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Redesigning adminship

Redesigning adminship: Initial comments

On the wikiEN-l mailing list, as some of you may know, there's been a lot of discussion the past day or so about how we're selecting admins as a community. The general opinion there seems to be very strong that the current system is broken and, as I would characterize it, equal parts too bloated and too stringent.

I'm approaching the bureaucrats specifically because they regularly evaluate requests for adminship, and are thus best placed to evaluate the system. I think if the bureaucrats can produce a reasonable consensus for change among themselves, it may be possible to enlist wider community support for it.

Let's assume you were collectively assigned to redesign the system. This should not attempt to alter the nature of adminship (values like trust and "no big deal"), only the process by which it is handed out. You can redesign from scratch if necessary, with the primary condition that adminship should not come simply at your whim. What parts of the system would you keep? What parts would you scrap? What information do you as bureaucrats need in order to recognize that a candidate is qualified and has community support? What kind of system would more effectively provide you with that information? --Michael Snow 03:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe such discussion belongs on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship where the audience is much wider, than on the mailing list. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

There has been plenty of discussion there that's never gotten anywhere. A smaller audience can actually be more productive, that's part of why I'm addressing the bureaucrats directly. --Michael Snow 06:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

People have been saying RfA is broken for years, and discussions on how to "fix" it have consumed megabyte after megabyte of space on talk pages... but the net change in the past two years? The questions are at the top of the template now, instead of the bottom... nothing else has changed, other than the people involved in individual RfAs. I'm just saying, I know people mean well, but these "drastic changes needed to RfA immediately" things are basically much ado about nothing. --W.marsh 05:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In theory, I agree with Michael: RfA could use some revamping. From a pragmatic point of view, however, marsh is right. And I should know, I proposed numerous alternatives and ideas to redesign RfA in the past, none of which came to fruition. And I wasn't the only one either. All that has been done really are a few structural rearrangements (as mentioned: questions at the top) and a few rewordings (mainly in the header: "voice your opinion", "scheduled to end") designed to better illustrate the nature of RfA. The Bureaucrats are always attentive to community feeling and the changes brought by it, but so far the only changes that we've seen have been in interpreting the existing system. We've been nowhere near a place where we could effectively restructure RfA in any way.
That being said, I don't believe any of the Bureaucrats would oppose making changes in RfA, especially since our job (specifically as Bureaucrats) is not to rule, or control, the process, but rather to operate it. Redux 11:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminship: the issue of scale

