Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 254

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Nice idea @MelanieN: but most of those you would approach aren't masochists. The main thing that makes RfA hard for the candidate is that it is a lifetime appointment and too much of the community gets to nash their teeth at them for a whole lot of (often frivolous or just downright nasty) reasons on the back of that premise. Mother Theresa would fail RfA if a couple of users dug up evidence she once kicked a rabid dog. @RexxS: was one of the best experienced candidates to run in recent times and look how that went. However, there are many other editors out there that have run out of ideas or enthusiasm for articles they want to write, or get bored with the monotonous vandalism reversion or NPP, or have reviewed all the current AfDs and are looking for things to do, but won't go through hell week and who could blame them. A way better idea would be to bypass the RfA process in its current form. Take the heat out of it by returning to "Admin is no big deal", and taking away the idea that the community is stuck with bad ones forever

• Existing Admins should identify, approach and get agreement from potential candidates for said areas, and commit to providing some guidance.
• Candidate should then be vetted by 'crats and given Adminship for 12 months.
• Then they could have a 'ratification RfA', where they are generally likely to pass as they have shown they "ain't breaking it". I would expect all admins to pass this ratification as long as there are not generally popping up as the perpetrator in ANI cases or losing Arbcom cases against them.
• I'd also like to see ratification RfAs for all admins every , say 3 years...same thing, unless ANI or ARBCOM cases are showing an unsettling trend, I'd expect opposers to be shut down by the community.

Never happen though, too many people like the drama.ClubOranje^T 11:18, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

• The need to undergo a periodical ratification RFA would probably cause thosr admins who deal with our most controversial areas to fail, even if they had handled the situations correctly; these are the admins we need to retain more than anyone else. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:18, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

  That's my same issue with it. If you handle a tough issue, you will handle it wrong. If you had handled it differently, you would have also handled it wrong. That would lead to admins only handling uncontroversial situations, since wading into tough ones guarantees some opposes next time around. No matter what you do in those cases, someone's going to be mad about it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:47, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

  Well I disagree with both of you. Define the criteria for opposing. If an admin is taken multiple times to ARBCOM and the community decides there they acted appropriately, then no issue. If the community finds they have gone outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour then perhaps they shouldn't have the tools anyway. Same at ANI. Time for people to be a bit mature. If a user complains about being blocked it should take two minutes to see there was some justification and that user can be told to pull their head. Too much pussyfooting around. And any admin who thinks they might lose the tools at a ratification RfA is exactly they type of admin that probably should because they are likely abusing the privilege. Admins ask the community to trust them, but they don't trust the community. Bit of a one-way street. I know a number of Admins who ran under a flag of admin recall. Don't remember voting them out yet. It's not about a couple of people having a grudge with an admin. Most of the community will see right through that and back the admin. The current system is not not working and hasn't been for some time. But like I said, know one wants to know. They want to protect their own little world and complain endlessly that not enough people want to put themselves on the pedestal to get stoned for public amusement, instead of getting on with the job of building a quality encyclopaedia. ClubOranje^T 06:49, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

  An admin reviews a discussion requiring admin closure. Significant claims were made in both directions, and the admin chose one. Months later, the admin is up for reconfirmation. Quite likelt, the "losers" in that discussion would be more likely to show up than the "winners".

  This admin has actually closed many such discussions. A user "won" in one discussion, but "lost" in an other one. This user would be more likely to remember the case where (s)he "lost" and oppose the admin because of that. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:55, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

  Od Mishehu, I personally wouldn't know whether you've closed any discussion I've been involved in as I don't normally even look. I do know of a couple of admins who have closed contrary to what I might agree with, and I know a couple I find slightly rude or dicks, but that doesn't mean I'd vote against them; they'd need to do something legitimately wrong. You know, abuse the tools. But I'm not a long tenured admin, so I still think AGF is a valid guideline. ClubOranje^T 07:15, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree. I think what's generally forgotten is that it will almost certainly be the same body of editors turning out to !vote for each one; I am wholly unconvinced that someone who can gain adminship without annoying people is then going to start annoying 50%+1 of them; or, likewise, that an admin who works in difficult areas will be unapprecaietd by the vast number of commenattors. I would expect the number of editors making WP:IDLI (read=dumbass) !votes at the reconfirmation to be the same proportion of editors who do so now at RfAs, viz, a tiny minority except in the cases where the candidate is problematic. The only adins who would have anything tofear, rightly, would be the legacies; not because they would have to defend maing bad calls, but because they would have to defend making no calls at all (cf this episode), and by it's nature that's not going to har the project. Frankly, the community—at least those who make up the backbone at RfA—are shit hot and spotting trolling !votes, and I see no reason why RRfA would be different; except the Discussion moved to talk page template would continue to be kept busy :D ——SerialNumber54129 13:15, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: I don't often disagree with you, but I think your description of what such a recall process would look like is missing something about the nature of Wikipedia editors as a body; that people are willing to go to far greater lengths to spite their "enemies" than to defend colleagues they have a good relationship with. There's a fair number of people who have expressed appreciation for the actions I have taken as an admin, but they are not as likely to !vote at a reconfirmation or recall as those editors who have long-standing grudges. I can't even blame them; those folks who have supported an admin in the past are far more likely to be spending their time constructively rather than monitoring their contributions for opportunities where they can !vote against said admin, whereas those who bear a grudge all crawl out of the woodwork whenever anything resembling an election occurs. You commented at WP:CUOS2018; you've seen this happen. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:42, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: You're overlooking the fact that it's nowhere near good enough to have a majority of editors in support; the threshold is not 51%, it's 76%. The minority of opposers get super-votes at RfA. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:18, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, you're overlooking the fact the threshold is not 76%. If you are changing the system to get with the times, then get with the times. You get to set the threshold for a new system. Personally I'd be happy with 75%....Remember you are voting to take tools away, not give them. If 75% think they should be stepping down then that shows a problem. If you. Think that's too low, suggest a different number. ClubOranje^T 07:00, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

A wise individual once said: "Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." The stress of dealing with difficult areas is great enough without adding the concern that it may reduce the odds of reconfirmation. UninvitedCompany 20:52, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

• And another wise individual once said "Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it." I'm going from fuzzy memory, but as I recall when the German Wikipedia instituted reconfirmation RfAs, they lost 40% of their admin corps from admins who didn't even want to stand for a reconfirmation. With respect, I don't see how we solve what ails RfA by making admins run through the gauntlet repeatedly. Further, if we did lose 40% of our active admin corps, the result could be catastrophic. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:31, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

• Maybe I don't explain things very well, because some of you just don't seem to get it. It doesn't have to be "RUNNING THE GAUNTLET". It's only seen like that because we let it be what it is. Most of the issues come from frivolous opposes. There will no longer be frivolous opposes; *oppose, he blocked me for 3RR, R= "so, not abuse of tools, you deserved it, vote zero rated", *oppose, I didn't like how he closed that AfD, R="So, arguments were for and against, there's DrV if you don't agree, but he didn't abuse admin tools so vote zero rated", *oppose, he blocked me in a content dispute he was involved in because I held different view, R="you and 30% of other voters have raised valid issues, let's evaluate the arguments." Won't take too many of these before the culture changes.

Its also not about existing admins; write in a protectionism clause grandfathering right to perpetual power for pre-existing admins if you wish. It's about getting other good editors who want to help become admins do they can help, without them having to be torn up and spat out. I just don't see how that is seen as a good thing by so many in an environment where civility and such like is a core principal.

Open your minds a little. New methods can have new rules it doesn't have to be locked into the old ways. It doesn't have to be 70% pass rate. It doesn't have to be any oppose counts. It doesn't have to be lots of questions for a candidate to answer - in fact I wouldn't see any need for questions, because they'll have already answered by their admin actions during their trial periods. It can be as simple as #crats giving the tools on recommendation of (2?) admins, #(2?) admins coach the trialist for 2? 4? 6? months, #crats pull the plug if coaches report issues, or present to community if they don't. Most by then would fly through as there will be no grounds for oppose if they are using the tools right. ClubOranje^T 13:07, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

No, it literally is not. An RfA-like process is a requirement for deletion and viewdeleted rights (the tools are tied together) per the Wikimedia Foundation, and I would not trust a "trainee" with blocking rights. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^Bori! 18:48, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

P.s. And I'm pretty sure those mentioned above that admins have been asking to run would be less reluctant if you adopted a system that actually aligned with the core values of Wikipedia. ClubOranje^T 13:13, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

If anybody is interested in my experience, I was the only admin to ever run a reconfirmation on the Russian Wikipedia, a couple of years I have passed RfA (a couple of other people tried but their reconfirmation was speedily closed by crats). Between RfA and reconfirmation, I was pretty active on an analog of ANI, on AfD, and I also sat for one term in the ArbCom. I passed RfA with smth like 98% votes, and I passed reconfirmation with 97% votes.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:17, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

• Vanamonde93, with endorsement from Hawkeye7, UninvitedCompany, and Hammersoft, has hit the nail on the head. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:02, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
• Well, it would certainly be interesting if RfA was refactored such that Oppose !votes would be discounted unless they were accompanied by explicit incidents demonstrating potential unfitness, and then for reconfirmations those had to be incidents of abuse of tools. I'd find it even more interesting if no two Oppose votes could cite the same incident. I.e. rather than number of !votes having any bearing on an RfA, it would be the number of incidents that was considered relevant. Everyone makes mistakes, and perhaps there should be more focus on the number of mistakes rather than the number of people who view the mistake as such. DonIago (talk) 13:59, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Interesting indeed. Currently a single undisclosed or recent example of sockpuppetry or personal attack can derail an RFA, whilst Deletion tagging errors need to be both multiple and recent. I'm not sure the community is ready to have two RFAs, one passing because we could only find a dozen incidents of sockpuppetry and personal attacks, and the other failing because though all the CSD tagging errors were stale and current CSd taging was exemplary, in the candidates first few months they did multiple A7 tags on articles that asserted significance such that they merited going too AFD, but which by our policy should be deleted via AFD not A7. I'm all for requiring Opposers to give examples or oppose per other people's examples, but requiring each oppose to find a fresh example is OTT. ϢereSpielChequers 09:21, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
• I find it interesting you use Mother Theresa as an example because... Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:08, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

The RexxS RfA has created a lot of comment and spawned many mini RfC recently, but the significant facts and stats have not been taken into account - more precisely clouded by the facts that the drama is due to the RexxS opposers not having got their own way, a lot is based on conjecture, and nobody appears to be bothering to check out the history of research into RfA as a process or to read some essential recent articles about it before commenting:

• Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails? (following one of the longest hiatus on this very talk page a year ago)
• What do admins actually do?
• The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

Something dramatic must have happened in 2007/2008 after which both the successful RfA and total number of RfA began to drop roughly by half each year shown on the (Wikipedia:RFA by month overview table by WereSpielChequers) until we were left with only 10 'promotions' last year. Research has failed to reveal the root cause of this phenomenon, but it could lie in a combination of forces such as the gradual unbundling of tools, a perceived sharpening of voters' criteria, the irresistible attraction for voters to be disingenuous and offensive with impunity, the doubling of the number of participants since the 2015 reform, and perhaps simply a general apathy for maintenance tasks - although this latter is not reflected in the regular clamour for minor rights. What ever it is, editors of the right calibre who have been approached have very often clearly stated that they are not prepared to go through hell on wheels for seven days however good their chances may be. Some of the key people such as Bishonen, Spinningspark, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Amakuru, Seraphimblade, Guy Macon, Cullen328, MER-C, Risker, TonyBallioni, Anna Frodesiak, MelanieN, and Spinningspark who don't regularly weigh in here my wish to come up with some ideas.

The stats page at WP:RFAY created 2016 by Hammersoft provides yet again a similar overview with the additional undeniable evidence that the vast majority of successful RfA generally pass by a large consensus irrespective of pre or post-reform, and that very few were anywhere near the discretionary zone whatever it happened to be at the time. In fact while over 2,000 adminships have been created, only 28 RfA were ever subject to a 'crat chat, something like only 1.4%. Extrapolate that, and the next borderline RfA might not be for years at this rate.

This all seems to demonstrate that the current spate of discussions since the RexxS RfA are based on a set of artificial premises, none of which really need to be addressed. As I mentioned earlier, the community is looking at the problems associated with RfA down the wrong end of the telescope. Fix the voters and RfA will fix itself: that is the more pressing issue, and has been since Wales' famous statement about RfA being "a horrible and broken process". Horrible, certainly, but perhaps not beyond repair.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:20, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah yes. RfA reform. I have some observations:

[1] If you ask "is RfA broken" you get 60% to 80% consensus, depending on exactly what you ask and how you ask it.

