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Observation

Being basically a WikiGnome myself, I can't help but notice that in the past few months' of RfAs that I've looked at, some Editors/Admins oppose a candidate primarily because the individual hasn't devote a substantial amount of their time and edits to writing new articles (and it's article creation, not editing, that counts). And it's not just creating stub or start articles, it's creating exceptional articles that is now expected. So this can result in Oppose votes for otherwise productive Editors who might toil away reviewing articles, working in Mediation or at the Help Desk, or fighting vandalism because they have no GAs or FAs to their name.

I can't believe that this expectation was present even a few years ago because I see many active Admins who contribute loads of time to the many important areas of Misplaced Pages that are essential for the smooth running of the encyclopedia, but little to new article creation. I completely understand the importance of new article creation for the vitality of Misplaced Pages and its future. I'm just not clear on why being an outstanding writer is a necessary qualification for becoming a good Admin.

So, that's my perception and you can argue that it's on the mark or way off. I should add that some of these candidates have passed their RfAs in spite of the opposition to their lack of writing expertise. It's just in looking over Oppose votes (which are, unfortunately, always longer and more detailed than Support votes), I see this same criteria coming up again and again. Liz 22:02, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

This is an significant point. Misplaced Pages has developed to a high degree of maturity and it is becoming as important to protect the good material that we have as to create new material. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:18, 2 November 2013 (UTC).

I think it comes down to showing that the person has attempted to try to build the Pedia and understands not just the policies needed in the role, but also how those on the affected side of the tools may feel when used. Most say, not looking for GA or FA, but something. I believe having those focusing on vandalism and other meta areas is vital; however, it's not out of the realm to expect someone to learn what goes into making an article and collaborating with others on them. It really isn't asking so much and a certain amount of clue is shown by knowing this prior to attempting an RFA. Calmer Waters 22:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree; extenuating that it becomes a bit more requisite, in my opinion, when the candidate expresses an intention to administer csd/afd deletions.—John Cline (talk) 22:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not have GAs and FAs, and I explained in my RFA statement why I am not planning to have any. There were no opposes based on this ground. I think the voters just believed my explanation.--Ymblanter (talk) 03:35, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that the content requirement is to have a GA or FA, I'm not seeing many !voters who are opposing for the lack of audited content. But I do think that the de facto requirements include having mastered the art of adding reliably sourced content to the pedia. Any candidate who doesn't take the opportunity of using question 2 to give examples of them doing that is going to have problems. ϢereSpielChequers 22:37, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I also don't think that FA, GA, or DYK are necessary(#4), but I do think a very minimum of article creation and/or an equivalent amount of new content should demonstrate that we are here first and foremost to build an encyclopedia and not a MMPORG. People don't join the army just because they want to shoot guns, and they don't join the police force just because they want to drive a fast car with a blue light and a siren and hand out speeding fines. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง, I don't see mediating disputes, closing CfDs, protecting pages, closing discussions on noticeboards, offering guidance to new editors, etc., as the "glamour" part of being an Admin. Not every Admin needs the tools to block other users as Admins generally focus their efforts on a couple of different areas of Misplaced Pages.

For example, if someone has an excellent record fighting vandalism, it might be nice to have another Admin working in that area even though an Editor doesn't need to be an Admin to fight vandalism. See there are two different approaches...the generalist approach views top Admin candidates to have lots of experience in many areas of Misplaced Pages so they are well-rounded (even though they will actually probably only work in a couple of areas). The other approach, the specialist, argues that it's talented Editors who should get the tools so there are a representative number of Admins present in all areas of Misplaced Pages, so there are Admins present in Dispute Resolution, on Help Desk or Reference Desk duty, in deletion discussions or article creation. You elect someone who has the right temperament, experience and attitude to be an Admin and then they continue to work in the fields they excel at.

Right now, it seems like the generalist approach is the dominant one seen in RfAs (although people voting do not need to share their rationale for their votes). I guess what I'm trying to get across is that there are different ways to select leaders.

I realize that suggesting reforms of the RfA process is a perennial activity for many. But this is not about changing the process, it's about viewing Admins in a different way, as more than just users who can hand out blocks, but as genuine leaders wherever they choose to work. Liz 01:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

There is just one flaw in that argument: At RfA we don't elect leaders, we elect janitors. The only difference between those janitors and the non-admins is that the janitors wanted to be janitors so they tried their chances at RfA, and if they passed they demonstrated that they could be trusted with a bunch of keys, know most of the corridors and rooms, and not to use them for locking the wrong doors for the wrong reasons. For leaders, we have a lot of prolific, very well respected active users who help develop new things, define policies, help other users, review and pass FA and GAN, and close RfCs without an admin flag. There is absolutely no glamour whatsoever in being an admin - if you stay in the safe areas of admin work that don't attract controversy, you'll never get noticed (but your work is still important), and if you are one of the 20 - 30 who are bold enough to enter the danger zones without a Kevlar vest, you'll get noticed alright but what you take is flak and criticism from the detractors for just doing your job. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually no. We should be electing janitors but the process is designed to elect conservative leaders. The problem is, most of them don't lede. In fact most admins don't do anything...or very little...and that's the problem. The current RFA process favors promoting ineffectual editors to admins. For every 10 admins we promote, only a couple use the tools with any frequency. The rest just add the icon to their userpages ad strut around. If some of these "wanna be's" wants to do some work then they should do some, otherwise the community needs to start promoting people who are willing to do the work, not the ones who will keep quite and play nice. I like you Kudpung I think your one of the better admins but the more I see your comments the more I think that the process won't change because too many admins find an excuse to keep it. No change is good enough so we may as well leave it be. I also don't agree that admins who do certain tasks are more prone to attracting criticism. Although that is true to a point, more often than not they attract criticism because they start to get arrogant and do whatever they want with impunity. They know they can't be touched, so they can do whatever they want. Many get bolder and bolder and no one does anything. I keep checking back thinking these discussions might be of some benefit. But I check back less and less and when I do, I see that the attitude here is that of general complacency. If the community doesn't have the desire or morale courage to do the right thing and help build up the project, then I have no desire to be here. As it is, its just a bunch of admins trying to hold onto their power and shooting down any suggestions to upend the system that got them that power. When you are interested in building an encyclopedia and are willing to make changes to benefit the project and not yourselves let me know. I would love to participate in that project. Kumioko (talk) 03:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know for sure if admins should be leaders or even if such qualities are anticipated at RfA; lead by example yes, but that's not the same thing. I've certainly never seen myself as a leader either - a mover-and-shaker maybe, because someone has to get the ball rolling but the rest is up to the community. I did my bit a couple of years ago by investing many hours in WP:RFA2011, which was not, I hasten to add, a project to help admins retain their superpowers and exclude others from it. The project was born of the very arguments the regular detractors make about all that's wrong with adminship and the way the sysops are elected. If I still comment here or vote regularly at RfA, it's because I'm still very concerned that the bit is not given to the wrong people while all the time hoping that more candidates of the right calibre will come forward, but I'm unlikely to be active on any new campaigns for reform. In an environment where the same detractors are persistently shooting the messengers, it's just not worth it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:04, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

And RFA2011 ended just as every other related one ended, in failure. Largely because too many do not want the system to change. Not you necessarily, but many. The problem is we need to do multiple things to fix the system and we can't even get one to pass. I obviously don't have any faith in the system left and I have a pretty strong disdain for the current system. I also don't think several of the current admins should be allowed to call themselves admins. In the end though no one really gives a shit what I think. I'm just a fool tilting at windmills. Because its easier to discredit my comments as heresy than to fix the obvious problem that a lot of editors see but continue to ignore. I see the problems and I see them getting much worse. That can be seen in the numbers of how 2 are promoted for every ten that have the tools taken away. I can also see already that the only way things are going to change is when the project gets to the brink of collapse. I hope Wikia is solid enough it can take the articles over at that point. What is needed is a major house cleaning and a complete and total restructuring of how the tools are used and who gets them. Good luck with that! Till then, those of us that want to help won't and we will continue to loose contributors to this arcane and outdated bureaucratic system. Kumioko (talk) 04:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Liz could not be more wrong. Considering I just finished dealing with a serious content problem in a DYK review from a new admin (whose RFA I just browsed and it showed no content experience), I'm reminded that those who don't know how to build content and don't know Misplaced Pages's core policies and guidelines that govern content should not be policing same. No, you don't need GAs or FAs, and those don't guarantee good admins, but please ... stop supporting admin candidates who don't know the fundamentals of how content is built or even our core policies, like BLP or NOR, or guidelines, like reliable sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I couldn't agree more.

@Kumioko: I have a very soft spot for anyone who takes the time (and spends their money) to attend a Wikimania. When we met, we should have taken the opportunity to discuss these issues, pity we didn't - mature blokes like us can usually talk things through. We all know what axe you are grinding, but never say nothing can be done about it. There is a huge amount of resources in WP:RFA2011 and the only reason none of the proposals were launched is because several of us got simply fed up with the barracking from the sidelines from wannabe's who would never get the tools if they asked for them - under the current system, others who were simply demonstrating righteous indignation at having been (most probably) rightfully admonished, and some who are like those who go to a peaceful demo just to throw rocks, smash shop windows, and set fire to cars. In the finish when the background din was getting so loud, we decided either to continue the project off-Wiki and get accused of being a cabal, or dropping the whole thing. We dropped it. There are several ready-to-go proposals in there that are just waiting for someone to take them to RfC. I doubt very much if ever one of the radical alternatives to the adminship system will ever gain traction, but unbundling some of the tools may be an answer although there again, detractors are worried about creating more hats for the kids to collect, some would fume if their requests for the rights would get denied, while others are genuinely concerned about the added bureaucracy an extended priesthood of gatekeepers would create. I don't believe for a second that there is a cabal of admins who practice a single-party exclusion policy - we're not a military dictatorship. If more people of the right calibre would run for office, we'd get, well, more admins of the right calibre rather than teenage hotheads or pompous adults who are used to throwing their weight around in RL. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Y'know, if we could distil Kumioko, SandyGeorgia and Kudpung into a single concoction and require all Wikipedians to drink it, Misplaced Pages would be invincible. --Epipelagic (talk) 10:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

@Kudpung:, actually several people of the right calibre have run and didn't make it. No I'm not talking about me. There are several others that have tried to get the tools and the community told them no. Sometimes for petty reasons and I know you have seen it too. Then as I said the majority of those that get it don't use it. Sure they might use them occasionally, but their not really making any impact and this site is too reliant on the same few admins like Plastikspork who does the vast majority of Stuff for deletion closures and Sandy with the FA's. If they leave, or several others like them, then those venues virtually collapse. Look at what happen to Featured pictures when Durova left. That venue is deader than a doornail. Aside from unbundling we also need to eliminate the admin for life mentality and the admins are above reproach policy. Not to mention the misconception you need to be a saint to have the tools. People keep mentioning how they don't trust me with the block button but the truth is I think 98% of blocks should be undone and virtually all blocks longer than a week should be restricted to a higher review than one admin. So the times I would even use that button are so rare its almost not worth having. Its just an excuse to prevent me from interfering with their POV and personal agendas. Not all of course, but quite a few. When we have admins who are indefinitely blocking IP ranges or users for a minor infraction or making up rules as they go along, then we are just hurting the project. Did you know we currently block about 3% of the entire internet from editing. That may not sound like a lot, but it is. I know people get irritated about me but then they completely ignore the real problems like admins abusing new editors and the severe abuses of power like the ones at AE because they can't do anything about those. The only reason I keep coming back is because I keep seeing these discussions where people are saying half truths and trying to manipulate the discussion because not enough people know the history. Now although I have been responding in a few discussions I really have the intent to essentially retire from this site. I no longer want the tools, I no longer help out any Wikiprojects, edit articles, write code for AWB, etc. I'm done. Completely fed up with the mentality of this place and the "we don't care how much work you do we just don't like you" comments. The problem is, that is why we lose a lot of people and they don't come back, because they are fed up with it too. Kumioko (talk) 13:48, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

We've also lost around half a dozen of our busiest and fairest admins over the past 12 months because they too, simply got fed up. Those who would like to see the back of all admins are of course jumping with glee, but those admins are the hardest of all to replace. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

By my count, including those due to inactivity we lost 89 admins, only a couple asked for the tools back. Since only 30 have been promoted its easy to see there is a problem. I would also argue that there were a couple that gave up the tools I would not consider a loss. Several yes, but not all. Unfortunately the ones who need to have the tools removed, or at least restricted, still have them and are unlikely to give them up. Kumioko (talk) 14:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The current admin system operates in a way that is a systemic insult to able admins and productive content builders. Able admins have to carry the burden of admins who pull the system down, and the best admins often resign or leave. The admin system is grinding Misplaced Pages ever deeper into muck of its own making, and we cannot look to the system itself for solutions. Maybe the only hope now is if remaining content builders revolt to the point where they can overhaul the system. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:09, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Undermining the current state of affairs is not the way to go about building an encyclopedia. Rather, if change is in order we should all sit down and talk about it in the appropriate manner as is deserved such a large culture change. KonveyorBelt 22:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

You might think so, but if you stay around here for more that a few weeks, Konveyor Belt, you'll realize that not how things work around here. The precise issue is that talk about it "in the appropriate manner" achieves nothing. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:30, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Then perhaps it is time for a change in "the appropriate manner". But running around screaming "revolt against authority!" will not get this encyclopedia built. What the content builders can do right now is continue to write articles and expand the wiki. If they make enough good contributions with no mass hysteria they have a fair shot at being an admin. By the way, what do you mean about admins who pull the system down? KonveyorBelt 22:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a MMORPG for teenagers, and you are not achieving anything with inflammatory language about "screaming" and "mass hysteria". See of you can write an article and get some experience with what this site is actually about. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Konveyer Belt. I'd have said "If they make enough good contributions without being a party to controversy they have a fair shot at being an admin." In my experience the main reasons why candidates who mainly focus on building content sometimes fail at RFA are either that they don't show a need for the tools, or they don't appreciate that the Q&A section is an open book exam and that it pays to reread the relevant policy before answering each question. I'm not bothered by the odd error in the Q&A section, and I personally don't oppose candidates who haven't indicated where they would use the tools. But my experience is that those are the main risks for our "content creator" candidates. ϢereSpielChequers 00:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

@Kumioko:, let's keep this attrition thing in perspective because we need to avoid possible misinterpretation of the figures. Since the 'inactive' policy was enacted, many users have been procedurally desysoped but they can get the bit refunded on simple request. If they haven't asked, that part of the attrition speaks for itself and no one is expected to be a Misplaced Pages contributor for life - people change their hobbies or their lifestyle or simply just move on. We really have lost about half a dozen or more of the nicest and most active admins over the past 12 months (I'm not going to list them), some of whom quietly handed their tools in, while others simply went into (semi)/retirement. I know the reasons behind several of those retirements which were mainly due to RL situations or, more worrying, getting fed up with the climate here. These latter have been driven away, and as I mentioned before, they are the ones who in terms of quality and activity are the hardest to replace. If you and our friend Epipelagic and a few other non-admins who regularly voice disfavour of the current system would actively help change it, maybe there might be some progress, but it's my guess that they, like me, have run out of ideas.

WereSpielChequers feels that some failed candidates should perhaps have passed. He may well be right, but those failures were based on community consensus or in the case of close calls, a crat chat, and they are always welcome to try again as WSC did; I'm not sure though that those who took 4, 5 ,6, or 7 attempts should finally have been promoted (a quick check on their performance might show something, but there's no need to go on a witch hunt). One way to address these issues is to improve the turnout and the quality of voting. What the table I published above demonstrates is that turnout is nevertheless generally on the increase, 100+ support votes are no longer a rarity (perhaps a reason to deprecate that list), and the number of inappropriate transclusions has dropped dramatically. There is a fascinating sortable table produced by Scottywong on this page of RFA2011 where a total of 1,497 individual RfA voters' profiles were examined based on multiple criteria. With some possible new trends emerging, perhaps this table should be updated to include all the RfA that have taken place over the additional 2.5 years since the table was created. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:37, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Look, I didn't come to do battle. There is enough bickering and fighting on Misplaced Pages as it is. I made an observation. I proposed that there were two ways of judging candidates, looking for generalists who had a deep and wide level of experience and picking specialists, individuals who have special skills and would make good Admins based on their character.

It was just a thought I was putting out there, to see if it would prompt a conversation, which it did (thank ::y'all). I'm not proposing sweeping reforms because, I've seen, this has been done many times in the past without success. I doubt that I have insight to offer that wasn't already present in ideas that have been suggested.

Let me be totally pragmatic now: There are only 630 active Admins and, according to comments here, only about 20-100 of them are doing most of the heavy lifting. I think you could use more help. But there are competent Editors, with experience who would make decent Admins who would never put themselves through an RfA process because, frankly, unless the candidate sails through, it's an exercise in having strangers point out all of ones flaws, in a public setting and debating ones competence. Who would want to go through that unless it seems like a sure thing? And I've seen these RfA check lists of expected levels of experience and, frankly, if 1 Editor out of 10,000 meets these criteria, I'd be surprised.

So, that's the situation. If this continues, Misplaced Pages will get 1 or 2 new Admins every month, while a dozen or more retire or are desysop'd for lack of activity or for cause. That's the trend line, going on for more than three years, and it is unlikely to change, we are not going to suddenly see dozens of Editors with straight A+ backgrounds wanting to become Admins.

