→Matt Britt RFA: rephrased question |
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:::Of course. —<sup>[[User talk:Physicq210|<font color="000000">210</font>]]</sup>'''[[User:Physicq210|<font color="#0000C0" face="Comic Sans MS">physicq</font>]]''' (''[[Special:Contributions/Physicq210|<font color="#0000C0">c</font>]]'') 01:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC) |
:::Of course. —<sup>[[User talk:Physicq210|<font color="000000">210</font>]]</sup>'''[[User:Physicq210|<font color="#0000C0" face="Comic Sans MS">physicq</font>]]''' (''[[Special:Contributions/Physicq210|<font color="#0000C0">c</font>]]'') 01:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC) |
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::::Ooops. Should rephrase. Does this mean he can re-apply again imediately, without every Wikipedian opposing for it being too soon? --<small>TeckWiz is now</small> [[User:R|'''R''']] <sup>[[User_talk:R|Parlate]]</sup><small>[[Special:Contributions/R|Contribs]]<sub>[[Special:Emailuser/R|@]]</sub>(Let's go Yankees!)</small> 01:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC) |
::::Ooops. Should rephrase. Does this mean he can re-apply again imediately, without every Wikipedian opposing for it being too soon? --<small>TeckWiz is now</small> [[User:R|'''R''']] <sup>[[User_talk:R|Parlate]]</sup><small>[[Special:Contributions/R|Contribs]]<sub>[[Special:Emailuser/R|@]]</sub>(Let's go Yankees!)</small> 01:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC) |
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:::::I should hope so. If I were to close that request, I would certainly ignore any users opposing on that basis. — [[User:Rdsmith4|Dan]] | [[User talk:Rdsmith4|talk]] 01:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC) |
Revision as of 01:24, 24 April 2007
RFA discussions prior to June 2003 took place on a mailing list
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Would these current admins still be accepted today?
We all know that RFA standards are improving all the time, so our admins are just getting better and better. Right? So, by edit count, would you support these users?
John Doe #1
Username John Doe #1 Total edits 2823 User groups <hidden> Image uploads 6 (3 cur, 3 old) (browse) Distinct pages edited 1098 Edits/page (avg) 2.57 Avg edits/day 1.28 Deleted edits 103 First edit 2001/03/27 20:47:31 Edits by namespace Namespace Edits (Main) 585 Talk 420 User 168 User talk 1185 Wikipedia 283 Wikipedia talk 114 Image 13 Image talk 3 MediaWiki 12 MediaWiki talk 7 Template 8 Template talk 2 Category 4 Category talk 19
Comments
- Comment here.
- Comment - Well, is this a trick question? I ask because I note the 250 deletions, 52 Blocks, etc. I'm guessing that this person is (or was?) a current admin? - jc37 15:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, these are current admins, and I'm wondering if we'd still support them today? Let me remove those sections, to reduce confusion. --Kim Bruning 15:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose, lack of experience with images. >Radiant< 16:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Refuse comment per my comment for #3. -- Black Falcon 16:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's not hard to tell who this is - Yeah, I can't !vote because it's pretty clear who this is anyway. This probably isn't such a good example, due to the fact that <cough> <cough> <cough>. The ones below are better. // Sean William (PTO) 02:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose Well, I might get bit for saying this, but I think that this user has too few Wikipedia edits for my liking. Captain panda 02:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Jane Doe#2
Username Jane Doe #2 Total edits 7460 User groups (hidden) Image uploads 85 (78 cur, 7 old) (browse) Distinct pages edited 2071 Edits/page (avg) 3.60 Avg edits/day 4.19 Deleted edits 202 First edit 2002/06/02 17:22:30 Edits by namespace Namespace Edits (Main) 2451 Talk 1001 User 901 User talk 1703 Wikipedia 858 Wikipedia talk 329 Image 166 Image talk 2 MediaWiki 25 MediaWiki talk 11 Template 9 Template talk 1 Category 1 Category talk 1 Portal talk 1
Comments
- Comment here
- Appears generally qualified, but not enough portal talk edits. Newyorkbrad 15:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not nearly enough Image talk or Category edits to work well as an admin, but I'm sure that's not important ;) Majorly (hot!) 15:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- I don't believe I had any of either one of those either. Amazing that I squeaked through. Newyorkbrad 15:53, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not nearly enough Image talk or Category edits to work well as an admin, but I'm sure that's not important ;) Majorly (hot!) 15:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Appears generally qualified, but not enough portal talk edits. Newyorkbrad 15:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose, not enough featured articles. >Radiant< 16:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Refuse comment per my comment for #3. -- Black Falcon 16:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Absolutely oppose, this one is Karmafist, who we all know went on to become a terrible admin. --Cyde Weys 02:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Support I had better tell the truth here: if Cyde Weys had not mentioned who this user is, I would have supported without question. (And yes, I get the point this is trying to make) Captain panda 02:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Jane Doe #3
Username Jane Doe #3 Total edits 44266 User groups (hidden) Image uploads 42 (32 cur, 10 old) (browse) Distinct pages edited 23103 Edits/page (avg) 1.92 Avg edits/day 29.20 Deleted edits 2312 First edit 2003/02/20 20:21:23 Edits by namespace Namespace Edits (Main) 19026 Talk 1731 User 1634 User talk 6321 Wikipedia 11170 Wikipedia talk 2395 Image 549 Image talk 20 MediaWiki 282 MediaWiki talk 134 Template 803 Template talk 111 Help 14 Help talk 2 Category 56 Category talk 12 Portal 6
Comments
- Add comment here
- Storng oppsoe has bda speling and note nouhg edit smumaries. >Radiant< 16:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Did you also notice ... 0 portal talk edits! That's just shameful. This person is clearly not suited for admniship. -- Black Falcon 18:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Refuse comment. Insufficient information is provided for me to make a decision. Firstly, there are no responses to questions; secondly, I have no idea what their actual contributions are (just a summary of them); and thirdly, there is no information about the distribution of edits. Maybe all 2800 edits were accumulated in one month? Maybe they're all vandalism? If they are, what does it say about Wikipedia that a person can accumulate 45000 vandalism edits and still not be blocked? ;) As I said, a breakdown of edits by namespace is simply not enough (for me) to come to a decision. -- Black Falcon 16:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good points. Is there an edit counting tool that can provide such a distribution to your satisfaction? --Kim Bruning 18:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- I never pay any attention to the count that gets posted on the talk page. I look through the user's actual contribs myself. It's time consuming, so I don't participate in very many RfAs, but when I do I've done my homework. Kafziel Talk 18:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interiot's "wannabe kate" counter provides a distribution by months (and also other information like most edited pages). Of course, a more advanced summary of edits is still not enough to make a decision. The distribution of edits is not a factor I use in judging RfAs, but rather serves as a rough indicator of whether closer inspection may be needed (e.g., if all edits are made within the last week). Finding out that an editor has made 1000 edits a month for 20 months is not of much use without having a general idea of the content of those edits (e.g., maybe half of those edits are insults to vandals or the like). -- Black Falcon 18:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sure. These questions are mostly for folks who purely use edit counts as their criteria. --Kim Bruning 18:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interiot's "wannabe kate" counter provides a distribution by months (and also other information like most edited pages). Of course, a more advanced summary of edits is still not enough to make a decision. The distribution of edits is not a factor I use in judging RfAs, but rather serves as a rough indicator of whether closer inspection may be needed (e.g., if all edits are made within the last week). Finding out that an editor has made 1000 edits a month for 20 months is not of much use without having a general idea of the content of those edits (e.g., maybe half of those edits are insults to vandals or the like). -- Black Falcon 18:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- I never pay any attention to the count that gets posted on the talk page. I look through the user's actual contribs myself. It's time consuming, so I don't participate in very many RfAs, but when I do I've done my homework. Kafziel Talk 18:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good points. Is there an edit counting tool that can provide such a distribution to your satisfaction? --Kim Bruning 18:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
We get that people have edit counts. Already. We get that they contain useful information only when viewed in a wider context. Already. Splash - tk 00:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Support Unless, this user is some banned user, I would support due to obvious experience. Captain panda 02:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Heh, she's definitely not banned. // Sean William (PTO) 03:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- So ... would someone please share the identities of #1 and #3? I've already run 30 or so usernames through the edit counter and ... well, I'm hoping we can avoid any feline casualties. -- Black Falcon 03:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Heh, she's definitely not banned. // Sean William (PTO) 03:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
John Doe #4
Username John Doe #4 Total edits 8125 Image uploads 13 (13 cur, 0 old) Distinct pages edited 5043 Edits/page (avg) 1.61 Deleted edits 302 (browse) First edit 2004-10-08 01:50:15 Edits by namespace Namespace Edits Articles 3943 Talk 559 User 302 User talk 1070 Project 1714 Project talk 207 Image 31 Image talk 3 MediaWiki 7 MediaWiki talk 14 Template 152 Template talk 36 Category 39 Category talk 2 Portal 46
Comments
- Who cares? These random edit counts are a pointless exercise, unless you really want to say that edit count is the only factor that should determine adminship. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Need more then edit counts
I'm not sure what has started this, but I've never used a number of edit-counts only to determine my !vote on RfA. While they are useful to determine what areas somone is active (or inactive in) more information can usually be garnished from edit summaries! — xaosflux Talk 02:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Alot of people do so, or are perceived to do so at least, in ways that can seem capricious. One user is currently opposing a candidate partly for a lack of edits to WikiProjects, for example. --bainer (talk) 04:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Frankly I find this exercise a bit silly since I never look at those edit counts on RFA to begin with. >Radiant< 08:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not only that, but some of our more infamous administrators are being cherry-picked for their high edit counts (or Jimbo with his edit count) to trick us into "supporting" them (or opposing Jimbo.) This is a useless exercise trying to make a point, and failing miserably (to me at least.) Edit count really isn't important to everyone, and some of our problem administrators had very clean records leading up to their RfA. Grandmasterka 10:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Like the Moralis RfA, this RfA has been refactored. However, in this case it has been refactored to be more like an RfC. The refactoring was done with the knowledge and consent of User:Matt Britt. The intention here is to break away from the obsession with vote counting and focus on discussion and relative merits of the nominee. Please keep meta discussions about the format of that RfA here, rather than on the RfA itself. Thank you. --Durin 22:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting experiment. I believe this one will turn out to be ok but I'm not sure we've got the right guinea pig. I have a hard time believing that this format for a more controversial candidate would not rapidly turn into an incoherent mess whose interpretation will be difficult. B'crats are supposed to evaluate consensus and it would be nice to have a format where we have some sort of confidence that different b'crats won't make different decisions. Pascal.Tesson 22:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Finding a guinea pig for this experiment is harder. It's a very radical change, far more so than Moralis' RfA. If another user wants to be an additional guinea pig for this format, who might be more controversial, feel free to ask :) --Durin 22:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
This is a bad, bad concept, an application for a North Korea travel visa would be simpler than this. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. I can't see any advantages in this model, and I can't figure out how is a bureaucrat going to determine any community consensus with so many parameteres.--Húsönd 22:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- This is a good notion, but I think the format is entirely too byzantine. A Traintalk 22:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Readily granted. I admit having a bit of a time getting my head around this sort of format, and coming up with a reasonable formatted RfA in this form. It can
probablydefinitely :) be evolved. --Durin 22:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Readily granted. I admit having a bit of a time getting my head around this sort of format, and coming up with a reasonable formatted RfA in this form. It can
- If I believe that the candidate has all five or six of the favorable qualities listed, what would have been a "support" with a comment becomes five or six separate entries. Multiply that by the number of supports, and then similarly with the number of opposes, and one envisions the page quickly becoming unwieldy. Newyorkbrad 22:25, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not unlike some RfCs :) --Durin 22:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- On those, it's sufficient to endorse the "Outside view by Newyorkbrad" and then move on. :) Newyorkbrad 22:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Newyorkbrad has hit this nail on the head. The structure of the RfA requires discursive answers from contributors over several measured dimensions. What are the advantages and the practicalities of this structure over the current model - I know about the vote-counting and the pile-on issues. This model is obfuscatory. I might support in three areas and oppose in two areas or any combination of the same, as well as the 60+ other regular contributors to the RfA articles. 60x5=300 comments to read through and balance out. The result would have to be issued as a Supreme Court ruling, showing the Bureaucrat's working out of the answer as evidence is weighed up. I'm not convinced that this is the best way to establish consensus and measure the opinion of the contributors on the evidence in-hand. (aeropagitica) 22:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I like this format quite a bit better than the one chosen for Moralis - that one had the advantage of making it less "vote-y", but also made it very difficult to follow the discussion. I'll be interested to follow the development of this RFA. JavaTenor 22:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The only word that comes to mind is "idiotic". No offense to whomever decided upon this format for an experiment (as I have no idea which editor(s) decided upon it, and I would not hold it against him/her/them, anyway), but this is the worst possible way to run an RfA. It's one thing for an RfC, when there are only a dozen people expected to contribute to the outcome, but it's another for an RfA, where there could be hundreds of opinions. It also doesn't leave wiggle room- with an RfC/arbitration/whatever, there are findings of fact; with an RfA, everything is opinion. Everybody has a different answer to "Is this person experienced?", "How much do I trust this person?", "Does this person need the admin tools?", "Will this person abuse his/her newly-found powers?", etc. An RfA should never be about agreeing or disagreeing with pre-written statements. It's about looking at a candidate's background and arguing for why or why not someone should be an administrator. There is no reason to make the page this long and unwieldy, and there's no reason to expect half a dozen comments from a single user when one would be sufficient. I don't expect Matt's RfA to get much action, and that's a shame, but I know that I, for one, am certainly discouraged from contributing under this format. -- Kicking222 22:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm the blithering idiot. For proof, see the upper right of my userpage. :) --Durin 22:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
This is another interesting idea, thanks Durin for these experiments. This one may provide a challenge to the closing bureaucrat as the head-counting heuristic will be difficult to apply, but it should also be more useful in exposing widely-held concerns about the candidate, if they exist. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Good to see the discussion is already in full swing. :) I was coming by just to say this version needs another category: "Nomination is the craziest dang thing I ever saw and I hardly know where to begin." Users who support this view: Kafziel Talk 22:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- The idea is fascinating, and good luck to the candidate, but I really feel that in some cases it is going to be totally impossible for the closing bureaucrat to determine consensus. If this format is adopted we are going to fail to promote an unknown number of potentially good candidates. I assume that the policy of >80% promote, <70% no (except User:Ryulong), between the two is bureaucrat discretion is going to go, because when opinions are given seperately on seperate parameters this percentage calculation will become wholly meaningless. For the record, in the light of recent applications, I would suggest that if this same format were to be applied to bureaucrat selection we would never, ever select any. And if it were not to be applied across the board, would that not be discriminatory? Tell me I'm wrong - I don't mind.--Anthony.bradbury 23:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Mmm, well I've had a good go at using all the features of the new format. To summarise my experience:
- Best bit - I like the way the discussion focuses contributors on the various skills of the candidate, it feels like a more in depth process
- Worse bit - amount of time it took me to understand the template enough to create my own section for the comment I wanted to make
- Concerns - judging the consensus may be difficult. But more importantly I think there's a risk that we can get too focused on a candidates lack of experience in one are- it took me a while to consider the candidate as an overall package rather than as a collection of skills that were present or absent.
I'm not sure its enough of an improvement on the present model to justify losing the convenient elements and it is horendously complicated. That said its an interesting experiment. Perhaps we should have another go at making the first X days of RfA discussion only and then the !vote happen for the rest? WjBscribe 23:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- The first time I read the idea of formatting RfAs as RfCs it felt like a good idea but once you actually see it, it's hard to really like much about it. As WJBscribe notes, this will make the candidate a collection of skills and non-skills. As I said earlier, the guinea pig is pretty solid so we might not get to see how disastrous this can become but WJBscribe's new section on "no XfD experience but not a problem" is (definitely not taking a jab at WJB here) a mild example of perverse effects of the format. People who feel that the summary of others is not quite right will keep adding sections with slightly tweaked formulations and there won't be much to conclude in the end. Also I'm afraid we'll arrive at impossible situations where pretty much everyone agrees that the editor needs the tools, does great work but, say, is uncivil. Unless we have two sections that are "the positives outweigh the negatives" and vice versa, it will be the b'crats job to assess that balance. And if we do have these sections, well, we're just back at voting. Pascal.Tesson 23:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- Exactly. Why do you think that large-scale surveys are of the 'Choose to agree or disagree with A,B,C,D' and not 'Give us your opinions about A,B,C,D'. The former is easy to analyse, the latter nigh-on impossible. This might just work with a dozen-or-so contributors but with the numbers that regularly participate the discursive nature of the RfA will not serve its subjects in the long run. (aeropagitica) 23:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm all for modifying and experimenting with RFA, but this format is just awful. RFA's fundamental issue is whether a user has the community's trust or not, and this format is not conducive to gathering consensus for that. It is useful for gathering evidence for an eventual lynching, but its layout is in many places liable for self-contradictions. I can agree with a user, for example, about the nominee not having enough experience in the Portal talk: namespace; that doesn't mean that I agree it is a substantive issue. If, as Pascal brings up above, we are going to end up with sections like "No XfD experience but not a problem", "No XfD experience and it is a problem", "No XfD experience but there are more relevant issues" and "No XfD experience but nobody cares", then this experiment will fail to scale and will throw no usable results. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 23:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Durin, I beg you, please stop these experiments before you accidentally invent a virus that wipes out the human species. I commend you on not taking the criticism by Kicking222 personally, but also intend to add to that criticism. As I see it, the only effect of this format change was to make turn RfA from one clear yes/no semi-vote into half a dozen overlapping, convoluted votes. Also, by discouraging many people from participating, I expect it will reduce transparency.
That's the practical side of the issue. I am also morally opposed to this format (for this, see my comments here). This format not only increases bureaucrat discretion, but does so in a way that accountability becomes impossible. What would we do with an RfA with this format that has 150 participants and 40 overlapping subsections? -- Black Falcon 23:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
- We'll need to institute a whole other bureaucratic process to try to figure out what the bureaucrats were thinking, like a wise man once said! Kafziel Talk 00:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not quite done with the virus that wipes out humanity. I'll let you know right before I release it. You might have time for a quick lunch at the local pub, and maybe hitch a ride with a vogon.
- Ok jokes aside...come on, it's just an experiment. There's no damage to the project being caused by this. For far too long, RfA has wallowed in a complete inability to come to any agreement on whether RfA is broken or not, whether we should reform it or not, what that reform would entail if anything, and etc..etc..etc.. The amount of discourse on these subjects could fill a small library. It's really rather absurd.
- So, I got tired of hashing these endless debates out. Instead, I decided to DO something about it and actually try doing something different for a change. Unless someone can show me how these experiments constitute some threat to the project (especially a threat that's worse than the normal, already damaging RfA formats), then I intend on trying others if I can find willing guinea pigs.
- In the very least, you have to acknowledge these experiments are fostering a considerable amount of discussion on actual attempts at reform rather than theoretical notions of how something might work. --Durin 00:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- After you patent the virus, will you at least donate some of the proceeds to humanitarian causes? ;) Yes, I'll agree that there's no damage caused by these experiments ... as long as they are limited to just a few instances. And I do have to admit that your bold actions have stirred debate considerable debate. And you are right that the existence of almost 90 RfA talk page archives, many about "RfA reform", is ridiculous. However, there is a simple solution ... something about "if it ain't broke" ... but I digress.
- Here's the thing: I don't see that the current RfA formats as damaging and I don't view RfA to be broken (also, I really do find this format to be exceptionally terrible ... no offense). Of course RfA isn't perfect, but then, what is? Yes, some candidacies fail for reasons you and I consider trivial (e.g., too "few" talk space edits). So what? We can't always get our way! Just because we consider those reasons to be trivial does not mean we should try to impose our standards on everyone else.
- On the whole, about half of RfAs succeed. RfA usually sees 10-15 nominations per week, of which 5-8 succeed. If you feel that we need more admins, just nominate more people. Instead of 10 nominations a week, let's have 20! -- Black Falcon 03:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please believe me when I say that this is meant with no arrogance; I, more so than probably anybody here at RfA, know about the history of RfA. 50% promotion rate is absolutely absurd, given the history here. I'm not going to argue, yet again, whether RfA is broken or not, whether we need more admins or not, etc..etc..etc.. ad nauseam. If you truly want my opinion on this subject, along with the opinions of literally hundreds of other contributors to RfA, read the archives. I'm not saying this to be hostile. I'm pointing out that this is very old ground. This is precisely one of the reasons why I embarked on these experiments. --Durin 13:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not to worry ... your statement is neither hostile nor arrogant. I too am not particularly inclined to get into a lengthy debate on the subject. I have one question, though: when you wrote that "50% promotion rate is absolutely absurd", did you mean that my estimate is inaccurate or that it is accurate but that the rate of promotion is too low? Thanks, Black Falcon 16:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please believe me when I say that this is meant with no arrogance; I, more so than probably anybody here at RfA, know about the history of RfA. 50% promotion rate is absolutely absurd, given the history here. I'm not going to argue, yet again, whether RfA is broken or not, whether we need more admins or not, etc..etc..etc.. ad nauseam. If you truly want my opinion on this subject, along with the opinions of literally hundreds of other contributors to RfA, read the archives. I'm not saying this to be hostile. I'm pointing out that this is very old ground. This is precisely one of the reasons why I embarked on these experiments. --Durin 13:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this format is a huge improvement over the previous experiment. Problem is of course that it is still a vote, and the decision can be very difficult to reach if some of the views pass and others not. Another (bigger) problem is that anyone who finds a new ground on which to oppose has to write a new view. That means that constant vigil is required from people who want to express their opinions, because after they have done so, a new view could have been added for which they feel the need to endorse or not to endorse. Furthermore, I worry about the quality of the views. In this RfA, a couple of views have been worded badly. E.g, User has no experience with XfD: if I don't endorse this view, does this mean that I think the user has enough experience with XfD? Furthermore, if I agree with some, but not all the points in a view, would I have to say I don't endorse, and write a view of my own? It all becomes very fragmented this way. Errabee 10:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Harakiri
Oh great! Instead of just one vote, we now have several and, indeed an unlimited number. Discussion may occur within each voting section, but that's blatantly the case with current, sensibly-arranged RFAs. So would both i)the nominator and ii) the nominee please explain to me how this is better than before?
Once they've done that, I'd like them both to tell me how they think that presenting a series of leading questions for people to vote on (oh hush, they're discussions like its snowing in Africa) is in some way going to demonstrate consensus. Would they have people i) oppose the leading questions, ii) write opposing leading question or iii) do both? If not i) alone, then ii) is just comedic since people will oppose and support with opposite meanings both of them.
If you're going to wail at the altar of consensus, and whip yourselves on the back with a nine-tailed whip called "RfA is broken", please try not to put entertaining make-up on before you do so. (Copied here because someone invented some rulecreep where I'm not allowed to discuss this on the discussion page of the RfA. Heaven forbid we might actually have a negative statement anywhere near it). Splash - tk 23:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Abort?
In all fairness to the candidate, I believe we should abort the experiment before it blows out of control. Now I understand some will disagree and say it's too early but I'm not sure this is very helpful for Matt Britt. Pascal.Tesson 00:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I second the motion. It's turning into a foundering morass in here, making it very tedious to look at every view and endorsement, not only for an evaluator but for a bureaucrat. bibliomaniac15 00:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The amount of text in the nomination at the moment is much less than any contentious RFA in the normal format. What about this format makes reading less text so tedious? Christopher Parham (talk) 00:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- You realise it's been running for all of about 2 hours, right, when you make that calculation? Splash - tk 00:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, and comparing to other RfAs at the two hour mark, and the difference is not significant. Moreover, as time goes on the fact that there is less need to repeat similar reasons/conversations over and over may allow this format to save space; we don't really know. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The amount of text in the nomination at the moment is much less than any contentious RFA in the normal format. What about this format makes reading less text so tedious? Christopher Parham (talk) 00:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I'll pile on as being this seriously opposed to this format. This is far worse than the Moralis format, which is itself far inferior to the standard format. What is completely missing from the format are the sub-sections for "I think this view is reason to promote" "I think this view is reason to not promote" and "I think this view should be completely ignored because the issue isn't relevant". And of course, since these are almost independent of whether the view is agreed with or not, everyone gets to vote again in this sub-section of each view. This doubles the needed effort level from the horror stories described above. GRBerry 00:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed with GRBerry that more nuance than "support" and "oppose" is needed to avoid an excess number of views. JavaTenor 01:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- green card --- RockMFR 01:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oppose aborting, unless Matt Britt wants to. You don't abort an experiment just because it seems to be going badly. We're just a few hours into it. Let it run. What's to lose? --Durin 00:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Durin. Although I don't think format is likely to be the solution to our problems, we are discovering a lot of reasons why it doesn't work so next time someone says "Why not have RfC style RfAs?" we'll have something to point to rather than just discussing it in the abstract. And good ideas may yet come of it. Unless Matt Britt wants to end it/change the format I don't see the harm in letting it continue. WjBscribe 01:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, I guess it is Matt's call although he should be made aware (if he isn't) that this is definitely an option. Sure it's nice to have a "see, it doesn't work" example but this is his RfA and he should be able to make that decision. Pascal.Tesson 01:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed. I favour aborting this particular experiment, but think deferring to the candidate is appropriate. I also don't want dislike of the format to be mixed with sentiments about the nominee, who is an excellent editor. -- Black Falcon 03:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please abort this. It's a nice idea but the result is a complete mess. >Radiant< 12:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There isn't any reason to abort. The nominee has not asked for it to be aborted, and it's not causing harm to the project. It's not as if people are being put to a torture rack and made to edit the RfA. Nobody's time is being wasted against their will. Contrast; the experiment is producing helpful feedback.What reason is there to abort? --Durin 13:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Abort. This is ridiculously close to WP:POINT. New format wasn't discussed enough to implement it in real life. Now result is a complete mess. Stop it before it's too late, because it's unclear if bureaucrats should promote after a RFA which format has no community consensus. MaxSem 17:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Enough with the voting already. --Tony Sidaway 17:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Arbitrary section break
- I oppose the reformatting of this RFA. I'm willing to let it continue for one simple reason: Matt Britt is a highly qualified candidate, well beyond the average, and he's likely to pass regardless of the format (unless he climbs the Reichstag). My main opposition is per Newyorkbrad. The standard RFA format is extremely user-friendly. You type in your vote and your reasoning, and that's it. You know exactly where all the comments belong. In this RFA, everything is confusing. I had to slog through endless lines of "noinclude" and "includeonly" and fully spelled-out diff links until I could find the section for voting on proposition one, then again for proposition two, and after that I gave up. More than any considerations of bureaucrat discretion, voting is evil, etc., an RFA must be user-friendly. I oppose the Moralis format for other reasons, but at least we can agree that the Moralis RFA is user-friendly.
Durin, I congratulate you on you boldness and good intentions. I hope you can find a more user-friendly way. For example, what if there were sections for "support" and "oppose" for people who just want to leave a single general comment, and a "discussion" section where the specific issues can be hashed out? It's probably worse than the current system, but at least it's reasonably user-friendly. YechielMan 02:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- If we did that, we might as well have the current RfA format. The idea in this format is to get away from voting, not support it.
- At least we now know what course of reform we should not take. And, of course, we shall thank Durin for pointing this part out, whether it was intentional or not, and I mean it with all sincerity. —210physicq (c) 02:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Of course its intentional; this is just one of the potential outcomes of the experiment. We do these things not because we necessarily expect them to work, but to see if and how they will fail. That's what an experiment is all about. --Durin 13:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
My impression from looking at this format is negative, there are altogether too many locations where we need to enter our opinion, and I don't think that is truly needed. But the experiment is well-intentioned, and are a better way of realizing possible benefits and drawbacks with the proposed system than a priori guesses at the significance of the pros and cons. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Determining consensus
Considering this is meant to be a way of making it easier to determine consensus, I'm surprised to see that there are no guidelines on how consensus will be determined. RFCs work in this format because they aren't intended to reach any kind of conclusion, they are just a way of finding out people's opinions. An RFA needs a definite result, and I see no way to derive one from this format. It's easy to determine if there is consensus on any individual view, but how are the crats meant to determine an overall result? --Tango 17:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I absolutely agree with Tango. Currently we have several views that definitely have consensus:
- Matt has demonstrated a need in sysop tools.
- He is trustwothy. (there are de-facto two views about this, WTHeck?)
- He sometimes misuses automatic reversion.
Now what should bureaucrat determine:
- Does #1 means that people would like to see Matt using these tools?
- Does #3 means that some people wouldn't like Matt to be an admin?
- Do #1 and #2 overweigh #3?
That means that most RFAs, except for really obvious ones will rely heavily on bureaucrat's discretion, much heavier than now. Is it what was intended? MaxSem 18:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I was just going to create a new thread. In a RfC, there is a "council" that offer solutions and determine which ones should be applied. If RfA are going to have an RfC format, bureaucrats should work like in Danny's case, using a public page to discuss and reach consensus. No more decisions made by a single bureaucrat. If it looks like a RfC, formats like a RfC and ends like a RfC, it is a RfC.
- As a side note, were us to adopt RfC format, people would not be able to dismiss a RfB candidacy because "we are enough." -- ReyBrujo 04:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- The Matt Britt experiment is ridiculous, you have to read several sections, figure out a disjointed structure, comment several times, etc...one either supports someone or one doesn't, one input, one place, keep it short and simple. The way we have now is the best of all I've seen on this talk page, not any of the experiments.Rlevse 00:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I have an idea
Since it's apparently experiment week at RFA, does anyone want to run for adminship with my idea, which is an arbitration-workshop-like structure (proposed principles, findings of fact, etc) with the discussion divided into comments by bureaucrats/by candidate/by others. Anyone up for it? --Random832 02:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- That makes it incredibly hard to analyze support and oppose, which is what bureaucrats have to do until there is a consensus to change that. If it's just intended to be an experiment, though, with no actual effect, then I'll do it. -Amarkov moo! 02:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- RfA is not a vote. RfA is not a vote. RfA is not a vote. Bureaucrats are not expected to count votes. They are expected to evaluate consensus. --Durin 13:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Go ahead. But I can say that it's going to be even more convoluted than the current standard template, though. —210physicq (c) 02:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I need a
victimguinea pigvolunteer, though... --Random832 02:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)- Choose a suitable one from the Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls list. Note the emphasis. —210physicq (c) 03:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I am considering accepting your offer, but I would like to see an example of this method of gaining adminship first. Captain panda 03:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I do suppose it could limit the amount of obviously unqualified candidates with an "opinion on hearing this request" type of thing at the beginning. bibliomaniac15 03:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I am considering accepting your offer, but I would like to see an example of this method of gaining adminship first. Captain panda 03:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Choose a suitable one from the Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls list. Note the emphasis. —210physicq (c) 03:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Um, I am interested in trying out with this method. AQu01rius (User • Talk) 03:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- shudder... that sounds even more complicated than the Matt Britt experiment. And I don't mean that as a compliment! :-) Pascal.Tesson 03:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's no harm in trying. At least we know what doesn't work so that said unworkable ideas won't come up again. —210physicq (c) 03:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well my gut feeling is that this is a step in a direction which is not turning out to be too convincing. Pascal.Tesson 04:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's no harm in trying. At least we know what doesn't work so that said unworkable ideas won't come up again. —210physicq (c) 03:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- RFAr is an even worse format than RFC for this purpose, unfortunately. -- nae'blis 14:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea and I will volunteer to be the guinea pig although I am not sure that my RFA will pass. Or, perhaps it is because I am not sure that my RFA will pass that I would be a good guinea pig. Presumably, the "Decisions" section will consist primarily of "Recommend for adminship" or "Decline adminship" with some possible additional recommendations. --Richard 19:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Withdrawn. I'm convinced that this isn't going to be as easy as i thought, based on the results of the "RFC-like" experiment. If someone else wants to do it, go ahead, but it's not worth the trouble for me. --Random832 03:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Ahem...