• As many people have observed, and a number of graphs I have produced have shown, standards at RfA have and continue to slowly rise over time. Similarly, there are frequent complaints of people using strange rationale for opposing such as the recent debate about namespace balance as a basis for oppose. These sorts of concerns keep arising. The reality is there is no ready way to prevent such problems from arising in any open system where any passerby can comment on an RfA. Yet, a non-open system is antithetical to the wiki way.
• The root problem though is not really open vs. non-open system. That's a consequence of the current environment. That environment has generated because of scale issues. When RfA regulars were a smaller set of people, gaining consensus and focusing a group towards sets of standards was considerably easier. Cohesion was achievable, standards stayed low. Now, there's been more than 300 people who have been active contributors to WT:RFA just in the last 3 months alone. I don't know what the number of unique people who are voters on RfAs in the last three months has been, but I strongly suspect it is higher. Now, there are simply too many people in the process to get the group to move in a direction, regardless of how good or bad that direction is. As noted by another above, the changes in recent history have been incremental, not substantial.
• Two things that are very worth reading in regards to this core problem; Dunbar's Number and http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html. In particular when reading this, think of their relevance to RfA (many thanks to Kim Bruning for bringing these to my attention). I think most of you will be amazed at the strong correlation between these and RfA. The latter reference is long, but very worth the read. Without readings like this, we're down in the forest complaining about "well this is wrong" and others saying "no it isn't" and nothing ever happening. With such readings, more global understanding of the core nature of the problem begins to evolve.
• en.wikipedia is a trailblazer vs. other language wikipedias. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the chief reasons is that this language wikipedia runs into the scale problems long before any other language does. There's small and obvious examples of this, such as the division of orphaned fair use images into dated categories to more rapidly identify those that have exceeded the seven day limit. There also happen to be considerably more subtle but quite large examples. RfA happens to be one of them. There are other areas at this language wikipedia that suffer from similar problems.
• In sum, it is highly unlikely that whatever problems RfA has can be cured by the group working towards a group solution. Every proposal that has been made has been shot down, some multiple times. WP:DFA is one such example. My gut feeling on how to reform RfA had been that we needed to focus on determining what is wrong with RfA, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses before we ever considered revamping it. Without such effort, we could just as easily cause harm (in fact I think more easily) than good. Since reading the above noted things, my opinion has changed. Even though such a process would be good, it would not work. The outcome of it, even if perfect in evolving RfA, would never be accepted.
• This is a big problem. Recent studies have shown that admin load (as shown by number of admin actions per admin per day) has doubled in the last two years. See WT:RFA#Charts_on_admin_activity. This is confirmed also by statistics kept by me showing that the number of edits made by all editors as a ratio to the number of admins has also doubled during the same time period. A number of tools have come online in the two year time period to help contend with these increases, but these are bandaids. They are not cures for the problem.
• To go even deeper into the "RfA" is broken problem, the core problem lies in the ability to effectively manage Wikipedia. As time goes on and Wikipedia continues to increase in popularity (we're now breaking into the top ten of all websites), our ability to manage is eroding. There's simply too much going on for the tools we currently have available. Something will have to change. Whether it be now or two years from now, it will change if only because it will become so apparent the system is broken that it must change in order to survive.
• en.wikipedia will be (and is) the first to run into these problems. What we do here is pivotal to the success of the project. RfA is but a symptom of the problem. What solutions we apply here, if they are going to be relatively permanent fixes, must address the scalability issue. The system will need to be able to work when there are thousands of people participating in RfA. The current system is failing because of a lack of scalability. Standards continue to rise, but due to the size of the group there is no effective way to reverse that trend. --Durin 13:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Very well said, Durin. The path to solve this, however, is not mysterious, just unpopular. At least to the larger portion of the community — although more experienced users usually understand and accept it.
There is a widespread misconception that nobody is running Wikipedia save for consensus. That is not true. There are people who ultimately run this project, and whose word will, if made necessary, be final. I'm not one of them, but one of them is rather obvious, it's Jimbo — and quoting from his user page, right after he states his principles: I should point out that these are my principles, such that I am the final judge of them. This does not mean that I will not listen to you, but it does mean that at some ultimate, fundamental level, this is how Wikipedia will be run. (I bolded that passage). Other people who do have power of decision: members of the Board of Trustees (Wikimedia-wide, which includes this Wikipedia) and, on enwiki specifically: Danny (when using WP:OFFICE prerrogatives) and arbitrators (as a group that makes binding decisions in a number of instances).
If we accept Durin's argument that the environment has become (or will become) unmanageable due to scale, ultimately we would need to ask some of these people, as a group or even individually (if it's Jimbo), to decide if something needs to be fixed regarding RfA — and if he/they say "no", then the discussion is over — and, if he/they say "yes", then decide what needs changing and how. And that would be final.
There's no need to tell me how unsavory this sounds, but ultimately there might be no alternative. And it has happened before: Jimbo implemented the 3RR by means of an executive decision. If the 3RR, an established policy, were put up for discussion today, as something new, it would have the same fate as "Requests for Rollback Privileges", that is, neverending discussions that yield no consensus, much like it has happened to every suggestion to revamp RfA.
I know nobody wants to hear that, but it needed to be said. Redux 14:18, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

