Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 77

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Moral Supports

I've seen many people put "moral support", on an editor's RFA if it's not doing well, to make them feel better. People like me may think it shouldn't be counted, since the user isn't supporting the editor becoming an admin, but supporting the editor in his boldness and that it will be okay, and not overreact and leave or something. Therefore, though it's minor, moral supports shouldn't be included in the support/oppose/neutral count. Also, though I don't know if people will agree with this, but so the closing b'crat can see the real supports more clearly (if there are a lot), maybe the moral ones should get their own subsection. --TeckWizTalkContribs@ 23:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

That would defeat the point of a moral support. And have you ever seen a case where someone with moral supports had a chance of passing? -Amarkov blahedits 23:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Your thoughts are understandable, but I can only think of one time when the moral supports even started making a difference, and even then it was still a clear failure (can't remember the name of the RfA). There really is no need to introduce additional work since if an RfA gets moral support votes, then it's doomed to failure by the very fact that it's getting the moral support votes in the first place. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 23:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
(Edit conflict) I think they should be counted. What is the point otherwise? They should definitely not be put in their own section, as they have never affected the outcome of an RFA, we don't need more than three default sections, and I think it would more of a bad sign (and disheartening to the candidate) to see a "Moral Support" section pop up in the middle of an RFA than to see oppose votes. -- Renesis (talk) 23:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
(3xEdit Conflict) Moral supports are usually only present in blizzard RfA's, so this would just be total instruction creep.
Wow, I have the shortest comment and I still get conflicted... --tjstrf talk 23:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

An RfA needs a minimum of 70 to 75% support to pass. No one casts a "moral support" if the RfA is even close to having a majority. Therefore while TechWiz's point is debatable in theory I don't think it has any practical repercussions one way or the other. And I fear that not counting "moral support" votes would lend to endless debate about whether hesitant support votes, weak support votes, votes with qualifications, etc., should be counted. Newyorkbrad 23:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I should also add that when I have voted "Moral support" it was because I wanted my vote to count, because although I knew the candidate would not pass and that the oppose votes had valid concern, I wanted to point out that there were good things to be said about the candidate's contributions or general suitability for adminship. -- Renesis (talk) 23:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think moral supports should exist at all - they are simply insulting to the candidate. They say, "You're never going to pass, but I'm going to vote support anyway because I think you're stupid enough to feel better because of it." --Tango 14:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I give out moral supports occasionally. I don't think they are insulting - it's more in reaction to the oft-unnecessary piling on of oppose votes, which are insulting. If someone's RFA is 0-13, do you really need to oppose? A moral support, if nothing else, is an opportunity to mention to the candidate - often they are fairly new - that they need more experience and so on. Proto::► 16:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course you don't really need to oppose, but not needing to oppose is not the same thing as needing to support... The way to avoid a pile on is simply not to vote on that RfA. If you want to give some advice that hasn't already been given (which is unlikely), then there is the comments section. --Tango 13:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
And, of course, if a candidate is insulted or demoralized by his receiving pile-on opposes, he might surely withdraw his RfA. In the absence of such withdrawal, it is, I think, fair to say that the candidate is interested in receiving more feedback from the community, such that, as Tango says, the only users who ought not perhaps to continue opposing are those who oppose for reasons stated plainly by others; even those users, though, would do well to oppose in order that (a) the candidate might understand that objections registered by some are shared by the community writ large and relate to certain standards that might be understood as common (those, for example, set out in the GRFA) and (b) he might readily appreciate that there may exist some concerns that the community think to be forever unassuageable. As to the normative question, I can't imagine, FWIW, that any individual who should be insulted or even particularly irked by his being overwhelmingly opposed for adminship should be possessed of the good judgment and even temperament we should hope to find in an administrator (or, for that matter, in any editor), but I suppose that that's an issue we need not to reach. Joe 07:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
A mention of advice can be given succinctly in a straight-faced oppose vote, while toning down the language used to make such votes. If someone is insulted by a slurry of genuine oppose votes, then obviously that person shouldn't be running for RfA at all. I have to agree with Tango; a moral support vote is quite a condescending measure, especially if there are multiple such votes, as a candidate may see this kind of support as half-hearted. Of course, we don't need a measure saying no moral support votes, or it would be needless instruction creep. --210physicq (c) 18:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, deja vu. We had this discussion last year. My opinion has not changed: Moral support exists because people don't know when to stop casting oppose "votes". Let's go acronym: WP:BITE, WP:DICK, WP:COMMON, etc. -- ReyBrujo 18:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Or perhaps WP:NO BIG DEAL? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 18:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

For some reason I'm going to compare this to FAC, I guess because both are places where occasionally people just can't be bothered to look around first, and nominate an article/a user that has no chance of succeeding. At FAC, what basically always happens is the hopeless case gets 3-5 oppose votes that spell out the general things wrong with the article (ongoing edit wars, pending cleanup/npov/referencing tags, lack of references, image license problems, etc) and then people stop opposing after a day or two and Raul removes it from the FAC page after the standard 5 days. I rarely see "per X" opposes here, people just oppose to point out yet another problem with the article. No one, to my knowledge, has ever given moral support to a hopeless FAC.

