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Proposed policy regarding inactive administrators

Please see Wikipedia:Inactive administrators (2005) and indicate whether you support this proposal on the talk page. Thank you. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Problems with some recent admins

I'd like to propose that nominees gain a certain number of votes before being promoted. I've recently had a problem with two newish admins: one is completely clueless and rude, and the other is a very poor editor and a troublemaker. I was surprised to see they'd been elected, but when I checked their noms, I saw one had received only 16 and the other 19 support votes. This seems way too low to me, especially as the last few months has seen higher numbers of people voting overall. Any thoughts on introducing a threshold of, say, 30 support votes? SlimVirgin (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Don't count votes anyway... look for consensus. RfA is not just about the votes. --LV (Dark Mark) 19:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
That's true, but when there's so few people supporting a nomination, can it be considered community consensus? I don't think it would be unreasonable to set a quorum of 30 voters. If a candidate is too unknown to have 30 people give their opinion on their RfA, they probably need to interact with the community more. Carbonite | Talk 19:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
That's be fine with me. A quorum of 30 is not too high a hurdle.--Alabamaboy 19:48, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Do we really need to go back through the list of recent Admins to point out great Admins who received less that 30 votes? The number of votes is arbitrary anyway. BD2412 received 100 votes, so that's not unheard of, I suggest making the number 100. That way we rule out any undeserving editors. It's just a little silly, is all. --LV (Dark Mark) 19:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I received 29. :-P —BorgHunter (talk) 19:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Many admins with less than 30 votes (myself included) had RfAs when the community was significantly smaller. I'm also against hard number, so we could instead provide a range (perhaps 25-35 voters) for a quorum. An RfA with 25 voters each providing a reason would obviously be preferable to 30 voters each supporting "per nom". It would be up to bureaucrats to make the call on which RfAs fall short of reaching a quorum. Carbonite | Talk 20:01, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Hard numbers are bad. I think the idea of a quorum makes sense, but I would prefer to have bureaucrats decide on that quorum on their own, rather than adhering to hard numbers. Just as the 75–80% is a general guideline, not a hard limit, I think a quorum of roughly 30 votes should be a general guideline for bureaucrats, rather than a hard, set minimum. —BorgHunter (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
(ec) Seems reasonable to me. Also, this problem could be solved by making de-admining somewhere near as easy as admining, but this has been hashed over many times and it doesn't look like it's likely to happen. This approach would also have the advantage of getting rid of admins who may have enjoyed lots of support at one time but no longer have the confidence of the community. Friday (talk) 19:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
After my 20,000 edits, I've seen a lot of boorish and/or clueless admins, but their number seems to have grown dramatically these last months. Therefore, I support Slim Virgin's proposal. --Ghirla | talk 19:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem is slightly different: more people are needed to vote here. I have voted only once because most editors don't usually work on the same articles as I do. However, I did not know about this page until I have found it in some user page. Since this is something that concerns the whole Wikipedia, why not making it more public? -- ReyBrujo 19:56, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Policemen are getting younger these days, too... Shimgray | talk | 20:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
What that have do to with the topic? --Jaranda wat's sup 20:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem I see with demanding a minimum number of votes is it may lead to campaigning by those highly in favor of a candidate.--MONGO 19:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that campaigning in favor is unacceptable. It has led to rigged votes in the past. This is a challenge yet to be addressed by wikicommunity. --Ghirla | talk 19:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
What about requiring a minimum number of supporters providing unique reasons? Ok, bad idea, but still, it may be worth thinking about a way to set quorum that isn't so conducive to campaigning. I do like this quorum idea, just as I like it at WP:AFD and in all policy-setting discussions. The Literate Engineer 20:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Of successful RfAs ending 14 December or later (roughly 2 weeks), 9 didn't receive 30 support votes and 8 failed to reach a 30 vote quorum. It just seems silly to set some arbitrary number telling people that if they don't get that many votes, sorry, they can't be sysopped. --LV (Dark Mark) 20:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Those figures suggest it's a problem, LV, and therefore time to address it. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that in many of the RfAs LV mentioned, editors are simply voting or providing a minimal comment, rather than providing any reason for their support. I share SlimVirgin's concern that the screening may be getting a bit lax on RfAs. How low are we willing to go? Should an admin with 10 votes on his/her RfA be sysoped? The community's growing at a rapid rate, which means that 20 supporters ain't what is used to be. Carbonite | Talk 20:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

How about a compromise in order that an admin properly demonstrates a consensus but the rule is not too harshly applied: minimum of 20? 30 seems a bit high for something that's not supposed to be a big deal.Gator (talk) 20:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Twenty is too low, in my view. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflcit)Why too low? And why is just 10 more the right number? We can't escape the fact that this is arbitrary, but we need to at least try to place some meaning bebhind the choice in the number. Our only other option is to tell bureacrats that they have the discretion to not promote based on too few support votes, no matter what the percentage....but give them no number for guidance....it's either arbitrary or giving little guidance and great discretion to bureacrats...not sure which is better...Gator (talk) 20:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

How about 25 then? I wouldn't want the bar to be set too high but on the flip side a minimum number seems like a good idea.--Alabamaboy 20:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with 25. The community is growing and more people are voting in RFA. But sometimes a person could have 30 or more votes and be a horrible admin. --Jaranda wat's sup 20:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with any new rule about minimum number of votes one needs to become an admin. Let a bureaucrat use the common sense when promoting, no point in piling up rules. And back to SlimVirgin's original post. On occasions I have been rude and clueless myself, with 56 support votes. Nobody's infallable. Maybe one should just be more gentle towards new admins and try to expain things to them instead of wishing they never became admins to start with. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Here here. There are enough arbitrary rules in Wikipedia already in my OP. I'm willing to trust the bureacrats and let them knwo they can decline to promite even if someone has the prerequisite percentages.Gator (talk) 20:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


What's the problem? Just vote oppose if you think someone is not experienced enough. If they have <20 support votes, 6 opposes would do the trick.  Grue  20:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I see the reasoning behind this, but are the statistics of rude admins or ones who are clueless substantially higher among lower vote getters than those that get 50 support votes? I can name a dozen admins who had huge support totals that are rude, use the rollback button when they should be doing a standard revert and who seem biased to the point of being clueless in regards to this project and admin responsibilities. I am opposed to having the crats NOT promote someone just because there are not over 20 or 30 support votes unless we do make that a standard....it shouldn't be up to them to decide to not promote based on this unless a guideline is implemented.--MONGO 20:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest WP:GRFA#If you disagree with consensus as valuable reading. It explains what how the bureaucrat decides what to do. Izehar 20:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
WP:GRFA#If you disagree with consensus deals with the precentage of oppose to support...this relates to a minimum number of supports and is a different issue.--MONGO 20:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I share the concern over misbehaving administrators, and yes, not sysopping someone in the first place is far easier than desysopping them. That begin said, I don't think this proposal is really the way to go. Of course, I should note that my own bid for adminship only received 28 votes and therefore would not have passed under this proposal, and I happen to think I make a semi-decent administrator. Besides, I'm not sure vote-count correlates very well with administrator suitability. Two administrators who were recently desysopped for misusing administrative powers both became administrators before RfA was established, yet I have no doubt that they would receive more than 30 votes. On the other hand, if there is a low vote turnout, then it will only take a few oppose votes to prevent the nomination from succeeding, especially if there are already some opposes. And if someone's nomination is unanimous, even with a relatively low turnout, I'd be hard-pressed to argue that that person shouldn't be an administrator. I can understand a cutoff for very low numbers, like 10, but I'd expect a bureaucrat to make that decision and I certainly feel that 30 is too high. I'd rather see more effort going to increase community participation in RfA. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

KS, you stood quite a few months ago (March, as I recall), when people did vote less, but in recent months the numbers voting have increased a lot, so for someone to get only 19 votes now isn't the same endorsement as it was back then. And I agree completely: you're exactly the kind of person we should be promoting. If you'd care to clone yourself a few dozen times, I'll withdraw my proposal. ;-) SlimVirgin (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
If the voting is too low, then the bureaucrat should relist or let it stand a couple more days. The seven days is the minimum period of time and there is nothing which states that the nomination can't stand longer.--MONGO 20:50, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
You're right and if I recall correctly that's exactly what has been done before. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that some problems exist, and that something needs to be done, but not sure that this is the way to do it. I just fundamentally don't like a hard number, plus this is guaranteed to lead to campaigning (either overt or covert).

If you look at RfA currently, the same person has voted oppose on the first 3 candidates (with valid reasons). What this suggests is that most people are too polite or too nonconfrontational to vote oppose, and only a few people actually do it even if they have reasons to. So I think the real problem here might be more that candidates are getting too few oppose votes than that they are getting too few support votes.

If we had a voting system that allowed voters more expression (say strong support/support/neutral/oppose/strong oppose), then the voters in two minds would be encouraged to express their voice. To qualify, a candidate would have to have a consensus of support votes, but also a majority of strong support votes. This is just an example; my point is that making voting more than trinary might help things. Arvindn 21:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Slim: do you have any reason to think that the reason we're supposedly seeing more rude and poor admins is because we do not have a policy regarding a minimum number opf support votes? In other words, how do we know this would even solve the problem, assuming that there is one?Gator (talk) 21:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

It probably wouldn't solve it but it should reduce the problem, Gator. If someone has been here for months and yet attracts only 19 votes (in the current climate of fairly high turnout), it suggests minimal community interaction, which means we actually have no idea at the time of the vote whether they'll be good admins or not. Having a minimum threshold would go some way to dealing with that. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I guess my questions was a littel vague, you didn't really answer it. I was wondering what evidence you have that this would help "reduce" any problem (assuming one exists)? I agree that a low support might not reveal whether someone would be a good admin, but that's different then saying that allowing such editors to be promoted is contributing to a problem. I'm just looking for hard evidence here, not assumptions. Thanks.01:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Slim, have you shared your concerns with the admins in question. They may think that they were behaving OK and may respond well to criticism. IMO we should WP:AGF and hear their side of the story. I have faith in the current system (it promoted me with [55/1/1]) and most of our admins seem good to me. Izehar 21:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Izehar, I deliberately didn't give any identifying information because I didn't want this to look like a personal attack on anyone. I could possibly discuss the behavior with one of them. With the other, I may try, but my guess is it will be fruitless. My point with this proposal is that mature interaction with other users should be obvious before someone is promoted, so that we know they're at least capable of it. If someone can muster only a very small number of votes, it means there aren't enough people vouching for that maturity. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

If anything, I'd say the problem is the opposite one -- that we reject too many perfectly good candidates, not that unacceptable ones are slipping through. The proposed measure doesn't seem to address any actual problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:23, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Quite - it's the quality of the votes, not the quantity. One user asking searching questions (and hopefully getting good answers) is worth 50 pile-on votes with minimal or silly comments. Rd232 talk 23:14, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Agreed - quality counts. We've also been seeing a lot more of ballot box stuffing these days - it is not unreasonable to assume that may happen here should a quorum be set. What about increasing the time for voting instead, and as suggested earlier, make more of an effort to make this page well-known? KillerChihuahua?!? 23:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

One possible solution is to look again at the nomination process. Since mixing in self-noms with nominations by others, the number of nominations being removed early as obvious failures seems to have increased greatly. If nomination could only be by others, with no self-nomination, then I think there'd be more of a chance that those nominated will already be of a reasonable standard - enough that any pile-on and sheep votes aren't going to be as much of a problem. We could even go one stage further - although I'd guarantee that this idea would be shouted down as Wikicabalism - and only allow admins to nominate people. Grutness...wha? 23:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Not allowing self-noms would go a long way in my opinion also. KillerChihuahua?!? 23:48, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I think some voters actually prefer self-noms, as showing initiative. AnnH (talk) 14:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I didn't even know people could self-nom; disallowing that would seem to go a long way towards reducing the number of auto-failures, and improve on the "must be a community player" aspect of Adminship which many consider to be valuable already. -- nae'blis (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm completely against this idea. RFA is already too much of a 'popularity contest'. The ability of someone to 'make friends' with other users is inevitably going to be a factor, but we shouldn't go out of our way to make it more important than it already is. Lots of people work on AfD and RC patrol... so users who work in those are going to be better known, but not necessarily any more deserving, than those who do 'stubs for redirect' or some other less common activity. A wikignome who hides in their lair and never talks to anybody but works diligently and properly at improving the encyclopedia is going to be a far better admin then someone who just schmoozes all the right people while not really contributing much... but the latter would get admin status alot sooner than the former under the proposed change (even moreso than they do now). If you really want to have a good idea that new admins aren't going to be 'problems' the only way I can think of to handle it would be to actually have someone thoroughly investigate each candidate's edits and report any potentially troubling activity. That still doesn't guarantee that they haven't just been behaving until they get admin status, but that'd be pretty rare and there is no way to detect such. Note - I'm not a big fan of this idea either. RFA already has alot of potential to alienate people... throw in an investigative aspect and it's practically guaranteed to get ugly. --CBD ☎ ✉ 23:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I fear the alternative to tightening standards somehow is to occasionally desysop admins who turn out not to be good. That's pretty darn ugly too. -- SCZenz 00:08, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
True enough. However, that last is going to inevitably come up from time to time no matter what standards are used. Heck, maybe if it were more common it wouldn't be quite such a big deal. Could just make it an automatic thing... 'sysops who violate any of these policies are automatically de-sysoped and may not run again for one month' or something like that. --CBD ☎ ✉ 00:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem, as I perceive it, is that admins are given far too much leeway. Sysops should be held to a higher standard than other users. Most do a good job, but some are routinely are permitted to get away with stuff that probably would cause non-admins to be blocked. Meanwhile, the abuse of administrative powers is far too common, with "regular users" relegated to second-class status.

To be clear, relatively few admins behave in this manner. The number, however, should be zero. It's unfortunate, in my opinion, that admins are not subject to anywhere near the level of scrutiny that prospective admins face. What we really need is not a stricter requests for adminship process, but an equivilvant requests for de-adminship process, thereby allowing the community (and not merely an elite subset thereof) to hold sysops accountable for their actions. Nobody's perfect, but misconduct shouldn't have to ascend to the level of deleting major project pages or punching Jimbo in the face before something is done. —David Levy 00:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I think admin abuse (as opposed to people making mistakes) is relatively rare, notwithstanding all the uninformed allegations people make when they're annoyed. I can only think of maybe half a dozen clear-cut cases of abuse that I've seen since becoming an admin. It makes a lot more sense to slightly tighten up nominations than come up with a de-adminning process with all the chaos that would entail, never mind the difficulty of getting any agreement. On the other hand, getting some agreement for raising the bar before people are promoted should be relatively easy, so long as we don't raise it too high. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, I think that you and I might be applying different definitions of the word "abuse." I'm not referring strictly to egregious, bad faith acts (which are quite rare). Most of the "abuse" to which I referred is limited to instances in which admins simply overstep their bounds. Fairly common examples include blocking (or threatening to block) a user with whom one is involved in a dispute, deliberately protecting (and sometimes editing) a page as one's preferred version, or just generally claiming to possess a level of authority that doesn't exist. The sysops in question often are well-intentioned, but their actions send a very, very bad message to the community. I certainly am not implying that such an infraction should result in de-adminship, but a long-term pattern of negative behavior should not be tolerated. I believe that the institution of a straightforward de-adminship process would serve largely as a deterrent; many admins would be far more careful if their virtual immunity were eliminated.
Secondly, many solid objections to your proposal already have been raised. Without rehashing what's already been said, I'll respectfully state that I believe it to be flawed. —David Levy 01:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm just going to rehash what I think has been said by a couple of people before - we should recognize that a bureaucrat may determine that an RfA does not have enough participation to show a community concensus in favor of promoting a candidate; and that the ideal solution in such a case is to hold the RfA open a few days more. bd2412 T 01:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

This seems the most reasonable solution (not least of all because it's already in place). If a bureaucrat can see that there's a lack of clear support, extending the RfA does no harm. If there's still a lack of a clear answer, then perhaps that's indicative of a problem. -- nae'blis (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Well said. Slim, don't worry about answering my question, I consider the issue to be moot now.Gator (talk) 02:02, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Just to put this into perspective: Of the 17 candidates currently listed in full on Wikipedia:Recently created admins, 6 have less than 30 support votes (and one has exactly 30). -- grm_wnr Esc 02:07, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