I've seen quite a few people (including myself) voicing the opinion that the current format is fine, or at least that there's no suitable replacement at this time. How come our opinion is just being ignored? I have no hard evidence, but I'm willing to bet there are more people who support the current version than there are people who support any one alternative. So if these alternate versions don't have significant support beforehand, why all the disruption? I know eventually (once there's support for them) we'll want to give these new versions a real-world try, but couldn't they at least go through some peer review-type troubleshooting sessions before being forced on us in a real RfA? It seems to me that in the stampede for "consensus building", you guys are actually trampling consensus by throwing these other formats out there almost unilaterally. Kafziel Talk 03:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- For three+ years, your opinions have been listened to. The opinions were not in any respect ignored. They were talked about, hashed out, lathered, rinsed, repeated, spindled, folded, hung out to dry, shat upon by passing seagulls, sent back to the laundry, re-washed with a few applications of a stain stick, rehashed, then put through a conventional dryer, put in a laundry basket and dumped in a closet somewhere. If you doubt me, have a look at the archives. Shockingly, somebody decided that...*GASP*...we've already had enough talking :) and decided to try something different for a change. Of course, Jesus was crucified for suggesting wouldn't it be great to be nice to people for a change too. Not equating myself to Jesus here, but the reluctance to change... --Durin 13:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm the one saying "wouldn't it be great to be nice to people". If you have an idea, don't make some other guy be your guinea pig, with his own actual RfA on the line. Do it in your own space, with your username and history, without dragging anyone else into it. It's not binding (obviously), it's not disruptive, nobody is forced to participate, it can weed out the obvious bad ideas... there's no down side to it. Kafziel Talk 13:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Except of course less participation. This has been done Kafziel, with little result. --Durin 13:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Then the problem is the advertising, not the lack of disruption. Kafziel Talk 13:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Except of course that advertising was done in previous attempts. Further, Moralis' and Matt Britt's RfAs are not causing any disruption to the project. Disliking an experiment, even vehemently, is not the same as disruption. Nobody else's RfA is being affected by these experiement. Nobody's. Nobody is being forced to comment against their will. --Durin 13:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm the one saying "wouldn't it be great to be nice to people". If you have an idea, don't make some other guy be your guinea pig, with his own actual RfA on the line. Do it in your own space, with your username and history, without dragging anyone else into it. It's not binding (obviously), it's not disruptive, nobody is forced to participate, it can weed out the obvious bad ideas... there's no down side to it. Kafziel Talk 13:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Um... these are intended to be real RfAs, with a binding result? That's stupid. Are we going to start running AfDs with weird formats and then declaring the results (which can't be interpreted well because the process is different) binding? -Amarkov moo! 03:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Absolutely. Why not? It's not as if an admin can cause irreparable harm to the project. If he is not trustworthy, it'll still show up in the RfA. What's the big deal? --Durin 13:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why you are so keen in trying to stop experimentation. No one is disrupting anything here. I am of the opinion that the current system does not work, except all the other systems are even worse (in short, there is nothing wrong with the current system). Just as long as there are willing volunteers for this, let it go. Obstructing new ideas is only going to cause more "overthrow the current
regimesystem" agitation. Rather, let these ideas come to reality, and when we see the abject failure of these proposals, we shall be able to prove that the current system is really the best we can get (so far). —210physicq (c) 03:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)- No one is disrupting anything? Have you seen the Moralis RfA? I haven't seen such a swarm of disorganized input and pissed-off editors since... well, maybe since one of my own RfAs.
- I'm not saying experimentation is impossible, but it shouldn't be so wanton, either. If you come up with an idea, set up the format in a subpage of your user space with yourself as the "nominee" and give it a week to see how it goes and get feedback on the talk page. Kafziel Talk 03:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting. Could you please point to some negative effect on the main namespace because of the Moralis RfA? A few diffs would suffice. Let's remember the goal of this project is the encyclopedia, not RfA. The project is not being harmed by this. --Durin 13:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well Moralis' RfA is pretty awful but I tend to agree that it could be a blessing in disguise. That is, of course, if the few supporters of that format are willing to recognize that it has created more problems than it has solved. Pascal.Tesson 04:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- But what about the next one, and the next one, and the next one?
- A similar result could have been had in a test run on a user subpage. It wouldn't have gotten quite the same level of response, but we would have seen a similar pattern. If someone comes up with an alternate format, he should be willing to put his own dignity on the line for his experiment, rather than someone else's. If things seem to be working out after a week or so, then he can go looking for a willing test subject for RfA. If not, no harm done to anyone. Kafziel Talk 04:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I doubt that to be the case. A subpage experiment lacks the ruffled feathers and "they moved my cheese!" effect we're seeing by having these be actual RfAs. Subpages get considerably less attention. --Durin 13:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- One problem: historically, RFA tests on pages away from WP:RFA receive little attention, if any. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Everyone on this talk page will know about it, and given the recent activity here, that should be a decent number of people. We can keep a list of links at the top of this page to the various test pages, so people dropping by can see where to go. Kafziel Talk 04:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The number of people here right now is not drastically different from the number of people that watch it routinely. However, why should I (to pick an example) care to go into a test page, when I could spend my time better in other community matters? At least when a real nomination with a potential promotion is concerned, there's an incentive to comment. Again, if the part is any indication, until someone is bold and breaks the window, no one bothers to comment. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Why should you? Well, that's kind of my point. Whether you care to go to a test page or not, consensus appears to hold that the current format is better than any other format, so these new versions shouldn't be forced on the community by one or two people. It's similar to moving an article to a different title when consensus has already held to leave it where it is. Being bold does not include being reckless. Kafziel Talk 12:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- You do know that a recent survey had a large majority of people indicating RfA was broken, yes? Your estimation of consensus might need adjusting. --Durin 13:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think not. There was no consensus found for any particular format, let alone one that outweighed consensus for the current one. It's easy to say something is broken in a vague way, but it's another thing entirely to actually come up with a viable alternative. Kafziel Talk 13:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Why should you? Well, that's kind of my point. Whether you care to go to a test page or not, consensus appears to hold that the current format is better than any other format, so these new versions shouldn't be forced on the community by one or two people. It's similar to moving an article to a different title when consensus has already held to leave it where it is. Being bold does not include being reckless. Kafziel Talk 12:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's nothing wrong with experimentation per se, but I'd like to see the list of alternative RfA structures proposed to-date, along with their pros and cons listed alongside too. Are the alternatives just Moralis' and Matt Britt's? It's brave of them to try but it's clear that it is much harder to interpret the balance of opinion in them compared to the other running RfAs following the established structure. Is this the way that a new structure is to be drawn up, by performing live experiments and rating the comments on WT:RFA? I'd like to be able to read the rationale behind each new structure as it is field tested, I think that this would be useful to see the method that the proposer is using to attempt to establish consensus for the candidate. A link to this on the RfA would be an excellent idea. (aeropagitica) 05:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The hypothetical discussions went on forever. The pros and cons were very difficult to evaluate without concreate examples. --Durin 13:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The number of people here right now is not drastically different from the number of people that watch it routinely. However, why should I (to pick an example) care to go into a test page, when I could spend my time better in other community matters? At least when a real nomination with a potential promotion is concerned, there's an incentive to comment. Again, if the part is any indication, until someone is bold and breaks the window, no one bothers to comment. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Everyone on this talk page will know about it, and given the recent activity here, that should be a decent number of people. We can keep a list of links at the top of this page to the various test pages, so people dropping by can see where to go. Kafziel Talk 04:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Support. I support the current format, and see no need for change.AKAF 06:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The cure is becoming worse than the problem. Wild experimentation isn't helpful. >Radiant< 12:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- But as you know experimentation is sometimes the only way to effect change. Haukur 12:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- PROD didn't disrupt AFD. It was tried out on a separate page, people were (and still are) free not to use it, and it didn't wreak havoc on anyone's chances at adminship. Kafziel Talk 13:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The experiment isn't disrupting RfA. No animals or plants, or even other RfAs were harmed in the making of this experiment. And, whether or not it wreaks havoc on Moralis' of Matt Britt's chances at adminship is irrelevant. They agreed to the experiment; the consequence is for them to decide, not for us. Personally, I think it's patently absurd to hold the format of an RfA against a candidate. --Durin 13:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It may seem irrelevant to you (by the way, I'm sure they appreciate your sympathy) but I doubt a failed RfA seems irrelevant to them. Kafziel Talk 13:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I'm a cruel and harsh task master who forced these guinea pigs into evil experiments where we drilled holes into their skulls, amputated toes, and tied them to a rack while sending electrical shocks through their testicles. You presume too much Kafziel. These are willing guinea pigs who know full well what the potential consequences are. Please stop trying to defend them against the great injustice of performing an experiment intended to help RfA evolve. If they want to end the experiment, there is nothing stopping them from doing so. Don't make decisions for them. They made the decisions. Not you. --Durin 13:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It may seem irrelevant to you (by the way, I'm sure they appreciate your sympathy) but I doubt a failed RfA seems irrelevant to them. Kafziel Talk 13:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Fair enough. I wouldn't say the current experiment is wreaking havoc with Matt's chances, though. If the experiment goes to the dogs I'm sure he can file a regular RFA and pass with flying colours. Haukur 13:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah Matt Britt is a very good candidate by current RfA standards. It perhaps makes him less of an ideal candidate for the experiment :/ Still, we're getting lots of discussion on the format, and it's less than a day old so maybe it's fine. --Durin 13:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- PROD didn't disrupt AFD. It was tried out on a separate page, people were (and still are) free not to use it, and it didn't wreak havoc on anyone's chances at adminship. Kafziel Talk 13:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
)CTU( 7002 lirpA 81 ,83:30 (em ksA ?pleh deeN)BCnIghiH .sdrawkcab stsop enoyreve erehw AfR na od ew tseggus I
- <sarcasm>Really? I think if we did it backwards it would fix all the problems, because of course, changing the style of the page will change how people think and act.</sarcasm> HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 04:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- But the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says... Err wait. Actually, if you change the procedure described on the page, people will act differently. Though I can think of ways where changing the style of a page might have effect.
- For instance on WP:VAND, if we change the style of the word "not" in "Do not vandalize" so that the word not is rendered in the background color... Wait...
- /me stops, before I start stuffing beans up people's noses, too ;-) --Kim Bruning 04:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
leizfaK - (: ?AfR ta tupni reffo meht tel ot uoy rof hguone "dettimmoc" si resu a evorp sdrawkcab gnitirw t'ndluoW ?miK ,ton yhW
Nope, if we want to have our RFAs written backwards, we could use a bot. Doing it by hand wastes everyone's time! :-P --Kim Bruning 04:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Subpages not working; partially to Kafziel
It has been suggested that a better method of testing things on RfA would be to create a subpage, advertise it, and allow me to comment on the subpage. I've argued that this has been tried before, with dismal results as the subpages receive little in the way of attention. To support this, I offer some examples:
Recently, I created User:Durin/What is wrong with RfA. I duly advertised it here on this talk page, and also on IRC. The page has been in existence for a week. During that time, the number of people who have contributed to User:Durin/What is wrong with RfA: 16.
Some time ago, effort was made by User:Werdna to try to run an RfA as an RfC Wikipedia:RFA as RFC/Werdna. It too was duly advertised [1]. The number of people who have contributed to Wikipedia:RFA as RFC/Werdna: 40 (and only 11 on the experiment RfA itself; the rest was discussion).
Contrast;
- The number of people who have commented at Moralis' RfA: 121.
- The number of people who, in the first 18 hours, of Matt Britt's RfA: 43
- The number of people who have participated at WT:RFA in the last three days, which has almost solely been focused on these RfA experiments: 61
The simple fact is, subpages do not generate as much traffic as doing the experiments as we are. It's been tried before. Matt's RfA has, in less than a day, exceeded Werdna's experiment in the diversity of people commenting on it, much less all the discussion that has happened here on WT:RFA. --Durin 14:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I disagree. Werdna's experiment was a good one. (I don't really see what your subpage has to do with my suggestion; everybody has a subpage about something they'd do differently, but you can't expect anyone else to care about it.) 11 isn't a bad turnout. 20 would be better, and probably could be had if it was repeated today. You can't base it solely on the number of participants. I'd rather have 10 participants with something to add rather than 50 saying "this format is stupid" or "the purple sparrow flies at midnight". Kafziel Talk 14:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you for making my point; "everybody has a subpage about something they'd do differently, but you can't expect anyone else to care about it" People have and do care when it's on the main RfA page. Suddenly, it's a topic. Suddenly, there's rampant interest. Suddenly, it's actually being tried. Werdna's experiment failed in large part because few people actually tried it out. Other than Werdna, just ten people actually tried the format. In the first 18 hours of Matt Britt's RfA, we've got FOUR TIMES that amount of people attempting to use the format. That's a good thing. IO still fail to see what great harm has been caused by trying this experiment for real.
- Look, simulations are all well and good. They're a necessary part of most development process. But, occasionally, you have to actually send something into the wild to see how it behaves in the chaotic environment it is expected to exist in. Apollo 8 for example was not the first ever launch of the Saturn V. It was the first ever manned launch. They experimented, and learned much from it. And please, don't make comparisons of man/unmanned to undermine the analogy. Matt Britt and Moralis won't be killed by agreeing to be a guinea pig. :) --Durin 14:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Durin: first could you please lay off the caps lock and the bold? And second, not that I want to spoil your fun but comparing your experiments to space exploration is maybe, just maybe, a sign that you're taking yourself a tad too seriously. Sure, there's no horrendous disruption going on but why shouldn't we seriously restarting Matt's RfA when a number of editors are saying that the format prevents them from participating in the debate? You seem to object to "disruption" but if the experiment is getting in the way of the community's ability to make a decision, surely this outweighs the benefits of experimentation. Pascal.Tesson 15:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Using emphasis is hardly unusual Pascal. Further, I'm rather far removed from taking myself too seriously. Look at the upper right of my user page if you doubt that :) As to the analogy, it should be blatantly apparent that experimentation is a good thing, and using the Apollo program was a great example of that. Yet, people here still seem to think experimentation is disruptive and damaging to the project. I've asked several times now for people to provide feedback on this, or even diffs supporting this supposed damage...with nobody providing anything. Rather funny :) These experiments do not get in the way of the community to make a decision in any respect. --Durin 15:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- You're getting all these responses because you are disrupting the RfA process. Is it for a good reason? Maybe. But it's still disruption. The fact that a practically unheard-of editor has 121 comments on his RfA should be evidence enough.
- To clarify what I meant about yours: Everybody has a subpage where they publish their manifesto, and nobody cares. Very few people are going to read it, let alone offer suggestions or copyedit it for you. An experiment that actively invites participation is quite different. People do participate on user pages that seek simple input like a comment or a vote.
- To stick with your analogy, what I'm suggesting is that you do some testing before the unmanned launch. NASA doesn't just launch a rocket without testing it under controlled conditions first. They don't just let each scientist come up with his own design and take it to the launch pad. Kafziel Talk 15:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The testing was already done on a subpage. So you're suggesting more tests on a subpage? And having 121 people comment on Moralis' RfA is a bad thing? How? --Durin 15:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- What subpage, and where? Who knew about it? What changes were made? What about all these other proposed formats? Where have they been tested? That's what I'm asking.
- The comments themselves are not bad; they are a symptom of the disruption. Contentious situations draw crowds. Intentionally creating a contentious situation with the purpose of drawing a crowd is disruption. Kafziel Talk 15:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Kafziel, we're talking right past each other. Have a nice day. --Durin 15:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that with respect to Matt's nomination, Apollo 13 may be a more apt comparison :) >Radiant< 15:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- You have 9 editors expressly saying on this talk page that the format is too confusing for them to participate in the debate. Why shouldn't that be considered as "getting in the way of proper decision-making"? As for using emphasis, well, WP:TALK#Good_practice might be a sound reminder. Pascal.Tesson 15:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not a single non-experimental RfA is being affected by these experimental RfAs. No articles, no policies, no protals, no projects, nothing is being affected by these experiments except the experiments themselves. Any "disruption" is illusory. --Durin 15:29, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Durin: first could you please lay off the caps lock and the bold? And second, not that I want to spoil your fun but comparing your experiments to space exploration is maybe, just maybe, a sign that you're taking yourself a tad too seriously. Sure, there's no horrendous disruption going on but why shouldn't we seriously restarting Matt's RfA when a number of editors are saying that the format prevents them from participating in the debate? You seem to object to "disruption" but if the experiment is getting in the way of the community's ability to make a decision, surely this outweighs the benefits of experimentation. Pascal.Tesson 15:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
At some point in time, I guess we just need to try stuff, else you end up stuck in a rut. So this method is too tricky for some folks? Ok, in that case, propose ways to fix it, and see how far it goes. Worst case we don't promote this candidate. (And hopefully the next experiment will go better! :-) )
RFA can use some spring cleaning. And besides, isn't this fun? :-)
--Kim Bruning 15:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC) hey we're volunteering for this project. If it's not fun, what are we doing here? :-P
- I must slightly disagree regarding your call to {{sofixit}} ... if you have a severely gangrenous leg, you don't try to fix it, you cut it off. Likewise, if you adopt a cuddly hamster that turns into this, it's probably better to reconsider that decision rather than trying to de-mutate the thing. One last example to follow this space exploration theme: if, during the final countdown, you spot a fire on the shuttle, you don't just try to put out the fire, you abort the launch. If the goal is "spring cleaning" maybe we ought to wait until September so everyone in the Southern Hemisphere can catch up? -- Black Falcon 16:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- <grin> Well, this is an experiment. Blowing up is as interesting a result as not blowing up. So try to figure out what's making this one blow up, so that the next experiment doesn't. :-) --Kim Bruning 02:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
what?
i requested for admin but it doesnt show up on the page, what am i doing wrong? The juggsd86 15:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Because it does not automatically transclude to WP:RFA. You have to manually add it. However, you should note that with less than 50 edits it would be impossible for you to pass RfA currently. --Durin 15:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I also strongly advise you to drop the idea of requesting adminship right now. You have made about 30 edits to Wikipedia since the creation of your account 4 months ago and this is clearly insufficient experience. There's a lot you can do here without being an admin: please do continue to participate as an ordinary editor and if in a few months you believe you have gained sufficient experience and feel you are ready, you can reconsider applying. Pascal.Tesson 15:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Reduce onerous requirements: note bad opposition reasons
Danny's RFA gives precedent for bureaucrats to just ignore irrelevant oppose reasons. To that end, I've started noting when a given oppose is irrelevant to the question "is this person likely to cause damage with the admin tools?" and suggest it be ignored.
Remember that adminship should be No Big Deal - thus, the only question at RFA is "will this editor cause damage as an admin?" 6000 edits, five featured articles or being put forward by three WikiProjects is utterly irrelevant and any bureaucrat should pay it the appropriate amount of attention, i.e. none whatsoever.
Others, e.g. you, are welcome to do so as well. This alone should help reduce irrelevant overrequirements - David Gerard 16:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I ask that you stop your highly inappropriate postings. I have looked over some of them, and they come off as disrespectful and arrogant. If your standard is, "is this person likely to cause damage with the admin tools?", then you are more than welcome to use it. Please have enough respect for your co-editors and do not call for them to be ignored just because you disagree with them. If you think a particular oppose reason is "irrelevant", then you are free to ignore it; please do not call for bureaucrats to do so. -- Black Falcon 16:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Certainly. The first things I'll be marking as inappropriate are the comments claiming that other comments are inappropriate. It is up to each RfA participant to determine the issues they consider relevant, and the community has not placed its trust in you to determine that. GRBerry 18:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Determination by the group that a particular opposition to consensus is not held of value by the group is fully within the purview of the process, however. "This user does not like the color blue." is not a deal-breaker. While I take issue with David Gerard's standards and don't believe they represent the consensus of the 'pedia, you are also incorrect that it is inappropriate to object to objections. -- nae'blis 18:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There is a difference between participating in a discussion by objecting to, or questioning, an objection, and by claiming the right to tell the closing bureaucrats "you should ignore this". Having just gone through one RfA where David did the latter, in every case he was not only unreasonably arrogant, he was wrong because the issues were relevant. GRBerry 18:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Determination by the group that a particular opposition to consensus is not held of value by the group is fully within the purview of the process, however. "This user does not like the color blue." is not a deal-breaker. While I take issue with David Gerard's standards and don't believe they represent the consensus of the 'pedia, you are also incorrect that it is inappropriate to object to objections. -- nae'blis 18:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- David, please do stop that experiment. Your comments come off as completely inappropriate. No good can come out of this way of doing things. Pascal.Tesson 19:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Certainly. The first things I'll be marking as inappropriate are the comments claiming that other comments are inappropriate. It is up to each RfA participant to determine the issues they consider relevant, and the community has not placed its trust in you to determine that. GRBerry 18:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I certainly hope the bureaucrats are capable of ignoring votes as appropriate. If they're not, we're in serious trouble. Take an extreme example; "Oppose: Likes the color blue too much. --User:JoeWikiUser9999" Should that carry as much weight as "Oppose: Has been blocked for WP:3RR violations several times, including twice in the last week"? Of course not. As we get into more grey areas, there's not as clear answers. David's position is absolutely valid. The only question that RfA asks is whether a person can be trusted with the tools. It does not ask if they contribute to XfD. It does not ask if they have a featured article or a featured picture. It does not ask if they have 2000 edits. If does not ask if they've been here for six months. Trust. That's all. --Durin 17:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- As I'm sure you're well aware, the comments at hand are not the obvious vandalism that you refer to in your post. I love that you've written, "Trust. That's all." Well, you should realise that people have different criteria for trusting others. When the issue comes to down something as basic and as personal as trust, it would do well to respect the fact that not everyone is and thinks alike. People will disagree, and it is not appropriate to imply that they necessarily do so out of bad-faith malice (e.g., personal grudges) or good-faith stupidity. -- Black Falcon 18:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Where did I imply bad faith malice or stupidity!?!?! I brought up a silly example to express the outlier areas. I'm sorry you're deeply offended by that. It had nothing to do with you or indeed any person here. --Durin 18:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's completely unnecessary, I assure you, as I neither am offended or find your comments offensive. In fact, allow me to apologise for the confusion my comment created (part of it is that this discussion bled over from the one I had not long ago with Mackensen at his RfB and on my talk page). I have clarified my somewhat lengthy thoughts in a new section at the bottom of the page. -- Black Falcon 20:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Where did I imply bad faith malice or stupidity!?!?! I brought up a silly example to express the outlier areas. I'm sorry you're deeply offended by that. It had nothing to do with you or indeed any person here. --Durin 18:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- As I'm sure you're well aware, the comments at hand are not the obvious vandalism that you refer to in your post. I love that you've written, "Trust. That's all." Well, you should realise that people have different criteria for trusting others. When the issue comes to down something as basic and as personal as trust, it would do well to respect the fact that not everyone is and thinks alike. People will disagree, and it is not appropriate to imply that they necessarily do so out of bad-faith malice (e.g., personal grudges) or good-faith stupidity. -- Black Falcon 18:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
People misnamed admins early on. People who actually administrate wikipedia are called "developers", or "foundation employees". Adminship is more like a drivers license, (an editing license if you will). With the admin bit set, you are allowed to do some more traditionally destructive kinds of edit. In fact we could possibly drop adminship at the moment, or grant it to many more people, because a lot of the issues that previously required restrictions (delete an image and it was gone, for instance) are now not so big a deal anymore. (In the case of our example, commons pushed to have reversible deletion on images) --Kim Bruning 17:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- In cases where a user asks me to do some administrator-related task, I've begun saying, "I'm sorry, I cannot do that because I do not have the sysop flag", or something like that. I totally agree that the term "administrator" is a misnomer. One can do so many administrative-related tasks and not be an administrator. Likewise (and I think that this is perfectly acceptable), one can do so little administrative-tasks and be an administrator. It all depends upon what type of work you want to do on Wikipedia. --Iamunknown 17:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at the vote count per se. If an editor gets 100 opposes, then the bureaucrats will piss some of these people off when they promote him to admin; they should weigh the advantage of the additional admin versus the potential damage to the community. (Carnildo's last RfA is in my opinion an example where the promotion (which I supported) was not worth the resulting commotion). So bureaucrats should probably have some range outside of which they just do what the vote count says: do not promote below 60% (66%, 70%, whatever), always promote above 90% (80%, whatever). Inbetween, I don't mind bureaucrats using their discretion if they do so all the time. There were perfectly reasonable oppose votes in Danny's RfA, and there are many failed 70%+ RfAs of less well known people that could have been closed as successful by a bureaucrat applying actual discretion (by which I mean: look at the arguments, make up his own mind, and make an informed decision; I do not think that discounting sockpuppets or new accounts has to do with discretion: that part should be automatic for any crat worth his salt). But there needs to be some consistency in what the bureaucrats do. That makes people believe in the system and helps against accusations of cabalism. If the bureaucrats are unable or unwilling to use their discretion in a way that is perceived as mostly fair, we should use a pure voting system instead, which will likely cause less disruption of the community. It would also be faster, leaving more time to write an encyclopedia instead of arguing whether "only 28 Wikipedia space edits" is a "valid" oppose reason. Kusma (talk) 18:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmm, I think Carnildo 3 was worth the commotion; now Carnildo is an administrator and, frankly, I think that is a good thing. S/he does quite a bit of work that is necessary for the pedia. I do, however, agree that there needs to be some semblance of order. But, likewise, if we were going to give total discretion (or, less radically, more discretion) to bureaucrats, what might make sense to one person might totally outrage another. In general, I think the best criterion for adminship is, "Is this user trusted?" If yes, then admin 'em, we can use all the help we can get to clear out backlogs, monitor AIV, etc. If no, then no. --Iamunknown 18:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, but "is this user trusted?" is a personal question; there is no way we can find out whether the greater part of the community trusts him other than by trying to hold a representative poll about it (i.e. vote). Kusma (talk) 18:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- (ec) I agree. In real life, trust corollates with the mutual understanding and, in particular, realising that you are safe when in the company of a particular person. Additionally, in real life, actions are not easily reversible. On wiki, however, actions are, so, in my mind, trust may be given more liberally. Perhaps the distinction between on wiki trust and real life trust is not readily apparent or acknowledged when people participate in RFA discussions? Or perhaps the distinction is non-existent? Thoughts? --Iamunknown 18:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, but "is this user trusted?" is a personal question; there is no way we can find out whether the greater part of the community trusts him other than by trying to hold a representative poll about it (i.e. vote). Kusma (talk) 18:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Without commenting on Carnildo or that closing, Kusma hit one of the nails on the head. The way the bureaucrats have been acting has been reinforcing the appearance of a Cabal. The effort made and standards applied in closing the Danny RfA were far different than those applied to the typical discussion. If they aren't prepared to put that level of effort into all close calls, then they shouldn't apply them for their friends, and we should just move to a straight vote. GRBerry 18:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- If they [bureaucrats] aren't prepared to put that level of effort into all close calls, then they shouldn't apply them for their friends, and we should just move to a straight vote. Agreed. See my response to Kusma above for thoughts about trust. --Iamunknown 18:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ah yes, Kusma is once more being his eloquent self. maybe it's time to acknowledge that save a few whackos here and there, a vast majority of RfA participants have pretty sound judgement and are expressing honestly their sentiments. If many of them are saying that they don't trust this user as an admin, chances are that... they don't. For the common good, it's reasonable then to avoid promoting. The current attempts at moving towards something that's as far as possible from voting has huge drawbacks. If we lose the little transparence and simplicity that's left, we might get a system that promotes candidates who know how to play the game rather than candidates who have the community's trust. Pascal.Tesson 19:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Need for tools as a criterion
In Matt Britt's RFA, Tony Sidaway seemed to indicate that the "need for the admin tools" was not a necessary criterion for adminship. I found this interesting as this is a very common objection to RFA candidates. I'd be interested in hearing Tony's explanation of his stance. --Richard 16:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not answering for Tony; whether or not a person needs the tools is not a reason to oppose. The admin rights are being treated as a status symbol when they are simply additional rights. If an editor finds they use them once a year, that's enough for them to have the admin tools. One admin action is still a benefit to the community, and is equivalent to one admin action from an editor that uses the admin rights a thousand times a day. It's all helpful. One of the editors I nominated for adminship, User:Edcolins, has since being promoted barely used the admin tools. Is he any less trustworthy, any less capable as an admin? No. Is he an inherent danger to the project because he so rarely uses his tools? No. Read Ed's RfA, specifically his answer to question 1 where he says his behavior won't change. Adminship is not about how often you might use the tools, it's all about whether you are trustworthy enough to not abuse the tools when you do use them. That's all that matters. --Durin 16:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- OK, thanks. That's enlightening and I think I agree. It's really hard to figure out what are good and not-so-good criteria for adminship based solely on watching WP:RFA. I would never have thought to question this criterion until Tony made the comment. --Richard 16:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would disagree. We run a risk every time another editor is given the admin tools. Since we don't have a functioning community based system for removing those tools, it is quite reasonable to decide that the risk isn't worth running because they won't be actually using the tools to benefit the project. So the concern is relevant. (On the other hand "need" is the wrong wording, "intention to regularly use the tools to benefit the project" would be more accurate, if longer.) GRBerry 18:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please enlighten me of this "risk". Everything an admin can do is reversable, and there are almost always stewards around, should there ever be a need to urgently remove the tools - which there hasn't been iirc. Majorly (hot!) 19:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Always worth unpacking an argument that people miss the middle steps in. 1) Wikipedia is built by a community of editors. 2) Administrative actions have effects on the perceptions of other editors and of readers. 3) The ability to reverse the technical steps taken by an admin does not include the ability to reverse the effect that those actions had on other editors prior to their reversal. 4) It is false that everything an admin can do is reversable, and they can drive away other editors and make the encyclopedia worse for a significant amount of time, at least in specific areas. If you want relevant recent specific examples, consider Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Darwinek, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war, and the Essjay scandal. (Not acting also carries risks; if I recall correctly an admin that declined to take action with regard to Philosophy has probably made the philosophy section of the noticably worse by contributing to the loss of a high value add contributor.)
