Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 55

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"Moral support"

I'm not so sure I approve of "Moral Support"s. I know if the candidate is getting billions of oppose votes it can be a stressful time for them... but I feel "Moral Support" is somewhat unneccesary. Perhaps someone could explain their reasoning behind voting "moral support" so I can better understand this? Thank you. --Darth Deskana (talk page) 19:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been wondering that myself. The reasons given for a "moral support" are almost universally reasons against them being an admin, so it's really an oppose. It's rather insulting to the candidate, as it says "you're foolish enough to think putting my oppose under support means I think you'd somehow make a better admin". --Tango 19:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Moral support votes should go in the neutral section. Not that the RfA is ever going to come to the point where a Bureaucrat has to look into the votes, but by putting it in the neutral section you are clearly saying to the bureaucrat and the other voters that you do not intend to affect the outcome, but want to leave a nice message to the candidate. NoSeptember talk 19:57, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
IMO, they seem almost condescending. If you're not going to approve a candidate, don't support him or her. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

There is some truth to that. But I think people are trying to do it to be nice. It may not be working, and maybe it's a practice to be discouraged, but that's what it looks like to me anyway. and I thought that neutrals do affect the outcome by increasing the total number of votes? not that this one matters, it's a WP:SNOW already ++Lar: t/c 20:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, neutrals are not counted... I can understand that people are trying to be nice, but "Moral Support. You're not ready yet" is like "Oppose, you'll be a great admin" in some ways, I think... --Darth Deskana (talk page) 20:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's people trying to be nice, but yeh should be discouraged for the possibly condescending reason, and also that you really should only say you support if you support them becoming admin. If you want to be nice just don't join in the pile-on in the oppose section and/or drop a friendly note with some advice on the candidates talk page/in the comments section. Neutral votes generally don't affect the outcome, unless it is very close and the closing 'crat checks for neutrals that look like weak supports or opposes. If they were counted for percentage purposes they would effectively be an oppose (which they are not). Petros471 20:50, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
As someone who has voted "Oppose, you'll be a great admin ..." but never "moral support", let me explain to you why I have voted "oppose" in such way. In each RfA I have responded, I clearly stated (and so has many other voters) "Oppose, you'll be a great admin in the future." This means that the candidate has the potential to be an excellent RfA candidate, but is not ready at this moment. I have never voted "moral support" because I will not say "yes" when I mean "no". In fact, I see that a "moral support" is the opposite of a "kind oppose"; a "moral support" says yes when you mean no; a "kind oppose" says no when you mean no. I hope this clears things up about the intentions of those of us who vote "kind oppose"; we want to tell our true feelings, yet we are mindful of the future, not just the present. (^'-')^ Covington 06:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Moral support indeed doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's less troubling than the development to which it is usually responding: absurd numbers of people voting oppose. Put it this way: if your vote will be the 25th oppose, and there are less than ten supports, stop and read meta:Don't_be_a_dick before editing the page. Any point you have to make can be better expressed as a comment, or on the nominee's talk page. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:14, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why it should be discouraged. From a newbie point of view, moral support is a pat in the back saying "Continue this way and someday...", while an oppose vote is a kick in the belly shouting "Try 'gain when yer bigger, buddy!". Remember WP:BITE. It is not about the truth, but about how to say it. -- ReyBrujo 22:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
It could also be seen as, "You are so not going to be an admin that we need to make you feel good because you aren't able to handle it." That's why Christopher Parham's advice is the best one: if it's going to be a pile-on, don't even edit the page. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't know, I think it's obvious to a user with ten opposes and no supports that they stand no chance. I have a hard time imagine it being taken as an additional insult; certainly, I wouldn't be insulted if it was me. I've only done one or two, and I agree that too many "moral supports" in a single RfA is silly. Once there are more than three, I would recommend that someone not add one. —Cuiviénen, Thursday, 4 May 2006 @ 00:38 UTC
So that a votation may end 3-30? Instead of suggesting to stop moral support votes, we may consider Christopher Parham's advice and stop voting negatively if the candidate has little chances of becoming an administrator, as courtesy. Use common sense, don't bite newcomers, don't be a dick, etc, etc, etc. A votation ending 3-10 is the same as one ending 3-45 regarding the final result: rejection. But is it necessary to stomp a newbie that much? I would not vote negatively unless I have a reason to vote. Although I agree users with very low edit count or little time in Wikipedia aren't suitable (yet) for adminship, I would not vote negatively; I let that for others. And if I give a moral support, it is because I consider a 30%-70% result a bordeline, but anything worse for a newbie, a plain lack of respect.
Unless you have over 15,000 edits and get a moral support vote, I don't think anyone would get offended by them. -- ReyBrujo 01:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I suppose I'll respond here, since I've dumped about 20 of these out since January... Most of the time I'll give this for someone in a boat such as (0/10/0), just to add a support vote and prevent a shutout. That said, the Moral Support pileon at Foxearth's RfA has been interesting. I voted at (1/7/0), with the one support being the nominator; since then, 6 more have been added on. Now, 7 moral supports is overkill, just like 4 nominators. However, I think a couple is okay, and I've always viewed it from the point of view ReyBrujo brings. Most of my moral supports are for editors I don't know (I only vote on RfA's of editors I've seen around) who are either getting piled on or who I see have no chance of passing (like 200 edits or something)... that said, maybe I should add the "suggest withdrawl" after each and every one? We'll see. I plan on continuing strings of moral supports when opposition gets out of hand. -- Jjjsixsix (t)/(c) @ 23:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that a Support vote means that you support the candidate's adminship. I have a feeling that were Support/Oppose called Accept Request/Decline Request originally, then we wouldn't have any of this "moral support" business... I do actually feel really strongly that it should be discouraged. --Darth Deskana (talk page) 23:28, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Accept/Decline will most definitely get me to stop, because a large number x opposes is quite awful to see. -- Jjjsixsix (t)/(c) @ 23:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I personally dislike "moral support" votes, as it makes my job more difficult; I have a standard of 4-1 opposition before I will close an RfA early (which is what needs to be done with a nomination that is failing so badly as to need moral support), and "moral support" makes it difficult to achive that standard. I have finally settled on the position that "moral support" votes are not support votes at all (if forced to say "Yes, I believe this individual should be promoted" (the definition of a support vote), I do not believe any of the "moral supporters" would do so), and I ignore them when making a decision to close early. I'd prefer users to trust the bureaucrat staff to close out these nominations in a timely manner, and to avoid making the decision to close early more difficult for the bureaucrat who draws the unpleasant task of doing so, nor for the unfortunate user who has to watch people expressing thier pity. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a more practical method of showing moral support to a candidate would be to leave a message on their talk page instead of the RfA. That way, he or she is more likely to read it (in case they pass it over once noticing that their RfA is doomed), they're not misleading to the candidates/closing admins/other users, the "morally supportive" user could still cast the appropriate vote, and they could pave the way to later discussion and suggestions on how the nominee could improve. Speaking personally, if I were in a failing RfA, I would prefer someone voted according to how they predicted my capabilities as a future admin, and then came to my talk page to drop a few suggestions that I could work with if they thought I needed some work. More productive, still supportive, less misleading. Tijuana Brass¡Épa!-E@ 05:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the others, but I only vote Moral Support when I believe that the candidate would be a good admin (i.e. fits my personal criteria), but he already gathered so many oppose votes that he has snowball's chance to get promoted. I don't see any problem with people supporting obviously failing candidates, because it doesn't affect the result in any way.  Grue  07:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Why not just vote "support" then? --Tango 13:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about moral support, but I will vote support when people are piling on 50 oppose votes to some guy who I think meant well in nominating himself for admin. I just don't get the need to keep making oppose votes way after it's clear the RfA will never pass... --W.marsh 13:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well on reading Essjay's comment I might stop the practice, but I think we need something to change to help out people who unknowingly nominate themselves when they have no chance. It must be a pretty discouraging experience to have 20 people tell you your faults in rapid succession. --W.marsh 13:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The best thing to do is to remove the RfA, and leave a comment on their talk page. Someone did this to me (helpfully!) but strangely, changed their mind and added it back again! "Moral supports" corrupt the system - support votes are indications that you want the person to be an admin. They should not be used for any other purpose. Stevage 15:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I just want to know how much trouble I'm going to get when I vote moral oppose one of these days... —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 14:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I personally find moral supports to be very condescending, though I don't fault anyone who does it to spare someone's feelings. I will vote oppose on RfAs only if it's not a pileon vote, but of course, not everyone does that. To address concerns about RfA candidates' feelings (which I don't think should be a priority anyway, since anyone submitting to the RfA process should be prepared to be criticised anyway), I think a general rule of thumb would suffice, just something we can fit in the back of our minds as common sense without setting any actual rules.

"Avoid voting oppose in an RfA if (# of oppose votes) - (# of support votes) > 10 and (# of total votes) > 20."

Note, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, and therefore doesn't count as the dreaded m:instruction creep. Or, to avoid actual numbers, a better rule of thumb is

"Avoid voting oppose in an RfA if there are a large number of oppose votes and a small number of support votes."

I'm not trying to add rules, just trying to think about what to do for common sense. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing you mean total votes more than 20. I would suggest using a %age for the first condition, since that's what actually matters for the final decision. If %age support is less than 10%, say. All of this can't be more than a personal rule of thumb. Anything even vaguely official would have to say "close the RfA early if..." rather than "don't vote if...", since discourgaging people from voting should be avoided in anything that even looks official. --Tango 17:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
(woops, corrected) I don't know if I want a definite number. To be honest, I'd be much more comfortable with the second version, and even then, this would be a general rule of thumb, guideline, or "common sense" thing that I wouldn't want to have in policy. Oh, and "avoid voting" is less set in stone than "don't vote if", IMO. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:59, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I suppose we could use a guideline, but it would be more to remind people of what RfA really is. Support only if you believe that the user should be promoted. Oppose if you really believe that the user shouldn't be promoted. And, which I found rather interesting, to avoid unnecessary pileons, in the spirit of WP:SENSE, WP:BITE and WP:DICK, consider abstaining if you would oppose but the RfA has already reached a point where there are no realistic hopes for a pass. Personally, I find it unnecessary to add adjectives to a "vote" (as in "super support", or "strong oppose"); we can praise or critique the candidate in the rationale, which is what a RfA participation should be: rationale + signature. It makes no difference if the oppose is "strong" or "weak" in terms of having the adjective in bold up there. If we were to follow that, then instead of writing "moral support", a user would write a rationale explaining that (s)he is supporting even though (s)he doesn't believes that the user should be promoted, because (s)he thinks that the candidate should get at least one support in his/her RfA. The closing Bureaucrat would have no difficulties in considering the merit of such a "vote". If the reason given to support is valid, however, such as: "moral support because I believe the user should be promoted but I can see that it's not going to happen in this RfA, but I'll support anyway", then it would likewise be clear that the "vote" is valid and should stand in determining consensus for promotion. Redux 21:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I think Strong and Weak votes are good. They are closer to what RfA should be - about gather concensus. It shouldn't just be a matter of counting votes. When the vote is within the 5% range of Buro's descretion, I would hope they use the adjectives before votes to help them decide - if most of one side is weak and most of the other side is strong, it's easy to see which should win. (Of course, care is needed when interpretting Strong votes, as they could just be an attempt to make your opinion more important than other people's rather than a genuinely strong support). --Tango 10:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
But that's why I said participation in a RfA should [ideally] consist of rationale + signature. The validity or the weigh carried by a user's support/opposition should be determined by his/her argumentation, not by writing the words "support" or "oppose", with or without adjectives. And then, for the same reasons why it is unnecessary to pile on opposition in a RfA that is already certain to fail, and why we should avoid the "moral support", it seems to me also unnecessary to write in bold "strong oppose": one can write a rationale that conveys the problems perceived with the candidate, in a polite, nonconfrontational manner, and that should be evidence enough to indicate that the opposition is based on serious reasons. This would also help ending the confusion regarding the "vote or not vote" [non-]issue. Redux 15:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

RFA Summaries

Should my RFA summaries be:

  1. Moved to Wikipedia space and/or
  2. Mentioned on the main RFA page?

Dragons flight 19:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Either and/or both, as it is dynamically generated would it be better suited to not be in wpspace for any reason? I have it watchlisted myself, and find it a very useful tool. KillerChihuahua?!? 19:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the raw data should remain in userspace, and then be transcluded into one or more WP space pages (which can have additional things added as preferred). I don't like WP:RFASUM because of the ugly shortcut link for example, so I can choose to look at your userspace page. I think it would be fine to mention it on WP:RFA also (my personal opinion, it depends on community consensus) NoSeptember <font color = "green">talk 20:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be best placed as per NoSeptember, as a transclusion from userspace, but not on the current page. It should be a subpage of RfA, perhaps at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Summary (which could have the shortcut WP:RfA/S). —Cuiviénen, Thursday, 4 May 2006 @ 00:34 UTC

Agree with Cuivienen, transclude onto a subpage of WP:RFA. It is a useful way of quickly checking which way the discussions are going. Kimchi.sg 00:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

One factor to consider is that to see updates on one's watchlist, one needs to be watching the primary page that the script writes to. Watching a page that merely transcludes the data will not result in an edit appearing on one's watchlist. Hence if we direct people to a WP:RFA/S (or whatever) that transcludes userspace data, they may be surprised if the updates are not actually reflected on their watchlist. Dragons flight 01:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but is it not the case that the edit summaries that update the page are always the same anyway? So it's not like the edit summaries on your watchlist would be informative. I asked you about that on your talk page once. As long as the edit summaries don't say anything, doesn't really matter about the transclusion, does it? -lethe talk + 01:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the edit summaries are always the same (for the forseeable future anyway), but having it appear on one's watchlist is a reminder to check for new noms, etc. Dragons flight 01:33, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I think people should be encouraged to watchlist RfA itself rather than a support page. —Cuiviénen, Friday, 5 May 2006 @ 01:42 UTC

Well, as a new bureaucrat I find your RfA summary page (your others too by the way) to be one of the best things since sliced bread, Dragons flight. Very easy way to keep track of closing times and which ones need more checking into as an addition to reading the full pages of course. I think it would be a good idea to move to an RFA subpage if you're willing to move it out of your userspace and give it to the community. I actually don't like something popping up on my watchlist that often so I just like a shortcut to type in when I want to monitor it, but both are good for different people. Thanks for putting the work into creating and tweaking them. I like User:Cuivienen's even shorter shortcut idea too. - Taxman Talk 02:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

One little request: if the current page is also going to be kept, could the new page have the heading text enclosed in <noinclude> tags? It's slightly more appealing that way. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:08, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


I've gone and created WP:RFA/S as a transclusion. If anyone has any objections, raise them there. Thanks. —Cuiviénen (talk•contribs), Wednesday, 10 May 2006 @ 17:29 UTC

Contributions analysis

My edit count tool for history pages now looks at a whole crapload of things[1]. I am already starting to get editcountitis. That "significant article edits" number is soo harsh on almost everyone :)!Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 01:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

RFA that fell through the cracks?

