User:Useight/RFA Subjects/Too many or few admins

(I expect this to stir up an ugly discussion. Sigh...) We now have upwards of 220 admins, with 17 more candidates on this page. In short - do we need so many admins? I know a lot of Wikipedians, and I personally don't recognize most of those people up for adminship, or at best known very little about most of them. Am I the only one who feels this way? →Raul654 02:33, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Well, what would be the symptom of the disease of toomanyadminitis (i.e. how can we test the hypothesis that there are too many)? I'd guess "ban wars", "protect wars", "delete/undelete wars"? I've not been keeping sufficient tabs on things to know if any of these have occurred or not. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:39, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm worried too. For me it's more that we're increasing the number very quickly with (I suspect) not too as much knowledge about their behavior as we used to have about nominees. While on the one hand there's a culture of letting anyone generally trusted be a sysop -- It should be no big deal is the phrase used I think -- there's also a culture based on knowing each other (by reputation, style, and history). On the other hand, the ever-increasing numbers of users makes it a challenge for sysops to keep up with maintenance, vandalism, etc. Also, as Angela noted in a somewhat related previous discussion:

"I don't think that people realize how difficult it is to desysop someone once they become an admin. Adminship is practically a permanent position, which may be a problem. If someone has only been here a few weeks, there is no real way of knowing that they can be trusted. If I could vote "support" but then in a few months time change that vote, then I would be far more likely to support the applications of very new users, but the current system means that once someone is in, they are basically a sysop forever, even if they turn out to be untrustworthy. This makes the principle of first trust a dangerous thing to rely on when it comes to supporting requests for adminship. Perhaps people would lower their requirements for nominations if something like the confirmation of sysophood became compulsory. If decisions could be more easily reversed at a later date, there might be no need to wait for someone to have been here three months/ got 1000 edits etc."

I'm not sure what (if anything) should be done, but I think that we need to be thinking about this and figuring out what protocols and customs should be examined and possibly modified. -- BCorr|Брайен 02:51, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

I think that we simply can't have as much knowledge as we did even when I got here (November 2003). But slowing down the pace of nominations isn't fair to new users, who are just as qualified as some who got here earlier. I could perhaps support confirmation of sysophood, but wouldn't it just cause huge amounts of wikipaperwork for few results? I don't think there have been that many problems with abuse of sysop powers, or at least none that I've heard of, and most anybody would scream to high heaven at even a whiff. I think we're going to have to get used to it. Meelar

The huge current number of prospective sysops may be just a glitch. But there's a bit of a problem as I investigate anyone I vote on and the big number makes it difficult to to look at everyone. Would it make anyone more comfortable if we were to limit the number of sysop nominations at any one time to, say, 7, or some other number, so that we would have to wait for someone to be taken off the list to add another? -- Cecropia 03:03, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

The more responsible people we can find to be admins, the better. This project grows every day. We cannot keep up with the maintenance unless we continue to have more hands on deck. Kingturtle 03:06, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I should point out that the number of admins is growing *far* faster than the number of articles we have. →Raul654 03:07, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

A more accurate metric might be rate of admin growth compared to rate of growth in users. Meelar 03:09, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone have some stats on that? →Raul654 03:18, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Also - just to answer to the above, I have noticed that a lot of times when someone bans a user indefinietely, someone else comes along and unbans him. Off the top of my head, I know that Uncle Ed unbanned Plautus after Jimbo banned him; Martin (myreddice) has on several occasions unbanned users after they were banned. →Raul654 03:24, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, all these examples involve users who have been here for a good while. Meelar 03:28, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Touche. I should also point out that the more 'established' admins are probably responsible for the vast, vast majority of bans. →Raul654 03:30, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

(grin)One might argue that all sysops' appointment should come up for annual review/renewal, not least because the standards that applied in the past may not apply now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 03:31, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Stats on that - new Wikipedians with 10+ edits. About +600 per month for the last 3 months. I'd be interested to see an admin versus nunber of users graph - my guess is it wouldn't support the original proposition. --Tagishsimon

---

Admins:

• May 1 - 215
• Apr 1 - 194
• Mar 1 - 169
• Feb 1 - 153
• Jan 1 - 143
• Dec 1 - 128

New admins created

• Apr - 21
• Mar - 25
• Feb - 16
• Jan - 10
• Dec - 15

Now someone make me a graph :) →Raul654 03:39, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

File:Admingraph.jpg

Here you guys go :) →Raul654 03:47, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

PS - March is purple, Yellow is APril, Feb is blue, Jan is Red, Decmeber is green.

This looks approximately linear, as it should, though it would be interesting to get more datapoints. I think the only long-term solution to the "I can't know all the admins" problem is to make sure that any abuse of admin powers is yelled about in every possible venue. I would not support any kind of restriction--it feels too much like a cabal. In fact, by having this conversation, I'm probably already a member. But in all seriousness, I can't see any solution other than somehow limiting adminship. And I haven't seen any proposals for that which could be both fair and useful. Meelar 06:13, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Ok, god help me, I put my engineering training to use. I waded back through wikistats and the page history for the admin page going back to April '03. I put them into an Excel document together and generated some nice graphs. You can get them here Wikianalysis.xls.

The gist of it is - my hunch was right on. Our admin/article count is the 2nd highest its ever been, although our admins/contributor isn't terribly high (which I suspect is from a large number of anon IPs making a small number of edits). Anyway, everyone please let me know what you think. →Raul654 06:51, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the charts. Anyway, my interpretation of them is thus: as Wikipedia grows, the number of new users is increasing faster than the number of new articles. Since new admins go up with new users, this creates upward pressure on the admins/article measure.

I think that this "new users increase faster than new articles" phenomenon is reasonable. Many, many topics are going to be covered--a new user in March 2004 will have fewer red links to follow, and fewer truly encyclopedic topics unwritten about. Thus, users increase, leading to an increase in admins. Meanwhile, the article count grows as well, but slower. Not a problem--it just means that more work is getting done on our existing articles. Meelar 07:00, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

From what I can tell from the chart, the highest admin/contribution percentage was 0.035566584 on 10/1/03. To match that percentage today, we would need to have over 240 active admins. As for the Admins/thousand articles percentage...I think three-quarters of one percent is a tiny amount. I think we should shoot for 1%. The idea of an admin is utilitarian. Admins clean and maintain. I think we need more admins. Kingturtle 07:11, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we need more admins - there are hundreds of out-and-out vandal assaults each day (by which I mean changes that all Wikipedians would agree are bad), and it's very disturbing to look at an article for the first time and discover little vandalisms that went unnoticed for weeks or months. We also need to not chase away or discourage existing admins. Stan 16:15, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Why is there this sudden flurry of activity on RfA? It seems a little silly. Contrary to popular believe, adminship is a big deal. There shouldn't be so many names put forward at once. No more than 4, I should think. People need time to evaluate each candidate. This flooding of the page just makes things too hard to manage. Is there a shortage of admins that I don't know about??? func(talk) 20:00, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The more responsible and skilled admins we have, the better. Andre (talk) 20:02, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

And we need to vote on all of them this week, do we? func(talk) 20:14, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The reason for the flurry of activity, such as it is, is that I completed Wikipedia:Another list of Wikipedians in order of arrival some days ago and upon reading through it, saw several users who I felt were long overdue for adminship. Had I realized previously that Hyacinth, or Karada, or any of the others were not admins I would have nominated them long ago. The nominations are hardly a flood. I cannot speak for the others, but each of mine was done with individual care and consideration. uc 20:31, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Is this an official policy of any kind? I think it's a bad idea and would to like to nominate someone anyway, but I'd like to know if I'd be violating policy by nominating someone during this moratorium. Andre (talk) 20:00, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

There is no set policy, except in violation of the ability of editors to give due consideration to each nomination (many take this very seriously) when there are so many at once. This is the most nomination we've had at once, and they're continuing to pile on. As PedanticallySpeaking mentioned on my talk page, there is no harm to any individual nominee in waiting a week or so. I am posting a poll below on this matter. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:06, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As reference to the above two subjects, please indicate a preference as to whether we should limit the number nominations running at the same time, in order to give voting Wikipedians an opportunity to give as much consideration to each nomination as they feel appropriate. We run from almost zero candacies to now more than a dosen. This is not an attempt to limit adminships, just to stretch them out so each gets the attention it deserves, and isn't simply a popularity contest. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:15, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

1. Andre (talk) 20:19, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
2. One does not have to vote on all candidates. If you don't know a candidate and you don't have time to research his/her editing history, that's all right—someone else will surely point out if there is anything exceptionally good or terrible with the candidate. After all, there are plenty of people watching RfA daily.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 20:25, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
3. —No-One Jones ^(m) 20:31, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC) I'll note that UninvitedCompany is responsible for most (6/16) of the current flood, and that all of his nominations were of excellent users who have somehow been overlooked. Since all of these are slam-dunk obvious cases (all are currently unanimous in favor of the candidates), I don't see any harm in having so many active at the same time. Now, if there were sixteen highly contentious nominations up at once, we might consider a moratorium just to prevent this page turning into another unreadable leviathan like VFD.
4. uc 20:37, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC) (I modified the language of this choice slightly after the 3 votes above were made)
5. I agree with Ezhiki's comment and have no concerns regardless of who is doing the nominating. Instead of trying to vote on every candidate and casting uninformed votes that piggyback on previous voters, you can just look through the table of contents for names you recognize, go vote for or against those, and be done with it. --Michael Snow 21:19, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

   Do you think it's not useful for voters to examine users they don't know. Such voters would be more impartial than one's friends and enemies, no? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 21:31, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

   Given the ever-higher-creeping standards people are expecting of admin candidates, it becomes increasingly impossible to do a thorough investigation of a candidate if you've never heard of them before. And I think we already have plenty of people voting who are not particularly friends or enemies (let's not encourage "you're either with me or you're against me" factionalist attitudes), but take an impartial approach because they focus on what is best for Wikipedia. --Michael Snow 21:53, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