- Please enlighten me of this "risk". Everything an admin can do is reversable, and there are almost always stewards around, should there ever be a need to urgently remove the tools - which there hasn't been iirc. Majorly (hot!) 19:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It is a common exception, but also not a very relevant one. An editor that doesn't use the admin tools by definition doesn't abuse them either. >Radiant< 08:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Consistent availability as a criterion
As a follow-on to the above discussion about the "need for admin tools", would you agree that consistency of editing is equally not important? If someone has made lots of edits but has also shown a fall-off from wherein he/she has not edited for a while, this should not be a criterion for opposition either? The idea being that the trustworthiness of the candidate and the good use of admin tools are more important than logging on every day and being available. I mention this because this is another criterion that is often used to oppose RFA candidates (i.e. rate of edits is less than x/day or y/month). --Richard 16:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would agree that "rate of edits" or "consistency of activity" are both poor standards by which to judge candidates. Quality of edits is far more important. However, (and this is addressed more to Durin than you) I also think that we should not try to impose our standards on everyone else. Most of the regulars at RfA are smart enough ... let's let them make their own decisions as to their standards. -- Black Falcon 17:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, everyone else is stupid and I'm the only one with the right answers! ;) If I see something that I think is wrong, I'm willing to stand up and say it's wrong. David Gerard did so above himself. This is part of how we encourage a process to evolve. I don't see anything wrong with that. I recognize that the defacto social currency system we have here actively discourages people from ruffling feathers. That's one of the primary reasons why I ran my RfB knowing it would fail, and why subsequent to that I stepped down from adminship...to intentionally remove myself from the social currency system. People might not like what I have to say, but there's little they can do to hold it against me unless I violate Wikipedia policy (and I'm not). Thus, if I see something that I think is rubbish, I'm going to call it into question. This isn't a matter of trying to enforce my own standards. It's a matter of me expressing my opinion. Nobody is forced to go along with me. --Durin 17:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's one thing to challenge arguments that you perceive to be wrong. It's another to write (and I paraphrase), "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! I don't want to listen to you. Lalalalala ... Hey everyone, IGNORE THIS IDIOT!!!". The difference may be subtle, but it's there. :) It's not particularly conducive to the idea of "discussion" when people decide to ignore what others say. If we feel that an argument is wrong, we certainly ought to challenge it. I wrote that people's comments ought to be respected, but that doesn't mean I hold them to be sacred dogma which is to be worshipped under the full moon. I'm just saying, I think our challenges of various arguments ought to consist of more than just this. -- Black Falcon 18:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's a difference between "ignoring" and "considering, rejecting, and not accounting for in decision making." If someone opposes (or supports) a candidate using a line of argument that the community as a whole rejects, the community should not account for that input in making its final decision. (i.e., the closing bureaucrat should ignore it.) This avoids the situation where community action is dictated by elements and positions that the community rejects. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Consensus can change. The only valid evidence that the community continues to reject a particular line of argument is the people who, having seen it attempted in a particular case, nonetheless hold the opposite opinion about what to do. GRBerry 20:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think there's a question of degrees -- if I ask somebody why they deleted an article or blocked a /13 range (500,000+ IPs), I'd rather not wait six months for an answer. I personally wouldn't make too big a deal about this, provided somebody makes reasonable efforts to respond to communication, but taking an extreme example as above, I could see it becoming a deal-breaker at some point. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment on the Durin/Matt Britt RFA format
On the one hand, I like the format because it shifts the focus away from a straight "up or down" vote/!vote on the candidate. On the other hand, I hate the format because it destroys the readability of the WP:RFA page. Matt Britt's RFA is so long that I can't just page past it to look at the RFA's below it. (Yes, I know I can use the TOC to navigate but that means that I have to page up to the TOC to get to each RFA.)
Could we consider having the Durin/Matt Britt RFA format as a supplemental discussion page? In other words, the Durin format discussion would be a separate page that is linked to but not transcluded onto the WP:RFA page. Before !voting on the standard format RFA page, editors would be asked to read and comment on the various assertions made on the Durin format discussion page. A committed participant in the RFA process would read and participate in the discussion on the discussion page. However, editors could choose to ignore the discussion page and just !vote on the RFA page as they currently do.
Thus, using my idea, you get the best of both worlds. With the Durin format discussion page, you get focused discussion that assists bureaucrats in focusing on what the contentious issues are for a particular candidate (if there are any). But you also have the readability advantages of the currrent streamlined RFA format.
What we have to ask ourselves is what happens if the discussion on the discussion page diverges from the consensus on the RFA page. I think this would only happen in those "discretionary" cases where the consensus is between 70% and 80%. If a candidate has less than 70% support, the discussion page is likely to have at least a few negative points raised. If the candidate is above 80%, it's likely that there will be few negative points if any. When the consensus falls into the "discretionary" range, there will be a mix of positive and negative points. In this situation, I think the Durin format will help the bureaucrat sift through the many opinions and decide which are the critical issues for this particular candidate and how much weight to give the objections.
--Richard 17:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Note: Haven't read the above; just want to donate my 2c to the discussion somewhere, then go to bed. This header covers it.
- Have to say, the Matt Britt format is excellent and exactly how RfAs should work in the real world. Sadly, this isn't the real world, this is Wikipedia. The mark-up is horribly complex for those of use who dread wikimarkup and all of its devil-like ways. There's no easy way to comment in each section - I defaulted to editing the subpage directly and, spending time finding, considering, finding again, checking I was in the right place, finding again and finally commenting, I was continually terrified that the world was about to end and I'd get an edit conflict after putting all the time in. I would have walked away at that point, my dead important views lost to an uncaring world. This is the ideal format, as long as 'crats can gain a consensus from it of course, but the mark-up and the layout need simplifying for those of us who are hard of thinking. Bed now! REDVERS ↔ SЯEVDEЯ 22:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I have to agree with Redvers. Even though I've gotten good at reading between the code (so to speak), this format is very unwieldy and a pain to use. I like the idea behind the format, but I don't believe it is a practical format to use for this purpose. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Determining/forming consensus
- Please understand that percentages of support have nothing to do with consensus. I'll give you an example of how voting fails in determining consensus. Let's suppose, for the moment, that an RfA was about to close with 37 in support and 0 against. Here's such an example (except for the about to close part) [2]. Now, shortly before close an editor comes along and votes oppose citing a diff that he finds quite objectionable [3]. A few minutes later, time is up on the RfA. Has consensus been achieved? It would seem so; 37-1...that's 97% in support! Wow! Except, it wasn't consensus [4]. Oops. Subsequent to the first oppose, only four of the original 37 changed their votes. Voting across seven days does not give any indicator of agreement or disagreement. It's not a static state. --Durin 17:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yup, I think that is consistent with what I wrote just a little bit earlier on this page about "forming consensus" rather than "determining consensus". I think we are in complete agreement on this and, if I wrote anything above that seems to indicate otherwise, then it was probably poorly stated.
- The point that I was trying to make above is simply that the !vote count gives a bureaucrat a high-level idea as to whether a consensus has formed or not. Your example is an exceptional case in which the consensus changed at the last minute due to new information.
- In general, if the !vote count is over 80%, all it takes is for the bureaucrat to scan the Opposes to see if there is any really troublesome evidence. I'm not a very consistent RFA participant but I would wager that there are darn few RFA's where the count was over 80% support and yet the RFA failed because the bureaucrat thought the opposes were significant enough to outweigh the supports. Of course, the politic way to handle such a situation is to extend the RFA and let the editors shift the consensus appropriately. The Carnildo 2 RFA was highly contentious because the bureaucrats did not or could not help the RFA community shift the consensus and so they just made the promotion decision by fiat.
- If the !vote count is below 70%, most RFAs will fail but it has not been made crystal clear whether the failure is due to the count being below 70% or because the 30%+ editors raised valid objections. In the case of Carnildo 2, the b'crats seem to have decided that the objections were not valid enough to outweigh strong reasons to re-admin Carnildo. I applaud the new effort to provide transparency of b'crat discussions regarding candidates with <80% support. I think the Durin format will also help shift the focus away from numerical percentages and onto the substantive issues. I envision the bureaucrats using the Durin format as supporting evidence for their discussion of RFA candidates whose !vote counts fall in the "discretionary" range.
- --Richard 17:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Tallies
A question: can voting tallies be automated? Or can someone create a bot that fix them automatically periodically (30 minutes, e.g.)? I just wonder. --Neigel von Teighen 18:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, tallies should be removed if anything; RfA is NOT a ballot. Majorly (hot!) 18:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- We already have a bot that does its best, but regularly is in error, so it updates a different page instead of the RFA pages. However, Majorly is just plain wrong, with the large number of participants that RFA gets, the tallies are the best tool available for measuring the consensus of the participants. GRBerry 18:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed. The tallies should be removed. They were arbitrarily added, without community discussion or consensus, back in February of 2004 by User:Ed Poor. It's time to do away with that decision. Vote counting gives zero indication of consensus. --Durin 18:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, remove them. Even if the format of RfA remains the same, remove them. They are unnecessary and set up a ballot-like mindset. --Iamunknown 18:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Tally should remain. RfA is not a ballot and that's all we need to know. It doesn't become a ballot just because of a tally that is merely an indicator of the number of participants in an RfA and their stance towards the respective admin candidate. Such nitpicking is unnecessary.--Húsönd 19:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Why are such numbers relevant? Majorly (hot!) 19:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not relevant at all. But after I express my position on a particular RfA, I do check the tally every now and then just to have a quick look at how's the RfA going on. It's handy and I can't see anything wrong about it, so I believe it should be kept unless some sound arguments are provided against it. Let's not make simple things complicated.--Húsönd 19:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The progress of an RfA can not and should not be judged by how many votes it has in support as a percentage. It's irrelevant, as an earlier example I noted showed. The tallies complicate things, and have made the environment at RfA exceptionally caustic. They were added without community input. It's a change that should have been undone a long, long time ago. --Durin 19:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's a change that was inserted a long, long time ago and which nobody complained about for a long, long time which means that it was widely accepted as useful. The tally in no way interferes with the outcome, not unless participants are careless enough to go with the tally flow without analysing a candidate by themselves and making their own judgements. But even for this kind of users, the tally removal would not change anything. Furthermore, I can't see how could the tally be considered complicated, especially if compared with the newly created RfA format that is so afraid of tallies but has so little regard for simplicity. --Húsönd 19:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that the tallies are in there so it's easier for a crat to judge consensus. If the RFA is failing, it saves time. But, it would not be bad if there was no tally. If there is one, I think it's a waste of time to get rid of it and consquently discuss it over and over again. Evilclown93 19:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The progress of an RfA can not and should not be judged by how many votes it has in support as a percentage. It's irrelevant, as an earlier example I noted showed. The tallies complicate things, and have made the environment at RfA exceptionally caustic. They were added without community input. It's a change that should have been undone a long, long time ago. --Durin 19:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not relevant at all. But after I express my position on a particular RfA, I do check the tally every now and then just to have a quick look at how's the RfA going on. It's handy and I can't see anything wrong about it, so I believe it should be kept unless some sound arguments are provided against it. Let's not make simple things complicated.--Húsönd 19:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Why are such numbers relevant? Majorly (hot!) 19:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I realized yesterday after readin this page that I regularly ignore candidates based on the bot-generated tally at WP:WATCH. That's illogical for a consensus-based model so yes, once again, remove the unhelpful tallies (I'll go through and find all the places people have objected to them later, Husond). -- nae'blis 20:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think RfA can work by consensus, so the tallies serve a useful purpose helping us to see the current vote count. I agree with Nae'blis though that deciding whether or not to vote on an RfA based on the current tally does bring some problems; I ignore too many RfAs where I feel my vote won't have an effect either way. Kusma (talk) 20:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- The problem is this: if we keep tallies, they're almost always wrong and should be automated (somehow). On the other hand, I think they're absolutely useless: you can easily watch the last number from the list. I remember there was an experiment to implement tallies on AfD and was a dissaster. --Neigel von Teighen 11:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
RFA is not a vote... yeah, right
I wandered off to go shave and, while doing so, I got an insight about the Durin format. While I stand by what I wrote above, my new thought on the Durin format is that it still retains the !vote aspect of the current format except instead of one big !vote, we have a lot of little !votes.
Look, if substance is what counts over pure quantity of votes, why not dispense with the !voting altogether? Just have a discussion page that has two major sections... "Arguments in favor" and "Arguments against". Editors would be encouraged to enter their opinions in each section, maybe even in both sections. However, editors would be discouraged from repeating the comments of other editors. We don't need 20 people saying "civility problems". Either there is a civility problem or there isn't. If there is, provide diffs to support the case. Having 19 extra "yup, I agree, civility is a problem" !votes doesn't change anything. What would change things is if there are people who say "Yeah, and here's another example". Additional evidence supporting or refuting an asertion is valuable. "Me, too" comments are not. If you know that your "me, too" comment will be discounted (maybe even deleted), hopefully you won't waste your time writing it.
The bureaucrat could then read through the discussion and decide if there are any substantive issues. This would allow a bureaucrat to discount issues related to edit-count, use of edit summaries, frequency of edits, lack of image or category experience, whatever.
In such a situation, the example of the 37-1 vote wouldn't be an issue. The question would be whether, in the bureaucrat's judgment, the evidence provided by that one sole opposing editor outweighed the opinions of the other 37 editors.
This, of course, is a difficult call and, especially in a post-Carnildo 2 era, it would take a lot of courage on the part of a bureaucrat to support one editor over 37 others. This is, perhaps, why we have !voting as a crutch for the bureaucrat to leave the responsibility for the decision on the RFA community.
This proposed approach of not counting !votes at all changes the nature of RFA and the role of bureaucrats dramatically.
But, if you believe RFA is broken, then such radical changes might be what is needed.
--Richard 18:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sounds good to me. I'll be happy to create an RfA if there's a willing guinea pig... --Durin 18:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Just to be clear, this would be a change completely away from having a consensus based process. For consensus, it matters how many people think a certain way, not just what the points mentioned are. GRBerry 18:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Consensus is not how many people think in a particular way, unless there is unanimity. --Durin 18:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- We're not looking for consensus. And that seems to be a keystone in this lark about unanimity. We're looking, on AfD for example, for "rough consensus", and on RfA for "general consensus" (until some well meaning but foolhardy copyeditor removed the word "general" and demonstrated they share the same flawed understanding of RfA). Nobody said unanimity, ever. The kind of consensus sought on RfA is very simply influenced by how many people think a particular way: if there is a large body of support behind a well argued opinion, the size of that body obviously matters. If, for example, a whole bunch of people say that biting newbies is bad, then it's bad, even if some crazy group of outlaws say it's fine. Splash - tk 22:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure where you get the idea that consensus is about numbers in any way, shape, or form, and I say that as someone trained in formal consensus-seeking process in the 'real world', not just the Wikipedia definition of "rough consensus". -- nae'blis 18:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Let me try to understand this: editors provide evidence, bureaucrat makes decision, the end. Umm .... where the hell's the consensus? This proposal is no different than allowing bureaucrats to promote at will (e.g., see user -- promote user), only with the aid of a few research assistants. Again, what happened to the role of editors who are supposed to aid in developing consensus? They're just lowly research assistants now (I write this having been a research assistant)? That's not consensus! That's centralisation of power and responsibility. Does the portion of WP:NOT that states "Wikipedia is not a democracy" somehow imply that Wikipedia should be authoritarian? Am I missing something? -- Black Falcon 18:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, actually you are.
Refer to the title of this section... If numbers matter, then RFA is a vote just not a majority vote with every vote counting equally. If RFA is not a vote, then what is it? Right now, it's a vote requiring supermajority to pass with bureaucrat's having discretion to determine where exactly the supermajority threshold is (usually 80% but sometimes as low as 69%) and also discretion as to which votes to count. Like it or not, this kind of !voting is the way we determine consensus in RFA today.
I think we all agree that a major objection like edit warring, incivility, etc. should stop an RFA candidacy. The questions to ask are: when does an objection rise to the level of being "major" and do a lot of minor objections (e.g. use of edit summaries) count as a major objection? Also, who decides whether an objection is "valid" or not?
My proposal clears the table by saying that the bureaucrats should decide all this and that they should do so on the basis of quality of the objections not just on the quantity of the objections.
--Richard 15:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- One problem with the proposal from you is that there are not usually very good reasons for supporting a user apart from 'Hasn't done anything wrong', 'Won't misuse the tools' and 'Very helpful editor'. There are far more reasons to oppose somebody, and so, surely, most RfAs will fail like this. -- Casmith_789 (talk) 15:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I disagree. First, the nominator will have given a lot of good reasons. Second, the proposal rests on the principle that "adminship is not a big deal" and therefore the default assumption is that, failing a very strong objection to promote, the candidate will be promoted. Finally, your comment still betrays a "voting" mentality because you are looking at the numerical quantity of objections over the numerical quantity of reasons to promote. My proposal focuses only on one thing... the quality of the reasons to promote versus the quality of objections to promote. A single, verifiable act of recent vandalism or incivility should be enough to derail a candidacy. In practice, it usually does if only because editors will switch from support to oppose if evidence of such misbehavior is provided.
- That said, I am not saying that my proposal is the absolute best way to do RFA although I think it could work. What I am saying is that this is one way that it could work if we want to honestly assert that "RFA is not a vote". Otherwise, we should just be intellectually honest and say "Well, RFA is a kind of a vote with special rules".
- Either it's not a vote and the weighing and discounting of for/against reasons is done in the mind of the bureaucrat without considering how many people have the same opinion or it is a vote and the weighing of for/against reasons in the minds of the "!voting" editors with the bureaucrat giving strong weight to the number of people with the same opinion. Let's grapple with the issue and describe what RFA really is.
- --Richard 16:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
My thoughts on ignoring "oppose" comments
As I see it, there are four classes of "oppose" comments:
- Obvious vandalism opposes. For instance, "Oppose. Anyone who wants to be an admin needs to get a life." I'm quite sure that everyone agrees that these types of comments, whose purpose is only to disrupt the process, may be ignored.
- Sockpuppet opposes. These may be expressed more diplomatically than the example above, but their purpose is still disruptive, and so they too should be ignored. I think everyone also agrees on that.
- Bad-faith opposes. These are cases where an editor opposes a candidate for a reason that that editor does not view to be relevant to adminship. The defining feature of this category is the commenting editor's thought process. For instance, if I think that tea-drinkers cannot make good admins, and I oppose a tea-drinking candidate, that does not qualify as a bad-faith oppose, no matter how ridiculous my standard may appear to be.
- Good-faith opposes. These are cases where an editor opposes a candidate for a reason that that editor does view to be relevant for adminship. If I sincerely believe (and I don't, by the way) that an editor cannot be a good admin until he or she has acquired 4336 edits, and I oppose an editor with less than that number of edits, my oppose is made in good-faith.
Here's the problem when it comes to ignoring "oppose"s. The first two classes of "oppose" comments can be relatively objectively identified and there is near-unanimous agreement that they should be ignored as disruptive. I believe bad-faith opposes should also be ignored as disruptive, but realise that it's difficult or impossible to identify whether an oppose was made in good or bad faith. W should always assume the former in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
Now, the only argument that can be offered to justify ignoring good-faith opposes is that the standards by which editors judge are somehow "wrong" (i.e., irrelevant to adminship). "Wrong" is a hopelessly subjective word. RfA is mostly about trust; we can't just say "if an editor meets criterion X, you will trust him, damn it!". So, the only way I see that ignoring a good-faith oppose can be justified is if the editor making the argument is stupid and should not be allowed to participate. I know that this is not the intention of the various editors who've suggested ignoring good-faith opposes which they deem to be "irrelevant", but I view that to be the logical conclusion of any proposal to ignore certain good-faith opposes. Either we must allow them, no matter how much we disagree with them, or we must simply ban most editors from participating in RfA. -- Black Falcon 20:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm a racist. A Jewish editor requests adminship. I sincerely believe that Jews abuse power, given the chance, and therefore make bad administrators. When I write "oppose, Jewish", I am certainly meeting your standard of good faith. How do you believe the community should react to this (obviously hyperbolic example)? I simply ask because the correct answer is plain, but it is appears to me that your system would arrive at a different one. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's actually not hyperbole. They tend to draw swift criticism and accusations of all sorts of violations, but I don't know if they've ever been officially discounted by a bureaucrat. Kafziel Talk 20:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's hyperbolic in its directness, since usually the comment is more of the form "pushes POV on balkans article and vandalizes serb pages". Usually this requires some sorting out of the extent to which the claims are true. HolyRomanEmperor's third RfA featured some attempts to discount such votes although it nonetheless turned into a disaster. But dealing with opinions that are obviously motivated at least in part by nationalist fervor is a real problem, and a good example of one that a simple test of good faith can't really overcome. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry for the late reply - I've been busy. ;) I've actually seen people just say "Oppose: there are too many Indian admins already" and the like. Yes, the vote is immediately derided as racist/nationalist/what have you, and notes telling the closing crat (in boldface, of course) to disregard them, but I don't remember a bureaucrat ever showing up to confirm that it wouldn't be counted. I don't know if there's precedent for a comment like that actually being thrown out. That's all I mean. Kafziel Talk 16:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's hyperbolic in its directness, since usually the comment is more of the form "pushes POV on balkans article and vandalizes serb pages". Usually this requires some sorting out of the extent to which the claims are true. HolyRomanEmperor's third RfA featured some attempts to discount such votes although it nonetheless turned into a disaster. But dealing with opinions that are obviously motivated at least in part by nationalist fervor is a real problem, and a good example of one that a simple test of good faith can't really overcome. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's actually not hyperbole. They tend to draw swift criticism and accusations of all sorts of violations, but I don't know if they've ever been officially discounted by a bureaucrat. Kafziel Talk 20:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed with Christopher. And where do we say an opposition vote is absurd for saying "Oppose: less than <X>000 edits"? If a person opposes for having less than 6000 edits, is that unreasonable? What about 8000? 10? 20? Where, in your system, do we begin to say "this is absurd and not a reason to oppose"? --Durin 20:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Nowhere. Nowhere is it said that anything is not a valid reason to oppose. If 10,000 edits isn't enough to earn your trust, that's up to you. We don't codify things beyond that, and we shouldn't start. Kafziel Talk 20:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- So let's say we've got an RfA that's teetering on 80%. A user comes along, and posts a vote saying "Oppose: less than 1,000,000 edits. Can't trust". We should allow that vote to sink the rfa? How about an editor who opposes every RfA in sight for no reason? We had that a long time ago (those of you who remember Boothy...) Bureaucrats are expected to reject ridiculous reasons for opposition. If we don't allow the bureaucrats to do that, then we might as well have a straight up/down vote and let a bot do the promotions. Minus the bot, this is precisely what the German Wikipedia does. --Durin 20:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- To reply to your examples (and this is just for me; Kafziel may disagree). Example 1. The 1 million edits example you gave falls under clear vandalism as no one has a million edits. If the number is 1000, then it's probably a good-faith comment and should be considered. An RfA at 80% is almost sure to succeed. If one comment changes it back to 79%, I'd say that's well within bureaucrat discretion. Example 2. An editor who opposes every RfA in sight for no reason falls under the "obvious vandalism" category and can be ignored. Ridiculous reasons can be rejected, but who's to say that "has less than 3000 edits", which is shorthand for "does not seem to have enough experience" is a ridiculous reason? What if I claim that opposing based on "the candidate posted death threats on multiple user pages" is a ridiculous reason to oppose? Who's to say I'm wrong? As with anything on Wikipedia, every process should be handled with a certain degree of common sense. Editors whose sole purpose is to disrupt the encyclopedia should be ignored. -- Black Falcon 21:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- So let's say we've got an RfA that's teetering on 80%. A user comes along, and posts a vote saying "Oppose: less than 1,000,000 edits. Can't trust". We should allow that vote to sink the rfa? How about an editor who opposes every RfA in sight for no reason? We had that a long time ago (those of you who remember Boothy...) Bureaucrats are expected to reject ridiculous reasons for opposition. If we don't allow the bureaucrats to do that, then we might as well have a straight up/down vote and let a bot do the promotions. Minus the bot, this is precisely what the German Wikipedia does. --Durin 20:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I'll reply to both you and Christopher in this post. Here's how I envision a "good" RfA process: if we perceive an argument to have flaws (the racist one or the one based solely on edits), we identify those flaws, state that we disagree with the reasoning, try to convince the opposer to change her mind, and ... leave it at that. Let other people judge the oppose vote and your counterarguments on their merits. I realise that this system has flaws, but I still think it's the better alternative. Under my proposed system, the worst that can happen is that a few racist opposes will make their way in (and let's be realistic ... most of the regulars at RfA are intelligent, committed to the project, and not outright racists). If we start ignoring "oppose" votes (e.g., based on edit counts), then what we're effectively doing is trying to forcibly create the impression of "consensus" when there isn't any. In any group where there is dissent, "consensus" can be achieved by getting rid of the dissenters. I doubt that that is what we want. -- Black Falcon 21:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Nowhere. Nowhere is it said that anything is not a valid reason to oppose. If 10,000 edits isn't enough to earn your trust, that's up to you. We don't codify things beyond that, and we shouldn't start. Kafziel Talk 20:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- A few racist opposes will make their way in is I suspect an understatement. I believe a problem we've had getting good administrators with expertise in the Balkans, for instance, is that whichever nationality they happen to be, people of the other tribe show up and oppose. No, we should not be accepting bad opposes at all. There is no need to do so, and doing so devalues the honest and well thought-out opinions of the rest of us. --Tony Sidaway 22:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- See right below? --Kim Bruning 22:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- And how exactly do we determine what is a "bad oppose" and what is a "honest and well thought-out opinion"? The simple criterion of "is the comment relevant to the candidate's merits as a potential admin" is not enough as people will have different "honest" and good-faith interpretations of what is and is not relevant. -- Black Falcon 22:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- O RLY? I wonder what the section right below this one is about? --Kim Bruning 22:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I commend you on the subtlety of your nudges. =) Your suggestion could possible yield positive results, but it's certain that it will result in a lot of pissed-off people. Lest we forget, that's how the French Revolution started. ... Hmm ... maybe you're onto something ... In order to implement your suggestion, you'd first need to find a willing
victimcandidate. -- Black Falcon 22:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I commend you on the subtlety of your nudges. =) Your suggestion could possible yield positive results, but it's certain that it will result in a lot of pissed-off people. Lest we forget, that's how the French Revolution started. ... Hmm ... maybe you're onto something ... In order to implement your suggestion, you'd first need to find a willing
- O RLY? I wonder what the section right below this one is about? --Kim Bruning 22:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- And how exactly do we determine what is a "bad oppose" and what is a "honest and well thought-out opinion"? The simple criterion of "is the comment relevant to the candidate's merits as a potential admin" is not enough as people will have different "honest" and good-faith interpretations of what is and is not relevant. -- Black Falcon 22:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- See right below? --Kim Bruning 22:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I believe ignoring oppose votes is a bad idea. I read Christopher Parham's comment above where he gives example of a voter who is racist, and he states that this is a vote to be ignored. Sounds reasonable.
However, if you think about it, such silly votes would be extremely rare and this is a hypothetical situation. Now let me give you a real example. In Danny's RfA the vast majority of oppose votes were well reasoned and in good faith. Some of them mentioned that they did not like Danny's WP:OFFICE activity, yet each of them as far as I saw also mentioned other reasons for opposing. And here is Christopher Parham's own vote:
- Support, I don't think any of the issues brought up below are particularly serious, and the large majority are idiotic even by the low standards of RfA.
So, here's my belief. Ignoring oppose votes is, in general, a bad idea. The bigger danger in my view is not a few clueless voters, but rather voters who are firmly convinced other people's votes are worthless. If we were to start an education of the electorate, the latter class of people need to be educated first. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I tend to agree with Oleg on this one. People are not giving enough credit to RfA participants. First of all, nobody (or maybe I should be careful and say almost nobody) is stupid enough to write "Oppose, Jewish" in an RfA. Now of course, a smart antisemite would say "Oppose, don't trust this user for reason blah". That's not something we can fix, regardless of the system we use and the best and perhaps only way to avoid giving too much weight to these is to ensure greater participation in RfA so that these become negligible. It's also no secret that IRC lobbying for RfAs does happen occasionally both in favor and against candidates and it seems to me that, once again, a simpler RfA process that draws more participants reduces the overall importance of such distortions. First and foremost I think people are arguing about hypothetical extreme cases and forget to assume that users who say "I trust this editor" or "I don't" have put as much thought into it as we each do. Pascal.Tesson 14:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Contested opinions
Would it be ok to ignore "contested opinions?"
I think people are worried that bureaucrats might start ignoring random opinions.
How about keeping that under community control to an extent?
Sometimes people leave opinions that other people would like to discuss with them. (This is often -but not always- one of those valuable oppose opinions).
It can be very frustrating when people just do "hit and run voting" as opposed to participating in a meaningful discussion.
So I'm sure lots of people have already thought of this themselves, but we could just ignore opinions where someone has asked a question, and that question has gone unanswered.
People should at least have the decency to keep an RFA on their watchlists while it's still running. If someone really cares about their opinion, and it gets contested, they will reply. (and thus prove their sincerity, and their opinion gets counted :-)).
Does this seem fair? Does this cover all the issues mentioned in some of the sections above? If not, where are the flaws?
--Kim Bruning 20:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Unfortunately this process sounds rather mechanical. Practically, it might get better results. But, it has the same flaws as simple vote counting since it uses basically the same heuristic: the existence of a block of text in a specific place is the primary input it considers. The content of that block of text is devalued. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that this is mechanical, but then again the objective is rather limited. It just forces people to actually respond when people speak with them, no more.
