick answer. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:31, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, all due respect, your RfA got 4 questions and your RfB got 8. :D —valereee (talk) 16:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: true, my RfA was a long time ago, I was actually expecting a lot more RfB questions - most of the participants seemed to already be quite familiar with me though. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:40, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, indeed. My RFA only got four and at the time I was editing in some very contentious areas (specifically Scientology) where I had some pretty heated disputes due to being a fairly prominent critic of them. Nowadays I'd probably have scores of questions about my judgement (or lack thereof) though I'd like to believe I'm a fairly level headed admin. In fact I don't think I've had a single dispute since and specifically steer away from such areas. We say it's no big deal but 22 23 questions later? Anyway, not going to crack it here but I know of probably a dozen editors that would bring tremendous value to the project with the tools and yet I'd be fearful of putting through an RFA with what it's become. Glen 18:02, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, and I'm sure they were quite familiar with you and knew you're be great. The point I was trying to make is that because your experience was of many fewer questions than 22 23, you may not fully realize how much more stressful this already-stressful process is made by each additional question, which the candidate must think about, possibly research, compose an answer to, rewrite that answer, maybe walk away for a while to give it more thought or allow their thinking to gel, come back and rewrite again, all the while worrying they aren't answering fast enough. I've seen people whose answers attracted opposes because they seemed 'flip' or 'dismissive' and even because they were too polished. I got dinged for an answer that seemed 'arrogant.' I certainly would never recommend to anyone that they simply not answer a question. —valereee (talk) 18:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: Has anyone ever justified an oppose vote based in whole or in part on a candidate taking too long to answer a question? That, to me, would be indicative of a serious issue. We can't expect candidates to be available 24/7 to answer questions, and as you rightly point out, they do often take a fair bit of thinking about. Perhaps there should be a policy somewhere clearly indicating expectations of candidates in answering or not answering questions if that's a worry people are having. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:41, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, I think the optics at the moment are terrible. Questions to the candidate are being used as an adminship suitability test; but the people asking are self-selecting and, all too often, immensely unqualified to administer a test of that nature. And they don't know how unqualified they are, and they ask technical questions that don't matter because a candidate with the right temperament for adminship will make mistakes without doing harm, while a candidate with the technical knowledge but not the temperament will do harm without making technical mistakes. We need to bring RfA back to a review of the candidate's contributions.—S Marshall T/C 19:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

And let's not forget (though I'm not commenting on the proposal, sorry) that candidates with the right temperament will also recognise when they're not competent in a certain field, and defer to (or even actively seek help from) people more familiar with that particular area. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• This is hard to gauge, but is really a requirement. If a would-be admin is not willing to seek help going into something unfamiliar, they stand a high chance of failing. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:00, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• RFA is stressful enough as it is, without us asking the candidate to discern which questions are appropriate and which are not. Striking questions that aren't appropriate would be doing the community a service. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:11, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• As with most things, the devil's in the details. Trying to parse out which are and are not bad questions will generate enormous controversy. I'm reminded of Louis XIV saying "Every time I make an appointment, I create a hundred malcontents and one ingrate." Same sort of situation here. Before we begin to decide what questions are bad on current or future RfAs, we should review the past couple of years of RfAs and see if we can get consensus on what questions were bad. That might provide some basis for informing future decisions. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

  At the risk of being ignorant here, one Q that bugs me personally is asking a candidate if they're open to recall. The answer is non-binding, can be bluffed and many (most?) admins don't go on to add themselves to recall, including some that stated they would. It's a pointless question. It's also a little unfair, because a negative answer probably doesn't look great, so really it's just a trick question at the same time as being useless. Perhaps asking for a candidate's thoughts on recall in general would be okay. But in either case, imo, either establish a process (applicable to all admins) for community desysopping, or if that can't be done then don't ask individual candidates if they're open to recall individually in RfA. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:47, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Until we get a working community desysopping route, that question's entirely fair and reasonable.—S Marshall T/C 00:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Hammersoft, that's a valid argument, but I'd say that that's just a reason to give admins and crats more discretion in dealing with those questions, not to say that the candidate must answer them all. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I sometimes wish Wikipedia editors would step outside their discussions and view them from another angle. 'Let's ban certain people from asking questions', 'let's ban certain questions', 'let's delete questions we don't like', etc. How do such suppressive tendencies manage to emerge from people collaborating on an educational project? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

• Suppressive tendencies would seem to emerge against people that aren't improving Wikipedia from people that are improving it. --Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 00:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Unless the OP can provide evidence that this as a long-standing problem, I don't see why we should react so strongly based on a single RfA. Once elected, an administrator is all but untouchable until they stop editing or get into trouble with ArbCom. This proposal would increase the power attached to admin status while making the process of attaining that status somewhat easier. That doesn't seem like a good trade-off. If someone has to answer a few extra questions as part of an RfA that is otherwise a cakewalk, I don't see why that's such a big deal. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Per Lepricavark, I see no evidence that this issue has been any sort of a problem, and it seems to me to be much ado about nothing. Questions are a vital part of the process, and voters have an absolute right to probe on any issue which they think is relevant to their assessment of the candidate. I was asked 15 questions on my RFA, and although I thought some of them were splitting hairs on minor content issues I was still more than happy to answer them. I knew I had signed up for a week of being scuritinised, and in running for a powerful job-for-life that's not unreasonable. I Oppose the proposed change, and I suggest candidates continue answering every question asked or risk being judged harshly, because if you're unable to deal with answering 22 questions in a week why should we think you're able to deal with complex and protracted admin issues. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 07:39, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Lepricavark and Amakuru, I'd agree with you if the questions were pertinent and incisive. But let's look at some real examples.
  1) If wikipedia ever shut down, how would you feel?: A job interview style question designed to elicit a long, detailed answer, asked by someone whose first edit under that username was on 19 July 2020.
  2) how will you tackle the sectarian biased and tensions on Wikipedia (talking about Buddhism and other religions) if you become an admin?: A political question designed to elicit a long, detailed answer on an obscure topic in which the candidate has not expressed any intention of working, asked by someone whose first edit under that username was on 20 July 2020.
  3) A long-term editor breaks 3RR reverting a vandal. You see it; the long-term editor acknowledges that they broke 3RR, but doesn't apologise, saying that they believe it was justified by WP:IAR. What do you do?: A trap question, asked by an editor who wasn't experienced enough was too careless to see that it was a trap.
  OK, this RfA is admittedly an outlier, but my position is that it warrants some intervention.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  @S Marshall: This is not remotely the point, but I'm a bit miffed to say the least at the suggestion that me making a mistake in wording comes from a "lack of experience". People do, from time to time, make mistakes, even stupid ones like that. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 11:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oh, I'm sorry: I see that you do have sufficient experience. I've edited.—S Marshall T/C 11:59, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  @S Marshall: Thank you. careless is perhaps more accurate criticism, although I still don't think the question is really comparable to the other two, even with the mistake... sighs Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not opposed to a rule that prohibits accounts less than a month old from asking questions at RfA, but that's about as far as I would go. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• This would be a wildly OTT countermeasure - in effect authorising partial GS on RfA. As there is a question limit, in the rare event of someone asking poor questions, being asked to stop, and continuing, ANI would be fine for the couple of possible TBANs. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Meh. This seems like a solution in search of a problem. I can't think of a single precedent in recent memory of an RfA that had that many questions that the community was opposed to. So, I don't really see the need to add red tape to RfA needlessly. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

There are undoubtedly questions of dubious merit that get posed. However privileged status within a community relies on the community trusting in the integrity of the system. I suspect the ancillary damage caused by trying to prevent some questions from being asked may be greater than leaving the questions in place to be dealt with as the candidate sees fit. If there is agreement to filter questions, though, then personally I believe doing it by either group moderation or selected moderators using an open submission process would work best. isaacl (talk) 00:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposal #2

All RfAs should be EC-protected.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm unconvinced EC protection is necessary or helpful; if a newer user wishes to partake in an RfA, they should probably be allowed to. I'd be more amenable to the idea of using the usergroup-show classes on MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages and other places where RfAs appear to restrict their advertising to more experienced users, whilst still allowing any user who wants to to participate, perhaps. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:33, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Tried that. --Trialpears (talk) 12:38, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  That was about watchlists; this is about questions. I wonder if there's a technical way to allow brand new users to vote, but require EC-protection to ask a question.—S Marshall T/C 12:49, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  I was responding to the second part of Nayptas proposal I'd be more amenable to the idea of using the usergroup-show classes on MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages and other places where RfAs appear to restrict their advertising to more experienced users. Require EC to ask questions sounds reasonable. It should be technically enforceable using edit filters. --Trialpears (talk) 12:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Possibly using a sub-page? Something like {{Wikipedia:RfA/User/Questions}}, make that page ECP, and include it in the main page. Kinda like how AfDs are done. That being said, I'm not sure limiting questions to ECP is a good idea. It's a bandaid to the problem. It should just be more acceptable to treat questions as optional, and not respond if the candidate feels they're ridiculous. Culture change is better than technical restrictions, as naive as this point probably is. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:32, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  RfA's are not "votes" they are a discussion - so you want someone to put "oppose - I'm assuming this person might do this thing I'm concerned about, but I'm not allowed to ask them about it".... ? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:22, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Would you settle for an attempt to bring about culture change by way of a technical bandaid and a guidance document for question-askers?—S Marshall T/C 14:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  S Marshall, you've seen this process and its problems for over a decade, and I haven't, so I'm not in opposition to your proposal by any stretch; you will know better than me what is likely to help here. I just wanted to raise my observation that I feel culture is the real problem here. If ECP would be effective I'm unsure; Levivich's comments below are interesting. But I guess this will never improve if everyone says there's a problem but there's never enough agreement for any changes, so perhaps something's gotta give.

  Of the ideas raised here, I like the idea of an essay on what's a good question, and sticking it into the RfA editnotice with a bright red background to make sure it gets attention (maybe even a warn edit filter for adding questions, to doubly-prompt people to read it, and make them think twice before they submit their question). Symbolic, yes, but I'd like to see if it makes a difference. As for restrictions, although I see the nuances I like Nosebagbear idea of questions needing 5 supports to be presented (after 5 supports, any editor may copy the question into the main page). As for ECP, as long as non-ECP question-askers can submit an edit request I don't think it's the worst idea. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:49, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• We could try an edit note or hidden comment in the question section to remind people that questions should be based on the research that a questioner has done of the candidate, and if you don't have a dif of theirs in the question, some will suspect that you are asking a question that isn't specific to that candidate. ϢereSpielChequers 18:11, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  Good idea. After reading all that discussion above, I think we could use an edit note with a pointer to the guidelines Levivich suggests, and technical measures to EC-protect the question section. People who want to ask a question but aren't able to, can use the talk page to ask a EC-confirmed editor to do it for them. That way there will be guidance and screening to stop random newbies asking for 30,000 word disquisitions on wikiphilosophy.—S Marshall T/C 08:02, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  You know, do we have evidence that EC protection would reduce the number of questionable questions? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Strictly speaking, what we have evidence for is that newly-registered accounts are asking questions that I see as questionable. There are several such in the RFA that's currently open.—S Marshall T/C 09:06, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Do you mean something like this?—S Marshall T/C 13:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  I was thinking of something much shorter. But at this stage I think we need a little research, and I don't have the time to do it myself for a while. My assumption is that the questions, especially the ones that aren't based on research of the candidate, are mostly coming from experienced editors who are possibly contemplating their own run. It would be good to know how many are coming from editors who are not yet extended confirmed, if I'm wrong there would be enough of them to make a difference if they were lost. ϢereSpielChequers 15:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  I checked the last few to see who was getting questions from non-EC-confirmed editors. I see 3 questions in the current RfA (two from NYC Guru, including the by-now-famous If wikipedia ever shut down, how would you feel?, and one highly inappropriate one from Kakima minimoto. Creffett's and Cwmhiraeth's were clean. CaptainEek got two from MightyKid and one from BasicsOnly that was struck by KingofHearts. Lee Vilensky's was clean. So since May we've had four separate non-EC-confirmed editors asking questions at RfA.—S Marshall T/C 17:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  WereSpielChequers, wait, are you saying you think some people might think asking questions at RfA will somehow help them with their own RfA? Honestly I think if anything the opposite is more likely to be true. —valereee (talk) 12:13, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  If someone asked me my advice I would say it is a high risk strategy, and I'm not sure any RFA aspirants do it as conscious strategy (There are people who ask questions as a strategy, or at least I assume that of some of those who ask questions to promote a particular hobby horse of their's). My observation of RFA is that it acquires its own sub-community, a revolving group of regulars who !vote in most RFAs. As with other parts of the Wiki there is a natural progression of increasing involvement, !voting, !voting with an effective rationale, asking questions, asking effective questions, and potentially becoming a nominator or candidate - some of us go on to become RFA researchers or Crats. I'm assuming that !voters are more likely to support candidates who they associate with positive clueful contributions, and that could include questions. It has been a while since I ran, but I was definitely a regular before I ran. ϢereSpielChequers 13:24, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  I think this is a good idea. The way it is right now is pretty much inviting people to add a question. Should add a statement in red or something to psychologically discourage useless questions. Walwal20 (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• I don't mind needing EC for questions, I disagree for needing EC for (!)voting. Alternatively, given the comparative paucity of questions, we could set really high requirements to directly add questions and have most or even all reviewed. Make the questions subject to quick reviewing - 5 supports and no opposes and it can be added, any reasonable oppose and it can have a couple of hours to discuss. Candidates know the talk page, if they were confident something would make it through they could start prepping then, while leaving others for the process. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm. Sounds like it would work better than EC protection, but would require human clerking.—S Marshall T/C 09:40, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• Same as what I said for the first proposal: I don't see a need to add red tape to the process due to this unprecedented RfA. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • If it was unprecedented, I wouldn't have started this discussion. Bullshit questions have been commonplace at RfA for years; we've got dozens of editors who use RfA as a chance to imagine they're the hiring manager in a job interview.—S Marshall T/C 13:03, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)Hardly unprecedented; it's barely even an outlier.
    I think some language in the RFA instructions to the effect of "Optional questions really are optional. Bureaucrats assign little weight to opposition based on not answering unreasonable questions." would go a long way. —Cryptic 13:05, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    I don't think it will help to point this out as I don't think this motivates questioners. If we really want to filter the questions, we should do what's done in the real world and moderate them, either through a group process as suggested above or via selected moderators. isaacl (talk) 18:55, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    I've given up on curbing questioners as hopeless. The point is to educate the candidates, who by and large do read the instructions, that it's ok to ignore these questions. —Cryptic 18:58, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    Personally I think it's one of those "if you need to be told, maybe you're not ready" things, but I imagine some reassurance might be helpful. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