On RfA, basically people will not stop opposing an RfA that's hopeless. I think there are some people who'd jump in to cast the next "per X" oppose even if it were 0/70/0. This is why people cast moral support votes... and honestly I can't blame them for it. I just can't get why people oppose a hopeless RfA well after the standard 5-10 votes to get the message across have been cast. So I dunno, that's why people do moral support votes. Really they shouldn't happen, but people shouldn't just keep opposing hopeless RfAs just for the hell of it either. --W.marsh 14:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If 'pile-on' votes to oppose are to be discouraged, shouldn't 'pile-on' votes to support be discouraged as well? Many RfAs are obviously going to pass before the vote count reaches 30, so why do we need vote counts of 100/0/0? RfAs are different from AfDs or FAC 'votes'. In RfAs we are selecting people to fill the role of admin/sysop. As vote count does seem to be a prime criterion for being made an admin (unlike in AfDs, where the closing admin should weigh the arguments presented rather than simply counting votes), I think it would be a mistake to discourage either support or oppose votes. -- Donald Albury 14:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • The main difference is that a tack-on support is nice but pointless, a tack-on oppose is mean but pointless. That's just how it seems to me. I know people who cast tack-on opposes probably aren't trying to be mean, but it comes off that way, since the oppose really isn't accomplishing anything at all. --W.marsh 14:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Yep, and supports contribute to a positive sense of community whereas pile on opposes do not. I'm not saying to avoid !voting in even remotely close cases, but snowball cases, the pile on opposes just don't help. If we had less of those, we'd have less moral supports, which I do agree are condescending, even if meant with good intentions. - Taxman Talk 16:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Are Edit Counts that important?

In my opinion, edit counts do not necessarily reflect the value and faithfulness one is toward Wikipedia. I questioned that why is everyone opposing someone from becoming an administrator if their edit count is only 1500? You can create 1500 articles and only counts as 1500 edit counts. Unlike some others, who is "faking" edit counts, they created 1500 articles with an edit count as high as 15000. Why? What is the difference between the two? The only one I could think of is that one does not have an adminship, but the one with 15000 edit count does. This is VERY unfair, I am sorry to say. --Smcafirst or Nick • Sign • Chit-Chat • I give at 00:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It's edit count plus a lot of other factors, such as where you make your edits (i.e. the different namespaces), how long you've been around, how active you are etc. --Majorly (Talk) 00:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes (to Majorly). If someone 20000 edits, but little participation in the Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk, main, and/or talk namespaces, I and likely many other users would oppose. –Llama mansign here 00:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit numbers alone will not earn you adminship, but they make a good indicator of who isn't ready yet. If you have a ton of edits and aren't blocked, that in itself goes a long way towards showing that you are able to get along with people. After about 3,000 edits I don't think you'll catch any real opposition for low edit count, unless you've totally neglected one of the major namespaces (no user talk edits or something). --tjstrf talk 00:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

What Tjstrf said. 5000 edits doesn't guarantee a user is ready for adminship, but 500 edits is sure a good sign that one is not ready. Likewise, a year on the project isn't going to be a surefire pass, but 1.5 months is a good sign that it is too early. If you want to eliminate consideration of edit counts and time (basically what makes up your entire record of existence here) then there is not much else to go off of. -- Renesis (talk) 00:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Clearly this user is not ready for adminship, as evidenced by the interrogative tone with which this message was posted. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 00:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If we are anywhere suggesting that we are going to be "fair" in determining who we trust to give admin tools to, we need to edit that out. Jkelly 00:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Words cannot quite convey how much I adore the previous sentence. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 00:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Deskana, do not make revenge attacks on people just because they support different policies than you do.
As for edit count: A person may make a single edit that contributes 1000 words of text, or 100 edits that each contribute 10 words of text. Edit war edits and vandalism also appear in the number of article space edits. Not all edits are of equal value to an encyclopedia. Edit count also does not indicate how much wikipedia policy a person has read. While edit count may be weakly correlated to the total value of one's contributions, the value should be gauged with a much more accurate method. We do not have the god-like power to deduce the value of a user's contributions based upon edit count and join date alone, but we must investigate the contributions themselves to deduce their value.
HalfOfElement29 05:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
{edit conflict} Even if you limited yourself entirely to the submission of high end B and GA class new articles and rewrites, and managed to build up a set of 10+ recognized articles in less than a thousand edits, it wouldn't necessarily mean you were ready for adminship.
Sysop is not the same as senior editor, and the requisite skills have far more to do with communication than they do writing ability. Ideally they both write excellent pieces and work well with others, but the priority skill set for adminship is a cool head, understanding of the principles behind rules, and ability to work with frustrating people. If I can write the perfect article, but cannot keep my sarcasm in check when working with the newbie who doesn't get it, I will not be a good admin. --tjstrf talk 05:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I generally agree that dealing with controversy and conflict well is the most important trait of an admin. In said controversies and conflicts, admins should demonstrate the traits of honesty, objectivity, fairness, efficiency, and constructiveness. HalfOfElement29 06:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Revenge attacks? What on earth are you talking about? I seriously adored what Jkelly said. It's an accurate description of RfA. Where is the revenge attack you speak of? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 14:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Correction: it should be an accurate description of RfA. In reality, people sometimes do garner "we have to be fair" supports. -Amarkov blahedits 00:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Deskana, acting oblivious and diverting attention to different statements does not help you. HalfOfElement29 05:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not so much the edit counts themselves, more where the edits are. 500 edits sounds like an auto-oppose, and it probably would be. 300 wikispace edits seems to be the minimum, but how would one balance the other 200? Even 1000 in this case would be difficult. I don't think there's a problem though (Look at Crystallina's RfA and you'll see that edits aren't an auto-accept). --Wizardman 00:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Durin made a quite detailed analysis about the promotion rate of RfAs with respect to edit count. Beyond a certain threshold, (I believe somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 edits) editcount, as well as time since account creation, do not matter as much. That said, what I would like to see is a breakdown of that analysis into successful nominations, full-term failures, withdrawals, and bureaucrat early-closures. Durin, are you still reading this page? Titoxd(?!?) 02:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Joke RFA's

