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The Bureaucrats' noticeboard is a place where items related to the Bureaucrats can be discussed and coordinated. Any user is welcome to leave a message or join the discussion here. Please start a new section for each topic.

This is not a forum for grievances. It is a specific noticeboard addressing Bureaucrat-related issues. If you want to know more about an action by a particular bureaucrat, you should first raise the matter with them on their talk page. Please stay on topic, remain civil, and remember to assume good faith. Take extraneous comments or threads to relevant talk pages.

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RfA behaviours

I wondered if any other Crats had seen this, or this (permanent link)?

Leaving aside discussions of specific individuals' behaviours, I wonder if we should consider some, erm, policing of RfAs? --Dweller (talk) 16:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I think Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for adminship would be a more appropriate venue for discussion on this topic. Crats have a mandate to judge the consensus at an AfD, not to enforce civility or other conduct guidelines. If crats start to take an active role in policing RFA conduct, it will undermine their appearance of neutrality in making RFA closes. Monty₈₄₅ 16:38, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm aware of the difference and of our responsibilities. I wanted to communicate with the other Crats, not with the regulars at WT:RFA. As it's not a privacy matter, the mailing list is inappropriate and this is the appropriate forum. Any Crat can intercede at any RfA without breach of neutrality, and we often do. We just opt not to close it. --Dweller (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "policing" of RfA/Bs outside of deciding on the consensus, which includes, at times, the weight given to particular opinions? DO you mean striking out unhelpful comments? If so, we are going to have to decide between someone voicing honest passion and someone acting like a troll. Do you mean flat out removing certain statements? Do you mean applying blocks to troll-like or highly incivil respondents at RfX in order to protect the integrity and dignity of the process and the project? -- Avi (talk) 16:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

sigh, so much of the discussion at Misplaced Pages is so, well, bureaucratic. Someone raises a point that is at least worthy of discussion and the first response is to quibble over the venue for discussion and the second is to quibble over meaning. Avi, if you think it would be far too difficult to decide who is voicing honest passion and who is acting like a troll, come out and make that point. Cut to the chase. Enter the debate. There is one of those bluelink thingys that some people love to pepper their posts with that talks about Misplaced Pages not being a bureaucracy. It is must be Misplaced Pages's most widely ignored guideline. Dean B (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Avi. I have an open mind on what we do. What I am convinced about is that we should do something. Happy to let consensus guide what that something is. But first, I want to know if other Crats think 'something' needs to be done. --Dweller (talk) 20:42, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Dean, this is the Bureaucrats' noticeboard . In all seriousness, my response to Dweller would depend on what Dweller has in mind. Personally, I would like for bureaucrats to be as non-intrusive as possible in RfX. If someone is acting like an idiot in RfX, I'd hope we, as bureaucrats, would recognize it and take the activity into consideration when we measure consensus. As for more extreme measures, we do have processes in force for handling disruptive editors (RfC's etc.) and any admin (bureaucrats included) can take protective measures in the case of harassment. A question for you, Dean (and everyone else, of course), if you saw a bureaucrat take protective action by blocking a misbehaving editor, would you feel that would affect said bureaucrat's impartiality when closing the discussion? -- Avi (talk) 20:46, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think a crat who "policed" an RfX should close it; they might not be partial because of those actions but there is no point in a crat acting in any way that might make people even slightly question their impartiality. Although we don't imho have a sufficient amount of crats, there should be enough of them to ensure that "policing" crat and closing crat are two different people.