- Despite being purely mechanical, perhaps it's already enough to get people past some certain invisible threshold. Or perhaps not. The only way to find out is to try it. :-) --Kim Bruning 20:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Umm ... I can think of one question and one flaw. First, the flaw: someone can easily manipulate the process by writing "Could you clarify your position?" after even the most thought-out and developed arguments. And now, the question: wouldn't we also have to apply this to the "support" comments? -- Black Falcon 21:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Dunno if this applies, but if you're asking why oppose !votes get more attention than support !votes, it's because an oppose is worth about 5x as much as a support, so folks want to see a reason why. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 21:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's a good point, although I would say the correct number is about 2.5 (70-30 usually passes). I'm not opposed to "oppose" comments being subjected to more scrutiny; but determining whether "someone really cares about their opinion" applies both ways. Hit-and-run supports are no more desirable than their counterparts. -- Black Falcon 21:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Dunno if this applies, but if you're asking why oppose !votes get more attention than support !votes, it's because an oppose is worth about 5x as much as a support, so folks want to see a reason why. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 21:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Umm ... I can think of one question and one flaw. First, the flaw: someone can easily manipulate the process by writing "Could you clarify your position?" after even the most thought-out and developed arguments. And now, the question: wouldn't we also have to apply this to the "support" comments? -- Black Falcon 21:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually I'm hoping that people will put "can you clarify your position" after every single support opinion at least once. ;-) the answers might be quite educational
The correct answer, of course, is "Which aspect would you like clarified?". ;-)
--Kim Bruning 21:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Could we stop calling opinions "!votes"? That alone would be a huge improvement. I'll always do my best to justify my opinions and explain why I think they're relevant to the question of adminship. I expect others to do the same. I don't see a problem with a bureaucrat ignoring my opinion if he disagrees with its relevance to candidacy. We expect bureaucrats to be honest and good judges, so there isn't a problem there. --Tony Sidaway 22:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- So do you agree we should try a Contested Opinions rule in some next experiment? --Kim Bruning 22:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, I think it's too mechanical. The bureaucrat should use his common sense. --Tony Sidaway 22:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Which has different results. Sometimes a hard rule can have more interesting consequences than a soft rule --Kim Bruning 01:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, I think it's too mechanical. The bureaucrat should use his common sense. --Tony Sidaway 22:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- So do you agree we should try a Contested Opinions rule in some next experiment? --Kim Bruning 22:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) A second flaw is timing. Someone could mass add the "clairfy" (or equivalent) questions a few minutes before the RfA ends. In principle this is solvable via instruction creep. (Maybe a
2448 hour clause in the rule?)
- A more significant flaw is that sometimes the person leaving the comment that was questioned has seen the question and doesn't think it merits a response. Times when I've done it is when I've said effecitively candidate C should not be an admin for reasons X, Y, and Z. Additionally, they might want to improve on areas Φ, Ψ, and Ω but these are not reasons to deny the tools, and then someone asks a question about Ω, which I've already said was an area for improvement but not a reason why I believe they shouldn't have the tools. GRBerry 22:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- This might not entirely be a flaw. Apparently someone misunderstood your opinion, right?
- If we do this experiment, and such a situation occurs, you could state that Ω was merely an additional optional area for improvement, but that you might change your opinion if something can be done about X, Y, and Z.
- That would seem to be a reasonable statement.
- Since the current criterium would be strictly mechanical, you could also get away with "you misunderstand" or some such very short answer. But be aware that I'm hoping that people would respond to such an answer in interesting and useful ways.
- --Kim Bruning 22:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
This would seriously increase the commitment required to vote. I know I don't pick up every response people make to my edits even though I watchlist every page I edit. Simply, watchlists don't work like that for busy pages. All it takes is another edit, or an edit without an edit summary, or 50 edits to other pages that bury the XFX edit so I don't see it. Regards, Ben Aveling 23:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, the objective is to seriously increase the commitment
required to voteto a level needed to hold a proper consensus forming discussion.
- It's a deceptively simple measure that would force people to continue to follow the whole discussion until the conclusion. :-)
- So by that (perhaps counter-intuitive) path, it suddenly means that people's opinions will have to be listened to, and possibly might influence other people. (whereas right now, peoples opinions get averaged out and lost.) --Kim Bruning 23:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that the influence of opinions on other people is one of the great flaws of the "discussion" part of RfA. If people could simply "oppose" for any reason they wouldn't have to invent stupid "criteria" which then spread like a disease. I have seen more harm come from "oppose, not enough experience with images" which was copied and used by others than from a simple "oppose" with no reasons disclosed. The "reasons" do not answer the question "should this candidate be an administrator?", they answer the completely different question "what should this candidate do differently so I will support him?" Kusma (talk) 05:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
It would mean that people who have the most time to troll rfas would have their opinions count the most. If someone systematically asks nitpicky questions from every opposer/supporter, it shouldn't be counted against them. This change would make it more like a shouting match and less like a debate. - Bobet 10:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think I'd just stop voting if I had to put this sort of effort in. Before I vote I typically do a review of the users contribs, maybe check on some of the claims that have been made about them. That sort of effort I'd like to see more of, not this 'guarding' of my vote. I someone wants to make a comment about my vote, they can go ahead and do that and people can make up their own minds. If someone wants to ask me a question, or feels I need to know about a comment someone else has made, I have a talk page. Regards, Ben Aveling 23:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Another idea (less substantial change) - thread mode.
Have each RFA (in otherwise substantially the current format) preceded by a few days or so of freeform discussion leading up to it, so that people can all get on the same page rather than what one issue seemed to be with the previous format, which is tendency of people to vote and then their concern is later addressed but they don't come back to change it even though they might. This way any concerns that people have either way can hopefully be brought up and addressed before 'voting' opens. We keep trying to add various more or less structured formats, but i really think that adding a period of simple thread-mode discussion would be refreshing --Random832 03:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- This idea isn't new, but I can find one potential weakness already: people have to come back to the RfA page twice. —210physicq (c) 03:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- People are free to only participate in one or the other phase. This simply attempts to ensure that a thorough discussion/sanity check has occured before voting opens. --Random832 03:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- No point. Block voters have already
had their minds made up for themmade up their minds even before the RfA is posted. The only thing this will do is perhaps make it easier for waterfall voters (voters who try to vote with the consensus) to vote -- they will presumably be able to tell from the discussion whether or not to vote for or against. Kelly Martin (talk) 03:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)- Isn't that important? Being able to look at the discussion and use that as a factor in whether or not to vote for or against? Say a discussion starts with 50 supports and 0 opposes, and ends at 60-10. It's a passing nomination, I suppose, but someone raised an issue that convinced half of the subsequent voters that the nomination shouldn't pass. Was it voter #49 who "waterfalled", or the tenth oppose? Yet it's "consensus" because of the overall tally. An exploration period would encourage a deeper evaluation of the nominee's background before anyone piles on. Dekimasuよ! 04:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I will say something heretical here. The current support/oppose format works better for discussion. When I look at an RfA, I glance quickly at the support votes, read carefully the oppose votes, perhaps take a look at the questions section, and then decide what to do. And if you wanna say something to the stinky opposer of your favorite candidate, just start a thread under his vote (be polite though :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- No point. Block voters have already
- People are free to only participate in one or the other phase. This simply attempts to ensure that a thorough discussion/sanity check has occured before voting opens. --Random832 03:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I support trying out a discussion period. Its implementation can't possibly prove as controversial or confusing as the current experiments. Dekimasuよ! 04:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Want to throw in contested opinions too? (fits with practically anything. :-) ) --Kim Bruning 04:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC) now to find a vict volunteer
What should an RfA change do?
I think we need to
- increase the number of candidates processed every week
- make sure we promote more candidates than now
To keep RfA readable and participation easy, we need a system that does not take more space than our old system (which is confusing enough in cases with more than 100 participants). If we make it hard for people to participate, we move further away from the idea of community consensus: only the people who can be bothered to go through the difficult system will participate, a probably poorly self-selecting sample. If we discuss points like whether something is or is not a valid oppose, we will spend a lot of time on the adminship process, making it even more of a big deal than it is now. The motivation for these changes seems to come from the ideology that "voting is evil", not addressing anything about the problem with RfA's output.
The main thing that is wrong with RfA from the view of the goals above is that opposes are given so much weight, making it very hard to pass. Fortunately, there is an easy remedy for this: lower the promotion threshold. Yes, RfA will still be a vote (or mostly a vote; see somewhere above where I argue for bureaucrats to try to use their discretion consistently instead of creating exceptions for a special class of people), but voting is a useful tool to find out whether the part of the community that opposes a certain action is small enough to have their concerns overruled. Kusma (talk) 05:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Once more, the easy solution is to lower the bar from 75% to 67%. >Radiant< 08:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not that this is a straw poll, or anything (grin), but I would support dropping it to 2/3 (67%). (And honestly, I believe that the bureaucrats could make that choice by their own consensus at any time, since the 75% was created by a previous bureaucrat, as far as I can tell...) - jc37 08:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that 2/3 is a pretty reasonable numerical threshold. Kusma (talk) 08:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I am also in favor of 2/3, but only if it were applied evenly. It would be bad to have bureaucrats citing that number to pass some candidates while still failing others who get 70%+. Everyking 13:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm also in favor of 2/3 but I think you still need to have some kind of a discretionary range (say 60%-70%). Above 70%, a bureaucrat would need to explain why a candidate was not getting promoted. Below 60%, a bureaucrat would need to explain why a candidate was getting promoted. Ideally, bureaucrats would just document the rationale for every promotion/failure so that the community would understand how the process was working or not working. --Richard 16:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not entirely in favour of a 67% threshold, if we decide to go by pure vote or part-vote/part-bureaucrat discretion. I feel a lower limit of 70%, with discretion in the 70-80% range is better. You may ask ... what difference does 3% make? Well, it requires that the support ratio be slightly greater than 2:1. Then again, 75% is a safer percentage that's bound to result in less controversy, less quibbling over results, and less bad blood between editors. To increase the # of candidates and successful candidates, the easiest solution is: nominate more editors. No change in format is really needed for that. -- Black Falcon 17:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Is there anything "wrong" with simple voting?
Is there anything wrong with simple voting? Majorly (hot!) 09:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, a lot of things. But all the other options are even worse. Haukur 10:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It has not evolved properly from when it was a vote. If it had, it would have lost the sections, the tally, the voting. We still have them, yet it is supposed to be a discussion. People don't want to move away from old ideas which simply do not work any more. Majorly (hot!) 11:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- RfA isn't supposed to be discussion. It is supposed to be an easy way to determine who gets the admin bit. Kusma (talk) 11:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- An easy way to do this would be to randomly assign the bit to users. No, RFA is at heart a discussion of the merits of granting adminship to a candidate. That it has sometimes been mistaken for a vote is a bit of a shame, and it's what we're trying to fix now. --Tony Sidaway 11:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's what you think. Perhaps people have been treating RfA as a vote because they are wise enough to see that voting is far superior to using an RfC style method to determine an answer to a yes/no question when many people participate. Consensus does not scale, and discussion easily turns RfA into a monumental time-sink, all just due to a misunderstanding that makes people think that voting processes are inherently bad. Kusma (talk) 11:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's not so much that voting processes are inherently bad, it's that they're not very useful for reaching consensus. If you want to overturn our Consensus policy, that's fine. But for now we're looking at ways to get consensus on whether someone should be an administrator. --Tony Sidaway 11:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, I'm not. I am looking for a good method to determine who should be an admin. I do not care at all whether that method involves consensus or magical wiki fairy dust. It should be workable, fair, not too much effort for the participants, and produce many good admins. Consensus is a tool, we are not forced to use it if other tools do a better job. Kusma (talk) 11:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Voting would not be a useful method for determining who should be an administrator. Our problems of factionalism around RFA have arisen from the tendency to treat the process as a vote. The hostility of the process means that we're currently promoting slightly fewer administrators than at the same time last year, despite the growth of the community and the growth of the task of maintaining the encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 11:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- The hostility seems to be based in the discussion aspects (the voting rationales), not the votes, though. Kusma (talk) 11:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think I'll leave it there. You and I seem to have irreconcilably different views of what Wikipedia decision-making is about. --Tony Sidaway 11:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- The hostility seems to be based in the discussion aspects (the voting rationales), not the votes, though. Kusma (talk) 11:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- An easy way to do this would be to randomly assign the bit to users. No, RFA is at heart a discussion of the merits of granting adminship to a candidate. That it has sometimes been mistaken for a vote is a bit of a shame, and it's what we're trying to fix now. --Tony Sidaway 11:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- RfA isn't supposed to be discussion. It is supposed to be an easy way to determine who gets the admin bit. Kusma (talk) 11:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It has not evolved properly from when it was a vote. If it had, it would have lost the sections, the tally, the voting. We still have them, yet it is supposed to be a discussion. People don't want to move away from old ideas which simply do not work any more. Majorly (hot!) 11:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Per my comments earlier on this page ("RFA is not a vote...yeah, right"), the question to focus on is "Who is really responsible for making the decision? The community or the bureaucrats?"
If it is the community that is making the decision, then some variation of voting with supermajorities and vote discounting is the way to go. It's not a straight majority vote or even a straight supermajority vote but it is still a vote at its core.
If it is the bureaucrat that is making the decision, then the "!vote" is just input to the decision and the bureaucrat could make the decision based solely on the merits of the support/oppose reasons without counting the number of people with the same opinion. Now, a bureaucrat might wish to consider the opinion of the community in making his decision but, in this view, the bureaucrat is not "determining the will of the community" but only giving weight to "the opinion of the community".
Consider this scenario... what if 30% of RFA !voters said "Oppose, failure to use edit summaries more than 60% of the time"? Should this candidate pass or fail? What if that 30% was 30% of 200 votes? 60 users opposing! I know this is an extremely contrived example but the point is... What is important to you? The quality of the opinion, the percentage of opposes or the actual number of opposes?
--Richard 16:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'll say it again: one comment, giving valid and serious doubts about a person's suitability to be an administrator, may be enough to make the determination. Forget voting. Voting cannot do what we need. --Tony Sidaway 17:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I reject the notion that we can predetermine what opinions are relevant, or even determine what opinions are currently relevant for a specific candidate by any means other than the support/oppose division in a specific RfA. The hypothetical example of something extremely great or terrible being discovered by the last opiner is a reason for relisting, not a reason for deciding on the basis of that opinion. Any other decision algorithm makes the bureaucrats the master of the community, not the servant of the community. Since Wikipedia is not a tyranny, the crats should be the servants of the the community.
- As to how the support/oppose division should be measured, it should be measured in the percentage ration of the unique supporters/opposers among members of the wikipedia community. (Sockpuppets and banned users are excluded, everyone else has the right to an opinion, and their opinion is valid.) If the decision is 3/1, 30/10, or 300/100 is not relevant; all of them are a 3:1 ratio. If the ratio is 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, ... is relevant. GRBerry 17:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- In essence, Tony trusts the b'crats to recognize the significance of a minority opinion whereas GRBerry wants the b'crats to go back to the community to have them reconsider what looks, at that point in time, like a "wrong" decision. There is probably no resolution to this difference of philosophy. The current compromise is that b'crats will extend RFA's when it appears that new information may change the opinion of the community and they will explain their rationale when the support/oppose ratio is in the "discretionary range". Since it seems impossible to form a consensus to do anything else, we should just document the current compromise and move on. --Richard 17:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Just treating RfA as a simple vote is clearly almost meaningless. I recently succeeded with a !vote of 108/1/1, an approval rate of about 99.5%. User:Danny succeeded after me (in a controversial RfA) with an approval rate of less than 70%. But I am totally certain that Danny is of far greater value to the project than I am. I suggested, some months ago (Village Pump), that in an RfA the candidate should be asked to make a lengthy and detailed presentation explaining why he should be made an admin, and should be required to answer any and all questions put to him by editors-at-large, and the closing bureaucrat should decide solely on his statement, his answers, and his wiki contribution record. Is that really such a bad idea? You can tell me - I can take it. --Anthony.bradbury 17:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- There are too many people addicted to voting to make this, or any other non-voting proposal, become acceptable. --Durin 17:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's real bad. :-) For one thing, and despite the great respect I have for Danny, I have no reason to think you're of lesser value than he is and RfA is not really about editor value anyways. My own two cents on this is that RfA seeks to give admin duties only to people that the community trusts to do that responsibly and in an appropriate manner. It seems as though there were quite a few who were uneasy about Danny's ability to do that consistently and while I believe they're wrong, the fact is these editors exist and should be heard. If we start promoting admins on the basis you propose, we'll get a lot more resentment and outraged cries of "Cabal!". We'll also get a system that favors eloquence above competence and we'll completely lose the transparency which I believe to be crucial. As far as Durin's last comment goes: I know you mean no harm but really, there's no need to toss off people who find value in the current system as being "addicted to voting". Many have made perfectly reasonable arguments in favor of the current system or some tweak of it and among them you find experienced Wikipedians who are simply trying to find a solution to the perceived problems of RfA. Pascal.Tesson 17:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, how about I am addicted to non-voting. Hope that helps :) --Durin 17:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Much better. You little junkie you. :-) Pascal.Tesson 17:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- <quiver> <shake> I need my fix... --Durin 17:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Quick, somebody get Durin a guinea pig! :-) Pascal.Tesson 17:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- hahahahaahha! Thank you Pascal, you just made my day :) --Durin 17:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's real bad. :-) For one thing, and despite the great respect I have for Danny, I have no reason to think you're of lesser value than he is and RfA is not really about editor value anyways. My own two cents on this is that RfA seeks to give admin duties only to people that the community trusts to do that responsibly and in an appropriate manner. It seems as though there were quite a few who were uneasy about Danny's ability to do that consistently and while I believe they're wrong, the fact is these editors exist and should be heard. If we start promoting admins on the basis you propose, we'll get a lot more resentment and outraged cries of "Cabal!". We'll also get a system that favors eloquence above competence and we'll completely lose the transparency which I believe to be crucial. As far as Durin's last comment goes: I know you mean no harm but really, there's no need to toss off people who find value in the current system as being "addicted to voting". Many have made perfectly reasonable arguments in favor of the current system or some tweak of it and among them you find experienced Wikipedians who are simply trying to find a solution to the perceived problems of RfA. Pascal.Tesson 17:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm probably wasting my time here, but here goes. I, for one, like voting because I just don't see any reason to try to reinvent the wheel. For thousands of years, the whole world has known that the only way to get usable opinion data from large groups of people in a finite space of time is to vote. (Lots of governments don't use votes, but it's not because they favor consensus; it's because they don't care what most of the public thinks.) Discussion is great if there are just a few people, but it gets off track when you have 100. The only consensus-based system I can think of that works consistently is the College of Cardinals, and even there they still use ballots. (And some of our RfAs have more participants than they have.)
That doesn't mean I want to turn Wikipedia into a democracy. The U.S. uses votes, and it's not a democracy. Millions of people vote, and then a smaller number of people look at those votes and make a decision. Usually they base their decision strictly according to the data from the masses, but in certain cases they make exceptions. If they do go against the popular vote, the public will expect them to account for that. I've always thought of the bureaucrats as the electoral college of RfA. It strikes a good balance of power between democracy and autocracy. The votes are suggestions—perhaps strong suggestions—but they are not the end-all. On the other hand, having vote tallies to look back on makes it easy to see when a bureaucrat should explain his reasoning a bit better. No one group is in charge.
As I said, this isn't some crazy scheme we cooked up. This is how large societies work. Like it or not (I don't), we are a large society. Wikipedia is a heck of a lot bigger than it was back when adminship was first said to be no big deal, back when an RfA might not even be seen by twenty differnt people. I don't have a problem with discussing votes, or adding comments to votes, or asking for clarification on votes, but taking away all semblence of voting puts too much decision-making power in the hands of too few people and can make it too complicated to have one's opinion heard in the first place. Kafziel Talk 18:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- To put that last statement another way: In a vote system, all you are is a tick mark. But in a vote system at least you are a tick mark. If there's no tally at all, you will never know whether your input was dismissed, disqualified, skimmed over, or completely overlooked. I'd rather turn my opinion into a tick mark that counts for something than turn it into a thousand words that nobody ever reads. Kafziel Talk 18:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
WP:POINT violation on Matt Britt RfA
RfAs exist for one purpose; the review of a candidate towards adminship. They are not a forum for discussing the validity or lack thereof of a particular RfA format. There is a reason talk pages exist. When I created the nomination for Matt Britt, I specifically instructed contributors to that RfA to take meta discussions to here, at WT:RFA. This is precisely the appropriate place regarding meta discussions on the format of RfAs. Then...
- Subsequent to this, User:AKAF added a view section titled "This method of RFA is so confusing that I am unable to participate." [5].
- Some hours later, I removed the section [6] and placed it where it belonged, here on WT:RFA [7], noting that it is a meta discussion and inappropriate for the RfA.
- Recognizing that there were editors who felt incapable of contributing (even if I disagreed) I placed a notice on the bureaucrat's noticeboard informing them that some contributors felt incapable of using the format, pointing the bureaucrats to the centralized discussion [8].
- About 10 hours later, User:Xaosflux copied the then current contents of this section of this talk page, creating a situation where there were duplicate sections and disarray in centralizing discussions [9].
- Two hours later, we still had the situation with duplicated sections and disarray in centralized discussion, with both talk pages still having copied content from each other. So, I removed it from the Matt Britt RfA talk page again, placing a marker for the location of centralized discussion [10].
- I pondered for about an hour, and recognizing the validity of the contention that it would perhaps be important for there to be an historical reference to this information, placed a comment on the Matt Britt RfA talk indicating that I would put a marker to the centralized discussion on the talk page of the RfA after it closed [11].
- Three hours later, User:Xaosflux reverted this and re-inserted it again into the Matt Britt RfA talk page [12].
- At this point, Xaosflux created a subpage of the RfA at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Matt Britt/Confusing, and transcluded it to this talk page [13], attempting to create another place for centralized discussion.
- Xaosflux then transcluded it to the talk page of the RfA [14] and this talk page [15]
- Four hours later, User:Radiant! moved a majority of the contents of the /confusing subpage [16] to the RfA itself [17].
Now we have a situation where this discussion is scattered all over the place. There's comments on the RfA itself, where meta discussions are inappropriate. There's comments on the RfA's talk page. There's comments here at WT:RFA. There's comments on the /confusing page that Xaosflux created. It's scattershot, all over the place. This makes it extremely difficult to engage in discussion regarding this format. Where is somebody supposed to comment? Who knows? In the least, it keeps moving, and keeping track of the bouncing ball is a trick best left to a bored cat.
I consider pushing the discussion regarding the format of the RfA onto the RfA itself to be a WP:POINT violation because:
- Meta discussions are inappropriate for a given page/article in dispute. We do not, for instance place discussion regarding the content of an article on the article itself. It goes on the article talk page. This is why we have talk pages!
- If a person moved content from this talk regarding the atrocious state of the current 'normal' format of RfAs onto an RfA talk page they would be immediately reverted. If they continued to do so, they would be warned to stop doing it as it causes a disruption to the RfA. This RfA is a perfectly valid and live RfA. It is highly inappropriate to have such discussion on the page itself. It deserves the same respect we give to 'normal' formatted RfAs.
- The people who are insisting on putting this content on the RfA have a strong dislike of the form of the RfA. By pushing this discussion onto the RfA, they are working to disrupt the RfA and prevent it from continuing in an appropriate manner.
This is not about me being in disagreement with the people who's opinions are against this format. Frankly, I have significant concerns about the format myself. This is about these users attempting to force discussion regarding the format of this RfA onto the RfA itself in violation of WP:POINT and going against the ideals espoused at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion.
It is blatantly obvious to me that the editors who insist on pushing this content back onto the RfA page itself are quite willing to revert war in order to get their way. I refuse to do so. I would appreciate it if others would step in and re-re-re-re-centralize the discussion to an appropriate place. The current situation is inexcusable as meta discussions are inappropriate for the RfA itself, and the meta discussion is scattered across at least four different pages now. --Durin 12:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Does it really matter? The experiment has failed already. Who did what is irrelevant here at WT:RFA; if you find the behaviour of individual users disruptive, that should be taken care of via WP:DR. Kusma (talk) 12:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- The experiment is not complete, thus asserting it has "failed" is premature. Further, per my comments elsewhere, there are more possible outcomes of the experiment than simply worked/didn't work. The people disrupting this RfA to make their point that it doesn't work are salting the experiment and forcing their view in a disruptive manner. --Durin 12:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
**This could all have been avoided if you had left the section in the RfA in the first place, or if you had returned it after others asked you to. You've been a one-man wrecking ball around here the last couple of days, so I don't think it's fair for you to start accusing others of wrongdoing the first time you don't get your way. Kafziel Talk 13:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm a one-man wrecking ball now? Wow. I mean, wow. --Durin 13:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Reply to Durin's accusation of WP:POINT
- For those who are reading this for the first time, I should make it clear that the addition of the section to Matt Britt's RFA was not a WP:POINT. I added it, after trying for 10 minutes to understand how to add a new section to the RFA. It occurred to me that I am not too inexperienced as an Editor (Although clearly not as experienced as Durin). The extreme difficulty of adding new sections to the RFA, compared with the relative ease of adding a single comment to an existing section made me think that it was appropriate to add a section to canvass how many users felt disenfrancised by the new format. I would have accepted Durin's move (I made an aborted revert after realising that Durin had moved, not deleted the section) but the revert was finally made by others. AKAF 13:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I should add that this is not related to my personal feelings about running experiments under "Live" RfAs. I find the deliberate malforming of RfAs unhelpful and disruptive. Additionally I find Durin (and other's) combined attacks of anyone voicing this opinion to be extremely uncivil when taken as a whole. Durin's repeated assertion that "meta discussions are inappropriate for the RfA" is rather difficult to justify, given that the whole RFA is a POV push of Durin's personal opinion. I find that this is exemplified by the following:
- Almost all !votes of oppose are attacked, while all !votes of support are accepted without question.
- Any suggestion that deliberate malforming of an RfA can lead to an invalid RfA is immediately attacked and discounted.
- Any suggestion that the judgement of a candidate in accepting a malformed nomination is poor leads to further attacks.
- While I appreciate that Durin has taken the time to have new ideas, I do not accept that there is any kind of consensus as to what the problems in RfA are, and thus testing anything on a live RfA is problematic at best and deliberately disruptive at worst. Durin has indicated that he wants to have a large number of these "live tests", and so I see this as a potentially escalating problem. AKAF 13:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I should add that this is not related to my personal feelings about running experiments under "Live" RfAs. I find the deliberate malforming of RfAs unhelpful and disruptive. Additionally I find Durin (and other's) combined attacks of anyone voicing this opinion to be extremely uncivil when taken as a whole. Durin's repeated assertion that "meta discussions are inappropriate for the RfA" is rather difficult to justify, given that the whole RFA is a POV push of Durin's personal opinion. I find that this is exemplified by the following:
- AKAF, first whether I am more experienced or not is irrelevant. I have held and continue to hold to the ideal that all good faith editors whether making their first edit or their 100,000th edit are equals. My comments regarding WP:POINT violations are considerably less directed at you.
- Second, you're now the third person who has made the accusation that I am "attacking" all or nearly all opposes in these experiments. This is flatly and provably false. When the first such accusation was made, I counted on the Moralis RfA. 46 opposes at the time; I'd responded to only 10. Less than 25%. Further, I've barely responded to anything on the Matt Britt RfA. I've made very few comments there since the RfA opened. I'm sorry but this accusation is simply false.
- Third, I am far from being the only one who thinks that attacking a candidate for being a guinea pig is a wrong idea. Please see Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Matt_Britt#Nominee_may_cause_undue_disruption.
- Lastly, I'll restate what I stated above. Meta discussions do not belong on the main page of whatever the meta discussion is about. This applies to articles, policy pages, images,...you name it. This is how we do things around here. I recognize people feel concerned they are "disenfranchised" (hard to understand when a) it's not a vote and b) plenty of other people felt well capable of contributing), and placed a pointed on WP:BN to alert the bureaucrats to this possibility, even trying to word it in favor of that viewpoint as much as I could [18]. We don't need to keep forcing meta discussion onto the RfA in order for the bureaucrats to be aware of this. --Durin 13:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I phrased that poorly, sorry. You have personally replied to a lot of oppose comments (I find 10% a lot). But you will note that an environment has been created in which a group of other editors who agree with the reformats are replying to oppose comments with considerably less civility than you are.
- As for the meta-discussion, I just don't think that you're right. The RFA is an discussion of the User's judgement and record, more than anything else. If it is the decision of other editors that the acceptance of an uncommonly formed RFA is an indication of poor judgement, how is that meta-discussion? I agree that there's a certain amount of POINT voting, but it's hard to tell since there is no consensus whether a user agreeing to the reformatting is poor judgement or not.
- I can see that you feel strongly about it, but in my opinion having a section on all these "live tests" for those who felt unable to use the format would defuse a big problem, namely that there will always be a subset of users who feel that these are invalid RFAs, and that there should be no promotions from these tests. AKAF 14:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Would you then be opposed to having such a section on all other RfAs using the "normal" format? A number of people find the current format quite objectionable. If it is reasonable to have similar objections on Matt Britt's RfA, it's entirely reasonable to have such objections on any other RfA where people feel the format is objectionable. --Durin 14:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please note that this is one of the points I noted above; if someone added such a section to a "normal" RfA they would be immediately reverted. If they re-added it, and then re-added it again they would be rightfully accused of violating WP:POINT. That's why it's a WP:POINT violation here, on this RfA. --Durin 14:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- You should really just stop now. There is no basis in policy for removing others' comments from a discussion and relegating them to a talk page or subpage. You were absolutely wrong to move them. The policy doesn't make exceptions for metadata, and sarcastic comments like this (and this) aren't going to change that. Kafziel Talk 14:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I will continue voicing my opinions as I see fit, as long as they are in line with Wikipedia policy and you have absolutely no right to insist that I stop. Further, your comments [19][20] are not exactly in line with your ideals expressed in this latest comment from you. If you think metadata belongs on main pages, then please tell me why we have talk pages? Why not just push all the commentary from WT:RFA to WP:RFA? Afterall, it's just metadata...deserve to be on the main page! --Durin
- I don't have a problem with sarcastic comments per se; my feelings aren't hurt. I'm just saying those comments aren't helping you prove your case. There are plenty of places that say it's bad to touch anyone else's comments. There's nowhere I know of that says it's okay to move people's comments around however you want, amidst the protests of others, as long as you deem them irrelevant. Kafziel Talk 14:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't deem them irrelevant. I gave them considerable weight. Moving them doesn't mean they are irrelevant. Would you please show me a main article page where we have discussions about the article on the article itself? Also, your attack on me for being sarcastic is...well, you should look in the mirror. :) --Durin 14:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Stop saying I'm attacking you. I just said I don't mind the sarcasm. I love sarcasm. Perhaps irrelevant was the wrong word. You (and only you) deemed them "inappropriate". Semantics aside, there's still no basis for moving them. Sarcasm won't change that, whining about my comments won't change that, and trying to compare RfA to an article won't change that. Kafziel Talk 15:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- You're not attacking me but call me the boss and a one man wrecking machine. I'll try to keep that in mind. --Durin 15:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Really? That's it? That's your response? Still no policy to back up moving others' comments? Just a picture of Mr. T and more lamentations about your sensitive feelings? All I'm asking for is a link to where it says what you did is okay. If you can't come up with one, just say so. Why are you trying so hard to make this personal? I'm not the one who moved the section back, or moved it to a different page, or anything. I never touched it. As far as I'm concerned, we're just talking here. Kafziel Talk 15:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- de-indent And now my feelings are too sensitive. Funny :) Have a nice day Kafziel. --Durin 15:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, you said that yesterday, too, but you didn't leave me alone. Still no luck on finding that policy, huh? Okie dokie. Kafziel Talk 15:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Silence on a point does not mean I concede it. Do not stuff words in my mouth. I simply recognize that you and I are totally incapable of interacting with each other in a rational manner. Thus, continuing discussion between us is an exercise in utter futility. --Durin 15:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's funny, though: I was asking for diffs or links when you decided to stop yesterday's conversation, too. You can't come up with any, so you'll "be the bigger man" and stop the conversation on your terms without admitting that you were wrong, only to show up a little later saying the same things I'm asking you to prove now (or worse, levelling accusations WP:POINT at other editors for daring to defy you). You've tried to change the subject six ways from Sunday, but I'm not having it. You can make this about me, but it still won't make you right. Kafziel Talk 15:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- You are welcome to your opinions and (wrong) insights into my behavior. Have a nice day. --Durin 15:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would actively encourage the addition of extra discussion sections. Perhaps two discussion sections:
- I couldn't take part because of problems caused by the format.