Should we salt these, or just delete them straight-out?? --SunStar Nettalk 13:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't delete them, keep the history as a record of what the "joker" did. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 13:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I meant for joke RFA's that get deleted, and constantly re-created. However, what you said above is true. --SunStar Nettalk 13:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know that they inherently have any more historical value than random vandalism new articles in the main namespace. Some though, like the Boothy one, I guess are interesting to keep around. --W.marsh 14:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe put them in WP:BJAODN?? --SunStar Nettalk 01:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably some form of WP:DENY (although replace "vandals" with these joke candidates) comes into play, we shouldn't be glorifying it. – Chacor 01:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucrats

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship#About RfB states:

At minimum, study what is expected of a bureaucrat by reading discussions at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship including the archives, before seeking this position.

Read the archives? All seventy-five of them? Has anyone ever actually done that, or is this a cunning way of reducing the number of RfBs? – Gurch 20:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not it was intended to be cunning, it's certainly a good way of reducing the number of RfB's (in practice; if any b'cat ever read all of the archives, they should be nominated for Jimbo Wales' position :). Yuser31415 20:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I saw that the other day. I guess the idea is that if you're ready to be a bcrat then you don't need guidance, you should already know where to look. Perhaps we should amend the main RfA page as such. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 20:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Good point. How about this for a rewording?:
In order to demonstrate their understanding of Wikipedia, candidates should read every discussion ever, including the archives (Special:Prefixindex/Talk: and Category:Talk archives are good starting points), obtain a shrubbery, and chop down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring before seeking this position.
– Gurch 20:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I see no problem with that, as Bcrats candidates should be willing to do so. — Arjun 20:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
You forgot the bit about travelling round the world in a frying pan? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
And making a llama moo. :) –Llama mansign here 22:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
No, all that's easier than passing an RfB. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Project page archives, interesting? You're either insane or should be nominated for bureaucrat immediately, I'm not sure which – Gurch 22:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Wait, you don't find project page archives interesting? Looking at how processes have developed is actually one of the things I like doing on Wikipedia. --tjstrf talk 23:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm starting right now at #1. I'll probably get bored and put up my RfB before I'm finished, but I've participated in RfA talk for a while now, that should be enough of a requirement. :-) Grandmasterka 22:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Not if I get there first. You can skip #6 through #13, they're boring :D – Gurch 23:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Skipping the boring ones!? I can hear the !votes now... Oppose, demonstrates insufficient knowledge of WT:RfA/Archive8. --tjstrf talk 23:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Now I'll know to oppose any RfB candidate because either (a) they haven't read all the archives and therefore aren't capable of following rules, or (b) they have read all the archives and mailing lists and are now completely insane, which would result in them immediately nominating Willy on Wheels to a b'cat in disgust. Yuser31415 23:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

More serious response: It should either be changed to "recent archives", or preferably, we should advise crat candiates to participate in WT:RFA discussions for a few months prior to applying. Reading ancient history can be interesting, but only really on an academic level, it's not very useful. RfA has changed a lot in the last couple of years. What crats need to know is how things work now and, more importantly, understand why they work that way (so they know when to bend the rules, which is the whole point of having crats, not bots), and the best way to gain that understanding is by participating in discussion. --Tango 13:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone wanting to run for b'crat should probably just review the post-2005 RfB's to get an idea of the standards. As for a serious change of the wording, I think Tango's on the right track... if you post like 2-3 comments to this page or the bot pages per year I doubt you're going to have much luck at RFB. --W.marsh 14:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds reasonable. I wouldn't necessarily want to go so far as to suggest that a participation on this page is (a) a requirement and (b) the most important one; that's too much like edit counting, and don't forget bureaucrats have other responsibilities too. However, Tango is right; discussion is good, as it demonstrates involvement and a desire to be part of the decision-making process. I suggest the RfB header should recommend familiarity not only with RfA and its accompanying discussion, but also the bot policy and the username change policy, as these are equally essential. I quite like Deskana's point, too: I guess the idea is that if you're ready to be a bcrat then you don't need guidance, you should already know where to look.; perhaps that could be worked in somehow – Gurch 16:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Certainly, we shouldn't specifiy any requirements. My suggestion was to advise participation, not require it. The other duties of crats should be included as well, I agree. --Tango 17:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Let's not get legalistic. The current wording (or at least the wording at the top of this section) makes no indication that you have to read all of the archives. "Recent" is too subjective and easy to game, and "all" is legalistic and overkill in most cases. Familiarity with WT:RFA and its archives should suffice. -- nae'blis 16:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
So you're saying the bot policy and username change policy are irrelevant? – Gurch 17:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course not, I was just responding to the quoted section above about archives of WT:RFA. Other requirements are not being addressed here, as far as I can tell. -- nae'blis 21:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, originally they weren't, though we now seem to be wondering whether the quoted section should be replaced by something else; I think it should, and I think all of a bureaucrat's tasks should be mentioned, but I'm not quite bold enough to erase and rewrite a section of WP:RFA without discussion – Gurch 22:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
How do you game a piece of advice? If the people !voting disagree with the candidates defintion of recent, then they oppose. We don't need to specify an exact amount of time. --Tango 17:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Speedy closure of RfA for User:BrianRFSU