<nostalga>...and to think I became an admin with 2 supports and no opposes.</nostalga> Raul654 02:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Gator, I don't think it's moot at all. You wrote: "I was wondering what evidence you have that this would help "reduce" any problem (assuming one exists)? I agree that a low support might not reveal whether someone would be a good admin, but that's different then saying that allowing such editors to be promoted is contributing to a problem. I'm just looking for hard evidence here, not assumptions."
I suppose what I'm saying is that we shouldn't be promoting people when there's no evidence at all that they would make good admins; and I consider 19 support votes as not constituting enough evidence of mature community interaction. I'd say that enough people have noticed there's a problem for us to be reasonably assured that there is one. So the question is: what is the least draconian solution? Setting up a de-adminning process would be complex and unpopular, and anyway, prevention is better than cure. Creating a set of more rigorous requirements would be difficult and might exclude good candidates. Preventing self-noms might be a step in the right direction, but I think some people would oppose it. Having admins only vote for admins would be opposed, though it arguably makes a lot of sense (as things stand, any troll can turn up and vote, which makes no sense to me.) So the least draconian thing, and the easiest to enforce, is at least to ensure there is some sort of quorum of voters required before a promotion can proceed, bearing in mind that any figure (e.g. 30) will not be absolutely rigid, but will be a guideline for the bureaucrat. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm strongly against strict numbers on this and there's no way in hell we're ever going to have just admins voting for candidates since that quite rightly would make people scream about there being a cabal. I would however support having bureaucrats consider whether there's enough input on an RFA for a consensus to be determined. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 03:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I have to say that I see no real big problem with requiring a minimum number of support votes to pass but it must be a definite number and not an arbitrary range like a concensus suggests. I would say 25 would make a good target...and the nomination should remain there for up to 10 days, but no more than that, or at least any votes after 10 days will be tossed out. I can see where you are coming from but am concerned (even though it happens al the time) that there may be campaigning to achieve at least the minimal standard. I am mostly concerned that bureaucrats should not have to deal with anything other than a concrete number and period of time...the concensus issue as comparing support to oppose votes is a different issue.--MONGO 03:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Are you saying you would like to make the job of bureaucrats easier by adding new rules so that the bureaucrats don't need to think too much before making decisions? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Yep.--MONGO 03:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
That does not make any sense to me then. It seems that SlimVirgin is really really concerned with the quality of new admins. Putting more and more rules and more restrictions on what bureaucrats can or cannot do would not help bureaucrats making good decisions on which admins to promote, rather the other way around. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I would compromise at 25 as a minimum number of support votes. It would be a start at least, and could be revised depending on how it works out. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Again, I am not a strong advocate of this as I am concerned about the campaigning issue...but as I also stated, that goes on sometimes anyway. The number is arbitrary (25 or 30, so long as it is a fixed number), but do you think there should be both a minimum number of days and a maximum number for the voting process?--MONGO 04:07, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to hear if any current bureaucrats have any thoughts on this question, since they're the ones who would be pulling the trigger under whatever guidelines are in place. bd2412 T 04:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't the [tacit minimum of] three month threshold be sufficient to iron out issues? People go to great lengths these days to scrutinise a potential candidate. If something serious is noticed, people do oppose their candidacy. I've seen many instances where the first person who produces clinching evindence starts a pile on process and virtually sinks an RFA. I've also noticed that those who frequent IRC regularly do get a higher number of votes. Most of the people who vote here are active in RC patrol and AFDs, and are more likely to support someone whom the've noticed. As mentioned above, some hardworking editors active in FAC may not make the cut, as not many would recognise them. There are also some who refuse to vote here citing it to be a popularity contest. =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Another thing I've noticed is that many people who would love to express their opinions on a candidate don't because 1) They don't know that the candidate is up for Rfa or 2) They don't know where to go. Also editcountitis is far too common in Rfas and is often taken like a joke or ignored completely. Many voters just look at the numbers without looking at the edits; what the user's really doing for Wikipedia. We need to analyze the quality not the quantity of edits. We also need to analyize their character, see what they're really like. Ask them questions. I've made it a habit to peruse the candidate's talk page as well their contributions page. Call that privacy invasion or not minding my own business, but I want to know how the user treats other people. I don't want an admin that makes great edits and fights vandalism and stuff if he's a total jerk to other users. And don't just judge a candidate by Rfa responses. Remember we are the Law, so to speak, and everyone drives safely around cops. You see the analogy? If a candidate makes a few hundred great, helpful, multifarious edits; is responsive and courtious to other users, and shows a decent knowledge of Wikipedia policy and admin powers; they got my vote. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 05:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't like having a minimum vote count, and you'd think more people would be going here than less after so much time of having this page. We need to get more people here and find out why less people are voting. Personally, I just don't know most of the people on here anymore. There used to be a time where I'd know 50% of the people up here, now I don't know anyone (I was discussing with Phroziac recently how Wikipedia users have generations of sorts, and I can explain later when it's not 11:40 PM). — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 05:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I only vote on people I have actually seen around enough to get an idea of what they are like. There is no time to thoroughly review each nominee with so many being put up. However, the growing size of Wikipedia also means that it gets harder to know people. If you see the same name once out of every hundred edits you might start to get an idea about that person... but if they only come up once in every thousand edits you look at you've forgotten about them from one edit to the next. The growth of Wikipedia inevitably makes it increasingly more difficult to get that kind of familiarity with people. At this point it only happens with those who work regularly in certain 'niche' areas. If they do so in well populated places like AfD, RC Patrol, IRC, et cetera then alot more people notice them and they are that much more likely to make admin. Meanwhile equally qualified people working in less populated areas go largely unnoticed... making them less likely to be nominated, less likely to get lots of votes, and easier to derail by a handful of malcontents. Setting a 'vote cap' would shut such people out entirely. Again, given the size of Wikipedia the only way to be sure admin candidates are as qualified as they were when the place was smaller is to research them... and that has become too big a job for each voter to do individually. --CBD ☎ ✉ 10:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Given the size of the community today, I think it is entirely reasonable that a minimum number of votes be required to create new admins, and that 30 is not an unreasonable number. An admin who is created with only 16 support votes does not appear to be known by the community, so it's hard to see how there could be consensus about him or her. In fact, I would suggest that any new admin should need at least 30 more "Support" than "Oppose" votes to be considered as well. Jayjg (talk) 05:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The idea of having a minimum number of votes sounds like a good idea (Just my 2 cents) --Eliezer | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 06:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
This seems entirely reasonable to me, given how fast the community is growing and how many new noms are coming down the pike. Even a moderate level of community interaction over a few months of time, combined with RFA regulars that evaluate candidates regardless of whether they know them personally, should get a good contributor to 30. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 06:54, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Everything has pretty much been said, so I'll just offer my regurgitated tuppence. I support the concept of there being a general guideline to becoming an admin in the 25-30 region, but I would feel uncomfortable with there being a minimum number of votes...it just seems too rigid and could encourage a nominee to solicit votes. By the way, I got 28 votes ;-p SoLando (Talk) 11:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
How about making their *duration* of experience with wikipedia culture a more "essential" qualification? Are the new admins who are causing problems ones who have been part of wikipedia for at least, oh, 2 years (or whatever) or so, or are they relatively new folks who racked up high edit counts by being argumentative and trigger happy for a few months, or just bided their time until getting admin abilities? I think a few months might be a little short, but I'm interested in what others think would be a goodly amount of time to determine someone's temperment over a longer-term (are they snippy and mean over the winter holidays? Do they exhibit a lack of sobriety during summer school vacations?) Ronabop 12:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I'd be in favour of a minimum duration at least for self-noms. If it did nothing else, it would spare some naive editors who nominate themselves two weeks after arriving the humiliation of a pile-on. AnnH (talk) 14:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I think a minimum of 30 votes is a good idea, perhaps leaving a little leeway for discretion of bureaucrats. I do have in mind two admins I trust and respect who both got in with fewer than thirty, and who have, in my view, been responsible and non-abusive administrators. However, SlimVirgin has pointed out that more people have been voting in recent months, and I am sure they would both have got more votes if these RfAs had been more recent, and also if they had made themselves better known to the community beforehand, which maybe they should have done. AnnH (talk) 14:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to address some points raised above:

  • A low number of support votes does not necessarily mean a low amount of community interaction. Some editors work primarily in areas where most RfA participants do not participate. Jimbo noted we are strong in some areas, weak in others. Should we stop a promotion of someone who works very diligently in a weak area where most of us don't go simply because they received 27 support votes instead of 30? (and I echo CBD's 10:43 28 December comment on this)
  • Of the last 270 successful RfAs, 35% of them had <30 votes. Over the last 3 months of 151 successful RfAs, 31% had <30 votes (and another 4% had exactly 30). In the last 30 days of successful nominations, 39% had <30 votes (and another 7% had exactly 30).
  • SlimVirgin's noted a problem with 2 <30 vote admins. Assuming those were in the last 30 days, we're talking about 2 of 24 RfAs with less than 30 votes. So, to deal with 2 problem admins we should have prevented 10 times as many people from becoming admins?
  • There are already structures in place for handling admins that are routinely in error. I recommend taking advantage of them.
  • "30" is arbitrary and not scalable. What do we do in 3 months if there are more people voting on RfAs? Raise it to 35?
  • The assertion has been made that the number of votes at RfA has increased. This is false. The average # of votes on RfAs from July 1st forward has remained essentially static. If anyone wants to see a graph of this, I'll be happy to produce it. The # of RfAs has significantly increased, but the number of votes has remained more or less static.

I believe the proposal to have 30 support votes to weed out bad admins is dramatically in error and misses the point. There are no real feedback mechanisms for admin behavior. Until such time as there is, any attempt to place restrictions on RfA will miss the mark; there's no way to judge if it is effective or not, or to even forecast a proposed "solution"'s viability. --Durin 16:33, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Completely agreed. When you set a minimum number of votes just to weed out jerks, there's going to be a lot of collateral damage. How's a very good candidate going to feel about losing when that person had just 28 or 29 votes instead of 30? That person probably would have been a good admin, but because of strict new rules, he was left in the dust. That's why I disagree with Jayjg and others who propose severe numerical restrictions. You can't just put a minimum-vote limit and have the problem magically go away. It just doesn't work that way. It's more complicated than that. That's why the extra time must be taken to scrutinize a nominee's character. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 23:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Maximum number of nominations per week?

I agree with Eric who says we need to scrutinize nominees more carefully. But it's very time-consuming, especially when so many are being nominated. Should we consider putting a cap on the numbers nominated each week to give us time to pay more attention? SlimVirgin (talk) 05:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Obvious problem: start of the week gets flooded, nobody can add through the rest of the week. I think a steady-random trickle's easier to keep track of and fairer to the people doing the nominating. The Literate Engineer 05:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
This is obviously a much less acceptable "solution" than a quorum. However, I'll re-iterate that I would oppose any measure which would make adminship harder to attain, as I see RfA's main problem being that it rejects too many perfectly good users, often for spurious reasons. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
How about limited nominations per day? That would be a bit fairer and would also limit the number of candidates being voted on during any period of time. That way, they could be scrutanized better. I think that would cut down on the amount of jerks being elected admins. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 06:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Same problem - what if the jerks all self-nominate in the morning? Then the quality editors are stuck waiting while we waste time debating the hopeless cases. bd2412 T 14:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • As Wikipedia continues to grow, so will RfA. Various projections I have done all have pointed to the possibility of more than 100 RfAs per week ~1-2 years in the future. I've noted the very real scalability issues before with that possible situation. Capping the # of RfAs per x time period only serves to reduce the pool of active admins vs. the number of active users. This is a poor solution. --Durin 15:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    • A better solution (or maybe partial solution) to both these problems is to implement rollback privileges only (actually the software feature to support the privilege is in place, but it can only be assigned by stewards, so a little more work has to be done). It will be somewhat easier to vet nominees when they have a history of using (or abusing) one particular privilege: I agree that admin behavior in general doesn't seem to have been very good lately (deletion, protection and block wars; edit wars on the interface), but a fixed number is always going to be problematic. Similarly, decoupling admin privileges from each other might help the scaling issue pointed out by Durin. Demi T/C 15:30, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I'm going to retread an old proposal and say that we should have two levels of adminship, with regular admins getting the rollback button and the power to semi-protect pages, delete pages in the article space, and impose short-term blocks on individual anon IPs, and who would be promoted with a fairly low threshold; and senior admins getting the full array of powers, and requiring approval for promotion under the current system. Almost everybody could become a junior admin by just not being a vandal or a complete ass, and they would get the powers most useful in fighting vandals and doing the basic cleanup tasks. This would serve as a vetting ground for senior admins, who would be able to fight the more clever vandals and deal with edit warring by imposing indefinite blocks and imposing full protection on pages, and who could delete images and user pages as needed. bd2412 T 16:08, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
        • Deletion and semi-protection are powerful tools which can easily be misused by an inexperienced, if well-intentioned "junior-admin". The fact that these actions are "reversible" is only partially true; the damage to the community from an incorrectly speedied article or a semi-protection hastily applied to enforce one POV over another cannot be undone. Granting such powers to an inexperienced user may quickly alienate many others who suffer the consequences. I do, however, strongly support implementing the Rollback permission class, and granting it liberally to any registered user in good standing (2 weeks, 150 edits, zero vandalism). Owen× ☎ 17:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
          • I'm not suggesting we hand out the powers willy-nilly, just that we use a lower threshold for some lesser powers - the candidate would still need the support of the community, so we would not be "granting such powers to an inexperienced user", but rather to the user with enough experience that we don't think they'll run off on a deletion/semi-protection spree (but perhaps someone we'd like to see more from before they get the full array of powers). Anyway, someone who misused the powers would lose them (and obviously would never get to handle the full powers). bd2412 T 23:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

In organizations that promote individuals to positions of responsibility, it is not unusual to have an organized system for research into that person's past. A research report is made available to the entire community that documents the person's record of past activities, particularly activities that may be diagnostic of the person's trust-worthiness. The advantage of such a system is that it reduces duplication of effort. Currently, if someone knows of something that is particularly good or bad from a candidate's past, they mention it during the vote. This does not prevent many people from performing the same time-consuming research on the candidate. Some of the research could be automated, such as determining what percentage of a user's contributions have been reverted by administrators. There could be a "background check" page associated with each candidate where other users would share all of the research that they have done on a candidate. For example, if a candidate nominates many articles for deletion, I might check and count how many of those nominated pages were actually deleted. I could provide a list of links to the votes for deletion on the candidate's "background check" page, making it easy for everyone else to quickly review them. If we were systematic about listing the components of such background checks, it would probably be possible to automate many of the most useful ones. --JWSchmidt 16:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The only slight problem is that many Admins use rollback to revert stuff they should be reverting manually. And why only Admin reverts, many regular editors do great revert work. Just sayin'. --LV (Dark Mark) 16:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
While such a "background check" seems reasonable, it will be very vocally opposed. There are and will possibly always be at least some Wikipedians who would be against any given measure of a candidate's acceptability. For example, you note the number of nominated AfDs vs. number actually deleted; there are going to be people who vociferously oppose that as a measure of the suitability of a candidate. There is not one single attribute of a candidate's acceptability that is without controversy. People have and will argue against any measure that might be raised. Putting a bunch of measures together on one page and calling it a "background check" is likely to produce much concentrated animosity. I for one would support such a page; let everyone contribute to the research so it doesn't need to be re-done over and over again, and let people review the page for their particular measures; not that a candidate needs to pass all of them, just the ones a particular viewer wants to see a candidate pass. But, any attempt to create a page like this for candidates will be met with very vocal (and in my opinion misguided) opposition. --Durin 18:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


I am strongly opposed to any new rules about the minimum number of votes per admin or maximum number of nominations per week. This is all instruction creep and not clear how it will make better quality admins.

Let the bureaucrats decide please. And if you see admins who don't seem to be doing their job well, just talk to them; they may need advice and guidance. If they abuse their position, report them at WP:AN/I. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Again, thank you Oleg for being a voice of reason. --LV (Dark Mark) 16:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not too sure I agree with the proposed changes (need to give it some more thought), but just a comment: over at the steward elections, they're using a 30 vote minimum and 80% support in order to be selected as a candidate for the board to choose, and that system seems to work pretty well. Flcelloguy (A note?) 18:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I approve of a kind of background check. Sure people will make a stink about it. That's why I propose it not be as extensive as is done in other organizations. Another problem with this idea though: Power tends to corrupt. People who me have been very courtious may turn sour once given higher power. Most murders are from first-time offenders. Many have a clean record. I do believe that this problem will never fully go away, but it can be reduced and managed. And that's what we should be trying to do here.
P.S: I'm one of a handful non-admins to post here. I feel so alone ;). -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 23:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose Unless their's a concern the RfA page might get too long, this is ridiculous. -- Eddie 04:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
    WP:NOT a democracy. We are not conducting a vote. NSLE (T+C+CVU) 04:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Admin

How do I request to be an admin? Astroview120mm 05:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

You should perhaps read up on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Standards and I quote "Please be familiar with the administrators' reading list and how-to guide, as well as the guide to requests for adminship before submitting your request." NSLE (T+C+CVU) 05:33, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Not knowing the answer to this question is ample indication that you can't be one (at this time). General qualifications (beyond knowing the answer to the question you've asked) include perhaps 3 months of activity here, plus a significant number of edits demonstrating understanding of at least most of the local procedures and processes. Out of curiousity - what makes you think you want to be admin? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:37, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal on minimum positive votes

I would like to gauge sentiment on having a minimum number of "support" votes for adminship. So as to be fair, we would give those with less than the desired number another 48 hours with a notice for Wikipedians to consier the candidacy. My proposal is:

At the time of the closing of a nomination, in addition to other considerations, candidates must have accumulated at least xx "Support" votes. If he/she has not, the nomination will be automatically extended for at least 48 hours with a notice informing those checking RfA to give the candidacy scrutiny in order to demonstrate consensus.

Proposed by Cecropia 18:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

No change in current procedures

  1. No change - a minimum could cause a perfectly good candidate's request to fail. The current system vets all applications thoroughly enough. If there are any closet skeletons, they are always brought to light and scrutinised. IMO it is impossible to prevent "inappropriate" candidates being promoted and we shouldn't change the system based on two isolated examples. I know some good admins who were promoted despite low turnouts and controversies. Izehar 18:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. If a nominee is unsuitable, simply oppose his/her promotion. If he/she hasn't received many "support" votes, it won't take many "oppose" votes to kill his/her chances. The proposed system would merely give candidates with lots of friends on Wikipedia a bigger advantage than they already have. —David Levy 18:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. Voting... Hmmm... Well, there are plenty of not-so-great admins with more than xx number of votes, so this doesn't seem like a great idea. Voting comes in waves depending on the time of year, so someone nominated might get the shaft just because, say, college kids have gone home for the week, or around these holidays where people won't be wikiing. In the past 2 weeks, User:Croat Canuck, User:EdwinHJ, User:Deltabeignet, User:BorgHunter, User:Joe Beaudoin Jr., User:Rschen7754, and User:Syrthiss were all sysopped with less than 25 support votes. Does this automatically mean that they are not suitable? If someone has 24 votes, they are deemed unworthy of adminship? Silly. Things are fine for now. We will always have bad apples slip through now and again, but imposing this just disallows good apples from getting through. --LV (Dark Mark) 18:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    And really, aren't the top two options the same? --LV (Dark Mark) 18:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    That's exactly what I was thinking, unless option #2 involves imposing a strict set of guidelines that the bureaucrats must follow. They aren't computers, so I prefer to trust their common sense. —David Levy 18:56, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    Option #2 indicates a per-case basis, which I take to mean no strict set of guidelines - but I strongly support making it clear that bureaucrats can use their judgment in this respect. bd2412 T 19:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    And that's what I meant when asked the question in the comments section below. It is about the per-case basis. Would they be ready for that? Anyway, I trust they can. Cheers -- Szvest 19:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up&#153;
  4. Though I see no difference between this position and the next; bureaucrats are already empowered to determine if consensus is achieved. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  5. Quite a few extremely capable admins, and hopefully I can include myself amongst them, failed to achieve 25 or 30 support votes. It is also worth pointing out that RFA is not a straight election (and therefore 19 well formulated comments are far more useful than several hundred votes offering little or no substantiation). Beyond this, I feel the the bureaucrats are doing a good job at determining consensus at the moment. Rje 20:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  6. I see no difference between this option and the one below, but oh well. In all, let the bureaucrat decide. New rules would be tying the hands of bureaucrats and thus not make it easier for bureaucrats to decide who whould make a good administrator and who would not. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  7. These proposals are a solution looking for a problem. All this discussion is because of 2...just 2 supposed problem admins who failed to achieve 30 support votes in their RfAs. Do we have any evidence...ANY.....evidence that more than xx votes means they're a good admin? I'll answer for you; NO. Reason? There's no feedback mechanism on admin performance. What about the other 22 successful RfAs in the last 30 days who had less than 30 votes? Should we presume they're flawed, and restart them? Should we presume that 90% of the 24 are all bad because just 10% are supposedly problem admins? How come nothing (at least that I know of) has been done to correct the behavior of the...2...problem admins and why instead are we attempting to cause major change to RfA as "corrective" action? This is, frankly, absurd. --Durin 20:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  8. I don't believe this is likely to cause a qualitative improvement in the admin pool, and consequently constitutes an unnecessary and inflexible rule. The only thing I think is likely to lead to safer adminship votes is if people vote "promote" for people with whom they've had significant personal interation, and there's practical means for that to be enforced by policy or technical means. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:37, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  9. I don't see that a quorum would help. Like many, I'm confused about the difference between this and the next option. (struck out after Cecropia's explanation below) Finally, I echo Durin that any issues should first and foremost be taken up with the admin. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  10. No change needed, I agree with Durin above.  Grue  22:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  11. No changes. If the community is too lax in granting admin powers, so be it. There is no need for arbitrary standards on vote counts. -Greg Asche (talk) 23:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  12. No changes. In my opinion, every reliable editor should have admin power, just as soon as possible. Given the nature of what we are trying to do with Wikipedia, soon is good. This requires that we determine that they are reliable. This is a very difficult task, but to put up these kinds of barriers doesn't help in this determination in my view. Catbar (Brian Rock) 01:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  13. No changes. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 01:47, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  14. Leave it be. NSLE (T+C+CVU) 02:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  15. Now that I have over 30 votes in favor of my candidacy (which closes in a few hours), I feel comfortable in joining this discussion. All I want to add to everything that has already been said, is that consensus often relies on people being quiet. Formal consensus decision making (in which I have a little training) says that "silence equals consent". It is the responsibility to speak up when you disagree. It is helpful to be quiet when you agree. You can see this in practice at CfD. Often a category is listed and there is only one or two votes in agreement. Why? It is because there is obvious consent. There is no need for everyone to spend the time saying "ditto, I agree". If there is obvious support to a candidate, and there is no dissent, why does it matter if there is 10, 50, or 100 votes? I could imagine making the period of nomination longer during holiday times, but even this week, I have not seen evidence that there was wasn't enough time for trusted members of the community to vote. I think many people watch the votes without deciding to vote. They look to see if things are going well, and only put the time in to respond if they think their vote is necessary. This is an efficient way to do things, and part of the consensus decision making process. -- Samuel Wantman 07:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  16. I support the current situation. I am concerned about the campaigning issue to achieve the minimal standard of votes. A simple concensus as it currently is should be the only grounds needed to be promoted. There are few nominations with much less than 20 votes and I am not convinced that someone having 30 support votes will ultimately be a better admin than someone with less than that. I remember recently asking people to look over a particular candidates edit history and cast a vote one way or the other because so few people had bothered to look at the nomination, and I placed the comments on the nominees nomination page. Popularity shouldn't be the criteria for adminship.--MONGO 08:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  17. If it ain't broke... --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 10:39, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  18. I support the current situation 'which seems to be the same as option 2. Because a consensus is subjective we must leave the issue to the subjective opinion of the burecrat. --Chazz88 14:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  19. No change required. --Ngb ?!? 14:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  20. No changes needed. The growing number of participants on the site might make any limits we set now trivial in the future. Further, limits might be biased against editors who don't spread their work over many areas. As some other editors have expressed here, I also would prefer good discussion rather than simple votes without reasons. --Idont Havaname 03:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  21. We are losing enough good candidates to the Rfa process as it stands. Requiring minimal support will only make it more of a popularity/beauty contest than it is already.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 06:06, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  22. No change, i.e. the same as option 2. (Bizarre poll... generally, poll options should be different!) Dan100 (Talk) 10:27, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  23. I prefer keeping the system as simple as possible. Sarge Baldy 07:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  24. No change, this would only lead to more wiki-clique and wiki-politics behaviour here (as if there wasn't already enough). I have seen excellent users with almost no support votes, and other users who just a while ago were pow-warring and edit-warring with a lot of support votes. This would be just an unnecessary rule that probably wouldn't help anything. But I support a "no criminal record" rule (see below). The problem is not so much the high number of support votes, but rather the lack of oppose votes in RFA's. --Kefalonia 16:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  25. No change. As noted, this is almost the same as option 2; bureaucrats are trusted to make decisions and it should be left to their discretion. enochlau (talk) 03:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  26. I oppose arbitrary limits. If a candidate is unsuitable, he won't become an admin. Talrias (t | e | c) 15:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  27. JoaoRicardotalk 04:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Allow bureaucrats to judge whether support numbers are sufficient on a per-case basis

