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:::::: Thanks for explaining why you do not wish to be an admin - understood and much appreciated. ] (]) 22:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
:::::: Thanks for explaining why you do not wish to be an admin - understood and much appreciated. ] (]) 22:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
:::::::Bags of good stuff there. Maybe an immediate "band aid" solution is a much more heavily policed RfA arena, with any bad faith or trolling or generally crap contributions being swiftly, and very publicly dealt with by existing sanctions. But it should be recognised that those sanctions should be applied to the max in such a sensitive arena as an RfA. A few heads on poles might "encourage the others" who might have similar thoughts, and may add candidate confidence to the whole process. ] (]) 23:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
:::::::Bags of good stuff there. Maybe an immediate "band aid" solution is a much more heavily policed RfA arena, with any bad faith or trolling or generally crap contributions being swiftly, and very publicly dealt with by existing sanctions. But it should be recognised that those sanctions should be applied to the max in such a sensitive arena as an RfA. A few heads on poles might "encourage the others" who might have similar thoughts, and may add candidate confidence to the whole process. ] (]) 23:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
::::::::Well yes, {{U|Irondome}}, that concurs largely with my way of thinking, ]. I do feel that just occasionally the community still needs to be reminded that RfA is not a free-for-all venue to behave as badly as possible with impunity, or to take strategic swipes at the concept of adminship in general. However, there are those who feel that by doing so would play into the hands of such attention seekers and ultimately encourage them and those of their ilk to do more trolling. They may be right - the majority of participants are one-off !voters; they leave their throw-away vote and often do not even come back to see what havoc the have wrought. It took 6 years to get rid of one persistent disruptor of RfA - perhaps they just left of their own accord because they haven made an edit to the 'pedia for over a year which coincidentally roughly coincides with the time RfA got noticeably cleaner. The actual pool of regular participants being quite small and generally comprised of people who know how to behave and vote sensibly. Sorry to sound like a cracked record {{U|Isaacl}}, but there's more on this too at ]. ] (]) 09:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
== Bot problem? ==
== Bot problem? ==
Revision as of 09:22, 12 November 2014
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I have noticed it is a bit quiet. Perhaps people are nervous given the 6:1 failure rate over the last month. Chillum07:45, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I've broken out my sixth form (high school) statistics, so forgive me if I make a mistake. So far we've had 36 weeks this year with 50 RfAs. That makes 2.78 RfAs per 2 week period on average. Modelling as a Poisson distribution (and so assuming RfAs are random and independent) the probability of any given two week period with no RfAs is approximately 6.5%. So unusual, but by no means out of the ordinary. (Numbers now fixed I think).
Of course, that's, as you say, assuming that RfAs are random and independent, which they may or may not be. Most university students in the States have had anywhere from one day (lucky bastards! at least they get out later than the rest of us) to three weeks of school, parents with school-age children presumably will have less time for the same reasons, and so on. It'd be interesting to go back through the years and see if there is a drop-off of activity (not just in RfAs) from late August through maybe October; a rough eyeballing of User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month doesn't suggest a pattern in successful RfAs, though. (Also, slightly off-topic, is there a list of all RfAs ever in chronological order, not split up by year/success/whatever?) Ansh66608:35, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
6:1 failure rate is not indicative of anything at all other than some (not all) of the failed candidates should have been clueful enough to read all the advice pages first and then realised that they didn't stand the remotest chance. Nothing for any genuine candidates to get nervous about.
Why always assume that the rate of RfA (or any other editing for that matter) depends on the academic cycle? Especially where the number of annual RfAs is now so low that it's impossible to draw any conclusions. Not all editors are schoolies - plenty of us are right at the other end of our careers, even some adminship candidates. KudpungMobile (talk) 09:36, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
That would be difficult to analyse given the relative anonymity of editors in general. However, the academic cycle is relevant even if students are not overrepresented because school vacations coincide with the periods that are the most popular times for vacations in general. For example, in the UK pretty much every adult, with or without children, will take one or two weeks of vacation between late June and early September. QuiteUnusual (talk) 10:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
@Kudpung: - not just students; parents who may need to tend to children going to school, teachers, etc. The school cycle affects more than just children. Ansh66619:12, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I remembered a similar conversation a while back. It was 2 years ago. An RFA was withdrawn on 21 Aug 12, the next RFA closed as successful on 1 Sep 12, then the next one closed as no consensus on 9 Oct 12. It was 31 days between the close on 1 Sep and the open on 2 Oct 12. What is happening now is not usual, but it is not unheard of. GBfan11:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps, after reading some of the recent ones, prospective candidates have asked themselves why they would want to go through such a broken (not just IMO) process. Note that this is the only comment I've made since. —— 13:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
I propose a college class on Misplaced Pages where students are graded by the level of responsibility they achieve on the site. Those who become an Administrator will get an "A" for "Administrator". Those who becomes Bureaucrats, of course, will get a "B", Checkusers will get a "C", and you know what happens to those who become Developers, or go to work for the Foundation. bd2412T15:10, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
As a student, I can say that I certainly would not run for RfA at any point during the year, due to the time commitment. Especially now that I'm in college, there's simply no time for me to even edit much, let alone go through an RfA. Since much of WP's editor base is high school and college students, it would be a perfectly plausible explanation for the decrease in RfA candidates. I suspect that once students settle in and get into routines, we'll start seeing more in October. Also, I get an "A", yay! StringTheory11 (t • c) 20:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Why a college class? I still think that there are so many who are ready and would run for RfA if only they could know what their chances are were in advance. I tried this, but was out of town during the discussion. I didn't get a chance to speak further on it as I was out of town. Bottom line: Totally optional, so not another hoop to jump through. Simple feedback, short and sweet. Caveat emptor. Maybe it could just have been in this format:
Easy pass - Your AfD work and clean record will do the trick. ~~~~
Likely - Sure. ~~~~
Almost certain - ~~~~
Outcome probably 100 S / 3 O - I can't see others objecting. ~~~~
Certain - ~~~~
Easy pass - ~~~~
Probably 80/0 - Do it! ~~~~
I wish this proposal could be revised in a way that everyone likes. I now regret the Village pump post. I wish I had boldly created the page in Misplaced Pages space just to see. What's the harm in this page existing? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Anna, doesn't seem like you got the joke. Read BD's suggestion again, carefully!
Also, yeah, that non-proposal...shot down because an inexperienced user doesn't know what "idea lab" means and took to mass-messaging admins about it, right? Maybe if the proposal was refined and formalized it would be more useful to consider. Or, just making it would work too, though I wonder what people would do... Ansh66600:57, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
An inexperienced user, yes. Considering the opposes, would you think that simply "just making it" would be in terribly bad form? It could go to MfD if it didn't work out. More potential benefits than hazards? What do we have to lose? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Well, I think that some of the people who were opposing had the wrong idea about it. And, I suspect that even with a reasonably supported proposal it'd go to MfD anyways. That said, "just making it" does not seem like a particularly good idea. A more complete, formal proposal would be better, IMO. Ansh66607:34, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough. I won't pursue this any further. I still think this sort of informal straw poll idea would result in new admins that otherwise wouldn't be and that the downside would be tiny. If others want to make a proposal out of this, fine. Thanks for the feedback. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:25, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, don't give up. I think it's a great idea, just needs to be formalized so that people actually see what it really is compared to their preconceived notions. Ansh66600:03, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, you guys. :) How could it be a bad idea? A little shallow water before a big plunge. Any guidance on how to get a formal proposal to look good? A model formal proposal somewhere? I guess I could ask some of the Idea Lab supports to help with the draft. Maybe I could start something in a sandbox and others might help knock it into shape. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:54, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Say, is there any way to actually find out if there are qualified prospectives who are too unsure to go through RfA? Some sort of poll? I mean, why propose something if there is no demand. Should I post at village pump? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 20:28, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
If you are concerned about a lack of Admins, or editors willing to take the job, then I have a suggestion. Instead of conducting a poll, why don't you nominate someone? -Ad Orientem (talk) 21:46, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
It would be interesting to see a poll, maybe at the pump, along the lines of "Are there any eds who are considering RfA in the next 2 years?" Just yes or no. At least it gives us an idea from a poll if interest is there, and if it is low, that may be an indicator of a long term systemic problem of a maybe complex interaction between RfA and the community. I think the existing admin "issue" is a straw man. It goes deeper than that. If there is an issue with RfA it least getting community feedback is a promising new road to fix issues down the line. I would support. Irondome (talk) 21:51, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
Ad Orientem: Because my nominating someone could result in one new admin while conducting a poll could help to figure out what the problem is and do much, much more.
Irondome: Indeed the very open "yes" or "no" would have great value. But I would still love to know the reasons behind the "no"s. Maybe that reasons is "because as an admin I would feel XXXXX" or it could be "because I'm scared of the RfA process". Maybe "If no, why not?" in the question? Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:04, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Sounds like you already have a good model in mind :). My thoughts would be along those lines. The right questions. A poll approach may be a useful tool if they are asked.Irondome (talk) 00:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Maybe you are right about the totally open question. See User:Anna Frodesiak/Yellow sandbox and feel free to tweak it. Do the brackets help diminish the "why not" part? Maybe totally open is best. Should it have a lead sentence like "I am trying to understand why there are so few new RfAs these days"? Maybe that would stop others from asking why I'm asking and then pointing me to some project page. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Anna, just so you know, I had an informal straw pole on my talk page the week before I ran for admin and left it up during RFA for full disclosure. I don't remember others doing much of the same, although it may have some merit as that is a better place to have someone say "you need more AFD experience" than at RFA. No one held the prior poll against me at RFA, and I would hope no one would know, 2.5 years later, if another potential candidate did similar. Dennis2¢00:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi Dennis. Yes, I think you are right about the talk page straw poll being best. After I posted at village pump asking, the responses did not say that reluctance was due to fear of what might happen during the RfA. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:32, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
RFA is dying
RFA is dying. Only 3 new admins have been promoted in the last 3.5 (three and a half) months.
If this trend continues, the admins will die out and will not be replaced, and the vandals will take over the project.
I propose that the pass rate be lowered immediately to 50%. A simple majority should be enough to demonstrate trust. What's worse - having an admin that 49% of voters dislike or having no admins and the vandals will destroy Misplaced Pages forever?
All you folks who disagree - what do you propose should be done? Even if WP has enough admins today, it will not have enough in 2 to 3 years unless new admins are promoted to replace those who leave the project.
Folks, this is an emergency. Radical reform is necessary. The 50% pass rate will be a stopgap while other possibilities (e.g. unbundling the tools or allowing bureaucrats or ArbCom to appoint admins without a full RFA) can be considered.
The answer cannot be to lower the standard. The answer could be to lessen the fear of the unknown with a pre-admin opinion page. If not a page for that purpose, then maybe some mention of the suggestion of creating a userspace subpage for those who wish to probe community views on their chances. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:42, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Not sure what that means. My point is that RfA is a plunge. People don't like to plunge into dark waters, even if they are expert swimmers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:45, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
The solution is pretty clear - do new page patrol, encounter potential new users who haven't figured out the ropes, and show them the ropes in a friendly, respectful way. Explain inclusion criteria, find sources to bring articles up to WP:N (or it's bastard stepchildren). Maybe merge, but don't try to destroy any work they've done that can be salvaged. Those who become regulars will continue to filter down to RfA. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way. There's no easy fix. WilyD08:43, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
There is nothing in need of fixing. All that's needed is for people to approach Misplaced Pages in the same way as they approach real life. Want a promotion at work or to be a school prefect? Then behave well, work hard demonstrating dedication, put effort into understanding what it means to be a prefect and demonstrate you understand it. Build up a track record; apply - result: you'll be supported or receive advice on how to be supported next time. There's no magic about this. QuiteUnusual (talk) 08:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Agree 100% with QuiteUnusual. There is nothing wrong with the process and anyone can become an admin. All it requires is to learn the ropes of editing and policy, to behave in a sensible manner and to ensure that interactions with other editors are always positive. Quality, not quantity of admins is what we need such that reducing the "bar" is not the answer. Philg88 09:00, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think becoming an admin is like getting a promotion at work. Putting aside the question of whether it's truly a "promotion", it's still far more public. To be the same thing, you'd have to work somewhere where: (a) everyone you work with knows you've applied for a promotion; (b) everyone you work with gets to comment on whether you should be promoted; (c) you (and all your co-workers) get to hear all of the negative comments that were made about you in the process; and (d) the record of your application(s) (and all those negative comments) is publicly available on the web to everyone. I suspect if anywhere adopted such an application process for internal promotions, they'd have real trouble finding anyone willing to go through it! There is unfortunately a downside to having a public process open to all... WJBscribe(talk)11:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Tangential I know: In which case I conclude that you don't work at the same kind of company I do where all the points you make broadly happen albeit to a restricted audience. Fail at a promotion review with my employer and it taints you forever. QuiteUnusual (talk) 13:00, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I agree it is not like a promotion at work. It is a bit more like getting tapped to be the emergency officer for your section. No money, some responsibility, and no perks, unless you really need a plastic orange helmet.--S Philbrick(Talk)17:48, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Oppose There is no crisis. There are plenty of Admins. Yes, we are experiencing a bit of a dry spell. It happens. Big deal. I for one am somewhat pleased by the slowdown. We have had way too many obviously NOTNOW nominations. Beyond which I think we need to pause and consider that not everyone can or should be an Admin. Lots of solid editors don't want the job, often for very good reasons. In the past I have suggested adding an essay or a section in the RFA page along the lines of "Reasons why you might not want to be an Admin." If there is anything wrong with the system, it is the perennial problem of unnecessarily acerbic commentary. I suspect that there are at least a few people who are turned off by the inquisitorial tone of the process and just concluded that they have better things to do with their time. But to the extent that this is a problem, it is certainly not one that will be corrected by lowering standards. -Ad Orientem (talk) 12:50, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict)*Some of us, including also WereSpielChequers who maintains the stats, and WJBscribe who closes a large number of the RfAs over the years, have been acutely aware of the problem for years but to lower the bar would not only be ridiculous, but would be to both play into the hands of the socks and trolls who make such suggestions and into the hands of the anti-admin brigade who could then devote themselves full-time to 'picking them off one-by-one'. With only 12 or so new admins likely to be appointed (I hate the word 'promoted') next year, it will still take many years before attrition at a rate of around 10 admins a year has reached the stage when all 614 'active' admins are no longer around. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:44, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Oppose I don't think the pass rate is an issue. We have few candidates because you can't get a day on Misplaced Pages without someone crying out how corrupt and unfair the admins are. Who wants a thankless job? Chillum Need help? Type {{ping|Chillum}}15:28, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I tend to agree. Admins sacrifice a great deal of their freedom in exchange for which they suffer endless abuse. That, plus the actual process (not the standards) would seem to be among the main reasons why so few solid editors seem interested. I will however concede that there are a few editors that !vote regularly on RfA who seem to have set unrealistically high standards for getting their !vote. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:55, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I plan to apply in late November. Having been editing for over two years, and having had this account for seven years, it occurred to me a few months ago that it might be a good idea if I apply. I often come across Misplaced Pages articles (mostly articles about famous personalities) that get quite a bit of vandalism from IP users who think badly of certain famous personalities. Other times, I come across articles about certain events, such as pay-per-views, that have jokesters who like to come along during the event and post silly things that only serve to interrupt editors who are trying to edit that page with updates during the event, making the editors' task too much and stressful. Having a few more administrators around for those types of things I think would be a good thing. I don't know if I'll receive it or not, but I'll at least apply when the time comes. In the meanwhile, I hope others apply and make it. Johnsmith2116 (talk) 15:39, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
RFA is not dying, but it is in a parlous state. Yes we are experiencing a dry spell. It started in early 2008 and has tended to get drier since. But the last four months have been exceptional by any standards, by far the driest period since the dawn of Misplaced Pages (early 2002 looks drier, but RFAs then were done by email and though we don't know which months they were in, there were rather more than we've had so far this year, or in the whole of 2012). There are various issues associated with having fewer admins around, but as long as we don't require existing admins to rerun their RFAs I'm not as worried over that as I used to be. When we find we have too few admins to maintain cover at AIV we will just appoint a large batch of poorly vetted ones, most of whom will do just fine. I would prefer that we appoint well vetted ones when they are ready to become admins, but I know I have lost that argument. My worry is partly that we don't know how much admin resource we actually have available, in theory we know how many "active admins" we have, but that is a laughable statistic which would equate me, and people who edit even less than me, equal with admins who are active as admins here for several hours a week. We don't know how many hours of admin time we need per week, how many are donated by our 600 or so admins, or how many "inactive" ones would resurface if asked. But my bigger worry is over community health. We have a wikigeneration divide between those who started editing more than six years ago and those who have become active during the drought, at some point that divide will widen to the point where we are no longer a self governing community, I suspect tht some people who started editing in the last six years already think that. Appointing lots of admins is good for community health, not only because of editor retention, but because it would enable us to spread the load so that we no longer needed admins who mostly act as admins rather than editors and because in my view we should have more admins amongst those who started editing in 2009-2012. I'm transcluding one of my charts to illustrate the current drought. ϢereSpielChequers10:25, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
If my memory has not failed me, once upon a time there used to be a list of editors who hoped to one day become Admins. Assuming it still exists, that would seem to be a great starting point for anyone concerned about a potential shortage of sysops. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:09, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
Why not M/M them, asking if they still wish to go for admin in the next year or so? At least we will have numbers then. We will know the extent of our future admin "gene-pool". They are a great poll base too for RfA related issues. Irondome (talk) 22:41, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
If you sample the calibre of the contributions made by users on that list, you will find it is not a fertile ground for recruiting able admins. It might be more productive to randomly M/M (whatever that means) users who are not on that list. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:44, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
I looked at about 40 members of Category:Misplaced Pages administrator hopefuls at random. About three quarters have been inactive for years, a handful more have only made a couple of dozen edits at most in the past 2 years, one had a recent warning for edit warring, one has a talk page full of copyright violation messages, and the remaining few showed no evidence of really engaging in any discussions. None would have a chance of RFA success. It looks like a category used mainly by wannabes but neverwillbes. Neatsfoot (talk) 15:34, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Actually, Misplaced Pages:List of administrator hopefuls further categorizes by activity level. To be honest, though, 40 is a meaningless sample size considering that there are almost 1500 users in that category. I'm sure some of the active ones (manual count says about 150) would be decent candidates, myself not included. ansh66617:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
RfA is withering because it's an adversarial popularity contest based on personalities and back-scratching, instead of an examination of competence. The result is inevitable, because anyone you even slightly irritate will vote against you out of spite, and editing disagreements necessarily lead to interpersonal irritations, with the result that the more experienced and (absent mental disorders) thus more competent an editor is, the more people they have who'll vote against them for personal animosity reasons. This is why most successful RFAs over the last few years have been of relatively new editors, not people with 5+ years experience. It's also why the admin pool is dwindling (retiring admins are not being replaced), and less competent and less trustworthy with the tools today, on average, than in 2010. Exacerbating factors are both the easy gameability of the system (make any histrionic accusation that can seem at first to be plausible, and this will cause a cascade of "no" votes from which the candidate probably cannot recover), and the "good ol' boys club" factor, in which old-school admins will vote against you and canvass their buddies via e-mail to do the same, over disagreements from years and years ago. RfA as we know it is doomed. This was obvious about 5 years ago.