    • I don't have anything more to add beyond what I've already said. I still think that additional red tape is unnecessary and a solution in search of a problem. That being said, I don't see any harm in amending WP:RFAV and WP:RFAADVICE as Cryptic suggested. OhKayeSierra (talk) 19:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• Looking at this RFA, I'm not seeing that the poor questions are coming from non-EC accounts more so than EC accounts. Seems like an even split to me? Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 13:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

• Yeah, agreed. EC-protection would help but, I think, not suffice by itself.—S Marshall T/C 13:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
• I agree, too. There are two things going on here. —valereee (talk) 00:11, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Previous efforts

• Levivich, 'We might start by writing an info page that explains what's a helpful question and what's an unhelpful question, which we currently do not have': That's the kind of comment that makes me glad I retired from this circus, but as you've only been around for just over a year, you can probably be forgiven for making such a wild claim. Perhaps you should do more to get up to speed: here, here, and the 100s of hours of research which are as relevant today as it was then - if not more so. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  I don't expect RFA !voters to read an RFC, a UTP thread, and a project page, from nine years ago, prior to asking questions. I think adding some guidance about helpful/unhelpful questions at WP:RFA or a page linked from WP:RFA would be more likely to reach the intended audience. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 15:53, 28 July 2020 (UTC)boards

"No, Levivich, but for a relative newcomer who is active on all sorts of policy and behavioural noticeboards and serious discussions where you would like to make your influence felt, I would hope for you to be better informed rather than making sweeping statements and jumping to conclusions. FWIW, that research is as relevant today as it was then - perhaps even more so, because not much has changed and the documented issues with RfA, if anything, have gotten even worse, and that is why this perennial discussion keeps going round and round with the same old - same old , ad nauseam. WP:RFA2011 is linked to on the edit notice at the top of this page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

So is there an info page that clearly delineates between helpful and unhelpful questions? I didn't find anything of the sort in the links you provided. If something relevant to our present purposes is buried in there somewhere, please point it out and then maybe we can use it. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 20:26, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Lepricavark: Valereee has set something up : User:Valereee/RfA questions - feel free to check it out and suggest stuff. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:37, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Also see the essay that links to that page at User:Valereee/Should_I_ask_a_question_at_RfA? —valereee (talk) 21:42, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I'll take a look at both when I get the chance. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 21:49, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought you didn't expect this kind of Spanish Inquisition? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:22, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• Nobody expects it! --Hammersoft (talk) 22:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
• Bit too strong there, maybe, Kudpung? We can't expect joiners to read the whole history of Wikipedia before piping up, or else discussions will just consist of the same people saying the same things to each other because nobody else is qualified to join in.—S Marshall T/C 08:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, the pages linked by Kudpung are all nine years old and need to be updated; for one thing, there were orders of magnitude more RfAs then. I also note a principal target of complaints in those discussions was Keepscases~enwiki (talk · contribs) who has not contributed in 7 years. To forestall and answer a possible follow-up question in advance, yes I can look into researching RfAs from the past few years and see what questions were asked. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:46, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Those "outdated pages" are the largest RfA research and analysis project that has ever been undertaken, if not the only one. That project was prompted by Jimbo himself calling RfA a "horrible and broken process", had dozens of members, it ran for an entire year and it had the backing of the WMF. You're right, it's nine years old, it shouldn't be relevant today, but it is. RfA is literally no different than it was in 2011, and the endless discussions on this page which have literally never stopped saying the same thing prove it. You bring up one user whose name was apparently relevant at the time, as if they were the problem. As if we don't still see the same behavior to this day. As if it can't even be observed in the archives over the past few years, over this year, in the recently-closed table. You say there were more RfAs back then, which is humorous, because in 2011 there were already alarmingly-few RfAs. As if we weren't already worried about the decline of RfA and working desperately to do something about it. Yes, there were more RfAs in the past. Is that a good thing, in your view? There are about 1100 current administrators on top of another 1100 former administrators. How many do you think have been promoted since that ancient project from 9 years ago? It's 184. Not even 10% of the admin corps that has ever served has been promoted since then. Is that supposed to be a reasonable point? What has changed since then? Some superficial things have changed, without success. RfA is still the same infamously-horrible gauntlet it has always been. So I can forgive Kudpung calling out someone for bringing up some idea he was working on a decade ago, oblivious to the fact that it's all been done before. He may be harsh, he may be cynical, but he couldn't be more right. I've been watching this page for a decade, too, there's a reason I don't participate. I would not be able to contain myself if I did, so I have to just sit back and laugh. This page is literally a walled-garden of people talking in circles, regurgitating the same perennial ideas, over and over, ad nauseam, to the point of insanity, and they never achieve anything meaningful. It is a circus, and I don't say that out of cynicism or to be harsh, but because it really is a comically-nonsensical situation. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that RfA is no different from what it was in 2011. It might not have changed much, depending on your point of view, but there are a couple of important differences, particularly those proposed by Biblioworm in 2015. The weight of support required to pass RfA is lower, questions are limited to two each, and RfAs can only be started by extended confirmed editors. So while there are far less RfAs now compared to 10 years ago, there are also even less failed RfAs. Indeed, in 2010 there were far more failed RfAs than successful ones; by 2019 that trend had reversed and of the RfAs that did run, a supermajority were successful. The last RfA I can recall that I would describe as unpleasant was Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GRuban and that was very much an outlier; in most of the others I would describe the vast majority of the opposition as fair comment (and even for GRuban I understood where a lot of it was coming from). So I think it's reasonable to suggest that a piece of ten year old research might want to be updated. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

If I had tried to do something for ten years and was unable to do it, I would be happy if some new people came along to help me. I would welcome their input. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:53, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

But the change in ratio and the more collegial atmosphere is because applicant numbers have collapsed and only the shoo-ins apply. Most of our admin corps don't meet our current standards. Questions aren't the problem here; they're just a tiny part of the problem that we might be able to change here and now.—S Marshall T/C 11:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, it's either naive or disingenuous to point to the decline in failed RfAs as "making progress", that you can attribute to the 2015 proposals. If anything, those proposals should have boosted RfA participation, both successful and unsuccessful, if they were to achieve anything they sought out to achieve. There were no measures cracking down on candidates that could possibly fail, obviously we wanted the opposite, we wanted people to be brave and run and not be afraid of failing. It's hard to view those proposals as anything but superficial changes that were a complete failure. The lack of unsuccessful RfAs is not a good sign, it's a sign that participation has dried up, and that no one's running unless they're a shoo-in, which defeats the entire purpose of RfA. We were supposed to make it less frightening, less intimidating, less of a big deal. Now it's such a soulless, vapid, icy institution that virtually none even dare to run anymore, unless they are so confident that they are a preordained success that they enter expecting to be rubberstamped. And that's in spite of the 2015 reforms, you prop up, limiting questions, encouraging clerking, increasing participation, and lowering the passing requirements. So no, Ritchie this isn't progress. This is what we were afraid would happen nine years ago. This is the worst case scenario. The hostility of RfA won. The reformers lost, the community lost and the admin corps lost. No offense to Levivich for wanting to help, but the perennial, short-sighted, petty, endless mutterings on this talk page are not "helping" and have never been helping. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 19:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

  Everything you say makes sense, but this page is literally a walled-garden of people talking in circles, regurgitating the same perennial ideas, over and over, ad nauseam, to the point of insanity, and they never achieve anything meaningful: do you have any better ideas that might move the needle? Surely some discussion to keep some momentum for some meaningful reform is better than doing nothing, since it probably won't fix itself? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

  Also, I don't get it, the community lost: isn't the community (collectively) responsible for the current state of affairs? If everyone, or at least the majority, changed their view on RfA, this system would be different. Perhaps the current state of affairs isn't what's good for the community, but it's caused by the community nevertheless. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:40, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• RfA-reform is likely a lost cause, for now at least. I hate to say it, as someone who coordinated the largest RfA reform project in history, which was ideologically founded by Jimbo himself and supported with resources from the WMF. However the hostility of the system has caused the system fail to the point where no one but preordained shoo-ins run anymore, resulting in the "quieting" of the hostile environment that RfA promotes. This means that people are no longer getting fired up about "fixing" RfA. Normal imperfect users are not getting brutally savaged and quitting the project because they're not running. So we're not seeing the injustices play out. Others, ironically, and with broken, twisted logic, point to the fact that RfA has already been fixed because we're not seeing the same level of controversy anymore, akin to the Ocoee massacre happening and then the residents saying that "racism has resolved itself". And, yes, the community lost. If you don't understand how a communal entity can fail to resolve a situation to its own detriment, I'm sorry but I really don't have the time to explain the fundamentals of sociology to you. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 20:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• So it had been a long time since I'd looked at WP:RFA2011. What struck me were its objectives. Of the six that were laid out I think 2 were achieved (new pass range & elimination of SNOW/NOTNOW applications) and 2 were at least partially successful (fairer closing, nonsense votes). So on that front I would say those efforts were a resounding success (given the difficulty of achieving those objectives). In 2020, my objective, however, would be more bottom line: how many reasonable people are putting themselves forward. Ultimately I don't care about the number/quality of questions except as it impacts people choosing (or not) to volunteer for service. It's been 9 years - or roughly half the length of time the project has been in existance - since we had a big effort like that. I wonder what objects we'd have in a similar effort today? Would people be like me and look at bottom line (# of candidate) type objectives or would the consensus still be around process reforms? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• Wow. Every time I look at this talk page, it feels like being stuck in a time-loop, kind of being inside the episode Cause and Effect (Star Trek: The Next Generation). It surprises me that the discussion still remains so miopic. Let me throw in my 1c. The reason all these RfA reforms have had so little effect is that the continuing decling in the number of RfAs has very little to do with the RfA process itself. The main two factors driving this decline are: 1) Adminship itself became a highly unattractive and complicated job, primarily because Wikipedia itself has become a great deal more complex. 2) The explosive growth in the number of regular editors that Wikipedia experienced in its early years has stagnated and even declined. Nothing we do here, no procedural RfA reform of any kind, is going to make any genuininely significant impact unless one or both of the above factors are addressed. Even if, say, the RfA passing bar was lowered to something like 40%, I guarantee you that this would have only a modest and temporary effect on inceeasing the number of RfA filings. The only real way to address 1) requires comprehensive unbundling of admin tools. Yeah, I heard all the arguments against unbundling. In the abstract they make sense. But in reality they ignore the big picture and they basically led us to where we are today. To me a more interesting question is what to do about 2), even though I doubt that people at this talk page are likely to concentrate on that point. Of course, 2) is more a matter for WMF, but still. I think that if people are really concerned about the RfA decline, they should think about new ways of broad outreach in terms of recruiting and retaining new Wikipedia editors. From what I have seen, many of WMF outreach efforts have been pretty miopic too. They still heavily concentrate on college students and on events that mostly attract existing Wikipedia editors. Anyway, I thought I'd throw this in before people begin seriously discussing stuff like limiting the content of the RfA questions. Nsk92 (talk) 06:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  Hi Nsk92, one problem with unbundling as a solution to the RFA crisis is that each unbundling has removed another "need for the tools". In particular the unbundling of Rollback in early 2008 ended the era when you could pass RFA simply as a "good vandalfighter" and is closely correlated with the biggest decline in RFAs. As for the decline in editing, even at the 2014 minima, editing levels were more than half what they were at the 2007 peak, and today the project is old enough that we can divide the history into three roughly equal thirds, the exponential growth era till sometime in 2007, the gentle decline in raw editing levels until the 2014 minima, and the subsequent rally and era of editing stability. But compared to the decline in successful RFAs from 408 in 2007 to 10 in 2018, the level of editing has been effectively stable. A peak of less than twice as many edits than the minima is trivial compare to a peak of over forty times as many RFAs in 2007 as opposed to 2018 (as an aside, and despite having spent many days helping at outreach events, I'm aware that the biggest constraint on editor recruitment for at least the last decade is the growth in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices at a time when Wikipedia's mobile platform is dramatically less editor friendly than the desktop platform). Wikipedia today is largely a community of "desktop" editors rather than "mobile" ones, and that limits our pool of new RFA recruits, but that limit is not sufficient to explain why in mid 2020 we only have one admin account that was created in 2016, and that is a bot...... ϢereSpielChequers 07:19, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  Of course smartphones are an issue but that does not excuse our severe lack of imagination in terms of outreach and recruitment. Lots of people still have and use laptops and desktops at home and at work. There are large sectors of society that are still mostly untapped as a Wikipedia editing resource and that could be reached, probably via some sort of a social call. E.g. white collar workers, academics, business people, professionals of any kind. Few of them edit and Wikipedia never seriously tried to reach them. Yet right now it might be an opportune moment to do so, with all the talk about privilege, and privileged people needing to contribute to society in various new ways, communal ways, other than just making money or advancing one's own career. WMF might make a pitch to them that editing Wikipedia is one such way of giving back. Might even work, who knows. Nsk92 (talk) 09:46, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I've put through 25 successful RfAs in the last four years, and in the grand scheme of things this doesn't sound like a lot. If I included people who I thought might not pass, or who weren't interested, I think it would be closer to 50. For example, I have recently had discussions about:

• Prolific content creator, civil, many GAs, failed RfA many years ago, no interest in ever running again
• Superb copyvio spotter, no other concerns, has declined offers to run from multiple admins
• Old hand at DYK, many will think they are actually an admin now, refused several RfAs
• New(ish) user, 18 months experience, couple of GAs, wrote a few popular scripts, concerned about too many opposes for "inexperience"
• Good work at AfD, civil, clashed with some disruptive editors who I fear will crawl out of the woodwork and oppose
• Longtime outstanding content creator, couple of old blocks, not interested in running for fear of key opposes

I'm quite happy to talk about these more off-wiki to any interested nominators. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:14, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

So... fear of failure is the big issue here? Here's a really awful idea that's never going to pass and probably suggested before, but still: how about instead of 'electing' admins, community elects a diverse 'committee' of sorts to bring forward admin nominations (ideally people with a track record of successful RfA nominations and good judgement), throw in annual reconfirmations for members of said committee to ensure continued competence/support. Any member can nominate someone internally, if there's a substantial majority within said committee after vetting a person for them being suitable for admin, they become one. Throw in the ability for the community to veto nominations so there's still a requirement of wider approval. X number of vetoes (backed with some diffs, ideally of temperament/civility/clueless isues) prevent a candidate from becoming admin. RfA can run as normal, for candidates that would rather this approach, or feel said committee is 'biased'. Slightly similar to how judges are nominated, at least in my country, plus the veto part. It would fix the big wall of fear, make it less high-profile, and it almost certainly wouldn't churn out poor admins. If you want to tighten the noose further, make it a probationary period, where the same committee can desysop any admin they've put through the process within the last 6 months (if they turn out to be iffy). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:51, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's a truly dreadful idea. Such a committee would by its nature only attract the worst kind of busybody Defender Of The Wiki types (no regular editor is going to volunteer for something that would take up so much time for such minimal benefit), so you'd be effectively delegating appointments to the pondlife that hangs around WP:ANI, WT:MOS, WT:RFA, User talk:Jimbo Wales and all the other safe havens for people who prefer to tell other people what they should be doing, rather than doing anything themselves. It would literally be fairer, more representative and less prone to abuse to abolish RFA and just have Arbcom choose five editors per month and unilaterally promote them. ‑ Iridescent 16:03, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I did begin with the "this will be awful" disclaimer for a reason ;p. I think my underlying point was more that direct election doesn't seem to work, not on Wikipedia and it isn't so great in real life either. No policy can change how a voter thinks and make them change the reasons for how they vote. But if you can proxy the choosing of candidates behind a competent body which can get elected, it would seemingly solve these issues, like some variant of Judicial Appointments Commission. And judges usually turn out better than politicians. I'm not sure it'd take up that much more of their time, since regular nominators presumably already vet their nominees. It would cause other issues of course, like the one you mention (lack of representation). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:05, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, what you write here aligns with my own thinking/experience. Do you have any thoughts/insights into what kind of reforms (if any) might entice the kinds of editors you enumerated to run? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:17, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@NSK92 Yes there are ways to do outreach and audiences we could yet tap, and when the current lockdown is over I hope to help with an outreach event running at a museum that a couple of us have been talking to. But we need to remember if an event is targeted at getting non editors to edit we are as HJMitchell once said "selling a hobby". Outreach focused on recruiting new editors is almost always a waste of effort, and a much less useful task than outreach focused on skillshares/surgeries and giving an opportunity for newish editors to get a bit more involved and run a problem by an experienced editor. Remember, we have never had a shortage of people making their first few edits, getting them to do more than dip their toe in has always been the best task for outreach efforts to address. But this page is focused on RFA, and our problem at RFA is that the number of people running collapsed from over 400 successful RFAs in 2007 to a low of ten in 2018. A drop of less than 40% in editing volumes does not explain a drop of over 97% in successful RFAs. ϢereSpielChequers 10:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• I've been staying out of this in part because of what Swarm point's out above: the constant wringing of hands and proposals on this talk page rarely achieve anything, and I'll add that "RfA reform" discussions have become a way for people to promote their pet grievance with Wikipedia's governance process using it as a theory as to why RfA isn't flooding with new people.
  At this point, I'm not entirely convinced a structural change will have any impact. If I were to ask anyone what the structural problem was with RfA that is preventing it from achieving the goal of having new admins, I'm not really sure anyone could provide a satisfactory answer that isn't someone trying to use RfA as a foil for another issue. There isn't anything fundamentally unfair about the process: it's a weeklong vote/discussion that's widely advertised and that allows for questions. What part of that format could be changed to make it more fair while also allowing for legitimate criticisms? I think you'd be hard pressed to find an actual structural issue at this point.
  That gets us to the the crux of the problem: it isn't the structure or the format, but what actually occurs in an RfA that turns people off. This is really a cultural thing. If you want to change RfA, you're going to have to change the norms for what is and isn't considered acceptable, and there's no policy proposal that is going to do that. Here's the other problem with that: like Ritchie333 pointed out, most RfAs these days are relatively tame, so there isn't that much you can do without getting rid of opposition all together.
  I'll end with the line I've been saying for years: the way to fix RfA is to ask more people to run, and for more people who think they might have a 50/50 shot of passing to run on their own. Yes, people will say no, but that is common in every volunteer organization and I don't think people saying "no" is unique to Wikipedia. If you have more people running, it will encourage further runs (see: January 2017) and get rid of this idea that only All-Stars and Shoe-ins have any shot of passing an RfA. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:34, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  TonyBallioni, indeed, WT:RFA is certainly less successful in achieving meaningful change at WP:RFA than WP:RFA is at producing new admins :) In addition to convincing people to run, the other thing that can be done within the current framework is vote support whenever the candidate would be a net positive, and to be as nice to each other as you can. —Kusma (t·c) 23:00, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

  I agree we need to look at the supply side, and what would motivate people to become an administrator. If it's solely out of dedication to a global knowledge sharing project, then we may need to recruit from likely candidates such as retired librarians or historians. If it's feeling constrained from doing tasks related to what they're already doing, then we need to look amongst those involved in areas where this happens. On the surface, administrators have a lot of headaches for very little advantages. We need to look for those who would be good fit, and perhaps encourage editors to think of it as a temporary role: they can pick up the privileged toolset for a brief time, when they have time to spare, return it when they don't, and request it again later. If the community wants admins to stop thinking of it as an appointment for life, it has to be flexible as well on granting privileges. isaacl (talk) 23:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• I think Tony is right at least to the tune that there's nothing WT:RFA could feasibly do that would dramatically add to the candidate numbers. There is some nibbling that could be done, whether that be on flights, questions etc, but in general it's accurate. Community zeitgeist, and how that reflects in RfA is most key, and then hunting for good candidate efforts. To a comment above, I'm not sure I'd encourage a candidate who was 50/50 to run right at that point - a brutal RfA is likely which, if it fails, is likely to permanently discourage them. I'd prefer to talk through areas that can be improved and have them run a few months later. But in terms of getting 80/20 candidates to run, absolutely. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:58, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer to talk through areas that can be improved and have them run a few months later. But in terms of getting 80/20 candidates to run, absolutely.
    Not to pick on you, Nosebagbear, because a lot of people share this view, but I think this comment most succinctly sums up what I think is the biggest problem with RfA that we can actually change: telling people who have a decent shot of being elected that they shouldn’t run because there odds aren’t high enough. I wouldn’t really give anyone more than an 80% shot of passing because we all of diffs someone could bring up that could sink us. Telling someone to wait until they have an 80% chance of passing us functionally telling them to wait until they’re the perfect candidate. That reinforces what I’ve described as the All-star problem in the past: we’re only encouraging people who we think will get 99% support and passing 200 to run, and by doing so we’re losing out on completely adequate, if less visible, administrators. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
    • @TonyBallioni: and certainly this is reasonable - in fact this exact thought when through my head when I posted it, but though your point is completely valid, my concern remains that as well. Yes it is an issue that we only encourage "all-stars" but that doesn't mean there isn't the issue with non-flawless candidates risking a highly bruising time. That joint-problem is hardly unknown to us, we just haven't found a good way around it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: In the case of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Money emoji, I didn't think he'd get a high 90s pass, but I really wanted the RfA to run; IMHO he had a cast-iron reason for using the tools that filled a severely needed vacancy and helped reduced backlogs of up for ten years. I didn't comment as much on the RfA as I could have done, but some of the opposition made me bang my head against a wall - here was a guy willing to tackle the backlog that nobody wanted to do, and they're concerned about "content creation". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Let me say this again. It's not the structure of the RfA, and not what happens in the RfA itself that's keeping people away. It's the nature of adminship itself. The job has become too complicated, too demanding, too difficult to be reasonably proficient in except for a small number of people. Think about how much more complex Wikipedia is now compared with 2005. And what the admins have to do now. How much all the different policies and procedures have proliferated, spread out in all directions, how much more tecnical details, gizmos, gadgets etc there are now. Pending changes, I still can't figure out how that works. Copyrigt rules, images, all that stuff with files, caterories, books, DYK, ITN, SPI, and so on. Everything has gotten much more complicated and what admins do there has gotten much more complicated as well. Not to mention the aggravation of dealing with various disputes. Even being a specialized admin is more difficult now. But in RfA you are, at least in theory, expected to demonstrate your knowledge and proficiency in everything, all the policies, all the rules of the road, and most finer points too. Most self respecting editors don't think that the have the requisite knowledge -- and in fact they don't. Even if you start sensoring the RfA questions and discussion section, people still wouldn't apply, wouldnt want to participate in a process seen as obviously skewed. Plus even that would still leave the nature of the adminship job unchanged. If people who are only interested in NPP and CSD could get access to a speedy deletion button and nothing else, they would ask for it, in larger numbers. Same with vandal fighters, who might be interested in AIV and making short term IP blocks. Etc. Of course, I am talking about small elements of comprtehensive unbundling of admin tools. Apart from that, the only other change I could see as possibly having a non-marginal effect compared to the current system is dumping the RfA system altogether and going to a purely formal approval process for admin rights, granted by crats, based on some well defined set of formal criteria (edit count, age of account, no blocks for some number of years, no sanctions/restrictions for some number of years, etc). That would probably increase the number of applicants noticeably. Nsk92 (talk) 10:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  Nsk92, being an admin is still a volunteer position. You don't have to do anything, and you certainly don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with. For example, it is not compulsory to participate in or even read WP:ANI. I have been an admin for fourteen years and there are many admin areas that I have never worked in or haven't worked in for years, and I think that's OK. I feel reasonably competent in some areas and know in which other areas I don't have the background to use the tools. And that's really not a problem -- just like people specialise in just a few content areas, admins specialise in just a few admin areas. Wikipedia is vast, and learning a new area of it as an admin is not really different from doing it as a non-admin -- you lurk for a while, maybe talk to some people, then work on some easier tasks until you have the confidence to tackle anything in that area. It really isn't that difficult. —Kusma (t·c) 14:19, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kusma: But look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ergo Sum and look at all that opposition, such as only 2% of edits to project space, a lack of a CSD log, insufficient number of AfD debates, zero edits to AIV. Of course, neither of us considered that to be appropriate opposition, but there was enough of it to be on a knife-edge for a 'crat chat. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:38, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@Kusma: Of course I understand that once you are an admin, you don't actually have to do all the things that admin rights allow you to do. But the point is, those admin rights do allow you to do all those other things as well. That creates certain expectations in the minds of potential of RfA candidates, when they think about what they need to know/learn/be proficient in before they apply for adminship. The RfA voters have similar expectations too. Make the following mental experiment. Imaging that a certain type of license allowed you to drive a car, a truck, a motorcycle, an RV, and a bus. Would you really be comfortable showing up to the license exam if you only knew how to drive a car? Hoping to convince the examiner that you had no interest in driving a bus now and that if you were to learn how to do that in the future, you'd be real careful about it. That's basically the RfA system we have. Nsk92 (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