6. I don't see the problem here. Sam [Spade] 22:05, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
7. More admins = good. Isomorphic 22:16, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
8. Just another new rule. Not necessary. --jpgordon{gab} 22:42, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
9. A rule to solve a non-problem. If you don't have time to consider a candidate, don't vote, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who will. Shane King 23:38, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
10. Neutrality (hopefully!) 00:53, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
11. I really don't see what the fuss is about. Wile E. Heresiarch 01:32, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
12. I don't see a problem in need of fixing. Tuf-Kat 02:17, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
13. Nor do I. Filiocht 16:14, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
14. Many of the others above make excellent points. - RedWordSmith 17:59, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
15. Snowspinner 18:26, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
16. Michael says it well -- we're getting too convinced that Wikipedia is made up of "friends" and "enemies". It's not. And I don't see a problem with high volume needing to be legislated (though I think it's probably wise to encourage editors to avoid piling on the nominations, I don't think it should be a rule). Jwrosenzweig 23:21, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
17. Lst27 (talk) 23:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
18. No need to limit. RickK 23:52, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
19. Becoming an admin is supposed to be no big deal, so it shouldn't require a lot of rules and regulations or agonizing over minutiae. I don't spend time carefully researching a user that I don't know; there are bound to be others who know these users without having to research them.So, it didn't take me long to dispose of the fourteen new candidates. I glanced at them, saw four names I recognized, and one that I had an opinion on. I voted on the one I had an opinion on. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:31, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
20. Nothing we cant handle so far -- Chris 73 Talk 05:58, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
21. the rule would not scale with WP's exponential growth. if we feel we have too many admins, the required standards may be raised. And sooner or later we may need clearer guidelines on how to de-admin someone who abuses the position. If RFA were flooded with nominations, an ad-hoc remedy would be voting "oppose -- please try again after we have dealt with the pile already in progress". dab 16:05, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
22. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 22:32, 2004 Nov 11 (UTC)
23. Unlike VFD the nomination page is frequented by good manored and polite representives of the community, and nominations are not coming in in any unmanagable numbers. I say keep the status quo. --BesigedB 23:40, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
24. no limit -- just don't vote if you can't do the research... just like any other edit. I'm not an admin, (wouldn't accept it right now, not enough time) and I'd like it if there were more people to handle the chores I don't want to do. we can always deadmin anyone who doesn't work out.Pedant 03:15, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
25. /Tuomas 11:02, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
26. Right... no. ugen64 16:16, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
27. Insert witty remark here... -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 01:32, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Added this choice for liberal nominators who still don't think everybody on Wikipedia should be nominated in the same week

1. Taxman 23:29, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

1. ALoan (Talk) 12:23, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) (even though I generally don't vote, I think the candidates need to be given due consideration)
2. Whosyourjudas (talk) 20:32, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC) - another week waiting to be nominated won't hurt anybody.

1. Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:15, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
2. At least. func(talk) 20:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
3. Schnee 21:00, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
4. Voters and nominees alike deserve sufficient time for carefully considered votes to be cast on all cases. —Triskaideka 22:25, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
5. Please. --Slowking Man 07:11, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
6. Gady 15:05, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
7. Netoholic @ 16:14, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC) -- This roughly equates to one admin nomination per day. That seems like a good pace to keep. If we're going to say that adminship is still about 70-75%, then we need to even out the tempo of nominations so that each is weighed equally. I don't want someone squeaking by because they have a lot of friends or losing out because of a few enemies just because noone impartial had time to evaluate them objectively.
8. Eight is Enough. If it worked for Dick Van Patten, why not us? PedanticallySpeaking 16:47, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
9. Acegikmo1 00:09, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
10. I have to agree with the thought that nominations have gotten out of hand. I have also heard my opinion expressed by others that, even though when originally started adminship was no big deal, I think it has become a sort of political position now. New contributors often look to admins for guidance. When everyone becomes an admin, it will be a meaningless role. I, personally, consider it to be an honor and while I think it should be capped at, say, 4 nominations at a time, I can live with 8. Skyler1534 17:41, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)
11. One a day sounds reasonable to me. Noisy | Talk 10:44, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to make sure that I understand Andrevan's position with regard to No Limit to Standing Nominations. So, if there were, say, 100 current nominations, you would see this as no problem, correct? func(talk) 20:25, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, theoretically. I don't think that's going to happen, but we can address it if it does. But I think, say, 30 nominations at a time is fine. By which I mean, that's the highest I think it will realistically get to. Andre (talk) 20:36, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

There are over 190 editors with more than 3000 edits and well over 450 with over 1500 that are not now admins. I was considering nominating many of those that I know are responsible, so this poll is timely. So yes we need to consider a limit. But also I don't think every editor needs to vote on every candidate and we do need to make room for a lot more admin noms. There are simply more good admin candidates than their used to be. - Taxman 23:18, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but there are reasons that most of them aren't admins. The top six non-admins are bots. Wik left. Robbot is a bot. Bobblewik is somewhat controversial. And so on.... ugen64 16:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You say most, and I don't know the number, but I believe it is well less than a third of users with over 1500 edits are problem users. I had already removed all the bots, known (to me) problem users, and (known) no longer active wikipedians from the list I took the above numbers from. - Taxman 15:07, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

I took out the changed wording "hard and fast" in the "unlimited" option. If we're going to have a moratorium ever, we need some kind of standard. I think there are too many now, and I wanted to head off the "snowball" effect of "let's see if we can put up a record number of nominations." Valid nominations will be just as valid in a week or two and we'll have more time to give them proper considerations. If you don't feel there should be a numeric standard, please say what standard you would use. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:45, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I thought this was about numeric ones. Andre (talk) 20:53, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

That's why I posted an "Other Standard for Moratorium". -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:56, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• If a user meets some obvious standard by which they can be almost assured of promotion, let's do it. I would say anyone that's been here over one year and has over 5000 edits should be promoted unless they have been 1) Inactive (less than 250 edits in the last two months), or 2) had any major dispute problems. How about for the "slam-dunk, obvious" admin promotions, make the process simply this:
  1. Create a list of all the users.
  2. Contact them and ask if they would like to be an admin. If so, instruct them to leave a brief statement and their acceptance on the vote page.
  3. Open that listing only to "oppose" votes.
  4. If after one week, there are no significant objections, promote them.

  -- Netoholic @ 20:57, 2004 Nov 9 (UTC)

  Isn't that a proposal for a different promotion standard, rather than a moratorium srandard? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:59, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  Time and edits alone do not a good admin make. Andre (talk) 21:13, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

  No thanks, this simply re-enforces the idea that adminship is a mathematical formula based on number of edits and time registered. It's supposed to be about whether wikipedia would be better off with that person as an admin. Shane King 01:24, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

  Did either of you read it? I'm not proposing any "auto-promotion" or proposing a replacement for the present system, just a more stream-lined way to handle "obvious" promotion candidates by only cataloging "oppose" votes. Seems like something like this could easily handle Uninvited's list in the above section. At any time, if there is dispute with a candidate, they could be converted to a regular RFA vote process. -- Netoholic @ 01:31, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

  My objection is that I don't believe a large number of edits makes anyone an "obvious" admin candidate. I also don't see how this streamlines the process: we still have to have the vote anyway (just if you support you don't have to edit the page), so why make two classes of users? Shane King 05:36, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

  A significant problem of your suggestion is that these editors would be annointed with the rebuttable presumption of adminship. I am opposed to the formation of "A-Lists" for promotion. After meeting a generally accepted minimum requirement, all editors should have an equal opportunity to be vetted by the community without the mantel of a presumption of adminship, which relegates those not on the A-List to a second-class status.

  A practical problem of soliciting "oppose" votes only is that the bureaucrats will not have a gauge of support (and arguments in favor) for that candidate that provide dimension to negatives assessments. So the bureaucrats must rely on subjective interpretations of the opposes, rather than determining community consensus, as now. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 07:45, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  You've both made very good arguments, and I've moved this whole thread down to the Comments section. -- Netoholic @ 16:10, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

  There is already too much stress on number of edits which is a very poor judgement of an editor. This proposal will only make this worse. Gady 15:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This whole thing strikes me as a example of a poll in search of a problem rather than a problem needing a poll to decide on a fix. Filiocht 16:16, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that some of us take the adminship process very seriously, and we like to give each candidate careful consideration. I don't search for problems on Wikipedia, the problems with this project keep jumping up and smacking me in the face. func(talk) 16:35, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As there is no consensus at all that moritoriums are appropriate or a good idea, and, in fact, very nearly consensus against moritoriums, I am removing the moritorium notice. Snowspinner 18:26, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

As this idea had had due consideration, I removed the large, prominent banner regarding it from the RFA page. I see that Cecropia, who clearly has rather strong feelings on this matter, has already reverted. I leave it to others now to decide how much longer it should remain. uc 17:08, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The general standard is a week. That is why I haven't moved the "de-admin" poll on the project page, which I will do today. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 17:22, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, don't flame me for stirring up this volatile issue. I just want to provoke an important discussion.

It's too easy to become an admin. i consider myself much more experienced (7222 edits) than some candidates, who often have around 2-3000 edits, yet i wouldnt nominate myself to be an admin (at the moment). Why? Well because i have relatively little experince on RC patrol, VFD etc. Yet I see admin candidates who have little experience of everything in wiki. (for clarification, i mean "little" with respect to admins, no Wikipedians in general).

These candidates, who are nearly always very good users, then get comments like "great user", or sometimes no comment or just one word comments. So what? who cares if they are a good user, I want to see good admins, not good users!

Now i dont think any minimum requirements would help, but could we at least try and make it a bit more difficult.

I dont claim to have any answers, but is definately a problem here.

Bluemoose 12:30, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Being an admin is no big deal, it's a housekeeper role. By my lights, if someone is a good user, that means they are doing their bit around the place and deserve the keys to the broom cupboard. Filiocht | Blarneyman 12:39, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

in my view, character and behaviour is more important than experience or number of edits. I.e. as long as you don't think you have more experience or authority than you do, you'll be a fine admin. Personally, I only started to show community involvement after I was made an admin, and I took great care not to use my privileges until I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. That said, if you would like the mop&truncheon, just ask for them, I am sure your chances are very intact. I do agree, however, that over-zealous admins may be a problem, sometimes, and we may need a simple de-admining procedure in the future, but at the moment, a proposal to this effect was clearly turned down. There are also hardly any rfcs because of admin abuse of privileges, and imho that goes to show that we do not have a problem with inexperienced admins right now. dab (ᛏ) 12:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

btw, I hardly ever vote for users with <2000 edits, and other people have other criteria for voting on rfa. If you state your own, I am sure nobody will resent if you vote oppose based on them (provided they are at all reasonable. Asking >8000 edits would seem a bit unrealistic. After all, we want enough admins, so a couple is likely to be online at all times). dab (ᛏ) 12:56, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To clarify, i dont think edit count is very important either, my main problem is with people who are clearly voting without any reason or just looking at edit count/user page to decide which way to vote.

