Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

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• Prior to June 2003, requests for adminship were made and discussed on the mailing list.
• For Archives of discussions from June 2003 to the present, please visit Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archives.
• Discussions about Requests for adminship can also often be found at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.

On Super-duper majority and voting for administrators

I have been studying closely the issues surrounding RFA and have determined that perhaps one of the problems is the requirement for a super-duper majority of support votes in order to obtain adminship (75% to 80%). If you compare this to other areas where community consensus is measured, this criteria looks like a slap in the face to those standards. In particular, since Wikipedia is not a democracy, it seems weird that in the RFA process suddenly we are requiring a super-duper majority of basically self-declared voting Wikipedians who can create their own arbitrary standards for voting and affect a decision in a manner that is easily abused by pile-ons. I have been a member of Wikipedia for some time, but I could not believe it when I was bitten by diehard RfA voters who didn't like the responses to the questions I made but made no attempt to explain what exactly they didn't like about them. Since every user can make up their own standards and RfA voters seem to move like a pack, there is really little in the way of protecting outsiders here in this peculiar corner of Wikipedia. I think if we removed the 75% to 80% statements in exchange for the normal statements about consensus this would be a lot better. Have the beuracrats exercise their arbitrary authority the way admins exercise their arbitrary authority at WP:AfD. If they can ascertain a consensus in favor, a consensus against, or no consensus, great. Maybe we can have them sift through some of the baloney that people have begun to insert in their personal standards that are not a part of the written prose regarding the RfA process. --ScienceApologist 18:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

To achieve this without changing the threshold, we would need a rethink of RfA standards, however. I suppose the bureaucrats can decide, but in my opinion if a candidate receives less than 70% they need to look at those oppose votes and think about their position, then do their best to change before their next RfA (if they have another). It's important to note that bureaucrats can use their discretion of a nomination is clost. --Draicone ^(talk) 00:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Clarifying what is meant by 75%

Thanks to everyone who helped me clean up some of the explanations of the process in front matter. I had one more change for your consideration: [1].

The rationale for this change is that it removes the parenthetical and the "rough" approximation which is unnecessary and misleading since it's pretty clear that someone getting less than 75% would not be granted adminship (as per the last time this happened people made a big stink) and it made it clear what the 75% support was refering to -- specifically votes in support of the nomination. Please tell me what you think of this edit.

--ScienceApologist 18:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't make it clear enough that at 80%, promotion is likely. In reality, between 75% and 80%, Bureaucrats have a lot of discretion. Outisde this range, they (importantly) still have discretion (for example, if new information comes to light near the end of the debate) but have to tread carefully. Depending on feedback, I'll put this in words on the page, but I don't want to leave it in its current form for long, because I think it is an undiscussed material change to current consensus. Stephen B Streater 18:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the promotion threshold can be made larger if bureaucrats have a good reason to promote or not promote outside the 75-80% range (e.g. a hypothetical HRE case had occured just prior to closure, and the nomination had an 85% or so support ratio). The actual numbers themselves are a sort of unspoken rule, although having them on the page could produce an appearance of official endorsement, which could be counterproductive. Titoxd^(?!?) 18:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not a fan of "unspoken rules" being hidden because we should, as accomplished Wikipedia editors all, be able to explain how things happen so that there are no surprises. I think we can nuance this to let people know what the standards usually are but also inform them that in extreme circumstances there can be other things that happen. --ScienceApologist 19:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a table would be appropriate for illustrating what happens in general?

Percentage of support votes	Nomination status
< 75%	Usually nomination fails
75% to 80%	Consensus determined by bureaucrat
> 80%	Usually nomination succeeds

--ScienceApologist 19:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

ScienceApologist: You're looking at this the wrong way. RfAs are not about percentages, at the core. RfAs are about consensus, and that should be stated. A table is unnecesary, and it only creates confusion. Consensus is always determined by a beaurocrat, and while I can't provide an example (I'm too lazy to find one) of a nom where it failed at above 80%, I'm pretty sure one exists. You're trying to make something fluid into a hard and fast rule, instead of stating the general terms.--digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 19:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Believe me, I'm not trying to make the 75% threshold a rule, I'm trying to describe what generally happens at a RfA. While I understand your concern that this is really about consensus and not about "standards", we should be able to nuance our statement so that people who come to RfA know what to expect. Consensus building at RfA is considerably different than consensus building in other parts of Wikipedia. I just want to illustrate how it's different. I'm sure that there are RfAs that were successful that were below 75% and there were RfAs that were unsuccessful above 80%. That's not the point of this description. I think it's only fair to explain that this is a community-accepted standard that is subject to the discretion of the bureaucrats. Is there anything wrong with that? --ScienceApologist 19:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

To save the trouble of new tables, why not use the existing one on BN, adequately coloured to indicate what the percentages mean.... Tyrenius 19:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot! Having a table that the bureacrats actually use would improve the transparency of the description of RfA. --ScienceApologist 19:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

While you discuss how to get the table colours with Tawkerbot, you should remember that this is not a vote and so percentages are only approximate. The weak law of large numbers just means that generally strong and weak points can balance out between pro and con supporters, so percentages usually work. There is no clear percentage which guarantees success or failure as good arguments may all be one one side, and late events may invalidate earlier arguments. Stephen B Streater 20:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with all of this. I just want to describe the process so it is clearer to people who come here for the first time is all. We can include in bold blinking letters if you want that the percentages are approximate and subject to the various meaningful consensus issues. I liked your wording about "discretion". --ScienceApologist 20:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the process described accurately at WP:GRFA? I think that it is, and perhaps just linking more prominently to that page would solve the issue. Titoxd^(?!?) 20:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed it is buried at the bottom of this page, but what is a description of the process doing in the guide anyway? Shouldn't the process be described up-front? --ScienceApologist 20:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

So I'm pretty confident that accurately describing RfA right now is summarized in part by the discussions we're having here. Is it okay to say that there is consensus that the parenthetical wording can be changed to accomodate a better description of what goes on? --ScienceApologist 01:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

75% threshold brings entire RfA into question?

75% is not consensus. That's majority. I think that a lot of people really do now just treat RfA as a vote. We may need to replace it soon. Could people who previously had proposals for replacement systems please step forward? Kim Bruning 20:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As long as big stinks are made whenever this treshold is violated and bureaucrat-status is dependent on accepting this "unspoken rule" it certainly feels like a voting system to me. --ScienceApologist 20:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the best way to get RfA to be more concensus based is to increase the range of descretion from 75-80% to 65-90%. It would be nice to remove the guidelines completely, but that will just cause people to use the 75-80% guideline unofficially, so it's better to have a firm guideline, just one that is closer to the desired system. I don't think RfA is broken enough to require a whole new system - that would be overkill. --Tango 20:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

That's still a majority based system. Could you propose a less "dangerous" system? Kim Bruning 21:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC) [1] The danger of majority voting systems is that they get imitated in the article namespace, where they're not supposed to be used.

As it exists today, RFA is not a simply vote or election. It is a consensus building activity with using the opinions expressed by participants to gauge consensus. Reality on the ground shows that very few RFA's are difficult interperate if you look at volume of comments, trends, as well as the number of participants voicing a particular opinion. FloNight ^talk 21:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I'd prefer it to be entirely at the beurocrat's descretion, but I don't think that would work - people would expect crats to continue using the 75-80% guideline, and when they decide against convention, there'd still be an outcry, as there is now. With a firm guideline, but one with enough leeway for crats to use their descretion in the vast majority of cases where there is any need to, the crats would actually be allowed to do their jobs. It's a compromise, basically. --Tango 21:40, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

/me takes large step forward. There have been a number of proposals, including my earlier suggestion for a sponsorship-driven system where prospective admins would be under the tutelage of a seasoned admin who would be responsible in part for their conduct. The core problem at RFA is not the percentages but rather the fact that good candidates get discouraged by the uncertainty and by the fact that even responsible involvement in conflict can be disqualifying. Less significant but still important is the fact that a handful of poor candidates are getting approved. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Just to correct something said above, I don't think any RfA with 80% or more support (after accounting for socks) has ever failed, at least not since the days when there were 10-15 people commenting in the average RfA. So despite the vigerous insistance that 80% is not a rule..... it is a rule, and we're simply not going to see anyone with legitimately over 80% support fail. --W.marsh 22:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

That's why it's important to have bureacrats you can trust to make a good decision. As is, people with the right social connections can muster 50-60 support votes without making a substantial contribution to the project. In addition, many people tend to vote and walk away - people who switch their votes in response to the discussion are rare. If something really worrying came up late in the debate, I trust that most of the bureaucrats would hold off on promotion. Still, I would prefer something closer to the FAC idea, where you would promote someone after all the substantive criticisms were dealt with the the satisfaction of the people raising the complaints. It would take much more bureaucratic involvement, it would require that they make the (higly controversial) decision of which opposes to discount, but it would move the idea back towards consensus... Guettarda 04:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussions for adminship proposed a system of commentary/evidence first, 'voting' later, but got shot down earlier this year. -- nae'blis _(talk) 04:24, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be more like a US Senate confirmation hearing. Seems like everybody gets turned inside out and then gets passed overwhelmingly that way. Nothing wrong with a thorough examination as long as people don't get vetoed for every little mistake.Blnguyen | rant-line 04:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflictx3)Why would someone that had over 80% support fail? That is strong community consensus. If 'crats saw an issue raised toward the end of customary timeframe, the best course of action would be to extend the RFA. The appropriate role for the 'crat should be guiding the process toward the best outcome for the community. FloNight ^talk 04:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I am just saying that I could forsee circumstances in which a 'crat might not promote someone who passes the 80% threshold. Guettarda 04:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