I found a stray RfA for User:BrianRFSU and wasn't quite sure what to do about it. I'm hesitant to transclude it on the main page, because of the responses and user's low contribution history, it seems like a foregone conclusion... I feel that a pile-on wouldn't do much in the way of making the editor realize the error of RfA self-nominating so early and might discourage him from contributing to the project. Perhaps someone could ask him to withdraw and/or early close it, and leave a note on his talk page which explains why. --Kinu t/c 17:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Check out Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship – there are many requests that never made it on to the main page. In BrianRFSU's case, a note to his talk page would be sufficient. --Majorly (Talk) 17:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Chamillitaryboi94

That RfA will never have a snowball's chance in hell of making it; can someone close it per WP:SNOW? --teh tennisman 21:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can close RfAs of this kind. Be bold! --Majorly (Talk) 21:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I thought you had to be an admin to close RfA discussions. Well, I'll get right on that then. --teh tennisman 21:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for closing RfAs when the candidates are woefully unqualified, but aren't the opinions of four editors (0/3/1) a rather small sample? SuperMachine 21:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably. The candidate, however has been around less than 2 weeks. --Majorly (Talk) 21:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I do not agree with Majorly; not just anyone is qualified to close RFAs of any kind, and Bureaucrats should be closing the vast majority. When it's already been withdrawn by the candidate, that's different, but a simple snowball case requires a bit more consensus than four editors and twenty minutes in my view. There's no evidence of ill intent on the part of the candidate here, and I don't see where anyone took the time to wait for Chamilitaryboi to respond to the advice to withdraw (something that could have indicated a strength of character for a future bid). -- nae'blis 21:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah well, if I was wrong, feel free to reverse it. --Majorly (Talk) 21:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Nah, no sense making the process more chaotic still, I just wish we played a little less Whack-a-mole here... -- nae'blis 22:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC) User_talk:Chamillitaryboi94

Spaceboy

One question that i could not find at both pages, how to I make a request? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiSpaceboy (talk • contribs) 16:57, January 4, 2007

A request to have someone nominate you? I'm not sure there is such a page... usually nominators already know the candidate and approach them. You can nominate yourself if you like, but I strongly encourage you to let your Editor Review run to completion first to see what things you should work on before requesting adminship (having more than 100 attributed edits would help, though if most of your anonymous edits were under a single IP that you feel comfortable sharing, that may help). -- nae'blis 22:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed with above editor; if you're looking for the nomination instructions, you can find them here. —bbatsell ¿? 22:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Nom !voting in RfA

I've just made my first nomination on RfA (Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Budgiekiller). I was unclear from the instructions whether I can support the nomination myself and fear of "malforming" the RfA stopped me. Perhaps this could be clarified in the instructions, or (better) could the automation make the nominator the first support !vote? --Dweller 09:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course you support you nominee in his/her RFA. Isn't it a bit obvious. :P I don't think we can make the nominator being the first support vote, since the user may decline the RFA. Terence Ong 10:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't sure if the "support" is support of the nomination or support of the nominee. Grammatically/logically, it makes more sense for it to be the former, which makes it a nonsense for the nominator to support himself. Yeah, I'm a pedant. I think it probably makes me a useful editor... if a bit of a pain from time to time. --Dweller 10:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The nominator is allowed to, and should, post a support !vote for the nominee. (Unless, of course, it's a self-nom.) Newyorkbrad 18:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Hooray for pedants! (or is that huzzah?) Anyway, if you can think of a better way to word that, I'd be in favor, because this isn't the first time I've seen that question... and the fact that it's different for self-noms and nominated RfAs doesn't help (logically, the initial nomination should count as your support !vote, but that screws up the ordered list count). -- nae'blis 21:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Policy questions

How important is it for an admin to know and understand policy? What policies do you feel are important for an admin to understand? I'd like to develop some new questions. Please comment here. Thanks. —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list. While you don't need to memorize them all, you should at least be familiar. -- ReyBrujo 18:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, should have thought of that. But I do wonder what's most important to most people. —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

