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Just looking at TheSandDoctor's RfA with utter dismay at some of the opposition there. It's honestly terrible that some actually think a year and a half and 20,000 edits isn't good enough, and it's the same people who tell the candidate they haven't got enough AfD experience then oppose them for !voting at AfD at the wrong time?! There are a lot of unfounded, nasty accusations of 'gaming the system' which people should be ashamed of writing. I joined back in 2009, which was hardly RfA's heyday, but other than pure trolling I'm certain I'd never imagine it to be this bad. Basically, it seems you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, unless you're one of the very lucky handful who are now promoted each year. (With apologies to TheSandDoctor, who I am using as an example, and who I have never personally encountered previously). Aiken D 22:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Don't forget that the last RFA had people flat-out reject the self-nomination, yet this RFA has people complaining that TSD sought out a third-party nominator. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 22:30, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

It's absolutely a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Candidates are expected to have lots of experience at AfD, but they can't have too much experience or have any "unnatural" experience there. Candidates are expected to be nominated by respected community members, but they aren't allowed to talk with trusted community members about whether or not they are ready. I think it all comes down to some people objecting to others "wanting" to be an admin. Their ideal RfA candidate is someone who has been around for years, edited in all areas of the project, accrued at least 30,000 edits, and then just happens to accidentally discover that adminship exists when a trusted user offers to nominate them for it. As I said on the current RfA, the saving grace here is that the majority of the community rejects that position. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 22:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

The idea for them, bizarre may be, is anyone who wants the job shouldn't get it. So, they'd rather no one willing would be one. Aiken D 22:36, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes exactly, and they ignore the fact that every admin wanted to be one or else they wouldn't have volunteered to do it. We need to continue to push back against the perception that wanting to be an admin is a bad thing, especially since we can never fully know someone's motivation for putting their name forward. If we want to avoid abusive admins, there are far better indicators - like how they interact with other editors and how they respond to criticism. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 22:40, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

To be fair, I'm not sure of the overlap between the opposers of the previous RfA you're referring to and this one. It is entirely possible that the two groups of people have effectively diametrically opposed views. That doesn't, however, negate the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, which is unfortunate. We must never let perfect get in the way of good enough. ƒirefly ( t · c · who? ) 22:38, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

We all have our standards and expectations and for me like I said in my Oppose tenure is one of them, I don't see being admin as a bad thing and If I were to put money on it I'd say I've supported more than I've opposed. – Davey2010 ^Talk 23:03, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support votes: 103 (58.9%)
• Oppose votes: 64 (36.6%)

You'd win that bet! SQL ^{Query me!} 23:12, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

It's a shame no one else put money on it could've earned a nice tenner or a fiver :), SQL Could I ask where you found that ?, Didn't even know it existed – Davey2010 ^Talk 23:25, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

@ Davey2010: - Sure, it's at https://tools.wmflabs.org/jackbot/snottywong/rfastats.html. SQL ^{Query me!} 23:26, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Brilliant thank you! :) – Davey2010 ^Talk 23:27, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

If there is such a thing as "the community" having an opinion, it seems that wanting to be an admin is bad, so we make people admins who manage to give the impression that they're really, really not looking to become an admin because they'd be good at admin stuff, but because of some other reason, like their GA's or their DYK's or their projects or portals whatever. That has lead to people preparing for adminship by making sure they have all their i's dotted and their t's crossed, and right now we have such a candidate, who's make sure to avoid all controversies and be as bland and boring as possible. There's some weird stuff in their edit history, that really wouldn't bother me if it wasn't such an overt attempt to please anyone and everyone by telling "the community" what they THINK they want to hear. Fuck all that. I don't want to hear some lame promise that they'll do something that they've never done before. I want people who make mistakes, and OWN them, for admin. I want people who will occasionally fuck up and fix their shit for admin. I want people who think they're good at adminning to run for admin. Candidates, stop trying to placate, appease and propitiate "the community". Be yourself and stop trying to please everyone. Vexations ( talk) 00:09, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

(to no one in particular) RfA is not a monolithic entity. In any community driven situation like Wikipedia, you're never going to be able to please all the people all the time. That is the inevitable situation. You can't fix it. Some people like sushi, and some people think it's disgusting. Neither is wrong or right. That doesn't stop restaurants from making sushi. A lot of people have criteria for adminship. Probably >95% (>99%?) of those criteria are purely subjective, and have no basis in research tying them to patterns observed in this set of former administrators. Nevertheless, those criteria are neither wrong nor right. RfA is a community driven process, and therefore driven by opinion. Therefore, there will always be people whose criteria we find absurd. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:16, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• I’m supporting because I find the opposes that are basically claiming 18 months tenure is too short ridiculous, but no, I think this is one of the weaker candidates we have seen in a while, and while I do hope it passes, I think the response to this RfA shows that it is not just about the numbers. The AfD thing, despite what is claimed, is a big deal: someone throwing in a rash of AfD votes that are basically one liners in March with RfA in mind is arguably disruptive (making consensus appear stronger than it is) and raises questions as to temperament: did someone actually read the articles and sourcing before !voting? If they didn’t, will they actually look at contributions before blocking or look at the arguments in a discussion before deleting? This isn’t just Ajraddatz hobby horse of “All admins want to be one!”, this actually raises issues of judgment. Re: the argument around us de facto requiring some AfD experience: sure, but we don’t require that much and we certainly don’t ask that candidates post a bunch of mindless votes one week to look good.
  Now on to my hobby horse: we need to get out of this destructive view that all candidates need to be all stars who are going to rise to RFX200 at their RfA and get 99% support. I said TSD was one of our weaker recent candidates, but honestly, I want more candidates like him to come forward: people who might not be on everyone’s radars as a future admin but who will do well with the tools and use them to better the encyclopedia. These will be RfAs that end in the 80s percent wise, BUT THAT IS OKAY! The passing percent is set at 75% for a reason: we are allowed to take risks as a community on clueful editors who might not be perfect, and we should have a discussion about them rather than a coronation, but I desperately want them to come forward. Bitching about how broken RfA is anytime one goes below 95% just discourages people from coming forward because we have this false image that all RfA should pass at that level. TonyBallioni ( talk) 15:47, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

  Agreed regarding your hobby horse; the current RfA is passing with 90% support, and that's a success story for the current system. These requests need not be - nor should be - unanimous. Candidates should feel comfortable coming forward even if they are going to pass with support ranges in the high 70s or low 80s. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 16:50, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

  It is actually healthier if support is not unanimous. Unanimous support can create a feeling that a candidate is all-round star which will eventually face the reality and can be painful.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 16:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

  Ymblanter, precisely. I do agree with Risker that we should vote based on a balanced review of the candidate; but sometimes we should also take what would be the best final outcome into consideration. It is far better to be critical now than later, as long as these concerns are valid. Alex Shih ( talk) 17:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• It is possible to convince an editor to lower their standards, but adminship should be granted solely based on the opinions raised in RfA, and if some participants have high standards, then their opinion still counts as after their own personal analysis, they have concluded that admins require a higher level of experience than generally expected by RfA participants. Esquivalience ( talk) 02:17, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

• That's one possibility. But there are also voters who feel that we already have too many admins, that the project should now be in maintenance mode, or that declining candidates will prompt RfA reform. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:24, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  Other userrights mostly have an agreed criteria that we use to determine who to grant them to, and people can use to decide whether to apply for the userright. Adminship doesn't have any defined criteria and without that then technically almost any !vote is valid however bizarre the criteria. I doubt we could get consensus to fully define a criteria for RFA, but perhaps we could get consensus to set parts of the criteria such as tenure and unautomated edit count. Ϣere SpielChequers 06:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  Too many admins for what? Are any of these people themselves admins? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:49, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, it is baffling. There are so many admin tasks now, lots of flak if you get something wrong and very rarely any thanks for getting things right. Deb ( talk) 07:34, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  That sounds like my experience doing volunteer development for wikipedia ;) — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 09:29, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  I have seen "too many admins" opposes in the past. Thankfully I think they are rare, at a quick glance I couldn't actually see one in the current RFA. What I did notice is that sdmins were more supportive than non admins: 41 - 2 as opposed to 80 - 12 (and I think it gets stronger if "mild" or "weak" votes are given less weight). Does anyone know if this is a general pattern of the admins being keener to replenish our ranks than the non admins are to see our ranks replenished? Ϣere SpielChequers 15:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  I'd be curious about this as well. Anecdotally, it seems likely, but I can imagine a number of confounding issues in any analysis:

  1. Sysops are by nature more likely to be aware of and interact with a given candidate who has been active in various administrative areas
  2. Sysops are by nature more aware of and involved in the RfA process, so are more likely to participate
  3. Watchlist notification brings in more folks who might not otherwise have been aware
  4. If support is high (say >90%), I'd imagine folks coming in after day 5 or so are more likely to support than go against the tide
  5. It's possible sysops are more likely to take a risky !vote one way or another

  I'm sure there are some others beyond these off the top of my head. Regardless, I think it'd be interesting to look at. At least in theory, it shouldn't be too hard to parse. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 15:15, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  I think it is definitely the case that existing admins are more likely to support new candidates for a number of reasons. And we should also not rule out the possibility that some of the opposers are simply jealous and resentful because they are not part of what they see as an elite group. In many cases, these are people who have chosen to steer clear of adminship because they fear failure and find it easier to criticise others than to put themselves in the firing line. The number of times I've been told "You're an admin, you should know better", by people who have never tried it! Deb ( talk) 19:46, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  @ WereSpielChequers and Amorymeltzer: So, I did a thing. It turns out that, this year at least, it's a general trend that admins are more likely to support a RfA - with the notable exception of this one. So perhaps it's because admins understand better who would be a good admin, which makes sense when you think about it. ansh 666 04:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

  Thank you, I was also curious for this data. Don’t think it bears on the theory you propose though. That idea may be true but to demonstrate it we would at least need a variable measuring admin quality (perhaps, who had been desysopped would be one possible approximation, although there are confounding variables at play there...) and then compare whether admins were more likely than other editors to have opposed the originally successful RfAs. And we’ve no way of knowing whether RfAs that didn’t pass would have in fact made bad sysops. Innisfree987 ( talk) 06:00, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

  I see your point. Perhaps, it's that admins understand better who is likely to pass RfA. It'd be interesting to go back and look at other close RfAs from previous years and see if the admin stats reflect the results the same way as this year's do so far, but I've had enough of numbers for the night. Another interesting thing that I noted, which Amory kind of touches on too, admins do seem to go neutral far less than non-admins except in very borderline cases - in this data set, only GMG and Pbsouthwood had significant amounts of admin neutrals (though to be fair there probably aren't enough neutrals in general to make a definitive statistical statement). ansh 666 06:53, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

  Thanks for this, definitely an interesting set to look at. I like to think that rather than knowing who would pass or be good, it's that sysops know it really is NBD. That plus some imposter syndrome, I'm sure ("Wow, if I'm an admin they definitely should be"). ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 10:19, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

  I just went through close RfAs in 2016 and it kind of quashes any trends other than perhaps the original (admins tend to support more). I'm going to do 2017 now, which will include a few not-so-close ones both ways, but I don't think it will be too different. Of course, my methodology isn't really that sound (counting by hand using admin highlighter, so it doesn't account for newer admins or desysoppings), but I didn't expect it to be particularly useful in the first place anyways. ansh 666 21:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