You could get partisan "vote lobbying" by someone organizing a bakdoor campaign to get similar editors of similar ideology to contribute. Look at the ethnic splits on the Khoikhoi (Turkish bloc oppose) or Bormalagurski (Serbian supports). If there was an innappropriate majority (OK, it's highly unlikely that Bormalagurski could find 100 ultra-nationalists to vote for him) or a large gropu of friends they could just override the dodgy aspects brought up by serious contributors. Blnguyen | rant-line 04:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Unless those people were already wikizens their votes would just be discounted. And if someone did have a stack of 100, it wouldn't be that hard to find 25 people who'll oppose on the grounds that stacking shows bad faith. And there are other appeal processes. But this is just speculation. Personally, I'm not convinced that there is a problem with the current system that needs fixing. Regards, Ben Aveling 08:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Current system is fine. I see no need for change. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I doubt this type of behavior described above is effective. During my RFA, (last of April/early May) a newbie started a email campaign against me because of a content dispute with my nominator. He left a strong oppose comment that was not factually accurate. These tactics did not sway the community, I was promoted with 93% (another of the opposes in the count was someone 14th edit to Wikipedia.) I agree that the current process is good. The main problem is getting enough experienced Wikipedians to comment on a regular basis. FloNight ^talk 04:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

So you don't disagree that the system works then. I frankly don't see any improvements which would not be burdensome and which would qualitatively improve things. My rant above is because I am getting tired of people wanting to change things. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, people *have* changed things, and moved away from consensus over time. So we need to get that fixed back to consensus yet again. I guess that if you can't handle constant change, wikipedia is probably not really the best place to hang out. Kim Bruning 12:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

As to whether RFA is working? Apparently there's some bad apples in our current group of admins, because we currently have a Wikipedia:Oversight process, that is designed specifically to keep certain information away from admins. That's a pretty clear vote of no confidence in our en.wikipedia admins as a group by the wikimedia foundation. They saw the problem of admins misbehaving in particular circumstances, and apparently had to do something or risk getting sued(!).

That leaves us with new problems of course, (like who gets oversight over oversight), but that's a different story for a different time.

In the mean time, don't try to sell to me that Requests for adminship is still working, because it has so obviously failed in real life. RFA will probably never be perfect , but it doesn't have to be quite THAT bad, does it? Can we make it so that oversight can go unused, sometime in the near future? Kim Bruning 12:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Not really, no. The two are designed to combat different problems. Administrator "abuse" comes in two broad types:

• Self-serving abuse: this is the usual blocking users that piss you off/protecting pages to your own version/etc. issue. We can probably push RFA towards more reliably detecting people who are likely to do this based on their behavior in conflicts and so forth.
• Malicious abuse: this is what oversight was designed to handle—people who aren't after particular results within the project, but are instead looking to actually harm the WMF and/or its projects from the outside. There's no way for RFA (inherently a social process) to detect something of this sort, because the actions taken here are generally not visible on the wiki itself. Hence, the need for technical measures. Kirill Lokshin 13:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, what Kirill said. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Do need to give 1000 people access to the information that was removed? We should be operating on a need to know basis. I do not need to know the who, what, when, where and why of oversight. The same is true of many things on Wikipedia. Like checkuser and some issues with banned users. Everyone, even admins, do not need to know all the details. FloNight ^talk 20:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Even if Oversight is a good idea in general, the fact remains that there exist administrators who repost deleted content. It is not merely a preventive measure or to stem satisfaction of curiousity. —Centrx→talk • 20:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Another problem could be that friendly users passingly acquainted with the nominee stop by, whip off of a "Support obviously, he is the greatest!" or, almost worse, "Support, great edit summary usage", and then never return to find problems, or, as mentioned (don't know if true) above about mboverload, come by and give an "Oppose, per comments by Bob" because of a first post by an opposer that turns out to be weak. I find this happens sometimes on AfD, but is not a problem because it is not used like a vote. Later comments clearly explain why the article should be kept or deleted, and the closing administrator can clearly see this is valid when compared to the first, unconsidered "Delete per nom" comments. This is also because AfDs have various users breezing through and commenting where necessary, without a hundred possibly little considered votes that are locked in with the user not returning. —Centrx→talk • 04:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The difference between RfA and AfD is that respect is that RfA has a default (to promote - the whole "no big deal" thing), whereas AfD doesn't. Any vote in AfD needs to give specific reasons, however there generally aren't any specific reasons to promote someone in RfA - you promote if there is no reason not to. If someone votes with no reason in an AfD, you can ignore it, you can't do that in an RfA, otherwise you'd be ignoring every support vote. --Tango 13:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

In practice does anyone ever dismiss an oppose vote in RfA because of this? I had a number of people vote "oppose" on my RfA with little to no explanation yet nobody seemed to indicate that this was in conflict with the "no big deal" thing. --ScienceApologist 16:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think crats only take it into account if the result is in the 75-80% range. --Tango 16:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hardly any week passes without one-three threads that the current system is broken and needs fixing, will all kinds of proposals floating around. That made me curious. Do we really have a problem? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It would at the very least indicate that many candidates do not think they were considered fairly. Otherwise, I see no reason why many discussions of problems could be taken as evidence of a lack of a problem. —Centrx→talk • 20:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It is better to keep it at that percent. It might look too restrictive, but that is the intention. Otherwise, some troll/vandal with working habits could get en.wiki into junk. Think, a vandal with his fellows + their sockpuppets and there you are. Just because the threshold was too low. A calm, fair and neutral person will mostly get over 75%, any doubtful person won't.
Or, as we know it "better (too much) safe than (even more) sorry". Kubura 14:29, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Very informal poll

The current Support/Oppose system is simple enough and works well in the absolute majority of cases.

Agree

1. Sure. RfA isn't perfect, but perfection is unrealistic. It works in the large majority of cases, and there's yet to be anything proposed that would work better. It seems like the main criticism of RfA is ultimately "This one person I really like didn't get chosen", and if that's the problem, then no consensus-based system is ever going to satisfy you. --W.marsh 17:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

   This is not to say that tweaks and improvements over time aren't important. The whole reason the current system works is that it's developed naturally over time to deal with the various problems that have come up. Thus, we should start all reform by clearly stating the problem to be adressed, rather than just proposing all kinds of totally new systems. --W.marsh 20:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

2. It would be good to know which arguments each person has read. Marginal votes (with a wider range) could result in a second round where only people who have assessed the totality of arguments from the first round express an opinion. I'm always a bit surprised at how few people take enough notice of the discussion to change their minds. Stephen B Streater 18:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
3. What W.marsh said. --Tango 18:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Support.  Grue  19:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
5. It's a not a perfect system, but it has few false positives (qualified admins being rejected) and very few false negatives (unqualified admins being promoted). I would like to see fewer votes lacking any reason at all. Aren't I Obscure? 19:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
6. Add me - Obvious. However, i'd have prefered this poll to be about shifting from universal suffrage to census suffrage. Admins are better fit to vote than non-admins (w/ all my respect to good abd very good contributors). -- Szvest 19:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC) ^{Wiki me up™}
7. Perhaps - in most cases but 'crats should engage in judicial activism a bit more so to speak, especially as per what Cyde and Naeblis say. In any case, if there is new info, a person who tries to ask a drive-by to reconsider is often fears being threatened for "soliciting votes" - also some users are very reluctant to switch sides - perhaps they feel "weak" if they did so, which is a problem if new info is discovered and a swing begins to develop.Blnguyen | rant-line 03:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Agree - I waited to read the disagree opinions below before voting and quite frankly the alternatives offered to my mind are not any better than the current system. The current format does have problems, but, my fear with a comment based system is that the most vocal, agressive and users that write the longest comments will cause their opinion to have undue weight - which is unfair. At the end of the day it could quite easily become a free for all shouting match. One "vote" (note the ""s) per user is a better option to my mind (at least at this stage) - Glen 02:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
9. Support Generally, RfA does a good job. Anyone who thinks that the system is broken because of the rejection of X (or the "flawed" promotion of X) should consider that his/her individual judgment is at least as likely to be in error as is a community process. Xoloz 23:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
10. Support Am I too late? Did they close the RfA? ;) -- Avi 02:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Disagree

1. Early votes are frequently "drive-by" and do not take into account either refutation of earlier claims of terrorism/vandalism/eating kittens, or false aggrandizements of skill and sainthood. Even a few days of discussion/research into the candidate before voting would be a nice incremental improvement. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

   This recent RFA shows that we are already using RFA exactly how you describe it should be done. [2] I did not want to overwhelm the RFA with my comment too early so I purposely waited. Many users came back and changed from support to oppose. For that reason, I think RFA is working. We need to encourage both oppose and support commenters to to a better job explaining themselves. FloNight ^talk 20:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

   I agree that in that instance what you did took into account the nature of RfA, but I'm not sure that demonstrates that the process is working in general. Why did you want to wait to comment, for example? I submit that it's because RfAs are presently frontloaded. That's why I'm in favor of a period of discussion/evidentiary findings before people start piling on the votes. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

2. I wholeheartedly disagree. I think there's too much subjectivity into what an admin should be, and I also think that if you're going to apply a standard, the standard needs to be applied uniformly across the board to all administrators, not just new administrators. I think that the current process pushes editcountitis and doesn't reinforce the policy aspects of administration. I think that if edit counts are going to be taken into consideration, then the quality of the edit counts needs to be taken into consideration as well. I think that if an editor can demonstrate that he or she can do the job, regardless of edit counts, they should be permitted to become an administrator. CQJ 22:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
3. I agree with nae'blis. I think a three day comment period followed by a seven day voting period would be better. The way it is now, a bunch of votes comes in before the candidate has responded to anything but the default questions. Oftentimes a lot of really insightful questions are asked, but combine the lag of the question asker finding out about the RFA and the candidate getting around to responding to them and you frequently have over half the votes coming in before the candidate has even responded to any questions specifically tailored to him (versus the general RFA questions). --Cyde↔Weys 00:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Not sure I understand the logic in this system Cyde - after all, we are all welcome to change our votes pending new answers. In fact I can think of more than one RfA from just this past week where the decision totally turned about face when new info came to hand. - Glen 05:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Why have a voting period at all? Why not just have a comment period? What purpose does voting serve? Can't we determine consensus without voting? --ScienceApologist 00:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Without a specific voting period, the comment period will turn into a vote, despite everyone's best intentions. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to vote, but this is wikipedia, not an ideal world. --Tango 01:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   What if we had people write only comments that were objections to the nomination? Those reading the nominations could join the conversation about the objections. The closing bureaucrat could then read through the discussions and give specific reasons why the nominations failed. Or would that devolve us into too much Usenet-ness? --ScienceApologist 01:46, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   I have a proposal floating around my mind which works along similar lines. Prehaps I'll write it up properly somewhere... --Tango