It's a conscious tradeoff made by the community: it knows it could break down permissions to a finer level, but that it would be a headache to administer. Accordingly it decides who it can trust to know their limitations and not use tools without becoming familiar with applicable procedures and norms. I do think most commenters at requests for administrative privileges are comfortable with trusting the candidates they support in this manner. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, I know that people expect much more from RfA candidates than from admins. I was talking to Nsk92 about what being an admin is like, not what becoming an admin is like. At RfA, people have used "lack of experience in area X" as an oppose rationale since time immemorial. Long term, experience in specific areas is less important than how you approach areas you are not yet experienced in. —Kusma (t·c) 14:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

As I've mentioned before, back when everyone knew everyone, they could rely on their personal knowledge to evaluate a candidate. Now that the community is too big for that, people rely on metrics to give them a sense of the candidate's overall characteristics. I believe they are looking for a few things: commitment to the project, evaluated through recent edit count and patrolling edits; good judgement, evaluated through participation at deletion discussions and other deletion-related matters; and experience in writing mainspace articles, evaluated through mainspace edits, articles created, and so forth. The big tools that concern editors the most are page protection, page deletion, and blocking, so commenters are looking for long-term behaviours that they feel are indications of trustworthiness. If we don't want them to use these metrics, we need to think of other ways for editors to demonstrate that they can be trusted. Maybe we can create a "good judgement" log where people can record their appreciation of instances of good judgement being exercised. (I wouldn't want there to be an equivalent bad stuff list, and I think it's fairly likely to get revealed anyway.) Perhaps make adminship easy come, easy go: let people request administrative privileges for a fixed time period, so they can schedule time to be more active in handling admin backlogs, and have it removed afterwards. If it works out, some time later they can request another short stint. This would capture the natural initial burst of activity when a new toolset is received, without worrying others that it will languish afterwards. I'm sure there are lots of other ideas people can come up with to encourage more people to take on the role for the first time. isaacl (talk) 15:42, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Note I'm not suggesting a probationary period or a junior adminship. I'm suggesting that someone might have a less busy month coming up and be willing to sign up to help out on a short-term basis. The community might be more willing to let them try it out, and they may become inclined to help out again later. isaacl (talk) 16:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I think Meta or MediaWiki have similar processes. If there's something you need to do that requires admin tools, you can request them for a limited period while you do what you need. I think something like that would be well used. We'd want similar limits in place as regular RfAs since I would expect a lot of inexperienced users trying to request tools. — Wug·a·po·des 20:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Actually, we kinda had one of those: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MGA73. --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 01:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Forgot to ping: @Isaacl and Wugapodes: --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 16:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Question for a crat (pinging Primefac because of a recent discussion at PERMs): do you have the ability to assign specific permissions or only permission groups? So if someone went through RfA could they only be granted delete/undelete on a technical level (not saying we'd want to just wondering how possible this even would be)? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:16, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Permission groups. If it's not in this table, it can't be granted. Primefac (talk) 20:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Let me try to bring this back down to tweaking the question guidelines. Yes, you're all correct to say we can't make a big difference by doing that. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make a small difference. The changes I think might be able to get consensus are: (1) Question-asking to be restricted to EC-confirmed editors; (2) Some text that tells the questioner that they should be reviewing the candidate's contributions and then asking specific questions with diffs -- not asking vague abstract questions about wikiphilosophy, or any question that seeks a mini-essay-format answer; and (3) More proactivity in striking inappropriate questions.—S Marshall T/C 23:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

  S Marshall, I think point (3) touches many problems we have with behavioural improvement at RfA: the question of enforcement of any improved norms such as your proposal (2). I think there is quite a bit of support for increased "clerking", also at one the last bigger reform RfCs, and some bureaucrats have become more active at moving lengthy discussion to the talk page, but we need to make sure such actions do not generate too much heat and make the RfA appear "controversial". Question striking/removal might be best left to bureaucrats. I am opposed to (1) for ideological reasons, but don't think it makes a huge practical difference either way. —Kusma (t·c) 09:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding point (3), I think candidates would find RfA less stressful if they knew they didn't need to answer any questions, and were confident they would not get any significant opposition from not doing so. If somebody could put themselves forward and then have a break for a week, coming back to see if they were a pass or a fail, then RfA might seem less stressful.

Alternatively, we could deprecate the idea of formal questions and just ask them as part of the general discussion, without necessarily requiring the candidate to answer them. We ask questions because we aren't sure whether to support or oppose a candidate, and want to ask specifics to help us. There's no actual reason the candidate needs to give the answer to get this information; a well-informed nominator could reply on their behalf, and voters would be free to support, oppose or abstain based on the information provided. The fall out of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/RexxS shows that opposition must be well-founded and within policy to stop an RfA, which may placate some people if they get "Oppose candidate disagreed with me once WAAAAH" comments. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:04, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@S Marshall and Ritchie333: I'm sorry, I know you are both trying to help, but candidates have in general taken to heart the advice not to respond to opposes, leaving their answers to the questions almost the only way to judge the "cut of their jib". I want to see how a candidate responds to people who see things differently, not how many powerful friends they have who will answer for them. Particularly since I would like to see more candidates who haven't put in a lot of time at the drama boards opining, and since I believe we need more admins who can explain things clearly, not just admins who are going to press a lot of buttons. Also, it takes all kinds; I can tell you that some candidates are also kind of relieved to be thrown an essay question, because I was. As to inappropriate questions: I had rehearsed in my mind how I would respond to "Which digit would you chop off for Wikipedia" and decided to refuse to answer. I doubt the instructions have changed since then; candidates can choose to refuse to answer, and admins do have to make hard decisions where they will necessarily offend someone, so I advocate letting the candidate do so.Yngvadottir (talk) 17:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that I want to hear from candidates on their reasoning, and not others. I don't mind anyone making factual corrections, but candidates are the best ones to provide detailed explanations of their thoughts and actions. isaacl (talk) 19:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

• Over the last two years, I've offered to nominate a few dozen folks at RFA, and have been turned down by most of them. Speaking off the top of my head, most of them turned me down not because they felt RFA was too unpleasant, but because they didn't want to be admins, for reasons of stressfulness or preparedness. I'm not saying we don't have a cultural problem at RFA; we do; but what data I have suggests that's far from the only problem. @Ritchie333 and TonyBallioni: you've likely approached more editors than I have; does your experience agree with mine? If so, it would suggest that the shift we need is not just in the expectations of candidates, or perceived expectations of candidates, but also in the expectations, or perceived expectations, of administrators. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  Vanamonde93, I've definitely gotten that impression from multiple people, too. I understand it. Some people have mentioned wanting to preserve their volunteer time for content creation. I think some don't want the added visibility or added likelihood of attracting troublesome users/interactions. But that must have been true in 2008, too, surely? Do we think a larger proportion of editors feel that way now? —valereee (talk) 17:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  It's easier in a small community to find editors willing to take on unpleasant tasks for the good of the community. As the community has grown, and all the long-time hard core editors have already decided whether or not they want to be an administrator, it becomes harder to find people to take on work that seems to bring very little reward other than self-satisfaction, and on contentious days, not much of that. Short fixed terms might entice some to volunteer to provide respite for other admins. isaacl (talk) 19:20, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  If that was our problem I would expect our community to be awash with admins and minorities of the very new and those who have lost adminship or don't think it is for them. But what I am seeing is very different. Only 51 of more than a thousand admins have been here less than ten years. Over a thousand of our admins first edited over ten years ago. Now OK, nobody who started editing in the last 12 months is going to be an admin and it would be surprising if more than one or two of them became admins in the next 12 months. But we currently don't have a single admin who started editing in 2016. Our problem isn't getting the occasional extra admin from those who started editing over ten years ago. Our problem is in recruiting admins from among those with less than ten years contributions. ϢereSpielChequers 23:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  WSC, I'm not sure that we can draw the conclusions you're suggesting from that data. For instance, what year did I start editing? A query would say 2005. Me a human would say 2018. A similar question (though perhaps not a similar answer) could be asked of Red Phoenix and CaptainEek and that's just the recent successful RfAs. Plus you have GeneralNotability who started in 2018 or Lee Vilenski who started in 2017. Only Cwmhiraeth has, for me, an undisputed case of being a longtimer before gaining the bit among that group. So this, for me, returns to a topic you and I have discussed before: how can we get editors who have edited casually/seriously in the past to re-engage with the project. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I understand—I gave a reason why it's hard to find new editors willing to take on adminship duties, which is in line with your findings. And my suggestion is one intended to give newcomers an easier entry point to doing administrative tasks than signing on for life. isaacl (talk) 00:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

  • The notion that users decline to run RfA because adminship is "stressful" seems to be a red herring; an excuse. It makes sense that people do not want to put themselves out there, subject themselves to intense scrutiny and drama. It does not make sense that users would be open to the scrutiny and drama, but are otherwise averse to adminship. Adminship grants you more capabilities, tools, and powers, with no obligation. Would an heir turn down their inheritance? Would a lottery winner turn down their winnings? Would a cashier turn down a promotion to manager? Would a serf turn down a lordship? Would a driver of a 98 Camry turn down a brand new Lamborghini? Would a starving person turn down a feast? Would a homeless person turn down a mansion? No, of course not. It is simply not within the purview of human nature to turn down an advance in one's possessions and status, unless the percieved cost is too high. The role of adminship itself bears no cost or burden. The only cost is the immense emotional burden of attaining adminship in the first place. It's truly naive to believe that people don't want adminship by default. I'm sure that almost every user on Wikipedia would like the tools and privileges. However people who think they won't pass will make up other excuses 100% of the time. It's foolish to blame the nonexistent "burdens" of adminship while pretending that RfA is not the reason that these people don't want to run. Nobody is saying that they would not be able to deal with the burden of Rollback. No permission carries any burden. The only thing that makes adminship a burden is RfA. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 02:28, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
    • @Swarm: That's what I would have thought until I spoke to potential candidates, and many of them had no reason to be evasive about why they didn't want to run. Many of these conversations were over email, too, where I'd expect folks to be honest. I don't want to ping them here and subject them to a whole lot of scrutiny they didn't sign up for. To be very clear, I'm not exempting the culture at RFA, but I think it's part of a larger trend wherein people who hold, or express willingness to hold, positions of authority are subject to a barrage of criticism from people who have little to no idea of what those positions demand and are not interested in finding out. I think the nature of interactions we see or have seen at ERRORS, ARCA, or AE, isn't fundamentally different from the culture at RFA we're (correctly) identifying as a problem. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:05, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