I think the fundamental point is that people assume innocence until proven guilty (which is normally good of course), whereas when voting here i personally think you should not assume either way without actually checking. Bluemoose 13:18, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh and 2 other things i forgot, 1) a lot of people seem to see adminship as a reward which is just plain silly. 2) It is considerably harder to get a featured article voted in than it is to become an admin! Bluemoose 13:25, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Quite right too. An FA is something we are telling the world displays our worth as an encyclopaedia, an admin is in the background with a mop and bucket. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:32, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Try saying it like this: It is much easier to get powers of deletion than it is to get a tag that indicates about 15 people think think the article is a good one. Bluemoose 13:45, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Or try saying it this way: you say that there is a problem and now appear to be implying that it has something to do with overly-easy access to the power to delete pages. I therefore ask you to produce evidence of consistent abuse of that power by those who have it. I grant there are odd instances of pages being deleted speedily that shouldn't. I even did it myself recently. But it was just a mistake and it was quickly spotted by another admin who restored it. I learned a lesson. But I would never have learned it if I had to wait until I was perfect before I had the power. Nobody is born knowing how to wield a mop.

In short, I'm saying that in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, the rational thing is to assume the absence of a problem. It is less rational, and less helpful, to try to solve problems that do not appear to exist. If evidence to the contrary exists,I'll be perfectly happy to look at it and reconsider my position. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:57, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

I have never noticed a page being deleted when it shouldnt have, I was poining out the fallacy in your statement, either way, you clearly know more than I on the subject, but my other points still remain. In regards to having evidence of admins actually being bad, the fallacy in this becomes obvious when you ask yourself why we even bother voting, why not just give it to everybody? or less extreme, automatically give it too people when they have made more than a certain amount of edits? Because we are supposed to ensure that they are admin quality. If i was a vandal and i wanted to wreck Wikipedia, it wouldnt be unrealistic to get myself 1500 edits, get admin'ed, then launch hell. Bluemoose 14:08, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Edit counting isn't a good tool. There are people who rack up thousands of minor edits in a few weeks. Voting is useful because it allows people who have interacted with the editor to say whether they think s/he will behave well or not. That said, people who should really be admins are shot down all the time. Guettarda 14:22, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Bluemoose14:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think part of the problem here may be your interpretation of the phrase "Good User". I cannot speak for others, but when I use the phrase, I usually mean "this person has shown, through their past interatcion with others and editing, that they are a good user of all of the types of pages that an administrator is likely to frequent, and will be a good user of the tools of administration, if those tools are bestowed upon them." That is, the person is conscientious, already does many of the things an administrator would do and does them well, and it would be in the interests of Wikipedia if this person was aided in their tasks by being able to use the (largely minor) powers of an administrator.

As to the comparison with getting an FA article, it makes a lot of sense that that is considerably harder. Being an admin is no big deal - but a featured article is Wikipedia's display to the world of how well it can do. An analogy would be to say that becoming an admin is like having the training wheels taken off your bike, whereas having a feature article is like winning a bike race. Grutness...wha? 14:19, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Problem is, Grutness and i'm sure Filiocht, are respectable users, but i think a lot of people vote who dont really think first (or as i said before only look at edit count/user pages), would making it so only existing admins vote be at all practical? Also what about the scenario of a vandal making lots of sock puppets/nasty friends then voting themself in as an admin? Bluemoose 14:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The current system doesn't prevent said scenario. Someone could cultivate a nice peersona, get elected, and then launch hell. Though how much hell is debatable as a truly rogue admin would arouse a united and skilled opposition. Equally the best way to learn how to be an effective vandal is to be a legitimate user for a few months (I have learnt a few tricks in my own conflicts with vandals). Fortunately most vandals are neither bright nor systematic enough....SqueakBox 14:23, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Heres a quote, admittedly from User:Boothy443 (users archived talk page), but i think he/she does actually have a point;

Why is is that you, adminstrators specificaly and other useres, only confront users that vote in oppsition, i see a majority of votes for support with no explnation what so ever, yet no one questions them why they voted in support, and when most resons for support are give they are things like "i think he will do a good job", or "i have had no problems with the user in the past", or "because so and so voted oppose". yet an oppsition supporter basiclay is forced to write war and peace to explain why they voted no or else they are basisicaly left to felt like their vote is discounted. So no you dont need to know why i voted oppose, only that i voted oppose. --Boothy443

Obviously i am not defending the users arbitrary opposition, but equally i cant stand for arbitrary support. Why do people never question support when little or no comment is given, yet always do in opposition. I find this trend very worrying. Bluemoose 15:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've heard this argument a few number of times, and it seems quite silly to me. There are a number of reasons why supporters don't explain themselves. First of all, the reason a user should be an admin is stated by the person nominating. By voting support, you are basically agreeing to that person. Second, the fact is that there is no burden of proof on the part of the supporter (note that this is my personal interpretation, but it seems quite natural), if there is no evidence that the user would do the job badly, why not support him? Third, in many cases which an adminship succedes there is an overwhelming majority of supporters, and only a handful of objectors. Case in point, look at Bishonens RFA. There are over 100 supporters and only two objectors. It is natural to ask why someone would oppose. In cases where there is an overwhelming majority of objectors, supporters do explain why they vote as they do. Case in point again, Kils RFA (well, not overwhelming amount of objectors in this case perhaps).

As for your other concern that it is to easy to become an admin, if some user has behaved badly it will ALWAYS come out in the open. ALWAYS. So even though a couple of people voted by pure habit, they will most likely change their vote, or there will be enough opposers anyway. Also, different users votes carry different weight (undemocratic? no......what do you mean?), if 2/3s of the ArbCom voted against and 20 troublesome users voted for, there is not a snowballs chance in hell that any bureocrat (can't we call it something else, it is impossible to spell!) would promote.

I hope this answers some of your concerns. gkhan 16:05, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and one more thing, personally i think it is something of an insult to vote object and not give a reason. It's like saying "it's obvious that you arn't good enough to be an admin!" instead of saying "well, a little to few edits, good user overall, object". gkhan 16:21, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

edit conflict, so I may seem to parrot Gkhan a little bit: Usually, support votes without comment are just "me too" votes agreeing with the nominator. Similarly, it is ok to vote oppose with a "what he said" if an earlier oppose vote gives reasons. Yes, the system isn't waterproof. But it is a basic practice of the wiki to fix problems as they arise. To the best of my knowledge, it has never happened that somebody accumulated 1500 "good" edits, had himself elected admin, and then started vandalizing. Nor would that be a problem, because he would be speed-de-adminned in five minutes. The problematic cases are admins with a choleric temper who are acting in best faith, but put their judgement too far above other people's. A good faith editor will exhibit such traits even in his first couple of 100 edits, and his RFA will be a bumpy ride. As soon as oppose votes start accumulating, people will pay close attention, and it will not be too easy to pass. RFAs only look easy in cases that really are obvious. dab (ᛏ) 16:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What you both seem to be saying is roughly "it works most of the time so it's ok", but that isnt good enough i dont think. Also you give examples, well look at the present top candidate, there seem to be real doubts, yet the user will probably be voted in due to sheep voters (to coin a phrase). only 3 of the 10 offer a comment (excluding "a nice person" and "all my support") Bluemoose 16:21, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note - i dont oppose the user in above example, my point is that it will be carried through by sheep voters. Bluemoose 16:22, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was added today, wasn't it? Give it time, and you'll probably see a few more oppose votes (alot more is my instinct). gkhan 16:30, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Eequor's nomination is controversial, and it only started today. It is impossible to say how it will turn out. It is more instructive to look at mature, or concluded votes: Many people will hold back their votes to see if something will tilt their opinion either way. You do realize, of course, that you need "consensus", usually amounting to 80% support votes, to be promoted? So that at this point (10 support, 3 oppose), Eequor would likely not be promoted, needing another two support votes to reach 80% support. dab (ᛏ) 16:33, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can only speak from my own experience, but I generally vote for someone I have interacted substantially with and have a good opinion of. If there is someone who I have a positive opinion of, but feel I don't have a thorough enough knowledge of, I tend to wait and see how it goes - if they are getting strong support I tend to stay out. If it looks borderline, I look at their edit history, look at what other people have said...and form an opinion. I am more likely to make a comment on a Support vote if I know the person and their edits. If I have to look things through and determine things on the balance of evidence I am less likely to explain my Support because it's not due to any single thing, but due to the overall balance of things. In addition, if I have nothing to add beyond what has already been said, I tend not to make a comment. Guettarda 16:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To sum up: Bluemoose raises a valid concern: "Sheep votes" skew the RfA process, which is unfair. However, no problem to Wikipedia has been shown: The primary power of an admin is to delete pages, and there are no significant abuses.

I would like to add my opinion: Being voted admin is a seal of approval, which brings about increased respect. Some let this goes to their head. It is not uncommon that a user behaves nicely at the eve of his/her nomination and becomes over-zealous or opinionated afterwards. I therefore completely agree with dab that it is important to focus on character. I can imagine that a "simple de-admining procedure" could mitigate this. (I missed that discussion). — Sebastian (talk) 18:03, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

My conclusion, I am actually very impressed with the level of thought on this matter, its very encouraging to see that many take the issue so seriously. I think I have possibly over estimated the power of admins, but still have concerns over Sheep votes being overly influential.

One good thing has come out of this conversation - a new phrase Sheep vote, which i am honoured to be credited with!. thanks Bluemoose 19:57, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think we should decide on what admin:user ratio is ideal. This is so we know whether we have too many admins, or too little. Sometimes when I feel I'm in the gray area regarding an admin candidate, I would like to know whether wikipedia has too many admins or too few, so I would know how 'strict' i have to be regarding votes. Borisblue 03:20, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for saying this! It lets me point you to Wikipedia:Redundancy is good. Andre (talk) 03:26, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

A page which, it should be pointed out, you just wrote. →Raul654 03:29, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Er, yes. That's why I thanked him. Are you angry at me because I started a bureaucrat consensus poll? Andre (talk) 03:33, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

I'm think you jumped the gun and started a poll rather than starting a discussion on this page (which, in all likelihood, would have gotten you better-thought-out responses than the poll would have) →Raul654 07:54, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

The way I see it, too much admin is impossible :). Pages are vandalised incessantly and at times, some admins are away. Since multiple users join each day, many admins are still needed.