   You have my full support. --ScienceApologist 18:29, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

4. I'm with nae'blis and cyde. As soon as an rfa is posted, there is a rush to get votes in. A lot of the users that vote never come back to check the comments, making it impossible for them to have any effect. A 3 day waiting period for would completely solve this problem. Alphachimp ^talk 03:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
5. I have no clue how to fix this, but a voter who doesn't check back for further discussion isn't much of a voter. Real elections have serious debates with informal polls, but the only thing that matters is a few hours of real voting. --mboverload@ 07:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Let everyone vote twice, but your second vote must be at least 48 hours after your first vote. If you don't come back to vote the second time, your opinion will get only half the weight as those who do. I'd prefer this to prohibiting anyone from voting during a comment period because it is natural to state your support or opposition when you are making a comment. NoSeptember 12:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Double voting isn't logical or necessary. If people were more willing to go back and change/revisit their earlier vote, the quality of votes would improve, but while some wikipedians do, I don't believe they're in the majority. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

6. There's a very easy way of making RFA better, which is to require at least one relevant diff for every 'vote' made. Think the user is a good and sensible editor? Provide a diff to back it up. Think the user doesn't grasp policy? Provide a diff to support that claim. Don't know how to provide a diff? Then you shouldn't be involved in selecting Wikipedia administrators. Simple, to the point, requires people to either know what the nominee has done or do some research, and beter informs the whole process. Proto::type 13:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   So hundred voters will have to find a hundred distinct diffs ? Tintin (talk) 14:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Yes. Why not? It sounds a lot less onerous if you say 'each editor will have to find a new diff'. If you can only find one diff that proves the editor is an terror that should never be let near the rollback and block buttons, then perhaps that line of thinking isn't completely correct. And there wouldn't be a hundred voters, as this would remove all those drive-by voters who only vote 'support' to every RFA so when they go for their RFA, they'll make it. You would actually have to have some kind of investment in the process to have a say. Proto::type 14:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   The last thing you mentioned is why I don't really ever vote support on an RFA unless I know the guy or I've put a signficant amount of effort into evaluating the candidate (including asking questions). I'll be honest, I'm lazy, so there's a lot of RFAs that I just don't put the time into, and thus don't vote Support even if it's 75-0 and nobody's brought up a credible objection. On the other hand, I tend to oppose rather often, even when I find just a little something wrong. This is because of a combination of my high admin criteria and a desire to balance out all of the blind support votes. --Cyde↔Weys 18:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   So if someone is a perfectly good Wikipedian except that he's replaced major pages with a penis image three separate times at large intervals, and ignored any attempt to get him to comment or apologize, he only needs to get a dozen supporters (which will get progressively easier as Wikipedia grows) to outvote everyone and become admin? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Errr, huh? Where did you get that from? Are you implying that 'diffs' wouldn't include Image upload logs? -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

   Simetrical is acting under the assumption that we will keep the 75-80% threshold requirement with this new system. (See how nefarious this voting thing is, once it is established, people don't want to give it up!) Simetrical is pointing out that there might be some admin candidate who unapologetically replaced an article with a penis image one time over the course of their career. In this case, there would be only one diff, but if said candidate could drum up 12 of his friends to vote for him AND we required everybody to provide a different diff to support their objections then it could be with this curious amalgamated system that awful admin candidate gets the nod. However, I think what we are suggesting here is getting rid of this outdated 75% threshold business all together and replacing it with a meaningful comment section that requires people to refer to the actions of the candidate. That way a real evaluation can be done instead of one that relies on the majority of the unwashed masses coming in and expressing unresearched opinions in the hope of swaying consensus. --ScienceApologist 18:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

   That's what some of us are suggesting, yes, but I gather the only change Proto would make is to force each oppose to present a different diff. I'm saying that a single diff, or a few diffs, could potentially be a sufficiently good reason to oppose to merit the rejection of a candidate, which this proposal doesn't account for. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:38, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

   Aha, I hadn't caught that nuance. I would submit that the diffs showing a lack of response to objections to the candidate's penisification of the Wiki would be additional diffs that could be submitted under such an (admittedly baroque) system. It's also a bit of a straw man, however... -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:43, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

7. I think that this page almost more than any other is a slap-in-the-face to consensus which is, to my understanding, not based on a democratic sentiment but rather on something more like a meritocratic sentiment. But at RfA, there is little to no attempt to measure the merit of people's comments unless there are some users that take it upon themselves to point out problems with the explanations for the votes and, in fact, there are a number of editors who object to doing this and will vote against a nomination on principle if a nominee or a even another user tries to start discussions about the explanations (this happened to me). The support/oppose dichotomy which is set-up only serves to encourage people to treat the RfA discussion as if it is a popularity contest. I think that this system of having a "comment" section that's really a "voting" section where a super-duper majority of voters must commit for there to be a reasonable chance for an adminship to succeed is duplicitous. In principle, I have no problems with the system being this way, but it isn't described this way in the description of the RfA nor is it clearly stated that what is really going on in every RfA is an attempt to drum up support for one's nomination to the tune of 75 to 80% of the people voting for you. Can't anyone see how ridiculous this is? --ScienceApologist 18:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Let's have a comment-based system and leave the decision up to the bureaucrat. --Tony Sidaway 20:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   I think we should try that out for a few weeks. --mboverload@ 21:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

9. Set some firmer criteria rather than letting everyone vote (and that is the correct term for what goes on today in RFA) however they feel like, allow people to comment on whether the candidate meets the criteria, and then let the bureaucrat decide. Which, yes, will give them much greater power than they currently have; in debatable cases they could confer and have a vote (which might seem to defeat the purpose of reform until you realize that they'd be voting on whether the candidate met sensible consensus requirements, not voting however they felt like). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
10. I Agree with Cyde that something needs to be done so that late objections don't go unnoticed. The "comment" period would need to be fairly structured ... almost like an RFC ... otherwise, it could have the same problems the current system has. I don't like the idea of restricting the voting process to administrators - for a very simple reason. If there are lots of people you can't get along with, sometimes, it isn't everyone else - it's you. I understand that active admins sometimes have users with a vendetta (even then, a lot of it can be brought upon themselves - if you taunt the trolls, don't be surprised when they respond), but we're not talking about people who are already administrators. If you can find 20 people to oppose someone for non-trivial reasons (ie, "there are too many admins already"), even if not a one of those opposing is themselves an administrator, there's probably something wrong somewhere. BigDT 17:51, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
11. Implement an evidence/comment subpage and permit the bureaucrat to make the decision on said data. -Randall Brackett 14:42, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• Neutral. First, I think that it's ironic that this poll question about the effectiveness of the "support/oppose" system uses the "support/oppose" system. ;) Irony aside, I have not been enolved enough in the RfA system to have a highly informed opinion. Based upon my limited experience here, however, I think that it works well enough. Then again, I would be open to suggestions. --AaronS 17:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral. On one hand, it does generally work - most people who should be admins get promoted. On the other hand, there at least isn't a perception that rationales are taken into consideration in the support/opposes, meaning that I could walk in and support or oppose anyone for any reason, regardless as to whether it were true or not, and have it hold the same weight as anyone else. So is the support/oppose a good judge of consensus? Only up to the point that the strict vote counting gives a good indicator, but not of what the actual consensus is in a number of cases. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Quadruple Edit-Conflicted, Beat-the-Nom, Strongest Ever, Cliché, Rattatatat Ding-Dong Neutral on Top of the Reichstag Yes, RfAs are generally okay, but I feel like this RfA is not a vote is just a thing we say rather than a thing we put into practice. If we were to put a bit more effort into keeping requests for adminship a discussion rather than a place where candidates are, in many cases, discouraged from responding to comments about them, we'd have more informed and less over-the-top !votes. That would make the requests for adminship process significantly better. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 19:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• "Very few false negatives": Sure there may not be many admins promoted who go around vandalizing, but unwise or impolite administrators may still be promoted. As pointed out above, also, there are bad administrators, which are the reason for the Oversight permission, and there are indeed administrators who block and protect over content disputes they are involved in. Also, if half the rejected administrator (not withdrawn) could have been approved with us still being able to say "Very few false negatives", that could indicate a failure in RfA. Another problem I see is that it does not scale up, where the sheer numbers become less and less an indication of suitability for adminship. These numerous "Support for awesomeness" do not all represent evaluations of administrative ability, and provide no reasons why the user should be administrator. One question is, one year from now when active users are maybe doubled, what happens when Voice-of-all, Crazyrussian, Yanksox, etc. are all voting one side, and on the other we have several registered users for a few months who make a few article edits every now and then but do not administrator functions? Certainly, the bureaucrats are doing their own research and making the decision, but insofar as that decision is not based on the RfA vote, the RfA vote is not meaningful. If the dozens of support votes with little or no justification do not strongly factor in, why not encourage reasonable discussion instead? —Centrx→talk • 19:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• The problem with support/oppose is that there's no set idea of what a person needs to be an admin. Drive-by votes of "looks okay" are harmful, but so are "has enough edits in all the right places". Admins do a lot more than what they are 'approved' to do, and while RC patrolling is good, RC patrollers should not all be admins. Admins need to negotiate with other admins and they need to agree with other admins and have a unified front. Accepting anyone who believes anything about the project because they've got enough edits will split the unified front which holds us together, a bad thing. RfA needs to be a discussion, in which all the participants continue to be involved for the entirety of it. I don't know how to do that, heh, but the vote-and-go, at best, needs to stop, somehow. --Keitei (talk) 20:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral. Undoubtedly some people don't check back on updates, and this isn't good, but I can't see what an alternative is. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The alternative is to have reasons. If a person bases his opinion on something that later turns out to be false or weak, it can be considered in that light. Currently, we don't know if a person's "Support" is because he is accepting what is described in the nomination straightforwardly—which could end up being exaggeration or somesuch, or whether it is based on his knowledge and a good examination of the user's contributions, or whether it is based solely on edit summary usage. It would also encourage returning because a user would not feel as though he has stuffed his vote in the ballot box and that is that, without bothering with or caring about discussion. —Centrx→talk • 06:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. And then we could set out some firmer criteria to stop all the people who think that someone who's made 1000 model edits over three months is suddenly going to turn around and start abusing tools. Okay, you've convinced me. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Having seen many of these discussions and polls on the same topic over the last 15 months or so, let me guess that absolutely nothing will come out of this poll. We will make the same few arguments back and forth. The discussions will go on for three or four days. There won't any consensus except for status quo, a couple of people will make suggestions which will be immediately shot down, and it will business as usual. Tintin (talk) 12:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • What is necessary is having a formal proposal, getting the bureaucrats to agree, and getting a significant number of administrators and editors to support them. The problem is that few people seem to be involved with this Talk page, even the dozens of people who regularly vote in RfAs. Saying that nothing will come of it because nothing has come of it before is a self-fulfilling argument, as people may ignore the discussion, thinking it moot, and there will never be any change to RfA, barring a major catastrophe. Even with a major problem, for example wheel warring, for some reason people didn't conclude that it indicated a problem in the way those administrators were selected in the first place. —Centrx→talk • 21:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Things won't change because the current process is very simple and works very well. Significant changes will make the process much more burdensome (think WP:DfA) and it won't prevent bad admins better than the existing one. Wheel warring happens very seldom and so far has been dealt smoothly with via requests for arbitration. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Oleg is right. The beauty of the present system is its flexibility and adaptability. Change can happen by us, the participants, changing our standards, and this happens all the time. If every person who thought the process was broken committed to expressing their opinion on every editor who applied for adminship, they could easily move the standards of what is most important in selecting admins. If things aren't the way you like it, you are either not participating or your views are not in alignment with the community. NoSeptember 06:21, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Well put. If you think a simple vote is insufficient, make sure you comment on each candidate in detail. If people like it, they will join in. Admins are the "rule from below" part of Wikipedia, after all. Stephen B Streater 06:37, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Support/Oppose is broken persay, but the criteria for selection of subject to drift indefinantly torwards unreasonableness. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Foo (wrong question)

