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Why so few?

Just popped in here for the first time in many months, and was surprised to see that there are no current RfAs. My memory is that usually (a few years back) the page looked more like WP:FAC, and would have a huge backlog of cases; some with merit, some without merit.

Just interested why this would have changed... are entries being closed through WP:SNOW far more quickly than before? Or are the instructions now so good that frivolous or not-ready-yet applications are rarely made? Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 13:25, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Having recently gone through one myself (successful, on the second ask), I can confirm that they are not massively pleasant experiences - the close scrutiny of edits and the dragging up of some from years ago (at my first RFA someone complained about an edit made 4/5 years previosuly!), the sometimes-borderline aggressive questioning - I know we need to make sure we are giving the right editor the right tools, but it all combines to be a very off-putting week of your life. GiantSnowman 13:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Really? Our last candidate completely ignored his RFA after the first 2 days and breezed through anyway. It's only as off-putting as you make it.--Atlan (talk) 15:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ignoring your nomination does not really instill confidence in your desire to become an admin. GiantSnowman 15:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I meant ignoring, as in answering the questions and then let it run its course.--Atlan (talk) 15:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Which is what I did - though it still doesn't mean it was a stressful week. GiantSnowman 15:22, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I can imagine it would be quite stressful when episodes from your Wiki-past that you might have chosen to move on from are dragged up over again. I was involved in one of the entries on WP:LAME about six years ago. That would not doubt get pride of place!

Anyway, notwithstanding that I'm still not sure why the trend would be for fewer RfAs. I wouldn't have thought the unanticipated prospect of a stressful week would be enough to put off most chancers or medium tenured 'pedians who think they're admin material. The figures at WP:RFAU#Archive are quite astonishing - from over 500 a year in 2006/2007, down to just 88 last year. Something must have changed...  — Amakuru (talk) 15:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

We have also seen a massive decline in new editors, over all editing and more editors are leaving along with the issues with the process itself. All these are contributing factors IMO. Unless we can somehow stop eating our own young and running off editors, both old and new, and make the RFA process more friendly we are going to be in for some tough times. It wouldn't surprise me to see a significant decline in the status of Misplaced Pages over the next 2 - 3 years. --Kumioko (talk) 15:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Part of the problem is finding articles to write/work on. Most of the low hanging fruit has already been picked. In order for somebody to add to the project, they have to know something that has gone unnoticed/touched for years or be an editor type person.---Balloonman 18:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well thats partly true but it also doesn't help when the new article is summarily deleted as non notable (strangely there is a discussionon this currently brewing at the Village pump I think). Personally the notability rule has always been a bit of a dubious one because what is notability and how does it affect me. I personally think all Medal of Honor/Victoria Cross receipients are notable others may not. I could personally care less if we deleted every Soccer/International Football player article but to others this is a big deal. I personally think that we should be paying less attention to notable and more attention to Verifiability and references. There are plenty of topics that are "notable" but we can't find 2 references. On the opposite there are a lot of what we would consider non notable topics you could easily get to FA status with the amount of available content. --Kumioko (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree... In poker, there are people who are one hit wonders. They won a WSOP bracelet and then disappear from the poker work entirely. IMHO these people need articles if for no other reason to say, "hit the big one and did nothing else." People are going to wonder about that... and having a redirect to the parent article doesn't answer that question. Sometimes you need an article to say, "nothing else is known about this notable person." (Again, several Poker Hall of Famers are in the HOF, but the people who put them there are dead and all that is left are anecdotes/stories about them... nothing reliable.)---Balloonman 21:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Much of the problem with the RFA process is not in editors lack of desire to get or use the tools but in the process itself. As was said above, its usually a needlessly unpleasant expereince, full of insults, arrogance and frequently causes the editor to leave. I know many editors, myself included who are capable of using all or most of the tools but do not desire to go through the experience. If they should appear or could be requested in pieces as some can, then that would be a much much better thing to do. As I have said many times and have taken much criticism for it. We do not need a lot of admins, we need a lot of people that can do that various admin things. Even those with the tools rarely use them all and most specialize in one thing or another. --Kumioko (talk) 15:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Support the comment by Kumioko. If there is a serious problem with lack of admins, something should be done about explaining to grunt content editors like me why it would be a desirable thing to do. I'm perfectly content with editing articles I'm interested in, without being dragged in to resolve disputes that I don't care about. There seems to be a view that becoming an admin is some sort of "promotion". That's a complete myth to many of us - it seems to be a highly undesirable position, to me and presumably to others. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:00, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