• Agreed. But, if we suggest a revamp of RfA that is not agreed upon by the group, we might as well slather ourselves in gasoline, string ourselves to an unlit bonfire and hand WT:RFA the match :) Witnessed what happened to Linuxbeak and Ilyanep when they tried to implement a version of WP:DFA without running it through WT:RFA first. --Durin 14:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't expect that there wouldn't be any discontent voices — as I said: the concept is not at all appealing — but noticing that I mentioned certain, very specific people who would have legitimacy to make a binding decision as a group; or individually, if it is Jimbo. A Bureaucrat, or even a group of Bureaucrats, does not have such legitimacy, which is why what happened to Linuxbeak and Ilyanep came to pass. But if Jimbo were to declare something like "this is how new administrators are to be selected from now on", then this would be final, and this would be how RfA would be run from then on. Jimbo is extremely genereous in listening to the community, and factoring community feeling into his decisions (hence the "benevolent dictator" thing), but ultimately his decision will stand. That would clearly not be the case if I, Redux, were to say suddenly: "this is how things will go". I'm a member of the community just like everybody else, whereas Jimbo is...well...he is Jimbo! ;-) Redux 15:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Despite the trend we are currently in, I think we should stick with the system we have, as there is no consensus to change it. If/when we find ourselves in a true crisis of a lack of admins, people will rush to nominate and approve more admins. Doing something to help avoid unsuccessful admin candidates from being totally battered, which has led some to leave the project, would be useful though. NoSeptember 15:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The point made by Durin, rather truthfully, is that regardless of whether or not there is a need for a change (which would mean that there would be something wrong with the current system, at least on some level), the evergrowing scale of the project makes consensus impossible to attain. And this means that we are forever stuck in the process of a group of people constantly claiming "there's something wrong, and we need to do something about it asap", and another group that always replies "no, there's nothing wrong with it" — and even those who think that there's something wrong can't even agree on what it is exactly that is wrong, and what to do about it. It's a vicious circle, made perpetual by the unmanageability of the environment. Redux 16:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Whatever our system was, we would always have some saying "there's something wrong" and others saying "there's nothing wrong". I hear the same division of opinion about the US Presidential process, and I'm sure the same is said in just about every other country with an electoral system of some sort too (and talk about scaling - these countries have millions of voters). There will never be a perfect solution. Having what in the final analysis is a simple process is not so bad. And if you boil it down, our process is very simple... you pass if you get a supermajority of support, all the additional guidelines and procedures are just bells and whistles. A simple process is flexible because nothing is stopping the participants from changing the basis of when they will support a candidate. So the new consensus will come from below instead of imposed from above. If we truly need more admins, the consensus from below to promote will suddenly develop, and our simple process allows for that to happen. NoSeptember 16:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

To reply to Redux way above, I so much doubt Jimbo will step in to reform the RfA. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

There's something I've been thinking of asking Jimbo for some time now: Does he still believe adminship is no big deal? He made that much quoted comment years ago, a lot has changed since then. There is a lot of disagreement over how big a deal adminship is - knowing Jimbo's opinion (and his reasons for it) would probably settle a lot of those arguments. I think asking Jimbo that specific question would be better than asking him a general "is RFA broken?" style question. --Tango 12:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminsip: Alternatives