Agree with me, disagree with me. Accept my ideas or ignore them. I'm just one Editor. But the demographics point to fewer and fewer Admins shouldering more and more work resulting in more frequent burnout. And right now, it doesn't seem like the community is inclined to do anything about this. Liz 03:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Liz, no one is suggesting you came here to do battle. If you review the archives of this talk page you'll see that even my comments regularly come under heavy fire, but I don't get upset about it. I wouldn't say that nothing ever gets done about RfA - earlier this year Dank started a monumental effort with a string of RfCs; my main observation was that they were not widely enough published to attract sufficient participation. A huge initiative was made with WP:RFA2011 to thoroughly examine RfA; even those detractors who didn't contribute particularly objectively had their say, and their points were noted. At the very least, as this talk page demonstrates, RfA is still a very lively topic for discussion, and your comments are most welcome even if others don't agree with you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง, I was just placing my comments in chronological order, I wasn't writing them in response to your wise words. I'm sorry for the confusion that resulted...I probably shouldn't have indented them. This, on the other hand, is in response to you! Liz 23:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is critical that anyone nominated for RfA should have substantial article edit contributions as well as the courage to stand up for Misplaced Pages's core principles and for what is right even when they are standing alone!... After one is elected admin and has been one for a while, then they can strike a balance, and focus more on admin contributions. Anyone who agrees or disagrees with my "opinion" is welcome to express their opinion respectfully, nicely and assuming good faith.Worldedixor (talk) 05:59, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

But that's not enough for many. A lot of editors are looking for a reason to oppose not to support. I have about 30 GA's and a dozen featured but even that's not enough to support. They can give all the reasons and excuses they want but I won't be an admin because I am critical of the system and abusive admins. So that's a big part of why I stopped editing. I also agree with Liz completely. Less admins means more work for fewer of them. That means a higher stress level for those that do the work. The majority of the editors that are getting promoted are the ones who don't get involved, because those are the ones the process favors.

@Kudpung: You know that I have and that I have been active in trying to change things so you can't blame the communities failure to change the processes on me. I ignored the problem for years just like everyone else and when I finally got involved I completely destroyed any chance I have of getting the tools. As I said before, at this point I'm essentially done with Misplaced Pages. I have no desire to try and change anything. They can turn off the servers at this point as far as I am concerned. So no I will not be submitting an RFC or discussion to change anything, because there is little interest in the community to do that. They would rather keep things as they are until the fail than change before they do. Kumioko (talk) 12:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Kunioko...you don't have to be an admin to be a somebody on the website. The tools exist solely to be a janitor and clean up stuff. I'm sorry gaining adminship has been something that has eluded you...Misplaced Pages isn't always fair or impartial.--MONGO 20:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Right, this may have been discussed somewhere but I can't see it and have limited time - (someone can link if they know) - two signs of a system in trouble would be (a) a significant number of candidates who fail who should have passed (or vice versa), and (b) a significant number of editors who won't run due to the process - are these numbers actually large? Without necessarily going into specifics and folks counting their own failed RfAs if they have one, can folks comment? My impression is that (a) is not too large as I don't recall seeing a large number where I think the result was in error (?), but (b) possibly a bigger group. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Cas Liber, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง is the user I know who has done the most study on the RfA process and maybe he could tell you. I remember recently he (I believe it was Kudpung) reviewed all of the candidates from the past year, compared their votes with the results of the RfAs and judged the process to be fair.

As for how many Editors who'd make good Admins decide not to try to become one, I don't think guesses at this number are even close since a) they are based on anecdotal information (those Editors we know) and b) most people who decide not to do something rarely talk about it. It would only happen if an Editor suggested nominating another user on their Talk Page and that user replied that they didn't want to do an RfA.

On an unrelated note, I have a script that posts how long an Editor has had an account and what User Rights they have. I think a high proportion of Admins I run across (I'd guess it's about 60-70%) have had accounts 6-8 years. When I look into when they became an Admin (when that detail is disclosed), it was between 9 and 15 months after they started editing. So, it does seem like there was a push to get more Admins during the period 2005-2008 as some Editors were given the tools with less than a year of experience. Obviously though, they were good decisions as many in that cohort are still quite active. And Misplaced Pages was experiencing a surge of growth around 2005-2007. So, the community can respond to a sudden need in Admins if they choose to. But Misplaced Pages hasn't hit this turning point yet. Maybe in another year or two though...whenever the number of active Admins falls below 500, I think it will be time to be very concerned. Liz 23:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't take the credit for having done the most research into adminship related issues. Admittedly I started WP:2011 and kept it bubbling as long as possible and kept the project's vast navigation on track, but I cajoled others into spending huge amounts of time to devise regex and other systems to come up with all the tables and extrapolations. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง, if not you, then who would you give credit to? Because we should invite them to this conversation. Liz 03:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Two yearly Admin re-elections

What is the admin communities' view on this?. Open to recall opted-in admins would be exempt. Would it be a deterrent for promising potential admins in the wider community, or would it ultimately aid the admin mission? I see a more informal RFA model. I feel it would boost the confidence of the entire community in each other. Irondome (talk) 03:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Some Wikipedias (which are smaller than ours) have such systems. Here, there would be concerns that such a system would create an even greater bureaucratic overload - one of the problems of RfA is the relatively low turnout to vote, and the actual quality of the voting. I think it's fair to say (See recent conversations above) that a very few RfA failed when they should probably have passed, and that equally few passed that should have failed - the number of desysops 'for cause' partly demonstrates this. Another fear is that knowing they would come under review again would discourage many possible candidates of the right calibre from running for office; RfA is still very much a trial by fire even for many of those who pass with flying colours, and to have to go through it again at regular intervals, especially for the 20 or 30 most active admins who work in the front line who attract flak for simply doing their job correctly, would probably be a deterrent.

There are skepticisms about the actual validity of the 'Open to recall' system. Ironically, subscribing to it has been, AFAICR, a cause both for support and oppose at RfA. I can't actually remember if it's ever been invoked. It's not something that has been brought up in recent discussions.

While we could probably argue for a sharpening of the 'inactivity' ctiteria, or introduce qualifications for voters, setting minimum criteria for candidates is probably not required - the community already sets the criteria themselves with their own voting patterns, and ironically again, one of the frequently mentioned criticisms is that those standards are too high. So the perennial dilemma is: Are the standards too exacting and reducing the number of passes, or are they too low and and according the admin status to some who may later do a wobbler? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Administrators open to recall/Past requests --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Two year stints would be problematic and open up a recurring circus of drama much busier than what we have now. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Please correct me if I am wrong, but is the topic about imposing term limits on current admins, making re-election of admins mandatory, meaning no admin is an admin for life? Thanks. Worldedixor (talk) 05:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it means that all admins would be re-elected after 2 years with the exception of Open to recall opted-in admins; which effectively would be a 2-year duration limit per term with possibility to rerun. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful reply. Then I am 100% opposed to the concept of admin for life. Also, with the exception of one completely unbiased admin I know, I believe that anyone that has shown one ounce of favoritism or bias should have to re-rerun for admin every two years. I also question the whole nomination process. I can make phone calls to 100 WP editors to come and support my nomination for RfA based on nepotism alone. In my case, that would be a good thing, but in other cases, that means having admins who are unable to have their personal opinions and remain at an EQUAL distance from everyone. Worldedixor (talk) 04:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link Sarek; 26 petitions, the vast majority of which were unsuccessful. I'm not sure if that all demonstrates anything much, but it's interesting reading. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:20, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

No the open to recall thing is basically a joke. It really doesn't do anything. Its like saying if you can find evidence of a Unicorn and a dragon I'll give up the tools. Kumioko (talk) 12:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• No, I don't this would work. GiantSnowman 13:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to see an end to admin for life. Two year may be a logistical problem but what about 5 years? That's about 300 per year. Is that too many? Then how about rethinking the approach, rather than picking a term, figure out how many we can review in a month. Just to illustrate the point, I'll pick 30. Identify the 30 earliest admins, and have them submit a re qualification RfA. At the end of a couple months, decide whether 30 is too many or too few, and modify accordingly. I think we'll find we can do do a few more, but let's stick with 30 to see what happens. It would take 47 months to get through the list of current admins. Which would mean we'd have a de facto term limit of about four years. Every year or so, review progress and determine whether to speed up or slow down, although a steady state of about a four year term would be fine with me.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest maybe 3 years, 2 is a little too short and 5 is a little too long. It should be a process that is less stringent than RFA; like when the tools are removed from the inactive folks. Provide a list for the month, send them a notification (probably via bot), if they want to keep it fine, if not then that's ok too. Then we also give some time for folks to comment on it and then the bureaucrats can decide if the comments are worth listening too. Because some deal with contreversial areas some comments might be based on their actions in that contreversial venue and may need to be ignored. I think the vast majority will keep the tools and this will provide a venue for people to comment on those that maybe shouldn't have the tools. The site needs an avenue for review of the admins though. With that said its unlikely to happen so I wouldn't waste much time on it. The key thing to rememeber is the majority of admins aren't using the tools anyway, so if they lose them, its not that big of a deal. With the Template editor and other rights now most of them may not even need it anyway. Kumioko (talk) 15:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm just trying to think through the obvious logistics. If we settled on 2 years, or 3 or 5, we would still have a large slug of admins in the initial group for review. We wouldn't want to have them all reviewed simultaneously, so we would have to work out a way to stagger those reviews. If we are going to need to do that, why not just start with the oldest, and work our way forward, and over time, we can decide whether to settle at 5 or 3 or 2 or something else.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: I understand and agree with that. I frankly have somewhat mixed feelings about it. I think term limits would be good if the process is made to be easy and painless. It would be good for people to occassionally have to walk in the peasants shoes for a while. Otherwise you lose sight of what its like in the trenches. If the RFA process remains a gauntlet though, then no we shouldn't do it. I generally agree with Yngvadottir that we need more people with access to the tools not less. The truth is, if an editor has been here for more than a year and are active then they probably are a net benefit and should be given the benefit of the doubt. With that said, we must also make it easier to remove the tools for abuse. So although I think an editor should be given the tools easier, I also think they should be taken away if abused, which is currently not the case. I don't think the RFA process is needed unless someone has the tools removed and wants them back. Then they should have to go before the jury. But that's just me. I still don't think any of this will matter though. Just like all the other discussions in the past there is no desire or will in the community to fix the process. Many of those that have the tools want the controlled access so they can be the kings and queens. Others just don't care. Still others are afraid to even get involved because it could torpedo their chances of getting the tools later. Kumioko (talk) 18:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm thinking that a reconfirmation RfR (Request for Reconfirmation) will differ from an RfA in two important respects, one negative one positive. Starting with the negative, admins are expected to deal with contentious situations, and therefore, are almost certain to piss some editors off. That could mean there are a whole pile of editors drooling at the chance to stick it to the admin who dun them wrong. On the positive side, one of the challenges of the RfA is you are trying to judge the suitability of a candidate to do things they haven't yet done. Editors have to make inferences from evidence that is not exactly on point. You have to judge whether someone will make good blocks, without seeing any real blocks. Obviously, with an RfR, the admin has a track record. I honestly, possibly naively, think this will make the RfR smoother in most cases (with some exceptions). No one needs to dream up hypotheticals, and guess whether they'd really do that with the bit, they can see the actions. I think most admins will attract some opposes simply out of spite. I trust out 'crats to be able to figure that out. I'm sure there are some who would be nervous about facing an RfR. This is a feature, not a bug. Under my proposal, it will probably take over a year from now to get to the 2005 group, so most active admins would have quite some time if they need to clean up an act. Plus, under my plan, we get to review Jimbo in the first group. What's not to like?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• I've hesitated to respond here, particularly since I am one of the admins that don't pull their weight. But as I understand it, the Dutch Misplaced Pages requires repeat RfAs every two years and there was recently massive drama over it. I take this as confirmation of my feeling that adding more bureaucracy would be counter-productive; moreover, it would be highly unlikely I would run again, so Misplaced Pages would lose what little I do do with my added buttons. If we want to encourage well qualified people to run out of motives other than ambition, making it subject to a repeat election every few years would work against that goal, since it's the election that most agree is the stumbling block in getting such candidates to run. I supported the creation of a noticeboard at which suspected admin abuse could be reported - that was not a successful proposal, but I believe it would be more to the point and less likely to backfire than requiring re-elections. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:42, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

What was the outcome? Did they retain it, or modify it?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I hunted up the original conversation on Drmies' user talk, and it turns out I misremembered - they have annual re-evaluations of their admins, followed by a confidence vote in cases of more than 4 objections. Pinging The Banner, who reported on the mess that occurred this year. Me, I have no idea, but that would put me right off fixing errors on the Main Page and so forth. Totally not worth the agita. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Get to work, you lay-about.  :) Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

It was my understanding (as of RFA2011 discussions) that Swedish Misplaced Pages runs the same system, or did, presumably with some success or at least acceptance—but we really need people to weigh in from these Wikis for any insight. To the OP I totally agree with this idea and have for a long time, it encourages a paradigm shift from this big, dramatic step-up in the community to something more like "I'm burnt out on content work, maybe I'll man AN/I for a year". With the huge dilution of RfAs, I assume people will care less both in promoting new admins and continuing to grant the bit to those wanting a longer spell. Afterall, what janitor truly desires to be a janitor forever? There are a tonne of other positives to this suggestion, IMO, but unfortunately discussion of any reform is provenly futile Jebus989 17:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The Dutch Misplaced Pages has a system of a yearly confirmation procedure. Each administrator must prove that she/he has still the confidence of the community. It is split in two rounds: in the first round people can object against an administrator. This is a great place to study a) the trolls and other not-so-pleasant editors and b) the adminsitrators who have f***k*d up big time (the difference is found on who is objecting, usually editor with a significant higher standing than group a). Administrators who collect 4 objections (usually about 25%) go to round 2. Round two is a confidence vote in which the administrator need to get 75% support-votes. This is more and more becoming a joke, due to block-voting of present and former administrators. Almost every time an administrator comes under serious threat, this group shows up and saves the administrator. No matter what were the reasons for the objections.

This year it became a complete mess when one of the administrators started canvassing for two long-overdue administrators on a closed mailing-list. A rather new administrator did not accept this and when the canvasser did not retract his comments, he brought it out in the open. Effect: the whistleblower got an impeachment and was voted out by his administrator-compagnions. The canvasser also got an impeachment and was also voted out, but this time by the community. The administrators tried to save him, but failed. And the two administrators under thread: they got enough votes from administrators to keep their status.

The whole circus is by now useless as round 1 is dominated by mud throwing and round two is dominated by block-voting. Not a good idea to introduce that here. In my opinion, it would be a good idea to end the administrator-for-life for new cases. A fixed term of 5 years seems the best option to me (with re-candidating possible again after a few months). The Banner talk 20:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC) I am not a administrator on the Dutch or English WP, nor have the intention to become that.

• English Misplaced Pages is different to Dutch/Swedish - we have far more traffic and far more work. Name me a single admin who has not pissed off a bunch of other editors, and who will therefore probably not get re-elected even if they are doing brilliant work. GiantSnowman 18:30, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Your right its higher traffic with more work. Its also got a reputation for being very combative at RFA. Much more so than many of the others. The argument you use has been used for years and its no more true now than it was when it started. Its just one of the many excuses to keep a broken system to limit editors that want to help out from doing so. Yes, sure, some will get denied, but its probably the same ones that abuse the tools anyway. If the reason would prevent someone from getting the tools, then it should also be used to take the tools away. Using the excuse that I did it after I became an admin so it doesn't count is both hypocritical and foolish. BTW, just as I could name several that should have the tools removed from their grip, I could name several that would breeze through if they reapplied. Kumioko (talk) 18:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Then reform RFA and make it less combative, rather than running the risk of a bunch of good admins not getting re-elected because they blocked someone 18 months ago who bears a grudge and has the mates to back him up. GiantSnowman 18:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
      • Honestly RFA is a lost cause and even if it wasn't no one is going to listen to me. Besides that though, 1 or 2 editors aren't enough to torpedo an RFA rerun unless you are say an overly aggressive admin who blocks first, asks questions later and favors indefinate blocks over limited duration ones because "if they violated the rules once they'll just do it again, its happened time and time again". That is a direct quote from an admin BTW. I'm not going to say which one but I have mentioned the name multiple times in the past in discussions. That is an example of an admin who should have the tools removed and would probably not get them back in the scenario you give. Admins like you, Bishonen, Sarah Stierch, Bearean hunter, Kudpung and a pile of others would and should be fine. But regardless of how we do it, the community needs to start policing the admins and getting rid of the abusive ones. I'm sure even you can think of a few you are ashamed to call a peer. We don't need those, they do more harm than good. Do it by review, by secret ballot or set up a panel, etc. There are many ways to do the job of policing the admins, but someone needs to do it. They should not be allowed to run amok just because 5 years ago they managed to sit below the radar and got through an RFA in one piece. Kumioko (talk) 19:02, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
        • I don't think there are (m)any safe admins, myself included. GiantSnowman 19:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
          • The discussion should probably not be led by admins worried they might no longer be admins. Most editors get into heated discussions from time to time, sure, but not with 30+ of the 100 odd that vote at an RfA. If >30% of a random sample of reasonable editors that think anyone isn't a net positive as an admin, they probably shouldn't be. Jebus989 19:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• I've no strong opinion on the feasibility of term limits, but I don't buy this "all the good admins have pissed off too many people to pass RFA today" meme. It's another way of saying that admins know what is best for the community, but the community is too dumb to realize it, and so must not be asked. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• No, it's not. It's saying that admin work by its very nature manages to annoy a lot of people. GiantSnowman 19:50, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• Also The Banner makes a great point above about the Dutch system - just as it is open to abuse for those wanting to get rid of administrators, it is also open to abuse by those wanting naughty admins to stay. GiantSnowman 20:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• I suspect this would result in 95% of admins being de-sysoped after two years; there are plenty of editors out there with grudges against admins for protecting pages, or blocking certain editors for one reason or another. Having said that, I'm more than happy to be subjected to bi-annual review, being an admin isn't that big a deal. If I couldn't revert vandalism, block vandals, protect pages, update the main page when required, so be it. If Wikipedians are so dead keen on removing the mop from some editors, c'est la vie. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Surely compulsory RfA re-runs after n years would require a bunch more crats to determine the consensus... unless we assume that the majority of cases would be so clear-cut that any editor (in good standing) could close close them - however, that leaves the technical problem of enabling/removing the user right, requiring requests to be placed elsewhere and potentially inviting re-evaluation of the closes. -- Trevj (talk) 20:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Depends on how you style it. The Dutch Misplaced Pages just relies on a confidence vote. Threshold is 75% support votes. (and support of the block-voting present administrators, otherwise you never make the 75% support) The Banner talk 22:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Crats don't have much to do these days, that wouldn't be a problem. But the biggest issue is the inevitable flood of disgruntled editors popping back to "demote" admins. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Do those people vastly outnumber those you haven't disgruntled? Have some faith in the community that trusted you with the tools in the first place Jebus989 20:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you get it. Being an admin for six years far outlives most people's entire time at Misplaced Pages. The community is very different. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Well yeah I mean, the point wasn't that an identical set of people would vote as in your original RfA. Just implicitly you're saying the community made the right decision in granting you adminship, yet they cannot be trusted with that decision at any future period, because you know best. Jebus989 21:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Bollocks, sadly it appears to me that you know nothing about this place. Most admins I know just block, delete, protect etc because they have to. Nothing more. (And they don't get paid). I'm saying that several admins have been around for several years. That means that several hundred/thousand editors have been aggrieved by them. Re-election would be a kangaroo court. Mind you, I suspect most admins would be fine with being de-sysopped, and this place could just dissolve in its own acrid self-destruction. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry TRM but I also disagree that the community cannot possibly be trusted with the responsibility of revoting an admin in or out. Will some admins not get re-elected, sure, but most should be fine. As I said above I don't think it needs to be a full blown RFA, just a review. The problem is there are abusive admins, We all know that but nothing is done about it. Something needs to be done. We can either start policing those bad apples or we make it so they all go through a review every few years. We could also keep the status quo and let things continue to degrade. If the admins don't like the idea of a review then they should start doing something about the abusive ones IMO, then the need to do a periodic review may not be necessary. Kumioko (talk) 21:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

"We all know that..." there are a small number of people who like to loudly and repeatedly insist that there are abusive admins. I dare say that we also all know that those same people virtually never bother to put together any sort of evidence to back up their claims, demonstrate that reasonable and good-faith efforts to resolve the problem have failed, and that the admin has continued with misconduct, and then file a well-argued request before ArbCom.

