Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 23:06, 6 October 2007 editJossi (talk \| contribs)72,880 edits →Outside view by Walton ← Previous edit		Revision as of 23:09, 6 October 2007 edit undoLessHeard vanU (talk \| contribs)Extended confirmed users33,650 edits →Outside view by Until(1 == 2): Do not wait till it fails to have a little remedial workNext edit →
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	Not broken, don't fix it.		Not broken, don't fix it.

			=== Comment on above view ===

			Not broken doesn't exclude a bit of maintenance where needed. ] 23:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Revision as of 23:09, 6 October 2007

Please note, that this was originally part of an MfD discussion, which was closed as speedy keep.

Statement of the dispute

Desired outcome

Rfa to be reformed as described below.

Applicable policies and guidelines

Description

This process has failed the community and needs to be shut down. We are no longer operating on a system of consensus, we are creating an environment in which people vote because of their own arbitrary standards, rather than judging the candidate on his own merits and abilities pertinent to adminship. Look at the vast majority of administrators. How many of them spend time writing content? Most administrators spend their time combing through the backlogs, trying to get slightly caught up. We’re busy mediating disputes, deleting, blocking and protecting. These are the administrative functions of Misplaced Pages necessary for it to continue to function, and require no article writing experience at all. Those people who would make great mop-wielders because they’re meta-involved, but not content-involved are shot down. This process is constantly called “Not a vote, it’s consensus,” but everyone involved knows it’s a percentage system. Those people who say it’s not a vote are the first to complain if someone with 69.99% approval is promoted. How can there be consensus by percentages? How can there be a 55% consensus? Consensus means a general agreement on something, NOT a percentage of votes. Other issues plaguing it are favoritism, elitism, personal attacks, assumptions of bad faith, and a general un-wiki-like attitude. We empower the bureaucrats to use their discretion, yet beat them up when their discretion isn’t how we agree. I propose to destroy the current RfA process. Instead, I suggest we allow a system in which candidates either nominate themselves or are nominated. If any user has opposition to their becoming an admin (keep the new system at a week-long process), they voice their concern. Provided there is no significant opposition, the closing Bureaucrat promotes in a week. I know many people say that MFD is not the place to discuss policy or to suggest shutting things down, but I have come to the conclusion that this cannot be discussed at the Village Pump, or at WT:RFA, or at any of the other places we’ve tried before. MFD garners attention and promotes discussion, and that’s what I’m trying to do, promote discussion, so please don’t shut this down prematurely.

Users that endorse this summary

^demon 16:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC) 16:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
➪HiDrNick! 17:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Kbdank71 17:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Mschel 18:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
- Philippe | Talk 23:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Cheers,Je t Lover (Report a mistake) 03:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Laleena 12:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Ryan Postlethwaite

When I first saw this go up I though oh dear, but ^demon raises some very good points here. The whole process goes against what[REDACTED] is about. Talking in percentages, how can not promoting a candidate with 70% support follow consensus? How can the levels be different for RfA and RfB if we are supposed to be following consensus? The major problem with the whole process is that we can't ever discuss it. WT:RFA turns into a war field the minute a change is suggested and we never properly get to discuss new methods.. I'd say this is a reform comment, as I generally agree with the nomination statement, but perhaps not as strongly as ^demon.

Users that endorse this summary

Ryan Postlethwaite 16:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
User:Hiberniantears - Thanks to Ryan for moving this here. To begin, rather than letting this turn into a process where many well intentioned editors and admins begin talking past each other in an effort to describe their perfect vision of a process to grant the mop to editors, perhaps we should turn this into a series of mini-debates on the components of the existing RfA process. For example, an individual debate on the percentage issues, an individual debate on legitimate criteria, and individual debate on what consensus is, etc. I sense that many frustrations with the RfA process spring from the very fact that it is simply a very contradictory beast, that can leave many editors very confused as to just why they actually failed. Hiberniantears 17:00, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
nat 17:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
J-ſtan_Contribs 17:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Tbo (talk) (review) 17:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
SamBC(talk) 18:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Rocksanddirt 18:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Adrian M. H. 22:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Hirohisat 01:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
нмŵוτн τ 02:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- Zeibura 02:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Lara❤Love 19:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
IvoShandor 05:07, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Camaron1 | Chris 13:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Pedro : Chat 14:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

View by User:Deskana

(not an "outside" view since I'm so involved in the process)

Many people desire that RFA be changed, to improve Misplaced Pages. Change can be good, and it can be bad. What a fair chunk of the people that argue for the reform of RFA don't seem to appreciate is that it isn't "broken". That's not to say that it can't be improved. Broken would imply that it's not working at all, which it is. Last month (September 2007), 34 users were approved to become administrators. That's more than one a day. There's no way this process can be broken. However, it is entirely possible that there are potential improvements to be sought. RFA can be vulnerable to comments (both oppose and support in nature) that have little basis on the candidate's suitability to be an administrator. Ironing out such support votes would be difficult but ironing out opposes is potentially easier. I await the outcome of this RFC eagerly. --Deskana (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Users that endorse this summary

--Deskana (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
J-ſtan_Contribs 17:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
^demon 17:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
SQL 17:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Mtmelendez 17:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Chaz 17:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Tbo (talk) (review) 18:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— Moe ε 18:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Sam Blacketer 18:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Fram 18:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
WjBscribe 18:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
RfA is the worst system in the world, except for all of the others which have been proposed. MastCell 18:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this. If RfA is broken, the page wouldn't be up and new admins would not be constantly created. The system is flawed just like every political system in the world (and yes it is political, as polis has to do with the will of the people). But like MastCell said above... Keegan 19:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Kusma (talk) 19:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
- auburnpilot talk 20:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
True. What MastCell said. - TwoOars (Rev) 20:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
People support and oppose for silly reasons. Support should be the default !vote with opposes only for good reasons--Phoenix 15 20:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Lemonflash_{(O_o)} 20:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
There is always room for improvement. LessHeard vanU 21:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Hit the nail on the head. —O (说 • 喝) 21:11, 04 October 2007 (GMT)
Wizardman 21:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— xaosflux 00:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
The RfA system is not broken. It makes mistakes. It can be chaotic. It is prone to clique-like behavior and irrationality. What else is new? Welcome to the wiki. But all in all, it does a decent job and all evidence suggests that it only promotes candidates which the community overwhelmingly trusts to handle admin duties responsibly. Pascal.Tesson 00:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
--Hirohisat 01:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree. Dureo 01:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
RFA is not broken. --JayHenry 04:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
➔ REDVEЯS was here 07:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
At least until I see evidence that RFA is broken, rather than assertions. Neil ム 09:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Maxim_{(talk) (contributions)} 12:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Orderinchaos 13:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree. The counter-argument seems to be "RFA isn't perfect so it needs to be deleted". — iridescent (talk to me!) 15:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Sχeptomaniac 16:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
-- _{Escape Artist Swyer} _{Articles touched by my noodly appendage} 17:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Homestarmy 18:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Lara❤Love 19:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Eye of the Mind 23:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
· AndonicO 00:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
-- Anonymous Dissident 01:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Deskana. — Thomas H. Larsen 02:07, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I have always thought adminship could be improved, but I have never considered it broken, the current system itself does have good points. Camaron1 | Chris 13:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Chris B • talk 15:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree. There are voices that say that the RfA is broken, but there is no such evidence. We can improve the process as and if needed. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by User:Warlordjohncarter

I actually was going to suggest that the MfD discussion remain open before it was closed in an edit conflict. I know that this point has probably been discussed to death, but is there any possibility between differentiating between the "maintenance" functions of an admin (speedy deletion, maybe editing some protected pages as per request on talk pages, maybe closing some discussions), and the "executive" fuctions, like blocking or banning and actual page protection itself? If it were possible to somehow "tier" the admin functions, I think that there would probably be more people selected to perform some of the maintenance functions than there are now, and possibly lessen the load per admin regarding such activities. Anyway, I do like the idea that the discussion is being allowed to continue.

Users that endorse this summary

Comment on this summary

A two-tier system would be beneficial. If a limited range of "safer" tools are on offer, it could allow more streamlined reviews to take place. Admins with limited powers could deal with some of the more mundane aspects of mop work and spread the workload to allow the fully enabled admins to be less bogged down. Last month may have seen 34 new admins, but if admins are still overworked and stressed, as has been said elsewhere, then surely we need more of them to share the burden. Adrian M. H. 17:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Friday

There's one specific sacred cow that needs slaughtered to fix this problem: We need a reasonably easy way to remove adminship from those who demonstrate poor usage of the tools. There's an unfortunately large amount of cultural inertia behind "adminship is forever" and "only arbcom can remove it, and only in extreme cases." This attitude is harmful. Almost the entire rest of Misplaced Pages works on a simple "What's easily done can be easily undone" basis, and this works surprisingly well. We already have crats who judge consensus; let them do the whole job instead of only half of it. Then, we can hand out the tools fairly liberally, knowing they can be removed when needed.

Clarification: (endorses before this time don't address this, of course) I don't necessarily want removing adminship to be too easy- hopefully it wouldn't happen often at all. Still, if people knew it could happen, it may drive home the point that all editors and particularly admins need to be responsive to feedback, even when that feedback is critical. Friday (talk) 23:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Users that endorse this summary