I just came across this RFA: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mcphysical. It was created six and a half days ago, but never listed on the main RFA page. Obviously it's not going to succeed (the user in question has only four edits to the article namespace) but I'm not sure what the proper procedure is for handling things like this. Should it just be closed at the end of its run? —David Wahler (talk) 03:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I tagged it with the headers, figured I'd save a 'crat the job seeing as it was never listed properly and the note of it being a sockpuppet on its userpage, I'm just not sure if I should straight out delete it -- Tawker 04:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
As the user is indefinitely banned as a sockpuppet, and the RFA had only 1 vote, I have taken the liberty of deleting it. I see no point in keeping a disruptive user's litter around once they have been banned. Dragons flight 04:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Deleting this was fine because it was a banned user. Tagging it as failed was not correct. This was never an active RfA, and did not fail. Until an RfA is accepted and transcluded by the nominee or nominator, we should leave these RfAs alone. They are "Draft" RfAs. People can create a draft and work on it as they wish. Many people have draft RfAs sitting out there for weeks or months before they decide to accept. We should not be jumping in to add an RfA we find to WP:RfA without their consent (or casting a vote) or anything else. Just leave the draft RfAs alone, or contact the user to ask them about it. (Related discussion) NoSeptember talk 11:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. My RfA nomination page sat for around 2 weeks while I worked on it. (hey, it takes time to come up with those longwinded answers!) I have a nomination out there with a draft RfA which is likely going to sit for over a month. It's not failed because it hasn't started yet. ++Lar: t/c 12:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I encourage users not to use the Wikipedia: namespace as a drafting space; [[User:YourNameHere/RfA]] works just as well, and doesn't have the problem of gathering invalid votes and potentially causing problems (need I mention CSCWEM2 and the oppose votes that showed up on CSCWEM3 because of it...). Either copy/paste, subst: or move it to the right page when you're ready for it to start; don't create problems for yourself or others by putting it in the Wikipedia: space before it is ready. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Users should use userspace. Unfortunately most of these draft RfAs seem to be created by someone who wants to nominate a friend and they get created without the immediate knowledge of the nominee, and neither the nominator nor nominee knows better than to leave it in WP space. So it still falls upon us RfA regulars to not transclude these draft RfAs without talking to the users first. If we find one of these that is not ready for use soon, we should tell the user to move it into userspace. NoSeptember talk 09:48, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Er, excellent points. But the guides don't say that now. Perhaps a quick add to say after you use the automation to create your page, (as outlined here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/nominate the page created is Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/USERNAME) do a quick move to your userspace??? or change the automation a bit to create it in userspace??? I dunno, but if the automation creates things a certain way, and the docs around it don't suggest doing it differently, we can't fault people for going with it that way, can we? IMHO anyway. ++Lar: t/c 19:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
(reviving stale discussion) I revisited the nomination form, and what we could do is to change the default pages created to [[Special:Mypage/RfA]] for self-noms and [[User:NOMINEE_USERNAME/RfA]] for friend-noms. The form that creates the RfA page has a text field for the name of the page to create, so smart people who know they want their RfA page in the Wikipedia namespace right away can still change the page name in the text box before pressing "nominate", and it'd do what it does now. Thoughts? Kimchi.sg 02:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Where can I get the record on an old RfA??

I am curious abut a specific, approved RfA, and I would like to do further research. Alas, I am unable to figure out how to locate this user's RfA. Where are the RfA archives held?? Thanks, Madman 16:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Multiple nominators? Poor form or no big deal?

Now that my RfA is over, I don't feel it's improper to bring this up any more, unlike during. As many of you know, I had several nominators, 4 to be exact. (and a lot more that wanted to nom me... I could have had a dozen noms easily if I had let everyone that wanted to co-nom do so) Obviously, I didn't think it was too big a deal or I would have demurred and went with just one. But clearly some other folks did not agree. Some reasons given included it being indecorous, or worse, that it might lead me to believe I was slightly more invincible than someone that had just one. I'm interested in general thoughts... Is this really thought of so badly by so many that it ought to be a tip (optinonal of course) in a guide not to do? Thanks! Do multiple noms mean you feel more invincible? I certainly don't! ++Lar: t/c 19:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

My opinion? NBD. :) RadioKirk talk to me 19:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I think to most people it would be no big deal (within reason). But it is not what most people think that matters in the case of a potentially close nomination. If it bothers some editors enough that they will cast an oppose vote, then you should avoid doing it in order to avoid bothering those people. Sort of like the way the early votes on CSCWEM-2 brought about a number of oppose votes and a lot of upset. So, use multiple nominators at your own risk ;-). NoSeptember talk 19:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I can't say I've seen multiple noms before, so it seems a bit like instruction creep to put a guideline in (not to mention WP:BEANS for other people!). Ziggurat 20:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
NoSeptember: I would ask, is it appropriate to do things because of how they might influence close outcomes? It seems to me that one ought to do what one thinks is right. (I was cautioned against being wordy in answering questions, but I did it anyway). To do otherwise doesn't seem quite true to one's self. I know you weren't suggesting that per se but it's good to make clear. Also, Ziggurat, I wasn't suggesting a guideline so much as a "tip" so people could then decide for themselves ++Lar: t/c 12:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
You seem to suggest that doing things because of how they might influence close outcomes is inconsistent with doing what is right. What does the having of multiple nominators have to do with right or wrong? It's only about appearances. An overabundance of nominators could be seen as an attempt to steamroll opposition, just as the early votes for CSCWEM were seen that way by some. We should be voting on you, not on the size of your nomination cabal ;-). NoSeptember talk 13:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
There's a nuance there, sorry if I'm not being very clear, but I do think that doing things (merely) because of how they might influence outcomes IS wrong. at least at one level, because it smacks of being political. Politics is inescapable in any situation with more than one person, of course, but I'd rather see stuff judged on merit as far as possible. I suppose that if you had two choices that were exactly equal except for how they influenced outcomes, choosing the one that influenced the outcome in the direction you wanted might be ok, but choices never are exactly equal. I think it fairly clear that my weight on what other people think compared to other factors is very low. I try to do what I think is right, regardless of appearances. At least I'd like to think that's what I do, but who knows for sure? Hope that helps add clarity rather than subtract it. ++Lar: t/c 13:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
It isn't merely about affecting the outcome, it's about respecting the opinions of those who may think that too many nominators is an attempt to steamroll the community. I don't see that as being political. NoSeptember talk 14:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Which is why I'm trying to get to. So is it true that multiple conoms is perceived as steamrollering, as is multiple pre-public votes (that's why I struck those) but having a boatload of people turn out quickly to support isn't? I honestly don't know. ++Lar: t/c 14:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey, if you really didn't care about affecting the outcome but just doing what is right, wouldn't you have started this topic before your RfA was concluded? ;-) NoSeptember talk 14:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Ooh, good question. I don't know! Maybe I should have. But it felt to me like I would have been trying to cock things more by not waiting than by waiting. Interesting thread even if no clear 100% unanimous consensus emerges. ++Lar: t/c 14:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with multiple noms but please try not to make half of the RfA page filled with noms. Ok ok, if I opposed it I'd be a hypocrite as I "stole" Mindspillage's nomination as she was talking and talking and talking and I finally gave up and nominated. -- Tawker 21:47, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I too have no problems with multiple noms. --Siva1979Talk to me 08:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Tawker did you see the length of my question answers? There was NO DANGER of the noms taking up half the page, trust me! Smile. ++Lar: t/c 12:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a bit of a peculiar thing to do but it's no big deal as far as I'm concerned. --Lord Deskana Dark Lord of the Sith 09:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for multiple noms - anyone can add lengthy comments to their support vote, so why not just put it there? That said, I don't think it does any harm, within reason. --Tango 12:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I see no problems with multiple noms.... but keep the extolments short. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Not a big deal within reason, but I'd perfer to just have one nominator (who ever created the rfa), with anyone else that wanted to nom voting support (with a comment to that effect if they want) when open for discussion. Having too many co-noms before the rfa is open could be seen as similar to having support votes too early, which should be discouraged. It's not a major issue, so long as one of the comments are short (nom or support), or otherwise the same person opinion would appear twice, which might easily be missed. MartinRe 13:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think multiple noms can be useful, especially if the co-noms don't just say "he's a great guy, I co-nominate", but add to the information in the nomination statement by mentioning other good sides of the candidate. More than three nominators are probably useless, because it is hard to come up with any new information unless the first couple nomination statements are substandard. But no big deal anyway. Kusma (討論) 13:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Three out of four of my noms I think added significant information the others did not contain but I do agree one didn't add much, I guess. ++Lar: t/c 13:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
4th one was just a joke, frankly. I think it was verging on poor form because with that many noms it looks like a "fait accompli" and/or some IRC admin cartel trying to push the promotion of their buddy. I privately urged you not to allow multiple noms and decided not to co-nom myself for this reason. All that said, I know you'll be a good admin - even if you do sometimes bite my head off :P - and we got the right result. It ended up as "no big deal". --kingboyk 14:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I do think it ended up being no big deal here, but it could have been. Other people have drawn analogies to the CSCWEM case, so I won't belabor the point. I loathe the (appearance of) "IRC cabal" behavior in RfA, so it may have made me less likely to vote support; I'm not sure I'd have opposed for it, since that's voting on the behavior of your nominators, not the candidate. If it becomes more common, it may become an influencing factor in RfAs, and therefore I think it should be discouraged as mentioned above. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Stats question

This is minor, no pun intended...but I programmed by edit summary tool to mark any edit it though was minor as minor, in addition to ones the user marked. The problem is that for edit summary use, do only look at the ratios of based on what the user marked as minor or not, or do I look at all edits that likely where minor as minor (even if it was not marked by the user)? I can program it either way, but I can't decide what to do. Right now, it counts edits it sees as minor as minor for edit summaries.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 22:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

It's all totally arbitrary, but what people probably expect "minor" to mean is when they tick the "minor" flag. If you want to have some other meaning, use a different term lik "significant edits" or something. Stevage 22:34, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Can it do both? I.e., show both minor edits and "non-significant" edits (minor edits according to your tool's algorithm). Although I like the idea of the tool considering edits not marked minor for insignificance, I agree with Steveage that calling these "minor" will probably confuse some people. Kimchi.sg 09:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
How does the tool determine significance? Regards, Ben Aveling 10:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Voting adjectives - question about/for b'crats

Do b'crats take into account the adjectives people use to support/oppose? Obviously I don't mean the joke ones ("support on wheels" and so on) but "weak support", "weak oppose", "weakest oppose possible"? Or even "strong support" and "strong oppose"? It would probably be silly to be give people double their say just by letting them add "strong" to their vote, but in RfAs where a lot of people cast "very weak oppose" votes, do those get taken into account, or do they count as full votes anyway? --W.marsh 13:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I would consider more the strength of the additional comments and reasoning than just the adjectives used, but if there are lots of strong supports and most of the opposes say weak oppose, that would be one thing that would tend to tip the nom towards promotion. Bare oppose votes without reasoning are harder to take into full account. Solid reasoning is much more helpful. - Taxman Talk 16:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
If it comes within our discretionary range, I would weigh in each oppose vote and its corresponding reason carefully. I believe that adminship is about judgement and oppose votes which are downright silly will not be given due weightage. For such opposes and those votes that say weak oppose I won't negate 4 support votes, I'll negate less. I've clearly outlined this during my RFB. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Crap, I should have opposed that, you're using numeric standards! *sigh* :-( (not your fault, but running anything on a wiki in that manner is known to Not Fly in the long term :-( ). Maybe the discussion below can bring further insights. Kim Bruning 02:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
See [2], Linuxbeak's breakdown of his promotion of Tawker; these were a factor. ~ PseudoSudo 00:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Amgine

This one closed with no consensus. It did numerically seem to be at the low end of the range but I have to say I was hoping this would have come out as a promote. ++Lar: t/c 13:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

