Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:23, 7 September 2006

New editors?

Does anyone else find it amazing that two editors who only began around the 20th of august have found their way to RFA? I may have been aytpical in my time at Misplaced Pages, but I don't think I stumbled upon RFA before 3-4 months after registering. Vice President In Charge Of Office Supplies (talk · contribs · count) and The Coffee Shop That Smiles Upon The River (talk · contribs · count)? Syrthiss 01:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Depends if the Mr. Coffee Shop is from Merrimack, New Hampshire or not :) - CrazyRussian talk/email 02:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, Taxman agreed. Picaroon9288|ta co 03:18, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll have a talk with him, if it really is him, which I suspect he is from an email he sent me. – Chacor 06:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

His reply seems to suggest he has indeed been using more than one account for RFA voting purposes. – Chacor 03:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Another, Just H (talk · contribs · count) just weighed in. Going to check the entire list now. Syrthiss 13:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Only other short-term editor (also around 19 aug) is Scobell302 (talk · contribs · count). Syrthiss 13:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

12:02, August 17, 2006 Yankee Rajput (Talk | contribs) New user account. I suggest getting a checkuser to check these against Juppiter. --Rory096 01:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not my sock, guys, but I think it's pretty sad that every oppose vote is being given such scrutiny. Juppiter 02:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is curious that a 2-week account is already participating in RFA. Oh, it can be possible. But when there are two or three accounts that had started participating almost in the same date, some people begin tingling. I would not say they are your socks, but some consider your behaviour (which I agree left a lot to be desired with the OrphanBot page) justifies a check. -- ReyBrujo 02:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course you could always follow a Misplaced Pages policy, WP:FAITH, or simply not show a bias and check every user that votes. PPGMD 03:19, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Moved from project page

Get off the fence and tell us what you really think ;-) JzG 16:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Some of my thoughts are on this WP:AN section. Again, please do not start a threaded conversation bellow my project page comment. El_C 08:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Promotion

Carnildo was an admin who was caught up in an unfortunate argument for which he was deadmined. Based on statements from members of the arbcom, we believe that this was meant as a temporary measure, a cooling off period, and in that time Carnildo has proved his loyalty and value to the project. While we recognize that there are many users who are opposed to his adminship, we believe that special consideration should be given to the extenuating circumstances of this case and that we should act in the spirit of forgiveness and reconcilliation which is integral to the success of our community. Carnildo has shown good will to the project despite his desysoping, and continues to contribute. We therefore reinstate Carnildo's adminship, on a probationary basis, for a period of two months, after which his activities will be reviewed by the arbcom. - Taxman 04:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC) (On behalf of myself, Danny, and Rdsmith4, primary writing credit to Danny :)

Why bother going through this at all then? VegaDark 05:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a spectacularly bad idea. You generate all the ill will from oppose votes, without accomplishing what oppose votes are meant to accomplish. It's rather discourteous to the body of editors to put a sham RFA in front of them like this. If they wanted to reinstate adminship, they could have done so without bothering with this. Friday (talk) 05:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Uh huh. This could have been done in the first place, preferably with Jimbo's backing, and it might have been okay. Certainly, I would have been okay with it. But allowing a standard RfA to run with far less than the required threshold of support votes at the announced closing time, plus a lot of respected people indicating they still don't trust Carnildo with the tools, and then declaring it "successful" anyway, was a very bad idea in my view. I guess there's nothing we can do about it, but you should know that it causes concern, at least to me. The concern is not assuaged by the probation arrangement. No one doubts that Carnildo can show good behaviour for a defined period of time. Metamagician3000 05:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Now, now people, Misplaced Pages is not a democracy (at least this is what I am told). I have seen some things that I do not agree with, but I BITE my tongue. Ouch, that hurt! JungleCat talk/contrib 05:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand the frustration expressed above. I would have been particularly perturbed if the vote had been running under 50% in favor but that's not the case here. The vote was 61% in favor. Consider the bureaucrats as a sort of tie-breaker. A 'crat could say "Hey, no consensus, no adminship". Or, as happened here, the 'crat could say "No consensus but the vote is running in favor and we 'crats are also in favor and so consider the 'crat vote to be a tie-breaker." Put that way, it's not as bad as some people are making it out to be. --Richard 05:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Two months probation period is not long. Then what? You say "it's not as bad as some people are making it out to be". I disagree. JungleCat talk/contrib 05:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