I also like how you talk about how "we" can start policing the "bad apples" in lieu of making this change, but then quickly morph your position to insist that "admins" need to start doing something, or else you'll put all editors – admin and non-admin alike – through an enormous amount of extra, unnecessary bureaucracy.

For those who will immediately insist that putting together a suitable evidence-supported, properly-justified request for ArbCom is too much work and just too hard, I have to admit I fail to see why you think that there should be less effort or quality of evidence required at whatever Vote-For-Desysopping process you put in its place—or why it would be beneficial or desirable for us to have to expend that level of effort to analyze and recertify every admin on a recurring basis instead of just the few putative 'problem' cases. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I myslef have admitted in multiple venues that abusive admins make up the minority, but there are quite a few. I am hesitent to mention any names here though for obvious reasons. I also wouldn't put much stock on Arbcom. Arbcom cases are a notorious nightmare so most people will just leave or ignore the problem. And those are the ones who even know what Arbcom is. Its also a well established trend that when admins are brought up on charges of misconduct little or nothing is done about it. Other admins justify their actions or they discredit the submitter. It should also be noted I can't do anything and at this point don't even care that much. I have all but stopped editing because of a variety of things including the admin bullshit. I have also admitted I don't necessarily think we need to review every one. I do believe that admin shouldn't be for life; I think it should be easier to get; I think it should be easier to take away; and I think admins should be held accountable for thier actions. How those things happen are up for debate. But if your happy with losing more admins than we promote, protecting abusive admins, maintingin a culture where good editors don't even try for the tools and where experienced editors who want to help aren't allowed too, then that's up to you. Frankly, I'm tired of fighting about it. I would rather play Xbox, read a book or walk my dog than edit here anymore, which I find a shame. I used to be a strong believer in the value of this project but I have grown to see its not a project or an encyclopedia anymore...its just another website. So go ahead and do whatever you want. Because its obvious to me that there is no desire to do what's right for the success of the project here. Just a desire to hold onto what scraps people have managed to gather. Kumioko (talk) 22:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ah so over the years all those who supported you or value what you do have left, while those you've aggrieved have steadily accrued, biding their time for one day when term limits are imposed and they can leave that soul-destroying oppose !vote. Thank you for the education, at least now I know one thing about this place Jebus989 21:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

• Two questions: (A) Why is it optional to be subject to recall? (B) Why does the admin get to specify their own recall criteria? My thinking is that periodic re-election is impractical (and for well-behaving admins unnecessary), but admins could be liable to recall subject to community-specified criteria. Those criteria don't need to be lax: we don't have to allow a couple of trolls to force it to happen without support; we don't have to admit "because he blocked me / deleted my article" as grounds. Only when raised by a quorum of editors in good standing -- "quorum" and "good standing" to be defined by the community. --Stfg (talk) 20:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

  Recall is optional because the community has never settled on a practical process for mandatory recall. The most common failing of such proposals is potential for abuse, which is reflected by Rambling Man and other's comments - the admins who work the dirty areas of the project will naturally generate enough heat that these recall processes become problematic. Not only for them, but for Misplaced Pages as a whole. And I can tell you that I am one of Kumioko's "unnamed abusive admins". Why? Because I call him out on his bullshit. Resolute 14:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Kumioko that admins need to be more readily accountable, but The Banner's description of the Dutch system scares me. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:54, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose set point reelection process. How many bad admins are there anyway?--MONGO 21:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Too many. The Banner talk 22:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose: As it is we have a system for removing the sysop flag from those that abuse it. The vast majority of the time, a re-election would be a waste of time for the admin, a patrolling bureaucrat and the people that regularly vote, because they are (for the most part) doing the job they were elected to do. If someone specific is abusing the tools, then and only then do I believe a discussion about their admin status needs to be opened. ~Frosty (Talk page) 22:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
• Thoughts on a probationary twelve month period for newly elected admins then? New Admins could be mentored, and any issues would most likely begin to be apparant within that timeframe. Would suggest an admin-only discussion, although open to general view, as to problematic new admins and their suitability, measures to take, etc. I agree that an open session would be a grudge and vendetta filled kangaroo court. I would have no probs it being an admin only panel. I am aware of course this does not address the problem of long standing admins who may have issues. Irondome (talk) 22:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

C'mon... why waste all this energy pretending something is happening in this thread. Admins and admin wannabes as a group never agree to anything that might diminish the powers and privileges of incumbent admins or facilitate content builders on Misplaced Pages. Nothing to see here folks. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

It shows up the fault-lines and general opposing attitudes quite well I think. Quite a bit to see really. Bottom line, do we stick with what we have or is there enough consensus or potential traction for change? Irondome (talk) 23:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In regard to the OP, I think regular "re-elections" would cause more Admins to turn in their tools meaning even fewer active Admins. The most active Admins, those that block users, delete articles, act against socks, etc., that is, those who actually do anything against another user's wishes, will encounter opposition that will surface in a re-election. This vocal discontent doesn't mean they aren't good Admins. I'd rather have a simpler process to address the few abusive Admins that exist than put all Admins through a regular re-election.

Personally, the main problem I see with the RfAs is that those who vote for the candidate, usually simply say Support or Support per User XYZ. But those who vote against a candidate? They do not simply say Oppose, no, they list all of the reasons why this particular candidate fails to meet their standards. These explanations can be quite lengthy.

So, those who think the candidate would be a great Admin simply say "Yes" while those who don't seem to feel compelled to enumerate every failing and fault they see. While these are proposals which would never pass, either forcing both supporters and detractors to list a reason why or allowing voters to only say "Support", "Oppose" or "Neutral" without any elaboration would result in a less harsh environment for the candidate. They would either see supporters listing their good points or no comment at all, just a simple vote. If voters wanted to elaborate, they could do so on their own Talk Page. Liz 23:49, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Looks like you're positioning yourself for your own RfA, Liz. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

LOL! That would be "No", Epipelagic for a lot of reasons (I'm too new, no substantial content contributions, alienated some vocal Editors, etc.). No, it's not an RfA I'm looking at, I was trained in sociology and I'm interested in the process. I studied leadership and different systems of governance. It's the process I'm analyzing, not pitching for my own promotion. Liz 03:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, the first and foremost qualities I look for in anyone nominated for RfA or for Recall are:

1. Being competent and not misquoting WP policy to serve a hidden agenda or instigate editors.

2. Being 100% unbiased, respectful and non-patronizing, and at an equal distance from EVERYONE all the time... not "buddy buddy to pals" and "bark orders" and bad mouth other editors whose intention they misjudge, especially editors who they have never had any direct interaction with.

3. Never ganging up with "pals" against an editor they do not understand.

4. Clearly assert that ALL (non-vandal) editors have something to contribute to WP, and that this is the reason why WP does not have "punitive" blocks, and strongly encourages second chances.

5. Adhering 100% to and DEFENDING WP core principles... ALL of them... and never "selectively" applying them.

Worldedixor (talk) 02:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Responding to Liz, above, the problem with your proposal is that RFA is not a vote, even though it looks like one sometimes. It's a discussion, a consensus generation mechanism, and oppose comments (!votes comes from not-votes) need to have a rationale to be properly considered. If an RFA got 100 supports and 100 opposes, but all of the opposes opposed because the candidate didn't like their favorite TV show, the bureaucrats would still promote because the oppose rationale was invalid. I think if we ever had a borderline RFA with lots of opposes around, say, candidate has never authored a featured article, that might actually come into play. The reason why supports often don't have reasoning is because adminship is "no big deal" and any clueful user should be granted the tools by default. That being said I often see supports which praise the candidate substantively. Andrevan@ 05:55, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Andrevan, you bring up some points I hadn't considered. I still think it's a problem that the Opposes are so much more wordy than the Supports. It makes RFAs seem tilted toward the negative (just in pure volume of words), rather than being neutral (unless it's a landslide win). Liz 03:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

You say "adminship is "no big deal" and any clueful user should be granted the tools by default." That might have chareacterised the situation many years ago, but clueful users would not think that was true now. You must have had very little involvement with Misplaced Pages in recent years. --Epipelagic (talk) 09:04, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

You are free to review my contributions to see that my involvement is consistent over the years. Whether or not the current RFA process reflects this truth, a janitor's mop is still "no big deal" and shoudl be treated as such. Someone seems to have removed the original Jimbo Wales quote from the adminship policy pages many years ago, which is a shame. Possibly because adminship had become a "big deal" in the eyes of many despite its intended role. Perhaps if we wish to reform RFA we should start here. Andrevan@ 13:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I thought the problem with RFA was that it was too hard, too grueling, that nobody wanted to go through it. And now you want to say that going through RFA has to happen not once, but every 2 years even if you pass? We'll have no admins left! I don't know that it has to be a lifetime appointment, but we are removing it from inactive admins. Andrevan@ 05:49, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

There have been suggestions in the past that the reason why 'support' votes do not require a mandatory rationale is possibly because they are voting 'as per' or concurring with the nomination statement.

I feel quite sure that the introduction of a manadatory resysoping system would further reduce the number of candidacies from users of the right calibre. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Requiring admins to periodically "run for re-election" will just keep admins from being willing to step into contentious areas. There will always be cases or discussions where, no matter what decision is made, it's going to upset a significant number of people. Getting an admin to step in and handle those cases and make the tough call is already hard enough. Imagine if all of those people on the "losing" side are now all potential "opposes" at the next confirmation RfA. Who would be willing to do it under those circumstances? If an admin is being genuinely abusive, ArbCom can and will handle that, and over recent years they've shown themselves to be quite willing to ensure admins who abuse the tools no longer have them. If not, but they are willing to make the difficult and close calls, we should be encouraging, not discouraging, that. Seraphimblade 15:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• I've heard this one before but I still don't really get it, who are these people that value their admin hat above all else? It sounds like the opposite of who we'd want in that role. If you (/one) make a tough call and a majority of editors disagreed with it to the extent that they don't want you to make those decisions anymore, it's probably ok to take a year or two out and go back to content work or just wiki-life without the hat Jebus989 15:55, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
• You say Seraphimblade, that if an admin "is being genuinely abusive, ArbCom can and will handle that, and over recent years they've shown themselves to be quite willing to ensure admins who abuse the tools no longer have them." That is one of a set of myths admin use to prop up their system. If there were any truth in it then the system would be in less need of urgent reform. ArbCom desops admins only when they behave in a manner that upsets other admins. Never, in the history of Misplaced Pages, has an admin been desopped for abusing content builders. Admins know they have a free pass. --Epipelagic (talk) 17:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, I say that, and they've done that. But "content builders" don't have a free pass either. They need abide every pillar of the cite, including civility and patience in all cases. With every accusation of "abuse" I've seen regarding "content builders", it's a "content builder" who has failed to abide that particular requirement (and yes, it's a requirement, not a nicety), and action has been correspondingly taken. Do you have a counterexample where that is not the case? Seraphimblade 20:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

So you are saying there are no examples where content builders have been abused by admins? I don't know where to begin with that one, but you could start with this example. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:56, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

@Epipelagic: In that case, it does indeed appear Scott's behavior was inappropriate. It was handled, and a stop was put to it, indeed by other administrators. I agree with the way WormThatTurned handled the situation, but based upon that isolated situation, I don't see that any other action would be necessary. For Eric's part, while I didn't see any trouble with his behavior at that juncture, he does not exactly have the proverbial "clean hands" as civility goes. That's of course not a green light to behave abusively toward him in turn, and Scott shouldn't have done that. He did anyway, and was told to either stop or be made to stop. Seraphimblade 17:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• @Epipelagic: - "Never, in the history of Misplaced Pages, has an admin been desopped for abusing content builders" - factually incorrect. Hawkweye7 was de-mopped by ArbCom for a personal attack against a non-admin. I have no doubt there are others. GiantSnowman 20:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

No, he was desysopped for wheel warring. What other examples have you got? --Epipelagic (talk) 20:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

...and "conduct unbecoming of an administrator" i.e. the personal attacks mentioned earlier. GiantSnowman 20:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

He was primarily desysopped for wheel warring. He would never have been desysopped merely for attacking a content builder. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:56, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

You know that how...? GiantSnowman 12:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Historically, admins have never been desysopped merely for attacking content builders. It could happen in the future. --Epipelagic (talk) 19:58, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• Another cute myth implicitly used by admins to prop up their system is the elitist idea that admins have clue, while non admins are a vindictive and undisciplined rabble without clue. It would be wrong to allow this unworthy rabble to assess whether admins should be reelected. Consequently an admin, once an admin, should remain an admin for life. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:02, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Regular elections for all admins would be just pointless bureaucracy. But there should be actual uniform recall system that applies to all admins. Its not really that hard to devise one that prevents people with obvious axe to grind from dominating the process. Generally, harder it is to reverse/fix some failure in process, "bigger deal" that process is. As for adminship, removing it requires basically full blown ArbCom case, which is "very big deal". Current RFA simply reflects that reality.--Staberinde (talk) 16:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
• It isn't just the admins whose opinion matters here, non admins are of course welcome; However this is one of the areas where admins tend to a slightly difference stance than non-admins, amongst non-admins opinion has been fairly evenly divided about periodic reconfirmation, amongst admins there is a usually a consensus against it. In order to build consensus it helps to be clear as to what your objections are and what the supporters of such a scheme would need to fix. For me the major dealbreakers about reelecting admins every two years include:

1. I don't like the idea of adminship becoming a bigger deal than it already is, and of course the fewer the admins we have the bigger the deal adminship becomes. Supporters of this sort of proposal really need to make the case for why they want adminship to become a bigger deal than it is.
2. With RFA broken the one thing that has enabled us to continue to efficiently block vandals and delete attack pages is the cadre of admins who were appointed in 2003-2007 before RFA was broken. Losing those admins or at least a large proportion of them is making it easier for vandals, spammers and creators of attack pages for no discernable benefit.
3. While no-one seriously disputes that Arbcom is a community elected body that desysops bad admins, there are continual grumblings that it should be more ruthless with unspecified "bad admins" who for whatever reason no-one has yet taken through the complain, RFC and Arbcom process. Having a fixed two year renewal would weaken the Arbco process further because people would be reluctant to bring cases against admins who had just been reappointed or who were up for reappointment in a few months time. The community is very short termist in its judgment at RFA and two year terms would make it harder to get rid of any admin who kept their nose clean in the last few months before a run.
4. We have a problem with editor retention and taking rights away from moderately active people or active admins who aren't prepared to put themselves through another RFA would not help this.
5. Either this will fail because too few admins are willing to go through reconfirmation, or because too many are running and RFA is flooded, or probably both. If only half our existing admins went for reconfirmation we would have lost the other half as admins, and we would have an average of three reconfirmations at any one time, but with possibly dozens swamping RFA in the week when the process started. That many reconfirmation RFAs would require excessive community time for the potential benefit.
6. RFA already is degrading in effectivenesss as people focus on the Q&A section rather than actually checking the candidates' actions, hundreds of extra RFAs would further exacerbate this problem as we don't have enough RFA !voters who actually check contributions to support that many extra RFAs ϢereSpielChequers 18:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Supporters of this sort of proposal really need to make the case for why they want adminship to become a bigger deal than it is is a non sequitur and exemplar straw man argument. The unevidenced assumption you make is that admin terms will make adminship a bigger deal then "admin for life". Intuitively that's a strange hypothesis; for example, if you were hiring a janitor for a one-year rolling basis you're saying you would apply more scrutiny to the candidate than if you were offering an eternal, unbreakable contract? A plausible argument can be made that it would have the opposite effect, not only for the first reason I've given but also because the volume of RfAs would have to increase substantially, likely becoming less of a spectacle and more mundane—most are just admins getting readmitted after a fairly uneventful year or two. Jebus989 19:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The last point above makes good sense. A periodic re-evaluation would become mundane, routine with a lot less drama, and would probably not appeal to the burning torch and pitchfork brigade as much as some past RFAs. Irondome (talk) 20:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you seriously underestimate Misplaced Pages's capacity for creating drama. Resolute 20:32, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, you may be correct. Dunno if it says more about me or the community. Irondome (talk) 20:52, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