      Public or private, it's easier to claim you don't want the "hassle" of adminship than that you're too afraid to run RfA. Who wants to admit to that? No one, that's who. If someone genuinely has no use for the tools and no intention to work in any administrative forum, that's one thing, but short of that, there's no obligation to work at one of the "drama boards" you mention. There's no obligation to work anywhere. That's why I don't buy a user's assertion that they want adminship, but the "drama" or "negativity" or "stress" of the extra tools puts them off. I'm a longtime PERM admin. For comparison, nobody has ever cared about the "stress" of any other permission. Yes, sometimes people don't want or need a tool, but they're never put off by the "stress" of having the tool. This is because there is no inherent stress with any permission, the only stress one can possibly find is that which one subjects themselves to. Same with adminship, same with no extended rights. Plenty of admins never get involved in "drama" or "stressful" administrative situations. With 1100 active admins, I'd venture to say the overwhelming majority keep out of the stressful and dramatic aspects of adminship, with "overwhelming majority" being an understatement. ERRORs, Arbcom, AE, AN, ANI, AN3, these boards are maintained by a couple or a few dozen admins at best, most do not concern themselves with it. So, I'm sorry, users who claim they won't run an RfA because they're willing to go through the RfA drama, but are not willing to subject themselves to the "stress" of adminship, are either misinformed, or they're covering up for their fear of RfA. Which it is depends on whether you're correcting their misunderstandings. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

      Swarm, we had an admin not long ago ask to be desysopped because it had started to feel like a burden. They eventually requested the tools back, saying the frustration at not simply being able to act had turned out to be a worse stresser <g>, but obviously that person sincerely felt at the time that adminship represented a more hassle than it was worth. So don't make assumptions about people's underlying motivations just because they're different from your own and you can't understand why someone would feel that way. I ran RfA not because I was burning to become an admin but because there were two very, very specific tasks I wanted to help with, and frankly there are downsides. I'm not saying there aren't upsides. I'm saying I believe people who say they don't want the downsides. —valereee (talk) 19:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't purport to speak for everyone. This is about the generalized notion of self-interest. Generally, people are interested in attaining more power, privilege, or status for themselves. Generally, most people would not hesitate to seize the opportunity to do so if there were no strings attached. Generally, if the only barrier to attaining this advancement in status carries a significant risk of personal harm, it is more likely that people's decision to not pursue it is due to the fear of personal harm than it is due to the fear of the advancement of status itself. I'm sure there are exceptions; there are exceptions to everything, but this gets to the most base fundamentals of human nature, and it's not particularly convincing to suggest that it doesn't apply the same way here based on what some people told you. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• • • I don't want administrative privileges because the tasks I am interested in don't require them. I don't want to hold privileges if I don't plan to use them, and the community doesn't like that, either. There is no expectation that people will use their rollback user right, once granted, but there is an expectation that admins be active for some period of time, thereby warranting the request and time spent by dozens of commenters evaluating the candidate and providing their reasoned viewpoints. isaacl (talk) 04:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

      And you are a rare case, to say the least. Been around since 2006, and never attained a single additional right beyond autoconfirmed. Even when the community took rights away from you, like screening edits in the case of PC protection, or screening new articles, you seemed to have no inclination towards any additional rights, ever, even though you're probably eligible for most. I respect that. But it's not normal. When you don't even have the slightest interest in PCR, nobody would ever expect you to have an interest in running an RfA. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

      There are plenty of editors who want to add and update content, and aren't concerned with having additional permissions that they don't plan on using in any case. I don't know if that's supposedly normal or not, but I disagree that almost every user would like to have administrative privileges. (And I can't recall anyone touting their pending changes review record as being particularly revealing of anything in their RfA.) isaacl (talk) 05:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

    I don't think RFA/adminship is an either/or; it's a trade-off. The difference between adminship on the one hand and large sums of money, a promotion, a lordship, a car, food, or shelter, on the other, is that people want money, promotions, etc. - those things have significant value, adminship doesn't. There's nothing that requires the admin tools that can't be done simply by asking someone who has the admin tools. We have fairly well-developed systems in place to process these requests, like RFPP.

    I agree that most editors, if you +sysop'd them tomorrow, would not ask for a -sysop. But that's because it was free and easy. It's not like turning down an inheritance. It's more like if somebody says, "Hey, do you want a nickel?" And you'd say, "Sure", if the person was just going to give it to you. But if they ask you to jump through flaming hoops for the nickel, you're going to say no. And if they say, "OK, we'll make them non-flaming hoops", still no.

    Being an admin doesn't benefit the admin or the admin's work very much; in fact, the whole thing is pretty much about helping others do their work (particularly because of WP:Involved). So when you ask someone if they want to be an admin, you might think you're asking, "Do you want to be vetted by your colleagues for a promotion?" But the candidate might hear: "Do you want to be vetted by your colleagues so you can have the privilege of processing their requests for page protection, etc.?" ^Lev!v^ich 04:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

    • @Swarm and Levivich: I don't want to put anybody off adminship; there are several editors I really wish would run so I could support them. But people do differ. Not everybody is ambitious; I had to be dumped into RfA, and I've turned down promotions at least twice. I don't believe adminship requires one to do scut work clearing backlogs unless one wants to, for whatever reason. I felt some obligation to make myself useful, but the aspect of it that I wanted was to see deleted pages, and that turned out to come with seeing and deleting some really nasty stuff; I had no idea (I don't hang out on that kind of social media). I never closed a single discussion, but I painfully learned how to merge page histories, and I found I could be of use at UAA and to a lesser extent fixing errors on the Main Page. There are several different kinds of admin, including those who just help out from time to time, those who spend all their time on technical things I don't even understand, and those who have very few logged actions but seem to be able to spread calm and understanding wherever they go, and there are lots of different reasons to want or not want the tools. (And as I discovered, and was told is not uncommon, I turned out to use adminship in quite different areas from what I'd expected.) This variety as I understand it is part of our greatest strength, which is that we bring together a staggering variety of people. And I believe it's why we don't just have moderators who go through a training course and then moderate. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• I must disagree that adminship is more akin to getting a free nickel than getting an inheritance​. Nice try, but no, just no. We're talking about the primary position of power on one of the largest websites in human history, as well as one of the largest academic projects in human history. The "no big deal" and "janitor" tropes are really nice, cute, and quaint but being a mod in a Facebook group is a big deal. Being a mod in a forum is a big deal. Being a mod on a subreddit is a big deal. Such roles are mostly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and yet they still have a very real power over thousands of people. Being a sitewide admin on one of the biggest websites in the world is a big deal. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Swarm, not everyone feels that way. I know from my own direct experience of at least three people who would easily pass RfA and aren't interested. Admin tools don't analogize to 'a feast to the starving' for everyone. To many they look like a PITA complication to a currently-enjoyable hobby. —valereee (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• @Valereee: I don't know what "a PITA complication" is supposed to mean, nor can I conceptualize any scenario in which your acronym is supposed to be an understandable reference. You're not off to a good start. But, let's pretend that we can just ignore certain things, like that, for instance. Okay then. Go on. Who? Who are you talking about? Go on, tell me! Please, tell me, who? Who genuinely wants the tools, is genuinely willing to run an RfA, is genuinely confident that they would easily pass said RfA, and is, in spite of all of this, unwilling to run? Such a user, I'd love to debate. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  PITA stands for "pain in the ass", I'm surprised you haven't heard that before. ^Lev!v^ich 04:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

  @Swarm: I think you've misunderstood what Valereee wrote. She wrote at least three people who would easily pass RfA. You interpreted this as is genuinely confident that they would easily pass said RfA. These are not the same things. Someone could be seen by others as someone who would easily pass RfA but they themselves do not agree with that assessment. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:12, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

This petty distinction makes no difference. If someone would easily pass RfA, then, still, name them. There's nothing to lose. If they would "easily" pass RfA but are not confident that they could pass RfA, then name them, so we can encourage them! I have to be honest, though, this current discussion seems gamey and disingenuous, this reeks of "bullshit", and I will not be played for a fool. Try me. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I have to admit to some surprise that you want to encourage them. Offering to debate a user is not very encouraging. Nor is coming into it with the idea that you might be played for a fool. I considered emailing you two names when I sent my first reply but I was concerned you'd actually engage them with that aggressive attitude. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:35, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

"Debate" is literally the fundamental system of governance the entire project operates on. I have to say, it's a bit bizarre you're suggesting that me merely asking to discuss an argument with the user(s) making the argument(s) is somehow aggressive. There is no privacy issue at stake here, I'm merely attempting to confront an alleged argument, and here I'm being told that I'm being "aggressive", merely because I am asking simple questions. Not a good look! ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

You're not asking to discuss (which is, as I read our principles the fundamental system of governance). You are asking to debate. To confront. Those are different things. And the difference between those users and me, is that I volunteered. I volunteered to be an admin for all the good and the bad (and btw I completely agree with you that being an admin on enwiki is a pretty sweet gig) and I volunteered to participate in this discussion. The people who I've approached didn't agree to be confronted/debated by others and in some cases indicated that being confronted/debated was why they didn't want to do RfA. This large discussion isn't about you and me - we both already are admins. It's about people who aren't admins and I don't find it hard to believe that other people have different values - like low-key doing what they enjoy for their hobby rather than being the center of attention on one of the largest sites on the internet. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:19, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

On the contrary, I'm not asking to discuss, or debate. Do you honestly think this is fun for me? To come here, point out that I don't participate in this board because it's a maddening, meaningless time sink, only to get mired in pointless debates about minutae that doesn't matter? I'm simply offering my opinions, I'm not demanding that anyone agree with me, nor am I asking for any confrontation whatsoever, indeed, I'd rather people just agree to disagree and not attempt to argue with me. I could care less whether people think I'm wrong. But if you're going to go out of your way to debate me, and are making deliberately vague claims about how you "know of people", then don't come after me for being "aggressive" when I merely ask for names. I have no interest in playing tedious games with people who demand my time and attention by engaging me in a debate and then waste it by not speaking plainly. Be as pedantic as you want about the differences between a "debate" and a "discussion", I care not, I'm speaking plainly, I'm stating the opinions that I have, I'm asking the questions that I have, and if you don't seek to speak plainly in return or answer straightforward questions I'd really rather you just don't reply at all. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 21:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Fair point that asking might have been the wrong verb. I am not making "vague claims". I am specifically stating I know two people who I could name who I think could easily pass RfA and who reluctance to run; I could name a further two who I reasonably believe would pass RfA (though not necessarily easily) who also refuse to run. I am not willing to reveal those names here because I respect their privacy and I am not willing to name them privately to you because I don't think you'll be respectful of those people if I were to name them. As to the rest of what you wrote, I don't think it sheds any light on the topic de jure and since you are not enjoying the conversation I will not continue with it at a user talk. In the same manner, I'm also happy to discontinue now and let you have any last word that might need to be had. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay now I'm just confused. You did not ever make "vague claims", nor was I ever referring or responding towards you. I was speaking to somebody else, and you inserted yourself, first saying that I misunderstood them, then saying that I was being aggressive, then saying that I am trying to "debate" rather than "discuss", whatever that means. From my reading, you seem to be trying to make my statements relevant to yourself, when they never were. Not sure what you're doing, it's a bit weird. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 05:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Swarm Can I offer my experience with one such user? I'm not going to name them because they approached me in confidence by e-mail about possibly running - I don't think I have the right to name them, but I can say that they have (a) written more more than a dozen FAs, and more GAs than you could shake a fairly large stick at, (b) have tens of thousands of edits, (c) have plenty of tenure and (d) have never, as far as I'm aware, been involved in any significant conflict or drama. I think they'd be a fine candidate for adminship, that their RfA would pass with ease, and I told them as much. Two issues gave them pause. (1) They wondered about whether they had what people call a need for the tools. It's true that they haven't been a prolific vandal basher, RfPP requester or ANI litigant - they just wanted to tools to help with cleaning up while gnoming, and to stop disruption when they come across it. They thought people might oppose on those grounds. (Personally, I expect that one or two might, but I am confident that the overwhelming majority would be swayed by the outstanding totality of their contributions.) (2) They did think it would be a burden. I tried the "it's a volunteer role - you can do as much or as little tooling as you want" argument, but they countered with "I feel that, if I am asking hundreds of editors to take time to review my work and make a determination, and they support me, I would owe it to them to make substantial use of the tools". After thinking about it for a bit, they decided not to run. I respect their decision, and haven't tried to persuade them to change their mind. GirthSummit _(blether) 10:02, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I actually don't even know that they themselves think they wouldn't pass. I just know of at least three people whom I believe would easily pass and who have been approached multiple times and have said very clearly that they aren't interested. And Swarm, I'm certainly not going to out them. I no longer even ask people publicly if they'd be interested. It's their own business why they either don't want to do admin work or don't want to run RfA. —valereee (talk) 11:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I think if people don't want to "name names" the privacy should be respected. However, I think I have publicly stated on-wiki that I have asked Yoninah, BlueMoonset and Crow to run for RfA, as have several other admins, and all have declined the offer. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:02, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Previous efforts break 1

Apologies for creating a break for myself, but the above section was getting difficult to navigate... Got a few pings here that I’ve been meaning to respond to, but have been avoiding because a lot of the back and forth. Vanamonde93, my experience is that when a “recognized name” tells someone they think they’d have a decent shot of passing RfA after they express reservations, they tend to be more confident and warm up to the idea of running. This slightly goes along with Swarm’s point above that people are probably more scared of the process than the results of passing RfA. (Swarm, it I’m mis-paraphrasing you apologies)

Nosebagbear, your point hits on something uniquely human which I think is important here. I’m not actually convinced that the current incarnation of RfA is that terrible; we have less people in the 70s and 80s running now so it’s hard to judge. I’ve been given a few recent and recentish examples of where the candidate didn’t like the experience and passed. In every case, I felt that the opposition was generally fair and civil, regardless of the side I fell on. Yet, these were held up as “bad RfAs” to me in private. Why is that?