^{Journalist C.}/ ^{Holla @ me!}

Admin is like an "advanced editing licence", so ideally 100% of our contributors should be admins*. At this moment in time there's a large disparity. Admins are temporarily considered to be wikigods, which is terribly undesirable (guilded cage and all that). I want to go back to being treated like a normal wikipedian please!

*Actually, since people are constantly joining us, some % must still be admins-in-training, so a realistic figure is probably (random guess) 95% or so.

Kim Bruning 03:31, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree strongly with Kim. Admins are people that we (the community) feel we can trust not to misbehave (or, not to misbehave too much). Trust is not a finite quantity that we can "use up". Admins don't have any formal role in governance, they are not somehow "better" than other users. Guettarda 03:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Here's another concurrence with Kim. I have a friend of mine who is a sporadic Wikipedia editor (he has all of 110 edits) who I would nonetheless completely trust with admin rights. The question we should ask is not "why should this editor be an admin?" but rather "why shouldn't this editor be an admin?" Kelly Martin 22:01, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

My opinion is that yes we do. As the project grows, the need for janitors--vandal fighters, junk deletors, copyvio hunters, and so forth--grows with the project. I've observed that a lot of people doing regular vandal-fighting on RC patrol have a fairly quick burnout rate, and they need to be replaced as fast as they burn out. New admins are often the most zealous RC patrollers; we need them. So my opinion is we need a regular crop of new admins. Sometime look at that list of 500 active admins, and reflect on how many of those names once were prominent in vandal-fighting and are now gone. Antandrus (talk) 03:32, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I think more admins should be good, since as mentioned earlier, people leave the project and an increasing amount are joining. We need more admins to counter-act the problems we are having against vandalism. Plus, the new admins can help in other tasks such as clearing backlogs at various procedual pages, such as WP:IFD. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:34, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

^Well said, I concur.

^{Journalist C.}/ ^{Holla @ me!}

• I think we have too few admins. Some of those with admin ability don't use it much to work against vandalism or get involved in hot disputes. Not that they have to. Examine a nominated editor's edit history, see if they play well with others and if they push a POV...also see if they are involved in RC patrol, Vfd, Ifd and have survived a few edit wars and how they dealt with it.--MONGO 03:37, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

A ratio would be impossible, considering the wide variation between what a "user" means so that we could never really know that number (some are just registered names with one edit, or thousands). But I think you can be sure we never have too few admins. Just take a look at VFD, and WP:CP and WP:VIP, and WP:IFD and WP:RFPP, etc. It's a never-ending task. I would just vote based on merit always, always imagining that admins are needed. Dmcdevit·t 03:42, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Well, we have ongoing backlog at IFD and the copyvio page. From time to time there is backlog at VFD. RC is generally well staffed but more eyes never hurt. So yes, we most assuredly do need more admins. There are also social implications of delaying adminship further or refusing it altogether more often. For various reasons, including the growing proportion of anon edits and the difficulty of measuring the number of active nonadmin accounts in a meaningful way, I don't think the admin-to-user ratio is a useful yardstick. Better to compare the number of admins to the number of edits made each month. I don't like the rising adminship standards and wish that people would support admins with fewer edits. I also wish people would refrain from opposing adminship nominations for retaliatory reasons and onetime incidents. Most of the people who were made admins when all you needed was 500 edits, 3 months with the project, and a demonstrable willingness to get along with others are still admins today and have not caused problems. Much of the rise in minimum standards occured prior to the AC being available to deal with matters of misuse of admin abilities. Now the AC deals with such cases routinely, yet the minimum standards have not returned to their previous levels. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 03:57, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Allright, thanks for the input. I'm lowering standards for my 'support' vote appopriately. Borisblue 04:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Definitely. Wikipedia's size is growing exponentially, and the number of admins should follow suit. As Wikipedia becomes more visible, more vandals will come to try to disrupt things because they think that it is "cool" or something like that. Ideally, if we're going to talk about ratios, there should be a 1:1 admin-to-vandal ratio, but that's going to be very hard to measure... --Titoxd 04:13, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

From Special:Statistics, the number of active wikipedians (those making at least 5 edits in a given month) is growing in a fairly exponential fashion at +10% a month, or equivalently, doubling every 6.7 months. So to keep a steady ratio we would need to expand the admin pool by 10% a month as well. Since we have ~500 active admins at the moment, we would need to promote 50 more this month. Dragons flight 04:45, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

PS. For the curious, the active:admin ratio is 21:1. Dragons flight 05:03, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't we lower the standards then? I mean, right on this page it states 1000 edits, 3 months, which seems a bit high given what you are telling me.Borisblue 05:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not. From WP:1000, there are 1700+ editors with greater than 1500 edits, presumably some significant chunk of them could be promoted. Really though, there are no standards, there is only the matter of what individual voters choose to care about. Dragons flight 05:09, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely not. There are plenty of users that have good editing track records, no major problems, and we simply haven't noticed them. Yeah it would be great for them all to edit at the prominent locations, but good article creation and some experience in the Wikipedia namespace should be enough to go along with a good track record. So we need to find and nominate more great candidates, not lower standards. - Taxman ^Talk 21:43, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

The standards Borisblue quotes are entirely unofficial, and are simply intented to describe general patterns; if the standards of the community change, the number will be changed (and not vice versa). For my part, I think that we certainly need to continue expanding the pool of admins, but we can afford to be quite selective. I have seen no evidence that our current admins are unable to keep up with the influx of vandalism and junk, but these will grow as the wiki grows. In fact, the current rate of promotion is just fine by me, and I trust that the community will continue to find and nominate the most qualified users. — Dan | Talk 05:14, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur with the above stmt. =Nichalp «Talk»= 11:44, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

On a slightly different note; Is it just me or has there been an influx of nominations recently? we have 19 at the moment! It is very encouraging that most seem like pretty decent candidates as well. I have also noticed that requirements for adminship seem to be rising a bit as well, although maybe its just my imagination. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 12:53, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Nominations often tend to come in bunches, though I've never figured out why. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 13:37, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I noticed the influx as well; I think it may have something to do with the merging of self-noms and noms. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 23:37, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

My theory is that nominations come in bunches because people are reminded to nominate/self-nominate when they see wp:rfa on RC. Thus, more nominations lead to yet more nominations in a sort of chain reaction. Meelar (talk) 23:40, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that as the Wikipedia community grows in size, it's simply to be expected that the number of admin nominations being processed at any given time is likely to grow as well. --Michael Snow 21:04, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes - especially with the recent WoW surge Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 21:07, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh come on. Something is deeply broken if a single vandal is dictating behavior for the entire community. PS. Help fix it. Dragons flight 21:10, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Actually it was sort of a half-joke. I thought mediawiki had a ton on developers on it though.... no? I could help out there, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 21:31, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Not really, the developer pool is quite small, but the link is really more to a discussion of what to do. Many of the changes suggested are technically trivial to implement, but not everyone agrees on what should be done. Dragons flight 21:51, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I notice there are a lot of nominations lately. Having enough admins is good, because it lets us be picky about candidates. If there is some doubt, or if they do not clearly have enough experience, vote oppose. However, if the candidate is obviously good, there is no reason not to vote for them. Note that not all admins spend all day fixing things. I'm one, and I don't feel obliged to clean up after WoW when I prefer to spend my time adding content (I'm not paid for this after all) So, while I make occasional good use of my admin powers, blocking the odd vandal here or deleting some nonsense there, I am not a dedicated member of the mopping-up squad. Now, 5,000 good editors doing the occasional admin work are at least as good as 50 full-time admins. Bottom line, be picky, but keep nominating trusted users! dab (ᛏ) 21:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

(Contradicts: Gut Feeling: Need more admins.)

"We have ~23,500,000 edits, ~2,300,000 pages, ~440,000 users and ~580 admins. That means each admin is effectively responsible for 40,500 edits, 4,000 pages and 750 users. That sounds like 580 full time jobs to me~ --Alterego 15:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)" (quote from Jimbo's talk page) [1] I don't know where he obtained his figures here, but I will (initially) take them at face value.

Conclusion: The desire to highly restrict Adminship to an "inside clique" simply goes against "gut feeling": It would be numerical suicide of the highest proportions and unnecessarily overwork the current Admins.--GordonWatts 15:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

With 29 active nominations on the list of RfAs right now, I really wonder if this process is scalable. Consider what this process might look like just a year from now. I'm not suggesting any particular changes at this point. I just want to point out that perhaps we need to consider what could change to make this more scalable. --Durin 05:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Well a few down at the bottom have passed their closing time and are just awaiting closing by a bureaucrat. Otherwise, I think it's likely that as the wiki grows, and more people join, you will see a corresponding increase in the number of nominations, which I personally welcome, as I think Wikipedia can't have enough good admins. That being said, perhaps the transclusion could be adjusted to not transclude the full RFA to the main page, but instead perhaps the main RfA page could simply link to current nominations, with maybe a high level status indicator on the main page to show the current vote tally for a given candidate, with the actual discussion taking place in the individual articles but not visible from the main RfA page. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 05:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I think this would be a good idea. Especially with really long discussions taking place on some people's RfAs, this would allow this page to load faster, etc. The name, the vote here button (if it works), the vote tally, and perhaps the nominators comment. Link to the RfA page, and that would be plenty. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 14:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the way to do it would be to have a template on the RfA sub-page that would transclude information to the main RfA page, then everything below it would just stay on the sub-page. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 15:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Just put the actual votes within a <noinclude> tag block. I think that works. Kelly Martin 16:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

That would have to be done manually to each nomination, as it obviously can't be in the nomination template. ~~ N (t/c) 16:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it can, because subst: ignores <noinclude> and <includeonly> blocks. – ABCD✉ 01:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

(......)Voice of All ^{Talk|@|Esperanza}17:58, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

With the quasi-exponential growth of Wikipedia, I'm not sure if that will ever happen. More readers → more vandals → more admins chasing the vandals... Titoxd^(?!?) 17:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Adminship is a position of trust, not a coterie. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Yep. As long as the right people are given adminship, there's no such thing as too many. Friday (talk) 18:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, adminship is no big deal. If we have a million great editors who would make good admins, we should have a million admins. There is no need to have a cabal... er, limit. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:05, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at WP:CP for example. We need more good admins, a lot more. Plus what Nichalp said. Martin 18:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Friday. If the right ones are being appointed, we can never have too many. Unfortunately, it really feels as if the vandals have been outpacing the admins as of late. I suppose I need to get back to writing that semi-protection proposal I've been drafting.  :-( Hall Monitor 19:00, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Well put, everyone. I catch vandalism on my watchlist every single day. That's vandalism that blew right by RC patrollers, even though there are usually a lot. We can always use more trusted people with admin powers. Antandrus (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I note that Wikipedia's editor base seems to be growing by about 10% per month. That would suggest that we need to grow our admin pool by that much just to ride herd on the project. Of course, there are a number of confounding factors.