The way to save WP administration and WP itself in the long run, is to unbundle all the admin powers, and instead use a series of competence tests. For some abilities, e.g. that to delete or protect/unprotect a page, this should be coupled with behavioral/judgement restrictions (e.g., to just make something up on the fly: no blocks within the last year; no topic bans or interaction bans within the last 6 months, and no vandalism, COI or other serious transgressions within the last 3 years; whatever). We don't want inveterate POV pushers getting the ability to win content disputes by tool abuse. And there should be a higher experience bar to cross for many tools, e.g. 1 year and 10,000 edits, to keep PoV-pushers from getting admin powers for their various sockpuppet accounts. But basically, anyone who is legit and who qualifies should be approved for most abilities that admins have access to, in a process like that for gaining the template editor bit, the account creator bit, and other abilities already unbundled. (Note how strenuously those unbundlings were resisted, for so long, by so many, yet hardly any problems have resulted from them.) Instead of a nearly impossible to pass, all-in-one approval process, have simpler per-bit processes, and make these abilities removable on a probationary basis, and on a permanent one after multiple transgressions. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 01:15, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Now now SMcCandlish, why are you talking constructive sense? This page is for facilitating the protection and enhancement of existing admin privileges, and for the eternal preservation of Misplaced Pages's own special heritage group, the appointed for life legacy admins. --Epipelagic (talk) 01:36, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
I disagree. Look at the latest, User:Philg88. He is totally opposite to what you say. He is no social butterfly, and scratches nobody's back. His competence was examined and was shown to be high. He has been in plenty of disagreements. He has been here for ages.
So, why was he overwhelmingly supported? Because of his competence. Because he is concise and doesn't do drama. Because, in disagreements, he doesn't dig his heels in and fight tooth and nail. Because he is reasonable and civil. Because he doesn't fight.
You suggest unbundling and giving tools to someone who was blocked 13 months ago, maybe multiple times, has had topic and interaction bans 7 months ago, and sure, vandalized and had other serious transgressions, but more than 3 years ago?I would never vote for that type of person. I just want someone who is "normal". I stand by the "airline pilot" thing. Maybe we should post at Wikiproject Airplanes or whatever, and ask if any pilot editors want to run.
Anyway, you might be right. But I think this place has tens of thousands of editors who could be good admins and some research instead of speculation is what is needed to find out what is going on. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Note the "most" in "most successful RFAs over the last few years have been of relatively new editors"; I used that for a reason. A lone counter-example doesn't disprove the applicability of a general observation about what is typical, in this or in any other context. Epipelagic beat me to responding to the rest of this with any demurrers. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 00:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Anna, I doubt that SMcCandlish had in mind such extreme examples as the one you made up. As for the rest, you are confusing what individual admins offer with what the system as a whole offers. There are plenty of good individual admins, yourself and Philg88 and many others. But the way the system is structured as a whole is deeply dysfunctional, "toxic" to use the currently fashionable term. If you examine the history of this talk page you will find it has almost wholly been dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of existing admin privileges, and has been almost wholly indifferent or hostile to reforming the system so it operates in a manner that is fair to editors across the boards. You were appointed yourself Anna as an admin who might give a human face to the admin system. But cosmetic adjustments like this ultimately do nothing to address the underlying injustices of this dilapidated system. --Epipelagic (talk) 02:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Good point about the extreme example. I was just trying to make a point.
So, as for detoxing the current system, I think we need to listen to non-admins and prospectives and take what they say seriously. Shouldn't some sort of organized research be in order, like opinion polls? I just don't know. I'm terrible at all this. Everybody at Misplaced Pages is so smart and they all make such good points. I have trouble weighing it all out. I'd better bail out of this one. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:43, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
This is an area where opinion polls don't work. These polls nearly always just endorse the status quo and nothing changes. Admin wannabes have an obvious COI and tend to be focused on preserving and enhancing the current admin privileges which they want for themselves. The same applies to the incumbent admins, most particularly the huge group of legacy admins appointed before 2009. Another group that turns up in force when such opinion polls are held are the drama board devotees. These users are here to socially network rather than to write serious articles. Some of them want to be important but can't write, and they can be resentful of users that can write. They sometimes have what they see as a moral and politically correct agenda, which like fundamentalists they use as a club for battering content builders. Drama board devotees are committed to drama. They don't want change because the current system is brilliant at maximising drama.
I suspect most dedicated content builders (the ones who are not admins) don't know or maybe don't care that these polls are happening. It takes years to really see just how crazed the admin system is. Their focus is on building the encyclopedia, not what is happening on the drama boards. The ones that do turn up are easily swamped. It is usually simple to show these mechanisms unfolding when one of these polls is held. There is a systematic refusal on the part of the admin corps and their retinues to examine the dysfunctions of the system itself. But until these dysfunctions are properly addressed, good admins will needlessly suffer along with the serious content builders. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
To be completely fair, part of the problem with unbundling has to do with the legal ramifications of accessing deleted content. There's nothing we can do about that as editors. Beyond that, I can't say that I'm part of any larger group of administrators; my only interest is in improving Misplaced Pages, and I've been solely focused on articles for about 2 years now. By and by, the problems with RfA mimic those in the real world, and I don't pretend to have any great answers. The best I can say is that any idea that has at least some chance to lead to some improvement, regardless of size, should be jumped at. That's how significant social change occurs in the real world, and following the real world would likely be the most effective way to create a better environment (whatever that may be) here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:08, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Ymblanter. I remember that. I took that test. That list is one-and-a-half years old, but may still be valuable. I see a number of outstanding editors. It is definitely not an exact science, though. I also see a few names near the top that would not pass an RfA in a zillion years. Anyhow, it would be good to see that tool running again. But, reflinks would be good too. Let's get that running first. Maybe throw a bit of that 20 million WMF has in the bank at the problem. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
RfA isn't the only thing "dying"; Misplaced Pages is
The table provided by ϢereSpielChequers is excellent. It is an excellent data visualization tool and certainly does highlight a drought. ϢereSpielChequers notes the possibility that Misplaced Pages is heading towards "no longer a self governing community". I maintain this is inevitable. Misplaced Pages growth is slowing. It is inexorable. See Misplaced Pages:Modelling Misplaced Pages's growth. The Wikimedia Foundation is well aware of the decline in editorship. Despite their focused effort to change this, they have failed. What the Wikimedia Foundation needs, and to date has failed, to understand is the life cycle of this project. The effects of the decline of Misplaced Pages will be dramatic and will affect the community of editors in every respect. If the Wikimedia Foundation refuses to consider the evolution of their product, the product will eventually be overwhelmed. The numbers at RfA are simply a symptom of this. Everyone knows that RfA is a broken process. It has been so for a very long time. Nevertheless, it doesn't really matter. No matter what process is used, the decline of administrators is inevitable as a symptom of the decline of Misplaced Pages. Still, this does not have to be a bad thing...if the Foundation had the capability to understand the lifecycle in which their product exists. Sadly, they do not. We can fret and fret about the state of RfA. No matter how much effort is put into 'fixing' it, or increasing the numbers of administrators confirmed through it, the efforts will be fruitless. The small bump we saw in RfA numbers in 2013 was statistically insignificant, just proof that even a dead cat bounces. Worrying about the decline RfA is akin to wondering why so little water in the Colorado River passes by Yuma, without ever considering what's happening in Utah and Colorado. RfA is part of a far, far larger problem that Misplaced Pages as a whole is facing. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:08, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
I wonder whether what is going on is that we are getting past the point where starting new pages becomes less important than improving the pages we already have. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Ok, so if this is so, does WMF have control of Misplaced Pages? If this is up to the enwp community, can't we fix it? Has this all been discussed at Village pump before? If not, why don't we post with "The Recovery of Misplaced Pages" "Many say it is dying and will not be a self-governing......what should we do...." etc etc. Good plan? I mean, why discuss it here? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:47, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
I don't buy it. What's happening is that the "sexy" phase of WP is over. There are almost no more major, important articles to write, only trivial or obscure ones, and most important ones are already developed and watchlisted enough that there's not a churn of activity around them. WP isn't new and exciting, it's work. We're in the second, more stable and long-haul organizational life cycle phase, and it is characterized by commitment and structure, not excitement and vision. The remaining volunteer "staff" are basically librarians, not investigators. This is natural and 100% predictable. We have a long way to go before we get to the actual decline and reinvent-or-die phases of the project as a whole. We're pretty alread at the terminal phase of RfA, however. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 00:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages is not dying, it's becoming a staple of Anglophone internet culture. Our Wild Wild West Days are over. Search results for any given subject are in the top half dozen results for any coherent subject; in fact they're often the first. There is absolutely no doubt about the future applicability of Misplaced Pages, the only question is that of internal governance. It's long ago past time to break down the "Admin" features of Misplaced Pages into coherent parts that can be exercised by committed and responsible editors. RfA is broken and has been for some time. We have to fix our ability to manage this project internally. We start that process by breaking apart basic maintenance processes from greater admin authority. GraniteSand (talk) 07:03, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
At the risk of appearing obstreperous, off-topic, or both, I have to disagree with some of what SMcCandlish says. The view that the encyclopedia is approaching completion and we should thus shift our focus to improvement of existing articles is one promulgated by the WMF, but in my view it's both short-sighted and harmful. Any comparison of our coverage with those of the larger foreign-language Wikipedias, or examination of any of the many pages - many in user space, some at WikiProjects - comparing our coverage with that of specialized encyclopedias will reveal our huge gaps. It's not just "obscure" topics, and it's not even only non-Anglophone people, literary and artistic works, institutions, and history. We have glaring holes. Unfortunately it's hard to know something is absent if you don't already know about it, or even if you don't think to look it up. (It doesn't help that there seem to be more and more editors removing red links - or replacing them with inline links to foreign-language Wikipedias.) In addition, our position as a non-paper encyclopedia - and a truly global one - means one has to careful about labeling something "trivial". Major companies in countries with which one is not personally familiar may seem trivial when first encountered in a new article; and every year brings not only new sporting figures and sporting records, recordings and other cultural events - many of which meet our notability criteria - but new publications and concepts, some of which will prove notable. As the internet permeates the whole globe, the rate of increase in new things we would probably not otherwise have known about will rise; we'll continue to get further from completion. At the same time, a naive interpretation of our tag-phrase as "the website anyone can contribute anything to" by people who may be unfamiliar with encyclopedias or who confuse us with LinkedIn lays us open to the uploading of résumés, biographies of people and musical groups who haven't yet made it, and any company that has registered its name. From the inside, it feels like a siege. And it creates a lot of tension for admins, who are tasked with protecting the encyclopedia by deleting and blocking as well as with explaining to the new contributors in as nice a way as possible, because we are the encyclopedia anyone can edit, regardless of the WMF's desire to emphasize certain kinds of editors ... and on top of that, it's desirable for admins to demonstrate that this is an encyclopedia-writing project by writing content themselves (ourselves). However, the multiplication of bureaucracy in the last 7 years or so has made it harder to keep that goal in mind, especially for admins, who are increasingly regarded as enforcers and operatives of the bureaucracy, in large part because the place feels like a siege. Admins are being treated like managers in some corporation, which conflicts with our mission focus, but is an entirely understandable error, since the project is becoming more and more corporate: and the WMF, as a corporate entity, sees it that way (in my view another failure of imagination matching the decision we have articles on pretty much everything important and should now become custodians). And ... I'll stop there. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:58, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Well, at this point, it's pretty safe to say, the relatively easy is done because that is how humans work -- unless there is a fundamental flaw, and if there is nothing will save it (that fundamental flaw would be, people are not interested in voluntarily creating a open source english encyclopedia (about all/many/some topics), and that is likely true for a certain set of the population). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
But "relatively easy" will vary by interests - I am terrible at writing about science and technology and have no idea where to find sources on rap singers, but those are both easy peasy for others - and to a certain extent by location/background (what newspapers one's library has in the basement, whether one has access to a university library and which one, familiarity with the politicians and terminology of different countries, what sports and pastimes one is familiar with ...) and there are still gaps in all these areas, not to mention a stream of new topics in all of them. Yes, not everybody wants to participate in the project; including an acquaintance of mine who is now retired from writing encyclopedia articles for money and understandably doesn't feel like doing it for nothing; and time and the right kind of computer access are often underestimated factors. But now I feel we are getting off the topic unless we bear in mind that the bureaucracy of the project deters many who would otherwise enjoy it, perhaps in small doses, and leads to many who have contributed getting dispirited - and that admins are both purveyors of this disenchantment and tend to get burned out by enforcing it. (See Dennis' post below.) In short, I don't feel that rating the importance of topics people might wanbt to write about in advance helps; I see it as counterproductive and making our message needlessly mixed. Think of it as the problem of unconscious bias if you like - no one can know how much they are not aware of. But our mission is to allow in all worthwhile knowledge. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:06, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
It is not hard to figure the why and wherefore of bureaucracy existing on this project: multiple people (strangers) doing something together -- and that is endemic in the model and in humans. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:20, 28 September 2014 (UTC) As for those unknown (by you or others) topics that nobody is working on, that was my previous point. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:44, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
What's wrong with RfA?
It always amuses me how newbies come onto this talk page with grand ideas about what's wrong with RfA without having possibly done any research into it whatsoever. Well, before anyone jumps down my throat , that's exactly how I made my first edit on this page 6 years or so ago, but at that time, nobody was doing anything about it. So I did (but I wasn't really exactly a newbie to Misplaced Pages).
Thing is, like the detractors who constantly bleat about admins and how they are all the nastiest people on earth, they never actually come up with an idea, or start a project to get something changed. Hence they are unaware of all the work that has been done in this direction already. That said, even if it has taken 4 years since WP:RFA2011 to get rid of most of the trolls who were determined to undermine the concept of adminship by destroying the RfA process, anyone who would take the trouble to review a few hundred passed and failed RfAs, will easily see how today's RfA are now a walk in the park for most of the serious contenders for the bit, without any major changes needing to be made.
Those who still hate admins today have either been tBanned from RfA, completely banned from Misplaced Pages, or have entered the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest block log on Misplaced Pages; other anti-adminship campaigners who still interject with their TL;DR mantras and diatribes are just no longer being listened to - it's just the crackling of thorns under a pot. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:44, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Good essay, that. Got a link to it on my user page too but I had fogotten all about it. Been aro0und a lomng time too. Thankl for the reminder. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:54, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm guessing you have seen the same problem I have Kudpung, the real problem isn't finding good candidates, it is getting them to run. The RFA process isn't what stops them, the loss of freedom once getting the bit is. Many are wise enough to see that there is a real burden with being an admin, and they would rather write articles and just do what they want: keep it fun. Sadly, those are the ones that would make the best admins, as they have no desire for "power", they just want to improve the place. Dennis2¢13:14, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Aye, there's the rub, Dennis. It's down to a few of us who are prepared to stick our necks out and get tarred and feathered by the mob for just doing the job we were elected for. Certainly old blokes like me who have been everywhere, done everything, and got a whole wardrobe full of T-shirts have no lust for power or need for anything to boast about in the schoolyard.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:13, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
Agree with Kudpung, with one exception: a lot of the time the so-called "newbies" who post here are sockpuppets of long-banned users, such as the one who started this whole long ridiculous thread. Unlike what Kudpung suggests, being banned doesn't stop them from continuing to try to take down RfA. I guess some people just need to grow a sense motive, and figure out when WP:RBI needs to be applied as opposed to meaningful discussion. ansh66618:47, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
"Many are wise enough to see that there is a real burden with being an admin, and they would rather write articles and just do what they want: keep it fun." I'm not sure if Dennis meant me, but that's exactly how I see it. Other admins would hopefully benefit me coming on board and taking away some of the stress and hassle, and if I'm editing for the long term, I shouldn't just sit by and let other people have to deal with that. On the other hand, do I want to go through a week's open book exam while people give lengthy critiques of my conduct, some of which I'm probably already aware of and would agree with (we're all human)? Not really. When I mull those over in my head, it seems an easy choice to procrastinate over something else instead. And to be honest, if I had to pick a "reward" to aim towards on WP, it would be a self-nominated FA, which I still haven't done. Ritchie33310:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
I was pretty lucky in that everyone was kind to me during my RFA, but even so it was a stressful week, just not knowing what to expect. However, for those thinking of taking on adminship, I'll report my experience since May, when I was given the 'mop'. I have carried out about 600 page deletions, 20 history merges, examined a lot of deleted content to compare it with recreated drafts (very useful), restored a few pages and moved some pages over redirects. A lot of this was in conjunction with my everyday editing, but some were items that came up on my watchlist or were requested by non-admin editors on my talk page. I've also been using AWB, which isn't necessarily an admin thing, but came with the package. I haven't closed any AfDs or MfDs, although I know how, because the ones that I see always seem to need more input, but that's the next thing I'll likely do. No one has pressured me to take on more stressful admin tasks. It felt a little weird at first not having a "guardian angel" on my shoulder taking care of the tricky bits, until I realized that it's nice to be able to fix your own mistakes (such as the time that I accidentally deleted Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions ...twice). Even though so far I am not a highly active admin, I feel that I am doing my part by taking on the tasks that in the past I would have asked an admin to do, and so freeing up the more experienced admins to help others. In summary, I would encourage anyone who feels qualified to accept a nomination for adminship. The actual RfA process may be stressful, but it's short-lived, and the aftermath is only as different from the regular Misplaced Pages editing experience as you want it to be. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
Well said Anne! If anyone suitably qualified is thinking about an RfA then go for a nomination. You'll likely find it's not as bad as you thought it was going to be and you may even be pleasantly surprised. Don't expect to get much sleep the week that you run. As soon as you hit the sack your brain will demand you get back up and take one more look at the !voting ... Philg88 14:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
Same, with this whole "0 articles written/improved to ___ status" thing (I love doing research, but don't have the patience to write it all down and stuff, hence mass participation at AfD)...of course, that's not my only problem, but definitely the only one that makes me not even consider it. I don't think the typical standards themselves are too high, just that the process by which those standards are examined (as Ritchie talks about above) makes it seem too high a bar to go through. ansh66619:49, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
ansh, have you thought of finding a collaborator who likes to write but doesn't have the patience to dig for sources, and creating articles together? I'd be willing to bet some good articles would come out of that. I don't see that an admin necessarily has to be a prolific writer - just to understand the process of article creation through participating in it. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
(This is mainly in response to Anna's "we need to listen to non-admins and prospectives" comment above). I've looked through a few RFAs and found many cases of oppose !votes on what I would consider to be not serious problems. For example, an editor who's never done a NAC is opposed as "needs more experience of admin-type work", but an editor who's done NACs is likely to have them all examined and then be opposed as "as a non-admin you shouldn't have closed this particular discussion". The path between not being bold enough to demonstrate skills and being too bold as a non-admin is so narrow (if there is a path at all) that unless someone studies RFAs etc and plans what editing to do on that basis then they are bound to stray off the path and get oppose !votes.