I propose a simple answer: getting constructive criticism sucks. No one likes it, even if the overwhelming majority of things said about you is great. If you work for a large corporation think about the mandatory “room for growth” bits of your last performance review. Those stand out, even if the review as a whole was great. RfA forced people to open themselves up to that, and even if it’s done in the most fair way possible, it takes a lot of courage to do.​TonyBallioni (talk) 04:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

And I think there is certainly truth to this, most opposes have at least a reasonable basis to them - certainly all but 1 did in mine. However there have been RfAs where that is not the case, even in the last 2 years, and I suspect they probably have a chilling effect (AA88's and Eek's come to mind) - even where most opposes are fine, once a significant number aren't it massively outweighs the reasonable ones. To follow your example, if you get three pieces of "things to improve on" in your review, the unreasonable one outshines the others. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:52, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe there's merit in writing an essay on how to handle that (c.f. WP:MASTODON)? One thing you get good at in grad school is taking...less than helpful criticism of your work. There's a lot of helpful resources on how to handle negative reviews and submission rejections (some representative examples) that may transfer well to this context. No one likes getting constructive criticism, even if it's from someone who's good at giving that kind of feedback and that's uncommon. A for this kind of advice, we have User:Sven Manguard/Failed RfA Advice and a section of WP:RFAADVICE, but they really focus on how to action the review items rather than how to handle the review. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

In front of hundreds. :D I mean, really. It's a performance/promotion review in front of literally everyone you work with, and the 17-yo intern who started yesterday and your worst work enemy get to ask questions. —valereee (talk) 22:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

At least you don't have to defeat a snake — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we should add that? —valereee (talk) 21:02, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Constructive feedback is also normally based on what you did in the last year, rather than the office digging out your failures for your entire employment span. It's worth noting that "stressors multiply, not add", so as we add more bad facets, it gets worse rapidly. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:52, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey

What's your view about brand new accounts asking questions at RfA?

1. They shouldn't be restricted in any way.
2. Nobody should be asking questions at RfA until they're autoconfirmed.
3. Nobody should be asking questions at RfA until they're EC confirmed.
4. Other, please expand.

This survey isn't meant to generate musings and pontifications on adminship in general; please could we have a targeted discussion on this specific question.—S Marshall T/C 18:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• option 1. Inappropriate Qs can be struck out, pointless ones can be neglected. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• option 1 ("They shouldn't be restricted in any way."). Veteran editors can ask stupid questions just like newbies can ask very relevant questions. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:38, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• option 1 / option 4 - Anyone who can !vote in an RFA should be able to ask a question. Personally, I believe !voting should be restricted to EC accounts, but so long as it isn't, neither should the questions. ^Lev!v^ich 20:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 ("They shouldn't be restricted in any way.") What constitutes a "pointless" question is very much in the eye of the beholder. Any attempt to censor the content of the questions and to strike good faith questions down would do much more harm than the "pointless" questions themselves could, and would make the process much more contentious. Moreover, there can always be some unexpected developments during the RfA itself that make some additional questions appropriate. It is neither reasonable nor possible to try to anticipate and regulate all possible types of "allowed" questions. Nsk92 (talk) 00:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 4. They should be asked to explain their history. If the question is reasonable, let it run. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1/4. AC/EC users can and do ask just as good or bad questions as brand-new accounts. Option 2 in particular especially is entirely worthless, 7 days is more than enough time to game autoconfirmed if someone wants to register a new account (or, if they have an account, make a sock). GeneralNotability (talk) 11:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2/(4) - While AC can absolutely be gamed with an RfA, it mitigates against someone just hearing about it and realising they can ask in front of a big audience immediately, so it mitigates some issues. There might be something to say for all (non-core) questions requiring review at the talk page, though I'm still inclined to think that the increase in BURO would outweigh the marginal gains. I actually think the current process works fairly well. But anyway, the deciding factor shouldn't be further user-right based. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:50, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
  • With some extra thought I realise I should also clarify I'm still happy for them to indirectly ask questions, and the general strength of my "2" should be viewed as weak, as there are a few very experienced IP editors who certainly shouldn't be ruled out of asking questions in any way. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:00, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2/4. Restrict RFA voting and questions to autoconfirmed/confirmed users. The bar for autoconfirmed is fairly low, so it isn't too restrictive. RFAs involve a certain amount of experience to decide if the candidate is capable or not; users who don't meet the minimal autoconfirmed requirements are unlikely to have that experience. It would also help with potential socking. Hog Farm _Bacon 13:47, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2 -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:26, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2 - and nobody should even be voting at RFA until they're autoconfirmed IMO. --Rschen7754 07:18, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1 - we should really be striking inappropriate questions on site. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:37, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1 – Admins are often required to deal with new users who unfamiliar with the project. Such questions are a good opportunity to see how the candidate handles such interactions. If a candidate needs protection from newbies then they are not fit to serve. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:54, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1/4. I think newbies should be allowed to ask questions. But I would expect that the majority of new accounts asking questions at RfA are not newbies. Troll socks need to be dealt with quickly without putting too much extra pressure on the candidate. —Kusma (t·c) 09:01, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
• 1. It should be the nature of a question itself that determines whether it is appropriate, not the status of the questioner. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:21, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2. But largely per Boing above. I've always had the feeling that the most troubling questions come from editors who would pass any reasonable numerical standard. I'm opting for #2 instead of #1 because anyone who isn't autoconfirmed and !voting at RfA is likely hiding something. Show me 2 good questions from non-autoconfirmed users and I'll change my mind. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 14:55, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
• 2 ~ ~mitch~ (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
• option 2 option 1 / option 4 - registered users with minimum 100 local non-automated edits. Warm Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 15:26, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
• 4 The problem with questions is when people ask a boilerplate question that may not be relevant to that candidate. We need something like "Questions should be based on your assessment of the candidate's edits, and contain at least one diff to a relevant edit by the candidate". It would be rare for an IP or a Newbie to ask a diff based question, but it isn't impossible, though "2" is very much my second choice. ϢereSpielChequers 16:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject / workgroup dedicated to investigate RfA candidates and provide assessments / endorsements

Hi wise RfA participants,

I am not sure if this is the best place to open such discussion, please triage / move / cross-post if not.

I wonder have anyone think of, or is it encouraged / discouraged to form formal/informal interest group who actively conduct due diligence investigation on RfA candidates. For example, there could be many different work groups / wikiprojects, and provide either full report or single perspective assessments and endorsements. E.g.

• an interest group focusing on checking CIRs such AfD participations / admin tools usage
• an interest group focusing on checking past discussion civility
• an interest group focusing on checking COI, paid edit disclosures etc.
• an interest group focusing on providing feedback on the content contribution quality such as GA, FA, DYKs etc.

The reports from these groups can be (actually should be) non-binding, non-monopoly - everyone can write individual opinions or forms collaborative opinions just like any open journalism.

The reason I ask is because, I feel like I am not particularly good to make individual assessments on all these different angles. For a civil and democratic process to be masure, I feel these are the components that could greatly help individual voters.

WDYT?

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 21:44, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Surely the last thing we need is additional more scrutiny at RfA. Literally hundreds of eyes on the candidate at that point. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:47, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I think the point would be less "everyone reviews everything (and we don't know who is looking at what)" as is today and more "someone reviews some things (and we know who and what)". (Of course we can't prevent the other state in any realistic regard.) Which is fairly similar to stuff I've seen Isaac writing about our decision making process. (There's also the "conveyer line" sense of improving the process.) --Izno (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

If you were referring to me, I have written in the past about generating a list of a candidate's pros and cons and consolidating discussion about each characteristic to reduce redundancy and thus save people's time, and I agree this idea would be complementary to a pros-and-cons approach. isaacl (talk) 23:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski: I agree with you there are already many pairs of eyes to reviewing them. I think the problem is we want more efficient process, just like @Izno: said, the current process is about "everyone reviewing everything", and I personally think it takes too much time. And also, sometimes certain checks are really non-trivial. We could much better improve the process, saving everyone's time to this process. It also help the perspective candidates by making it more clear of what the current community will look for. A clearer road-to-adminship means more people can prepare and be motivated to do what the community needs. xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 23:06, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I can't think of anything that would dissuade people from running the WP:RFA gauntlet more than an opposition research firm constructed specifically to scrutinize prospective candidates. Bluntly, this is a terrible idea.--WaltCip-(BLM!Resist The Orange One) 14:32, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

WaltCip, my thoughts exactly! Nsk92 (talk) 16:05, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the well-intentioned suggestion, but I would oppose this. The last thing we need is some kind of organized bureaucracy to conduct background investigations on candidates and issue a series of "reports". That type of pre-nomination vetting is primarily entrusted to the nominators, and their "reports" are in their nomination statements. Sometimes individual !voters do additional checking on their own in areas that interest them and cite their findings. Many, possibly most, !voters base their decision primarily on what they see in the RfA: the investigation done by the nominators and anyone else who cared to do it, the candidate's responses to questions, and the discussion. In the course of a week, any skeletons in the closet will have been revealed, and any perceived deficiencies in the person's history will have been discussed, including whether the deficiency actually matters for this particular RfA candidate or not. Let's not make it any more structured than that. -- MelanieN (talk) 18:07, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that an organized or "official" group would be too much bureaucracy and potentially could be viewed as an "oppo research firm" and be off-putting to candidates. However, the research you describe is often useful, and we often see editors do that kind of research and report their findings in an RFA (which sometimes are agreed with, and sometimes disagreed with, by other voters). So while I'm not crazy about organizing an official group, I wouldn't discourage individual editors from posting more-detailed analyses of RFA candidates at RFAs. It may be that an informal group of regular researchers arises out of that. Lev!vich 18:12, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I am not thrilled, but there are some merits to the idea. If we had formal criteria, we could set up some open groups that check whether a given candidate matches these criteria. At present, where we do have a lot of statistics available and easily linked from every RfA, we could have some group of people go and neutrally interpret and contextualise that data. This is a process that currently happens on an ad hoc (and less neutral) basis, whenever one of these statistics is used in an oppose vote. (Classic examples are opposes based on number of deleted edits, or supports based on a high number of "correct" AfDs when it turns out that the candidate has gamed this by always adding an extra vote agreeing "per above" with the unanimous consensus of others). Good nominators should do some of this work, but edit count inflation (and criteria inflation) has made it harder to be thorough than it was in the good old days when we actually had RfAs every day. —Kusma (t·c) 20:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

The correct way to address the issue you mention is to counter the arguments of the type you mention whenever they are brought up in AfDs rather than trying to institutionalize them. Doing the latter and creating these "working groups" inspecting under the microscope different aspects of a potential RfA candidate's suitability for adminship changes adminship from "no big deal" to "larger than life deal". It's like hiring a law firm conducting a background check on college president applicants or something. We should not be doing that with admins and we should not be sending possible admin candidates that this is what's expected. They nominated some article for AfD 4 years ago that was sno kept. Sorry, no need to apply. Had a botched DYK nomination 3 years ago. Sorry, goodbye adminship. Had a scuffle with somebody at ANI 4 years ago. Well, maybe better wait another 3 years. Only 3 AIV reports yet. Where have you been? Three hundred CSD tags but no CSD log; what are you lazy? Why no SPP reports? Why no UAA reports? Why so many ANI posts? Why so few ANI posts? Too many userspace edits! Too few userspace edits! Why aren't you doing NPP? And so on. This kind of thing, once institutionalized and buraucratized, would just reinforce the expectations that an RFA candidate is supposed to be "perfect" in all respects and check all the boxes. Which is, of course, not possible. The number of people who are even going to try will drop to basically zero. Whatever possible shortcomings this solition is meant to cure are infinitesimal compared to the harm it will cause. In reality, within the confines of the current RfA system, we should be trying to send the message that it is OK not to be perfect, it is OK not to have all boxes checked in all possible areas, and that different candidates with widely different types of WP experience and interests are welcome as RfA candidates. Somebody who is primarily a content creator, with little or no AfD experience. Somebody who is maily a vandal fighter with some basic content creation experience. Somebody who specializes in working with files and images and does little else. Somebody who is a wikignome and mostly does content cleanup, with occasional AIV and RPP reporting. Somebody who specializes in AfD and CSD. And so on. Nsk92 (talk) 08:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Nsk92, I think we actually mostly agree with each other. The obsession with all-round perfection has also annoyed me for quite a while (although the last couple of years seem to have been better than the half decade before that). In my own votes, I have often countered spurious arguments and incorrect deductions from statistics at RfA. The only trouble is that I'm often not careful enough in my countering of the argument, so the opposer feels attacked, starts defending themself and we end up having a long threaded discussion that distracts from the candidate and makes the RfA appear "controversial". I was wondering whether the "experts" could help contextualise information and issue statements like "only made twenty idiotic edits in a ten year Wikipedia career full of great edits, a better ratio than the vast majority of admins" and that diligent specialists often make great admins. But in the absence of proper criteria what makes a good admin, it is just as likely that such experts will be only used to test for perfection. —Kusma (t·c) 19:55, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