Maybe not. Or maybe Jimbo could say "I don't see any need for a reform in RfA" (which means: no changes are needed), or maybe he'd defer the decision to a think tank formed by some of those people I mentioned way above. The point is not necessarily to reform RfA, but rather to break the vicious circle. And this would respond to one of NoSeptember's points: yes, there will always be people that are dissatisfied with whichever system, but ultimately we wouldn't need to write 11 pages worth of comments in order to get the same old result: "no consensus to do anything". We'd be able to say "this issue has been addressed and resolved", something we are utterly unable to do at this point.
Our ordinary process of consensus-building discussions hasn't been working for the larger issues, those that get the attention of a larger morcel of the group — I'm not talking about the consensus-building discussions within any given RfA, but rather I'm referring to the discussions on the topic of whether or not RfA needs a reform. I'm not defending either at this point. With over 300 people participating in RfA and RfA talk (as Durin said), we will not be able to work up to consensus on anything that is controverted to a certain degree. It will always come down to a "no consensus to do anything" situation, which, in a way, may be conceding control of the system to a group that doesn't necessarily represents the larger community, but is populous enough to always split the discussion to a point where consensus, which isn't the process of ascertaining a simple majority, will not be possible.
I'm not saying that those in favor of the status quo are wrong: I'm not advocating for either side at this point. But it is relevant to point out that there is no possible resolution through ordinary community discussion. We will just find ourselves writing pages and pages to no avail again (how long is this thread already??). So again, it is not the best prospect to contemplate, but there simply may not be an alternative to resolve this situation: someone (or a group of people) with legitimacy might just have to make a binding decision. And if they say "let's change nothing", then we will ask that people stop posting every now and then to propose changes in the process, at least for some time, until context again changes to a point where revision becomes prement.
In closing, notice how other high-profile decisions made by the community (enwiki or Wikimedia) are actually votes — such as Board elections, Steward elections or ArbCom elections, and not by a consensus-building discussion — they'd be unmanageable as well. One might say "so let's decide whether or not RfA needs change by means of a vote", but then we'd need to get consensus in order to decide whether or not this should be decided with a vote, and then we are righ back to square 1...
This is not about changing the wiki way: articles have a much lower traffic, sometimes only a handful of users. The system works just fine on them, and there's no reason to imagine that this will change in the forseeable future. And articles are in fact the essence of this project. Redux 21:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The steward elections are pretty similar to RfA, everyone over a certain percentage passed, similar to the supermajority of RfA. Even ArbCom isn't much different, although with a fixed number of seats (well sort of, depending on Jimbo's choice of the number) the cutoff is not predefined, but Jimbo again pretty much passed those with the highest percentages. All of these processes are supermajority processes now, whether we call them elections or consensus building exercises. Btw, I am not an advocate of the current system per se to the exclusion of new alternatives, I just think we will find that a new system will have just as many complaints and endless discussion as the current one does. I am always game to try them though. NoSeptember 23:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

