It has been two and a half years since the requests for adminship process has undergone any significant attempts to reform or improve it. However, as laid out at the 2021 and 2015 RfA reform pushes, RfA is widely agreed by the community to be toxic and hostile to participants and candidates, and has had the effect of discouraging qualified candidates from seeking adminship. Because those prior RfCs have established community consensus on what is at issue with RfA, this RfC will largely focus on proposing and testing solutions to make improvements to RfA, and then re-evaluating those solutions in light of their trial runs.

RfA reforms will be proposed in two phases: in Phase I, proposals will be discussed that either make small changes to RfA or test out changes on a few subsequent RfAs. Any proposals that require workshopping or follow-up can be discussed in Phase II, where participants will discuss the outcomes of trial proposals and refine the implementation details of broad-strokes ideas. Phase I was open to new proposals until March 8; voting is ongoing but new proposals will be closed procedurally. Phase I officially ends when all proposals have been closed. If Phase II has not started yet, the RfC tag will be removed until the first proposal from Phase I comes up for review; it will close when the last proposal from Phase I that requires review has been discussed.

Successful

• Proposal 2: Add a reminder of civility norms at RfA, initiated by HouseBlaster
• Proposal 3b: Make the first two days discussion-only (trial), initiated by Usedtobecool
• Proposal 9b: Require links for claims of specific policy violations, initiated by Reaper Eternal
• Proposal 13: Admin elections, initiated by Novem Linguae
• Proposal 14: Suffrage requirements, initiated by Kusma
• Proposal 16: Allow the community to initiate recall RfAs, initiated by Thebiguglyalien
  • Proposal 16c: Community recall process based on dewiki, initiated by Soni
• Proposal 17: Have named Admins/crats to monitor infractions, initiated by SchroCat
• Proposal 24: Provide better mentoring for becoming an admin and the RfA process, initiated by SportingFlyer
• Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed, initiated by Femke

Unsuccessful

• Proposal 1: Impose community sanctions on RfA, initiated by theleekycauldron (result: Withdrawn)
• Proposal 3: Add three days of discussion before voting (trial), initiated by Barkeep49 (result: No consensus)
• Proposal 4: Prohibit threaded discussion (trial), initiated by SilkTork (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 5: Add option for header to support limited-time adminship (trial), initiated by theleekycauldron (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 6: Provisional adminship via sortition, initiated by BilledMammal (result: Withdrawn)
  • Proposal 6b: Trial adminship, initiated by Awesome Aasim (result: Withdrawn)
  • Proposal 6c: Provisional adminship via sortition (admin nomination), initiated by BilledMammal (result: Consensus against)
  • Proposal 6d: Provisional adminship via sortition (criteria to be determined), initiated by BilledMammal (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 7: Threaded General Comments, initiated by Lee Vilenski (result: No consensus)
• Proposal 8: Straight vote (trial), initiated by Mach61 (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 9: Require diffs, initiated by jc37 (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 10: Unbundling 90% of blocks, initiated by WereSpielChequers (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 11: Set some of the Admin criteria, initiated by WereSpielChequers (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 12: Abolish the discretionary zone and crat chats, initiated by Kusma (result: Consensus against)
  • Proposal 12b: Abolish crat chats and allow discretionary relisting, initiated by Ivanvector (result: Withdrawn)
  • Proposal 12c: Lower the high end of the bureaucrats' discretionary zone from 75% to 70%, initiated by City of Silver (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 15: Community-based process for appointing CheckUsers and Oversighters, initiated by Interstellarity (result: Out of scope)
• Proposal 16b: Require a reconfirmation RfA after X years, initiated by Thebiguglyalien (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 16d: Community recall process initiated by consensus, initiated by Novo Tape (result: Withdrawn)
• Proposal 16e: Allow the community to initiate recall RfBs, initiated by BilledMammal (result: No consensus)
• Proposal 16f: Require a reconfirmation RfB after X years, initiated by Cryptic (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 18: Normalize the RfB consensus requirements, initiated by theleekycauldron (result: Withdrawn)
• Proposal 19: Discussion-only RfAs, initiated by SportingFlyer (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 20: Make RFA an internal non public process, initiated by WereSpielChequers (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 21: Reduce threshold of consensus at RfA, initiated by Ritchie333 (result: Consensus against)
  • Proposal 21b: Slightly reduce threshold of consensus at RfA, initiated by HouseBlaster (result: WP:SNOW)
• Proposal 22: Change the name from RFA to "Nominations For Adminship", initiated by North8000 (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 23: All Admins are probationary for first six months, initiated by Chetsford (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 26: Have the admin corps select its own members, initiated by Herostratus (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 27: Introduce training/periodic retraining for admins, initiated by WereSpielChequers (result: No consensus)
• Proposal 28: Limiting multi-part questions, initiated by HouseBlaster (result: No consensus)
• Proposal 29: Provide a few paragraphs of respondent-guidance / advice on the RFA page, initiated by North8000 (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 30: Emphasize that just granting the tools does not mean that they will be blocking experienced editors tomorrow, initiated by North8000 (result: SNOW fail)
• Proposal 31: Eliminate the support, oppose, and neutral sections and instead: publish the entire !voting sequence and threaded discussion in one section, as participants arrive, initiated by John_Cline (result: Consensus against)
• Proposal 32: Add OoA: Offer of Adminship, initiated by Pgallert (result: Consensus against)

When Phase II opens, proposal-by-proposal subpages will be created as necessary here.