On the topic itself, I think Dweller is correct. Of course crats shouldn't watch RfXs like hawks and delete any possibly offending content or block anyone making a slightly unorthodox comment but they should intervene when people use the RfX for off-topic discussions or general discussions not related to the candidate and move such discussions and/or block people insisting to have them on the RfX despite warnings. For example, discussions about whether admins should be article creators belong to WT:RFA, not the RfA of somebody who did not create articles; on the other hand, the discussion why this user did not create articles belongs there (or maybe the talk page). Of course any user can already "clean up" RfX discussions but they are often challenged by others, leading to more controversy and potentially edit-warring (for example there was an edit-war about the inclusion of one of Keepscases' questions recently). Crats on the other hand are respected by almost all participants in such discussions and their job is to preserve the "institution of RfX", so if they "police" an RfX it will be better for all involved. Regards SoWhy 20:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary. Policing of behavior is not a part of a bureaucrat's job. (And I don't see why incivility in an RfA is different from incivility elsewhere. I looked at the link above and it would have been far better to have taken it to WP:WQA that to rant and discuss it on the RfA itself. Determining what is or is not civil is a consensus issue rather than a straightforward judgement.) --regentspark (comment) 21:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Bureaucrats may no more act as police than admins. Bureaucrats may judge finished RFAs, and nothing more. The community is more than up to the task of policing incivility. Andrevan@ 02:28, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The community has not been policing incivility at RfA very well. --Dweller (talk) 16:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Then that's the community's failing. I'm not sure that bureaucrats should necessarily step in and pick up the ball that's been dropped. If we (as 'crats) police an RfA, it shouldn't be because it's part of our job description, but because we're seasoned editors with relatively level heads, a description that can easily be applied to non-bureaucrats. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That is certainly true in theory but in practice a crat "policing" such problems will not be met with the same resistance as a non-crat seasoned editor. Maybe the better way would be to accept that the community failed and make it part of the crats' job description instead. Regards SoWhy 22:16, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, bureaucrats do tend to enjoy a bit of added freedom in policing stuff, but I prefer to consider it being because of who we are as individual editors, rather than just because we have a userright flag that most people don't. So... we're agreeing about how things currently are, just with different points of view about it. :)
I'd rather it not become a codified part of our job description, however, if only because it's not something that has to do with gauging consensus (such as with RfX closures) or something assigned to us for technical reasons (renaming and userright modifications). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:54, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:RfA reform 2011/Clerks for a relevant proposal. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That proposal seems to have been stale since July. As such we still have a problem with no solution. --Dweller (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, neither of the two links you provide in your original post are symptomatic of a problem. The first is to an essay by Dayewalker (disclosure: I !voted support and still believe, on the balance, that that is a reasonable !vote) on his/her experiences. It is a personal statement, and I respect that, but the facts are that the candidate has a weak content contribution, did point to content contributions that were not borne out under scrutiny, and much of what the opposers said was legitimate. I'm not sure what a bureaucrat, or even the community can do in this sort of situation. The second link, to the ANI report on BadgerDrink, is where the comments ended up (disclosure: I !voted support and then withdrew my !vote). Badger's original comments, while harsh, were neither disruptive nor uncivil and this is borne out by the fact that several !voters used that as a basis for their oppose !votes. Do we really want to police RfA to the point where these sort of useful comments will disappear? The reality is that the RfA process, because it involves comments on people rather than content, will always be at the edge of civility. It is better to acknowledge that and let the community figure out when someone crosses the line. Appointing guardians of civility will only kill useful debate. --regentspark (comment) 17:30, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, OK, but looking at the bigger picture. We have about 730 active admins (this includes bots, I think. There are also 557 "semi-active" admins (fewer than 30 edits in the last two months), and that counts for something, so the effective number is higher than 730.) But anyway, we're loosing close to 200 a year.

I extrapolate the number 200 by looking at Misplaced Pages:List of administrators/Inactive. If none of those who have been active for getting on a year resume activity, then we'd have to de-sysop for inactivity the following numbers: December 2011, 13; January 2012, 18; February 2012, 15; March 2012, 16; April 2012, 17. Some will surely resume activity, but not many -- it's been near a year after all -- and then there are active admins who will resign or be de-sysopped by ArbCom, so this probably balances. This works out to about 200 a year.