More questions? As I've said before, I've got no problem with asking RfA candidates optional questions. However, I see no need for instruction creep or an overly long set of questions being applied to almost every RfA without consideration to the specific circumstances of the particular RfA in question. Instead, I suggest starting a discussion about whether or not the existing standard questions are adequate, and if the consensus is that they're not, then follow up with a discussion of what the questions ought to be. Agent 86 18:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Not more, new. As many have pointed out, the answers to my first and second questions are starting to sound canned. —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
In that case, if by "new" you don't mean "new in addition to", it may well be time to review the existing standard questions. After all, consensus can change. Even if it hasn't, and the existing standard questions remain, it doesn't hurt to review these things from time to time. Agent 86 19:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the opening questions are general and about all we could expect to get consensus on for standardized questions. I think it's a good idea to leave it open to editors to pose their own personalized questions on issues that are important to them. But I do agree that too many questions can be difficult to sort through when evaluating a nominee. I think a restriction on three (I'm considering restricting myself to this) per editor would be a good idea. —Malber (talk • contribs) 19:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Many say that blocking is the most important power admins have, but article deletion has a greater effect on the readers of the encyclopedia. Two proposals, one for each: "Under what circumstances is it appropriate to indefinitely block a) a user account, b) an IP address?" "What constitutes an assertion to notability? Explain your reasoning."--Kchase T 18:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current questions? --Durin 19:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing is wrong with them and I've said above that it's the best we can expect to get consensus on for standardized questions. In the suggestions to the nominee we recommend the reading list, but there is no evaluation on whether or not they, you know, actually did this. —Malber (talk • contribs) 19:37, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Above you say "Not more, new". The implication is an intention to replace the current questions. Yet here you indicate more questions. Which is it? Replace the current questions or add questions? --Durin 20:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was referring to my personal questions. IMO the generic ones should stay. —Malber (talk • contribs) 21:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Questions about policy are pointless, anyone with half a brain can read the appropriate policy page and summarise it. I suggest you ask questions that are actually relevant to the candidate, rather than asking the same questions of everyone. If you think everyone should answer a particular question, start a discussion about it and if there is concensus we can add it to the standard questions. I think asking everyone the same questions should be banned, it's pointless. --Tango 20:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you want to give the mop to someone with less than half a brain? —Malber (talk • contribs) 21:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I think I can tell whether someone has more or less than half a brain without having to quiz them on reading comprehension. Looking at their contribs should be plenty. --Tango 23:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree totally with Tango, users commenting can do their research and see if the candidate understands policy by looking at their contributions. And, answers can always be copied. --Majorly (talk) 23:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
A bit off-topic, but I think we should have 9 or 10 optional question, out of which candidates may choose three to answer. The kind of questions he chooses to reply may give a good lead about what he intends to do with his administrator status (in example, "What would you do if someone vandalizes a single page multiple times, block the user or protect the article?", "If two users are war editing, and both have been warned, would you protect the article or block both users?", etc). -- ReyBrujo 05:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Argue with opposer

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

This isn't a court. The community seems to think we don't need overly argumentative admins. I agree. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I do agree with Deskana to a certain extent, but nobody should really Oppose without providing a brief explanation of why they're opposing out of courtesy to the candidate. Good reasoning is need to both help the candidate address the concerns and satisfy the closing bureaucrat of the validity of the Oppose. It's less relevant in cases where there is consensus is overwhelmingly against the candidate being granted sysop access but in borderline or vast majority cases, it's important to know if the Oppose is a matter of WP:POINT or made for a genuine well founded reason. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 22:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Then we have nominators discussing the oppose opinions. I prefer the candidate to back his position up than having someone else do that, but only if it is sensible to do it (in example, when a discussion would clarify whether the oppose opinion is erred or not). -- ReyBrujo 22:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Most certainly. It is possible to question an oppose voter in a such a way that it is not considered arguing. Such as "Thank you for your vote, perhaps you can clarify x, y, z?" --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 22:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I did not have many opposes and one really puzzled me. So I did ask for clarification and got a support. But with the others I felt is was not my place to argue, as they expressed the way they felt - and as such they were right. Agathoclea 22:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I've never nominated someone, but sometimes I have brought up points regarding someone's oppose vote when there is something obvious to say, to save the candidate from having to do so and ending up looking picky or confrontational. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do it with good intentions of saving the candidate from arguing. -- Renesis (talk) 22:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

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

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

Agreed. Per WP:RFA, a request for adminship is not a ballot. To my mind, simply stating "support" or "oppose" without comment is against both the letter and spirit of WP:RFA. Raymond Arritt 23:51, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Replying to opposers if their stated reasons are unclear or if you feel they misinterpreted something is okay by me. Arguing with them, as well as asking them to change their votes to support on their talk page, is not. —bbatsell ¿? 23:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, there is a natural reaction to that one. As soon as someone finds out a candidate argued for a vote change on talk pages, they are done. -- Renesis (talk) 00:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Who is saying it is? -- Renesis (talk) 00:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)#
Having recently achieved a no consensus on an RfA, and hopefully learned from it, I would suggest that it is quite reasonable to clarify points raised bt oppose voters, but not to argue them. And certainly answering every oppose vote can only lead to massive disenchantment with the applicant.--Anthony.bradbury 00:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yao Ziyuan's mindset is a problem with RfAs currently. Adminship is not a law court, for that matter, it's only about you to the extent that you're the one getting the powers. Questions of fairness should not come into RfAs, because it's about what's good for Wikipedia, not the nominee or anyone else. -Amarkov blahedits 01:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Only problem is RfA is failing Wikipedia in failing to grant adminship to dozens of candidates who could really help the project and giving adminship to a few who successfully game the system. It's obsessed with quantity over quality and people continue, in their !voting, to promote running up masses of WP space edits with no regard for any damage incurred to the project by baseless !voting on XfDs or needless why do 1 edit when 20 will do listings on images for deletion. In the past few weeks, I've found a few candidates who have thousands of WP space edits that are all fluff, duplication and sheep-like follow the nominator or follow the masses XfD !votes, yet they've got the numbers so nobody gives a stuff. Try Opposing and all hell breaks loose. Clearly, something is wrong with RfA and it's failing Wikipedia in both who it promotes and what is suggests prospective candidates need or should do in order to pass. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
For my reply to Renesis in this thread, see the #Issues with RFA subheading below, apparently some kind soul thought it was worth the extra heading, and moved it there :-) Kim Bruning 01:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Issues with RFA

