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• Prior to June 2003, requests for adminship were made and discussed on the mailing list.
• For Archives of discussions from June 2003 to the present, please visit Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for adminship/Archives.

Tony1's Rfa

Allow me to again express my UTTER DISGUST at the Trial by ordeal the Rfa process seems to be degenerating into. This is how we lose so many excellent, talented and thoughtful contributors. Are none of us entitled to express our strong opinions without running the risk of incurring a personal, political pile on?! Do we not have the right to defend ourselves when we feel we are under unfair attack?! Can we not even be bothered to FORGIVE some percieved slight?! Or to extend to our colleagues the benefit of the doubt rather than to doubt their benefits?! If one of my dear friends were to nominate me today, I would DECLINE rather than face running such a disgraceful gauntlet as that which Tony1 was subjected! A Kangaroo court has more decorum!!! I wonder how many of YOU would fare facing such a barrage of negativity. Would you be able to sit quietly and smile, while your honor, your integrity, your personal charachter are smeared in the mud? I think those who would DO NOT deserve to be admins. Those are the very ones who merely want some small crumb of status/reward/power/influence. Who will use their position as a personal TOY rather than a TOOL to make our encyclopedia and community better. Something needs to be done about the ordeal process, otherwise Misplaced Pages will continue to hemmorage knowledge and talent from these self-inflicted wounds. --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 17:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

• Calm down. I've read some of the comments in the RfA, and while most seem rather civil, there are some that look like outright accusations to Tony1. If I were in his place I would perhaps got a little angry too. I personally don't know Tony1 but judging by the comments in the RfA, he doesn't seem ready for adminship just now, but if he reapplies in a few weeks or months I might support him. — JIP | Talk 17:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
• RDH, outside of the decorum issues on RfA, you don't appear to be raising any particular faults that the RfA process has nor suggesting any ways in which to improve it. I grant that you have some very legitimate feelings regarding the RfA process, but failing any detailing of just what is wrong, there isn't anything for us to comment on. As for decorum, certainly the behavior of certain users should be spoken of on their respective talk pages. Their behavior on RfA is a reflection of their behavior; not of RfA. There are a large number of people who acquit themselves appropriately on RfA. I don't think that extending the behavior of a few against the many is what you intended, but based on the above is sounds to me like that. --Durin 18:19, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

It only takes a few spiteful, rude, inconsiderate and outright trolling individuals to contaminate the entire process. These few can create an atmosphere of ill-will and distrust which grows and carries over to other nominations. I think losing even even one good editor/contributor to this flawed process is one too many.

But you ask, and rightfully so, do I have any suggestions to make the process, if not better, then at least less flawed? What sort of Wikipedian would I be if I did'nt:> First off, we could have Rfa "Ushers" or "Bouncers", who could step in when an Rfa begins to get out of hand, before the flames and pile-ons have a chance to cause serious harm. If someone can't behave in accordance with the rules of Civility, No personal attacks, Staying cool, Assumption of good faith and perhaps most importantly Don't be a dick, then these officials would be able to remove them from the Rfa in question and negate their vote. Offenders would recieve, at most, 2 warnings and may also have their offending comments stricken out. Any registered user in good standing may volunteer to be an "Usher" or "Bouncer", but if they are not yet an admin, they will need an admin to be "Enforcer" for their decisions. Durin, you may be ideal for this role.

Second, a while ago someone mentioned that we need a "Wiki Middle Class" between registered users and admins. I think this is an exxxcellent suggestion. Towards this end, I have proposed HERE to create a corps of Article Custodians, or admins-lite if you will:>. Basically they would have limited admin powers over a single article (48 hour lock maximum and rollback button). They would be voted in, as are admins, but the threshold for concensus would be lower (60%) and they may be removed by bureaucrats if asked to by at least three different admins. Article Custodianship would reward good contributors who have put a lot of time and work into an article with the power and responsibility to care for it. It would also allow them to show they have The Right Stuff to be admins, make the transition from to admin much easier and help take the sting off a failed Rfa. It could also help the admins deal with the bane of the Wikiverse-Vandalism.