This is just ridiculous. Karmafist had about the same percentage in his last RfA, but he wasn't resysopped still. And AFAIK he never did something as stupid as Carnildo did (I mean, while he still was an admin).  Grue  06:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree that this is a joke, and one in particularly poor taste given the damage Carnildo did. What was the point in letting it go through the RFA process again if the intention was to ignore the result if it went against your opinion? Did Carnildo know you intended to push through the result anyway? Is that why he didn't respond to the questions for so long, knowing it was a sham RFA and it didn't matter? Leithp 08:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Strongly oppose this. Carnildo failed his RfA. This is just a cheap way to push him through regardless of the community's vote. Everyking 09:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I almost didn't participate here, because it looked like there was little chance of it succeeding, and I didn't want to pile on an oppose. However I went ahead and participated, just in case. Now, I have to wonder how many people out there were thinking "oppose" but didn't say so because it looked unneccessary. I'd like to hear personally from more B'crats whether they support this or not. Are we to assume B'crats can overrule Arbcom at will? Surely if arbcom had intended this to be temporary, they'd have said so somewhere? I think it's better when the arbcom and the bcrats are seperate and don't second-guess each other like this. Friday (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm another of the bureaucrats, and I don't object to what Taxman, Danny, and Rdsmith4 have done, though I wasn't involved in the promotion decision or discussions they had prior to making it. I note that the 75-80% threshold is not a substitute for the judgement of the bureaucrats involved in making the promotion, and indeed is an arbitrary figure originally borrowed from the forerunner to AFD with little discussion and adopted at a time when few RFAs were close calls. I consider the oppose votes based primarily on dislike for Carnildo's work on fair use images to be specious, because Carnildo is working well within settled policy in this area; his excellent work in running orphanbot is hardly legitimate grounds for opposition. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you'd object; you nominated him. For the record, going through the 70 oppose votes, I count only three that explicitly say oppose because of bad bot or oppose for bot misuse. Three opposes hardly makes a difference; if you count those who say oppose because running the bot doesn't need admin tools that figure goes to around 10 or 15 (haven't checked that one myself). That is still very, very iffy. – Chacor 15:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The Arbcom did say if was temporary, read the "sentence" again, he was to be de-admined for two weeks after wich he could re-apply (that was about 6 months ago now), also as far as I can tell all the arbcom members who participated in this debate supported his re-adminship. So I have some difficulty seeing how you can claim this descission somehow overturn or second guess the Arbcom. --Sherool (talk) 16:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There's a big difference between being able to re-apply afterwards and magically getting the sysop bit back afterwards. Friday (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I thought these RfA's were supposed to be decided by the community, based on this decision it appears as though I am mistaken. If there was already a decision in place to award the candidate with this "probationary" admin status then why even bring it to other editors? Why let many of us voice our opinion and then disregard it all? This leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, I guess Misplaced Pages is only community driven most of the time. DrunkenSmurf 15:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

What is the likelihood of another pedophile userbox war? I'd say pretty limited. The userbox wars saw many otherwise reasonable people doing things of which they should have been ashamed (and generally were, when it all died down). Carnildo's work on image copyright is good and important, and I for one am happy to see him get is mop and bucket back - it is, after all, supposed to be no big deal. Rest assured, he will be watched by many people. But it does raise the question of what to do about recall, periodic re-election and so on. It is almost impossible to be an active admin without making enemies, some due to grudges over errors of judgment but many more due to the frustration of the unrighteous stopped in their attempts to impose their own agenda. If you want every admin to remain popular, you're going to need to start being a lot more supportive as a community when admins are tackling POV warriors, because its being isolated against a small but determined group of such tendentious editors which causes many of us to burn out and/or lose it. That is, of course, a discussion for another place... Guy 17:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a mistake to focus entirely on userboxes here—Carnildo's actions were not, as one might recall, actually related to the userbox itself, but rather to the associated block of the editor using it (and the underlying reasons for blocking him in the first place). The userbox situation may have defused itself, but the underlying issue probably hasn't. Kirill Lokshin 17:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Guy only in one part. Carnildo will be watched by all closely and it wouldn't take much to get him on a notice board. Admins are under the magnifying glass anyway. JungleCat talk/contrib 17:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus?!

THIS is consensus?! I smell a stolen election here..... whatever....... Juppiter 13:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

No consensus

There was no consensus to promote here, and I disagree that this was close enough to warrant a "tie breaker". Note that I was ambivalent with regards to the actual promotion, which is why I did not support or oppose, but I feel compelled to express my dissatisfaction with this decision based upon the community's feedback. If we are going to promote some at 61%, and then deny others at 71%, why even bother going through the motions of an RFA? RFerreira 18:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. If Carnildo has any respect for wikipedia, he will resign his adminship and wait to win an RfA fairly. Juppiter 19:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Because it's not a vote, and beurocrats are supposed to take all the arguments into acount rater than simply counting the number times the words "support" and "oppose" occur in bold text on the page. They aparently feel that in this case the arguments offered to support combined with Carnildo's virtualy spotles record aside from that one bad lapse of judgement was sufficient to tip the balance enough in his favour to grant him a probationary reinstatement despite a sizable minority expressing various levels of lacking confidence in his ability to make good judgements. I'm sure it was not a desission they took lightly. --Sherool (talk) 19:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