Currently, RFA and our administrator system itself has at least six issues:
  1. The administrator/user ratio has gone way way down. This is bad, because it means that people who have an admin flag can no longer take part in consensus based process as equals, despite ostensibly having been recognised as being experienced at same. (A notable symptom is when an admin is accused of having "acted unilaterally". A situation that previously would have been nonsensical, because there would be sufficient admins around to balance each other out.)
  2. Admins are being selected based on arbitrary criteria, which are *not* linked with whether or not a candidate is actually suited to be an admin. (How many people still look at proven mediation ability, or proven encyclopedia editing ability, or skill with unusual situations as opposed to n edits. In fact people have recently often been opposed when nominated on the basis of such skills alone.)
  3. Requests for Adminship apparently no longer uses consensus as the leading requirement, as per the previous discussion people have held in this section (see above) This also reduces the ability to check the quality of the candidate.
  4. Admins are currently apparently not entirely trusted by the foundation, hence WP:OFFICE
  5. Insofar as the foundation can trust admins, it may be such that the wikipedia community cannot actually trust certain people ourselves, wrt unmonitored offwiki activity Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano/Workshop#Fourth_suggestion.
So no single person is saying this, it's just that the situation in general warrents it.
Does that cover your question sufficiently?
Kim Bruning 01:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
WRT second and last points - unfortunately, some good former admins usually don't get their bit back. If this changed, I'd say RFA has improved. I know myself that I've been put off trying another RFA for the forseeable future. – Chacor 01:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't really agree with the second and fourth, but yeah, there are problems. I now call RfAs votes, because they are. Unless an RfA happens to fall within a teeny little 10% margin, the result is entirely decided on vote count. It doesn't matter if everyone who opposed did so because the user has 24% mainspace edits instead of 25%, it has to fall between 70 and 80% for "bureaucrat discretion" to exist. -Amarkov blahedits 01:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, that's a pretty big supposition. Where's your example where spurious !voters swung the percentage, and the closing 'crat explicitly said upon questioning that this was fine? I think you're postulating instead of citing, here, and what we need in any discussion of this type is facts. -- nae'blis 01:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Is that a question for Amarkov, or is it one for me? Kim Bruning 01:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Ostensibly to Amarkov's specific 'example' though anyone is welcome to refute me. I think there's a general clarity of opinion on RfA that isn't necessarily what the candidates/nominators would like, but that's not the same as positing that bureaucrats are ignoring the rules of consensus altogether (a much more serious "charge"). -- nae'blis 03:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Amarkov: Fair enough. As to the two points you disagree with..
  • If you do not agree with the second, in your view, how do current criteria link to the skills an administrator is required to have?
  • If you do not agree with the fourth, please explain your view on the history and purpose behind WP:OFFICE ?
Kim Bruning 01:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict; to Nae'blis) Obviously, nothing is that bad. It was an exaggeration, yes, and I didn't mean it to be really true. But except for things which are that bad, I have never seen a bureaucrat consider the worthiness of arguments. For instance, there's an RfA right now where the guy is being opposed because he doesn't edit articles enough. That may be good or it may not be, but is a bureaucrat going to figure that out? No, because the current process is simply to count the votes which seem plausible. If people tried some of the arguments they do here in an AfD (hint: vague statements which mean nothing), an admin would have no problem just completely ignoring them. -Amarkov blahedits 01:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
So you are saying that on AFD (another notorious problem area), people actually have more freedom to figure out consensus than they have here? Kim Bruning 02:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. -Amarkov blahedits 02:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh <insert string of irreplicable monosyllabics>. Do other people agree? Kim Bruning 03:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
And to Kim Bruning: the current criteria aren't what people should care about, but as the latest RfA shows, people do look at article editing, which I actually oppose using as a criterion. And WP:OFFICE is to make absolutely sure that things which could cause legal problems do not. I don't see any lack of trust there. -Amarkov blahedits 01:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Right, there is no good consensus on what criteria we should use for admins. No one ever thought to discuss that :-)
WP:OFFICE is there to solve legal issues, but why can't that be left to admins? Similar for WP:OVERSIGHT, what is that doing that admins can't? :-)
Kim Bruning 02:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Oversight... I'm not entirely sure why it's not only above admin status, but above bureaucrat status too. That makes no sense. But WP:OFFICE does nothing but give Wikimedia officials the power to do things which are necessary for legal issues, does it? -Amarkov blahedits 02:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the reason so few people are given oversight permissions is that, in addition to be able to hide certain edits, they can see the edits that have already been hidden. Edits are hidden so no-one will see them, having lots of people able to see them defeats the object. --Tango 02:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:OFFICE is there to solve legal issues, but why can't that be left to admins? I can think of four reasons: (a) need to act immediately, rather than to discuss; (b) need to act decisively, rather than have admins reversing themselves; (c) need to consider the larger consequences to the Foundation rather than precedent or consensus or other values that are important for the vast majority of ongoing article creation and improvement; and (d) having paid employees act, who will be around should there be subsequent legal action (as opposed to a volunteer, not-real-named admin), and who are covered by liability insurance (if you were an insurance company, would you want to provide full coverage for 1000+ anonymous admins?).
More importantly, exactly how does the existence of WP:OFFICE impact the RfA process? Do editors actually decline to run because of that? Drop out of active admin work? John Broughton | Talk 02:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
(to Tango) That makes sense, although in that case MediaWiki should just be updated to allow delete-only oversight acess to admins. I can't imagine it would be that hard, and having people to delete libelous material faster would be good. -Amarkov blahedits 02:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