If anyone can come up with better suggestions, by all means please do and I'll endorse, peddle, push and pimp them wholeheartedly:> But something must be done, not only to keep our talent but to maintain the atmosphere of civility and collaboration which makes the Wiki MORE than simply an encyclopedia. Tony left a message on my talk page today, thanking me for my comments and support and asking me to contact him in mail. This makes the second friend, User:Rl is the other, I have lost due to the toxic effects from Rfa. The system may not yet be broke, but it is clearly starting to crack under the strain of Misplaced Pages's growth. The time to fix it is now. Thanks for your time and consideration--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 18:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm against instruction creep, and feel these suggestions are in that vein. I would like to see what impact WP:GRFA has when it's 'officially' released first before applying any other salve on the RfA process. With respect to the suggestions; I think the first carries more merit than the second. But in general, I don't like the idea of adding in additional special classes of wiki-citizens to pursue particular problems. --Durin 19:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

So you are against "instruction creep", then you post a link to yet another page full of instructions. But they are good instructions...I wish I'd known about them before I became involved in Rfa. Unfortunately, I jumped right in and learned nearly everything in there the hard way. I'm afraid most others will learn the same way too, afterall the Wikiverse is so vast and there are so many WP:Instruction pages to keep track of already. It can be confusing even for those who know their way around. I'm none too optimistic WP:GiRaFA will have any significant impact at all. Anymore than a warning sign at a Mosh pit.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 19:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Misplaced Pages:Requests for rollback privileges. Talrias (t | e | c) 11:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

That is a step in the right direction. But only a step. And it does'nt address the problem of bruising if not abusive Rfas. My friend SoLando has come up with an interesting idea. If y'all promise to be nice, I might convince him to share it here:>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 19:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

The very community interaction that makes Misplaced Pages rewarding can become destructive when critical comment is made in RfA or FaC discussions, particularly when candidates or authors take understandable pride in their work. It's hard not to take attacks personally, though better forewarning and support might help. In this instance an interesting article marred by grammatical errors and convoluted writing has been isolated from critical improvement, and more importantly a contributor with uncommon skills has been alienated. Administrators have to be responsible, but testing their restraint by public abuse is out of order. The Admin-lite idea would still involve the same process, and limited powers to protect one article would have no relevance in this case, where an editor was making contributions over many articles. However, there could be merit in a kind of official barnstar or recognition of responsibility as a standard precursor to adminship, possibly giving access to rollback buttons, and I'm for that...dave souza 18:41, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I see no "public abuse" at Tony1's RfA or, indeed, the RfAs of most users. What I see is a legitimate comment about a tantrum Tony threw at an old FAC, followed by Tony dragging in his objections from that FAC to a forum where they have no relevance. Then, when other users opposed (notably Cyberjunkie and Alkivar), he blew up at them. Frankly, if you respond to legitimate comments by throwing a very public tantrum on your own RfA, I don't feel you have any right to be upset when your RfA doesn't pass, and further, you are not admin material. Good editors are not necessarily good admins, and vice versa. Please, let's not let our personal feelings get in the way of the basic facts. Tony was not mistreated, and it's pure fantasy to say he was. --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 08:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I figure this section would be an appropiate location to place my proposal, since R.D.H.'s proposals inspired mine. Now hopefully this won't be considered an unnecessary tier to the RFA structure. But as the principal reason for some RFA descending into a frenzied debacle is that of unresolved issues, why not have an optional "peer review" similar to that used for articles, which invariably are a precursor to the article becoming an FA Candidate. At the peer review, issues could be raised and resolved with the prospective admin, and perhaps an indication of their chances (or whether they are even ready) could be given, as many seem to be jumping head first into an RFA, then get hurt when it doesn't go as they anticipated/desired. I can imagine this idea may be seen as unnecessary, what with there being RFCs and the like, but as R.D.H. said responding to me on his talk page: "RFCs usually involve edit wars, personal pissing contests and such, what you propose would exclusively deal with admin candidate issues." SoLando (Talk) 19:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

How would this not turn into "personal pissing constests" as well? People's pasts are a big reason why RfAs pass or fail. You could always list youself at RfC and explain you are looking for constructive criticism. Or do as other have done, start a user subpage seeking comments. The new guide should help incredibly though. --LV 19:46, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