[2] Any specific proposal for fixing the problem never gets even 10% consensus.

[3] You rarely if ever see any specific proposal that has not been proposed and rejected several times already.

[4] I have been asking for over ten years for somebody to give me a good reason why I or anybody else would want to go through hell to become a Wikipedia administrator. Nobody has ever presented a good argument. Mostly nobody even tries.

[5] I know exactly how to pass an RfA if I ever go batshit insane enough to want to become a Wikipedia administrator (see above). Spend one or maybe two years never disagreeing with anyone on anything. Stay away from all noticeboards. Spend a couple of hours every day writing new articles on noncontraversial subjects, and abandon the article the moment anyone disagrees with you on anything. Participate in things like AfD, new page curation, vandalism reverting, etc., but never ever on anything where there is the slightest chance that there will anything other than overwhelming agreement with you. Finally, having demonstrated that you have zero interest in doing any of the tasks that admins actually do, run for RfA. Once you get the bit, do the bare minimum of noncontroversial admin work required to avoid an inactivity desysop.

I would love to see someone argue that I am wrong on any of the above points. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:55, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe I'd disagree a little on #5; I think some people will want to see how you handle a conflict.

Me, I am wondering if people just are less interested in becoming admin. Or perhaps more exactly, that the kind of editor who wants admin buttons thinks they'll struggle in RfA while the type of people who will pass uncontroversially just doesn't need access to the admin tools. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:07, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

EC@Kudpung. We know why RFA dropped off a cliff in early 2008. Rollback was unbundled, in that era you had to have Rollback in order to use Huggle, and before the unbundling of Rollback it was possible to pass RFA simply as a "good vandalfighter", after that particular RFA reform it ceased to be possible to pass RFA without some content contributions (there have since been various abortive attempts to raise that further to "some featured contributions" but the change in early 2008 is stark and known). There are multiple theories as to subsequent decline in RFA numbers, and yes an obvious anomaly in that effective vandalfighting does really require the ability to block vandals and protect pages.

@Guy Macon There is an old trope at WT:RFA to bemoan the inability of various proposed reforms to get consensus, and yes there are a set of perennial suggestions that keep recurring. But one reason why some keep recurring and getting in some cases over 50% support, is that there are several obvious and sensible reforms, and eventually we work through the opposition and fine tune the proposal or the idea comes up when the community consensus has shifted. Even a reform as obvious as making the page the equivalent of extended confirmed protected took about a decade. The last big reform package included two reforms, advertising RFAs on watchlists and lowering the discretionary zone. The greater advertising has greatly increased the voters, though sadly not yet the candidates. The change to the discretionary zone led directly to the recent RFA success. As for your method of passing RFA, yes that would work, but as recent RFAs have demonstrated, it isn't the only way of passing. for starters, how you respond to controversy is important. In terms of motivation, some people want the extra bits, others are content not to have them. As a nominator I start with the former group. As for it being "hell". RFA is timeconsuming, a contentious RFA is stressful, but most successful ones are more of an inauguration, and some of the last few have had support levels approaching 100%. I'm one of those who passed at the second attempt, and the contrast between my two in stress terms was marked. ϢereSpielChequers 08:12, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• The chances of any kind of revolutionary change are close to nil in my opinion, but since I have been (double) pinged, I'll give you my views (entirely without evidence) as to why there is a problem. There are two broad reasons, neither of which can be fixed by tinkering, and neither of which the community is capable supporting a radical solution for.

1. As others have mentioned, the RFA process is hell to go through. That is no way to appoint people to a task, most especially volunteers. Having the whole community interrogate is just crazy. The candidate will never know what the requirements are because any random issue can be raised by any random editor. This is not how things are done in the real world. The solution is to give the task of appointing administrators to a finite sized appointment board. The appointment of the board itself can be open to community participation, but once they are in place they are solely responsible for appointing admins. The board would be small enough that we don't need to worry about finding enough candidates to go through the process. After all, the Arbitration Committee does not seem to have this problem. Hell, this could even be a function of the already existing ArbCom. SpinningSpark 11:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
2. Administrators have very limited powers. I know this is an unpolular thing to say; the general perception is that administrators are too powerful. They particularly do not have any power to resolve content disputes. Think about it, we have been demanding content experience from candidates for years, but these content creators are given no powers in the very area that is of interest to them. In fact, there is a problem here that goes beyond the lack of administrators. That problem is that Wikipedia has no formal process for definitively resolving content disputes. This results in even minor disagreements becoming major wars with no hope of resolution. I have suggested elsewhere that Wikipedia should have an Editorial Board (you know, like the ones all grown-up encyclopaedias have) and if such a board were implemented it could set the boundaries for administrator intervention.

When Wikipedia was young and developing, it was an exciting thing to become an administrator. Now the community has matured, I think there is a better understanding of just how limited the administrator role is. That combined with the difficulty of going through an RfA pretty much explains, to me at least, why there are so few candidates. SpinningSpark 11:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• As long we have the occasional Arbitration Case over administrator conduct (for example, the one that just started), there is going to be that perception among random voters that candidates have to be extraordinarily vetted and qualified to ensure they don’t abuse the powers. I would argue that the arbitration case linked above, necessary as it is, will simply add fuel to the opposition fire. If Enigmaman was able to get away with the giant mound of examples in the evidence section, how can we be sure a new admin is not going to get away with the same? I know there are a lot of problems with that argument, but tell that to the pile-on opposers who can make a ridiculous claim look just credible enough to be usable at RFA. As an aside, I do not think most of the recently appointed admins in the last couple of years have been overly bad at abusing power. The bigger problem I see with newer admins as a normal content editor is their being over-zealous in using the tools and throwing their weight around. While an overzealous admin with good intentions is easier to handle (and repair damage from) than one who skits the fine line of abusing power, I don’t think either one is helping RFA candidates at the moment. ZettaComposer (talk) 12:03, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• Radical or semi radical?

Quarterly selection dates (and Crats may call selection, at any time, generally related to the number of candidates expressing interest). Crats will also decide on incidental timings related to quarterly selection, and generally act as election committee in addition to final consensus maker).

Selection run similar to Arbcom elections provided that for winners, there be at least 60% of secure poll, and 75% Bureaucrats in the finalizing chat agree. (Crats who participate on a candidates page or in secure poll are recused) Candidates are still well advised to have nominators. Others may write voter guides if they wish. Crats may run the chat anyway they see fit provided that it is done openly (and it is expected that discussion will center on the issues raised on candidate pages, the level of secure poll support and anything else they see relevant), they are free to use straw polls among themselves any other consensus building mechanism. They may delegate scrutineer of the secure poll itself to remove votes to an internal group or single crat. (The secure poll question: Should [candidate] be forwarded to the crats for consideration?)

Further, it is the general expectation given to Crats to that about 1/3 of the candidates standing at the quarterly will be selected, barring good reason. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:10, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

(I can't see any way to make admin more attractive to those of us who don't find the job itself attractive, and I have never seen anything that convinces we actually need more admins, because we do not know how many we need, but if the desire is for new blood and the thinking is the current selection process is broken, let's try something different with a melding of the past). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:10, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• Spinningspark has an exceptional breakdown above: the problem is that RfA is too big of a deal, and adminship is too small of a deal proportional to the amount of work it takes to become one. As I've said before, nobody wants to spend years working on Wikipedia like it's their full-time job only to be able to mindlessly delete pages and block IPs at the end of it. Past RfA reforms were passed with good intentions but have been complete policy failures in terms of attracting new candidates.

Because this is a website and we have literally invented all of our policies and processes, there is endless possibility for reform. The obvious solution here is to make RfA proportional to adminship -- make the selection process closer to PERM. This would involve setting criteria for adminship, and a community comment period that is focused on those criteria. But I also think that deep down, the vast majority of the community really likes the status quo. Admins like it because it makes them feel good about passing such a big hurdle. The Content Creators™ like it because it means their "enemies" can't get access to more buttons. The dispute resolutioners at AN/ANI like it because it means they can continue to act as the final authority without pesky new people running around with the block button. It prevents bad people from becoming admins at the expense of preventing an uncounted number of good people, or good enough people, from accessing the toolset as well. We can put as many bandaids on RfA as we like, but in five years we'll still be wondering why nobody wants to step forward. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 16:53, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• In many ways I agree with Spinning Spark, but note an asterisks for one (semi-large, now, area). We have been unable to grapple with having a content board, mainly because there is no verifiable expertise, so what did we do instead, Arbcom stepped into the breach to create wide swaths of the pedia subject to plenary discretion of admins. (Further note, it looks like the job is unattractive, in part because large swaths of admins don't do it, we don't even expect them too, and basically say, 'here you go, after all that, be functionally inactive.') Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
• Our RfA standards are currently the lowest they have been in at least a decade, and while to one degree or another I agree with both Ajraddatz and Kudpung, I will again point out that I think the biggest problem is we need people to run. To address some of the points above:
  • The level we expect now is about right for what you'd want someone with administrative access on the 5th largest website in the world. Yes, we are just a website, but we're not the same just website we were in 2004. +sysop can't really do anything too terrible from a technical perspective, but it can create a ton of PR problems, which is just as important, and why I can't really fully get behind Ajraddatz' view here.
  • The January 2017 crop showed that we are willing to promote acceptable candidates en masse and if anything, the standards have remained the same or gotten lower since then. The question just becomes why aren't people volunteering? And there are several possible answers to this, but three come to mind:
    • We're losing people who are active editors to recruit
    • People who are qualified aren't interested or are scared off
    • We already have most of the people who would meet a reasonable RfA standard as sysops

I think the second one isn't really the answer: RfA has had a terrible reputation for years, and we haven't had this low of a number for a while. The real answer, I feel, is somewhere in between the first and third options.

There are plenty of editors who could make decent admins: somewhere between 10-20 a year who are interested, apparently, but while we are maintaining stable editor numbers, a significant number of new editors, even those who stay around, wouldn't meet a reasonable standard for administrator status on this project. I'm not talking full-time work, I'm talking basic understanding and competence of culture and policies and who don't have other issues that are incompatible with adminship on this project.

I suppose the point I am making is that as a maturing project, this is to be expected, and thanks to the advent of bots, etc. we don't really need 1200 active administrators anymore. We do need more admins, yes, but we aren't in a crisis by any means, and reflecting on where we are as a project today compared to where we were as a project even in 2007 will put this in perspective. That being said, I'm happy for anyone to reach out to me if they are considering RfA and I'll give me advice and see if we can work out a nom. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:43, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

That's probably a better description of why the community likes the status quo than the straw men I constructed; you're saying that the results of the current system are good for Wikipedia's current status as a top-five website. While I don't necessarily agree that a system designed by some random dudes in 2004(?) is ideal for that, I think that is a good explanation for why we aren't going to get any meaningful change. And maybe that's a good thing. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:52, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not saying it is an ideal system, but there is no such thing as an ideal system. I'm saying that the status quo works reasonably well at preventing 14 year olds with a clean block log and 3 months of Huggle experience from hard blocking the U.S. House of Representatives without realizing the implications, etc. I'm sure every one of the groups you listed above could find their own version of this action would not be ideal on a top-5 website. The system has flaws, but it does generally well at keeping disastrous choices out, which at this stage of en.wiki's development is more important than getting someone who might be good in. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:23, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I've typed up a number of responses, but none of them really hit the mark. I obviously fundamentally disagree with your assessment. There is no reason why adminship should be more important than other toolsets from a risk management perspective. There is no reason why people who were promoted in 2007 should be more responsible than users who joined more recently. Preventing good people from becoming admins stagnates our leadership and enhances some of the worst parts of the Wikipedia culture that exists today. But the reality is that you speak for the majority of the community − better to let 50 good candidates be dissuaded from the process than promote one bad admin. And that said, I'll go find more meaningful discussions to have :P -- Ajraddatz (talk) 18:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Re "no reason why people who were promoted in 2007 should be more responsible than users who joined more recently": If anything, we have evidence to the contrary, because early admins who went through less of a vetting have more often been desysopped. There's a possible statistical skew in there, in that the more years you are active the more opportunity you have to pooh the screwch in a way that causes people to seek your head on a pike (though that idea would seem to deny that admins could get better through practice and experience, so I don't buy it). Regardless, it's unquestionable that the criteria (both formal and "my personal RfA criteria are ...") were generally much more lax back then.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Since the English Wikipedia's edit rate has been fairly stable, I think it would be better to ask whether the situation is sustainable, rather than whether it's possible to increase the number of RfAs. Is the number of high-activity administrators stable? We know that the total number of administrators isn't necessarily relevant here, because the bulk of the work is handled by about a quarter of the current administrators.
  I don't know how to use Quarry, but presumably you could generate a graph of the rate of admin actions over the past five years. If it's realistically not going to cause the project to descend into chaos, then it's not really necessary to spend all this time debating it when it's not really going to spur anyone into magically wanting to dedicate hours of their time becoming one of Wikipedia's janitors. Jc86035 (talk) 17:49, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

presumably you could generate a graph of the rate of admin actions over the past five years As it turns out, I did such a thing! Check out User:Amorymeltzer/s-index; you can see some graphs (last updated in January) there of total actions, both including adminbots and not. A ton of caveats — not all sysop actions are equal and they aren't a great way to measure usefulness or difficulty — but I think both the totals and the s-index itself are interesting to have. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:18, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I’m not sure I quite understand those graphs. Do they tell us whether it is the same subset of admins who are consistently active over time, or whether there are a significant group of admins who are sometimes active and sometimes not? ϢereSpielChequers 19:17, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Nope! It's the project/community as a whole, so it doesn't care who is doing what when. We can graph an individual's number of monthly actions over time, but I don't think that really means much? Or did I misunderstand the question? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:58, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: - you get bonus points for not merely having created what I think this discussion needed, but adding it in so that the next paragraph I read actually contained it. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC) Now I feel this discussion needs some cheese paninis...