  1. I'm not convinced the system needs fixing or that Slim's proosal will solve anything.Gator (talk) 18:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. Bureaucrats have in the past posted notices inviting more people to take a look a nominations which had not gotten much attention, sometimes extending the time on them as well. But if a nomination has only a handful of votes, I think the latitude they are given includes making a judgment on whether that is sufficient. Jonathunder 18:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. Trust the bureaucrats, that's what we have them for! bd2412 T 18:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  4. As per BDA. This is exactly what I thought. Szvest 18:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up&#153;
  5. Let the 'Crats know that the community likes to see a certain number of votes (as per the discussion above) and recommend that they should take that into account when closing, but leave the actual decision up to them. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    If the "community likes to see a certain number of votes," the community needs to vote. What sense does it make to sit around twiddling one's thumbs for a week, followed by a complaint that there were too few votes? Just vote! —David Levy 19:12, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  6. After reading Cecropia's comment [1] on this choice, I believe this is the best option. Carbonite | Talk 23:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  7. I support the Cecropian solution.-gadfium 02:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  8. Same here. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  9. After a Request for RoastingBureaucratship, I trust that they have the common sense to determine whether there is sufficient support. It's their job, after all. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  10. This option would seem to be the same as the status quo option. — Dan | talk 07:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  11. Bureaucrats can currently keep an RFA open for longer if there's ambiguity as to whether there's a consensus or not so that more opinions can be gotten so this would only codify it which I support even though it may be rules and regs creep. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 07:38, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  12. Flcelloguy (A note?) 19:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  13. I like this idea, but I'd like hear a bureaucrat comment on it. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:26, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  14. I think it's reasonable, and I think that any strict numerical limit would be instruction creepish. In the rare case where an admin nom gets very few votes, it might otherwise get people to oppose because there isn't sufficient support, which seems kind of silly. Radiant_>|< 11:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  15. It's best to explicitly state this so failed candidates can't argue that they were unfairly treated. --Deathphoenix 13:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  16. THe easiest, simplest, and most flexible. We entrust the bureaucrats to make sound judgment. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  17. Not my first preference, but better than no change at all. SlimVirgin (talk) 10:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  18. Definitely, yes. I think it makes sense to avoid instruction creep and entrust bureaucrats to use their judgement -- Ferkelparade π 10:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  19. Better than nothing. Jayjg (talk) 23:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  20. This choice seems best to me, combined with a general rule-of-thumb minimum (25-30 for example), but the bureaucrat is still free to use discernment. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 01:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  21. Best blend of concerns. Youngamerican 16:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  22. I trust my judgement ;-P Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 17:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  23. A little surprised this wasn't the case already. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 20:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  24. the wub "?!" 00:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  25. I would say, given our normal prediliction for common sense, that this was current practice anyway; but never mind... James F. (talk) 23:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  26. There should be enough interest in a nomination to determine actual consensus, but I don't feel that an arbitrary floor is going to accomplish much. Bureaucrats have done a decent job so far making judgment calls in tricky situations, and that, is after all, one of their responsibilities. – Seancdaug 01:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Require at least 20 support votes

Require at least 25 support votes

  1. 25 votes are a good start, and most canditates could get that easily. Jaranda wat's sup 18:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    Many succesful candidates don't
  2. Sounds good to me, though I think bureaucrats should have the authority to suspend a nomination if they have issues with it. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. --Improv 14:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  4. Again, not my first preference, but close enough. SlimVirgin (talk) 10:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  5. Good start. Jayjg (talk) 23:15, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. Fine as a general-rule-of-thumb minimum that a bureaucrat is still free to overrule. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 01:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  7. Yes. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 20:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Require at least 30 support votes

  1. This is my first preference. Someone who has interacted well with the community for several months should be able to muster at least 30 votes in the current climate of high turnout for these nominations. If they can't, I'd say there might be a problem. SlimVirgin (talk) 10:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
    The average # of votes per RfA over the last 7 months has remain essentially unchanged. There's only been a very marginal increase. --Durin 14:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
    I've noticed a change over the last year, and going back to look at nominations six months prior to that, an even bigger one. I'd say someone who can't muster 30 votes now could use some further interaction before being promoted. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    Do you have eny evidence which shows that RfAs with less than 30 support votes over the last month resulted in admins that have behaved badly? --Durin 20:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Even better. Jayjg (talk) 23:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. Fine as a general-rule-of-thumb minimum that a bureaucrat is still free to overrule. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 01:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. Yes. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 20:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Other

No self-noms

Keep procedure the same, except for no self noms.

  1. KillerChihuahua?!? 20:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC) I see the issues, I have even voiced ideas on changing the procedure. Every proposed change brings with it cons which IMHO outweigh the pros, with the exception of no self noms, which while it may not help as much as other proposals, also will not hurt. If someone cannot dredge up anyone who considers them worthy of nomination, they are highly unlikely to make it through the procedure.
    Boo! I think that's a bad idea - higher standards for self-noms... maybe. But, IMO we shouldn't exclude the possibility. Many of our excellent admins were promoted after self-noms. Izehar 20:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    But surely those could have found a nominator? I'm thinking of reducing clutter of people who could not be realistically expected to be admined. KillerChihuahua?!? 22:54, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    I agree with Izehar with that, Curps, Journalist and many other good admins were promoted by self-noms and several bad admins didn't had a self-nom in their RFA's. Higher standards maybe ok but I don't see how this no self-nom idea is a soulution. --Jaranda wat's sup 02:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    I also agree with Izehar. Although it is embarassing for the poor-qualified self-nom, with the proper amount of explanation, a user can be motivated to become a better and more-experienced Wikipedian. Just because some people don't read any of the information at the top of the RfA page doesn't mean we should get rid of self-nominations. I've seen several users get nominated well beyond 15,000 good edits with active participation in project spaces, and they could have been doing a lot more good if they had nominated themselves earlier. Now let's try to apply that story to what I was talking about :-). JHMM13 (T | C) 14:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Most pile-on failed nominations are self-noms, so at least that would cut out the really unsuitable candidates. All good candidates can (or should be able to) get a nominator, there's thousands of active users here. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    Typically, if the nominator is a trusted wikipedian, I would tend to vote "Support" with just a cursory glance at the contribs of the nominee. However, sometimes I keep wondering what if the nominator missed something from the nominee's record? However, in a self-nom, lot of editors go through the contribs and the possibility of adminning a wrong candidate is reduced drastically. Hence, I believe strongly that self-noms should be allowed. --Gurubrahma 10:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    As a successful self nom myself, I could have found a nominator, but I didn't want to: why get someone else to do something I can do myslef? And more per Guru, self-noms generally undergo more scrutiny; far too often people vote by nominator rather than by who is being nominated, so anything that can garner deeper investigation is a good thing. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 10:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    Comment: Keep self nominations. Users should be allowed to nominate themselves rather than ask another user. This rule is for bureaucrats, and besides their is no linit to how many nominations you can attempt. -- Eddie 04:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
    What rule is for bureaucrats? NSLE (T+C+CVU) 04:19, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. There have been a lot more quick-fail noms since self-noms and noms by others were mixed together a few months back. Although it's laudable that people should want to become admins, a prerequisite for many voters is an ability to engage with the community. If a user does that enough, it'll soon become obvious to someone that they should be nominated (especially given things like the list of non-admins with most edits). I don't see removing self-nomination as being a significant hurdle to people becoming admins. Grutness...wha? 04:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  4. I'm voting yes to no self-nominations (but not to no changes otherwise). If someone has interacted well with the community, they'll be nominated soon enough.
  5. No self-noms. If you can't find a single person to nominate you, then you'd benefit from more interaction. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. I have seen more self-noms fail more than nominated candidates. A self-nom is red flag that the user does not interact at a sufficient level for the community to make an informed decision. It also would stop noms that are bound to fail as in this example[2] showing that the candidate may not have even understood the process.--Dakota ~ ε 19:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Oppose requiring non self-noms (ie allow self-noms)

  1. Come on, forbidding self-noms will fix what? Yet another rule, and with no gain. The way to deal with bad admins is (1) visit RfA often, study carefully people's candidacies, oppose if something does not look right (Radiant! is doing a good job at that). (2) Be tolerant to new admins, point gently to their mistakes and guide them if necessary (if some old hands do a bad job, talk to them also). (3) Report abuse at WP:AN/I or/and start RfC/RfArb if necessary. Really, inventing new rules is not the way. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. This entire vote is ridiculous - there was no category for voting against the choice until Oleg Alexandrov created one just now, so the I thought the above was intended to be a discussion, not a vote... which others may have thought also, thus declining to vote otherwise. Start over. bd2412 T 03:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. Not everyone goes around looking for people to promote; expecting all potential admins to have someone nominate them is silly. Besides: such a rule will only lead to adminship clubs that nominate each other (if the CVU isn't such already). jnothman talk 03:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. Per my comment above. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 09:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  5. Oppose per jnothman. enochlau (talk) 03:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. Concur, as an other-nommed administrator. ~~ N (t/c) 04:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  7. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC). Of course.
  8. We, as a community, do a perfectly fine job of sorting out crap-tastic self noms. Youngamerican 16:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  9. Oppose. --Durin 17:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  10. Strongly. the wub "?!" 00:23, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  11. Not all self-noms are bad. -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive -- my dropsonde 07:56, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  12. I would oppose not allowing self-nominations. There are people out there who are interested in being an admin and doing good work, but in possibly low visibility areas. Should they have to go ask someone to nominate them just because they're interested in the job? Sue Anne 23:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Only allow self-noms

  1. OK, I know this isn't going to get much support. But it kind of disturbs me to see people who apparently spend their time hunting for nominees, trying to build up a big list of successful nominated admins. Also, I like to see what self-noms have to say about themselves in the nominating statements. (This second part could of course be taken care of by having nominees enter an acceptance statement, rather that just saying "I accept", so it's a minor point.)

At least 1 vote

  1. David Remahl 20:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    I think that goes without saying. The bureaucrat would probably let the RfA run until someone actually voted. Izehar 20:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. David Levy 20:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. Isn't this already a rule. This soulds like common sense to me. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
    It's an attempt at Wikihumor. -- Cecropia 15:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
    Any joke that must be explained either proves poor humor in the teller or the audience...usually both. ;-) JHMM13 (T | C) 14:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose! bd2412 T 03:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Create an RfA-like process through which the community can de-sysop bad admins.

  1. If the community can be trusted to promote a user to sysop, I see no reason why it can't be trusted to determine when a demotion is necessary. —David Levy 20:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    I can easily see this a blackmail tool e.g., "if you keep on editing this article I will start a deadmin process against you!". I would think that the current mechanism of request for comment and request for arbitration would work better. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    Any de-sysop process would gauge the community's will. Just as a single disgruntled editor (or a handful of disgruntled editors) is unable to stop an RfA from succeeding, only a clear-cut consensus would actually result in a demotion. If, for example, 4/5 of the community were to advocate de-sysopping a user (for valid reasons, of course, as this wouldn't be a simple vote count), wouldn't that be sufficient? —David Levy 23:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    Nah, too much potential for abuse. The only reasonable way of doing would be for a bureaucrat and bureaucrat only to nominate an admin for being desysopped (say after reviewing some evidence, something like an ArbCom fast track), but I would not probably support even that (abuse is not that often, and so far the ArbCom did a good job, the cases of Stevertigo and Ed Poor is what I remember). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    I would support a setup in which the process may be initiated only by a bureaucrat or via an ArbCom ruling (based upon specific, pre-determined criteria). The final decision, however, would rest with the community. —David Levy 06:03, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
    Unless things have changed since my brief stint on the AC, this proposal is already at least partially in place, David. As I recall, at least one editor has been dealt with in this manner by the ArbCom...either we sent them here for a vote to see if the community wanted them desysopped, or else we removed sysop rights and then immediately sent them here as a nominee to see if the community disagreed and wanted them to remain an admin. I don't know if this is the best possible system, but having been on the unpleasant end of a troll or two, I'd rather not make desysopping too easy a process to initiate. Even if the vast majority supported me, the few unpleasant comments would really sour in my mind (and lead to Wikibreaks). Empowering anyone other than the ArbCom (say, a bureaucrat) significantly alters the power structure....the number of active b-crats, for example, is very small, and I don't know that we should add to their stress this responsibility. Jwrosenzweig 07:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. Sounds good to me. This has the advantage of bringing in bureaucrats to interpret the results and perform the action if neccessary, so those that want ArbCom and/or B'crat involvement should be satisfied. The ArbCom has shown their willingness to de-sysop in a couple recent cases, so they're already doing their part. Friday (talk) 19:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. Good Idea, only thing is to decide who can actually nominate. -- Eddie 04:18, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  4. This is an interesting idea at face value, but I think there would need to be a massive consensus to get rid of a user...and only admins can vote. If that is the case, then 99% of the voters are respected members of the community who can be trusted to read into the issue at hand. I reccomend something like a 85-90% consensus and a trial run. I don't really believe blackmail will be an issue, because users who use that as blackmail will lose all credibility, and the user getting blackmailed will easily overturn the nomination for de-adminship, earning himself some pseudo-martyr points with the community. I think we should try this proposal out with a high consensus percentage. JHMM13 (T | C) 14:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. I think the current system of ArbCom and RfA are sufficient. Issues to do with administrator abuse are quite complicated, and only a proper examination of all the relevant (often copious) material is sufficient. Having an easy de-admin process has the potential to lend itself to abuse. enochlau (talk) 04:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. Strong Support, this would encourage some admins to actually act like admins. It could for example be proposed that every admin has to through such a process all 1-2 years at the minimum, and all 6 months at the maximum. --Kefalonia 14:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Been there, tried that, still have the scars. Such processes have been tried before, and it has been observed that they have the tendency to blow up in your face. Have fun! :-) Kim Bruning 23:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments

  • In case anyone wonders, I am expressing no opinion, but do want to know how the community feels. -- Cecropia 18:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Would bureaucrats be ready for this new task in case it is decided that they will have to judge on a per-case basis? Cheers -- Szvest 18:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)  Wiki me up&#153;
  • Don't they have to anyway? I thought a bureaucrat's decision in an RfA is akin to an administrator's in an AfD. Izehar 18:30, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Ha! It is to laugh. All bureaucrats receive special training in secret CIA facilities in unnamed eastern European countries! ... Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that. Never mind. -- Cecropia 18:37, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh man that was fun though. —Ilyanep (Talk) 04:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there any difference between first two options?