>How would this not turn into "personal pissing constests" as well?< There is no guarantee it would'nt. None of the suggestions SoLando or I have made would make the process completely "piss-proof". We realize this, but it is our hope that they will at least help reduce the "piss level" which is slowly creeping over the levees and flooding the Rfa. SoLando's suggestion for RFAC, would allow candidates and nominators to "test the waters" first, so they will know much better what to work on and what to expect from the Rfa. It would make "ambushes" and "pile-ons" much less a problem than they currently are. Plus his proposal has the added virtue of being easy and painless to implement without having to change the (sacred) Wiki software. --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 19:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• The process is fine. The problem here was Tony had a temper he could not control, he became as a spoilt and petulant child. Insulting all who came near. If no-one had ever said "No, Tony I don't like your edits they are wrong" When would Tony's temperament have come to light - after you, the sympathetic crowd had voted him "Admin of FA", and everyone new to the page was too frightened to say a word.

I'm sick of being the villain of this piece. Tony was over forceful and arrogant in his edits. Pages I've written are edited every day, and good, so they should be! There's one coming up on the front page very shortly, and we all know what happens there, especially me because I've had several on the front page before, all thankfully well copy-edited before they arrived there. (and before you all rush off to have a look now). I couldn't care less what style and grammar gurus do to a page but when they alter the integrity of the page - I do.

My grammar and spelling are appalling, I can't write a simple stub without being copy-edited. I admit it, it's Misplaced Pages's most badly kept secret. However, I will not be harassed into altering the essence and emphasis of a page. If people can't cope with that, then the encyclopedia may as well give up now. Tony was very good with his grammar, and his phrasing and vocabulary was wonderful for children. If he comes back knowing his limitations good, if he doesn't come back well grammar is taught in schools. End of story.

Keep the process as it is, because a few people behind closed doors would fail to reach the correct decision. Tony was very happy originally to be there, but he was too new. If he was ignorant and unhappy blame those who nominated him, not a tried, trusted and proven system. 81.131.95.249 20:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC) Giano (I keep being logged out - have I been banned)

Completely independent of SoLando or RDH, I stumbled across the idea of peer review as well. It's entirely notional at this point, but I did create a subpage of mine for it: User:Durin/Peer review.

As for WP:GRFA being instruction creep; it's nothing of the sort. There are no instructions anyone is compelled to follow. It is not policy. It isn't even a guideline. It's a set of recommendations and are not part of the instructions found at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/nominate. There are no additional hurdles here to jump; it is just some helpful advice.

I do think people should take some responsibility for keeping the RfA process as civil as possible. To that end, I've begun advising people of when I feel they have overstepped the boundaries a bit . That said, I have no intention of becoming the Sheriff of RfA. I think we should all be encouraging each other to contribute to RfA productively. --Durin 21:16, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying the instructions (or recommendations if you prefer) won't help. They will. But they won't be enough. However, they, along with my proposal for Rfa "ushers" and SoLando's "Peer Review" idea TOGETHER might be enough. They are at least worth a try. What do we have to lose except more talent? The system may have worked fine when Wiki was relatively small, but it has grown, and is growing, tremendously now. It is starting to bend and in time it will break. The time to start fixing it is before it reaches this breaking point.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 19:25, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• But who regarding Tony overstepped the mark? Tony was originally asked to provide the "diffs" for a problem he (no one else) first mentioned. He could not oblige. The man failed, it was unpleasant, so are all interviews, the process is fine. Giano | talk 21:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

"I'm sick of being the villain of this piece." No one here even mentioned you by name, Giano, but since the shoe fits... You knew DAMN well Tony had buttons, where they were and how to push them...which you did..like a maestro troll. Afterall, it is his fault for having buttons, not yours for pushing them right? Seems it is not enough for you to have shot down his Rfa and driven Tony away, you continue to insult and belittle him and his charachter here to defend your actions. What does that say for you? That you are petty, spiteful and vindictive...not exactly good traits for either an editor nor an admin. You are the sort who must tear someone else down in order to make yourself feel bigger. The HONOURABLE thing to do would be to apologize, publically and sincerely. But instead you take an almost perverse pride and reprehensable callousness IE-"If he comes back knowing his limitations good, if he doesn't come back well grammar is taught in schools. End of story." You say the system is fine...well we will see just how fine it is if you or one of your nominees ever faces it. There is NO ONE here worthy of serious admin consideration who does'nt have SOMETHING in their past which cannot be distorted and blown out of all proportion. There is no one here who does'nt have a boiling point and won't explode when the right buttons are pushed. It is only a matter of finding them and applying enough pressure. Tony's major flaw is his were easy to find. I wonder how well hidden yours are...I'm guessing hardly much better than his. It will be amusing to find out, afterall, according to you all Wikipedians are basically expendable.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 21:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Dual nominations