• It's always been an issue. As Kudpung correctly states, we have an interesting conundrum, where there is a general consensus that something should change, but very little on what changes should be made or how to implement them. One of the primary problems I see is that there isn't any clarity on what makes a vote (and let's not kid ourselves by putting the bang before it, there are even codified numerical thresholds) valid versus invalid. At AfD, there's at least some general guidance, in terms of for example arguments to avoid, and those are more or less permitted to be "enforced" by the closing admin. If a bunch of brand-new users flood an AfD discussion, all making very poor arguments, that can be considered and weighted (or de-weighted) accordingly. On the other hand, there's little if any guidance on what makes for a persuasive RfA argument, and many are even just a bare "support" or "oppose".

  I think part of the problem is the idea of a "big deal" after a few administrators either had their account compromised or went off the deep end. If anything, I think that those incidents actually bolstered the "not a big deal" argument, since the disruption they caused was undone easily and quickly. Something like the Wifione and Runcorn incidents, on the other hand, certainly do show that an administrator determined to do harm can do actual and insidious damage over a period of time—but, then, the RfA process didn't exactly stop them, did it?

  So, I think the questions about whether RfA is fit for purpose are well in order. I don't know an easy answer; if I did, I certainly wouldn't have kept it a secret. Perhaps the best way forward, but by no means easily done, is to figure out what we, as a community, actually want to see in an administrator, but also realizing that just checking whether someone "ticks all the boxes" isn't a great way forward. I think, also, that there's some focus on things only tangentially related to suitability as an admin, such as content work. While I wouldn't want an admin with absolutely no content experience, there are plenty of people who don't write featured articles but could make great admins, and more than one who has written a ton of featured articles but who I wouldn't want within a million miles of the tools.

  Maybe the place to start is to ask that people put forth at least some rationale for why they support or oppose the person becoming an administrator, and giving bureaucrats greater leeway to discount arguments which are either completely unsupported or nonsensical. That would probably require some substantial notification and instruction, at the very least, as right now people are especially used to putting a "support" with no rationale. If you think someone should be an administrator, one would hope that you have at least a few words to say as to why you believe they should. I think that might also help the pass rate. As things stand currently, if you want to find actual reasons, you're much more likely to find them in the oppose section than in the supports. More indication as to why the supporters believe the candidate should be an admin could allow someone undecided to see both sides of the issue, not just the reasoning behind those against.

  That also brings up the other issue. Raising the pass rate doesn't help if good candidates won't run to begin with. When asked, potential candidates quite often note the ugliness of the process as a reason for their decision not to undertake it, and even many who ultimately passed noted that as a reason that they were reluctant to go forward with it. If RfA is keeping away good candidates who would be able to pass, that certainly indicates a problem. I think, there, that the solution already lies in our existing policies. We are expected to treat one another civilly. That certainly does not mean it's not okay to disagree with someone. It means that if you do, you focus on what you disagree with and why, rather than attacking them. Those standards of behavior should be enforced at RfA, and participants there (both candidates and voters) should expect that they will be. It is okay to say you're concerned about a candidate's history and why, and for that reason oppose their request. It should not be acceptable to say "Oppose, this moron completely sucks in every way." The same should apply to any discussion regarding a particular vote, or discussion of the candidate in general. I think an expectation of baseline civility at RfA would help in convincing good potential candidates to be willing to undergo the process. It's stressful enough without namecalling and nastiness; there's no need to actively make it even worse. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

The problem is not so much "Oppose - candidate is an asshole", which happens rarely. More often, the problem is more like "Oppose - candidate made a typo [1]", "Oppose - only 1 GA", "Oppose - I have my reasons and I do not appreciate badgering" or "Oppose" (no reason) which is then jumped on with excessive badgering like "What the **** are you doing, haven't you got a ****ing clue how to behave here, people like you should be topic banned from RfA". I've done this, as has Kudpung, so I speak from some experience when I say this is neither big nor clever. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:47, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

• There's an obvious missing cause (maybe several missing causes, but one's clear and I understand it well enough to outline it) missing from Kudpung's otherwise spot-on list of them at the top of this subthread under "Something dramatic must have happened in 2007/2008 ..."). Around this time is when meta:Eventualism stopped being viable. By this point, most of the "sexy" Wikipedia articles had already been written, most WP:P&G was firmly set, even most influential WP essays already written in much like their present form; ArbCom was solidly in its bureaucratic pattern, and Jimbo's "benevolent dictator" activity was being sloughed off (while along with it went the "anyone sane and clueful can be an admin, which is no big deal" idea – definitely already a thing of the past in practice despite mantra-like lipservice to that folklore); vandalism was already well-in-hand, and most mass-scale attempts to do stupid stuff on Wikipedia were over. In short, WP had aged out of the first phase of the organizational life-cycle, and the heady buzz of the wild and wooly era of "visionary founders" and "we don't really need rules" had worn off. This is when the general editorial decline began in earnest (starting as a trickle in 2006[1]). It's also, pretty much necessarily, when the RfA decline started in earnest, candidates and RfA participants being a statistical subset of the editorship. WPs editorial ranks had been massively swelled in the early 2000s bY a large influx of Slash/dot users, fascinated and very enthused by the idea of whether the crazy experiment to collectively create a free, volunteer, self-organizing encyclopedia could actual work. That enthusiasm and fascination, in a large block of the editorial pool, faded quite quickly. By the period at which WP actually had become one of the general public's most frequently used sources of information, very rule-bound, and with much less to do at it that was new rather than polishing and maintenance, it had become an institution not a "what if", so for many of those early adopters it became boring old news, or (for some having more of a "my job is done" than "yawn" reaction) like watching your kid finally ride that bike away from you, training wheels still attached but without you holding the offspring and bike upright. PS: The checklist in Guy Macon's tongue-in-cheek post after Kudpung's, for how to pass RfA, is missing a denouement point: after you get the bit, avoid making any potentially controversial decisions that actually require judgement (you know, the reason the community needs admins at all).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrary and capricious break

• Re "...what we, as a community, actually want to see in an administrator", Maybe "we" want the wrong things. We have a number of highly vocal editors who create articles and think that this somehow makes them better than Wikignomes who make smaller improvements on a larger number of articles. Some people are simply not very good at composing paragraphs but are great at interpreting policies and dealing with people, but the content-creation-bigots would have you believe that such a person is somehow not qualified to be an administrator. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 20:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

It always seems to me that a pretty high proportion of "opposers" have created very little content themselves, though of course there are exceptions. Complaints about edit-count, an area where Wikignomes do very well, are common, but these, and excessively high requirements for actual content, are much fewer that they were a few years ago, imo. Johnbod (talk) 20:09, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Re "Oppose, this moron completely sucks in every way." We have admins, who are suppose to redact cmts/block people who write that. Are people not writing that or are admins not doing their job? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:15, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

"Oppose, this moron completely sucks in every way" is indeed blockable; "Oppose, the user has not demonstrated good judgement in any of the areas" is not.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:23, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I sometimes think it would be a good idea to come up with a kind of a rubric - that an oppose or a support vote should be supplemented by a set of "partial" votes. I saw that users have RfA criteria, but, as far as I am concerned, they are often too rigid and too detailed. For example, often users say that they require GA and FA experience. This is not really necessary - for example, on my RfA I was very open that I am never going to have GAs and FAs, and I did not get a singe oppose on this ground. The real reason why people ask for this is that they want to see some content creation experience - and it is needed, in its turn, to demonstrate, that the candidate (i) knows what copyvio, vandalism etc means; (ii) has certain respect to people who actually create content and to the content creation process. This can be reflected in a rubric as "content experience" and be one of say ten criteria. If we would be able to come up with such a rubric and run it say during a year at all RFAs (without any effect on the outcome, the rubric must merely explain the vote), we would understand much better what voters actually expect.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:20, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

No, sorry, users do not often say "they require GA and FA experience"! Some used to, but there was a bit of a campaign slapping this down a while back, & it's much less common (part of my point above) - especially FA. These days 2-3 DYKs will satisfy the great majority of voters. Johnbod (talk) 20:32, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

This is ok, I just used it as an example to illustrate my concept. One can city DYK instead.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:35, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

?? To complete the point, take for example, from a nom this January "Enterprisey has written a handful of articles, often related to tech, of which four were promoted at DYK..." - 252 Support, 2 Oppose, neither mentioning content creation. Johnbod (talk) 20:38, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Opposes for a lack of (interest in) content creation are nothing new and in fact something I myself experienced in my RfA back in 2008, i.e. the "glory days of RFA". So I don't think these kinds of opposes were ever responsible for the decline in people running for adminship. As for Ymblanter's point, I wrote the essay Wikipedia:Content awareness, not content creation back in 2011 and I think it's advice still applies.</shameless selfpromotion> Regards SoWhy 18:42, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

All I ask is that there is a little bit of Wikipedia that they look at and are proud for their efforts.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:10, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I remain unsure of why I had such an easy time of RfA, given that I had very little major content creation to my name (though I went to the opposite extreme after my RfA, I have yet to get any DYK/GA/FA credit at all) and was quite open about the fact that I Absolutely Just Don't Care about such things. As far as I know I haven't laid waste to anything, so why would anyone else standing for RfA in my situation do so? I was basically the last admin chosen based on NPP work (TonyBallioni arguably excepted), and the people deleting things and blocking username violations are still overwhelmingly all the same people who were deleting things when I tagged them (plus me!). Plus, I've come to see that getting enough experience to become an administrator drained a lot of parts of my life, which I frankly regret but can't take back now; only relying on people willing to take part in Wikipedia as a de facto second (or even first!) job, with enormous expense to their personal lives, is not a way to keep people interested in what tasks admins are needed for (since I am one now I happen to enjoy those tasks, but I'd have never sacrificed as much as I did to become one). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

I somewhat wrote the rule book on "why admins should create content" WP:WRITE, but I have never mandated GAs (eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/331dot), and would indeed support a user who poo-pooed the process with well thought out and justifiable reasons (even if I didn't personally agree with them). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Based on my experience, Blade, I never would encourage anyone to put themselves through an RfA. It's not worth the pain from the personal attacks. I guess I'm glad I passed but the RfA changed me, changed how and what I edit and how I view everyone else who edits here. Everything is different now and not in a great way. Working on Wikipedia is more duty than pleasure now. And RfAs aren't any less brutal now. Kudpung is right that it's the voters, not the candidates that are the problem here. There is no call to dutifully go through every area where a candidate is lacking and enumerate their faults. This is not Festivus, there doesn't need to be an airing of grievances but everyone that can find an edit where the candidate made a mistake will find a way to bring it up years later. Support, Oppose, I don't care, but one can oppose someone's attempt to become an admin without trashing the person. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:59, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I remember that all too well. Since then I haven't made a nomination because it was hard to even watch, I felt absolutely horrible that it got so vicious; I can only imagine what it was like for you. And it's not even for anything significant, despite the pompous claims of adminship being Very Serious. It's a few buttons, everything (save botched histmerges!) is easily reversed, and the number of ZOMG VANDALS CONSPIRING TO DESTROY US!!!!! ascribes an utterly unwarranted self-importance (as if they're lined up everywhere trying to get admin tools so they can blow up Wikipedia). It's a website. Seriously. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The issue raised by Alanscottwalker about whether admins are doing their job, is probably due to admins preferring to vote rather than clerk the process. They can't do both. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:19, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@Kudpung: - this is a similar issue to the fact that 'Crat chats have been recusing major numbers, because the more controversial (and thus likely to warrant a 'chat) an RfA, the more Crats end up participating in it. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