It's easy to !vote oppose at RFA ("candidate doesn't meet item 17b in my list of RFA criteria"), but anyone who !votes support ("can't see any problems with this candidate") either has to spend a long time checking the candidates contributions or risks looking a bit silly when someone spots something dodgy the candidate did thousands of edits earlier. For that reason strength of argument should be more relevant (as it is at XFDs) than the number of votes (as currently at RFA). XFDs can be closed with a statement like "although the majority of !votes are X the strength of policy-based arguments is Y", but afaik that doesn't happen at RFA.
As a wikignome (rather than a content contributor) I'm not going to apply at RFA unless the de facto criteria for adminship changes from whether the candidate has enough DYKs etc to be rewarded by adminship (and has the "correct" balance of different types of edits) to whether the candidate can be trusted to use the bit wisely. DexDor (talk) 06:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
I am an admin and I haven't created any DYKs or FAs or even GAs. You have created a lot of content! From what I've seen, editors at RfA seem to want evidence of good knowledge of deletion policy, such as AfD and MfD participation or CSD nominations, and evidence of ability to keep your cool in discussions. One thing about going into an RfA: even if you don't pass it, you'll come out knowing just what to do to prepare for a second run in the future. I also learned a lot from the material I had to look up to answer the questions. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
I have some ideas on what's wrong with RfA. (Please don't disregard my comment just because I'm a relative "newbie". I know more about wikis than people may assume I do). I've read over many RfAs, successful and unsuccessful, and I've also read over all the previous discussions concerning RfA. From my research, there are two outstanding problems that I feel are a big part of the RfA problem, and if eliminated, they might solve a good part of the issue.
We want all candidates to be the same. For example, people who specialize in anti-vandalism or gnomish jobs are rejected because they haven't created content, which many people claim is "essential" for adminship. Now, I fully appreciate the importance of the content creators, but not everyone has the time or skill to write in the "encyclopedia prose" and instead prefer to do backstage cleanup work. Ironically, despite my username, I don't imagine myself creating a lot of content at all, simply because just about every notable topic I can think of already has an article. (However, I do plan on doing some copyediting here and possibly some article creation over at the Simple English, where there's an abundance of red links. I also plan on contributing cross-wiki sometime, so I may create some things over at Wikibooks and possibly Wiktionary). Now, here's how I've always thought of it. If someone doesn't know how to cook, would that mean they're unfit to clean up the kitchen? No. It's unfair to reject someone for a cleanup job just because they don't make the thing they're cleaning up. The same goes for adminship. Adminship is merely supposed to be a mop, and almost no content creation is actually involved with it. Just a provable knowledge of policy is needed. Think about what would happen if all our "Hugglers", "STikiers", "Lupiners", and the other vandal fighters left for a day. Soon, we would be overrun with vandalism that would soon spiral out of control and the damage would take weeks to repair. If that ever happened, I feel the community would be much more appreciative of the anti-vandals than they were before. On the same token, our site would soon be overrun with broken links and typos if it weren't for the gnomes. A great example of this are Cobi's RfAs. It took four times for him to pass (, , , ). Of course, Cobi is the mastermind behind the great ClueBots, which are the greatest inventions in the history of anti-vandalism. Obviously, Cobi was definitely trying to help Misplaced Pages and deserved the tools (in my opinion, anyway), but he was continually denied them because people were trying to force him into something that he felt uncomfortable with (namely, article writing). The same thing applies to all other vandal fighters; not just those who have created bots.
We have unrealistic expectations of candidates. The tiniest blocks, errors, and disputes are used against the candidate in an RfA. The !voters always seem to forget that humans are not perfect and will make mistakes. I once saw an RfA where a few CSD slip-ups were used to oppose the candidate. Some other RfAs have failed because of a one isolated civility incident. Really, we need to be more understanding and supportive of candidates and not go around purposely searching for every little mistake they ever made.
Is Adminship a Big Deal?
It's a mantra. "Adminship is not a big deal." But, to do average contributor, does it appear to be a big deal? In my opinion, yes. Here's why.
Now, to start, I personally know that no user right is a big deal. Ever since I began to actively edit wikis about five months ago, I quickly learned that user rights don't earn you a wikiShrine and automatic respect. In fact, even though you may covet the buttons when you don't have them, I've found that when you finally get them, they don't feel too special anymore.
But, to some others, this is not the case. So, what does make adminship look like a big deal?
The incredible difficulty of RfA. Like I mentioned above, you have to be an almost perfect contributor to become a admin nowadays, so that's one reason why adminship appears to be an "elite group of perfect people". If we actually start showing that admins are just regular people and not just saying it, we'll make our mantra look more true.
The mystery of the tools. Admins have magic wands they can wave and make pages vanish at a whim. They have the golden key to lock pages from editing. Admins have a mysterious tool that can stop any user from editing at any time. (Of course, that was meant to be written humorously.) However, there was something that helped me to understand that there really is nothing special about the admin tools. What was that? Screenshots. I found some pictures of the admin interfaces on Meta some time ago. I feel that seeing something concretely helps you learn that in the end, adminship is just extra buttons and checkboxes. If we could find a way to de-mystify the tools without unbundling them, I think that would be helpful.
So, when I file my RfA in a few months, I'll only be doing it because I feel I can help the project. Not because I imagine myself getting a crown and purple robes.
I agree User:WritingEnthusiast14. I feel that adminship is treated like a big deal, then when someone asks if it is a big deal, everyone says no, then they go back to holding adminship up again. I have the extra tools on two Wikimedia sites, therefore I know it's really just a few extra tools. But to the average editor who hasn't had the toolkit anywhere, it looks like a huge trophy and magic wand, IMO. BTW, I think with a few more months of experience, and a higher edit count, you'd be a good RfA candidate, WritingEnthusiast. --AmaryllisGardener19:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
WritingEnthusiast14, having voted on hundreds of RfA over the years and doing a lot of research into it at WP:RFA2011, I believe the only people who really think it's a big deal are those who are possibly rather new to Misplaced Pages, and maybe perhaps rather young. Certainly the users who join Misplaced Pages and almost immediately place one of those 'I want to be an admin someday' userboxes on their user pages are the least likely to really be potental candidates any time soon. Those who are a bit longer in the tooth and been around a long time are mostly aware that being an admin is anything but a cool job, nothing whatsoever to be proud of, and judjing from the low activty of a great many of the 1,600 admins, it's possible they wish they had never bothered in the fist place. The real elite on Misplaced Pages are the prolific content providers who plod along creating sensible new articles, improving others, staying out of trouble and, unfortunately, hardly ever getting noticed. KudpungMobile (talk) 11:50, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
I think Newyorkbrad said it best calling it a "medium sized deal" in a previous discussion, a year ago or so. You can do a lot of damage with the tools, and RFA is a gauntlet, thus getting the bit isn't easy. That said, having the bit shouldn't be a big deal nor make anyone a super user. (To quote Yogi Berra "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.") . With all the discussion, and drama, and effort to reform/fit/etc the admin process, calling it "no big deal" sounds disingenuous in some respects. Dennis2¢13:13, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
No it is not a big deal. You don't get to declare rules or use your tools to any sort of personal benefit. You simply get the tools needed for basic maintenance of the site. We are janitors, janitors who get accused of conspiracy theories and insulted at random. Chillum16:58, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
@Chillum: WritingEnthusiast14 knows that it's not a big deal, himself stating "Now, to start, I personally know that no user right is a big deal." I think the point he was trying to make is do others make it appear to be a big deal. Just throwing that out there. --AmaryllisGardener21:12, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
I've been on Wikibreak for the best part of nine months. It's nice to see that some things never change – unfortunately where vested interests are involved change rarely happens.
Accordingly my view on the subject hasn't changed. While acknowledging that there is a framework in place which all admins must follow, the elephant in the room remains the question of whether adminship is a quasi-judicial role or a janitorial/dull technical one. Some admins are excellent at acting in the former capacity, while others are not. The fact that the number of successful RfAs has fallen off the edge of a cliff in recent years, even in the context of sitewide editing statistics, is as strong evidence as there could possibly be that people's perspective on adminship is increasingly shifting towards the former definition. —WFC— FL wishlist17:16, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Nostalgia
I actually wandered onto this talk page with the intention of starting a thread about the aforementioned drought here at RfA. When I first began editing several years back, it was a very rare occurrence for there to be no active RfAs - and when it did happpen, it would only last a few hours, tops. This sort of drought was literally unheard of. I think Dennis is probably right when he says that many good candidates are intimidated by the job itself. I also think it's true that a lot of people find the whole process of acquiring the tools to be arduous and even frightening.
Does anyone think it might be a good idea for us to lower our expectations when it comes to administrators? By that, I mean not expecting them to be the most well-rounded contributors with an excess of experience, just enough so that they know their way around the place. There are two skills that I think we ought to be looking for in particular: good judgment (thinking before acting, reading before delving into unfamiliar territory) and a consideration for the feelings of others. RfA questions can be used to gauge these things. There's a reason it's called an "open-book exam", and if they can effectively read up on policies and respond in kind, then they're probably suited to the task regardless of the credentials they bring to the table. Kurtis16:53, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
I think candidates are intimidated by a minority who insist admins are a corrupt force and are engaged in conspiracies. As an admin I have so much baseless vitriol spit at me in a day I have had to grow a second skin.
I encounter situations where users are engaged in abuse towards others and when I try to intervene I get comments like "if we just ignore it there will be less drama" or "if you block it will create more drama".
We have a culture where admins are regularly blasted for doing exactly what the community expects from them. I don't think RfA is the problem, I think it is Misplaced Pages's current culture of tolerance to abusive behavior.
Frankly those capable of doing the job are those who have enough intelligence to see that it is thankless. Chillum17:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
And you and I both know all too well that the civility debate is as old as goddamned dirt. It goes on, and on, and on, and on — and after all these years, all the ANI threads, the user conduct RfCs, the ArbCom cases, the botched attempts at enforcement, everything is the same. The untouchables are still untouchable, the battles between the "administrator corps" and the "people's brigade" persist, the same old song and dance routine is regularly rehashed at ANI. When it comes to civility enforcement, nothing changes. Kurtis20:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Desysopping process
At this stage, would it be realistic to pursue another initiative to create a process to remove adminship? A process like that would surely transform and loosen up RfA, and it's perhaps the only practical way to revitalize the moribund RfA process, if we could just get some agreement on how to do it. Everyking (talk) 00:55, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
Sometime in the now seemingly distant past, I was involved in WP:CDARFC. I know from past experience that, for every argument that a community desysopping process would make RfA more relaxed, there's an opposing argument that it would make fewer editors want to try for RfA. In the time that has since passed, it seems to me (others of course may disagree) that the community has evolved a lot, in that administrator misconduct that was tolerated several years ago, is not tolerated today. And the Arbitration Committee has evolved along with the community. As a result, in my opinion we now have the process that we need, which is to contact ArbCom, who are quite prepared to deal with clear-cut cases by motion. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:30, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
Maybe that's true. But if adminship can now be removed more easily, and abuse is not as tolerated, then why do you suppose people are still so reluctant to vote in new admins? For some reason or another, the process is moribund. Everyking (talk) 00:13, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
I think that a community-led desysopping process is absolutely vital, and it's a shame that nothing exists yet. However, the standards have to be sufficiently high that a small group that an admin has pissed off cannot band together and recall him or her for something trivial. A balance needs to be found, where it is not a trivial manner, but certainly doable. The hardest part, IMO, is finding this balance. StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:21, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the recently lower level of RfA activity really means that the RfA process is moribund, or at any rate that it is unable to provide what the community wants. Perhaps some RfA candidates fail because editors are uncomfortable about being unable to recall them if confirmed, but perhaps this is just a case of high community standards. Perhaps, because abuse is less tolerated, editors see no point in supporting candidates who are likely to have to be recalled. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
It's time to close RFA / RFB
The RFA / RFB process has quite clearly fallen into disuse. Only by permanently closing this failed process will a better process be invented. Townlake (talk) 04:41, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
RfA is certainly far from dead. However, while we have been expending endless amounts of cyber hot air on the subject of RfA, I think a plausible argument could be made that RfB has in fact become a dead letter. -Ad Orientem (talk) 13:40, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
There's always a need for new admins, just because of regular attrition. For example, when the last successful RfA passed on 21 August 2014, there were 613 active administrators . Now, two months later, there are 593 , a drop of 20 admins. Compared to last year this time, we're down 39 admins. That's net, mind. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:10, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
TOWNLAKE!!! You've got to be kidding right?? RfA is not dead - it remains fantastic voyeuristic entertainment for those who take sadistic pleasure in watching character assassination!
Granted, most veteran editors are getting wise to this and refusing to run. But that's a GOOD thing! We can't have the admin corps replenishing its ranks! Misplaced Pages is loosing about 100 active admins per year. An unchanged RfA could soon result in only a few dozen active admins. Those who stay will be rewarded with a massive concentration of power.