As I've commented in the past, anyone who can be trusted with one administrator-only tool can be trusted with all of them. If someone is trustworthy and has a demonstrable need for one or more administrator-only tools, he/she should become an administrator. If there are administrator-only tools that he/she doesn't need, the community should trust him/her to not misuse them.

The problem is that segments of the community have developed unreasonable expectations of admin candidates. The idea that adminship is "no big deal" has faded, leading to the aforementioned unpleasantness at RfA (to which many users understandably don't wish to subject themselves).

In addition to creating needless complexity, splitting the administrator-only tools would encourage opposition to trustworthy editors' adminship requests ("You can just get tool x and tool y separately, so you don't need to be an admin."), reinforcing the perception that it's a big deal. —David Levy 16:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I do actually see your point here and I would be inclined to agree if the process itself wasn't such a painful thing to endure. Additionally, using myself as an example. I have no desire to go through the process again (I tried it several years ago) and under no dilusions that the community would likely not approve the submission anyway due to my very outspoken stance on several topics, especially recently, so there is little point in wasting my time applying. That aside, I would argue that as an editor with more then 300, 000 edits, more than 5 years experience, there are few templates I can't figure out (even the fairly complicated ones), etc. there are few tools I wouldn't be able to use correctly although I would probably rarely if ever perform a block, protect an article or any number of other things. It would have been very beneficial to me though to be able to edit a protected article or template, be able to move a file or be able to do several other things that are restricted to adminnistrators. None of which, IMO, do I need adminship for. --Kumioko (talk) 16:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The ability to edit protected pages requires a certain level of trust. If a user possesses such trust and can demonstrate a need for the tool, he/she should become an administrator. Just as we trust admins to refrain from editing complicated code with which they're unfamiliar, we can trust them to refrain from using tools that they don't need.

That the RfA process is painful to endure is a big part of the problem. It hasn't always been, and it shouldn't be. —David Levy 16:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

With respect. I agree that there are many tasks (such as blocks and revision deletions) that require a special level of trust above and beyond what should be given to the average user. I would argue however if an editor has been around a while they shuoldn't have to endure the gauntlet to get some of them. Again using myself as an example, if I could have made the changes I needed too to some of the templates relating to US related WikiProjects fast it would have spared a lot of trouble. As it was I had to do the change in the sandbox and then wait several days to a few weeks for someone to get around to it and sometimes caused unnecessary anxiety. I also shouldn't, as someone with quite a bit of experience have to request an administrator fix a typo in a fully protected article just because I didn't want to get the RFA lashing. I would also argue that, given the painful experience that RFA is known to be, to continue to tell editors that they can never do anything more than basic editing because "the community doesn't trust you" is an assumption of bad faith and is an enabler to the reason why so many editors leave. Of course I don't have any proof to support that claim but as someone who has edited in good standing for years (with the exception of the occassional disagreement with entrenched adminsn and editors with their own agendas) and hundreds of thousands of edits, if I haven't earned the trust of the community by now then I likely never will and should probably take the hint and invest my time elsewhere. --Kumioko (talk) 16:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree, unreservedly, that trustworthy editors "shouldn't have to endure the gauntlet" to obtain these tools — all of them (not merely "some of them"). This is the problem that we must address. —David Levy 17:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I think part of the reason for the drop in numbers may actually be all the discussions about RfAs. If you've been around long enough to have a fair chance at an RfA then you've almost certainly seen the "RfA is broken", "worse week of your life" and similar comments. Don't get me wrong I do think RfA is broken and I've seen some cases where it must have been horrible to be the user involved but the regular making of comments like that, without any changes to the process, must be putting people off. Bit of a catch-22 that.