  • This was discussed at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Amgine.27s_RfA_more_time_to_come_to_consensus. --Durin 13:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the pointer, Durin. I retain my "hoping" sentiment but that's a very good read, lots of profound thoughtfulness there, and I think that my "hope" aside, they did the right thing... as usual. ++Lar: t/c 14:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
      • He got nowhere near enough community support, so it was absolutely the right closure to my mind. If the Foundation want to give him the sysop bit anyway that's fine but as was commented on at WP:BN they can't expect our bureaucrats to fudge the closure of a debate for them. So, top marks there I think. --kingboyk 14:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
        • "Nowhere near" ? We're talking about a few percentage points, certainly well less than 10%, of difference here. Top marks though, agreed. ++Lar: t/c 14:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
          • 80% is a 4 to 1 ratio, 75% is a 3 to 1 ratio, 71% is less than a 2.5 to 1. That's a big difference. NoSeptember talk 14:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
          • 71% with 33 opposes and 7 neutrals. I don't think that's anywhere near enough - but I'm not a beauraucrat (nor do I want to be one :)). --kingboyk 14:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC) (edit conflict)
          • The RfA closed at 76-33-7. That's 69.7%. To get to 75%, there would have had to have been another 23 support votes without any additional oppose votes. That's quite a bit. --Durin 14:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
            • Or a just a few opposes switched to supports somehow ("votes" do change... and changing one oppose to a support is a far larger impact than garnering another support.). But ya, the leverage effect as the percentage climbs does impose an increasingly steep barrier. Good points all... ++Lar: t/c 14:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

After my compromise suggestion and the other one that followed, the support percentage needed to be higher than normal not lower to show solid support for this alternative type of admin. It needed to be in the 80% range supporting a specific alternative. IMO, anything less would not show the type of community consensus needed for something out of the ordinary. --FloNight talk 15:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Echoing Flo somewhat, non-standard arrangements should face a stronger burdern of evidence to show consensus on them, not a weaker version. JoshuaZ 15:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


Requests for Adminship needs to be reviewed

Hmmm, Amgine didn't make it, and I did spontaniously say (wisely or not) that "if THIS nomination fails, RFA should be shut down", or words to that effect. Well, that was spur of the moment, this is now. I won't push it if you won't! ;-) (Though I reserve the right to still yell words to that effect in future, if there's no improvement)

Now, the thing is, it's very nice to have procedures and percentages and bells and whistles. Rube Goldberg could make a living out of it! :)

But at the end of the day, if those percentages and procedures and bells and whistles and whatnot don't actually lead to logical results, that needs fixing. (Come ON! If you can do OTRS, being an admin on wikipedia is a walk in the park by comparison).

I don't understand why people say we should give more power to office either. Do we WANT the foundation to take control of our wiki? Other wikis are independant, but are we such wusses that en.wikipedia is the only wikimedia wiki that can't figure out what's good for itself on its own?

I think yes, possibly we are such wusses, and should be ashamed.

Surely not! +sj +

In conclusion: perhaps "we should shut down Requests for Adminiship" was a spur of the moment thing to say, so I'm not going to push that too hard yet. BUT we should certainly review and discuss our current RFA setup, because we just screwed up in a fairly obvious and visible fashion.

Kim Bruning 22:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

ps. I'm not so worried about Amgine himself. He can take a beating, he's a grownup :-P It's just the fact that rfa managed to get it so wrong!

It would seem doing OTRS *isn't* enough to become an admin, since the RfA failed. The only way doing OTRS could be considered enough would be if there was concensus to that effect - there wasn't. RfA worked as designed in this case. --Tango 22:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Er, no. Only the most trusted people are given OTRS access, and that trust is more than enough to be given admin abilities. Therefore RFA failed, quite miserably, in this case.--Sean Black (talk) 22:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
These are different tasks, however. The environments of replying to OTRS mail and that of acting as a wiki-administrator are likewise different. +sj + 06:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, Like Sean Black said as well, I've had both admin and OTRS access, and admin is definately a lot easier, (the skills needed to be an admin are in fact a subset of those required for OTRS). In conclusion: Somehow people came to the wrong consensus. Kim Bruning 23:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I have also dealt with daily routine, complications, and conflicts both as an admin and on OTRS. I agree that doing administrative/janitorial work is generally easier; but it requires different skills, not a subset of those needed for OTRS responses. They are simply separate. Many people will be good at both; but that is not a reason for one to automatically qualify someone for the other (cf. Alphax as well). And to reply to Sean Black, while people responding to OTRS mail are trusted, I certainly wouldn't say that this is "the set of 'most trusted people'" among Wikipedians. It is simply a subset of the many trusted Wikipedians who would be good at, and have time for, such work. +sj + 06:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
The question is whose trust. If the community doesn't have trust, it won't give admin abilities. If only the Foundation has trust, then the Foundation has to give admin abilities themselves. You can't put a person to an RFA vote and say "you mustn't oppose - he's trusted anyway" -- grm_wnr Esc 23:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
What procedure is used to award OTRS access? Perhaps we could incorporate elements in the RfA. -Will Beback 23:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Basically, someone asks one of the contacts (currently, either myself or sannse, as listed on m:OTRS). We decide whether we need any new personnel and try to judge carefully, asking around and delaying decisions where necessary; it is not much of a procedure and does not scale, but has been on the whole reasonably successful. (Not only does Amgine have access to the regular messages, he also answers the "urgent" tickets, which is currently about 10 people who are particularly good with sticky situations.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
If the foundation is so confident that Amgine can be trusted, why go through RfA at all? There is certainly precedent for people being promoted without RfA, BradPatrick for example. jaco♫plane 13:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Brad's situation (and that of any future legal counsel) is special, and shouldn't be considered a precedent for normal community members. +sj + 06:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Well not "you mustn't oppose", but more like this person ALREADY has been granted higher levels of access and trust.
So rephrasing: it's more like "This guy even does OTRS, and people are insanely happy with how he's doing there. How on earth is it possible that en.wikipedia suddenly thinks he's too st00pid to even handle a simple admin bit?"
In short: I'm one flabbergasted dude here! Kim Bruning 23:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
See kusma's comments below, and mine above. Handling OTRS does not automatically make someone a good admin; and there were valid concerns. You don't think those concerns should have affected anything, all things considered, and neither do I (hence our votes in the RfA and your strong position), but I don't see any reason to be quite so flabbergasted. AzaToth's RfA was a clearer example of what needs fixing. +sj + 06:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
My conclusion is that the community does not like to see things like wheel warring and unilateral deletion of userboxes in a prospective admin's recent past. I guess OTRS handling just doesn't matter as much to most people. Also, remember OTRS is out there where nobody can see it (I hazard the guess many don't even know what it means), while diffs from Wikinews are readily available. Also, be careful: There's no such thing as a "wrong" consensus. There's just consensus. Consensus for the wrong reasons maybe. Or consensus among the wrong people. Or consensus for a decision you don't agree with. But consensus. All you can hope for is to educate the voters that OTRS is a BIG qualification for adminship, but I guess that's pretty hopeless. -- grm_wnr Esc 23:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
If we are failing to educate the voters on this page, then that's a problem. We could hope to educate people better, we could bar people from voting until they prove they are somehow sufficiently educated, or we could use a system that does not require voting at all. :-( The options seem somewhat bleak. I wonder if people have better ideas? Kim Bruning 02:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You guys seem to think that if there was just discussion it would be different. There would still be uneducated participants and people placing comments based on tenths of a percentage of edit count distribution just like we have now. RfA should be about can we trust an editor to not abuse the tools, but instead we get all kinds of people that think edit count is critical. Just look through RfA/Standards and it's quite disheartening. - Taxman Talk 14:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
To springboard off of Kim's comment and soapbox for a minute: while there seemed to be some valid concerns about Amigne's RfA, there is a common problem that RfAs seem to rarely work for the more unique cases. For example, AzaToth's RfA failed to reach consensus despite his definite needs for the tools and everyone agreeing that he wasn't going to misuse them. Similarly, Tawker's RfA was barely successful. In both these cases the admins were people who didn't fit the cookie cutter mold of an admin and were treated poorly as a result. Other similar problems abound: Master of Puppets was accused of being argumentative even though one can routinely find far more argumentative comments by admins on WP:ANI. A further data point to the brokeness of the system is my own RfA; there is no good reason to justify my having the fourth most supported RfA ever. The two possible explanations for that level of support are that 1) I've really been as incredibly helpful as some of the supporters seem to think or 2) Blnguyen concern's that I'm overly political have some validity. There is something wrong when a political hack who has been involved in a multitude of conflicts and only one Wiki for about 3 months gets one of the highest support totals in Wikipedia history while a template wizard like AzaToth doesn't get adminship. (Note that I'm not saying that I shouldn't have been made an admin, I wouldn't have accepted the nom if i thought I shouldn't be, but I do think that my overwhelming support may be another symptom of the problems with the process). The way I see it(I know I've said this before but I'll say it again because I think it is important) the key issues are 1) Will the project benefit from the user having admin tools? 2) Do we know that the user won't abuse those tools? 3) Do we know that the user has the competence and experience to correctly use the tools?" If the answer to all three is "yes" then they should have the tools. It isn't much more complicated than that. JoshuaZ 22:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I certainly agree with you that these issues are far more important than the number of edits or their distribution on different namespaces or whatever common oppose reasons are. In the case of Amgine, though, many people apparently thought the answers were "yes, no, yes" due to the Wikinews incidents, and I think it was that more than the low edit count etc. that made Amgine's nomination fail. So I think AzaToth is a better example for the "brokenness" of the system than Amgine. Kusma (討論) 22:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The number of users is only increasing so I don't find it odd that RFAs are getting more votes over time, as long as people do not only vote on those where they actually know/have interacted with the person it will happen. I thought you got a high number of support votes, but I am not sure that is a sign that the system is broken. There is a problem with the system if people that are not qualified or will abuse the tools are promoted and people that have a need for them and will use them responsibly are not promoted.
I can only speak for myself on Amgine, but I opposed because of the wikinews blocking wheel war. It happened not even a month ago and he made (imo) vindictive blocks, reblocked someone 4 times, and continued to use admin powers when blocked. These are things that should not be done, even if they were not against wikinews policy (at the time, it mentioned unblocking more than 3 times in 24 hours, but not reblocking). If the foundation wants/needs him to have the sysop bit I'm sure they can find a steward to do it, but I do not see this case as a failure of RFA as while he is qualified I am not sure of his judgment. Kotepho 23:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Not too late to help us out and write a decent WP:DFA proposal :P — Ilyanep (Talk) 22:25, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

This isn't a problem with the RFA process, it's a problem with the community (the RFA community in particular - call it RFA culture if you wish). Of course, the process has some influence on the culture, but it boils down to the following:

  1. RFA asks the community if someone should be an admin
  2. In this case, too large a part of the community said no

How can this be adressed? Well, we could discount notvotes that don't meet some rule (which is always dangerous and instruction-creepy). We could lower the bar at which an RFA is considered successful (might work for this case, but there's got to be a border somewhere, so this doesn't really help in general, at least not for cases of this kind). Or we could not ask the community at all (which is already an option in special cases and could have been in this one). So, Kim, I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're asking the wrong questions. Any RFA process will give undesirable results if there's somthing about the candidate a part of the community doesn't like. To JoshuaZ: Your three points in the end certainly do make sense. But they're also not so rock hard as to be completely non-trivial to interpret, which just ends us with a process where we poll the community, and we have that already. -- grm_wnr Esc 22:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Essentially, I agree, yeah. But really, we don't need a hard and fast "this is a valid vote, this isn't.", we just need bureaucrats to judge the arguments, not the number. Unfortunately, that isn't happening.--Sean Black (talk) 22:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, can you just make a blanket generalization like that? I saw the RFA too, and some very respected Wikipedians were concerned about the Wikinews incident, so it isn't an argument you can just discard like that. Bureaucrats have the hardest job on Wikipedia, as any judgment call they make is going to cause some sort of controversy. In this case, they erred on the side of caution after listening to both sides, so I can't blame them for the decision they took, even though I supported. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I was speaking more generally. Idiotic crap is happening on a whole bunch of RFAs, not just Amgine's.--Sean Black (talk) 23:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