I would like to get enlightned, what is the difference between "no change in the rules" and "allow bureaucrats to judge if number of votes is sufficient"? As voiced already above, both of those reflect how things are now. The bureaucrat has wide lattitude to promote/not promote/extend the voting period based on individual circumstances. How about mergin the two options? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed.Gator (talk) 19:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that in option 1, a bureaucrat has to promote whoever has achieved a consensus, whereas in potion 2, a bureaucrat can choose not to. Izehar 19:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but a consensus is left up to be determined by the BCrat, so how is there a difference? --LV (Dark Mark) 19:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes - example: in the current system the bureaucrat would have to promote BD2412, whereas if option 2 were used, the bureaucrat could choose not to. Izehar 20:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
That, my friend, is a baaad example. bd2412 T 20:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, it may be a bad example, but it is also a wrong example. It is up to the closing BCrat to determine consensus. It is not just about the number of votes people get. But, like I said, that is a bad example. --LV (Dark Mark) 20:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Why is it a bad example? Could that result ever be called a "no consensus" or a "consensus against promoting"? Izehar 20:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
No sane B'crat could have decided that such an RfA lacked the support of the community. We're not proposing to give B'crats unfettered discretion, just endorsing their authority to factor the number of votes into a determination of whether there exists a consensus in support of the candidate. A B'crat simply could not "choose" not to promote someone who had received a significant number of legitimate votes, and what constitutes this significant number is fairly a matter of common sense. For example, you would not imagine that a candidate with a seven-day closing tally of 2/0/0 should promoted, would you? bd2412 T 20:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, a sane BCrat would extend the nom, but I am not sure I would have a problem with that if the 2 supporters gave extensive resaoning for their votes. If the candidate had really been terrible, wouldn't they receive at least one oppose vote? Some people do not vote just to prevent piling on. But then again, that's why I'll never be made BCrat. --LV (Dark Mark) 20:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Well bureaucrats can extend polls now. Therefore, the current system is fine! Izehar 20:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
The difference to me is that the first leaves b'crats to continue to use their discretion in the same way as the past, with no special change in how to deal with low vote candidates. Option 2 says that RfA voters are concerned about the numbers and want b'crats to pay extra attention to the issue but does not suggest hard numbers. -- Cecropia 20:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I was operating under the impression that BCrats always paid "extra attention". That is their role as BCrat, to pay their fullest attention when closing RfAs to determining consensus. Was I wrong? --LV (Dark Mark) 20:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Let me clarify the point. B'crats have to determine consensus, which is not the same as vote counting. In order to determine consensus, b'crats need to understand not only how the community feels about an individual nominee, but what standards the community feels determine consensus for all candidates. If Option 2 were to have the most support, it would imply that the minimum number of votes that a candidate receives is now a more important issue than b'crats have been led to believe until now, and deserves a least a little extra weight.
I'll give you a concrete example: Right now, I would be hard pressed not to extend and possibly fail a nomination with a total of only 10 votes, of which 2 were opposes, even though that is 80%. That is bureaucrat discretion. OTOH, I would be comfortable promoting someone with 50 votes, of which 11 were garden-variety opposes (< 80%) after carefully examining the arguments raised on both sides. What's the difference? The one with 50 total votes has had a lot more editors paying a lot closer attention to the candidate and I can be more confident that all the bouquets and all the warts are on the table.--Cecropia 21:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

If Option 2 were to have the most support, it would imply that the minimum number of votes that a candidate receives is now a more important issue than b'crats have been led to believe until now, and deserves a least a little extra weight - not really, as that "implication" is not at all clear, and probably not what people think they're voting on. The two options are identical, i.e. bureaucrats decide, as per your example above. Dan100 (Talk) 10:33, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Partially Random Yet Intriguing Ideas

A list of non-admins with high admin potential

This would make it easier to size up admin hopefuls and perhaps make any future voting go quicker and smoother. This would be the place to make sure a potential nominee wants to be an admin, and give admin hopefuls feedback and suggestions before any voting occurs. This would also reduce the number of ridiculous and hopeless nominations.

  • Rule 1: All self-noms must pass through here.
  • Rule 2: A user can only be posted here by a consensus of 5 or more users.
  • Rule 3: Minimum stay of 7 days.
  • Rule 4: A presiding administrator or bureaucrat give a final assesment at the end of the feedback period. If the presidor deems the feedback good enough, the candidate moves on to voting. If the presidor deems the feedback not good enough, then the user is stricken from the list and rule 5 applies:
  • Rule 5: The period between feedback sessions no shorter than 3 weeks.

What do you think? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:54, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Great Idea!

Like It, But...

  1. "A consensus of 5 or more users" sounds a bit unrealistic or at least hard to achieve. Normally, as per the current procedure, one user approaches another one, like would you fancy it?!. I can't see how a minimum of 5 would gather in a room to discuss who will be the one fancying it next. Unless it would be the user himself approaching 10 and that would not be a good idea in terms of ethics. -- Szvest 15:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up&#153;

Have you lost your freaking mind?!

  1. No. It is against the entire process to create "A-lists" of people for adminship or any other function. This is worse than unnecessary, especially given the current ease of making a self-nom. -- Cecropia 14:27, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  2. No. The above phrase isn't my exact sentiment, but it's the only no option. :-) The process right now is good enough, this adds instruction creep. --Deathphoenix 14:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  3. No. I agree, it creates crinstruction eep. — JIP | Talk 20:34, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  4. No. I agree. What if we miss somebody? For example, on Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts, there are probably a lot of editors that should be listed there but are not. It's also instruction creep. There are probably just too many users here for something like this to work. I've seen several nominations in the last few months get closed early by bureaucrats who knew that the nominations would probably fail. I don't see anything wrong with their continuing to do that. The community puts a lot of trust in bureaucrats as it is, and the number of requests at any given time isn't that high. --Idont Havaname 03:33, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
  5. No. This will lead to excessive politicking and wannabe-ism. Next thing you know, all the newbies on the anti-vandalism "unit" will be high-fiving each other onto this list, thinking they'll make swell admins. Oy. --Improv 10:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. No. As above. enochlau (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  7. No. It would add more red tape to something that "shouldn't be a big deal and per reasons above. Youngamerican 16:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
"There are probably a lot of editors that should be listed there but are not." Yeah, including me. I had 2,700 last I checked. Kate's site is down so I can't be sure. Anyway, I see your point. Wikipedia's gotten so big, it's almost impossible to deal with a group of users on an induvidual basis. It was just a thought. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 21:11, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Other

Don't 1 & 2 contradict each other? I mean, a 1-self doesn't equal a 5-in-agreement... or is that to be read as "self-nominations will require 4 sponsors"? The Literate Engineer 02:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Rule 2 might be interpreted as "Rule 2: A user can only remain posted here by a consensus of 5 or more users.". In that case, a 1-self sitting un-attested by more than 5 users, for a 7 day stretch, might then disappear from the list. --Ancheta Wis 02:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh. Yeah, that'd make sense. The Literate Engineer 02:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
You could interpret it that way. I didn't originally think about it that way but it makes sense how it would contradict itself. So how about: "Self noms must have the support of at least five other users"? -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 02:47, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I think this is something that our bureaucrats can determine for themselves. --Deathphoenix 14:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Selfish?

Well since you selfish fools won't give me an award for my hardwork:P

I demand an admin!

Why? you ask!?

Because i can have access, and requickly rverted stupid External Links to weakling sites. I have just reverted some edits by some fool puting some sites on Doom articles not actually containing Doom information.

Also for other articles, because some fools think they are smarter than me/wiki, by putting there link to a random article, so we won't know nor detect it.

Thanks for admining me, for an Adminship:P
>x<ino 03:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Uhm..... if you don't even know how to self-nom.... I'm sorry. NSLE (T+C+CVU) 03:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to say anything. Must hold it in... ;) -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:33, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Good idea. :-) Ëvilphoenix Burn! 02:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I am going to say something - that was funny! thanks for adding some humor to lighten the page. KillerChihuahua?!? 04:24, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Xino, this is Wikipedia: Requests for adminship. I think the page you want is Wikipedia:Requests for Pwnership :). Grutness...wha? 04:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

It's so tempting to create that page...-gadfium 23:30, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

On my washlist, I read sell fish. Xino, there are no fish here to fish, to sell or to buy! Cool stuff! -- Szvest 14:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up&#153;

Replica of an Aztec stone of the Sun.

On a selfish note, I hereby award those Wikipedians who survive trial by RFA an AdminStar[3]. Wear it in good health. Beware the power. Note that it has 8 points, three more than a U.S. Marshal's. Admins, where might I post this link to thank others? --Ancheta Wis 16:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

^ For other details, see the Aztec calendar article. See also: "36 hours: Mexico City" The New York Times Friday, Dec 30 2006 page D3.

I am almost tempted to create Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Xino, write an entirely objective description, and vote neutral instead of support, just to show Xino how RfAs are done correctly. — JIP | Talk 10:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Question

Are self-nominations generally seen as less worthy than being nominated by someone else? --Revolución (talk) 02:21, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

It's exactly how the page discribes it. Some people view it unfavorably, some favorably. I don't know if there's a way to tell how many are in each camp, but it seems even, though either way, I think more people jsut don't care and evaluate the candidate anyway. Statistically self noms are less likely to succeed, but that's probably due to failure to self select properly. - Taxman Talk 04:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm much in favor of self-nominating, and give "extra points" to the candidates brave enough to take that road. Adminship is not a country club, and should not need a sponsor. But my impression, sadly, is that rather more voters disagree than agree with me. Bishonen | talk 14:13, 31 December 2005 (UTC).
Self noms tend to be really good candidates (i.e. you only nom yourself when you're really sure you can pass) or really bad (i.e. trolls and "newbies" who dont understand the procedure), but not much in between. Martin 14:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Looking at RfAs from 27 June 2005 forward for editors with >2000 edits, 70.6% of self noms were successful. 84.1% of non-self noms were successful. I am 100% against the idea of not allowing self-noms. But, self-noms are less successful on the whole than non-self noms. --Durin 14:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Trying to derail an RFB

In what I think is the most appaling thing I've ever seen at Wikipedia, Several administrators ran across unprecedented levels of campaigning from an America Online user that is trying to force voters to change their support votes on Quadell's RFB: [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]

This is obviously entirely inappropriate, but since I'm not voting in either direction, I just wanted bureaucrats and other admins to know about this. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:02, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I left a brief note on User talk:Cecropia. --HappyCamper 06:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Clearly the user should be warned and blocked as necessary, but I can't imagine that any amount of campaigning from an anon - especially of the lame sort which this one is doing - would really cause a veteran user to change his vote. — Dan | talk 06:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
That's quite true. I think we can all rest with ease knowing that the process is robust against this sort of thing. --HappyCamper 06:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
How many people are actually listening to this idiot? I hope none. This person is very low to do something like this. I ran across a few of those posts yesterday, but forgot to say anything. This person seems to be causing little damage but nontheless, he should be warned or blocked as suggested above. This is just a mean-spirited attempt to try and make a person they don't like lose. I've come across my share of jerks like this. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 21:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Edit summary usage for RfA candidates?

A while ago, Durin used to post charts with edit summary usage for RfA candidates. I am thinking of doing something similar, but automated (using a bot, that is), and with a percentage instead of a chart, which would go as a comment in the Comments section of one's RfA. The percentage would be calculated by parsing user's recent contributions, and taking into account say the last 500-1000 edits to the article namespace (that is, no Talk:, User:, or Wikipedia: namespaces). That because it is in article namespace where edit summaries are most important.

Technically this would be as easy to implement as parsing an html page. The question would that be helpful, or would it be just a thing which stays in the way or more important aspects of one's RfA? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I would support such a thing. In the tool Titoxd and I have been working on, we've been planning to add such a thing. However, I'm having a bit of trouble doing the parsing of html when there's a section-edit. Anyways, a bot would be a lot more useful. Could you send me the code that parses through the section-edit? Thanks a lot! Flcelloguy (A note?) 04:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I have no code yet. I learned the hard way that you better ask if a tool is wanted before making one. :) About section edits, I believe you mean the default section heading /* .... */. That one can be stripped first by noting that in the html source code it shows up as <span class="autocomment"> default section heading comment </span>. And for the record, any code I would make would be Perl. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that editsummaryitis is getting to be the new editcountitis. I'm sure that if you did such a chart for a lot of editors then the percentage would be surprisingly low, partly because one vital factor is missed out. I'm sure I'm not alone in using edit summaries for major edits but rarely for minor ones. If you did a correlation* of my edit summary use against major/minor edit, you'd notice a quite startling difference between the two situations (*not sure whther a correlation is the right test between two discrete instances - t-test, perhaps?). I've no objection to such a bot being run, but I'd ask that if it is, it gives figures for both major and minor edits separately. Grutness...wha? 04:52, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea indeed. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:37, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Grutness, too. I pretty much use edit summaries on every edit now, because that is what some people seem to want, but it seems pretty silly when I remove a comma or add a period to spend more time on the edit summary than it took to fix the article. To judge a candidate for adminship on whether he or she typed "remove comma" on an edit marked as minor seems a bit over the top. -- DS1953 talk 06:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I support this with minor-major differentiation. jnothman talk 06:13, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Agreed with Grutness. That seems to be the better option. So I support the bot upon those conditions. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 07:31, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Not a bad idea. I would suggest using edit summaries for minor edits is not onerous if one uses some fairly standard abbreviations. If fiddling with commas, the edit summary can just be "punc", for example. Simularly "typo" or "spell" or "gram" can cover many minor edits. But I certainly would not hold it against someone in RfA if they don't use edit summaries for small edits which are marked as minor. Jonathunder 16:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
When I am RC patrolling, I never select "hide minor edits". Reason; logged in vandals can very easily check "this is a minor edit". Similarly, edit summaries for minor edits I feel are important. Yes, even if you're just removing a comma. I typically put in something like "copyedit". Wikipedia:Edit summary legend may be useful to some for reducing the overhead on edit summary typing. --Durin 17:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I support this. However, please bear in mind that you are going to receive a *hellacious* amount of flack once it is implemented. I've been roundly criticized by a vocal subset of the community for supposedly raising the bar on admin appointments, hijacking RfA to my own purposes, suffering from editcountitis and editsummaryitis, and all sorts of other nefarious deeds. It won't matter how much explanation of your motivations you write. I tried very hard to get people off of editcountitis and on to things that actually make a difference to the project. Edit summaries make a big difference to some vandal fighters. I also tried to increase the success rate of RfAs for editors with less than 2000 edits by including those charts that I used to do. The results from RfA seemed to show that RfAs in this category with charts had a ~10% greater chance of success than RfAs without a chart. No matter; I was accused again of all manner of nefarious deeds. I've been considering re-starting the charts, and suffering the consequences, in the hopes of getting that 10% better success rate for <2000 edit count RfAs.

The core problem here is that there is a large and growing gap between a subset of the community that likes things the way they used to be, and a subset of the community that sees things as they are now. The former began operating on a Wikipedia that was far smaller in every respect (most notably number of members). The latter mostly entered into the project within the last year. Both sides think they are right. In almost every negotiation between these sides that I've seen, the disagreement has been unresolvable, and remains painfully open. These arguments are still going on, and some are even speaking of outright wiki-rebellion. This is a state of affairs that might be beyond the capabilities of the Wikipedia community to master. --Durin 14:30, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Conflict between generations, eh? We'll get over it. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:40, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd be interested in any further thoughts on this "generational conflict". There are certainly scalability issues with the way the Wikipedia community works, and I think analysing the issues in this way might produce some useful conclusions. Rd232 talk 18:19, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries should always be filled out, minor edit or not. When I look at a page history or on RC I want the summaries to show me what has been done to a version. If someone has made a minor spelling correction, they should type that in the summary (shorten it to "sp" is fine). So I like User:Oleg Alexandrov sugestion. It will be usefull and also make more people aware of wikipedias guidline to always use them. If a candidate is ignoring this guideline on a considerate amount of his/her edits (minor or not), I'll most likely vote oppose myself if I see it. Shanes 18:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Since all the responses were positive, I wrote a script to do the edit summary usage for RfA candidates. You can see how it works by looking at my bot's contributions.

For now things are still a bit in the testing mode, but after several days I will have it run hourly. Also, looking forward to more comments about whether people agree with such bot edits or not, and more specific suggestions in any way. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Have the bot add a signature. Right now, I expect people to go hunting to figure out who added the comments about edit summaries. --Durin 13:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied from my talk page by Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)) I think it should add edit summary stats after prior comments, if any. In one of the rfas, it has added the stats before a pre-existing comment by me - it makes reading the page difficult. Or you may want to create a separate sub-section? btw, does it look at edit summary usage in Template space? If not, it may be a good idea to say that it looks at edit summaries in the article namespace. Also, you may want it to generate a table (a 2X2 matrix) to show edit summary usage for major and minor edits on one axis and for Article and other namespaces on the other axes generating four boxes. Also, implicit assumption is that the user would have made 500 edits to article namespace. Pl. feel free to disregard ;) any of these suggestions. --Gurubrahma 09:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a lot of things. OK, first mathbot adds the usage right after the Comment heading because it is easier to parse text that way, and is good that mathbot's message is always in the same place. I don't see how putting mathbot's comment first (one or two lines) would make the page less readable. For now, I don't know about a separate subsection, I doubt it is worth the trouble.
Yes, the bot does look in the template namespace, the message states that it ignores just talk pages, wikipedia, image, and user namespaces. About making a table with edits to all other namespaces, I don't know how useful is that, I don't think people care much if somebody does not consistently use edit summaries when votign for deletion for example. Anwyay, I will post this at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship and wait for comments. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Oleg, this is a great idea. But to avoid duplication of effort, check with Interiot; he already has code to do all the counting. As a minimum, you may want to run both scripts side-by-side for validation. Owen× ☎ 16:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a lot of duplication of effort, I guess. WP:KATE wrote one of the original counters, Flcelloguy and Titoxd are working together on one, I have three separate codebases so far, and you have one. I do hope to have something like this on the toolserver in a week or two, with it being basically focused on RfA only, and adding a bunch of statistics, as many as is reasonable. Major/minor is definitely one of them, but the data can be mashed up in all sorts of ways. It's just taking a bit longer than I thought it would because the SQL/indexing details are a little complicated. For what it's worth, this is what I have so far.
I do want to help out RfA as much as possible though, and hopefully tools like this don't harm the process. The userbox thing and comments on wikien-l make me think about benficial admins more. --Interiot 18:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, as you saw my tool is nothing fancy, but works, and works now. :) When your tool is ready for primetime, I don't mind you using it instead of my silly script in people's RfA pages. But all that amount of graphics you plan makes me a bit intimidated. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Your tool is very nice for the time being. Just because the information is there doesn't mean people have to base their decisions on it. More information is more gooder. JHMM13 (T | C) 04:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, edit summary usage is just one of the many things one needs to take into account when voting for RfA, and is definitely not the most important one. However, it is hard to argue that a user who uses edit summaries under 20 percent of the time should be an admin yet. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. It's not exactly massively essential to the process, but with a low amount of edit summaries, you can infer that a user does respect the job others do, which is not a quality I want in an admin. JHMM13 (T | C) 21:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Ed Poor RfA

An RfA on Ed Poor, who was desysoped by arbitrators just a week ago, has been going on for three days. Despite the comments from a number of users that the RfA shouldn't allow voting unless it is linked to from the main RfA, voting is occuring. Myself and another user now feel that this RfA should be stopped. Any comments from more experienced RfA hands?--Alabamaboy 21:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Um, put a note at the top indicating it's an inactive RFA, and if people persist in voting then protect it until people come to their senses. Raul654 21:59, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I have made a note to that effect on the page. [[Sam Korn]] 22:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Email communication I had with Ed indicated to me that he was not planning on returning anyime soon. The RFA can probably be speedied.--MONGO 00:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

List of things one should do to become admin-worthy?

Besides making a thousand or so edits, what other kinds of projects should an aspiring admin work on? Thanks in advance. J.R. Hercules 05:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Have you read the Guide to RFA? This covers a fair answer to your question. Also, take a look at past RFAs for more clues. jnothman talk 05:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Be around at least 3, and ideally 6 months, show good edits in article space, at least dip your toe in project space, and if you want to be really sure you'll be a good admin, have some good conversations on policy and attitude with a few existing admins. --Improv 05:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, WP:GRFA is a good place to start, but you may want to read the original version of that page—a less politically-correct but more practical and succinct version of the guide. Owen× ☎ 17:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Minimum number of edits

Although I am not an admin myself, I do believe there should be a minimum number of edits to become an admin because there are people who just become admin for the heck of it, have their closest friends back them up, and then don't even do their job. This is trashing up the encyclopedia, and needs to be stopped.