As an aside I did watch my RfA for the whole week, there just didn't seem anything I needed to comment on after the first couple of days. Dpmuk (talk) 16:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I would also completely agree with that and that sorta goes along with the comment I made above about the RFA process. --Kumioko (talk) 16:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Ghmyrtle's comment about getting dragged into disputes as an admin is also quite right; in the months I've been an admin, I've gotten multiple profane messages regarding my intelligence, e-mails accusing me of all kinds of things (my favorite is being an evil colonialist Westerner trying to destroy India), and requests to intervene in subjects I don't care about at all. I personally find much of it strangely entertaining, and I can't help but laugh at some of the unbelievably ridiculous things I've been accused of, so I actually enjoy it. Ultimately, though, one ends up having a lot of negative interactions with a lot of people, which is something most people don't want to do. And though we often complain about the levels of incivility, it's very hard to bring yourself to do a block that you think even could be contentious. I and a few other admins are willing to because we can tolerate the screaming (from whatever direction it comes), but most people quite understandably have no desire to spend their free time being attacked on all sides. While I can't help but find a certain amount of humor in (for instance) trying to bludgeon some sanity into Indian caste articles, I also know that the vast majority of people don't enjoy it; if you don't, you probably won't like being an admin. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:05, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The bottom line is that everyone's involvement here is voluntary - and, for most people, that means it has to be enjoyable. At the moment, many long-established editors don't find being here very enjoyable, and many newbies don't find it enjoyable either. Perhaps the only people who do find it enjoyable are those admins who get a kick out of ordering people around (and I'm making no comment on what proportion I think that may be). So, if WP is to thrive, ways need to be found of making it a more rewarding experience (and by "rewarding" I don't mean that things like barnstars should be thrown around more freely). Before anyone asks, I don't have the answers. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

If I may offer a fringe opinion on the OP's question: There are now so few admin candidates because they are expected to be active content creators as well as to have extensive administrative experience. Only Wiki polymaths can expect to get the bit. This in turn leads to the inflated expectations described ad nauseam on this talk page. To succeed at RfA,

• an established content editor is requested to engage in monotonous Associate-Admin work. This diverts their attention from what they joined WP for.
• an established gnome, vandal fighter, or cleaner is requested to engage in content creation, even if that is not what they enjoy.
• taking up work "on the other side" cannot just be done as proof of concept, otherwise the candidate is seen as hat or badge collector.

The polymaths are all admins already or are expected to become admin soon. To expect "the other" editors to live up to the expectations at RfA is only realistic for people that can devote a lot of time, end even those need to be very determined to sacrifice a few hundred hours of work in an area they do not enjoy. I'm not really worried, however, because as soon as the lack of admins becomes apparent, expectations will be watered down. There is no crisis yet. --Pgallert (talk) 10:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Good points all around. The question of whether standards are too high has been discussed extensively on this page in the past, but the truth of the matter is that way the community has applied the standards has not been static. While RfA candidates are expected to be polymaths, as you correctly note, and while that has been the standard for a few years now, saying so doesn't give us the whole picture. For all the RfAs that are unsuccessful due to opposition over lack of experience, there are at least as many where the bulk of the opposition finds a specific event or tendency in the candidate's history to justify their opposition. This recently withdrawn RfA is an example of voters discovering something specific about the candidate (in this case, repeated misidentification of edits as vandalism) and citing that as their reason for opposition. Now, Christine (the candidate in question) appears to have had the experience generally required of today's applicants for adminship, and she may very well have succeeded if there wasn't an issue with something specific from her on-wiki history. I am not saying that those opposing RfAs for such reasons are necessarily wrong. What I am saying is that, depending on the time when the RfA occurs, voters might be more inclined to oppose a RfA over something like that, or be more inclined to gloss over it and see the forest for the trees. (And to a lesser extent, under certain circumstances, voters might be willing to cut candidates a little more slack on the polymath-status requirement.)