• Do we have an ability to see what the median (not mean) number of edits is by an admin in general, and the median & mean number of edits by an admin created in, say, the last 2 years? Nosebagbear (talk) 20:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Any stats you can draw up on it are a bit problematic as the data set is rather small (see WP:RBM). For what it's worth, the mean edit count of a successful candidate at the time of their RfA for 2017 was 43k edits. The median was 33k edits. You didn't ask for this, but on the fail side...isolating for those that failed without SNOWing or NOTNOWing; 40k edits mean, and the median was 13k. I don't have full data for 2018. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:36, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
    • @Hammersoft: - thanks for working that out. That's an impressive mean/median difference for the unsuccessfuls, must have been a seriously high candidate. You're right, of course, as to small sample size. Nosebagbear (talk) 21:42, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

RfA voting motivations

I think Seraphimblade is absolutely a spot on, and a discussion why and how we vote on RfA should happen. Hopefully it could lead to some understanding of the community what is actually going on.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:59, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• I personally rarely oppose (I believe I opposed twice, and in both times the candidates finished well below the line), and I often support if after research (admittedly, not always extremely thorough one) I do not see any crucial problems. The question is of course what are crucial problems. I do not expect the candidate to know all the details of the policies (which can be read at any moment), but I do expect them to have a clue - meaning they should know how to behave in various, sometimes unexpected situations. None of us is perfect, but at the very least one expects that if an admin really screws up and gets pointed out to that, they admit they screwed up and do not repeat.There are some things which would be absolutely unacceptable for me - such as past documented experience of vandalism, socking, or, I do not know, battleground mentality without proper subsequent reflection - but, to be honest, this is a non-issue, we do not get such candidates anyway. I can be lenient on experience, I can be lenient on past conflicts, again, if conclusions have been made, but if a candidate is clueless and not capable of reflection, I am not going to support them. See also my rubric suggestion above.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:21, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I also think Seraphimblade's comments are quite accurate, but everyone else who has commented up to now has made interesting observations and suggestions. I particularly find Seraphim's analogy with AfD a pertinent idea - it might be useful to revise WP:AAAD ad talk about it. My WP:RFAV is aimed generally at voters who are very new and/or unkind, and I often drop a link to it to voters who IMO have acted in an inappropriate manner; if anyone reads it, I belive it does its job quite well, but I'm not sure if either of the essays get read very much. One of the debatable effects of Biblioworm's reforms was the large increase in exposure of RfA - does doubling the umber of participants double the effectiveness of the process, or does it simply attract more drive-by and potential rubbish votes and user questions? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

As long as it isn't required to give any rationale for a support, we'll never know the answer to that. If all someone needs to type is "#Support ~~~~" (or even just "#~~~~") how are we supposed to know if it's drive-by and/or potential rubbish? ansh666 01:58, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I mean I'd be perfectly game for support voters having to justify, however as the pass-rate is calculated off the current status quo, we'd have to rejig it before implementing Perhaps a push for support !voters to justify would be beneficial in multiple ways, without the drawbacks? Nosebagbear (talk) 21:44, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how. Justification for support can be pretty much finding nothing to make you distrust the person. per Nom does that. Do we really want the RfA full of 'I didn't find anything bad' comments? That is basically 'per nom' so not achieving anything we don't already have. If someone comments that they support because of 'criteria a' are they then going to draw lots of oppose responses saying yeah, but what about b, did you find some of that, what about c candidate never worked in c....do supporters then need to list everything?. Oppose is different; you only really need to agree one significant thing makes them unsuitable....what I'm rally trying to say here is it is hard to prove a negative. I for one don't plan on writing a big diatribe for support along the lines of 'good AfD work, good template work, good edit count, made dyk, made fa, worked with bots, good hit rate at npp, polite talk page responses, helpful to new editors, etcetera ' ClubOranje^T 08:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

How this interplays with personality disorders

The current method favors the narcissist-leaning user, while a more mechanized voting method favors the psychopathic-leaning user. The current discussion method gives an advantage to the higher degree of networking which narcissist-leaning users are capable of. Psychopathic-leaning users, being more lone wolfs, are at a disadvantage. The existing rules concerning the limitations and conduct of admins are currently adapted to check the vices that narcissist-leaning users are more prone to succumbing. If you change to a voting system, some tweaking may be needed. As for my own preference, I suggest we continue to let the problem get worse. If it gets bad enough, people may start treating others better on the RfAs on their own. If the admin shortage gets very bad, in coming years there may be an algorithm based system which does a better job choosing admins. Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:48, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I understand your argument, but which system would favour down-to-earth, reasonable, perceptive, and caring users? ---Sluzzelin talk 21:55, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales' country school (quick answer, I need to think more).--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:05, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Some sort of real-world program where prospective admins were vetted from a pool which had taught Wikipedia classes based at local schools, libraries, places of worship, neighborhood centers, half-way houses, etc. Classes could be for adults or children, but priority would come for working with youth. People would need to be evaluated by the teachers/librarians/clergy/other administrators for their people skills. A written form completed by these people would be signed, scanned, and uploaded to Wikipedia. A real world example which approaches aspects of this method would be the GLOBE program.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

A drawback to having down-to-earth admins is that we need near-personality disordered admins with the grit to fight hard against near-personality disordered editors. Possibly the feature with enhanced sanctions for certain topics could be strengthened--it could become sort of a mini-Wikipedia inside of a Wikipedia, with more rules and easier adminship. Admins would need to choose whether they want to be a good cop on the larger Wikipedia or a bad cop on the controversial pages. The tough ones could decide "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Meanwhile, the rest of Wikipedia would become more pleasant due to safety valve theory.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

We want admins to be balanced not imbalanced — I'm not sure you're depicting reality or anything realistically-implementable with the rest. El_C 00:09, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that was for fun! The serious comment comes from the first one: "If you change to a voting system, some tweaking may be needed" to account for the difference in personalities you get from each system. In particular, Wikipedia culture tends towards cerebral narcissism as it is (See Sam Vaknin#Views on narcissism). The relation of this, broadly speaking, to the RfA process has already been discussed by Stvilia et al. (Wikipedia administrators#Requests for adminship, and see the scientific studies section at the bottom of the page if you are curious). If you change the system to disfavor near-cerebral narcissists in favor of near-psychopaths (see Psychopathy#Society and culture), expect to adjust some rules to account for this.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 00:22, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Whatever all that is, down-to-earth it is not. Which is to say: hello, my name is Mr. Snrub! El_C 00:58, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

• @Epiphyllumlover: - "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." - we could have Bureaucrats in safe-wiki and auditors (of the discworld style) for arena-wiki. Stewards and Judges! Nosebagbear (talk) 12:53, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Are we asking the correct question?

That there are very few RFAs, and very few new admins, is a fact. That the reason for this is problems with the RFA process isn't - before a user reaches the point of doing an RFA, (s)he genereally goes through the following steps:

1. Doing a first edit on Wikipedia, and feeling that this edit was appreciated.
2. Becoming a member of the Wikipedia community
3. Handling areas of enforcement of policies, including requesting help from admins for this purpose.

I believe that we have serious problems with step 1, which result in fewer potential admins reaching step 3. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:23, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

What you say is absolutely true. Sadly the fact that no one has replied to your post shows that, with over 250 archives of this page, people are much more interesting in discussing the minutae than getting to the nub of the issue, which is that we don't have enough editors. If you want lots of top-class sportsmen or pianists or whatever, you need a large base at the grass-roots. That's what we're missing. Nigej (talk) 22:05, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

1,000% agree with this. – Levivich 19:53, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Od Mishehu's point is a good one, but its not only about their first edit. Everyone needs to feel like their work is appreciated in order to keep working. This thread reminded me of a TED talk by the genius Dan Ariely called What makes us feel good about our work? and how spot-on it relates to every editor on Wikipedia. To sum it up, he finds that its not rewards that motivates people to work - its the sense of progress and the satisfaction that others appreciate the fruits of their labor. I think that applies to both a novice editor, making their first simple tweaks to a page, to an experienced editor, who perhaps puts some extended effort into something. We have the "thank" function conspicuously right next to "undo" on the page history, but which do we use more for new editors and old. Are we thanking editors even for changes we disagree about? -- Netoholic @ 21:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Before one can be appreciated for doing an edit, (s)he must actually do it. Sincd I joined Wikipedia, I believe this became much harder. Today, for a user to do this first edit:

1. The page must not have any protection. The page, however, has a high chance of being a BLP, a controversial issue or a current event - all of which have a high risk of being protected.
2. The IP address must not have any block. With soft blocks being available, we are much quicker to block IP addresses and ranges than we were when I first joined. Additionally, the CheckUser tool gives certain community members access to reasons to block IP ranges which no one had back then.
3. The page must not have a BITEy edit notice. Every BLP has one now. Any edit notice which appears to say "before adding any information, please read a difficult policy page" (such as WP:BLP) is inherently BITEy.
4. The edit must not trigger any edit filter warning/disallowing or capcha. Yes, even a warning or a captcha, which only make the edit harder and not impossible, make it less likely the user will actually save the edit.

I believe that this process is much harder than it was when I joined (semi protections, soft blocks, CheckUser, edit notices, edit filters, captchas for certain types of edits), which means we have fewer new users and fewer potential candidates for RFA. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:45, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

I suspect the biggest reason for the apparent decline in raw edit numbers in the 2007-2014 era and its subsequent stability at around 5 million edits a month were that edit filters lose us a lot of vandalism, the move of intrawiki links to wikidata lost us a lot of edits, especially bot ones, and the smartphone is not a viable editing device for most smartphone users. Yet the community is not much smaller than it was at peak. If our problem was recruitment of new editors not RFA then we would have a community where most people were admins and we would be bemoaning the lack of new non-admins within our community. Instead we have a broadly stable community with a declining number of admins and a growing wikigeneration divide between those who have been here over a decade and are mostly admins and those who have been here less than a decade and are rarely admins. ϢereSpielChequers 09:31, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Why are both current nominations for adminship scheduled to end on 7th July 17:00, despite the different opening times of the two nominations? Deryck C. 16:51, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

They were opened at the same time: Special:Diff/904203057. –xeno^talk 17:09, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest, as I do now and then, that candidates desist from thanking people for their questions. It's like flight attendants as you step off the plane. "Bye!" "Bye!" "Bu-bye!" "Bye-bye!" Enough already! I think we all agree questions are appreciated so can we just leave it at that? EEng 03:51, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Candidates could also meet you halfway and just issue a single blanket thank you to everyone who asked questions. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:03, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Apparently you haven't flown recently. It's been years since airlines gave out blankets. EEng 10:26, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

They certainly still do for international flights. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:39, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I was talking about for the little people. EEng 22:24, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure with Ryanair they have to pay extra. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:36, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Pay extra just to get a seat with that lot :) Leaky caldron (talk) 07:55, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

I've found that you can suggest all sorts of things to editors but unless there are policy reasons to back it up, people are going to do what they want to do. You know? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:06, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, EEng! (Yes, I'm being cheeky.) —Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 04:45, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, me as well! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:18, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

To compliment the endless fun at AN/I, one might hope that RfA candidates would politely offer each questioner a packet of nuts. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:25, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that all questions ARE appreciated. I don't suppose "are you a sockpuppet of (infamous SP name)" would be all that welcome! As for thanks - unless it comes across as sarcastic / obsequious /fawning - I don't see the harm. Politeness is not my forte but I don't mind being thanked for something useful. There again, there is a Thank button - if it works. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:33, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

EEng, my friend, it sounds like you are telling the kids to stay off your lawn. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I realize I'm joining a pile-on here, but this is very "old man yells at cloud". Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:21, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Jesus, lighten up you two. EEng 16:42, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Congratulations, you've just been upgraded to first class. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

bwahaha —usernamekiran(talk) 18:25, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

This seems to be obvious but usernames of those seeking RfA should be included in the watchlist notices. It's a pointless waste of time for editors to go through the link only to find that they have no comment to add as they aren't aware of the candidate at all. Conversely it means comments aren't being made when they otherwise would be, as editors aren't aware of who is applying for RfA unless they proceed to find out. I assume this was merely an accidental omission, so I appeal to whoever set up the notices to fix this given that there are currently RfA discussions underway. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Me, given anchoring I'd be concerned that showing the username might encourage people to base their decision on a first impression or (partially) remembered and not statistically significant past encounters. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried that a user can't think of a single comment to make, simply because they don't recognise their username... Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:29, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