It's a great thing standards have got so high. It's like New York city insisting no one is hired to its police force unless they're good enough to be an inspector Morse or Colombo. Granted, even a Columbo can take weeks to solve a difficult case. Don't worry, a dozen Colombos could still keep order if instead of wasting time investigating, they just lock down whole blocks every time there's a crime. Im so glad the RfA community has had the good sense to unanimously reject your proposal! FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Joking aside, thanks Townlake for a bold and timely proposal. Perhaps there is no need to MfD this page, but if no serious objections are raised we should mark this process as historical and retire to the village pump to decide on its replacement. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:00, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Poll on admin. staffing levels
OK, let's have a referendum:
Considering currently active administrators in relation to those tasks that require administrative tools, based on your experience are there at present:
6. Admins appointed years ago who show consistently problematic behaviour can't be removed, except by processes that will be shot down by admins appointed nearly as long ago? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:01, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Discussion
This is irrelevant. New admins should always be appointed. First, to replace those who retire and second, to ensure fresh views are present in discussions that require an admin presence. Also, the number of active admins has no bearing on whether or not an editor can pass RFA. --NeilN19:51, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Agreed, I'm reminded of a few years earlier of a user who used to oppose every RFA he saw because there were "Too Many Administrators Currently". I don't care if there are 10 active administrators or 10,000. If we (The Community) trust their judgement and experience I don't see the harm in giving them the tools. --Church20:21, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps a better question would be, which specific admin areas are consistently backlogged, and are there experienced non-admins who work in those areas whom we could nominate as administrators? GoPhightins!20:38, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Of the people I've sought out, using this same logic (which I agree with), most simply didn't want to be admin even if the bit was handed to them. These were very experienced editors who said it wasn't about RFA, it was about the hassles admin get after RFA. Being an admin is not nearly as much "fun" as most people think, and 2.5 years into it, trust me, it gets less fun each day. Dennis2¢20:49, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Dennis- there are some who see it like that, but the reason most refuse to run is because the process is too hostile and random. See this recent request for candidates from TParis, where several veteran editors give this reason. Folk love to be moderators even if its just on small facebook groups - being an admin on one of the worlds foremost web site is even more rewarding, see the prestige thread below. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Not for all of us. Some of us are old, have owned businesses, ran departments, have families, and view Misplaced Pages as rewarding in a different way, but "prestige" isn't really on the list. Most admin don't even use their real names, so if it is prestige, it stops at the gates of the front page. "Making a difference" ranks up there, but bragging rights doesn't. As for why admin tend to leave less often than regular editors, that isn't a shocker: they are already vetted for being regular contributors with a level head, and by virtue of seeking adminship, they are emotionally invested in the idea of a 💕. Of course they leave less often than a regular editor. And to correct one thing: I've had my ass chewed on by other 100x more since being an admin than before, where I did a fair amount of mediation and AFD work (hense why I ran for admin). I agree some newer people are more submissive to admin, but some older people are flat out more hostile when they see the bit. It is a mixed bag at best. Dennis2¢22:22, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I agree Dennis, for some adminship is both a burden and a duty. And like many regular editors Im grateful to the entire admin corps for the work they do, regardless of whether they enjoy the status or are purely selfless servants. But my point stands. Most humans desire status. And while admin status may be a red rag to a bull for some, Kudpung's study shows in the general case admins receive more positive interactions and less negative ones than regular users. Regular users are finding the editing environment is getting more hostile too. Perhaps it's even worse for them, as the study might imply. And perhaps the declining number of admins to moderate trouble is part of the reason for this? FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:44, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I haven't analysed the data or the methods, although I know Kudpung quite well and trust his math. Keeping in mind that you can often draw different conclusions from the same data. It may be due to less mediating from admin and non-admin (and I'm constantly saying we need more non-admin mediating, the bit doesn't make you a better mediator). Honestly, I used to do a lot of it but have lost my taste for it here. While people are freaking out around here because someone says a swear word, the real damage is from POV trolls who will grind and grind and grind until they wear everyone out with wikilawyering and they get their way, with nary an offensive word, but that is called "civil". We used to just duke it out a bit and move on once a consensus was found, but no more as we worry more about being politically correct and less about being factually correct. Perhaps that is part of the change from "creating" to "maintaining", I have no idea. Dennis2¢22:55, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I guess we have more questions than answers. What's not in doubt is that recently we've been losing active admins at a rate close to 10 per month, and promoting at a rate of 0 per month. FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:14, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
As well as need for the tools, other considerations include: How would it help community health if veteran editors had a feasible progression path? If there were more admins, would this mean more attention could be given to tricky situations and newbies who need help to adapt to our ways? If the admin corps keeps shrinking, would the resulting concentration of power be good or bad? FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm not so sure about how this would work if there was not a request of some sort. I kind of understand the "reluctant" part, but it doesn't make sense to somehow start sysoping random look-goods through an undescribed process. Dustin(talk)21:26, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I like the idea of the category, I should probably add myself to it :-) But then people who wanted to ask me for help might feel I was saying I didn't want to help. And those who voted me in might be a bit hurt. There's the rub, you see - it's a responsibility. We do need to vet admins carefully - for one thing, the WMF doesn't permit us to peel off many of the admin permissions without requiring a comparable vetting process, and now that I have them, I see why; they are connected, and sometimes I wind up approaching something one way, sometimes another. We can't predict accurately what our needs are in terms of administrative personpower because admins are volunteers like anyone else - I don't pull my weight in helping clear backlogs, but occasionally I do a stint (and often feel miserable afterwards), and I quite often see things that need doing and am glad I have the tools to do them. And I sometimes get a request to help someone. Whereas other admins do a tremendous amount of admin work - but they too have off-wiki commitments, get burnt out, decide to give other kinds of work here a higher priority for a while. As an essay somewhere says, having more admins, even if some (like me) don't often help with the backlogs, frees up other admins to do other things (including article writing). Yngvadottir (talk) 21:32, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo hinted at this a few years ago, if "the wheels start falling off" he (/active crats?) would/should just make a loads of seemingly-reasonable editors admins. Seems OK to me, NBD and all. benmoore08:43, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Clarification
I'm grateful to see the spirited discussion here. I wanted to quickly clarify one thing from my original post up top: I'm not suggesting that the project should stop creating new admins. I don't agree with that argument. I'm suggesting the current process for creating new admins isn't succeeding; viable candidates are no longer using the process. The stats don't lie. But the current RFA process won't be replaced until the community closes it. Nailing the doors shut on the existing process would force the creation of something different, and likely better. Thanks and carry on. Townlake (talk) 01:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
If you go back to WP:RFA2011, you'll see what the issue is: apart from a general consensus that people wish NOTNOW closes were prevented from being opened in the first place, people mostly want an RfA where the questions/votes are more aligned with their personal vision of what an admin should be. But because the visions of what an admin should be are all over the place, there's no way to do that.
If you want RfA to be more active, the only thing to do is do new page patrol, teahouse, etc. Find new users and help them over the initial difficulties. Teach them the ropes. And let (some of) them progress up the experience ladder to become admins. As long as the number of new editors continues to drop, them number of RfAs will continue to drop in kind. Is the process more rigourous? Yes, but we can never go back to the pre-Seigenthaler era. WilyD09:31, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes, we have this discussion all over the place. Recently saw a request for a grant to study why WikiProjects are failing, but it's the same reason again. Editor numbers and activity are dropping. It's affecting all areas. Samsara (FA • FP) 10:02, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The causation works both ways. One of the reasons for declining activity is a less collegial environment, caused partly by insufficient moderation. Also, regular editors leave when they can't see a progression path, as Sue Gardner and others have noted. Gaining adminship makes it less likely for an editor to leave, but the current RfA process makes this form of editor retention almost impossible. Once we close down this process, we can break this viscous circle. No one's saying restoring the editor > admin promotion path will solve the wider retention problem on its own, but it's a start. The RfA process can be replaced with something radically different, avoiding all the current problems. For example, elections based on the arbitration model where votes are not public, and a fixed number of candidates are promoted each quarter. Or a form of promotion that doesnt need voting at all. As Townlake suggests, no point discussing the alternatives in detail until we mark this obviously disused process as historical. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:36, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Admins don't do that moderation because (essentially) we don't have a community mandate to enforce a collegial environment. More admins wouldn't help. But the real issue is that the editor > admin path is about as open as it's been for almost a decade; it's the lack of new editors that results in a lack of new admins. Beyond that, it's hard to imagine how having an admin creation procedure that lacks community support wouldn't be far more catastrophic. Again, read WP:RFA2011 - if we had to design a process to create admins today, it'd be this, more or less. And for the obvious reason - it's the way everying on Misplaced Pages is decided; by discussion and consensus. WilyD15:03, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The last part of your comment is demonstrably false. Arbcom is not a consensus process. RFA arguably is not; it's a 70% vote with very rare exceptions. RFB is similar, isn't 90% or so the standard? That's all I have time to think of right now, but the current RFA process pretends to be a consensus process when any rational outsider would observe it isn't. Townlake (talk) 15:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Administrators open to Recall discussion
I opened a thread at Administrators open to recall proposing to have it closed and marked as historical. There hasn't been any discussion made yet so I'm asking if anyone is willing to join the discussion and decide whether or not to close it. The discussion can be found here. GamerPro6421:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Admins and prestige
As we enter what are hopefully the last moments of RfA as we know it, it might be useful to dispel a harmful myth about wikipedia adminship. It's often claimed that admins don't have any special status or prestige. This is not true. To quote from the study Kudpung cites above:
“
...may indicate submissiveness towards the admins. Therefore, the fact that admins also receive more positive emotion and overall less negative emotion, could be interpreted as part of an ingratiation strategy, i.e., regular editors may wish to come across as attractive or likeable to higher status Wikipedians.
”
This is typical of how outside observers perceive the status gap between regular editors and admins. Despite claims to the contrary, adminship can be psychologically rewarding, and it's little wonder admins are less likely to leave Misplaced Pages than regular editors.
There's two takeaways. While this would not apply to all or even most admins, the admins corps would not be human if some of them don't at least subconsciously have a CoI which makes them want to resist reforms that would dilute power by making it easier for new promotions to occur. So it makes sense for RfA reform discussions to be exceptions to the general unwritten rule where an admins voice counts for more in a project space discussion.
Secondly, awarding adminship to constructive long term editors is the most tangible form of recognition we have it in our gift to bestow. With the number of active editors in sharp decline, it makes sense not to cut off what many see as the only meaningful progression path. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
All these years and I never took advantage of my psychological reward. :( That would make me quite sad if not for the fact that I'm an admin. – Juliancolton | 00:31, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The suggestion that admins would not want more admins because it would dilute their power is nonsense. In fact, I'll be even more strident, bollocks. A) Admins are servants of the community B) the abuse that admins get, the shit we have to put up with, and the time consumed by sockpuppets, trolls, spammers, and vandals vastly outweighs any power trip and any of the more enjoyable parts of the job, C) for every extra admin who actually uses their tools and pitches in at AIV/UAA/RfPP/SPI, that's slightly less work for the tiny number of us who regularly clear backlogs there, and D) I wanted to finish off an article I've been working on today, but I got bogged down in admin shit and I haven't made a substantial edit to the mainspace all day. More admins means I get to spend more time in the mainspace, sooo.... more admins please! And if any dormant admins are watching this, I for one would really appreciate it if you'd get your mop out of the cupboard and put it to use. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:47, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if any of this seems critical of admins, that's not the intention at all. I think all active admins deserve gratitude for the work they do.
I've a copy of the Smith book you're working on in front of me. Some of the thoughts on p 292 - 301 about overcommited services echo what you're saying, and would seem a good reason to expand the admin corps. Despite the stridency, I think we agree on quite a bit. Thing is, admins seem to have been among the loudest voices in resisting reforms that would allow more promotions, such as the sensible suggestion to lower the threshold to 50%. I've wrote an article on a book with something in common with yours: The Iliad or the Poem of Force. A central point is that even as far back as Homer, it was recognized that possessing power is psychologically rewarding, and that it's natural for it to arouse jealousy. The article puts it even more stridently, saying wielding force "intoxicates". This point had been made again and again by thousands of others down the centuries. To my knowledge no one we'd count as a reliable source disputes that humans compete for power, or denies this competition doesn't also happen online. Nothing is more forceful on Misplaced Pages than the ability to block or delete. No ones saying all admins are jealous of their power. Many have put in a great deal of effort to expand the admin corps. It's only a small minority who seem to like to block reform efforts. And some, perhaps all, of the admins who object to lowering the bar may do so solely as they care about the encyclopedia and belief quality is preferable to quantity. I think though the point remains that opposing admins are a key part of the reason why every single RfA reform effort for the last 6 or more years has failed. FeydHuxtable (talk) 02:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
You say "the sensible suggestion to lower the threshold to 50%"? That was not sensible at all (least of all the way in which it started), and this coming from someone who may one day want to go through the process. ansh66606:42, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
From a new admin's point of view: Tedious, draws me away from the mainspace, zero prestige, zero power (admins have equal and no greater say in how the place is run), psychologically unrewarding, and please, please dilute my imaginary power and double the amount of admins.
Anna, you deserve just as much respect for your admin work as you do for your legendary contributions to our coverage of food. Maybe there's a lesson here for us regular editors, that we should show more appreciation for admins and the work they do. Though it's probably the case that many regular editors feel unappreciated too, as I think your fellow anna seems to be suggesting. Back to the matter at hand, replenishing the ranks of the admin corps is exactly what were trying to achieve. Townlake and myself are suggesting we've reached the point where the essential first step is to close the current RfA process, and then replace it with something new. Again, check out this recent thread asking for new admin candidates , and see the caliber of some of the folk who are declining solely due to how they perceive the current RfA process. It will likely be easy to achieve the doubling you request, once we've replaced this broken process. FeydHuxtable (talk) 02:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words, FeydHuxtable. I think none of us are in it for colleague appreciation anyhow. And if there is appreciation felt, it should be for those who build. Besides, the entire world thinks Misplaced Pages is great and appreciates it so much, and we get to feel that we helped put it together. For me, that is huge. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:51, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
As a relatively new Wikipedian (less than two years), who is also an admin, I must say that I have not noticed any editors deferring to me in any way. In fact, in most interactions it's not likely that other editors are even aware of who is an admin; it's not as though our signatures have little mops attached. If anything, there is a little push-back from some long term, non-admin editors, who may feel that their years of experience on the project and record of productive encyclopedia-building is more worthy of prestige than adminship - and I agree with them. We do have many ways of recognizing the contributions of editors - Misplaced Pages:Service awards, for example, but are they given enough prominence? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:28, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Have to respect the fact that many admins don't feel they are treated as though they have any special status. However, this is the opposite of what multiple external studies are saying. More use of service awards and similar might also help improve community morale, see this essay for more on the value of recognition. I think though a point remains that granting adminship is a much more tangible form of recognition than awards or barnstars. FeydHuxtable (talk) 02:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Please provide data that it is admins who make new promotions hard. I counted sysop versus non-sysop votes in the last RfA we had, and at least until the last day, the percentage of supporters among sysops was higher than among non-sysops. I guess a systematic study would show that admins are not making adminship hard to achieve; that is done by non-admins who think adminship is something special. —Kusma (t·c) 07:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
No one's suggesting admins are more likely to oppose RfAs. I agree with Kudpung that admins behave better in actual RfAs, and in fact I can only recall a single time when an admin engaged in character assassination - usually it's only regular editors who attack candidates in this way. What is being said is that admins have played a leading role in shooting down suggestions for reform. This would be trivially easy to demonstrate. More useful data might be some figures for admin attrition, you can see a break down of much of this info over at User:WereSpielChequers/Admin attrition:
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Active admins
943
870
766
744
674
633
Admin promotions
201
121
78
52
28
34
Admin attrition (actual, not net)
263
194
182
74
98
75
You could quibble that such figures don't include non standard events like the occasional former admin who resigned under a clear sky getting their tools back without an RfA. But the broad message from the figures is undeniable. The numbers of active admins is plummeting. The rate at which promotions have been taking place has declined by several thousand % over the last few years. Huh, looking back at just the last two months, the decline has been infinetly sharp. The case for change from the stats is so clear there's no burden for those favoring reform to provide more data. Rather, if any wish to prevent this obviously disused process being marked as historical, they need to provide convincing answers to these questions.
1) Why do we need to retain a process that consistently sees good editors subject to character assassination, sometimes leading to permanent retirement immediately after the RfA? Character assassination has been a known problem since at least 2008, but nothing substantive is done about it. In the most recent RfA, the excellent editor GamerPro64 was caused timid just for showing some hesitancy about the fiendishly complex FA process, something even a first class professor would be cautious about. 'Timidity' is a synonym for the deadly sin of cowardice. Not one admin intervened when the candidate was called a chicken for no good reason. No ones blaming admin as there obviously isn't enough of you. But why do we need to keep a process that allows this sort of nonsense?
2) How is it a good thing not to do anything about the shrinkage of the admin corps? Misplaced Pages suffers from an increasingly uncollegial editing environment. Insufficient moderation is a sure fire recipe for allowing a website to degenerate into a troll fest. Whats the justification for preventing a reform that would allow the admin ranks to be replenished?
3) As WSC suggests above, it would be good for community health if all clueful long term editors could be promoted to adminship. Sue Gardner and many others have said much the same thing. How do you justify retaining a process that leaves no progression path for veteran editors. (aside from the tiny minority of saints who never do anything controversial and so don't get opposed.). FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:36, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
It maybe, as the project matures (gets set in its ways) it is easier to have a self-regulating climate - the standards for self-regulation being clearer - thus, less need for arbcom and admin to do what the users already do, and already communicate to the new. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:08, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
It is likely that the unbundling of some admin tools has led to fewer applications for adminship. If there were no rollbackers, template editors, or pending changes reviewers, for example, then editors working in areas for which these tools are useful would be more likely to want to become admins so that they could work more efficiently. Even though these tools are given to admins, they can be granted in other ways, so this leads to an emphasis on the tools relating to deletion and access to deleted revisions, blocking and unblocking, etc. at RfA. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:35, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Re: "The rate at which promotions have been taking place has declined by several thousand % over the last few years," I think a rate can't go down by more than 100%, i.e., from what it was to zero. Am I missing something, or was that hyperbole? Dekimasuよ!19:44, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Consider it hyperbole until actual numbers or calculations are given. (Consider, though: if a rate doubling is stated as "100% increase", then what is the opposite, i.e. "100% decrease"? Does that mean halved, or zero? I don't actually know.) ansh66619:52, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
When figuring percent increases and decreases, the percentage is calculated based on the starting figure. Thus, a 100% increase is a doubling, a 50% decrease is a halving, and a 100% decrease means there is nothing left. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Ah, okay, that makes sense (though I don't see why we can't just go off plain ol' "100%" being no change and go from there...I blame my computer brain.) ansh66620:47, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
About the quote from the study which is at the beginning of this thread: If it's true that editors are more civil and positive when conversing with admins, this may not be a matter of prestige (ie, thinking that admins are great and their ideas must be good and that whichever side of a discussion they are on must be the right one), but more that (1) they are aware that admins know how editors are expected to act, (2) they fear being censored if they behave badly (3) they AGF more readily, since admins aren't likely to be vandals, (4) they know that admins are familiar with WP policies, and so are more likely to respond to policy-based arguments than to bullying and name-calling. Also, it would be interesting to gauge the tone of postings which were responses to non-admins, in discussions where an admin was also actively taking part. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:07, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
This has been something I've thought about for quite a long time, and I gave my personal opinions on this matter in an earlier thread. (The thread is still here, I believe. Keep in mind that I made that comment before my username change.) Perhaps I write my own essay on this in my userspace, so I'll be able to access it easily instead of looking through old, forgotten archives. Anyway, to get back to the point, I see adminship (and any advanced userrights in general) something like this:
With any position of power, there is responsibility. In fact, the higher you rise on the "power scale", the more responsibility you have. For example, our stewards are essentially super-bureaucrats, because they have complete access to all the MediaWiki tools. However, stewards also have more responsibility than any other people on these projects, because a single mistake on their part can be severely damaging and very difficult (if not impossible) to reverse. For example, the stewards have the ability to delete global accounts. This action is irreversible, and if this tool were ever to be misused, it would have very serious consequences. (This is also why it's very important that stewards have remarkably strong account security.) While a mistake on the part of an admin would not be as "fatal" as that of a steward, a rouge admin certainly does have the ability to cause some rather major "inconveniences".
To give a balanced view, however, I do think we look a little contradictory when we say that "adminship is not a big deal". (Note to any admins reading this: please do not pile on me for saying this. I'm not done yet.) While adminship should not be a big deal, I fear that we sometimes make it appear to be a big deal. This is mainly because of the notorious difficultly of RfA. If adminship is really not a big deal, we need to stop making it appear to be one by making RfA so difficult. Like I've said before, any and every past mistake is used against you in the current system, even if you've sincerely apologized for them. You really have to be near-perfect to pass an RfA.