• (responding to Hawkeye7) I think the data shows that we will either (A) be forced into a maintenance mode, (B) forced into dramatically easing RfA standards, or (C) devising a system that largely replaces the need for administrators. More likely is a hybrid of all three. To some extent, that has begun to happen already. The reality; while the number of active administrators has remained steady for quite some time now, the overall number of administrators has been in decline for seven years. On average over the last five years, the admin pool has net decreased by 38 admins per year. That's 2013-17. This year, we've not yet reached the half way point, and we're already down 35, on track for losing 78 administrators net this year. Is the sky falling? No, but the current pattern is unsustainable over the long term. How many active administrators do we need to keep the project alive? Hard to quantify. Right now at 540, it's enough. Is half that enough? A third? A tenth? We don't know. Solutions must be put in place. Reacting, rather than anticipating, is not the way to go. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:42, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

• The last quarter of 2005 is well before I started editing, but it rather stands out as an unusual time at RFA Wikipedia:RFA by month. I remember one of the veterans of that era explaining that they did a big recruitment drive for admins because of some forthcoming change that they thought meant they needed more. We have rather more editors today who save over 100 edits per month than we did in 2005. I'm pretty sure that if our admin decline turned into crisis mode we would appoint a large batch of lightly considered admins and most of them would do just fine. I'd prefer us to steer our way out of the situation in a more sensible way, and I haven't given up on fixing the RFA problem, but I find it puts things into proportion to think that if things really go wrong, we once had a smaller community appoint 170 admins in one quarter. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:26, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
• There are enough admins working in some areas. I would love it if more admins worked in other (hint, hint: AE) areas. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:46, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

You don't want me working in AE - I'd snow close everything as "Storm in a teacup. Go and play outside." Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:03, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I DO want you there because of that attitude! Only Floq said it even shorter: " No foul, play on". -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:21, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't get the too many admins argument, because the added risk of giving admin rights is fairly low. However, all arguments based on standards should be counted unless they are so ridiculous that they seem like trolling. Other user groups have specific criteria because community consensus is quite simple with regards to those rights. Policy is the codification of community consensus, but adminship standards have no easy codification, because of the number of skills required to be a suitable candidate, and thus wildly varying and complicated standards. Esquivalience ( talk) 22:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

There is no assume Good Faith and that is being WP:NETPOSITIVE with little chance of abuse of tools will not ensure a successful RFA unlike before 2010.The only real concern has been really if someone becomes an admin it is permanent, it would not be possible to move remove her or him without drama that is also only if they misused there tools openly though Arbcom. Those offering themselves for recall are gentleman admins not the ones who cause real problem. Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 23:11, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

You say this in the middle of an RfA with 90% support that is clearly going to pass. The system works for the most part and most qualified candidates will pass. Also to the point made above: existing admins in my experience are much more likely to support a candidate. TonyBallioni ( talk) 18:11, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

There has been a significant drop in candidates running for a RFA at the peak in 1 month November 2007 103 editors run for RFA with 56 successful and 47 unsuccessful candidacies. Since Jan 2015 there have been 82 unsuccessful candidates and 62 promotions that is over 3 years till date and if we exclude WP:NOTNOW and WP:SNOW candidates it much much less.Editors willing to run for RFA has come down significantly after 2010 the main reason is many find the atmosphere not so good to run that is the reason for the fall in admin numbers .Further in nearly 6 months (15 days to go) only 10 people have run for RFA so far this year 2018 (out of which 3 are NOTNOW and SNOW) only 7 people having a chance of becoming an admin have even tried out of which 5 (4 + the current candidate) may become admins . Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 18:44, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

And keeping screaming about how horrible the atmosphere to run is when its the best it has been in years certainly doesn't help the problem. I'm not saying it is perfect, only that "RfA is broken because everyone thinks it is so horrible as to not run so lets wail and moan about how horrible it is so people don't run!" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. TonyBallioni ( talk) 19:22, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Citation needed on the self-fulfilling prophesy claim. I for one find it to be one of the only sanity-saving bits of RfA, that at least sometimes people are willing to call out how bad it can get. Innisfree987 ( talk) 07:14, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Having just gone through RfA, I can say that I did not find it anywhere near as horrible as it is commonly made out to be. Being opposed by someone for a good reason is only fair, most of the community was remarkably pleasant about both support and opposition, and when someone opposes for what appear to be irrational or unimportant reasons, one can take that as a feature of a diverse community with a wide range of members, some of whom are better balanced than others. There is generally someone who will point out the lack of relevance of the more extreme or obscure opposes, and I have some confidence that the closers are steady enough to recognise the difference betrween a good argument and a bad one. I think that the general community is mostly friendly, supportive and polite, with a few slightly obsessive members, who will always be with us, as they are often very good at building an encyclopaedia. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

For sure Peter, if all RfAs resembled yours, I would be hailing the forum as the model of all of what all of our boards discussing editor conduct should aspire to! Alas for the project, but in what I can only understand as quite a testament to you, you drew a totally different level of courtesy and constructiveness than I've ever seen before (participating in the last ~30 or so). Would be delighted if it sticks--culture changes are a funny business, maybe it will--but it would very much be a change. Innisfree987 ( talk) 16:23, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

We are currently having wailing and gnashing of teeth over an RfA with 90% support that is going to pass. By any standard this has not been a rough RfA (even if I personally think some of the opposes are particularly out of left-field.) When 90% support is being talked about as a negative then you set up the idea that even success stories are failures, which turns people off. TonyBallioni ( talk) 11:20, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Bell rings, dog salivates? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:01, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

How has adminship changed in the last decade?

I keep seeing unsubstantiated claims that adminship has changed “vastly” in the past decade. How accurate is this, exactly, and how do these “vast” changes equate to what some believe to be a whole extra year or more of “experience” needed in order to qualify for the job? It would be interesting to hear from admins who were promoted in 2008 or earlier. Aiken D 15:04, 16 June 2018 (UTC) Just to be clear, I’m wondering how the day to day job of being an adminship has changed - is it vastly more difficult, has your approach needed to change over the past decade? If so, how and why? If not, why the absurdly high standards? Aiken D 15:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

From my experience (my RFA was in October 2008), RFA has definitely changed over the last decade but I'm still figuring out how adminship has. Real life forced me to radically cut back my activity in 2010/2011 and I only returned to more active editing beginning of last year, so I basically started almost fresh 1.5 years ago. Yet, most knowledge I had from back in 2010/2011 still applied. If anything, the unbundling of tools that happened the last ten years means that there are slightly less jobs you actually need admins for. Most policies have not really changed since 2008 as well, except minor modifications (CSD for example is basically the same as it was in 2008 except for the addition of A10, A11 and G13 afaict). I, too, would be interested in knowing how exactly the wiki-world got so much more complicated that people now are expected (by some) to have 3+ years of experience to pass RFA. Regards So Why 15:21, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Per admins like Alex Shih - who basically stopped editing for 10 years shortly after becoming admin in 2007 with 9 months of activity - and came back and did fine, even serving on arbcom (which its rules are supposedly part of why adminship has become super-duper complicated), those claims seem unlikely to me Galobtter ( pingó mió) 15:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I passed in 09, and didn't get involved in RFA till some time in 08. But I have in the past looked at many old RFAS in order to understand the stats. Before Twinkle, effective vandalfighters needed Rollback, and before Rollback was unbundled in early 08 there really were admins who passed RFA on the basis that they were "good vandalfighters". Since the unbundling of Rollback "good vandalfighter" on its own has been insufficient to pass RFA. Which is ironic because one of our most basic needs for admins is for vandalfighters who will block the vandals. Of course the unbundling of Rollback is now over a decade ago and arguably adminship hasn't changed so much in the last decade. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:43, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

This seems correct - based on unreliable recollection, perhaps 50% of Stone Age RFAs had "good vandalfighter" as their main argument - and not being a "good vandalfighter" in some cases led to opposes. Johnbod ( talk) 15:51, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd third this. I'm in the class of '09, and RfAs have definitely become much less about antivandal work, but that's okay! To build on what WSP and SoWhy said, beyond even just the proliferation of twinkle/huggle/stiki/rollback, a lot of things have actually changed in the past decade-plus to devolve tasks or prevent the need for them: AbuseFilter, pending changes, template-protection and extended-protection, pagemover. Besides, ClueBot only came online, what, mid-2007? I bet a lot of the reasons RfA or adminship have changed since before 2008 could probably be explained by ClueBot, the AbuseFilter, and new protection options. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 16:13, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