The RfA process is a discussion, and encounters that editors have experienced with the candidate are highly relevant, for which the discussion participants then judge. As for editors not making comments, the vast majority of Wikipedia editors currently choose not to participate, so I don't understand the concern from Lee Vilenski. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:44, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Not knowing the candidate may be a good thing. As a voter, you can then do fresh research and find out whether the candidate should be an admin. Anyway, as to whether or not we want to add the names: Back in the day I supported directly linking to the open RfAs (which would have included putting the usernames in the watchlist notice) but now I think just mentioning there are RfAs ongoing is enough (and participation is pretty decent at the moment). Not broken, don't fix. —Kusma (t·c) 12:11, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• We've gone over this a few times, see discussions and referenced discussions from MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages/Archive_8#RfA_discussions and Wikipedia_talk:2015_administrator_election_reform/Phase_II/RfC#A2_verbiage. The longest part of the input was driven from Wikipedia:2015_administrator_election_reform/Phase_II/RfC#A2:_Advertise_RfAs_with_a_watchlist_notice. I was strongly against putting usernames in the WLN's then, and still am - anyone is welcome to participate in RfA's that cares about the RfA process, and it is not supposed to be a popularity contest. Additionally, I'd hate to see the WLN get cluttered with separate lines for each running RfA and having a single line that gets changed after dismissing is annoying as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:11, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Agree that this is not needed. GiantSnowman 13:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• As I noted at the current RfA, I think this would be too obtrusive to candidates. All people have to do if they want to know who it is is click the link. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• I never thought watchlisting RfA was a good thing. All it's done is double the participation and doubled the drama and trolling. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:58, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
• I'd support this proposal if we're putting RfAs in the watchlist anyway, it'd save a couple of clicks. I do have some questions and concerns, though:

• What would be done if there were multiple RfAs at the same time? If we put them on separate lines it'd be too long and too much clutter, and might misdirect someone's click on the watchlist if it's loading (i.e., you try to click on a link in your watchlist before the RfA list is fully loaded, but then it fully loads and you end up clicking on something else instead).
• I don't buy the privacy-intrusion argument brought up earlier; I'd think that anyone who'd notice the notice, much less care, would be in good enough faith to avoid such behavior. The second edge of this "only people who care would come" sword, however, is that the "popularity contest" factor brought up above does come into play, although one could make the argument that such a factor would happen anyway without the names on the notice.

– John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 17:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• I would oppose this change. The watchlist is one of the most visible locations on Wikipedia, so I believe adding usernames to the watchlist would add quite a bit of "stage fright" to prospective candidates, and we have enough trouble convincing candidates to overcome that nervousness in the first place. Mz7 (talk) 02:25, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• +1 to what Mz7 said above. As someone who went through RfA not that long ago, I can certainly imagine that having my name displayed on such a prominent place would have been intimidating when considering doing an RfA. Galobtter (pingó mió) 03:55, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• It's also worth remembering that it's fairly common to have RfAs started by "not-now" candidates that get snow-closed or candidate-withdrawn. I wouldn't want to see those candidates' names published so conspicuously. --Tryptofish (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• I, too, would oppose such a change. It is not uncommon for marginally active editors with longstanding grudges to crawl out of the woodwork to oppose an RFA. This would simply be feeding that behavior. The current watchlist notice is a reasonable method of alerting those interested in Wikipedia's governance. We don't need more. Indeed, not knowing the candidate is often a good thing; if we limited RFA !voting to users who didn't have substantive interactions with the candidate, we'd have a more reasonable passing rate, I think. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed to see some of the responses here. It seems that some people are interested in only keeping RfA discussions to the same group of people who participate, and not wanting the broader community involved. If somebody has a negative experience with an RfA candidate, that should obviously be brought to the attention of the community which can then decide how much that evidence should matter. There is obviously a certain side to Wikipedia that enjoys researching and discussing candidates for RfA, and that is appreciated, but most editors are involved primarily in editing and do not wish to waste time commenting on candidates that they know nothing about, or even waste time going through the links to the RfA discussions only to find that there is nothing to say about them. Even if their name wasn't displayed on the watchlist notice, it should at least link to the RfA directly and not the RfA general page, so that editors who are interested in the process can be aware of who is applying. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't about numbers but consensus, and we should be striving for more informed, engaged RfAs, not ones with more people alone. I don't think most editors know anything about the people ending up at RfA; putting their name there doesn't suggest any meaningful interaction beyond ones we should strive to avoid. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 16:05, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Overall community involvement (# of !voters) has increased since these began a few years ago, it purposefully links to the instructions so that new editors will know what an RfA is and what is expected. Skipping the directions and going in to just one specific RfA would mean we would have to have a separate WL line for each candidate as well - and you will still get notified that they are occurring. The RfA summary status template is also right on the top of the current landing page, with the names of the current candidates. This is also similar to what is placed on T:CENT. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:06, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Instead of changing the watchlist notices, we should change the link to RFA at the WP:CD page so that clicking on "open for discussion" doesn't jump down to the "Expressing opinions" section, thereby making you annoyingly have to scroll back to the top of the page to see the actual RFAs. IntoThinAir (talk) 17:11, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

David Fuchs Nowhere did I say anything about Wikipedia being numbers, so I would appreciate if you not make that implication. You seem to agree with me that these processes should be about information, and increasing potential participation certainly does that. Otherwise we have to rely on editors to waste time researching the candidate's history without knowing what to look for, whether that is good behaviour or bad behaviour. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:21, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Xaosflux Unfortunately participation still remains pretty low. It's untrue that multiple lines would be necessary for each candidate, as the candidates can both be named in one line very easily. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:21, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

• I concur with Vanamonde93 with the one exception that I still very strongly contend that the reform allowing publicity on the watchlist and at CENT has not increased the quality of the process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:42, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• I was thinking that it doesn't really matter much one way or the other, but Typtofish's point from 2 days ago "It's also worth remembering that it's fairly common to have RfAs started by "not-now" candidates that get snow-closed or candidate-withdrawn. I wouldn't want to see those candidates' names published so conspicuously" is an excellent one. Let's not do this. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No reason was provided for why those candidates should not have their names published. It would be helpful if people could state their reasons, rather than simply finding words to say that it would be bad. I had assumed it was simply an oversight that usernames were not part of the watchlist notice. Onetwothreeip (talk) 13:17, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
    • I don't think it's "bad", exactly, but I tend to agree that those who watch the page should go there regardless of who is up for adminship. Deb (talk) 13:21, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Onetwothreeip, I think what Trypt and Floq are getting at is that RfA is already embarrassing for not-now and snow-closed candidates and that we don't want to publicize their usernames on watchlist (probably causing further embarassment) when there's no corresponding upside for RfAs of stronger candidates. --valereee (talk) 13:36, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
      • Yes, that's what I meant; I assume Tryp too. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:26, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
        • Yes, it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:07, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
• I worry that publishing names in the watchlist will just bring in editors who are otherwise uninterested in RfA to vote against their perceived enemies for spurious reasons not related to adminship. If someone doesn't care enough to click through to the list to see who is actually running, they probably shouldn't participate at RfA at all. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:38, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Ivanvector: We do want people who have experience with the candidates to voice that in the process, whether it is positive or negative. It shouldn't be up to other editors to spend a lot of time sleuthing this sort of thing when it's not necessary. It's up to the other participants to judge whether any complaints by RfA participants are valid or not. It seems bizarre that we are worried about candidates being embarrassed. They are asking to have important administrative tools and be trusted by the community, so they should be as accountable to the community as possible. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:57, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
• With respect to my earlier comment in this thread, I think this message received today at the help desk reaffirms my opinion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:04, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support removing the color coding - but the percentage should likely stay. — Ched :  ?  — 18:48, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

What is the largest number of votes at an RfA? I suppose we must include Neutral votes, despite how pointless they usually are.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Given when you asked the question, is it Floq2? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't know the answer. That's why I started this exciting contest. But it did strike me that there are an awful lot of votes at Floq2 (and we're not even done), so I wondered if it was the most or if some poor schnook got even more. Ironically, the Foundation authorized the prize money.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Floq is second to crack into WP:300, but as near as I can tell it's the first to hit 400 for total votes at an RFA. Primefac (talk) 22:46, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• @Bbb23: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cullen328 (July 2017) had 321 !votes - this is the highest closed RfA in the last 10 years; at 415 and running Floquenbeam 2 will be the new most participated RfA. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:47, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  False (ish). Dihydrogen Monoxide 3 got 400 !votes (in 2008, which is outside xaosflux's timeline), which unless I find a new larger one it's currently sitting in second behind Floq2. Primefac (talk) 22:50, 28 July 2019 (UTC) udpated, can't read. Primefac (talk) 22:52, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Cullen328 – 316/2/3 - (pass) Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Cullen328
• Dihydrogen Monoxide 3 - (withdrawn) 300/83/17 - courtesy blanked

— Ched :  ?  — 22:51, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• I had Floq listed as "ongoing" at the wp:200, but someone thought I was wrong to post it and removed it. So I didn't bother with the wp:300 — Ched :  ?  — 22:55, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• I propose that Floq get an extra 5% support points for breaking 400. BTW, bureaucrats are disqualified from winning the prize: it's unseemly.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:59, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
• One record possibly hanging in the balance... no RfA candidate has ever garnered 300 support votes... and failed. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:26, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  But one did withdraw. — Ched :  ?  — 23:50, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  Technically not, the bot didn't update before they withdrew. Only 299. Primefac (talk) 23:52, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'd give an answer but Wikidollars sounds about as valuable a currency as Monopoly money! Acalamari 23:51, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

  Acalamari Would you answer if the prize was 1,000,000 gold Wikidollars? - ZLEA _T\^C 22:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yea - I was just looking at that .. top of page tally says 300 [3], but counts say 299 ... meh - — Ched :  ?  — 23:55, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• As I write this, Floq 2 has the most number of supports ever, the highest turnout ever, and (AFAIK) is the second most opposed after Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MZMcBride 4. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:12, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

  Nope, third probably ... Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Danny 2. Graham87 04:45, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, we started a discussion awhile ago in the backwater of Template_talk:RfA#Paid_editing_question - to see if/how nomination statements should have the policy question of Candidates are also required to disclose whether they have ever edited for pay included in the standard template. Any feedback on this is welcome below! Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Ping to prior participants: @Power~enwiki and Amorymeltzer:. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I think there is a fair chance that anyone who admits to paid editing would not pass RfA, I therefore don't believe a candidate would admit to it if they have. There are still too many ways in which users can dodge being caught out. Despite the very strict policy on the use of CU, I can see the day coming sooner or later where CU checks will be made on candidates. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. There are many many things we - including editors, policies and Terms of Service clauses - expect from administrators and adminship candidates and whether they are paid editors is just one thing among many, too minor to merit a special question. That and I worry extended arguments about what counts as "paid editing" as has happened in some past discussions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:20, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Jo-Jo who put it very well in my opinion.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:58, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• It's required, but I don't think a special question is needed. Jo-Jo Eumerus, I agree with most of your points, but I think it could be dealt with pretty simply by just adding it to the acceptance line, where candidates now make the required disclosure normally anyway. "Candidates please indicate your acceptance and disclose whether or not you have edited for pay". Not it's own question, but just a friendly reminder. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• Does "paid editing" include "I was a Wikipedian in Residence"? Because they're paid to edit, although such a disclosure is not required under the ToU. Yeah, I know it would be practically impossible to act as a WiR without disclosing it somewhere, but that's not the question. Risker (talk) 18:01, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • In accordance with the FAQ for the Terms of Use regarding paid contributions, Wikipedians-in-residence being paid for edits related to their role are required to make a paid contribution disclosure. isaacl (talk) 18:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Most WiRs are not in fact "paid to edit" in terms of major additions. The role is more often about training, negotiating rights releases, and so on. Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, this is going back to how much I hate the phrase "paid editor" (I prefer "commercial editor" since it more accurately describes the issue without the WiR confounding variable.) That being said, if someone says "Yes, I was a Wikimedian in Residence" I don't think the community would hold it against them one bit. I also think Johnbod makes a good point that for the most part, they aren't really paid for the content creation they do as much as the administrative stuff, though there are exceptions. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
    • I think it's debatable whether or not "most" WiRs do some kind of editing as part of their remit (every one of them that I'm aware of has done something that would count, either on this project or a sister project), but I agree that it is unlikely that many RfA participants would hold it against a former WiR who was seeking adminship. Risker (talk) 20:38, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• Making sure this stays on track, this was only asking if the default questions (or possibly just the HTML comments) include a prompt for this when applying for RfA to support the existing administrator policy requirement of Candidates are also required to disclose whether they have ever edited for pay.. Seems anytime this isn't actually written in to the acceptance statement someone comes along and asks it anyway. I'm not trying to debate if the administrator policy should be changed here. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:06, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I think having an HTML comment is actually the least intrusive way to go about it. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:08, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Concur that an HTML comment would probably be best, at least to ensure that the question is answered before someone starts opposing because the candidate didn't answer it in their acceptance. Risker (talk) 20:38, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
    • I was bold and added it to the HTML comment. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:30, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

      This is a good result and seems to strike a good balance. AGK ■ 13:40, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

    • I agree. It's very arguable that if I had to answer that question now at an RfA, would I have passed it? People that know me, know me to be a reasonable, fair, and forgiving admin with good judgment, I hope. It also comes down to, "AM I paid editor?" I am being paid for developing IABot, and have gone about it responsibly, I hope. The speculative answer is, no, I would probably not pass an RfA as too many would see a paid botop with admin powers as too dangerous and could probably not think straight in areas of a COI. But yet here I am, and still no calls for resignation. So it boils down to how do you get the trust of the community as a paid editor? You can't, not unless you are already an admin. So it becomes a catch-22.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:24, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

"That's one hell of a catch".