The amount of edits I am reasoning is 1000. 1000 edits would be a significant number of months on the encyclopedia and provide experience to how it works and what is acceptable and what is not. To stop potential power abusers, I believe there should also be a "no criminal record" rule. That means those who have vandalised shall never be made an admin for any reason. If that rule doesn't work, there could be an alternative of, say, 6 months of acceptable behaviour.

A minimum number of edits would also be required to participate in admin nominations to stop users from creating sockpuppets to cast votes for themselves. That would also solve the problem of people creating new accounts and voting yes or no on every single election for the purpose of participating.

As a matter of fact, I have been a user for 3 months and I still do not believe I am experienced enough for an admin. It is just sick to let very new and/or rude people cheat their way into jobs that have power over the veterans of the encyclopedia, and either abuse their power or get bored of it and quit. So everyone, vote yes for a minimum number of edits for adminship.

PS. Post comments as needed Link9er 14:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Although vandalism is considered to be a black mark, as is trolling, being a POV warrior, and other forms of problematic behaviour, it is always possible for people to turn around and become upstanding, productive Wikipedians, given time and engagement with the community. Although we should perhaps wait a bit longer when people need to be reformed if they do these kinds of things, I don't think it would be appropriate to close the door forever on their being an admin. I can think of two people in particular who have done some very problematic things during the first few months of being in the community who have since then proven themselves to be good Wikipedians, and who I can see eventually becoming admins should they become interested. I think having hopeful admins become engaged in the culture of the community and initially working closely with existing admins would be a good tradition. --Improv 15:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • In practice, nobody with fewer than 750 edits has been made an admin over the last 400 RfAs dating back to June 27th. Among those 400, there were 29 with 750 or fewer edits. All were unsuccessful or withdrawn. In short, we don't need a rule for 500 edits or more to make admin; that's the defacto case already. As for sufferage; bureaucrats make the decision on what are and are not valid votes. It is frequently the case that sockpuppet votes are identified by others long before the bureaucrats close an RfA. Thus, I doubt any change is needed here. --Durin 15:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think that a minimum of edits rule is needed. Wikicountedits is overrated: It is not the number, but the quality of the edits that should count.
But I strongly support a "no criminal record" rule. Those that have vandalized and/or were pov-warring and edit-warring should really have 6 months of acceptable behaviour. --Kefalonia 16:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with the quality of edits as well, but I believe a minimum of at least 1000 is sensible. Regarding the "no criminal record" rule, I disagree somewhat, because some "injustices" are not sufficent enough to ban someone from adminship. Others are. So that's somewhat varible basis concerning what the actions. For example, take cool Cat. He's clearly reformed, and despite his past behavior, he is clearly one of the best, constructive editors I've had the pleasure of meeting. Even take the fact Davenbelle has been harrassing and sniping him, and Cool Cat (clearly and changed person) just shrugs it off and doesn't let it bother him. That's what its all about. :) In a moment of madness, I may just re-elect him for admin; he clearly deserves it. -MegamanZero|Talk 16:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • (replying to Kefalonia) In general, if an editor has a history of edit warring or other bad behaviour, it will be brought up and discussed (often at length) during the course of an RFA. If the behaviour is sufficiently inappropriate, the RFA fails. I don't think it's necessary to enshrine such standards in policy; the community seems to do a pretty good job of evaluating the merits of each case already. If we try to create a laundry list of sins for which adminship will be witheld, it will encourage wikilawyering and whining of the form, 'I demand to be sysopped because adminship should be no big deal and I didn't do any of the things on the naughty list'. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a stated personal standard of 1000 edits (~2000 for self-noms). I know a lot of other RFA voters have their own standards, and therefore I believe a fixed minimum isn't necessary and contributes to m:instruction creep. --Deathphoenix 17:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, and past "bad behaviour" is also unnecessary because each RFA candidate goes through scrutiny. RFA voters also have their owns standards about bad behaviour. --Deathphoenix 18:17, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

    • Thank you for your comments. -Link9er 18:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Rather than a minimum count (which doesn't necessarily translate to "months on Wikipedia", although it should, I'd much rather see increased granularity of admin/sysop powers be implemented. Adminship may have been no big deal back in the day, but the potential for abuse of some powers is ripe. Others can be handed out at a lower trust threshold. -- nae'blis (talk) 19:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

A fine and excellent idea. It could be similar or akin to semi-protect, in a sense. Allows users that have fullfilled preregcosites and gained community trust over time to slowly gain different administrative abilities until they become a full-fleged one themselves. It would depict how and why they utilize their admin abilities, without any speculation on our part. Perhaps a chat with Lord Jimbo is in order about this. -MegamanZero|Talk 19:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges. Talrias (t | e | c) 20:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Another way to "challenge" RFA candidates

A lot of the newer ideas around here about "weeding out" RFAs have centered around setting a minimum edit count or account age. I propose a different tact. Some of the criticism levelled at new admins (at least, from what I've read on the various Wikipedia discussions and mailing list) is that they have all this power without knowing a sprig about policy. Some of the new admins will readily unblock a user without knowing about blocking and unblocking policy. This has irked some veteran blocking admins, especially when procedure hasn't been followed (for example, you're supposed to notify the blocking admin and discuss the matter on WP:ANI before unilaterally unblocking the user).

Instead of setting minimum edit counts or account age, which RFA voters can tell for themselves, we need to add more questions to tell if an RFA candidate truly knows what being an admin is all about.

I think we need to add two or three more questions on the standard template that specifically asks candidates what they think of specific parts of these guides. That shows that the RFA candidate has read the policy pages or at least has a decent idea of the sorts of decisions that an admin needs to make. Here are the types of questions that I have in mind:

  1. What do you do if you disagree with the blocking of a user?
  2. What would you do if a user reverts an article three four times in 25 hours?
  3. In your opinion, when would you delete an article under CSD A7 and when do you nominate it for an AFD instead?
  4. How would you tell the difference between a sockpuppet and a new user?
  5. When would you use {{test1}}, and when would you use {{bv}}?

(I recently made a gaffe w.r.t. #4. If I had to answer this question, maybe I wouldn't have made that mistake, but luckily I only asked a question on WP:AN, rather than block the user in question)

Notice that I deliberately didn't provide any Wikilinks to the appropriate articles unless absolutely necessary. This encourages RFA candidates to read through the proper documents, and also favours those who are already familiar with some of the Wikipedia procedures without being unduly weighed down by editcountitis or ageitis.

The one problem with this is that some users can simply regurgitate answers from previous RFAs, but maybe if we also include questions that ask for the candidate's opinions rather than having a "correct answer", we'd get a better result. What do you think? --Deathphoenix 18:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I personally think this is all fine and dandy, but not really good. It would be quite naïve to expect a prospective admin candidate to know all of the policies beforehand—and it's not only because there are so many of them. I remember myself having to consult the admin reading list every single time when I was going to perform an administrative task, and I am sure even then I still made some mistakes.
Prior knowledge of the policies, to me, is far less important than willingness to diligently study them when need arises. After all, if you need to apply a policy and have to study it first it would make you a more refined admin than mechanically studying them beforehand "just in case", and then forgetting most of them after bein adminned. It does not really matter if a candidate does not know what exactly a three-revert rule implies; what matters is that he realizes the need to thoroughly read (and understand) the policy before blocking someone for a 3RR violation. I would rather support a trial period (three months, say?) for new admins than rigorous testing your proposal will eventually lead to.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 18:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, how would you feel about questions that an experienced Wikipedia editor would be expected to know, rather than an admin? I would expect a few of these questions should be answerable by an editor, such as questions 2, 4, and 5. These kinds of questions would give RFA voters a better idea of how familiar users are with Wikipedia procedures and policies without expecting them to know procedures and policies specific to admins. --Deathphoenix 18:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I am not strongly against those types of questions; but, IMO, it would all too easy for a would-be admin to copy correct answers from the previous nominations, thus defeating the purpose of the questioning (unless, of course, someone would be willing to present each new candidate with a brand-new set of questions/situation scenarios). I personally find questions testing the attitude of admin candidates a lot more useful, but these are pretty much the questions we already have in the "Questions for the candidate" list anyway. I would not mind seeing the latter expanded, though, but the questions should not be of the yes/no/"I will do this, this, and that in that order" type.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 19:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, that's the weakness in these questions that I acknowledged when I posted my idea. Maybe we need questions for which there are no "correct" answers (I think the 3RR in 25 hours would be one of these). Either way, I'm just gauging what people think of this idea. If it's a good one, we'll probably all get together and try to come up with questions where the answers can't be readily duplicated (or would easily be spotted as plagiarism if it is). Or maybe rotating questions is another way of dealing with it. :-) --Deathphoenix 19:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, if all goes as planned, becoming a sysop will be harder than entering a Starfleet Academy :) I still think a trial period is a better and a more fool-proof way, but let's indeed hear out what others have to say.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 19:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been musing along these lines myself, lately. I'm very supportive of the general idea, but not sure of a good implementation. Regarding whether the candidate should be questioned about "admin" policies or not, I say of course they should! A counter-argument was "prior knowledge of the policies, to me, is far less important than willingness to diligently study them when need arises." That's true. But it wouldn't be a "closed-book" test, right? If a candidate needs to go look up and read the policy pages to answer the question, that's great! And if a candidate can't be bothered to do so -- if doing do when applying for adminship a big burden -- what makes you think they would ever bother to investigate the policies after they are promoted? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
That's also true. I perhaps put too much trust in that the new admins thoroughly read the administrators' reading list before starting to use powers vested in them. Still, unless there is going to be a system of checks and balances allowing us to verify that the candidate in fact read and understood the policies instead of simply found them (or other admins' responses to a similar question) and copied them to the answers section, I am going to remain skeptical of this particular process. As an addition, perhaps, it's not a shabby idea, but I would be hesitant to rely on it too much.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 19:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I think something along these lines would be a good thing. I'd rather have the nominee outline his or her involvement in different areas of Wikipedia policy...talk pages, involvement in admin duties that don't need admin tools (WP:CP is a big one, AFD debates, WP:AIV and so on), input in policy discussions. If a nominee is familar with policy there should be some pre-existing involvement that can be pointed to. But either way, a nominee should be able to thumbnail where they have interacted with and learned WP policy. Rx StrangeLove 20:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

A probation period would work also, I'd rather do the decision making before the admin tools are handed over though. Rx StrangeLove 20:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that this proposal is a good idea, subject to some tweaking of the questions. Anyone who does NP or RC patrol will likely have an answer to questions 3 and 5, and anyone who's ever faced or become involved in an edit war will likely have an answer to questions 2 and 4. Someone who wants to be an administrator should be able to answer all five when the time comes. Someone who copy-pastes from policy or another RFA does not have the competence, the diligence, or the honesty to be an administrator. NatusRoma 02:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't you mean 4 reverts in 25 hours? The 3RR permits three in 24 hours. ~~ N (t/c) 02:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Woops. Corrected. --Deathphoenix 03:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Extra points and question

There seems to be a general consensus to use this, though there are questions as to its general implementation and what questions to use. Before putting this idea up for a formal poll, I'd like to make a few points:

  1. The specific questions we use are definitely up for discussion
  2. One possible idea is to have a "pool" of questions and rotate them regularly (though this requires regular maintenance of {{RfA-nom}}, so this is probably a bad idea).
  3. I think it would be best to have a header pointing out that these questions are asking for your opinion and that there are no correct answers. Hopefully this would encourage RFA candidates to think and form their own opinions rather than cutting-and-pasting the answers from current policy pages or from past RFAs.
  4. I think cut-and-pastes from RFAs would be fairly easy to spot.

I also have one question: How and where would we form these questions? In this talk page? On WP:AN? --Deathphoenix 15:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Whoa! Hold your horses! "seems to be a general consensus to use this" is outright ridiculous—how do you expect to establish "general consensus" within less than 24hours around here? When only four people have expressed support for this idea? Just for the record: I am opposed to any further inquisitory questions for admin candidates. Granting adminship is no big deal, and is a sign that the community trusts the candidate not to goof and fool around with the extra tools in bad ways. Usually, the community trusts a person when he or she has shown before that he or she is a reasonable editor, has an idea of what an encyclopedia is that matches Wikipedia and interacts reasonably well with others. All admins so far have been learning on the job—inevitable when you don't have the tools available before. Candidates are offering a service to the community; they are not applying for a job. Be glad for anyone who offers to help housekeeping, check their contributions to get a feeling what kind of persons they are, and then vote yes or no or abstain, and be doubly grateful for any admin who, once elected, actually finds the time to do some housekeeping. But do not expect or require elected admins to actually be active, and let's get rid of that mindset of requiring them to be near-perfect before being handed the mop and bucket. Remember, we're all volunteers here. Lupo 15:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Please WP:AGF. If you read what I wrote, I wasn't pushing this forward, and I wasn't going to unilaterally apply these questions. All I was doing was presenting a few extra points and questions and I was also saying that all I wanted to do was to perform a poll. Please don't take what I said as being reckless. Thank you. --Deathphoenix 18:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Don't worry, I do (assume good faith, that is). Sorry if I came across a bit strongly. I just stumbled upon that "consensus" remark combined with the short time. Lupo 07:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
That's okay. I could have worded my post a little differently. --Deathphoenix 13:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
And one more thing. I am fully aware that we're all volunteers here. I keep that fact firmly in my mind when I am on Wikipedia. --Deathphoenix 18:06, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Now I'll get around to addressing your concerns. This proposal is actually an attempt to give RFA voters more information on a candidate while not applying any strict minimums with account age or edit count. I see this proposal as being milder than others than have come about. There is nothing forcing RFA voters to strictly look at the answers to these questions before voting. There is nothing in this policy that forces admin candidates to answer these questions (though, like the original three questions, I'd imagine answering these questions would be highly recommended). I'm not expecting admin candidates to be perfect. There are no such things as "correct answers" to these questions. There are plenty of people who answered the original question 2 without much in the way of good contributions (myself included) that got handed the adminship anyway. I didn't say the admin candidate would have to answer all five: I was only giving examples of the types of questions I had in mind. People seemed open to the idea of asking additional questions in general, and in my point above, I stated that the actual questions are still up for discussion. I'm merely proposing the asking of questions to gauge how much the admin candidate knows of Wikipedia policies and procedures. I'm proposing simple questions that have no correct answers that only ask for opinions. If there's anything here that you find exceedingly draconian, I'd like to hear your feedback so I can modify this proposal further. --Deathphoenix 18:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, these detailed questions you proposed certainly would make the questions section look even more like a job quiz. But anyway, it's no big deal, and we can experiment. Why not just be bold? IIRC, Cecropia introduced the first version of these standardized questions pretty much out of the blue without any extensive discussions beforehand. (I might be mistaken, though—it's been so long ago.) In fact, I have just been bold. Lupo 07:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
That's an idea. It's not like I'm breaking RFA policies or anything, since all I'll be doing is putting additional questions for the candidate to answer. Maybe to make the experiment a little easier on the candidates, I can put up a note that these questions are strictly optional. I'll take a look at the questions and maybe make them a little easier to answer. --Deathphoenix 13:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Draft questions ready

I've made a draft of these questions here, and will appreciate any feedback you can give me. Starting tomorrow (UTC time?), I'll be putting these questions on new RFAs as an experiment. Thanks, --Deathphoenix 18:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

A modest proposal

I have a thought in regards to the recent conversations about adminship, suitability of admins, and the ease (or lack thereof) of de-adminship. Aircraft pilots must pass what's known as a biannual flight review. Every two years, no matter how much or how little they fly, a pilot must go for a quick test flight with an instructor who verifies that they still know enough to fly safely and haven't picked up bad habits that'll get them killed. Perhaps Wikipedia should consider adopting a similar methodology for gauging adminship on a continuing basis, but without adding to the RfA backlog.

Proposal:A machine generated list of admins who have been 'unchecked' for 6 months or some other arbitrary length would be be maintained, and a group of volunteers would do a quick review of the past X edits. I imagine the process being something that doesn't take more than 5 minutes or so per person, and also includes a quick scan of their user_talk to look for anything worrisome. If they see anything of concern, there would be a more indepth study, possibly with an RFC involved, but I expect that would be a very rare event. For this to work, nobody could be excluded. No matter how long someone has been with the project, everyone would have the quick review done on them.

Expected results: If there are admins who have become jaded and no longer exercise their powers with the attention to process, good will, and accuracy that is expected, then they will be given an opportunity to work things out with their peers.

With the flight reviews, every pilot (from the senior 747 captain to the occasional Cessna renter) has added incentive to stay current on policy (FAA regulations), keep their skills fresh, and gets an opportunity to receive feedback on their skills. With a little attention and not a lot of work, this could do a lot to smooth feathers and help keep the quality of Wikipedia up. Thoughts? Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

As I recall, this sort of thing was proposed before (as an annual review) and rejected because this process would result in many admins losing access. The very nature of some admin activities means that admins can rub some editors the wrong way (because of blocks for 3RR and incivility, among others). I agree that the process for de-adminning is too difficult, but this makes de-adminning too easy. --Deathphoenix 20:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
My apologies, I meant to add that the reviewers would be admins themselves who could differentiate users who were 'rubbed the wrong way' with admins who failed to excercise their skills properly and in accordance with policy. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
(ec) All editors are under review all the time, already. I don't see that making a formal review process would really accomplish much. At any rate, if such a review were to have any teeth, it would still require some way of revoking adminship from those who abuse it, right? If we had a way of revoking sysop rights, I think the application of it would take care of itself, without need for a scheduled review. Friday (talk) 20:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi Friday, great point, but one thing this would improve on is that currently, someone needs to complain before an admin is reviewed, and usually the person who complains ends up coming across as a crank. If the process is impersonal and by the numbers and everyone is reviewed on a scheduled basis, then you don't have to rely on a perfect storm of A: A user who was done 'wrong' who is also B: Eloquent. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Support with the following riders - admin inactivity itself should not be a reason for concern; apart from edits, the deletion, protection and block logs should be viewed; actions like indefinite blocks should be placed under careful scrutiny; Incivility, Personal attacks and newbie biting should be viewed more unfavorably than lapses in process; and finally, this should be re-named a radical proposal - sureshot way to elicit more participation in the discussion. --Gurubrahma 06:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucrat Voting

The two current/recent bureaucrat votes show a problem with voting for this position. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the community expects a higher degree of consensus for bureaucrat than admin. Put numerically this has been about 90% or better. The circus surrounding voting is bothersome. Not just looking at these nominations but for the future, remember that bureaucrat judgment is a "lowest common denominator" situation; i.e., the most liberal bureaucrat can promote even if the others don't think promotion is merited.

It would seem that a number of editors are voting Support in a popularity contest. It would seem others are voting Oppose for petty reasons or for personal spite.