We shouldn't liberally take adminship away, but a way for the community to remove adminship would be a step forward. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:06, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Addhoc 18:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Mschel 18:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
➪HiDrNick! 18:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
With Ryan's caveats above. SamBC(talk) 18:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Tintin 18:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— Moe ε 18:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
...with reservations. Adminiship is a responsibility, not an award or recognition. It is provided by the community by means of consensus in an effort to improve Misplaced Pages; as such, it should also be taken away by the community, by consensus when it so chooses. My reservation, in line with Ryan's comment above, is how such consensus could be determined. Mtmelendez 18:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that once adminship is handed out, it can't be taken away without outright abuse by the admin and months of wikilawyering at arbcom. That's what makes people so reluctant to support a candidate. Please see the discussion here. Melsaran (talk) 18:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— Edokter • Talk • 18:41, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to this idea; after all, we sometimes see Dr. Jekyll in the RfA and Mr. Hyde afterwards, and more accountability to the community would be good. But is the current method of going through RfC/ArbCom really broken? MastCell 19:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Weak support of this. I'd support based on "Admiship is no big deal", but I've also seen vandal patrollers (and others) spammed mercilessly by those who oppose some admin action they performed. So yes, it should be at least somewhat easier than it seems to be now, but it shouldn't be "easy". - jc37 19:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I'll repeat what I said at WT:RFA: "What shouldn't be presumed is that everyone who passes RfA will make a good admin. There should be a lot more "you are getting admin stuff wrong" self-policing within the admin community, and similar criticism from non-admins should be listened to as well." Maybe not a full-blown de-adminning process, but a lot more training after RfA and making it easier to review an admin's record. When vandals are given warnings, an admin can review contributions and warning templates. It should be easier for us all to review the record of different admins. That way it will become obvious which ones are not doing a good job. Carcharoth 19:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Making adminship less serious is key to any reform. Nihiltres 20:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree with this too. - TwoOars (Rev) 20:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree, but (per Ryan) in moderation. High standards can be poisonous for unreasonable or narrow definitions of "standard". It is, in my opinion, best to lower standards for adminship to "can this person better Misplaced Pages as an admin?" (what the question should be anyway), and simplifying deadminship requests might be one way to accomplish this. Gracenotes § 20:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Not easy, or even reasonably easy, but the ability for the community to decide upon desysopping is required. LessHeard vanU 21:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The easier to take a tool away, the easier to give it out. Sasha Callahan 21:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
If adminship is truly no big deal, then perhaps removing it should be no big deal, too ... with the caveat that community de-adminship shouldn't be so easy our admins fear desysopping every time they use their buttons. szyslak 21:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Weak Endorse, mirroring Ryan Postlethwaite's comments. I can just see the corrupt support votes "If he screws up, we'll just take it away". I think some have this idea that if we have an easier removal process, we should be more liberal about giving it out. While not perfect, RfA standards are pretty good. Maybe a start would be giving bureaucrats the ability to remove the mop. J-ſtan_Contribs 21:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
(e/c)Agreed. As it stands, it is near impossible to have the tools removed except in an absolute emergency or after persistent, documented, and serious abuse. As a result of this, RFA is (and with the current process for de-sysopping, almost should be) extremely intensive, so that anyone who might have any potential of abusing the tools won't get them because it will take so long to desysop if they do abuse the the tools. This super-critical process discourages many good candidates from applying. On the other hand, the process can't be too easy or otherwise-good admins will have the extra stress of knowing that a screw-up or 2 might lead to a lynch mob calling for a "Request for de-adminning." Mr.Z-man 21:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Absoloutely, give the community the power to remove adminship without having to resort to the long legalese of arbcom. Viridae 22:00, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Endorse, with Ryan's caveats. - Philippe | Talk 23:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Weak endorsement: while I agree that something easier than ArbCom should be found, I am concerned that any requests for de-adminship via the community would turn into a troll/grudge-fest. It's bad enough some people don't pass their RfAs because of trolls or grudge-opposers without perfectly good admins losing their adminship due to trolls or grudges. After all, RfAs for former admins attempting to be resysopped bring out the trolls and the grudge-opposers, and a community-based desysopping process would most likely do the same. Acalamari 23:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I like this, as do I most proposals regarding RFA that aren't prefixed by "RFA IS BROKEN!!!". --Deskana (talk) 23:16, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Carbon Monoxide 23:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Cla68 00:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
— Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 01:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Well said. But the only part I'm worried is a the same thing that's going on at Rfa right now with the De-sysoping system; Drama. People who aren't really favoured or not well known might have disadvantage in de-sysopping system than others who have the popularity. This is a total violation of WP:AGF to me, but just to point out. --Hirohisat 01:23, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
this seems to be the major factor in voting for some, would help immensely I believe. Dureo 01:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
нмŵוτн τ 02:13, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely - having the extra buttons is not a big deal. Mistakes can be undone, and continuous mistakes should be prevented by taking the buttons away through a less bureaucratic process than an ArbCom case that takes over a month for anything to happen. If the current RfA process is to stay as it is then this would be a great starting point for reforming the system. - Zeibura 02:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
WODUP 05:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
maclean 07:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
If the tools could be taken away easily, they could be given out easily. A community-based desysopping process is exactly what we need - an "easy sysop, easy desysop" culture. Walton 09:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
-- lucasbfr 09:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Strongly agree. In part it is such a damaging punishment at the moment that it would equate to being removed from the project. Being de-admined should be on the scale of getting a 3RR block, and shouldn't necessarily require a vote to be being restored to the fold. Spenny 12:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree if a way anyone can find a way to do it — iridescent (talk to me!) 15:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Lara❤Love 19:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I whole-heartedly believe the bureuacrats should have more discretion when it comes to judging RfAs. I don't see what's the point of giving bureaucratship to someone if they are only going to press buttons, and not really use their judgment. Nishkid64 (talk) 21:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Eye of the Mind 23:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Mailer Diablo 05:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes: promote many more admins; take away just a few more adminships; the net result is a win. (sdsds - talk) 05:38, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The key to solving any problem is putting as much power as possible into the hands of the people, and taking it out of the hands of the bureaucracy. A stricter interpretation of WP:COI should sort out any problems that would come out of a potential troll fest. The Hyb rid 10:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", so I support some kind of fair process where the community could remove adminship. ArbCom does a good job - but that is de facto only for serious abuse of the tools. Camaron1 | Chris 13:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Partial support. De-adminship could be accomplished by a consensus vote of no confidence from fellow admins, but I would argue that ArbCom has and can continue to arbiter these cases. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this summary

I can't imagine an "easy" deadminning process ever being anything other than a venue for grudges to be aired and a bunch of Wiki-lynch mobs. Admins make enemies - they are forced to make judgement calls based on (hopefully) what is best for the encyclopaedia. The busiest (and thus most important to the well-being of the Wiki) admins make a lot of enemies, who would love the opportunity to pillory someone who had dared revert them / block them / protect a page they were edit-warring on / warned them / deleted a page they had worked on. It should be difficult to take away admin rights - otherwise those who make tough calls receive no protection for doing so, and we will have a situation where people shy away from making such calls. Admins who are truly incompetent or malicious end up having their tools removed at the moment - by all means, let's establish a straightforward and defined process to do so, but it shouldn't be easy. Neil ム 09:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Neil on this one. Perhaps more contentious RfA's should be adminned for 3-6 months and then reconfirmed (in a manner not dissimilar to WP:PROD), with a new RfA if not automatically reconfirmed. This is not dissimilar to the way it.wikipedia does things, although they take it to the bureaucratic extreme of applying it to *every* admin and I don't think that is necessary on en. Having seen some admins who do deal with very controversial sections of the encyclopaedia many of us would not dare to go near, who would probably fail such a reconfirmation solely because of the types of people they deal with, I would hate to think of them losing their rights because of a new failed community process. Orderinchaos 13:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

These are problems we already have. We're already good at distinguishing frivolous complaints from legitimate ones. We depend on crats to read consensus for promotion- I would surely think we could depend on them to know whether complaints are for good cause. Someone shouting "desysop him! he deleted the article on my dog!" will find that their ridiculous opinion is not taken seriously. Friday (talk) 14:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It is very easy to make something seem worse than it is, through selective use of diffs, quotes, and the like - there's been plenty of RFCs where that has happened. If someone is truly motivated or is a popular editor, they can easily enough whip up a lynch mob over something relatively minor or infrequent. I wasn't suggesting the stupid complaints are the ones that would be an issue - more the malicious ones. Neil ム 16:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Junior-high-school-style politics is also a problem we already have. But I don't see how RFA reform can particularly make that problem better or worse. A lynch mob can already try to derail an RFA for a stupid reason, for example. Friday (talk) 16:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

In practice, this would probably work more like a 'block' than a de-adminning. It might be a bit strange for "admins" to be without their tools for a few days, but maybe some of them would learn from it. If someone was blocked from using the admin tools for a week for a poorly judged block, that might seem like a punishment ("but I want to help clear CSD"), but it should be considered more along the lines of a permanent record of the misjudgements. This would be no different to editors who get blocked early on in their editing career before they realise how things work around here. The problem is, this would require too much technical intervention to implement, so will never happen. Carcharoth 17:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- Hmm. Admins restoring their admin rights might be more of a problem here. There is a reason why only a limited number of users turn admin rights on and off. Probably best not to do it like this. Carcharoth 17:10, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Why does a cow need to be slaughtered? That goes against my religious beliefs. I believe a chicken (or goat) will be fair game for everybody. Nishkid64 (talk) 21:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree per Neil. Who is going to do the hard stuff and nasty blocks just to build up a grudge group who will try to desysopp at the first stumble? Resolute vandals and trolls will quickly establish a greater presence, and will likely target deadminning as a damage limitation limitation excercise. LessHeard vanU 13:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by User:WJBscribe

There are a lot of processes in the real world that aren't perfect - national election models, juries etc. They are often criticised, have inherent biases, and come to the wrong results. We stick with these systems for want of a better alternative. I feel RfA is another such system. It has flaws and limitation and proposals for change/replacements always merit full consideration but we've never thought of anything resoundingly better.
Is it broken?
Often I find that criticisms of RfA are actually criticisms of how people participate in RfA; that people are supported/opposed for the wrong reasons and that such reasons are given too much weight. I'm not sure RfA can be expected to magically eliminate these perceived "wrong opinions" of the Community - changes in process are unlikely to create very different results without addressing underlying attitudes as to what makes a good admin. I suspect working towards altering attitudes will be more effective an effort at reform than cosmetic changes to the process. If an oppose rationale is thought weak, it should be challenged and the contrary position advanced forcefully. But I do think it wrong to blame RfA for the perceived misdeeds of its participants - it is fairly refective of prevailing views as to what makes a good admin and flexible to changes in those views. I also think RfA creates a good balance between valuing the opinions of individuals (whether someone has or lacks another's trust is an important element to consider) and giving low weight to weak reasons (no need for the tools, low portalspace edits etc.) through using crat discretion guided by the weight of opinion on both sides to determine the consensus of the discussion.

