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Here, and could probably do with some admin/crat intervention. 2A02:C7F:BE04:700:A9E5:E4C4:1D6:F054 ( talk) 16:03, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I was under the impression that RFAs are sacred in ways most other pages aren't, and presumed we would have to wait for them to choose/learn to transclude it or to get blocked. Usedtobecool  ☎️ 16:19, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand why three editors have voted in it when it hasn't been transcluded yet. P-K3 ( talk) 23:06, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the premature votes, and I've also encouraged the user on their talk page to ask that the RfA subpage be deleted for now. Mz7 ( talk) 00:30, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

H'mm. Far from taking the excellent advice they have received from three distinguished editors, they seem intent on going through with it all the same. 2A02:C7F:BE04:700:1C3D:1FC6:6853:AD7 ( talk) 13:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Deleted, and salted for 1 year. There's being a newbie, and then there's not giving a toss about wasting other people's time. -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 13:57, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The best result, thank you. 2A02:C7F:BE04:700:1C3D:1FC6:6853:AD7 ( talk) 14:06, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Good move! Ignoring advice would appear to be their speciality, and will undoubtedly scupper any RfA for longer than a year. Nick Moyes ( talk) 14:51, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Can we sort out Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ronjohn while we're at it? The corresponding thread on WP:ORCP was speedily closed as "no chance". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:35, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not particularly okay that RfAs are being unilaterally deleted. I agree that they're NOTNOW/SNOW cases, but last I checked, "wasting other editors' time" isn't a CSD reason. GeneralNotability ( talk) 15:04, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Many hopeless RfAs have been speedily deleted. This page says, RfAs with not even the slightest chance to pass per WP:NOTNOW can be tagged and deleted under WP:CSD#G6.-- P-K3 ( talk) 17:09, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Just in case anyone is curious, that was added in 2015 with this edit, as “per precedent”. I don’t think there’s been a discussion, but it’s been the common practice since then, and presumably before given the edit summary. Consensus by doing, etc. TonyBallioni ( talk) 17:28, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

All right, I wasn't aware that deleting impossible-to-pass RfAs had this much precedent/community acceptance. I don't think it's the friendliest way to approach these things, but I'm not going to make a fuss over this. GeneralNotability ( talk) 23:34, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Since Ronjohn's RFA isn't being used to waste people's time, I don't think it needs unilateral deletion. You can ask I have asked them about it on their talk page. -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 15:06, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I think Floq’s request method is nicer, but in general I don’t have an issue with unilateral courtesy deletions for no chance RfAs or extremely new accounts that have no chance of passing. A lot of the time these users don’t even know how to request it... TonyBallioni ( talk) 17:04, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think untranscluded pages ought to be deleted and salted, as editors haven't formally made a request yet. If having it under the project space seems undesirable, it can be moved into user space. I recognize that in these cases, the intention is good—clear away a no-hope request so it doesn't muddy up the picture should a more appropriate request be made in future. All the same I think deletion should generally be reserved for transcluded requests. isaacl ( talk) 22:54, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I deleted and salted it because they attempted to transclude it after a lot of advice not to (they did it wrong so it doesn't show in the page history of WP:RFA). And from their talk page it was becoming clear they didn't respond well to advice and suggestions. Salting isn't needed about 99% of the time. - Floquenbeam ( talk) 23:08, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

​ Floquenbeam, nobody is saying it should have been left open, or that it is not wasting anyone elses time. Simply that I do not feel it should have been deleted (such pages like that should not be deleted, I imagine this is like deleting VP or deleting a talk page), simply closed per WP:SNOW and left at that. I am not necessary opposed to salting and protection (for users who repeatedly nominate themselves, not simply a single time); however the current policy does not add a time limit between nominations, which of course this salt goes against that, which maybe should be changed if this is some precedent. But of course, I still do not feel the RfA page should be deleted (while I don't necessarily think this and other pages like that should be restored, unless needed for a specific purpose), it might be better going forward. Naleksuh ( talk) 15:35, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