Therefore: I propose we consider that only admins (of which there are now more than 600 as opposed to about 300 a year ago) be allowed to vote for bureaucrat. This makes sense for two reasons: (1) by definition admins are our more experienced users and have already gained a community expression of trust; and (2) admins do not have a vested interested in some person becoming a bureaucrat, since their adminship status cannot be affected by a bureaucrat in the future. Another aspect of (2) is that admins are less likely to engage in petty tactics, "beauty contest" or spite voting.

I have divided the voting into admins and non-admins, so we can see the relative sentiment in these groups. Please feel free to elaborate your positions, but if they are extensive, put it under Comments. Thanks, Cecropia 05:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Question: Should administrators only be allowed to vote for bureaucrat?

Yes

  1. Support - Bureaucrats have one key purpose, which relates to the promotion of new admins. The skills necessary for this purpose are best evaluated by those who have had sufficient participation and interest to garner adminship. Non-admins can still participate in the discussion, and can raise legitimat points of concern. bd2412 T 05:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Logical, as potential admins are only affected. But to say that "admins are less likely to engage in petty tactics, 'beauty contest' or spite voting" is extremely short sighted - cliques and pile-on popularity voting is equally likely to occur amongst admins, especially considerring VfB and the votes made therein are decidedly nothing more than unnecessary popularity contests. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. Support per BD2412 with Jeffrey O. Gustafson's caveat. I'm not a fan of instruction creep, but considering the role of bureaucrats its not a hard step to take. --Syrthiss 13:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support. To reduce popularity contest and sour grape modivated votes.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 23:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

No

  1. Oppose I don't think the problem is so grave as to require such extraordinary measures (I did look at the votes in there). Besides, whoever decides to promote the bureaucrat should be smart enough to sift through frivolious oppose votes. Also, I don't want to give other people more ammunition in claiming that the admins are above ordinary users. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Oppose seems like instruction creep to me. We don't need more restrictions on voting. One of the reasons that many new users (including me, when I was one) like wikipedia is beacuse there only a few things restricted to admins only. This seems like a solution in search of a problem, I for one have not seen any need for this in recent RfBs. At some point will we only allow bureaucrats to vote for stewards? -Greg Asche (talk) 05:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  3. oppose for similar reasons to those expressed above. However, see also comments. Grutness...wha? 08:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose (1) it is not as if admins are the only ones who are experienced. (2) are you trying to suggest that non-admins will vote for a b'crat expecting favours (?!) later if they go for an RfA ? Tintin Talk 05:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    See comments -- Cecropia 05:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  5. Unacceptable, unless the bureaucrats are prepared to put a stop to adminship being denied users for trivial reasons. Many perfectly trustworthy users are denied adminship on spurious grounds (at least if we are interpreting adminship as a measure of trustworthiness). As long as admin candidacies continue to fail for reasons like: too few edit summaries, not enough talk page posts, etc., adminship is not an effective way to single out trustworthy users. (I also merged the comments section, as it seems you would want people to respond in thread whether they are admins or not. Feel free to revert.) Christopher Parham (talk) 05:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    As long as I've been at Wikipedia it's been policy that admin voting can be for any reason whatsoever, even a stupid reason. Bureaucrats are only empowered to sort out the reasoning in close votes, and we do. A change in bureaucrat policy on this would require an expressed desire for a different policy from the community. -- Cecropia 05:51, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    I understand this, but that policy unfortunately conflicts with the idea that the admin population coincides with the population of trusted users, which is pretty fundamental to your proposal. There's no reason to restrict voting for bureaucrats to admins when adminship effectively means "this user meets the arbitrary criteria of 80% of whoever happened to be voting that week." Christopher Parham (talk) 05:54, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  6. Absolutely not. Being an admin only entitles users to a few extra tools. Their vote does not become more important than that of any other user. Wikipedia is communist, everyone's the same. Proto t c 10:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  7. Hell no! Regular editors are not second-class citizens, and adminship should be no big deal (including no extra privileges) BlankVerse 12:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  8. Oppose. Administrators should not be granted extra priveleges when it comes to voting anywhere. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  9. Oppose there should be no Cabal. Izehar 13:03, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  10. Strongest possible oppose - Regular editors are not, and must never be, treated as second-class citizens. Nandesuka 13:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  11. Echo a number of sentiments above regarding equal treatment of all Wikipedia editors. We all started with one edit. There is an increasing elitist attitude, perhaps fostered by bunker mentality, that experienced editors have more valid opinions on Wikipedia than others. This is antithetical to our purpose and must be put down. Any sufferage issues need to apply to all users equally, admin or no. --Durin 13:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  12. Weak oppose. I'm not a fan of separating the value of the vote of an admin and the vote of an editor. However, this is a weak vote because I agree that something has to be done. I've seen so many perfectly valid admins get voted down for relatively minor reasons (such as "we don't need more bureaucrats"). Indeed, there's only been one successful RfB in a long time, and he only succeeded because a bunch of people on IRC got wind of it and piled on their votes. I think RfB needs to be fixed, but I'm not sure if this is the way to do it. --Deathphoenix 13:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  13. Oppose This is not necessary and not democratic. But maybe a rule should be imposed that all votes (also for RFA's, and for support and oppose votes) should have a minimum of two lines of explanation. --Kefalonia 14:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  14. Oppose. I agree that there should be some reform, but this might be a bit too much. I would, however, be open to the idea of some less-extreme form of limitations on who can cast meaninglful votes on RfBs. Youngamerican 14:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  15. I am not an admin, yet I think I should be able to support or oppose candidates for Bureaucrat. TacoDeposit 16:19, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  16. No. Let any registered user vote for bureaucrats. We don't need a hierarchy like "only people at level n-1 may vote for level n". — JIP | Talk 21:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  17. Oppose.Registered editors should retain the right to vote for RFB's. I do agree with User:Kefalonia that explaination for support or oppose should be a requirement.--Dakota ~ ε 00:46, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  18. Oppose. Nandesuka said it best. -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive -- my dropsonde 05:11, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Other criteria for voting

Comments

  • Please note that I am not trying in any way to demean non-admins or suggest admins are a higher life form. I am saying that bureaucrat is a position which merits a bit closer scrutiny because bad choice can have almost impossible-to-reverse consequences. -- Cecropia 05:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Your statement above doesn't seem to explain why you think that encouraging 75% of the editing population from looking at the nomination would increase the amount of scrutiny provided. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Everyone can still look at the nominations and comment. I'll put it this way. Until now, bureaucrat voting has not been so massive and seems to have been taken more seriously. As of now, I (and very possibly other bureaucrats) would have to fail the current nominations, and I don't feel they are being seriously enough evaluated. -- Cecropia 05:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
        • It seems pretty likely that people will be less eager to contribute to a discussion when they are relegated to an advisory role underneath more privileged users. And again, there seems to be no evidence that the RfA process will produce users more likely to take the nominations seriously. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Do you mean discouraging? In regards to Cecropia's comments, I don't think admins scrutinize say RfA candidates any more thoroughly than non-admins do. Also, your comment about admins not being affected by bureaucratic decisions isn't true: an admin can be de-adminned and be up for adminship again. -Greg Asche (talk) 05:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • part of the problem here is that 90% is ridiculously high. One oppose vote (and we are getting a few spiteful-seeming oppose votes) can wipe ten support votes. I'm not saying we aren't getting "popular: support" votes, but in this context they are far less of a problem than "unpopular: oppose" votes. The question is, how to handle that - do we let bureaucrats decide which votes are "for valid reasons"? (tricky and problematic), do we restrict voting as has been suggested (which won't remove the problem, just reduce it), or do we do something else? I'd personally favour dropping the requirement to 83% (5/6), but admit that it doesn't address the original problem directly. Grutness...wha? 08:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Since we are looking at ensuring only diligent voters vote, why not restrict it to people with minimum 3 months & 450 edits on a trial basis for the next two RFBs? Personally, I feel 90% is justified given the trust that is placed in the post. I understand that arbcom posts have only an approval rating, however. --Gurubrahma 13:15, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    The general consensus for the minimum RFA nom is 3 months & 1000 edits. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    I think Gurubrahma was saying that there should be a minimum criterion for voting on an RfBs, not the criterion for being an admin. Or were you proposing that the 3 months and 1000 edits be a criterion for voting on an RfB? -- Cecropia 17:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
    Oh yeah, I didn´t see it that way. =Nichalp «Talk»= 02:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • What about trusted and experienced users who do not want to take up adminship responsibilities? Would it be fair to them? =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes?

I'm seeing a few "Oppose - too many userboxes" votes, yet I haven't seen any reasoning given anywhere as to why having userboxes is a bad thing. If anything, I'd say they are a good thing, in that they tell people a little bit about the administrator they're dealing with (which may be very useful when you're asking them to have a look at an edit-war on a controversial subject, for instance). Can anyone explain why they are bad, or is userboxitis the new editcountitis? Grutness...wha? 08:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Probably a spin-off of Kelly Martin's RFC. NSLE (T+C+CVU) 10:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I guess my question is, are b-crats given enough latitude to discard such votes, and if so, are they actually counting them? :P Unless there's something particularly bad about userboxes I missed, I can't imagine such a vote being reasonable. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
But I fully intend to oppose anyone who uses inappropriate userboxes, such as those containing personal attacks or fair use images. I don't think that is a spurious reason. [[Sam Korn]] 11:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. "POV presented in userboxes is troubling" would be a perfectly good reason for opposing, IMO. --Deathphoenix 12:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, yes, there's no problem with that as a reason. But that's a completely different thing from "too many userboxes", which is what is being used as a reaon for opposing. That's like the difference between opposing someone for a personal attack on a talk page (understandable) and opposing someone for simply leaving lots of messages on talk pages (very strange). Grutness...wha? 13:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Right, but even then, with the possibility of a userbox changing from the time the user added it ntil the time of the RFA, it's not really fair to assume the person being nominated has noticed that one of their userboxes contains a disputed image (unless the person added the image themselves, or reverted over someone who'd removed the image). —Locke Cole • t • c 23:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Hence I agreed with Sam Korn's comments. :-) --Deathphoenix 17:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I joked about it on wikien-l, and here we are... Alphax τεχ 13:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I support the right to have userboxes and the associated categories. But I very much understand where the "oppose -- too many userboxes" is coming from. That's why we're each allowed to contribute our opinions to RFA discussions, and why we're allowed to each have our own standards. We need to be flexible as we think about new things. In many cases, too many userboxes (not the presence of userboxes at all, but an obsession with them) MAY indicate a Wiki-immaturity. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 22:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Are admin standards too loose?

Recent discussions show admins engaging in wheel wars, admins insisting they are in the right and are entitled to act unilaterally — even when corrected by community consensus —, admins abusing their power, and on and on. I read WP:SIGN every week, and it is telling that there are on average (rough guestimate) about twelve new admins per week. TWELVE? That seems like an awfully fast rate of advancement.

Persons are regularly promoted to admin who have been with Wikipedia less than three months. This has disturbed me for a long time. My edit count was a minor issue in my own WP:RFA; what was hidden by the edit count discussion was the fact that I had been around longer than most of the people involved in voting (and indeed longer than some members of the ArbCom), and what was even more hidden was the extensive amount of Wikipedia reading I do. There aren't any "article read count" features in MediaWiki that I am aware of.

Yet these -- trying to be funny and for lack of a better term -- "whippersnappers" presumed to admonish me in some cases about what I could do to become a better candidate for adminship, etc. Less than three months. It would be overgeneralizing to assume that these same folks are the ones causing the wheel wars and taking other actions showing such clear misunderstandings of Wikipedia. But the fact remains that my personal gut instinct called not for a high edit count but for a 'twelve month track record standard for adminship.

Apparently expecting people to use and edit Wikipedia for at least a year (in general — no hard and fast rules, here) before being given administrator status on one of the top 20 websites on the entire Internet is gallingly over the top for most Wikipedians, whose standards seem to hover around three months, often because many of them were themselves promoted after less than three months. (Or hope to be promoted when they hit that mark...)

Even more important than my time constraint is my attitude criterion: an admin must be someone who has shown a demonstrated commitment to the principles of consensus and NPOV, believing that these will eventually result in a high-quality encyclopedia.

Most admins pass in underwatched RFAs. I'm seriously thinking of becoming a regular in the RFA discussion. I'm seriously thinking of beginning to vote "oppose" in all RFAs where my criterion are not met. I think we need to raise the bar for adminship to calm down some of the rioting that has been happening. "Adminship should be no big deal" — that's not (or at least no longer) an admonishment to hand out adminship to everybody who asks; it's an explanation of why people should not seek it as if it is.

I'm thinking I might do the following: for any RFA, post questions asking for diffs demonstrating the commitment to principles that I am looking for. Vote oppose in any RFA where such diffs cannot be produced and/or editor has not been around for a year. Vote support in cases where the demonstrated commitment overwhelms the lack of fulfilling the time criteria. Reserve the right to vote support or neutral in any special cases.

How much will this help? I dunno. Even raising the time standard wouldn't rule out some of the people I'm seeing overdo it on WP:IAR. But it might prompt people to think about raising their standards, and consensus might find the sweet spot for good adminship. It's not really about time or edit counts. But more filtering and raising awareness of the issue might help. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 23:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

This has actually been the subject of some recent discussion on wikien-l. There's a way you can access the list's archives without being subscribed to it (through pipermail somehow), but I couldn't tell you how... maybe someone else can. Also, you might be interested in SlimVirgin's proposal to require a minimum amount of support votes before someone is promoted to administrator, which you can find here Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Proposal_on_minimum_positive_votes. · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 23:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Yep. Reading those list archives is what prompted me saying this. :) And I saw the minimum 30 vote proposal. Good idea overall, and it will probably scale until Wikipedia is at least twice as old as it is now. There's still the fundamental problem of deciding this with democracy, and the fundamental problem of deciding it with a popularity contest. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 23:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd appreciate if someone could give me a gut feeling of "Jdavidb, you will or will not be perceived as a jerk if you start voting oppose on RFAs for candidates who have not been around for twelve months. Actually I'd prefer to hear from several someones. :) If I can't get enough feedback, I'll probably tentatively try it out on some poor unfortunate's RFA, selected at random, in the next few days, then see what happens. There have been a few universal- or near-universal-oppose voters before, and it has never been popular. But I would be explaining my oppose votes. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 23:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I don't think anybody would think that. In the case of, say, Boothy443, I think people began to get tired of his voting no on everybody because, in the absence of any sort of explanation, it seemed arbitrary, petty, and sort of silly. A jerk? Maybe, but I doubt it. A principled jerk? More likely. Crotchety, entirely possible as well. ;) · Katefan0(scribble)/mrp 23:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I also wouldn't see it as jerkiness at all. However I'm not sure how much it'll help- some of the worst behavior I've seen lately is from "old timers", many of whom are already admins. I'd still like to see a way to de-admin people in a process similiar to adminning them, but for whatever reason this idea doesn't seem like it'll ever have much support. In the meantime, sure, raising standards is perfectly reasonable. Friday (talk) 23:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I recall someone (can't remember who) used to have a nine-month standard, and that didn't cause too many problems; the interesting question would be how many candidates could actually pass your criterion.
On another note, it would be interesting to see some statitics for the rate at which admins burn out/leave/become inactive. Raising standards to the point where we have a net loss of active admins would probably be counter-productive, especially given our ever-increasing number of users. —Kirill Lokshin 02:01, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think time limits, edit limits, minimum-voter-counts, more questions, no-self-noms, or more detailed requirements are any kind of solution. A few months and a few thousand edits is more than enough to gauge whether someone is a jerk, nutter, egomaniac, or ill-motivated partisan. Why we don't spot them accurately enough needs some examination. Back in 2003 my own RfA came after 3 months and about 1100 edits, and got about nine support votes - this link is roughly where it closed (this may not be such a good example if someone thinks I am one or all of those unfavourable things, but ignoring that...). The difference then is that Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community was really very small. Everyone voting on my RfA knew me, or my edits, fairly well. They were voting based on personal knowledge, not a brief review of my edits and talk page, not on statistics someone quoted or pat answers I'd supplied to rote questions. People who didn't know me well didn't vote. I'm not in the least special in that. But look at what people say in votes now. It seems to me that many voters have little, if any, personal knowledge of working with the editor they're supporting. I could very well be extrapolating too far, but I think a lot of people are basing their opinions (whether pro or con) on that list of stupid criteria. Some people vote on nearly every nomination - you couldn't possibly know every applicant well enough back in 2003 to do that; the wiki is vast now, the non-admin population enormous - no-one can possibly make a genuinely informed vote on more than a few percent of applicants. Now, some will claim they do due dilligence, but on editors even with 1000 edits that's a huge job - reading through their edits, checking the context in which they're made, understanding the state of discussions and votes and consensuses and wikiprojects at that time is essentially impossible. These days I very rarely vote for someone (and very rarely against, too) as I know so few applicants well enough to make an informed opinion. An informed support vote should read something like "I worked with user:foo on XXX and on YYY related articles, and I've found them to be ZZZ", not "Seems okay". I think the only solution to bad admins (which is a problem, although probably not really much worse than it's ever been) is genuinely informed voters. And I know of no practical policy which can ensure that. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
These days I very rarely vote for someone (and very rarely against, too) as I know so few applicants well enough to make an informed opinion. Finlay, I feel like that may be the crux of the problem. I'm the same way: I don't vote, because I simply don't know people. I'm sure it describes a large number of other people who would be qualified to judge admin candidates. So uninformed people vote "support" with no restraint, and people who are capable of really seeing what makes a good admin either don't vote, or vote "neutral." And "neutral" essentially has no effect, except perhaps to spark discussion. So I'm concerned that I should be voting oppose to counteract that effect. If I start voting oppose on candidates with less than twelve months and/or the inability to demonstrate with diffs their commitment to NPOV and consensus, that will cancel out at least one completely uninformed vote.
Oh, crud. I see that I'm calling this "vote" again. What I mean is, if I vote "oppose" and ask some questions, not only will it counter one person who simply said "yes" without thinking, maybe it will prompt some other people to think.
I'm worried this may hurt some feelings of candidates. But if adminship is truly "no big deal," then hearing, "Sorry, we can't vet you as an admin &mdash yet," should also be no big deal. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:05, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I tend to think that RFA makes regular minor mistakes, but over all nothing earth shattering. I know of at least a couple recently approved admins that (imo) show little understanding of policy and whose blocks and deletions seem pretty arbitrary. I don't think the standards are too loose, I just think we don't hold editors to them and/or don't properly perform due diligence while they are at RFA. So on one hand RFA doesn't make huge mistakes, but like I said it makes regular minor ones. So having said that I'd propose "admin tool" blocks. If an admin misuses admin powers they lose them for a day/week/month. And then they get them back when the block expires. Abuse of admin tools are not exclusive of new admins...so this might be a way of policing the admin group as a whole and would provide consequences to the mis-use of admins tools that aren't as harsh as total de-admining. Rx StrangeLove 03:50, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Speaking in a general, I wonder if these issues are a sign that the community has grown so large that it is beginning to lose (or has already lost) its ability to "police" itself adequately. The systems that are in place seem to be showing signs that it cannot adequately address all the complexity to which it is exposed to. --HappyCamper 04:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking the same thing, in this context maybe we need a set of senior admins with powers to suspend editor's admin functions if needed. Even to me it seems like a bad idea, can of worms etc...Rx StrangeLove 04:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Hm...I wish I had the time to elaborate on this more with this medium. Maybe I will save this for Wikimania 2006. --HappyCamper 04:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
All we really need is a fairly simple way to ensure admins can be held accountable for their behavior. In short, a community based process for removing sysophood. To restate a proposal I've made in the past: Why not have a process where if any administrator is judged to have significantly abused their powers by X other administrators then that person should be required to stand at RFA again to reassess whether the community supports their continued access to those powers. It's simple, direct, and less open to abuse than many other possibilities. This would allow us to go on making promotions fast enough to support our growth without having to fret over how hard it is to deal with those few admins that are later revealed to be poorly qualified/abusive/etc. Dragons flight 05:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd still be interested in a halfway measure, some sense of a warning before removing sysophood. I don't think taking admin rights away will ever be easy or non-disruptive. Rx StrangeLove 05:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
If implemented properly, that would be a nice reform. Tintin Talk 05:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
On second thoughts, it may lead to a situation where admins play it safe or take revenge - you don't put my name up for RfA and I will t do the same, or vice versa. Tintin Talk 05:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Which is why X needs to be something greater than 1, but if we can't assume good faith on behalf of most admins then we have a lot bigger problems to worry about. Dragons flight 05:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Of possible interest regarding the establishment of a process for the other admins to notice problems, please see my A modest proposal section earlier in this talk page. - 05:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
IMO, voting in essentially any context within Wikipedia has become virtually meaningless. 3 years ago, 9 votes was probably a significant percentage of the active users of Wikipedia (anyone want to guess, perhaps 10%?). Now, 10% of the active users would be a huge number, perhaps more like 1000. When there are 100 users altogether, it's possible for 10% of them to know you. When there are 10,000 it's simply not possible. Compound this with self-selection of voters and you end up with votes that have absolutely no statistical meaning. What do you suppose is the chance that the opinion of 80% of a self-selected subset of 100 members out of a group of 10,000 represents of an overall consensus? My guess is that if it's even 90% of a self-selected subset of 200 it's still pretty darn close to 50-50. This issue affects every "consensus discussion" we hold - RfA, CfD, AfD, FAC, every policy discussion, .... Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we have bad admins, or that the *fD results might as well be coin flips (hmmmm, come to think of it). I think the folks who self-select to vote on RfA generally do a pretty good job. On the other hand, imagining these votes represent "community-wide consensus" is delusional. I think the reality is we have a weird self-selected representative system, essentially based on blind faith (that the self-selected representatives are acting in accordance with the best interests of the community). That this sometimes screws up shouldn't really surprise anyone. If we want consensus, we should really be doing some sort of random sampling. Perhaps every month or so we should randomly select (not elect) a new slate of representatives willing to vote on RfA, AfD, etc. and make sure the group is large enough to have some statistical validity. It'd be fun! Just like jury duty! Seriously, we seem to take assume good faith pretty far, but I'm not sure there's a viable alternative. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:49, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
It sounds like you're suggesting some sort of "Administrator Selection Committee". If you do it randomly, you'd have to make it truly random (but at the same time, make sure the random process chooses activer users). You'd also have to choose a sufficient number of users to have a better gauge of consensus. Not sure if that would be the way to go. It's frustrating to know that the process isn't the best it can be, yet we can't seem to find a way to improve it. --Deathphoenix 06:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Rick, I've considered (and maybe discussed somewhere) an idea like this at one point. I don't think we ever want to just allow these "votes" (ugh) to be run solely by a randomly sampled committee. But maybe we could get better results if we had some kind of "JuryDutyBot" that periodically selected a random sampling of active users (perhaps culled from the most recent 5000 logged-in edits or something) and posted messages inviting them to participate in one area of the discussions, informing them as to what it's all about, letting them know that more participation yields better results, etc. Rather than overwhelming them by inviting them to every discussion, select a pool to invite to RFA, a pool to invite to AFD, tinier pools to invite to miscellany for deletion etc., and so on. I don't think anyone would even have to change policy to do this. I think you'd just have to get approval for the bot. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't have an issue with tightening the guidelines a bit on who can become an admin. There are so many RfAs up for a vote all the time that even though I glance through the listing every few days I recently missed one for an editor I knew and would have voted for. The problem, though, is that any solution to this, such as an "Administrator Selection Committee," would have other inintended consequences and probably cause just as much trouble. Not sure what the answer is.--Alabamaboy 14:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I proposed adding more quesions in the above topic, and Lupo recently indicated to me that there's nothing wrong with simply asking questions of candidates, since RFA voters often ask additional questions of candidates anyway. Unless there's an objection to my doing this, I'm going to give it a trial run and post these questions on new RfAs starting tomorrow. Since there's no onus on candidates to answer these questions, I'll definitely put up a disclaimer before the new questions pointing out that they are optional questions with no "correct" answers. --Deathphoenix 14:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