(e/c) Why not ask a few admins who have been around for four or five years to go through this process, as a trial, without any enforced outcome. We'd soon see how many pitchforks are sharpened. And, just as we have next-to-no RFAs today, we'd see how few people would want to volunteer for that role and the subsequent online assassinations that would be inevitable. As for the "hiring a janitor" example, that's straw man in extremis. Admins suffer personal abuse and grudges. Janitors do not, nor is the role of janitor judged on how a janitor closed an AFD or blocked an editor, it's completely different. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The analogy is making use of the hirer, the hirees position is irrelevant to the point being made, and it isn't subject to the logical fallacy you mention. Actually I agree with your suggestion, randomly select 5 of the most active admins (obviously, ideally it'd be a bigger sample size) and coerce them into an RfA; we'll see if plagues of aggrieved editors tear each one apart or, as I would predict, >=4 will retain their adminship by consensus. Jebus989 20:56, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Again, there is something to that. I think both the admin and general edding community are seeing greatly magnified shadows to some extent. Insane, grudge filled editors roaming in hordes and a vast, corrupt, cunning group of illuminati style admins. I think the jerks in both camps are actually numerically quite small. They just create large ripples. Irondome (talk) 21:02, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Janitors get paid, admins don't. And yes, go for it, ask a cross-section of admins to re-run. I'd be happy to volunteer on a purely demonstrative basis. Having said that, if the community no longer trust me, I'd be happy to de-sysop, and then sit and watch vandalism continues unabated until the "good" admins finally turn up to deal with it. Go for it, let me know when it starts, I'm a little busy in real life, but that shouldn't stop User:Jebus989 initiating the demonstration of the principle. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

If you are willing to try it, please do. It could be quite instructive. Granted, a larger sample size would be nicer, but that doesn't seem too realistic. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to see this too, it might restore some of your faith in the community—else I suppose it'll prove you right! But please don't feel pressured into doing so from me Jebus989 22:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

We had a couple of voluntary unprompted reconfirmations two or three years back, they a little resistance from people saying that admin review was thataway. I don't see they prove anything other than that everyone is correct in assuming that some admins would run and could get reconfirmed. An admin survey would be more useful in that it would give an idea as to how many current admins would run again if reconfirmation came in. But all this is a distraction from RFA reform, the problem remains that our number of admins is dwindling, and we need to increase their numbers not reduce them. ϢereSpielChequers 23:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

@Jebus999 Of course if you greatly reduce the number of admins you will make adminship a bigger deal. Even if reconfirmation did really well and only halved the number of admins you increase the big deal element in multiple ways. Firstly the scarcer the admins are within the community the bigger the deal it is to be an admin. Just as those of us who would like to make adminship less of a big deal want to increase the number of admins, so those who want to reduce the number of admins need to make the case for adminship becoming a bigger deal than it already is. Secondly reducing the number of admins whilst not reducing the admin workload means that the remaining admins are likely to spend more of their wiki time doing admin stuff and less doing other editing. That can only increase the existing admin/nonadmin divide. Thirdly the admins who you will lose will disproportionately come from those who don't consider their adminship to be that big a deal, certainly not worth going through another RFA for, and the more of those sort of admins you lose the more your admin corps will be dominated by those who do think of adminship as at least sufficiently a big deal to be worth going through RFA again. ϢereSpielChequers 23:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I remember HJ's, who were the others (out of interest)? Personally I think term-limits would aid the long-term goal of _increasing_ (active) admin numbers through the grander paradigm shift back to NBD, but maybe that's where our disagreement comes from. I can imagine one or two year adminships eventually leading to a utopian future where RfAs generally pass without incident (they happen all the time and are mostly just a formality), this talkpage becomes all but dead, editors in general are taking less interest in who takes up a transient position blocking users at AIV for a year or clearing tagged CSDs, instead of being something only the most experienced editors can enter in to, we'll give any competent person a go and teach them on the job, there'll be no "I'm honoured to nominate" statements or 100K long RfAs… Jebus989 00:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

That is how I see it too, User:Jebus989. ultimately a situation where the admin task, and burden, is shared by the whole community. A scenario where the distinction between admin and ed is eventually blurred to the point of irrelevance. Irondome (talk) 02:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• There is no point tinkering with finite term admins unless the whole admin mal-structure is also addressed. Merely introducing finite terms would just aggravate the mess. Since admins as a group are not willing to address the real issues, revolt from the content builders is maybe the only way forward. Since content builders as a group are probably not willing to revolt, nor willing to look and see just how bad the system has become (that takes a lot of time), Misplaced Pages has a grim future. And that's about where it rests. Threads like this are ephemeral fluff and of no consequence. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I am quite chuffed by the terrific response to my OP, which has generated some unique new thoughts from some of the most productive and clued eds of all camps on Eng WP. I only expected about 2 responses, if that. It indicates great interest in the subject in all camps, irrespective of the POV. Its not fluff. I hear you, but please try to define this elephant in the room. We may go forward more openly then, as a community. Irondome (talk) 00:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Basically the thread is just a slew of distractions offered by admins. If you look back down through the years, you will see that nothing new is happening here. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. And, of course, you so easily demonstrate the use of ad hominem attacks by "the other side" that likewise is old hat. Resolute 01:00, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

What's that about? --Epipelagic (talk) 02:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Experimental Re-runs

I think the idea thrown out by The Rambling Man is worth considering. If a group of about four to five veteran admins are willing to run what would amount to reconfirmation requests for adminship, the results would be very informative. Of course, this is a lot to ask and things could potentially become very unpleasant, but it could also be invaluable to have some concrete evidence of how this would work. So, any takers? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 22:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure it was a serious proposal by TRM. If it was, it seems to me to be an uncharacteristically poor suggestion. Drama for the sake of it. Leaky Caldron 22:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Would you prefer to never know if it is a good solution? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 22:52, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

And what metric would you use to determine if it had "succeeded"? Black Kite (talk) 22:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

If it helped us determine whether term limits are a good idea or not, it could be considered successful. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

It is a solution to nothing. It would be an shapeless, uncontrolled experiment in drama generation for the sake of it and with nothing tangible to show at the end of it. Leaky Caldron 23:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

This is not drama generation for the sake of it. This is trying to find out what works and what doesn't. Are term limits a good idea or would good admins be shot down by vendetta-bearing troublemakers? We'll never find out just by guessing. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

See above for context. Essentially TRM believes admins who have been around long enough have built up too much ill-feeling through doing admin work that any proposed term limits would lead to all these (good, active) admins being desysopped to the detriment of the project. I and other countered that that's probably not the case, and most admins would sail through an RfA regardless of a few disgruntled editors. Hypothetically if a small (ideally random) sample of long-term admins did rerun, a low pass rate indicates TRM is correct and term limits would do serious harm to the long-term prospects of the wiki, while if most or all pass it's evidence that he and others are seeing "magnified shadows", as was nicely put above. While it would be interesting to observe, I agree that the output can't lead to any meaningful change either way. If there's one thing we do have evidence for, it's that RfA on the whole is immutable Jebus989 23:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• If it helps, I'd be happy to. Worm(talk) 08:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

  So we have Worm That Turned and The Rambling Man volunteering to test out the process. Taking HJ Mitchell 3 as an example, this idea may remain reasonably contentious, particularly if run as a test situation without the tools being relinquished in advance of RfAs. Now of course, I'm not suggesting that these volunteers relinquish their tools for the purposes of this experiment, because that'd mean a loss of useful work to the project. Additionally, I think it unlikely that many admins who anticipate overwhelming opposition in a re-run would take part in the experiment, which would then skew the results.

  Perhaps a radical shift to something like that operated at the Italian or Spanish Wikipedias is something which might work... but can any of us really foresee consensus evolving for such a change (within the near future)! -- Trevj (talk) 09:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm probably being dumb - but I can't see what this "experiment" is supposed to "test". Setting aside (which we really shouldn't) its artificiality, and the skew that will have, I don't understand what it would measure. You take 2 or 3 random admins, put them up for reconfirmation, and then what? If they don't get reconfirmed does that prove it worked because they've lost the community's trust and this is now revealed - or does it prove it doesn't work because people have opposed due to grudges over actions during their tenure? I truly don't see how you establish that from a sample like this. Sure, if reconfirmations became the norm, a decision would need to be made about where to set the bar, and likely significantly lower than initial RFAs because of the "grudge factor" - but there's going to be no useful data from this "test" to help with that. Some will say "see, it doesn't work, told you so...", some will say "this means x", but it will just be another debating point with no real, meaningful, measurable addition to the data or knowledge pool. Who makes the value judgment as to what the result "should" have been (and is that even a question)? I'm all for well thought out experiments to test theories, but in the absence of any metrics to measure this, I truly can't see what it's for. Happy to have my ignorance dispelled, though. Begoon  11:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, you've just saved me from a bunch of typing. Experiments are supposed to address a specific problem, be carefully devised to avoid misleading outcomes, methodical in conduct and with results that can be extrapolated on the basis of sound evidence. So how does a sitting Arbcom member putting themselves up for a fictitious RfA with immunity represent the reality of the alleged "Admin. problem" - whatever that might be? Leaky Caldron 12:00, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be an interesting experiment but I can already tell you what the general outcome is going to be. It will be basically the same as the RFA process! If we start requiring Re-rfa's I expect a sizeable chunk of admins would get reelected; quite a few would not for the same reasons given at a typical RFA, this would include many that have been admins for a long time, particularly if they are careless or overly harsh with the tools and I can think of several in both those camps; I also think it will keep some from running or rerunning. If this is going to be done the RFA process needs to be made easier first or few will want to go through it. Most of the admins that have the tools today got it when the tools were no big deal, since most of them are still admins, we can conclude a couple things at the beginning; that the good old days of trusting our users wasn't so bad and that no matter how badly you screw up, once your an admin, your chances of losing it are pretty small. IMO even if this experiment does work and the community decides to use it, there is no need to remove the tools from a user unless they don't pass the re-admin process. They should be able to keep it until after the result of the re-RFA.

@Trevj:, if the admin thinks they will have a hard time passing then this will give them the opportunity for growth and development to reevaluate the way they do things. I also think this would encourage people to fix the broken RFA process and even possibly return to a time when editors were trusted again and being an admin was no big deal and people were encouraged to help out.

@Begoon:. I think this test is just to see how a reRFA would function. It would, IMO, show several things including whether the community would treat it as they do an RFA, would an admin pass if they were to run in an RFA, the communities perceptions of adins and the process and it would test the theory that if admin isn't for life, we'll run out of admins. Personally I think its just hogwash. Most admins don't use the tools anyway, any would breeze though (although I admit some would not pass and rightfully so) so if we drop from 1400 admins to 250 the end result will still be the same. I also think that if an admin might have to rerun, they'll think twice about being a jerk to editors who aren't admins and treating them like throwaways. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 12:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah - I get 2 main things from that: It will basically be the same as an RFA - well, yes, but with added artificial drama which probably makes its result less useful, in that the "motives" of !voters will be utterly inscrutable, and the comparison value thus tending to zero, and just hogwash - probably, in the absence of any clearer idea what the experiment is meant to be testing, and some metrics for such. Begoon  12:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Did you read my paragraph above? I don't think this experiment actually needs to occur but it could be quite well-defined in terms of outcomes, especially relative to the "trials" imposed for PC, visual editor etc. Obviously ideal conditions can't be met (randomly selected and stratified, 50+ admins) but the variance in a smaller sample doesn't make the results invalid. The experiment is testing the notion that, should term-limits and "reconfirmation" RfAs (why aren't these just called confirmation btw?) come about, would working admins be penalised just by the nature of the admin work they do, making it an untenable RfA reform, or would most pass without incident, showing it to be a plausible avenue of discussion. Should (say) >75% pass, this is evidence in favour of the latter, if perhaps <50% pass this validates the concerns of TRM and others.

I should reiterate that I don't think this is necessary as it seems obvious to me that most would pass without incident Jebus989 12:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I did read it, sorry, I should have said. I just don't see where you get significance from this. You have to set an "expected result" to compare with the "actual result" and I don't get where that comes from. If less than 50% pass it may be evidence for what you say. It may equally be evidence that the community doesn't like to reconfirm longstanding admins because deep down they feel admins should only serve 2 years. Or they don't like (or do like) the candidates in your very small sample (perhaps admiring them, or devaluing them for "having the balls" or "gall" to "take part", even). Or they are tactically voting because they know it's an artificial test. Or they are an artificial audience that likes voting on tests. Or it's Thursday, and they never could get the hang of Thursdays. . Sorry, it just doesn't seem to offer much in the way of understandable data. Could be just me - I'm a natural cynic. Begoon  12:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Skepticism is good, but we are constrained by reality and it sounds like what you're asking for is the best-designed study ever conducted on Misplaced Pages (admittedly not a place known for it's rigorous application of the scientific method). There are inevitably latent variables, but in terms of a proof-of-concept, the individual voter motivations aren't all that interesting and will mostly be smoothed over per our consensus-forming process. Ultimately we'd have to analyse the results with these caveats in mind, and it would be incorrect to try and produce a precise a priori set of alternative hypotheses or a back-of-the-envelope power calculation at this stage of the discussion. Jebus989 13:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. I don't think a perfectly designed experiment is ever possible. Let's look at your subjects, as typical admins - you have one Arbcom member, and one ex-beuraucrat (never cud spel that). And you're still not really laying out what the results will "prove". Hey, if y'all want to "stick a finger in the air" to see if anything useful can be learnt, there's nothing wrong with that, sometimes - if it's very windy you'll get an idea which way it's blowing, and even if it's very fast - but it's not an "experiment" then, and you have to ask yourself if the perhaps very weak conclusions are worth the drama, and the sandcastles that will inevitably be built on them. Begoon  13:13, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I can lay out what I think the results would prove in any other useful way, we seem to have reached an impasse. I just wanted to clarify that they're not my subjects and I haven't suggested using self-selected volunteers, though I recognise the difficulties in doing this any other way. Regardless I think we both agree this experiment need not occur Jebus989 13:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry - that's cool. I know they aren't your subjects, and I apologise for that. Look, we'd all love to know the answers, and you make some good points. If this was an easy question all these geniuses (genii?) wouldn't have been tossing it around here for 5+ years with no answers. I just, honestly, don't see where we'd know any more the day after this experiment than we did the day before. Perhaps I'm wrong and it does no harm - but I'm just so leery of false conclusions, and we are a bit prone to those, as a group, imo. And yes, I recognise we agreed all along about its non-necessity - them's the vagaries of debate... Begoon  13:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• Those admins who are pushing for a re-run every 2 years should be invited to nominate themselves for this experiment. GiantSnowman 13:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps that's not the silliest thing you ever said. I doubt the validity of the experiment, as I ramble on about above, but you certainly suggest a better sample. Begoon  13:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Selecting admins who approve of finite admin terms would be selecting a loaded sample. Generally, the community would have little concern about admins like that, who would tend to be admins of calibre. Of more concern would be admins who oppose finite terms. These are the ones who need to stand for re-election. --Epipelagic (talk) 14:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, or, as I said earlier, and as you prove here, the whole thing will be so prone to preconceived, opinionated, conceptions that it's worthless. No offence meant, truly, but that's the reality. Begoon  15:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

You know it occurs to me that the same arguments for not mandating a re-RFA process also apply to the RFA process itself. You say non admins can't be trusted to reelect admins, but they can be trusted to elect them initially? That doesn't make any sense. Either the community can be trusted or they can't. Arguments to the contrary are mostly just admins who are afraid to lose the tools. Some of which probably should lose them based on their history. The problem we have is there are too many abusive admins who know that for them to lose the tools it takes an Arbcom discussion and few are willing to go through the effort of submitting one. Even then most of them don't pass and they just get adminishment which is basically telling the submitter that we know there is a problem but we after over a month of discussion we really don't want to do anything about it. Its just a slap in the face. So why even bother with it. The very few exceptions are generally collateral punishments in a case where they participated, not though individual submissions. So really, there is no effective process for getting rid of bad admins. Certainly no one is policing them in the way the admin police (and frequently bully) regular editors. If there was such a group, then that would make a lot of this moot, but then again, it would probably be some of those admin bully's that ended up on that group too. Regardless of what is done, something needs to be done. 138.162.8.59 (talk) 15:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the question of what would be the goals of having some experimental reconfirmations, the issue is what are the objectives of an admin reconfirmation? I can think of a couple of key ones:

• Provide an opportunity for regular feedback so the admin can learn and respond.
• Allow the community to reassert or withdraw its trust placed in an admin.

To these ends, I believe any experiments should seek to address the obstacles in meeting these objectives, such as:

• The limited participation in requests for adminship (which presumably would be similar for a reconfirmation) limits the degree of community approval that results from the discussion.
• The respondents most likely to participate are those with negative feedback, which leads to a skewed view of the general community's opinions.