They’re deleted as a courtesy. It’s a bit jerkish to keep around a reminder of someone being overeager, especially if they later want to run for adminship and have a chance. Floq’s point here also has merit, but we do delete these fairly frequently just on the basis of trying to be kind to the person involved. As I noted above, this has the practice for at least 5 years, and likely before that. Though, I get Isaacl’s point about waiting until transclusion, but I certainly don’t fault Floq. TonyBallioni ( talk) 16:36, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

• Instead of deleting, maybe we should move them to the user's userspace without redirect. If necessary, we can also create a list of such "moved" RfAs. Any thoughts? —usernamekiran (talk) 00:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  As I suggested? isaacl ( talk) 02:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  I don't really see how userfication is better, though. We are only doing this for RfAs that clearly have no hope, so keeping them around in userspace doesn't seem to have any project benefit. Deletion really is a win-win: for the community, it prevents time wasting on a premature RfA, and for the newbie, it also allows them to keep their first RfA link as a redlink, so it doesn't weigh negatively against them in the future. I don't see it as rude at all, particularly given the alternative of subjecting the newbie to harsh oppose votes and provided the newbie is appropriately counseled on their talk page after it is done. Mz7 ( talk) 18:38, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  Closing an RfA that has started saves the community time. Deleting it allows users to have a fresh start for future requests (and they can request undeletion if there is something they want to restore from the closed request). But if the request was never officially filed: users should be able to work on their own projects within their user space, even if that project is filling out a request for administrative privileges. isaacl ( talk) 18:46, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Mz7 If we close, and userfy the RfA with redirect suppressed, the WP:RfA/SnowyCandidate would be a redlink. As it was closed, and now not transcluded anymore; so there wont be harsh comments, and community's time wont be wasted. But I hadnt thought about it weighing negatively against them in next RfA, and given the nature of RfAs this might happen. So yeah, now I think we should delete them only for this one reason. But I still feel we should close and userfy such RfAs, with no record anywhere else. I guess thats what they call as dilemma. @ Isaacl: Thats what we do currently: if RfA is not transcluded, there cant be comments/votes there, and it doesnt get closed/deleted. —usernamekiran (talk) 04:56, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Could we get a CU?

Could we get a CU on this editor? In addition to his trollish RfA, someone has pointed out to me that he (mysteriously, for an editor with less than 150 article-space edits) inquired about articles created by a blocked user [1], and he himself has created several articles. Softlavender ( talk) 04:15, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@ Softlavender: They have recently renamed their username. I also have doubts about the user being more experienced than this account should be, with some other reasons. The doubts increased as soon as I saw the WP:TH post 5 days ago. But I cant think of any other user with similar behaviour/interests. —usernamekiran (talk) 14:53, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm asking for a CU. Softlavender ( talk) 14:56, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

And I am basically agreeing with you :-p
—usernamekiran (talk) 15:02, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Softlavender and usernamekiran, they've violated WP:SOCK by creating and editing Draft:Eugènie Jeanne Devolle under two names, although a month elapsed between the edits. The other account hasn't edited since 6 August; perhaps they've decided to abandon it. There are two more probable accounts with no edits, which I found by searching for the username they signed over their own here. BlackcurrantTea ( talk) 19:47, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

There's no socking since August, but there were definitely some dodgy accounts used at the time... Maxim_(talk) 20:56, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into it, Maxim. BlackcurrantTea ( talk) 02:00, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I see an SPI has been opened. 2A02:C7F:BE04:700:6428:D1E9:4BC5:3A98 ( talk) 11:47, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

How many nominations are African Americans for nomination or how many admins do we have in general that are African American? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronjohn ( talk • contribs) 22:01, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Ronjohn, I doubt we have any idea, but almost certainly a lower proportion of US admins than would be proportional. Most editors are white men. All admins are experienced editors. —valereee ( talk) 22:58, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Do we have any idea if the number of US admins is proportional wrt to total, to start with? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ymblanter ( talk • contribs) 06:41, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Not every admin or admin candidate specifies where they live, nor what ethnicity they are. It never has, and should never be an issue. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{( talk • contribs)} 10:47, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Actually it is similar to female admins-- Ron John ( talk) 11:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

What is "similar to female admins", in what way, and how do you/we know? Johnbod ( talk) 20:43, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Ronjohn, we're not following -- can you clarify? —valereee ( talk) 16:04, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Pardon me I meant like the topic of female admins.