A number of people raised serious concerns regarding Amgine. In particular two different RfArs at Wikinews that showed Amgine to have deleted templates out of process and engaged in wheel warring. These are very serious concerns that led to a number of people voting oppose, and for good reason. That Amgine happens to answer mail and performs other tasks requiring trust does not automatically vacate these concerns. RfA did not fail in this case. For the people that voted oppose, it is perhaps some relief that a nominee who has a history of wheel warring and out of process deletions on another wiki project did not gain administrator privileges here. Wheel warring and out of process deletions has been a major factor in a number of very heated debates on Wikipedia in the last six months. Having a new admin with a history of precisely those problems is something that obviously several people were not too keen about. Somebody, at some point, has to be the first person to note problems with an individual who was previously otherwise considered trustable beyond question. Of the wiki projects in this case, Wikipedia happens to have been the first. That doesn't make the RfA process wrong. In fact, rather the opposite. --Durin 23:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Typically you are very observant, so I always pay attention. Just to check though, did you notice that Eloquence ("the jimbo of wikinews") came forward in at least one of those RFArs, and politely requested/suggested/reccomended to drop it?
Amgine is a very old hand at handeling wikis, so I wonder what's up now. We should certainly ask Eloquence to come in and take a look at your statements. Kim Bruning 23:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
My view of his view is "stuff went wrong, trying to punish people over it doesn't help anything, lets just fix it." Just saying that it should be dropped, without the context, could be read to mean "this is trivial" or "nothing went wrong here." Kotepho 13:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Historicaly OTRS is not equal to adminship. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Alphax 2.Geni 23:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me: Why didn't the community from it's grave mistake in that RFA?--Sean Black (talk) 23:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Becuase there are a large number of high quality zero baggage candidates around. Thus those with baggage are going to have a much harder time. People who chose to get involved in wikipolitics before running for adminship are going to have a harder time.Geni 23:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
By that reasoning, some of the people most suited for admin are those least likely to get it! Kim Bruning 23:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Not really. A skilled potential admin will figure out how the community works.Geni 00:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
But someone who has already figured it out and is acting like an admin should, would not then get admin. Kim Bruning 02:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Because "the community" is not necessarily of your (or my) opinion as to what constitutes a mistake. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason for another (possibly even heavier, I mean we're talking shell access here) example. -- grm_wnr Esc 23:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
All that proves is that there's something wrong with "the community". Alphax should be an admin, and those who think otherwise are simply wrong.--Sean Black (talk) 00:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
An anti userbox admin who clearly doesn't think much of policy? We have enough trouble with the current lot.Geni 00:29, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
That statement clearly demonstrates that you have no idea what you're talking about.--Sean Black (talk) 00:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Alphax made anti-userbox and anti policy staments around the time of his RFA. Admins who combien those two qualities have a tendancy to desturbe the peace.Geni 00:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Blah, whatever. This argument is silly and irrelevant to the discussion at hand.--Sean Black (talk) 03:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm curious how many people simply saw that some outside incidents occurred without looking into it for themselves. The culture of Wikinews is somewhat different (I say this having spent more time there recently—it's quieter and smaller than this project, and no one expects me to do anything other than copyedit). It's a small community with little over a dozen core contributors. Amgine's userbox case was its arbitration committee's very first case, and the incident involved may not have even made it past an unspectacular RfC here. Was it a bold move that several people disagreed with? Well, sure. But it nipped the userbox problem in the bud. Would the same outcome have come out some other way? I can't say. Does he go around deleting things on Wikinews willy-nilly? He does not. This is not a pattern. It was a perhaps extreme approach to solving a problem. And as far as I can tell it worked.
The blocking incident also needs to be looked at on its own. It's one incident that came to a head after... well, a long history. It's not incomparable to the sort of blocks and unblocks that happen here without too much notice, where admins disagree. Is it part of a pattern of unreasoned, inflammatory action? It isn't; Amgine is usually ridiculously cool-headed. His actions are not without disagreement, but on the whole he is an extrememly valued and respected contributor there.
More importantly—this is a user with a long history of positive work, and where the only areas in which anyone could be concerned, he has no desire to engage in on this project, and has stated his intent not to involve himself in them. Fewer edits here than your usual candidate, but his familiarity with the project and use for the technical abilities were vouched for by several longstanding and reputable users. (Yes, myself, but I'm not that arrogant; others such as Essjay and Danny who have had a great deal of experience working with him also spoke up for him.) I think it would have been a positive thing for en.wikipedia for Amgine to be an admin, or I would not have made the nomination. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see Amgine promotoed, but at the moment I don't feel like that much of a rogue bureaucrat :(. I think that the community didn't understand the underlying circumstances (*cough*) because they weren't given a chance to (or didn't want to?) BTW, I personally don't have much background, but did Amgine perhaps get caught up in a similar mess as Kelly Martin? Another user I respect that got caught up in this ridiculous userbox deal. — Ilyanep (Talk) 00:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Userboxes are a slightly unique case. In past conflicts it hasn't really mattered very much how many admins are on each "side". This time due to the rather nasty way the battle has been fourt it does.Geni 00:29, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Why Ilyanep, You might want that cough looked at! I think a review of Requests for Adminship could certainly help with a Discussions for Adminship design. Kim Bruning 02:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I definately hope so :) — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Well this is why requests for adminship needs review. I'm pretty darn certain about Amgine, since I've had the chance to observe him for quite a long time, and know for sure that he is a decent admin (note: IS, on other wikis at least ).

So apparently people are failing to take into account factors that show that people can be a decent admin, and instead, are taking into account factors that are not relevant to a person being a decent admin.

Or perhaps they're simply not reading far enough. Gosh knows it happens to me too, I used to review people's entire edit histories and interrogate them at length. (*sigh* yet another side effect of editcountitis... how can you expect a person to review 2000+ edits? )

The reason I'm focussing on the Amgine case is because Amgine is a very helpful and well known person. So many people know (or think they know) all about him. Especially at the foundation level. So we can check and doublecheck everything, and do a thorough review to figure out what happened.

Hypothetically we might even find nothing wrong! But with the RFA result being so different from the predicted outcome, I think that would be too much to hope for. On the other hand, finding things that are wrong will help us fix things :-)

Kim Bruning 02:03, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem is very simple. Admins are not just editors with a few extra features availible any more.Geni 02:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Can you explicate what additional requirements there are for admins? Or link to them? Formally it looks like admins are users with 1500+ edits and 3months+ experience. Kim Bruning 02:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Your list of requirements is pretty much correct. The only thing it misses is "little bagage".
(ps. The thing is, I haven't actually seen a consensus on additional responsibilities or requirements explicitly stated anywhere. Maybe I've missed them. If not, then at the least we'll come up with a new more accurate description of what an admin is and does) Kim Bruning 02:24, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
We should in fact do so. Because I think we're holding people up to an informal unwritten standard which isn't usually a very good thing. It can be flexible, but people should know the range. — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Additional responsibilities? None. Responsibilities suggest on some level accountability. In that case the only responsibility admins have is not to screw up really big time. Additional abilities? The ability to use their admin powers in a conflict and not be instantly jumped on by all the other admins. The ability more and more to use their powers in situations that require subjective judgements. The ability to use the deference people generally have towards admins instead of having to make a show of not doing so.
That's not good :( (in reply to Geni). Sometimes I wonder if I would even pass if I ran again. — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You got 70% in the arbcom elections so I doubt you would have any problems passing.Geni 03:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't really see why this is so different from the predicted outcome -- most of things that are to this user's credit are effectively invisible to most contributors at the English Wikipedia. On the whole I think that nominees should be evaluated mostly on their contribution history here, so I'm not sure that the failure of this RfA is really a sign of systemic problems. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
That would depend on unvoiced assumptions about what an administrator is and what being an administrator entails. Apparently we hold very different definitions.
My definition is simply: "An administrator is anyone who can be trusted not to destroy the wiki".
In fact, I would prefer the responsibility-set to be renamed to something more innocious like "advanced editing licence" or something, which is basically what it is. (In the same way, you are granted a drivers licence after you have shown that you can drive relatively safely.)
The requirement that follows from that is that it needs to be adequately shown (or known) that indeed they will do more good than harm, on balance.
That is my only requirement.
Apparently you have a very different view of adminship! Would you care to elucidate? :-) Kim Bruning 10:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I think we should call admins executioner. No wait, I meant executor. NoSeptember talk 11:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I would have about the same requirement, and the people who voted in opposition appeared to have the same thing in mind as well. Although I might point out one key difference -- I'm more interested in whether people can be trusted not to destroy the encyclopedia. That, after all, is the point. This of course makes me much less interested in someone's experience on other wikis.
In light of that, Amgine simply didn't have a lot of experience to point to in demonstrating that he would do more good than harm. Unfortunately, nobody can examine his work for OTRS, and most of his visible work has been concentrated at Wikinews. The community apparently felt that his experience at Wikinews was not especially convincing, which is perhaps sensible given that Wikinews has a different copyright scheme and different core content policies. Experience there may not be very useful. Moreover his judgment regarding use of admin tools has been brought into question there. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The above debate can be condensed thus: Amgine should have been promoted and wasn't, ergot the process is bad, and all who opposed him are idiots. I opposed him, because he has very few edits here, on the English Wikipedia, and has recently wheel warred on another project. I'm not sure I'm too happy at the implication that I'm an idiot or my opinion is invalid. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Foundation own this website, and if they want to give him the sysop bit they should go right ahead. What actually happened was that the community was asked, "do you want to promote him?" and we said no (or not enough of us said yes). I don't care what goes on behind the scenes, I don't care what's said on IRC, he didn't meet the standards as far as I and 32 other editors were concerned. --kingboyk 11:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

"Blame the process, not the people." I wonder what manual that's from again? :)
Hmmm, in any case, there's something not quite right with the process, if that's all you know about Amgine :) .
Please define which standards and requirements apply (this request has been made several times in this thread, and hasn't really been answered properly, so far).
Finally , while the foundation folks are all very nice people, and I really enjoy cooperating with them, there's a whole mountain of reasons why I'd rather not have them having a too large a say in en.wikipedia. (In fact, most wikis operate practically independantly, why should en.wikipedia need babysitting?) Kim Bruning 19:55, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

More on Amgine and RfA

Certain points have been raised which I would like to respond to. I would also like to expand on my comments above regarding Amgine's nomination.

Mindspillage noted that Amgine used an extreme approach on Wikinews and that it worked. This certainly shows that Amgine was capable of making significant decisions where little precedent existed on that project. However, taking an extreme approach here on Wikipedia would very likely lead to very severe problems. Would Amgine have the ability to understand when to use extreme approaches? Given that Amgine engaged in wheel warring, it's easy to see why some editors would have very reasonable, rational concerns about whether Amgine could exercise that ability accurately here.

While certainly some members of the RfA community does have a habit of glossing over details, it is a completely reasonable conclusion to feel that Amgine is not well suited to being an admin on Wikipedia. Perhaps he is ideally suited to being an admin on smaller projects, but not on larger projects. Being an admin on other wiki projects certainly makes a person more qualified to be an admin on Wikipedia, but it is far from being enough experience and ability to qualify here. Saying you know how to drive a Swatch car does not make you significantly qualified to drive a Formula One car. It is reasonable for users to look at Amgine's contributions here, on Wikipedia, in somewhat of an isolation from contributions elsewhere; our culture here at Wikipedia is decidedly different than that at Wikinews for example. How well does Amgine understand the culture here? Does he understand it well enough to know the grave impacts that wheel warring and out of process deletions have here? It's a reasonable question. I don't feel people should knee-jerk and say "Hey, less than 1500...bzzt...you're outta here!". But, it is entirely reasonable to look at the sum of his contributions here on Wikipedia and question whether he has the experience and exposure to effectively be an administrator here. Being an administrator here is not the same as being an administrator at Wikinews.

Wikipedia is the largest wiki project in the world. It dwarfs almost all other wiki projects by an order of magnitude or more. Amgine's wheel warring and out of process deletions might not be a big deal on other projects, but if such behavior was to happen here, there would be hell to pay. It's simply not acceptable behavior here and there has been very significant problems over the last few months from precisely that behavior. On a smaller wiki project, it can be swept under the rug in favor of moving the project forward. Here at Wikipedia, there's too many people for an approach like that to effectively work. That's an issue of scale, not an issue of people. What works in small communities does not work in large ones and vice versa. "Would Amgine engage in such behavior here?" is really the crucial question. The community's response to his RfA seems to indicate that too many people are concerned about this issue to, at this time, allow Amgine to become an administrator here and definitively answer that question.

In answering question 1 on his RfA, Amgine noted a desire to address bias in articles. This seems rather innocuous on first read. But, that statement points to one of the most contentious problems in Wikipedia; bias in articles. Bias in articles has been a veritable hatchery of all sorts of heated debates, RfCs, and RfArs. Amgine is walking into one of the biggest problem areas while having a history of wheel warring and out of process deletions. This did not bode well for this candidate.

I understand there are a number of people who feel very strongly in favor of Amgine. Some of these people are very experienced here. However, to take this situation with a potentially problematic nominee and expand it into a condemnation of RfA, perhaps even going so far as to shut RfA down, is, to borrow Mindspillage's words from another context, an extreme approach. RfA did it's job here, and did it well. You might disagree with the decision, but the opposition to this candidate was soundly based in rational reasons. Yes, it was a minority opinion, but that minority was strong enough to prevent consensus being in favor of Amgine having adminsitrator privileges here at this time. --Durin 14:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

To condense that entire text above, it was never made clear why Amgine should be an admin on en.wikipeda on time to do any good, either that, or it was ignored.
I know he's trustworthy. Many other people know too.
It's one thing to deal with a deletion or two, it's another thing entirely to be trusted to deal with entire wikis at once, or with jouralists or conferences.
I've had no trouble delegating responsibilities to him myself either.
I'm not sure what's wrong, or why. But you're not getting away with "everything is ok". There's a lot more to know about Amgine, for instance! Why wasn't this information taken into account?
In any case, I am utterly convinced that Amgine is a very very clearcut case of someone who seriously should have had no trouble whatsoever becoming an administrator on en.wikipedia, and yet failed at it.
Please don't argue that perhaps this shouldn't be the case, it's been quite solidly established elsewhere that he is capable of working on wikis. Try to figure out why this RFA did not pass instead. Kim Bruning 20:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I think you've missed Durin's point. He didn't say that "it wasn't made clear" why Amgine should be admin. Rather, he said that valid reasons were brought to light why he should not be admin. If you understand that point, then "why this RfA did not pass" is easy to understand. -lethe talk + 20:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • So everything I said above is bunk, and anyone who voted in opposition to Amgine was way out in left field? Kim, I thoroughly respect you but you've got a long, long road to hoe to support that sort of position on this RfA. I do not, based on the evidence available at this time, feel in any way that Amgine should have clearly and easily passed RfA. In fact, rather the contrary. I think you're making a very presumptive statement by asserting that he should have passed and therefore it's all RfA's fault. --Durin 20:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps because it wasn't made clear enough exactly how qualified Amgine is? Most of the reasons for being qualified are not visible on this wiki, so it would have been good to point them out in more detail. The original nomination statement by Tawker just said "lots of experience" but didn't go into much details, so the only links provided for other people to check were his contributions here (which were not enough by the usual standards). Information about the recent wheel warring incident was found out later, and then opposition based on that. I would say bad timing (too soon after incident) and an insufficient nomination statement (Mindspillage's was a lot better, but also did not mention the incidents at Wikinews and did not go into detail on the "many smaller wikis" on which Amgine works, nor made clear the amount of trust put into Amgine with OTRS - all these foundation or meta issues are unknown to many people here) were part of the reason that this RfA did not pass. Kusma (討論) 20:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
To respond seeing Durin's comment in a different light, do you think that because he took one approach in one community that he will take that same approach in other contexts? You could have reason to worry, but the assumption that is necessarily the case is a fallacious one, and one not supported by actual events; on the contrary, I've usually found his responses to be appropriate to the contexts in which they were made. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • As I noted, the only way to truly answer that question was to give him the tools, and the community was not comfortable with that prospect. I didn't make a case that it would necessarily happen. I made a case that people were concerned about it, and they were. --Durin 20:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