I suggest that some different formats, procedures, and other ideas be discussed that will improve the legitimacy of a reconfirmation process. Once there are some concrete proposals, the value of proceeding with some dry runs can be evaluated. isaacl (talk) 19:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be putting the cart before the horse. There is no mandate for reconfirmation. Nor is there a mandate for holding malformed experiments. Leaky Caldron 19:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree; that's why I believe the purpose for having experiments and their format needs to be discussed first. Only once this is understood can a discussion be held on whether or not any experiments should proceed. isaacl (talk) 19:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

At this point, RfA-related discussion is pretty much a dead end. It doesn't appear that any experiments will be carried out. Sometimes it seems to me that there is a subset of editors (not including Isaacl, just wanted to make that clear) who would rather criticize problems than look for solutions (these same people like to criticize solutions as well). AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 20:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I've been a regular contributor to this talk for several years, and believe it or not, over these last few days there has been some of the most positive and objective commenting I think I've ever seen here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:32, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you :) --Epipelagic (talk) 21:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Some tentative proposals

I would like to see;

• Admin candidates being initially vetted in terms of WP history by admins, before an RFA goes live.
• Echoing some thoughts from User:Kudpung. sharpening up action on inactive admins, and stipulating !Voter requirements based on edits, say a minimum 500 mainspace edits. An experienced ed is a good judge, if having a NPOV.
• No ed being allowed to !Vote if they have a previous record of issues with the candidate. The admin initial sift could identify potential past or even ancient issues. Its water under the bridge, and cuts out WP:Drama. This stuff should be in a new brief admin-prepared synopsis of the candidate section, which would open the RFA, with nominations.
• All admin candidates having content work as an essential requirement for consideration, maybe 2 articles created, GA or similar. Even a good gnome. No mainspace content contribution, no RFA. Say at least 40% mainspace edits in contributions.
• A 12 month probationary period, where newbies are shadowed by an experienced admin. Short report created by mentor at end, with power to dysop. A critical process, which calls for quality administrators. Kevlar vests and nerves of steel would be important attributes. This would replace my periodic re-election proposal.
• Get rid of Open To Recall. It appears to be more a fashion item than a reliable or often used routeway to flag up behavioural or procedural concerns.
• A method created to root out bad admins. But that should be an admin-led task. No one can see a bad admin better than a good admin, should be the credo there. User:Sphilbrick has son good ideas on this from my reading. Irondome (talk) 00:19, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Maybe more controversially, no non-admin input in dysop decision making after election. Lets see the admins step up to the plate as the Americans say. Admins must police themselves. Paradoxically, this may increase ed confidence in the admin corps, if they are only seen to act as a group and be seen as being proactive in addressing admin misdeameaners.This may also help editor retention, and lessen attitudal burn out from great content contributors, which is losing us so much at the mo it seems.Irondome (talk) 00:34, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I still keep thinking of the bureaucratic workload of a de/re-sysoping system, especially where we could use a better turnout of voters at RfA, and better quality of voting.

Taken from the tables, which may be inaccurate due to dups across the tables or entries in the wrong table:

• 153 voluntary resignations, of which
• 10 failed a readminship
• 12 resigned in recognition of the community's dissatisfaction with their activities.
  • 20 admins have been desysoped for cause
  • 55 resignations (no cloud) since 2008: 2013 (15), 2012 (13), 2011 (9), 2010 (4), 2009 (10), 2008 (4)

A better factor for determining whether or not we really need a procedural re-sysoping system would probably be to investigate just what percentage of our 'active' admins appear to be actually demonstrating patterns of poor judgement or inappropriate behaviour. That's not so easy to evaluate however without naming and shaming or going on a witch hunt, it may however either lend credence to those who tar all admins with the same brush, or discredit their claims. The idea of a noticeboard at which suspected admin abuse could be reported has a certain appeal but I doubt whether the community would accept it. It would likely be a ANI-style board, and like ANI, open to abuse by time wasters, users with an axe to grind, and comments by admin wannabes.

I agree with GiantSnowman's and The Rambling Man's sentiments, non-admins vastly outnumber admins and their vengeance votes could easily produce the wrong consensus, after all, there is no guarantee that any re-sysoping system would perform any better than RfA does today. As Misplaced Pages:RfA reform 2011/Voter profiles shows, the vast majority of voters are highly transient, indicating that RfA is very much an (un)popularity contest. There is a small core of regular voters (which also changes over time) who make reasonably researched votes, but they are very much in the minority.

I don't believe that the majority of newly elected admins make the most mistakes with their tools, judgement, or civility; from what I have seen, such behaviour appears to come mainly from sysops with much longer tenure who have gotten bold and think they can get away with stuff. Many of them are from pre 2007 days. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Ditto the last paragraph!... A side note: Thanks for speaking out!... It is my opinion that Misplaced Pages will benefit enormously from speaking out against flagrant imbalances and blatant injustices and calling on all admins to employ non-bias, civility, respect, composure and fully (not selectively) adhering to WP core principles 100% of the time.Worldedixor (talk) 07:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe that excluding editors with previous issues from voting is a good thing -- they're most likely to have useful, detailed input on the candidates. (And believe me, there are some folks I'd love to see excluded if anyone is ever dense enough to nominate me again...) In fact, in my first RFA, I called it to the attention of someone I knew would disapprove.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

• Back in August, I drew up a fairly broad rough-draft RfC regarding to a handful of the basic RfA-related controversies. You can see the RfC here. Might this be a good time to consider opening it up to the community for input? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 19:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Looks sound to me, with various options presented. It would generate a huge conversation though, if it was just presented en masse. Would suggest it be presented a premise or section at a time. This present thread I feel is attempting to define the issue(s) which are still rather formless. I think we need to establish consensus on whether length of adminship is an issue which in any way impacts on other admin areas in interaction with the wider community Irondome (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

@Irondome:. Earlier this year an extensive, 3 month RfC, covering all aspects of the perceived problems with RfA was completed. If you are unaware of it please see Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_adminship/2013_RfC and the 3 associated section links. It might save you and the community some considerable time in reviewing that recent material (for example Admin. probation was proposed and rejected) rather than you re-presenting the same or similar proposals for yet more consideration and debate less than 7 months on. Leaky Caldron 14:36, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Comparisons of other Wikipedias' RfA mechanisms. By courtesy of User:Kudpung

This is interesting. Misplaced Pages:RfA reform (continued)/Voter profiles#comparison RfA other Wikipedias. Note the differing qualifications required for candidates and voters, and controls on comments. Irondome (talk) 21:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe try to survey opposes/neutrals of borderline RFAs?

Probably has been suggested before by someone somewhere, but anyway I got an idea that most accurate way to determine what changes adminship needs to increase RFA productivity, would be surveying people who were neutral or opposed in more borderline RFAs. These would be RFAs that ended in 60-80% support, meaning failure despite considerable support or only barely passing. If significant amount of editors who were neutral/opposed in those RFAs say that they would have been willing to vote more favorably for the candidate if system was some way different (like some rights unbundled, or regular re-elections, or probation period etc.), then it could actually show some real direction how you can make adminship less of a "big deal". Otherwise all those RFA reform discussions are inevitably just people making wild personal assumptions with no data whatsoever to back it up. Just an idea though, I haven't given much thought how such surveys should exactly work in practice.--Staberinde (talk) 17:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

A large amount of data was extracted and extrapolated t WP:RFA2011. I suggest looking through that project first. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion part of problem with RFA reform attempts is the fact that there have been lots of different people and lots of different questions, resulting huge amounts of data that is problematic to manage, and relatively hopeless to draw much useful conclusions from. So I thought that more focused approach of asking right question from right people would be better way to establish what needs to be changed. That said, its just an idea, if people think that they already have all the needed data and they can draw appropriate conclusions from it, then obviously my suggestion would be just additional waste of time.--Staberinde (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting for a moment that it would be a waste of time. What I am reiterating again is that much of the information you seek is probably at Misplaced Pages:RfA reform (continued)/Voter profiles which shows exactly how around 1,500 editors voted at RfA. As I mentioned somewhere above, it would be worthwhile expanding that information to take into account the additional 2.5 years. From there, if you wished to make a targeted survey, you would know whom to address. WP:RFA2011 is a very large project, but as I know it almost inside out, I'm quite happy to point anyone directly to relevant pages and discussions. The whole concept of RFA2011 was to a create space where focus on systematic research could take place without being confused with general discussion such as here at WT:RfA, and identify from the research what the problems with RfA are. In that, I think the project succeeded. Many suggestions for reform were also made, but for reasons stated above, they were never taken to RfC. I think a lot could be done with that material without reinventing the wheel. 19:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

In that case I suggest that this thread be closed and archieved. As the OP'er I do feel somewhat guilty in wasting everybodys' time and energy. I sincerely apologise to all community members who were so generous with their time and thoughts, for inadvertently creating a conceptual blind alley. Cheers all and thanks. Irondome (talk) 19:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

(ec) I hope you'll excuse me using the alley you built, for a moment longer. It seems to me that one way to address some perceived problems in RfAs, would be to take that proportion of borderline RfAs that passed, and then ask the more thoughtful-seeming Opposers if they felt, on consideration of the successful RfA-ee's behaviour as an admin over an extended period of time, that their concerns were either proved correct or might have been misplaced.

Any such process would, of course, benefit greatly from the information extracted by WP:RFA2011 as pointed out by Kudpung. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a useful plan to take forward. Irondome (talk) 20:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's been a waste of time at all. Several new ideas have been posited and if nothing else, it has served to remind us of where similar discussions and research have taken place that need not necessarily be duplicated (and where perhaps they could still continue). i like Calmer Waters's suggestion below for a footer template. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

It is a good idea. I would support any implementation of such an inclusion. Irondome (talk) 20:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Footer box for prior RFCs, reform projects, and such

Since this is a place that many editors come to discuss questions about the admin selection process and possible changes would it be helpful to add something like a "Links to related discussions" collapsible box at the bottom of the page? It could link to prior RFA reform projects, RFA RFCs, etc. This might help those new to the area or those that haven't frequented the page in some time. Not to stifle discussion, but rather a tool for those that want to take an extra step forward to be able to find these vast resources easier, rather than rehashing the same proposals every time the page goes blank. I know there is the archive, but that thing is a beast and from watching this page it does not appear to be used all to often. Calmer Waters 18:46, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

All the major de-admin related stuff is in a box at Misplaced Pages:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept/Navbox. Cheers. 64.40.54.179 (talk) 05:31, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Participation in reform

Of the 42 currently signed up at WP:RFA2011 many have significantly reduced their participation in Misplaced Pages or quietly stopped editing altogether, some have been blocked and/or desysoped, and only 12 are (or were at the time) admins. I don't know what one can conclude from all that, or perhaps one could come up with some suggestions if they were to examine their editing histories more closely. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:14, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Its probably for many reasons not the least of which IMO would be the communities continued inability to make any meaningful change; the WMF's conduct with several of the reason releases and the progressively degenerating editing environment here. I also think it helps to further illustrate that the nail that sticks out gets hammered. So if you do something here to buck the system particularly against admins, you are likely to become a target from many of them. There are a lot of good admins here but there are also quite a few who are excellent manipulators and are very good at twisting policies to meet their POV. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 11:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Bear in mind that since 2007 we've typically lost over 200 very active editors per year (graph). You may just be seeing the normal Wikipedian lifecycle in action Jebus989 12:06, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I think we're probably looking at a typical average Wikipedian lifecycle. Probably also at some admins who drifted into the background after their initial euphoria of getting the bit wore off. I'm also seeing that the project was hardly one designed to help admins hang on to their immense power and keep others out of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Some were also probably very young/wannabe admins and realised that their time is better spent on their schoolwork. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm one of those 42, and I know I need to do more. I've been in isolation mode for more than 10 months now, my project has taken far more time than I ever anticipated and I have no intention of stopping, but if that ever does finish I'll try to put in some more time. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:34, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking very much forward to it  ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

As with many others I think reform is necessary and would be a good thing. Unfortunately I don't have any faith that anything will come out of these discussions except wasted time. Too many are opposed to making changes to a system that gives them power. People like power and tend to do whatever they can to keep it. So just as all the other RFC's and ideas ended in failure this one is destined too as well. Until the RFA problem has gotten to a point where we aren't promoting or there are so few admins that work isn't getting done (which arguably is already occurring) then this process won't change. Its going to take something drastic to get changed. Not a few well wishers talking about it. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 13:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I still do not believe that statements such as , or similar to: "Too many are opposed to making changes to a system that gives them power. People like power and tend to do whatever they can to keep it." have any foundation in fact. I think such assumptions are based purely on the perceptions of those who have an axe to grind. It's a mantra we've heard too often and it's wearing a bit thin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:02, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Well when meaningful discussion turns into meaningful change I'll retract my statement and you can publicly call me a fool and a lier. Since these discussions always end in failure with reasons like "this won't work; the WMF won't allow it; or the non admin community can't be trusted to reelect admins because they don't know what its like to be an admin, are just as foolish and pointless as perceptions that abusive admins will prevent change from happening. As it is, there is more evidence to prove I am right than to the contrary. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Right, the problem is just that it is not actionable. We have people who believe that Misplaced Pages is broken beyond repair, and some of them are present at this page. The problem is that "broken beyond repair" usually translates into "let these fools fight each other, until the point that everything is really disfunctional, and then Jimbo will be kicked out, WMF will be kicked out, and I will pick up the website and run it how I please". Great, may be it comes to this point, but I am personally not really willing just to sit and wait until this point comes.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:03, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually I don't think Misplaced Pages is beyond repair. I think the problems are very repairable. What I see is the problem though is a lack of desire by the community to accept there is a problem; a lack of desire to affect change to fix it; a general attitude that the few who are trying to change the system just have a chip on their shoulder and a lack of interest. Not to mention a number of admins who vote against any change the to system no matter how benign; the lack of trust towards editors by the admins and a general attitude that admins are better than editors because 5 years ago 40 editors all said they could be trusted and they got the tools. The mere fact that a lot of admins don't use their tools at all and still admit they wouldn't pass under current standards says a lot. If they can't pass, and they have been admins for years, then how the hell can they justify that the system works. They can't because it doesn't, but they will protect it fiercely because they have the power and they don't want to lose it. I challenge the admins to rerun. If they get to keep the tools great, if they don't then they will learn what they need to improve on to get them back and regain the communities trust. A lot of them lost the communities trust and need to get it back but the community is powerless to do anything about it. As for the latter part of your statement. Jimbo is nothing more than a figurehead these days and hasn't had an active role in several years. Other than paying to keep the servers running the WMF does very little of value and a large amount of what they do isn't an improvement or is a waste of the communities time. So frankly, I wouldn't have a problem if the WMF stepped aside. They don't do the things they should be doing and need to do and only seem to be focused on things that none of the rest of us care about or deem important....like Visual editor and Flow. Both of which are a long way fro being developed to a point where they are useful here and even then they are being developed how the developers want to do things and not what is beneficial. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 20:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem is not that a significant minority, admins or otherwise denies that we have a problem, that minority has long dwindled below the level that can block change. At worst we have a small number who will oppose some reforms such as unbundling block newbie because things aren't yet so broken as to require that change. The real problem is that we disagree wildly as to what the solution(s) should be, and that many of those who support some reforms believe that some of the alternatives would be counterproductive. The implication of that is that we need to shift our focus away from convincing people that RFA is broken and focus on trying to achieve consensus for some particular changes. ϢereSpielChequers 21:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) If we are serious about reforming RFA, we need to break off a few bite-size changes to implement and not try to fix the whole shebang in one fell swoop. For example, one problem has been the rise of opposes based on semi-arbitrary criteria like the creation of FAs and GAs. We could try to institute a policy that would make those oppose votes invalid. Andrevan@ 23:03, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Non-starter -- what would happen is that people would then use "accepted" criteria for their votes so they would not be thrown out. Collect (talk) 23:12, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with most of what both of you are saying. But I also disagree with parts of what you both state. The problem with those comments is that I don't have faith the community will accept any change to the RFA process regardless of how small or targetted we make it. I have seen those positive comments for years and many have tried to do just that and every suggestion has ended in failure. It has nothing to do with the validity of the suggestion, it has to do with the general inability of the community to do anything about it and the incompetence of the WMF for allowing it to get to this point and not stepping in to do something about it. I also consider it a failure of Arbcom and the bureaucrcts and the admins for allowing a minority of their peers to continue abusing the tools unmolested. Its easy just to look the other way,it takes courage and strength to do something about it. If they don't have the strength or courage to fix it they should let others do it. Not continue to block suggestions to fix the problems with hyperbole and what if scenario's. We also should not need to unbundle the tools because we don't trust our editors. Let them have some rope and if they screw up tighten the noose. This would require a couple things that we don't currently have. First, it would require trust which is something this community no longer has; Second it would require a change to make the tools easier to get like in the old days (which makes up the majority of our current admin corps so it must have worked pretty well); third we need to make it easier to take the tools away if people screw up. Admins shouldn't have unlimited impunity to be assholes. None of these is likely to occur however. So there is little need for me to continue to dwell on it. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 23:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

"...one problem has been the rise of opposes based on semi-arbitrary criteria like the creation of FAs and GAs." - we need to investigate and provide stats to demonstrate just how much this is accurate. I've said many times before that the majority of participants at RfA are very transient, leaving only a small pool of regular voters. What seems obvious to me, although it would be difficult, if not impossible to prove, is that many voters do little or no research into the candidate's background. Among those regular voters who have published their criterta, many have very different criteria. On the whole, taking all kinds of voters, the overall criteria are therefore set anew for each RfA depending on who turns out to vote. Hence, it is not the system which is broken, but the process that allows certain types of voting by certain types of voters.

I've also mentioned many times previously that there are basically two camps: 1) those who wish to maintain high standards in order to prevent unsuitable candidates from passing (this is quite different from admins abusing their powers to keep new candidates out), and 2) those who think the standards should be lower, giving new admins enough rope to hang themselves later. In the latter, it would create more bureaucracy, and one that would be very incomplete without an easier system in place for desysoping. There are possibly some tools that could be unbundled for use in exceptional circumstances, but until someone starts an RfC, we cannot possibly speculate on the outcome. That said, has anyone tried reviewing and analysing just exactly who voted 'oppose' on all the dozens of RfCs to unbundle tools, make major changes to RfA, or adminship in general?