Users that endorse this summary

WjBscribe 18:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--AnonEMouse 18:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Addhoc 18:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Mtmelendez 18:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Grand master ka 18:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— Moe ε 18:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Nihiltres 20:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree in principle but I am not so sure about giving low weight to weak reasons (no need for the tools...'. I mean, while you and I think "no need for tools" is a weak (or I'd like to say silly) reason to oppose, we don't really know whether any of the crats think so. This is the problem with so-called "crat discretion". We don't know what their own requirements for adminship are, so we don't know what they think is a weak reason and what is not. In the absence of a demonstrable community consensus on what is a reasonable oppose and what is silly, I don't see how crats exercise their discretion except by following their own biases and interpretations. - TwoOars (Rev) 20:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The Basic model of RfA is possibly one of the best possible in theory: get input from the community on whether that person would be a good sysop, evaluate those arguments and the consensus, and then come to a decision. I doubt we'd be able to find a system better than that. The problems (whether real or perceived) are the reasons on which people decide their !vote. No change to the system will keep the good parts of RfA (an open invitation for community discussion) and be able to reform the process. The way to Reform RfA is to reform the way people !vote. Think the standards are currently wrong? Vote yourself. Decisions are made by those who show up. If the current standards for adminship are set by those voting, then they're the only thing we have that can act as a gauge on what the community values in an admin. WjBscribe is right: the process isn't broken, and no amount of tinkering will improve it. --Ybbor 22:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that much of RfA's problems can't be fixed by changing the process. Switching the way RfA works won't change the reasons people oppose for. Captain panda 23:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Couldn't agree more. The flaws of RfA are best addressed by educating participants and making sure that people understand both the purpose of RfA and the importance of choosing quality admins. Pascal.Tesson 01:00, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Echo Pascal's comments. — Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 01:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Dureo 01:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
нмŵוτн τ 02:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Most of the supposed problems with RFA would exist under any possible system of requesting adminship. --JayHenry 04:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I try to stay away from RfA because I often strongly disagree with the arguments I see there. We need all kind of contributors, the mop can be useful in many ways. For some you need a strong article writing experience (most of the dispute resolution process), for some you still need it, but less strongly (3RR, AfD, ...). But we have many good admins that work on the vandal/deletion/copyright side of Misplaced Pages, and that are seriously in need of help. Seeing contributors willing to help on this side be turned down because they didn't write a Featured Article (and don't plan to) is really depressing. -- lucasbfr 09:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Orderinchaos 13:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think problems with the participants preclude discussing (and possibly trying) improvements, but we should recognize what the problems are. Sχeptomaniac 16:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Endorse, and raise you 2p: There's no perfect way of selecting anyone for anything; there are different ways to the way we do it now that can be explored, but the baby appears to be going down the plughole with the bath water with most other options being presented on this page. The RfA process can be poisonous; but this isn't the fault of RfA, this is the fault of the voters. More 'crat discretion, I say. ➔ REDVEЯS was here 22:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
· AndonicO 00:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Gizza 11:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Camaron1 | Chris 13:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on the summary

I think, as with any process on Misplaced Pages, the process itself cannot be fully separated from the patterns of practice. The sub-optimal ways that people !vote and !discuss at RfA are learned behaviors that evolved along with the formal rules of the process. The assumption that the same problems would come up under any system is, I think, wrong; even rerunning the same system starting from scratch (i.e., with a fresh set of participants who had no prior experience with RfA) would probably result in a significantly different set of problem behaviors, since the issues Wikipedians are most concerned about now are different than when many of the bad conventions developed.

Even if the process itself has fewer theoretical problems than other systems we could imagine, starting anew with a virgin process and well-defined expectations for what the process is meant to do (i.e., what criteria it is to judge potential admins on) could alleviate some of the behavior problems. (But then again, it might not.)--ragesoss 16:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by User:Moe Epsilon

It seems that we are learning how to run before we learned how to crawl. I too believe requests for adminship is broken in the way ^demon described it and I believe that a new method needs to be created to contrast a difference from current methods.

However, I also believe a closure of requests for adminship right now is premature, at best. There is currently no other method of obtaining adminship at the present time. If we were to close RFA right now, we would have to formulate a new method of users being evaluated for adminship in a timely manner. Since that is constantly an issue among the community, frequently discussed at Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for adminship (and no changes are ultimately made), I don't believe the community can gather consensus without taking a year of debate to do so. When a new method for requests for adminship gains consensus from the community first, that is when the move to close RFA should be made, because without RFA, we are without any process at all. And I don't know about others, but I would rather have a process right now than have no process for a long period of time.

Users that endorse this summary

Moe ε 18:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The timescales are open to question, but the basis that the alternative needs to be not only running but fine tuned before closing down the existing system is fundemental. LessHeard vanU 21:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Unavoidably, it will take some time and patience. Adrian M. H. 22:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
· AndonicO 00:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
We shouldn't be hasty on such a major issue. Gizza 11:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by SamBC

RfA is one of the most inexplicable processes on wikipedia. It's true that a lot of the reasons people give for opposing, or refusing to support, a nomination aren't really relevant to either the general work of an admin, or the work the prospective admin intends to undertake. However, a system based on opposition only would certainly lead to fewer successful "promotions" (or mop-bestowings). As a user who would certainly like to be able to help out with menial admin stuff some time in the future, it certainly seems rather unpredictable what people will choose to object over, and asking for objections only isn't likely to lead to fewer objections. So yes, there should be some sort of reform, but not what's suggested by the submitters above. I can't say what the right reform should be, but I know it's not that. There should be some sort of process of the community, as many people as are interested, looking and trying to discern a way to "fix" (or rather "improve") RfA. The problem then is that any attempt to get wider community consensus once that idea is worked out by those who choose to get involved will probably have a lot of trouble, because it will almost certainl seem terribly radical.

Users that endorse this summary

Outside view by Grandmasterka

You say RfA is arbitrary - who's criteria are we going to use to determine who gets adminship? Often one person's arbitrary oppose is another person's legitimate concern (and the bureaucrats are smart enough to know a really arbitrary concern), and in reading a large portion of the RfA archives, no-one has ever adequately explained how changing the system we use will change people's views on adminship. Also, special cases often arise and we need to have a very flexible system for when those come up, like the one we already have. As for needing a quick desysopping process - unless you provide a specific example of someone who should have been desysopped right away using the system you propose, the discussion is pretty useless... Everyone wants quick de-adminship but no-one wants to provide a specific example of how their system would have worked. I've never fully understood all the fuss over RfA, especially when we have a ~97% success rate according to a recent thread on WT:RFA.

Users that endorse this summary

Grand master ka 18:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--AnonEMouse 18:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
-- LessHeard vanU 21:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
-- Captain panda 23:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Arbcom can rule, and has ruled, to suspend someone's admin rights for a period of time - perhaps that system could be streamlined in cases where abuse of admin privileges is fairly clear. Aside from that, I agree. Orderinchaos 13:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Gizza 11:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view

The specific abusive desysop is well handled via a vandalism prevention type arrangement (which we sort of do now). The type of deadmin that the community might go for is one where the admin actions are short of instant action, and short of arbcomm specific incident action, but are enough that the community has lost an amount of trust. Some type of forum for dealing with this wether actions are taken or not is of needed in my opinion. --Rocksanddirt 23:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

View by Kusma

Before we dismantle RFA, let us stop and think what we want RFA to do. I want RFA to be an efficient and simple way to promote sufficient numbers of administrators while keeping out unsuitable candidates. The current system creates some unnecessary heated discussions (efficiency could be improved, but is better than in the RfC-style systems we saw), is reasonably simple for participants to use (just voting is still allowed), does not promote all that many candidates (number of admins grows slower than amount of admin actions that needs to be done), and rarely promotes unsuitable candidates. So the system works in a way, but could be improved. The problem is how to improve it. Unfortunately WT:RFA shows that there are many ideas, but philosophical differences between the Wikipedians involved have so far kept us from reaching a consensus. I won't offer a proposal here (although I can think of several very different directions we could take), but would like to see what other people think RFA should do: is your priority to promote as many as possible, or to keep all unsuitable candidates out at all cost? Kusma (talk) 19:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Kusma is right. Before we get into an RfC frenzy and RfA overhaul, we need to answer some basic questions which however simple they may appear are probably quite subtle. What is the purpose of RfA? What do we need the end result of this process to be? How successful is it currently with respect to these objectives? Or even more basically, how can we even measure whether it's successful in attaining these goals? Until we get that sort of data, we will only get into shouting matches which result in a big hoopla and no change. For instance, there is a fairly prevalent feeling that the number of admins is growing slower than the amount of admin work to be done. Is this really the case? I happen to think some good candidates avoid RfA because they want to avoid that sort of drama. Is there any basis to that hunch, beyond anecdotal evidence? Let's agree about facts before we try to agree on reform. Pascal.Tesson 18:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by jc37

In reading the several views above, I think RfA may need "adjusting", but isn't "broken". The problem lies more with Wikipedians' expectations of adminship, than with the process in granting the mop.

Users that endorse this summary

- jc37 19:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes. It certainly isn't clear to me that the criteria by which users assess candidates at RfA are always entirely relevant to the criteria which make a good administrator. Some of them undoubtedly are, but many are not. Sam Blacketer 19:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Rocksanddirt 20:06, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
— Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 01:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Orderinchaos 13:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Strongly agree. To read some of the oppose votes, you get the feeling people think they're selecting the President of the United States. — iridescent (talk to me!) 15:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Tbo (talk) (review) 17:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
· AndonicO 00:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Captain panda 02:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The current process is not perfect, but by no means terrible. Gizza 11:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
The current system does have good points, it is how people use the system which is the problem a lot of the time. Camaron1 | Chris 13:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Chris B • talk 15:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Another outside view by jc37

Perhaps one way to deal with the many concerns on this page would be to remove the Support section of an RfA. Those who support are obviously welcome to discuss with those who oppose or are neutral. This would eliminate the appearance of poll-like "voting" (since typically a support vote is just a signature, or a humourous comment, or a statement of "meeting my personal requirements", or even a refutation of one or more oppose comments), and would lean more heavily on Bureaucrat discernment.

Users that endorse this view

- jc37 19:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
This is something I could agree with, definitely a step in the right direction. I think the process should rely more on "Why shouldn't we make this person an admin?" rather than "How many people think they should be one?" ^demon 20:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with ^demon that this idea is a good one. How to counterbalance opposition, though. It's quite easy for participation in RfA to vary from forty to two hundred in a single nomination on both sides of the fence so the question of judging consensus without a measurement of agreement is rough. Nice starting point, though. Keegan 20:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, this is a step back to the "being an Admin should not be a big thing" ideal. After some threshold of edits & time spent active on Misplaced Pages, anyone who wants to be an Admin should be one -- unless they are clearly a crank, troublemaker, or otherwise a liability to the project. And the RfA process should be adjusted to be just that, not some mix of "vote" & "consensus". -- llywrch 20:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
My concurrence goes with this one. When you support them, what really do you support them for? Because they generally are great? But when you opose someone, you oppose for a specific reason. Supporting on RFA is typically a bunch of superfluous perfenander. MessedRocker (talk) 20:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. — Moe ε 22:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely...the best proposal so far, I think. — Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 01:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this idea seems really practical and not too much of a change that it will completely scare off people. нмŵוτн τ 02:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Any objection would need to be supported with objective evidence - even on marginal cases, that should be straightforward to unearth. Spenny 12:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Same as my rationale in my view below, but I agree totally. Spawn Man 09:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Completely agree, this proposal fosters consensus rather than !vote-counting. shoy 15:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view by User:Sxeptomaniac

However, this would replace a process with at least some positives into a pretty much purely negative one. I fear that those who already see RfAs as too negative will only be further turned off by something like that. Sχeptomaniac 16:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users that endorse this summary

How does one determine community support if showing support is mostly disallowed while showing opposition is encouraged? In the current process, one may get 20 comments in opposition. If they get 50 comments in support, they will likely fail, if they get 100, they will succeed. If there is no real way for those 50 or 100 supporters to indicate their support besides waiting for someone to oppose and then giving a rebuttal (which could turn a controversial RFA into an even bigger battleground than it would be now), how does one determine the difference between those 2 cases? Mr.Z-man 16:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Another comment on this view

No, no, no. This is the worst possible way to approach it. The outcome of an RfA should depend 100% on the strength of community support - that's what "consensus" actually means, in the real world. Taking away the Support section would deny good-faith users a chance to air their legitimate views or to concur with the nominator (which is a valuable thing to do, as it shows that the nom's statement enjoys consensus). This seems like a step towards giving the bureaucrats more power, which is a very, very bad idea. Walton 10:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to the oppositional comments above

How would this work? Initially the same way that indefinite blocking works. If there is no one willing to unblock, then they are by default "blocked by the community". Same with this. If no one opposes, then their RfA is successful. If there are opposes, then go in and discuss.