1. Yes I've stopped beating my wife, wait I mean no! ... oh foo... I plead the fifth!.You're asking the wrong question and getting the wrong answer. RFA would be broken right now with or without support/oppose or what have you. It's irrelevant. Kim Bruning 19:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

   You failed to tell us what the right question is, a question that will lead us to do some sort of positive change. I want to know what you think it is. NoSeptember 20:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Here are some:

• Can we trust our current admins?

  Answer: No. Empirically no, the foundation does not trust our current admins, in certain situations (Oversight, Office).

• Can we rule out RFA being part of the problem?

  Answer: No, in fact current rfa standards and processes appear to be geared towards arbitrary requirements, with no discernable relationship with the responsibilites admins should have. (see above)

• Does RFA promote people who know much about wikipedia?

  Answer: No. How many recently promoted admins know the trifecta and foundation issues? Many are clearly confused about consensus too.

to be fair do foundation issues really mater than much?Geni 13:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

• • How about this one: Does the foundation have any problem with a particular admin, or are they being cautious about giving extremely sensitive information to 1,000 people, some of which they don't know anything about? Titoxd^(?!?) 23:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Anyone I actually nominate for admin... I actually do know a number of things about. Don't you? Kim Bruning 23:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
      • What's your point? The foundation didn't nominate the 1000 admins, so why would they know about them? --Tango 00:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
        • That's the problem. They do. They know that some are leaking information and causing legal difficulties. Kim Bruning 09:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Oversight is not an indicator of a "broken system". There will always need to be a "higher level", per se. You cannot simply assume that oversight would not have been created if RfA worked perfectly or under another system. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

      We already have a higher level an sich. Apparently the load was so high that an entire system was needed. A similar argument goes for the Office policy. Kim Bruning 23:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

      • • Previously the removal of history from the database could only be done by developers; Brion and others simply didn't have the time to do so, focusing mainly on the many technical issues that they deal with to keep all of the projects running. Oversight simply transferred the priviledge to other just as trusted people with the time and responsibility to do so; the creation of the level cannot be interpreted strictly as either a lack of trust in the admins or a broken RfA system. In a similar fashion, Office actions were necessary to improve the overall editing structure; by efficiently dealing with poor articles, we are not only improving our quality but serving the Foundation's need to deal with such queries. It does not implicate or imply that we have a broken RfA system. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

          It should be so rare that Brion doesn't need to hand it off. Office is specifically there to fix problems when we have just made a spectacular error (think siegenthaler). Definately a vote of no confidence. Kim Bruning 00:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

          All that media publicity about WP is bringing in the people and companies that have articles here, and more of them are expecting to fix their articles the way they like them without understanding the WP way. This is not a surprise to me, the demand for Office and oversight will grow like crazy, and would do so even if every admin were top notch. How can we expect to be a top 15 visited site and not get that sort of attention from the lovers and haters of the subjects of articles? NoSeptember 00:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

          Our community should be able to handle problems internally. If it cannot, then the community should take steps to change that, or admit that it is incapable of operating autonomously. Kim Bruning 09:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

          We can handle it internally. New programs like Office and oversight have been set up by Jimbo and the developers because it is new, just as the original ArbCom was completely appointed by Jimbo, and the original bureaucrats were selected not elected. Nothing prevents us from taking over this role, why not propose a good procedure for us. ArbCom is charged with selecting new checkusers and oversight people, so the community already has control going forward since we select ArbCom. While Jimbo and the foundation will have a veto, there is no reason we can't run our own selection processes. Brand new processes always seem to be top-down, but they don't need to stay that way. NoSeptember 12:29, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

          • "It should be so rare that Brion doesn't need to hand it off." - were you asking him on a daily basis to remove damaging edits from the history of pages? No, you weren't. The oversight permission was created because if admins tried to do the regular "delete and selectively restore" method, the database would lock and the site would crash. The WP:OFFICE rule was created because Jimbo did not have the time to handle all the requests the Foundation Office needed to deal with directly (in cases, deal with immediately), so he devolved powers that were originally with him towards a few he knew already well. It doesn't sound to me as a vote of no confidence. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

            As above: the en.wikipedia community should be the one to handle those requests autonomously. It currently does not and can not. Kim Bruning 09:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Some good questions. I think the lack of knowledge of issues could be addressed even by a minority of people who are willing to press candidates to prove their bonafides. On the sensitive information issues, it is a bit too late to deal with the 1000 admins that already exist, many of whom are fairly unknown and thus untrusted by the foundation. The problem seems to have been solved with the new oversight and office functions, is there some way you want to make those functions work better? And how will changing RfA improve these issues? Reform of RfA doesn't quite seem to be the solution to solve the sensitive information issue. NoSeptember 23:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, those functions are a constant reminder of our failure to look after ourselves. No other wiki has them (yet). It's quite embarrasing. I propose we make them obsolete. Kim Bruning 00:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

English WP is just getting too big to maintain that personal touch it once had. The other WPs will have the same problems when they get to this stage. Some of them already have their share of problems. Do you think these problems could have been avoided at any project that grows to this size? NoSeptember 00:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

That's a pretty bizarre way of looking at it. As I said above RFA was not designed to pick people who could be trusted to carry out the Foundation's business, only those who could be trusted not to screw up too much with shiny admin buttons. It's fundamentally impossible to have a selection process that relies entirely (or primarily) on on-wiki activity while at the same time filtering out the people whose malicious actions are done entirely off-wiki (and usually under a different name).

(Which is not to say, however, that we don't need some way of ferreting out the second group; but it is something that would need to be done primarily off-wiki as well, or through the use of more sophisticated technical measures. In neither case would a change to the RFA process be effective.) Kirill Lokshin 00:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

My admin requirement is the traditional "can be trusted not to blow up the wiki". Admins don't need to conduct the foundations business, but they shouldn't actively do things that could end wikipedia and/or require foundation intervention either, right? Apparently in (some? limited? [1]) situations, the foundation thinks that admins as a group no longer fit even that criterium.

Forget things like 1 featured article, vandalism patrol, and 3 months, 1500 edits. We're failing on the fundamentals here! Kim Bruning 09:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC) [1] I'm hoping it's only limited. It probably is, but I'd prefer to start taking corrective action early. :-)

I don't really disagree with you; my point is that while the theoretical requirement might be "can be trusted not to blow up the wiki", we cannot generally do any better than "has not shown any signs that he cannot be trusted not to blow up the wiki" in practice. Some people will inevitably manage to game this (see sleeper agent), and any changes to our process shouldn't be motivated by trying to stop them—because we simply can't without doing highly invasive background checks on every candidate. Kirill Lokshin 12:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that it's that we can't trust our admins. Can we trust all 1000 of our admins (give or take) to adhere to the set guidelines, which most of them see as unbendable policy in my experience (which is probably a good thing...), on how they should use their admin tools under pain of ArbCom? Sure we can. The checks and balances are there; it's extremely bureaucratic and uniform, with little left to good judgement; it works.
However, can we trust all our admins to effectively run the community, as they will end up doing? No, I don't think we can. It's self-deceptive to say that admins are not viewed as higher than normal users. They are high-profile and people go to them with questions and for advice. Many of them are also more aware of what is going on with the community and Wikipedia in general and are contributing to how policy will play out. Is this bad? No, this is good. The people who spend the most time doing stuff will understand it best, and admins are promoted because they have spent that amount of time, and a good many continue to be very active. However, they are also promoted for very stupid reasons, and not promoted for equally stupid ones. The evidence shows that admins do not get along with each other (wheel warring, etc). Other admins are viewed as just any other editor, which divides the community. People tend to make their little groups, which is inevitable, but the admins should be a group also. It shouldn't be Christianity related-editor admins vs admins who edit or identify with other religions, or anything of the sort. Wikipedia doesn't have room or time for partisan politics.
Anyhow, it's my personal belief that one's ability to work with others to the good of the encyclopedia, finding and helping in the finding of compromises for major issues, and working with others to resolve things should be the main criteria for admins. The idea is not that we vote against each other and battle for things; it's that we resolve our differing opinions in a way favorable to everyone. Also, it doesn't take any special skills to 'fight vandals', and quality control is everyone's business, not just admin candidates. --Keitei (talk) 09:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Trust is not a Boolean attribute. Sure admins are trusted, but that doesn't mean they're allowed root access to Wikimedia servers. Admins are just trusted more than most users. If you pick out 839 people that you think meet the highest standards of trust, at least one is going to actually be untrustworthy. That's just a fact of life. And then there's the issue of accounts being hacked; it hasn't happened yet to an admin, to my knowledge, but some of our admins must have weak passwords, and so it's an open possibility. So give admins any tools that are somewhat dangerous in the wrong hands, but useful for a reasonably large percentage of editors to have; don't give them tools that are very dangerous in the wrong hands, or tools that only a couple of people really need to have. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Poll to determine that polls are evil is evil