And the number of new admins being admitted is almost negligible at this point. At this rate we will have zero admins in a few years. But we don't have to get to zero before it becomes a problem. I'm assuming that admin attrition is is not increasing in rate; if it is, so much the worse. But even if steady, simple arithmetic progression indicates we'll run low on admins in a shorter time than one might think. We have maybe a few years, but not a lot of years.

Unless there's a way to slow admin attrition (can't think of any), then perforce something needs to be done at at the admission end. I'm not sure what, but in my opinion efforts such as Misplaced Pages:RfA reform 2011 aren't a good way to get things done and aren't likely to succeed. Therefore, sooner or later the 'crats will have to step up, I think. Whether this would be in form of more active intervention as suggested above, de facto taking less account of raw vote totals, or what, I'm not sure. But probably something. Not today, not this year, but it's something to be mindful of, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 16:22, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with your analysis of the difficulty. I'm certainly willing to help but remain unsure how best to do it. More active crat managements of RfAs has in the past hit a lot of resistance. Of course, I could simply grant +sysop to 20 accounts every month that I think deserve the bit to combat attrition, but I suspect I wouldn't remain a bureaucrat long if I started doing that... WJBscribe (talk) 19:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with your analysis. We have seen that the number of admins promoted per given time period varies widely, but it is certainly not negligible. Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that, as you say, "Some will surely resume activity, but not many." Many Wikipedians are active or not at a given time depending on how much free time they have in their own lives, and we have seen many cases of inactive admins returning years later to request re-adminship or similar. There is no pending admin crisis, and if there ever were, it would be easily fixable in ways other than bureaucrat policing of RFAs (for example, if the Foundation were to offer some kind of editing stipend a la Mechanical Turk, an idea I've not heard proposed). I have yet to hear any explanation as to how bureaucrat policing of comments would lead to more admin promotions. The problem isn't there, the solution wouldn't fix the problem that doesn't exist. Andrevan@ 01:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

If RfAs still looked like this, I'd agree. But they don't. We've evolved a monstrosity that is increasingly off-putting to good candidates. I used to be able to persuade roughly one editor per month to run, but those I've asked this year have all declined for pretty much the same reason - they're volunteers, it's a hobby, going through RfA doesn't look like much fun, thank you very much. You're probably right that "policing" RfAs is unlikely to be the solution, but sometimes I think it'd be nice to try something new. I suspect we're already running a bit short on admins. There may not be huge backlogs, but I suspect there are few admin actions (especially speedy deletions) that anyone has time to double check these days. An admin crisis may be hyperbole, but I do think the project's diminishing number of admins (when IMO it should be growing) is an issue that needs to be tackled. WJBscribe (talk) 00:35, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

We're all no doubt reassured that "The problem isn't there, the solution wouldn't fix the problem that doesn't exist". Clearly Andrevan's detailed analysis is that there is no issue at RFA at all, that all is sweetness and light in fact; and that we're merrily giving lots of people +sysop after a vigorous but courteous and collegial debate. Obviously he's right - and after all his log clearly indicates how he's right in touch with RFA promotions over the last year. And his regular input at RFA is such that he gets it right first time every time. I think I'd be more interested in the opinion of bureaucrats who take an active interest in RFA to be honest. Pedro :  Chat  20:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Some crat work needed