Now, I have what some may consider to be "advanced" userrights. I have rollback and reviewer here, and a couple of rights on another wiki that I contribute to. I can certainly assure people who don't have these rights that there is nothing glamorous about buttons and checkboxes. They do not make you feel "special" or "powerful". In fact, the jobs are very routine. For example, over at wikiHow (the other wiki I contribute to), one of my userrights allows me to vote in what we call the NFD (nominations for deletion) Guardian. Big deal. Really, it's just looking through an article, clicking either the "Keep" or "Delete" button, and moving on to the next one. There's nothing glamorous about it at all. However, I can certainly understand people who think that adminship here is a big deal, because as I said earlier, our actions sometimes make it appear to be one.
Just my two cents. Thanks, --Biblioworm21:57, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The reality is that RfA is a popularity contest. Make friends, you pass RfA. If not, you won't. It is a voting system, which means it is based on popularity. It IS a vote - any system based on percentages is a vote. The only time it isn't is in the very small margin for error slice. Otherwise, it's a straight vote. Until such time as it is not a vote (which means RfA as we know it goes away), it will always be a popularity contest. Therefore, people who do not make friends (like me) will find it impossible to pass RfA. At User:Hammersoft/log I've logged close to 300 actions that I took to get admins to do something. Only twice was I wrong (and maybe three, depending on your view). This is an error rate of about 1%. I don't vandalize the project, I don't go around messing things up, I've been working on the project for years. Yet, I have no chance of passing RfA because I don't make friends. Base RfA on qualifications rather than popularity and get rid of the ridiculous voting system and you will have an RfA that actually passes people. Until then, there's no 'reform' to RfA that will work. Any other attempts are just spitting into Niagara Falls and claiming you can fix it with a wrench. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:39, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Reading some of the comments above made me remember that when I was still a new editor and found out that there was such a thing as administrators, I formed the opinion that administrators were somehow a big deal and were people to be careful around. One of my first edits was speedily deleted, and I figured that the deleting admin was someone who knew a lot more than I did. Early on, another admin got angry at me over a content dispute, and I was genuinely scared that something bad was going to happen to me. As I've gotten years of experience, I no longer see it that way at all, and I smile at my earlier misconceptions (although I have respect for people who have passed RfA relatively recently, in that they have established that they can come through close scrutiny). I guess my point is that new editors may see things very differently than experienced editors do. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:55, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
In my daily dose of getting my soul sucked out (i.e. reading WP:AN/I), I came across this perfect example: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User J Greb harassment. To quote, for those of you who don't want to go there, the OP stated I doubt I'll be successful in this since he's an administrator. (I don't know who's right or wrong, for the record.) Like it or not, many editors do see admins differently, even if they're usually too polite to say so. ansh66607:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
Unbundling the admin toolbox
What do folks think about the idea of splitting up the tools that admins get and using a "lighter" vetting process for handing some of the tools to editors who can properly motivate a need for them?
Take for example my recent RFA, it failed basically due to my inexperience with article deletion - but deletion is far from the be all and end all of adminship. Some tools surely do not need the full "Inquisition" as the potential for doing serious damage with them is less than with other tools or permissions. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:58, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
From what I've read about this, it seems like the main feature that people regard as being especially serious is the ability to view deleted material. Of course, this is understandable, as some deleted pages/revisions contain defamation, copyright violations, personal information, etc., and the ability to view this sort of material has legal implications. Now, there might be a few features that could be unbundled, but then again, doing this might be somewhat challenging. If this did actually happen (I very much doubt that it will, however), we'd have to create new WP:RPE pages for each administrative feature. Just as a reminder, the admin toolset contains the ability to block, delete, protect, edit fully protected pages, use RevDel, rollback, etc. (For anyone interested in the full list of tools, click here.) Admins would have to keep up with all the various rights requests (not to mention that a healthy portion of these requests are from newbies who don't have any idea what the right in question is even for), and I just think it would be too confusing and overwhelming. In my opinion, the simple fact of the matter is that the current RfA process just needs some serious reform. --Biblioworm21:07, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Biblioworm, It's understandable that very new users are probably not up to speed on adminship issues. Users who add one of these to their user pages within a couple of weeks of joining Misplaced Pages will almost certainly be waiting a very long time - perhaps years - by which time any reform may have already taken place. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:58, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Some perspective
The statistics cited above have completely focused on sysops, but it's worth remembering that we unbundled some of the rights some time ago. We have over 5k rollbackers, for instance, and I'm not sure we've ever compiled stats on how many of those are being created, month by month. Samsara (FA • FP) 12:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Excellent point. I have reviewer and rollback rights, and there are several more tools I could get to make edding easier. Non admins actually have a high degree of editing autonomy if they are trusted by the community, and this is indicated by the issueage of tools. Reviewer carries with it a high level of community confidence, for example. Irondome (talk) 19:36, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
Discussion closers
One possibly feasible unbundling could be to create discussion closer. They would only have the ability to delete, no other admin abilities, and the only admin task they could take on would be closing deletion discussions. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:37, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Discussed to death, and the conclusion is always the same. Anyone who's trusted to delete is also trusted to protect and to block. And the same is true in all permutations. Unbundling the real admin tools isn't helpful, because anyone who asked for the delete button would be held to the same standard as someone asking for all the admin buttons. WilyD14:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Exactly. And the power to delete pretty much must come with the power to undelete, which includes the power to view previously deleted material. The Foundation has been brutally clear that a user must pass an RFA style gauntlet to view deleted material, no exceptions. As it stands, non-admin can already close many AFDS, RFCs, etc. Honestly, we have enough closers for AFDs, what we really need is more people participating in the discussions. No bit required. Dennis2¢15:04, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Sounds great! Let's have a separate right for each admin tool! Deleting, blocking, protected page editing, protecting, and right granting! *sarcasm* --AmaryllisGardener15:11, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Let me clarify one point, about closures and backlogs. There are a couple of reasons why some things get backlogged. 1. Some types of closures are drama filled and closing will always result in a review, 100 explanations, being called a nazi, etc. Admin that get a bad taste in one area tend to avoid that area in the future. 2. In some areas, there are few admin who feel comfortable closing, so they back up. I don't close many Requests to Move or Category stuff, it is just outside of my comfort level. 3. Some closings just take a long time. I can close 20 AFDs in less time than it takes to close one moderately busy RFC. Big RFCs are particularly hard, as you just about have to close with "more to come", do a couple hours of homework, then close with the answer. Sometimes, the drama that follows takes up more time than the close. Closing isn't fun, it's something we do out of duty, not joy. If you close enough discussions over a long enough period of time, you get worn down from the occasional drama from those that disagree, and it eventually makes you less willing to close, so you do other things instead. You can't always predict which discussions will cause drama either, its like flipping a coin. Dennis2¢20:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
The first time?
Am not sure, but isn't it the first time on Misplaced Pages that two months would pass without a successful RfA? Wifione09:40, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes. It is yet another depressing milestone in RfA's history. Every time I check this page for nominations, I half expect a ball of tumbleweed to roll across the screen. Kurtis09:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I've approached a number of highly qualified editors about adminship in the last couple of months, but none wanted the job. The RFA process was mentioned, but wasn't the overwhelming reason. The hassles after you pass RFA have been the primary reason they didn't want to become an admin. Of course, this is anecdotal but it is consistent with the previous editors I've approached about the job. Dennis - 2¢13:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
It's not being an admin in itself that causes the hassles - it's getting involved in controversial areas afterwards. There are background admin tasks to be done which don't cause drama. If experienced editors became admins, they could start out with these, and as time went on they might occasionally choose to take on one of the more in-your=face actions, and then back off for a while. Or not. But it would be good to have the tools available. (I almost blocked a vandal the other day, but someone beat me to it...) —Anne Delong (talk) 14:18, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I've found staying away from the controversial areas entirely as a sysop to be rewarding. It affords me time to do substantial content work (which I thoroughly enjoy) while keeping things running smoothly in the background. It's a matter of finding one's niche, I suppose, and I've found that the things I do are much more of a stress-reliever than a stress-generator. There's something therapeutic about undertaking a mundanely repetitive task, or learning about something of interest by writing about it to inform others. Tyrol514:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I also devote myself to non-controversial matters these days and avoid the chaos. It's not worth the aggravation or distraction. I have only so much energy to devote to Misplaced Pages, that energy is less than it was, say, five years ago, and I choose to reserve it for productive things.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:47, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I completely agree with you all, although that leaves no one to deal with the controversial areas. I've unwatched most of the drama areas from burn out from trying to help. Keep in mind, most potential admin don't see the admin working quietly, they see the ones that are getting screamed at on their talk page because that stands out more than calm admin/gnoming. Dennis - 2¢15:19, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I told the community in my RFA that my being an administrator would be ancillary to my being a content contributor. I don't know if we have too few admins, too many, or just right. But we survive.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:55, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I can't say how many we need either, things generally seem to get done, and the backlogs aren't a matter of available hands, but of willing hands. The people I've been approaching for admin tend to be folks with well over half of their contribs in articles, the kind that would be admins as a secondary part of what they do. Content creators with tools. Dennis - 2¢16:02, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
I've considered running, but despite appearing qualified from the various guidelines and any user's individual requirements that I've seen, I just don't have any confidence in passing due to the various comparably nitpicky decline reasons I see. I'd assume that's a factor for other editors also. Sam Walton (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
As long as you understand that not being successful does not mean you've failed, then running will mean that you tried – not that you've clocked a four minute mile to get yourself out of harms way. Either way, my advice to you is to run. Cheers.—John Cline (talk) 16:51, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Whatever it is worth, I found admin work at WP:RFPP rewarding. It requires some clue and a bit of experience and occasionally people may become unhappy (though I never had anybody stalking me for protections / refusing to protect), but mostly this is where one gets a lot of thanks via the echo, and there is always plenty of work available over there. If anyone feels worn out, consider trying out there.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:02, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Despite being a sysop who enjoys the gnomish maintenance work, I still find the most rewarding thing to be—by far—writing content. There are a number of subjects that I would know remarkably little about (if anything at all) had it not been for the fact that I added some missing content related to them as a result of a sparked interest. Tyrol517:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Personally I find it very rewarding to take on the controversial issues, I've never once felt stressed handling AE threads or similar. In a lot of cases, the real-world controversies are quite interesting on their own. Sometimes I only pursue it outside of Misplaced Pages—I've done extensive reading about Armenia-Azerbaijan and Israel-Palestine issues but keep to the administrative side here—but I wouldn't necessarily do that in all cases. And finally, being an admin doesn't make it difficult to contribute to most articles; over the last year and 10 months, my being an administrator has never had a negative impact on my article work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:52, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Inactivity
Hello Everyone, I was considering perhaps throwing my hat into RFA seeing as how there really haven't been that much lately. However, I feel the number one thing holding me back isn't so much my edits but my sporadic activity over the past several years. I was Fairly active for a few months last year before I Joined the United States Army and was deployed overseas where the only device I really had to edit from was a mobile phone and I couldn't do a lot with it. I guess my main question is, how much does would inactivity influence a chance at a successful RFA? Thank you for your input. Regards, --Church16:49, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi Church, most want to see some confirmation that you are active again, and a couple hundred edits spread over a month or two would do that. You have about 40 edits in the past 11 months with a couple days activity. In my estimate any application right now would fail for that reason allone. You will need to establish that you are active again. Hope this helps. All the best, Taketa (talk) 17:05, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Two pages that many will look at, taken from the actual RFA pages are (which is arguably problematic) and which has the ratios (ok) and you can click for other info like monthly stats. The monthly stats is probably enough to put most people off. Having at least 6 months of regular contribs (100+ a month) is minimal in my eyes, 12 months of 200+ is better. None of it is a guarantee, particularly if you can't show a better history with deletion policy. Dennis - 2¢19:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't put much stock in the AfD stats. Having an opinion on whether an article should be kept or deleted is not at all the same thing as determining consensus. Having an opinion is encouraged for participants, whereas admins have to leave their opinions at the door. Besides, a chimp could make a few obvious votes to skew the stats without adding anything useful to the discussion. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:10, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Determining consensus isn't the same as demonstrating you know the deletion policy, however. Having AFDs or at least CSD logging gives people a clear sign of how you view deletions, which is core to why we are here, and arguably, one of the most important traits that many people look for in an admin, not just me. It doesn't take tons of AFDs or CSDs, just enough that competency can be determined. How someone reads consensus is difficult to judge before they have the bit. Closing AFDs as NAC doesn't show it. Mediating disputes shows it a bit, but mainly, we have to vote blind on knowing how they read consensus unless they take up closing RFCs or RMs as a non-admin. Dennis - 2¢22:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Dennis, from what you just said, it sounds like if a hypothetical RfA candidate who was not making deletion decisions a major part of their intended areas of work did not have such logs, you would consider that a compelling reason to oppose. (I can understand opposing a candidate who expresses a desire to close AfDs or process CSDs if they haven't provided information on their track record.) Would you actually go that far for all RfA candidates? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:06, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm saying they need at least a little experience in deletion policy, CSD or AFD or both. Not hundreds, but more than one dozen. Realistically, 100 is pretty solid and easy to look and insure their ideas on deletion policy are within community norms. 300 give me a warm fuzzy feeling if they look good. The ratio by itself isn't that helpful, although it can show some red flags. What matters is the logic in their statement, which is why AFD is more useful to judge by than CSD. I would consider someone with no experience at AFD, but they would have to bring something to the table to offset it, simply because deleting articles is a core responsibility of admin, and the time to learn the basics on deletion policy is before you get the bit, not after. My bar is pretty low, but yes, there is a bar. I ran with 18k edits, 1400 AFDs and over 90% CSD success ratio and many editors opposed because that wasn't good enough. I think that was a ridiculous standard and would never hold anyone to that, but I do think it is reasonable to require "some experience" with deletion policy. And the last three real RFAs, deletion policy experience played a major role in the discussion. That is why I'm giving him the advice now, to better his odds. Dennis - 2¢01:08, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, that was a very helpful answer to my question, and I basically agree with you. I know that in the past, there has been discussion about candidates having logs posted in their user space, and it sounded (to me) like you were requiring that candidates post such logs, as opposed to having developed experience in the way that you describe now, which I think is very reasonable and good advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I've never been big on participating in AFD, and I've more specialized in CSD and Image Policy then I have there. I know RFA is a slippery slope when it comes to things like that though. I understand why candidates are subject to that, even if they say they won't participate in that area once they have the button they're fair game. (Also i haven't seen half of these AFD's in years and I can't help but cringe at my childhood mistakes.)--Church19:50, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
If an editor has a job which causes him or her to be away from the Internet, so that there are periods of activity and then inactivity, it seems unfair to judge by recent edits, and more fair to judge by the previous active period. Otherwise, by the time the editor is active long enough to pass RfA, it will be time for another inactive period. An admin who helps out for a few months each year seems perfectly acceptable to me. About old AfD work: If comments made years ago showed lack of familiarity with policies, that's all the more reason to take part again now and show that you've "grown" in your understanding. Past inexperience is a good excuse, as long as it leads to present experience. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:06, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I'll definitely take the advice and start participating more. I should be stationed in the states for a significant amount of time so hopefully there won't be another decline for awhile. --Church20:11, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
There was a time when you'd never see this page without at least 3 RfAs running at once, sometimes more than ten. And we used to achieve on average over 30 promotions a month. Now we can go months without a single promotion. To say this reflects a wider decline of Misplaced Pages is perhaps somewhat defeatist. By some measures, the number of active regular editors has been growing in 2014. The world is only weeks away from having over 3 Billion internet users, and English Misplaced Pages is their no 1 choice for information. They need us more than ever.
So many reform efforts have failed over the years that achieving consensus for a new process seems almost unthinkable. Editor Townlake and Townlake alone has proposed the solution to this problem - to permanently close RfA as we know it, as only then is a suitable replacement process likely to be designed.
Seven days ago, it was suggested that unless there are serious objections, this process should be marked as historical. By my reading, only one admin directly objected, and ceased to do so after Townlake demonstrated that parts of their argument were false. On the other hand, only one other editor clearly came out in direct support of Townlake's proposal. So some might see it as overly bold to mark this page as historical. Accordingly, an editor has opened a thread on the village pump, to seek concensus from the wider community. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:31, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
In my opinion, their is probably a lot of editors out there who wish to be an admin. They just aren't confident enough to ask another user or self-nom. Another thing is newer editors seem to be to shy to ask a more experienced user if they want adminship. Just another part of broken RFA. - NickGibson390003:53, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, the idea of lack of confidence is probably right. On the other hand, newer editors shouldn't be asking about being admins anyway. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't see it. If an editor is "too shy" to ask for an RfA then chances are they don't have the dispute resolution, Q&A, or AfD chops to pass an RfA in it's current condition anyway. GraniteSand (talk) 09:34, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I think we need to be cautious with "if an editor is capable of Xing, then they must be fine with doing Z other things"-type statements here. Lots of people - and this is especially true of female editors, I suspect - who know they can do a job are too shy, too cautious, or too socialized-not-to directly ask for the job. It's viewed as often as not as power-hunger or being dissatisfied with what you've already "been given" to step up and ask for more. Is it true that there are some people who, if they can't take the notion of jumping up in front of the whole community on their own initiative, probably aren't ready to be looked at by the whole community? Sure. But it's probably true of as many or more that, if someone guided them up there, or even just told them "hey, I think you should try getting up there", they'd be ready and able. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 11:34, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
You're going to chastise me for over generalization while characterizing women as being more "shy", "cautious", and more conditioned against forthrightness than men? Seriously? GraniteSand (talk) 12:01, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Except the "pay gap" is a myth. Additionally, we exist in a optionally genderless environment in terms of social presentation. Regardless, and to prevent any further deviation from the basic topic at hand, we don't cater to subjective perceptions of gender here. We establish universal processes and then enforce them with contiguous community consensus and our discourse should remain focused on that reality. GraniteSand (talk) 13:00, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Not going to speculate on gender issues, but generally I agree with Fluffernutter. I agreed to run a RfA when two users suggested they could nominate me. If this didn't happen, I could consider self-nomination, but I would probably not go to someone I do not know at all and ask to nominate me. On the other hand, we had many users who volunteered to nominate for RfA, this might help if this info is sufficiently visible.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:24, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I actively hunt for editors to run for RFA (to honest, women in particular because they are underrepresented in the admin corps) but most say they aren't interested for a variety of reasons. There really isn't a single reason that pops out, although many see having the admin bit as a hassle and they don't want the responsibility. They would rather write articles, and they think the bit would interfere with it, which is a reasonable conclusion. The RFA process isn't the primary reason, although it is sometimes mentioned. I'm not sure how visibility of willing nominators fits into this, it might, but I just haven't seen that as a major factor. Having a couple of known editors willing to nominate does bolster confidence, but most people would be qualified to run know plenty of other editors. As for the gender pay gap "not existing"....Facepalm . Dennis - 2¢14:17, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Instead of trying to recruit article writers, it's better to recruit Wikignomes. The work they do is much more mop-like, and using the admin bit wouldn't majorly change the work they do. Changing an article writer to an admin means they have to give up a bunch of article writing to do gnomish stuff instead, so recruit the gnomes to do gnomish stuff. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:40, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I was pretty gnomish, turned mediator, but it is hard to find qualified gnomes, as they tend to stay in the background. Many also avoid deletion policy, dispute resolution, etc. by the nature of what it is they want to do. So they don't get the experience, or they simply don't want the job, as they are gnomes BECAUSE they don't want to be out front. The whole reason we founded the Editor of the Week program was to locate and acknowledge gnomes, but they are elusive creatures by their very nature. Dennis - 2¢15:03, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I note that four of the editors who have received an Eddy subsequently had an RfA, and all of them succeeded. Considering that about 55% of all RfAs fail, a 100% success rate is stunning. Granted, it's a small data set. Still, whatever means you are using to assess editors for an Eddy, it appears to be working.