1. Ideal, no, good enough until a better replacement has been worked out, yes. And if the system is broke, start to change it with new ideas, not with the supposed broke ideas to show that it has been broke.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 19:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

   People are opposed to fixing it, because they claim it ain't broke! Kim Bruning 00:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   How is it broken? We are promoting ample admins that are basically doing a good job, right? So how is the system broken? FloNight ^talk 01:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   I'm a bit of an odd man out, because I tend to work through other people, rather than doing things myself. (That's also why I handed in my own admin bit, to remove the temptation to micromanage). But I'm having more and more trouble finding people who are willing to do a good job. Often I find people who will help me in spite of RFA rather than thanks to it. I've hardly ever managed to recruit people off of rfa to do useful work. I've also seen RFA turn down people who are known to be useful. So for me, RFA is not doing much useful work.

   That's ok. It's always nice to have fun and interesting clubs like Esperanza or RFA, who don't do anything useful per-se, but who chat with each other and provide a friendly environment, and make their members feel important. Of course, if they actually become harmful to wikipedia, they should be shut down and/or replaced. Kim Bruning 11:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   I've suggested in the past that we have a list of a half dozen frequently backlogged processes and we ask each admin candidate to promise to adopt one of them to learn it and do work on it once an admin, as a condition of us promoting them. NoSeptember 13:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   That sounds like an excellent optional question, although it could be a rephrasement of Q1. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

   Yes, but we cannot expect constant contribution from all users. If everyone capable wikified one article, took care of 10 disambig link repairs etc. we could clear all the backlog. Its a good idea, but you also need to figure out how to hold candidates to their promise and if that really is the purpose we are promoting them for (many should really just be using the anti-vandal functions). --Draicone ^(talk) 00:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

   This is a volunteer project. Noone is required to do anything, and noone can be forced to keep a promise they make. -Splash - tk 14:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

   I never suggested we force anything, getting a promise to do a specific task will work with those who keep their promises. With the others, well we learned what they are willing to do to get promoted ;) (useful information). NoSeptember 15:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Polls to determine that polls are evil is evil are evil

1. Tony Sidaway 20:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
2. digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 20:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

What in heaven's good name is this section of this talk page trying to talk about? If it's just an opportunity to say "yeah" or "no" I do/do not like RfA, then we heard it all a hundred times. Last week, probably. As it is, this section meanders randomly in all directions at once, and in no direction at all. -Splash - tk 14:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Poll to determine whether the mind-numbing nature if this discussion is sufficient to drive a user to spouse-beating, assuming he/she has one

1. — Jul. 18, '06 [23:46] <freak|talk>

Poll to determine whether or not this poll has gotten way too frickin' long and should be truncated before someone other than Freakofnurture beats their spouse in frustration over the confusion

In the end, crats can choose to discount the driveby votes anyway.--The ikiroid (talk•desk•Advise me) 02:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

User:The Mad Bomber the first RfA candidate blocked during candidcay period?

Just for the record, I have blocked this user for wind-ups...for lack of the T word....on his own RfA. He had been making racist attacks in June, when I gave him a onoe month block, and has since made a few more dubious antics between then and now. Is this OK? It not, then unblock. Blnguyen | rant-line 08:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. How has he been allowed to get away with this name anyway??? Tyrenius 08:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Request semi-protection for an RfA

Hi. Would someone semi-protect Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Grendelkhan? It's been vandalised twice three times in the past few hours by an imposter forging a vote - first from a new imposter account,[3] then as an IP,[4], and again as a different IP.[5] In this circumstance, I feel a semi-protection will adequately prevent future disruption to this RfA. I'd do it myself, but as the nominator in this case feel it would present a conflict of interest. After all, I'm too involved to be sure I'm not blowing this out of proportion. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

done,.Blnguyen | rant-line 03:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Too Far-Gone Conclusions

I'm a bit worried about my comments on Sean Black's RfA and JD_UK's RfA, due to their lengths. I'm not trying to stab them with my opposition rationale, but I fear I'm inadvertently doing just that, especially since long opposition comments sometimes draw potential !voters to a side even if they don't particularly agree with them. In all honesty, have I gone against my own principle that this is an RfA, not an FBI investigation, and climbed on top of the Reichstag wearing a Spider-man suit with my oppose !votes in hand? Should I cut down the comments (or at least cut down comments in the future) or is the detail okay (this isn't a vote, after all)? Comments would be appreciated, and this doesn't just have to be about the length of my comments specifically. And, yes, I know that's not the correct usage of "far-gone". -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 14:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

No, the length of your comments is fine. I cannot imagine a reason for wanting to provide less rationale. People complain all the time about !vote or vote (even though nearly every single opposer gives a reason in nearly every RfA) and writing proper comments just proves that this is, in fact a discussion! not a !vote. -Splash - tk 14:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, please don't stop. As long as you're not piling-on (which I've never seen you do), there's nothing wrong with giving thorough explanations. I, for one, greatly appreciate them. ×Meegs 17:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright; thank you both for the feedback. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 22:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If you think they are long on the page, move them to the rfa/nom talk page, then link to them from the rfa/nom page. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The more thoughtful the reasoning, the better. Length in itself shouldn't reflect badly on a comment. There was one small thing I noticed though in your comment on Sean Black's nom, Jo: "Okay, okay, perhaps I over-reacted on some of those..." If you feel you may be over-reacting, than perhaps reconsider whether the diffs are really all that egregious. Marskell 12:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I see what you meant by that. It was only an "oppose" with my comment (as I wanted to see if what I said really was an over-reaction), but I changed it to "strong oppose" after seeing what others - namely BigDT - had to say. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 12:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Time to counter the drift in standards?

I've observed over the past few years that this process has drifted towards increasingly higher (sometimes unreasonably and unrealisticly high) expectations of prospective admins, and that worries me. In particular, those participating in these discussions are often fixated on edit count, rather than other more important factors like an user's trustworthyness and ability to work with others. We are far from the the original intent of granting adminship except where there's a reason not to, and while that isn't entirely bad, I think that the standards should be set only as high as necessary to protect the project from blatent abuse of admin powers - they were never intended to be an "elite" class of users. - - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 09:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

In particular, I think the questions that we need to answer are:

• How tough do the standards need to be to protect Wikipedia from malicious admins?
• Do the current level of informal standards make enough of a difference in preventing abuse that they are justifiable?
• Are current informal standards reasonable or unreasonable given the goals of the project and WP:AGF ?
• Would we be better served with formal qualifications so that the standards for adminship can remain consistant?
  • Should edit counts factor into those qualifications?
  • Should time as a contributor factor into those qualifications?
  • What other factors are involved? History of relations with other users? History of conflicts?

Also, I think we need to be asking ourself different questions regarding adminship candidates:

• If promoted, will the user use their admin powers to pursue their own POV or to influence edit conflicts they are involved in?
• If promoted, will the user intentionally harm Wikipedia?
• If promoted, will the user be capable of exercising restraint and neutrality?
• Does the user have a history of conflicts that calls into question their ability to work with others?
• Does the user have a history of abusive editing that calls into question their motives?
• Has the user been around for enough time to demonstrate their commitment to the project?

Really it boils down to one question: is the user likely to abuse the tools? bd2412 T 09:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I think the only reason we need any consderation af all on time or edit count is to make sure that they have put enough effort into the project that we have a reasonable idea of who their are and their level of commitment - basically, look at it this way - it only needs to be enough to make sure that the amount of time and effort the candidate has put into the project outweighs the time and effort that would have to be spent cleaning up after them should they turn out to be a problem as an admin. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 10:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I prefer "misuse" to "abuse" - that way it includes unintentional damage an admin can cause simply by not knowing what they're doing. Abuse is always in bad faith. --Tango 11:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I see what you are saying... I did actually consider wording it "misuse", but realisticly, to do serious damage generally requires intent. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 12:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps time to think about something in the line of adminship on probation? (I don't know if this has come up before). And there already is this. Lectonar 10:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Mboverload has a great essay in their userspace called "Zero Featured Article" that states that people should not use standard metrics for measuring the worth of the user. The page then goes on to list standards for admins, putting more and more emphasis on certain points. —this is messedrocker (talk) 10:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I like that. I can agree with that essay. Unfortunately, I think that we do need some form of arbitrary standard if only to keep from having 50 million different arbitrary standards. What we are trying to determine by a RFA is whether giving someone adminship is more likely to help Wikipedia or harm it. Thats it. No Roman Inquisition required. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 10:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

It all comes down to trust right? Do you trust the user, regardless of your personal feelings, to use the tools responsibly and for the good of the community? If so then they deserve a vote... -- Errant  ^talk(formerly tmorton166) 11:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Just for comparision an early version of RFA. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 11:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Somehow, I prefer the plain and simple days when RfA was like this. No indication of silly metrics there. :) Kimchi.sg 16:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Another thought. If we are concerned about bad admins, maybe we should make it easier to remove them too. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 12:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

It is very true that people sometimes use silly reasons for supporting and especially for opposing. One can always write under such a vote challenging the voter for as to why he/she voted that way, but I guess that's as far as one could go. I think it would be a bad idea to discount frivolous votes, or to institute a policy of criteria people can and cannot vote upon.