I still resent the notion that all admins are potential badmins. There was talk above about identifying possible badmins, but that would require a systematic evaluation of every one of the 1,400 sysops, and not only their use of tools, but their judgement and comments in non-tool areas, and civility. It would be a dangerous exercise because it would be assuming bad faith on the part of all admins, but such stats could, theoretically, be useful. After all, the persistent negative claims about admins is soon going to need backing up, otherwise those mantras will (and already do) fall on deaf ears. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you that not all admins are bad, in fact I have mentioned that it is a minority. The proble is no one is doing anything about them so IMO they are contributing to the problem by ignoring it. If they did the right thing and police their own, or the Bureau's did it, or Arbcom did it, or the WMF did it then the problems would be mitigated. But since none of those groups are interested in doing what is essentially all their jobs to some degree, it continues to be a problem; it continues to hinder recruiting and keeping new editors; it continues hindering allowing editors from helping and it continues to bog down the process with needless politics and redtape. I also don't think it would be all that hard to look through the admins. You could eliminate probably 1000 almost immediately because they don't even use the tools, then you could narrow the scope even further buy grouping them into activity levels. Start with the most active and then eliminate each group. The bad ones stand out just as much as the good ones so they are easy to find. Another possibility is to do an editor survey, see what the community tells you are the bad apples. The world wont come crashing down if we defrock a few rogues anymore than it will by not promoting deserving editors to admin.71.126.152.253 (talk) 01:34, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm taking it as a given that the problem with RFA is that it's too hard on candidates which discourages participation; therefore I would be in the category of whose who believe that community standards have drifted too high for what is essentially still "not a big deal." I do agree with you that fundamentally RFA works and we don't need to throw out the mechanisms or the general shape and characteristics that RFA has had since 2003 or whenever. In my view, the problem is not that admins as a class have decided to prevent the creation of more of themselves, but that the community has created an unreasonably high standard of achievement to prove that one is a serious contributor, perhaps as a form of subconscious competition or one-upmanship. This has developed slowly over the years. I remember when the first editors started stating their criteria as 1800-2000 edits, before too long we had instituted today's edit count and contribution history review or inquisition of sorts. I think this has snowballed somewhat such that if you don't have broad participation in many policy pages, backlogs and mechanisms you will be opposed. I don't think a WikiGnomic admin needs to be a major content contributor, nor do I think a prolific article writer should have to deal with things like deletion or non-free image removals. That being said, the constants for good admins are communication skills, cool heads, civility, thoughtfulness, attention to detail, and the like. I agree we could end up playing whack-a-mole if we disallow specific lines of reasoning in advance, but the bureaucrats can adapt, and if the response to disallowing invalid reasoning results in the construction of a legitimate argument, that seems like a feature not a bug to me. Andrevan@ 02:00, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

• I can't help but say this again: I think it's time that someone took the initiative to use their skills with regex or whatever, and provide some tables that we can examine to prove or disprove the claims by both sides. I spent enough time a couple of years ago on WP:RFA2011 so there's no point in waiting in the hope that I'm going to do it, besides which, I still spend far too much time on this forum just talking about things and doing battle with Kumioko (who is actually a nice guy). That's the way to go about it - c'mon people, let's get some up to date facts into the discourse. Let's get this table (How they voted) updated for starters, also adding a column for logged admin actions where the admins are concerned - there's a huge amount of information in it still waiting to be extrapolated, and a lot of other graphs and tables on that page that I feel sure not everyone has taken the trouble to visit. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  And it would be great to have an analog of these statistics, not all-time, but just for a recent period, say, 6 months.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:23, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  I agree Kudpung, after seeing countless proposals and RFC's fail, many of which were good ideas and would be a big improvement, I have no desire to use my time in what would be a failure and amount to nothing more than a waste of time. I also think its pretty sad that the primary user advocating change is one the majority of the community would like to see leave and not come back. That doesn't reflect well on the community or the project. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 15:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  Kumioko, who are you talking about with the "primary user" comment? Binksternet (talk) 15:44, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  Looking at this table (How they voted) I cant stop thinking that hope seems to be that if enough data is gathered then somehow someone will read correct answer out from it, but nobody has any real idea how that answer should be found. Simply having lots of statistics wont do. If you count in all RFAs, including total failures and complete successes, then you will just get bunch of extra garbage that doesn't give you any useful information how those more borderline cases could have done better. Similarly going to voter level, supporters cant tell you what could have made opposers/neutrals more favourable to borderline candidates, only opposers or neutrals can tell you that. Simply gathering all possible statistics wont help, you need to get data that is directly relevant to making RFA process easier to pass.--Staberinde (talk) 18:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  I'm talking about myself of course. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 18:07, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

  I don't think that's a great idea, the same people that !voted oppose in a borderline passing RfA will also vote support in a landslide and etc. for all combinations—individual !votes are no more interesting than the average participant. Also those tables seem to show the RfA pass rate has't really decreased, so making it easier to pass may not be the issue so much as getting more people to put themselves forward Jebus989 19:45, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Standards (i.e. voters' individual criteria) may not actually have risen much in the post 2007 years. What we do have is an exponentially increasing number of editors who, over time, are likely to meet them. There was also an exponential increase in bad faith oppose voting and, which seems to have somewhat abated recently, while the support sections are still frequented by a large number of one-off and rare visitors to RfA, and just a few admins and regular participants.

Here's a list of users' essays and voting criteria:

I'm not so sure that that the dramatic decline in candidates over the past couple of years is directly due to potential candidates feeling that the standards are too high. It may be more that a combination of the increases in disingenuous voting, exposure of RfA reform, campaigns for easier desysoping, and in the general tarring of all admins with the same brush, are what are putting people off. Ironically, in inverse proportion to the number of RfAs, the number of voters on each RfA has increased, and 100+ support votes are no longer a rarity.

On another note, I see a rather disquieting percentage of desysops 'for cause' being to highly visible admins, 'crats, or arbs. There were a couple of desysops this year (I stayed completely of of those cases) where I had already seen the writing on the wall a long time back, and just had to sit back and wait. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:19, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

That is an interesting list of criteria. I had seen many of them but didn't know about some of those. It might be useful to create a consolidated essay somewhere of the various good ideas of what it takes to become an admin. It should also be noted that I actually meet most of the criteria from the majority of those and at least one of those users, User:A Nobody, has been banned from Misplaced Pages. I also think some of the criteria are unrealistic and very few would qualify or are unnecessary and unrelated to RFA and shouldn't be used as a criteria. I also note another interesting fact of these. They all list multiple technical qualifications that few candidates being promoted these days have showing they seem to favor those admins who are less technical over being mediators. Its also interesting to me that several of the criteria would disqualify many of the current admins if they were held up to the light such as Blocks, bad attitudes towards other editors, abusive use of the tools like extraordinarily long blocks for minor infractions of policy and low vote records at venues like AFD or CFD. It seems to me if these criteria are to be used to prevent users from getting the tools, the same criteria should be used at removing them from users who fail to uphold the standards. Otherwise their just hypocritical. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 12:08, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

What it takes to become an admin ought to be common sense, but when I think about the regular stream of emails I receive from some who want to be nominated or would like my opinion, I'm not so sure. That's why this got written. -Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:46, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Hypocrisy only comes into play when someone argues for higher standards for others than they intend to follow themselves. If an admin opposed a candidate on grounds that would get that admin desysopped or would have trashed their RFA then they might be being hypocritical. But of course an admin who passed RFA prior to 2009 without ever citing a reliable source could now argue that standards have risen, and that by modern standards they themselves shouldn't have become an admin until a year after they did. Equally a !voter who themselves thinks that they aren't ready for adminship is not hypocritical in opposing someone who is as qualified as themselves. Specifically at AFD/CSD, an active admin who never works in those areas but instead specialises in block appeals, protections or requested moves is a different and known quantity from an RFA candidate who says they intend to work at CSD or AFD but has little relevant experience. We have hundreds of admins whose recent levels of activity would see them fail an RFA, but none of those hundreds are being hypocritical unless they themselves oppose similar candidates to themselves for taking a recent wikibreak or "insufficient recent activity". Very few of our 1400 admins, far less than a tenth of them, are regulars at RFA. I doubt if there are many hypocritical !votes, off hand I can't recall any. But we do have lots of Admins who are aware that current RFA standards would have seen their own RFA fail, and in many cases we have admins who suspect that if they had not become admins when they did and were to run now they would not pass. Such admins are not necessarily being hypocritical in continuing to be admins, especially not if they consider RFA to be broken. ϢereSpielChequers 12:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Inactivity isn't really what I'm referring too although I admit I do agree with removing the tools from inactive editors. I would even agree that we should drop it from 1 year to 6 months. What I mean is that some admins, over time, start to become callous towards other editors. Rather than start with minimum blocks they go straight to indefinite. Some show extremely poor judgement at AFD,CFD and other venues where they vote to delete nearly everything they come across. When you look at the criteria of these "checklists" I can see one or 2 admins for most of the "criteria". Some fail multiple criteria. Its a very minor group of admins, some active and some less so. But no one is removing the tools from them for violating the rules which are used as criteria that's used to promote them. That is what I mean by hypocritical. We are holding editors to a higher standard than admins. That just ain't right no matter how some admins might try and justify it. No RFA reform is going to be accepted or take hold unless something is done to equal the imbalance. If we are goign to set criteria for RFA that's totally fine but we need to hold our admins to the same standard. Not relax the rules once they become admins. Furthermore I still contend that for many to insist the community can only be trusted with voting in admins and not having a say in getting rid of the bad ones or the ones that violate policy is also hypocritical and gives a lot of validation to my assertions that there is an us and them mentality between the admins and the editors. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 14:55, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

IMO in all of the complexities of this, there is one (IMHO no-brainer obvious) area to take a step forward on which would be uncontroversial and no-brainer certain to help. And that would be to compile a short list of qualities sought, and to structure RFA to urge respondents to evaluate the candidate in those areas, I.E. make so that some of their feedback shifts to being on those topics. That would reduce the randomness, superficiality and grudge-based feedback attributes. This could be slowly developed and tried, first on a tiny basis, so it would not need the huge decision which this process has been unable to come up with. North8000 (talk) 13:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that agreeing a criteria would be an obvious reform, and it would bring RFA more into line with processes that work like Rollback or FAC. However after proposing User:WereSpielChequers/RFA_reform#Agree_a_criteria_for_adminship more than once, I wouldn't describe the idea as uncontroversial, and even if we get agreement to set a criteria setting the criteria itself will be contentious. ϢereSpielChequers 13:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

My idea specifically AVOIDS setting it as a criteria, something that heavy duty and controversial is certain to die under it's own weight. It's just to describe some desirable qualities, and give the RFA discussions a nudge to talk a little more about those and place a little extra value on those. North8000 (talk) 13:39, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I / let's might even start it via a few edits in that "what respondents are likely to look for" material which has a lot of offbeat stuff in it. That would be just an incubator. North8000 (talk) 13:41, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Not calling it a criteria might not be the solution, I suspect that would just get the idea trashed as a criteria that pretended not to be. I think it would be safer to call it a core criteria as that acknowledges that not everything can be set in the criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 14:02, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that you are right regarding where it should end up. I think that I'm right regarding a realistic way to start going there. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

So a "no brainer" reason this wouldn't work is that it's practically a tautology. Problem: disagreement amongst participants on what is required of admin candidates; solution: agree what is required of admin candidates. If you manage to freeze out all those with conflicting opinions and just write your own criteria, it's equivalent to those userspace pages linked above and should set no more of a precedent than they do Jebus989 16:24, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Does an essay exist approximating User:Kudpungs advice for candidates, which is aimed at potential !voters? I have not been able to locate it. (Sorry if I am just missing it). I think it would be a useful thing. All !voters would be strongly encouraged to read it before participating in RfAs. It would explain some of the attitudes or approaches to avoid as being unhelpful, and would encourage tips on what to look for in a candidate, how to research candidates histories constructively, etc. I would propose an RfA moderator, using this guidance as a template, ruling out some of the grosser attacks from ill-informed and/or unconstructive !voters. I would see an active arbitor actually pro-actively involved in the voting discussion, controlling the more unhelpful or obviously POV voters. Voters should also recognise their responsibility in the process, if we have the vision that all members of the community are indeed equal. A society ends up with the police force it deserves, ive heard it said. The same probably holds true of WP. Irondome (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Relevant: RfA clerks (failed proposal) Jebus989 16:46, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• I think that should be re-evaluated in terms of our present discussion, redrafted and re proposed. This could be the way in. Every debate has a chairperson. I think it would greatly decrease RfA stress to potential candidates, and is a first step to more reform, if it was accepted. Also, I am assuming there is still some traction for your "experiment, User:Jebus989. How do you feel about it now? In terms of my OP, I am thinking now that if utilised in the short term, without other changes to buttress it, periodic re-election would be damaging. In the context of a reforming RfA process though, I think its the way to go, in the long term. Irondome (talk) 23:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Although I share skepticism that requiring certain things for an RFA is unlikely to pass, what I think would be useful and generally accepted is if an essay were written that combines the various "criteria" that some use into one central document. Most of them share a lot of the same criteria anyway, most editors probably have some criteria they use even if only mentally and not written down. This could also help to inform those who might be considering running but don't know if they are qualified. We don't need to require its use immediately, but having something drafted would be a good step in the right direction. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• This has been around for a while: Misplaced Pages:Advice for RfA voters. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:12, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

That one is focused on signs, which is fine. I was thinking of coming up with a few that are "qualities" (which those signs could be an indicator of) Another maybe even more on target is the "what voters are looking for" type sections in Misplaced Pages:Guide to requests for adminship. We should pick one that will be the incubator and go to work there. North8000 (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• Note that in spite of all the recent discussion in several sections on this page, we have gone about a week now without an open RfA. This is becoming an all-too-common occurrence. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The reasons for that should be obvious. It's been discussed ad nauseam for years to such an extent that they no longer need any stats to prove them.

To arrive at any detailed stats of individual performance, especially behavioural, there is no work-around to doing it manually. Good luck for anyone who has the time to go through the RfAs of 1,400 admins and their edits.

I think there is nothing to be gained in collating a set of adminship criteria; as I've said many times, most of the voters are transient, and in any case, few appear to do any particular research before voting. If a user is seriously interested in becoming an admin, all they have to do is read WP:RFAADVICE and follow all the links in it and they'd soon find out what is required of them. Investing a couple of hours to do that is the least they could be expected to do. Why should we spoon feed them? We need candidates of the right calibre to come forward, and they will have the intelligence to know what is required of admins. Those who have joined Misplaced Pages with the sole intention of becoming a admin some day (and there are most definitely many of these) should probably best not be encouraged. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

That wasn't the idea. It was to develop a few desirable qualities, and nudge the RFA discussion to be more about those and less about the random and grudge stuff. North8000 (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

As much as it may seem to the contrary, not having any candidates or promotions for a month or few is actually a good thing. As long as the occassional candidate is getting the tools some will insist the process works. Which we all pretty much agree it doesn't. The only way it will be fixed is to let it go to a state that so few admins are getting the tools, something must be done. At this point that is the only way I see change occurring to improve the RFA process. 71.126.152.253 (talk) 03:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

That kind of thinking is better saved for end time arguments—"let's allow the system to become as messed up as possible so that it can eventually be fixed." I strongly protest such a WP:POINTy strategy. Binksternet (talk) 05:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh stop being so dramatic Binksternet. It is perfectly sensible to allow the already messed up system to run to its logical conclusion. The current admins as a group will never voluntarily release their grip on the levers of power. That will not happen until they have no choice. Letting the system run itself into the ground so it can finally be replaced with a decent and more workable system is the best possible outcome. Then we can have a system worthy of the better admins and less demeaning to content builders. The worst possible option is to keep trying to prop up the current mess. Then we will just get an endless cycle of what we already have. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:52, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

An intellectualised version of what is basically the game of chicken is probably not the best way forward either. Lets not stray into magnified shadows territory again. If we keep emphasising the them and us anecdotal stuff, we will be doing no camp any favours. The idea is to destroy the distinctions in the longer term. Thats my goal here anyway Irondome (talk) 06:04, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Can you explain what that is meant to mean? It doesn't seem to be addressing the point here. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is very precisely. I will expand after I get some kip, later. Cheers Irondome (talk) 06:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

It's perfectly clear what Irondome is saying. To illustrate a point.... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I've realized for a long time that this reform talk with no action is all in vain. If we really want something done, somebody just has to be bold and get it done. Sure, big decisions require community input, but you can't satisfy everybody. You have to be willing to make compromises, even if it leaves a few people partially or even completely unsatisfied. The Utahraptor/_Contribs 17:01, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that something should to be done, but what do you have in mind? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 17:13, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

See my reply to Calmer Waters. The Utahraptor/_Contribs 06:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Contrary to what Binksternet infers by his comments above, the comments I left as IP 71.126.152.253 are not based on pure pessimism. They are pessimistic but that is based on years of experience with Misplaced Pages and the communities repeated admittance that the RFA process needs to be reformed along with the communities repeated failure to do anything about it. Virtually everyone (all as far as I know in fact) believe the RFA process is a nightmare. Virtually everyone thinks it needs to change and has flaws. Every conceivable idea has been presented multiple times. Many of them were very, very good ideas. None of them passed, not one. No matter how good the idea or how well well its articulated nor how much support it has, there will always be a few that don't agree for one reason or another. This minority insist the changes don't meet consensus and the change doesn't occur. In order for a change it takes an unrealistic super majority of the community. If people are serious about wanting Misplaced Pages to succeed they need to stop holding onto this false sense that admins are above editors, that editors can't be trusted and that the RFA process can't or shouldn't be changed. Its also unrealistic to say that editors just need to be bold. First, such actions in an RFA would almost certainly lead to a block, a bureaucrat would need to intervene to even give someone the tools and its doubtful they would get away with arbitrarily granting the tools to someone. In theory, the bureaus could all vote on someone and give them the tools if they all agreed but that would likely be controversial. Other than that I agree not everyone would be happy. 138.162.8.58 (talk) 17:25, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe it is a nightmare. It could be better, but until editors are willing to sit down in an organized way, identify the goals, identify possible solutions, review the shortcomings and refine the proposals, nothing is going to happen. The throw something at the wall to see if it will stick has failed. Again, and again, and again. That's why I think a different approach is warranted.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