And these mean new admins need at least an extra year of experience? Aiken D 16:18, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think the de facto rule of at least 12 months experience came from around that era, but related to some bad apples who came through, at least one before 2008 and at least one after. The change that came from the unbundling of rollback was that "good vandalfighter" ceased to be sufficient and you had to be able to demonstrate cases where you had added reliably sourced content with inline cites. Some people have higher, a few much higher standards than that. But to get a consensus pass in the last ten and a bit years you have needed to give examples of citing content to reliable sources. I can think of at least one person who got through by citing other people's unsourced content to reliable sources (he sourced or tagged for deletion a stack of unsourced articles). But I would be surprised if we could find many exceptions of people who have passed RFA in the last ten years without demonstrating how to do an inline cite to reliable sources. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:05, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I am probably one of those anti-vandal admins mentioned above, though I severely dislike the 'fighter' term and would never use it myself. In fact I eradicated it from many of our templates. Passed in '07. I still have only one accidental DYK to my name, and certainly not the slightest hint of a good or featured article. Adminship hasn't changed a great deal. Some extra buttons are available (think edit filters and granting permissions), some are no longer as necessary (think edit filters, anti-vandal bots, and long schoolblocks). Some things on balance have remained the same (think increased visibility). Some powers have been devolved from Arbcom, but in practice this doesn't really add up to a great deal because we probably could have banned you anyway. Some of the policies and processes have severely bloated so it might take longer to get the hang of things, but I see no reason to wait 3 years. You could probably still pick things up in a year or two. It is probably less necessary to be an admin because of devolved rights, but it is not less useful to have admins. My message would be that absurdly high standards have extended everywhere, from the lack of red links, to reverting additions which aren't immediately sourced, to usernames, to vandal-only accounts, to talk pages, to articles for creation, to RFA. If looking at high standards one should probably look beyond RfA, and certainly, continue to go against some of it. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:31, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think it's natural for some editors to expect longer tenure as the project grows older. Since returning to active editing, I have always had the impression that the unbundled user rights and sharp decline in the number of RfAs somehow turned RfA into closer to RfB in the old days. Alex Shih ( talk) 17:26, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that adminship has changed in scope over the last ten years away from counter-vandalism. Now that reverts are cheaper (unbundled rollback, Huggle, Cluebot, abusefilters) we don't need as many admins running around blocking vandals. I'd say that this has contributed not only to the rising standards over the years at RfA, but also a declining interest in the admin role as it changes. Counter-vandalism work was always more fun to me than what adminship has left: mindless housekeeping on the one hand, and highly-controversial dispute resolution enforcement on the other. And to depart from my usual rah rah about ridiculous standards, I can even understand looking for more experience in admins who are focused on the remaining aspects rather than the simplicity of counter-vandalism. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 17:31, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if adminship itself has changed all that much in the last decade, at least not at its core. But the creep at RFA over the last ten years has been something to behold. Wind the clock back ten years and people with 2,000 edits passed RFA with no problem. Nowadays a person with 2,000 edits get shutdown in a heartbeat. If you ask me, with the core of adminship still being blocking, protecting, deleting, etc., I see no reason why it should take five times as long to demonstrate trust now than it did then, but apparently it does - something I'm reminded of every time I read an RFA for consensus. Useight ( talk) 14:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The responses seem based on how RFA has changed, but I see that's not the question. The question is how has "being an admin" changed. To look at that we need to look at the core things admins do that non admins can't. Mainly that's block / protect / delete (and a few other bits like user rights). So the question then is has WP changed in the way the admin tools should be used in 10 years? Well, obviously community views change in terms of what fits into a specific CSD tag, or whether a 24 hour or week block is "what's right" - but fundamentally admins stop damage and remove non encyclopedic crud. That hasn't changed. This then leads us back to "do we trust an individual to use the tools wisely"; exactly why I wrote WP:NETPOS 10 (arggghhh! 10!!!) years ago. It's still as relevant an essay today as it was then - because what admins do fundamentally hasn't changed. Just my 2p Pedro :   Chat  14:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The entire site, and editorial base, and user base have changed; it's not just that adminship has. In the first decade, we had an enormous army of editors, and a much larger need for "centurions" to marshal them. We also had orders of magnitude more work to do, a less stable policy and dispute-resolution system, and a constant barrage of vandalism much higher than what we deal with now. Even the threat model has changed: WP's primary enemy isn't 12-year-olds who want to insert FUCKETTYFUCKFUCK into biology articles, it's organized, "long-game" PoV pushing, because this site is no longer a weird, and maybe doomed, geeky project, it's a world-wide resource that millions depend on daily, and trust quite a lot more. So, yes, adminship has changed along with everything else. We can hopefully get back to it "not being a big deal", probably through more unbundling, but the nature of the real threat model is that for the "dangerous" admin tools (deletion and blocking), we really do need better candidate scrutiny today than we did 10 or 15 years ago. The problem before us is that vetting candidates need not be a total drama quagmire. The problem isn't that 2,000 edits used to be good enough, it's that RfA is kangaroo court were people are judged for crap that happened 5 years ago, where they're told they have to have A amount of experience in B area (AfD, whatever), then told they're being opposed because they went and got it ("padding"); told that they need experience with "admin-ish" things, e.g. unbundled former admin tools, then told they're being opposed for "hat-collecting" the tools to get that experience. I don't have a magic-bullet solution to this problem, but some new ground rules might help, e.g. that evidence more than X number of years old will be deleted, that comments without supporting diffs will be discounted, or insert some other idea here.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Last year we had a candidate pass with only 2,370 edits, as far as I can see they have done just fine. Though I still think you need to be a truly exceptional candidate to pass with under 3,000 edits. Yes some people will oppose for very stale issues, though five years would be unusual. However for such an oppose to gain traction and come even close to derailing an RFA you really have to convince the RFA community that something about the candidate's recent behaviour shows that the five year incident is likely to recur if that person gets the bit. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:13, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Two words: "Discretionary sanctions". Applying to a wide variety and increasing amount of topic areas (e.g., post-1932 American Politics), this system gives individual admins the authorization to take actions that could previously only come from community consensus or arbcom remedies/motions. Most admins don't take part in arbitration or community sanctions enforcement but they always have the option to do so. In my opinion, the community is right in wanting to make sure editors have good judgment beyond blocking/protecting/deleting before giving them the bit as topics under discretionary sanctions often attract our most experienced and vested contributors along with the easier to deal with SPA/vandal. The fallout/reaction from blocking/restricting a 50,000+ edits contributor solely using arbcom authorization can be quite different from blocking the aforementioned SPA/vandal. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. Although "but they always have the option to do so" is surely a rehash of relentless arguments we've had here about specialist admins; about candidates saying they won't touch deletions because they don't care but people opposing "because they might" .....and we fall back into the "unbundle the tools" debate. I don't subscribe to the "oh but they might" school of thought (I might suddenly decide to get involved in transculsions on the Main Page but funny old thing, I haven't in 10 years) - however I take your point on board Neil, just don't think it's a particularly "new" argument TBH. Pedro :   Chat  15:15, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that in the early days of RfA, when it was easier to pass, a subset (not all!) of the admins from that period later proved to be people who lost the trust of the community. With DS and the like, the community now rightly pays attention to more than just simple janitorial tasks during RfA. And in the early days of ArbCom, the committee tended to be reluctant to desysop anyone. Now, it's harder to squeak through RfA, and ArbCom is reasonably efficient at dealing with problem admins. Under present trends, we are heading to where very few problem admins will slip through RfA and those that do will be dealt with pretty quickly. And I think that may lead to where fewer members of the community are worried about letting someone unqualified through RfA. In other words, I'm speculating that difficult RfA standards may prove self-correcting over time, and RfA may actually become a little easier in the future. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:23, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

In the long run, you're probably right about the homeostasis argument. The project will find a balance. However, the pace is, frankly, glacial. It's been 11 years since WT:RFA/R and 7 years since WP:RFA2011. By 2011, we were at 5000 edits. By 2014, 10,000. I get the sense it's now plateaued, but only fairly recently, and no sign of a fall yet. If you're hoping for significant movement, I'd be surprised if it took less than 10 more years. Meanwhile, we lose admins to attrition. ∰Bellezzasolo✡  Discuss 22:24, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, speaking of homeostasis, despite the low RfA numbers we have exactly the same number of active admins we had two years ago. Dekimasu よ! 01:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Depends what you call an 'active' admin. The generally used criterion is a farce. At a rough estimate accotding to this script, it looks as if around 95% of the logged admin actions is done by about 20 admins. On another note, while I was researching for something related, I was surprised at the number of admins who practically retired shorty after being given the bit . I'll let others hypothesise on that. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 23:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

That part about getting the bit and then practically retiring strikes me as quite interesting. (I could say facetiously that it makes the thought of RfA a lot more attractive.) I'm curious: is there any trend along the lines of those quick dropouts coming out of long-ago RfAs, versus those from recent RfAs? I'm wondering whether there might be any kind of positive or negative correlation with RfAs getting harder. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:55, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I agree with you on the criterion, but at least it is an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm not sure the script's results paint a very full picture of what's going on, either: some admin actions take longer (and more effort) than others, and some admin activities do not result in admin actions (declining speedy deletion, deciding not to block, closing a contentious RfC, fulfilling edit requests, etc.). Anyway, what happens if you run that script for a period 2, 5, or 10 years ago? Dekimasu よ! 19:34, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

2018-05-21 to 2018-06-21:

• 1000 admin actions puts you between #18 and #19,
• 500 puts you between #31 and #32,
• 175 puts you between #68 and #69,
• 50 puts you in a 2-way tie for #148 on the script list.
• 10 is a 5-way tie for #241.

2016-05-21 to 2016-06-21:

• 1000 admin actions puts you between #15 and #16,
• 500 puts you between #36 and #37,
• 175 puts you between #83 and #84,
• 50 puts you between #145 and #146 on the script list.
• 10 is an 4-way tie for #240.

2013-05-21 to 2013-06-21:

• 1000 admin actions puts you between #19 and #20,
• 500 puts you between #33 and #34,
• 175 puts you between #77 and #78,
• 50 puts you at #136 on the script list.
• 10 is an 11-way tie for #256. Dekimasu よ! 19:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

• I don't know where this perception of increased standards comes from. Apart from some occasional ridiculous votes by clueless users or even trolls, and our resident serial opposer, AFAICS (and WSC has the actual stats tucked away somewhere) that the majority of truly active admins were awarded their bits 7 - 8 years ago or longer. In fact, compared to the over 2,000 admins that have been created, extremely few have had their tools taken away for being naughty thus reinforcing my argument that the criteria that were generally applied at least since 2009 when I started watching RfAs were perfectly sufficient to measure competency, trust, and maturity, and there is no reason why they shouldn't be today.

In fact, @ Tryptofish and Pedro:, if anything, the Dec 2015 reforms, while they didn't make RfC a less thorny place, have actually made it easiert to pass and users are running the gauntlet and surviving it today who wouldn't have done before. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 00:13, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Most of the admins we've ever appointed were in the five years 2004-2008. We have only appointed 395 admins since the start of 2009, 9 and half years ago, and even if all of them were still active (they aren't), simple maths tells you that a lot of our active admins have been admins for longer than that. As for our very active admins, on some measures this site is more dependent on being the hobby of one London pensioner than is healthy. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:47, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I've been saying that for years. Hypothetically speaking, maybe it's time to start rotating out, admins who have been here for many years. I proposed changes to a page many many years back that a combination of establishment administrators and zealous users jumped all over me for proposing...now I find that not only are most of those users no longer active, some have gotten into trouble and many of the changes I had proposed ended up happening ANYWAY. Furthermore, I was a victim of a zealous admin who has since been de-sysopped in a dramatic fashion for particularly dramatic abuses of his power. I sometimes feel that a few users owe me a massive apology, but what can I do? At least I'm back here editing and I love it so I'll take it. EnglishEfternamn _*t/c* 18:18, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you just have to suck it up like the rest of us. :-/ WP badly needs the ability to remove invalid admin actions from the log, but we've been saying that for over a decade. We actually lose productive editors (who are more valuable to the project than administratively-productive admins who are not productive editors) over it, but the community doesn't yet care enough to fix it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:55, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Well that's exactly what these guys told me to do...in everything but those words, or they would make a further example of me. I feel like I can't even mention one name, I worry I'll get in hot water again. I'm not calling myself a valuable editor, but WP lost me for years over it, so yea, people do leave over this stuff. They do get a bad taste put in their mouths by the Wikigarchy. I only came when I got the idea that I sort of had a chance of being let back in. I did do a lot of things wrong, anybody will find that if they look through my contribs. But so did a lot of the people whose shadow I found myself standing in, and the hammer flung down on a lot of them in the several years I was gone. I'm of the "oppose most of the time" camp in terms of RfA's. Maybe I should support more often in favour of taken new people in. EnglishEfternamn _*t/c* 23:19, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The community's not entirely crazy to take something like this "shut up and take it" approach, to minimize the potential for people to go to wikiwar to "reclaim their honor" and that sort of thing; I've elaborated on this at Wikipedia:Advice for hotheads#You cannot argue Wikipedia into capitulation. However, we need some balance. The simplest way to get it is to remove overturned (i.e. bad, not expired) sanctions from all logs. I won't hold my breath for that outcome, however.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Followup discussion

I think the bulk of this thread is more relevant for WT:RFA than the original page it was posted on.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:43, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW it is my opinion, and has been for some time, that WP:NOBIGDEAL is de-facto WP:HISTORICAL. It hasn't been repealed de-jure. But as a matter of practical reality it's a dead letter. Before everyone jumps on me, I would suggest perusing the last eight years or so of RfAs. - Ad Orientem ( talk) 00:21, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

  Part of the point of what some of us were discussing in this thread and in The Signpost responses is that there's clearly a way to get back to adminship not being a big deal.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:56, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

  You should copy the signpost discussion here too. SQL ^{Query me!} 04:05, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  Nah; it's appropriate to continue discussing an old Signpost article in its own discussion section. The only reason I relocated the material here from an RfA's talk page is the weirdness, maybe even impropriety, of continuing to use an individual's RfA talk page to discuss what is/isn't wrong with RfA and how to fix it. :-) It seemed especially iffy given that the RfA was a narrow one; i.e., it might seem like questioning of the result and the 'crat process that lead to it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:15, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  Well, there's been barely any discussion, and no real comments in a while (and it's extremely odd to copy discussions in this fashion). So it feels a lot like being harassed for supporting on my end. SQL ^{Query me!} 00:46, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