In short, while we can all invariably complain on this talk page about unhealthy trends, I guess the best one can do is let people vote however they feel and hope that due to the large number of voting people frivolous votes would cancel each other or become insignificant to the ultimate promote/not promote decision. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

If one perceives that another editor's standards are not as good as they might be, one should make a comment in the RfA of one's own using one's own, assumedly better, standards. One should not seek to impose those standards on everyone. Doing that would be a surefire way to break RfA. The reason it so rarely promotes bad people and so rarely fails to promote good people (no system can ever be perfect, remember, and someone else's grass is always greener) is that people have an almost completely free hand to guide a given RfA according to the detail of the circumstance of the particular candidate. -Splash - tk 16:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, well said. --Cactus.man ✍ 19:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I could care less about the standards for supporting an RFA - I do find problematic the percieved standards for opposing one. I think opposition should be limited to demonstrating that it would be harmful to Wikipedia and its goals to give someone adminship - if you can't show that someone is likely to use the mop and broom to do harm, then theres no reason why they shouldn't be an admin. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 00:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The older version of RfA, here, looks much more welcoming and less over the top. It is driven into the head of candidates that ADMINSHIP IS NO BIG DEAL!!!, but there is an utter rigmarole, (odd word ;), you have to file a huge application, cross reference your credentials, and sell yourself in the intro. And then 100-so people you've never even heard make a snap judgement of you, and pile it on. RfA shouldn't be a vote, it should be a discussion. The whole system is screwed in the head, personally I'd much prefer the above option. Obviously it's not applicable since Wikipedia is bursting at the seams with user haters, but I think we should aspire to that. But it isn't going to happen, so why complain. Highway ^Batman! 22:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Well RfA still is no big deal...all the technical actions can be reversed, so in the technical aplication it isn't. However, lack of diplomacy and incivility cannot be undone as it can damage trust, etc. so this is one of the big points in RfA. It would be the main point why your RfA failed, not because people think that your writing skills are bad or whatever....I haven't written any FAs....I think it would be better for you to not assume that people hate you.... Secondly, I feel that it is important to take RfA seriously as admins need to be good role models, and it doesn't take more than 20min to prepare a standard RfA, although for me it is more like three hours....Blnguyen | rant-line 00:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh no no no. While Adminship may not be a big deal, getting it (RfA) most certainly is. In this climate, candidates are expected to just through hoops to become Admins, but if they succeed, there's very little to actually being an Admin. -- Ec5618 21:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Nah, I have a hate crowd. I actually know better about Pokémon grammar. Which makes me a prime target. People don't check a user, or read an RfA. They look at the first oppose and see if it is worthy to oppose. And generally it's who opposes, not what they say. Numph. Highway ^{Return to Oz...} 13:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thats true to an extent, alot of people do look at the opposes (or supports) that are there and base opinions on that; but to be honest that will happen anyway. I think there are enough regular or semi-regular voters around to ensure that a hate (for want of a better word) doesn't undermine an RFA! --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk)(Review me) 13:17, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Adminship is, in essence, a security guard and a custodian blended into one job. Why do so many wikipedians think that becoming an administrator is the answer to getting power and becoming popular on wikipedia? Perhaps it is because so many administrators are influential and heavily involved—yet a normal user is not prevented from participating in discussions or requesting a block, protect, or delete, or helping change a policy (and as a side note, there are a decent amount of admins, even crats, who don't participate a lot in the community). We have processes so non-admins can work easily and get things done. Cabals do not control the system, a cabal is only created by one's lack of civility, communication, and/or knowledge of process and policy. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

No offence Ikiroid, but what 'pedia are you on? New users who disagree with me on policy often have a go at me, until they find out I'm not an admin, and then it turns into, "you aren't qualified to tell me if I'm doing something wrong!" I also have a harder time at things like FAC, but that may be because I'm not popular, but when we're being frank, is why most people aren't admins. Highway ^{Return to Oz...} 23:43, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

apparent contradiction

The first entry under Commenting and expressing opinions" says "Who may comment: Any Wikipedian with an account is welcome to express their opinion, including the nominator." This would seem to indicate that anonymous (IP) comments are stricken. The last entry says "Threaded discussions are held in the Comments section. Long discussions are held on the discussion page of the individual nomination. Anyone may comment or discuss, including anonymous editors." This indicates that IP comments are welcome (even though they have to have an account to vote).

Which one of these is correct? The incorrect one needs to be fixed. - CheNuevara 15:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

This looks like another result of the infamous "votes to comments" conversion. Back when it wasn't taboo to use the word "vote", RFA had a suffrage against anonymous users making votes but were still allowed to make comments (ie, in the "Comments" section). Therefore, it used to be that any Wikipedian with an account is welcome to vote, but anyone may comment, including anonymous editors. Since I doubt "!vote" will be used in "official" documentation, I think "express their opinion" should be changed to something like "support or oppose" (which doesn't cover neutral, but is the best in terms of minimalistic text), or "leave a support, oppose, or neutral comment" (which is unwieldy, but is technically the most accurate). Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if we just used the damn "vote" or "!vote". ;-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

We should just use the term "vote" anyway unless we change RfA to a pure discussion. Kusma (討論) 16:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Anons can comment, they just can't comment. Heh. --W.marsh 16:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about "You need an account to state a formal opinion, however anonymous users may make other comments." (Basically !vote becomes "formal opinion") --Tango 16:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about we post a picture of someone bending over backwards alongside this language... --W.marsh 17:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about bending over forwards? Bending over backwards may be offensive to some. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How about just Image:pretzel.jpg? Oh wait, that'll be offensive to those with wheat allergies... -- nae'blis _(talk) 19:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps "Anyone is welcome to express thier opinion on any candidate. Commments by non-logged-in users are restricted to the "Comments" section, as they are intended to aid others in the formation of thier comments, and are not utilized in determining promotion." That says, in an addmittedly much longer form than before, that anons can bring stuff up, but thier opinion on promotion isn't counted towards the standard for promotion (the minimum 75% support one nobody wants to admit exists but won't stand for anyone "violating"). Essjay (Talk) 21:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think we'd be better off just calling the thing a vote. Playing semantic games or writing things out in long and complicated language, just serves to confuse people. For what? Some little bit of moral comfort that we aren't really voting as long as we all agree not to call it a vote? That's just silly. If you want RFA to not involve voting, then work to change RFA, but don't just obfusticate the language and declare mission accomplished. It strikes me that this is Wikipedia's own special little version of political correctness run amok. Dragons flight 21:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You're saying what most of us are thinking, I'd wager, or perhaps what we're already saying in our own, twisted, humourous ways. --Deathphoenix ʕ 21:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Twisted humour. I agree with you both. -- Ec5618 21:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that the moment it officially becomes a vote, is the moment some people are going to swoop in and kill the process as being totally out of control. That's why people who want to make it into a vote are twisting themselves into more and more impossible positions to try and prevent the waiting sentinals from officially catching on. I'm watching this with wry amusement. Not long now. <slow... menacing... grin> Kim Bruning 12:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps bureaucrats should only count reasoned opinions. As WP expands, people know each other less, and giving WP over to drive-by voters would be a undesirable. Stephen B Streater 13:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

RFA isn't really suited to reasoned opinions- either you trust someone or you don't. In any case, either you would need an inventive new reason from every supporter/opposer, or you would end up with 50 'per Mr X's. Henry^Flower 13:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I only half agree - there are no real reasons to support, but every oppose should be for a specific reason (or combination of specific reasons). However, most people do give a reason - the problem is in deciding if it's a good reason. That can't be a crat's job, as that would give them power to decide for themselves, rather than just determine concensus. --Tango 14:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It's been a vote for a long time, whether we've called it that or not. It's not 2003 anymore. And no one's stopped it. --W.marsh 13:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not really a vote, it only appears to be so because of the volume of people involved in each decision nowadays. Counting heads does get you to a general idea of consensus, and then contemplating the nature of comments gets you the rest of the way. I would point out that AfD is a lot less predictable because the judgment of the closing admin makes a huge difference, and admins have quite a variety of ways that they interpret consensus. I think RfA works better than AfD. NoSeptember 14:35, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Well this argument has been had before, but as long as you always pass by getting 80% and always fail at under 75%, regardless of the quality of arguments... it's a vote, even if we choose not to call it that. No one's ever going to get "contemplated" out of adminship when they have an 81% showing on one of the vote counters after 7 or 8 days, so I find it hard to believe that the discussion is more important than the head count at that point. We wouldn't even want people with 81% failing, anyway. And frankly, that's what works best now with 50-100 people commenting in every RfA. --W.marsh 14:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the topic immediately below here, you'll see someone being promoted with less than 75%... although, to be fair, going by the closing b'crat's statements there they were influenced as much by the unique situation as by the comments. --Aquillion 18:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That's only the second time someone outside of the 75%/80% range hasn't gotten the default decision in the past few hundred RfAs. And to be honest, the B'crat who closed it enjoys much more discretion than any other b'crat - that's just how it is. --W.marsh 18:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That could be because he is a Steward. Stephen B Streater 18:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Danny is both a steward and a bureaucrat, and he went through an RfB and was promoted by community consensus. NoSeptember 19:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

URL not working

The "vote here" icon in my RFA is not showing up as a link, and I don't know why.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 15:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. They have nowiki tags around it by default, I can't say I know why (someone who's familiar with {{rfa}} might be able to answer that one}}. Good luck with it, hope it doesn't end up being a too stressful experience :) Petros471 15:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'm not too worried either way....after all, adminship is no big deal ;).--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 15:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah right. I'm off to oppose his RfA... "Malformed RfA! Clearly not admin material." (it would be funny if stuff like that actually hadn't been done in seriousness) --W.marsh 00:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, if he doesn't even provide a working "vote here" link, then he clearly doesn't us voting to support and therefore lacks enthusiasm and committment. :P RandyWang (^raves/_{review me!}) 05:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The technical guy comes to answer questions! The reason for the nowikis is there, in their absence, the link to the pagename would subst: in the template to Template:RfA, and , as it's subst'ed, would not change. fetofs ^Hello! 01:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Haha, well, I'd just give a person an FYI for a restart on their talkpage if they had built a corrupt one. Better to help someone improve then slap them on the wrist w/o any advice. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 01:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sean Black 2

It appears that Sean Black was promoted with (159/63/6) which is a 71.62% support votes. I believe this goes against the consensus of 75%. Also, with due respect to Danny, this is not the first time he does such controversal actions.