Pgallert, you've written that standards will become a little more lax once the number of administrators declines noticeably. However, I think that this already happens on a smaller scale each time there is a period of appreciably fewer successful candidacies. Fears of new-admin droughts play into the community decision-making process in a significant way, or at least that's what I suspect (I'm not exactly working with poll numbers here!). Take a look here and here. There were only four successful RfAs in December 2010 and January 2011. Of these, one was a user's seventh candidacy after a series of highly contentious, unsuccessful bids for adminship; another was itself highly contentious, with a verdict reached only after a 'crat-chat. Meanwhile, there was much consternation on this page about various problems with the process. In the following two months, the community approved a whopping 18 admin candidates, 17 of whom had never run for adminship before. So the question is: Did qualified candidates see the drought and seek adminship as a result, or was the community just more willing to gloss over lesser flaws and approve candidates who on the whole had the experience needed? As I alluded to above, I suspect that the latter is true, and that the community was reacting to the drought consciously or subconsciously. A closer look at those RfAs might help us get a better-justified answer, but that's a project for another day (and probably for User:WereSpielChequers, not me!) But I would not surprised to see a spike in the number of successful candidacies in the next few months. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 03:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi A Stop at Willoughby!

Hyperbole doesn't make your position more plausible.

Nobody has required polymath status.

Instead, a minority of RfA discussants consistently raise concerns about editors who have not written any, say, B-level articles. Having written a B-level article or a good article shows some competences in (a) writing and (b) complying with WP policies----both (a) and (b) suggest intellectual maturity and often show an ability to collaborate with other editors.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I've watched this thread for a little while and it has made me smile. The original comment was made 4 days after an RfA closed; it is now a week since the last RfA (according to the thing at the top). The last RfA we had was one of three, which all began within a few days of each other. I am not sure where the notion that suddenly no one is requesting adminship has come from. Three nominations in two weeks (which is essentially what we've had) is not a drought in admin requests at all. If we have no candidates in 2 months we might worry - although, it might just be a dry seaon. Requests for adminship fluctuates: sometimes there are three at once, sometimes there are none. Let's not get worried that RfA is in a lull; I would be more worried if we had a constant stream of ill-prepared RfAs. ItsZippy 20:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi ItsZippy!

Most internet writing is non-cognitive, but enables writers to feel part of a group. For example, if you read commentary about a video with Robert Fripp, you will see that most of the young men participating will be making comments about his sitting while he plays guitar. This adds no information to anybody, but allows the writer to feel that he has special knowledge that he can share with everybody.

Given that we share most of our DNA with chimpanzees, we should expect that much of our emotional responses will be rather similar to chimpanzees.

If you watch chimpanzees, you will see that if the alpha male bangs a door, then the other males will start to bang the door.

I almost forgot: RfA is broken! Jimmy Wales's statement is essential reading! There is a shortage of RfA candidates. WP has too few administrators! We should make it easier to silence opposition to candidates at RfA!

I feel much better! ;)

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Heh, very apt. The RfA talk page does amuse me; I tend to avoid posting here, but seeing such a long discussion about the lack of RfA candidates 4 days after three nominations close was too much for me to avoid. ItsZippy 21:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

There are editors (such as myself) who just don't want to become admins. I suspect there are probably quite a lot of us. And I also suspect that quite a number of us might make very good admins indeed, but have been around for long enough to ask the perfectly sane question of why on Earth would we risk putting ourselves through hell in order to become a janitor or bin-man ... If you;ve been around for a while, you'll have collected some foes. And they will turn up, yes they will, and they'll do that Kipling thing and you'll find yourself having to "hear the truths you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools". Not that I'm paranoid, or pessimistic, or anything. I could make good use of delete and undelete for dealing with copyvios, for which I seem to have a "nose"; I might conceivably use page protect wossname-thingie. It's unlikely that I'd ever use any other part of the toolkit. But go through RfA just for that? No thanks! ;p Pesky (talk) 21:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