• RfA was and is, at least supposed to be, a consensus building mechanism. However, in the current environment much of what happens is driven by the declaration of a supermajority, whether there is consensus or no. The current reality is that RfAs themselves routinely exceed the upper bounds of Dunbar's number. The notion that such RfAs really adhere to any sort of consensus is fairly flawed; people aren't agreeing that a candidate is such-and-such. People are just voting. Few people openly declare any particular statement when making supporting votes. Consensus is what evolves from discussion. It is not what evolves from a vote. As a voting mechanism, RfA works in so far as it derives a metric by which we say yes or no to nominees. As a consensus mechanism, RfA is currently fatally flawed. It just doesn't work very well as a consensus building operation. Consensus can readily evolve in groups of 10-20. In groups or 150-200, which is hardly uncommon on RfAs any more, the notion of consensus is inconceivable in reality. People aren't reaching a joint decision on the character of a candidate. They're just voting. We keep dancing around this issue over and over again at WT:RFA. Some Wikipedias have simply given up on it and just work on a strict voting basis. But, such a system has its shortcomings too.
• What is the goal of RfA? On the surface, to approve/disapprove of candidates for adminship. But, that's just one goal. Another goal is to ensure that enough admins are promoted to properly maintain Wikipedia. Yet another is to ensure, in as much as possible, that no harm come to the project from the giving of admin privileges. There may be other goals as well, but those are the biggies I think. To the second goal, that of promoting sufficient admins, we can apply metrics. We've done a few of late and shown that admin load has doubled in two years. If that pattern persists, in another two years it will have been a quadrupling of admin load in four years. At some point, we will have to step back and say "we need more admins" or "we need alternative tools or processes that reduce the load per admin" (or both). As RfA continues to promote fewer and fewer candidates and continues to raise standards of acceptable candidates, it is likely that "we need more admins" will become a signficantly loud concern. Yet, as I noted above...WT:RFA is, I believe, incapable of responding to this concern.
• Many times, people refer back to Jimbo's comment from 2003 that adminship should be no big deal. That concept still exists and is quite pertinent here. At core, there really isn't anything that's developed that changes that concept. In fact, quite the opposite. All admin functions are reversible now. All of them. So, where is the harm in giving admin tools? People say they would reduce their standards if it were easier to de-admin people. But, the reality is, whether a person is an admin or not they can have a very negative effect on the project. Being an admin has really little do with that. In fact, if there is anything that makes it have more to do with it, it is the perception that admins are a special class of user. They really aren't. It's just some extra tools, and that is all. Eventually, as the standards keep rising at RfA and the need for more admins becomes more and more apparent, there IS going to be change decreed from above. This is starkly unavoidable for reasons noted before; standards keep rising, promotions keep decreasing, and consensus to change is impossible to achieve. Eventually, there will be a decree from above. We can choose to do something about it now, to be better prepared for that decree and help contribute to what that decree says, or instead have no say in it in any way. Regardless, the decree is coming.
• I'm not saying "the sky is falling!". I think when the decree happens (and it will), there will be huge complaints about it for ~2 weeks. Objections will die down when people grow weary of complaining about the change and nothing happens to reverse the change. ~2-3 months after the change, it will be accepted as old hat...the way we do things now. RfA will then percolate along with little trouble. Admins will be made and wikilife will go on as before. --Durin 04:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminship: The community can fix this

