Wikipedia talk:Administrative action review

RFC text

From Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals:

Create a new process, Wikipedia:Administrative action review (XRV), that will determine whether an editor's specific use of an advanced permission, including the admin tools, is consistent with policy. XRV will use a structured discussion format, open to all editors and closed by an uninvolved administrator, to reach a consensus on whether an action or set of actions is endorsed or not endorsed. Acting on this consensus, if necessary, is deferred to existing processes.

• The goal of XRV is to provide a focused and constructive venue in which admins and other advanced permissions users can be held accountable to the community.
• Any action, or set or related actions, requiring an advanced permission and not already covered by an existing process (e.g. WP:DRV for deletions), may be referred to XRV.
• A structured discussion format, closed by an uninvolved administrator, will be used to reach a consensus on whether the action should be endorsed or not endorsed.
• Participation in XRV is open to all editors.
• The purpose of XRV is solely to reach a consensus on whether the use of the permission was appropriate, not to remove permissions. Acting on that consensus is deferred to existing processes:
  • Individual actions that are not endorsed can be reversed by any editor or administrator;
  • Permissions granted at WP:PERM may be revoked by an administrator if XRV finds them to be misused;
  • Repeated or egregious misuse of permissions may form the basis of an WP:AN, WP:ANI, or WP:RFARB report, as appropriate.

References

XRV structure/implementation

In the spirit of the RfC, which was found to have consensus, I have done a large overhaul of the instructions for this process. My goal was to provide a structure and otherwise implement wording present from the RfC. Thoughts and comments welcome. Courtesy pings to: @Joe Roe, Ritchie333, and 力:. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:09, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

May I suggest adding a step that requires notification to AN when a new review is opened? It would ensure advertisement to a better watched venue, so that there’s more diverse participation, given that XRV regulars aren’t a thing atm and those notified by the user talk message notification may not be representative of the community, for a given disputed action. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:27, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, I've just overhauled the instructions before seeing this (post forthcoming), but I'm of two minds on making AN notification a requirement. Just as there's no "regulars" yet, we also don't know how active this venue will become. Spamming AN might not be the best long-term choice. ProcrastinatingReader what do you think of a bot-updated log similar to the ECP log at the top of AN? This keeps the notifications there and prevents spamming if this should get busy. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:22, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Nobody reads the ECP log though, I don't even know why it's still there. Perhaps useful when ECP wasn't commonplace, but now it is, so probably that should be removed. Anyway, I'd be ok with such a solution if this gets too busy/spammy, but until it does I'd prefer individual notifications. After all, a single section notification about an admin action is more likely to be of interest to admins & the community than ACN notifications like Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Épine_unblocked ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:27, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

If this is going to become the catch-all place to request review of privileged actions, I think it would be redundant to have notifications at the administrators' noticeboard. If there is a paucity of people weighing in, then I think some priming of the pump can be considered, just on an as-needed basis. isaacl (talk) 00:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I strongly oppose notification at AN. The point of XRV is largely to separate simple conduct questions like "was this action okay?" from the derailing dramafest that goes on at AN(I). A generalised message when XRV gets up and running should be posted on many major noticeboards to let people interested watchlist the relevant XRV log page. (Or is it live now? Can we already open cases?) — Bilorv (talk) 02:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

A few suggestions:

• The XRV template could use examples; it's not obvious to me at first glance how "user", "performer", and "discussion" work. It might be better not to use a generic "((action)) on ((page/user))" phrase, since it could lead to odd grammar (e.g. "block on UserX").
• "Performer" sounds a bit stilted to me. Maybe something like "editor", and instead of "page" and "user", "subject-of-action"?
• Perhaps instead of "discussion" being a section header on the editor's talk page, it should be a full page/section wikilink, so it can be used to point to an appropriate discussion in a different place such as article talk pages or project space pages? I appreciate that many think a word on the editor's talk page should come first, but sometimes it would be redundant with an existing conversation.

isaacl (talk) 00:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion parameter comes from WP:MRV in the sense of promoting someone having discussed it with the person whose actions are being reviewed first. Pointing to other discussions seems great but can happen in the reason section, I'd suggest. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:52, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrative action review abbreviation

This is a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but where did XRV come from? I know that WP:AAR is already taken by WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles, but why couldn't we use something like WP:AARV or WP:A/AR (since in the noticeboards navbox, this new board is grouped in with AN and AN/I)? Another idea I have is WP:AN/AR. The "X" in XRV doesn't make much sense to me. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

It's similar to WP:DRV and WP:MRV which are venues for reviewing deletions and moves. This board is for all other adminsitrative actions, so like WP:XFD (Miscellany for deletion) is to WP:AFD, WP:CFD, and WP:RFD, this board for miscellaneous review is WP:XRV — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:35, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

But then, wouldn't the XRV name imply that this board is directly related to DRV and MRV? Moves can be done by non-admins, so I feel this creates confusion. In my mind, the term XRV refers collectively to the DRV and MRV processes (as how XfD is a catchall for the various deletion discussion boards such as AfD, MfD, TfD, etc), but this is separate from those. It's possible to have multiple shortcuts for a page, so couldn't we add some of these as well? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand what "administrative" means in this context. From the proposal text copied at the top of the talk page the goal of "Administrative action review" is to determine whether an editor's specific use of an advanced permission was proper; administrative actions (like moves) are performed by many people, not just sysops. The RFC closure of the proposal also makes this point: "the process as proposed is not just about the evaluation of administrative actions, but about all advanced permissions, and thus also applies to non-administrators". The parallel between DRV and MRV is intentional because just like how those venues can review non-sysop, administrative actions, so can this one. You're right that MRV (Miscellaneous Review) would be more consistent with the XFD process naming scheme, but that's already taken. I recommend reading the October discussion on what to name the venue for further background. Lastly, you can make whatever redirects you think are helpful, I'm just explaining why XRV was chosen since you asked where it came from. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:18, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The original suggestion was PRV (permissions review), but that was quickly sidelined after someone helpfully pointed out that its users would be labelled prverts. (Sigh.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:25, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Speaking of which, we should add this new board to Wikipedia:Deletion process#Deletion venues, under Review venues. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:46, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, go for it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:18, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

This has now been done, hopefully I did it correctly! Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

In the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter, as long as people understand what happens here, and you can abbreviate it however you want. The use of administrative where miscellaneous might have been a bit more accurate is because the latter doesn't give you any idea of what is being reviewed; but also in the hope of reclaiming administrat- meaning anything relating to "the process or activity of running a business, organization, etc.", rather than a specific, privileged class of super-Wikipedians. I wouldn't like anything that suggests this venue is subordinate to AN because: technically, it isn't; it shouldn't be seen as only open to, or even preferentially targetted at, administrators; the RfC proposal quite explicitly sought to differentiate XRV from the format and culture of AN/I which, in my view, is a failure. – Joe (talk) 07:47, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Instructions changes

I made some changes over at Wikipedia:Administrative action review/header that I think could be helpful to note here. I replaced the wikitable with HTML since I think it simplifies the code and using divs and lists has accessibility benefits over tables. I also added a button to create the new review section, rather than the small link that was there before. That link now preloads the {{subst:XRV}} template as well so that users can simply fill it out without needing to copy and paste things. Hopefully the changes are an improvement and let me know if there are any issues with it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:40, 11 December 2021 (UTC)