What you are asking for has been done multiple times. There is the one from last year by Dank and the one from 2011 mentioned multiple times here. Those are just 2. So no, I do not believe that just coming together to solve the problem is going to solve the problem. The problem is more culturally systemic than that. Unless something happens that causes a majority of the community to accept finally that the RFA process must change (like not having any new admins elected for a period of time) its not going to change. Its not that there is a lack of willing participants or good ideas, its a matter of community will. Right now the community not only lacks the will...but the desire as well. Few want to spend their time in discussions that have, repeatedly, ended in failure. Too few people hold out hope that this process can be changed, myself included. 138.162.8.58 (talk) 17:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The idea of a committee designated for this task appears to have the teeth for such a task, if they were allowed to have a set period for research, workshop, and trial. A Misplaced Pages site wide voting process for those interested in being in the committee can be selected from a pre agreed upon number of bureaucrats, admins, and non-admins. There could be a questioning period and then a voting period. The arbcom process is one that appears to work fairly well and could be tailored to fit this. Once voted in, they have the ability to really work on the problems addressed above. There could be a workshop page where other can suggest ideas, suggestions and comments, allowing others to assist without detracting or disruption. This will also allow added transparency. When the date of trial submission has been reached and all research and proposals agreed upon by its membership and the committee has agreed on a draft, it could be presented to say arbcom, Jimbo, or the WMF to sign off on for those who appreciate an official like close. Then the new system is set in play. Controversial? Probably. A lot of work? Definitely. But able to be enacted? I think so. Calmer Waters 04:29, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

And see, this makes sense to me. I think this would be a wonderful thing to do. But what's going to be difficult is getting people interested in this. Misplaced Pages is a community of volunteers, and as such most people just aren't interested in putting all that time and all that effort into a project that has little to no impact on their real world lives. The biggest problem in RfA reform isn't RfA's voters, these discussions, or anything like that. The problem is that most people simply don't feel like doing anything because it doesn't have any kind of significant impact on their real world lives. It's a shame they feel that way, but that's how it is. The Utahraptor/_Contribs 06:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Signpost

I wasn't aware until now that the Signpost had a series of articles on Admins/Adminship but the last article was issued in January 2013. I suggested on their talk page that one of their writers visit this talk page to read over the comments but I'm not sure how likely that is as there really isn't a "news" angle here. Still, I think if anyone wanted to write up a summary of suggestions for RfAs proposed here and submit it, it could get printed and the conversation might get restarted. ;-) Liz 23:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I've written or contributed to several Signpost articles, including some on RFA, but I wasn't planning on doing the next one till the new year. I'm not sure that an article that just focussed on the possible changes would cause a spike, my experience is that you need to make it clear that RFA is not as bad as its reputation, and that there are many experienced editors who would sail through uncontentiously. Partly that's down to my personal time commitments, partly because for some years we've had one annual spike in RFAs after a signpost article, and if we had two in one year it would muck up the stats, but also some of the stats are just a little easier if you do them at year end. I think that the news for a Jan 2014 article would be that the decline in new admins has finally levelled out, but that the decline in the number of active admins has continued and unless we fix RFA will do so for some time. But biggest of all is the Wikigeneration issue. I covered this in my 2010 article and both the average and minimum length of service of admins have dramatically grown since then. Of course this is partly because we aren't recruiting so many new editors nowadays, and we are much worse at turning newbies into active editors. But the change is staggering. In August 2010 I worried that "there is now a gulf growing between admins and non admins in terms of "Wiki generations". Over 90% of our admins first edited more than three and a half years ago. It is probably no surprise that there are no admins who first edited in 2010, but only nine started editing in 2009 and thirty-eight in 2008." A little over three years later and Over 99% of our admins first edited more than three and a half years ago. It is probably no surprise that there are no admins who first edited in 2013, but none started in 2012 and only 2 in 2011, 7 in 2010, 23 in 2009 and 55 in 2008. 90% of our admins first edited over six and a half years ago. These stats are stark and my experience at least at WT:RFA is that the Wikigeneration divide is very much with us. That said reading through the list of those admins whose first edit was in the 2008-2010 era there are several arbs, so perhaps the wikigeneration divide is more pronounced between admins and the rest than it is between arbs and the community. ϢereSpielChequers 08:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Stats

Also, I just came across Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Statistics. Even though the data is 7 years old, you can see, in the last chart, the problem emerge. In 2006, there were 800 active Admins and just over 1M articles. Now there are around 630 active Admins and over 4M articles. It would have been so interesting if this study had lasted longer than one year. Liz 23:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Glad I poked my head in on the link you gave, it led to stats regarding active administrators I didn't previously have. I was able to update Misplaced Pages:List of administrators/stat table from 2002 to March 2007, but I am still missing five months of stats that don't seemingly exist. It might be a huge pain but I'll find them; I can't stand to see this gap in the table.

Average number of active English Misplaced Pages administrators per month (January 2001 – present):
	January	February	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October	November	December	Yearly
2001	Founded
2002									37	37	38 (1)	39 (1)
2003	40 (1)	40	47 (7)	54 (7)	65 (11)	86 (21)	98 (12)	105 (7)	114 (9)	121 (7)	128 (7)	143 (15)	104
2004	153 (10)	166 (13)	193 (27)	215 (22)	240 (25)	253 (13)	259 (6)	270 (11)	292 (22)	312 (20)	336 (24)	360 (24)	217
2005	368 (8)	381 (13)	394 (13)	418 (24)	432 (14)	458 (26)	417 (41)	446 (29)	496 (50)	541 (45)	557 (16)	627 (70)	267
2006	667 (40)	689 (22)	696 (7)	731 (35)	738 (7)	757 (19)	783 (26)	787 (4)	804 (17)	815 (11)	812 (3)	819 (7)	192
2007	825 (6)	846 (21)	863 (17)	857 (6)	916 (59)	947 (31)	971 (24)	913 (58)	922 (9)	929 (7)	952 (23)	993 (41)	174
2008	1,011 (18)	1,016 (5)	1,006 (10)	989 (17)	986 (3)	990 (4)	986 (4)	966 (20)	974 (8)	966 (8)	951 (15)	951	42
2009	942 (9)	938 (4)	929 (9)	918 (11)	922 (4)	918 (4)	916 (2)	906 (10)	896 (10)	880 (16)	862 (18)	865 (3)	86
2010	882 (17)	885 (3)	859 (26)	843 (16)	841 (2)	838 (3)	817 (21)	800 (17)	805 (5)	796 (9)	785 (11)	777 (8)	88
2011	765 (12)	778 (13)	777 (1)	771 (6)	764 (7)	760 (4)	765 (5)	746 (19)	730 (16)	723 (7)	729 (6)	744 (15)	33
2012	742 (2)	748 (6)	745 (3)	734 (11)	719 (15)	703 (16)	693 (10)	702 (9)	694 (8)	674 (20)	661 (13)	663 (2)	81
2013	693 (30)	700 (7)	687 (13)	687	686 (1)	676 (10)	661 (15)	651 (10)	646 (5)	631 (15)	621 (10)	633 (12)	30
2014	630 (3)	648 (18)	634 (14)	608 (26)	598 (10)	601 (3)	599 (2)	610 (11)	613 (3)	595 (18)	583 (12)	583	50
2015	591 (8)	591	590 (1)	597 (7)	591 (6)	583 (8)	585 (2)	584 (1)	572 (12)	574 (2)	571 (3)	582 (11)	1
2016	593 (11)	594 (1)	567 (27)	562 (5)	547 (15)	539 (8)	545 (6)	545	540 (5)	516 (24)	526 (10)	529 (3)	53
2017	552 (23)	568 (16)	571 (3)	547 (24)	538 (9)	542 (4)	534 (8)	523 (11)	525 (2)	535 (10)	531 (4)	533 (2)	4
2018	548 (15)	552 (4)	536 (16)	528 (8)	530 (2)	537 (7)	524 (13)	520 (4)	520	514 (6)	513 (1)	515 (2)	18
2019	521 (6)	527 (6)	527	523 (4)	531 (8)	531	505 (26)	498 (7)	507 (9)	505 (2)	504 (1)	497 (7)	18
2020	504 (7)	517 (13)	509 (8)	510 (1)	508 (2)	509 (1)	512 (3)	515 (2)	514 (1)	499 (15)	498 (1)	503 (5)	6
2021	514 (11)	516 (2)	498 (18)	494 (4)	491 (3)	492 (1)	487 (5)	474 (13)	450 (24)	468 (18)	469 (1)	463 (6)	40
2022	475 (12)	479 (4)	458 (21)	455 (3)	465 (10)	472 (7)	460 (12)	447 (13)	478 (31)	483 (5)	479 (4)	478 (1)	15
2023	498 (20)	475 (23)	461 (14)	455 (6)	462 (7)	454 (8)	467 (13)	449 (18)	462 (13)	451 (11)	446 (5)	448 (2)	30
2024	466 (18)	474 (8)	448 (26)
Notes:	Information gathered between September 2002 and August 2007 was the number of administrators considered active at the end of the month • Information gathered between September 2007 to present was collected daily by Rick Bot and averaged together • July 2011: Misplaced Pages adopts the policy of procedural removal for inactive administrators • December 2012: Misplaced Pages adopts the policy of lengthy inactivity of administrators

Oh well, one day maybe I can be coerced into finding those missing stats or manually doing it. Addendum: Bothered too much, filled in the information now. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 10:13, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

• Is it possible to represent this table as a graph? Maybe also plot the number of articles, and the number of active editors on the same graph? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 00:40, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Very possible, assuming I had the information for the latter two; I'm sure that information is somewhere. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 04:47, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Liz, I wouldn't worry too much about the ratio of admins to articles, the current number of articles doesn't really predict the admin workload, and sometimes it is a bit academic as the same content might form a different number of articles depending on whether it has been broken down by subsection or spun off into separate articles. The real drivers of the admin workload are things like the number of edits, number of deletion tags, number of AIV reports and of course one crucial difference between us and some language versions, the timezones we need to cover. EN wiki operates 24/7 with readers and editors in pretty much every timezone, by contrast there are some language versions which are inactive for several hours per day. ϢereSpielChequers 02:15, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

@Moe Epsilon: I believe that stats:EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm is what you're looking for. It has the number of articles and active editors broken down by month. Thanks for all your work keeping the stats table updated over the years. Best. 64.40.54.82 (talk) 09:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

No problem! I'll try and get a graph detailing this information out soon. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 11:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Nice work, both of you. I am really surprised and somewhat reassured that admin numbers are broadly tracking edit levels. I would prefer that as the community stabilised so the proportion of admins rose. I also worry that our definition of active admin doesn't really separate those who use the admin tools for several hours each week from people like myself who at least this year rarely use the tools, and I worry that our community is increasingly divided between very longterm editors who include 90% of the admins and newer editors who are underrepresented in the admin cadre. But then I'm a worrier, perhaps we have more slack in the system than I feared. ϢereSpielChequers 13:16, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Just spotted that these graphs are based on article edits not total edits, total raw edits are falling more gently. When measuring the admin workload I think we need to include the non article edits - AIV and AFD edits probably generate more admin activity than the average. It may seem a bit unsettling that article edit counts have fallen so sharply in recent years, part of that could be the drift of newpages to AFC and userspace, and since the beginning of this year the change in the way that intrawiki links are maintained. But the big change in editing since 2009 has been the rise of the edit filters, and most of what they lose us will be mainspace vandalism and its reversion. My estimation is that if all the edit filters had instead been implemented as anti vandal bots we would now have a higher raw edit count than in 2009, but no-one can be quite sure as the way that vandals respond to the filters is different. ϢereSpielChequers 14:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Where would I find total edits per period? --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 19:19, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

One source is User:Katalaveno/TBE, that doesn't fit with the time period you want but the methodology has potential - though I hadn't realised this omits deleted edits, which is a bit awkward for the purpose of identifying admin workload as deleted edits will have involved admins! There are others but they give current figures not historical. ϢereSpielChequers 04:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I might be able to work something with that. At the very least it helps me develop a new idea for how to get the data.

About tracking edit levels: I share your surprise. It was really surprising to me when I saw the comparison, but, as can be seen clearly with graph 2, the pairs of numbers are perfectly ordered: That is, the year with the fewest edits has the fewest active admins, the year with the second fewest edits has the second fewest active admins, etc. all the way up to the year with the most edits which has the most active admins. I would have been surprised to see a close ordering, but a perfect one (for each September anyway) was very surprising. Now, despite that ordering, the ratio has obviously nonetheless swung widely between 2002 and 2013 (the best ratio was 2003, and the worst was for 2010), but since 2006 the trend is flat. So at least as for number of article edits, the number of active admins does not seem to be a problem (unless it's been a problem since 2006). Now that doesn't mean the number of active admins is not a problem for some other reason, as you point out.--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 10:28, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

More graphs

• I have made another attempt at making the graph for number of active admins. Since I am not as good at making graphs as others here, the data used for making the above graphs can be found at the Google Drive spreadsheet at bit dot ly/WikiAdmins (I could not find any other adequate way to paste the spreadsheet here so I uploaded it.)

If anyone can use that data to make better graphs that look at a number of these factors, while still factoring in all the months, that would be great.

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 16:22, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow, Moe Epsilon, I LOVE the graphs and table. It really brings to life trends one can only guess at based on ones own experience. I think the most stunning stat is the steeply falling number of edits....it seems like not only are there fewer editors but the editors that are here are doing fewer edits, which is stunning to me considering the popularity of automated tools like Twinkle, Huggle and AWB.
Based on the first table, it looks like Misplaced Pages is most likely to have a net addition to the Admin corps from December->February. It does look like there need to be more active Admins but given the decline in edits, it's not as severe as I originally thought. Of course, there is a very low bar for what is considered "active" and I'm guessing that not all of the 630 active Admins are doing admin activities daily or even weekly.
Moe, I'm tracking down more and more stats on Adminship which different Editors have put together and they are scattered across Misplaced Pages, including on subpages of user accounts where I just kind of stumbled upon them (by backtracking to see what pages linked to certain information). I really think it would be a good idea to collect all of this data (all attributed, of course) on a section of Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship or some other area of WP devoted to conversation on adminship. Even old information is useful when you are talking about the evolution and history of Misplaced Pages. What do you think? Liz 19:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't take credit for all the graphs, thank Atethnekos as well. :) The falling number of edits doesn't surprise me so much, because the number of one-time contributors is down drastically. We peaked at 51,000 editors with 5 or more edits in March 2007, with 4.8 million edits made that month. We are down to a lowly 28,000 editors with 5 or more edits, and 2.8 million edits in September 2013. Editors with 100 or more are "active" per se, but the bulk of our community used to be small-time contributors. I'd probably say that long-term semi-protections that locks out the majority of these editors is why the number of edits are down.

There is a low bar of what is considered active. Consider though if you will, that we have 1,424 administrators (I think we peaked in the 1,700s total at one time, so we havent lost a whole lot of them). As of right now, over 800 administrators can not even meet this low, low bar of activity. That is what is most troublesome to me. The bar being set at 30 or more edits in the last two months may not be entirely accurate or indicative of what the truth is (a handful of admins handle all the tasks on a daily basis), but at least it does show us how truly inactive the majority of our administrators are.

I think it sounds like a wonderful idea, to keep stats somewhere in the main RFA space as a subpage perhaps, and have this information free for people to see all together. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 05:05, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I think most of what you say is right on Moe and I think it matches pretty closely with what the numbers show. I have a couple followup opinions though. Part of the reason why we have less edits is not only because of the semi protections but the massive number of blocks. I have read several times that we currently block between 2 and 4% of the entire internet through range or IP blocks. Another factor in the numbers as well as edits is log entries. I'm not sure if those are reflected in the numbers above. Since many of the things admins do aren't edits per sey, the numbers will be only one factor. From a personal perspective I tried for years to help out but I was told repeatedly I can't be trusted, IMO because I am very outspoken about admin abuse and the us and them mentality between many admins and editors. So I basically stopped editing. I beleive that is the case with many others as well. They edit and want to do more but don't fit into the cliche so they leave and the project loses in the long term. Its really hypocritical considering most of the current day admins were promoted when it was easier to get the tools and very few admins ever have the tools removed for reasons other than inactivity. So, either the old system worked pretty well and there is no reason why we shouldn't go back to making it easier to get the tools, or we have an ineffectual system for getting rid of bad admins. In either case, there is room for improvement in the current system. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 13:47, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

What we don't know (and seem unable to figure out)

• We know that the preceding section was created by User:Liz who also initiated the current discussion at the top of this page
• We know that Liz is concerned (to paraphrase) about the obstacles to Administrator recruitment
• We know that this concern has been raised by some editors for a few years
• We know that serious attempts to propose restructure of RfA in 2011 and 2012 failed - completely
• We know that some people are concerned about aspects of the existing RfA process which might contribute to a lack of fresh candidates
• We know that a lot of effort by a few editors continues to be expended in examining, re-examining, discussing, scrutinising, analysing and regurgitating this issue, over and over again
• We know that there have been some good-faith ideas that are, frankly, daft
• We know that no tangible change has been affected by any of these discussions
• We know that the place where there is evidently no shortage of Admins. is WP:AN & WP:ANI and that the problem (if there is one) must be at the more practical, mundane level where Admin. involvement is currently the only way to move things along
• We know that for all the efforts to present available data, it is open to interpretation depending on what one wishes to achieve by way of outcome
• We know that becoming an Admin. means (in all but exceptional circumstances) a job for life
• We know that before a single question is answered it is possible to have up to 25 supports turn up to !vote yet such a candidate can still not pass their RfA
• We know that too many editors across the entire range consider becoming an Admin. as (delete as appropriate): Promotion, Recognition, Election, Deserving, Achieving, Elevation, Rank, Authority
• We know that too few editors across the entire range consider an Admin. as being (delete as appropriate): Entrusted, Selected, Suitable, Capable
• We know that there are lots of other "knowns" which I don't know.

• We don't know what conclusions might be drawn if and when all this data is interpreted correctly (or incorrectly)
• We don't know why we don't know precisely what, if any, problem actually exists (with RfA)
• We don't know precisely why candidate numbers have dropped in recent years
• We don't know for sure that the drop off is necessarily detrimental now, next year or by 2020
• We don't know what being an "active Admin." actually means in terms of actual Admin. activity as opposed to an Admin. simply editing
• We don't have an undisputed, completely accurate view on the correlation between the size of the user community, the size of the active user community, the volume of contributions generated by the active community and the number of Admin. interventions required at any given time
• We don't measure and compare critical queue sizes where Admin. intervention is required, therefore we are not measuring the real problem (if any)
• We don't know whether any reform to RfA would have any material consequence - beneficial or not
• We don't know why, before a single question is answered, it is possible to have up to 25 supports based on no evidence of suitability
• We don't know for sure but one might suspect that (trigger warning: accusation of self-interest) the ultra anxiety repeatedly shown by some non-Admin. editors about this matter belies a pressing desire to become a member of the Admin. group.