• You say:
  >"WT:RFA is... incapable of responding to this concern" (of "we need more admins"). and,
  >"Eventually, there will be a decree from above".
  I disagree. The community can respond when the need to change becomes obvious to more people in the community. Nothing is stopping us from nominating and deciding to promote more admins. And no decree will be needed to make us do so. Just this past week there was an effort to find and nominate overlooked candidates, and the result of that effort can be seen in the current list of candidates. The truth is, while we talk about how short of admins we are, as long as the admin-tool only backlogs are as low and as managable as they are, it is hard to sell that to some people. For example, we talk about a CSD backlog, yet every 2 days or so we run the list down to 0. If we can consistently run the list down to 0, it is hard to say we have a "real" backlog problem. We may be burning out some of our active admins in the process, but we are not really enduring a too-big backlog as long as admins are stepping up and clearing them. We haven't got to the point where our admins can't handle it, and this gives an excuse for tend-to-oppose voters to be selective about who they will support. When a true crisis of a shortage of admins comes, the votes to pass more admins will be there, because fundamentally the people who vote at RfA (including the frequent opposers) do value the best interests of the project. It doesn't need to be done by decree, we just haven't come to the moment of true crisis that will sway the community to act.
  Don't get me wrong, I too would like to solve this before we get to a true shortage crisis, but I also know that our current system will handle it when it comes, without Jimbo's intervention. NoSeptember 11:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • A little interesting addendum to this: Radiant's recent comment to WT:RFA making a relevant observation. --Durin 18:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
    • The community can respond when the need to change becomes obvious to more people in the community - I can't believe that someone could read the suggested readings by Durin (Dunbar's Number and http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) and still make this argument. The second reading is full of examples of communities that failed - of communities that didn't scale and couldn't agree within themselves on how to change themselves so they didn't fail. Failure - at least failure by the community to fix itself - is an option; it's quite possibly the most likely option.
    • If nothing else, the "community" is an ever-changing (as well as ever-increasing) group of people. It's simply an assertion of faith that somehow a "community" that hasn't been able to agree on any change to the RfA process in the past two years (except to move the chairs around on the upper deck, so to speak) is going to act differently in the future. Wikipedia policies are capable of incremental changes. But even something as minor as reusing old accounts with zero edits (see Wikipedia:Usurpation) took, what, a 'crat to grab everyone by their scruffs and force the process along? Suffrage, for example, is something that many, if not most of the other major language Wikipedias use, and something that might help this Wikipedia with RfAs, even though only for year or two of time before increasing scale again takes its toll - but I doubt that it could ever get any serious consideration here. Rather, I think it's pretty clear it would have to be something that Jimbo mandates, if its going to happen at all. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
      • NoSeptember is a rational person, with a very significant involvement in WP:RFA. He and I have differing opinions on the ability of the community to respond to the question and issue of reform. I think he is wrong, and my stance is right. But, it doesn't really matter. Looking at the long view of this, I think it is inevitable that the pressures on RfA will become so apparent that a stance that RfA is not fatally broken and that the community can effectively respond to this problem will be untenable. We are not there yet. In that sense, NoSeptember is right. But, in the long view, that position is untenable.
      • The process for RfA was put in place to manage RfA when it began in June of 2003 and has been largely unchanged since. This process has undergone cosmetic changes during the three and a half years since, but the essential process is the same; nominees are put forth, they are supported and opposed, and someone evaluates whether that person is considered acceptable or not. The metrics have changed somewhat, but the process has not. Take a look at what it looked like in June of 2004, just a year after creation [1]. That's basically what we have now. Sure, we transclude RfAs now, and the headers for each RfA are different. But, other than that, what's changed? Nothing really. Meanwhile, we've had ideas of reform dating back at least to March of 2004 when the idea of no self nominations was proposed [2]. Since then, there's been a huge number of calls for reform, reform proposals, discussions of reforms, polls and surveys, and more. Yet, nothing has changed. As the RfA community, we've never been able to agree on any significant change.
      • Now, it could readily be argued that the process hasn't been changed because it is as close to perfect as we can expect to achieve. That might be a reasonable argument. However, given the seemingly ever increasing debate on how to reform RfA, this position seems increasingly untenable. I myself held this position for quite some time. My opinion (and true, it is an opinion) has since changed. See my comments on scalability issues earlier on this page. While RfA remained small, the problems it had were also small. As it grows, as standards increase (see Image:AverageEditCountatRfA-2006.png, as admin load increases (see Image:Actionsperadmin.png, the pressures on RfA to achieve its goals will continue to mount. It's inability to meet the goals will become increasingly apparent. It's simply a matter of time. --Durin 19:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminship: Suggestions

I have some suggestions:

1. Adopt specific numerical minimum requirements for edit counts and duration of involvement to prevent the constant inflation of standards.
2. Require objective, high minimum standards for voters. I would be in favor of limiting voting to only those Wikipedians who have themselves been admins for at least three months, because it would break up the now-overinfluential caucus of upcoming and recently promoted admin candidates. Absent such a change, I would still be in favor of limiting voting to only those Wikipedians who have, for example, 1000 edits and three months' participation.
3. Split the RFA process into a "discussion" and a "voting" stage similar to that proposed at "discussions for adminship."
4. Encourage the bureaucrats to utilize a more liberal standard than the current 75%/80% one for promotion when large numbers of votes have been cast, using a sliding scale. For example, the ratios could be lowered to 70%/75% when over 50 votes are present and to 65/70% when over 100 votes are present.

Any combination of these would help, and I believe we would benefit from implementing them all. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

None of these take the scaling issues that Durin has pointed out into account, so mileage may vary.

The article namespace generally works well, because people are typically split into small groups (true for perhaps 90% of articles.)

Try to think of ways to have people split up into small groups, perhaps to discuss aspects of the candidate, and have these small groups somehow come together and reach some conclusion. If people don't notice the split happening, all the better :-)

Well designed lightweight consensus processes are typically faster and more pleasant to work with than comparable committee or majority based systems, so adoption isn't the biggest problem. Finding a good, clean, simple and elegant design, and especially taking scalability into account... that's the tricky part.