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

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

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

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

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

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

That's why I dislike admin coaching and did detest Esperanza.
Admin coaching seems to produce a perfect candidate, but often without the necessary real-life experience of actually disagreeing with someone, having them vandalise your user page, or any of the other 101 things a really good candidate should have experience of. At the moment, it's editcountitis forcing this issue along, nobody wants to support a candidate who has worked especially hard in one field, they want a candidate that's the perfect all rounder. This tends to rule out the really good candidates who have found a niche and are quite happy to sit their plodding along and who can make a real difference to the project given a mop. Instead, some of us appear to only support editors based on their edit count, looking no further than that awful tool for calculating edit count and voting accordingly (yes, the !has gone from !vote, RFA's no longer a discussion, or sensible consensus, but a damn popularity contest almost anyway can waltz through by saying or doing the right things). Suggestions abound about gaming the system, I've had one comment where someone said it would be sad a candidate didn't get the mop because they didn't game the system, and instead we've got people continually tallying edits on RfAs, editing WP pages as often as possible (listing or removing items one by one instead of in groups) to generate WP "experience of policy" and of course, the pre-requisite sheepish follow the editor or follow the masses voting on XfDs. Generating the perfect candidate is easy, it just means WP ends up with a whole heap of admins who can't actually use the tools to edit Wikipedia for the benefit of the community, but use the little userbox as a badge of honour, who go around inflicting their ill thought out, ill conceived (ill)will upon the rest of us. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 03:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
You make some good points there. One thing I haven't seen anyone address is issues of scalability. With over 1000 admins, it is not possible any more to be aware of all the active admins. Does the current RfA process, and the admin set-up itself, scale well to a wikipedia with over 1000 admins? Carcharoth 04:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Interestingly, my problems are in some ways the exact opposite of Heligoland's. As evidenced by discussions on my talk page, there are people who think that article editing is necessary to be an admin. That's bad, but more troubling is that people are offering to nominate me if I start doing more article editing. RfA should be evaluating what a candidate is, and it scares me that people are willing to support me simply because I will give the impression of article editing. Isn't it pretty obvious that if I don't like article editing, I'll cease to do it the instant my RfA closes? -Amarkov blahedits 04:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Is easy to say "admins should be elected based on consensus, and not voting". The current system, however imperfect, at least provides some objectivity. Ideally a bureaucrat would ignore the votes and do very careful research of the candidate and of what people said, and come up with an assessment of whether a candiate should be an admin or not. In practice, that would take too much time, there would not always be enough info to judge reliably, the result would be bureaucrat-dependent, and more people would be pissed off with that system than with the current "dumb counting of the votes of the uninformed masses". Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
What you say it should be the rule is actually the exception. I am not against the current method, but would expand it to include the gray 65-80%, giving them a two month probation following Carnildo's precedent. Sure, it is not the same; sure, the bureaucrats would work more; and sure, many who have been rejected in this gray area may complain, but it would be a good way to demonstrate we need, want and welcome more administrators if either there is a great consensus in the community, or if they demonstrate those skeptical they can be good admins. -- ReyBrujo 06:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


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

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

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

... In fact...

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

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

Of course he would fail. His edit summary usage is awful. And he hardly has any projectspace edits – Gurch 21:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
:-P
That's what I'm thinking might indeed happen. See what I mean? Kim Bruning 22:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
If he didn't actually participate on Wikipedia, he probably would. Turing and Djikstra would fail too, unless they created a sufficiently clever AI bot that evaluated RFA requirements and then met them. —Centrx→talk • 22:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The difference being that Cunningham actually invented the wiki ;-) Kim Bruning 23:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
But not Wikipedia. Inventing the wiki does not necessarily translate to understanding Wikipedia. If he invented the wiki, he might think that Wikipedia should be completely open and nothing deleted, so he just restores every deleted page he comes across. Inventing the wiki would not even be enough to help for most {{helpme}} requests. —Centrx→talk • 15:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Closed RFA template question

Should we change it to the pinkish-color as used on {{indef}}?? A suggestion to consider, I think that the pinkish colour is a bit too garish for what is a formal process, while the brick colour is neutral! --SunStar Nettalk 01:21, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-WP:RFA related (but WT:RFA related) - can we get a bot set up?

Can we get Werdnabot or Essjaybot to archive this page? I've just cleared all the stuff from 2006, which has significantly reduced the size of this page. – Chacor 02:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

No reason not to have one of them do the archiving. What should the time-before-archiving be? I suggest 7 days as this isn't as busy a page as, say, the noticeboards. Newyorkbrad 02:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Seven days sounds fine, but note that this topic was brought up recently. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Most of the handful of commenters said the bot would be fine, but a couple thought the archiving should be done manually; then a month passed and no one did any. I don't feel strongly either way but certainly bot archiving is better than no archiving. Newyorkbrad 04:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Threads can always be resurrected if the bot screws up; I say use it on a long-ish timespan (5-7 days without a comment in that thread), and we can archive more severely if needed. -- nae'blis 05:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It sometimes helps to manually archive (if a topic is completely inactive, but someone might add something 5 days later that doesn't really contribute anything) or refactor (if several threads are talking about the same thing - move them to subheadings of a super-thread). Carcharoth 01:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Just to make clear, I support the idea of having either one of those bots archiving this page. Does anyone have any objections to contacting Essjay again and asking him to set one of his Essjaybots to archive this page with a 7-day threshold? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Given this talk page is pretty slow in comparison with some others, 7 days (or even longer) is appropriate. Proto::► 16:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
7 or even 10 days feels right to me, and auto archiving is fine by me. Now if someone could write a bot that indexed the archives so we could find things again... :) ++Lar: t/c 16:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Cumulative assessment?