• There are many other things about RfA we do not know we don't know.

Leaky Caldron 14:36, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Nice one! Do we know whether any of the unknown unknowns, if they became known, would refute any of the known knowns? IOW, did Rumsfeld have a clue what he was talking about? --Stfg (talk) 14:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree with one of your listed "knowns": that there is no lack of admins at AN and ANI. Several people who start sections there later go on to bemoan the lack of response; and ANI in particular is a fashionable place for non-admins to hang out, partly as preparation for RfA (some do use participation there as a measure of suitability; and it can be argued to be a good place to get to know issues and community standards) - sometimes to the point where a thread has so many responses it gets passed over, but none are admin responses. Looking at that it occurred to me that the thing about measurability of admin actions and the thing about where we need admins are related - some admins avoid those two noticeboards, some admins perform very few logged actions but edit a lot of protected pages ... it's a more varied job than I thought it was before I got it, and there is even greater variation among admins than I had been aware of. I suspect some editors would be good additions to the admin corps and simply haven't realized it because they're not seeing this variation and how they could be useful in one admin area; I've also seen a few RfAs (both successful and unsuccessful) where an important objection to a candidate was that they would likely not work in a wide range of admin areas; and the questions thing is probably related too, because not everyone boasts well. Obviously a candidate's responses to the questions can be very useful - for one thing they are useful in showing how well the person communicates, and for another, what they consider most important or what is uppermost in their mind regarding adminship - and that's why they've been made a part of the template. But responses to the unpredictable questions that follow are at least as useful, and it does say something about a candidate if they get 25 supports before they finish filling out the form! Every RfA - and candidate - is different. I like that, and it suits what we want, which is for all sorts of clueful editors to be seriously considered for adminship. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Most of those observations are correct, though as a community we clearly don't agree as to which possible reforms are daft and which are eminently sensible. But it isn't just some aspirants who are keen on reform, Kudpung and I are both admins and we aren't the only admins who consider RFA to be badly in need of reform. We don't understand all the reasons for the decline, but we understand some; Fewer editors becoming active editors and rising if arbitrary standards especially the change in early 2008 after Rollback was unbundled and "good vandalfighter" ceased to be enough to pass RFA. Also I wouldn't worry at the number of !votes placed before the first question, few of the questions are actually tailored to the candidate; My worry is the number of !votes placed in the first half an hour, how can these be based on even a cursory check of the candidate's contributions? ϢereSpielChequers 17:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

There's no doubt there is a small minority of admins who do advocate for change publicly. The problem is they can't compete with the minority of admins who are abusive and want to keep their power or the vast majority of admins and editors who either don't want the process to change or don't care. So the process is basically stuck in a rut. We can't change it because we can't get a consensus to change it and the process and environment gets incrementally worse as more time goes by. Basically the project suffers, because of a few stallers. I also agree with most of Leaky's points. A particularly good point is that we don't know what will happen if we change the process...we do know what will happen if we don't change it. I also think that some of the unknowns are known...but the results of nearly anything can be debated so a few will always shout there is no consensus for change. I also agree with the post of the IP below. The hostility of Misplaced Pages is legendary and will be its downfall if something isn't done. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 18:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

• We know exactly what the problem is. Misplaced Pages is hostile. The problem with RfA is the same problem with Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is hostile. RfA is a nightmare because Misplaced Pages is hostile. New users don't join because Misplaced Pages is hostile. Veteran editors leave because Misplaced Pages is hostile. The decline in RfA's follows the decline in editors, which follow the decline in articles, etc.. We have known this since at least 2009. People have been talking about it since 2009 (Why is Misplaced Pages so hostile to experts?). There have been acedemic studies and newspaper articles about the hostility going back to 2009. They are all over meta:. The community did a major study about it in 2010. I've mentioned it several times going back to 2011. The most recent I know od is the MIT study a month ago and the related Slashdot thread (Misplaced Pages's Participation Problem). The problem will only be fixed when people decide to come to Misplaced Pages to collaborate with each other rather than battle with each other. Until that happens, the problem with RfA/editor retention/article quality/etc. will remain. 64.40.54.145 (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Then this is a job for the anthropologist, psychologist, sociologist, and maybe a priest. WP is getting an increasingly stressful place to work in, and I have only been here a relatively short time. But the RfA issues, all the Gordian-knot problems of WP systemically, are symptoms of the real world. It is an internet plus real life problems thing. It is human nature. Was there ever an ideal WP "first time" a polite collegiate state of nature utopia that we have slipped from? I suspect we have always been like this, but things have just got bigger and more complex. Let us not drive ourselves nuts with these big issues. Lets try to fix small, do-able bits that we can agree on and take forward for discussion. Irondome (talk) 19:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually its my experience that it is possible to do thousands of edits without encountering hostility, and it is quite possible for experts to edit very happily. I'm also Wikimedia UK's GLAM organiser and I've met several museum curators who edit successfully and uncontentiously. Aside from the minority of us editors who deal with abuse and attack pages there isn't much outside hostility to worry about. Within Misplaced Pages there are a minority of contentious areas, anything contentious in real life will be contentious here, but that shouldn't often surprise people. Where we have big areas of contention are the rise of spam, our deletionism and inclusionism struggle and between verifiable and verified. If you are writing referenced content about something notable and uncontentious, even dry and academic then you are unlikely to find WP hostile. Spammers and those who write articles of borderline notability will find us hostile. If you write unreferenced content then nowadays you are likely to be reverted, sometimes without an edit summary. I'd like us to go back to tagging stuff as , but I'd prefer that we changed our edit process to prompt for or even require a reference rather than continue the current trainwreck of our unadvertised de facto standards being stricter than our advertised ones. ϢereSpielChequers 19:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

@Irondome: Was there ever an ideal WP "first time" a polite collegiate state of nature utopia that we have slipped from? I don't know about the earliest days, but between 2003 and 2006 Misplaced Pages was a very different place. It was dominated by writers and content builders. A thousand edits in those days was huge. People would spend a couple of hours each day making 3 or 4 edits. They were writing great swaths of material. The community was slow and methodical because writing is relatively difficult compared with other things. Around mid-2006, Wikpedia started showing up more often in the top 10 results of Google. Also around that time, automated tools were becoming more popular and this attracted a different type of editor. With a single click, an editor could tag an article, revert an edit or template a user. These rapid fire edits made people focus more on rapid fire tasks rather than content building. In mid-2007, the rapid fire editors came to be the dominant community and took over from the slow, methodical content builders and that's the peak you see in all the graphs. That's when the content builders started leaving. A rapid fire editor could tag more than 100 articles in the time it took a content builder to make a single edit. The click-first and ask-questions-later type editor created of different type of user experience for newbies and verterans alike. It's much easier to tag a new article for deletion than to do in-depth research to to find out if it's notable, so that's what people focus on. That's why we only have a few thousand FA class articles and over 2 million stubs, because people want to do quick, easy edits rather than the difficult work of writing content. This type of rapid fire work fosters a different type of thinking. People think more in terms of "what can I find that's wrong" as opposed to "how can I significantly improve this". That, in a nutshell, is what the hostile environment is. 64.40.54.145 (talk) 20:31, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

@Special:Contributions/64.40.54.145 Thanks for that excellent response. Very helpful for context. Irondome (talk) 20:39, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Misplaced Pages IS a vicious place; WereSpielChequers you completely missed the main place that it is which is on contentious articles. More specifically, articles which reflect a real-world clash where the combatants see that there is something to gain by making the article go their way. And the way to accomplish that (as encouraged and incentiveized by the system) is by cleverly ripping the other person and their work to shreds / deprecating / denigrating them. And do it in a way that is not only 100% wiki-legal, but which uses the wikisystem to do so. For an emblematic/ironic/informative example, to use wp:civil to cut their wiki-head off with a chainsaw. North8000 (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Misplaced Pages has ever been a warm, cuddly, supportive place. It depends on who you ran across during your first year editing, whether they were friendly or left a bitter taste. For example, early in my time as a more active Editor, there was another Editor who for a day, followed me from page to page and reverted a good portion of my edits. So, I just lay low, did completely uncontroversial edits, didn't edit as much, and that person moved on to other editing activities. But another person might have edit warred because they felt the reverts were unjustified. I came across a paper on Wikimedia about the effects of reverting a person's edits and, as you can guess, it prompts other people to get prickly (my unscientific word).

I've spend a fair amount of the past four months reading old ARBCOM cases which led me into the AN and AN/I archives to try to trace how particular conflicts started, evolved and exploded (this is primarily between 2005-2009). No grand conclusions (yet) but, let me tell you, things were vicious then, too. It seemed like WP:IAR was much more highly valued than today and lots of Admins appear to be free-wheeling, lone rangers, used to getting their way. I see much more reference to particular policies now than 5-8 years ago and I came across more than a few Admins who complain about there being "too many rules" now on Misplaced Pages (I guess, compared to 2001-2005). So, for all of the complaints about "abusive Admins", I think there is actually more adherence to rules and accountability and less shooting from the hip than there used to be. Of course, I'm reading about desysoping, topic bans, admonishments and controversy over IRC so I'm seeing the worst of it.

But when I see people getting all nostalgic about the old days when everyone supposedly supported and encouraged each other, I'm beginning to think that when they joined they signed up with a WikiProject that offered that to them, it's a particular kind of experience that can happen today with some WikiProjects that isn't tied to a particular era on Misplaced Pages. I do run into a fair number of inactive WikiProjects and maybe some of the loss of collegiality is due to that. Liz 21:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, Misplaced Pages still is a warm, cuddly, supportive place. Depends on what you are doing. It certainly still is in the area I mainly edit - though of course just one problematic editor can easily turn this into a hell, and several tried.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with much of what Liz is saying but having read much of the Arbcom, AN, ANI and other content over the years myself, I interpret some of that differently. First, I agree that there is more emphasis on the rules these days. I also agree that the good ole days weren't necessary steller, they were better in many respects to what we have now though. Back then if you were a hardworking editor and had been here for some time and asked for the tools, there was a strong chance you would get them. Now, unless you are extremely careful in your wikicareer and stay away from dramatic areas until after you get the admin tools, you probably won't. I also think the Arbcom 5 years ago was a much better process than the one we have now. As with many things, RFA included, it has strayed quite aways from its original intent and mandate. Decisions are more arbitrary and especially at Arbitration enforcement, the end result is more like a block them so we don't have to deal with it any more mentality. Its almost like they try and make the process so painful to all parties no one will want to use it because everyone gets burned, so its better not to submit at all. To get back on topic of RFA, the RFA process we have now is a shadow of what it should be. RFA should be more like a screening process than a gauntlet (more like what it used to be like). If the submitter isn't going to delete the main page or start mass blocking all their enemies, they should get the tools. On the inverse, all the admins who do little more than bully other editors and make an arse out of themselves should swiftly have the tools removed. WITHOUT having a multi month arbitration case and editors should be more than trustworthy enough to vote them in and out. We need to abandon the notion that Admins are above reproach and editors can't be trusted to vote them out. That argument only further justifies the arguments that the RFA process is garbage. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 22:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

@Kumioko, I hope you don't mind me using you as an example. A long time ago, I ran across Kumioko, He was one of the most friendly people on the project. He was hard-working and encouraging to others. He was like this for many, many years, then he got bit. I don't mean just a little, it was a feeding frenzy, There's an entire thread at the village pump where people were criticizing Kumioko. His natural reaction was to defend himself but people didn't want that. They wanted him to submit. Most people would have left after something like this, but Kumioko stayed and called for change though in an abrasive tone, which is understandable. At that point, Kumioko was labelled as one of the bad guys. All his years of service didn't matter. The community decided he was not one of the good guys. There are many other stories like this. It has happened over and over. This is what has changed about Misplaced Pages. Instead of thinking about "how can we make this situation significantly better" people instead focus on "what can we criticize about Kumioko". Misplaced Pages has changed from focusing on improvement to focusing on criticism. That's why changes to RfA don't work. People are focusing on criticizing rather than improvement. So when people go through RfA, !voters focus on criticizing rather than helping. This is a result of rapid fire editing and how it has changed the mindset of editors. 64.40.54.126 (talk) 02:52, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Nope its totally fine. Not trying to hide, there's just no point in using an account anymore. IMO that's a fairly accurate assessment BTW. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 03:21, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

• There are more than 4 million articles on Misplaced Pages. Can ayone really get their head around such a vast number? The amount of incivility, personal attacks, edit-warring, and bad admining is extremely small in comparison. In fact, as a 'front-line' admin, I see most of what goes on at AN, ANI, RfC/U, and Arbcom. What I do see are the same names cropping up time and time again, but they are only a tiny minority of the editors and admins who gnome away making uncontentious content contributions, using AWB to correct typos and formatting errors, policing the very few who do (regularly) misbehave, and generally getting on well with the people they meet in the areas where they work. Never in the field of human knowledge has so much been owed by so many to so few. Don't wreck it by giving it an undeserved bad name. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:46, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
  • @Kudpung: Part of the problem with that statement Kudpung is that eventhough admins are only a small fraction of the community and bad admins are only a small fraction of that, the mere fact that its next to impossible to remove the tools from a bad admin only increases the problem. One admin can do more damage than 20 or 30 regular editors. By the time the tools are removed from them, a massive amount of damage is done. Arbcom and AE has done more damage to the project than they help and no one even thinks about doing something about them. In the case of Arbcom it isn't so much the members but manipulative admins who craftily eliminate editors they don't like or agree with. Then you have others admins who feel they are always right and will even block or revert other admins who question their actions. Most of the time admins just let it go but there are some, and I know you know a few, that will fight tooth and nail against any action which questions their actions. So most admins don't bother arguing with them and eventually they just get their way. Sure some admins have lost the tools over the years but the vast majority (not counting loss due to inactivity or voluntarily) are due to association in a tangential Arbcom case. Their usually not even the direct target, just collateral damage. Even the its often times under the appearance of being done just so to show people that submitting an Arbcom case is going to end badly for everyone...so just don't do it. My problem isn't with the 99% of the good admins who do what they are supposed to do, my problem is that nothing is being done about the 1% who doesn't and admins such as yourself that just dismiss it as admin bashing. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 12:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
    • It is not next to impossible - the arbitration committee is bound to at least respond to a case where use of tools or admin conduct has been questioned. Agree with comments about vast areas of content-building being harmonious, and the good old days not really being that good. People often get supports by others who know them. I rarely look at answers when voting, but concentrate on past conduct. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
      • The reason I state that its next to impossible is two fold. First, historically the huge majority of editors who were sanctioned fell into that trap. Only a handful managed to avoid it, mostly by just not editing and moving to some other project like Commons. Secondly is human nature. People edit what they are interested in so if I am interested in Biology and I have a sanction on biology articles its not very likely I am going to start editing sports articles instead. Its more likely I am going to write about something tangentially related or leave. Most people aren't going to edit something they aren't interested in. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
        • • Many people can and do edit in a wide range of areas. It is a matter of sitting it out and abiding by the rules, not dick around and split hairs editing at the margins and engendering reams of arguments about whether it constitutes a transgression of sanctions....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

That's not accurate. You forget that on contentious articles, "the rules" are used against their intended purpose and are just a wiki-llegal method of conducting warfare. In Misplaced Pages, the most effective way to POV an article is by cleverly using the policies to deprecate your opponents, including those that want it to be neutral. North8000 (talk) 14:08, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I've seen bad admins do a huge amount of damage. The two most common reasons are incompetency and engaging in battleground mentality while supposedly acting as an admin. North8000 (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to be an admin....

go write some content. Or if you can't, go review some - peer review is always desperate for input. Or expand some stubs at the Stub Contest in a few weeks. Show onlookers you care about the First Pillar....cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs)

I for one have done all of that. In fact the vast majority of the things I have done over the last couple years are admin related and I still will never be allowed access to the tools. I won't be allowed to help out at CCI, see deleted content, help delete trash bock vandals or protect articles and I'm tred of spending my time submitting these things to admins when I can't be trusted. Let them find it themselves if they don't trust me. Sadly I have a growing list of uncorrected vandalism, several of which from the same user and at least 30 templates that need to be fixed for various problems. Not to mention the long backlogs at multiple venues. So the oversimplified statement above is just kidding the reader. IF they want to be an admin they need to do some of those but stay away from ANI, AN and keep their heads down, don't question the admins and never try and stand up against them until after you get the tools. If you care more for the project than managing your wikicareer you will not get access to the toolset. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Err, so you say, I can't comment unless you log in as who you are and see what you're talking about. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

No not at all, you can comment all you want just as I can. I just don't agree that ultra simplified explanation you gave is nearly enough to help someone get the tools that's all. Maybe back on 2005-2008 time frame it worked. But now it doesn't. Although I agree it should. I would also add that I no longer care about getting access to the tools. I am investing my time elsewhere since it wasn't wanted here. I just comment occasionally now but this project and this community lost me as a contributor in the traditional sense. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 13:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

If you're a new editor, I suggest you create an account. GiantSnowman 14:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a new editor, I was here for years and had a lot of edits across a wide range of areas but there is no need to login anymore. There is nothing (except vote) that I can't do as an IP if I need too. Even as far as credibility goes I don't care about that either. People can believe what I say or not, it makes little difference to me at this point. This isn't really about me though. Its about fixing the broken RFA process. If it really bothers you to know though my username is mentioned in the previous discussion. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 14:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that your "If you care more for the project than managing your wikicareer you will not get access to the toolset." shows understanding and wisdom, at least for folks who's caring about the project involves going near contentious articles and contentious situations. RFA questions should cause a CLOSE look and analysis of how the person handled themselves in tough situations, not just what the name-callers said or whether they avoided them. North8000 (talk) 15:49, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

• cough* Kumioko *cough* Just a hunch.—cyberpower _Online 16:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Lol Ding ding ding. See, no need to login at all. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 17:26, 18 November 2013 (UTC)