--Kim Bruning 00:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I would disagree in very strong terms with attempts to introduce suffrage requirements for voting in RfAs. Also, edit count inflation is a problem, but explicitly invalidating oppose votes because their rationale is based on an overinflated edit count expecation is a not a good idea I would think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I mostly agree. Except where extremely tough suffrage would push back scaling issues for a while. (Like if only 1 in 10 people could still participate, it might take a while for RfA to go out of control again). --Kim Bruning 13:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminship: Overhaul

I agree with Michael that the sytem needs an overhaul. Nothing concrete has materialised in the past few months quite a number of people have something or the other against a new system being set up. Agreed, no system is perfect, but I strongly feel some of the problems facing RFAs such as editcountitis should be cleared up. One way to deal with it is for bureaucrats to tune in to good suggestions made by the community, and then collectively (the 'crats) debate and come to a consensus regarding the proposal. If consensus has been reached, it could be perhaps be referred to Jimbo/Arbcom for an endorsement. For example I would like to see the editcountitis issue be dealt with once and for all. Also it could reinforce the concept that adminiship is based on the aptitude, experience and skillset of the candidate, not superfluous parameters such as high editcounts, excessive RFA patrol, and daily AFD participation. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Trial adminship was discussed earlier last month. It raises hackles for some people but may be worth considering. At any rate, if the problem is too few passing nominations and/or too stringent standards, an obvious solution would be to lower the requirement. It seems we're already doing that; I seem to recall that it used to be "about 80%", then it became "75%-80%" and now it's more like "70%-80%". Of course, changing the bounds will give the appearance of not being impartial - but, note that the English Wikipedia is the only one that doesn't simply have a cutoff point. A simple statement like "starting tomorrow, all RFAs with 67% or more support shall pass (discounting socks)" should easily resolve the problems of (1) too few people passing, and (2) the general ruckus any time a decision is in doubt. >Radiant< 09:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Radiant: How does this address the scaling issues that Durin has put forth? I think all the proposals put forth have failed, because they do not scale? --Kim Bruning 13:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The current RFA method tends to "throw away" most of the data collected in an RFA, and also does not manage to develop as much information. When less people were participating, more of the information got incorporated in the final decision. In short, RFA has not been scaling very well, as far as efficiency goes. Any proposal for "fixing" RFA should try to find a solution for the scaling problem. --Kim Bruning 14:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Redesigning adminship: All-in-one expectations

I think another problem with RFA participants is expecting admin-candidates to be "All-in-Ones" expecting them to take care of vandalism, AFDs, blocks and what not. One may prefer to edit articles, and as such his usage of the tools will differ. So, one way of breaking the scaling issue is to make sure that a person seeking admin privileges (as per his outline for justification of tools), does not result people !voting against a niche rather than a jack-of-all trades user. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure this has to do with scaling? (scaling is typically when a you grow a small thing into something very large, see: ummm Scale (computing) or Scalability, which are close enough, though in this case we're talking about scaling in social networks.) Even so, a good point wrt requirements: you think admins should specialize more?. --Kim Bruning 16:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• I think (correct me if I'm wrong) what Nichalp is getting at is that RfA contributors are expecting nominees to be jack-of-all-trades type admins. Reality is there is no one size fits all editor or admin. But, equal reality is that if you don't cover all the bases, you're chances of passing RfA go down. --Durin 17:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually it has indirect dealings with scalings. The moment we do away with the requirement that admins should be all-in-ones, lesser people will participate in the !vote. People who do choose to participate would take a closer look at how the candidate has performed as AFD-admin and accordingly vote. To answer Durin's question on touching bases, I agree yes, the candidate should have a fair understanding on basic adminship duties policies before seeking adminship. This can also be tested through AFD questioning. After all all candidates must go though a manual before applying, don't they? =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