"The problem is simple"

Geni says that "the problem is simple. Admins are not just editors with a few extra responsibilities anymore". However, that's not really true. Admins are the same, but the people determining who gets adminship are fumbling rather badly. On your average RFA, there's tons of nonsense about numbers, and very little about actual qualifications. That's the problem. Now how do we fix it?--Sean Black (talk) 03:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Really what cases are you argueing got the wrong result due to numbers? In any case the numbers thing is largly due the the number of people applying. Edit count and numrical patterns is about the only thing people have time to check.Geni 03:29, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
If you don't have the time to properly evaluate a candidate, then you shouldn't be commenting on that nomination.--Sean Black (talk) 03:36, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Have fun trying to inforce that one. My personal stardard is I only consider voteing if I heard of them before voteing starts.Geni 03:44, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, me too. Voting for somebody only because that person has 100% edit summary usage, 2500 edit out of which 10% are in project namespace, is silly. On the other hand, using the numbers to shoot down candidates is, in my view, acceptable. So, numbers are necessary but not sufficient. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Srikeit removed the picture from his signature on May 5, but still got this oppose vote today. Tintin (talk) 04:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Ardenn has been voteing oppose on everyone.Geni 04:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
It might be unpopular, but the reality is that adminship isn't a small deal anymore. People vote support because they have no reason to oppose, like codified on Raul's Laws; however, once a reason to oppose is found, many editors do not feel comfortable supporting the candidate. Why is that? Because promoting a bad candidate and having to go through a desysoping procedure is a three-ring circus, and often occurs with wheel wars, block wars and other assorted fireworks that often culminate in a spectacular manner. Editors don't want to have to go through all the carnage, so they are now extra cautious in choosing who to promote. Anyone with a minor chink in their armor fails nowadays for this reason. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I've tightened up my requirements since I became an admin, not because I want to prevent other people from being promoted - on the contrary, I can see we still need more recruits and with the growth of the site we're likely to need a constant flow of new admins for some time yet. No, it's simply because I've learnt that adminship is quite a big deal in many ways. I can deny people the right to edit, I can edit a front page that gets thousands of hits a day, I'm asked to intervene in all sorts of disputes and problems. There's nothing I do which can't be undone, of course, but I realise that it's actually quite a tough job and you have to be damn sure you know the policies because there's a truck load of people out there waiting to wave "the rulebook" at you. --kingboyk 11:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC) (edit conflict)
Ah, I recall some psychological paper on faulty risk-averse human behaviour.
As a stratagy, a naive person will often select the option with the lowest absolute risk, rather than the option with the highest average gain. This is an extremely suboptimal stratagy in many cases! (A hypothetical evolutionary basis for this behaviour is beyond the scope of this edit)
Example (names left out to protect the guilty^Winnocent) :
*A person who has done 1800 page moves and spelling corrections gets promoted.
* A creative person who has done over 10000 solid contributions and has occaisionally even actually stood up and fought for what's right... does not get promoted. (1)
Kim Bruning 11:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
(1)In one example, the most cited reason was "this person is too controversial". To forestall objections: in the case examined, on close inspection, all of the candidates actions appeared to be correct. Also, all of the people who were interviewed actually agreed that in fact all actions taken by the candidate were in fact correct (Especially taking into account the level of experience at the time). This was one of the last times (mid-2005) that I'm aware of that such a thorough background check was done for RFA.
As I mentioned in the thread at WP:BN, it was a mistake for Amgine's supporters not to anticipate that RfArs would be brought up. You need to explain these situations ahead of time. By the time the compromise offers were made, most people had already voted and moved on. This RfA did not fail by all that much, handled differently, the outcome may have been different. Of course that is easy to say in retrospect ;-). NoSeptember talk 11:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, that's an intelligent, pragmatic, tactical approach. I'll keep it in mind!
Looking at RFA iself: Can we devise ways to mitigate the need for such tactical methods? Kim Bruning 11:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Tactical methods are a part of any effort to convince a community to support you. Even just answering the questions well is a tactic we use to garner support. Look at how many oppose votes Silsor got based on the perception that his answer to question 1 was flippant. Like anything else, you got to sell an RfA candidate, especially if there is any "baggage". This isn't a small community where everyone knows everyone anymore. RfA ain't broke, you just have to respect it for what it is, and that means making a good argument for your side if you want to win. NoSeptember talk 12:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Which is perhaps why some think something's broken. If the process requires tactics, planning, and political skill, then the result is a big deal. Go up two or three threads and you'll see NoSeptember and I discussing this very point, another aspect of it anyway. Maybe the result IS a big deal and should be. But I'd rather pick good candidates, not politically astute ones. On the other hand, maybe political astuteness is required. Heck, I believe I've actually argued that political astuteness is necessary... Kelly Martin's userbox deletions were perhaps not politically astute (regardless of whether the long term result was good for the project in your view or not...) Bog, who knows. ++Lar: t/c 12:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps politically astute candidates will be astute enough to know how to not get involved in wheel wars, and know how to deal with smart trolls and vandals. If you're not astute, but still qualified, you need to find a good nominator who will help you get through the RfA system. NoSeptember talk 12:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, perhaps that is not the kind of person I would want to see walking around as an admin on wikipedia. Personally, I'm looking for people who are willing and able to do the nescessary work. I'm not looking for people who shirk their responsibilites because it is "not politically astute" Kim Bruning 12:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Who is shirking due to political astuteness? We need all types of admins, and should let each focus on what they do well. Some admins appear to be so willing to do the necessary work that they don't think twice about overruling other admins without discussion. Some of these could use more astuteness ;-). NoSeptember talk 13:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • "There's nothing I do which can't be undone" --Kingboyk

In a way, that's not actually true. The changes we make on the wiki can be reversed, but the changes that happen in people's heads are harder to erase. Adminship is not just a bit, it's a sign that the person has been awarded the trust of the community. So if you make a mistake as an admin, you're making that mistake not just on your own behalf, but on behalf of the whole community. Ben Aveling 12:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, indeed, that reinforces my argument that adminship is something of a big deal :) --kingboyk 12:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. It was supposed to. Ben Aveling 16:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
That's broken. As an admin, you still make decision on behalf of yourself. If you believe people are starting to view it differently in your case, please relinquish your adminship bit before you (unintentionally) become a threat to the community.
The Adminship bit is useful for 3 categories of people:
  • Featured Article Writers. (The people actually writing the encyclopedia! )
  • Janitors. (people who mop up the trash)
  • Coordinators (people who try to keep people from whacking each others heads in, and who gently encourage them to cooperate instead)
None of these categories of people (need to) act on the behalf of any community. We shouldn't expect or require them to do so either. (they do of course do work that is useful to the community. And they should of course be on thier best behaviour. But it would be unfair to demand that they act as a kind of spokespeople) Kim Bruning 12:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Usually things are clear cut, the will of the community is expressed in policy, and only needs to be enacted. But sometimes, it's not clear. Then we need to make our own best guess about the common will, decide if we act, or if we post to a noticeboard, or whatever. It's not about being a spokesperson, altough each of us does that everytime we (for eg) vandal-tag a users page. It applies to everyone any time they do something that expresses their understanding of 'this is how it is here'. Not just admins. But the word of an admin carries more weight, not because they have the bit flipped, but because of how the bit is flipped. The process of being voted on is an expression of the communities faith in that person. So even if 'we know better', even if we know that the community is wrong and the person is fit to serve, the onus should be on us to defend the person and educate the community, not just have some easy way to override them. Regards, Ben Aveling 16:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

What is the solution?

I don't see a major problem with RFA - it gets the easy ones right, and it gets a bit random on the borderline cases. Well, fair enough. Rather than saying "there's something wrong with RFA because...", I'd like to hear someone say "RFA would be better if..." Regards, Ben Aveling 12:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Define easy. Define borderline. In my perspective a *lot* of borderline cases are passing when they shouldn't, and a number of easy cases have failed. As to "RFA would be better if": please check Ilyaneps comments, he could use some help! :-) Kim Bruning 12:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
There's always going to be some false positives and some false negatives. The easiest way to reduce the number of get rid of false positives is to raise the bar, but that increases the number of false negatives. For deletions, we have deletion review. Maybe it's time for Wikipedia:Requests for adminship review? I don't think the above case is as clear cut as some people do, but if a lot of people have voted on dud information, it might be good to have some formal process that can relist an RFA and/or discount/allow contested votes. Regards, Ben Aveling 16:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't a separate RfA 3-6 months later have the same effect? Kimchi.sg 16:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Not exactly for 2 reasons. One, it adds a delay. Two, having a review board say 'this argument is wrong' clears the air - we've all seen things dragged up from the distant past that shouldn't have been. Regards, Ben Aveling 17:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC). PS: I basically do agree with you. I don't see that the current process is broken and I'm far from ready to vote for a review board, even though I've suggested it. I'm just thinking out loud about options we have.
I was basically of roughly the same opinion as you are (though I'll admint I did have some suspicions), right up until the Amgine RFA. Something is definately not right. Kim Bruning 20:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The solution is WP:AGF

I know there is some perplexity over Amgine's RfA failing, as well as some perplexity over vote switching. Speaking as a person who switched from “oppose” to “support,” on the Amgine RfA, I believe the process ‘’’did’’’ work. Consensus was not reached because of concerns over wheel warring. I know the it was my main concern, once I understood the user’s commitment and ability had been demonstrated in a way other than edit count. If my count was right, 17 oppose votes were for wheel warring or the “trouble at Wikinews”. Most of the rest were for low edit count. If those users who opposed on wheel warring had not voted either way, he would have passed with the support he had.

What convinced me to reconsider my oppose was the support of user’s like Antandrus, Tawker, Mindspillage and Titoxd (WP:AGF). I’ve seen them at work and respect them. I re-examined because I felt I must have missed something. I’d never heard of OTRS before this AfR and had to look it up. I suspect many people did not see that Amgine‘s edit count was more than made up for by OTRS, and that the ability and commitment were there. The message from Mindspillage’s nom statement sank in after a while. I switched my vote out of trust for the judgment of the supporters and in hope that the wheel warring was an aberration. I felt that if it did recur, then it could be dealt with. (With thousands of admins and over a million users, the disputes and infighting are minimal, and a process is in place to deal with it.)

NoSeptember was correct about Amgine ‘s supporters not anticipating the problem with the AfAr coming up, and that making a good argument is crucial. (I think Mindspillage did make a good argument, but it did not sink in for the people who opposed for low edit count. Maybe it was too good and should have been shorter. Or are people just looking at the contribs page and voting by rote?)

The scary thing is that the advantage may eventually go to the candidate that is capable of tackling RfA tactically. Wikipedia is, first and foremost, a collection of people-- and politics is the process by which people arbitrate decisions. Assuming AfR‘s are spontaneous affairs-- that there is no formal campaign management pro or con, then we must trust to consensus.