Is there any point to dual nominations? There was even a recent nom that had three conominators. Why not just one, and everybody votes? When are too many co-noms too many? Why not 10 co-noms? 20? Always concerned about scalability, --Durin 19:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's slightly silly but harmless. I hope that editors will try to mostly limit themselves to the standard "I was going to nominate him myself!", or make their positive remarks in the comments section. I don't foresee it becoming a major problem; there's only so many laudatory things that can be said about any candidate, so potential nominators will eventually run out of new things to say. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

What Ten said. I don't think it hurts anything; should a particular case become a problem we can deal with it individually. (It's not as though having multiple nominators affects the process itself; it's just unnecessary. And perhaps a bit embarrassing, for the candidate being gushed over!) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:15, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Come to think of it, are there any good reasons why we need any nominators? Why not have everyone self-nominate? I did - it never did me any harm... It helps those users who don't regularly come into contact with any particular other users to be nominated without suffering the increased social hazard that self-nomination brings. The only reason I can think of for having nominations is to let users recommend unknown users to the community. I don't, however, find that a desperately useful thing. ] 20:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

One good reason is modesty - some people feel uncomfortable telling others what great people they are. Failure to self-promote should not be a reason not to become an admin. Guettarda 20:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Im a supporter of co-nominations (I just did a co-nom with FireFox RFA) but I some how agree with the above. There should be a limit for only one nom and maybe one co-nom but no more cause if lets say User:Faa is such a excellent user that everyone want to nominate him for admin and when the request for admin comes he gets 10 co-nom than that will be ridiculos. Its harmless to co-nom but it could go way to far to control so a limit should be into 2 noms --JAranda | watz sup 01:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

If there's to be a limit, why any limit higher than one? Once you open the door to co-nomination, escalation seems almost inevitable, and capping it at any further point, arbitrary. Procedurally, anything after a single nomination seems redundant, unless there's to be some requirement for multiple proposers (which might not be a bad idea as such). Nominated is nominated, anything further is "seconding", or just plain "voting". But I agree it doesn't do any harm, other than the possible appearance of silliness/gush, as has been said.

Here's a thought for your collective idle consideration though: why not bar nominators from voting? Doing both is somewhat redundant, after all, as the nomination is required, and support is implied thereby. This might act as a (mild, marginal) deterrent against multi-noms, and as a (mild, marginal) encouragement to self-nom, which people seem often reluctant to do (perhaps understandably, given the occasionally fraught nature of the process). If those are desirable... Though presumably due weight would still be given to the gravitas (or whatever else) of the nominator, as at present. Alai 19:48, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• There's been past discussion about making RfA self-nom only. For what it's worth, I recently took a look at the success of self-nom vs. nom for nominations of candidates with more than 2,000 edits since June of this year. What I found was that 83% of non-self noms were successful. 68% of self-noms were successful. That's a 15% difference. The difference might be explained by other causal factors, but the difference is interesting nonetheless. Personally, I'd prefer to see the process remain open to people nominating others. --Durin 19:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• • ... but I'm not suggesting making it 'not open' to that. People would still be free to nominate others, just not to nominate and to vote. Alai 20:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Silsor and adminship reaffirmation

I think that Silsor makes an interesting case on his RFA, and it's unfortunate that some people immediately discount it as disruption. The issue seems to be the perennial question of adminship reaffirmation.

• Basically, the question is if adminship should be a lifetime position, or subject to review once per year. The latter system is used on Meta, and on several other language wikis such as the Dutch one.
• Review would simply mean to publically ask if there are any objections to the admin. If there are none, as would usually be the case, he remains an admin. If there are, a RFA-like vote is used.
• This is very different from RFDA, because an RFDA could be filed at any arbitrary time, such as whenever a dispute occurs; whereas revision only occurs once per year, around the admin's "anniversary". This makes revision far more even-handed.