  @ SQL: Argh, that wasn't the intent at all. Just to inject the bullet points and some discussion about them into this page so they archive here and can be found with searches. I didn't think about the fact that it leads by mentioning you, and that it might seem as if it's about you rather than about the general "no big deal" topic and community perception of it; sorry about that. I'll put a hatnote on it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

• Wouldn't a link to the talkpage in question be better than dumping multiple pages of discussion here? SQL ^{Query me!} 00:59, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

  I thought not, because little of the material is specific to that RfA, and there's no community point in discussing "future of RfA" matters at the talk page of a closed individual nomination. Also, WP isn't short on disk space.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:55, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

• My take is that the idea that the granting of adminship is no big deal is something no longer accepted by the community – but the idea that having admin privileges does not make the editor a "big deal", as in someone whose opinions about content should count more than the opinions of "regular" editors, is something that continues to have wide acceptance, and is probably the reason why there hasn't been more in the way of efforts to have it marked as historical. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

  Yeah, the two-way nature of the phrase probably does have a lot to do with it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:36, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

• As a matter of practical reality, most of us know not to argue with admins about content. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:12, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

  Depends what you mean by argue. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:46, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

It also depends on the admin. You can argue about content with me until the cows come home, as long as I can argue back. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

No I can't. -- Laser brain (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I could be arguing in my spare time.... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:41, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

You got my point. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:32, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

• The bigness of the deal is in the eye of the beholder. If people insist on considering it a big deal, then to them it is. Logic does not necessarily come into it. "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up!!!" Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 18:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
• Of course adminship is a big deal - for those who want it for something to brag about in the schoolyard... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 23:10, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

  Do you think anyone going through RfA for that reason is ever successful? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:53, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

  Sure. It wouldn't take much of an act. And it would account for the "admins who disappear shortly after getting adminship" effect. Once you've beat the boss monster, the game loses its appeal.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:34, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

  Simulating a good editor for a fairly protracted period seems a lot of work for a rather dubious distinction, but I concede it is plausible and should not be too difficult. At least Wikipedia gets a couple of years of good work out of it, so a net gain. Now if there was some way to get the trolls and vandals onto that bandwagon we would really be getting somewhere.... · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:52, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

  To quote Ernest Shackleton "Life to me is the greatest of all games..." As long as they play the game well, and by its rules, we will be none the wiser that they view it that way. Monty ₈₄₅ 03:08, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

  The long-term danger is people being on good behavior until a pack of them of like mind get admin status and act as a coordinated WP:POVRAILROAD tagteam. Can and probably will happen. E.g., we know that the government of Pakistan is or at least was trying to manipulate our content about the Indian subcontinent, and that various commercial interests have long had shill editors. We also know that Facebook was severely manipulated during the Trump campaign by organized teams. Given WP's importance as an information source, we should expect this sort of WP:FACTION behavior and be prepared to counter it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:10, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

  I assume this is one of the reasons why the de facto tenure requirements have increased, and how some of the least contentious candidates are very very longterm editors. Ϣere SpielChequers 12:34, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

• I cot'd the above quoted section. ^{cinco de} L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:18, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
• For something that's not a big deal, adminship here is certainly treated like a very big deal. Lots of questions need to be answered, (inconsistent) criteria need to be met, a lot of competence and trustworthiness has to be demonstrated before someone can be given the bit/mop/whatever. If it really were "no big deal", everyone (or at least every user with at least a small amount of experience) would be an admin. Adminship seems like being a politician in that people always disparage and harass you because of how you use your power. But a) admins don't have real power (i.e. in the real world) and b) they don't get paid. It makes you wonder why anyone would volunteer for adminship. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 01:15, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

  One might say that Category:Not an admin user templates exists for a reason. >;-)  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

• Of course it's a big deal. When I was a kid in the days of steam, all the boys wanted to be train drivers. Now they either want to be astronauts or Wikipedia admins. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 18:09, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

  I would definitely want to be the latter if I was stuck in space for a long stint. Would keep my mind off the vast radiation-spewing vacuum trying to kill me.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:06, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

I was surprised to see this page "red linked". I can imagine several reasons for turning it blue. Tell me why I am wrong about this, or perhaps right?-- John Cline ( talk) 09:41, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

What reasons are you imagining for this WikiProject to exist? Iffy★ Chat -- 11:09, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

And what do you think could be discussed within such a WikiProject that can't be discussed here? Regards So Why 11:17, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree. There would be a level of redundancy between the two. Additionally, while not directly related, we have (the somewhat inactive) Wikipedia:WikiProject Reforming Wikipedia if the idea was to use the WikiProject to discuss changing RfA. Anarchyte ( work | talk) 11:23, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

This is the project. Until the recent articles in The Signpost there hadn't been a comment for weeks. I fail to see how another talk page would generate more discussion. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 13:01, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I think that if we've gotten along without it for 17 years, it probably isn't necessary.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 13:45, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I am very biased for wikiprojects, yet i can say there is no use for this wikiproject. Everybody knows the current (this) venue, no need to move/split it. Everything is working fine for now, or "no need". It can be thought in furure when it is needed. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe we could make a nice shiny Portal instead? Nick Moyes ( talk) 14:50, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

I have started a discussion about the new interface administrator user group at WP:VPM#RFC: Interface administrators and transition. Please take a moment to review and/or comment. -- Izno ( talk) 14:50, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Not so long ago, there was an RfA. The candidate was an SPI clerk, and yet one vote said "concerned about his lack of activity in SPI". Could somebody please tell me which RfA was it? —usernamekiran (talk) 15:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't remember that comment, but you're probably talking about Sro23. -- MelanieN ( talk) 16:09, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I thought that was the one where they got asked if they were going to request CU, and it got taken to the talkpage. -- Emir of Wikipedia ( talk) 20:09, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I think Ivanvector and Vanjagenije were also SPI clerks before their RfAs, so you might check those too. ansh 666 19:54, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

• @ Usernamekiran: You might be thinking of the initial reason listed in Oppose #1 in my RfB last summer? Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Salvidrim!#Oppose Ben · Salvidrim!  ✉ 20:43, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

  Yup, it was Ben's RfB. I went through Ivan's, two of GAB's, and Vanjagenije's RfAs. Then it hit me it was Ben. But I couldnt find his RfA. By the time it dawned on me that it was an RfB and not RfA, I was off the wikipedia. When I came back to look for Ben's RfB, he had already posted n pinged me here. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

  My first (and only for now) RfA had its share of controversy and silly opposes as well -- at least one oppose for a NAC prompted like half a dozen users to support on the basis of the same closure. And then I broke 3RR before the RfA closed like a big dumb oaf. I've always had a knack for over-optimist self-sabotage it seems! :p Ben · Salvidrim!  ✉ 21:03, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

  Though now I guess you piqued my curiosity -- why were you looking for that specific oppose? ;) Ben · Salvidrim!  ✉ 21:04, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

  @ Salvidrim!: to be honest, i came across your RfB after it was close. But when I saw that oppose, I found it very funny because it had come from a "not inexperienced user". And when I saw the first oppose in JBH's RfA, it reminded me of "that" RfA; and wanted to read that oppose and replies again. But I couldnt find it, and it made me want to read it even more lol. On totally other note, i dont know why but i like to go through old stuff (online/IRL/antiques/vintage stuff literally anything old). Thats how I had come across this gem too. Sorry, my reason must have not been as interesting as you were expecting it to be. I apologise for getting your curiosity ignited. —usernamekiran (talk) 00:02, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

The subject of temporary adminship came up at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Pbsouthwood. Posting here because it is a broiader issue and discussuon is likely to wander off-topic to that nomination. A couple of editors opined that this would be a worthwhile thing to do. I know it was discussed in the past with reference to non-admins being elected to ArbCom. Aparently, it has been done for WMF staff? I don't see any real obstacles to it. WP:Administrators says Administrators may request that their access to administrative tools be removed at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard. There is nothing that says that removal it cannot be requesated in advance. Anyone have any thoughts? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

• This is something that other projects allow. I would likely oppose it on en.wiki because I think we need more regular admins that aren't temp or limited, and think that in the culture of this project, it would likely just make most people less likely to try for regular adminship. TonyBallioni ( talk) 22:04, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

On the other hand, many of our admins go inactive after a year, so if it's easier to become an admin with a term limit then the net result is that we will end up with more admins, not less. Brad v 22:08, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I highly doubt that, and part of the advantage of the all-or-nothing approach we have is that it allows people to branch out into new areas and help where they can.

Also, adminship hit it's low point in October 2016 with 516 active admins (see Wikipedia:List of administrators/stat table). Our median number of active admins per month has been 550 since 2015. Our median from January 2018 to April 2018 was 542 active admins, lower than the three year median, but not by much. 2017 was also the first year in a decade where we had more active administrators than the previous year. Active admins is staying relatively stable in the 500-600/mo range, and I don't think we're in danger of losing that.

We don't have an adminship crisis (the graph that everyone likes showing puts it in context of the early days of the project, when a lot more was done by hand and the project was a much different place). I do think we need more people to pass RfA, but I also don't think our standards are too high currently, and while I think the current RfA should pass, if it doesn't, a lot of it will likely have to do with how the candidate presented himself more than anything else. I don't think the solution to getting more RfAs is to dole out the bit on a limited basis. As I mentioned above, I think it is to engage more potential candidates in the process (and a high rate of "not interested" doesn't make it less of a solution.) TonyBallioni ( talk) 22:38, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

It isn't true that many admins go inactive after a year, rather that hundreds have continued to volunteer their time for a decade or more. There have only been 393 Admins appointed since the start of 2009, and we have over 500 active admins. When we do appoint an admin they usually stay around a long long time. Ϣere SpielChequers 17:18, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't totally follow, but I think is broadly true. Rapidly disappearing admins were I think much more a feature of the 2000s, when it was much easier. Johnbod ( talk) 17:40, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

• On first blush I like the idea. Having a set limit might let people feel comfortable to support a wide range of candidates. Someone who does a good job for a limited time would have an easy time showing they would use the tools responsibly in a permanent manner. I do worry about second order effects. Like would there be less disincentive for someone to "go rouge" knowing they are already going to be de-sysopped? Would it become impossible for a first time RfA to pass and would voters then not really relax their standards for the temporary bit so now we would ask people to go through still a contentious process for a temporary position thus meaning even fewer people would want to do it? Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 22:20, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Barkeep49 I would likely oppose it for that reason, I'd be worried that someone would "go rouge" for that reason. If that happens then it's more damaging than doing good.-- 5 albert square ( talk) 22:31, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

As long as they aren't going rogue, a bit of rouge might be a good thing for our admins. -- RL0919 ( talk) 22:39, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

On first blush I like the idea. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:26, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I can see both arguments, but it remains true that there are a lot of beansy things a sysop can do. Nothing too permanent, but with some malicious planning, there could be a lot of disruption. We do need to always be aware of that. More likely, there is nothing currently stopping anyone from just saying "nah" short of ArbCom. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 01:09, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