You know, that's a really good idea. I'll support you on this and will state that I'll only consider voting for candidates who answer these additional questions. If other people preface their vote consideration upon the answering of these additional questions, that might help this situation. Best,--Alabamaboy 14:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. It's still going to be optional for now, but voters are free to depend on whatever questions they wish. --Deathphoenix 20:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

subheading to make this section shorter -- please be bold and give it a descriptive name

Well, I just randomly selected (literally -- with a short perl script) one of the admin candidates. He did meet my time criterion, so I expressed a neutral vote and added a question asking for more information. I think I'll keep doing this until I find one I vote oppose on. Just "testing the waters," here. Hopefully I don't ruffle any feathers, and even more hopefully I cause people to start thinking more about RFA.

Couple of comments:

I view the discussion of raising our admin standards (each of us, independently — this is a wiki, after all) as orthogonal to discussions of deadminship. Jayjg commented on the mailing list that it's far cheaper to filter out problems earlier than to correct them, later. This experience is definitely borne out in my field of programming, where catching software defects is always an order of magnitude more costly in the next phase of the project. As Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Rather than an explicit deadmin process, I'd personally just like to see the Arbcom process streamlined and encourage them to execute the option more frequently and swiftly where desired. I think selecting no-nonsense Arbcom candidates helps this. But having an opinion on a deadminship process is, as I said, orthogonal to having an opinion on raising our standards. You can believe in either, both, or neither.

Big support for those considering asking the candidates more questions. I'll continue to revise and refine mine.

Had another comment which I've now forgotten. :) Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Idea for sifting out only dedicated candidates

This is just an idea that probably needs refining, what if people could only vote for or oppose a prospective admin., if they had had communication with the candidate on three separate occasions - on three different topics - over the previous three months. It would ensure knowledge of the candidate, and that the candidate was a fully paid up member of the project - used to having interaction with many members of the community. Of course the candidate would have to be allowed to notify his contacts of his candidature, by having a template on his page, or even attaching something to his signature - I'm sure some way of notifying all his contacts good and bad could be devised. This is just a vague idea that could perhaps be developed. Giano | talk 17:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I've just realised that those who have an unpleasant experience of an editor seldom return within three months for a second helping - but I still think something workable could be devised from such a system, which would also prevent pile-ons. Giano | talk 17:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • What if it were required that every vote be accompanied by just one diff, demonstrating a good or bad interaction? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • You can easily require that. Just vote Neutral or Oppose on every nomination with the caveat that your vote will only be changed if the candidate posts said diff. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 18:33, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • No, that wouldn't work. This idea was to require every vote to come with a diff. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Ah, I see. I misread you. :) But wouldn't people who currently do the pile-on yes votes just copy the same diffs others gave? Hmmm, maybe each vote should require a unique diff. (And maybe those who don't have that many good, unique diffs should be admins...) Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 20:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Yeah, something along those lines would be great, one diff involving each commenter and the candidate Giano | talk 17:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Ummm, I can think of many occassions where I have observed people doing good work without feeling the need to talk to them about it. Dragons flight 17:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • An admin has to have good communication skills, and these are what need to be proved, the good work should come from a requisite number of page edits Giano | talk 17:35, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
    • And, I've also observed plenty of examples of good communication without having to be party to the conversation. This happens both by observing an individuals conversation with other people and by looking at the statements they make on forums like AFD (which do involve reasoned communication, even if not a specific conversation with anyone in particular). Dragons flight 17:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree with DF. Your opinion of someone is built not only on your interactions with them on Wikipedia, but also through observing their edits and interactions/conversations with others, their postings to places like here, WP:AN, etc., the mailing list, IRC... In addition, if you take the time to study someone's contributions you might get a very different picture from the one you had via your interactions with them. You might have three interactions with a person, have one of them be negative, and think they are a jerk, when in fact you just caught them on an off day and in all their other interactions they were great. On the other hand, I've seen people I thought of as ok, based on limited interactions, be banned by the arbcomm. You should only vote for people you feel you know well enough to vouch for, or whose contributions you are willing to have a seriouis look at. People don't, but additional rules aren't going to solve that. Guettarda 18:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • and what exactly is IRC? Giano | talk 20:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Internet relay chat. --maru (talk) Contribs 20:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
IRC is an internet 'chat' structure, based around the concept of channels (in this case, the main one is #wikipedia). The article takes about many of the software to get in that channel better than I ever could. It's supposed to be an informal way for Wikipedians to communicate in real-time. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
So can only people who interact there become admins, or do just those people there stand a better chance? Giano | talk 20:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I have never participated in any Wikipedia IRC channel, and rarely use IRC at all, and I'm an admin. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 20:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it's an unfortunate side-effect that people who hang out on wikien-l or #wikipedia stand a better chance of passing RFAs. "Unfortunate" in the sense that it over-emphasizes a non-wiki part of Wikipedia's community, and fosters a feeling of cliqueishness, even when it's unwarranted. The discussion above about WP's failure to scale is probably the root cause, though. It's just not possible to "know" all your candidates anymore; I don't know what the solution is. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I reluctantly have to disagree with this proposal, as worded. I don't think I should have to have had direct interaction with a potential admin to vote yea/nay, but if I can post a diff from anywhere that supports my position, that would VASTLY improve the quality of voting that goes on. Obviously only unique diffs would count, though that puts an additional hassle on the bureaucrat in charge. -- nae'blis (talk) 20:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Sounds nearly good to me now. One diff, from anywhere, a brief comment on what the diff is to make it easier to tell by a quick scan whether the diffs are unique. But there's still a problem: that scheme makes sense for voting support. For voting oppose, though -- well face it, one really terribly awful recent diff *should* in some cases be enough to scuttle a candidacy, but with this rule, only one person could vote oppose based on a singe heinous edit. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2006

(UTC)

Hummm, good point about the inadvertent de-emphasizing of a single huge problem. I think the goal of informed voting is an admirable one, just not sure this is the way. -- nae'blis (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
But it's not a vote. If the diff is very bad, wouldn't other people be able to change their view, it's not a vote but a discussion. Because all comments require a diff, there are going to be probably less editors offering a view, thus making a concenssus (I can't be bothered to spell check that) easier to obtain. Giano | talk 22:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, probably the last thing RfA needs is less voters.... -- nae'blis (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • What we need is less candidates, admins are two a penny, a few weeks ago some twit admin (nameless) threatened to block me because he objected to the quality of a tiny PD image demonstrating a unique architectural feature and wanted to delete it. I'm going to stick my neck above the parapet and say being an admin should be a big deal at the moment the whole thing is debased. An admin should be some-one whose name at least is known to those who have been around a while. The problem I have is I seldom stray outside my own field and interests (I don't no how to write about rocket science), and I suspect in that I'm not alone, but often the new admins seem to have no particular field, and one wonders why they are here. There's no conclusion to my ramblings, just a few thoughts to share with you but whatever conclusions we reach here only the dedicated and informed should have their names submitted and be permitted to vote. Giano | talk 21:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. Giano is one of the most brilliant editors in this project, therefore the threat cited by him above made me sick. I still try to recover from User:Mikkalai's block just before the New Year, when he happened to violate 3RR fending off anonymous vandals and trolls. The blocking action by a newly-promoted admin led to one of the most prolific contributors ever (50,000+ edits!!) being scared from editing even now. People seem to forget that the number of users making more than 100 edits per month remains virtually the same since June, whereas the number of admins rose 60% for the period in question. These figures speak for themselves. I don't have enough time to proceed this subject today, but requirements for adminship surely need to be revised in order to prevent valuable contributors from leaving the project under pressure from clueless/boorish admins. --Ghirla | talk 21:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Another proposal: Recommendations

My proposal is rather simple and straightforward, yet could result in an overall improvement of the RfA process.

Basically, for an RfA to begin, the candidate would need to have recommendations from 3 admins. The recommendations would briefly describe why the candidate would make a good admin. With over 700 active admins, finding three to write a recommendation would prove to be trivial. This proposal would virtually eliminate the problem of woefully unqualified candidates nominating themselves and would also lead to borderline candidates getting additional feedback. Thoughts? Carbonite | Talk 18:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a funny proposal coming from a self-nom who didn't have a recommendation from a single administrator. I'll support it if you and any other admins pushing for this instruction-creep voluntarily start over and put yourself through the same process. --لæmäļ al diη 19:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

To answer a few questions that may come up:

  • Why eliminate self-noms?

There's nothing inherently wrong with self-nominating. In fact, my RfA was a self-nom. However, as the community gets larger, it's more important than ever for reasons to be provided about why a candidate should be made an admin. It's not uncommon to see an RfA become one or two reasons to support followed by an endless string of "Me too!". This proposal would ensure that there would be four users (candidate + 3 admins) making such statements before the RfA even began.

  • Why could only admins provide the recommendations?

Admins have been entrusted by the community to make good judgement calls. With 700 admins, finding three to write a short recommendation for an RfA is fairly easy for anyone likely to pass. Obviously, there would be no new restrictions on who could participate in the RfA once it began.

  • Why 3 admins?

Two seemed too low and four seemed too high. ;) It is rather arbitrary, but I think 3 is a low enough number to make the task of obtaining the recommendations pretty easy while still improving the integrity of the process.

I'm open to any other questions users may have. Carbonite | Talk 18:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good to me as at least an interim solution. It is not clear to me exactly what the long-term consequences of this approach might be, but my first thoughts are that this is a good proposal. I'd incorporate the suggestion that the "why" needs to be shown with diffs. Jkelly 18:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Even though three might be excessive, this looks like a very practical solution. The best thing is that the admin who puts forward the name has a reputation to lose by suggesting someone whose qualitites (s)he is not sure about and this itself will filter out a few. Tintin Talk 18:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Second thoughts. Is this an original suggestion ? It seems to me that someone would have suggested this sometime and it should have been shot down for some reason. Tintin Talk 18:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Offhand, I can't remember this exact proposal being made before. I thought it over for a while before adding it here and I haven't been able to think of any major drawbacks. It does make it harder for a candidate to begin an RfA, but I see that as a sign that the candidate is truly interested in the position. Carbonite | Talk 18:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I want to suggest that everybody do trials of the policies they are proposing. Simply vote oppose if the candidate can't get the endorsement of three admins, in this case.

Personally, I don't feel this proposal has much to offer. I'm not worried about the woefully inadequate self-noms. RFA is not an overworked process. Eliminating every single woefully inadequate nomination will not solve the problem of inadequate (but not woefully so) admins being approved do the the social-club-like nature of this process. And since the process works like a social club or popularity contest, it will be easy to find three like-minded newbie admins to approve you. All you have to do is just start voting support in every single nomination, or at least most of them. It won't be long before three of them are approved, and willing to support you as "thanks." Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 18:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

But with the current RfA process we won't know if three admins endorse a candidate until after the RfA has begun. One important difference is that my proposal is for three admins to provide recommendations, not just a support "vote". I consider a recommendation to be about a paragraph in length, providing links and diffs when appropriate. As for admins possibly returning favors, it's always a possibility, but people can still oppose the RfA if the candidate is unsuitable or the recommendations don't give any real reasons to support. This proposal is essentially about improving the RfA process, not trying to perfect it (I don't think that's possible). Carbonite | Talk 18:46, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Carbonite, can you do a practical test. Check the RfAs of a few admins who you consider 'bad', and see who nominated them. The results were not very encouraging when I tried it. Tintin Talk 18:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I actually did this a few days ago and without going into specifics, my experience was that the nominators in these RfAs were rarely admins themselves and some were users I've barely heard of. Overall, I think it's pretty hard to use anecdotal evidence to evaluate the merits since we're all going to have different views of whom the "bad" admins are. This proposal would raise the bar to three admins and encourage the recommendation to be as specific as possible. There wouldn't be additional work for bureaucrats and we'd also have the added advantage of eliminating the RfAs that easily fail, but end up hurting the feelings of the candidate (sometimes leading them to leave Wikipedia). Carbonite | Talk 19:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:41, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

a simplification of "another proposal"

Rather than saying "three admin recommendations before we start", wouldn't it be far simpler to say that a person can stand for rfa, but would only become an admin if at least three of those voting support were admins, and the ratio of admins voting support/oppose was above the standard criterion for adminship? This would make the rfa process "bicameral" like some parliamentary systems - 75% support from editors overall, and 75% from admins. I realise it reeks a little of elitism for the admins, but so does requiring three admin recommendations before even starting an rfa. Grutness...wha? 23:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Or perhaps even simpler, the person has to get 3 admins to mentor a nomination. Until 3 admins step forward, the nomination does not take effect. Anyone could still vote, but it wouldn't count without the 3 admin mentors. It should also be stated that along with being a mentor the 3 admins are putting their own reputation on the line for the candidate. Most self-noms would probably end up serching out admin mentors before posting at RfA, and that would probalby be a very good thing. -- Samuel Wantman 08:06, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm... no. There is a big difference between voting support and proposing a candidate. If you look at the people who vote in RfA, a large percent of those who vote for support are 'acquaintances' - they may have met the candidate a few times, or they may have just found that he appears to be a decent guy etc. On the other hand, the proposers are invariably people who know the candidate intimately, who have probably worked with him/her for a considerable period of time. Tintin Talk 08:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Not necessarily, on my rfa, the proposer was Durin, with whom I hardly interacted before the rfa. I felt that I measured up to his standards and asked him to consider nominate me; he did so after due diligence. However, the moot point is, "how many people would go to the length of formally stating their standards for nominating and then, performing due diligence on all the aspirants." --Gurubrahma 08:59, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Seconded, I didn't know my nominator at all, I certainly hadn't worked closely with him and there was very little discussion before the nomination. I don't really like the idea of people having to recruit admins for nominations. Maybe a page editors could add themselves to express interest in becoming an admin. Don't we have one of those? A category or something. Rx StrangeLove 19:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I actively recruit people whom I think will make good admins. I have high standards for whom I nominate (which are not the same as who I would vote support for). Several users now (with Gurubrahma being the first) have asked me to conduct reviews of them with respect to my standards for the possibility of a nomination. I don't see any problem with recruiting admins, or with having people ask to be nominated. --Durin 16:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Being able to suck up to existing admins should not be a requirement for adminship.Geni 19:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

In truth, I'm inclined to agree with Geni above (although I probably wouldn't have said it in quite that way). I'm also concerned that this is generally unproductive bureaucreep, and that it is (or is liable to be interpreted as) an attempt to elevate the standing of administrators. Administrative privileges should not be used as a measuring stick to determine whether or not an editor can "make good judgment calls." There are plenty of editors who have no interest in taking on the role of sysop who are as mature, capable, and well-reasoned as any admin. While I'm not opposed, in principle, to requiring that admin candidates seek out a given number of recommendations, I see absolutely no reason to accept recommendations from current admins only. Let anyone provide them: in all likelihood, editors incapable of making reasonable judgment calls are probably not going to provide a particularly compelling recommendation. – Seancdaug 01:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Indeed. RfA tends to be a very darwinian process. I do not like the hostility that is often generated at WP:RFA, but the process does a fairly decent job of sorting out people who would make poor administrators. I also concur with Seancdaug, in that admins do not necessarily mean good judgement calls, and great editors who have no interest in being admins; we should not be stratifying users on Wikipedia in any respect. All of us...all of us...start with one edit. The qualities inherent in an individual that will make them great Wikipedians exist even before their first edit. We should not be treating newcomers any different than Jimbo, or holding them in any less respect. --Durin 16:01, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Actual stats on # of admins <3 months

From time to time, I see people making generalizations about the changes in RfA. A recent one was that the average number of votes has gone up significantly, so getting 30 votes should be easy. My stats show the average number of votes has remained virtually unchanged over the last 400 RfA.