In that case, the best way to become an admin is not to do good work and win the respect of the community. You just have to be friends with the bureaucrats, which some people unfortunately were not, despite having a consensus bigger than this. Juppiter 19:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Believe it or not, but the best way to gain the respect of beurocrats and other admins is in fact to do good work, so there is kind of no way around that one. --Sherool (talk) 20:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I ask this of User:Sherool in a posture of truly wanting to understand rather than just being argumentative. What Sherool writes is plausible and sounds good but I haven't read that before. My impression is that Sherool's interpretation is a change in policy as currently stated.

Where is it written in Misplaced Pages policy that bureaucrats are supposed to act in the way that Sherool describes? If that description is correct, then the Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship page should be updated to reflect the policy. --Richard 19:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Not explicitly, but WP:CONSENSUS give some guidance. Let me quote a section:

"(...)That said, the numbers mentioned as being sufficient to reach supermajority vary from about 60% to over 80% depending upon the decision, with the more critical processes tending to have higher thresholds. See the pages for RM, AFD and RFA for further discussion of such figures. The numbers are by no means fixed, but are merely statistics reflecting past decisions. Note that the numbers are not binding on the editor who is interpreting the debate, and should never be the only consideration in making a final decision." (emphasis mine).

--Sherool (talk) 20:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I seem to recall we kept trying to remove those bloody silly numbers from that page and somebody kept on stuffing them back in. They are effectively meaningless. --Tony Sidaway 05:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's get this straight: do you really believe that consensus was attained on this RfA or you are just trolling?  Grue  06:06, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's correct to describe the process of selecting an administrator in terms of finding consensus. A discussion in search of consensus concerning the adminship of a given editor could, I think, go on for months without any reasonable chance of convergence to consensus. So we have a quite short process, and in that process something rather complex happens, which I have proposed to try to begin pinning down by the declaration that RFA is not a vote.

The details of what it actually is aren't that important to me, as long as we can be reasonably confident that it usually arrives at the right decision, which is to grant sysop bits to competent, trustworthy applicants and withold them from incompetent, untrustworthy and insufficiently experienced applicants. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, I suspect that if ever we figured out exactly what it is that happens in an RFA, it will immediately disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable. There are some of us who think that this has already happened. --Tony Sidaway 06:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the RfA arrived at the right decision: Carnildo's nom failed. The powers that be then decided to make him an admin in direct contradiction of the RfA result. Everyking 10:07, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Tony we aren't blind, Carnildo was if not friends well liked in the crat community so even though the consensus was a percentage that would have prevented most other people from becoming admin, the crats pulled the wool over everyone's eyes with this worthless two month review, and lowered the bar for someone they wanted as an admin. This totally subverts the trust of the community showing favoritism in a process where there should be none, and this is how many start questioning all the actions that admins and crats do on Misplaced Pages. PPGMD 13:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The thing that's especially disheartening here was that the people complaining (mostly) aren't just bitching about "process". There is a real, tangible harm that comes to the project from irresponsible admins. To promote someone under questionable circumstances like this is one thing. But to promote someone who's already shown he cannot be trusted with the admin buttons is even more questionable. Also throw on the fact that some of his supporters are themselves irresponsible admins and it just looks like cronyism. I'm fine with saying "fuck process" when there's a good reason for it, but this is a case of "fuck process" against all reason. Friday (talk) 14:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has been seized from the community, seized from being "The 💕," and effectively put in the hands of a group that can get away with doing whatever it wants. Misplaced Pages was never supposed to be a democracy, but it did belong to everyone. It prided itself on being a 💕 that ANYONE could edit. Nowadays, it seems like you have to be in a certain elitist group to do anything here. If you're not in the group, anything you say can easily be disregarded as "silliness" and effectively censored. If you are in the group, you can do whatever you want, and still remain an admin despite breaking the rules at your whims. This project is going down a dangerous path. It has turned into a military junta. Juppiter 16:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

"military junta" - excuse me? Exageration is one thing, but comparing a website to a government of a country that kills people, seems a bit of a strech. If that the best you can do... JesseW, the juggling janitor 21:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