I scrapped the first 485 admin userpages (because the API limits you to 500, and I haven't figured out how to get more), and 129 of them gave location data in category form (easier to parse), of those 52 are Americans. Maybe Americans are less likely to mention (Brits were 23, Canadians 9, Aussies 17), making Americans look underrepresented. But several people were from non-Anglophone countries, so just normalising by the number of first-language English speakers would definitely be wrong. Very hard to infer any racial data (there are six people in Category:User en-aave, the first measure I tried. Nothing else I looked at worked better; you might look for user page pictures, but they're quite uncommon, I think. Wily D 14:24, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. This would mean India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are grossly underrepresented, but, not counting this, indeed the US seems to be underrepresented. (I mention my location on my user page and not in a category, so that I am not in the statistics, on the other hand, manually checking all user pages would clearly be an overkill).-- Ymblanter ( talk) 18:27, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, maybe, maybe not. Note that the Hindi and Bengali Wikipedias are quite robust, so it's not obvious there should be a lot of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia, as there aren't a ton of first language English speakers there (those three combined are about the same as Canada in terms of native speakers)

Anyways, to teach myself how to do it better, I updated my code and re-ran it for all admins in Category:Administrators. There were 859 admins with userpages, reporting 235 nationalities (some double counting was possible; a person saying they lived in both Seattle and the United States only counted as one American, but a Canadian living in France gets counted twice), so there's a slight error there. Of the 235 nationalities, I got

87 Americans

42 Brits

28 Canadians

22 Australians

7 Indians

5 Finns (probably the biggest overrepresentation?)

4 Kiwis

3 Chinese people

3 Germans

2 from each of Czechia, Denmark, the Philippines, France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Singapore

1 from each of UAE, Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Greece, Israel, (South?) Korea, Mexico, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago

So, compared to other big Anglophone countries, Americans are definitely underrepresented in this Self Reported sample. I'd guess that's the main driver there, as I see huge self-reporting bias in sex (8 men, 14 women, when editors are something like 85-15 or 90-10). If we scaled up the Americans like UK/Can/Aussies, we'd have ~300 Americans, of then ~450 reporting, so 2/3rds, which is about right for native speakers of English (but not remotely 2nd+ languagers).

As far as heritage/ethnicity, people just aren't saying. I got about a dozen pages with some info (English/Scottish/Irish/Polish/Native American heritage), but the numbers are way to small to seriously consider it as useful data. Wily D 07:36, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

How did you collect the info? I do not see my nationality in the list.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 10:47, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