What this also does is make editors a bit more responsible for their comments, and removes a fair chunk of the "drive-by voting". (Yes, supporters may actually have to type a bit more than a single line comment in support of a cantidate - they may actually have to support them, by defense of their edits/contributions.) This also means a fair chunk of the appearance of a "popularity contest" should also diminish as well.

And by the way, this would not "deny good-faith users a chance to air their legitimate views or to concur with the nominator" - There is still a discussion section. It just wouldn't be filled with non-researched/non-explained "votes". So now, people would have to actually read what's being discussed, rather than just ignoring it, dropping some pithy comment, and being on their way. I'm not saying that that's what everyone does, but I think if we went over the last 100 RfAs (or more) we'd find that most of the "support votes" fall under one of 4 types:

Just a signature.
A humourous comment.
A statement of "meeting all or most of my personal requirements", or "no concerns", or something similar.
A refutation of one or more oppose comments.

So this proposal cuts out the first three, but still leaves the fourth. And thereby fostering discussion by default. (Consensus is, after all, the weighing of the comments/responses, not counting votes, as I presume we all know by now.)

The more I think about this, the more I think that this deals with a large chunk of the complaints about RfA. And personally, I don't see how this is much different than the discussions about good or featured articles. Or even talk page discussions about article content.

The "negativity" that one poster above is talking about is inherent in this system anyway. Why? Because unlike most situations here, we're discussing the person (or at least their actions/edits/contributions) as well as the content. And as I note in a response below, if they "can't handle the negativity from a single discussion, how will they respond down the road in their 5000th discussion? Or when they're the one determining consensus and closing discussions?"

And I think we should be able to trust the discernment of the bureaucrats, the same way that we should be able to trust the discernment of admins, though "even more so" since they've been trusted with "even more" tools. However, if you're saying that we can't trust the bureaucrats (or admins for that matter), then let's please start a discussion about how to fix that, because that's more dire a situation than concerns about the current state of RfA. - jc37 14:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

No. Support votes which carry no clear rationale are still useful, because they demonstrate the weight of community support behind the candidate. They don't need to present arguments; the nominator has already done that, and a Support vote signifies that there is no reason to object. Numbers are important. If we only count objections, we will never know how many people actually support the candidate - and that is extremely important IMO, because the basis of RfA is that each user weighs up the arguments and votes accordingly, thereby exercising the community's right to choose its own administrators.
Your point about "negativity" is also not quite correct. As a current admin, I can attest that I have never (on Misplaced Pages, at least) gone through a harsher and more negative experience than my RfA. Yes, some admins (who work in controversial areas) get more abuse after becoming admins than they do at RfA. But for the majority, getting through RfA is the worst part of our wiki-lives.
To answer your final point, you've slightly misunderstood the nature of "trust". Yes, bureaucrats are "trustworthy" users, in that they've won enough community respect and support to reach their position, and are unlikely to go insane and sysop Willy on Wheels. However, the idea of "trusting" someone does not mean that I want to surrender the community's decision-making powers to them. It is possible to consider someone a trustworthy individual, and still disagree with them in good faith; and where there is good-faith disagreement, the community's will (expressed, where necessary, through a vote) should always prevail. Walton 16:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Numbers are not important. Else we need to poll all 5 million+ registered accounts, and an unknown myriad of anonymous IPs in order to truly find community consensus.
And this also goes to a crux of one of the issues with RfA being a vote: "If we only count objections, we will never know how many people actually support the candidate..." - We're not counting objections either. We're asking for the community to point out any objections that they may have. BIG difference. Again, this isn't a vote, it's about determining whether or not the Wikipedian may be trusted with the extra tools. And it's up to you and me and the rest of the community to help by contributing to that discussion, should we choose to.
Which directly leads us to your statement of "trust". I am, well, rather stunned by the comment: "However, the idea of "trusting" someone does not mean that I want to surrender the community's decision-making powers to them." - Then perhaps we should do away with blocking, CSD, and all things which involve administrative discernment. And remember, currently, every Bureaucrat is also an admin. So they've also already been trusted to use such discernment.
As for being "correct" about negativity, that's subjective for every person. There's no "right" or "wrong" when considering how someone may have "felt", then or now. Though, as an aside, I wonder if "taking the RfA discussion personally" might be a sign that maybe the person shouldn't be an admin, or at least maybe spend some time in personal reflection. - jc37 17:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand how you can argue that "numbers are not important". Every established Wikipedian's opinion, given in good faith, counts equally. Your argument about polling all 5 million+ registered accounts is a straw man; just as suffrage is denied in the real world to minors, there would be no good reason to poll an account with no edits. And in almost all democracies (in private organisations as well as nation-states) there is no obligation to participate in a vote in which one is not interested. So you've distorted my argument somewhat; those who advocate numerical polling do not advocate some form of compulsory universal suffrage. But every established user who decides, in good faith, to offer an opinion in an RfA, should be counted equally. Those people who make edits to Misplaced Pages - the community - are the people who have a moral right to make decisions, and to choose administrators.
As to the issue of trust, this is once again a straw man argument. Yes, administrators already have discretion in blocking and deletions; however, the exercise of these powers is heavily circumscribed by strict policies and guidelines, approved by the community as a whole. This is not the case with RfA; there is no policy page which gives "criteria for adminship". Users disagree in good faith about what makes a good admin, and promotions should therefore reflect the majority opinion of the community.
With your third point, I apologise if I sounded arrogant in using the word "correct", and you're right that different people experience different emotions. However, I can attest that I have suffered no objectively serious conflict or abuse since becoming an admin - that is, no conflict that an average person would find emotionally distressing. In my experience, the experience of passing RfA is ten times more stressful than the experience of being an admin. Some will have had different experience, if they work in controversial areas, but I'm trying to bring the benefit of my own experience into this discussion. Walton 17:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's see:
1. Misplaced Pages is not a democracy. There is no "suffrage", just merely joining in on the discussion. Which is one (actually two) of the Five pillars. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That goes for project pages too, obviously. And Discussions are resolved by finding concensus, not voting.
2. Yes there is such a page. See Consensus. That covers all such discussions. (and has several related pages as well).
3. I think the key words in your comments are: "In my experience, the experience of passing RfA is ten times more stressful than the experience of being an admin." Your experience is framed by the the choices you make, and the world around you. As you note, those who involve themselves in "controversial areas" tend to have to deal with more stress. But one cannot always determine what may be considered "controversial". And who knows what may happen tomorrow? One need merely to look over the archives of WP:AN/I to see who the "spotlight" of scrutiny can suddenly come upon an admin without warning. One difference to note, however, is that RfA scrutinises all of a nominee's edits/actions, as opposed to just a single action or set of actions.
- jc37 17:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

In regard to point 2, you've misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was saying that there is no policy page saying "Anyone promoted to adminship must have X number of edits, fewer than Y blocks, and N months on the project". In contrast, deletions and blocks etc. have clear policies, and while people express their opinion on an XfD, the eventual outcome has to be consistent with policy.
The question of the relationship between voting, discussion and consensus is more difficult, and I think we'll have to agree to differ on that. I've always understood "Misplaced Pages is not a democracy" to mean that, as Misplaced Pages is a privately owned organisation with legal obligations and basic foundation issues, there are some aspects of the site's running that are non-negotiable (e.g. copyright policy, BLP, NPOV) and couldn't be changed by a poll; also, I agree that a discussion resulting in a compromise tends to be better than an adversarial vote. However, look at this in the narrow context of an RfA. There are only two possible outcomes on an RfA: pass or fail. Thus, there's no possibility of reaching a compromise through discussion. Somewhere along the line, someone has to make a decision - and IMO it has to be the community that makes that decision. Walton 18:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, as I recall, RfA itself has a couple sub-pages talking about criteria, and "tendencies" in why people oppose. However, most of those fall under: "Needs more experience" or "Needs to more fully understand the policies and guidelines" or "needs to more fully follow the policies and guidelines". What are the demarcation lines of "more"? That's determined on a case-by-case basis and typically comes out in the discussion.
If that's your opinion of consensus, then I sincerely suggest that you may wish to re-read Misplaced Pages:Consensus, as well as Consensus and Consensus decision making. I will note that I feel that the confusion of consensus with voting is one of the key misunderstandings of editors on Misplaced Pages, and I have a current request at Template:Welcome to include it.
And the results of RfA are not pass/fail. They are "sucessful" and "not successful" nominations. - jc37 18:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

A modification to the above proposal - by rocksanddirt

My suggestion (along the lines of jc37's and demon's suggestions would be to 1) do away with the sections on support, oppose and neutral instead request people make their arguement similar to the Xfd's, 2) do away with the vote count section as well. This would put a bit more emphasis on the discussion of qualifications and put a bit more work on the closer to sort it out, but might help reduce the arguementation on "frivolous" opposses.

In addition, I would like to see a community based deadmin process, though the use of arbcomm as the main deadmin is not "broken".

Users who endorse this summary

Rocksanddirt 20:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view by Keegan

I can see the point in this application of our other methods of maintaining the encyclopedia. This view actually serves to highlight what the major differences are between RfA/RfB, and the XfD processes.

The deletion system is set up to get community consensus on what is/is not encyclopedic and what does/does not serve toward that goal. Ultimately it is a cut and dry procedure from the outset based on policies, guidelines, precedent and the intended goal of the 💕 that anyone can edit.

RfA/RfB, on the other hand, concerns the users that maintain the project. Opinions expressed are not rooted on any precedent aside from "Adminship is no big deal." Therefore intertwining the support, oppose, neutral comments would not serve to provide the consensus that the community needs because it would do nothing to benefit the process. RfA is a mixed environment of all the lot of Misplaced Pages contributors and it searches for candidates that come from all expertise.