• I'm mostly opposed to a strict time-limited admin "option", if you are able to be a "full admin" for a time - then you don't really need a forced expiration. I would be generally supportive of a "Limited Administrator" type option for special-use cases, etc. (ala the meta method). Technically, there is no access limit (so would still need a community review as it allows unlogged viewing of things only admins can view) but socially the limited admins would be limited to using the tools for specific purposes for a requested time frame (up to say 1 year). Coupled with "community recall" and/or "bureaucrat discretion" to remove access if the limits are breached - I think it would allow the bar to be lowered for editors that want to temporarily help with a special task. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:00, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
• I was typing out a response agreeing with Xaosflux, particularly regarding limited adminship, but it would be interesting to try an RfA replacement that followed a review - trial - review model. An initial community review at the start of the trial period (and maybe some specific measures of evaluation rather than a free-for-all), followed by a three or six month trial period, followed by another community review at the end to determine if the candidate should keep the bit. Such a model would be successful to the extent that it a) lowered the initial review bar to become a trial admin and b) showed the community that trial admins can be successful with the tools while having significantly less experience than currently demanded of RfA candidates. Normally I wouldn't be a fan of temporary adminship for the reasons stated by Xaosflux above. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 00:05, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• There is little need for temporary adminship, because it stems from a misguided belief that some candidates will turn rogue or incompetent after X months and screw up the wiki. Esquivalience ( talk) 00:37, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• I was thinking about it in respect to special events like the Paralympic Games, for which they would be required for about three months. I believe that WMF would still require a community process akin to an RfA. However, I don't know if this would make them more likely to be granted. I was thinking of it from the other end, of people being more likely to request access for a special purpose. We would have felt more secure in Rio having an admin on hand, but I couldn't guarantee that the toolset would actually be required. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:40, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
• Not the same idea, but administrator trials, e.g. gaining consensus to grant someone the tools for six or so months then having a community evaluation of their use of the tools (i.e. whether or not they should retain them) at the end, might be something to consider. — Godsy ^{( TALK} _CONT) 01:39, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

  Frankly, it borders on some kind of mass insanity that we haven't been doing it that way all along.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

• I wrote up an idea for an op-in recall procedure with teeth Jbhunley/Essays/Binding community recall. The main issue is that the 'teeth' are based on the voluntary acceptance of an enforceable CBAN. There has been some question about whether a voluntary editing restriction is enforceable, if not the idea will not work. I brought the question up at WP:AN#Question on enforceability of voluntary editing restrictions but have not gotten any feedback.
  This type of opt-in recall / enforceable conditions may be a useful way to address some of these issues within the framework of existing rules. Jbh ^Talk 01:49, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • That's a poison pill though. Any admin candidates who don't agree with this recall procedure isn't likely to garner enough support % to become an admin. In essence, this "voluntary editing restriction" isn't so "voluntary" after all. RfA is already hard enough to pass, and adding additional restrictions will deter even more who want to take a run at RfA. OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 14:51, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
• I am concerned that temporary adminship would compel users who are not so overwhelmingly popular as to have a sizable cushion in RfA to run on the pretext of their bit being temporary, even if they have an interest in serving indefinitely. — Compassionate727 ^{( T· C)} 16:49, 2 June 2018 (UTC) Modified at 17:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• I would support a sort of "test" for RfA candidates that have < 75% and > 65% Support !votes that would be one month long and then they could re-run for Adminship. L293D ( ☎ •  ✎) 17:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• I'm sorry I brought this up at the RfA; I definitely wasn't proposing we do this. It's a terrible idea likely to result in no "direct to full adminship" situations, as the community will require the intermediate step. Further, any admin who works in controversial areas wouldn't be elected to a full term, so we'd find our admins staying far away from the areas that need the most attention. ~ Rob₁₃ ^Talk 17:26, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• I oppose the idea of time-limited adminship or temporary adminship. The bottom line for supporting at RfA is “do I trust this person with the tools?” That question is not going to have a different answer if the granting of tools is temporary or permanent. I really can’t imagine a !voter saying “I don’t really think this person should be an admin, but what the heck, it’s only for a year.” Someone who wants the tools for a limited purpose can say so at their RfA; they can go to BN at the end of that time and request removal, but I don’t think it would or should be an enforceable contract, or worse yet a bot-enforced pulling of the plug. And we should evaluate the person as we always have: whether we think they will be a good administrator. -- MelanieN ( talk) 18:18, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• Agreed with MelanieN in the entirety. Can't support this at all. — Javert2113 ( talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 21:20, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• No. Per TonyBallioni and MelanieN.  —  Amakuru ( talk) 21:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I think you had meant to use Template:U there and forgotten the "u", so I added it for you. — Compassionate727 ^{( T· C)} 22:23, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

    Oh, thanks, good catch! Although I reckon Tony and Melanie are eminent enough Wikipedians that they should have the honour of their own templates named after them...  —  Amakuru ( talk) 22:28, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

    • Compassionate727, If I recall right, adding "u" after forgetting it the first time does not succeed in pinging the editors, unless you sign again. Lourdes 00:45, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

      • Well, whatever the history, I did get the ping. Thanks for the kind words, Amakuru. -- MelanieN ( talk) 03:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

True, with respect to pings not working if you don't re-sign. But Compassionate727 signed their edit where they corrected the template, so the pings would work but they would read as coming from Compassionate727 instead of Amakuru. </technicalpedantry> Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 12:39, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

• I think time limited adminship would discourage candidates for regular adminshship from applying. I don't believe that further unbundling of the tools or single purpose adminships would be a benefit to the admin workload. The actual number of truly active admins appears to cope with any minor backlogs that occasionally occur. The number of admins who are desyoped 'for cause' is actually infrequent and any concerns of abuse of tools is, IMO, basically scaremongering. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 11:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
• A very poor idea. If an editor only wants to become an admin for a short while, then they can simply hand back the mop. Giant Snowman 12:50, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
• Disagree - I would also imagine that disruption from an admin is more likely to appear earlier on rather than later. An increased ability to remove admins for cause would make more sense Nosebagbear ( talk) 13:49, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
• I don't think the concept of requesting administrative privileges for a specific task, bounded either by time or a fixed list of work times, will discourage regular requests, because I don't believe there are many applicable situations (perhaps I'm overlooking some scenarios?). On the other hand, though, since there aren't many relevant cases, I don't see a pressing need to introduce any specific changes to the RfA process for this. Applicants can of course make whatever pledges they wish in their statement, including criteria for their relinquishing administrative privileges. isaacl ( talk) 15:57, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
• No proposed changes to the RfA process, whether good or bad, are likely to pass. That's just the way it is. Lepricavark ( talk) 19:21, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Trial run adminship?

• I understand the opposition to adminship for a specific purpose over a limited duration, but what about a user applying for an admin 'trial run' via RfA? (e.g. RfA candidates choosing this option would still need to demonstrate trustworthiness and competence, but would only be applying for a few months trial run with the admin tools, after which they would undertake a second reconfirmation RfA for permanent adminship based on how they did in the trial). One of the issues with Adminship is that it isn't particularly easy to demonstrate competence with the tools unless you have the tools. This might be an option that reduces the risk of rogue admins, and at the same time let the community be a bit less conservative and appoint more admins (given that the candidate isn't asking for a lifetime appointment in the first RfA), and at the same time this will give more options to candidates wishing to apply. This wouldn't require any changes to the current system, the user would just specify that this is what they were applying for when they ran their RfA, and users could also simply run for Permanent Adminship as normal. If it turns out to be a useful system, !votes in the future might 'Oppose' but support a trial run instead, leading to editors that otherwise would have failed being given a trial run instead. I'm happy to be a guinea pig if you guys want to try it out as I intend to apply soon anyway. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)} 00:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I actually like this idea. Lourdes 00:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I dislike the idea but I'm willing to support it for the reasons I gave above. If it is done, it should be a separate process from RfA IMO. Set some low formal requirements for the trial adminship request (5,000 edits, 6 months experience) and allow for a brief period of community comment to identify any huge issues that would prevent the person from being an admin for even three months. Then they can run through the RfA process at the end of the trial period. Add some sort of rule where a trial admin can be removed at any time by consensus at AN or ANI and this might turn into a credible proposal. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 01:16, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I was a knee-jerk no, but with the safeguards mentioned by Ajraddatz, or some version to be discussed, I'm more willing to support this idea. — Javert2113 ( talk; please ping me in your reply on this page) 01:30, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@ Ajraddatz@ Javert2113I think that what I was proposing is to change no rules at RFA, and to run it through the current RfA process, but simply have the rights set to expire after 3 months. Any formal proposal for an additional process is, I fear, doomed to failure. I would say that the candidate would be subject to additional scrutiny during the trial period (it is a trial after all) and would subject themselves to mandatory WP:RECALL and removal of the tools should they go rogue during the trial period. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)} 04:54, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, what Ajraddatz writes is absolutely sensible. I have this inkling that this may well be the best proposal at RfA in a long time, that is, the combination of your idea with Ajraddatz's delimiters. I might be jumping the gun, but I personal feel that the community might be very comfortable with having trial admins and then checking their performance out at the end of their trial tenure. This would also immediately encourage more editors to apply; especially editors like say Giants2008 who like PBS may have a narrow use, but are absolutely trustworthy and experienced, but who might never wish to apply for the RfA due to the drama it entails. I think this may become a meeting point that resolves issues from various ends. Lourdes 07:19, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I think trial adminship would discourage candidates for regular adminshship from applying. Firstly, there is the issue of double the bureaucracy - and there will always be drama, plus, how many admin actions (tools and judgements) would they have to make of each kind to qualify for full adminship? Adminship is accorded not only on presumption of correct use of the tools as demonstrated through knowledge of policies and guidelines, commenting at ANI and other forums, NAC, and deletion tagging, but also on the estimated ability to conduct their admin business in a mature and professional manner; this includes probably, even more importantly, the areas that require skills of judgement that do not necessarily involve the actual use of tools. Out of around 2,000 successful bids for adminship, according to Wikipedia:Former administrators/reason/for cause (if I have read the page correctly), the number of admins who are desyoped for abuse of their privileges is infrequent and not necessarily due to incompetent use of tools either. Any concerns of abuse of tools is, IMO, therefore basically scaremongering.
That said, all it needs is for someone to draft up and lauch an RfC to propose the idea. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 08:43, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I think the greater issue is that we move into a phase where every candidate is expected to run through both stages to become a "permanent" admin. This runs two main risks with trying to increase numbers: some will be put off from the increased bureaucracy/pain - RfA is horrible, and going through it twice might put some off. Additionally temporary admins who focus in certain areas could cause hostility towards them by doing their jobs and thus make it harder to pass permanent RfA (I suggest we refer to these as TRfA and PRfA) Nosebagbear ( talk) 08:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I disagree that you can't demonstrate competence, as for the most part the tools are fairly straightforward and operate like everything else around here. What you need to demonstrate is judgment, and there are dozens of places where participating does just that. More importantly, I'm not sold that such a process would be sufficient to satisfy the WMF as regards viewing deleted content. Although admittedly it does seem more involved than many of our sister projects' systems. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 10:32, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@ NosebagbearI mean, the main issue now is that there are very few people applying for Adminship at all. I understand what Kudpung means about abuse desysoping being infrequent though, and I wish the community understood that. I wonder why he says we would need an RfC though, surely I could just run for RfA myself and say that I was only applying for a temporary trial run in my application? If people supported me, at the end of the three months I couldn't very well turn around to the 'crats and say, "Hey, I passed RfA and I changed my mind about reconfirming my adminship after three months, I'd rather stay an admin." They would quite rightly say that I had to run for reconfirmation or they would strip it off because the consensus at my RfA would only have been for granting the 3 month trial run I asked for. Its not like WP:RECALL where you can change your mind afterwards. @ Amorymeltzer I don't see how it would be any different than a normal RfA with regards to viewing deleted content. The main reservation I have about this is not the practicalities, but the added load on the community to evaluate and comment twice. As well as the fear that it might raise the bar for regular RfA, or that some single silly mistake during the trial could get blown out of proportion and tank the reconfirmation. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)} 12:07, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere - I don't support your plan, but to answer your questions on "why even have the RFC" a couple of points come to mind:

• No Compliance - It would be as with recall elections, admins can say they will follow certain criteria but have no obligations to do so. People elected under RfA could change their minds and there isn't anything that would authorise the 'Crats to remove them - it isn't set-up to allow individual amendment of the policy governing admin status. People wouldn't !vote someone in under this set-up
• Community Agreement - this would be a substantial change to the nature of admins, and just changing it yourself risks (inaccurately, I believe) coming across as arrogant. This type of set-up would need significant support to think it's worth doing for it to function properly and this is better done in an RFC. Particularly because if you did it in an RfA it would be a horrible mix between people debating you and people debating the idea. Nosebagbear ( talk) 12:33, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@ Nosebagbear: Eh... you are right of course. I keep forgetting that RfA is the 10th Circle of Hell, where Murphy goes to hang out when he isn't hanging out at your house. Expecting the community to be sensible is clearly asking too much of them. There is no point it attempting an RfC, 'RfC' and 'RfA' are a bit like oil and water. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)}

• @ Amorymeltzer: my read is that the RFA or an RFA-identical process is required for viewdeleted, the "process" part is that there is an open community consensus building exercise to vet the editor and ensure they have the support of the community. The "result" of the process does not need to be the same (that is, it could result in an admin that is time or function limited, or subject to community managed removal processes). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
  • You're right, I was inelegant in my language. I said process but what I really meant to get across was that the process relies on some reasonable understanding of standards. An RfA-identical process with a commonly-understood standard of 30 days, 500 edits would clearly be unacceptable, for example. What's proposed above is slightly more-involved than WP:PERM/PM; we'd have to ask, of course, and as we've just seen, the definition of "RFA-identical process" is fairly lax on some sister projects, but I think at the very least it's a potential pitfall. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 14:50, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
    • The WMF probably has stricter requirements for enwiki admins than small wiki admins, but I don't think the community review process requirement is going to be a stumbling block - simply because we can design any new system around their minimum requirements. It just requires a conversation with them, and that will happen before/during any serious proposal. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 15:59, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• Strong opposition because the community would then never grant non-trial adminship, claiming it’s too risky. It would make permanent RfAs even more toxic. It would guarantee no new admins work in areas with a lot of disruption, where we most need them. ~ Rob₁₃ ^Talk 14:22, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• As with many proposed processes, this sounds great on the surface but will invariably invoke a number of problems. The issue with viewing deleted content is serious, and can not be overlooked. I also disagree that one needs to have administrator tools in order to demonstrate competence. This creates a chicken-egg paradox; you can't be an admin unless you're an admin. As Amory noted, what needs to be demonstrated is good judgment. There are innumerable ways to do this. We have also devolved a number of privileges from the administrator toolbox, which people can make use of in order to demonstrate their ability to use extended privileges appropriately (see WP:PERM). In my opinion, a request for time limited administrator status would become just as intense as a regular RFA. Thus it follows, if it's as intense of a scrutiny as a regular RFA, why not grant full administrator status? I can also imagine that temporary administrators would have the status of an ugly step child. Imagine the AN/I reports; "I'm looking for help from a real administrator because temporary administrator did <x,y,z>". I've no objection if Insertcleverphrasehere wants to be a guinea pig. It's certainly possible the idea will catch on and we'll figure out how to iron out the problems. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 15:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems to dodge relatively few of the problems that plague normal RfAs and brings a significant new host. Nosebagbear ( talk)

Personally I advocate for the RfA shift that would invalidate arguments purely based on certain grounds if a sufficient (consensus-agreed) quality level was made (number of edits, article edits, AfD !votes etc) so that those oppose arguments that were given would pick up on the most serious grounds so long as an experienced applicant was involved. That apparently, though, was rejected, though I don't know how much by. Nosebagbear ( talk) 15:50, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• Kudpung is correct when he says that abuse of sysop tools is not a big issue. Others are correct when they say that adminship requires good judgement, and that there are other ways to demonstrate good judgement than a trial adminship period. But both perspectives ignore the reality of what a significant minority wants to see in admin candidates (read: enough to cause RfAs to fail, and enough to cause an entire population of people to avoid the process altogether). We've known for years that RfA is a broken process, but nobody wants to touch it. So let's not: make a new process instead. If RfA is truly superior, then any trial adminship system will fail horribly because nobody will want to use it. People are concerned about making two tiers of admins, but this has already happened with unbundling. So long as the new system has a "path to adminship" (either utilizing the existing process or not) then we can ensure that we are still getting new admins.

When the proposal to restrict page creation to autoconfirmed users was presented, there was a trial period of a few months to ensure that the community had the chance to go back on it after. Why not do the same here? Create a separate trial adminship system that grants one 3-month temporary adminship period to users who meet a minimum standard after a 5-day comment period that focuses on actual metrics of trust and judgement. Allow temporary admins to be removed by consensus at AN or ANI. And then remove the system after six months or a year for re-evaluation, just like what was done with the ACPERM trial. We can then evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and since any admins made by the system would be temporary, there would be no lasting "damage" so to speak. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 16:19, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• @ Ajraddatz: - unbundling could not be said to have formed two tiers of admins, each right only adds a small facet of abilities judged on that specific person's experience in that field. Admin adds the whole caboodle, even though they won't have experience in each. You would need a wide range of the unbundled rights to even be considered a "mini-admin".

• ACTRIAL had a relatively low level capability to cause high-level issues: importantly both on a global sense and to individual users. ADMTRIAL would have significantly higher risks, both (to a small degree) to the wiki, but also to users - it is quite possible a few would get caught up in more dramatic methods. You would need to almost eliminate ban capability to even mitigate this (in the sense that most don't return post ban, even/especially if incorrectly placed). Nosebagbear ( talk) 17:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Unbundling has absolutely caused a two-tier admin system. To over-simplify things, users who joined before 2008 got to be admins, and users who joined after got to be sub-admins with access to a large portion of the toolset through the unbundled permissions. Fair point regarding the lasting effects that would come from a temp admin trial period, though temp admins would still be vetted and there would not be a significantly greater risk of abuse. The standards expected of temp admins would still be significantly higher than those expected of early admins here, and those early admins (largely) turned out OK. -- Ajraddatz ( talk) 17:11, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but what Nosebagear is referring to (ban capability to be eliminated from trial admins) is doable. Admins unilaterally cannot ban editors any way. The only place they get such unilateral power is in the area of discretionary sanctions. Perhaps we could build in some limitation about trial admins' scope of power in discretionary sanctions. User:Lourdes 00:38, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

My guess is that 'ban' was meant to be 'block'. SQL ^{Query me!} 09:07, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, it was supposed to be block, thank you. Though the issues apply both to their blocking and to their actions in the discretionary field. These aren't my only objections, but they are significant pertinent ones. Nosebagbear ( talk) 09:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree that to get any major changes done, a trial is more likely to get a consensus than anything permanent. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 17:10, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• As much as I like it I don't the community (of which I am a part) would approve of it. It is double the work, more room for argument and strife over what consitutes ability etc tec. What wee need is more people to run koff koff. ^{cinco de} L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 23:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• I agree with BU Rob13: RfA would become non-existent without TRfA. This is the quickest way to actually break RfA, which as has been pointed out by several recently, is actually about where we want it in terms of standards now and in the overwhelming majority of cases is actually a walk in the park for qualified candidates. Even the most recent RfA with 77% pass was not a nasty one. We very rarely have nasty RfAs anymore. I maintain that the "problem" we have, if there is one, is in convincing qualified people to run. TBallioni ( talk) 17:58, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

• The problem is simple: adminship should be no big deal. It became a big deal as Wikipedia became more of a big deal, and then as Wikipedia's peak activity declined, it stayed too big a deal. High activity requirements aren't the primary characteristic of adminship that we should emphasize. It's near full employment in the US and other English speaking nations, most competent people have day jobs. They don't have time to edit Wikipedia all the time. We should look for qualified people even if they only have 2,000 total edits. If those 2,000 edits show thoughtful analysis, good use of language, knowledge of core policies, good sense of humor, friendly and collegial demeanor, that's better than 100,000 huggle twinkle tool-assisted vandalism reversion speed runs. Andrevan @ 00:54, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

It was certainly no big deal at 20/0/0 in 2004, was it, Andrevan? A bigger deal is what users do with the bit when they get it. Yes, standards and expectancies are higher nowadays. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 01:19, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not saying things will go back to the way they were in 2004, or that my own RFA is a good model of anything. I'm saying a lot of qualified candidates are discouraged because they feel they don't have enough activity. Not everyone needs to have the same standards for adminship, but I know for a fact there are many qualified editors who make great edits, just not at a high enough rate to greatly distinguish themselves. Or they haven't done enough AFDs, or written any GAs, or whatever. We should definitely have confidence and trust in potential admins. I'm simply saying the importance of having a huge amount of well rounded activity is overstated. Andrevan @ 03:11, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's overstated and I would like to see some evidence that it is. There are the occasional oppose votes such as 'Hasn't made any FA'. But IMO, that's just trolling. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 12:37, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Sure, I'd agree with that to some extent, but I think our standards starting in late 2016 and with the January 2017 batch have gotten to where we don't really have nasty RfAs all that often. The standards are higher than they were in 2005, and to some extent 2008-2011, but I think they are probably the lowest and most reasonable they have been in 5 or so years. The community as a whole has taken the critique that RfA is nasty on board and the atmosphere is much better now. No one is guaranteed a pass, but typically the opposes will be reasonable as a whole and won't be overly personal. I support the no big deal ideal, but I also recognize that having a clue today means something different than it did in 2003. TonyBallioni ( talk) 14:02, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I completely agree, Tony. They are very reasonable right now compared to what they used to be. We don't need any major reforms or change to the system. I also don't have any evidence of anything other than the occasional troll as Kudpung mentions. I just think there is a perception among potential admins that "I can't run, I don't have enough edits [or FAs, etc.]" -- it's anecdotal, I don't have any charts or scientific surveys. Andrevan @ 21:40, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I ran in 2016, and it was highly personal and extremely nasty. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:53, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

That’s not really a fair example either, sinceyou had been desysopped by arbcom in 2012. That doesn’t excuse nastiness, but still, not the same thing as someone who hasn’t done it before. Beeblebrox ( talk) 03:13, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Why? What difference does that make? Why does that justify remarks about your private life? What reason would someone who hasn't done it before have to expect that they would be treated any differently? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:27, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

• I have long thought that a temporary period immediately after passing RFA in which your adminship status can be revoked immediately would be a good idea. This would be thought of as a "trial" period to both let you familiarize yourself with the experience and get practice in performing admin-specific tasks. If you do something obviously inappropriate, your "admin" userright would be immediately revoked and you would keep practicing performing admin duties (at least the ones you want to perform) until you can do so adequately to become an admin. In other words, like learning to drive by practicing with an instructor until you can pass the test to get a license and do it by yourself. But the most important thing here I think is to unbundle the tools somehow, be it by a provisional "practice" adminship or just by letting people apply only to delete pages/block users/etc. Every morning (there's a halo...) 02:50, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
  • A few years back I went through the admins desysopped for cause or resigned under a cloud to see if I could spot patterns that would predict which candidates would ultimately need to be desysopped. The only pattern I spotted was that admins were a little more likely to be desyopped after about three years as admins. There could be patterns that I didn't spot or that have developed since then, but I'm not about to repeat the experiment though I'd be delighted if someone else did. Adminship is not like driving (notoriously new drivers are among the riskiest). Trial periods would make sense if the pattern was for new admins to make unacceptable mistakes, but since that isn't the pattern, trial periods are not a useful change to adminship. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:48, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