In order to automated it, I pulled the categories, and looked for categories that indicated a nationality from a place (e.g. if you're in Category:Canadian Wikipedians I labelled you Canadian, if you're in Category:Wikipedians in Northern California I labelled you American, if you're in Category:Wikipedians in Trondheim I labelled you Norwegian. I had to parse all the categories by hand, so I may well have missed a couhttps://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship&action=edit&section=7ple). Trying to pull from other stuff on your userpage was rife with lists of stuff that people were working on/watching/interested in that made it a horrifying mess, looking for membership in a Wikipedians in X or Xish Wikipedians was quite straightforward. Also, I copied it over from my script by hand, and failed to copy over the one admin in Category:Dutch Wikipedians. My bad on that last bit. Wily D 11:55, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I see, thanks. Indeed, I am not in any category by location.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 14:09, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm assuming you meant Category:Wikipedia administrators not Category:Administrators! I find these conclusions rather dubious. I suspect Americans are much less likely to say "I'm American" than eg "I'm Finnish" on their user pages. Did you pick up people declaring their (US) state? That's more common I think. I have to say that saying "Note that the Hindi and Bengali Wikipedias are quite robust, so it's not obvious there should be a lot of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi Wikipedians on the English Wikipedia" bespeaks considerable ignorance of what we know about where en:wp editors (and readers) are based. I can't remember the links, but there are lots. Johnbod ( talk) 13:53, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:WWW? (I don't think Pakistanis would edit either of those Wikipedias.) Usedtobecool  ☎️ 14:06, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, thanks - from these 2013 en:wp editor stats. India +Pakistan just under 6% of edits] (beating Australia - Bangladesh not mentioned). Yes, Urdu and all the other dozen + Indian languages with wikis were not mentioned. I can't read it, but somehow I doubt anyone could call the Urdu wp "robust". Johnbod ( talk) 14:31, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Unless I am mistaken, all university education in the Indian subcontinent is in English, and thus every educated person (our typical editor base) speaks English very well, and often has specialized vocabulary in English greater than the one in their mothertongue. (Which by the way I find unfortunate, but we have what we have).-- Ymblanter ( talk) 14:12, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, Category:Wikipedia Administrators, and as I stated I picked up on everyone I could find that gave a city, State, Province, Territory, administrative subdivision (e.g., a lot of the Brits declare they're in Dorset or Devon or the like, not the UK), or country in a category of Wikipedians. Otherwise, instead of stereotyping people from India and the like, I suggest you think of them as actual people. There are some active here (including, at least, several admins from India & Sri Lanka), but the number of first language speakers there is comparatively smaller, and the Hindi and Bengali Wikipedias are in good shape (as well as possibly others, I didn't look exhaustively); we shouldn't expect that all Indian 2nd (3rd, 4th) language speakers would prefer English Wikipedia to their native language Wikipedia, so when we talk about what is over/under-representation, it behooves need to remember that not everyone is a monolingual anglophone, nor is English somehow superior to other languages. Past that, I've emphasized that the sample is self reported, and only gets a ~25% response rate, so I don't think you can find the results dubious. They look, I think, pretty sensible for what they are, including the expectations that we probably should expect Americans to self-report American-ness less because they're probably the plurality if not majority of editors. Wily D 15:43, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Unclear what the pompous "stereotyping" ticking-off is about; at least User:Ymblanter & I are aware they exist, which you seemed not to be. As it happens I edit on Indian topics a lot, & deal with many local and diaspora Indian editors (the latter also a significant group). I don't get the impression many of them think the wikis in Indian languages are "in good shape" at all, and they have the advantage of actually being able to read (some of) the languages. Large numbers of second-language English speakers prefer to edit en:wp, for a variety of reasons including practice writing in English, larger audiences, and promotion of their local/national culture and point of view. This is especially noticeable for smaller European language groups such as the Dutch/Flemish, Scandinavians & Polish, but also for Arabic speakers. Johnbod ( talk) 15:57, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I am a speaker of English as a second language (I estimate my language ability in the Babel box as en-3), and I edit English Wikipedia because it has greater impact that the Wikipedia in my mothertongue, and in addition I have an advantage of being able to find and read sources in a variety of languages many other users are not abler to process (at the expense of being one of very few non-partisan editors in these topics), but I think this is probably an entirely different discussion.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 16:23, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Uhm, maybe go back and look at what's been written. You're definitely not talking about them as though they're individual people, whereas Ymblanter were already talking about how their situation is different, and how we might expect them to react differently to their different situations (as one expects people to do). There are reasons for people whose first language isn't English to prefer English wikipedia, their native language (and probably in some cases, other lingua francas like Arabic, Spanish, or the like). There are also a lot of reasons to prefer their native language version (where generally, one makes a larger, more positive impact, since en-wiki is more mature, and is often less important given the relative quantity of English language sources on the web). Indeed, bilingual anglophones probably do more useful work working in their second language (unless that Wikipedia is particular mature, I say, making excuses for myself). So we should expect people in these situations to make various choices according to their actual situation, and their own interests, rather than as some monolithic block Wily D 05:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