Hopefully, Amgine will reapply after a while and win more support. The wheel warring will be in the past, and he’ll have had a chance to prove his ability. Is it tactical to advise boosting his edit count and to spend his spare time vandal fighting?  :) Dlohcierekim 20:24, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for jumping in a bit late to this discussion. :-) I have to agree with some of the sentiments above and also expressed by Durin. RfA is about determining whether or not the community has come to a consensus on whether or not the candidate is qualified to be an administrator, and in this case, it did not, from the bureaucrat's interpretation. Even though I, one of the supporters, have full and absolute trust in the candidate's ability (and felt that I could not express my feelings any better than Mindspillage had in the co-nomination statement), I respect the fact that other people did not have this trust, and I respect their reasons for opposition, most of which are valid reasons for opposing. Simply because someone is part of the OTRS team does not automatically guarantee promotion to admin, just as being an admin does not guarantee access to OTRS. While it should definitely be a factor by demonstrating the work and effort of this particular individual, many other voters disagreed with the numerous qualifications (obviously I'm a bit biased, of course) and we should respect and value those opinions and sentiments as well. RfA is about consensus and the will and standards of the entire community. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
If RfA is only just about the community, and no longer about the encyclopedia or the wiki, we may indeed have to consider shutting it down or replacing it. Kim Bruning 23:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Just as soon as we find something better, of course.  :-) You make a good point. The encyclopedia is the objective. The community is the means to that end. Can't have one without the other. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course RfA is about the encyclopedia and the wiki; the administrators here serve this great project. However, it's that the accepted method of determining who gains administrator rights is by the community, and that's how we've come to implement it, regardless of what the process is called. It's not about the community, it's about choosing whether a candidate is qualified or not to be an administrator and serving the encyclopedia, and we've come to accept that such a process involves the community. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Speak for yourself. ;-) It might be nice to have a community decide, very nice even. But it would help if they made saner descisions! :-P Kim Bruning 23:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
It's very difficult to come up with a sane solution to an insane problem ;-)
A major issue here is that admins combine the position of a janitor with that of an enforcer (or a keeper of the peace, if you prefer). The obvious distinction between the two is that the janitorial side of things deals primarily with articles, while the other deals directly with contributors; wrongly blocking someone is likely to cause more trouble (as measured in numbers of valuable contributors leaving and such) than wrongly deleting some random page. We need a system that can adequately make use of people who are perfectly capable of doing janitorial work—and who are fully trusted to do so—but who may be considered temperamentally unsuited for the blocking/unblocking side of things (which tends to be the cause of most wheel wars as well). Maybe two separate types of admins would help? (An obvious side effect would be that the "senior" admins could prevent wheel warring among the "junior" ones—who wouldn't have blocking abilities—by blocking them; whether this is desirable is open to debate.) Kirill Lokshin 01:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Our junior admins need to be able to block vandals. They should perhaps not block established contributors (for whatever reason) in the first couple of months of their adminship, but that is a social problem that can't be solved by a technical solution. Kusma (討論) 01:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that the encyclopedia or the wiki are not important at RfA? Or that a different process (say, pure cabal approval) would generate better administrators? The concerns or standards of the community do sometimes mean that people who would be useful to Wikipedia as admins are not granted adminship (for example, AzaToth, where unlike in Amgine's case, there were no concerns that tools might be abused, just edit-counting). Yes, that is bad. However, a community admin process probably makes the community trust it a lot more than cabal approval. Keeping the crowds (i.e. the Wikipedia editors who form the community) happy is important for our goal of building an encyclopedia, and it is hard to weigh this against the importance of any single editor being given the sysop bit or not. Kusma (討論) 23:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, as I said above, the fact that RfA is focused on the encyclopedia is exactly why Amgine's RfA failed. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure sure about that. It's not really "focused on the encyclopedia" so much as it's focused on arbitrary qualities and statistics as opposed to what's actually going to benefit the encyclopedia—I'm sure that people think they're doing what's best for Wikipedia, but oftentimes they really aren't.--Sean Black (talk) 06:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, whether that focus on the encyclopedia is actually well-implemented, and whether it will produce the best possible admins, are other matters entirely. With regard to the first point, obviously we would like the best possible research to be done, though I think the heuristic used by RfA voters is quite efficient. Regarding the second point, it may be worth taking excellent work outside the encyclopedia, e.g. at sister projects or on Foundation-related tasks, into more account. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
There have been times I have craved the ability to block vandals-- particularly at times when I’ve been 4 edits behind a blatant vandal and AIV is backlogged and there’s still no help in sight. I feel safe with blocking powers in such extreme circumstances. I know I lack the ability to do much more. I like Kusma (討論) ‘s suggestion about limited vandal blocking. I’m not sure how it could be implemented without creating another tier, say ”assistant Admin’s” with clearly delineated powers and access. The problem with power is can be addictive.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Megaman Zero 3

This apparently was put up and then withdrawn (by the nominator, I beleive) in a fairly short time, which must be rather frustrating for at least Zero himself if not for others as well. Strikes me that a bit more research by the nominator might have been a good idea, but it's not clear how one would ensure such an outcome other than asking for common sense... ++Lar: t/c 11:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I withdrew it to protect him. I am (or thought) I had checked Zero out and have followed his edits since he started here, so it was a surprise to me that he had been blocked several times in the last month. He didn't mention it to me prior to nomination, and since it was obvious he would fail now a third time, no reason to continue the pursuit. Had I known about the blocks my advice would have been to wait another few months at least. Not sure what the common sense part is about.--MONGO 12:03, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Checking the block log perhaps? Putting the nom on hold to work on it for a few days or so and see how things develop, ask others for their views, etc? No slight intended but maybe one of those things would have helped... the whole thing ran for less than 10 hours from first start to finish. That just seems short, and there is no rush. (I support withdrawing it, that was a kindness in my view, my point is that it would have been better if it had not been placed) ++Lar: t/c 12:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Why put the nom on hold? I should have checked the block log. It's tough to know all the details about even those I watchlist. I'm not perfect and don't pretend to be.--MONGO 12:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Zero signed it (he wasn't nominated without being aware of it), and Zero knew about the recent blocks. So it is Zero's responsibility to have said something about it. NoSeptember talk 12:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I assumed this was all common knowledge. I didn't revert without good, solid reasoning, and the respective talkpages depict my willingness to discuss matters. On this rfa, I saw quite a bit of discordant views. Most were misplaced, I believe, but had the rfa remained, I would not have raised counter-arguments. I think it comes to mind that one with as much contirbutions to the community really doesn't have an alternate agenda, but I don't mind. As I noted on the rfa, I won't run for the tools again. -ZeroTalk 12:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

That's too bad, you would be a good one. NoSeptember talk 12:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Well in any case you've done so much good work, I hope you won't let this discourage you. Cheers, jaco♫plane 12:41, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Possibly a wise choice by now ^^;; Kim Bruning 12:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Kim, that's not very fair...he's young and in six months he may be one of our best Wikipedians...I wouldn't be trying to discourage any future potentials.--MONGO 12:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh Kim is right. It took me awhile to comprehend this, but I finally concluded that I'm a completely inept wikipedian and I don't think I ever will be a suitible member of the community. I'm certainly far for being perfect which I suppose I needed to be to pass the nomination. Oh well, no harm done. -ZeroTalk 13:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Nonsense. You might not be suitable admin material right now, you have some issues to work through, but not being admin material right now is not the same thing as being a "completely inept wikipedian". There are lots of hugely valuable contributors that are not admins. Be a good contributor. Work on your equanamibility. Work on not acting too rashly (except when rashness is needed...) Work on judgement to tell which is which. Oscillating wildly between morose statements of unsuitability and excessive enthusiasm is not the right approach, though. Adminship is not a trophy, it is not a validation of your inner worth. Don't get hung up on it. Hang in there, think positive, learn from events, and keep contributing. If you have to be perfect to pass, the system is broken. But you don't. I am not perfect! (close, just ask me, but not actually perfect) None of us are. ++Lar: t/c 13:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Not to discredit the blocks, but MegamanZero was dealing with one editor that has been repeatedly warned and keeps reverting warnings on his talk page...User:BIG, who is actually just this side of troll. The accusation on the Rfa that was also made was that Zero had taken a newcomers award and put it on his own userpage...what Zero actually did was to simply take the image in the award and add it to his page, which he did simply because he liked the image and no false misrepresentation was intended by Zero. (the full thread is here) But blocks are blocks, hence the withdrawal.--MONGO 14:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
You know, there's nothing wrong with being an editor and not an admin. We have some very well respected Wikipedians who are not admins, nor do they want to be admins. We also have some long-time Wikipedians who have tried and failed to be admins, and after a while, are perfectly content to remain editors. Perhaps you should just stay an editor for now, and maybe even stay an editor for a good long time. Adminship isn't for everybody. --Deathphoenix ʕ 14:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
If look at what I said in context (see discussion above, and see my admin status ;-) ) , you'll understand why I am currently fully in support of Zero not rerequesting admin status :-) I'm sure he's a fine editor, and we shouldn't ruin him/her/other with our stupid broken procedures. Kim Bruning 20:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Pre-Acceptance Votes

Frankly, I have a problem with the pre-acceptance votes. I'm sure we all remember what happened with Can't sleep, clown will eat me's second nomination. And on many occasions an RfA nominee accepts (with no bad intentions) after several support votes are already posted. This kind of thing comprimises the integrity of the RfA process, giving the nominee an unnecessary advantage, especially if there are a fellowship of editors who often look at the nominee's page (and most likely revere the candidate). Surely, these same editors can wait until the nominee accepts the nomination and then vote support. These pre-acceptance votes need to be disallowed so the process is a bit more fair and so the nominee will be discouraged from unnecessarily delaying the acceptance (or rejection) of a nomination. joturner 00:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, pre-acceptance votes should be either be struck out or removed when the page is linked to the main page. The RFA procedure should also be clarified to state that pre-acceptance votes are not allowed. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I definitely (and edit-conflictedly) agree. Early voting, while almost always well-intentioned, always seems to have an "appearance of impropriety" about it. It looks caballistic even when it's not meant to be. It makes the most sense to have everything as public as possible, IMHO.--Deville (Talk) 00:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
What if every candidate could do as Lar did? Kimchi.sg 00:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Every candidate can, if they want to. And let me tell you, it hurt a little tiny bit to see the RfA end with Brenny's support still struck, (he was pretty sick and not on the wiki at all, all week, so what can you do?)... but it was, in my view, the right thing to do (obviously I don't feel that way about multiple noms. I note that a current candidate even has a wannabe nom saying he didn't nom because of the possibility that it might attract opposes. That's just wrong, IMHO. People can oppose for any reason, or no reason at all, but that reason doesn't make my "top 10 most sensible reasons to oppose" list, sorry.) ++Lar: t/c 00:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Which leads to another question: Since it's a good thing, should we make it de rigueur? Maybe even allow other voters to strike out early votes? Kimchi.sg 02:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Better they not be stricken out, but rather, a small note placed underneath the vote, noting it, so the bureaucrat that closes it will be aware. Additionally, leaving a "you voted early, be aware..." note on the voters talk page would be a good faith effort to make. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 02:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't just adding "This vote is not open yet" to the RfA template and having the candidate remove this upon acceptance solve the problem already? Kusma (討論) 02:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Theoretically, but I would not be surprised to see people accidentally supporting or opposing before that was removed. WP:FPC used to have a "discussion period" of two days before people could support or oppose, but it was quite common for people to mistakenly support or oppose early anyway despite a warning tag. I don't think we should prohibit pre-acceptance votes, BUT we should encourage nominees to strike out pre-acceptance votes upon accepting. (Personally, I would oppose any candidate who did not do this already.) —Cuiviénen (talk•contribs), Thursday, 11 May 2006 @ 02:39 UTC

Consensus level/promotion threshold

It seems that RfA is doing a good job at denying adminship to candidates that should not be promoted. Some worthy candidates are not promoted or not promoted at first try, see for example Amgine, AzaToth, Proto, Alex Bakharev, CSCWEM. All of which would have been promoted if we defined consensus to be somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 instead of 4/5. What effect would a lowering of the promotion threshold have? Kusma (討論) 01:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It wouldn't mean much in terms of who would suceed, if nothing else it would just mean that we'd get more people who opposed because at one time in the distant past the person who's going up for admin used the color #FF00FF (a light shade of pink) in their signature. Pegasus1138|talk 01:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
That is indeed an excellent reason to oppose. You'll be up for adminship in late June, right? Kusma (討論) 02:01, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
You're talking to someone who has failed two RfAs. :-) Kimchi.sg 02:10, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Oops, I didn't see the second one, just read the comment of David Gerard in the first one that he'd nominate after 90 days... Kusma (討論) 02:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Both due to my newness which won't be an issue next time around, on the topic of sig color I think that one time change (believe me I won't normally be using a hot pink sig) got the point across though even though I assume Kusma was being sarcastic about opposing due to the sig color but people seriously have opposed for similar reasons, including but not limited to; images in sigs that were removed long before the nom, signature style, userpage layout (non userbox issues), and whether a user uses substed templates when opposing or supporting someone or something during a poll. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 02:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
To return some seriousness to this debate: I don't believe the number of silly opposers would go up by that much, unless somebody enforces that all votes must be accompanied by a "reason". (we'll get a lot of Oppose, not enough Help talk edits type of votes then). And even a slight increase would probably be offset by having one oppose not be worth four, but only 2.5 supports. Kusma (討論) 02:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No matter what the issues are with good candidates not being promoted, I'd rather not lower the bar on consensus amount specifically (and I'm being careful with my wording here cause I know this will come back to bite me). I'm afraid of bad candidates being promoted at 67% support (which is 1 oppose to every 2 supports, way too low). — Ilyanep (Talk) 02:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, that is the threshold on German wikipedia (of course (at least temporary) de-adminning is a lot easier there, too). My point is, though, that almost all candidates we have that fail with 70-80 percent are actually quite good. Kusma (討論) 02:51, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I would be glad to see both an easier method of temp de-adminning and a lower adminship threshhold (in that order). Adminship should be no big deal. Fluorescent sigs, on the other hand... +sj + 06:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
What is the German way ? Tintin (talk) 06:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
The main idea is that there is a page where problems with admins can be noted, and people can then file a request for temporary desysopping (usually one or two weeks) which is then voted on. I am not certain about the exact voting procedure; it seems it used to be mostly done by admins, but is now open to all. The German Wikipedia has no ArbCom, though. Kusma (討論) 15:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
You know, I’ve been trying to think of a way to fix my sig so I can find my comments easier later. Maybe a nice BLINK ;).  :) Dlohcierekim 13:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

What's this about opposing because of a pink sig? :-)--Sean Black (talk) 02:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think people should be desysopped for it. And for Chinese characters in sigs. Kusma (討論) 02:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
OMG ROUGE ADMIN!!! Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 03:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I used to have greek characters even though my name is Russian. That count? — Ilyanep (Talk) 03:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I think anyone with a strange character in their sig should fail an RfA (or be deadminned). --Deathphoenix ʕ 03:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be opposed to lowering the threshold for admins, that in spite of the fact that some votes are plain silly, Taxman's RfB nomination comes to mind. 75% is a good balance, and I feel that a person should get at least 3/4 of the votes to be considered trusted by the community.