"It's the best there is"

——SerialNumber54129 16:45, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

• Perfectly good reason to ask and require an answer. Then, if they are later found to have provided a false answer, they can be more readily be required to resign / recall. Leaky caldron (talk) 17:05, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

In the RFA infobox, there is a column which says "Dups?" and the values are "Yes" or "No". What does that mean? Seems like it could do with some link or footnote for clarification...  — Amakuru (talk) 11:59, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• I'm guessing it means that someone has voted twice. Reyk _YO! 12:07, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  This, it helps identify double votes. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:22, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  Ah OK. Does the detector post anywhere else, to help figure out which votes it is talking about? Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 12:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  @Amakuru: normally they show in the report - the bot is a little mad, I kicked it a bit to see if it gets better. Sometimes it gets mad when the first entry in a section is striken as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:34, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  great, thanks for clarifying. I noticed someone switched a struck vote into second place in the last RFA for just such a reason. Is this the first sign of the machines taking control over us? 🙄😉🤔 — Amakuru (talk) 15:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  I think it used to show up in the report, but Enterprisey somewhat-recently switched the report to his vote history tool. @Enterprisey: Do you know whether your tool identifies and highlights duplicate votes? Mz7 (talk) 22:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  @Mz7: When there are potential dups, User:Amalthea/RfX/Overview lists the specific entries in the "notes" section DannyS712 (talk) 01:19, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

It's great to see, but when was the last time we had four simultaneous RfAs (serious ones, at that)? Nosebagbear (talk) 15:49, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: that would be immediately before and after we had 5 serious RfA's open at once in January 2017. I didn't count April Fool's days or one brief moment a deleted RfA was open since then. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:10, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Which was in turn immediately before we had 7 serious RfAs open at once that month. That was a good month. Mz7 (talk) 21:07, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

It's depressing that I consider 4 to be a peak, then! Though even 36 good new admins a year would a good change :) Nosebagbear (talk) 00:58, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Would keep me busy. Linguist111^{my talk page} 08:11, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Hopefully this becomes a regular occasion. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:55, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Occasions like this increase the necessity for the usernames of the RfA candidates to be listed within the watchlist notice. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:02, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

What is the record for simultaneous RFAs? Presumably in the 2007 heyday there were quite a number going on concurrently...  — Amakuru (talk) 08:34, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:RFA_by_month The peak year for successful RFAs was 2007, but the peak month was December 2005, with 68 successful RFAs in one month, that's an average of more than two passing per day and on average over a dozen running each day. But the record is also going to be influenced by unsuccessful RFAs, there have been more of them, but because they often run for much less than a week there have been on average fewer of them live at any one time than ultimately successful ones. Given the averages involved and the variability of such things, it would not surprise me if at some point in the 2005-7 peak there were more RFAs live than have taken place in the last two years. ϢereSpielChequers 09:13, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

It's a good thing that I was back then a little boy who didn't know Wikipedia existed. I wouldn't have been able to catch a break. Linguist111^{my talk page} 11:33, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

• In mid-December 2005, there were 20 running at the same time [4]. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:24, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Does anybody think a new election process could be voted in, one that was modern (relatively speaking of course), addresses many of the problems e.g. the lack of administrators, the need to vote in a certain minimum number each year, the trolling, the unsubtantial and hollow oppose vote and other potential problems of the current system. One that is based on how other learned societies conduct elections. Is the current Rfa fixed in stone? I'm trying tp find out what the thinking is before I write an Wikipedia essay. scope_creep^Talk 12:03, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd be up for some of that, scope_creep; but, tbh, if you find enough encouragement here then you shouldn't confine yourself to writing an essay! ——SerialNumber54129 12:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: I have a new process that I've been thinking about for ages, but I figured an essay would be a good way to convine folk. Go to the new idea lab, is that what your talking about. scope_creep^Talk 12:18, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd love to see anything that could fix all that! --valereee (talk) 12:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• I think the only way you address trolling/negative behaviors in RfA is by going to a straight up/down anonymous vote like ArbCom. As soon as you allow people to make comments, you're going to have people who troll. I'd be curious to know what system you have in mind. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:18, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

  IIRC we just had an RfA on this and the community resoundingly rejected treating RfA as a vote, or a vote-discussion hybrid, in favor of considering it a straight consensus-building discussion. It’s doubtful that any proposal that moves away from this approach would be successful. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 15:02, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Yep, and I concur. I'm just noting that you won't be able to get away from the trolling without removing the discussion aspect. So, I'm curious how Scope creep's plan would address this without removing discussion. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

  • I myself have proposed something like this before on this page and IIRC it is correct that the response of others was overwhelmingly negative. I also seem to remember people specifically saying this was a bad idea because if it was just an anonymous vote, then other editors wouldn't be able to publicly post useful facts about candidates to inform other !voters. I have always found it weird that in order to even try to pass a RFA you have to invite public scrutiny and criticism like this--it seems to be a recipe for negative interactions between editors. IntoThinAir (talk) 20:47, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• Personally I think the system is working much better than in years gone by - neither Floq nor Rexxx were typical situations at all (don't get me wrong, I supported both) & the sillier sorts of oppose are well down. Having a public "debate", or airing of the issues, seems pretty necessary where most voters have had little contact with the candidates - that we don't do that for Arbs or the WMF board seems a weakness to me. The main problem is the shortage of candidates, & I'm not sure how much the process puts people off. Johnbod (talk) 13:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• scope_creep, if you haven't already, I suggest looking at Wikipedia:RFA reform for links to previous initiatives to change the process of granting administrative privileges. isaacl (talk) 16:21, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
• Basically what Johnbod said. RfA isn't that difficult now. When the high 80s are the low RfAs of late, that's saying something. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:26, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• What is often missing on this talk page is institutional memory, and a reluctance to read previous RfA research and suggestions for reform. RfA does its job quite well and RfA isn't any easier than it ever was. It looks this way because most RfA nowadays pass, but this is due to us having been fairly successful, through various means, of dissuading people from transcluding who don't stand a chance.

The present system would be fine if as I have said many many times: 'fix the voters and RfA will fix itself', and for anyone who fails to grasp that, it means introducing rules for who can vote, and being more systematic with the indenting or removal of votes that are obviously disingenuous, personal attacks, uncivil, totally uniformed, or just plain trolling. Just get rid of the drama and the nonsensically long discussions that take place on the foot of the page nowadays (most of which belongs here at WT:RfA).

We need admins, but as long as the community clearly prefers RfA to remain a venue of depravity with impunity, few editors are prepare to run the gauntlet. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:46, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you even quoted your oft-repeated phrase in a Signpost op-ed last year without attributing it to yourself... It is of course true of almost any social issue: select a specific group of participants and problems from the excluded go away. The challenge is how to get to there from here, as there is a reasonable apprehension about how the excluded group is chosen. I've previously said that as per Clay Shirky's "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy", eventually more hierarchy is needed to deal with interpersonal interaction issues. English Wikipedia's current decision-making traditions stalemate change, though, as a relatively small number of vociferous objectors can block proposals. Leaving aside the option of change being enacted from above, I suspect that the community will only be motivated to change its governance if interpersonal problems start deadlocking progress on a broad basis. Step one, I believe, is to try to evolve towards decision-making processes that rely less on mimicking real-world consensus, which just doesn't scale up beyond small groups, and instead select the strongest option based on pros and cons. This would help break the stalemate, enabling other changes to be agreed upon. isaacl (talk) 05:35, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure he did attribute it to himself and normally does either explicitly (like this time) or implicitly by just saying it. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Normally, yes, which is why its absence was striking in the op-ed, where the quote was simply described as something often cited. isaacl (talk) 08:37, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

You're just splitting hairs, Isaacl. I'm surprised, because it's not something you generally do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:00, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

• Personally I think moving ALL the discussion talk out of the voting areas to talk page would make things a lot better. That part of it is better than it was back in the 08-10 era - but we could be even more diligent on that part IMO. — Ched :  ?  — 01:46, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

  Isaacl .. I just saw your post in a list of diffs and thought scope_creep was something new to wp:creep :-/ — Ched :  ?  — 01:50, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

  Ched: I'm curious as to what drives you to that opinion. If you'll forgive some generalization, it seems to me that when reasonable folks discuss why RFA is "broken", they're typically referring to grossly unreasonable oppose !votes; and short of actively striking or removing them, I see calling them out for what they are as the most effective thing to do. Moving discussion elsewhere would, I think, give the impression that folks can say any old thing in their oppose without consequence. Or have I misunderstood what you mean? Vanamonde (Talk) 02:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

  placeholder - I'll get back to this in a day or two hopefully. OK, see: WP:TIO I'm interested in vote rationale, not the bickering of those who disagree, or if I do want to clarify, I'd like to move it away from the votes. It puts additional pressure on the subject of the RfA when there's quite enough in just the RfA itself. IIF the subject want's to ask for clarification then they are the only ones that should be editing in a users vote section (IMO). There's already a discussion area set aside as well as the talk page. It's there for a reason. — Ched :  ?  — 04:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC) edited:14:28, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

  The problem with moving all discussion to another page is that it lets people make untrue or unreasonable statements without challenge (that will be seen by many people). If we allow people to comment when making !votes then we need to allow responses on the same page. The only way I can imagine a different system working would be to have a straw poll of !votes on the main page and a set of discussions (perhaps by topic e.g. "Conduct"; "AfD experience"; "Content creation") on the talk page. I have no idea whether this would be chaos or an improvement in practise. — Bilorv (talk) 22:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  It sounds a little like my suggestion in the last large RfA reform RfC to organize discussion around determining the pros and cons of the candidate. I think this approach would reduce redundancy by consolidating discussion of a given topic area, which should reduce acrimony and encourage greater participation. I understand why people are strongly wedded to the idea of expressing their net support/oppose opinion: it's less work for each person and lets them get in and out quickly. But if the community really wants to try to make a consensus-like process work, it would be better served by a process that breaks down decisions into smaller, more manageable discussions. isaacl (talk) 03:28, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

• To paraphrase Winston Churchill:[5] the current RfA system is the worst such method, except for all those other methods that have been proposed from time to time. -- MelanieN (talk) 02:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

• Agreed. Everyone should read Worm That Turned's evaluation of RfA. I quote it: I attempted to fix RfA in 2011. After reading through over 300 RfAs and doing a lot of other research into the different areas, I came to the conclusion that it was not broken. It's letting good candidates in and keeping bad candidates out. AGK ■ 09:25, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

• Considering that this question is posed on the back of a wholly unnecessary, avoidable and self-indulgent RfA - and is a question asked at least twice a year in normal circumstances - repeated biannual navel gazing seems pointless. Nothing changes - or ever will. Leaky caldron (talk) 09:31, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Two of the changes in the last great reform exercise were to lower the discretionary range from 70-80% to 65-75% and increase participation by including a watchlist notice. We have just had an RFA pass by crat chat at the top of the revised discretionary range, that RFA had the highest ever total participation highest support and third highest oppose. I'd say that both changes altered it and without the lowered discretionary range it might not have passed. I'm disappointed that the great increase in voting at RFA has not been followed by more of those new voters running, but I wouldn't agree that nothing at RFA changes. ϢereSpielChequers 09:52, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
    • There's also the new practice of moving debates about specific votes to the talk page. This helps to decrease the attention drawn by single oppose votes, which in turn moves emphasis to where it should be – on the consensus as a whole. I agree with WereSpielChequers that there have been a number of positive developments at RfA in recent years. Our RfA process even lacks some of the bad practices you see at permissions requests on other Wikimedia projects. AGK ■ 09:57, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
      • The questioner asks about a "new" election process. The recent changes are not fundamental changes to the established process from 20 years ago. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:03, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
        • Regressive changes #3 which limit participation, deny awareness #5 and curtail scrutiny #1 - see below - are not needed. Leaky caldron (talk) 14:50, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

        Leaky caldron, in that case you are left with adopting entirely new models (eg anonymous voting, periodic elections rather than at-will nominations, etc.). But you can change the existing process without adopting a different model. Dismissing changes to the conduct of the RfA process is unwise: they can have a deep effect. AGK ■ 10:28, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

        • AGK, No idea what you are talking about. I am repudiating the openly regressive changes mentioned below. I am not advocating any RfA changes. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:34, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

          Leaky caldron, I was replying to your comment of 04 August – not your further comment disagreeing with the changes proposed below. AGK ■ 10:36, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

          Still not getting you. I have not "dismissed" anything. Simply pointed out the facts, we talk about this frequently - major beneficial changes are impossible to achieve consensus upon, the process is broadly the same as 20 years ago. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Changes

On the premise that the actual structure of RfA is not seriously flawed - a theory which I support - IMO six things need to change and/or be introduced:

1. The total number of questions that can reasonably asked (IMO 20 is already far too many). It seems to me that many editors, some of whom are new and/or inexoerienced, post questions for the sake of posting questions. See also: The questions they ask at RfA.