What problem is this trying to solve? Basically, it's a matter of administrator accountability. Admins are said to have the trust of the community, and said to be held to very high standards. However, that isn't true in practice. Admins are subject to peer review but can choose to ignore it, and losing community trust has no effect whatsoever on their status, except if their behavior is so extreme that the already-overworked ArbCom has to deal with it.

Additionally, some admins have been around for years and have been promoted for different reasons than we use now. People change, and standards change, and people should not be in a position of authority merely for having been around longer.

This has been debated before, of course, but I've seen only two real objections. First, some people think that the sheer amount of admins here makes it impractical, but that's not actually true: for the vast majority of admins, reaffirmation would be automatic since nobody objects to them. If necessary, two or three objections could be required before the matter is put to a vote.

And second, it seems that some people oppose because they're afraid that they, or their friends, might lose their privileges. That hardly sounds like a good reason. There are a small number of controversial admins, and the thought that they should keep community trust may well serve as an incentive to behave less controversially.

Food for thought? Oh yes, and see meatball:DevolvePower and meatball:VestedContributor. Radiant_>|< 12:33, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Let an affirmation vote stand 48 hours. If three objections are raised it triggers a full re-vote and the admin will need the usual 70-80% plus to retain adminship. And I'll take a stab at something raised earlier: if an admin hasn't been active in a year they are automatically de-sysopped. Marskell 13:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Any admin who after a year of adminship hasn't pissed 3 people off hasn't been very active. Throw in those who will use this to try an impose insanely high standards and 3 votes per admin is pretty much garenteed.Geni 14:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

This proposal would virtually guarantee that anyone on ArbCom will have to face frequent affirmations; all of us (except maybe Mindspillage) have at least three people out there who don't like us enough to demand our adminships yanked. We'd all probably survive such attempts, but why waste our time and everyone else's? We have enough trouble convincing people to serve on ArbCom as it is. Kelly Martin (talk) 18:40, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

A yearly AdministrativePower review wouldn't be a bad idea. Admins who fail to show up for the review, voluntarily ask to be de-sysopped, or are criticised and respond inadequately to criticism, would be de-sysopped. Other admins would be kept. — JIP | Talk 13:20, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll point out that, on a purely semantic level, you've misinterpreted Silsor's request. He has not, in fact, asked to be reaffirmed as an admin — instead, he has requested, technically, that his admin status be removed (and, by stressing that his request is no different from any other on RFA, seems to be suggesting that one can nominate someone else to be "promoted to usership").

And another objection you didn't mention: since this has never been tried before, nobody is quite certain of the potential scope of such a policy. There is, indeed, a "small number of controversial admins" (who, for better or worse, tend to be among the most active) who could be quite certain of being forced into a confirmation vote. There is a much greater number of admins for whom the the level of opposition is less clear — they have likely made some enemies, but nobody knows how many. Losing a few active admins may be unfortunate, but losing a hundred would be rather more traumatic for the project as a whole; thus, since no-one is certain of just how many admins would lose their positions, supporting such a policy seems rather ill-advised. Kirill Lokshin 13:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think Silsor's request was misunderstood. I think the idea here is let's take the implication of his request and try to create a more plausible framework. Also, I very much doubt we'll lose anywhere near a hundred and, of course, bureaucrats would still have their discretion if they feel "enemies" have suddenly materialized out of nowhere. Marskell 13:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• Kirill, while I'm sure that a few admins would be "forced into confirmation", that by no means implies that we will lose all, or even most, of them. In fact I expect most confirmation votes to pass, so your allegation that we would lose a hundred admins sounds like a strong exaggeration. It is very unlikely that, as you seem to claim, many admins have sufficient opposition in hidden enemies. Please provide some evidence thereof? Being uncertain is no grounds for assuming the absolute worst.
• Most regular adminship nominations pass. If (as I strongly doubt) there are in fact a large number of current admins that would not pass an adminship nomination, then we are having serious problems with double standards here. Radiant_>|< 13:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