What's done is done

There's a well-established expectation that no one will succeed in an RfA with less than 75 per cent, so this really was a surprise. Surprises like that should be avoided if possible. However, let's move on. For future such situations, perhaps there needs to be some mechanism for Arb.Com to routinely review its desysopping decisions after six months, rather than go through a process like this. Metamagician3000 01:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Moving on at this point is probably the best thing that could happen, but, I don't think "what's done is done" is the right attitude here. On the contrary, I think that what's done can usually be undone, when the need arises. If the B'crats had decided among themselves to reverse their decision here, that would have been within their rights, and not at all the end of the world. Friday (talk) 02:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Note that this is not without precedent. See Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Sean Black 2, which had more support than this one, but was still short of the usual threshold for promotion. (I could see this coming because of that.) If we want to hold previous admins to a different standard, that's fine, but I would prefer it be expressed as an agreed-upon guideline. RfAs like this one generate too much animosity to be closed like this without such a guideline In My Humble Opinion. Grandmasterka 08:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Good example, and there's a criticial difference between the two. Most of us would probably agree that it's reasonable to be lenient in the case of someone who voluntarily gave up their sysop bit. In the case of someone who's sysop bit was removed for cause, the case for such leniency is far less clear. Obviously, knowing what the standards are would help- any number of people thinking "oppose" in this case probably didn't participate since it looked so unneccessary. Friday (talk) 16:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The role of bureaucrats

The role of bureaucrats is to gauge community consensus. WP:CRAT says that bureaucrats may grant administrator access "only when doing so reflects the wishes of the community", WP:RfA says that bureaucrats "review the discussion to see whether there is a general consensus for promotion", and Taxman, one of the three bureaucrats behind the decision to promote Carnildo, acknowledges that "As a bureaucrat it is my job to determine consensus in RfAs." Yet the decision makes no mention of consensus, and only references community opinion to say that while many users oppose Carnildo's adminship, he is being promoted anyway.

The threshold for consensus was not met here. Although RfA is not a rigid vote, consensus tends to be gauged by percentage, with bureaucrats "generally held to a 75-80% discretionary zone", in Taxman's words. Carnildo's RfA closed with 112 supports and 71 opposes, a 61% ratio. The true ratio may be even lower due to users (like and ) not bothering to oppose when they saw that the RfA was already well below the threshold for promotion.

There has arisen a dangerous misconception that when deciding whether to promote, bureaucrats are permitted to "weigh the arguments" or make arguments of their own at the expense of community consensus. Neither WP:CRAT nor WP:RfA gives them such authority. Rather, it is the job of the community to make arguments and weigh each other's arguments during the discussion. The job of bureaucrats is strictly to gauge consensus. Of course, they cannot do so by mechanically counting supports and opposes, but must watch carefully for sockpuppets and other consensus-obscuring factors. And of course, bureaucrats are part of the community too, and in their role as community members, may participate in the discussion themselves. But in their role as bureaucrats, when deciding whether to promote, they are bound by the community's will.

In addition to lacking consensus, this decision had other problems. First, although bureaucrats may participate in RfA discussions, it is best for impartiality that they not close discussions in which they have participated, unless the outcome is uncontroversial due to an obvious consensus or non-consensus. Danny, who supported the RfA, nonetheless holds "primary writing credit" for this highly controversial decision. Second, transparency requires that bureaucrats discuss issues of promotion or non-promotion openly. Taxman pledged to do so when he became a bureaucrat, but now admits that with respect to the current decision, of which, as far as I know, not a peep was made prior to its surprise announcement, he "did different from what said would", a "mistake", in his words.

In short, the decision to promote Carnildo was made without transparency and without consensus. If the bureaucrats believed that "special consideration should be given to the extenuating circumstances of this case", they could have presented that view to the community and sought consensus in the ensuing discussion. Instead, they issued a highly irregular decision without public consultation. It is disappointing and worrying to see trusted users exhibit such disrespect for the community which granted them their positions, and I urge them to recant. Tim Smith 21:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I think it's probably incorrect to say that in this case the bureaucrats who chose to promote a candidate did not perform their duty of gauging community consensus correctly. My principal justification for this belief is that there is, to my mind, no compelling reason to believe that they made a decision that will not prevail. My second justification for this belief is that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedians involved in the matter seem to be perfectly happy with the decision. A very, very small number of editors have engaged in discussion on this talk page, and a few of those are opposed to the decision. This is not going to shake the foundations of Misplaced Pages. This was not a decision that went against the consensus of editors. --Tony Sidaway 22:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe you are simply wrong. Your "overwhelming majority" has no basis in fact. You data is also skewed by the reception you youself have given dissenting voices: removing requests for Carnildo to step down from his talk page, characterizing oppose voters as a "mob", blocking Ghirlando for engaging in personalized struggle in violation of WP:NOT, etc. To chill dissenting voices and then look around and say "look! everybody agrees" is unbecoming behavior, Tony. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)