2. Adminship criteria. Just for example, IMO demanding an FA or a minimum of 2 GA is excessive, or demanding more than 2 years tenure when a candidate already has over 10,000 solid relevant edits is excessive. Maybe now is the time to draw up a semi-official set of guidelines for RfA criteria. There is a wealth of material to draw on at here.

3. A minimum experience for being allowed to vote, e.g. 500/90 (best) or at least just putting all RfA under WP:ECP by default.

4. Civility in the Oppose section and/or disingenuous voting , with far more visible clerking by Bureaucrats or abstaining admins.

5. Remove the watchlist and CENT notices again.

6. Stop using the comments section in the RfA footer as an alternative venue to WT:RfA.

But most of us who frequent this talk page are aware of all this already and have been for many years...

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:33, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Let's address these, one by one.

1. There should be no limit on the number of questions, we're giving someone a lifetime appointment and immense power, we need to ask whatever questions the community has before someone is given the bit.

2. This is an example of groupthink, where if someone disagrees and says so, we have to stamp it out. Kudpung doesn't like my criteria, so he wants to make a rule that it cannot be used (along, presumably, with any other criteria that he doesn't like). That's bullshit. If he doesn't want to use my criteria, then don't use it, but don't tell me how I have to evaluate potential admins.

3. Nope.

4. Civility in the oppose section, by not badgering those who oppose a nomination, as is being done now. Go look at the support comments--how many of those are questioned in the same manner as Kudpung and others harass those who oppose a nomination? And going to a user's talk page to issue threats is completely uncalled for.

5. Nope.

6. No position.

There are several things wrong with the admin system on WP, with two primary ones. Someone should be a content creator to be an admin, and there needs to be a viable way to recall someone. GregJackP Boomer! 08:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

1. I don't think there is any merit on putting a limit on numbers of questions.

2. We cannot legislate for what other people think is necessary in an admin.

3. Not sure what this would achieve

4. I note you specifically linked to discussion of my oppose !vote in Bradv's RFA as an example of "disingenuous voting". I'm don't understand why you would say my !vote was disingenuous... I honestly think its a terrible idea to promote Bradv to admin and there really is no way to sugar coat why I think that is. What is neatly illustrated by that link is the hostility that oppose !voters often have to endure and why many people would be put off stating their mind.

5. I think it's useful.

6. I don't use it.

Catfish Jim and the soapdish 09:41, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

1. I agree that the questions are getting out of hand, but don't see this as a great solution.

3. I could agree with minimum requirements for voting, but not for participating in the discussion.

4. More clerking to keep the peace is generally a good idea.

5. Why?

—Kusma (t·c) 10:38, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

1. I suspect that the question section distracts from actually checking the candidate's contributions, and I would like to stop people asking questions that don't have a diff linking to one of the candidate's edits. Many questions seem to be boilerplate ones that could be asked of any candidate. Some are obviously the questioner pursuing a hobby horse unrelated to the candidate.

2 If we can agree criteria for Rollback and Template Editor then of course we should be able to agree at least some of the criteria for admins. Setting minimum criteria for tenure and edit count would hopefully stop standards inflation re those two and allow for the debate to focus on more important issues such as communication skills and accuracy of tagging.

3 I'd go lower, maybe 200 edits and thirty days, but I remember in my days as a newbie coming to an RFA, working out that there was an unwritten rule about how experienced you needed to be to !vote, and going away because I wasn't sure what the rule was. I believe that a clearly defined low bar to qualifying to vote at RFAs would be more welcoming to newbies.

4 Bad example of a real problem. That isn't to say I agree with that Oppose, I don't, I'm in the Support section in that RFA and from what I can see the candidate handled a difficult situation well. The Oppose votes I would like to stop are the ones we sometimes see from people who want to change a policy not by an RFC, but by opposing candidates at RFA for enforcing that policy.

5 I had hoped that the watchlist and cent notices would not just get additional !voters, but that after a while many of those additional !voters would have started to run at RFA. I am disappointed that the latter hasn't yet happened, I would like to see the watchlist and central notices be more selective in line with my views on point 3, or maybe even higher so you start being invited to !vote at RFA when you are not far off being ready to start thinking of running at RFA. But I would rather not lose those notices.

6 Re my point 2, if we can agree some of the minimum criteria such as "needs to have been active in 12 different months" then discussion of such criteria will decline at individual RFAs and the focus there can shift to important things such as scrutiny of the candidate's edits.

ϢereSpielChequers 11:21, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• I'd be fine with codifying something like 10,000 edits and 12 months of experience is the generally accepted minimum tenure before filing an RfA because 1) it's true and 2) the people who are opposing based on 12,000 edits and 18 months experience is a bit low are ridiculous. I was an admin after 14 months of activity and I have nominated people with around that much experience who I think are excellent administrators.
  I would view this not as a way to stop people from participating, but to stop the "minimum" standards of inexperienced voters from growing. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  @TonyBallioni and WereSpielChequers: I wish I shared your optimism. I think the fundamental reason we get so much unreasonable opposition is an attitude problem among !voters, and that codifying such a standard is going to lead to "well 10k is the minimum, but I'm going to oppose anyone who has less than 25,000 edits (I recall one oppose !vote at my RFA, citing insufficient edits, when I had 24,000). I think codifying this standard will lead to no substantial change at best, and possibly to a change for the worse. So far as I can see, the only way to minimize opposition that is nitpicky, grudge-bearing, or unreasonable, is for the crats to make it clear that they are disregarding certain types of opposition altogether. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:43, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  I'm kind of with WTT on this. RfA is not especially broken. We're continually reminded that Jimbo said a long time ago that adminship is not a big deal. Well, actually it kind of is... More so than it was in 2005 perhaps, but things were simple back then. Seriously, who cares if User:Whoever decides they want admins to have ten years experience and 100,000 edits? The Crats won't pay any attention to it. Who cares if he !votes Oppose on every single RfA because he doesn't like admins... the Crats won't pay any attention to it. There is an issue with civility at RfA, but it's not where we're constantly told it is. Every Wikipedia editor has the right to voice their concerns on every RfA... so why is there a pile on of badgering harassment whenever there's an Oppose !vote? Catfish Jim and the soapdish 20:56, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  @Catfish Jim: Because admin numbers are declining, because several suitable candidates failed or withdrew thanks to unreasonable opposition, and because several other suitable candidates have declined to run because of the same unreasonable opposition. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:02, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  They're not though. I've been an admin since 2011 when there was the first panic about the shortage of admins... I've been editing as CJ&tsd since 2007 and as an IP from 2005-2007. WP is not in an admin crisis. If a candidate fails in an RfA it is because consensus deems they are unsuitable... they can always try again if they really think they can make a difference... many of the admins I respect the most failed on their first attempt. If the RfA process is so unpleasant that a candidate withdraws, well they probably dodged a bullet. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 21:23, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  Ah, right. So, if you can't handle the heat of RfA it's a good thing you're not becoming an admin because it's going to be worse if you somehow pass :) "We're going to haze you, but it's a good thing!" :) --Hammersoft (talk) 22:55, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  Expressing an opinion that a prospective admin is not suitable for the role is not "hazing", but it has to be said that most admins will experience situations that are unpleasant. I've had it all, from attempts to dox me (for no other reason than I'm an admin) to dealing with threats of self-harm/suicide. And I'm not the most active of admins (although it's fair to say the latter of those examples is partly responsible for that). I'm afraid the "stress" of an RfA is somewhat less than the potential stress of adminship. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 08:31, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

  My point precisely. RfA is a kind of hazing, and if you can't handle that you won't be able to handle adminship. So, from one view, for all the complaints about RfA being an unpleasant process it is a good thing; if you think RfA is unpleasant, just wait until you become an admin. :) --Hammersoft (talk) 12:43, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

  We can frame the rule as "You may not oppose a candidate for the reason of edit count where that candidate has more than X edits." or similar. Then the opposition needs to find some other reason to oppose (which may be [in]valid itself), but at least we're moving to a 'more'-productive discussion about some other factor of interest. --Izno (talk) 23:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

  Honestly, it won't help. At Wikipedia:Advice_for_RfA_candidates#RfA_essays_and_criteria, ~2/3rds of the criteria pages have edit count requirements. Edit counts as a means of opposition is heavily entrenched. You can't make it go away by saying you can't oppose on that basis. People will oppose on that basis anyway, just won't say it straight out. Instead, they'll say things like "insufficient experience", "Not seasoned enough", "Lacks effort in critical areas", and the like. By trying to ban editcountitis, you're just playing a game of whack-a-mole. The problem won't go away. Even if you made RfA strictly an anonymous voting system, people would still use editcountitis to filter people out. The reason is that a crap ton of voters here, including a significant majority of the people who write their criteria down, are addicted to the idea that the number of edits you make is somehow indicative of your capabilities. I've never seen a correlation developed that showed successful vs. unsuccessful admins based on edit counts. Yet, here we are. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:27, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Hammersoft, you are forgetting perhaps, that although Arbcom is a secret poll, there are nevertheless the 'Voter Guides' and the questions for the candidate, which in many cases are more spiteful and disingenuous than anything we get at RfA. And they can't be repudiated or discredited. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

• I have two comments about the RfA. First, you can not legislate or mandate how editors decide who they want to be an admin or what their criteria is. THAT SAID, I think it is truly unfair when some oppose voters cite a single or even a couple AfD votes or nominations or any single diff as being representative of an editor's entire body of work. Everyone here has made mistakes and I think it would be impossible to find candidates who don't have a few bad decisions in their contribution history. But even thinking that this is a completely unfair basis to judge how someone would act as an admin, no person can disallow an oppose which can be made for any reason at all, whether it is warranted or trivial. It's up the crats to judge how strong the oppose or support is.

  Second, and this is sometimes mentioned but not enough attention is paid to it: There are many editors who think content contributions are the most important criterion to judge admin candidates but some of our best candidates are technical experts or are great at assessing and closing discussions or any of the innumerable other ways of contributing to the project but they don't write articles. But you will never convince some prolific content creators to support an editor who doesn't also contribute in that way. I've seen this happen in most RfAs I've seen since I started editing regularly. This opposition is not insurmountable but it is predictable and RfA candidates should always be aware that there will be tough questions about their content work. For some reason, this still seems to surprise some nominators and candidates but it is one of the most predictable features of an RfA. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:07, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

  That's because content creation is the most important factor in determining who should or should not be an admin. This is an encyclopedia, we are editors, and we are here to create content, either from scratch or by revising an extant article. Those of us who are content creators already have to deal with enough idiots, and the admins should be focused (as I've said in the past) on keeping the riff-raff at bay so that we can create content. Everything else is secondary. GregJackP Boomer! 06:18, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

  Writing is important, but so are things like copy editing and fact checking. I'd agree that RFA candidates who solely protect the pedia from vandals need to show some contribution to improving the pedia as well as to protecting it. But the logic of requiring admins to focus on "keeping the riff raff at bay" is that an RFA candidate who is strong on content contributions should be discouraged from adminship as they are more needed elsewhere. I prefer the model where lots of content contributors have the tools and use them when needed, but that few if any of us focus on admin stuff. ϢereSpielChequers 08:10, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

1. The tools that the nominee requests are serious and can very easily be abused. The community needs to know that they can trust the nominee not to abuse the tools.