  My apologies — I didn't mean to imply that we would lose a hundred admins (I should certainly hope that wouldn't be the case). My concern, however, is that, if this were put into place and subsequently got out of hand, there would be no way of stopping it without being unfair to those who had already undergone the process. Kirill Lokshin 14:20, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• Despite the response to "What problem is this trying to solve?" I think this is a solution looking for a problem. I also fear that it's a form of m:Instruction creep. I do agree that there is a limited accountability loop for appropriate admin behavior. That loop is, at present, restricted to dispute resolution processes. The appropriate area is Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct#Use_of_administrator_privileges. Notably, this area sees little in the way of traffic. I have come across users before who have complained of admin abuses. I have routinely asked users to show me the evidence of their concerns. So far, I've received nothing in return. I'm not saying that what I received wasn't substantiative; I'm saying I received nothing. Of course, that is anecdotal. At this point, I think a new level of procedure/bureaucracy is premature. More evidence of the need of it needs to be generated. In an effort to help keep admins accountable, I started a (still very notional) project called "Admin watch" as a subpage of mine. Feel free to contribute there. --Durin 13:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
  • There is a difference between being downright abusive (which are very rare and dealt with by ArbCom) and not adhering to the high standards to which admins are supposedly kept. According to Misplaced Pages:Administrators, an admin is a "known and trusted member of the community". If someone no longer has community trust, should that person remain admin indefinitely? Radiant_>|< 14:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

  You've avoided defining "community", however. There is a certain group of users — the trolls, the creators of speedied pages, the submitters of copyvios — who would love nothing more than to exact their revenge on the admins who interfered with them. Are you quite certain that this group is not large enough to constitue a significant voting block? Or that certain members of this group, given the capability to remove admins, could not restrain their destructive impulses long enough to create a "legitimate" account with which they could vote? Kirill Lokshin 14:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

  Chicken Licken thought the sky was going to fall in. It didn't. -Splash 14:40, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that most admin nominees have never been admins before nor have they performed admin tasks. If we set the standard 70-80% threshold for reconfirmation, I expect that we will risk losing a large number of productive and useful admins simply because they are the ones who most often deal with active trolls and the most ornery editors. Every editor who you have temporarily blocked for 3RR, personal attacks, disruption, and other forms of asshattery becomes a potential revenge voter—and each of those revenge votes needs four support votes to be counterbalanced. Toss in a couple of 'legitimate' oppose votes from editors with honest qualms and suddenly we are in a position to lose a lot of admins. If we set threshold for reconfirmation lower to account for this, then you start getting charges that confirmed admins don't have the support of the community, and you taint their reputation for the next year.

Plus there's the delightful disruptive effect of encouraging the formation of cliques and voting blocs. If this is an annual process then we're looking at a couple of confirmations per day with our current admin population; it becomes a continuous election atmosphere. We've already started to see some editors engage in campaigning for and against RFAs—I don't want to see the practice take root in a reconfirmation process too.

This may also have an effect on our supply of new admins. If we start seeing a very ugly reconfirmation process–and frankly, I can't see how it won't be–then that is likely to give pause to new candidates who won't want to put up with the annual abuse.