There's still going to be a portion of the RFA population thinking, "Well, he said that he won't {delete|protect|block|edit the interface}, but he still has the technical ability to do it, so I'm opposing until he shows at least some regularity with those processes." That brings us back to the point of granularity in user permissions. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

User rename log

I see this log only goes back to 22 July 2005. Is there a page showing the log prior to this date? (similar to Wikipedia:Bureaucrat log which shows older rights changes) NoSeptember 11:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the SVN repository, the Renameuser extension was added Sun Jun 26 10:19:06 2005 UTC, so it is likely that all bureaucrat renames are recorded in Special:Log/rename. Prior to that, if any renames were done, they would have been done by developers directly in the database, and would not have generated a log. Wikipedia:Changing username/Archive1 shows requests that predate the automatic log, and to my knowledge, all those responding to the requests are developers, suggesting that my assumption is correct. Essjay (Talk) 12:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. NoSeptember 12:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Delldot

Any chance one of you lot could give Delldot the mop? Shes desperate to get started! RyanPostlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 01:02, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh, thanks Ryan, but I'm just puttering around AFC anyway right now, so it's cool :) delldot | talk 01:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I've closed the RfA. Thanks for the note. Redux 03:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot counts of !vote

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but why doesn't my neutral vote in Crum375's RFA show up in the summary above? I checked and it is formatted correctly. Obviously, this particular !vote doesn't really matter all that much, but if the bot could be miscounting or failing to find duplicates elsewhere, that could matter. --BigDT 05:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You should probably ask Tangotango directly about that. And, everyone should remember, we use the bot summary as a convenience, a reminder of what RFAs are due to need closing, and a general idea of how they are doing. When actually closing an RFA, we look at the actual !votes on the actual page, so it never matters what the bot reports. Essjay (Talk) 05:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the ::: at the start of Crum375's reply confused it. I've fixed the markup there to #: (not only to unconfuse the bot, but so that any future neutral votes will be correctly numbered), and the bot recognizes the vote now according to the 'details' link (so your vote should show up next update). Hope that helps! --ais523 09:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense ... and just now I noticed and fixed the same thing in another RFA ... there was a comment after the lone oppose vote that was missing the # mark and the autocounter was showing zero opposes. Thanks to both. --BigDT 23:58, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Offensive username dilemma

Please see User talk:Deadaphaia. The user in question is remarkably similar to a blocked user on ja:wp with the same name who was blocked there shortly before this account as created. The ja user was obviously trolling and hoping to offend ja:User:Aphaia, a user who left en:wp not long ago for a different class of username reasons (see User:Aphaia).

After rebuffing a few requests by different people to change username, the user is currently stalling. I would recommend a temporary namechange until the user decides on a new name; hoping the user is not a troll but expecting that s/he may be and not wanting to waste more time.

See Wikipedia:Changing_username#Deadaphaia_.E2.86.92_Lifelessatropos for the specific change request... the user could request a new name if this is not acceptable and they actually want to contribute. +sj + 16:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

It all appears to add up, and it is an innapropriate name. It's not so egregious that we couldn't wait a couple days after notifying them that it is indeed going to happen very soon unless they pick another name themselves. Can you note that on the user's talkpage and the CHU request? - Taxman ^Talk 17:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't get why this is a rename issue. If the user is not willing to undergo a rename, and the username is inappropriate, block them. They will either decide to undergo the rename and be unblocked, or will remain blocked; either way, the probelm is solved. It's the same process we've been using for years, and I don't see any reason for setting a bad precedent of performing renames without the user's consent. The tool for enforcing Wikipedia:Username is Special:Blockip not Special:Renameuser. Essjay (Talk) 17:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Adminstrative right to vanish

I have raised my concerns with the adminstrative right to vanish and return with bit at the Wikipedia:Village pump (news). Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)