Similarly, I see a claim here that we are regularly promoting people with less than 3 months experience. The reality does not bear this out. Out of 285 successful RfAs since June 27th, just 10 of them have had less than 90 days since their first edit (or 3.5%), and only one had less than 2,000 edits: 

Editor           Days        Edits (at time of nom)
Phroziac          89         1083
JoanneB           89         6747
Redwolf24         87         2414
Jtkiefer          86         2601
Journalist        84         3230
Jkelly            82         3704
Flcelloguy        79         2886
NSLE              73         2071
Bmicomp           72         4904
Izehar            54         4547

Of these, only Redwolf24 had an RfC filed against him, but that was three months after becoming an admin. At least, no RfCs against these people where the RfC was titled rfc/<username>.

Our users/admin ratio is the third highest among major wikipedias m:Administrators_of_various_Wikipedias. Only Japanese and Spanish wikipiedias have a worse ratio. This would seem to suggest that we need *more* admins, and not less.

Of note; if the bar had been 12 months for the last 285 successful admins, 162 would not have qualified. I wouldn't call you a jerk for such a voting standard, but you will receive a lot of flack for it from a number of people. I made attempts at getting people to stop attacking people on RfA, and was roundly attacked for it (I guess that's no surprise). So, the atmosphere of personal assault continues at RfA.

I also echo some of the comments made by Friday; quite a bit of the most egregious behavior has been exhibited by long time members of this community, apparently feeling they can act with impunity. The said thing is, they're right. To a person, they've gone unsanctioned.

The problem here isn't that the pool of admins is any worse than it was in the past. The problem here is that there are more bad admins because there are more admins in general. Furthermore, that there is no accountability loop, and no feedback mechanisms on admin behavior. And worse, (see section below on Wikipedia riots) ArbCom has essentially invalidated all policies except WP:IAR recently.

RfA does a good job of weeding out seriously bad candidates. I don't think there's anything wrong with the process in so far as how it approves candidates. --Durin 20:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, as I said above somewhere RFA hardly ever makes a huge mistake, I'm not sure we need any of these fixes people are proposing, at least at this point. I do think that we could use a mechanism to nudge admins that are consistantly making bad choices when deleting or blocking etc....some sort of temporary revocation of admin tools possibly. You mentioned a feedback mechanism above and I agree that we need one. Over all though I think RFA itself does a decent job and really doesn't need a fix currently. Rx StrangeLove 21:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
I was promoted with less than 90 days of experience? Hmm... Well, I sure haven't had a RfC against me... (knocks on wood). :-) Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
<Colonel Klink>Ve vill get to you ven ve are ready. You must be patient. Painful interrogation takes time to set up!</Colonel Klink> --Durin 23:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I had only been here for 54 days before been nominated??? I never thought of it that way! Izehar 23:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Really? I agree with Colonel Klink. You need to have been here long enough to give us time to see what you are like; what kind of editor you are. -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive -- my dropsonde 07:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia riots

In a section above, Jdavidb mentions the term "rioting" in relation to Wikipedia behaviors of late. I don't think the pool of admins is the source of the problem. I see several seriously bad things that are more common or have happened of late that have fostered this environment:

  • Casual disrespect for new users by admins, some members of ArbCom, and even Jimbo. Not only must you be an experienced user to have your voice heard (and even being an admin doesn't count as experienced anymore), but you must also be acceptable by some nebulous standard before your voice carries any weight. In short, if you're not in the 'in' group, your voice lacks merit.
  • Willful ignorance of policy and guidelines by some admins, and ArbCom supporting their actions in many cases.
  • ArbCom's utter unwillingness to hear a case against some people yet clear willingness to hear cases against other admins who behaved much in the same way. I.e., major bias within ArbCom.
  • ArbCom's several recent decisions and explanations which have, in summary, left all policies as meaningless. Policy is, according to ArbCom, defined as "common sense" and by how we do things. Both of these definitions of policy are nearly entirely encompassed within individual judgement rather than community judgement; this is starkly against what so much of Wikipedia tells us it is supposed to be; consensus.

I outlined a partial aspect of this on Talrias' self brought RfC. There are very serious issues facing Wikipedia right now with community behavior. If you think policy is important, you're called a policy-wonk and insulted. If you complain about out-of-process bannings, you get banned. If you complain as Marsden did about the nature of Wikipedia now [24], you get banned (by Jimbo no less [25]).

I have seen a significant number of very dedicated, intelligent, well-spoken Wikipedians who have left the project. Some have done so in a public outcry of defiance. Quite a number have done so silently.

I hope all of you are very, very careful in who you vote for in the upcoming ArbCom elections. This election could have a dramatic impact on what several users see as something of a coming revolution. As one of the persons I am in communication said, Wikipedia is not "genuinely free and intellectually open". Quite a few people are realizing this, and like rats on a sinking ship, are leaving. ArbCom and a number of admins think the rats are just that; rats and good riddance to them. Meanwhile, they are ignoring the tons of water rushing into the hold.

I intend on writing something more on this in the near future, and hoping to start something of a wiki-petition drive. --Durin 20:26, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

While a fair amount of this commentary is good advice under any conditions, most of it is not new and the tone is unduly alarmist. People have been biting newcomers almost since the beginning, which is why we have a longstanding page that counsels against it. People have been getting frustrated, burned out, and leaving the project for a long time.
These problems we will always struggle with, but they are not proportionally worse than in the past (or at least no evidence of that is visible). In this you've fallen into the same trap you criticize above, believing that things are worse merely because the community itself is larger. The ship is not sinking.
The community does periodically go through phases of heightened concern over whether things are headed in the right direction. We're experiencing one now, prompted especially by the Seigenthaler incident and, on a more internal level, the userbox conflict and the tension of an arbitration election. But we can't spend all our time on self-flagellation; we have an encyclopedia to work on. This too shall pass. --Michael Snow 00:52, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
What is different is ArbCom's and Jimbo's recent statements regarding policy. Policy is now meaningless, and ArbCom is currently refusing to hear any cases which bring up this departure from reality. --Durin 01:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
A quick answer, as I'm just running through my watchlist: no, we aren't. Though we as a committee aren't actually equipped to handle really fundamental issues of Wikipedia culture such as are being brought up. And I don't think we should be; we can only really consider the roles of individual users in them and some issues of interpretation of policy in specific cases, and the problems are more than that; you're not going to get broad and decisive statements from one landmark case. (In my understanding, part of the reason we are not bound by precedent is that sometimes we make really glaring mistakes.)
I agree that there are fundamental concerns that overlap with what you describe and that the current requests are symptomatic of them, but I strongly disagree with your statement that policy is now meaningless; is this honestly and unexaggeratedly what you believe? If I and the rest of the Committee believed this to be so, we may as well have disbanded already. I consider some of your other statements oversimplifications as well (such as characterizing Marsden's block as being simply for his criticism), which makes it difficult to properly respond to them. I've already gone on too long in an out-of-place discussion, though; if you want my personal opinion, ask me, and if you want an official opinion from the Committee, ask on the relevant talk page. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 02:33, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Dear Durin: A good analogy, in my opinion, of role of policy on Wikipedia is that of the way musicians use sheet music. Sheet music gives the performer an outline of how to play a new piece, and provide the basis of the information needed to play a particular piece. No performer, however, ever reads each individual note one-by-one when sight-reading (one grasps musical notation more as groups and intervals), and uses his or her own interpretation when performing the piece. Indeed, a perfomer cannot keep precisely to sheet music, for the simple reason that musicians are not computers; and of course note timing, the selection of ornaments, the decision on dynamics etc. are a combination of human factors and the performer's own musical judgement. (Bear with me on this one, I'm a musician)
Likewise, policy provides an outline of how to do things on Wikipedia, and provide the instructions on the "melody" to play. However, no Wikipedian should have to keep policy in mind word-by-word, and likewise since the Wikipedian posesses intellect and policy does not (it is fixed) the judgement of the Wikipedian trumps that of the policy, to his or her idea of the best way of doing something. Thus every person's interpretation of policy, and the extent of application, will vary, and rightly so. Indeed, just as a string quintet is not obliged to play Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet at a heavy metal concert, so likewise Wikipedians may choose not to follow a policy entirely where they feel it is not appropriate. (Actually, I'm having doubts about the analogy myself now, but I do think it is fun nevertheless) All the best, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 02:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Further to this analogy, sometimes musicians play by ear, or improvise. Likewise, Wikipedians use their judgement to determine what is best, without reference to policy or only following the spirit of it. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 02:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Nicholas, I am a musician as well so your analogy (oh this is painful!) doesn't fall on deaf ears (baaad pun!). The problem inherent in individual users being able to trump policy as they see fit is that quite a number of people are being smashed for doing so. I'm not talking just politely pointed in a different direction; I'm saying well and truly mugged.
  • Mindspillage, I don't have the time to fully respond to you right now. Yes, I believe what I say or I wouldn't write it, so no I do not feel I am exaggerating the case. I will be quite happy to provide you with cites that shows that a number of members of ArbCom do not believe policy has meaning. In the very least, this can be implied from a number of recent decisions by ArbCom. As one of your number said, policy isn't what is written down, it's common sense. Problem is, common sense is up to individual judgement, and there will be radical disagreements as to what "common sense" is most especially when this resource has people contributing to it from around the world from a hundred+ different cultures. What you might call reasonable another might call insane. Policy must be codified and while the letter of the law shouldn't be followed lockstep to the 7th layer of hell, it needs to be followed and as closely as rational thought permits us. That isn't what is happening now. Right now, we are seeing regular wikipedia riots break out in the form of wheel warring, reversion wars by long experienced users, a large number of users leaving the project, and all sorts of other mayhem. Maybe this isn't unprecedented. But, the situation as it is now is grave. Even if there have been a dozen riots before, the fact of the matter is serious damage is being caused now. Sadly, you're saying ArbCom lacks the jurisdiction (sorry for the legal term) to deal with it. That leaves...Jimbo...who has made statements that make it clear (at least to me) that he feels the policies are meaningless as well. The power of the project devolves from the people who contribute to it, not the other way around. Since ArbCom is unwilling/incapable of acting, and Jimbo (at least so far) fails to understand the grievous situation at hand, then it is up to the users that care about this project enough to mount a large enough voice to force change. In my car this afternoon, I thought of another apt analogy; that of the riotous crowd. Does it matter if they are right or wrong? If they have sufficient mass to cause grave damaged, such as the burning down of the Savoy, does it matter if they are right or not? Their issue is real whether you call it right or wrong. I am aware of literally hundreds of people who are likely to share a common sentiment on this matter. If ArbCom is incapable of managing this, then change must happen to develop something that can, whether Jimbo wants to acknowledge it or not. His baby is bleeding. I will comment more later, but I must go now. --Durin 03:48, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Maple and Oak forest. The maples are hard to distinguish from oaks during some seasons. Mature maples can be as tall as their oak competitors; in fall their foliage is distinctive from the oak.
There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
(and they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream "oppression!"
And the oaks, just shake their heads —BorgHunter (talk) 04:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Huh? Are you saying to be happy with second class citizenship? ~~ N (t/c) 03:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Hard to say with Rush fans. Credit where credit is due, of course...Hamster Sandwich 04:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
There are places whose inhabitants cherish the maple. No second class label for maples, please. Oak can be despised for some uses as well (e.g., furniture); so under what condition can you call oak first class? --Ancheta Wis 18:56, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Riots occur when the only productive action left to people is to dismantle the system that overpowers their productivity, for productivity is measured in the mind as consensual, and the functioning of Wikipedia is no longer at the consent of large numbers of her editors. --لæmäļ al diη 19:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Hard to tell oaks from maples in Winter? Not really. Anyway, the whole oak-maple issue is really driven by fire & climate, not light competition Guettarda 19:34, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Poor user:Luckyluke

Since his RfA is already going to fail, and between my list of recommendations and the others, enough has been said, why do we need more "oppose per above" votes? I ask that when you see this happen, either be the one to make a long to-do list or if it is already there, then just don't vote. He knows the reasons, he doesn't need a 2/30 oppose vote.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 20:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but how would we make sure all voters know that. I know that I use section editing when I vote. Doing that, such a message could easily be missed. And you'd also have to deal with people who do that before failure is nearly certain, perhaps by misunderstanding or because that user has a grudge against the nominee. Guidelines should be set. And that still doesn't fix the notification problem beformentioned. -- §Hurricane ERIC§ archive -- my dropsonde 07:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I think there are probably two ways of sorting this out: either come to a policy decision to close obvious losses early, or for one of us to leave a message on the respective user's talk page suggesting poilitely that they might wish to withdraw before it gets too bad. Saying that RfA isn't supposed to be a popularity contest and users should understand before the accept a nomination that this could happen. -- Francs2000 18:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
It isn't always necessary to go through an elaborate procedure. Usually this is a matter of bureaucrat discretion. Alerted to the situation by the above, I removed the nomination, as 2-19 was clearly failing and leaving it just piling on. I would discourage other users from making such a decision without a direct request from the nominee since it is a good way to begin needless RfA wars. -- Cecropia 18:06, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you can remove it. But my issue is less formal: don't "pile-on", let it conclude into failure as is. If 5 people say "not enough edits" and 14 oppose for simalar reasons, why say "oppose. per above" or "oppose. not enough edits"? What does that add? It just makes the candicacy look incredibly pathetic for no gain.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 19:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Alas, 'tis human nature I fear. How many expressions do we have for it? "Don't kick a man when he's down," "Don't whip a dead horse," But some people get a charge out of it anyway. Or perhaps everyone feels they must "get their licks in." Not many at Wikipedia, it sometimes seems, have much patience for religious philosophy, but it might be well, every now and then to consider whether "we do unto others as we would have them do unto us." -- Cecropia 20:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I gave one of the last helpful votes, making a good list of things to do and telling him to apply later, I did that to try to stop a pile-on. It didn't work...Voice of AllT|@|ESP 22:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Questions

I've noticed the recent addition to the set of compulsory questions: "4. What do you think of these questions?" If I may ask, what's the point of the question? enochlau (talk) 11:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Possible changes for page text

Greetings. In my recent failed candidacy for bureaucratship, I discovered a few improvements that I think could be made to this page.

  1. It is current practice to promote bureaucrats only when there is an overwhelming consensus to promote, meaning roughly 90% approve and no more than 2 or 3 oppose votes. But the page doesn't mention this. If this is to be our practice, it seems to me that the page should say so.
  2. There is a detailed explanation of "how to promote" for bureaucrats, but there is no information on "how to decline to promote". When a nomination fails, it seems to me that it would be good practice for the involved bureaucrat to note on the subpage that there was insufficient consensus to promote, and notify the candidate of this fact. (In my case, I could only determine what the decision was by looking in the page history.)

Is there any objection to making these changes? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Quadell. Since you requested my feedback, here is my impression of what you have just written, and a bit of elaboration.
I agree most with your point that if a nomination fails, the bureaucrat who removes the nomination information should inform the candidate as a matter of courtesy, and I will endeavor to do that in the future. I am reluctant, though, to try to list every nuance of what does, could or should go into a bureaucrat's decision. The community has expressed itself in the past as to what the general rules for promotion (admin of Bcrat) should be and has multiple times (and recently) expressed the opinion that bureaucrats are trusted to make hair-spliting decisions. The one requirement I expect of myself (and would want to see in other bureaucrats) is a willingness to explain my reasoning if challenged, as I did when you asked why your promotion failed. Any time I actually am in a position where I will have to decide one way or the other, I always form in mind the rationale for my decision. This helps me be confident that the decision is the right one and that I am able to communicate that. I am perfect? Gimme a break! ;-) It's like an umpire, you try to be careful, but you must be able to make a decision. "Maybe this, maybe that" doesn't cut it.
There are not many bureaucrats, so I don't think it is out of line to expect those who make promotions to familiarize themselves with the ins and outs, by studying the archived talk where community sentiment has been both polled and discussed, and by asking another bureaucrat (or 'crats) about a particular point. I hesitate to codify these things in numerical terms for two reasons. (1) has to do with the history of how a person is promoted. Since everyone (almost) is most comfortable with numbers, we tend to look at numbers (such-and-such percent, so-many-and-so-many-for-or-against) but the standard is and has always been consensus. That's why promotions are made by a bureaucrat and not by a bot. (2) The more detailed rules we post, the more Wikilawyers we will have chewing on every nomination, not to mention the specter of instruction creep.
So the chief issue is that Wikipedians have confidence in the bureaucrats' fairness and judgment.
I have my own opinions of the mess that RfA can be, but that is another discussion. Cheers, Cecropia 00:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Then what would you think of a sentence like "promotion to the status of bureaucrat generally requires a stronger and more unequivical consensus than promotion to administrator" or something of that nature? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 01:07, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
This is surely the sort of thing that a good, well-learned-up ;crat nominee should already know. -Splashtalk 01:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
True, but a voter might not. And shouldn't a voter know how effective his vote would be? Let's say a nominee already has 48 support votes and 2 object votes. If the nominee is for an admin, and a voter doesn't think the nominee is ready, he might abstain from voting, since his vote wouldn't make much a difference and he wouldn't want to get on the nominee's bad side. He might vote differently for a bureacrat, since his vote would matter much more. Conversely, if a poor bureaucrat nominee has 10 oppose votes and 40 supports, one might not bother to vote against, since his nomination is effectively already sunk. But if it were an admin nomination, one might decide to vote. I'm not saying people should vote this way, but they might, and it seems to me it would be best to give people this information unless there's a good reason not to. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 05:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Quadell, I see what you mean on the RfB text. It does say that a higher standard is expected for bureaucratship but is a little ambiguous as to what that meant. Some time back, when we were hashing out the expectations of the community on promotion policy, the wording was much more explicit but was watered down in time, I suppose under the Wikisentiment that nothing should sound at all threatening or, well, bureaucratic. I've added a few words to make the point more evident. Clearer now? -- Cecropia 04:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Much. Thanks again. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 05:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
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