Finally, if the vast bulk of confirmations are expected to pass, then the process is a waste of our time. Though the ArbCom is certainly busy right now, I don't see their docket crowded with cases regarding admin privileges. Requiring all of us to run through six hundred reviews every year seems kind of silly if we can't be bothered to refer six cases to ArbCom now. If someone has lost the trust of the community through misuse of their administrative power–even if it's not gross abuse–you can still ask the ArbCom to step in. If it appears that that process won't work, then we can consider creating a whole new massive bureaucracy. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Very insightful. Not quite related to my RFA but insightful nonetheless. silsor 14:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think this would be incredibly divisive, and I think we have enough of that as it is. If an admin is active at all in some of the more difficult areas they'll get a review virtually automatically causing a lot of ill-will, discouraging taking and defending unpopular positions. Any group needs some of its members to challenge the status quo and community assumptions and this would stifle that. We have processes for comment and de-admin right now, if they are ineffective then I think we should look at improving those first as a review function. Rx StrangeLove 14:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• Kirill Lokshin hit the nail on the head above when he pointed out that silsor has "requested, technically, that his admin status be removed (and, by stressing that his request is no different from any other on RFA, seems to be suggesting that one can nominate someone else to be 'promoted to usership')". This is the vital big giant neon-illuminated red flag that everyone should be looking at: silsor's actions are creating a back-door Requests for De-adminship, when every attempt to do so through community consensus has failed. This should be ended now. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 14:42, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Two responses to Ten... first, you're assuming that most (e.g.) blocks would result in revenge votes; I don't think that's correct - first, most blocks are not against established editors, and second, most established editors are not vindictive. And of course the 'Crats would discount obvious troll or sockpuppet votes. I invite you to take a look at the Dutch process, which is working fine on our 6th-largest Wiki. Second, you're assuming that we would have to vote on every existing admin, but that wasn't the idea. There would only be a vote on those to which objection is voiced. And I do believe that the average effect of campaigning is to vote down the nominee because he was gathering votes. You do have a good point about cliques though, but of course such cliques already exist in whichever discussion forums we use. Radiant_>|< 15:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, no—I don't actually assume that most blocks will result in revenge votes; I merely suggested it as an example of a reasonable administrative action that could result in retaliatory voting. Editors who act as mediators on our more contentious articles, or admins who try to keep the peace or warn users about WP:NPA violations might also tend to face problems. Any admin who's expressed an opinion on Gdanskig will probably face review. There are dozens of things that admins do (or should do) on a regular basis that may annoy the editors who don't take our policies to heart. We don't block editors (usually) for the more mild violations of WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:NPOV, and WP:NPA; frankly there are quite a few regular contributors who are dicks—it only takes a few to force a vote, and only a few more to push support below 75%.

Looking at the Dutch Misplaced Pages, they have only 66 admins: a tenth our number. Is it reasonable to assume that a process that works for them will work equally well when scaled up by a factor of ten? Of the fifteen candidates whose adminships are currently on the review board, nine are being voted upon; while it is true that they don't have to vote on all candidates, they still have to vote on a majority of them. I freely admit that I don't speak Dutch, so I'm doing a bit of guessing here—but between my broken knowledge of German and a little bit of machine translation, it appears that most of the oppose votes are based on candidates being insufficiently active rather than on their administrative actions or missteps. From what I can see, the Dutch process appears to affirm my suspicion that the process would be a waste of time. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

A "factor of ten" doesn't begin to describe it. The English Misplaced Pages had more than 66 admins (68 to be exact) confirmed in the month of October 2005 alone (see Special:Log/rights). -- Curps 16:07, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• And that will become more problematic over time. I did a linear progression of this recently. I don't have the finished data any more. But if I recall correctly, the progression showed that by the time two years from now we'll be nominating >100 admins per week. I don't think what is being suggested is readily scalable. --Durin 16:31, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

As an aside, Fred Bauder has recently created a page describing Administrative probation as a possible remedy that the ArbCom could impose. It is designed to cope with admins who are not "...able to adequately fulfill or conform to community expectations regarding some aspects of their responsibilities". Such a remedy could be appropriate for the cases where full-blown desysopping might be overkill but where there is serious concern about an admin's behaviour. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:38, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm minior burcratic challenge. If a review system was set to one year on what date would I be reviewed?Geni 03:23, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't see silsor stating anywhere that he is trying to prove the point that Radiant describes up there, to wit, that there should be adminship reaffirmation. Maybe that is what he's trying to prove, but he has certainly not been clear about it, and this strikes me instead as somebody trying to hitch the wagon of their own issue to the minor disruption of silsor's RFA so that they can get attention given to the issue without personally having to WP:POINT.

I also have an issue with the statement that People change, and standards change, and people should not be in a position of authority merely for having been around longer. I agree that that shouldn't be the sole reason, but "having been around longer" is one of the most important things to me in an admin. From my point of view a lot of admins have not been around on Misplaced Pages as long as would like. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Silsor

Hmmm, looks like Silsor is not requesting Admin review at all. He's requesting honorable discharge basically. Something we'll likely see more of in future.

RFA is the page best suited for now, though I agree we might want to set up a separate page if this becomes common.

Anyway, please state your support if you think Silsor has done a good enough job as admin, or oppose if you think he needs to stay on longer to prove he's good enough.

And do leave the RfA up, I'm curious as to the outcome! It can't do much harm to have it there anyway. :-)

Kim Bruning 08:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC) (Note also that the deadminship request submitted by Curps was denied )