Found while perusing this data; User:Wetman. This editor has been on the project for over 11 years. He's created over 2,000 articles, has over 90,000 edits and has never been blocked. Ok, more than 90% of his edits are to articles and their talk pages, and very little of his editing is done in project space. I get that. So? Is there some reason this guy isn't an administrator? To me, this guy strikes me as the poster child of what's wrong with RfA. If the system is incapable of finding people like this and at least approaching them with the possibility of adminship, we have a problem. If the system wouldn't pass this guy because he would not be a terrifically active administrator (I'm guessing based on % of edits to project space), we have a problem. If he doesn't want to go through an RfA because it's hellish, we have a problem. If he doesn't want to be an administrator because it's too stressful, we have a problem. There is no reason...none...that this guy should not be an administrator. If there is a problem, it's not with him but with the system. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:10, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
What if editors who mainly deal with content don't feel the need for the tools, because they don't need them at all for what they do here? That's not a problem with the editor or the system. ansh66617:21, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
It goes to show how a seemingly unrelated activity (Editor of the Week) can get us more admin, without any change to the process. This is one of the unexpected benefits of that program. There is a mild vetting process in the EotW system, not everyone nominated gets through, although most do. I've approached other recipients of the award as well, some say no, some are mulling it over. One of them, Anna Frodesiak, is someone I had worked with before, mediating some disputes, so I was proud to nominate her for admin. I still think she is an amazing Wikipedian, admin or not. The staff working EotW and the people who help find candidates have a lot to be proud of, as the admins that came from the EotW have very high quality candidates indeed. And there is no fixed, hard rule for Eddys, just common sense. Anyone can nominate. To me, that shows the community has a pretty good idea on what they approve of, and what they want in an admin, without a rule book. Dennis - 2¢18:32, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, a look through his talk archives shows many times that he was asked about applying for adminship, going even all the way back to 05. He's declined each time. It's possible he could be ok with it now, but to say no one's tried it dishonest, and I imagine this is the case with 99% of non-admins that would come to mind. Wizardman21:05, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you so much Wizardman for accusing me of lying. There is a difference between inaccurate and dishonest that you apparently need to learn. I looked. I found no record of an RfA for him (red link). I even looked for things linked to what would be his RfA page and found nothing . I also looked for his talk page archives, and did not find them (I see them now). Not seeing his archives, I looked at the talk page history and saw frequent deletions of sections by him (9 of his last 20 edits to his talk page are large deletions ) so I (inaccurately) assumed he managed his talk page that way. I expect a retraction from your false accusation of my dishonesty. And you're an administrator, and even a bureaucrat? Good lord! --Hammersoft (talk) 14:31, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I was courteously alerted to this thread concerning me, and I intrude just to say that deletions on my Talkpage concern Bot-alerts of my frequent unclosed parentheses and links to dab pages. Tiresome but welcome. Once fixed, the posts are deleted, to keep User talk:Wetman manageable. Exchanges like the previous one I find an unproductive use of my editing time, so I avoid Adminship. Thank you for thinking of me in such flattering terms.--Wetman (talk) 14:59, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Anna Frodesiak and I have been bouncing a few ideas around intermittently for the past couple of months or more on improving RfA takeup rates. I have begun to think that RfA as it currently stands is probably the best that can be hoped for at this time, it is the issue of the admin role itself that is a major inhibitor. The perception is a role which can be fraught with stress, politics and sheer bad vibes, the last being the killer on WP. Obviously this may explain the gender related takeup issue. Working on perception may be the way ahead. Anna may disagree. Irondome (talk) 21:20, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
This whole "dismantle RfA" thing is cart before the horse, if you ask me. We need to get to the bottom of why it is broken. Otherwise, we could form a new, broken system.
Nobody can agree on why it is broken. Figuring that out is first. Has anybody posted at village pump with "Becoming an administrator: Please, in a sentence, give the reason why you do or do not want to be an administrator." Everybody is guessing, but nobody is doing a study.
More guessing from me: Many say that it is not fear of the process. Rather, it is the messes and bad vibes the job brings.
We expect admins to be unafraid of messes and bad vibes, right? Well, who isn't afraid of that now? Aren't there non-admins who are active at AN/I? Maybe they comprise all the expected candidates, but they know they would never pass RfA as they have a history of being involved at AN/I and have foes. Most admins accumulate foes once given the tools, right? Maybe that is it. Maybe buttons and getting into messes do not mix.
Why are admins expected to handle messes anyhow? Couldn't they stick to RFPP, AIV, CSD, MfD, UAA, etc. Why do they have to be the ones that go in as arbitrators? Why not small teams of uninvolved regular editors? They zoom in, get to the bottom of it, then recommend to an admin that their findings require a block or something? I know we have DR, but maybe this could be something where they arrive on the scene and work like a small team of judges -- maybe three of them -- then call on admins to use the tools.
Wouldn't this be a way of splitting up the power without splitting up the tools. Is this a stupid idea? Maybe something similar to this? I'm just brainstorming (or braindrizzling).
Technically, non-admin can now do most things at ANI. They can vote in a topic ban and list it. Generally, there are plenty of admin to do so, however. The problem is judgement. Most of the non-admin have good intentions but lack the experience to mop up a lot of problems. Some can make things worse with sarcasm. A few are really good and digging out the truth, thankfully. As for being a regular at ANI and passing RFA, I was a regular at ANI and it got me 31 oppose votes, so there is some truth in that. Most of our finest non-admin are currently busy writing articles instead of patrolling admin areas. Arguably, that is a good thing. As for why admin are expected to handle messes, well, that is why we are vetting for judgement, the community expects we will handle most "messages" with our magic mops. That is one reason many don't want to become admin. As you now know, it is more work than most people realize. And very little "glory". Dennis - 2¢01:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I disagree with the argument that the admin work is the thing that drives people away from running for RfA. Extremely "picky" people (who IMO just either have an ax to grind, or are impossible to please) try to tear apart and feast on people who are wonderful candidates with nonsense rationales. At File:Lionshuntingzebramasaimara.JPG you can see it in action, a couple of lionesses (aka "picky" or impossible users) are getting ready to feast on a zebra (an innocent editor with 10,000 edits, and record of fighting vandalism, vandalism-fighting, and article creation, who became a victim because he didn't have any GAs, etc.) Need an actual RfA? Here. That's a WP version of the zebra being killed (Just to make sure, I'm not saying that everyone that opposed the RfA is out of their mind). Cyphoid hasn't ran again, though I told him after the RfA that he should in a few months, (on the other hand if people aren't going to make sensible oppose rationales then I guess he shouldn't run). Now I know nobody will pay much attention to this, and if they do, it won't be good attention, but I just wanted to throw my opinion out there. --AmaryllisGardener02:11, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Not sure what to tell you, Over the last 2.5 years, I've nominated 10 people, 6 are now admin, and approached at least 40 more about becoming an admin. Overwhelmingly, the reason they said no was the hassles after the job. These weren't random people casually talking about it, these were highly experienced editors that I was willing to nominate on the spot and they knew it. These were arguably the exact people we want running, so I tend to take their observations pretty serious. Dennis - 2¢02:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I agree that there are quite a few desirable/suitable candidates who won't run simply because they aren't interested in the work involved in being an admin, however, I still think that there are those who are desirable/suitable candidates, but don't run because they don't want to run because of illogical criticisms. Looking at AmaryllisGardener's comment gives me an idea. For example, if lack of FAs is an illogical/invalid criticism, we could get it out of the way by having an RFC which decides whether it is an invalid criticism or not. If it is found to be an invalid criticism, it can be discounted from future discussions. If we can identify and discount four/five common illogical criticisms in this manner, that should give prospective candidates more confidence and also demonstrate our desire to make things easier.OrangesRyellow (talk) 06:38, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Not to be negative, but if we are honest, someone that can't take harsh criticism for one week is probably not going to able to handle being an admin. Or at the very least, is not going to handle it well. Most editors are pretty nice to admin, but because of the duties we must do, we get called names, dragged to ANI or ARB over groundless things, and heaven forbid when we make a mistake (and we are human, we do make mistakes), you have a dozen admin-haters come out and attack you, demanding you retire. I agree that RFA needs tweaking, and I had a very drama filled RFA myself with 31 opposers and blocks, and stuff much worse than the vast majority of RFAs. And I had a well known nom and an Arb as conom, which is a pretty solid team, plus a lot of rock solid experience (5 years, 18k edits). So I do speak from experience here. I did a lot of mediation and ANI work, which made me "controversial". If I couldn't have handled that, then I would have no business being an admin. For the record, I get along exceptionally well with most of my opposers, even did two GAs, an FA and a TFA with one of them afterwards, and pushed for the unblock of one of them after the RFA. RFA needs work, but it isn't as broken as some claim. Most that are making the claim have never been through it. Dennis - 2¢15:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Sorry to disagree, while I agree that admins should be worldly wise and have an ability to handle argumentative users, I do not think that we should have candidates demonstrate that ability by going through a week long heckling/acid bath "rite of passage" type process. Their diplomatic skills and other related dispute resolution skills should be demonstrated on talk pages etc. while resolving disagreements over article content etc. Looking into your RFA, it appears that the oppose votes all boiled down to CSD issues, i.e. only one issue, and you could probable agree that these concerns were not groundless at the time. Although 31 opposes on that score does seem too much, I don't think your RFA suffered too much due to invalid/illogical/harsh criticisms. Except for KieferW, most of those opposing seemed to have a positive view and were almost supporting your RFA. My above suggestion does not apply to your RFA in the sense that I do not want good-faith/valid criticisms to be stopped. I think it is desirable that weaknesses in certain areas be pointed out if they are relevant. So, my suggestion does not really apply to the example of your RFA. What I had suggested is that we should make an effort to do away with invalid criticisms so that reasonable candidates do not have to go through unnecessary hardships and so that everyone can devote more focus on relevant issues/criticisms/weaknesses/strengths of the candidate in question. Best.OrangesRyellow (talk) 03:24, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I disagree also. We shouldn't tear down users at RfA just to test them. Do you agree with users attacking admins? If not, we should lead users with an example of how one should be treated. I always try to leave nice messages (and in some cases, barnstars) to admins who do hard work (and those who get attacked for doing their job), let's all try to encourage the janitors, don't make them feel unappreciated, as they often feel. :) --AmaryllisGardener03:37, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
@Hammersoft: Regarding your statement "If the system is incapable of finding people like this and at least approaching them with the possibility of adminship, we have a problem.": any system for identifying potential candidates is separate from the process of approving applicants for administrative privileges. Unfortunately, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Admin Nominators didn't progress very far, but perhaps any interested parties can revive it to address the problem you have highlighted. isaacl (talk) 16:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Parallels with en.wn
I'm wondering how much parallelism people here might perceive between troubles getting new admins here, and troubles getting new reviewers at en.wn.
This requires some explanation, I think.
Until recently, I never really thought about this sort of parallel between the sisters. There's a long-standing perception at en.wn that we confront problems our big sister en.wp will eventually need to deal with. (This is me struggling to resist temptation to digress.) It wasn't until this summer that I really looked at problems the two sisters share. I watched Misplaced Pages's reaction to the Foundation dissing the Wikipedian community, and thought (not happily), now they know what that feels like. Gradually shrinking activity is also something the sisters share.
I've made a particular study of what en.wn needs in order to grow. The pivotal element, I concluded, is that various tasks need to be made easier; especially, newcomers writing articles, and experienced Wikinewsies reviewing articles. The question was how to do this while maintaining the standards inherent in the journalistic ideals that drive the project. (All volunteer projects are driven by idealism; lose that and you're cooked. You may recall we had a fork of en.wn a few years ago; those of good will in both factions agreed, I think, that review difficulty was a problem, but those who left wanted to sacrifice standards — and ultimately their morale tanked.)
My intended strategy is crowdsourced semi-automated assistance. You can't get there, I maintain, if the semi-automated tools can't be written ultimately in wiki markup. The great strength of wikis has always been that they cut out the middleman: members of the community can just do what's wanted, without having to learn another language (like php, or javascript, or lua), and without having to try to explain to, and persuade, Foundation employees who aren't the ones who understand what's needed and likely have priorities different from the community. So I've been gradually piecing together a suite of tools at en.wn, culimating in templates like {{dialog/text}} (for a text input box) and {{dialog/button}} (for passing data from a page to another page or to some action such as an edit). (Fwiw, the current state of my tools, which I'm still trying to put "finishing" touches on, is visible at n:Help:Dialog.)