In summary, these sorts of ideas are what need to be bandied about to institute not change, but a modification to fit the environment. RfA itself in Support/Oppose is not necessarily the problem but that the forum is used for platforming and grandstanding even if most nominations go the way they should. Keegan 05:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Walton

I think this approach is the worst possible (no offence to anyone). As Keegan points out above, RfA is totally different from XfD. XfD outcomes have to be in line with the narrow parameters of deletion policy; also, many XfDs attract so little participation that closing them as a "vote" would be ludicrous. RfA, on the other hand, is where we, the community, exercise our legitimate right to choose our administrators. It is not the bureaucrats who have the right to choose administrators, nor should the 'crats "weigh up the arguments" and make a decision. Each individual user should weigh up the arguments and make a decision whether to Support or Oppose. RfA is a discussion, but it is also a vote, and this is not a bad thing. Walton 10:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Mr.Z-man

If RFA was totally broken, it would not work at all, however, I can't help but wonder how many good editors decide against nominating others or themselves (when they could be good admins) or accepting a nom because they are afraid of the process; the immense amount of criticism some people get (so much do that some users quit the project), the thought that one minor screw up will be used against them if someone can find it in their contribs, the thought that if they fail they might not be able to run again for another 4 months or more, the en-vogue reason for opposing changes so often, the ever increasing expectations of RFA voters, they must have an almost perfect contribution record (but not so perfect that it looks they have made adminship as their goal), etc. While the current RFA process is not (yet) broken beyond repair, reforms that, while maintaining the current thoroughness, would make the process (for lack of a better term) less scary and more uniform would be extremely beneficial.

Users that endorse this summary

Mr.Z-man 20:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
➪HiDrNick! 20:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Davewild 20:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Very well said! SQL 20:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Rocksanddirt 20:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC) - under the current system, I would not be nominating myself, or accepting any nomination.
SamBC(talk) 22:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Because of the enemies I made because of my opposition of SIHULM, I couldn't become an admin if I wanted because SPAs would flood the RfA with baseless opposes. -Jéské 22:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
RfA can be an extremely harsh process, and it seems to have become worse over the last few months. Acalamari 23:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Adrian M. H. 23:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
WODUP 05:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I know this was the case for me. — madman bum and angel 13:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely. IvoShandor 05:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
By George, I think you've hit one of the many nails on the head! This is ever so similar to my rationale - I've given up commenting on tricky XfDs/RfAs/FACs as I might vote the wrong way or provide a view which I feel is correct, but no one else does. I know I have the skills, but it's just not worth the repercussions if I get one wrong. I've seen so many nit pickers at RfA pick up on very obscure details that I'm surprised editors who've failed previous RfAs even come back for a second round! You've got everything completely correct Z-man. Spawn Man 09:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
We need to make adminship "not a big deal" again (well at least not a very big deal). Gizza 11:42, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Well said, adminship is way too big a deal now. Not that being an admin is not a position of great responsibility, because it is, but it is a huge deal and people should not be leaving the project over such a small thing as a failed RfA. Neranei (talk) 19:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view by jc37

While I have to agree that the current RfA process is daunting, to say the very least, I'm forced to admit that perhaps that's not as incredibly a bad thing as one may at first think it is. Wiki-stress and Wiki-fatigue are becoming more and more common among our editors, and particularly the admins. Can any of us imagine how many times someone combatting vandalism or just closing an XfD discussion, was told that they were abusing the tools, had repeated postings to WP:AN/I about them, or even just the petty name calling, and so on? I would guess that that may grate on even the most positive of personalities. Not to mention dealing with the incessant turntable of controversy. No, I think RfA may need to continue to be as troubling and difficult as it is, just to help prepare the cantidate for what's coming, and to help alert the community about possible issues in dealing with confrontation and/or stress. Because if the cantidate can't handle the negativity from a single discussion, how will they respond down the road in their 5000th discussion? Or when they're the one determining consensus and closing discussions? So yes, the current situation can be daunting, and at times has really gone out-of-bounds of WP:CIVIL, much less, WP:EQ. But I think in most cases it may be a good thing.

Users that endorse this view

- jc37 07:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree. I'm one of the least active admins in terms of using admin functions (20 blocks, 5 page protects and around 200 deletions, almost all uncontroversial speedies), and still have a talkpage full of abuse for it. Someone who'll be traumatised by "Oppose, doesn't need the tools" or "I'm not confident you'll understand policy" is probably someone who'll either snap back or leave the project after their user page is replaced by "you are a fat pedophile fag" three times — iridescent (talk to me!) 16:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
A bit of immature vandalism does not really compare to the harsh light of the interrogation process. When someone calls you a "poo head", you can't fail to come out of it looking the more mature of the two parties. Adrian M. H. 18:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It's much more stressful being told that you're abusing the tools than that you don't deserve them. · AndonicO 00:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Nihiltres

Adminship is one of the most contentious things about Misplaced Pages as a community - our administrators are our leaders and guides, regardless of the otherwise relatively flat hierarchy we have. It is this that makes our process for granting adminship frustrating - who is to say who among us deserves the mop for any particular purpose? While a cultural change about the process is definitely needed, I doubt that anything short of changing the nature of adminship will lower the high wall it is perceived that one must climb with the process. For one, granting adminship more freely but removing it as quickly would lower the wall - people who misuse the privileges won't get through any process a second time. I'd support the privilege of admin right removal being given to bureaucrats for this idea. Further, a system of single admin tools might be useful - if the tools were unbundled, users who might work only in deletions could specialize and gain a useful tool and do useful work even if they were known to be bad with the blocking right. This would be another method of lowering the barriers to adminship, which is what I think is really the issue in RfA - while adminship should be no big deal, it's often made a big deal of because of the different natures involved in it. This shouldn't replace our current adminship, but supplement it. If the community can choose to give people some rights knowing that those can easily be taken away, and they are taken away when misused, adminship might become less of a major issue.

Users that endorse this summary

Nihiltres 20:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
--Phoenix 15 20:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The ability to desysop admins who turn out to be less good will probably allow users to be more likely to support users who they don't know. Od Mishehu 21:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. -Jéské 22:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Support. I still think that maybe having more than one "level" of adminship might be good, as it almost certainly would increase the number of probably reliable people involved. Perhaps if we maybe gave a few, limited admin powers to "admin trainees", who could be chosen on the basis of apparent trustworthiness, and have the powers revoked by any reasonable objection to their continuing to have them? Those who are successfull and demonstrate trustworthiness could then be considered for full adminship later, with people generally knowing rather more about what they would be likely to do with the tools than they often do today. John Carter 23:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

View on the Removal Process by User:J-stan

While the process is decidedly flawed, standards for RfA candidates are acceptable. People seem to want a very easy removal process. This will lower standards, and users who are unqualified will get promoted, however quickly it might get taken away. I propose that RfA standards stay the same, and users who are promoted go through a probationary period for their first two or three months. If editors have a legitimate cause for complaint, they can make their case known. If there is enough reason to desysop, they will get desysoped. I think that the users who deserve to keep the tools will make it through the probationary period, but those who make mistakes won't.

Users that endorse this summary

Even if there was a quick and easy removal process, adminship will become more like a toy if standards drop dramatically. Gizza 11:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside View by Jéské Couriano

Because of all the things, minor or no, that could sink a nomination - irrelevant views expressed by the candidate on outside websites, a clique of editors who loathe the nominee, or a bad edit made months or even years ago - I see that the problem isn't that the nominee would be bad, rather it's that someone brings these up in an RfA (case in point: the CharlotteWebb RfA/Arbitration) and the process turns from a public forum to a Salem witchcraft trial. Support isn't much better, mostly just copping "I like him/her". I propose that we require all support and opposition to include a specific reason why they (mis)trust the user with the mop and bucket, and that off-Misplaced Pages behavior not be considered. -Jéské 22:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Addendum in response to Iridescent

I was referring to those whose views would end up getting them overwhelmingly shot down by a group of editors, not those that ran attack sites. Those that run attack sites aren't likely to be doing much more than vandalism or POV edits. -Jéské 20:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You'd be surprised - hop over to ED and see how many familiar names you spot. Even ruling the "pure" attack sites out, surely (to take the example I'd guess you're thinking of) Kelly Martin's blog was at least potentially relevant to her RFA? — iridescent (talk to me!) 20:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeowch. That was nothing but venom, but, frankly, she was looking to make a point. That, and, I was referring to CW, as I stated above ("Case in point: CharlotteWebb...")-Jéské 20:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users that endorse this summary

Jéské 22:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view by Iridescent

I strongly oppose the "off-Misplaced Pages behavior not be considered". Yes, it discriminates against people who've made their off-wiki identities known, but I see no reasons why someone who is known to run an off-wiki attack site shouldn't have the fact taken into consideration. — iridescent (talk to me!) 16:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this comment

Rocksanddirt 19:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside View by Cla68

I'm going to repeat my idea that I posted on the RfA talk page a few weeks ago () and that is that an RFA be processed this way:

Once a new RfA opens, a bot or other program will randomly select a group of 20-30 editors and notify them to vote in the opened RfA. Anyone can comment in the comments section in the RfA, but only those randomly selected editors can actually vote. If any of the selected editors don't vote within a certain time period, the bot will replace them with other randomly selected editors until enough have voted to show consensus. This should help eliminate the current weakness in the process that allows a small group of biased or agenda-driven editors to unfairly influence the outcome of an RfA.

Users that endorse this summary

Cla68 00:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Novel. A bit like jury service... LessHeard vanU 12:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
There would have to be selection criteria for the voters, but it would be interesting. Maybe like the electoral college. Alternately, maybe we could vote on those who would be given the task of selecting admins for a given period of time. John Carter 14:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment - this has been suggested in the past. The selection criteria and implementing it technically are the big hurdles to overcome. All that would need to be seet up and tested before even considering this. Carcharoth 22:42, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Request by Neil

Do we have any examples of RFAs that failed when they should have passed, or passed when they should have failed, as evidence to back up this fairly big assertion that RFA is "broken"? Neil ム 09:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest maybe User:Gracenotes should have passed - Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Gracenotes. A major problem comes when the 'crats apply their discretion and give some comments less weight - every 'crat does that differently and has different standards. There's also been a few which the community probably don't think should have passed such as Danny and Ryulong's. My point is that how can support of 70% show a consensus not to promote? That seems to be going against consensus in my eyes. Ryan Postlethwaite 09:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of being flippant - you would say that, as you nominated Gracenotes for RFA (note, I did support GN in that RFA). But therein lies the problem; of all 3 of the examples you provide, the flaw is a simple numerical one - one was failed despite being over 70%, two were passed despite being under 70%. The system is only to blame for that situation in that it gives bureaucrats this nebulous "discretion"; we either accept they have discression and not bitch when they apply it in a way we do not agree with, or we get rid of any discretion (in which case, we could have a bot judge whether an RFA has passed). Neil ム 09:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem I highlight is that the 'crats use their discretion in different ways, which has led to very inconsistant sets of results. Ryan Postlethwaite 09:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain what you mean by "used their discretion in different ways"? They used their discretion, which leads to results that appear inconsistent when you don't know exactly what the bureaucrats were thinking. Or to results that are inconsistent depending on which bureaucrat closes an RFA. That is a feature of discretion. If you think it is a problem, then you should argue to remove discretion. Kusma (talk) 10:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