Yes, some good people do not pass at the first/second attempt. But if such a person gets bitter/leaves the project because he/she feels he "deserved" to be promoted, that person was probably not commited enough to the project to start with. That said, if you failed, just wait a couple more of months and try again. Sensible enough to me. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


Kusma; Just for the record, of the five people you noted that were worthy to be promoted and were not, three of them went on to being promoted on later RfA nominations. AzaToth's RfA was ~7 weeks ago, and I would imagine that if he wants to try again he's probably waiting for a while, which is probably a good idea. Amgine's RfA just recently failed. There is nothing stopping a nominee from trying again. --Durin 13:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I know all that. I am only trying to say that instead of saying "The whole process is a failure because XY was not made a sysop" we could look at small changes to the system, and a lower promotion threshold (or a wider range for bureaucrat discretion) would be one of the more obvious ways that the system can be tweaked instead of changing it completely. Kusma (討論) 15:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • And I'm noting that lowering the threshold wouldn't make a difference in the five cases you cited; three of them went on to be promoted and the other two it's too early for them to have had another chance. --Durin 15:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • You raise a good point by looking at the results in the long run. RfA does get it wrong on the first try sometimes, but most worthy candidates that fail once do seem to get their sysop bit two or three months later. Which would mean that the only thing RfA is proven to do "wrong" is to delay some good candidates by a couple of months (and weed out some who have low patience and/or a low stress resistance). Consensus seems to be that this is worth it for being extra cautious, which I can agree with, although of course it is never nice to see your favorite candidate fail just barely. Kusma (討論) 20:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

a reason why the threshold is high

It all depends on how you look at the process. We have had earlier threads where the point was made that most of the problem admins who are eventually desysopped only got passed at the low end of the approval range. Perhaps we unconsciously accept the idea that it is better to temporarily deny 10 good candidates in order to avoid one bad candidate getting through. Usually the good candidates that fail can get through the next time as they have grown in experience and demonstrate an ability to not get into improper conflicts. Being rejected could be considered a test, to see if you can handle the rejection and continue to be a solid contributor. NoSeptember talk 13:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. The reason it's probably not a good idea to lower the standard is that it is too hard to remove admins. If the arbcom showed less reticence to do that, it wouldn't be as big a deal to grant adminship. The admin accountability poll showed pretty strong support for the arbcom to remove adminship when necessary if I recall, but some people seem to think that's a big deal. - Taxman Talk 13:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Concerning ArbCom and desysopping, I have had the idea that maybe desysopping could be done more frequently if it was not attached to RfA (requiring people to reapply here). BorgHunter and Ashibaka were temporarily desysopped and restored after a certain amount of time. Almost all involuntary desysoppings that require reapplication fail (the one that succeeded was a fourth attempt, more than a year later). A one, two or three month temporary desysopping would seem to be a reasonable middle ground between not desysopping and desysopping with required reapplication. I have written more about this at User:NoSeptember/Arbcom punishments. If we can make the desysopping process less draconian for ArbCom, they could potentially use it more, and we at RfA could start considering adminship less of a big deal again. NoSeptember talk 14:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I also think desysopping should be less difficult, as currently when you vote for an admin, it's all or nothing, so that if successful, this editor will be an admin for all time (with a few exceptions). So it boils down to damage limitation, weight the harm that might come from a bad admin, against the harm (or loss of benefit) from the lack of a good admin. Unfortunatetly one bad admin can do a lot of damage, so I believe that's why the standards are rising as we just can't risk it, even if that means we have to lose a few good ones as well. Regards, MartinRe 14:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
On the balance of 'benefit to the wiki' it is better to have a few good candidates denied adminship than to have a few bad candidates given adminship. Keep the 'threshold' the same but introduce easier de-sysopping within (say) the first 3 months of adminship. This would maintain the integrity of the process but would encourage people who are unsure (there are a lot of 'not sure whether to trust you'-type votes on RFA) to support rather than oppose, because any bad admins could easily be kicked out removed from adminship, and this would result in more people receiving adminship without gaming the process to benefit people whose supporters believe their rejection was 'obviously wrong' Cynical 12:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Specialist admins

With the massive expansion of Wiki in all directions there is now a need for "specialist" admins. Concentrating on a particular subject area and knowing it in depth is an asset to be encouraged, not something to be criticised. Likewise admins who specialise in e.g. vandalism are greatly needed. Tyrenius 03:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Not particularly relevant, but I get this impression that the way that RfA happens at the moment, is encouraging people to become specialist CDVF operators, because it is a very high-profile way to get name recognition. I think that there is a need to promote core article editing and manual watchlisting some more, because there are a lot of times when people deliberately put in misinformation and it never gets picked up for a few days, or perhaps never, because CDVF only picks up words which are likely nonsense. Also, promoting people with a solid article editing background at RfA is important, because I think that they tend to watch out for more subtle degradation of Wikipedia such as linkspam, POV edits such as hagiography, subtle bias on lower-profile articles.For example [3] at Jessicah Schipper was added and it wasn't until I turned up on Monday to check my watchlist. I'm guessing that I was the only regular monitoring that article?ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 04:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm quite confident that no new levels of admins will be put in place soon. You could still apply for adminship, have it pass and then work on your concerned area. I don't see the point of this post. NSLE (T+C) at 04:20 UTC (2006-05-11)

I'm not suggesting a new level. I'm talking about the criteria which are often used at the moment to assess whether someone is suitable for adminship, when they can be e.g. criticised because they have concentrated on a particular area of subject matter, or because they have spent a lot of time vandal fighting and not much on articles. I am suggesting this should be seen as something positive, not something negative.Tyrenius 04:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. There have been edits I’ve been stumped over RCPatrolling. I could not tell if it was vandal nonsense or perfect article creation. The articles are sometimes opaque to anyone unfamiliar with the subject area. I realized that looking at Sukh’s RfA. He spoke very clearly of the need to be able to protect areas he understands well enough that vandalism is obvious.
As to levels, I think it is something we could think about. A sort of limited, clearly delineated level of admins below the current level, say assistant admins could be useful. See my comments at assistant admins w/ limited power above. Wikipedia has an astonishingly large number of editors but comparatively few admins.
The policies and procedures are very daunting to try to understand. It would be easier to master them one section at a time, gain authority commensurate with ability, and grow into the job a little at a time. Wikipedia has grown beyond the size where even admins know one another. With the exception of Bastique , I voted on people in the latest round that I’d never heard of before.
This may be why we are not promoting people that are probably qualified and ready-- we have insufficient information and are going with best guess based on edit count and (perhaps bizarre) minutiae. I’m thinking of the proposed Amgine compromise. Had the idea been fleshed out and presented ahead of time and with the knowledge that he would be too limited to wheel war, it would have eliminated that objection. If we say from the start that user xyz will be given just enough power to be useful but not enough to damage the project, we could see a needed increase in admins with minimal risk. (Good night, Y'all, past my bed time.) :) Dlohcierekim 04:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
While I think I understand where Tyrenius is coming from, I'm not sure I agree with him. Sure, a generalist who focused on AFD, RC patrol and AFD is likely to have a better chance at having a successful RFA than a person who has created a couple FAs but has only edited a single subject area, it's still important that a prospective admin knows what Wikipedia is about and how it works. If that means waiting 6 months instead of 3, so be it. The average person can get through most tasks without being an admin - the important exception being page moves that require deletion. And for that you need only ask someone who is an admin. If you decide you would like to be an admin, a little RFA involvement and some *FD votes and a few comments at the Village pump or AN(I) can easily compensate for lack of earlier participation. It's a relatively small price to pay. It's better than the alternative, which is giving people admin powers who don't know policy. Guettarda 04:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
We already pretty much operate on a specialist admin model. While there are a few admins around who have done pretty much everything most settle down into one area.Geni 05:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I will be more specific. I suggest the following are suitable credentials for being an admin:

1) Editor has specialised in a certain subject area, and has shown a good quality of edits, the ability in any disputes or talk to be reasonable and courteous, and has reverted vandalism, then left the appropriate test tags on the vandal's talk page. The editor states his main intention with adminship is to deal with vandals and edit-orientated matters, such as page moves involving deletion/redirects (in his "specialist" area). The lack of contribution to Afd, Rfa, AN etc etc should not count against him, because these are not skills he needs.

2) The editor has done very little article editing, but has demonstrated a dedication to a particular area, e.g. vandal fighting. The editor says his intention as an admin is to continue vandal fighting. The lack of article editing should not count against him. If the editor has been dedicated to any other specific area, e.g. AfD, and states that as an admin that is the area he wishes to work in, then lack of participation in other areas should not count against him.

This is what I mean by specialisation being a good thing in the selection of admins.

An admin who wishes to do vandal-fighting in the subject area in which he is proficient does not need to have participated in RfA etc, and it is counter-productive to encourage him to do so, as it uses up the time he would otherwise be spending in creating good quality articles. I understand that someone who does specialise in a certain subject area would wish to have admin powers, so they can further their ability to look after that area. I can't see the point of encouraging them or expecting them to learn about other areas which they will not need to make use of.

Taking part in RfA, AfD, Village Pump and AN does not necessarily mean people understand policy. There are other ways that should be acceptable to demonstrate an editor's understanding of policy, one of them being good edits. That also shows the editor's ability to master policy and put it into practice, an ability they will then be able use for the practice of adminship also.

Tyrenius 06:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the prevailing belief by some that adminship is necessary for vandal patrol. Rollbacks are great, and the ability to block can be useful, but neither are essential and carry a risk of abuse in the hands of an unskilled user. It seems that there's a mountain of RfA's with the primary purpose of "I want to fight vandalism." A noble goal, of course, but adminship is much more than dropping a {{test5}} onto anon's pages.
As far as participation in Wikipedia space not necessarily being an indicator of experience, that's true, but I tend to have more trust in well-rounded admins than one who may be focused solely on one task. Wikipedia is more than blocks. And deletions. And RfC's. And so on. Tijuana Brass¡Épa!-E@ 06:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaphs but we need admins who are prepared to go through the various deletion quews day in day out.Geni 06:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think specialist admins are a good idea. I think administrators should know how to do everything admin related, such as closing XfDs, reverting vandalism, blocking etc, or should at least know where to look it up. While I clearly specialise in fighting vandalism myself, I have responded to 3RR requests, requests for page protection, closed AfDs etc. If admins want to go into a specialist area, then fine... --Lord Deskana Dark Lord of the Sith 07:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
How much do you know about copyright?Geni 08:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd say I know enough. Either way, I know where to look it up! WP:COPY. --Lord Deskana Dark Lord of the Sith 08:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Bad image list?Geni 10:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Is this your curiosity or are you trying to get me to trip up? --Lord Deskana Dark Lord of the Sith 14:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning, since I used it myself (I stated repeatedly that I'm not primarily interested in vandal fighting). But the flip side of it is that there's only the one switch. The community has to flip that one switch and then hope the admin doesn't go back on what they said in their nom about what they want to do. And (read the current DRVU kerfluffle for an example of, at least in my view, an admin going back on campaign promises) that's not an easy thing to ensure. Absent subdividing the switch into many pieces (which I oppose for reasons well documented by others elsewhere, it's instruction creep), and absent a way to take adminship away more easily when transgressed, the community has to pass judgement on the total package, as Lord Deskana and others say. My area of interest is not vandal fighting but it was fair to test me on aspects of it, and so on. Full marks for the idea though. ++Lar: t/c 10:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel that the arguments against my point actually support it. To wit, what is needed are sensible, level-headed individuals, who don't necessarily know how to do everything, but know how to find out how to do something if necessary, and have the discrimination and self-awareness not to overstep the mark, but to use their powers judiciously. All of these qualities are needed for e.g. good article editing, as an editor will have had to acquaint themselves with the various policies such as NOR, V, NPOV etc, not to mention Footnotes. Anyone who can research, understand and put into practice all of this (and avoid 3RR, NPA etc as well—all dangers of editing) has demonstrated the ability and maturity necessary for adminship.

I am not suggesting that admins are then expected to do only what they have stated in the RfA, but that this is their initial interest, which may well get expanded as they learn more. I think it is a mistake to see a simple switch from ordinary editor to admin. I realise that this gives the powers of an admin at a simple switch, but obviously adminship is a learning curve, just as editing is, and any admin who doesn't see themselves initially as a "newbie" admin who needs to proceed with caution step by step, does not possess the right attitude to be an admin.

The right qualities can be gauged just as accurately, if not more so, by an in-depth examination of article edit contributions and conduct as they can by edit counts and wiki namespace contributions etc. I have severe reservations about expecting potential admins to take part in a variety of activities, e.g. AfD, in order to prove they are "well rounded", as it can easily encourage "clocking up" the edit counts in the right spaces, but this does not necessarily equate with quality. It is quite obvious that some of these contributions are in fact being made fairly mindlessly in a "follow my leader" way, simply in order to tick the right boxes, although the editor may not have even bothered to check out the article. It is much easier to get away with one-liners, when someone else has already set the precedent, than it is with more substantial article edits.

The big flaw in the system is that there isn't the ease of dealing with admin transgressions that exists with ordinary editors' transgressions. That is something that needs attending to.

Tyrenius 03:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Re. the comment I'm concerned about the prevailing belief by some that adminship is necessary for vandal patrol. Rollbacks are great, and the ability to block can be useful, but neither are essential and carry a risk of abuse in the hands of an unskilled user. They are not essential, but for an editor who has a conscientious involvement with a particular subject area, they are the natural next step, when wishing to contribute to Wiki. Manual reverts become frustrating when they have to be done day after day to the same article (see Vincent van Gogh for example. Furthermore, for an editor who is spending time on good article contributions, the process of contacting admins and waiting for a response etc, eats up valuable time and energy, which could be used better if the editor was able to police the articles in person.