The best system would be, as someone else suggested, a secret ballot combined with an automatic mini-crat chat to weed out spurious or trolly votes. This would significantly reduce the hullaballoo factor from oppose votes that turn into long arguments with poor admin candidate caught in the middle. If we were to implement that, then maybe we could talk about having research groups conducting background checks on candidates, but once you go there, why even have a vote? Just go to a merit-based approved/denied system. I'm sure that would go over like a lead zeppelin, though.--WaltCip-(BLM!Resist The Orange One) 12:18, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

One problem with that is that very few !voters actually assess the candidate's edits. Most look no further than the RFA page. RFA relies on a small number of participants who actually assess the candidate, and if they find some reason to oppose, the argument is then over whether that is sufficient for enough others to also oppose. A secret ballot would make it harder to work out whether the rest of the RFA crowd agreed that a particular diff or group of diffs was a deal breaker. Then there is the issue that this isn't a political election, it is more akin to a driving test. If and when we fail people we want them to know why they were deemed not ready, how else an we expect them to improve and come back for a future RFA run? ϢereSpielChequers 15:07, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hiding votes and instead having just diffs and comments/arguments for people to analyse might not solve that issue. A wall of diffs (even if they're irrelevant) brings with it a wall of (now-secret) opposes, because really who has the time to dig through multiple long discussions and determine themselves what really went on. Mere existence of lots of 'possible issues' just brings knee-jerk opposes. Same as walls of support encouraging supports, and walls of opposes encouraging opposes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I can think of one RFA which failed because of a number of diffs that needed admin rights to make sense of, but that was the exception. Normally if diffs are cited others will look at them and either defend them, say they are too stale, or agree with the person who did the research. Yes there are occasions where other voters will agree that the candidate wasn't ready 6 months ago, or when someone will cite one diff that could be an isolated error. I have learned over the years not to oppose over one mistake in deletion, I'm looking for a pattern. Requiring diffs in questions might get an additional researched !vote or two, but I can't see it converting dozens of RFA regulars into doing researched !votes. But a couple more would be nice, especially if we got rid of a bunch of the questions that are not tailored to the candidate. ϢereSpielChequers 21:40, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

• I'm against the general concept as I think it both discourage candidates and we'd still end up with mass duplication (as many would want to do their own research). WSC makes some excellent points on why a non-blind process remains worthwhile. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:25, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Records could be broken, unfortunately

I think that this has got to be one of the longest active RFA droughts since 2014. 139.192.206.157 (talk) 04:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

• Since 2014 (inclusive), we've had eight gaps between successful RFAs longer than this one. In a week, there will still be five gaps longer than this one. Yes, this is a long gap, but not anything to worry about. Also, we've had 10 successful RFAs this year so far. That's more than 2019, 2018, and 2016. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Have we actually broken an RFA record here guys??? 139.192.105.124 (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• No. The longest drought for a successfully concluded RfA was from August 21, 2014 to November 11, 2014. That was 76 days. This recent drought lasted from May 17 to July 30, which was 74 days. Close, but no record. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:57, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• However it's actually the longest drought between any RFA (both successful and unsuccessful). Right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.192.105.124 (talk) 02:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

• It's not a fair comparison. In the era of RfA being EC protected, then yes but that's been only 2 1/2 years or so. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

In the next few days I will be putting in a RFA request. Hopefully there will be success. Bunkytrap34 (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@Bunkytrap34: Greetings! I'm afraid that with only 47 edits to mainspace, it would be closed very quickly. I like your userpage though! All the best, ——Serial 15:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Bunkytrap, I agree with SN. You don't want to do that. Read the last ten or so RfAs and see what kinds of experience is expected. —valereee (talk) 18:50, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Watchlist announcement bug?

The most recent batch of RfAs aren't showing up as watchlist banners for me, have they been showing up for anyone else? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:52, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I have them (both iPad and Google chrome) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:54, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

The old cookie needs to eaten I think, for anyone who dismissed it (done). –xeno^talk 17:58, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, everything's in order on my end now. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:07, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Its still not showing for me after purging caches (Microsoft Edge) History DMZ ^{(talk)+(ping)} 19:55, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

History DMZ, I think I fixed it. If you had previously dismissed the notice about the ArbCom election RfC, then it wouldn't have shown up. Mz7 (talk) 20:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I half knew I would mess it up somehow. There was since another RfA so it needed a fresh number. Thanks Mz7. There could be an admin bot opportunity here (increment notice after RfA stays live for 1 hour, or some such). –xeno^talk 20:09, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Mz7, well done, you fixed it. Now the 2-3% of people who use Edge can be notified lol. History DMZ ^{(talk)+(ping)} 20:16, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, the issue actually wasn't with your browser, but most likely the fact that you previously dismissed the watchlist notice about WP:ACERFC2020. There was an issue such that if you did that, you also wouldn't have seen the RfA notice here. Mz7 (talk) 20:37, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure you are correct about the cause of the problem. Apologies if my Edge joke added confusion. History DMZ ^{(talk)+(ping)} 20:49, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

September RfA Flight

We're about a couple weeks off from the targeted launch of a group of candidates running together. We have a few very exciting candidates already committed. But there's still plenty of time for others to join. If you, or a candidate you would be nominating, is interested, please drop me an email and we can discuss coordination. I really would love to get some more people in on this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:19, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Barkeep49: are we in the flight mode currently? —usernamekiran (talk) 08:01, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Fortunately only 5 people (so far!) have to have their seatbelts on! Thanks to Barkeep49 and the various noms for finding and aiding so many serious candidates into the process. I'm sure we'll do a proper wash-up in a week or so once we've seen how well the process works Nosebagbear (talk) 09:24, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

  Usernamekiran, yes. Look for one more person (possibly) this weekend. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 11:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Female admins

We've got five nominations here and they're all male which I find disappointing given the already existing imbalance, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 21:45, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

there are many female admins. Also, why do we have to differentiate? An admin is an admin, and nobody knows who is a dog. —usernamekiran (talk) 23:05, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Diversity in the admin corps is a good thing. While the vast majority of issues that admins deal with are totally gender-agnostic, on the rare occasion that there is an issue where gender comes into play (e.g. use of gendered insults in a heated discussion, or a RGW editor on a gender-related topic), having a diverse set of admins responding is good, as they may either have an additional relevant perspective on the mater or else can help deescalate conflicts by sympathizing with complainants' underlying grievances while pointing out issues with their editing behavior _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:21, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry – what does RGW mean in this context? --bonadea contributions talk 12:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Bonadea, Right Great Wrongs. To spell out the context I was thinking of in more detail, we sometimes get editors who are angry about real-world injustices and expect us to take an activist stance on them. Often, the first response they get from editors is a sharp dismissal followed by threats of sanctions because they're not following the rules, and little or no attempts are made to acknowledge their grievances before telling them that they can't do what they're trying to do. A lack of tact in situations like this can have a bunch of undesirable side effects, whether it's alienating someone who perhaps could have eventually been a productive editor or incensing them to commit even more disruption before eventually getting blocked. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:33, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Of course it means Right Great Wrongs – sometimes I am so stupid I surprise even myself. (Seriously, it's not a particularly obscure abbreviation.) --bonadea contributions talk

I noticed that too, if you're passionate about it you could direct some female editors to nominators... Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 23:12, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Atlantic306, only three of the five current candidates have their gender set, so I'm not sure we can say with confidence that they're all male. However, I am also concerned about the lack of gender balance at RfA, and wish we could find a way to change that. Thank you for drawing attention to this issue. – bradv🍁 23:21, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I do think a lot of people automatically assume one is a male, such as was the case with me before I decided to display my gender. A lot of times, editors chose to hide it because, as Rosguill says above, there is an issue where gender comes into play. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 23:23, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

If more men than women feel comfortable revealing their gender, we definitely have an issue. That requires a culture change. – bradv🍁 23:24, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

HickoryOughtShirt?4, I don't think that's quite what I meant by that, but your point stands regardless _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:25, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

If more men than women feel comfortable revealing their gender, we definitely have an issue.

Rosguill, No of course, I was speaking from my own experience. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

If more men than women feel comfortable revealing their gender, we definitely have an issue. How can you determine whether somebody is not posting an explicit statement about their gender, it's because they are not comfortable, rather than because they just don't see any reason to do so? I have not revealed my hair colour; this is not because I am not comfortable doing it but because just like my gender, my hair colour has no bearing on my editing. Some Wikipedians know which gender I go by, and that's not a problem (well, except for that one troll, but that's not somebody I consider to be a Wikipedian) but if anyone expects me to have a gendered point of view or identify with something just because of my gender, they will be disappointed. Many people do have a gendered point of view – I don't quite understand how it works but I acknowledge that they do, since they say so. That doesn't mean that everybody does. --bonadea contributions talk 12:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Though, as others have pointed out, we don't know the gender of all candidates, I'm disappointed too that we don't have anyone who explicitly identifies as female. I know of at least 2 female editors who were approached by "big names" to run and each decided for their own reason not to run. If this proves successful (and I'm not 100% sure what success is quite honestly) and we run another flight perhaps they, or other, female editors will choose to participate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:27, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

I do think lack of diversity among our administrators is an important issue, and it's a consequence of the broader underrepresentation of non-male Wikipedia editors. In 2017, the WMF surveyed 117 administrators, and only 9.4% of respondents identified as female. Mz7 (talk) 00:07, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

• I was going by the nominators who referred to all the candidates as he or him. Perhaps there needs to be an enquiry as to how to encourage diversity in admins as well as editors, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 01:23, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• Is there more of a lack of diversity in the admin corps than elsewhere (say, for instance, the broader editor base)? I was under the impression the make-up of our admins reflects the actual editor base (which is predominantly male) pretty closely. However, I do agree with the editors above that we should work to encourage diversity in the corps. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 01:33, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• The idea that we should nominate or promote candidates at RFA based on gender is deeply troubling, and even offensive to some women. I have always worked closely with a largely (long-term) female-dominated structure at WP:FAC, WP:FAR and WP:TFA, and multiple well-appreciated females at WP:MED, both admins and non-admins. I have nominated proportionately (to the alleged percentage of women on Wikipedia) a high number of women to RFA, none of whom have failed RFA. At the moment, off the top of my head, almost all of the admin-material women I work with are already admins, except for one who comes to mind who has declined to be nominated many times (like me). But I would oppose those who are not admin material in the same proportion I do males-- most of whom are not admin material. This is not an RFA issue; it is a broader Wikipedia and Internet issue; the proportionate numbers of female admins reflect well on the number of strong and competent female editors we have, like Risker, Ealdgyth, SarahSV, Nikkimaria, Slp1 ... heck, I shouldn't have started listing them, since that means I have left out scores.
  The broader problem is an Internet problem that would be difficult for Wikipedia to solve. I hid my gender on Wikipedia for years (I suspect many of us women do), and deliberately chose a gender-neutral name because I understood the dangers on the Internet for women. Males need to consider what life on the Internet is like for females—much worse than catcalls we routinely receive in the street. Only those who know me very well know the extent of danger my family and I have been exposed to because of stalking situations involving death threats based on Internet fantasies in men's minds. Why would I expose myself further? Those women who don't submit to RFA are well aware of the dangers on the Internet, but for those who do submit to RFA, I will apply the same criteria to them as I do males. I don't think we have an RFA problem, as much as an Internet-wide problem. I suspect most of us women are too busy writing articles to want to submit to character assassination and endless trick questions; maybe we're smart like that, or maybe we're just too busy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