@ItsZippy,

It's the same with blogs. Most blogs seem to just be "cut and paste" and linking of others' thoughts. No wonder that many of our new editors just cut and paste what they like.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess the reason for the extent of discussion is that everyone has some kind of opinion, it is mildly interesting and serves as a break from editing. So long as it remains harmless (which isn't a given), I'm fine with it and find it quite amusing. ItsZippy 21:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

My opinion

I honestly think RfA is what it is due to several factors, including the following:

1.) Historically it's been a bastardised hybrid of consensus and "voting" (as most pages which give extra tool or responsibilities to Wikipedians seem to be in one way or other). So along with that it's always been the case that any Wikipedian may "vote" for whatever reasons they choose, though in recent times, afaik, the bureaucrats have started to discount "because the sky was blue" or "we have too many admins" type "votes". So with that sort of vague definition of what criteria is required for adminship, imagine applying for a job this way. it's one thing to deal with being hired by committee when the committee typically has a consensus in advance of what they are looking for. But in our case, quite often the sky's the limit, both in quantity and in quality of expectations.

2.) The administrator package is a broad package. Unlike how pretty much all the other packages of tools are focused on a certain set of things, "sysop" is all over the place. Plus due to those tools, admins have picked up some de facto responsibilities on Wiki.

And not everyone is going to be good at everything. And that's pretty much what we're asking admins to be. I don't mean at every topic or every venue. But admins are not only editors trusted to do "advanced editing" (deletion, see deleted revisions, editing protected pages, editing mediawiki, and the like), but also as advanced policing the wiki: (protecting pages from being able to be edited, blocking individuals or even ranges of IP addresses.)

And along with these, closing discussions have traditionally been admins' responsibilities. Since typically it's admins who will be able to take action based upon whatever result of a discussion (per having the tools). So an admin not only needs to clearly understand WP:BOLD and WP:CON, but they need to be able to communicate well, and read for content. And those are things that not everyone understands/does well, either.

The argument has been that if we trust an editor to be good at one of these things, we should be able to trust them to be good at all of them. But that's just simply not always the case, and this has been shown again and again. Separately, all these things rate high expectations, and when all required together...

Having the expectation that an editor be good at all these things increasingly raises the bar than if there were separate individual types of admin. And then those who would do well with both advanced editing and advanced policing, could just get both sets of tools/responsibilities.

We're already starting to see some changes along these lines as things like "rollbacker" and other individual rights' packages are being split from the adminship package.

3.) Fear. Two specific ways in which fear affects the process.

First, modern society has set up an ingrained fear of authority. (If I do something, even if it my not be wrong per se, an authority figure can subjectively assess it to be wrong.) And also things like: "Why does the policeman seem to be following me? Was I speeding? I didn't mean to be..." This comes out in RfA in many ways. The general "we have too many admins" to the specific: "I've seen them do such n such and I'm afraid they'd do bad things to me or to something (some edit) I care about. So I want all authority figures to agree with me, just to be on the safe side.

Second is fear of abuse of the responsibilities and/or tools that go along with being an admin. this latter wouldn't be much of a "big deal" except that to remove adminship from someone seems to be very difficult and rare. So while de-sysopping is a big deal, so will be sysopping.

(As an aside, Sounds a lot like what The US puts Supreme Court justices through, doesn't it? Another case of where it's a big deal to remove one.)

4.) The normal nonsense that would be easy to see through/deal with if not for the previous three sections. Look at me, I "voted" against someone who reverted me, or "voted" for someone who supported my assertion in some discussion. Or the inclusion/deletion debate, or the fancruft debate, or the pseudoscience debate or a specific regional debate or or or.

Conclusion

The Requests for Adminship process is going to be a mess as long as:

• a.) removing adminship remains a big deal
• b.) The vast and myriad amount of tools and responsibilites continue to be lumped together in a single, multi faceted package.

YMMV of course : ) - jc37 22:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)