Add to that the debacle at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Kelly_Martin.2FB related to this RfA, and I am becoming worried that Wikipedia as an open, consensus-driven community is in danger. Sad to see. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

RFA is not a vote. It's a discussion for establishing who can be trusted with the administrator tools. Sean Black can obviously be trusted. --Cyde↔Weys 17:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That's your opinion. Apparently at least 60 users disagree.  Grue  18:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Not a single oppose vote was able to demonstrate an abuse of the admin tools by Sean Black. It was all just grasping at straws ... "Ooooh look, he said fuck once in an edit summary! Very Strong Oppose!" --Cyde↔Weys 18:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm as sure as the next man that he will not abuse his restored Admin status. My oppose (#40) was based mostly on lack of willingness to communicate and make himself accountable for his actions, not abuse of admin tools. This is the responsibility of any editor, but particularly so for an Admin when new users may not understand the rules. I hope he takes this on board as a constructive criticism. It's good to see flexibility in the counting too - I never supported the idea of strict percentages. Stephen B Streater 18:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Unbelieveable. Cyde, you totally miss the point again and again. Read the oppose votes for comprehension and try and realise that people disagree with you. I don't care if you diagree with me, I do care when you warp my arguments to suit your agenda. David D. (Talk) 22:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Just thinking, answering to Oleg, if he (or someone else) has done that before, there are precedents. -- ReyBrujo 17:35, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it strikes me that hewing strictly to a percentage is far more dangerous to the idea of consensus. Mackensen (talk) 17:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Actually, I think it is ludicrous that we have taken trust down to measuring it in percentage points, or rather 1/100th of a percentage point (71.62). For a community that prides itself on "community," there seems to be a lot of mistrust and latent anger here. Danny

The number 71.62 has four digits as this is how MATLAB outputs things. By the way, there is no hidden anger, as you suggest.

I don't doubt your intentions. But it was bad judgement on your part to do this promotion, and that for two reasons:

The consensus is 75%. At the very least, you should have consulted with other bureaucrats on what to do before promoting.

You voted support in this RfA which makes you a biased party.

Add to that the fact that you are a very powerful person working for Jimbo in the office, and what we see is a person using one's weight to push one's positions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't realize Danny voted in the RfA. Bureaucrats who vote in particular RfAs really should not close them unless the consensus is clearly for promotion; if what Danny did was so correct, he should have left closing it to one of the other bureaucrats who didn't comment in the RfA. I hope the bureaucrats discussed this decision before making it, especially considering how much Essjay was fried in his request for bureaucratship when he mentioned the number seventy. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 21:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Well, I could be wrong, but judging from the totals, the people who actually voted support only added up to 69.74%. (I didn't vote, but I watched from the sidelines).--Firsfron of Ronchester 18:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
    • (And, yes, I'm aware it's not a "vote" in a strict sense) :) --Firsfron of Ronchester 18:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
    • When the percentage is worked out, the votes included are only the support and oppose votes. The neutral "votes" are not included in the percentage. So there were 159 support votes out of a total of 222 support or oppose votes, which is 71.62%. DarthVader 05:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Which of course you have admirably smooted over. I thought it was funny the way you mused "I wonder how many other admins would be elected again if they were to do the same thing", when the answer clearly, is that, with you around, just about all of them would be. -Splash - tk 18:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Danny's statement on this RfA closure. NoSeptember 18:08, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

When people keep enemy lists based, in large part, on who opposed or supported an RfA, it certainly kills trust. Jonathunder 18:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Enemy lists? That's horrible! Can you provide an example? Misza13 ^{T C} 18:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It is also funny how Cyde and Mackensen have misunderstood "not a vote" and "consensus" respectively to mean "outcome is arbitrary depending on whether Danny closes it or not and/or wrong if it does not align with my opinion". -Splash - tk 18:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Danny mentions "community" but has completely dismissed that community by promoting when there was clearly no consensus (by generally accepted standards) to do so. If he had disregarded certain votes, that would be one thing but his statement above shows that he has instead decided to simply change the percentage himself. By using emotional language such as "ludicrous", focusing on the issue of the % precision and accusing people of being motivated by "mistrust and latent anger" he is avoiding the actual issue - why he promoted with a level of consensus that is clearly outside of generally accepted standards. Such use of emotional language and diverting the discussion to irrelevant points, does not seem to be a unique response to questioning of his decisions. TigerShark 18:42, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Danny's usual response is just to desysop (and/or indefinitely block) anyone who gets under his skin, so do tread carefully. -Splash - tk 18:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That's absolutely outrageous!!!, I don't live anywhere near a Walmart and it didn't even rain last Friday! TigerShark 19:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Just wow. Wrong side of the bed this morning? Mackensen (talk) 19:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Have you actually got a counter argument to what I have said, or any comments other than "wow" or asking me whether I got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning? I expressed an opinion and backed it up with reasoning, perhaps you'd like to provide a reasoned response. TigerShark 19:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I was responding to Splash, actually, regarding his rampant incivility. Regarding your comment, I'd say that given the number of established users in favor of Sean regaining adminship, and given the lack of evidence that he had abused the tools previously or would do so again, I'd say Danny was well within bureaucratic discertion to close as he did. Best, Mackensen (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, sorry for misunderstanding - I was judging by the identing of your comment. I don't personally see how Danny acted within any established bounds of discretion, but the current, vaguely defined, concept of AfD discretion means that it can be used to justify pretty much any decision. Cheers TigerShark 19:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Good call by Danny in this case, balance of comments clearly weighed in favor of returning Sean's adminship. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the fuss. He won't abuse the tools. NO BIG DEAL! --Lord Deskana (talk) 19:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that's right. We'll never ever be able to solve the "it's not a numerical vote, it's a consensus judgement" vs "it's clearly not consensus when such a large number of editors oppose" riddle. The best we can do here is to try and predict how someone will use the tools. In this case it seems pretty clear that there will be no abuse. Rx StrangeLove 19:22, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, and this probably won't be popular, is that it should be a vote - with the only discretion being to discount votes (and even that should have clear criteria). If we need to give further discretion, the question should be "why do we need that discretion?" The "consensus" and "discretion" concepts basically provide an excuse for a bureaucrat to promote those that they think should be admins. Other discussion, such as AfD, need to be discussions rather than votes because they are debating objective critera that have been pre-defined (e.g. notability), but RfA is down to whether individuals believe that an candidate is right for the role. We should bring in binding objective criteria that can be debated, or this should be a vote. Cheers TigerShark 19:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

This is too simplistic for me. An oppose because someone only has 98% minor edit summaries is completely different qualitatively from an oppose because someone is a persistent vandal. But quantitatively, it is the same. If anything, the bureaucrats should be able to take more account of the strength of support/opposition. Stephen B Streater 20:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

RFA is community-based decision-making because we assume that this community of people writing an encyclopedia can make good decisions. And we do - people don't support persistent vandals and people don't oppose because of 98% use of edit summaries for minor edits. Now, you can argue that hierarchical decision making is superior - one such hierarchical model would be "Jimbo's deputy decides on the merits of the case after listening to community input". You can make a perfectly valid case that this is better than community-based decision-making. The perceived problem here is that some people feel that we are getting the latter but pretending that it is the former. Haukur 00:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

OK

I think we've gone into this enough, I'd just like to throw in 2c before this becomes a "we don't trust anyone" type argument. Sean Black's RFA was a unique case (and before someone screams bias, yes, I did support) - are we here to write articles or are we here to freak out about every little policy decisions. If Sean screws up, ArbCom can take care of it. If I screw up, I'm sure ArbCom is going to take care of it. It's not exactly the hardest thing in the world to de-sysop, so I say let's let this one rest and move on to bigger and more important things (like breakfast for me for one) -- Tawker 06:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems Danny and others have misunderstood the reasons given for the opposes. I don't think that anyone is suggesting Sean's actions might warrant ArbCom. Stephen B Streater 08:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess I will ramble a bit :). Sean's RFA got me thinking about the process, and comments about contributers even more. Much like AFD, these RFAs often have one or two (sometimes relatively minor) points raised and then often having people latch on these; both the candidates and even the people who oppose them often get HAMMERED. In addition, many of the comments make character judgements about people. Much of this was prevalent in Sean's RFA - when I read it, I was overwhelmed - over 100 opinions on the page; some claiming gross incivility and others claiming much the opposite. I guess you could say I was "looking for a good reason to oppose" since my opinion was somewhat biased towards the negative side from the little I thought I knew from various WP:ANI posts and such from when I was A7ing pages and other routine activities. Originally, I was more convinced of this after reading some of the good points raised by the opposition; had my "vote" written up and everything (something like "incivility and claims of not following process are troubling"). It wasn't until I started doing comparisons to myself that I started to invest even more time and even more contributions - nothing appeared to be particularily systematic either way to me; which made me realize even more how hard it is to determine whether particular groups of edits are evidence of systematic editing or just an attempt to paint a broad brush, as it were. I thought about the fleeting nature of editors in general - about how I could be responsible for possibly denying a possibly good administrator based on general feeling and a few random edits while deleting pages (in particular the run on meta with David Gerard and others). The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was more confused about how much personal opinion I wanted to interject - on AFD it is much easier because there are rather concrete policies (WP:V etc.). I suppose one idea would be for comments about contributers themselves were not allowed and instead comments were directly specified for particular edits, and more emphasis was made on improvement; less on "renomination time." Also, as per Voice of All's comment below the policy for renomination gets even more interesting with former admins and more longer-time contributers because of the greater chance of the latching-on; keeping it in perspective is difficult for any process I suppose. RN 09:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

What should "consensus" be in a re-RfA?