- Danny and Ryulong should definitely have failed - those cases were just instances of the bureaucrats ignoring the community and going their own way. As to those which "should have passed", I don't think there's ever been one where the bureaucrats incorrectly determined community consensus in failing to promote; they're quite right not to promote controversial admins. However, there have been several (like Dihydrogen Monoxide's) where I wish the community had decided to give them the tools; that isn't a problem with the bureaucrats, but of the community (see my outside view below). Walton 09:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If 3 RFAs (maybe 4 if you count Carnildo's) are all the examples of the RFA process failing there are, I would suggest that 4 out of the around 3000 RFAs that have taken place being "inconsistent" is not a bad percentage at all (0.13%). Even if we say (ridiculously pessimistically) that 50 RFAs have been closed in a wrong result, that would still only be 1.7% of all RFAs being closed badly. I would submit we are placing far too much emphasis on a very small proportion of adminship requests. Ones that fail because you, personally, disagree with the result (passed when you said "oppose", failed when you said "support") are neither a problem of the RFA process, nor of the bureaucrats, nor of the community (like Walton's example of Dihydrogen Monoxide's RFA). They are not a problem at all. Neil ム 09:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, fair enough - in mentioning Dihydrogen Monoxide, I was trying to get across the main problem with RfA; because admins are so hard to remove, the community is reluctant to sysop people who might well be competent admins. If we introduced a "votes for desysopping" process, the requirements for promotion would hopefully be less sky-high. But I agree that no one did anything wrong with Dihydrogen's RfA; the bureaucrats were right not to promote, since there was no consensus for promotion. Walton 10:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

To run with these examples, have the sysoppings of Ryulong and Danny demonstrably harmed Misplaced Pages? By this I mean definite disruptions and failings after the sysopping that you can point to, not nebulous hand-waving about long-term harm. Carcharoth 11:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Ryulong's use of the tools has been the subject of much concern. Friday (talk) 15:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a few admins I once supported, who, if I had any idea how they would conduct themselves after becoming the admins, I would have strongly opposed (I vote in the RfAs of only people I know reasonably well, and this is despite that). I won't name them, obviously, but I am sure most of the RfAites would have had the same experience. Tintin 15:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

(Reply to Carcharoth) I don't know about Danny, but when Ryulong blocked this good-faith user for 24h for absolutely no reason, the user left the project (he hasn't edited since April). This is an example of what happens when bureaucrats rely on their own "judgment" rather than the will of the community. Walton 15:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- Heh. I'm looking at "this good faith user"'s block log, and reading 9 blocks, by 5 different admins, with reasons from (admitted creation of vandalbot; physical threat) to (disruption of[REDACTED] (trolling, hate jokes, ignoring warnings)). The last block, the one you're objecting to, seems to be because he nominated Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion for deletion at Miscellany for deletion. "for absolutely no reason" seems to be not quite correct. For a one time disruption like that, I would probably argue for a warning, but with a record like that, I could see someone blocking indefinitely, much less for 24 hours. If this is the worst we can find about Ryulong, he deserves praise, not criticism. --AnonEMouse 15:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
While I do trust the discernment of our bureaucrats, perhaps a way to resolve the above would be to require at least 2 bureaucrats (3?) to deem an AfD nom "successful". Since, atm, it can be a rather long drawn out process to de-admin someone, and otherwise the tools are "for life", having at least a second opinion might not be a bad thing? - jc37 16:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
AfD ... RfA? I think the bureaucrats do have a "bureaucrat chat" when it's close. There's certainly no need for multiple people to say "yes, it's a pass" if an RFA has 100% (or near to 100%) support. Neil ム 19:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
"Bureaucrat chats" are always a bad idea, for the reasons I outlined above. The community is the only body with the legitimate power to select admins. The job of the bureaucrats is solely to implement the will of the community. On the few occasions where bureaucrats have made a collective decision, they've too often got it wrong (viz. Danny and Ryulong); hence why they should close by the numbers. Ultimately, a controversial candidate who is opposed by 30-40% out of hundreds of participants is never going to make a good admin. The bureaucrats should bow to the community's judgment. Walton 10:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
(Yes, I meant RfA) - And in hindsight, I think that a "bureaucrat quorum" (which is somewhat what I was suggesting above), for every RfA would probably be a bad idea, since it could become a second RfA. However, I think it's a great idea on a case-by-case basis. And I think any bureaucrat should be able to ask for one in any case (which would place the RfA on "hold").

But besides that, I have to disagree with you on "too often got it wrong". But I suppose that's a subjective debate from either side of the fence. - jc37 15:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Sjakkalle

I am unsure what people mean when they say "RFA is failing". What is the measure of success?

The role of RFA is to get new administrators who are competent and up to the job. It is also a process to avoid granting unsuited candidates adminship. In order to determine whether someone is competent, we defer to the community to make that decision. So there are two fundamental ways in which RFA can fail.

Competent candidates are denied adminship.
Incompetent candidates are granted adminship.
People are opposing for ridiculous reasons.
People are blindly supporting.
Bureaucrats are ignoring consensus.
Bureaucrats are following consensus (=mob rule).

There will, in a large community, nearly always be someone who dissents. They may have good reason, and they may have stupid reasons. But take heart, usually stupid reasons don't get much support, and if they do, the reason is probanly not that stupid. When there is disagreement there will be people upset when the decision goes against them.

I think the level of anger is greater when there is perceived unfairness or double standards, as was the case in the Carnildo, Danny, and Ryulong RFAs, hence I think bureaucrats should usually follow the consensus (in other words, the "mob rule"), but I know there is disagreement and controversy over this in general, and those RFAs in particular, so I'll let that issue rest for now.

If we want to continue having the community decide who becomes admins, and who does not, has anyone yet proposed a system which obviously will work better than the current system? A few systems were tried out some months ago, with supports and opposes collected together to facilitate discussion, and another "RFC format" where different opinions were endorsed, but neither gained significant support over the current system. Until we have system which is better at determining community consensus than the current model, we cannot abandon the current model without abandoning community control.

On the issue of people's criteria for supporting, we should be aware that, consensus aside, there are no policies in place which will demand that someone must be promoted. This is different from AFD, we have policies saying that unverifiable content cannot stay around forever, and the community cannot overrule that. We have no such policies in RFA. Some people think it is ridiculous to oppose someone because they haven't contributed enough to mainspace becuase adminship is janitorial work, and writing great articles has nothing to do with adminship. Others argue that article writing is what is needed for a candidate to understand the core policies. This is a difference in opinion, and it is impossible to say that one or the other is right, objectively speaking. We can debate for a long time over issues like that, but we are unlikely to ever have a full agreement there. Before leaving the issue of "ridiculous" reasons, I want to say that reasons considered silly by most normal people do not topple a candidacies today. I have seen no examples of an RFA failing because "self-nominations are prima facie evidence of pwer hunger". Trolling reasons, which are not reasons or opinions at all, but simply vandalism/disruption ("Candidate is a s***hole") are already ignored. The fact that we have no agreement over what criteria or qualities we should look for in the admin candidates is not a problem with RFA, but a concern which has to do with the community.

Judging on the standard that we get the right people promoted, RFA is definitely failing and I can prove it: I supported the candidacies of CharlotteWebb and R and they failed. I opposed Khaosworks and Butseriouslyfolks and they succeeded. OK, I'll mention that I am using ridiculous criteria on RFA candidates, because the two above who I opposed turned out to be good admins. Any community based process will be no better than the community who participate in it

I am fully aware that Misplaced Pages is not a democracy, but I will finish off with Churchill's opinion of democracy: ""Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

Strong endorse. The community has the right to select admins. Sometimes the community makes mistakes, but it's still better than having Misplaced Pages run by a self-selecting elite. Walton 09:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Orderinchaos 13:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
endorse this summary, Gnan garra 13:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Mailer Diablo 05:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Endorse. It's not that RfA is incapable of improvement, but editors need to have a realistic assessment of what proposed changes would mean - the negative consequences as well. Sam Blacketer 10:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Endorse. Far too many people, when they say RfA is broken, really mean that the results don't always agree with what they think the result should be. -Amarkov moo! 22:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Walton

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the RfA process itself, or with the voting process. Ultimately, sovereignty on Misplaced Pages belongs to the community as a whole, and it is the community who have the inviolable right to select administrators. Each established user in good standing should weigh up the arguments and decide whether to vote Support or Oppose. This is why the discussion - challenging other people's comments - is also an essential part of RfA, because it allows the arguments and evidence to be fully explored, and allows strong arguments to influence others.

The only problem with RfA is that, as Friday points out, admins are very hard to remove - hence why we have a lot of semi-abusive admins, who don't do anything bad enough to get sent to ArbCom, but are habitually incivil and uncommunicative. This, in turn, makes RfA harder to pass, as people are reluctant to give the tools out unless they trust a candidate 100%; hence why good editors like Dihydrogen Monoxide and R have been consistently failing to get adminship, even though they would both make competent admins. If we had a "votes for desysopping" process, RfA would become easier to pass, because people would be more willing to give out the tools knowing that they would be given out easily.

Admins are, fundamentally, the exercisers of power and judgment; and like all such power-holders, they must be held to account by the community. An admin who is not supported by the community loses their legitimacy. Despite the much-overused maxim that "Misplaced Pages is not a democracy", Misplaced Pages belongs (morally) to its community; it's the community who create and maintain it, and the community alone who should decide how it will be run. The community has an inalienable right to select admins through a fair, equal voting process, and should also have a right to remove them at will. Walton 09:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

Carbon Monoxide 11:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
As I said before, with minor reservations. I believe every admin makes mistakes, and should be given the opportunity to correct them, especially if they were made in good faith such as a lack of specific knowledge or a quick, innocent misjudgment. However, Walton summarizes a key principle to any organized community: accountability. The community should have the right to hold an admin accountable for his/her overall performance, and not only for one negligent action (as is the usual, but not the only case in ArbCom proceedings). - Mtmelendez 13:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Rocksanddirt 15:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC) - heartily endorse this postition on the need for a better deadmin process.
Nihiltres 15:37, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Strong endorse — iridescent (talk to me!) 16:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
♠TomasBat 21:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Mailer Diablo 05:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Generally concur, but removal should be made more exacting than giving as arbitary removal of the mop will discourage application by some editors - and may result in having sysops not wishing to make difficult actions because of the possible repercussions... so that would be a weak endorse! LessHeard vanU 11:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Camaron1 | Chris 13:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Agree that a more community-accessible venue than ArbCom is needed for making the will of the community known. shoy 15:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Chris B • talk 15:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Carcharoth