- I dislike this format (but voted above), and it's being a problem in this RFA because....
- In my opinion, this would be a better method of centralising the discussion, and hopefully would take a number of POINT opposes to a central area, leaving only those who feel that a candidate has showed poor judgement.AKAF 14:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would actively encourage the addition of extra discussion sections. Perhaps two discussion sections:
Everybody needs to take a deep breath here. It's alright to have a little experiment and it's also ok for people to point out that the experiment is giving everyone a headache and should be aborted. There's absolutely no reason to turn this into such a personal affair and anyone who has trouble with that part should just walk away from this debate and cool down for a while. Pascal.Tesson 14:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone noted that the RfA is a lot easier to comment on now, after all the <includeonly>s have been stripped? Those who want it aborted are also those who lack the desire to help improve it. –Pomte 14:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I was hoping one or more people would help improve the format. If it was you, THANK YOU! :) --Durin 14:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- User:Freakofnurture gets the credit.[21] –Pomte 16:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- If people have legitimate concerns against this novel process, it follows they have legitimate concerns against promoting candidates via this process, and hence that should be noted. This has nothing to do with disrupting anything, nor with making a point. >Radiant< 08:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- As I've been named above, here's my 2c on this. After seeing all the reverting (including my own) of where those comments could be, and fearing data loss as a result, I made that sub-page. If the comments in there are still preserved somewhere feel free to speedy delete that page. My goal in it was to fight the ForestFire that was formed. Personally I think these comments were mostly about that specific RFA, and belong on either the RfA subpage, or it's talk page (not needed on both). I also respect Durin's point that the discussion has bearing to other aspects of the project as well, and WT:RFA may be the approiate venue. To achieve that end, the subpage seemed like the best compromise. — xaosflux Talk 01:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
A Simple Suggestion
Allow the crats to exercise discretion early - Explicitly state what !votes are to be discounted by crats, i.e. what they consider to be poor arguments, sockpuppets etc. These !votes are to be struck out (e.g. Oppose, not enough blah counts!) by any crat anytime during the RfA along with an explanation. These struck !votes may be overriden by any other crat which would then be discussed at the noticeboard, and they be discussed/critiqued by any other editor if they feel that there are lapses in discretion. Everything else be left the same as it is.
Also consider : possible extension to support !votes as well? - Mailer Diablo 14:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'd always agree simply writing Support 15:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC) isn't helpful, that's just voting (although I'm guilty of it when I'm being lazy). Since it is the 'crats discretion to discount such opinions, this could be a good idea. Majorly (hot!) 15:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- This would alleviate the problems encountered with Carnildo's, Danny's and Ryulong's RfAs, where the numbers indicated that the candidates hadn't passed but the Bureaucrats decided that consensus had been achieved. Explanatory notes and a summary of the 'crats findings would have been useful in determining how the decision had been made. (aeropagitica) 15:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed, I'm looking out for the crat's thought process during the course of the RfA !voting, rather than at towards the closing time. - Mailer Diablo 15:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I like this idea but I'm concerned as to what the criteria would be for discounting votes. There has been some dispute as to which !votes should be ignored by bureaucrats.
Here's a list of criteria that are discounted by general agreement...
- Sock puppet accounts
- !Votes which are based on a personal grudge
- Very new accounts
- !votes by anonymous IPs
Here's a list of criteria that some people would argue should be discounted...
- No need for tools
- Failure to use edit summaries
- "Me, too" or "Support/oppose per User:X"
- Not enough edits/experience
- Not enough edits in a particular namespace (e.g. the Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk namespaces)
- Not enough edits in xFD discussions
- !Votes which are based on Wikipedia philosophy such as inclusionist/deletionist
These lists are "off the top of my head" and I readily grant that the lists could be expanded. I also grant that not all of these criteria have the same weight with regards to "discountability".
So... which of these criteria are you proposing that bureaucrats discount?
--Richard 16:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- There was one RfA I remember (no idea whose) where the first two Oppose votes both attracted heavy criticism from users (the nominee wasn't involved, but other users were complaining that the votes weren't based in policy, etc.) As a result, the third vote simply said Oppose without a reason. (By the way, see the talk page of WP:QAV to see why you have to be very careful about disallowing votes.) --ais523 16:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that any of these could be discounted - each RfA can be equally measured against these criteria and the only those that they fall down upon need be highlighted in the striking of votes and summation at the end of the process. (aeropagitica) 17:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose. If bureaucrats have this much discretion in closing RfAs, we may as well let them do on-sight promotions. See a user, promote a user; no community input required. -- Black Falcon 17:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- That would be ok with me. The reasons people are being opposed these days are often absurd. I trust the judgement of a bureaucrat considerably more than I trust the judgment of a person who says "Oppose: Only have 897 mainspace edits, and I demand 1000". --Durin 17:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- This would then raise the accusation of the existence of a cabal of like-minded admins who support a particular line of the promoting Bureaucrat. A transparent process would be better for all involved and passive observers too. A meritocracy is more beneficial to this collaborative project than a series of cliques. This is a worst case scenario but I can all-too easily imagine the accusation being raised as soon as a promotion goes ahead when someone opposed to the new admin's way of thinking decides to speak out. (aeropagitica) 17:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm all with aeropagitica: transparency is important and supporters or opposers whose arguments will be discounted by the closing b'crat should get some sort of heads-up if possible. I strongly advise against making precise rules about what's a good reason and what isn't: unless the motivations are obviously bad-faith, disruptive junk then let people speak their mind. "Ridiculous" is in the eye of the beholder: for instance I find Walton Monarchist's "support unless awful" approach to RfA careless but I'm positive he's being honest and thorough in his assessments and at least he's consistent. We just disagree on what the criteria should be. I find "lack of experience with images" a bad reason to oppose but I can live with it as long as people who oppose on that basis are consistent. Pascal.Tesson 18:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- If there was something that could give information about what not to vote in RfAs besides Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in adminship discussions (which is only ideas and theories anyway), we would have fewer arguments about which reasons are valid reasons to support and oppose. Captain panda 21:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- In response to Aeropagitica, "where the numbers indicated that the candidates hadn't passed but the Bureaucrats decided that consensus had been achieved" - as far as I can tell the 'crats decided that consensus had not been achieved but they would promote anyway. There is a difference there. >Radiant< 08:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, and seeing the process whereby that decision was arrived at is important if the restructuring of RfA is going to be along these lines. Transparency in elections is a very useful thing for all concerned in order to see that due process has been observed. (aeropagitica) 17:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
The noinclude tags on Matt Britt's RfA, and support/include/neutral sections using the current RfA method
This isn't yet another post about the correct method to use for RfAs, but instead a merely technical suggestion. At the moment, RfAs either have to use Support in bold as a section header (with no section-edit link), use ===Support=== as a section header (lengthening the RfA TOC to beyond a usable length), or use noinclude trickery (acceptable on current-style RfAs, but leading to much confusion in the case of Matt Britt's). If a proposal I've made on MediaWiki talk:common.css to make it possible to limit TOCs to a certain depth doesn't receive objections (and I don't see why it would), a fourth method will become possible: using ===Support=== as a section header (complete with [edit] link), and limiting WP:RFA's table of contents so that the 'Support' entry doesn't appear there. What do people think of this possibility? --ais523 15:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- If there is support to use ====Support==== and ====Oppose==== and ====Neutral==== (level 4 currently), I don't think there's a need to supress them from the table of contents because it's only 3 subheadings per RfA. With 10 or so RfAs at any given time, the TOC at WP:RfA won't override into the first nomination. –Pomte 15:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Section editing on RfA. Yes, please. SchmuckyTheCat 19:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
A record has been set
I got curious, and ran the numbers totaling contributions to WT:RFA per rolling 7 days through the extant history of this talk page. The prior record for the number of contributions per rolling 7 days was during the Ryulong promotion affair with 567 comments, back in January of this year. In a close second place was the Carnildo promotion affair back in September of '06 with 538. We've just blown that record out of the water, with 748 contributions in the last 7 days.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to indicate the Moralis and Matt Britt RfA formats are controversial. ;) --Durin 18:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would say that you added an incorrect negative sign in your mental math. More discussion implies more controversy. GRBerry 19:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would say you missed the ";)" on the end of my comment. :) --Durin 19:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say that having so many comments is necessarily a good thing. Every comment made here (to fix something that isn't broken, in my opinion) is one less minor improvement to an article. -- Black Falcon 19:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Getting RfA to work properly will significantly help the project. These aren't wasted edits. --Durin 19:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- That assumes that it currently doesn't work well enough. But, as you noted yesterday, I suppose this is something about which we'll have to agree to disagree. -- Black Falcon 19:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- What he said. Kafziel Talk 19:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- What, it's somehow detrimental to participate in policy-forming activities? There are no deadlines on Wikipedia. Every article improvement that can be done will be done - whether sooner or later. You seem to be implying that a comment made here will actually subtract from the total number of article edits a contributor will make in their career here. That's a totally false implication. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 21:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, I'm not implying that. I'm just pointing to the opportunity costs of every comment made here. Every edit made here consumes time that could be spent elsewhere. Now, of course, I'm not lobbying for an end to policy discussion as such discussion is necessary to establish and maintain frameworks in which article editing can take place. The intent of my comment above was simply to express the opinion that the commenting in the past few days (in which I admit I heavily participated) may not have been ... and please don't lynch me for this ... the most productive. I would love to be proven wrong by seeing some sort of positive result, but I can see only two: (1) we adopt one of the two experimental formats as the standard, or (2) we keep the existing standard. I view the first to be a negative result and the second to be neutral (no change). Of course, there is the fact that we now know of 2 formats that won't receive consensus support. If you think the current format of RfA is broken and needs significant reform, then that's probably consoling. If you don't, well ... -- Black Falcon 22:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
A record of another sort?
An admin has just gone rogue. Has this ever happened before? The rogue admin got in three edits before being blocked and then emergency desysopped, and got in 25 blocking, unblocking, unprotecting, and deleting actions. See WP:ANI#Robdurbar. Carcharoth 10:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thirteen minutes from when he deleted the Main Page until he got desysopped... Carcharoth 10:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's shocking. I would say we need either (a) more active stewards or (b) to give crats the ability to desysop. Higher standards at RfB, whoopee. – Riana ऋ 10:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Undoubtedly this will raise new questions about whether admins claiming "right to leave" should be desysopped. – Chacor (RIP 32@VT) 10:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Looks like I was beaten to it. – Chacor (RIP 32@VT) 10:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Is there a good reason why the crats can't desysop? Moreschi Talk 10:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Probably some separation of powers thingy. Carcharoth 10:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I can't think of one, especially with the already amazingly high standards. Plus, my immediate response to this incident was "we need mroe crats!" before someone reminded me that crats can't desyssop. That incident alone means I shouldn't run for RfB for six months :) — Deckiller 10:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Was there actually a bureaucrat around and more accessible than jhs was? —Cryptic 10:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not so relevant: standards at RfB are stupidly high anyway. Moreschi Talk 11:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think more to the point is: should admins be able to unblock themselves? That would be the short-term answer before the question of de-sysopping is even required. – B.hotep u/t• 10:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah that has always seemed bizarre to me. Will (aka Wimt) 11:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Admins can and do block themselves by mistake, and in this case admins who were blocked found it pretty useful to unblock themselves. Moreschi Talk 11:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- True but you could make it possible to remove your own blocks but not someone else's. Or just wait for someone else to unblock you! Will (aka Wimt) 11:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Allowing to self-unblock only if you self-blocked seems like a reasonable idea. To control a rogue admin with a blockbot who blocks every available sysop you'll still need a steward, though. Kusma (talk) 11:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- What is needed is to set the system up so a self-unblock only restores editing privileges, and not admin privileges. To regain the admin privileges, you need to get someone else to complete the process. Then you hope that the number of good admins outweighs the bad ones and they get their blocks in first... Hmm. Maybe that wouldn't work! Carcharoth 11:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ouch, that's the terrifying scenario. The problem with allowing self-unblocking only if you've blocked yourself is exactly that: in that scenario, you'd need the stewards to unblock maybe hundreds of admins, desysop the rouge admin, block him, and then clean up any other mess he's left behind. That's probably why we need admins to be able to self-unblock. Moreschi Talk 11:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure whether it would be possible to introduce some kind of protection that prevented a sysop blocking more than three sysops in 24 hours or something. That would prevent that kind of blockbot attack. Will (aka Wimt) 11:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Allowing to self-unblock only if you self-blocked seems like a reasonable idea. To control a rogue admin with a blockbot who blocks every available sysop you'll still need a steward, though. Kusma (talk) 11:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- True but you could make it possible to remove your own blocks but not someone else's. Or just wait for someone else to unblock you! Will (aka Wimt) 11:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's a good question too, I thought of that when I unblocked myself. Blocking should mean blocking from all editing privileges, including administrative privs. – Riana ऋ 11:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Is there a good reason why the crats can't desysop? Moreschi Talk 10:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Looks like I was beaten to it. – Chacor (RIP 32@VT) 10:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
So, does anyone actually know whether anything like this has happened before? Is it that common? Carcharoth 11:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Whoa! What on earth?! Still, 13 minutes is a pretty good response time. >Radiant< 11:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
The only case I know of where an admin was emergency desysopped for what seemed at the time to be rogue behaviour was in May 2005 - see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive23#Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason. It used to be possible for admins to use rollback, protect/unprotect a page ETC. while blocked - that was fixed as bug 3801. Graham87 12:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, one other: User:Husnock was rapidly desysopped after it emerged he'd given away his password to help someone evade a block. Moreschi Talk 12:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- There will undoubtedly be calls for reform (and already are) regarding things we could change to have avoided this admin account going rogue. Reality; three admins emergency desysopped out of >1100. .3% (I'm apparently not allowed to use forms of emphasis, so I'm trying out adding spaces around something I want to emphasize in an effort not to annoy certain people). --Durin 13:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- That number count is incomplete. We had at least three emergency desysoppings in the Daniel Brandt Wheel War case alone, none of them listed here. Off the top of my head, I don't remember how many were permanently desysopped (at least 1), but the point that the list is obviously incomplete stands. GRBerry 13:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Those were not security breaches. Sorry. Even if they were, that's what... .5%? The point stands. --Durin 13:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
There is good reason not to have desysopping rights for bureaucrats. We have to remember that on the many small projects we have there are usually only two bureaucrats for the project and limiting them to promotions only is a good way to avoid potential problems. The ratio of promotions relative to desysoppings is quite large. Having a cross-project wide group of several dozens of stewards to handle desysoppings on all projects is fine. With dozens of stewards available, one can always be found quickly enough. After all, we are spending a lot more effort talking about this rare event than the actual effort required to bring the problem to an end. The system worked. NoSeptember 13:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Echo NoSeptember and Carcharoth; it took 13 minutes to emergency desysop. In the meantime, any vandalism to the main page was virtually instantly undone. The system worked just fine. --Durin 14:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, actually, I was suggesting that the response time should be better than 13 minutes. Something along the order of 2-3 minutes, I'd say. I am reassured though by the comments by Jon Harald Søby over at the WP:ANI thread where he said that he was told that the reason it took so long was that people in #wikipedia at the time didn't know where to get hold of a steward, actually, they didn't even know that a steward was the required class of functionary. It seems that little bit of process needs to be more widely enculturated. Also, I haven't checked, but the visible damage (eg. Main Page deletion, as you say) was fixed very quickly. Jon Harald Søby indicated that there will probably be stewards available at any time, as they are in different time zones, but that seems a little bit like wishful thinking to me. There probably are quiet times when no stewards are available, but the only way we will find out, unless a system is set up, is when something like this happens and we find all the stewards are asleep/away/inactive, or whatever. Carcharoth 14:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I doubt very much that the problem is at an end. How often are admins emergency desysopped and the matter just drops? Never. There will be arguments on policy talk pages all over Wikipedia, requests for comment that will last for months, and discussions about it on other websites (and in print, if we're really lucky) as well. Blocking a bad admin starts the problem. It doesn't finish it. Kafziel Talk 14:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- It would be pointless giving it to bureaucrats, as most aren't particularly active. Majorly (hot!) 15:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Maybe I'm jaded but I'm not sure there's really much of a lesson to be learned here. I mean once every few months (if even that) some admin goes beserk. In 20 minutes he's desysopped and the little damage he's had time to do is all reverted. I don't quite understand why we should go into complex soul searching to guard against an unlikely event which in any case has consequences of relatively limited depth. Pascal.Tesson 15:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would suggest that it is because we are all used to coping with what we might call ordinary vandals, but when one of us - one of our own - goes vandal it is a bit like one of the family doing it, and the emotional impact is vastly greater. And the automatic urge is to find out why, how could it have been prevented, and how can it be prevented in the future. --Anthony.bradbury 21:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ah but of course, I'm not part of that family! :-) Pascal.Tesson 21:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I would suggest that it is because we are all used to coping with what we might call ordinary vandals, but when one of us - one of our own - goes vandal it is a bit like one of the family doing it, and the emotional impact is vastly greater. And the automatic urge is to find out why, how could it have been prevented, and how can it be prevented in the future. --Anthony.bradbury 21:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Closing Moralis' RfA
In response to a couple of requests, I'm posting a brief comment on my views on the structure of Moralis' RfA.
In general, I found that the new format wasn't particularly helpful in determining consensus. On the plus side, it did encourage users to explain their reasons for support or objection, but on the negative side, it led to a large number of comments mixed throughout the discussion repeating issues which had appeared earlier. This made it far more time-consuming than an ordinary RfA to determine which issues had been raised and how many users felt that these were serious concerns.
This was an interesting experiment and well worth conducting, but if it is to be repeated, I would be keen to see some sort of grouping of related issues. I am particularly interested in the format of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Matt Britt, which seems to address this, but may carry some new difficulties. Warofdreams talk 17:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Moralis' RfA in retrospect
This page has been way too quiet in the last 24 hours so let me make a few comments on the Moralis experiment. That's just bound to draw some action! :-0
First, thanks to Warofdreams for sharing his thoughts on the b'crat perspective of the format. I have to agree with him that this was an interesting experiment although not such a convincing one. I think we can all agree that the end result is difficult to make sense of, probably more so than your average RfA debate. The problem we face is of course distinguishing the impact of the format from the impact of the candidate: any RfA for a candidate who has a relatively low edit count but has been somewhat involved in the IRC channels tends to be problematic because of the discrepancy in trust from IRC people (who know the candidate better) and non-IRC people (who can only judge him through his visible contribs history). Still, I believe the format is partly to be blamed for the chaotic output and I think it failed to deliver more productive discussion. There was a lot of redundancy between the various threads and more shouting than usual. By scattering the supports and opposes through the RfA, this is bound to happen as it's harder to have an overall view of how the debate is shaping. Pascal.Tesson 21:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- If it had been a "regular" RfA, it would been snowballed. This would have stifled all the later conversation that the RfA produced. Notes:
- This RfA produced the most commented on RfA in history for a candidate with less than 1000 edits.
- It produced (if you strictly count votes) the 2nd most supported RfA candidate with less than 1000 edits in the last year.
- I do not agree that the chronological sorting of comments was bad in and of itself.
- I do agree that more coherent discussion would have been useful; perhaps something that merges the best ideas from this RfA, Matt Britt's RfA, and a notional WP:DFA style RfA would yield something better.
- I'm still reviewing comments at various places regarding this RfA. But, preliminary summary; it produced a lot of considerably useful insight and feedback. --Durin 21:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I have to note that considering that Moralis received the 2nd most support for a candidate with less than 1000 edits, it seems odd to have previously heard complaints that people were opposing based on the format of the RfA. I suppose some may have, but it can't have been that many considering the level of support. Captain panda 21:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting that you think the RfA would've been snowballed. In which direction? I don't really see such a hard trend in the initial phase of it. Also, even though there was quite a lot of participation, it's really a big big stretch to attribute this to the format. For one thing, the RfA was thoroughly advertised on this talk page and on the B'crats noticeboard at a time when these pages had more traffic as usual following Danny's controversial RfA. And there's no reason to conclude that participants were drawn in because they found the format enticing. Pascal.Tesson 21:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Your conclusions are (please take this in the good spirit it's intended) just as speculative. --Durin 21:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Of course, although I find my explanation considerably simpler! Pascal.Tesson 21:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
WANTED: Guinea pigs
We've now completed one experiment, and have another three days underway. There are still several other experiments to be conducted. I'd like to request volunteers to be guinea pigs for near future further experiments. The only qualifications are that you want to be an admin, and you think you'd make an ok candidate. You don't have to be perfect.
If you're willing to be a guinea pig, you will of course have the opportunity to refuse to be a test case for a particular format of an RfA. This is purely voluntary on your part. If you are interested, please leave a message on my talk page. Thank you, --Durin 21:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Discussion on whether to have experiments
- Hmmm... How about we take a slight break from experimentation? Sure, you're not forcing every RfA candidate to take part but you are forcing every RfA participant to deal with these. It's ok to be bold but at some point, you do have to ask around and ask "mind if I experiment a bit?" Pascal.Tesson 21:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- This goes to a point two people raised, about whether there is permission to do experiments or not. I don't have to have permission. I'm not saying this to be hostile, I'm saying it because the past three years of RfA have demonstrated that this community is incapable of coming to any consensus regarding reform, and it's unlikely that the community will suddenly now agree that experimentation is good. Look at all the rancorous debate that has occurred on this page in the last 72 hours. I'm not going to hold myself hostage to a group that is incapable of forming consensus in any direction. Indeed, that is one the chief problems I am attempting to fix. --Durin 21:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I could be a guinea pic if one's really needed. The only problem's that i'm already an admin, haha. I do think we should do these slowly, like 1 up at a time so that RfA can at least still flow.--Wizardman 21:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I don't see the experiments as disrupting any flow; any can ignore a given RfA if they like. But, 1 a week is at least at this point pretty much defacto, as Matt's will conclude before I'll have sufficient time to craft another experiment. --Durin 21:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I could be a guinea pic if one's really needed. The only problem's that i'm already an admin, haha. I do think we should do these slowly, like 1 up at a time so that RfA can at least still flow.--Wizardman 21:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Durin, if you are taking the view (which I would not argue with) that experience has shown that the community has shown itself incapable of coming to consensus on reform, then when you have finished your experiments how are you going to get the community to implement one of them?--Anthony.bradbury 22:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- And if the community shows no consensus that change is needed, why is it being forced down our throats? - auburnpilot talk 22:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- An excellent question Anthony, an excellent question. I'll leave my response at this. --Durin 22:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I would like a response. There is absolutely no sign that the community supports changing the system, yet here we are. - auburnpilot talk 22:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I am not changing the system. I'm experimenting. There's considerable difference. --Durin 22:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I would like a response. There is absolutely no sign that the community supports changing the system, yet here we are. - auburnpilot talk 22:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- An excellent question Anthony, an excellent question. I'll leave my response at this. --Durin 22:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- do you think that quoting the illustrator of Alice in Wonderland re-inforces your point?--Anthony.bradbury 22:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not interested in reinforcing my point. --Durin 22:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Durin, if you believe that your experimentation with RfA will magically cure the community's inability to form a consensus on such large scale reform, then I am sorry to say you're in for a rough landing. You know, part of the rancorous debate you are referring to is partly due to your experimentation and systematic refusal to listen to those who argue that a particular experiment is a failure. So I'm just suggesting we slow it down, wait for patient discussion of the pros and cons of future experiments and discussion on what the experiment should be. I'm not saying this because I'm a conservative addict to voting but because I don't think we need any more rancorous arguments. This de facto standard you speak about is, after all, the standard you have chosen to impose. Pascal.Tesson 22:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I do not believe my experimentation with RfA will magically cure the community's inability to form a consensus. I simply refuse to be bound by the community's shortcomings. Once again, you are indicating that the only thing we can gain from an experiment is whether it "failed" or "didn't fail". This is highly subjective. You yourself above noted some conclusions of your own from the experiment. Gaining light from an experiment is a success. I recognize and respect you are extremely opposed to the experiments (perhaps in any form). If the community as a whole here came to consensus that I should stop, then I'd stop. But, I guarantee you such consensus is incapable of forming. --Durin 22:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- We need to generate the consensus to do this at all. There is no reason we can't gain consensus on this, unless the current system is actually preferred over any alternatives. While you could argue that the community has trapped itself into a system where what it likes is not was is needed, unilateral tests are not acceptable. RfAs should not be failing or (more importantly) passing based on a system that has not been approved by the community. Some of these systems drastically change the role of the Bureaucrat, and having some RfAs be "easier" and some "harder" to pass is not something that should be done. Design, test, then implement; don't skip the first two steps. Prodego talk 22:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Every experiment that has been attempted via the method you have suggested has utterly failed to ever make any progress. This is in part because of the community's inability to reach consensus. I recommend you read "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy", with an eye towards the possibility of RfA reform coming from this community's consensus. The fact that the community can not come to consensus about anything makes this community dysfunctional and incapable of evolution. --Durin 22:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- In Wikipedia we never have settled rules for anything, except in the policy, and we resist expanding that, to avoid instruction creep. If we were to DECIDE to close down some of the RfA options, like 'You must not oppose because of insufficient portal talk edits', that would be a instruction creep, and everyone would resist that. So it's hard to object to what Durin is doing (unless you just plain think it's annoying). EdJohnston 22:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- It is disruptive to the process to make large changes to some, but not all of the RfAs. I want RfA changed. But I do not want candidates able to put forward their RfAs in whatever format they want, which is what this is leading to. Process, though it can be unwieldy if used improperly, is the guide that holds the project together. Please consider that RfA is an important process that shouldn't just be messed with to see what works. Prodego talk 22:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- You're making the presumption that these experiments are damaging to the project. They are not. Do not allow yourself to be process bound, especially when consensus is utterly incapable of forming. Please read the essay cited above, "A group is its own worst enemy". RfA can not come to consensus, and it thus can not evolve in any direction. A process that can not do so is inherently broken. --Durin 22:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- It is disruptive to the process to make large changes to some, but not all of the RfAs. I want RfA changed. But I do not want candidates able to put forward their RfAs in whatever format they want, which is what this is leading to. Process, though it can be unwieldy if used improperly, is the guide that holds the project together. Please consider that RfA is an important process that shouldn't just be messed with to see what works. Prodego talk 22:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Given that consensus is very difficult, or impossible, to achieve, there is one question that you could ask. And that is, whether the community want WP:RfA to be changed. It's a simple yes/no vote. If they do, you are half way there. If they do not, you may decide for yourself.--Anthony.bradbury 22:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- As noted above, if consensus forms that I should stop these experiments, I will. I'm not going to do anything against consensus of the community. So, if the community agrees that these experiments should stop, then I'll stop. I am not going to stop to wait for consensus to form that the experiments should be done; as I noted above, consensus is incapable of forming at RfA. So, if you want me to stop, please gain consensus that these experiments should stop. --Durin 22:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Durin, with all due respect, do you not see the problem in your attitude? Tossing out opponents as though they don't understand group dynamics as well as you do, insisting that your experiments are not disruptive when a number of people have fairly explicitly said they find them otherwise, seeing yourself as the one guy with a clear strategy for a better tomorrow when the rest of us are simply process bound, essentially implying you've got some kind of a mandate to shake things up when you're getting as much negative response as positive response (and I'm being generous here). I really, really am not being antagonistic here but I think you might need to walk away from all of this, just for a short while. I believe there's value in what you're trying to do but you're not going to achieve much if you keep being so inflexible about it all. Pascal.Tesson 22:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think you are viewing my efforts in completely the wrong light Pascal. I'm not under any particular tension or stress, and have no need of walking away. I would have thought my sprinkling of humor at different points on this page would have pointed to that, but I guess not. To respond to the rest, you're inferring there is consensus that I should stop. I'm sorry, but I don't see that consensus. You're welcome to start a process to gain that consensus, and I'd be happy to abide by a consensus decision that I should stop, if such a consensus formed. --Durin 22:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Durin, with all due respect, do you not see the problem in your attitude? Tossing out opponents as though they don't understand group dynamics as well as you do, insisting that your experiments are not disruptive when a number of people have fairly explicitly said they find them otherwise, seeing yourself as the one guy with a clear strategy for a better tomorrow when the rest of us are simply process bound, essentially implying you've got some kind of a mandate to shake things up when you're getting as much negative response as positive response (and I'm being generous here). I really, really am not being antagonistic here but I think you might need to walk away from all of this, just for a short while. I believe there's value in what you're trying to do but you're not going to achieve much if you keep being so inflexible about it all. Pascal.Tesson 22:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Durin, your last edit to me reads as if we are in contention; this is not so. I have already agreed that WP:RfA is badly flawed. But I do think that you are going too far, too fast, and I do see consensus on this page to hold back a little.--Anthony.bradbury 22:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- You do, I don't. *shrug* As I noted above, the next experiment couldn't start until Matt Britt's RfA closes anyway. So, the 1 a week request will be honored. --Durin 22:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget, guys: Durin is the boss. If you think experiments are disruptive, Durin says: No they're not. If you think there should be at least some sort of testing process first, Durin says: No there shouldn't. If you think Durin is going too fast, Durin says: No I'm not. Who can compete with such convincing arguments? Obviously not Anthony, Prodego, AuburnPilot, Pascal, or myself. I mean, really: anyone who can post a picture of a cheshire cat must be right. Kafziel Talk 22:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Kafziel, your comments are a personal attack. This is the second time you've called me "the boss" [22]. You've also called me a one man wrecking ball [23]. Enough with the personal slant to your comments. Thank you, --Durin 23:02, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- I stand by everything I said, because it is absolutely factual. A lot of people have said this is disruptive. You flatly say it isn't. When asked to compromise, you say you won't. When asked what your plan is, you post a picture of a cheshire cat. What part of that is untrue? Kafziel Talk 00:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Kafziel, getting personal helps nobody, and obscures the fact that Durin is trying to improve the project. Durin, reading through the whole of this page appears to produce 24 editors against your recent experiments, 15 in favour (and a large number of uncomitted). Comments?--Anthony.bradbury 23:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Comments? Well, I'm being personally attacked and when I attempt to run a poll, it is immediately shut down in favor of another poll. Then, when I try to helpfully merge some clarification of the latter question on that poll, I am immediately reverted. Worse, my vote in that poll is also immediately reverted. You guys are on a witch hunt. Good grief. Start an RfAr already. It's that way. What a nice way to form consensus. Silence me. Beautiful. If you want that, then just block me already. Good night. --Durin 23:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Kafziel, getting personal helps nobody, and obscures the fact that Durin is trying to improve the project. Durin, reading through the whole of this page appears to produce 24 editors against your recent experiments, 15 in favour (and a large number of uncomitted). Comments?--Anthony.bradbury 23:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Durin, with deepest respect I was asking User:Kafziel to refrain from personal attacks on you, and I personally have neither reverted or deleted anything you have posted. I did not shut down your poll. I have at no time personally attacked you, nor have I made any attempt whatsoever to silence you. My question related solely to consensus on your experiments, as shown on this page.--Anthony.bradbury 23:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- That would have been me, and I accidentally reverted you Durin. It was not deliberate, and I apologize for not reloading the history before I reverted myself. Prodego talk 23:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how calling Durin "The [RFA experiments] Boss" is a personal attack. Can we get a consensus on During being the RFA experiments boss? ;-) --Kim Bruning 00:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I can't see how anyone would have a problem with that. He is eminently well-qualified and trustworthy. --Guinnog 00:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This poll has been archived. It does not meet the polling guidelines
POLL: Should experiments in format be allowed on live RfAs?