As somebody else who was missed out as I'm not in any nationality categories (English-Canadian btw), and as somebody keen to promote diversity, is it worth WMF or whoever launching a secure, anonymous census survey for admins? Age, nationality, sexuality, gender, heritage etc.? To give them/us a better picture of how the land lies and what they can do to encourage a more diverse admin corps? Giant Snowman 14:21, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I assume this would be easy to do (we already have anonymous polling setup for ArbCom elections, e.g.). I'm not sure how high the response rate would be. I'm also not sure if the specifics would actually be all that helpful. Really, what you'd probably need is data on people who are interested in getting involved in Wikipedia, but get chased off in one way or another (or, who could be interested, but who never realise they could contribute in the first place, and and how to reach them;) Wily D 15:46, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, I'd love to see this happen, and would be happy to work on it if it's something we want to do ourselves instead of asking WMF to do it. For one thing I think if it were an enwiki project we'd likely get greater participation than if it were a wmf project. —valereee ( talk) 16:07, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, agree this is a great idea. Glen ( talk) 16:11, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I mean if you wanted to think grand scale we could do it for all registered editors, rather than just admins.... Giant Snowman 16:12, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, I'd love to see that, but now we're talking about a very large project indeed. For administrators, we could randomly sample 100 and end up with a representative sample. We could crosstab that by hand if we needed to lol. For editors...I wouldn't want to go lower than 1000, probably, and now we have to worry about things like do they have to be extended confirmed? Is extended confirmed enough? Should they have created at least one article? If they don't respond, how do we recontact until they do? In general we want to get a VERY high compliance rate if we want to be able to generalize. —valereee ( talk) 16:31, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

English Wikipedia only has ~1100 admins. There are stats on editors like the Wikimedia community survey, but it's also a highly self-selecting sample, so one needs to be rather careful with it. Wily D 05:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

WilyD, yes, I'm not comfortable with a sample size of less than 100 even for a population of only 1100. I'd actually prefer a sample of 200 even for a pop that size. The problem is always randomization. I know we can get hundreds to opt-in, but we really need randomization, which requires followup. —valereee ( talk) 17:57, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The difference between 100 or 200 in stats isn't really that much. But admins here are active volunteers. I would guess that you could get a high response rate, and asking everyone doesn't cost noticably more than asking 100 people, since you'd do it with some web form anyhow. It'd still be self selected, but once the response rate is high, that doesn't matter so much. Wily D 04:45, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

WilyD, the issue is randomness of the sample. If we ask everyone to participate, what's the difference between those who do, and those who don't? If we ask everyone to participate, we need to follow up with everyone in order to get a representative sample. If we ask 100 to participate, we need only follow up with those who don't initially participate. —valereee ( talk) 20:37, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The same issue exists in a random sample where you can't compel people to participate. Given I scraped almost a third of the population (and actually I added some functionality to check userboxen and got more than a third), and people were eager to volunteer who hadn't given that info on their userpage, I think it's likely you could get high enough participation that you don't need to worry too hard about non-response bias, because it looks like the umber of non-responders would be low. Also, I don't think you can do any better for non-response anyways. Wily D 05:07, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

As far as I know there are 2 South African resident admins. One is English first language, I don't know about the other. It is possible there may be others I am unaware of. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 19:04, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Pbsouthwood are you referring to me? Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 14:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Dodger67, I was, but obliquely, as I was not sure at the time that you had self identified, but I see your user page is fairly explicit, so no cats out of the bag. The other one is me. Also fairly explicitly identified on my user page. Do you know of any others? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:50, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Pbsouthwood Not off the top of my head, perhaps it's a question best asked at WikiProject South Africa or even Wikimedia ZA? I'm a bit surprised that WilyD found no Africans at all, perhaps a question for WikiProject Africa? Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 21:27, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my bad. User:Meno25 actually is in Category:Wikipedians in Egypt, but it's transcluded from a subpage rather than on their userpage, so I missed it. As penance, I tried scrapping Wikiproject membership and found a few admins in Wikiprojects Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Liberia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Cape Verde, the last of which uses {{User Cape Verde}} to transclude the category Category:Wikipedians in Cape Verde, suggesting I should maybe try to find such features. The irregularity of the data makes it rather a pain, though. Wily D 08:18, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

• I'm "African American" (I prefer Black, personally) and an admin; I think I know of one or two others. It's not something that comes up that often (twice this week though). The larger problem is gender diversity. On Wikipedia, my race has never led to discrimination or threats of harm like those mentioned by women in the previous section. Making the encyclopedia more welcoming to women also makes it more welcoming to black women, which I believe is where our community needs to diversify given the proportionally high education and scholarly achievements of that demographic. — Wug· a·po·des​ 01:45, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