Well since Sean asked to have his tools taken away voluntarily and then re-applied, I think that only a consensus to NOT promote should be what makes his RfA possibly fail; so when I look at it that way, I don't see anything wrong. There was a consensus to promote him the first time, he gave it up after some issues, and asked for it again; we then tested to see if there was a consensus to overturn the first consensus and confirm that he should not be an admin. That did not happen, as he still has majority support.Voice-of-All 19:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Dmcdevit had a proposal in which these standards were discussed. NoSeptember 19:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that makes sense to me. Thanks. --Cyde↔Weys 21:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it would depend on the "issues" that cause someone to resign. They don't seem to have been problematic this case, and if someone just resigns because of general stress then I have no problems with it just being a temporary thing... but if an admin 'voluntarily' gives up the tools as part of an agreement in an ongoing ArbCom settlement or something similar, they shouldn't get any special treatment if they decide to try and get them back. When someone resigns in a situation like that (or decides to 'fall on their sword' rather than go through de-adminship), there's an understanding that they're not just going to turn around and regain the position next week. I would hope, in any case, that the closing b'crat would be able to take all this into account without needing pages of detailed rules and guideline percentages... --Aquillion 21:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that doing a "Nixon" resign should not give them the respect of "voluntarily" resigning. On the other hand, if it was that bad, I'd image that consensus would swing the other way.Voice-of-All 22:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

A little off point I know, but this request made me wonder how RickK would have done if he went through a similar process during his heyday - he was far more controversial than Sean, but also a fantastic admin - I very much doubt he would have got anywhere close to 70% of the "vote" in the current climate. Personally I feel that if an admin gives up the keys of their own free will they should get them back on request: I see no real difference between this and a normal editor going on a "Wikibreak". All "re-RfAs", like all RfAs, should be decided at the discretion of the closing bureaucrat; given the nature of RFA, I see the relative percentages of votes cast as totally meaningless in relation to the reasoning behind them. An irrelevant point becomes no more pertinent when it is shouted loudly, nor does a damning argument become any less serious if it is not hitched onto a bandwagon. Rje 01:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

If so, we should call it something else - not RfA - or change the rules, rather than bend/break the rules and conventions of RfA when it is convenient. We already have some proposals in that direction. Tintin (talk) 04:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it these are the rules now, we would have no need for bureaucrats or admins if a simple supermajority was enough in our Rf*s (a bot could close all debates in such a situation). Any number we choose as a limit for supermajority is by definition arbitrary, the 75%/80% numbers that are often mentioned serve as indicators of consensus rather than its minimum bounds. It is worth pointing out that the use of these numbers is not policy, it just kind of developed over time. Rje 18:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps naively, I always saw the 75-80% "threshold" as an example of what most passing RfAs recieve, and not necessarily the absolute must-reach number. Thus, in a case like Sean's, a 70% could pass and perhaps an 82% could fail if the arguments went heavily in one direction. Perhaps calling it a "threshold" is part of the problem? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with the idea of forcing administrators in good standing who voluntarily gave up their op bit to go through RFA again, but if it must be done, I would say the "threshold percentage" should be 50% or so. This builds in some leeway for all of the associated trolls and malcontents who are pissed off at the admin for past necessary actions taken, but if the admin really is a bad apple, he won't meet the 50%. --Cyde↔Weys 18:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

While I have no problem with crats making exceptions to the 75% rule if they think the %age isn't representative of concensus, I do have a problem with a crat closing an RFA that they've voted in - without even removing the vote first. I'm not sure if there is strictly a rule against it, but it's certainly a very bad idea if you're closing below 75%, as it's obviously going to be contraversial. --Tango 19:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Tango. With no comments about this particular case, bureaucrats should generally steer clear of closing RfAs in which they have voted, unless the consensus is very clear, just as admins should avoid closing AfDs that they started or have voted in. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 19:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

It is my understanding that someone who voluntarily resigns their adminship (with no accompanying cloud of problems) and later wishes to get it back does not need an RFA, but to simply ask a bureacrat. Raul654 19:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Perhaps, but Sean chose to take the WP:RFA route. His choice. --Durin 20:15, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I just hope Sean appreciated all the advice which we spent so much time crafting. I think it is good practice to suspend Adminship before a long Wikibreak to reduce risk of hacking. Suspended accounts should be restarted without an RfA. This is different from someone resigning, when they lose the automatic right to re-promotion. As others have also said, the re-RfA percentage should be lower: it can be quicker to make enemies who will oppose than friends who will support, as most support is tacit. Stephen B Streater 20:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

A brute-force password attack is so easy with this software that there's really no point in going through the hassle of desysopping and resysopping every time an admin wants to go on vacation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

We shouldn't encourage people to resign every time they feel like it. We should point to how close this RfA was to failing for minor issues. And Silsor got some heat for the act of leaving adminship behind too. Readminship should not be automatic, or at least there should be a time limit of say a month, so if someone leaves in a huff, they have a bit of time to reconsider, but not forever. NoSeptember 05:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Semiprotection request

Some IP editors have been creating a lot of trouble in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Eluchil404. A semi-prot would help. Tintin (talk) 11:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. I've also struck the faked Supports, rather than deleted them, as its useful to see a record of this sort of attack. Gwernol 12:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

'Crats please look at this oppose opinion in current RFA

Copied from Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jersey Devil

Oppose For the same reasons I have given on other nominations recently, namely Misza13, Grendelkhan, and others. That is: The unusual support, both in numbers, and in the cliquiness involved. Although the number of supporters is not as large at this rfa as in the others that I opposed, the support editors are basically the same. The same or many of the same editors are supporting all of the nominations as of late. I still find this questionable and highly suspicious. I will continue to oppose these cliquey rfa's as a matter of principle. If however one of these rfa candidates shows me a reason to change my vote, I will change it. Shannonduck talk 01:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Could the 'crats please look at this oppose opinion? I feel that it does not speak to the nom's ability to use admin tools and should be struck. Sorry, do not mean to be troublesome. FloNight ^talk 00:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The best course of action is to ignore the user. We've had routine oppose voters with questionable justifications in the past, they will eventually go away. NoSeptember 05:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Appears she's struck out that opinion. Alphachimp ^talk 05:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty symptomatic of the issues others have noted about the whole process. The process becomes a beauty contest so at least appears if not becomes an effort in establishing oneself in the in crowd.ALR 18:36, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Name of Process

I apologize if this has already been brought up in the archives, but since I didn't find anything:

Is "Requests for adminship" the most appropriate name for this process? At the time of writing, ten candidates are under consideration for adminship. Only two are self-noms-they can legitimately claim to have "requested" adminship. The other eight, however, were nominated by others. Judging by this, and the broader pattern of nominations from other users, I feel like "Nominations for Adminship" would be a more relevant name. Comments are apprectiated.--Lkjhgfdsa 15:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

But you still have to accept a nomination, so it is still a request by the candidate. At one time, the page was divided into two sections, one for self-noms and one for nominations, but we did away with that. NoSeptember 16:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, the proper name is obviously Wikipedia:Flexible process not involving voting for the approval of the granting of certain additional technical abilities to trusted editors. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

How about AFD — Adminships for discussion. --Cyde↔Weys 18:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, yup, that's got to be the name ;). NoSeptember 18:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, no published sources, fails google test. Kirill Lokshin 18:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Userfy. Eh? --Lord Deskana (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Transwiki, processcruft ;-) Eluchil404 19:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy delete, CSD A7. Even many of the page's strongest supporters admit that it's "no big deal." Besides, it's inherently POV and WP:NOT a battlefield, an experiment in democracy, or an experiment in rule making. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 19:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Merge what are we voting on again? (Oops, now I'm going to WP:HELL for saying the v-word...) -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 19:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• User... Misza13 ^{T C} 19:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and Delete per Goldom and Kirill. --Gmaxwell 19:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• please contact an administrator for verification purposes, as described on this page. —freak(talk) 20:00, Jul. 25, 2006 (UTC)
• Comment How about "Adminship for Review"? "Discussion" is usually used a euphemism for "argument" or "fight," and "review" is more specific. It also would prevent it from being misunderstood as Articles for Deletion. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Fights over adminship, then? -Splash - tk 21:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I think that was Cyde's attempt at humor.--Lkjhgfdsa 22:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• {{openproxy}} Naconkantari 21:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• I thought this already was an admin. --Lord Deskana (talk) 21:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Replying to oppose and neutral votes

Is it in bad taste to tell a user on their talkpage that you responded to their concerns? I see wikipedians raise valid points on my RfA, then I reply, then I get no answer. I get the feeling they forgot about it. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 17:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't really think that's in bad taste, provided you don't end up badgering them about it. Go for it, methinks. :) RandyWang 17:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

It's probably very polite to do so, as long as you remain civil and the other party is cooperative. If things get heavy, disengage. --Tony Sidaway 17:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, so long as you avoid being pushy, I doubt anyone will regard it as a problem. Kirill Lokshin 18:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

OK. Thank you. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

One more comment I tried to post from my phone... I watchlist the RfAs I take part in, so I'd know if you responded there. The talk pages are the official way of contacting someone, so they shouldn't take offence, but I'd rather have the entire discussion on the RfA so everyone can see it. Stephen B Streater 18:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I was about to ask the same question. Cool.--Firsfron of Ronchester 18:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's probably even ok to be pushy, because RFA is a consensus gathering process. If someone is unwilling to take the effort explain or discuss their opinion or work towards compromise, then why should we take the effort of taking that opinion into account? (note that this is not a recommendation to be pushy, but rather it establishes the outer limit of what's ok. Preferably you should be polite and non-confrontational, of course. :-) ) Kim Bruning 18:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's a problem as long as it's not just to argue, but I do often see others then opposing "per the user being confrontational", so don't overdo it, I'd answer only if there's something that really needs to be addressed. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 19:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that it is quite polite to do so. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)