This poll asks the question, "Should experiments in format be allowed on live RfAs?". A number of experiments before going to RfA have been tried over the last three years without any of them coming to consensus that they should move forward to experimenting on a live RfA. I can provide a rather large number of cites to this effect if anyone questions this. Thus, the question phrased as it is.
Note: This question does not ask if the results of an experimental RfA is binding. Bureaucrats are charged with and expected to evaluate consensus. If, given an experimental format they can not, it is reasonable to expect they would return the RfA is incapable of evaluating consensus and thus close as such. I note that the Moralis RfA was closed by User:Warofdreams without too much trouble. I expect that there may be considerable difficulty in closing the Matt Britt RfA and if so the bureaucrats should return it as unable to close.
PS: And yes, I know polls are evil. But, quite a number of people who are opposed to the experiments seem very much in favor of voting, so...
Should experiments in format be allowed on live RfAs?
In responding, please keep your vote short. If you would like to engage in extensive discussion, please use the discussion section below. Thank you.
Yes
- Support: The experiments are not damaging in any respect to Wikipedia, are not binding on the bureaucrats to close, and are done in cooperation with the nominee, not against their will. I fail to see how this is a bad thing. --Durin 23:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Support. But only after consensus is reached that change is necessary.--Anthony.bradbury 23:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Support. Experiments may be the most effective way of making changes to entrenched procedures so, as a principle, I think we shouldn't disallow them. Personally I favor doing RFA the German way - can we try that? Haukur 00:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
No
Neutral
Other
Discussion
I already created a similar poll, then edit conflicted. Since this will fill up lets use mine. Message:
- Since you're reverting my additions to the poll stating that the polls are different, I'm uncommenting mine above. --Durin 23:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
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- Your poll question asks the wrong question. I attempted to include commentary from this poll to that one, and you immediately reverted it. Good grief. --Durin 23:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Consensus poll
I created this page where we can both !vote and discuss the changes, which will both gain consensus about the changes, and show the relationship between a pure vote and a consensus system. The poll asks if "you support making changes to RfA" and if "you support the way test changes are being conducted". I highly recommend anyone interested answer both questions, and make their arguments on the talk page. Prodego talk 23:04, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- Closed this one too, doesn't follow polling guidelines. (What's a consensus poll?) --Kim Bruning 00:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry, Kim, I guess we had an edit conflict when you closed it and I didn't notice, so I put my 2 cents in. Honestly, when I previewed my post, I just thought, "Oooh, purple. Fancy." :) Kafziel Talk 00:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I like purple too. :-) --Kim Bruning 00:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Polling guidelines
Ironically Polling is not a substitute for discussion is much more lax than Straw polls. Either way, the way folks are trying to do polls on RFA talk utterly ignores either guideline, so I've closed them both. --Kim Bruning 00:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Of course it isn't. Polls are tools to help gauge consensus, and by no means a substitute for discussion. However, based on the discussion on this page, is there agreement (consensus) to make these changes? If we can't be sure, this is where polling helps us decide. Prodego talk 00:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Is there consensus on the content of the poll and on the questions you are asking? --Kim Bruning 00:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- So ... the next step would be to have a poll on whether to try to establish consensus for the content of a poll to poll whether we can poll for the existence of consensus to experiment with RfA? ;) -- Black Falcon 16:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- That would be fine, but please establish consensus for the poll before you start it. --Kim Bruning 17:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC) Note that consensus and polling are very different things ;-)
Wording change?
I noticed that the wording to the standard RfA questions has been changed. Was there discussion related to that change? Did I miss it in the midst of all the Moralis/Matt Britt talk? Dekimasuよ! 12:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not sure, but I think someone was just bold enough to do it. Pascal.Tesson 12:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Someone decided that linking to Category:Administrative backlogs in question 1 was making it too easy to answer. A candidate for adminship should know independently what sysop chores he/she intends to do. You can ask User:Majorly about this; I think he could point you to the original discussion. YechielMan 16:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting. It would be pretty dumb if this was really the motivation for the change. I mean, the question isn't meant to be a test. Pascal.Tesson 16:51, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Someone decided that linking to Category:Administrative backlogs in question 1 was making it too easy to answer. A candidate for adminship should know independently what sysop chores he/she intends to do. You can ask User:Majorly about this; I think he could point you to the original discussion. YechielMan 16:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Trying to break the deadlock
Here's an idea to try and reconcile everyone. One of the problems I see with experimenting RfA formats on various guinea pigs is that it's hard to separate the effects of the format from the effects of the candidate. Consequently, we' re bound to end up with experiments which nobody will agree on how to interpret. Eventually, we'd like to have tested 5 or 6 formats and be able to compare their effectiveness but I don't really see how to compare, say, the effectiveness of Moralis' format versus Matt Britt's given that they have such different profiles. I'm also still skeptical that experimenting with "live" RfAs is the best solution. So I'm proposing we find a universal guinea pig: let's take one editor and run RfA's for him under different formats. Now I know that Durin will argue that RfAs which are not meant to be "real" RfAs will generate little or no action but I think that if we actually transclude these experiments on the RfA page (with some little note about its experimental nature) this might turn out ok. In the long run, this could allow a better basis for discussion on how to tweak the process whereas I'm very much convinced that the current string of experiments will only serve to entrench people in their beliefs that this or that format is preferable. Pascal.Tesson 12:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I don't see why not. I would suggest letting them go one (perhaps two) at a time so the main RFA page doesn't get clogged, it reduces confusion when voting and it doesn't generate comments here on WT:RFA like "OMGZORS WHY IS USER:X UP FOR 6 RFAS?". Obviously it should be a candidate who will receive a few opposes. James086Talk | Email 12:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Of course, finding that guinea pig will be no cake walk. Ideally it would be someone who will indeed generate a bit of opposition but it should also be someone who's in no rush to become an admin... Pascal.Tesson 12:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Pascal is right, we need opposition and neutral commentary to get a good test of the format. Any reasonable format will handle candidates with an obvious yes or no, the tough decisions are the ones that really test a format. GRBerry 13:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Of course, finding that guinea pig will be no cake walk. Ideally it would be someone who will indeed generate a bit of opposition but it should also be someone who's in no rush to become an admin... Pascal.Tesson 12:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'll volunteer to be a guinea pig. I never, ever want to be an admin, I am fairly qualified, but I have got some stuff that would probably generate opposition. But I'd only volunteer with the understanding that I would not serve if promoted. ;-) Anchoress 12:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- As part of the preparation, you might want to sprinkle a few incivil comments here and there. :-) All kidding aside, I'd rather have a candidate that actually wants to be an admin. But maybe that's just me. Pascal.Tesson 13:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Uh... but didn't you just say you are looking for someone who's in no rush to become an admin? Make up your fucking mind. ;-) How's that? Anchoress 13:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Pascal. It's one thing to (in my opinion) disrupt RfA to test a format. But if the candidate doesn't even want to be an admin, then it's really just disruption to prove a point (the point being that the format can or can't work), without even pretending to have a useful goal. Kafziel Talk 13:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that's a little bit sadistic. You're looking for someone who wants to be an admin, who is willing to go through the rigamarole of being a guinea pig, but someone who would generate a fair bit of opposition? So in other words your ideal candidate is someone who wants to be an administrator but may not get to be one? Except that they're also not in a hurry to be an admin. That sounds like a tall order, plus a bit cold, if you don't mind me saying so. Anchoress 13:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed it does. That's why I disagree with the whole premise of putting other people's RfAs on the line for the sake of a throw-away test. Kafziel Talk 13:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm... I suppose my secret plan to stop the experiments by suggesting we select a guinea pig that doesn't actually exist has now been uncovered. ;-) I could be that guinea pig myself, I have some interest in being an admin although it won't cause me undue stress to go through a few weeks of format experimentation. But (don't know how to say this without sounding really vain) I'm not sure I'd generate enough controversy for this to be useful, although I did get enough opposition to fail my first RfA. Pascal.Tesson 15:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed it does. That's why I disagree with the whole premise of putting other people's RfAs on the line for the sake of a throw-away test. Kafziel Talk 13:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think that's a little bit sadistic. You're looking for someone who wants to be an admin, who is willing to go through the rigamarole of being a guinea pig, but someone who would generate a fair bit of opposition? So in other words your ideal candidate is someone who wants to be an administrator but may not get to be one? Except that they're also not in a hurry to be an admin. That sounds like a tall order, plus a bit cold, if you don't mind me saying so. Anchoress 13:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I agree with Pascal. It's one thing to (in my opinion) disrupt RfA to test a format. But if the candidate doesn't even want to be an admin, then it's really just disruption to prove a point (the point being that the format can or can't work), without even pretending to have a useful goal. Kafziel Talk 13:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Uh... but didn't you just say you are looking for someone who's in no rush to become an admin? Make up your fucking mind. ;-) How's that? Anchoress 13:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- As part of the preparation, you might want to sprinkle a few incivil comments here and there. :-) All kidding aside, I'd rather have a candidate that actually wants to be an admin. But maybe that's just me. Pascal.Tesson 13:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
You might want to use me as guinea pig as well, although I suffer from the same condition as Anchoress: I have no ambition to become an admin, but (opposed to Anchoress) I wouldn't say no to the extra tools. I wouldn't change my editing pattern if I did become admin, except for performing tasks myself that I now have to ask admins to do (i.e. blocks for persistent users who vandalise articles on my watch list, that I now have to report at WP:AIV). Furthermore, I think I might have ruffled some feathers here and there, so it's very likely I'll attract a fair share of opposers. Errabee 14:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- "No ambition, but could use the tools" is probably about right for a test like this; if a user in that situation isn't promoted, it's not really a problem for the user, but it reduces the workload on the other admins. --ais523 15:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't do too shabby last time, perhaps I should resign and run again! Pulls tongue out of cheek. Seriously though, I have a couple people in mind I may email. We'll see how this discussion goes further first. Teke 05:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- To qualify why that was tongue in cheek, I do believe it was incredible that I didn't get any honest opposition, at least a few opinions. There were instances in my diffs that I wasn't comfortable with that I expected to be drug out of the murky past. Nothing major, nothing that would have hindered my RfA in the long run, but anything. So it was a pile on, and frankly I'm not too proud of that fact. The consensus to promote I am proud of. Something I've wanted to get off my chest for awhile, carry on. Teke 05:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't do too shabby last time, perhaps I should resign and run again! Pulls tongue out of cheek. Seriously though, I have a couple people in mind I may email. We'll see how this discussion goes further first. Teke 05:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- Feel free to use me as a guinea pig for any experiments you wish to run. I have no interest in seeking adminship, and I'm sure my candidacy would engender objections as well as support in the community. At the same time, I have a fervent interest in seeing the adminship appointment process reformed. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Another idea
I recently wrote something over at WP:AADD, and it might be an idea that could be used over here for an incremental change that might be acceptable and less disruptive. The basic idea (probably raised before), is that anyone who wants to vote per nom without giving reasons, can do so. They just add their name in a small typeface section immediately following the nominator's spiel. That leaves the field free for those who want to raise specific oppose and support points with diffs to do so in specifically named sections, similar to the optional questions sections. The idea is then that those who support or oppose based on those specific points can again add their names in small typeface section immediately following the point. To avoid long lists, the "small" lists would format as ordinary text rather than lists, thus making it clear at a glance what the distinct arguments are, rather than focusing on numbers. The different arguments could still be numbered, though there wouldn't be much need for that. Having looked at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Matt Britt (and I rather like that format), my proposal would basically be similar in switching the focus to past behaviour and response to questions, and away from pile-on supports and opposes, but would still count the number of supporting and opposing "group arguments". Basically, the proposal is to move the chaff of "per nom" votes to a place where they don't disrupt the balance of the discussion as much. This would be an incremental step along the road towards an RfA where specific behaviour is discussed, rather than polling for popular support. Those who like numbers can still count the number of "per nom" votes if they want, and anyone can add an "oppose nomination" statement, which would similarly acruee "small name" support after it. The basic idea is to make clear, by using the "small" tags, that per nom votes are less important than providing some substantial argument and new evidence. Carcharoth 16:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think the focus on specific points that are irrelevant for the question of "do I trust the candidate with the tools" is one of the major disadvantages of the Matt Britt format. People should be lead away from the idea of discussing the candidate's edit summary usage and the number of his contributions to XfD's and whether these are important points in an adminship bid and back to looking at the whole picture. For an overall reasonable candidate, there is simply no need to discuss many individual points; it only makes RfA more of a big deal instead of less. Kusma (talk) 17:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- What appears to be the main problem with the Matt Britt's RfA format (and to a lesser extent the proposed Carcharoth format as applied to RfA), is that we're trying to merge two different things together: 'does the candidate meet criterion X' and 'is criterion X relevant for adminship'. The first will vary from candidate to candidate, whilst the second in most cases will never reach consensus. --ais523 17:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Absolutely. And once we've agreed (say) on the criteria that the candidate meets/does not meet, it's essentially up to the bureaucrat to determine whether the bulk of these findings should result in a promotion. In effect, this puts the choice of the relevant versus irrelevant criteria in the hands of the b'crat: that's not a desirable outcome. Pascal.Tesson 17:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Whose hands would you prefer it to be in? You could say 'the community', but then it comes down to finding some way to attempt to find a consensus among the community as a whole as to which criteria are relevant; somehow I think that's unlikely. I agree that many editors will think that leaving it in the hands of the 'crats is unsatisfactory too, but at least they're more likely to actually come to a decision. You could have the community vote, but then you're polling rather than trying to seek consensus and the result may not be an adequate solution for what happens. So it's quite a tough problem, really. In fact, determining what the criteria for adminship should be anyway is quite possibly the largest hurdle to RfA reform (in part because there are so many unusual cases). The present 'everyone comes up with their own criteria, votes, and tries to persuade people to go along with them' at least avoids this problem, although it has many others. --ais523 17:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Absolutely. And once we've agreed (say) on the criteria that the candidate meets/does not meet, it's essentially up to the bureaucrat to determine whether the bulk of these findings should result in a promotion. In effect, this puts the choice of the relevant versus irrelevant criteria in the hands of the b'crat: that's not a desirable outcome. Pascal.Tesson 17:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- What appears to be the main problem with the Matt Britt's RfA format (and to a lesser extent the proposed Carcharoth format as applied to RfA), is that we're trying to merge two different things together: 'does the candidate meet criterion X' and 'is criterion X relevant for adminship'. The first will vary from candidate to candidate, whilst the second in most cases will never reach consensus. --ais523 17:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Refusing to allow bureaucrats to make a decision on the relevancy of an opposition vote creates a situation where "Oppose: does not have 5000 wikipedia space edits" carries potentially enough weight to sink an RfA all on its own, regardless of how much support there is. Imagine an RfA teetering on 75%. At the last moment, this opposer comes in and makes this (totally irrelevant) vote. The RfA is now below 75%. That one vote killed the RfA. One vote does not equal equality for all people in this system. That's why bureaucrats must exercise discretion in order for the current voting system to have any prayer of success. --Durin 18:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- I see this as one of the rather good points about the current RfA system. The community as a whole does not agree on precisely what the criteria should be but the format actually reflects this. If you keep staring down at one oppose opinion, you'll see it as a completely absurd oppose that risks failing the RfA. But you have to look at the big picture. Within the whole RfA these silly opposes are just random noise (and are well compensated by equally silly supports). If a candidate's support is so close to 75% that this vote makes the difference the correct interpretation is not "this RfA failed because one opposer was being silly" but rather "this RfA failed because roughly 25% of people that expressed an opinion had fairly good reasons to oppose the promotion." Actually, putting more discretion in the hands of the b'crats creates much worse distortions since different b'crats have different opinions on what a valid reason to support or oppose is. One thing we definitely don't want is a system where the success of one's RfA depends on the identity of the closing bureaucrat. Pascal.Tesson 18:21, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Meanwhile, the notion that an RfA can hinge on the identity of a single voter is a horribly bad system. We work on straight percentages. We work on a super majority system. One vote does not equal equality. --Durin 18:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- No offense but I have absolutely no idea what you mean in that last reply. Pascal.Tesson 18:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- You know, I think if you and I sat in a pub somewhere over a few pints, we'd punch the living heck out of each other and walk out lifetime friends. --Durin 19:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Sure. Can't wait to
punch the living daylights out of youhave a nice chat! Seriously though I really did not understand what you meant by that last comment and I was asking because it's clear you were saying something. Maybe a few pints would help me make sense of "One vote does not equal equality." Getting back to the topic, although we all have our doubts about the current system I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the rationale is sort of "above 80% we can safely assume that even discounting the odd meatpuppet support there is something like consensus, under 75% we can safely assume that even discounting the odd frivolous oppose there's not sufficent consensus and in between is where we want b'crats to take a hard look because it's pretty close". Mind you I'm not saying that's a perfectly sound principle but it does have a few advantages. In particular, it does not give too much discretionary power to the b'crats, it avoids lengthy recurrent debates about what's a good and not so good reason to oppose (of course we do have those but I'd say it's not actually that big a problem, compared to what it could be), it guarantees to a certain extent that candidates are all (more or less) treated the same and it guarantees that all RfA participants are also treated equally. That last point I believe is important. While we certainly have to make sure that bad-faith opposition is identified and disregarded, individual editors who oppose or support in good faith should be respected even when we disagree with their rationales and criteria. Pascal.Tesson 01:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)- I'm sorry, but I find myself in utter disagreement with just about everything you just said. This is not a comment on you; just what is being espoused. This sort of thinking is precisely one of the greatest problems RfA suffers from at this time. I could write a book on this alone. --Durin 03:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yeh, it's a bit obscure but I second Pascal.Tesson's point. There is a discretionary range from 70% to 80% where a bureaucrat could say "Eh, 73% support but, based on a discussion with some of the other bureaucrats", we think this editor should be given the sysop bit. I don't think this is policy but it is the current modus operandi post Carnildo. So, as Pascal asserts, RFAs never hinge on one vote. That's why bureaucrats are not vote-counting automata. --Richard 19:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- On those RfAs I would agree. However, the track record of virtually every other discretion range RfA (and it's 75-80, not 70-80) has shown lockstepping with vote counts. --Durin 19:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Where is it written that we even have a discretion range? Just wondering... I mean I know the b-crats won't promote someone with say 50% (mind you I don't think numbers have a role here) because the b-crats would have to deal with the protest. Same with rejecting a candidate with no opposes. But looking at this I don't even see where it is written down that you must have XXX percent. I mean User:Danny has not caused so much trouble yet... or User:Ryulong.... just a thought. —— Eagle101 Need help? 22:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding "That one vote killed the RfA." This is not logical, that one !vote wouldn't make it fail, if it didn't pass it would be because of ALL of the oppose votes. — xaosflux Talk 01:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Imagine a court of 9 judges. 4 vote one way, 4 vote another. The last one to vote has the most powerful vote. It's entirely logical. --Durin 04:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Actually Durin, it isn't logical and that's exactly what Xaosflux and I were pointing out. None of these judges has more power with their vote than all the others. It's a common fallacy used often in the analysis of elections. In any case, the fact will always remain that whatever system we use for RfA you will have closely contested RfAs for which any little thing will shift the balance one way or another and there's no point in driving ourselves nuts to avoid this. Pascal.Tesson 05:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- In a sequential voting system, in a tie situation the last vote has the most power. Thanks for continuing the thesis that I am illogical :) To the rest, the presumption is true if we assume any possible system is a voting system. I do not accept that the only system we can possibly have must be a voting system. --Durin 13:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well I'll continue pushing that thesis until you start being logical! :-) The thing is, this last vote only has more power because all the other votes made it a close contest. So viewing that last vote as having more power is just an illusion. In any case, that sensitivity is not due to the use of a voting system. Surely you agree that whatever RfA system we implement, there will be borderline candidates for whom the consensus is difficult to form. For any of these, the final decision will inevitably hinge on who actually participated in the RfA. There is no purely objective way of determining who should get the admin tools so we have to live with this. Pascal.Tesson 14:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oh cool! Now I'm hallucinating too (having illusions)! Excellent! :) Lesse, in the last week I'm a wrecking ball, the boss, a bully, insane, illogical, and now hallucinating. Hmm. I wonder how many other labels I can garner :)
- I do not agree with the thesis that we have to exist in a pile of excrement just because we see excrement everywhere, so we should be happy with the excrement we exist in (mainly because we're familiar with this excrement, and better the excrement we know than the excrement we don't know). The exrement will continue until morale improves! --Durin 15:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- If you really want another label, I'll give you "overly sensitive" and perhaps even "stuck in anal stage" for that last rant. :-) Look, I certainly did not mean to insult you by using the term "illusion" although I do think you're really making a common logical mistake by interpreting a tipping vote as having more value than others. As for the excrement part, well nobody is saying that RfA is working all fine and dandy but we're not going to get anywhere by starting from a flawed analysis of what's currently going wrong. (see also new section I'll start in a second) Pascal.Tesson 16:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- If me expressing some sense of humor means I'm overly sensitive, then I should hope we're all overly sensitive. :) --Durin 16:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Don't know what you're insinuating but I'm deeply offended nonetheless. :) Pascal.Tesson 16:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hey, I'm sure we are all thrilled you two are now best of friends, but does my proposal have any chance of "gaining traction", as I think the buzzword is? Carcharoth 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- No proposals have any chance of gaining traction. See this link about a group being its own worst enemy, and also Dunbar's number. If you want to try it out, run an experiment. --Durin 12:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm a little bit less pessimistic than you. I think that a well-thought out series of small, incremental changes, might have a chance of getting through. A bit like evolution! Sweeping redesigns and changes are less likely to succeed. Also, note that change is still possible, it is just that we haven't ossified enough to bow to proper top-down organisation (and hopefully never will). Carcharoth
- Hey, I'm sure we are all thrilled you two are now best of friends, but does my proposal have any chance of "gaining traction", as I think the buzzword is? Carcharoth 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- de-indent Have a look at these two nominations from September 2004 Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/CryptoDerk, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mackensen. That's 2.5 years ago. Notice anything different about this format of RfA compared to 'modern' RfAs? No? Me neither. Now, have a look at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archives, reading archives 21 through 87. I'll save you the time if you like; there's been a bazilliongazillion proposals for reform in a dizzying array of ways. Not one of them has gained traction, other than infitesimally small changes (we have the questions at the top now, and we apply closing templates...oooooo radical change!). I'm willing to assume progress can happen, but when you're beaten in the head a few dozen times with a sledgehammer, eventually you figure out that standing in range of the sledgehammer just might not be such a good idea anymore. :) --Durin 15:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, then maybe it is not broken? :-) I think there are improvements that could be made, but I don't participate in RfAs much because, if I encounter an admin "out there", the best way to judge them is to engage them in conversation and see if they can make reasoned arguments to justify their actions. Over time, I become aware of particularly active admins, and mentally pigeonhole them by what I've seen of their actions and comments. Any admins I might have concerns about, I may try and politely talk to them, or wait until they end up tripping themselves up at some point down the line. It ends up being a spectrum of behaviour, rather than "all the admins are perfect". And it is a deliciously anarchic and organic process. It is not to everyone's taste though. Some areas of Wikipedia are rigorously organised and kept under control (think ArbCom), and RfA is actually one of the more organised areas of Wikipedia, IMO. The only real issue is excessive backlogs and a low promotion rate compared to the number of editors and articles. If this ever becomes a real problem, then we can cross that bridge when we come to it. What, in your opinion, is the single most pressing reason to have more admins? Carcharoth 15:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- A lack of admins, combined with there isn't any reason to not have more. There's no quota, or dimishing supply of admin flags. For lack of admins, note heavily increasing amount of work per admin, plus significant, ongoing backlogs in a variety of areas. There's plenty (and I mean plenty) of secondary, and tertiary reasons. --Durin 15:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Right. Then put RfA up for MfD; give adminship to anyone who asks for it, and can get at least 20 support votes; find 30 admins to become bureaucrats to run the new system; and turn the current bureaucrats into stewards to run a de-adminning process. I leave the order of this up to you... This should focus all the current RfA activity on de-adminning those found to be unsuitable. Hang on. On second thoughts, just find more candidates and work at changing the culture at RfA. I just voted support on an RfA cos I have seen the candidate's work. I think I will watch RfA more closely, and take notice when I recognise a name. Carcharoth 16:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting proposal :) To last, you might try not voting on an RfA and instead helping consensus form. Voting serves consensus forming very, very poorly. In fact, it actively works against it. --Durin 16:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- But the numbers are so alluring to those who like statistics... Not to mention WP:100, WP:200, WP:300 and WP:400. I still think there is room for voting, but only after a discussion has taken place. Carcharoth 16:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Factors survey
In an effort to find out which factors are important to people when they give their opinions on requests for adminship, and how important those factors are, I've started a survey at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Factors. It's not a poll, or a vote, it's just a survey to generate some ideas and hopefully, to develop a better understanding of what the community looks for in a candidate.
I've started it off with an initial selection of factors; feel free to add more factors, but try to keep them broadly defined. --bainer (talk) 01:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- A very good idea in my opinion, I will watch this with interest. Camaron1 | Chris 11:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Didn't we just go through this a few months ago? Agent 86 17:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well the questions that were asked in that survey are a little different to this. Camaron1 | Chris 20:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- That was mainly about the performance of existing admins and the mechanics of the operation of this page. This aims to find out more about what's important to the community when assessing a candidate. --bainer (talk) 00:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Mathbot tool
This does not seem to be working. How do i see which candidates' edit summay usage? Simply south 22:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
- The toolserver was down I guess, as interiot's tool did not work either. Now both tools are working. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Second attempt at moving forward
If we hope to move towards RfA reform, I believe it's important that we start by making sure we can agree on what the objectives of RfA 2.0 should be. I feel that without such an agreement there's really no hope of achieving anything beyond an unproductive shouting match. One of my chief concerns (and I know I'm not alone) is that the discussion on this page has often turned very dogmatic ("voting is the only way to be fair", "we don't do voting on Wikipedia because it's evil" etc.) whereas it should be adressed in purely pragmatic terms. RfA is one of the most critical processes on Wikipedia and all we want is an efficient system that ends up giving adminship to people who will use it wisely. Here's my own finding of facts and I hope this can be the basis of a discussion that will help us plan future evolution of the process.
- There are not enough admins on the English Wikipedia. The situation is not catastrophic but it would be preferable to have more admins.
- The current RfA process is pretty grueling for candidates and so a number of good candidates are probably hesitant to go ahead with RfA. (note that this last bit is pretty speculative)
- Because bad admins can really hurt the project and because it's very difficult to desysop, it's more important to minimize the number of false positives than the number of false negatives.
- The current system has very few false positives, probably too much so.
- Clique voting is routine in the current system. However, cliques won't go away, no matter what system we use.
- We should have a system that ensures that more people participate so that the overall importance of cliques is reduced.
- It's the b'crats responsibility to determine the outcome of RfAs. Nevertheless, the system should be such that the result is not overly dependent on which b'crat closes a particular RfA. In particular, b'crats shouldn't participate in closing RfAs they've participated in.
- The RfA process should ideally be fair (candidates are all treated the same), simple (easy to participate in), friendly (format that avoids mud-slinging and is not unnecessarily stressful for all those involves) and transparent (easy to understand on what basis candidates are/aren't promoted).
Pascal.Tesson 16:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The thesis begins, in my opinion, poorly. You say, "RfA is one of the most critical processes". That's incorrect. It's been made into a major social arena, and has gained the patina of being critical. It isn't. Adminship used to be given out liberally to almost anyone who wanted it. Approvals were done with barely any input, and on the mailing list no less, in a generally disorganized manner. No significant harm was ever caused to the project by this. What has become critical is the massive barrier that RfA has become to the proper functioning of the project. The process should in no respect ever be "critical" to its proper functioning. Responding point for point.
- Agreed.
- Agreed, except we have evidence of this. It's not speculative; it's just difficult to assess how much this is affecting potential candidates.
- Bad admins can't really hurt the project. We have just had ample proof of that, with a nutsoid admin being shutdown in minutes, and their impact undone in very short order. It's little different than a vandal going crazy, except they can affect the main page and block people. Nothing that can't be undone. If we presume that bad admins can hurt the project, then the same logic applies to vandals and we should ban anyone from editing until they prove themselves trustworthy! :)
- The current system has proven itself incapable of preventing false positives. Of the admins who have forcibly been de-adminned, almost all of them had heavy support well above 75% in their RfAs. RfA can not predict the future, nor should we expect it to. Further, we shouldn't expect any system to replace it to be capable of doing so.
- Cliques can be readily de-emphasized, by allowing bureaucrats to do the job they were put in place to do.
- See last response. Also, more people just means more cliques.