  I'm glad to hear a person who is Black say we can make WP more welcoming to Black women by making it more welcoming to women in general. That's not a generalization I'd have been comfortable making myself (I'm a White woman.) IMO there've been improvements generally to requiring people to adher to civility and AGF policy, and to me that's huge for that. A year or two ago, if you'd asked me, I would have said I wouldn't recommend to my 24-yo daughter, a professional researcher/writer (and brilliant, natch) but someone who would be crushed if someone said to her some of the things I've had said to me over the past fifteen years, to edit. I'm old enough to have developed a very thick skin. These days I feel like I could recommend it to her because I believe if someone said those things to her, someone else would step in and call it out. —valereee ( talk) 18:11, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

• I'm more concerned about supporting African editors (the majority of whom edit this project or French/Arab Wikipedias) both generally and in helping them develop into suitable administrator candidates than I am about African-American editors, but that's my own bias speaking. Ironically, as a group African editors seem to have a more balanced gender diversity than "western" editors, so there may well be a positive side effect for the gender balance of admins by helping skills development for this geographic area. Risker ( talk) 05:27, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
• I'm currently on the mobile, didn't see this page for a few days. Ronjon By "African American" do you mean American black people, or black people all over the world? —usernamekiran (talk) 08:28, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

"African-American"

last ping to Ronjohn failed because I used a variation of the name. —usernamekiran (talk) 08:44, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

• usernamekiran, why would "African American" include black people who are not American? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:22, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Peter Few of my American friends told me that a lot of Americans use the term "African American" interchangeably with "black person", and according to my friends, some americans sometimes mistakenly use "African American" for a black person from another country as well. Hence I wanted to clarify :) —usernamekiran (talk) 21:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Amazing. I am somewhat conflicted about how I feel about that. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:18, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I saw The Interpreter movie in 2006; in that movie, either the movie (director/dialogue writer) incorrectly refers an actual African person as "african american", or a character does that and another character corrects the first one. Cant remember exactly. I knew " White Africans" was a formal term, but didnt know it is a legally recognised term. Just found out. So the American term "African American" to refer to black persons is totally flawed as it can also incorporate "white africans" who now have american citizenship. Related fun fact: most of the people from India (I dont like to use the term "Indians") are still unaware that the term "negro" is offensive. They think the term formal/norm for "black race", and use it in good faith. Another fun fact: one same couple from india can give birth to very fair (white looking), brown, and black kids. /end fun fact. Most of the people from India didnt know about racism till first decade 21st century. Caste system in India. —usernamekiran (talk) 07:16, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Article African Americans says it is a legal term to refer descendants of enslaved black persons exclusively, moved from Africa. African Americans#Terminology has more details. But generally it is used to refer any black person with American citizenship. I think Josh Blue is "white african american". —usernamekiran (talk) 07:39, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

• I have met lots of current and former admins in person, mostly in the UK, many at London meetups. I can only remember five who weren't white, and three of those are mainly associated with other countries where they aren't necessarily an ethnic minority. I have hear elsewhere that the WMF is considering a new survey of the editors, and that the US and UK versions of the survey may include an ethnicity question - surveys on ethnicity are definitely something that needs to be tailored to the country you are in. The editor survey was something that came out of the 2009 Strategy Process, I think it may have been on my wishlist. Unfortunately it is now nine years old and if the next is next year it would only give us a once in a decade picture rather than the annual or biannual one we need if we are to at least keep tabs on things like the gender gap. Ϣere SpielChequers 23:44, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
• I am rather surprised to see that there is some data indicating that U.S. editors may be underrepresented among the admins. I would have expected the opposite. Maybe it just says something about the quality of life and how overworked Americans are -:) It does seem like a good idea to ask WMF to conduct a resonably detailed anonymous demographic survey of WP admins. We should be careful, though, not to press for such information in RfAs and not to give the RfA candidates the impression that they need to disclose various demographic details about themselves before they run. I also agree with Risker's comment above that the English Wikipedia currently does seem to have large gaps in terms of regular editors from African countries, particularly the English speaking countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Liberia, etc. I hope that the WMF is thinking of some new types of oureach efforts there. Nsk92 ( talk) 02:07, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