What I'm wondering is, how much of a role does the difficulty of tasks play in the troubles over here at Misplaced Pages? How much, or little, difference could be made here by crowdsourced semi-automated assistance for complicated/tedious tasks? --Pi zero (talk) 20:39, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
@Pi zero: Much of the discussion here and elsewhere has been primarily about the RFA process itself and how that might or might not leave an unfavorable impression on potential candidates. What you discuss seems to be more on the editor outreach and retention side of things, which may very well lead to more administrators in the long-run. In the short-run, however, the structure of the process of granting the tools itself has been and will be the topic du jour. As an aside from someone who has Wikinews experience, the process of granting reviewer resembles closely process of granting +sysop over here about ten years ago. A good track record and a few months of solid experience is generally enough. The problem at Wikinews (I know, I shouldn't be saying this looking at my recent lack of activity over there) has been a shortage of active contributors and, hence, potential reviewers. I think that very well might be a long-term problem for RFA, but we don't seem to have any shortage of qualified editors at the moment. The problem, as many see it, is getting them to run. Tyrol500:27, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
@Tyrol5: Yes, it's quite clear emphasis in the discussion is being placed on how the request process works. What I'm talking about is very much long-term (I've been working on my tools for about three years now). It seemed there was perhaps also an undercurrent, glimpsed here and there, of the effort of acting (and acting well) as an admin, which is a sort of thing my interactive-assistance approach ought to help. --Pi zero (talk) 12:39, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Potential admins probably don't know what they are letting themselves in for, so I doubt the usability of the interface for admin tasks is a major hindrance for new applications. It is possibly linked to the decline in activity of existing admins. On a sister project when faced with 100 copyright violations that needed deleting, which were too old for Nuke, they had to be deleted one at a time via a three click process. That's not only time consuming but utterly tedious. QuiteUnusual (talk) 13:44, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
What I did was reverted to the very first revision of the page. Someone linked to that revision in the Village Pump discussion and I thought, hey, why the hell not? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I have nothing against that. I just added this section as it will be controversial decision and I'd say there are a lot of different views on your revert. - NickGibson390004:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
If I had known a nomination was in progress, I probably wouldn't have done that (shoulda hit the reload button first). My idea was to drop everything from RfA, including the canned questions. But, hey, we'll see what happens. I can't believe that I haven't been reverted yet. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Reverting via the WP:BRD process - there is already a reform discussion in process at WP:VPP for this page, and changes certainly can be discussed here and implemented. — xaosflux04:57, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, I attempted to start the Bold, Revert, Discuss process---apparently others are opposed to that...I'm not going to start an edit war on a project page--though additional discussion is warranted, such as the one already in process at WP:VPP — xaosflux05:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
So Rspeer since you are editing on this now--why do you think we should no longer have a WP:RFB process that you just removed? — xaosflux 05:02, 30 October 2014 (UTC) apologies, I was looking at the wrong diffs. — xaosflux05:04, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Well, now I'm the one in the hotseat, but I find "WP:BRD" to be a very weak reason to reintroduce years and years of unnecessary rule creep. WP:BRD is justified by the goal of improving Misplaced Pages. Reverting a good idea with BRD as the sole reason is... not that. Feel free to do something with RFB if that's your only complaint; I didn't touch it intentionally (and yes, I see your strikethrough now). rspεεr (talk) 05:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
(Think we were slightly edit conflicted) I'm all for continuous improvement, my BRD claim is only against the change being a BOLD claim. — xaosflux05:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I have reverted again. To reiterate, from my edit summary: development over time is not necessarily creep; the page years ago does not reflect community consensus better than the page today; and the earlier version will not change attitudes toward RfA. For that matter, the discussion at WP:VPP does not show, at this time, that the current setup lacks consensus. Dekimasuよ!06:20, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I do not believe that's the case, but this doesn't address my main points. This was not something new; it was something we changed over time from a less than ideal system to a slightly better system, just as so many articles have improved in the intervening years by a similar process. I have, however, made a few changes to the edit notice that makes it less scary than before; not having had cause to edit the page in several years, I was surprised by its tone, although I understand that the intention is to avoid WP:NOTNOW cases when possible. Dekimasuよ!06:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Can we come up with a brand new proposal of a de-sysopping process? Sometimes the lack of such a process leads people to !vote "oppose" or "neutral" at RfA. Looks like a lot of de-adminship processes have been proposed in the past, but can we propose another? What about a simple, RfA-like process where !voters !vote "keep" or "remove" on a page titled "Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Removal/Example" or "Misplaced Pages:Requests for de-adminship/Example"? Would the community support such, even in this time of desperation? --AmaryllisGardener15:08, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't mean to be defeatist, but any such effort is likely to fail. Nevertheless, I do think it would be useful to try again, if only to update the list to have something more recent than four two years ago. Gauging the community sentiment periodically, even if we are quite certain it will fail, is not a bad thing. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC) (amendment: I found something from 2012)
I know it isn't. Like I said, I don't mean to be defeatist. I really don't. But, while I think most people can agree (and we have) that there needs to be a community driven process, moving forward from that agreement to create a system fails every time. It's a very sticky problem, and one that very likely will have rather enormous unintended consequences. Wide swaths of people are rightfully concerned about how such a system would work, what sorts of protections would be in place from malicious attempts to remove rights, etc. It's hard. Very hard. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:45, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Why does it have to be so hard? We can have an RFC on particular desysop requests, and get it closed and actioned by a neutral bureaucrat. The formal structure added could be a page to do it on, a sample format, minimum numbers of people requesting the desysop, and guidance for the closer. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:16, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
The process to get from where we are now to having a working desysop process could be to agree in stages about what we want. For example the first step could be just the simple question about whether or not to have a desysop determined by community consensus. The next step could be to decide on who will close and on what basis. Rules about how people will do their arguments can then be agreed. Then the details about place and structure can be specified. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:31, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I agree this is unnecessarily difficult. It should be a simple RFC/U-type discussion initiated by two or more established editors, one of whom should be a sysop. At the end the discussion is closed by a 'crat using the same criteria as RFA and the user is desysopped if there is consensus for it. There can't be another discussion for at least six months after a no-consensus close, any subsequent emergencies related to the user's conduct can be dealt with via the normal measures (compromised accounts, emergency blocks, whatever). The Spanish Misplaced Pages has a similar process that seems to work well. §FreeRangeFrog22:43, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Don't forget two of the most recent attempts (which aren't covered in that list above), which were both covered under Misplaced Pages:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept. Jc37 authored one of the plans WP:RRA, I authored the other WP:RAS with help from Coren. Both were open to changes, both were radically different at the outset (Jc's was desysop only, mine has provisions for deysop and other sanctions). The entire event was a spectacular failure, primarily due to no one being able to agree on the most basic of ideas. Dennis - 2¢23:24, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
As the primary author of an earlier spectacular failure, let me ask: what's wrong with asking ArbCom to desysop someone who should be desysopped? A couple of years ago, there was (in my opinion) a real need for a community process, because there were no smoothly-working alternatives. But today, ArbCom is pretty well-attuned to community sentiment about conduct unbecoming an administrator, and they have repeatedly shown themselves to be willing and able to act promptly in response to a complaint. Posting to ArbCom is now a simpler process than any kind of community RfC that I know of. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
'Fish, I did not participate in the discussion of your desysop proposal: what was it? (Brief summary, please.) Even if the community cannot settle on a standard procedure, why can't there be a "standard" procedure that RfA candidates could volunteer during their RfAs? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Here's a link: WP:CDARFC. As for volunteering, we sort of have the concept of administrators open to recall, which doesn't work too well either. There is no standard recall process, and if there were, then there's the issue of making it recommended for the future without making it recommended retroactively (lotsa luck with that!). There are various individual recall procedures. Some of them are constructed so that recall just will not happen. And I've seen others used to successfully recall admins who really should never have been recalled. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:54, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, when you get to design your own recall process, some folks are predictably going to err on the side of not being recalled! I've always thought that a recall process should require at least seven editors in good standing (at least three of whom are administrators) to initiate the process, followed by a RfC-style community vote. Not so dissimilar to the RfA process, but perhaps WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA should apply without exception or leniency. I've seen an RfA or two where that might have been helpful to the candidate. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:13, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Change your seven to ten, and you pretty much have the rejected process that I worked on. It ends up being both easier, and less subject to (insert a better phrase than "mob rule"), to post a request at WP:RFAR. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I would not call a 65% !vote a "spectacular failure"; anywhere outside an RfA, we often call 65%+ with good reasoning a consensus. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
File it under false modesty. I was, of course, echoing what Dennis had just said. But I'm actually quite proud of the CDA proposal. I am absolutely convinced that the discussion it brought about led to an evolution in what the community expects of admins, and those evolving community standards are reflected by ArbCom, and that's why ArbCom is much more effective at desysopping today than it was several years ago. When I first started editing, some admins were kind of Wild West. Today, some of those are gone, and many of the others are on their good behavior. And those who have passed RfA more recently are pretty uniformly trustworthy. Which brings us full circle to whether there are now too few passing RfA. (I don't claim to know the answer to that one.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Well done, 'Fish. As for your question, I think it is self-evident we have too few active administrators. Certain areas of the project barely function for lack of adequate administrator help. The Wild West is gone, and that's a good thing. There are plenty of qualified candidates if we're willing to accept something less than perfection and the complete absence of past controversy. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:36, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I would not endorse any desysoping procedure that did not include a neutral evaluation as to whether there was a policy breach, and for all its faults, that is what ArbCom does in such cases. I've seen too many torches-and-pitchfork brigades, and the leaders of them rewarded, to want anything less. And I don't trust ArbCom to do it routinely, not when I look at how some of them got elected. Suffice it to say that while I am open to the idea of community desysoping, I haven't seen a proposal, or even a concept, that I could support.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
My WP:RAS proposal, which was developed with Coren, an ex Arb, gave Arb a 30 day window to overrule any desysop. They would Approve, Disapprove, Ignore (same as approve). It wasn't perfect, but it has that check and balance. It also allowed for "tool blocking", ie: desysoping for a period of time, say 6 months, to force a break. We have some normally acceptable admin who sometimes would benefit from that, imo. Dennis - 2¢13:29, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Wehwalt, I respect your opinion and your work as an administrator, but I must disagree with you in this instance: there needs to be some form of administrator accountability to the larger community that includes a process for desysopping. Even the president of the United States can be impeached and removed from office by super majorities of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate; ditto for federal judges, who otherwise serve lifetime appointments. Misplaced Pages administrators are not so different in that they are selected in a democratic fashion, and we should be able to remove them in a similar democratic fashion when they transgress the community's standards for conduct and playing by the rules. To me, the need for such a straightforward removal process is self-evident. If selecting an administrator is "no big deal," then there should be a process that allows for the removal of the bit by a similar process. The process to remove should be no less difficult than the RfA process by which administrators gain the bit; it must be straightforward for the complaining parties, but it must include a measure of procedural fairness to accused administrator, too. While I have my attorney hat on, I would also suggest that the community desysopping process should include the requirement of "certification" of the specific accusations, i.e., an endorsement of the accusations by a designated subcommittee of administrators, bureaucrats and/or arbs. As I imagine it, if the certification committee does not endorse the validity of the accusations, then the process would not proceed to community discussion and !voting. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:16, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
We have the ArbCom already for desysoppings. They are elected democratically by the community. No need to have a special-purpose committee and different set of "process law" for a very uncommon thing. However ArbCom has a history of concentrating on user's behavior instead of actual policy violations and has done at least one pure "attitude desysopping" in the past, so the existing system is not perfect but I fail to see how your ideas would improve things. jni...just not interested21:53, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1:, I think you'd appreciate my ideas for a de-adminship process. It addresses your lifetime appointment concern, a similar ease/difficulty between gaining and losing adminship, and the need for certification (without that committee actually endorsing the validity of the accusations). EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
@EVula: Just saw this -- I think it's a pretty good framework for a supervised desysopping process, and is very much in keeping with my own thinking on the subject. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:00, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
Suggestion: Add a long section to that Q&A part, where you explain how your proposal will solve the objections that were raised to earlier proposals that failed (such as WP:CDARFC). Important: don't just say that it won't have those problems because it is simpler. That's a failed proposal waiting to happen. You need to go through all the specific complaints that have been raised in the past, and there are a lot of them, and explain in specific ways how they are addressed now. And also, how your proposal would be simpler than going to ArbCom, but just as safe regarding "mobs with pitchforks". If you actually propose this to the community, you can expect a ton of pushback, and you need to be prepared to answer it factually and specifically. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
'Fish, I nearly suggested it earlier, but since you chimed in, I will suggest it now: you and EVula should go to one of your talk pages and put your heads together and discuss strategy. Your proposals are not that different in spirit, and I could be a vocal supporter of either. This needs to happen in some form or fashion. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:22, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, but the last time I went through one of these proposals was enough. For the sake of my own sanity, I'll just watch this time. I wish EVula and whoever else might work on it the best of luck. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
PS: I'm actually not convinced that it would really be any better than going to ArbCom. Also, it would be of no use when an admin does 1 or 2 things that are very bad; it only works for 3+. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
Two points, 'Fish: (1) you don't have to be the front man, but it would obviously be helpful to someone like EVula to have the benefit of your experience if he's serious about pursuing this; and (2) the difference between ArbCom and EVula's reverse RfA process is the level of community involvement -- which I believe is what so many dissenters are clamoring for -- because there is community discussion and !voting, with consensus determined at the conclusion. It's a process that is familiar to anyone who has ever participated in RfAs, but with a greater measure of protection built into it before the community discussion begins. Anyway, that's my opinion, FWIW. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: and @Tryptofish: I'm totally amenable to hammering out further details about this on my own talk page. I really would like to see this grow legs again, but I'm similarly shy about doing this again (the first version of this, which was much more laid back, went down in flames... but that was several years ago now). If I wasn't the only one trying to make it work, that'd make me feel better about doing a second round with this. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
I just don't have the time to make this something that I would work on, but I do encourage you to pursue it further in your user space. Any time you have any questions for me about it, please feel free to ping me. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
There's an adminship-related idea I've been kicking around that might make people more willing to support less-than-perfect candidates. My idea is inspired by the fact that non-admins are able to close certain discussions only under non-controversial circumstances. Anyway, here's the idea: admins with over 75 percent get the normal admin powers, as usual. Admins with lesser support (say, 60-75 percent) get the same bits as conventional admins, but aren't allowed to use them in controversial cases. For example, one of these limited admins would be allowed to block a vandal at AIV or UAA, but couldn't carry out ANI consensus to block someone with thousands of edits. A limited admin could handle speedy deletions or PRODs, but not close large and controversial AFDs. They could semi-protect low-key articles affected by simple vandalism, but not fully-protect a highly-viewed controversial article from edit warring. User rights changes could be handled equally by both types of admin, since they tend not to be controversial. Admins aren't supposed to make controversial edits to protected pages anyway, so both types of admin would also use this right in the same way. These are just examples; hopefully you get the idea. If a limited admin does something controversial, the action could be discussed at ANI (not needed if it's obviously controversial) and be desysopped or warned once, then desysopped, or something. The desysopping policy would need to be changed (a good idea anyway IMHO) to support it. The WMF should be okay with this since it's not too much less rigorous than the standard RFA (in fact, it would be a standard RFA, just with lower standards). Also, no technical changes would be needed to support this (unlike unbundling), only social ones. --Jakob (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Percentage of the vote at RFA is not an indication of capability or quality. A person might get 90% one week at RFA, but the next week get 80%. The community is a fickle thing. This also creates classes of admin, something I'm against. It is bad enough we have the impression that admin are "better" than non-admin, we don't need to reinforce that false idea with classes within admin. Sociologically speaking, this would be bad for the community, imho. Dennis - 2¢17:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) People would use their own judgement, as they do anyway. If a reasonable person thinks an action is controversial, they can take it up to ANI for further examination. If an unreasonable person does that, they'll be snowed under. --Jakob (talk) 17:06, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Plus, focusing on the percentage goes against the "bureaucrats gauge consensus" thing that has been the standard for... uh, a while. The standard argument against just having an 'crat-bot do promotions is that it would be impossible for the bot to weigh arguments; a bureaucrat can do that for a binary decision (promote or not-promote), but I think the bureaucrats would be creating a world of problems if we started closing RfAs with "can make controversial admin actions" or "there is consensus to promote to administrator, but not consensus to do anything controversial." And that doesn't even begin to address what we do with all the (edit: silly me, I didn't finish my thought) existing administrators; I guess they all just get the "go ahead and do controversial actions" nod? EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I was wondering that myself, Ansh666. Anyway, I meant the percentages to be a rough guideline (like the current 75% figure for all RFAs), not an exact number. --Jakob (talk) 03:21, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Actually finishing my thought before hitting "send" would go a very, very long way towards eliminating confusion. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:31, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
RfA community problems
Basically, the "good" things about unbundling the bit is that users wouldn't have to get chased by the angry mob with pitchforks (aka go through an RfA). So, is the format really the problem? As long as the same people decide, what difference does it make? We still have the angry mob with pitchforks! I now know that, I have 0% chance of passing an RfA (in its current form) in the next five years after I tried to argue with the opposers at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Jackmcbarn. Apparently me and several others "badgered" when we argued with an opposer (my continued arguing is not "badgering", but just trying to understand people's reasoning, and it happens very often that I will understand where they're coming from eventually and I'll change my !vote). It seems that WP:AGF and WP:NPA is not applied at RfA. Thoughts? --AmaryllisGardener20:10, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
People keep saying this, but it isn't true. For ANY editor to have access to the undelete function or see deleted contribs, they MUST pass through RFA or a very similar process. The legal department at the Foundation has made this brutally clear, there are no exceptions. Even if the Crat gave the bit, they would strip it as an WP:OFFICE action, and they have the authority. Dennis - 2¢20:22, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I didn't say we shouldn't have RfAs anymore. I was asking if others felt like I do, that the community is what makes RfA broken. Doing away with RfA is the opposite of what I was saying. I said that the community was the problem, not the process. --AmaryllisGardener20:32, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
My idea. Four times a year we look at how much active admin attrition we have had. Say we lost a net of 3 admins in that time period. We could then look over the last 12 months worth of failed RfAs and promote the top 3. That way those who have the most support can stop attrition. Of course if you passed normally you would still be promoted as normal. Chillum21:05, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
We'd still have to have a threshold. What if we end up in some bleak future where the only passes are obvious and the only fails are new users? What if the "best" candidate had legitimately serious problems? This is too difficult and arbitrary to implement. ansh66621:23, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Beginning to think that the current RfA mech is as good as it gets. "The community" is merely a small but very faithful echo of the real world. Some life processes are shit, be it work, private life or WP. RfA is just one of them. Its perceptions we need to look at big time. a radical change in relationships and perceptions of relationships. I have never got my head around the admin v "us" thing. There are several admins and other eds working on the WW2 page at the mo. Perfect amity, and its hard to distinguish "them" from "us" unless you go on eds talk page to check. Everyone's pulling their weight. Its what happens after the RfA that freaks people out. I dont think there is any immediate admin numbers crisis on the horizon. There were some good stats on that here a while ago. Just my 10p Irondome (talk) 21:49, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
In most large organisations, it's easier to improve process than to improve culture; but if you change the former, the latter can adapt (though it may lag). I wouldn't advocate change for change's sake, but there's definitely some scope for change. Partly because en.wikipedia has historically been quite slow to change. bobrayner (talk) 02:45, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Some data that I would like to see
I suggest that we find out how those editors who comment "oppose" in some recent RfAs (the current one, and some recent past ones that were not snow closes, but instead genuinely discussed from both "sides") feel about the position that "RfA has become too difficult to pass". Perhaps we could have some sort of poll, asking those particular opposing editors to participate.
Here's why. Given all the talk about "RfA is broken", the question is whether it objectively is broken, in the sense of failing to reflect community wishes, or not. If editors are opposing RfA candidates in spite of believing that not enough editors are passing RfA, then what they say would be worth evaluating for whether we have a problem with getting enough good candidates, or a problem with how RfA evaluates candidates – and it could give us some specifics about what the problems are. On the other hand, if editors who oppose RfA candidates feel that there is not a problem with the RfA success rate, then what they say would be worth evaluating for whether such editors are somehow not typical of the community – or whether the system actually works because the community has high standards. When editors are unhappy about an RfA candidate not passing, we tend to hear from them in these discussions. But I think we ought to hear more from editors who !vote the other way. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I opposed one recent RfA, so I guess your invitation includes me. I think RfA is about right. It hasn't become too difficult to pass (and this is coming from someone who recently failed one). We don't really need more admins generally -- although we do in some discrete areas -- so the low pass rate doesn't concern me too much. I've come quite firmly to the view that what Misplaced Pages is badly missing is article editors, not administrators, and I've changed my own editing patterns accordingly. I think sometimes particular RfAs can get unnecessarily heated, and I accept that puts some potential candidates off, but not in all my time here have I seen any proposals that would fix that without generating more heat or sacrificing important community standards. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:48, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I, too, have opposed, so here're my two cents. I don't think RfA is the problem. It has been asserted a number of times, but i've not seen anything in the way of data to back up the assertion. If there is a problem at RfA, it is, as Mkativerata says, some behaviour at some RfAs, but that is a behavioural or cultural problem, not a structural one. The fact that the Foundation requires some form of community scrutiny for the ability to view deleted material to be granted implies that there will always be the opportunity, at least, for that behavioural issue to come to the fore. In the end, though there are some candidates who don't get through, it seems to me that the majority who "should", do (with the caveat that i supported Mkativerata, who didn't). Cheers, Lindsay03:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Mkativerata and LindsayH, for your helpful replies. Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Jackmcbarn just closed as successful, but with a significant number of opposes, so I think that provides a ready-made sample of the editors whose opinions I'm talking about here, so I'm going to poll those who can reply here.