• Not all editors and not all admins are still active. There's no real way to get rid of an account once it has edited, and admins who go dormant usually aren't desysopped. Even though we have more than 600 nominal admins, I suspect that quite a few rarely visit the project.
• There is an arms race between the persistence and ingenuity of our developers and vandal fighters and the determined vandals. Having more admins means that it's more likely that a serious troublemaker (vandalbot or the like) will be stopped quickly, and it also means that many people are able to help clean up things like page move vandalism. Usually the vandals are just background noise, but there are short periods of time when we need all the good admins we can get.

Since we don't seem to have any problems right now related to having too many admins, I'm inclined not to worry about it. If we get to a point where there is a problem, I expect the matter to be self-correcting as it is with bureaucrats—people will get much pickier about their candidates, and will oppose on the grounds of sufficient supply. Possibly there will evolve a finer-grained privilege management structure (for example, the proposal to grant rollback privileges to some editors without giving out the full admin toolbox.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• I see no reason to slow down the process by which we are making admins. I've been keeping track of statistics regarding this. One of the stats I am keeping is how many edits there are per day per admin. Average over the length of the (short) study is 137 edits per day. There have been no extremes from this number, and it is not getting worse. Thus, I don't think we can conclude that the number of admins is too great or too small, assuming that Wikipedia is in a state of good repair. Rather, I think we can conclude we are making admins at a proper pace to keep pace with the increasing number of edits per day. That said, I think there are a number of scalability issues in general with Wikipedia that are not being properly addressed. Small case in point; WP:RFA. At the pace that the number of admin noms per week is increasing, the number of nominations per week two years from now will be >120 nominations per week, assuming linear growth (which is optimistic; Wikipedia growth has been anything but linear). --Durin 19:30, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• There is no downside to having more admins, as long as they're good community members. Some would say it's the wiki way to have everyone be an admin and then take away privlidges when warrented. I'm not going that far, but as soon as it can be determined someone is trustworthy, my opinion is they should be an admin. Tedernst 21:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• I think that the optimal (i.e. idealistic but unrealistic) situation would be to have every dedicated, good-faith, dependable editor be an admin. The more good people we make into admins, the less problems we'll have from vandals and the like, the smoother things that require admins will run, and the less danger a mistake by an individual admin or 'personality problems' will pose (since there will be more people empowered to review and reverse it.) Obviously, there are reasons why we can't spread adminship quite that widely... we need time to determine who fits the critera, for instance. But there's no reason to ever worry about having too many admins, beause our optimal case would be to promote all qualified individuals. --Aquillion 21:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

(......)Voice of All ^{Talk|@|Esperanza} 21:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

In that case your concern should not be "when will we start to slow down the rate of new admin creation", but "are admins getting accepted more easily than they once were". We always want as many potentally qualified people as possible to apply for adminship; and we should expect, given that the candidate pool remains of a constant quality, that the percentage accepted remains about constant as well. The fact that this ensures that the rate of admin creation will ramp up as Wikipedia's rate of growth increases is a good thing as long as our standards (as represented in the percentage accepted) remain the same. Maybe we should get statistics on the percentage of admin candidates who are accepted/rejected each month, to track trends... --Aquillion 22:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

This may be a bit ad hominem, but I must say I'm rather dissapointed in someone who just passed the bar discussing a possible cap. C'mon, what if we capped it a month ago? You wouldn't be one... please, no cap suggestions. Redwolf24 (talk) 22:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• Judging by RFA history, it is in fact somewhat more difficult to become an admin than it was in the past. So I don't think there's a problem here. Radiant_>|< 14:13, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

How many Admins do we need? All of them! :-D  BD2412 ^talk 22:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

So, I've been doing some math (one would think that I'm a mathematician) and I came up with these rough numbers (as I said, I'm no mathematician): It took us about five years to get to ~500 Admins. Now it will take us 8 to nine months to get to ~1000. That means a 50% increase in 1/12 the time. Considering that RfA is going through a mini-crisis right now, I thought that it could be interesting that we slowed down the pace of creation of new Admins. Someone mentioned that we are making about 10 new admins a week, that is, 40 a month (this is nobel material, eh?).
So I though: what if we introduced, as a temporary measure (not sure of how long it would last though), a sort of "quota" for new nominations? Let's say, for the sake of example, a maximum of 15 RfAs, with no more than 5 RfAs up at the same time. In the spirit of "first come, first served", we could institute a monthly waiting list, and open the RfA at the top of the list as soon as one closes in the RfA forum, to the limit of (per the example) fifteen.
Alternatively, the quota could be for new Admins, instead of RfAs — so that there could be a greater number of RfAs a month, but as soon as (from the example) 15 new Admins have been promoted in that same month, then we'd halt RfA until 12:00 am UTC of the first day of the following month.
How about it? I'm not sure if something like this has been suggested before. Redux 20:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

No. What's the point of limiting good editors being promoted? Can we ever have too many good editors as Admins? --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:42, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

We should promote every good candidate, regardless of how many admins we may have. The number of users is growing at an rapid rate and instituting a quota would almost certainly be counter-productive. RfA may have its problems, but not to the extent that we need to shut it down for a period of time. Carbonite | Talk 20:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Humm, but the idea is not to bar anyone from being promoted, just slowing down the pace of promotion. Any deserving user would still be promoted, just not "all at once". Redux 20:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

In effect that bars user's from being promoted because they can't even be nominated. We don't want to limit qualified editors from being promoted. We need more good admins not less. The English Wikipedia has one of the lowest ratios of admins to regular users of any of the larger projects. There's no RFA crisis, just the project is scaling so large you're seeing a lot of complaints. The RfA system works pretty well, very few problem editors get promoted. We need to make it easier to remove those 2 or 5 or whatever admins not slow down the 500 that should be promoted. In fact I'd argue our mission should be to go find 2000 qualified admins and promote them as fast as the system could handle. - Taxman ^Talk 21:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

As for the rate we are producing admins, see my new chart here. We crossed the 30/month barrier in July, already we are at the 60/month level just 6 months later. OTOH, I have been here 9 months, and the number of articles on en.wiki has doubled in that time. I see no crisis in RfA. I see more good editors blocked from being promoted than I see unsuitable candidates promoted (you don't find out until after the fact anyway). If everyone applies their own standards in voting, as we are doing, the results seem to be fairly good, though not perfect. NoSeptember ^talk 20:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of RfAs/new Admins. I only suggested it given the general feel that something is not quite right with RfA (hence the need for a reform). Slowing down the pace is always a good idea if we believe that some adjusting is needed — until it's been adjusted. Thanks for the charts, NS. Regards, Redux 20:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

RfA is not going through a minicrisis. People are discussing possible ways to change it, that's all. -Splash^talk 20:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

As long as the admins aren't causing a problem, having too many shouldn't be an issue. The more there are, the quicker the vandalism gets reverted. --tomf688^{talk} 21:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Splash, without discussing anyone's personal [of course] opinion, there seems to be a lot of people around here (including the Bcrats) who do think that there's a problem with RfA, and that it is indeed going through a minicrisis. Redux 21:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I see it as a lot of sound and fury, really. The only minicrisis I see is that people continually want RfA changed without presenting evidence that there is a problem. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to digress from the original topic, but wouldn't the problem be that a lot of people don't think that the system is good? And noting Taxman's post, we need to take into account that the ratio in the en.wp is considerably thrown by the fact that a much wider base of individuals can register here, even though many don't contribute regularly (or even scarcely): most of the serious contributors from other-language wikis have accounts in the en.wp, but they don't contribute that often here (sometimes, all they do is link the transwiki articles). But more importantly, a quota of X new Admins a month still means X new Admins every month (15 was just an example). Redux 21:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

RfA is always going through mini-crises and ipso facto (I love ipso facto) is never going through crises. Where is the sudden breakdown in process here? More noms are getting rejected on this page than previously (in my anecdotal judgement) which is probably a good thing in that it means greater scrutiny. But in no way has the scaleability been thrown off. This Wiki will soon hit a million articles and there are just under a thousand admins to match that. Arguably a low ratio. The problem with a queue is that it will hold appropriate candidates equal to inappropriate candidates. Why should someone who's been contributing well and in good faith for months wait behind a troll for their nom to be considered? Marskell 21:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. Restricting the number of new admins is an idea which will no help in any way make for better admins. Putting new rules for adminship will in no way make for better admins. Lots of bad ideas floating around this talk page periodically. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Question: What is the benefit to the wiki in this proposal? And please don't bring up The Great RfA Crisis again, because it's pretty obvious that it's not about to explode, even if some things could run a bit better. Why would we want to restrict it? Why does that help the wiki? Why does that help the candidates? Why does that help the admins? -Splash^talk 23:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

The intention would have been to slow down the pace some. Less RfAs up at one time, less deviding of the attention of the voting community (how often do users cast votes and then never return to see if evidence that could turn their opinions around have surfaced?). Again, it was not meant to bar anyone, or restrict anything, except the rapid pace we are seeing right now, in light of the (fine, let's call it) perceived crisis in RfA.
But Marskell brought up an interesting point which I had not considered, which is that of people intentionally clogging the list and thus disturbing the process, which would end up delaying the process unduly for worthy candidates. Yeah, that won't work. Back to the drawing board it is. Redux 01:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