• I think there should be one year terms, and follow up RfA's.As it is, admins have too much power and yes, status, on this site and in the course of TDS's Rfa, I even saw one (who I won't name because I believe this person only said so out of the best of intentions) proposing that all prospective admins undergo checkuser inquiries, which is a disturbing thought given that that is not what CU's purpose is and the fact that people get hurt by CU's sometimes. That's exactly the problem, because it adds to the uncertainty of a "civilian editor" on this site without political power on WP. Editors who aren't admins or who don't have special permissions don't realise how easily they could be shoved right off the scene because some zealous admin decided he didn't like their work, or because some checkuser found something they attributed to that editor because someone else vandalized some page on God knows what for God knows what reason and that vandal just happened to use the same network the serious editor used. I've seen it happen. Seems nobody remembers a certain admin, who I regret I feel I shouldn't name, and of which I was collateral damage, who was desysopped and exposed for having abused his authority so many times. Terms, maybe of one to two years, would certainly reduce this kind of conduct. Why not have it be this way? Admins here are not supreme court justices, there shouldn't be life terms. EnglishEfternamn _*t/c* 00:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

This would be logistical hell and guarantee every admin that works in a controversial topic area or one that is populated largely by partisans (such as most topic areas under arbitration sanctions) end up one-term chumps. We need more admins willing to make the tough choices, not less. — Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:29, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Nah. If were easy to lose the bit, the community would un-bunch its undies from its anus about granting the bit in the first place. The only reason adminship has become a big deal (aside from ArbCom inventing discretionary sanction out of nowhere) is that it's damned near impossible to get rid of an admin once the bit's been granted, unless they're abusive over and over and over. If it were a trivial matter to take adminship away for a span, as it is for page mover, template editor, etc., it would become much easier to get it back, and to get it the first time around. There really are only two causes of adminship being a big deal. Really. And getting rid of the "for life" one also takes care of the other, since any admin that abused DS would get their bit taken away at their re-hearing.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not talking cases of admins abusing DS. Those sanctioned under DS for legitimate reasons who are hyperpartisan to the point they are contributing to the topic area's battlefield mentality would have a powerful tool to "get back at" the administrator that sanctioned them by doing everything in their power to tank the re-confirmation. If the "opposition" is large enough, especially if they have legitimate gripes mixed in with their blind vindictiveness, it can be enough to turn what would ordinarily be a easy reconfirmation to a 'crat discretion or worse. — Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 06:13, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Except this doesn't happen at ANI, AN, AE, ArbCom. People may try it, but the attempts are patently obvious. You're making a slippery slope argument about a flat surface.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:35, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't happen at AE and ArbCom because AE is where they get sanctioned (and they're not likely to pull a "no, you" on the sanctioning admin out of pragmatism) and ArbCom wouldn't step in absent egregious abuse (which, given these users' mentality they interpret as being co-conspirators). It doesn't happen at AN(/I) because the users that frequent those boards tend to do homework and will refer cases to the proper boards. With RfA, there's no real penalty to opposing for asinine reasons other than a bureaucrat *maybe* disregarding whatever they say, and requiring a reconfirmation allows them to repeatedly make the lives of the admins who sanction them hell. RfA is already one of the more toxic areas of Wikipedia without needing to import grudges from hyperpartisan users in topic areas well-known to be battlefields. — Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 22:53, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't really buy it. It's just too elaborate a theory. I see that this very day a bunch of venting blather at RfA got forcibly refactored to the talk page by a 'Crat. If RfA were busier with more RfAs and these theoretical reconfirmations – the way RfA was a decade ago – we'd have more 'Crats and more policing of RfA and the community would work it out. That's what the community does.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

• I thought WMF changed the policy so that trial admins without going through community consensus cannot view deleted contents. So either tool needs to be unbundled such that trial admins can't view deleted contents or else it may run afoul of WMF's policy. And you also need a steward to remove any unsuccessful trial admins. OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 18:59, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

  Concerning your last point, technically crats should be able to only assign admin right for a finite period - at least as a Wikidata crat I have this option in the interface (though I may not use it as it is not in the policy).-- Ymblanter ( talk) 19:05, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

  Any rights can be issued with automatic expiration. If we want a new group that has less access then admins (e.g. "everything they have except for viewdelete" it could theoretically be created, but would you let them have "undelete" then, how about revision (un)delete? Then they wouldn't even be able to see what they were resoring. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:23, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

• Trial adminship doubles the amount of time spent on RfA, and if RfA is a 'bad' process, why would candidates want more RfA? Esquivalience ( talk) 00:30, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The cheap alternative to trained police officers, Police Community Support Officers, are referred to as "plastic police". I dread to think what "trial administrators" would be referred to as. 80.5.88.70 ( talk) 07:47, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

RfA is a bad process in part because the decision is permanent and the role has the potential for serious abuse. A time-limited or reduced powers (e.g. only short blocks) role's initial RfA would require less nit-picking scrutiny nor near unanimity. A renewal second RfA could drawn the candidate's performance in the initial time period.-- agr ( talk) 18:53, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Bullshit. Yes, the role has the potential for serious abuse, but the same can be said for autoconfirmed. Not to mention, again, this would not help the areas where admins are required - Arbitration enforcement, primarily - since a time-limited admin that values his chances at getting the bit permanently will avoid such areas. — Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 21:33, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Without pointing fingers or citing specific examples, I will try to outline the problems I have seen with some oppose votes on recent RFAs that seem to serve no legitimate purpose with respect to the actual process of promoting (or not promoting) users to adminship. But first I will note that most oppose votes appear to be good faith and constructive criticism, and I am not going to criticize such votes, as I think they are very important to the RFA process. It appears that those oppose votes that are bad faith serve to start a cycle that goes roughly as follows:

1. Original oppose vote, on an RFA with almost 100% support votes, based on shaky/irrelevant/exaggerated rationale
2. Other users respond to original opposer pointing out why their rationale is bullshit
3. Original opposer complains about being "censored" or "harassed" merely for speaking their mind, and/or complains about a hostile and chilling environment to anyone who opposes any RFA for any reason
4. A very long, drawn out discussion ensues, partly because other users feel motivated to respond to the faulty and intentionally provocative rationale of the original opposer, and partly because the very presence of the opposer's vote creates uncertainty about what should be done
5. The very long discussion thereby produced is moved to the talk page of the RFA.

This process wastes a lot of people's time and energy, and it seems clear that it should not be allowed to keep happening. Something must be done about unnecessarily provocative RFA opposes based on bogus reasons, and that something should include a broad reform of the RFA voting process. I suspect that making voting anonymous rather than in a publicly visible place (like an RFA page) would help. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 01:31, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

• I disagree heavily with 'anonymous', knowing who is !voting where is important to help build your own opinion. 'Crats generally ignore spurious opposes anyway. Because the bar to passing RfA is greater than 50%, 'oppose' !votes carry more weight than 'support' !votes do (almost 3 to 1), it isn't a surprise that they generate some controversy when the rationale isn't well thought out. Users feel obliged to point this out to make sure that the !votes are discounted by the 'crats I think. This isn't really a problem, it is the system self correcting (its a feature, not a bug). It wastes time, sure, but all discussions on Wikipedia waste time to some extent or another, and I don't believe this is disruptive enough to warrant trying to shut down conversation. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{( or here)} 01:53, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Your characterization of the cycle seems accurate, but the solution is not to make voting private but to stop editors from doing items 1 through 4. There are numerous opportunities to break the cycle but instead, like with a mass reply-all thread, the cycle continues. There are different remedies of varying efficacy, one could propose to break out at each step, but in the end we are (for the most part) each of us only in control of our own actions. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 02:05, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• The cycle as you've written it has a theoretically straightforward (but hard to put into practice) answer: when support is near 100%, editors can just ignore any dubious opposes and let them be. Unfortunately, it seems there are always some editors who get involved, and I fully appreciate how difficult it can be not to respond. But in the more common case where support is at a lower level, the cycle still happens, because of how nearly all decisions in Wikipedia are made by straw poll, so there is a benefit in trying to persuade individuals into changing their minds. If instead a weighing of pros and cons was made, as is typically the case for consensus decisions made in the real world, then it wouldn't pay to argue over individual votes. isaacl ( talk) 02:27, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Similarly to Isaacl, I encourage everybody to express their rightful contempt of genuinely "bullshit" oppose rationales by ignoring them entirely, rather than legitimizing them with discussion. — Cryptic 02:35, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• An obvious problem with IntoThinAir's OP is that "provocative" opposes are a very narrow problem, but the OP concludes with "a broad reform of the RFA voting process" with is a) the exact opposite, and b) something we all know equates to "this proposal is stillborn".  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:49, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

• A broad reform of the voting process needs to be nothing more than insisting that the toxic nature of the oppose section needs to be cleaned up. It's long been established, at least since WP:RFA2011, that RfA is the one place on Wikipedia where PA and incivility is allowed to abound with total impunity. And that's what puts off otherwise qualified users from running. More in this month's Signpost - out today. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 06:32, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Re "it seems clear that it should not be allowed to keep happening", I don't particularly agree. As others have mentioned above, this really isn't a big problem. It doesn't affect the outcome of RFAs, most people ignore it anyway, and for those who do choose to engage in the debate, well good luck to them, they probably did so because they wanted to. Freedom of speech at RFA is something we cherish, and I would fear that any solution to address this minor issue would risk throwing the baby out with the bath water and possibly inhibiting other more genuine expressions of editor opinion.  —  Amakuru ( talk) 12:43, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• The characterization of the situation was correct, but I disagree with the identification of the point of failure. (1) and (2) are usually civilized, on-topic comments about a candidate's suitability and the wiki way is to disagree amicably. (3) is where it breaks down because the discussion starts to go off-topic. I have been the (1) person a few times to raise an issue about a candidate that hasn't been raised before and the RfA was trending towards 100% support. Then, others disagree and I find myself in the minority (or "wrong", as the majority tends to put it), which is fine. I don't think I've ever cried "censorship" or "harassment" but to my disappointment others have done that in response to the criticism of my comment. I think denying recognition is the right thing to do and the current cycle of moving off-topic discussion to the talk page (but keeping the original vote and maybe the first rebuttal, however flimsy the rationale was perceived to be) is the right thing to do. If you think someone is voting in bad faith, don't feed the trolls. Deryck C. 13:28, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
  • The problem with step 2 is that since the response is made to an individual, rather than in a common discussion section that evaluates the relative strength of the line of reasoning, a confrontational situation is set up. Sometimes it can be defused with careful wording, but it's tricky and unfortunately more times than desired it doesn't happen. The fine distinction to be made is that anyone can raise objections based on what they personally find important, but when consensus is evaluated, what the group as a whole considers to be important should be given more weight. isaacl ( talk) 15:37, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
    • @ Isaacl: what the group as a whole considers to be important should be given more weight - isn't that why we count heads at the end of an RfA? Deryck C. 11:17, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
      • That's the point of this theoretically not being a vote: we shouldn't be making decisions solely on a straw poll in favour or against the candidate as a whole. In the real world, consensus decisions are made by listing the pros and cons and evaluating them in terms of which ones are most important. Then the relative weighting of the pros and cons are judged. This way, the focus of the discussion is on the strength of the arguments, rather than arguing with individuals over their choices of criteria they value. isaacl ( talk) 16:13, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