2. While I agree that an admin should have experience in creating mainspace content, I can't deny that there is lots of behind the scenes work that is just as important to building the encyclopedia. I think that the nominee should show experience in both content creation (not necessarily writing FA or GA articles) and behind the scenes work.

3. I like the idea of a minimum amount of experience to vote. This could solve the problem of users voting multiple times using sockpuppets.

4. It is my opinion that any user should have the right to question why another user voted the way they did. From what I have seen in the recent RfAs, incivility usually starts when the voter assumes the question was an attack or a threat.

5. No position Now that I know exactly what this refers to, I am against the removal of watchlist RfA notices.

6. Absolutely, I don't see any reason for there to be a comments section on the main RfA page when there is already a talk page. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:50, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

1. Agree (with Kudpung). Comments above (e.g. "There should be no limit on the number of questions" and "I don't think there is any merit on putting a limit on numbers of questions") appear to ignore that there may be people who might make good admins but due to real life (work, family etc) might not be able to commit to spending about 2 hours a day (e.g. 30 questions and 30 minutes per question) on each day of the RFA. Or am I missing something? DexDor ^(talk) 20:20, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

It shouldn't take 30 minutes to answer a question if you're sufficiently familiar with policy to be promoted to admin. That said, perhaps 30 is excessive. My main concern about putting an upper limit on question numbers is that some people ask stupid questions like "If Wikipedia was a tree, what tree would it be?" (yes, really). It would be irritating if the question limit was reached by a series of irrelevant questions leaving no room for questions about WP policy.Catfish Jim and the soapdish 10:20, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

If you look at the questions asked (e.g. in AA88's RfA) very few of the questions are about wp policies and even those that are (e.g. q28.1) are (in effect) asking the candidate to do some analysis and write a (short) essay.  Many of the questions (e.g. q16) probably took over 30 minutes to answer. DexDor ^(talk) 11:50, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Most of them are five to ten minute questions if you know what you're doing. The usual exceptions are questions 1 to 3, but you have all the time in the world to do those before transcluding the RfA. Question 16 is unusual and, to be brutally honest, one that he wouldn't have got if he hadn't rushed to RfA before he was ready and been too desperate to show he was useful by doing non-Admin closures/relists on AfD. He's made some mistakes by not knowing the relevant policy. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 18:37, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

1. I think questions from new/inexperienced/self-aggrandizing editors are an issue, but I don't agree that the number of questions alone is a problem. I think increasing the number of standard questions to take into account perennial questions would help, but two questions per person I think strikes the correct balance between the ability for editor inquiry and not bombarding the candidate.

2. No strong opinions on formal criteria. It's not a secret that there's a minimum bar, so I doubt making it explicit would hurt much. On purely philosophical grounds, though, I do like that there are no formal requirements even if it is a de facto fiction.

3. Eh, not a huge fan of protecting everything by default. I can see the merit in minimum requirements to vote, but would prefer they be closer to confirmed than extended confirmed.

4. Fully support more visible and active clerking.

5. Strongly against removing CENT notices. Regularly against removing watchlist notices. Quite honestly it tends to be how I find out about RFAs as transclusions can quickly get lost in my watchlist.

6. I would be fine with removing the general discussion section in favor of using the nomination talk page, but I don't think having discussion on every RfA here is the best solution.

Wug·a·po·des​ 19:13, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• While here at WT:RfA some may argue that it's a necessary and justifiable hazing ceremony, it's not every candidate who even wants to work in contentious areas - there are plenty of other tasks that require the admin bit. None of them need to prove they have the cognitive level of a degree in maths, IT, or jurisprudence, or solving the Times crossword. In the army, all recruits, even those in non-combat roles, have to go through basic training, barrack room bullying, and square bashing, but Wikipedia editors are not soldiers (even if some of us are or have been in RL) and intransigent warrant officer behaviour is not warranted here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:53, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Where is the incivility at RfA? ——SerialNumber54129 09:11, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Mainly in the persistent badgering of "curiosity" opposes that do not conform to the generally accepted view. Which is why removing the extended discussion to the TP is usually an effective method of quelling the disruptive discussion. Leaky caldron (talk) 09:18, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, then the badgerers need to be bollocked rather than having their badgering moved to the talk. ——SerialNumber54129 10:55, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

There is 'badgering' (to harass or annoy persistently – Merriam Webster), and genuine expression of concern that a vote might not conform to our Wikisocial norms. Practicing questionably high criteria or posing trick or irrelevant questions are issues that could be perhaps better addressed on the voter's own talk page where the editor is made to look and feel a fool slightly less publicly. Purely disingenuous, disruptive, or false voting probably ought to be responded to directly on the RfA.

In any case, the number of mini threaded discussions being moved to the RfA's talk page is becoming very much more frequent. This is not due to more consistent clerking, but is a result of the steady degradation of the environment of the process, the doubling of participation since the December 2015 reforms, and the classical propensity at Internet forums for everyone to add their two pence . Thus, with more or less the words with which I began this thread 'On the premise that the actual structure of RfA is not seriously flawed - a theory which I support - IMO some things need to change, changed back, and/or be introduced' Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:23, 31 August 2019 (UTC) FYI: (Vanamonde93, WereSpielChequers, Hammersoft). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:14, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

(moved from Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Barkeep49#General_comments - permalink)

Do people vote to make themselves feel important? Or is it just being part of the "inside" Wiki community? I am probably at the wrong place to vent but I cannot believe how much typing goes on that does not add to the encyclopedia's purpose of providing knowledge. I understand any organization needs people to run the place. But the reverts, appeals and endless talk pages. Why can someone vote to oppose and not be challenged for their reason? I learned we do not vote but obtain consensus another inside wiki world rule. No one needs to respond but someone will. Eschoryii (talk) 07:19, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

It is not an unreasonable question, but I can only confidently answer for myself. This is a community which is stronger when we work together for the common cause, and we all have a responsibility to try to keep it healthy and running smoothly, so those who prefer to create content can do so in as reasonably peaceful and supportive an environment as we can manage. I would prefer to spend more of my time on content, and less on Wikimedia politics, but we all need to do our bit where and how we can. Appointing admins and other functionaries is a thing that needs to be done, so it might as well be done properly and with due diligence. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 19:28, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@Eschoryii and Pbsouthwood: I think its a bit of both. Maintenace areas are a magnet to new users, especially younger ones, and RfA is one of the most highly visible back-office places they can get themselves noticed on (but not always in a positive light). That's one of the reasons why I strongly advocate introducing a minimum threshold to be able to vote at RfA, and to revert one of the December 2015 reforms. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:10, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, no, I do not vote to make myself feel important. Usually I have an opinion on a candidate which I hope could be helpful to other voters, or at least could hep the crats to determine the outcome of RFA if there is a close call.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Ymblanter I don't think you need to feel worried about being personally adressed by the question. The question was more general because the OP has certainly noticed something which we began to address with in-depth research at Voter Profiles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:46, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The idea that opposes must be attacked, whereas similar supports are left alone (even with repeated comments by crats that they weight opposes less than supports) is one of the worst aspects of the current process. Has Greg ever caused an RfA to fail? If not, then why are people continually complaining about it? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:24, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I guess people are, not so surprisingly, more irritable and get more defensive when it comes to opposes. An editor who, years ago, viewed self noms as "prima facie evidence of power hunger" comes to mind. I don't think he ever sank an RFA either, yet he was muzzled by the community. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:51, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

David Fuchs, I do not believe there exists an ...idea that opposes must be attacked, whereas similar supports are left alone. What does exist is the possibility to legitimately express any clear fault found with a vote, and if necessary condemn any obvious trolling, vengeance, or disingenuous votes. That it generally takes place in the oppose section is because that's generally where such votes are made - and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of diffs than can be cited for it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

The opposes absolutely are put to greater scrutiny. That's reflected in the note on RFA that says "there [is] not been the same obligation on supporters to explain their reasons" as opposers. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

David Fuchs, why don't you read what I wrote? Of course oppose votes are subjected to heavy scrutiny, because so many of them are rotten the core. Would you want it any other way? Or do you enjoy people being vindictive, telling lies, or just being downright silly? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

• Something similar to PeterBS said: enwiki is an organisation/community of hundreds of active editors/users. We definitely need some particular designations/roles that have access to particular authorisations to perform certain tasks. We are like small town that is 98% self sustaining. The other question that you asked, about the importance, there are few different reasons why people answer. When I voted in 3rd or fourth RfA, I felt like I was important/a part of the community, it was a warm feeling. But i didnt have the same feeling in next RfA. Since then/now I participate in RfA (and AfD), to make sure incorrect candidate doesnt get the tools. Some other people do it for the same reason, to make themselves reassure that they are of the community. Some people do it make themselves feel important. Some people do it to make other people think that they are important (read in a mocking/kid's voice) "ooh. Look how much i know, look at the fancy words n wikilinks I used. I am so experienced, i am so important to the community" (voice end), and some people feel obliged to vote to keep the tools away from wrong hands. —usernamekiran(talk) 21:12, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

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The description is misleading, please change it into "A place where users become administrators". Monniasza talk 09:07, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Looks like there was some vandalism on Wikidata, reverted. Sam Walton (talk) 09:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I had a comment - but "beans" compels me to withhold it. — Ched (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Now I have to know...Squeeps10 ^{Talk to me}_{My edits} 19:59, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Ched and his secrets. I want to know about these beans, I promise I won't shove them up my nose, or up yours. —usernamekiran(talk) 08:57, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

I recently realized that we have pages like Wikipedia:Times that 100 Wikipedians supported an RFX, but there is no equivalent for when 100 or more Wikipedians opposed an individual RFX, or, as far as I can tell, any nomination or proposal. E.g. Category:Times that 100 Wikipedians supported something exists but Category:Times that 100 Wikipedians opposed something does not. Not to be a negative Nancy but maybe there should be an equivalent list of RFAs with 100/200/etc. or more opposes, given that such instances also seem to be significant. IntoThinAir (talk) 22:20, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

We could redirect it to Category:Kicking someone when they're down. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:23, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Or WP:No personal attacks. Harrias ^talk 10:35, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I was surprised and honored and a little bit embarrassed at the large number of supports I received in my RfA. I cannot imagine how mortifying it must be to receive many opposes, especially for serious candidates who have devoted so much time and effort to this encylopedia. Any steps to prolong or permanently record their humiliation is cruel and unusual punishment. We must be better than that. Move on, and encourage and support improvement. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:14, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like a horrible idea. RfA is a hard enough experience (even from just viewing it), to have the humiliation of getting a lot of opposes doubly so. Having a list or category recording this is too much. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:20, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

It would accomplish even less than the existing pointless categories counting +100 supports. In terms of ultimate competence there is no difference between 99 and 201. Leaky caldron (talk) 08:30, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

This is especially true of opposed RFAs, as they're very often withdrawn midway through. Fram's was pretty much certain to break the record for most opposes had it continued, which is 124 I believe. But then again it could also have broken the support record, the way things were going. It could have closed after a week with 350 supports and 350 opposes. Neither stat on its own tells us much at all.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:51, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

• Anything of this sort would just be grave dancing. Reyk _YO! 08:52, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
• Have any of Fram's supporters considered offering a courtesy blanking? I've seen it done before, although it was quite a while back. — Ched (talk) 11:42, 28 September 2019 (UTC) - this comes to mind. — Ched (talk) 12:22, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Why? I opposed him. #1. Did I oppose based on his WMF case? The more you make and continue to argue for special treatment for Fram the more difficult it will be for the community as a whole to reconcile their issues when he comes back in 12 months. Leaky caldron (talk) 13:14, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

If anything a courtesy blanking would probably be counterproductive. A closed RfA is not widely visible in the same way as a signpost article or user talk page is. If/when it becomes visible again (say, on RFA/Fram 3) the fact that it was blanked will probably lead to greater scrutiny as people wonder why such an extraordinary step was taken. Wug·a·po·des​ 20:41, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Courtesy blanking is usually done on the request of the candidate. Unless Fram requests it, the issue is moot. ϢereSpielChequers 19:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

What would this proposal achieve? /Julle (talk) 18:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

• "Congratulations, Your RFA is the most opposed RFA on the site... how do you feel?" .... Shit would be the most probable answer, I don't think anyone would ever want their RFA on such a list and as asked above What would such a list achieve ? ... It would only demoralise that person. –Davey2010^Talk 18:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)