What about creating a new user group? Today, we have now only the group "admin" (see Wikipedia:User access levels). How about splitting that? Today, there is only the choice to give someone that whole admin set or not. How about splitting off something? Maybe we could categorize rights a bit. For me for example blocking users/IPs is one of the toughest rights. Whereas protecting/unprotecting a page is not of the same weight (see also semi-protection). What about a new group "junior admin" which has the rights to protect/unprotect a page, rollback, unwatchedpages and deletedhistory? (See also Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges). We could rename the current admins as "senior admins". Or whatever names you prefer (heavy/light admin?). --Adrian Buehlmann 11:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

• Adrian - this was queried at WP:AAP, and most people said we don't need the complexity. We either fully trust people or we don't. Nor do I agree with Redux's idea of limiting the rate of promotion. The problems we have with admins do not lie in promoting too many people, or the wrong people; the problems we have lie in not demoting the (admittedly few) disruptive ones. If we want the RFA page less clogged, we should invoke the Snowball Clause on candidates that obviously don't stand a chance. Radiant_>|< 13:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any shortage. Whenever I've needed help from an admin, they've been available and responsive. Unless there's a reason to think we need more admins, why not simply close RfA for a while? 70.231.136.114 08:51, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Martin 08:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly how more admins is supposed to help with that. That problem could be solved immediately by speedy-deleting any edits with copyright problems instead of reserving CSD A8 for revenue-producing sites, or getting rid of them automatically after 1 week with a PROD-like process. Getting permissions needs to be the responsibility of the contributing editor, not admins. If anything, more admins makes copyright problems worse, since admins can see deleted articles. If there's just a few admins performing needed maintenance tasks, that's one thing, but if there's an admin community that's expanding for its own sake like the regular user community, copyvios are still effectively published to anyone willing to jump through a few RfA hoops. There's something like 1000 admins on en right now, and websites with fewer than 1000 regular users routinely get hassled over copyvios. 70.231.136.114 09:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The user base is growing faster than the admin count. At one time, admins exceeded 0.1% of the user base, but the ratio (admin count) / (user count) is steadily shrinking. --Ancheta Wis 09:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The flood of garbage that flows into the Project as it grows is astounding. Just sit and watch Special:Newpages for a while and you shall see that there is a distinct shortage of administrators here. We have more than a million articles and a million users: vandalism needs to be reverted, pranksters/spammers/vandals need to be blocked, garbage needs to be deleted, policy needs to be maintained. The admin community does not expand for its own sake - people who choose to be admins go in with the full knowledge that they will be required to do dirty, thankless work that makes them the targets of wiki-abusers. Nobody just jumps into this shit for the fun of it, nor for the simple ability of being an admin, trust me. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 09:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Quite. Some may scoff at it, but the crux of requesting admistrative tools lies with expanded matinence and clean-up duty. I for one see a great many backlogs that require clean-up and assistance in other areas that need more and more manpower as we continuosly recieve new editors.

Wikipedia is one of the most visted websites on the internet. A lovely google search will almost certainly bring a link to wikipedia and its almost certain various clean-up will follow. -Zero^Talk 09:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I was recently moved, by a glance at the rights and user rename logs, to seriously consider the view that we simply do not need more bureaucrats. However, we are not going to reach that place with respect to administrators for a long time, drastic changes to Wikipedia policy notwithstanding. Although there are currently 872 administrators, as with the situation with bureaucrats only a fraction of this number regularly perform sysop tasks; it has been said that the real work of maintaining WP day to day is shouldered by fewer than 150 or so people. However, in vivid contrast with the situation with bureaucrats, there is a massive backlog of sysop tasks. The major work that sysops do is cleaning up WP—cleaning up the vandalism, the copyright infringements, the unsuitable page creations. The other tasks—protecting pages and blocking malefactors—consume much less time. Since the clean-up tasks roughly increase in volume in concert with Wikipedia's own growth and popularity, we're probably going to have to keep adding to the number of sysops to keep pace, if only to maintain that critical fraction of people who actually carry out sysop tasks. If we define an adequate number of sysops as that number with which all sysop tasks are completed to satisfaction in the minimum amount of time (i.e., all vandalism is reverted more or less immediately, all copyright infringements are dealt with in the shortest possible time per Wikipedia:Copyrights and WP:CSD A8, I3, I4 and I5, and all unsuitable pages are likewise deleted in the minimum time per WP:DEL and WP:CSD) we are even now way behind the curve. Reducing the number of admins is figurative suicide. —Encephalon 10:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

If most of the work is being done by 150 admins, then why are there 872? I think any who become inactive for more than a few months should be asked to retire their wheel bits, with reinstatement on request if they want to become active again. I just feel like the large number of admins causes decohesion and there should be fewer (look at the revert wars on the main page, which can only be edited by admins). Also, admins aren't needed to revert vandalism. I do it just fine as a non-admin. Sometimes I post at AIAV if a block is needed, and it's always responded to promptly. If the 150 busy admins are overloaded, then the number that needs to be higher is 150, not 872, and the current rfa process is ridiculous. Also, maybe improved technical tools could make some of the tasks easier. 70.231.136.114 13:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

No, Admins aren't the only ones who can engage in vandalism reversion, but we're the only ones who can block problematic usernames and IP's, and that is important. Sometimes the only way to stop a determined vandal is to simply block it from the source. Reversion takes time and energy away from editors who could be building the encyclopedia, so blocking is important. There's actually been quite a bit of discussion through the months about various RfA and Adminship reforms, such as a system for de-adminning that you suggest. For example, on Meta Wikipedia, Admins have to stand for affirmation once a year. I think part of the reason we don't have that here is to minimise the red tape and Bureacracy we have to deal with...we're doing good just to confirm as many good Admins as we can, and to deal with problematic Admins, without having to deal with re-confirmation. Yes, it would be nice to have cohesion within the Administrative community, but you have to remember that Wikipedia is huge. It's bigger than any one person, or even any group of people. I think for the most part though, the most active Administrators know most of the other active Administrators, so there is a fair amount of cohesion. Yes we disagree sometimes, but that's part of a Wiki. Hopefully we all remember the ideals of collaboration and communication, and all that fun stuff. I agree with you that the 150 number needs to be higher, but I don't think that taking Adminship away from those who don't often use their mop will help raise that number. Basically all we can do is to try and find as many people to be Admins as we can, and confirm as many qualified candidates as come through the RfA process. Generally, I think most Admins contribute most as Administrators when they are new Admins, and mellow out in their use of the mop as their time on Wiki increases, so confirming new Admins is not a bad thing. However it's good to have people with the mops running around, even if you're not actively doing Admin work, you might run across something that needs an Admin or you might get called in on a dispute, so it's helpful to have when you need it, and it's helpful to have those people around. Basically what it comes down to, anyone who is an Admin and is good at it, is an asset to Wikipedia. Even if they only use their mop five times a year, that's five helpful edits to Wikipedia that some other Admin didn't have to do, or might not have gotten done at all had they not done it. So I'm more than happy to confirm someone even if they won't be a super-active Admin, as long as they will use the tools correctly, they're welcome to them. We need as many good Administrators as we can get, and the only way for us to do that is keep chugging through RfA. By the way, why not sign up for an account? Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 13:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Inactivity of admins is a relative thing. If there are 150 who do most of the work, there are a few hundred more who still do some admin work. Even if each of these do only 10% or 5% of what the typical top 150er does, when you multiply that by the hundreds of these semi-active admins, it still adds up to a significant contribution. We must remember that Wiki is volunteer work. Only about a quarter of the 872 admins are truly inactive, many of those were made admins years ago and have just moved on away from the project. Take a look at my admin stats page and you will see that we have basically doubled the number of admins every year, and have been adding them at a rate of one a day for quite a while now. We need to keep making new ones, and the current RfA process does that, the rate is really determined by the number of qualified people who apply for the job, eventually we will start spitting them out at a rate of 2 a day :-). NoSeptember ^talk 14:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Btw, we need a 1000 admin pool :-). What time and date will we promote admin number 1000, and who will it be? NoSeptember ^talk 14:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I see about 3 new admins/day for this past week, though maybe that's an unusual spurt. I see this Azatoth nonsense that led a bureaucrat to resign and the amount of campaigning by rfa candidates and the thanks for votes they send out and the congratulations/condolences they receive when the rfa closes, and it looks a little too much like a club membership. I have root on the server where I work, to make some config tasks easier; it never would have occurred to me or my co-workers to throw a party when I got it. The Azatoth thing was awful; nobody should want it that much, and if they do, it's a bad sign. Also, admins are promoted by bureaucrats instead of by a bot for the precise reason that bureaucrats are supposed to use some discretion, not be bound by hard limits on vote percentages, etc.; they should get some slack. Any particular nomination (especially marginal ones) getting through or not getting through on a particular try is no big deal, and the process is dysfunctional if it becomes a big deal. I'd almost prefer that bureaucrats privately roll 2D6 and add that number to the vote percentage, then promote if the total is higher than 85%, specifically to soften the vote percentage as a promotion criterion; but more likely, the process is just deeply broken at this point and admin selection should be done some other way, hopefully with an eye towards toning down the social culture of the nomination/rfa process.

To Evilphoenix: as for me getting an account, I have one--its user number is in the 10000's, which puts it in the oldest 2% on en, but I almost never logged in to edit (m:exopedianism) and paid no attention to these meta issues until recently because of some stupid edit wars. (I'm not logged in now because I happened to not be logged in when I first posted to this thread, and don't want to reveal the IP address for my account).

Anyway, I'm going on for too long, I better stop, I just wanted to get this off my chest. 70.231.136.114 15:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that any one person becoming an admin should not be a big deal. We become admins for the benefit of Wikipedia, not personal agrandizement. Those who are rejected for newness will become admins soon enough, waiting should not be a big deal to them. Those rejected for perceived incivility may never become admins. Trying to desysop inactive admins will just create more drama though, so it is best we just leave them be. Only desysop those who are actually harming Wikipedia, and let ArbCom decide who those few are. For the record, 12 admins have been promoted in the first 7 days of April. NoSeptember ^talk 15:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Now that's a good idea! My money's on User:Willy on Wheels, February 7, 2007.