        Except the real world doesn't decide things like this by a consensus-formation process, but through voting.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        In the real world, things like who is given privileged access are often decided by a single person or a small committee, because making a nuanced judgement doesn't scale well to include dozens of people. If being decided by committee, it can choose to just have a straight vote, but if it does decide to determine a consensus view, it will evaluate pros and cons. isaacl ( talk) 04:19, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        Which RfA also does. I guess I just don't see where you're going with this. I agree RfA is hardly ideal, I just don't see a concrete solution in what you're saying here. To return to your original reply, you've identified the fact that candidates are going to take opposes personally as as central problem, but there doesn't appear to be a way around it – they are in fact being evaluated for personal suitability for the position, so it is personal.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:29, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        I'm not clear what you are saying RfA "does": it does evaluate pros and cons? In practice, it's a straw poll: if the percentage is above a threshold, the candidate passes; below a threshold, the candidate fails; in between, the bureaucrats through some fuzzy process discount votes, rather than weighting pros and cons. My concrete solution is to generate a list of pros and cons and evaluate how they stack up, rather than counting heads, but the approach only gained minimal support at the last reform RfC, so it's not going to happen any time soon. My original reply was not about candidates taking opposes personally, but replies to opposers being confrontational, usually because the opposers feel they are being told what's important to them is wrong. I think this can be addressed to some degree, by focusing on how criteria is weighed by the community as a whole, acknowledging that individuals will often have different personal opinions. isaacl ( talk) 17:34, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        Yes, it evaluates pros and cons, since those are the bases on which people make their polling votes, and each vote is often laden with such analysis (not always good analysis, mind you). I'm not sure what you want to see in its place. It would still have to be evaluated somehow, and we already have a process for doing that. If you think that what the 'Crats do is faulty, then that's what you should probably be trying to change. The Bureaucrats are not going to examine in detail a 92% support rate, or a 52% one, because the odds of finding faulty rationales that would cause the overall level of support and opposition to be radically wrongly accounted for is very low.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:09, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        There's not much point in discussing my earlier proposal further here, since it's off-topic and was already rejected. (If you're interested you can see it at Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase I/RfC and we can discuss it elsewhere.) Back to the topic: instead of replying to individual commenters to try to argue them out of their oppose, a discussion thread can be opened in the "Discussion" section regarding the importance that should be given to a given criterion (for example, participation in sockpuppet investigations). Then if there is a bureaucrat discussion, they can determine from the discussion how much weight should be given to that criterion. isaacl ( talk) 19:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

        Sounds useful, and kind of ties in with what Collect is saying below, about comment length limits.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:03, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

    • @ Isaacl and SMcCandlish: The listing of pros and cons are important in decision-making, but this method is insufficient when members of the committee disagree on priorities. In most real-world committees, voting is done to resolve debates where members disagree. I can see on-wiki discussions playing out similarly: usually people can reach agreement (or overwhelming majority support for a course of action), but where there is strong disagreement about what's important, the decision usually boils down to some sort of vote. (ref) Deryck C. 09:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
      • I agree that consensus only works when there is strong alignment in the goals of the community; I've written about the problems with trying to use consensus on Wikipedia. But if we're going to try to use consensus, we should truly try to decide based on what most people can support on some level. If we're going to go to straight vote, then we shouldn't argue with people's individual votes. Either way, the conversation would be de-personalized and more efficient if it were centred around pros and cons, and not held one-on-one with voters, trying to convince them to choose other criteria upon which to base their votes. isaacl ( talk) 14:34, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

• In this context it's not so much a question of not feeding the trolls. By way of ensuring they don't come back to more RfAs and become serial silly voters, they - and others - need to be shown that their 'votes' are waste of space and of course of their own and everyone else's time, at least until they have reached adulthood and a significant amount of experience. Risker, whose suggestion I reproduced in the Signpost article, hits the nail on the head, and when she says something, she's usually right. We need to start by introducing a symbolic threshold for RfA candidates, at least high enough to prevent raw newbies from transcluding, which still happens quite frequently but most of us don't get to know about it because they are nipped in the bud and deleted before they get started. We can then look to establishing some requirement for voting.

Meta areas are always a magnet for newbies and anyone who has been around for two weeks and 49 edits does not have significant experience (and possibly not maturity either) to be participating in an area where the work, reputation, and personal feelings of an otherwise well established editor are at stake - the RfAs of some good and competent users can still fail quite legitimately. Run your mouses over the names of the voters on any recent RfA in all sections and let pop-ups tell you what I'm talking about, and until an RfA reaches the discretionary zone, those votes, however inappropriate, still count. Likewise, the the comments by IPs are not without impact but they are generally from blocked/banned users with an axe to grind.

The sad thing however, is that there are still plenty of established users who just can't be nice once they enter the off-road area of RfA. If I have to oppose a bid for the mop, I at least try to let the candidate down gently. Several of our best admins needed two attempts, but others who might have passed a second time were so insulted, disheartened, and discouraged they left Wikipedia for good.
Is that what RfA is supposed to achieve? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 00:04, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

There is already a minimum bar to entry - WP:RFA is extendedconfirmed protected. We should probably look at the rest of her suggestion. SQL ^{Query me!} 01:29, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

(But the transclused RfAs are not.) Natureium ( talk) 01:33, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Right, but the comment I replied to says " We need to start by introducing a symbolic threshold for RfA candidates, ". I'm saying We already have that threshold - let's start looking at the rest of the suggestion. SQL ^{Query me!} 01:37, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread the post above and thought it was talking about voting. Natureium ( talk) 01:40, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

While I can see some cases where active discouragement would be useful (primarily when factual matters of record are incorrectly related), in many cases, silence is the best way to show that the person's vote is unworthy of reaction. People know when they've voiced a controversial opinion and are looking to see how others react. Denying them any reaction at all denies gratification, reducing the incentive to make similar statements in future. isaacl ( talk) 03:46, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

The problem is, isaacl, is that many people don't know when they've voiced a controversial opinion and are looking to see how others react - unless it's one of our lone serial opposers who thinks RfA is their personal circus. They are the fifty-edit, fifteen day wonders who think 'anyone can edit' means 'anyone can tinker in the back office' - like a bull in a china shop. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 08:02, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

I think you're giving many people too much credit. Yes, there are still a few newbies posting uninformed objections, but the most vociferous discussion threads are arising from comments by those who aren't newbies and know what they're doing. I've often thought of writing an essay, "Please don't be obnoxious, even if there's no rule against it". Far too many people waste time arguing if they've technically broken some written rule, when they understand the effect of what they're saying, and the "assume good faith policy" prevents us from commenting on it, because it'll just raise the hackles of a whole other group of contrarian voices. isaacl ( talk) 16:06, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

@ Isaacl: Please do write it. We've needed that page for a long time, because WP:JERK only gets at the worst of it, and people don't cite it much any longer because the title verges on a personal attack, and the saying goes that you're violating it by citing it.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:38, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the support! The main problem is that it would be preaching to the choir. People who know they're being obnoxious aren't likely to be swayed, and those who don't realize it will just get offended. (I do plan to put a disclaimer at the top: "If you've been referred to this page, you probably think it doesn't apply to you. Please feel free to stop reading now; you'll be happier for it.") isaacl ( talk) 04:34, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

A potential model is WP:HOTHEADS. I key element to getting people to read it is making it a "how to stay out of trouble" kind of page.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I could write an advice essay about how to collaborate nicely (and perhaps I will), but it would address a slightly different audience. The editors I was thinking of are those who fully know what they are doing isn't helpful in working collaboratively and are deliberately taking advantage of those who are working to make everyone as happy as possible. The problem is structural: with how decisions are currently made, being aggressively non-cooperative can be effective, and so there isn't sufficient incentive to play nice. isaacl ( talk) 17:47, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

• I wouldn't oppose raising the voting threshold of RfAs to WP:ECP. For reference, the Chinese Wikipedia has a separate voter eligibility criterion for RfA (and desysop polls) of at least 100 total edits that are more than 1 month old and at least 1 mainspace edit within 1 month of the start of the vote. Deryck C. 11:17, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Are we sure that newbies are the source of the contentious !votes. I am looking at some of the arguments and I am not seeing such a pattern. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 11:19, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Me neither. I think that such opposes typically come from the same group of disaffected people. And I also believe that making voting "private" would make things worse. Deb ( talk) 15:25, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Agreed - As TonyBallioni has pointed out in the past - there's a social barrier to opposing at the moment, at least for most people. If voting were made private, it could well remove that barrier for others / trolls / etc. You'd also start to see more "metoo"-ing in the form of "voter guides" (much like around arbcom election time). SQL ^{Query me!} 19:59, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

I do think newer editors tend to have more dumb opposes (i.e. “No SPI experience, even though non-admins really can’t do much there!” and the like, and are less likely to care about the social barrier. That being said, if we moved to private voting, I think support ratios would go down and we’d have to lower the pass rate. 75% as pass in part works to cancel out the oppose-barrier and makes valid oppose rationales heard, rather than drowned out in stuff like my standard “Not a jerk, has a clue.” TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:16, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

• Disagree: This is obviously about Collect. —  Mr. Guye ( talk) ( contribs)  04:21, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. The implication is that my positions on a number of candidates are "unnecessary" and "bullshit". I have a substantial number of edits in almost every aspect of Wikipedia. I do not make twenty tiny edits in a row in order to boost my edit count. I also have made sure to edit on other projects, to go a DYK, to add images, to work on SEW, Commons, to do GA work, to do work on BLPs and so on. Including providing a number of essays, and participation in Wikimedia projects. One thing I do not do is "bullshit opposes". Collect ( talk) 05:16, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

@ Mr. Guye: I thought that was about me and maybe Andrewd! 1 2 -- Deryck C. 09:41, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

• I don't think yet another essay is necessary. It would be sufficient to point voters, whether newbies or not, in the direction of Wikipedia:Advice for RfA voters. I know I wrote it, but I think it says everything, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 12:43, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• If this is indeed about Collect, I do agree that there is a problem when an oppose !voter gets overly defensive and takes all disagreement personally. On the RfA and on the RfA talk page, I repeatedly tried to logically engage with the editor and received one illogical, defensive reply after another. Furthermore, in an apparent attempt to garner sympathy, he brought up an irrelevant incident in which an IP allegedly wanted one of his family members to die, even though that was clearly a misrepresentation of what the IP meant. Unfortunately, we seem to have no way of dealing with this kind of disruption during an RfA. Oh, and the off-wiki mudslinging wasn't cool either. This kind of thing contributes to the negative reputation of RfA that was covered in the recent Signpost article. Lepricavark ( talk) 14:32, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively, you might possibly seem to misapprehend my positions for some reason or another. I try to answer questions posed. The off-wiki stuff was, moreover not initiated by me at all. My post was number 5 (3:04 P.M. WO time on 30 July) - and stressed my belief that a 91% "delete vote" record at AfD was unusual, and that this was my reason for opposing his RfA. "On a different topic I hope Kumioko will share when/where he encountered me being a dick to him" seems to have been Hunley's own personal addition.

The main issue, as far as I am concerned, was and is the deletion issue, as I had quite forgotten about the spleen directed at me three years ago. Collect ( talk) 16:37, 3 August 2018 (UTC)