"some data indicating that U.S. editors may be underrepresented among the admins" is over-stating it. The small test above, while a valiant effort, has all sorts of issues, some but not all raised above, & I don't believe for a moment that there would be an significant under-representation of US admins relative to editors if we knew the true figures. No doubt African American editors are under-represented compared to the population, & possibly again under-represented as admins even allowing for that. Editors from Africa are certainly in short supply (across all the languages spoken there) and the WMF has devoted considerable effort to this, perhaps with mixed results. Johnbod ( talk) 03:10, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I suspect we do have more UK admins and possibly editors as compared to the US than you might expect from relative population size. I have seen figures on readership which show that a high proportion of the US population use Wikipedia, and a very high proportion of the UK population do so. My assumption is that the US has a higher proportion of people who don't share our ethos, and are deterred by our pro science coverage of topics such as evolution, climate change and medicine (though on the last we may not have much of an edge over the US). When it comes to Africa and to a lesser extent India, part of the problem is that in these areas most people came online later, and this has at least three factors that depress the number of admins. Most of our admins were appointed in the 2003-2008 era before RFA requirements were as tough as now, and when experienced Internet users were much more likely to be in the US or UK. Editing Wikipedia is not an entry level activity for new internet users, so we should not be surprised that there is a time lag between increased internet use in places such as Nigeria and increased Wikipedia editing. But there is one thing that we can point out to the WMF; desktop users are much more likely to become editors and admins than mobile users, and since there are some countries where smartphones are the most common internet access device, this skew almost certainly contributes to our ethnicity gap being greater than our gender gap. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:00, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

In relation to the U.S., setting aside a portion of the population with strong ideological objections, my impression is that almost everybody else reads Wikipedia but almost nobody edits it. That's true even for the highly educated "pro-science" portion of the population. I think that indicates a problem with how the WMF outreach efforts are configured, and that there is still a significant disconnect that exists in people's perceptions of how Wikipedia can be used. For example, in my own research area of mathematics, geometric group theory, I often ask my colleagues at conferences, workshops, seminars, etc, and every single one of them (professors, postdcs, graduate students) reads Wikipedia all the time. And they all have strong pro-science-ethos. But I have yet to meet a single other one of them who regularly edits Wikipedia. It's rather sad, actually. Regarding Africa, the issue of admins aside, I am more concerned about our lack of regular editors from African countries. Of course, the internet access is an issue, and what you say about desktops vs smart phones is also true (although I think laptops may provide a solution here and they probably are much wider available than desktops). But I still would have thought that we'd be doing better by now, at least, say, with South Africa. I must admit I have no idea how the WMF outreach efforts in Africa are organized. But I am hoping that now, during the pandemic, things like Zoom and other distance communication tools may allow them to reach more people there. Nsk92 ( talk) 10:34, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Despite John's weird hostility, the underlying point is probably correct; Americans are probably less likely to self-declare as American, because that's sort of the default assumption about anglophones on the internet. The same effect occurs with men & women (probably, the Wikimedia community surveys aren't a perfect ground truth), and I think with LGBTQ+ (though I'm not scraping them, I looked at a lot of categories and userboxen by hand). That the other wealthy anglophone countries line up pretty much in proportion would seem to match that expectation. I added some userboxen scraping ability and got 320 nationalities, and that result mostly holds, though I found 46 Canadians (and at least two admins in this discussion are Canadians who don't mention it on their user page), per List of countries by English-speaking population, that puts disclosed Canadians very close to our proportion among native speakers. But, okay, that's really not that important, I'm only do it for fun. It's a self-selected sample of sort, whose only real virtue is that I can scrap more than a third of the population, it can only be so biased. Wily D 09:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Given that trolls and vandals include a lot of homophobes, mysoginists and racists, it should not surprise us if people who don't fit the straight white male stereotype include a disproportionate proportion who have been driven out of the community or underground. Measuring problems is important, how can you solve problems without first defining them? Ϣere SpielChequers 10:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Sure, although this goes the other way (at least, with respect to underground). Women and LGBTQ+s are more likely to identify themselves as such on their user page than are Men or straight people. Really, you're right about problem definition, but it's not about measure, it's about problem definition. This, I think you can partially pull out of the data I have that what you (might) expect is true: first language English speakers from developed countries form the bulk of admins; adding userboxes, I can scrape 320 nationalities from 861 admins, with 120 Americans, 55 Brits, 46 Canucks, 28 Aussies, 5 Kiwis, 2 Singaporeans, I couldn't find any Irish, but that's ~1 per million assuming Americans are underreporting, with obvious small number uncertainty for smaller countries. Developing countries with significant first language speakers show up a bit; 8 Indians, 1 Sri Lankan, 2 South Africans, 1 Trinidadian, no Pakistanis, nor Bangladeshis, nor Jamaicans, maybe 1 admin per ~2 million first language speakers. Developed countries with significant second language speakers show up at a higher level (2 Czechs, 2 Danes, 1 Netherlander, 5 Finns, 2 French, 3 Germans, 2 Greeks, 1 Israeli, 3 Italians, 2 South Koreans, a Pole, 3 Portuguese people, 1 Swede, 1 Swiss person, maybe that's around 1 admin per 10 million people, order or magnitude. Developing countries with lots of 2nd language speakers mostly didn't show up; 1 Egyptian, 2 Filipinos, 1 Mexican, 1 Nepali perhaps some of the Indian/Sri Lankans actually belong here, but still zero Nigerians, zero Pakistanis, zero Bangladeshis, zero Ghanians - maybe 1 per 30 million 2nd language speaker, and developing countries without large populations of 2nd language speakers have a very small number, but the numbers are too small to do much (3 in China, 2 in Vietnam, 2 in Russia, and a smattering of countries with 1, so lower still). So, I wouldn't trust the details, especially in the small numbers, but the trends are probably reasonably accurate.