More topic-wise, I find it hard to believe Wikipedia could ever have too many administrators with the current system. Most people demand thousands of edits and significant talk-space contribution along with the various standards of integrity and reliability, and in any community only a strikingly small percentage will have the time, persistance, or demeanour to become support-worthy candidates. One looks at the list of administrators and it is quite imposing, but as a fraction of the Wikipedia userbase, not counting the zillions of anonymous contributors and vandals, it's quite small and always will be. Adminship was originally conceived as "nothing special", but, for better or for worse, we've moved away from that and as a result we have what might be a higher-calibre admin force, but fewer of them. Lord Bob 15:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

All things change and end, including the involvement of individuals as administrators on the project. Having been here two years now, I've seen it again and again: good user, becomes admin, uses admin tools every day, does a lot of RC and Newpages patrol, then gradually fades away. Involvement of most people on this project, as is true in most internet communities, follows a kind of narrative curve of discovery, enthusiasm, peak, and then decline; we need a steady flow of new administrators to replace those who burn out or leave the project, or just get tired of troll-fighting. Troll-fighting makes us all tired and we always need a steady stream of new energetic recruits to join us. Antandrus (talk) 15:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that this issue was brought up earlier, but responses were more personal opinions than they were suggestions for fine-tuning the procedure. There are a lot of things that should be addressed directly by the people involved with RfAs. As it stands, the RfA procedure is not nearly as good at admin selection as it could be. Your direct involvement will serve to make sure there is good "QC" for potential candidates, while assuring that some very poor criticisms do not block candidates that would do a fine job.

One large example of poor criteria is people that reject solely based on edit count. It was mentioned above that edit count should logically go up over time, but that is somewhat detrimental to the project. Increasing edit count serves only to delay the acceptance of candidates that are interested in admin duties, so the backlog grows bigger. Meanwhile, the people that have that many edits may not even be interested in admin tasks. In my view, people emphasize edit count so much because they think that editing more automatically means better understanding of policy. The thing is, it takes very little understanding of policy just to add content to the encyclopedia. Minor edits significantly raise this number with no indication of increased understanding as well.

Time with the project is a very important factor, but IMO should not be left to stringent limits such as: "longer than this, I accept the candidate but shorter than this I oppose." I see people rejecting candidates because they have not been with the project for 9 months, despite good work for the time they have been involved. This should not be; if a candidate has proven themselves worthy, shouldn't they be able to begin helping reduce the backlog immediately? I propose you judge candidates based on merit, with time as an afterthought. To be forward, bureaucrats can make the judgement on whether candidates have proven that they will not abuse the tools given to them. To oppose solely because of time with the project is ignoring the quality of edits that they have done in that time, and is the one of the biggest reasons the backlog is growing.

The last big issue with the process that I feel should be addressed is the demand for expertise in every area. For example, an editor may be applying for admin rights to pursue vandals and has no intention of working with pictures. Despite this, an "oppose" vote is cast because the candidate has not dealt much with images. This is almost like insisting that a chemist be required to sew, just because their lab has access to sewing equipment of a neighboring business. Assuming the editor has been here long enough to show that they do not intend to abuse their powers, isn't it improper to reject them because they do not excel in one thing that they do not even intend to do? It seems candidates that want to focus on one area are often rejected, just because they do not have experience in a totally different area. The easiest way to say it is that you can either try to seperate the powers, or you can accept that admins may not want to do everything that they are allowed to do. With the growing amount of work there is to be done here, reducing the number of people that can help - even if just in one area - is contributing to backlogs and longer AIV times.

The most recent candidate is a good example of how the system has the effect of devaluing candidates that want to focus on one activity. He wants to fight vandals (almost expected of any admin), but people oppose him because he has not worked on "encyclopedia writing." He may just make it, but the small minority that oppose for that reason hopefully think about what would happen if every vandal fighter were rejected because they don't concentrate on lengthy article edits. As a parting thought I ask you; where does it say that someone has to enjoy doing every type of admin activity, or devote time to doing everything, to make them a good candidate? Markovich292 00:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There have been enough responses to topics below since I posted this that I just thought I would put out the request again for people that are currently heavily involved in the RfA procedure to respond here. Please give it a read, even if it is just a quick once-over. I didn't post this in a policy change section because it really isn't a policy issue: it is just a suggestion on how people that vote on RfAs can improve adminisrator presence without sacrificing quality. Because of that I was really hoping that the people here would talk it over.

Thank you. Markovich292 20:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

• The issues you raise are age-old. Reality; the situation is unlikely to change. People are free to use whatever criteria they wish to use in evaluating a nominee for their appropriateness for adminship. If we generate a list of acceptable criteria, we might as well generate a checklist and automatically pass any admin candidates who meet the criteria. --Durin 22:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Going by a checklist probably wouldn't be an improvement, I personally like the way it is set out now, in principle. The problem seems to lie in the editors that frequently cast votes at RfA. Many of them use reasons for rejection that are absolutely trivial. Sometimes others have reasons that are not trivial per se, but their reasons certainly do not reflect a concern for wikipedia's needs. If this issue is age-old with people making the same criticisms that I have, I am suprised that some/many of the principle voters at RfA have not gotten the hint that they have not adapted their voting to the needs of wikipedia. Markovich292 23:46, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I suspect people see the "needs" of Wikipedia very much through the prism of their own activities: some content-writers are seemingly offended at the idea of people getting the mop without a FA under their belt; vandal-fighters want to see other vandal-fighters sysopped; metapedians want people whose metapedian agenda appears to align with their own; wikignomes are too occupied with wikignoming to participate at RFA at all. And the very occasional person opposes everyone, for whatever reason, and with whatever rationale. People are to be applauded when they transcend their own preconceptions, perhaps, rather than anyone being too surprised when they don't. Personally, if I were to propose significant RFA reform, it would be to introduce some modest suffrage requirement, and to allow 'crats to strike out votes that are unrationalised, or have rationales that the community has indicated are unreasonable. (So a "line item" veto in effect, rather than the "let the BCs decide in conclave" that has been suggested by way of big-bang reform.) Any proposal that changes the role of BCs of course suffers from the objection that it's not the job they were elected to do, however, and the lack of any term limit or "recall" provision for 'crats, but the above would I think at least be less drastic than some. Alai 01:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Do my eyes deceive me or are there only two concurrent RfAs? Are we running low on good candidates? -- tariqabjotu 22:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, yeah. I think people are just busy. Yanksox 22:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'll give it a whirl, but I'm not sure it would pass... - Mike 22:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'd wait a bit. People will find fault with 1700 edits in 10 months. Not saying I would, but a number of people would. --Durin 22:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That's an average of 5 or 6 edits a day.. and that's considered "bad"? - jc37 22:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't disagree with you, but based on recent history I can guarantee there'd be oppose votes based on that. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. That's why I'm hesitant. I have very much imcreased my activity level lately though. I didn't really plan on going for the mop before I got over the 2,000 plateau. There shouldn't be, but there are a lot of editcountitis votes on RfAs. - Mike 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• See, that's exactly why I proposed a mandatory suffrage for candidates that is reasonable, so that people won't make up their own that is not. >Radiant< 22:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• And it's ok for people to make up what standards they want. For us to blanket them would be wrong, and sets a bar that will always rise. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps now is the time for existing admins to put themself up for confirmation... do I see any volunteers? :) --ALoan (Talk) 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with reconfirmation is scalability. It's always been a problem, and will remain a problem. From my chair, one of the chief problems we have at RfA is the difficulty in analyzing a candidate unknown to you. This is exacerbated by what is usually (this week is a rare exception) a long list of 10-20 candidates up at any given time. We now have in excess of 1,000 admins. We know from the stats above that at least 450 of them are actively using their abilities. If we forced reconfirmation of all admins, we'd add another 9 RfAs per week to the list. I'm not in favor of admins being above community desire, but expressing that desire by forcing yearly confirmations is a process fraught with problems with scalability. --Durin 22:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking of starting a thread exactly titled "Two?". After a year-and-a-half I've literally never seen this. It would be interesting to correlate admin growth with absolute and/or percentage article growth on the Wiki itself (Durin, you do enough, but I'm thinking of you ;). Not to draw too broad a conclusion from one look at RfA, but a plateau here might indicate a larger plateau. Marskell 23:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• What in particular are you looking for? Ratio of articles to admins? That ratio has slowly increased over the last couple of years. Slowly. --Durin 23:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• You're probably looking for one of the first four graphs here. -- tariqabjotu 03:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Strangely the backlogs are probably somewhat better than normal at the moment.Geni 01:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's definitely not typical. Michael 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say everybody's sick and tired of the stupid bullshit that goes on on RfA. I think it's time for reform. — Werdna talk criticism 05:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

OK then. Present a specific problem that needs reformation, give a solution, and we'll consider it. Don't just make blanket statements like that. --tjstrf 05:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

See Triona's section above. That, and the fact that it is very harsh on candidates. As for solutions, there are a variety sitting around on this page. — Werdna talk criticism 06:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• See also this essay on the matter. >Radiant< 07:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of essays in all sorts of places (this, for instance; subpages of other users; various Wikipedia policy proposals, etc). It is clear that there are issues that need to be addressed with adminning (and de-adminning). The problem is building a sufficient head of steam, and consensus, to do something about it. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