Has anything like a standard portfolio of documented work has ever been considered as a(n optional) part of the RfA process? (Internal search didn't turn up anything related.) It seems like this might curb the "popularity contest" aspect of RfA, and help to focus attention on a candidate's complete body of work, for better or worse. But perhaps this has been considered before... -- Visviva 02:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Lots of people have what amounts to portfolios if you go to their user pages. Bringing my portfolio up to date has been one of my aims for a while. OK, actually making my portfolio has been an aim for a while. :-) In my opinion, it shows the organisation that an admin should show. I'd also recommend looking at someone's user pages and seeing if they look organised. Of course, the candidate could have nicked someone else's page design, but having a neat set of links to important areas is a bonus, IMO. We can't all have user pages like User:Essjay, but we can aspire to that! :-) Carcharoth 04:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good, but it would only show their positive contributions. If it's organised by them then any arbcom rulings/blocks etc. would not be included. Searching their contributions would still be neccessary to find the proverbial "dirt" on them, however bad that sounds. James086Talk | Contribs 07:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Very true; I was mostly thinking it would provide a more useful measure of broad-based experience than (for example) edit counts. If a user has done enough to accumulate a presentable body of work covering all the areas in which admins are expected to have experience, and has done so without getting into or causing serious trouble, that is probably a very good sign of adminworthiness. A semi-standard portfolio might also make editor review into a more useful process. It's just a random idea at this point, though; I haven't even made one for myself yet. ;-) -- Visviva 08:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
What helps is if people are honest and point out the bad things as well (kind of like the "have you been involved in any disputes?" question. I would expect a portfolio (or maybe "history" is a better word) to include any RfCs, arbitration cases, etc. It helps to break things up logically and detail contributions to article space, Wikipedia space, talk pages, etc. The edit tools like Wannabe Kate show the articles a user has edited most in each namespace, so that can help. Wikignomes and AWB users should also be honest and say that, say, 10,000 of their 20,000 edits were "just" adding category tags to lots of articles. A real, detailed analysis might show that an impressive looking spread of edits is not that impressive once you take away the "standard" edits. I suppose what this is effectively asking for is for people to start the analysis themselves, and offer it up to RfA so the regulars here (or at places like 'Editor Review') can then dig a little further and give their verdict. Edit summaries help. If you can search for "copyedit", "typo", "vote delete", "comment on..." in the edit summaries, that helps as well. It is actually quite easy to copy one's own contributions list and analyse it yourself in this way, grouping all the edits to one article together, for instance, or all the edits to any AfD page, or linking to a long series of 200 AWB edits (this involves putting the right date and time in the URL to get the last edit up first, and offsetting by 200). This also brings up stability of edits. If someone has made 100s of edits to an article, or series of articles, but none of them have survived to the current version, that could show lack of sourcing, or failure to keep an eye on an article. This is getting more into editor review territory than RfA territory, but it shows the point. Dealing with conflict and proper understanding of policy should obviously remain at the heart of RfA, but demonstrating self-awareness and organisation is also good. Carcharoth 01:17, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure what the use of a portfolio would be. I'll assume people aren't going to lie, but it's all too easy to delude yourself about the importance of your work, and of course there's the issue previously brought up that nothing bad would be included. -Amarkov blahedits 01:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, there is a difference between egoism, navel-gazing and organisation, but you do have a point. Carcharoth

Don't quite know what to do here...

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ali 786 appears to be stuck somewhere not fully there. How are you supposed to repair them? 68.39.174.238 08:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I corrected that apparently accidental page transclusion. The voting link still needs fixing though... - jc37 08:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
And getting rid of the sockpuppets. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 12:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I just closed it. It's been "open" for over a year. If the user still wishes to be an administrator, they can open a new request. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 12:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for advice

In response to a request for advice on an application as an RFA, I suggested that being nominated by someone with less than 150 edits may create a "red flag" where the voters would most likely give the nomination additional scrutiny because the person nominating and vouching for the trustworthiness of the candidate, although assumed to be a good editor, is not yet what i called a trusted member of the community. The nominator wanted an example where someone didn't pass because the nominator was so new. Because I thought it useless to point out nominations that are quickly removed because of such defects (since the nominee usually also has very few edits - and in this case the nominee had over 4000), I pointed out my experience is that the nominators are usually trusted members, and that of the current RFA's no nominator has less than 4500 edits. This did not satisfy him/her. Therefore I am asking - do you think I am out of bounds suggesting that a nominee consider finding a different person to nominate them, or is my prediction that to go forward might subject the nomination to additional scrutiny (which is not necessarily a bad thing) completely unjustified. --Trödel 19:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

You may find Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sean gorter interesting. If the nomination is worded well enough (and perhaps the nominator mentions they are quite new in the nomination) there may not be a problem. Emphasis on the "may". I can't take responsibility if there is a problem. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link - I had remembered that happening a couple times. I agree there may be no problem especially if the nominee is excellent - but it seems like you shouldn't introduce a possible objection in the nomination language. --Trödel 21:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that's a good example. There is a big difference between being nominated by a fairly new user and being nominated by a sockpuppet/meatpuppet. I would suggest the candidate in question just makes a self-nom, going around trying to get someone to nominate you seems to be gaming the system to me. --Tango 02:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the point of someone else nominating you is that they think really well of you and want you to be an admin. Going around and actively seeking out someone to nominate you defeats the point, and gives a slight implication that you're too lazy to write a nomination statement yourself. -Amarkov blahedits 02:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Thx all --Trödel 16:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
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