- Unless you have a strict vote bases system, you can not avoid bureaucrats having an impact on the close.
- Lofty, and commendable. Except, when a person is being affected by the outcome, stress can't really be avoided except for unanimous support RfAs. --Durin 17:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- When active vandals outnumber active editors, I must question the wisdow of the idea that adminship should be "given out liberally to almost anyone who want[s] it".
- Agreed.
- Agreed.
- Agree with Pascal. Bad admins can hurt the project. However, bad admins are not the ones that delete the main page; they're the ones that push POV on certain articles, are quick to block users, and who ignore consensus and policy when they think they can get away with it. The ones that go on a spree are not as much a problem as the ones that deliberately or otherwise drive off potential or current editors.
- The current system has few false positives and I doubt any other system could do better.
- Agree with Pascal. Re Durin: your statement presumes that a bureaucrat can't be a member of a clique.
- Agree with Pascal. More participation means better representation of the community.
- Completely agree with Pascal.
- Agree with Pascal and Durin. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thx for the reply Durin. It's a shame we disagree but it's probably good to clear this up because it's no surprise we disagree on reform ideas if we disagree on even more fundamental issues. I have to agree with Black Falcon about what constitutes a "bad admin". If the only problem we had with admins was deletion of the main page, why we could almost give every new user admin rights and only take them away if they commit deliberate attempts to harm the project. We're long past the time when everyone working on Wikipedia knew one another and RfA should take this into account imo. I'll go out on a limb here and say that your view that adminship should be given out liberally to almost anyone who wants it is very much a minority view. Pascal.Tesson 17:26, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not going to go out on that limb with you. Jimbo stated this is the way things should be, and still holds to that opinion. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and I prefer to follow Jimbo's vision in the vast majority of cases. As to the bad admins being what Black Falcon describes; non-admins are equally capable of running people off the project. You don't need the admin bit to do that. I've seen this happen over and over and over again. Running people off the project is not the sole purview of admins. In fact, it's not typified by "bad admin". It's typified by "bad editor". We can not cure the ills of the project from "bad admins" (of this flavor) by making RfA more restrictive. In fact, very much the opposite. The very notion that you can protect the community by making RfA more exclusive is flawed. See my note earlier where I noted that the admins who have been forcibly de-adminned by and large cleared RfA with flying colors. RfA can't predict the future. Attempting to make it do so is pointless and hopelessly flawed. --Durin 17:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Re: "When active vandals outnumber active editors, I must question the wisdow of the idea that adminship should be "given out liberally to almost anyone who want[s] it". (Black Falcon)
- Then you stand in disagreement with Jimbo, who founded the project. --Durin 17:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I have no problems being in disagreement with Jimbo and I'm not even so sure in any case that Jimbo still believes that adminship should be given out liberally to almost anyone who wants it. I'd also like to note two important things: first, I'm not saying that we need to make RfA more restrictive and in fact I thought it was sort of clear that I favor a process that promotes more admins. Secondly, I'd like to point out that "Wikipedia is not a democracy" is by far the most misquoted bit of WP:NOT. Certainly, it was never meant to be interpreted as "when there's a disagreement, we turn to Jimbo" or "when we disagree, we just wait until someone forcibly imposes something and then we say that's ok because actually making decisions in a collegial manner, well that would be democracy and we are not a democracy." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pascal.Tesson (talk • contribs) 17:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- You and I disagree Pascal. I think I finally managed to figure that out, even if I am a blithering idiot. --Durin 17:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ah yes, it's good to know a 100kb of discussion finally yielded a valuable piece of information! Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 17:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Boy, can't you even get BASIC facts correct? This page is already 256kb large. Not 100kb! You blithering idiot! :) Geez, we can't agree on ANYTHING...even the amount of discussion! :) (if humor not detected by anyone read this, please turn in your humor detection device...it's broken). --Durin 17:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ah yes, it's good to know a 100kb of discussion finally yielded a valuable piece of information! Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 17:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- You and I disagree Pascal. I think I finally managed to figure that out, even if I am a blithering idiot. --Durin 17:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I have no problems being in disagreement with Jimbo and I'm not even so sure in any case that Jimbo still believes that adminship should be given out liberally to almost anyone who wants it. I'd also like to note two important things: first, I'm not saying that we need to make RfA more restrictive and in fact I thought it was sort of clear that I favor a process that promotes more admins. Secondly, I'd like to point out that "Wikipedia is not a democracy" is by far the most misquoted bit of WP:NOT. Certainly, it was never meant to be interpreted as "when there's a disagreement, we turn to Jimbo" or "when we disagree, we just wait until someone forcibly imposes something and then we say that's ok because actually making decisions in a collegial manner, well that would be democracy and we are not a democracy." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pascal.Tesson (talk • contribs) 17:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I wish to bring up two points. First, disagreeing with Jimbo on some points, especially points that are not central to the project (e.g., free-content), is itself not necessarily "a big deal". Second, I agree with Jimbo. I agree that "adminship is not a big deal", but simply don't interpret that to mean that we ought to "give it to almost anyone who wants it". To me, the phrase that "adminship is not a big deal" means the following things:
- Editors who are made sysops are still editors. They must still abide by all rules that govern editors, their decisions may be challenged, and they do not merit any preferential treatment, exceptional deference, or worship.
- You don't have to dedicate your life to Wikipedia to become an admin. Adminship is not a "prize" or a "reward" or a "right". The role of admins is more secretarial than administrative. If you want to be an admin, then be a good editor, have a basic understanding of policies, and ... that's it!
- Any user can harm the project, but all else equal, admins are more able to do so because they possess more tools. If Wikipedia is thought of as a construction project, the role of admins can be considered similar to that of crane operators. Not everyone is allowed to operate the crane. Why? Well, for one thing, being a good operator requires some technical knowledge. Likewise, being a good admin requires knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and processes. Another factor is that crane operators must be trustworthy ...
- You don't give the crane to someone who might drop two tonnes of lumber on the guy who's sleeping with his wife. Likewise, you don't promote candidates who are liable to misuse their tools to gain an advantage in personal and/or content disputes.
- You don't give the crane to someone who is liable to ignore orders from the construction foreman because he thinks he knows better than everyone else. Likewise, you don't promote candidates who are liable to ignore consensus based on their personal preferences.
- You don't give the crane to someone who operates the crane in a way that terrifies everyone in the neighbourhood. Likewise, you don't promote candidates who are liable to bite new users, be trigger-happy in any respect, or otherwise contribute to a negative environment. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 18:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Some good points made here by Black Falcon about what adminship being "no big deal" means (or should mean). I have several times seen a person involved in a content dispute say something like "let's ask an admin to decide what we should do", or "well, me and admin Joe Smith think this" - both examples revealing an attitude that admins are super-editors, or arbitrators of content, which is of course completely wrong, but a common misunderstanding, I fear. This misunderstanding may partly be due to adminship being seen to "be a big deal". Carcharoth 23:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Possibly helpful
If you are looking for details from a non admin who is "admin material" (~2k edits, a year with the project, experience in administrative functions, external experience...) that is very hesitant about the RFA process I'd be happy to answer any questions. I also happen to think there is a massive shortage of admins. Tons of things that could be created to make this place work more smoothly aren't because there aren't additional admins around to assist. jbolden1517Talk 17:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Insight away! Please tell us more! --Durin 17:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- A person's entire history is fair game in an RFA. This is very unusual in an election for a minor office. For example in the US political process a candidate for Congress generally doesn't receive this level of scrutiny. A even surface full life review reserved for supreme court justices, senators, gubernatorial candidates.... Moreover the first time you go forward for an RFA people feel obligated to bring old stuff up. (2nd and later times there is a sort of a "since your last RFA rule").
- Your RFA is part of a permanent record that people in other disagreement will look for. It cites back old dirt. In effect an RFA ends up being a lot like a User/RFC.
- Evidence used against you cannot be contested because contesting means you don't respect community opinion. In effect, this means things can (and are) quoted out of context. To pick a harmless example, I frequently forget to sign talk posts. Not once, not twice but probably 30+x. I almost always catch it and then add 4~ within a few seconds, but I certainly make that mistake a lot. There is no question that something like that could be brought up as evidence that "I don't understand the rules". Now normally I could then show the list of mistake/correction within 1 minute to prove that I was well aware except that... building a counter case proves that you don't understand the process.
- There is a real tendency for "powerful people" to gang up any time you go for any title. This stuff can be outright lies and f this isn't counter balanced by having powerful advocates your RFA will fail. This means you (in effect) have had to do some humiliating work for the wikipedia "aristocracy" if you want to make admin. And the recent joiner of the discussion can tell you about how that process works from the other side.
- Taking all that is a lot to ask in exchange for a job which means getting attacked more on wikipedia. Either RFAs have to be given out reasonably lightly or you have to accept having a very low ratio of active admins to users. Most people who edit are interested in only a small number of articles. Most people who edit a large number of articles have demonstrable flaws and failure in their record.
jbolden1517Talk 17:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting. I've always been very uncomfortable with this horrible RfA practice that says you shouldn't argue with opposition. I think this is actually a big problem and one of the root causes of the perception that RfA is like running the gauntlet. The only solution I see is to make sure people are told when they are asking for a shrubbery or when they are not being consistent with opinions they gave on various candidates. Not that I want to pose as a martyr, but I remember on my own RfA for instance being very frustrated by people opposing me for lack of experience with images when they had never held this against other candidates. I also knew full well that if I called them out on it, I would get some "oppose: too confrontational"... One way out I see is to encourage bureaucrats to comment on RfAs during the process so that people who are using crappy reasoning are told so in no uncertain terms. This is much preferable I think than having B'crats close and say "some of the opposition wasn't convincing." Being more precise in what opinions are being discounted might help cleaning up RfA culture in the long run. Pascal.Tesson 18:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- If bureaucrats were expected to highlight those opinions being discounted, their heads would be on a gilt platter faster than you can melt butter in a microwave. --Durin 18:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Also used as reasons to oppose are candidate's mistakes. People aren't perfect. And last time I checked Wikipedians are people (except some days when we all go on vacation and the others take over :))! People opposing candidates for a mistake that the candidate admits they are wrong is not right. If they admit it, good for them. It shows us no one is perfect. And if admins were perfect I wouldn't be going around every day telling admins to "disable autoblock on [user] since username blocks should have autoblock turned off" and other mistakes. Admins aren't perfect, so why do RFA candidates have to be. --TeckWiz is now R ParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 18:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There is a difference between one mistake and a pattern of behaviour (i.e., multiple mistakes). Also, some mistakes may alone constitute reason not to trust a user for a long time. Take, for instance, death threats. This is a rather extreme example, I know, but the point is the same: some mistakes are such that they shatter others' confidence in an editor. The nature of those mistakes will vary from edtior to editor. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 18:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- What I meant was one mistake. For example, on my recent RFA, I think I go at least 5 oppose votes for nominating a cricketer article for deletion. I was wrong, and discussed it with the writer of the article. I soon admitted I was wrong and withdrew the AFD. I still got more than 5 opposes for being wrong, though I admitted it. If a candidate is willing to admit a mistake, and it isn't something as heavy as you example of death threats, I'm not going to oppose for that mistake. I don't know why anyone would. No one is perfect. --TeckWiz is now R ParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 19:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- In extreme cases, a single mistake can be enough. I would probably oppose anyone who's made a death threat ever, be it one day ago or 10 years (I write "probably" because I've never encountered the situation and/or had to make a choice). However, I think you're right overall. Everyone makes mistakes and single mistakes should generally be forgiven and forgotten. Single mistakes for which there is no precedent are better ignored as time passes. For instance, a misapplication of policy from 5 days ago may be relevant, but one from a few weeks ago is much less so. In your RfA, I think the fact that the mistake was so recent was a factor. A lot of times, a recent mistake can make editors think that a candidate does not yet have a firm grasp of policies (whether this assumption holds true is a different matter). I doubt anyone would hold the cricketer article incident against you in 2 or 3 months. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 19:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting. I've always been very uncomfortable with this horrible RfA practice that says you shouldn't argue with opposition. I think this is actually a big problem and one of the root causes of the perception that RfA is like running the gauntlet. The only solution I see is to make sure people are told when they are asking for a shrubbery or when they are not being consistent with opinions they gave on various candidates. Not that I want to pose as a martyr, but I remember on my own RfA for instance being very frustrated by people opposing me for lack of experience with images when they had never held this against other candidates. I also knew full well that if I called them out on it, I would get some "oppose: too confrontational"... One way out I see is to encourage bureaucrats to comment on RfAs during the process so that people who are using crappy reasoning are told so in no uncertain terms. This is much preferable I think than having B'crats close and say "some of the opposition wasn't convincing." Being more precise in what opinions are being discounted might help cleaning up RfA culture in the long run. Pascal.Tesson 18:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- A death threat probably is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about, better than my failure to sign. I can easily imagine a situation on wikipedia getting heated and someone issuing a death threat. If it specific "I know you like to jog at 7:15 past west 3rd street I'm going to run you over..." then its a criminal act and it has not much more to do with wikipedia. If its general "I would really like to bash your head in with a baseball bat" then its just a stupid thing to say. I can easily imagine lots of very good candidates for adminship who have said stupid things like the baseball bat comment. Its disqualifying people for one mistake like that which is the reason that people won't run the RFA gammit. Most active editors have that kind of stuff in their past. Anyway there is your answer. jbolden1517Talk
- It seems we are in disagreement on the issue of death threats. The specific threat is a criminal act and takes precedence over adminship and related issues. However, I would also oppose based on the "bash your head with a baseball bat". I'm sure everyone has though that at some point, some may have said it out loud, but it's different to have expressed it in written form. I think very few active editors have made death threats here on Wikipedia. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 19:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding Durin's comment: I have no objection putting anyone's head on a platter (so long as it's not mine)... I feel we should be consistent: if we ask of admins to discount trivial opposition, we should make sure they point it out. But to a certain extent, we also have to share that responsibility. The current system wouldn't be so bad if we collectively took it upon ourselves to make RfA culture healthier and too often we only scrutinize oppose reasons on RfAs that we support. Take as a rather extreme example Badlydrawnjeff's latest RfA. There are tons of good reasons to oppose Jeff's RfA bid and I don't feel that he actually has enough support to be an admin but I think it's rather sad to see some opposition below the belt from a number of established users. (Mind you, most of the criticism was perfectly ok and valid) And at the risk of being uncivil, let me be more specific: Kelly Martin's "oppose cause he says AfD can only be closed by admins", Hipocrite "oppose cause he's with Encyclopedia Dramatica", etc, all of these would, in an ideal process be pointed out by bureaucrats and other RfA participants as irrelevant. But when irrelevant, unfair criticism is on our side of the argument we tend to shrug it off. Pascal.Tesson 19:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment by Kim
Adding a data point: I no longer nominate people for admin, and am also known to actively encourage experienced admins to hand in their admin flag.
Hmm, put that way it sounds kind of wierd. I think everyone knows, but just to be sure: Does everyone know (or guess), my reasons for doing that? --Kim Bruning 17:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not a clue, Kim. I am befuddledness personified. Enlighten us, do. Moreschi Talk 18:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- No. Do tell.--Anthony.bradbury 18:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I can think of a few possibilites (though this is certainly not an exclusive list).
- (1) You no longer believe that Wikipedia is a viable project. Possible, but then why comment?
- (2) You are a secret agent of a rival project of Wikipedia, probably Citizendium, and you wish to destroy Wikipedia. Certainly a fun prospect to entertain, but probably not the most plausible. ;)
- (3) You think we do not need admins as no one ought to be blocked and nothing deleted. Yikes!
- (4) You are trying to create a shortage of admins so that more people will support RfA reform. Hmm ... that's seems a lot like a malicious plan to attain world domination ... I like it!
- (5) You think no one should be an admin until everyone is an admin. See #3.
- (6) You are lying. You still do nominate people for adminship and don't actively encourage admins to resign, but you just wrote this to see if anyone would actually try to figure out why. Again, that's rather malicious of you ... but a damn good practical joke!
- So, which is it? Are you a disillusioned Wikipedian who see no hope for humanity, an evil and elitist spirit bent on destruction, an über-tolerant incluionist hippie (no offense intended to anyone belonging in that category), a cunning and wily villain, a radical egalitarian, or a mischiefous practical joker? -- Black Falcon (Talk) 18:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm,
- en.wikipedia may yet still be viable, but I think currently it's mostly running on already gained momentum. (ut oh, we better not look down)
- A rival project? Not so much, though I do work on other projects. I don't want to destroy wikipedia though. :-P
- Oh it's theoretically possible to run the project without ever deleting or blocking, but it's very tricky to work that way. We lack sufficient numbers of people of sufficient skill to really do that. If you think you can handle it: try and hand in your admin bit, and see what you're really made of! "Come on trolls and vandals, I'll take on all y'all bare handed! ;-)"
- Nope, RFA is causing the shortage of admins, not me! They're not going to gain world domination this way either. (I do want world domination though, so I kersupportize RFA reform! :-) )
- Make that almost everyone is an admin, and there's actually a viable project that works that way O:-) Though I'm not sure it's right for wikipedia.
- Call me a Vulcan.
- Kim Bruning 19:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm,
- Hmm ... not nearly as scandalous as I'd hoped it would be. ;) Regarding #3, I'd recommend you wear gloves ... it can git purty darn messy. On a more serious note (regarding #1), I do share your concern about the growing disparity between the number of articles we have and their quality. Although I think that most Wikipedia articles are mostly accurate, I hope the issue of sourcing and safeguarding against vandalism can somehow be resolved, even if it is by making sure that every page is watchlisted by at least one active editor. Maybe there ought to be a WikiProject Watchlisting ... -- Black Falcon (Talk) 19:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- OMG, befuddleness! I'd better kerunbefuddelnessafy :-D
- The two different things have slightly different reasons.
- I no longer nominate people for admin:
- My admin criteria and admin criteria of RFA regulars no longer overlap.
- I have strict requirements to do with actually looking at (and criticising) people's edits in diverse namespaces, as opposed to merely counting them.
- A person might have a high number of edits in a particular namespace, and yet be totally incompetent, or inversely might have a low number of edits, but those edits show great wisdom and competence.
- I count experience on multiple wikis in favor
- I count other positions of trust. (ie I am more likely to support developers or stewards)
- I count demonstrated skill at using the wiki on RFA in favor. (I'm more likely to support someone if they edit their RFA)
- Likeliness to take action. (any actions people have taken to help the encyclopedia above and beyond what guidelines suggest)
- Demonstrated skill at predicting consensus is also hugely in favor (I'm even more likely to support candidates whos actions go only lightly opposed or unopposed)
- Demonstrated skill in areas where admins often work such as *FD, RF*, etc. (yes, non-admins are allowed to do practically everything admins are, except actually "use the buttons".)
- I actually question candidates on core guidelines (TRI/5P and foundation issues), and they must show a keen understanding and dedication.
- I require at a minimum that the person does not *harm* a situation further during a conflict. My preference is that they are able to mediate and are able to reach a peaceful resolution
- Heavy bonus points for Featured or Good articles.
- Despite the above criteria being very strict, sometimes people I support on that basis will garner much opposition. Some people I oppose garner much support. Apparently my criteria and views on adminship are not shared by the RFA subcommunity.
- My last nominations failed. (Whereas some earlier nominations broke records)
- I don't want to subject people to unpleasantness on RFA
- There are too many hoops to jump through before an RFA nomination can start.
- People are attacked on RFA more often, it is no longer at all pleasant.
- Comments on RFA are often not constructive or fun, so the net gain is lower.
- My admin criteria and admin criteria of RFA regulars no longer overlap.
- I Encourage experienced admins to hand in their bits:
- Currently, adminship is seen as a big deal by some. The hypothesis is that most of the most experienced community members hold admin bits. Correlation is not causation, but lots of people draw the erroneous conclusion that admin==experienced. If more highly trusted/experienced people hung out without an admin bit, the correlation would no longer be there, and people might draw more useful conclusions. :-) This would also hopefully reduce admin requirements at RFA accordingly.
- Being an admin is hard work. After 1 year, I think it's ok to retire and do something else.People are also more likely to support people if they know they are willing to retire.
- Admins are watched more closely, and missteps are scrutinized more readily. Handing in the admin bit gives you lots of much needed air.
- After some time on wikipedia, people build up enough skill in dealing with people that they no longer need to rely on meatball:PowerAnswers as much. Handing in the admin bit is the ultimate test to see if you've reached that level. ;-)
- Some users actively distrust admins as a group.
- Like the roman Cincinnatus, it is a good thing to hand in privileges as quickly as possible. You didn't want to be an admin in the first place, after all, right? :-)
- I no longer nominate people for admin:
- --Kim Bruning 19:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed with all of that...the problem is that we need more admins to keep on top of the backlogs, in the absence of adminbots. If the experienced ones quit, and you won't nominate new ones, we're stuck. I can't see as that many right now would spit blood at your criteria. When did you last nominate someone? Should you start trying again? RfA standards change very drastically and very quickly: sometimes the arrival or departure of just one person can change things. Moreschi Talk 20:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ooh. I really like some of Kim's points here. I wonder if someone running for admin and saying they want to help with backlogs, but at the same time they say they don't want to deal with admin stuff for more than a year, would stand a chance? Something like:
Say you are currently editing, but want to give something back to the community, so will carry out admin tasks for a year, but will then return to editing after finding a suitable candidate that passes RfA?
- This neatly fulfils a lot of criteria: (a) Makes clear adminship is not a big deal and is more a way of helping out; (b) results (after a year) in an experienced non-but-former-admin, to foster the sense of allowing a new generation of admins to come through; (c) clearly addresses issues of admins being "powerful", and discourages those who want adminship for the "power trip"; (d) keeps the focus on editing and contributing content. Of course, this is a route for 'editing' admins to go. There always will be those who like to focus on admin tasks alone, but how to deal with that is not something I have any answers for (as it can be both good and bad). Carcharoth 23:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Candidate in an impossible position
Kelly Martin sounded positive, but wrote on my Request for adminship that she was withholding support until I was endorsed by a WikiProject. Now there is a problem with that: WikiProjects don't endorse candidates for adminship. There are two possible WikiProjects that I have helped and I could drop them a note asking what they feel, but as explained on User talk:Kelly Martin, some editors might consider that to be canvassing. This puts me in an impossible position: asked for an endorsement, but unable to either confirm or deny it. Sam Blacketer 19:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Let it go. Kelly has been doing this for a couple of weeks now and when people point out to her that it's ridiculous she replies that everyone's being uncivil to her. Pascal.Tesson 19:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm with Pascal. I cannot understand why Kelly Martin feels so strongly about this, but you should have no trouble gaining adminship even without her support, so don't worry about it. YechielMan 19:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- What they said ... Besides, you are hereby formally and officially endorsed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Endorsements. I believe that my status as the 16th member of the project and the first editor to oppose its existence while simultaneously becoming a member gives me the right to speak on the project's behalf. ;) By the way, someone should really consider deleting that thing already ... -- Black Falcon (Talk) 20:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm with Pascal. I cannot understand why Kelly Martin feels so strongly about this, but you should have no trouble gaining adminship even without her support, so don't worry about it. YechielMan 19:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Seeing as Kelly hasn't gone campaigning in favor of the idea (I don't think she's actually wrote up a proposal, instead simply referring to it on RfAs), it appears that she hopes to see her endorsements idea take root and become standard practice, simple as that. How is the question: how is this going to come about? Force of personality? I'm not sure if Wikipedia ever functioned so spontaneously, but it certainly doesn't nowadays. Anyways, it's not like she's opposing over it, just "witholding support," so you shouldn't worry about it. Picaroon 19:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Which projects might endorse you? And I think Kelly Martin is obliged to help me at the talk page for the canvassing guideline then. O:-) --Kim Bruning 20:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The two I was thinking of were Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies (because I have written a lot of biographies of British Members of Parliament) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Baronetcies (because some of them have been Baronets, and I have also written stub articles about the Baronetcies in these cases). I can give you more details if you want. Sam Blacketer 20:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Done, + full disclosure at Wikipedia talk:Canvassing. --Kim Bruning 20:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
{{shrubbery}}. I fully realize that it's very incivil to refer to botany in adminship discussions, but there you go. >Radiant< 08:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Discussion to make all sysops bureaucrats
Following discussion after Nihonjoe's RfB, I bring forward the idea that all admins should be made bureaucrats when promoted. We're close to the longest period EVER without a new face on the bureaucrat list, and as RfB has now turned into the worst of catch 22 occasions (too many bureaucrats, do you use % or good judgement, not enough RfA discussion, too much RfA discussion...) it really is time we do something radical to change it. Please discuss below whether this is a good idea or not. Thanks. Majorly (hot!) 20:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I think this is a good idea. Although admins may not stick to the strict guidelines on promotions, I have a hard time thinking that people will promote abusive bureaucrats too. I ask that everyone else consider this- Do you think abusive bureaucrats will exist if this happens? I do not. I also bet most if not all of the current bureaucrats will oppose this. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 20:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Do abusive admins exist? The incident with Robdurbar just 2(?) days ago proves that there are. Is there any reason to think that an editor who abuses admin tools will not abuse bureaucrat tools? Unless the answer is 'yes', it is certain that this will create abusive bureaucrats. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 21:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Everything is reversable. That's a one off incident, who was removed minutes after. If this system were to be put into place, the rights log would surely be watched more closely to ensure nothing bad happens. Majorly (hot!) 21:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, everything is not reversible. There are several actions that are extremely damaging, some of which are irreversible, some of which would require developer intervention. —Centrx→talk • 23:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- What can a bureaucrat do that is not reversable? Other than promoting, where a steward is almost always around to intervene, I can't think what... Majorly (hot!) 23:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- No, everything is not reversible. There are several actions that are extremely damaging, some of which are irreversible, some of which would require developer intervention. —Centrx→talk • 23:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Everything is reversable. That's a one off incident, who was removed minutes after. If this system were to be put into place, the rights log would surely be watched more closely to ensure nothing bad happens. Majorly (hot!) 21:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Do abusive admins exist? The incident with Robdurbar just 2(?) days ago proves that there are. Is there any reason to think that an editor who abuses admin tools will not abuse bureaucrat tools? Unless the answer is 'yes', it is certain that this will create abusive bureaucrats. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 21:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Some stewards might support? --Kim Bruning 21:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I guess my question is what problem do we expect this will solve? It seems a number of RfB have failed on the sort of strange rationale that we don't need any more bureaucrats so we certainly don't need an extra 1000. I also see a potential for disasters of colossal proportion if all admins are able to promote new admins. It took 15 minutes to shutdown an admin gone beserk the other day. Pascal.Tesson 21:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- So... the way to fix RfB is to tick everyone who's participated in the last three years off? Because giving admins tools that nobody ever said they should get is not going to go over well. -Amarkov moo! 21:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- (ecx2) I would modify the proposal slightly to say that anyone who has been an admin for six months in good standing can ask for bureaucrat powers and receive them without further discussion. I don't endorse removing the distinction between admins and bureaucrats because that makes it harder to become an admin, and we really do need more admins. At the same time, it's impossible for anybody to pass RFB, so I say we should go to the other extreme and promote anybody who has logged time as an admin without formal disciplinary problems. YechielMan 21:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- That I could support, although I might make it a year. Anybody who's still an admin in good standing after a year must be doing something right (or be slightly insane, or both). --kingboyk 23:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- What I don't get though is this: if the only problem we've identified is that RfB is ridiculously hard, why not just lower the standards of RfB? Seems less controversial. Pascal.Tesson 21:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- That just isn't going to happen. Majorly (hot!) 21:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- ok. But then if you have no hope in convincing people we need to lower the standards of RfB, how exactly do you hope of convincing anybody to go for the ultimate lowering of standards? Seems to me like you're running towards a brick wall. Pascal.Tesson 21:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- That just isn't going to happen. Majorly (hot!) 21:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Removing standards == lowering standards to 0. -Amarkov moo! 21:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- (ecx2) I would modify the proposal slightly to say that anyone who has been an admin for six months in good standing can ask for bureaucrat powers and receive them without further discussion. I don't endorse removing the distinction between admins and bureaucrats because that makes it harder to become an admin, and we really do need more admins. At the same time, it's impossible for anybody to pass RFB, so I say we should go to the other extreme and promote anybody who has logged time as an admin without formal disciplinary problems. YechielMan 21:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
There would be too much of a free-for-all after a close RfA with potentially a couple of hundred admin-crats rushing to be the one who decides whether to promote or not. But I wouldn't object to letting any admin do a name-change or a bot-flag (although I don't think that's doable now for coding reasons). Newyorkbrad 21:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Other Wikipedias have no problem with that (in example, the Spanish one). I am not against the general idea, but I don't think it is the right solution, mostly because there are already too many administrators. Although I don't like it, an administrator that closes his first AFD ever is more questionable than one that has closed thousands before, especially if the discussion was controversial. The same happens with bureaucrats: one who has promoted a user for the first time after months is more disputable if the request is controversial than one who has closed 5 in the last month. You need reliable bureaucrats, not a huge amount of new ones. I still think there should be a new bureaucrat per month, but 1,000 ones is just too much. -- ReyBrujo 21:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Too many administrators? How, exactly, would the backlogs be managed if there were less than we have now? I think the fact that we have unending backlogs is proof that there are not enough. Picaroon 21:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I shouldn't speak for ReyBrujo but I think he meant that there are too many admins to make them all bureaucrats. (I think) Pascal.Tesson 22:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Indeed. Getting 1,000 bureaucrats in a day won't help us, because as explained by Newyorkbrad (incidentally, my reply was an edit conflict handled by MediaWiki) they will clash, so we will end in a year with 300 bureaucrats each promoting a couple of admins. We need bureaucrats with experience, and that experience won't be available if 50 admins get an edit conflict everytime a nomination should be closed. -- ReyBrujo 23:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I shouldn't speak for ReyBrujo but I think he meant that there are too many admins to make them all bureaucrats. (I think) Pascal.Tesson 22:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Too many administrators? How, exactly, would the backlogs be managed if there were less than we have now? I think the fact that we have unending backlogs is proof that there are not enough. Picaroon 21:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Newyorkbrad brings up a good point. Perhaps split the jobs up? Reybrujo, instead of 1000, how about only admins who are currently classed as active? Majorly (hot!) 22:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's still the problem that there are admins, even active ones, who people might not trust with bureaucrat tools; not because there are "enough already", but because people just don't trust them with bureaucrat tools. How do you solve that problem? -Amarkov moo! 22:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There really is not much difference between the trust level needed - people just make it that way, and seem to think bureaucrats are something very special, when really they're not at all. I've said this before, an admin can do more damaging things than a bureaucrat. Once they're trusted enough to be an admin, all they're doing is determining consensus like in AfDs, so it shouldn't be a problem. But for some reason it is. The Spanish Wikipedia's admins are all bureaucrats, and they have no problems. Majorly (hot!) 22:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- And how we determine who is active and who is not? Software based stats? Removing admins that are not active, and those that haven't been admin for at least a year, but then we would have to do that manually, and may imply 400 reviews (we don't trust a bot to protect all the pages linked from the main page, I doubt we will agree with one doing the initial promotions). -- ReyBrujo 23:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There really is not much difference between the trust level needed - people just make it that way, and seem to think bureaucrats are something very special, when really they're not at all. I've said this before, an admin can do more damaging things than a bureaucrat. Once they're trusted enough to be an admin, all they're doing is determining consensus like in AfDs, so it shouldn't be a problem. But for some reason it is. The Spanish Wikipedia's admins are all bureaucrats, and they have no problems. Majorly (hot!) 22:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Unless I'm mistaken, there are currently about 850-900 active admins ... it's really not much different from 1000. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- We currently have nearly 1200 actually. We have 863 active admins, but they haven't all been admins for more than a year (and I don't want to count how many have more than a years experience). As suggested above, how about active admins who have been admins more than a year? Majorly (hot!) 23:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Right we have 1182, of which about three-fourths are active. Again, 863 is not much different from 1000 (that's in reply to the comment by Reybrujo). As for me, I'm strongly opposed. In addition to all the problems already noted above, we do not need to create the possibility of one rogue admin ... I know a rogue bureaucrat can do the same damage, but the chances of that are much greater when we're dealing with hundreds of individuals as opposed to 20 or so. You note that we're close to setting a record for the amount of time no new bureaucrat has been promoted, but I can't help but note that there've been only a few RfBs since I started following RfA/RfB a few months ago. If we really need more bureaucrats, we should have more nominations. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's been 12 since the last successful one. The reason is probably because no one wants to take the chance of each and every edit they have every made (or not made) being carefully inspected, and opposed for the trivial reason "we don't need anymore". It's sad when one wants to volunteer their time, even when they are fully capable (which I think most admins are), they are shot down for the most trivial of reasons that are nothing to do with being a bureaucrat. Majorly (hot!) 23:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Right we have 1182, of which about three-fourths are active. Again, 863 is not much different from 1000 (that's in reply to the comment by Reybrujo). As for me, I'm strongly opposed. In addition to all the problems already noted above, we do not need to create the possibility of one rogue admin ... I know a rogue bureaucrat can do the same damage, but the chances of that are much greater when we're dealing with hundreds of individuals as opposed to 20 or so. You note that we're close to setting a record for the amount of time no new bureaucrat has been promoted, but I can't help but note that there've been only a few RfBs since I started following RfA/RfB a few months ago. If we really need more bureaucrats, we should have more nominations. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- We currently have nearly 1200 actually. We have 863 active admins, but they haven't all been admins for more than a year (and I don't want to count how many have more than a years experience). As suggested above, how about active admins who have been admins more than a year? Majorly (hot!) 23:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- There's still the problem that there are admins, even active ones, who people might not trust with bureaucrat tools; not because there are "enough already", but because people just don't trust them with bureaucrat tools. How do you solve that problem? -Amarkov moo! 22:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The problem I see is that while cleaning up after an admin gone mad is not too hard, a 'crat that decides to give admin rights to the most recent 500 vandals can leave a real mess on our hands. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 23:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Not really, if someone is really that decisive they would have used a vandal admin bot (which can delete and block thousands of pages and other users in a matter of seconds) on their account now anyways instead of promoting 500 vandals which would be more than likely having no idea how to use the tools. Also, it is unlikely there would be 500 active vandals at the same time and that there is going to be someone yell foul for the first sign of trouble in the user rights log. --WinHunter (talk) 00:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's without doubt (in my mind at least) the major flaw in the argument.