{{sofixit}}. >Radiant< 10:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Sofixit? Well, I am entirely happy to unilaterally impose my "solution" on the community if that it what you really want, but I rather suspect that others might like to have some input into the process. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is, there are at least five proposals along these lines in Wikispace. If you think this is important, you can generate a head of steam from there using the best parts of all five. In my experience whenever there are multiple proposals for something, most of them are way too complex. Witness Wikipedia:AfD_reform as complex, and WP:PROD as a simple end result. >Radiant< 11:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's just go with the Dutch solution, that's simple and solves everything. As summarized by Radiant!: "Adminship is subject to yearly reconfirmation via this same procedure, but only if there are significant objections to the admin, which generally means about 4 or 5 dissenters." This means that there won't be a huge load of work in confirming admins everyone likes. And since the window of requesting demotion only opens once every year most storms in a teacup won't lead to a demotion !vote. Haukur 11:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

that's perfect. I voice my full support for this "Dutch solution". With 1,000 admins and a "reconfirmation window" of one week, there'll be about 20 admins "open to recall" at any given moment. Only a minority of these will provoke "4-5 dissenters", so that we will have maybe 3-4 open "reconfirmation requests" open. This additional yard of red tape is well worth the added stability and control, resulting in increased trust awarded the admin population, in my opinion. dab (ᛏ) 12:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I would support any admin being required to be reconfirmed at any time if, say, 5 other admins called for it, but this idea is much better than doing nothing. Will there be any sufferage requirements for the dissenters? Only admins? 100/500/1000 edits, 1 month/3 months?-- ALoan (Talk) 13:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

yes, the "yearly window" seems a bit arbitrary. Better set a minimal time between requests. It would be reasonable to force re-submission if 5 admins request it, but we have to be very clear that this adds another power to the admin population, setting it apart from the user base: only admins will be able to ostracize another admin (which then will have to be re-confirmed by the entire community). But to avoid needless bad faith ostracisms (anyone can conjure up five troll accounts), I would support a "any admin has to re-submit to RFA if five other admins call for it (don't do this to the same admin more than once every three months)" policy (especially since it will still be the community having the final say). dab (ᛏ) 14:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The important thing at this point is not to get overly bogged down in details or edge cases. A lot of us agree with the basic idea and I don't care that much whether it gets implemented with ketchup or with mustard. The Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages page shows several ways this is done in other languages. Some look like they might not scale well to :en: but the Dutch one looks fine to me. If we could get Radiant! on board here he could tell us more about the way this works over there. He's also someone who can make policy happen after the community has stood and scratched its collective head for a year. Haukur 15:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I've created a proposal at Wikipedia:Ostracism. I know we have a lot of these flying around at the moment. That's part of the process, it will boil down to something more simple. Please comment and improve. dab (ᛏ) 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Question: if you incorporate any process of "re-election or recall," doesn't it legimitize political behaviour and attitudes? Sure, there will be a sense of accountability but it still diverts attention and energy from building an encyclopedia. Are there holes here through which politics can build up? Rama's arrow 15:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Other Questions: if a large number of editors don't bother to analyze an RfA candidate, can we say that a process of re-call will provoke sufficient scrutiny? If a majority of 1,000 admins won't be hauled up in this process, will there be a real sense of accountability? Will admins feel comfortable in making tough decisions? Rama's arrow 15:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not opposing this idea, rather trying to check for possible holes. Rama's arrow 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I felt that a mistake made in the Carnildo affair was to start an RfA at all. ArbCom should not have asked for community opinion on a case it was handling itself - it should always complete doing its job. Consider Sean Black's recent RfA - he handed in the tools and then asked for them back after some time. Only 70% of the folks wanted to give his tools back. He was given the tools back, clearly breaking the RfA guideline. If it was only a short period of time, why couldn't the bureaucrats or ArbCom just hand the tools back themselves, albeit after a brief discussion at WP:BN or ArbCom? Perhaps there is a candid danger in asking the "masses" to hold individual admins accountable, no matter how selective or infrequently you do it. Rama's arrow 15:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I consider administrators to be those editors who protect the flanks of article/media editors, acting like minesweepers keep the path safe for the army to advance. Would it really help to introduce complex processes that take admins in a different direction from where the army is supposed to go? Rama's arrow 15:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

18 requests on the main page right now... That's the most I've ever seen! I wonder what the record is for the most RfAs running at once. Grandmasterka 07:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Amazing to think that when my RfA closed under 2 months ago there were just four left running. 4 --> 18?? Who said its broken aye people!! Glen 09:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

There were just two running a while back, someone made a thread here about it. – Chacor 09:57, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Here you go. (Also, compare the short-lived two RfA revision with the current one.) The oldest RfA ends roughly a day and a half from now, there's a chance for more. Got any promising candidates? >3 months and ~2500 edits? Grandmasterka 10:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

And Wikicats makes 19!' Glen 10:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Promptly back to 18. – Chacor 15:11, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

So much for the notion that the process is so gruesome that no one wants to undertake it. Most of them are succeeding too. I still don;t understand the opposes to Benon, though. I would have given him the mop long ago. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 14:30, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Everything goes in cycles. The thing isn't broke as much as it's just going through a phase. Yu need to give it a chance. Yanksox 15:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, everything goes in cycles. I'd suspect one of the things that goes in cycles is the severity with which folks going through the RfA process are graded. It's my impression we've relaxed the standards a little (examples include: no more 1FA and self nomination is no longer the kiss of death).

Not suggesting the change in standards is inappropriate. Just that this might be influencing the improved RfA turnout to some degree... Cheers - Williamborg (Bill) 15:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Now, at present, it's up to 19, and for the most part, it's not a problem of quantity over quality. Agent 86 21:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The same thing happened last year. We had a big surge in October 2005 and promoted 67 admins. The 4th quarter of 2005 remains the record quarter for admin promotions, and there have been several peaks and valleys over the years in admin growth. NoSeptember 12:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The following is a joke request for adminship that was run into the ground. Please do not modify it, just move along.

Wow! I looked at the RFA stats on my talkpage today and they look wonderful! There's at least half a dozen nominees with 100% support! The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Things seem to move in waves on RfA. One minute people are complaining that it's an nigh-impossible gauntlet that candidates are forced to endure; the next minute 10 of 12 candidates have 88%+ support. Maybe the process isn't quite so broken... SuperMachine 17:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me if I hope the trend lasts, at the very least, through November 7th. ;-) EVula 17:21, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

ALERT! EVula is overeager - everybody vote to oppose! :-) Jokes aside, there are usually several nominations at a time from inexperienced editors that are naturally bound to fail - these skew the counts and give a negative impression when you're monitoring RfA. If you remove such cases from previous stats, they should rise to this same success rate. Rama's arrow 17:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It almost always comes down to the quality and experience of the candidate. Yes, there are occasionally situations such as strong candidates being rejected because of their biases or weaker candidates being promoted due to IRC popularity. But these are exceptions, not the rule. SuperMachine 17:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

• EVula's going to run? Oppose: Less than ten thousand edits, and less than five thousand to the main article namespace. And what's this? Only 13 edits to categories?!?!?!? Too inexperienced! ;) --Durin 02:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm also seeing less than 99% use of edit summaries while editing the Obscure 1980s TV Specials page after 7:00 PM on Thursdays when it's not raining outside. I'm afraid I must oppose. - Mike | Happy Thanksgiving 02:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, just who does that jerk think... he... aww, damn. EVula 03:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

INCIVILITY! INCIVILITY here! We've got him! Get on IRC, spam e-mail everybody! Oppose, Oppose! (lols) We're running this joke into the ground. Rama's arrow 03:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. He just used a dirty word! My grandmother was in the room, saw it, had a heart attack and DIED! --tjstrf Now on editor review! 03:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't recall the last time I saw only four nominations on the page. Is that unusual, or have I just not been paying attention? —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 20:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is unusually low, but note that the recent high number of nominations was also unusual. —Centrx→talk • 20:58, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It may be that upon seeing your nomination everyone realizes that now all adminship tasks will be efficiently taken care of and no more admins will be needed. —Centrx→talk • 20:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It depends. A month ago, we went from having about 18 to 4 in a matter of a day or two. Michael 21:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If you look at Tangobot (talk · contribs)'s contributions you can get a good idea. The last time I could see it being this low was October 25 when it was at 4 for several hours in a row. If you go back to September around the 26th, 27th, 28th we had between 1 and 4 at any given time. Metros232 21:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Mayhaps American college students are reluctant to start a nomination now since they'll be going home this week (for Thanksgiving) and won't be online so much. And other Wikipedians are expecting guests or travel this week. Or it could just be one of those random fluctuations. --W.marsh 21:05, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Whaaat? Not being online while at home for Thanksgiving? W.marsh, how ELSE am I going to avoid awkward time with relatives?  :) Metros232 21:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Nobody remembers that, a couple of months ago, we had only two? -- ReyBrujo 21:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, if no new RfAs are nominated in the next 19 hours, we could be back down to two again. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 22:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Quick! Find someone to nominate! :-) Seriously, there probably are seasonal and specific fluctuations in RfA levels. For example, I predict that the forthcoming ArbCom elections during December will stress people out, so possibly that will impact RfA nominations and voting, but hopefully not to the extent of affecting actual results. Though I could be totally wrong on this. Was RfA noticeably affected during the last ArbCom elections, or the recent WMF Board election? Carcharoth 23:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually December 2005 is the all-time high in terms of admins promoted in a month, with 68 (it must have been high, it's the month they let me in). So maybe people'd blown off all their argumentativeness at the Arbcom elections. See [[2]] --W.marsh 01:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeesh, if we get down to just two, I'll register a sockpuppet and put it up for consideration just for shits and giggles. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why the number of nominations fluctuates so much these days. I think about a month ago at one time there were almost 20 noms. :) Gizza^{Chat ©} 08:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I keep meaning to register a sock to toss up on RfA for whenever we have so few people, just so it doesn't seem quite so lonely. ;-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 08:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It will be cool if nobody is nominated for the next three days. Then we may have no noms running at a particular moment. Gizza^{Chat ©} 12:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen two nominations several times prior to today, but never one or zero - does anyone recall the last time that happened? Picaroon 18:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

In a way, back in the time when self-noms were separated from the other nominations. The self-nom slot would sometimes be empty or have just one or two noms. But that's a different Era in "wiki time". ;-) Redux 19:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's when the self-noms were separated, aka. "sitting in the back of the bus". Times have changed. feydey 19:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, even back when I started in the summer of 2004, there was never a single moment I can remember when we had less than two noms. Back then, if you were especially popular, you might get more than 30 support votes. How times have changed, indeed. – ClockworkSoul 19:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It is the holiday season. I'd guess that people are recovering from turkey induced comas or the festivus feats of strength and are getting ready to celebrate the new year. Agent 86 21:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Wel, everything's going pretty well, so there's not too much need to admins at the moment. Or maybe I should apply just to annoy those who want to see 1 or 0 candidates :P. Actually, I fall under that, I'd like to see very few. --Wizardman 21:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Once everyone from #wikipedia-in is certified as an admin you should see things slow down. —Malber (talk • contribs) 00:45, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You may want to join in then... ;) --Srikeit 15:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and see my RfA turn into a RfC by NHN? No thanks. —Malber (talk • contribs) 16:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

5 nominations now, so the low number probably won't happen again for a while. --Wizardman 03:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)