RfA is a community process that decides who should be given the administrative tools. But the fundamental question, in my view, is this: Are those who pass RfA suitable for adminship? If the answer is "sometimes, yes, sometimes, no, sometimes we won't know until they start using their tools", then what we need is another process to assess admins and decide whether they are using their tools properly. Let RfA continue the way it operates at the moment, but make clear that all it is is a community process to decide who should get the admin tools, but not to decide who should keep them. To counter-balance it, start up a new process that is designed to decide whether those who have passed RfA and are using their admin tools, are using them well. This would not be a desyopping process, but more an assessment process. Much like we have "editor review", this would be "admin review". Almost like an RfC, but focused on admin conduct. Again, the problem is how to avoid drama, and to avoid discouraging admins from working in controversial areas, but I don't think that problem can ever be overcome. If an admin's conduct ever gets to Arbcom level, then these previous reviews and RfC-type reviews would be a useful step in the process. Carcharoth 11:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Additional comment - Another point is that people shouldn't think that RfA is the only point at which to stop unsuitable people becoming admins, or to restrain unsuitable behaviour from admins. RfA should probably be seen as the first barrier to stop those who are unsuitable. But the community should not relax after this, and there should be a robust and searching review process that works to restrain and retrain borderline admins, while not supporting trolls and POV-warriors. That way there would be something in-between RfA and Arbcom to question admin actions. The periodic threads at WP:AN (either "admin abuse" or "please review my action") sometimes serve this purpose, but one alternative would be if the RFC process was simplified to allow review of specific admin actions in a "how could this have been handled better" type reviews. And then the results actually noted somewhere so successive generations of admins actually learn something from all this. Carcharoth 22:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

Proposer. Carcharoth 11:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
John Carter 14:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
This could make room for a slightly less critical and nitpicking approach in RFA. I would support this, provided that it does not add too much to the workload to be practical. Adrian M. H. 15:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Not a bad idea. Walton 15:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea, I can imagine that this may lead to less worried and unpleasant attitudes at RfA, once it gets going. SamBC(talk) 16:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I like this idea quite a bit. The reason we are clamoring for a desysop process but can't/won't come up with examples of who should be desysopped is because most of the "abuse" is at the border of acceptable content, and no one wants to lose face and make enemies by campaigning for the desysopping of someone only to have the community back the admin. Framed as a discussion of how an admin has used the tools rather than a disciplinary measure, this would be much more effective in identifying and stopping problems and keeping clear the standards of acceptable behavior (which change as the community changes).--ragesoss 17:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Spenny

I think there is a schizophrenia in adminship that is at the root of the discontent. There are two different tasks: the routine maintenance of the database and the first line of arbitration and enforcement of the policies of Misplaced Pages.

In some responses we see adminship as some tools to be given and some tools to be taken away. That is an uncontroversial decision and should be no big deal: has the person demonstrated the appropriate behaviour that would make the tools a useful addition to their contribution? Abuse the tools - de-sysop.

The controversial element is the oversight. There are plenty of people, admins included, who have had run-ins with admins. There are some admins who rule the roost and have taken it as their personal duty to dictate the rules, often under the guise of this being for the good of Misplaced Pages. There are others who perform this role brilliantly. Aside from page protection, they don't need tools.

Perhaps the issue is that we need moderators and we need admins. The two tasks are different and neither the selection process, nor the deselection process acknowledges this. Do we too often see the foibles of a diligent admin forgiven when they screw up on the moderation - I think we do. We need people to work to their strengths and allow weaknesses to be recognised.

So I think this is asking the wrong question and is simply dealing with one of the symptoms of a deeper issue. Spenny 15:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC) (oops!)

Users who endorse this summary

Carcharoth 13:57, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
John Carter 14:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Rocksanddirt 15:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC) - excellent point.
I am pleased to see that someone has highlighted the distinction between the two roles. Adrian M. H. 16:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
This does make sense, although I'm not sure that the "moderation" role needs any formal recognition. What may be better is clarifying, as loudly and clearly as possible, that admins aren't moderators in general. SamBC(talk) 17:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments

I think formally recognising the moderator role would be helpful. The admins who enjoy pottering in the background are then shielded from the politics, and there is clarity in what the role is for those brave souls who put themselves on the line aiding the less co-operative of our editors. As I suggested, I see one problem as there are some really hard workers who need recognition for that, but probably only get noticed when they get involved in dealing with users, where their skills are not so good. Other admins are then unwilling to take them to task because they don't want to offend someone who does a lot for the project. Yet we have some really good moderator admins who can diffuse situations, and they should be recognised for that rare skill. Spenny 18:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. Though as a note of caution I would point out that there are some admins who get involved in moderation roles and who don't start off or even remain objective. That needs to be addressed as well (ie. stopped). Truly uninvolved moderators are needed in some places. This also happens on policy and guideline pages as well, with entrenched camps staking out their positions and an uneasy stalemate ensuing. Carcharoth 11:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, any editor can be a moderator. I've tried moderating some disputes, with not much success. There also seems to be a mentality among some editors involved in a content dispute to ask "an admin" to resolve the dispute, when they should realise that it is the community of editors involved in that page that need to come to a consensus. The perception that admins, because they can block, are best suited to resolving disputes, needs to be changed. Blocking should only happen when incivility or disruptive editing (reverting) is disrupting constructive discussions and editing. Carcharoth 11:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

The trouble is, though, that a really effective moderator has to have some degree of authority. Experienced users realise that admins have comparatively little wiki-political power (though we do have some), but the newer users tend to assume that we're the only people with the "authority" to sort out their disputes. I quite like the idea of creating a separate "moderator" position with formal authority, although I'm not sure it will gain consensus. Walton 23:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Laleena

I think that it is correct to reform the process. However, I go a step further by asking that everyone be made to apply somewhere outside of Misplaced Pages, like on Meta, and make the most important people in the Wikimedia Foundation approve of the admin-to-be. That way, we could revamp the system by simply redoing admin processes. It sounds great to me, but I want some approval.

Users who endorse this summary

Laleena 12:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to this outside view

I strongly disagree with this. "The most important people in the Wikimedia Foundation" have neither the right, nor the good judgment, to take power away from the community. The Wikimedia Foundation may own the servers, and, yes, they have a legal duty to intervene in Misplaced Pages's internal affairs in certain rare cases. However, Misplaced Pages belongs to its community, and the community is sovereign. We don't want "the great and the good" making decisions; we want the whole community (the people who actually write and maintain the articles) to make binding decisions. For an example of where "the most important people" get things totally wrong: Kelly Martin was appointed to the first ArbCom by edict of Jimbo Wales. If you would care to peruse her recent failed RfA, you will see numerous diffs which demonstrated her total unsuitability for any position of authority or trust. The community is more reliable than the Foundation, therefore, in determining right from wrong in the appointment of admins, and also has a moral right to make these decisions IMO. Walton 15:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
- I tend to agree with Walton. The disadvantage of giving the power of appointment exclusively to the Foundation is that those individuals, for all their good qualities, are less involved in the day-to-day functioning of[REDACTED] than many of the editors are, and on that basis are almost certain to rely upon others for some of their information. We have no way of knowing if these sources would themselves be necessarily aware of the individual strengths or weaknesses of individual editors, and this presents a situation in which very serious problems could, and almost certainly would, arise. I agree with the idea in theory, to a degree, but see major difficulties if were to ever be put into practice. John Carter 16:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  - Walton hits the nail on the head. Giving the Foundation this kind of power (quite aside from the fact that they don't have the time and I suspect not the inclination to exercise it) converts the whole project from one of the most successful community-run organisations in the world to a glorified blog for Jimbo's friends. (I suspect ^demon, who proposed this RFC, can think of a rather more recent example of one of the "most important people" taking a very dubious decision.) — iridescent (talk to me!) 16:22, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by The sunder King

I believe the process of adminship is completely nesscery. However I believe that this process over time has provoked trouble on[REDACTED] amongst editors who have failed the process. However I do not see a reason to shut this down. Yes I agree with personal attacks, favouritism, hatred and general disliking of editors all seem to pull a part in this process. However it seems that nothing else would work better on[REDACTED] to function this particular process. I endorse an immediate change to the page and the general behaviour of the people who edit it Some things I have seen throughout the past 3 months of my editing are completely unnacceptable, I believe that some editors just use this page to basically insult other editors and use the page to start wars on each other. this page needs more attention on what is being said. We do need an admin process though, no further words. The sunder king 15:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

The sunder king 15:26, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Opinions by OhanaUnited

There are flaws in the RFA (some are major, some are minor). I'm not here to against the removal of RfA, nor promoting to retain it. I'm here to explain the flaws and provide ideas so that we can correct this system. Instead of writing an essay, I decided to put them into point form:

(major flaw) Way too many people snowball votes. You can see this very often when people say "per XYZ editor" and without any additional comments.
(major flaw) Oppose for the sack of oppose. (Scenario: You opposed me in my RFA, I'll oppose yours when you apply for adminship.) How does that help Misplaced Pages?
(minor flaw) Humans tend to speak up more often when they want to oppose something. If you took statistics courses, your teacher/prof probably mentioned about this kind of bias.
(somewhat major flaw) Oppose because you are not active in (fill in the blank). If you are not active in voting for RfA, you shouldn't be opposed because of that. What you should say is vote neutral and say something like "I am concerned because you're not active in XYZ department."
(major flaw) Oppose because you're self-nom (or nominated by XXX editor). The system allows us to do self-nom, so there's no way you should vote oppose because of who nominated you. Yet these votes are often counted for the %.
(super major flaw, ^demon's idea) RfA claims to be working based on consensus, in accordance to Misplaced Pages's guidelines, but the reality is not the same way as it says. What is the definition of consensus? 50%? 70%?
(minor flaw, not occured in English Misplaced Pages at the moment, but I believe it will occur sooner or later, could turn from minor flaw into major flaw) Support the candidate and ask for something in return. I was in Hong Kong this summer and went to several WikiMeet as well as the formation of WikiMedia Hong Kong division. I exchanged the status of English Misplaced Pages to some users and admins using Chinese Misplaced Pages. They said once in a while, this kind of "group" support pops out in RfA. Let me give you an example:
- Users (A, B, C) decided to nominate a user (D) for adminship. Person A, B, and C voted support for D.
- In return for obtaining the mop, person D becomes a protector for A, B, C.
- Whenever those 3 players want to push POV, D can jump in and "shield" the fire directly at those 3.
(minor flaw) After obtaining the mop, some admins went on extended wikibreak. We need something so that admins actually do their job after obtaining the mop. This will also discourage from obtaining the mop simply because they want to be admin, but not serving the community.
(major flaw) Oppose because of edit count, activeness, how long the nom joined Misplaced Pages. We should be judging if we trust the nom, not because how much work he did.

OhanaUnited 17:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to this outside view

This is substantially why we have WP:AAAD, and why discussion of RfA comments is not only allowed, but encouraged. Arguments such as "Doesn't have 2000 projectspace edits" or "only been active for 3 months" are, as a rule, challenged; the editors who base their votes on these factors are entitled to their opinion, but it tends not to influence anyone else. I also don't agree that all the things you brought up are necessarily flaws; for instance, admins are as entitled as anyone else to go on extended wikibreak. Inactive admins don't do any harm to Misplaced Pages, and since there's no upper limit on the number of people who can be made admins, there's no harm in promoting admins who won't necessarily use the tools every day. Walton 09:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Sxeptomaniac

My one thought is that we should consider doing away with automated edit counters. I feel they are often a crutch for editors who poorly research qualifications in RfAs. This would not stop all of the editcountitis problems, but it would force editors to go to the person's contributions page to find out approximately how many edits an applicant as, encouraging research into what the content of those edits is. (Perhaps an edit counter that purely gives percentages might be a reasonable exception, though.)