- OK, how about this. Community decides how many bureacrats are needed (or how many as a percentage of registered users). Every so often, every admin of at least 3 (or 6 or 12) months can put themselves onto the request for bureacrat rights list. People vote (yes, vote!) on which of those to promote.
- Example. Say we decide that we need 50 crats as of now. We get a list of eligible admins who self nominate, and hold an election from that list for the 30 places. --kingboyk 23:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC) (e/c)
- For the record, the Spanish Wikipedia grants bureaucrat status to all active administrators. However, Wikipedia:Candidaturas a bibliotecario is a straight vote. There's no such thing as bureaucrat discretion. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 23:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps people are trying to fix something that is not really broken. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 00:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps. To me the lack of promotions for nigh on a year, despite some pretty decent candidates running, is a fair indicator it's broken. I accept that others may quite legitimately disagree.
- Maybe we should restart the discussion, starting first with the question "Is RFB broken?" --kingboyk 01:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps people are trying to fix something that is not really broken. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 00:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
{{RfA}}, for the fifth(?) time
The sections have been removed. I'm almost sure there is no consensus for this, but I would never have noticed had a new RfA not just come in. Could we please not change things on the template without some sort of note here? -Amarkov moo! 21:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please do revert that. We've pretty much agreed to experiment slowly. There certainly is nothing close to consensus regarding this and Moralis' RfA was not too conclusive on that kind of format. Pascal.Tesson 21:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The sections were added without consensus, so I duly removed them. Is there a problem? We're having a discussion, not a vote, sections aren't needed, the bureaucrats aren't stupid. Majorly (hot!) 21:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's not about the bureaucrat's stupidity, it's about making it easier to read the darn thing. Pascal.Tesson 21:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- They were promoted to do the job, in whatever form RfA may take. Majorly (hot!) 21:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think you understand what I mean. Sure, bureaucrats can still evaluate the RfA without these sections (and did so in the Moralis experiment). However, it is unquestionably making the RfA harder to read and harder to review in retrospect. Note also the not so enthusiastic comments of the closing b'crat. Pascal.Tesson 21:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- They were promoted to do the job, in whatever form RfA may take. Majorly (hot!) 21:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- It's not about the bureaucrat's stupidity, it's about making it easier to read the darn thing. Pascal.Tesson 21:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The sections were added without consensus, so I duly removed them. Is there a problem? We're having a discussion, not a vote, sections aren't needed, the bureaucrats aren't stupid. Majorly (hot!) 21:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please don't remove those again. I'm not sure how many ways I can state this, but "There is not even a consensus that change is needed. There certainly is not a consensus for what changes would be made." - auburnpilot talk 22:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what people really imagine a b'crat is going to do in an RFA without sections... still going to count up the supports and opposes, it'll just take them longer. The RFA equivalent of security through obscurity... it just makes things more difficult but the same stuff is going on. --W.marsh 22:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please note Majorly has removed them again. [24]. This is getting tiring. - auburnpilot talk 22:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Now protected/reverted (not by me on either count). --W.marsh 22:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The bureaucrats will be doing nothing of the sort. If they were counting, I'd ask them to resign. We do not need pointless sections in a discussion. Majorly (hot!) 22:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Majorly. perhaps you could leave the RfA template alone for a while. Quite a lot of the recent edits there are yours, and such things rarely help achieve consensus on talk pages. There's more to writing an encyclopedia than hanging around RfA, you know. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oleg, I'm rather offended by that. I am actually free to edit pages as I please. I've been continuing to add references to List of English monarchs this afternoon, closed an AfD or two later, and now I'm here. Please don't say I'm "hanging around RfA". I'm concerned, and I can comment and make changes as much as I like. Majorly (hot!) 22:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Majorly. perhaps you could leave the RfA template alone for a while. Quite a lot of the recent edits there are yours, and such things rarely help achieve consensus on talk pages. There's more to writing an encyclopedia than hanging around RfA, you know. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- They'd all better resign then, because I guarantee you none have closed an RFA in years without some ballpark idea of what the % was. --W.marsh 22:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- My point exactly, check all recent successful RfBs, answer to question 1. We have like 5 exceptions that are under the magic 75%, which goes to show that they stick to numbers so carefully. In light of these discussions, if there are any who do, I hope they change. Majorly (hot!) 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- That conclusion is not supported by your initial premise. You note that few RfAs below 75% have succeeded, yet seem to reject the possibility that they failed because there actually was no consensus. I think "failed because of no consensus" is a more plausible explanation than "failed because they act like bots", especially since there are exceptions. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- My point exactly, check all recent successful RfBs, answer to question 1. We have like 5 exceptions that are under the magic 75%, which goes to show that they stick to numbers so carefully. In light of these discussions, if there are any who do, I hope they change. Majorly (hot!) 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- The bureaucrats will be doing nothing of the sort. If they were counting, I'd ask them to resign. We do not need pointless sections in a discussion. Majorly (hot!) 22:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Now protected/reverted (not by me on either count). --W.marsh 22:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Majorly, the sections are not just for the sake of the bureaucrats. They are also for the sake of anyone who wants to participate in an AfD discussion without having to read the exact same comments repeated dozens of times by different people. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Do we have sections in an AfD? No. Is AfD a discussion? Yes. Is RfA a discussion? Yes. Do we have sections in an RfA? Yes. Is this logical? No. And exact same comments are made on AfDs as well too you know ;) Majorly (hot!) 23:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- An AFD can produce roughly a dozen common decisions (transwiki, merge, delete, redirect, etc.) and numerous wacky other decisions rarely. An RFA can produce one of 2 decisions, period. So you're kind of comparing apples and oranges even before mentioning the fact that the average AFD gets 3-5 participants and the average RFA gets 50+. --W.marsh 23:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmmm... Not so convincing. For one thing AfDs rarely attain the same level of participation as RfAs. In any case, the goal here is not to dogmatically figure out a way to impose a structure on RfAs so that it looks like Afd but rather to pragmatically find a structure that makes RfAs easy enough to follow. Pascal.Tesson 23:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Think of those rare XfDs (Daniel Brandt, Esperanza, Encyclopedia Dramatica) that get a lot attention. The admin that closes that has the same job as a bureaucrat. Majorly (hot!) 23:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I sure wish that these were refactored to make the discussion more intellegible and less painfully redundant. Pascal.Tesson 23:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Majorly, my response is ... what W.marsh said. RfA has only 2 outcomes, whereas AfD has many. Also, RfA has many more participants. Also, I would think that we would want to avoid RfAs that look like the Daniel Brandt AfD. That thing was awful! -- Black Falcon (Talk) 00:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I sure wish that these were refactored to make the discussion more intellegible and less painfully redundant. Pascal.Tesson 23:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Think of those rare XfDs (Daniel Brandt, Esperanza, Encyclopedia Dramatica) that get a lot attention. The admin that closes that has the same job as a bureaucrat. Majorly (hot!) 23:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Suggestion: how about leaving the sections in, but having people bullet their comments under support and oppose instead of numbering them? I don't mind the tally myself, but that seems to be the major point of contention. Dekimasuよ! 23:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Tried it here, but auburnpilot decided voting sections were better in a discussion, and re-added them. Majorly (hot!) 23:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- If I found the diff you were trying to point me to, that wasn't quite what I had in mind. I meant leaving in the support, oppose, and neutral sections, but using * instead of # at the head of each comment. Dekimasuよ! 23:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, let's not try to paint a different picture than actually exists. Completely removing the sections (as you did Majorly) is very different from replacing a "#" with a "*". - auburnpilot talk 00:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- If I found the diff you were trying to point me to, that wasn't quite what I had in mind. I meant leaving in the support, oppose, and neutral sections, but using * instead of # at the head of each comment. Dekimasuよ! 23:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it's great and refreshing that people are finally being WP:BOLD about trying to make improvements to requests for adminship. I hope this trend continues. :-) --Kim Bruning 23:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- Everything I try is reverted, Kim, so I doubt I'll be doing much else BOLD :( Majorly (hot!) 23:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm having severe difficulty reading this section of WT:RFA because it's not sorted into support/oppose/neutral sections. Would someone please refactor this discussion so I can make sense of it? --Durin 12:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- While we're removing the useless headers from the template, can we also remove the useless "standard questions" as well? Kelly Martin (talk) 12:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Can't do that. The only thing left for people at the RfA to review would be their contributions. You can't expect people to actually go through someone's contributions to evaluate them! --Durin 12:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I have added a note reminding editors that the questions are optional and that lack of answering them by a candidate does not merit an oppose. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 13:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Reckless renegade! Of course, those who think against that will either a) revert you, b) insist on voting against a person anyway, and just couch their vote a bit differently, or c) insist bureaucrats should never ever ever discount their vote...or all the above. --Durin 13:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'll take b). I do understand the meaning of optional, although I think it's just plain rude for a candidate not to answer questions asked by RfA participants (i.e., the extra questions submitted by individual participants) and that does give me cause to worry on how these candidates would react when random users question their admin actions. Pascal.Tesson 13:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Told you so! Only took 13 minutes too. --Durin 13:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I reverted it, not because I think against it (If not answering the questions is someone's only problem, I'll certainly support), but because people can oppose for whatever stupid reason they please. Attempts to discount certain opinions, even ones that are demonstratably stupid, have failed before. -Amarkov moo! 14:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'd like a reference for that, and some proof that leaving my change in instead of knee-jerk reverting it would actually have made future RfAs worse. -- Earle Martin [t/c] 17:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Perhaps it would be useful to add some examples of stupid reasons, since we're going out of our way to support stupid reasons anyways. --Durin 14:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'd like to nominate "Oppose because of userbox saying he loves chocolate. That is waaaaaay divisive." Pascal.Tesson 14:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I reverted it, not because I think against it (If not answering the questions is someone's only problem, I'll certainly support), but because people can oppose for whatever stupid reason they please. Attempts to discount certain opinions, even ones that are demonstratably stupid, have failed before. -Amarkov moo! 14:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Reckless renegade! Of course, those who think against that will either a) revert you, b) insist on voting against a person anyway, and just couch their vote a bit differently, or c) insist bureaucrats should never ever ever discount their vote...or all the above. --Durin 13:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- While we're removing the useless headers from the template, can we also remove the useless "standard questions" as well? Kelly Martin (talk) 12:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Not to state the obvious, but being snarky and trying to make fun of people who disagree with you isn't all that helpful. It just makes this thing more combative than it needs to be. The surest fire way to avoid change happening here is to be a jerk in advocating your changes. --W.marsh 14:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Please check your humor detection device. It appears to be malfunctioning. --Durin 14:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Uh I pretty clearly said you were trying to make a joke... it was also a joke on people. My comment was that making fun of people isn't productive in this situation. --W.marsh 14:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Didn't seem clear to me. Anyways, adding humor isn't unproductive either. Pascal.tesson and I, for example, disagree very strongly with each other. But, thanks to the introduction of humor into our commentary, we've come to User_talk:Durin#On_blithering_idiots and User_talk:Durin#Hello.21. Seems pretty positive to me. --Durin 14:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well we'll see. I have observed a lot of animosity between the two camps and making fun of eachother doesn't seem likely to help any change actually occur. --W.marsh 14:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- In the last week, I've seen a dizzying array of admonitions from various people towards various people. If we were to take all of these admonitions as gospel, and treat them as inviolable, we'd be reduced to saying about three different words here. "Support", "Oppose", and "Neutral". Except, there wouldn't be anything to vote on because people wouldn't be permitted to talk. --Durin 14:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's simply false... people are allowed to post comments in RFAs. This is increasingly becoming an example of exactly the kind of dialog that is counterproductive to getting anything done... just making incorrect or ridiculously exaggerated claims about the positions of the other camp. --W.marsh 15:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Umm, I was talking about WT:RFA, not WP:RFA. --Durin 15:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Then why were you talking about converting everything to support, oppose and neutral sections? That was the reference to WP:RFA. But nevermind... this is clearly some sort of a miscommunication. No need to reply but you probably will... --W.marsh 15:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Umm, I was talking about WT:RFA, not WP:RFA. --Durin 15:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's simply false... people are allowed to post comments in RFAs. This is increasingly becoming an example of exactly the kind of dialog that is counterproductive to getting anything done... just making incorrect or ridiculously exaggerated claims about the positions of the other camp. --W.marsh 15:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- In the last week, I've seen a dizzying array of admonitions from various people towards various people. If we were to take all of these admonitions as gospel, and treat them as inviolable, we'd be reduced to saying about three different words here. "Support", "Oppose", and "Neutral". Except, there wouldn't be anything to vote on because people wouldn't be permitted to talk. --Durin 14:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well we'll see. I have observed a lot of animosity between the two camps and making fun of eachother doesn't seem likely to help any change actually occur. --W.marsh 14:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Didn't seem clear to me. Anyways, adding humor isn't unproductive either. Pascal.tesson and I, for example, disagree very strongly with each other. But, thanks to the introduction of humor into our commentary, we've come to User_talk:Durin#On_blithering_idiots and User_talk:Durin#Hello.21. Seems pretty positive to me. --Durin 14:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Uh I pretty clearly said you were trying to make a joke... it was also a joke on people. My comment was that making fun of people isn't productive in this situation. --W.marsh 14:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
And it flares up again [25] with the inexplicable edit summary "there was no consensus to include a tally on top of a discussion" (as if there was a consensus to include it on the bottom?) --W.marsh 15:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Protected
Since there's eviddently a dispute (resulting in a edit war) over the template's content, it shall stay fully protected until this matter is resolved. Also, while administrators may still edit the template, they should (and I believe they will) observe the protection guidelines, as the edit page suggests. Миша13 18:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Archives: annoying task
ShadowBot3 has been sending archived discussion to archive 86 instead of archive 88, and manual archiving has been done that has sent other things to archive 87. The two seem to overlap as well, but archive 86 is generally newer than archive 87. ShadowBot3 is correctly set to archive 88 now, but would someone helpful like to go through and clean up the order of the archives? Dekimasuよ! 23:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm all for taking the task away from the bot. We were archiving just fine without it. Now, when the bot is supposed to be archiving, we're up to over 314kb of discussion on this page. This is silly. Archiving manually was working just fine, and now we have a bot breaking it. Nice. <cough> --Durin 12:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- If we have editors willing to do manual archiving, they should deactivate the bot immediately and archive by hand (which is superior). If we don't have anybody willing to do that work, the bot is better than nothing. Kusma (talk) 14:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- We've had editors willing to do it for four years, and editors had been happily doing it through that entire time. There's no reason editors can't continue doing it now. --Durin 14:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not the same
Even the RFAs that are not experiments aren't the same. Why do some current RFAs have the vote summary and some don't? We should process them all the same for uniformity's sake, and all this experiment should cease for the time being until the boat settles back to an even keel; no wonder they're all akilter right now.Rlevse 00:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- No they're fine. If you see any with a tally it can be removed though :) Majorly (hot!) 00:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oh yes, very subtle.
:)
I'd rather have active RfAs see no format changes; they should end the way they started ... unless the format is so horrible that the RfA is stopped prematurely and restarted. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 00:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)- Where's the rule that says they shouldn't have a tally? They should at least all be the same. No they are not fine. Changing the format of an RFA once it starts is just plain wrong.Rlevse 00:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Oh yes, very subtle.
- God, the tally is a non issue, have one or don't, but don't argue over it. A tally does not change how people cast their opinions. If they want to know the count they will find it. There is no reason they have to be uniform either. I would leave it up to the person running. If he wants to do it in ROT13, then let him, I won't support, but all the power to them. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 00:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't say they should or shouldn't have a tally, i said the RFAs should be consistent and the format of a specific one should not change once it starts. What I said is wrong is changing format on one after it starts. I don't think it's a nonissue, they should all be the same so everyone gets an equal shot. You give a reason they should not have one.Rlevse 00:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Because it's not a vote, that's why. Majorly (hot!) 01:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Then why'd it ever get started with the tally? The tally makes it easier to see how it's going. Actually, I don't care that much about the tally, but I firmly believe the formats should be consisent, that way no one can claim another had a more favorable format. Take a look at the recent RFAs that were victims of the experiments.Rlevse 01:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Because it's not a vote, that's why. Majorly (hot!) 01:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I didn't say they should or shouldn't have a tally, i said the RFAs should be consistent and the format of a specific one should not change once it starts. What I said is wrong is changing format on one after it starts. I don't think it's a nonissue, they should all be the same so everyone gets an equal shot. You give a reason they should not have one.Rlevse 00:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- If it was common sense it would be common to other people. I like the tally, it saves me time. I have not heard it explained how it causes any harm. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 01:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- The explanation I've heard is that the tally manipulates people into treating RFA like a vote, and removing it learns them better. Personally I give people more credit than that... and never really thought it was our job to tell people how to think about RFA in the first place. I agree that the tally is just useful, some people see it as a psychological key to RFA or something like that. --W.marsh 01:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
By the way, is there any reason why we essentially vote for ArbCom members rather than use only discussion? (where, say the closer would be the Foundation board) I'm asking because I'm still puzzled by the dogmatic mantra of RfA is not a vote. Pascal.Tesson 01:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- I'm also confused. Since everyone loves the tally so much, we may as well make most use of it :) Majorly (hot!) 01:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Call whatever you want, but supporting and objecting is a vote. Otherwise, we should just nom someone and let a bureaucrat decide it on their own without them worrying about whether they got 85% (or whatever).Rlevse 01:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well actually, I think that there are people who think this would be a good solution, provided we have a weeklong discussion on the candidate beforehand. I happen to think it wouldn't simplify the whole process but it's not an incoherent proposal either. Pascal.Tesson 01:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, RfA is a vote. And there is nothing wrong with that. Voting is the best way to gauge the opinions of a large community. And the larger Wikipedia becomes, the more more vote-like things will get. Yes, that scares some people away from adminship, I've seen that first-hand. Yes, some people's votes are silly. Some people think other people's votes are silly. That's sad, but mixing people's comments together and hoping that the enlightened bureaucrats will just read everything and come up with a magic decision which will please everybody and remove the pain from the process is just not realistic. The current process is simple, and it works. Giving bureaucrats more authority will make things not better, I'd argue. And perhaps not everybody's meant to be an admin after all? And perhaps the current backlogs are due to people like me not using their admin powers too much, but what can you do in a community of volunteers? And anyhow, no attempt of reform I've seen in two years has produced anything. This one generated more discussion, but I doubt the outcome will be any different. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well I do not know how many registered users we have, but I found the number 4,000,000 at English_Wikipedia page (not sure if that includes not registered or not), so say that we have 400 voters for one admin that would make it 0.01% that actually did vote, I'm not sure that is a good way to 'to gauge the opinions of a large community'? At least I do not think so. Stefan 13:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- In statistics, a poll of 1000-2000 random people is enough to tell how the entire US population feels about an issue with an accuracy of a few percent. Granted, the RfA voters are not a random bunch, but surely they are more representative of the community feelings than the bureaucrat who would make the "hard decisions". Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- True, but as you say, I do not think the people voting now are very random, nor representative of the average user. Stefan 15:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, aside from the fact that statistical significance can be attained in relatively small samples (e.g., 1200 of a population 300 million), we should also keep in mind that although the English Wikipedia has 4 million registered users, only about 50 thousand are active (I remember seeing the figure 43000 somewhere; I'd be most grateful is someone could tell point me in the right direction). -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- True, but as you say, I do not think the people voting now are very random, nor representative of the average user. Stefan 15:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- In statistics, a poll of 1000-2000 random people is enough to tell how the entire US population feels about an issue with an accuracy of a few percent. Granted, the RfA voters are not a random bunch, but surely they are more representative of the community feelings than the bureaucrat who would make the "hard decisions". Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well I do not know how many registered users we have, but I found the number 4,000,000 at English_Wikipedia page (not sure if that includes not registered or not), so say that we have 400 voters for one admin that would make it 0.01% that actually did vote, I'm not sure that is a good way to 'to gauge the opinions of a large community'? At least I do not think so. Stefan 13:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well, RfA is a vote. And there is nothing wrong with that. Voting is the best way to gauge the opinions of a large community. And the larger Wikipedia becomes, the more more vote-like things will get. Yes, that scares some people away from adminship, I've seen that first-hand. Yes, some people's votes are silly. Some people think other people's votes are silly. That's sad, but mixing people's comments together and hoping that the enlightened bureaucrats will just read everything and come up with a magic decision which will please everybody and remove the pain from the process is just not realistic. The current process is simple, and it works. Giving bureaucrats more authority will make things not better, I'd argue. And perhaps not everybody's meant to be an admin after all? And perhaps the current backlogs are due to people like me not using their admin powers too much, but what can you do in a community of volunteers? And anyhow, no attempt of reform I've seen in two years has produced anything. This one generated more discussion, but I doubt the outcome will be any different. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Well actually, I think that there are people who think this would be a good solution, provided we have a weeklong discussion on the candidate beforehand. I happen to think it wouldn't simplify the whole process but it's not an incoherent proposal either. Pascal.Tesson 01:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Call whatever you want, but supporting and objecting is a vote. Otherwise, we should just nom someone and let a bureaucrat decide it on their own without them worrying about whether they got 85% (or whatever).Rlevse 01:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Majorly-I see why Rlevse interpreted what you said the way he did. You may want to be more careful how you word things. Oleg-well said.Sumoeagle179 10:11, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Format changes good. Learn to understand what needs to be truely stable and what need not be truely stable. --Kim Bruning 16:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC) why am I starting to sound like a zen type person? Must be that time of year again.Zen season!
- Stable the universe is ... visions of instability reflect inner turmoil and failure to attain oneness with the self and with life. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC) How's that?
Seriously though
Wouldn't RfA be a lot better if those voting were only those that had interacted with the candidate or had made the effort to look at their contributions? Just require voters to provide a diff or archive link to a thread, edit, or whatever. Those voting support should have an easy time of it, and those voting oppose would have to justify their opposes. Carcharoth 16:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- For every candidate in whose RfA I participate, I look through 50-200 random diffs. Any single diff is not going to make up my mind (unless it's a death threat); I look for patterns of behaviour. It really does many RfA regulars injustice to automatically assume that they do not make the effor to look through candidates' contributions. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good point. I apologise for assuming that. Carcharoth 17:15, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- To clarify further, do you state on every RfA that you have looked through 50-200 random diffs, or do you assume that people realise you have done that? If you said you had done that, and said what patterns you saw, I'd be happy. Carcharoth 17:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmm ... interesting question. Somtimes I do note that I looked at the contributions history (e.g., [26]) and other times I don't. I suppose I operate on the following principle: If I'm supporting a candidate, I do not provide extensive justifications. I assume that people will realise that (1) I have checked the candidate's contributions, (2) deemed him suitable for adminship per my standards, and (3) find the reasons to oppose (if any) given by other editors to be insufficiently convincing. If I'm opposing a candidate, I feel it's necessary to provide a detailed justification with supporting diffs as needed. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, I think one of the things that are broken now is that when the people that I have interacted with and have a strong opinion for or agains is up for RfA I do not know, and they are not allowed to tell me. I think that RfA should be published more directly, on project pages, home pages and so on, now this is not allowed (I assume) since it is a direct vote and if I where running I would send a note to all the people that I know and that like me, but IF RfA is not supposed to be a direct vote but instead we should promote good people, the correct way should be to get in touch with the people that have interacted with the user and let them know that the RfA is running.
- Have a one week discussion, publish the names, lets editors that have interacted with this user have their say, I'm sure someone can make a bot that figures out who have interacted with thsi user, let that bot post on the talk page of these people, have everyone list good and bad points, THEN maybe have a vote. Stefan 23:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Hmm ... interesting question. Somtimes I do note that I looked at the contributions history (e.g., [26]) and other times I don't. I suppose I operate on the following principle: If I'm supporting a candidate, I do not provide extensive justifications. I assume that people will realise that (1) I have checked the candidate's contributions, (2) deemed him suitable for adminship per my standards, and (3) find the reasons to oppose (if any) given by other editors to be insufficiently convincing. If I'm opposing a candidate, I feel it's necessary to provide a detailed justification with supporting diffs as needed. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Random voters
Or, even better, randomly generate voters! I'm sure I remember a "random user" generator somewhere. Spam 100 randomly generated user talk pages where the user has been active in the past week, and say they have been granted the singular honour of voting on this candidate's RfA. This is a bit like jury service in the UK, which, with checks and balances, is essentially a random selection of your peers to sit in judgement on you. Carcharoth 16:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Seriously. People selected at random tend to take their duties very seriously. If this idea took off, and if even only 20% of the 100 random users participated, then you would get 20 people carefully picking through the contributions history and giving their opinion on the candidate. Also, in case you get a random selection of 100 trolls, allow the candidate to rebut oppose votes, and still leave the ultimate decision to the bureaucrat. Randomly selecting from the entire pool of users might be a bit much, so instead maybe randomly select from a large of list of those "willing to serve at RfA". Carcharoth 16:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- That's an interesting idea. Want to add it to Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform? -- Earle Martin [t/c] 17:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- A random user generator is located at Wikipedia:Random, although that only takes you to users who have created user or user talk pages. I do not think your proposal will have the desired results. First, editors may not appreciate being spammed. Second, we may accidentally spam vandals and trolls. They, for the time being, are not overly interested in disruspting RfAs ... I hope we can keep it that way. Third, the proposal creates a new level of bureaucracy that goes against the principles expressed in Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. Fourth, it restricts participation and discussion by active editors. Fifth, I believe your premise that "People selected at random tend to take their duties very seriously" may not hold. Those things for which I've been randomly selected are usually the ones I take least seriously. If someone considers sampling me just as good as any other poor sod, I see no reason to take things seriously. I am, of course, referring to surveys and not to to jury duty, which I'd take a little bit more seriously. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the phrase 'jury duty', which led me to Jury duty#Selection, which I've now added above and over there. I was looking for jury service, which I might turn into a redirect if no-one else beats me to it. Carcharoth 17:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
OK. I've added the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform#Proposal by Carcharoth. Could further disussion be copied over there? Thanks. Black Falcon, I hope you don't mind me asking you to copy your comments over there. I'll respond to them over there later, as I have to leave the computer for the next few hours. Carcharoth 17:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
- No problem ... I'll do it right now. Cheers, Black Falcon (Talk) 17:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Matt Britt RFA
I have closed Matt Britt's request as unsuccessful because the community appears far from convinced of the validity of this format. I am sorry to Matt, who I suggest should run again under the regular format until such a time as consensus favors the new format -- which, while intriguing, certainly has its issues. My mandate as a bureaucrat permits me to promote administrators under very specific circumstances; with so many users objecting to the very premise of this request, I cannot in good faith promote Matt. I have, however, studied the request in an attempt to reason out how I would evaluate the request, were the format accepted as valid; I believe I would have promoted him. If this format, or some revised version thereof, ever gains the community's acceptance (and I think it has much promise), I will start dialogue among the bureaucrats to decide on a standard way to evaluate these requests. — Dan | talk 00:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
- Good call, I also left a note at the Matt's user talk page. --WinHunter (talk) 01:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
- Does this mean he can re-apply immediately? --TeckWiz is now R ParlateContribs@(Let's go Yankees!) 01:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)