(ec) Indeed - I've noticed that most of the women wikipedians I see around, including most of the list above, are more interested in writing content (actual article text) than the nerd-tending Christmas tree decorations for articles, and the internal administrative matters that seem to be the typical admin track. If the % of women admins roughly equals the % of editors as a whole, that's not too bad imo - & if we want to increase the first the way to do it is to increase the second (I know we're trying to do that). Johnbod (talk) 02:03, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I know of one admin that all think is a male (we know eachother in the real world) They do so because they don't want gender to be an issue ever. Wonder how many others admins or not do the same.--Moxy 🍁 02:00, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

right, for example ... I don't ping other females I know to this discussion because ... I'm not certain if they want it known they are females. It's besides the point; they are competent. We should be gender-blind at RFA, but aware of the issues faced by women on the Internet. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:03, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

We should be gender-blind at RFA, but aware of the issues faced by women on the Internet. This is an excellent way to frame the issue. – bradv🍁 02:22, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

At the same time, I think "we should be gender-blind at RFA" is not incompatible with "we should actively seek out admin candidates who would diversify the admin corps", and while the former exemplifies my attitude as a !voter, the latter is how I approach searching for candidates to nominate. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:50, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

But I think we are, by nature ... I have a 100% successful nom rate ... if there is anyone out there who would diversify the corps that I am unaware of but have worked with, I sure do hope they'll email me, even if (particularly if) they don't want to self-identify as part of any particular demographic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:01, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I assume you mean we are seeking out candidates who'd improve the diversity of our admin pool; and while I acknowledge and appreciate that you and many others have likely done so, I don't think that's necessarily true of most of our editors experienced enough to have considered RFA nominations at some point. Indeed, I rather suspect most noms just look for candidates in the areas they are already familiar with, and are thus quite unintentionally going to perpetuate the internet's gender problem among the admin corps. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:48, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

• I'd say SandyGeorgia is largely correct in that the "difficulty getting women editors to run in RFA" issue is at least as reflective of a broader online societal issue than it is simply an English Wikipedia issue. When I ran at RFA in 2008, most people found out only by reading my nomination that I am a woman. (In fact, the first oppose vote wound up being largely deprecated when the "voter" referred to me as being male.) I think I had only made corrections to gender references a few times before then, and only on personal talk pages. My username was chosen because it is gender-neutral, and I thought at the time that it was kind of risky for a woman to join Wikipedia, given the well-known harassment that many women - especially women admins - were experiencing at the time. (Hard to believe but it was much worse then, and included actual physical stalking on several occasions - our culture has progressively become less tolerant of gender-oriented harassment, but it still has a long way to go.) Having said that, I do tend to find that women editors on this project are less likely to be interested in taking on roles that come with additional responsibilities, often very time-consuming ones. An arbitrator on most other projects would spend as much time in a year on arbitration matters as an enwiki arbitrator spends in a month. The same is true for checkusers and oversighters - our project does nearly half of the checkusers and about 70% of the oversights on all Wikimedia projects. Administrators are expected to carry out admin-specific tasks; no, we don't quantify the expectations, but there's real pressure there; many other projects have documented but really quite small requirements for maintenance of adminship. I'm well aware of other projects where anywhere from 35 to 50% of administrators and other functionaries or people in roles like the local chapter/user group directors are women, but they're more the exception than the rule. (A woman administrator on a pretty large project told me that the biggest opposition to her adminship was that she was a woman. She still passed, but it was very close.)

  I'll be honest enough to say that I really don't pay that much attention to the gender of editors; most of the time I find myself referring to an editor with the "singular they" (unless they've specified otherwise) because it shouldn't really matter what bits or gender identity they hold. And I've spent a lot of time on global issues in the past couple of years, so I'm not really in a position to seek out candidates for RFA; if I was, I'd more likely try to seek out candidates in poorly represented geographic areas (Africa, in particular) because I *do* believe that we need to diversify our admin corps. Risker (talk) 02:23, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

It's harder to get women to run for RFA because it is more brutal for women and they are judged more harshly for interpersonal interactions like being sarcastic or too sharp. It seems like there are a few unimpeachable female editors who sail through at 100% approval but for most female RFA candidates it's a grueling experience. We are not just judged on our editing stats but whether or not we make other editors feel comfortable, aspects that male candidates are rarely judged on. I could go on but I rarely offer feedback on this page any more and I've said my peace. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:18, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

• I can vouch for the threats. I know that admins tend to get this in general, but I know that for a while there it seemed like I was getting quite a lot of flack. One of the "gems" I received was a threat of physical harm... because I speedied an article about a non-notable church. Been called the C-word at least once on my user page as well. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:40, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'd always felt that while in absolute terms, the female admin % on en-wiki was pretty low, it was higher than the base editor rate. Of course, I probably only frequently talk to 50 or so admins, so that could just be a statistical blip on my behalf. One of the three people I approached to run on this flight (2 "no"s, one "prefer to run in 3 months") was a woman, though she didn't give sexism as one of her reasons for not running (not, of course, that it couldn't still be). A limit on potential candidates who I think would pass is the biggest hurdle, which would be a) too few female editors b) of those there are, I suspect the average focus is somewhat different than most candidates. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:59, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• Wait... everyone is talking about female admins, not AI admins **sad robot noises** ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 13:04, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
• Having more female admins (and a more racial/gender diverse group of admins and editors in general) is a great goal to shoot for. However, the way to get there is not to complain about how disappointed you are that all recent RfA candidates are male, or go even further to oppose male RfA candidates who are otherwise qualified, because that would be attacking the symptom, not the cause. WP can use all the qualified admins it can get, of any gender. Let's make sure we're not getting to a point where we are artificially manipulating the male/female percentages by allowing less male RfA candidates through, since that would be counter-productive. If you want to increase the percentage of female admins, we should be working on ways to make WP more attractive to female editors, because admins come out of our pool of editors. ‑Scottywong| [verbalize] || 18:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • If you want to increase the percentage of female admins, we should be working on ways to make WP more attractive to female editors Very much agree. Given the comments by SandyGeorgia, Readerofthepack, and others, this is clearly our biggest hurdle. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:06, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'd like to make the admin corps as diverse as possible; I think I've spent more time trying to recruit Indian and Asian admins than female admins, and think Vanamonde is one of our best recruits. While it's certainly true two of my favourite RfAs that I started (Megalibrarygirl and Valereee) were women, that was more because they vastly exceeded my personal expectations and got a brilliant amount of support that makes me quite chuffed to have got them to run, if I do say so myself. I agree with Johnbod that most of the female colleagues I have on here are through creating content than any back-end activities. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:56, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

  lol...so happy to have contributed to chuffing you :D —valereee (talk) 20:03, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

• I'll repeat here what I said before during similar discussions at WT:RFA, although it seems like shouting at the wind. The difficulty in reaching out to new pools of potential admins, such as, say, female admins, has rather little with the RfA process as such. Instead it has mostly to do with the problem of recruiting and retaining new pools of regular Wikipedia editors, and adjusting the Wikipedia culture to make the environment here sufficiently comfortable for them. WMF had been trying to recruit more female editors for years but, IMHO, their recruitment efforts themselves have been pretty unimaginative and miopic up to this point. For example, much of the outreach efforts are still chanelled into Editathons and various kinds of Wiknic type events that mostly attract existing Wikipedia editors. Maybe some college kids will show up, out of curiosity, but that's no way to substantially extend the editing base. Instead WMF should have been organizing Wikipedia editing presentations at various scientific, scholarly, cultural, business, political, community, etc conferences and events, and try to attract new editors there. Now with the pandemic and the Zoom conferences going on everywhere, lots of opportunities are being wasted too. Anyway, that's my rant on the topic, or maybe off topic. Nsk92 (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • @Nsk92: I can vouch for the effectiveness of edit-a-thons at scholarly events. At the Linguistic Society of America's annual meeting the last few years, I've helped run an edit-a-thon that tends to attract a lot of women editors. I don't know our retention rate, but I'm usually the only one there that was an editor prior. For the year of indigenous languages, we even had a remote edit-a-thon which would translate well to the current remote conference trend. Linguistics in my experience has a high number of women, which helps, so mileage may vary with other disciplines. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:11, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
• I think Nsk92 is very much on topic, and there are many, many imaginative ways we could have been trying to recruit more female editors which might, in time, lead to more female potential admins coming through. A big shout-out must go to the WP:WOMRED project whose impact has not only been on increasing the percentage of non-bloke articles, but whose editathon events really do attract a very high proportion of female editors. But being obviously supportive of new female editors in our day-to-day interactions and actively being biased towards supporting, guiding or adopting them is extremely important to me, and should be to everyone else, too. I would like to see many more obviously female hosts active at the Teahouse and other help fora (by which I mean with usernames that clearly indicate their gender, nothing else!) and more editors proud and willing to bend over backwards to help, guide, adopt, defend or give just that little bit more leeway to encourage female editors who might be encountering difficulties (recent example). We do seem, at last, to be moving slowly away from tolerating the use of testosterone-filled language which has haunted and bedevilled many of Wikipedia's noticeboard interactions over the years. The safer and less angst-ridden we can make all our interactions (including at RFA), the less intimidating and more welcoming Wikipedia will appear to everyone. Nick Moyes (talk) 01:13, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm not worried about "testosterone-filled language" from admins; I'm worried about out-and-out trolling, stalking, and outing by disruptive newer, non-admin editors (including IPs). I cannot consider adminship unless I feel that there will be a swift and sure halt put to such behavior close to 100 percent of the time. I don't trust the WMF to protect me. I have concerns that, while the community may have some useful protective tools, there is a certain contingent of admins who always want to err on the side of not "discouraging" "potentially productive editors" who are patently nothing but undersupervised schoolchildren/college kids focused on trollery rather than building the encyclopedia. - Julietdeltalima (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Thepesar

Is this subject to deletion or snow close? I mean WP:NOTNOW. -- CptViraj (talk) 16:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@CptViraj: I don't see it was ever transcluded - so there is no "closure" needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:09, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Wait, Are untranscluded RfAs considered as drafts? -- CptViraj (talk) 16:15, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Potential candidates can draft a request at their lesiure. Only transcluding the request starts the request for administrative privileges process. isaacl (talk) 16:27, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah, didn't know that. Sorry and thanks. -- CptViraj (talk) 16:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Record for the longest time period between an unsuccessful and successful RfA (Is it 12 years or more?)

Hello everyone, I was looking for the record for the longest time period between an unsuccessful and successful RfA of anyone (it can be any subsequent RfA, so it doesn't matter how many times someone ran or whether that person is currently an admin or not). The longest record I could find was of 12 years and that was of User:Red Phoenix who had first ran in 2008 and then finally this year in July. I have tried to check and find any other RfA in which the time difference between both the RfA's is more than that, but haven't been able to find any. If anyone else can find and link it, that would be helpful. If there isn't any, that's okay as well. TheGeneralUser (talk) 12:05, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Would a sequence like Failed RfA; Successful RfA; Desysop; Successful RfA count for the delay between first and last RfAs? Because if so, there's probably going to be returning admins who lost the bit for inactivity featuring on any such list. Reyk _YO! 12:20, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@Reyk: Technically it can, but like I said, the time period difference has to be between an unsuccessful and successful RfA only with no other RfA's in between. A person can only be desysopped or lose the admin toolkit due to inactivity if they had passed the RfA in the first place, so those things naturally won't count. Like I mentioned above, a person could have run for adminship several times, but I am only looking for the time difference greater than 12 years than their last unsuccesful and then subsequent successful RfA (so it doesn't matter if a person passed 4 RfA's, lost the admin bit each time due to any reason, was unsuccessful on their 5th one and their next successful RfA was the 6th one). The only condition and thing that I'm looking for is that it should be a subsequent successful RfA and the time difference should be more than 12 years. TheGeneralUser (talk) 12:43, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@TheGeneralUser: I'm fairly certain that Red Phoenix has the record. Since RFA was established in 2003, that means someone beating the record has to start at least from 2015. I checked down the list and though we have a couple long gaps (9 years for Floquenbeam and a little shy of that for Opabinia regalis), none of them come close to Red Phoenix's 12 year, 24 day record. I suppose if you're curious, the RFB record would probably be held by Acalamari, who was about a month short of 6 years between his RFBs. bibliomaniac15 18:13, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the information bibliomaniac15. TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:22, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

FTR, I don't fit TGU's criteria. Neither does OR. Both of ours were successful the first time, and the second was a resysop request. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:38, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I'm silly. Of course it was between unsuccessful and successful. I'll take a WP:TROUT for that one. bibliomaniac15 20:47, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Are you allowing for users who changed name between RfAs? 10yrs 10mos before you ask, Cabayi (talk) 16:20, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Cabayi: Yes, it doesn't matter if the username of the candidate changed or not. The only conditions are the ones which I have already specified above. TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2020 (UTC)