The second point is about the "unskilled user" and I certainly don't suggest giving powers to such a person. My point is that a proficient editor has already demonstrated that they are capable of skilled application of Wiki requirements. If abuse has not occurred in the editing process, there is no reason to suppose the person is going to change character and suddenly start becoming abusive in an admin role. Of course, there are no guarantees and people can change, but this is a general possibility, and applies just as much to the current criteria for admin suitability. Tyrenius 18:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That idea can also apply to Requests for rollback privileges, which is simlar to what you have suggested. The only question I have about this is that admins already specialize in particular areas, but it is useful (if not preferable) to have them at least be somewhat familiar with other areas of policy outside their area, in case they decide to go do something else. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 19:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Admins should be people who have demonstrated themselves as capable individuals, and who therefore, if they decide to expand their area of operations (which they will most likely do), are people who will do this sensibly and have the requisite mental and psychological resources. Mere familiarity through voting in Afd, RfA or whatever is not a demonstration of these qualities, and is a superficial qualification. Anybody carrying out a new job has to learn about it. What is needed are admins who have demonstrated they are capable of learning and can recognise their abilities and limitations at any stage of this learning process.Tyrenius 23:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

RfA Floor

Hi All - may I have your views on a possible floor for requests for adminship, in order to prevent the onerous processing of inherently futile RfAs? Virtually every week there are some good faith and poor faith nominations of inexperienced Wikipedians, many a times by naive nominators. For example:

Floor Proposal

  1. Users with fewer than 1,500 edits may not be permitted to create or receive a nomination.
  2. Users with under two month's presence on Wikipedia may not be permitted to create or receive a nomination.

These qualifications are based on the basic consensus that has emerged amongst Wikipedians on what qualifications and experience an admin should possess. Looking forward to your views. Rama's Arrow 06:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Do we need more rule creep? The community seems to work these problems out themselves pretty quickly without legislation. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 06:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Well I don't see anyway the community can solve this problem without a simple, 2-point rule like this. It is becoz these guys are not part of the community that they don't realize the need for better work and experience. If these guys would hang out on the RFA page a bit more, or converse and work with experienced users, they'd realize this. Rama's Arrow 06:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
In general it would work, but it would on rare occasions eliminate excellent users such as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Joke137, who had only 1500 edits would be eliminated because most of his edits were quite large paragraphs at once, on a difficult technical subject such as Quantum field theory, where every exact word usage makes a technical difference. Speaking for myself, the Vertex model article which I created in two edits, actually took me 6 hours to do, including the images, whereas in that time I could glue about 1500 templates such as {{City of Burnside suburbs}} onto the relevant page - it possiblt to do 3 edits a minute using cut and paste. So it might encourage people to slice their edits thin, whereas if they had only 1000 edits and 50 solid article creations, this may be the same as 6000 AfD "votes".ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 06:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
You are correct in pointing out that editcounts don't reveal the true worth of a user and his/her work. In response to this, I have reduced the numerical req by 500 edits. But I also feel that this should be an ideal floor which good potential candidates must wait to cross. Its not that hard to cross the line for good users, even as futile RfAs are prevented. Rama's Arrow 06:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I picked and stressed these two venues of qualifications becoz this is the best option we have in making a general rule on RfAs. If one suggests that futile RfAs may belong to people beyond this floor, I would reply that in that case the community is obligated to give the candidate a properly analyzed opinion. But this is the least good users can do in terms of a general requirement. Rama's Arrow 06:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I strongly object to this. Amgine only has 1300 edits, and while his RfA failed, it was probably one of the worst mistakes in RfA history. --Rory096 07:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Several current members of the arbcom, as well as several of those approved for arbcom duty would likely not have become admins under such a rule. Just for context. :-) (Oh, and it's closely related to one of our foundation issues.) Kim Bruning 07:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect how much would history have changed if these persons had waited for 200-300 more edits? The problem are naive, young users. Wikipedia won't lose the good ones by asking them to wait for 200-300 more edits, or a few weeks more. I'm talking of now, and the kind of futile RfAs that have been launched. I don't know why Amgine's RfA failed, but its certainly not relevant here and its purely a matter of opinion if it was good or bad. Rama's Arrow 07:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Does it really matter? We shouldn't be arbitrarily overriding consensus just to get rid of a few joke noms that are gone in a few hours anyway. --Rory096 07:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, because there were a lot less edits before someone applied for admin, it was actually still practical to read *all* (yes ALL) the edits a candidate had ever made, and see how they were doing. Past 2000 or 3000 or whatever the number-du-jour is, that approach becomes rather impractical. (1500 would be the maximum limit, not the minimum, and it's a lot of hard work).
People just aren't bothering to check anymore. Knowing this, would it surprise you to know that on average, the quality of current admins is probably lower than the quality of admins who were given the admin bit in the past?
I've heard actual administrators asking things like :
  • "what are the foundation issues?" (5 basic practically none-negotiable rules, which form our "constitution" of sorts) or
  • "who is James Forrester?" (A founder of the arbitration committee, expert on policy)
Old hands simply don't make those errors! Goodness forbid if one of the current crop of admins ever makes it to the arbitration committee by accident.
Kim Bruning 09:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
So raising the floor doesn't actually do what you'd expect it to do. This can have funny consequences, from a system perspective.
It's a bit like a problem I had with my car recently. It turned out that there was a faulty fuel sensor someplace. Normally, when you press down on the gas, a car will go faster. But due to the sensor bug, my engine was actually getting too rich a mixture. So pressing down on the gas past a certain point would flood the engine, and the car would actually slow down! Driving long ago having become instinctive, my foot would automatically push the gas pedal down further, causing the car to slow even more. Before I knew what was wrong, I would end up flooring the gas... and the car would roll to a halt.
Kim Bruning 08:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I fail to see how lack of knowledge of who Jdforrester is makes someone a bad admin or would throw arbcom into shabbles. Even if they don't know it by m:Foundation issues they probably know it as Wikipedia:Five Pillars (which is almost the same). Would an actual judge or legislator not make a good arbcom member because they do not know who Jdforrester is? One can easily read about the past and any precedents as needed so lack of knowledge does not mean they are unsuited for the task. Arbcom can certainly benefit from people with different levels of experience and history with the project. The important parts are thoughtfulness, good judgment, communication, etc--not knowing Who's Who of Wikipedia. Kotepho 17:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
These joke noms are only eliminated when 3-4 users make the effort to point it out the obvious. And let me add, that by making such a rule, you'll be making aspiring and young users to study the system, Wikipedia policies and work with the community instead of getting discouraged or developing wrong ideas. Cheers, Rama's Arrow 08:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I like the proposal, but could it be formulated softer, like RfAs of all appicants with fewer than 1500 edits should be approved by a bureacrat? This way we could still discuss reasonable appications from users with low editcounts like AzaTooth and filter out the newbees? abakharev 08:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

This is probably the second time this week this idea has been proposed on this talk page. Maybe we need a floor proposal for floor proposals. -lethe talk + 08:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_54#Low-edit-count_welcoming_template -lethe talk + 08:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not convinced the rule is necessary: will it really save all that much work? It might be useful, however, to point out to potential candidates that different wikipedians have differingminimums and that many of the criteria used are qualititative rather than quantitative. Bucketsofg✐ 11:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly opposed to these requirements. --Durin 12:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Strongly opposed also. More rulecreep, with no benefits. Let anybody who feels like candidating for admin do so. Being here for that many months and having that many edits is not either necessary nor sufficient condition for somebody to submit his/her candidacy. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Look at the recognized sig. article edits, that percent is 2-4 times most people's...Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 15:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
--Viewing contribution data for user Joke137 (sysop) (over the 2521 edit(s) shown on this page)-- (FAQ)
Time range: 434 approximate day(s) of edits on this page
Most recent edit on: 15hr (UTC) -- 12, May, 2006
Oldest edit on: 22hr (UTC) -- 4, February, 2005
Overall edit summary use: Major edits: 63.52% Minor edits: 93.11%
Article edit summary use: Major article edits: 80.25% Minor article edits: 93.84%
Average edits per day (current): 5.81
Recognized significant article edits (non-minor/reverts): 14.36%
Unique pages edited: 737 | Average edits per page: 3.42 | Edits on top: 5.43%
Breakdown of edits:
All significant edits (non-minor/reverts): 35.26%
Minor edits (non reverts): 32.88%
Marked reverts: 7.97%
Unmarked edits: 23.88%
Edits by Wikipedia namespace:
Article: 53.63% (1352) | Article talk: 23.76% (599)
User: 0.67% (17) | User talk: 7.14% (180)
Wikipedia: 10.35% (261) | Wikipedia talk: 2.78% (70)
Image: 0.28% (7)
Template: 0.83% (21)
Category: 0.08% (2)
Portal: 0% (0)
Help: 0% (0)
MediaWiki: 0% (0)
Other talk pages: 0.48% (12)
That number tends to help eliminate some of the usual editcountitis problems...additionally, people should be aware that edit count is not everything.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 17:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposals above don't go far enough. Consider Discussions for Adminship

Wikipedia:Discussions for adminship is a proposed improvement to Requests for adminship, started by Ilyanep (one of our Bureaucrats - the people managing the Requests for Adminship process), which might help solve some of the problems we've seen recently. Perhaps people might have other such ideas as well. Kim Bruning 07:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

In the discussion above some of the dissatisfaction appears to stem from the fact that a person was approved for OTRS but not approved for Adminship. Probably this is due to differences in how the two approvals proceed. I haven't any idea of how OTRS members are approved. Perhaps either we should adopt some of their procedures here, or vice versa. Can you explain how OTRS membership is handled? If we all know what the problem is then we'll have a better handle on the solution. -Will Beback 09:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
See: [4] Kim Bruning 10:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I missed that reply It sounds like there is no real set procedure for ORTS nominations. Sort of a "it feels right" kind of thing. There's no reason to think that what seems right to a handful of longtime users will be equally acceptable to a much larger community. I don't see a problem in that, and from what I gather in the previous conversation, neither do many other folks. Perhaps it'd be helpful to restate the problems that we all acknowledge so that we all know what outcome we're working towards. That said, I think there is a lot of benefit to the Wikipedia:Discussions for adminship proposal. -Will Beback 10:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
*Nod* OTRS people are hand picked. The discussions for adminship page probably covers most of your other questions. :-) Kim Bruning 10:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, so what's the problem? -Will Beback 10:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Starting the ball rolling...
1. Users who do not have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding either self-nominating or being nominated.
2. Users who have a good chance but who have some impediments needing a chance to work through their issues.
3. ?
Let's continue to define the problem. -Will Beback 10:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Summary of large debate we've had so far. (see above under RFA needs review) : "We are getting false positives and false negatives. (And some fairly odd ones just recently) How can we do better on that?" Kim Bruning 11:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't see a lot of false positives or false negatives, RfA seems to get it right incredibly often. Temporary rejections (candidates that fail now but will pass after a bit more experience) are not false results, just legitimate postponements IMO. NoSeptember talk 14:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • The debate you summarize as being "large" is a pittance compared to the debate that has raged about WP:DFA. I continue my strong objections to the DFA process as it stands now. My words on the subject can be found on its talk page and in its talk page archives. --Durin 12:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
    Heya Durin. You wouldn't happen to have a proposal of your own, would you? :-) Kim Bruning 14:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I've made specific recommendations at the DFA process. As to a recommendation of my own, no. Any recommendation I did do would be working with a large number of other people anyway. Right now, given the projects I am working on I don't have the time. Furthermore, I don't personally see a significant reason to overhaul RfA, so I lack the motivation to lead such an effort. --Durin 14:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
RFA seems an efficient enough process to me. The "bad" candidates are usually detected, and the good ones usually get elected. --Knucmo2 16:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I am sure that by "bad" Knucmo2 meant something more like "not currently ready to be administrators." If this is the case, then I concur with the above sentiment. Kukini 20:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I must also echo Durin's words at these times. I've given my opinion many times (and can be found in the talk pages and archives); I don't believe that "discussions for adminship" is the right step at this time. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Why, what short memories some people have. I recently posted on this page stating my strong surprise at a particular candidate failing to be promoted. If you're aware of it or not, I considered both Silsor and Amgine together to be a kind of acid test of RFA at this time. One passed and one didn't.

I'm well aware of the weaknesses of acid tests. But if the acid test fails, or only passes partially, it *is* time to check and recheck ones beliefs.

When someone goes "Look! There's smoke coming out of that house!" , the correct action would be to go look at the house, to be sure it's not on fire.

It's not the best of ideas to say "Oh, it was fine when I looked last year, so it's probably ok." and refuse to look.

Kim Bruning 20:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC) (Of course the smoke could be from some innocent cause, but you'll never know unless you do look.)

Yes, and my response then to your surprise regarding this particular candidate's RfA stands: a significant portion of people did not feel that the candidate was qualified to become an administrator. While I disagreed (and still disagree) with that decision and still feel that Amgine is qualified, I respect their opinion and their reasons for opposition. The processes we have created - regardless of whether it is called "requests" or "discussions" - entrust the community with the ultimate choice of whether a candidate is qualified or not to become an administrator and serve the encyclopedia; in this one particular case, the community did not. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 20:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
So you would put it that the community itself fails this particular acid test? Kim Bruning 11:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
No; I respect and acknowledge the fact that even though I and many others expressed support for the qualifications of the candidate, that others expressed valid and legitimate opposition to the candidate's qualifications. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 14:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

To Durin: The DfA process is currently being entirely rewritten on the talk page. So it really doesn't quite stand exactly. — Ilyanep (Talk) 20:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I've just reviewed it, and there aren't any significant changes. One of my primary objections remains; there's still not attempt at ascertaining what's wrong with RfA. --Durin 23:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
That's because Stevage purged it from WP:DFA. (It wasn't much, but it was a start. Unfortunately some people don't appreciate the fact that not everyone is crazy about DFA.) Johnleemk | Talk 02:56, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
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