no work needed

Resolved User:TCO has returned from retirement. As there is no policy reason in my view not to unblock him, I did so at his request. Can one of you guys do whatever is needed to merge with User:RetiredUser12459780? Many thanks.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC) Accounts can't have their contributions merged. At most, we could rename RetiredUser12459780 back to TCO, but I'd rather they make that request themselves (with either account). EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC) Please rename the Retired account to TCO. (I realize it is a yarn-snarl of work.  :( ) TCO (reviews needed) 19:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC) Are you going to do this whole RTV and return thing again? The community (and patient 'crats etc) should know if this is going to be habitual. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC) I donno. That was one part of my hesitancy in coming back. I sort of have the feeling that you will not indulge that though. I guess you could just not honor this request. (Serious, not flippant). TCO (reviews needed) 19:47, 23 November 2011 (UTC) Uh huh, TCO. You put the cat among the pigeons with that study, you have to stay here to face the heat, or if you choose to go, it should be your decision, not a crat's. JMO. Sorry about mixed metaphor, but I lack the motivation to fix it.  :)--Wehwalt (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2011 (UTC) 1. I understood that I would get cursed either way (deservedly). If I returned, then I had wasted work...and was indecisive. If I posted a criticism externally, then I was scared to face the heat. (And trying to stop ad hominem dismissal of the arguments.) I think coming back and having the dialog is more the better of the two bad choices. 2. I am fine with my current username. I do not require any 'crat action. 3. I think it is not surprising that people think I left, because I was in trouble (vice unhappy with the site). And they do this even knowing the RTV is only allowed to users in good standing. However, if anyone wants to test that theory, I would be glad to bet a gold class ring against someone's next paycheck that a polygraph proves I vanished under own horsepower. RetiredUser12459780 (talk) 23:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

TCO comes and goes, posts as an IP, posts as RetiredUser, requests blocks, requests unblocks, ad nauseum ... he has never vanished even though he exercised the RTV. OK, so if he is now going to stay as RetiredUser, could someone please do whatever needs to be done to assure that both accounts indicate that TCO is RetiredUser and vice-versa (aren't alternate accounts supposed to be identified, and he still signs as and identifies as TCO)? The right to vanish shouldn't be so abused-- editors should know that retired user is TCO, and his unstable editing history should be available to editors for judging the validity of the grenades he's lobbing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Diffs (see WT:USEP for context):

• "I'm taking a lot of incoming rounds at FAC, but that is fine. I had the first say and it is better if I let others see what it all means for them. Yeah, Signpost would be good. Please make it happen if you know how." (to a member of WP:USEP)
• "Your timing was impeccable" (from a participant at WT:USEP) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:59, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sandy, I know you are upset, but please calm down. Even if you want to tear me apart, there's probably a way to do it more effectively (even just tactically). This whole site seems to run around different cliques and factions and alliances and things get interpreted in terms of that. Sometimes a cigar is really just a cigar. If any more "betters" want to check, then I can prove that most of my Wiki quality criticism Powerpoint was written before I became aware of USEP/IEP, etc. That's just ANOTHER interesting drama going on. You can also even dig out the diff where I said to Jimmy that Sandy was 90% right on the WMF criticism. And when I tried to buck him up, it was to buck him up, not to try to play some faction game. Or look for an ally or any of that crap. He's a civilian and a high school teacher. Let's not AK-47 him--I'll take the bullet.

And what does Piotr/USEP have to do with comments on my Powerpoint about lack of traction on important articles? He's a part of the research council isn't he (the thing wrt studies on Wiki, that user DAR runs.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Yes, Sandy, you too. Srsly.RetiredUser12459780 (talk) 06:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

P.s. I am fine with Sandy's plan being implemented (rename my account back to TCO). I think I asked for it and got shot down. So the whole thing is sort of "don't throw me in the briar patch, Brer 'crat".

Patronize much? I get upset about stuff that matters-- that's rarely, usually not stuff on Misplaced Pages, and this little kerfuffle doesn't matter. Where it's going is both of your pages need to declare who you are, since you've made such a mess of your contribs and various accounts, and have never vanished, have posted as an IP and as two different VanishedUsers, and continue to sign as TCO, and that you should declare the alternate accounts on both accounts, and something should be shut down, since you're now getting posts on multiple talk pages. Your "Happy Thanksgiving" fluff doesn't cover for how you've abused of admins and crats, asking for blocks and unblocks, vanishing and unvanishing-- just declare who you are on all accounts, and then stick with one. And go patronize high school students-- they might not be able to see through it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

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