Users who endorse this summary

Sχeptomaniac 19:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Eiler7

This is more of a meta-comment. It is hard to think about this issue and evaluate possible solutions without having clearly defined the problem. Perhaps we can try to define the problem first and see if there is over 50% agreement that it is important. A clear definition would be something like "RFA is failing because it takes to long to promote editors" or "RFA is failing because backlog X is not being handled". Without knowing whether a definition with clear support exists, it is hard to think concretely about a solution.

Users who endorse this summary

Outside view by Anonymous Dissident

RFA is the process involving the making of new administrators, the users who have shown their dedication to and their interest in the project, and their knowledge of the policy which is integral to the project itself, and their experience as an editor and as a user. Such a process is never going to be simple, because what can result from it is certainly not simple - a new administrator, who can block people, delete pages, and protect pages. The process is going to have flaws. Different people are going to dislike different aspects of it, because it is a complex procedure, involving sometimes hundreds of people. It isn't broken. It is still functioning. The page is still there, and people are still submitting candidacies, and people are still being promoted, and some are not. The page is working generally as it was supposed to, but it has some flaws that truly don't go too far beyond the surface; flaws that should be repaired through improvement, rather than the tearing down of the process. We could end up diving headlong into a process much worse, when we could have worked on the improvement of the current process, that already has solid and substantial roots, and that has been proven to actually work. Reform is needed. Change is needed. But tearing down a functional, but admittedly flawed, process is not the answer, when a better idea has not really been found.

Views on WT:RFA

We first need to sort out the discussion page for this process. WT:RFA is a complete mess, and any attempts to sort out the problem(s) are dismissed quickly, even by those who complain the loudest about RFAs issues. Consensus on what to do needs to be achieved through polite discussion on WT:RFA before any proper progress toward the elimination of the problem can be made. Currently, we really are stuck in a rut on the process' talk page, with ideas constantly recurring each month, only to be gunned down. Maybe trial and error is the key, because discussion and disagreement certainly isn't doing anything. -- Anonymous Dissident 01:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Users that endorse this summary

Me, I suppose. -- Anonymous Dissident 01:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
· AndonicO 01:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
SamBC(talk) 11:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Camaron1 | Chris 13:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Chris B • talk 15:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion by Cacycle

Admins get only a few additional buttons and functions that make site maintenance easier (the "mop"). Because these functions can be abused, access has to be restricted. Just like in real life - you do not hire janitors or security guards and give them the keys if you do not trust them. At the same time, adminship is seen as a higher management position with representative function and Requests for adminship discussions often resemble more a presidential election than a simple job interview.

On the one hand, we have many trusted users that do a great job as vandal fighters who could clearly benefit from the admin buttons. On the other hand, we have many users that have grown into higher positions ("chief editors", "human resource managers", "politicians", "chief technical officers") without having the mop of adminship. I think that most problems with the current system arise from intermingling these two different concepts. Both jobs, janitor and manager, do actually not have much in common. One way out of the current misery might therefore be a clear and explicit distinction between both duties.

Just as an example: We could have "janitors" which are chosen solely by their trustedness and which can have their rights revoked upon misuse in a simple process - in the spirit of the no big deal doctrine. Independently, we could elect people to carry an official title of honor (such as "manager", "distinguished editor", or, of course, "administrator") in a process that resembles the current Requests for adminship discussions. Such a status would then be the user equivalent of a featured article :-)

Users who endorse this summary

Cacycle 04:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Interesting idea - maybe we should call it Featured Editor status. :-) Walton 09:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I had thoguht about this earlier; it's actually quite a good idea. Editors which predominantly edit articles could get only the revert tools, whilst more deletion involved editors could get others to help them. It'd save people nit-picking one certain editing aspect (Such as edits the mainspace too much compared to Xfds), as editors would only run for one type of job. Could work. Spawn Man 09:38, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Support. I believe that the admins currently are asked to solely perform a few too many duties. I'm not sure about "Featured Editor", though. Maybe instead retain the "admin" title for the upper rank, and give a title like "security and maintenance officer" to the lower rank. Qualifications for the lower status would probably be less frequently contested, and would allow the admins more time to perform the more difficult tasks. John Carter 15:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Kind-of-support. I think that this is an idea that should be more thoroughly explored. I do know, however, that there's been a lot of resistance to the idea of more tiers of users before now, and there would need to be a lot of thrashing to define the two different roles. I'm not sure I'd view one as higher than the other, however, more seperate-but-equal. One might be harder to get, but that's just because it would have more potential trouble and fewer people would be suitable; it wouldn't make it more senior. I think it would be best if the jobs are to be split that neither be a prerequisite for the other, nor have a superset of the tools. SamBC(talk) 19:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Spawn Man

Support votes are given waay too much weight when it comes to consensus - I don't really think a support vote of "Support - Per nom - User:Supporter" cuts the cheese, when oppose voters give so much more thought and time into delivering their rationale. I've always been a big believer that there should in fact be no supporting votes allowed - admins simply see a tally with 70% supporting and discard the 30% of possibly good objections. However, if supporting voters could come up with some way to provide a better rationale such as "This person should be an admin because they've done this here etc etc etc", it'd seem much more credible than "Per nom" - although this could be better, I think scrapping the whole supporting vote side of things is much better. The underlying problem is that people don't trust admins & 'crats - if they did, we wouldn't be questioning now about consensus. Unless Jimbo himself is promoting users (And even then there'd be some complainers), we won't be able to solve the problem and frankly, I don't think we ever will. Everyone has their own opinion which is very different from everyone else's. Spawn Man 09:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

Spawn Man 09:33, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to outside view

I don't really agree with this. We always need more admins, so in most RfAs the default should be to Support. An unadorned Support vote, or a "per nom", doesn't imply that the user is just piling on; it implies that they've read the nomination statement, investigated the candidate, read any opposes, and decided to agree with the nominator. Opposers, on the other hand, really need to clearly demonstrate why the candidate should not be an admin, and need to provide diffs to back up their argument (as I did in Kelly Martin's recent RfA, one of the few I have ever strongly opposed). Certainly, 30% of users making good objections should not be ignored, and usually someone with only 70% support will not pass (when such people have been promoted, it's usually been a total disaster). As to your second point: I don't trust the 'crats in general, because they have a track record of poor decision-making in controversial cases (e.g. Danny and Ryulong). And I trust Jimbo even less than I trust the 'crats; the fact that he appointed Kelly Martin to the ArbCom makes me question his judgment. The only people who should make decisions about promotions are the community as a whole, through a fair and consistent voting process. Walton 10:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Walton, generally. Sometimes the preamble, answers to questions and other discussion covers everything that a supporter wanted to clarify. Since there is no further reason to support (and support needs demonstrating) then "per X" is appropriate. LessHeard vanU 11:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Mailer Diablo

RfA doesn't break by itself; People do.

You can tear down the building and rebuild a different one, but so long the occupants and the management treat it with disdain it's only a matter of time the cycle begins all over.

Users who endorse this summary

Mailer Diablo 05:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Walton 09:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Pedro : Chat 14:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Iridescent 15:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Chris B • talk 15:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
A brilliant point--Phoenix 15 18:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, as long as we treat adminship as something very special this will occur. Humans love status. The only way to fix this is to make adminship less special. - cohesion 18:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view

Imagine someone standing in front of a tree. They have a spoon, and are attempting to cut a branch off the tree.

Well it's moderately sucessful, but after teaching this to others, the others begin to complain that the spoon is "broken", because it's not as effective removing braches as they might like.

Someone else comes up with a plan to modify the spoon so that it can cut similar to a knife, but is sent away by naysayers who claim changing the tool isn't the problem, the people complaining are. Calls of: They aren't using the tool effectively. This is the way we've always done it, and it seems to work just fine. If we change now, the new version may not work, and then we'd be back where we started, etc.

Are such views "correct? Perhaps. But then that would leave us in the Stone age, and we'd never make it to the Bronze age, much less the Iron age, if we follow that line of thinking. Tools must be tested continually. What may have worked well in the past may not be the best choice of tool for the future. I doubt anyone on this page surfs the web with a 286 computer running DOS, for example. People will claim whatever they want regardless of what the tool actually in use is, they are the constant in this equation. So let's work on what we can, and take a look at the tool and see if there are ways to improve it.

Users who endorse this comment

- jc37 18:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Carcharoth 22:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Good analogy. Adrian M. H. 22:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Cohesion

This is a suggestion for a different RFA process. I admit I don't know much about the inner workings of RFA, I nominated myself, passed, and very rarely go there because it seems rather ugly to me. So, here's the process:

People self request, saying why they need the tools. (there is no need to nominate others, if people want access to the tools they can ask. The word "nomination" sends the wrong message, it's not an award. It's certainly not an award that people should give others.)
A bureaucrat looks at the requests and the person's history, assures themselves they are not dangerous, and flips the switch. Perhaps at this step people can sign up to watch the new admin and help.
Some time period later there is a retrospective discussion. Did the person cause any problems with the tools? Was this a good decision? If not then de-admin. (Obviously if there is an intervening serious issue the bureaucrat can de-admin immediately)

This system will make adminship less of a big deal. It will also focus the discussion on how the person is using the adminship tools, rather than how many featured articles they wrote, or if a project supports them, or any number of other unrelated metrics.

Users who endorse this summary

cohesion 18:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Could it really be this simple? :-) Carcharoth 22:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Not a million miles away from my take on Warlordjohncarter's proposal. With a bit of tuning and toning down (we don't want it to be too simple because that could make a net that has very large holes), I believe that this might just work. Adrian M. H. 22:47, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment on this view

Why a bcrat will have a better sense than a community of editors? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Not outside view by Amarkov

So, we want to replace a process that squelches some valid concerns, overaccounts for others, and sometimes arrives at the wrong result. That's fine, on the surface. But the only other community process we have squelches some valid concerns, overaccounts for others, has no clear outcome, and still sometimes arrives at the wrong result. And our non-community based process squelches any valid concerns not held by people who have been here for sufficiently long, overaccounts for any held by the in group, are decided by the voting that we're trying to get rid of in the first place, and still sometimes arrive at the wrong result. Why exactly are the latter two preferable?

Users who endorse this summary:

Amarkov moo! 22:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Hell yeah. Walton 22:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside view by Until(1 == 2)

Not broken, don't fix it.

Comment on above view

Not broken doesn't exclude a bit of maintenance where needed. LessHeard vanU 23:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)