Yes it is too difficult to pass. There's a myriad of reasons. Lack of trust in editors, despite years of editing. Insane standards (well if you just had 1,000,000 more edits I would feel more comfortable). Lack of a desysop ability. Popularity contest. Inability to promote good candidates over candidates who shouldn't have the tools in the first place. Etc. Etc. Etc. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
No, it is not too difficult to pass. I often oppose candidates, including those who are good content contributors. My concern is that being a good content writer does not necessarily mean that the person will be a good admin. Indeed the best content writers are less likely to use the admin tools at all. Let the content writers continue to write content. If you think that they are doing a good job, give them a barnstar. I suspect that all too often, adminship is subconsciously seen as a promotion for good editors, rather than an extension of power into restricted activities. Axl ¤ 13:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
No, the process is not too difficult for the nominee. Since I was pinged to be polled, because of my opposition; (which seems skewed in a valid survey); My motivation in participating: becoming an admin requires "a high level of trust from the community". I have supported some; I have opposed some upon this basis. (Being challenged over my opposes does not bother me, since I have astoundingly grown fangs in WP:FPC)....This: and this: however, really saddened me and seemed quite bad form, since this is a successful outcome for the candidate. Gravedancing at the end upon us opposers makes me wonder if I will participate again. I feel mocked for my oppose, which was not undertaken frivously. I imagine no one has noticed this entry: : #Support - Based on this editors surprisingly vague editing history, I'm changing my vote from neutral to support. Now that WP has such an admin shortage, choosing admins with such a lack of transparent history is definitely the thing to do to further water-down WP's administrative competence and hopefully hasten the projet's demise. Cla68 (talk) 10:11, 1 November 2014 (UTC). Therein lies the tale. Fylbecatuloustalk14:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I concur that this is a skewed poll (if that is what it is). The people being polled recently opposed an RfA and I'm guessing would lean more towards saying its not too difficult to pass. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:37, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I fully understand that this poll is entirely skewed, and is not useful as a gage of the views of the community as a whole. I explained my reasons for asking it in this way at the top of this discussion section. I deliberately would like to hear from editors selected this way, because most of the discussions about "RfA is too difficult!" are posted by editors who support candidates and are unhappy about "oppose" comments. I feel that it may be useful to get some opinions that might otherwise not be heard. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:07, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
No, I don't think the process is too hard to pass. Post Misplaced Pages Seigenthaler biography incident, it necessarily became somewhat more difficult, and there's no going back. Might be great if we could, but we can't. Standards just had to become higher. I think it'd be great if we had more admins, but the pipeline needs to be patched where it's leaking badly; the 1st edit => 10th edit line, which is where the decline in RfAs originates. WilyD15:02, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I think that any increase in difficulty (and I'm not convinced that it is necessarily more difficult) comes from the realization that it is very difficult to correct a mistake when appointing an Admin. Should a candidate turn out to be unsuited, we're in effect stuck with them until they decide to give up the bit (or in the very unlikely event that ArbCom takes action). Intothatdarkness15:33, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
A case example of this is administrator DangerousPanda. Promoted in January of 2010, he is now before ArbCom over incivility issues. Incivility issues were raised during his first and second RfA (note: he changed his username since). They did not carry the day in his second RfA and he was promoted. Nevertheless, the incivility problems continued. It has taken nigh on four years for it to get to the point of being an ArbCom case. I see in that several problems; (1) Admins are more 'equal' than all of us equals, (2) the system for desysopping is effectively useless, (3) incivility is treated as normal and acceptable, and others. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:56, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Hammersoft and Fylbecatulous, and the issues they raise were what bothered me about the hectoring and belittling (example) of "opposes" in that recent RfA. It's hard enough to oppose an admin who is getting a lot of support. (Why antagonize somebody who is going to have power over you?) Supporters jumping on every opposer had the effect of intimidating potential opposers and ensuring that "their guy" gets the tools. He got them, but I think that the behavior of his supporters cast a pall over the results. Coretheapple (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Intothatdarkness that the lack of a recall mechanism raises the stakes (and thus the standards) on the Request For Administration process. I don't think the process is itself too difficult, I think the stakes are too high by overbundling of tools and lack of post-election accountability. It would also help tone down things if the "3 standard vapid questions" asked of every nominee were transformed into ten good ones (including a declaration of all previous accounts) and if voter questions were at the same time moved to a position of less prominence, such as the "Neutral" section. Carrite (talk) 15:58, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Asking if RfA is "too difficult to pass" is like asking if a person's "legs are too long." I do think that the process is capricious; I once saw a highly qualified content creator, a real gem, get passed over on totally bogus reasons, while we just saw an editor with little content creation and a seven-year gap in his editing history sail by. The general rule seems to be that if one keeps one's head down and doesn't antangonize anyone, while doing technical or scut work, one can become an administrator. Why more techies and scut-workers don't become admins is beyond me, as the door is open to them even if they haven't created much content. I think one reason there is difficulty at each of these RfAs is that the position is a lifetime appointment, and there are no effective ways of removing rotten apples. Coretheapple (talk) 16:07, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I attended an event recently. At this, one of the speakers commented that the OpenStreetMap project didn't have any admins. He immediately qualified this by saying that there was actually a small core of privileged users who could block and do other admin tasks. But the point was that admins were so low profile on that project that it was easy to forget they were there. I have the impression that we're at the other end of the scale - that our admin corps is too large and heavy-handed. This may be due to RFA having been too permissive in the past. If it is much more stringent now then this seems to be a reasonable response. Andrew (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Just to note I did not receive the notification. I have no opinion on the question, or what is the point of asking it. —Neotarf (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who is responding here, no matter how you found out about it! I'm sorry that the notification system is so buggy, but blame that on the WMF software people, over whom I have no control. As for that other website serving as a notifier in the absence of things working the right way here, well isn't that ironic! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I didn't see the notice either and checking the notice list I never received one. No I don't think RfA is too hard to pass but as another commentator has noted its capricious. Here, we had an editor with a seven year gap in their editing history and the answers to Q.12 were vague and evasive. The candidate was asked twice if they'd had a previous named account, the answer hints that they did but they didn't disclose them. That raises a massive red flag in my book. Equally I've seen eminent candidates who'd simply edited in controversial areas, thereby attracting adverse comment from aggrieved POV pushing SPA. Apparently its really easy to pass if you avoid editing in any controversial areas and don't pick up any enemies. Thats what needs to be fixed, RFA should be about the candidates suitability and often it is simply an avenue to pursue personal grievances. WCMemail13:10, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Archive
All admins and bureaucrats, can you archive this page because it's 252,796 bytes on this page? I think you have to archive this talk page now for over 200K bytes. It will be the 231st archive on this one. --Allen22:31, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
First, anyone can archive a page. It doesn't take an admin or a bureaucrat. Second, this page is automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. In fact, the last edit before your edit here above was done by this bot . If you edit this page in full and look at the line "|algo = old(30d)" you'll see that threads are automatically archived after they've gone stale for 30 days. All the threads active on this page are less stale than that. This page hasn't been manually archived in a long time. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Archiving is done by a bot. When a section has not been edited for over 30 days, it will move it to an archive (the max size of which is 200 kilobytes). For more information, see User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo. I do not believe there is a hard limit for page size, especially on talk pages. ansh66622:54, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
" Of course, wiki-side, the simple problem with RFA is that !votes aren't ignored by patrolling bureaucrats when they aren't in line with current admin policy. For example, when people "oppose" based on "not enough article improvement edits" or "I don't like this edit they made" or "this edit made a mistake" (an extremely common occurrence) when someone's clearly almost exclusively an anti-vandal patroller or something, it's not at all an argument that's in line with the admin policy (there's precisely zero requirement for admins to make article improvement edits or be generally well-rounded wiki citizens); therefore, they should probably summarily be ignored but in actuality aren't. I, myself, probably haven't made substantial mainspace edits for years—doesn't mean I don't try my best to clear out backlogs—the place where admins are most needed—when and if I have free time. Similarly, RFA questions that are divisive, contentious, or loaded to select for an ideology, much like those posed to political candidates, could also be screened for and removed by bureaucrats or other editors. " - comment by Slakr.
Yes, but it's easier said than done. The hard (maybe impossible) part is coming up with a way of deciding which !votes are legitimate and which aren't. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:50, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Then by the same token should they ignore support !votes based on a lack of admins or some other concern not directly related to the candidate's qualifications? Intothatdarkness16:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I feel that support should be the "default"; by this, I mean that a support without a reason should be considered as saying "I agree with the nominator(s), I have no concerns, and the opposes so far (if any) don't convince me" (and this is what no-text supports are currently considered, de facto). Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:32, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Is there any evidence that Crats aren't properly judging consensus at RFA? I haven't seen anything that would substantiate that claim. Dennis - 2¢16:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I tend to think not, honestly. This is just one of those things that comes up occasionally, usually focusing on !votes that oppose. Intothatdarkness17:30, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
We don't need anyone deciding which votes are valid or invalid. Ultimately, when you go down that road, you give the person counting the votes the power to decide the outcome. Disqualification of votes should only be done on the basis of incontestable technical reasons, such as an account being too new or having too few edits. Everyking (talk) 18:14, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Of course the person counting the votes has the power to decide the outcome, that is what we select Crats to do. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of time, counting those votes is a simple affair as the person clearly passes or clearly fails. It is only the rare times when an RFA is on the threshold does it come into focus. And being "too new" or having "too few edits" isn't a valid reason to discount a vote, policy is pretty clear on that, and I'm kind of shocked to see an admin even say that. Dennis - 2¢19:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I always thought that bureaucrats could discard any votes at their discretion, and have commented here with that assumption in the past. However, my thoughts were that it was for obviously bad-faith comments ("oppose because the third co-nominator is a sockpuppet" when said co-nom is an arb or something), frivolous complaints ("editor has 13 in their username and I'm scared of it"), or opposes without a reason (do I need to give an example? - note, none of these are real, hopefully), among other obvious things. I don't think that they should discard comments like those described by Slakr or contributions by accounts that Everyking describes - the community has accepted that each editor is allowed to have their own standards for RfA, and while new/low-edit accounts should obviously be scrutinized especially on potentially controversial candidates, if legitimate there is no reason to not count them. ansh66620:19, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
In the closest cases, the crats open a process call a "crat chat", by creating a dedicated page where the crats, as a group, discuss and decide how to close the RfA. One can see in these discussions that they explicitly speak about giving more or less weight to certain arguments, and it generally is in line with the ways that WP:CONSENSUS is determined in other kinds of discussions. After all, WP:VOTE. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't believe there is a specifically a problem. There has rarely been a Crat decision that I did not think was correct. I say rarely, but generally speaking I don't see that vetoing certain !votes and that criteria would have resolved those close calls anyway. Mkdw15:55, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
Bureaucrats have been chosen by the community explicitly to consider the merit of RfA !votes during closure. (If they didn't need to do that, we wouldn't need bureaucrats to close RfAs.) Axl ¤ 14:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
The conundrum
This is my understanding of the present dilemma: RFA is not producing new admins very often. As a result, some people feel that the process needs to be closed. However, there is no consensus to close the process until a new process can be agreed upon. Unfortunately, no consensus can found regarding a new process. While everyone is talking, the discussion prompts the success of a handful of RFA, leading some to claim that there really isn't any problem as good candidate are still getting through. The whole conversation basically goes nowhere. Since the inactivity issues really weren't solved, the new-RFA momentum dies off fairly quickly and the cycle begins again a few months down the road. Does that sound like an accurate summation? Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 16:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Sounds about right, Perhaps it would help to construct in one place what everyone sees at the problems with RFA and the good parts about it and then go from there about what needs to be done? To my knowledge, I don't think the community as a whole has ever produced such a list. --Church19:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
See also, round one of the three-round RfC in 2013. There are no new ideas when it comes to RfA, the 230 archives of this page are a testament to that. benmoore20:26, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Two or three years ago, I used to get excited about all this for similar reasons. I got over it. If anything, RFA is more gentle now than before, and the "shortage" of admin hasn't caused any problems. We still have backlogs at some things, like closing RFCs, but that isn't from a shortage of admin, it is because it hard, thankless work that often ends in drama so once you've done a few, you lose your taste for closing them. Dennis - 2¢17:44, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
No, because that proposal was for a tactic: to unnecessarily bring about a state of necessity. All the supporters presumably wanted change. Around half the oppose voters were also prepared for change, even radical change: they just wanted to know roughly what change. Another quarter were looking for incremental change or "tweaks" to the current system. Only about a quarter clearly felt no change was needed. Well let's look for one incremental change that can be widely supported, if only to restore confidence that we can improve admin selection. I suggest bringing forward this proposal for a new application form. Does it look like a goer?: Noyster (talk), 10:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
No. I've read a lot of the back history of this talk page, and proposals for mandated minimum admin requirements are always rejected. Neatsfoot (talk) 15:09, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Noyster's proposal does not address the actual problems. Wherever comments are allowed on an RfA system, some '!voters' will resort to disingenuous tactics or simply be obnoxious. That said, and concurring with Dennis, RfA is a lot less scary than it was when I felt motivated to launch WP:RFA2011, so if that project didn't bring about any physical changes to the system, it sent a clear message to the trolls (of that time), and the mature RfA voting community is now far less tolerant of such behaviour. Anyone who makes stupid comments on an RfA only makes themselves look (very) silly.
Minimum requirements for running for sysop IMO are not needed to be written down; anyone who attempts an RfA by ignoring all the advice pages and last minute caveats has already demonstrated that they either lack common sense, or just don't have the nous to understand what adminship is all about. If anything, we need a set of minimum qualifications for the !voters ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:23, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
That's another idea that has been thrown around, and is guaranteed to cause drama. I'm not sure what RfA needs, except more candidates. Dennis - 2¢14:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I encourage all those who wish to invest effort in identifying and inviting potential candidates to revive Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Admin Nominators as a place to record the outcome of your efforts. This way the community can benefit from your experience to try to learn what may work well, and what needs improvement. For example, you can list a profile that you are looking for in a potential administrator, and record the outcome of your invitations, with the associated reasons why they chose to proceed or not. Based on this feedback, further evolution of the administrator selection process can be proposed, if it seems desirable. isaacl (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Some people may use this profile to identify their ideal candidates, and other may use other criteria; the idea is that each person who decides to do a recruitment drive will take note of the criteria they used at the time, and the outcome. It would be nice to have a retrospective of each initiative, so they can be evaluated and lessons learned, regardless of whether or not they lose steam at some point. As for me, the types of tasks that interest me do not require administrative privileges. (This is a good case of where identifying the criteria being used to solicit feedback is useful; as I'm pretty sure that I do not meet anyone's criteria, with the possible exception of those whose only criteria is "seems trustworthy", my response can't be used to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of the RfA process.) isaacl (talk) 13:37, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
Isaacl (and Dennis), there are (generally/very broadly) two types of users who do recruitment drives: those whose nominations badly misfire in spite of being good faith, and those who do considerable research and are genuinely confident their candidates will pass. That said, what actually defines a 'recruitment drive'? AFAIK, those of us who actively look for candidates of the right calibre often share our experiences through the confidentiality of email or face-to-face at meet ups or Misplaced Pages conferences, and the conclusion is the one I illustrated above.
As a classic example, please see the clear evidence of blatant trolling on a current RfA - you'd be surprised how that kind of thing discourages even the most thick-skinned and highly experienced users from wanting to subject themselves to the process; such !votes add to RfA's rotten reputation and should rapidly be indented by an admin, 'crat, or even any user in good standing, and perhaps with a warning for disruptive editing.
You may wish to review a few dozen successful and unsuccessful RfAs, and above all read up on the dozens of voter criteria listed here - it would save a lot of surmise or conjecture. Bear in mind that that essay was based on the huge amount of research that was done at WP:RFA2011, a great deal of which is still very much relevant today despite the pool of 'regular' voters in the voter profile table having largely mutated over the last 3 to 4 years.
If you are going to take a closer look at or for successful/unsuccessful stats (which I hope you will, because we still need as much objective feedback as possible, especially from users like yourself who are not simply hoping that an eventual reform of the process will make it easier for them to get the bit), it helps to discount the snow and not-now self noms - they don't really belong in the equation.
Bags of good stuff there. Maybe an immediate "band aid" solution is a much more heavily policed RfA arena, with any bad faith or trolling or generally crap contributions being swiftly, and very publicly dealt with by existing sanctions. But it should be recognised that those sanctions should be applied to the max in such a sensitive arena as an RfA. A few heads on poles might "encourage the others" who might have similar thoughts, and may add candidate confidence to the whole process. Irondome (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
Well yes, Irondome, that concurs largely with my way of thinking, but who will be bold enough to start? Aye, there's the rub. I do feel that just occasionally the community still needs to be reminded that RfA is not a free-for-all venue to behave as badly as possible with impunity, or to take strategic swipes at the concept of adminship in general. However, there are those who feel that by doing so would play into the hands of such attention seekers and ultimately encourage them and those of their ilk to do more trolling. They may be right - the majority of participants are one-off !voters; they leave their throw-away vote and often do not even come back to see what havoc the have wrought. It took 6 years to get rid of one persistent disruptor of RfA - perhaps they just left of their own accord because they haven made an edit to the 'pedia for over a year which coincidentally roughly coincides with the time RfA got noticeably cleaner. The actual pool of regular participants being quite small and generally comprised of people who know how to behave and vote sensibly. Sorry to sound like a cracked record Isaacl, but there's more on this too at Misplaced Pages:RfA reform (continued)/Voter profiles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
Bot problem?
Is there something awry with the bot that updates the !vote counter? It seems no update has been made to the current RfA since yesterday. Philg88 10:17, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Support. Ansh666 19:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Done, I've been meaning to do that but keep forgetting. Thanks for the reminder.--Church 19:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Facepalm . Dennis - 2¢ 14:17, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