I could try parsing a large number of user pages at random. It'd still have the self-reporting bias, and probably with a lower completeness than the admin sample, but it might give some indication of where the selection is taking place. Or, look at the geolocation of IPs than edit (has this already been done?), which'd give some data on that transition. Wily D 13:56, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure I have seen stats on edits by country using geolocation of IPs. That probably hasn't been broken down by userrights to the admin level due to privacy concerns. Also it doesn't differentiate between an expat in a particular country and someone from that country (at one point we had two British expats who were admins living in one particular country that you would be surprised to have an EN wiki admin living in). If you can do it it would be interesting to compare admins who became admins in the last ten years with the main group of admins. If my theory is correct there could be more diversity in that group than among those who became admins over a decade ago. However there is a chance that we are going backwards as we are with gender and the crats. When Jimmy appointed the first handful of crats about 17 years ago he included at least two women (and at least five blokes). Among the thirty who have been elected since I think we have one woman and about twenty blokes. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

These 2013 stats on edits by country using geolocation of IPs were linked near the top of the section. There must be more recent ones somewhere? But I doubt the picture has changed much. Johnbod ( talk) 15:41, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Huh, compared to the traffic, the admin makeup that I scrape really isn't that far off. Americans and Brits are almost spot on (37.2% vs 39.3% and 17.0% vs. 16.2% Indians are the most underrepresented, at 2.5% vs 5.1% (of the nationalities that show up in the traffic as > 0.5%, the Irish at zero admins scrapped vs 1.1% of traffic are the most underrepresented that way, I also found 0 Spanish (0.7%), Pakistani (0.7%), Indonesians (0.7%), Malaysians (0.6%). The most overrepresented were Canadians, at 14.5% of admins professing a nationality, vs. 6.2% of traffic. I tried scrapping people in Category:Wikipedia rollbackers, for comparison. The hit rate was lower (504 of 2758), so the worries about completeness are worse, but the nationalities that were underrepresented among admins weren't underrepresented there, with Indians at 10.4%, Filipinos at 3.4%, Pakistanis at 1.6%, and Irish at 1.4% (with a lot of the slack coming from Brits, who were underrepresented among rollbackers 8% vs 16.2% of traffic). I'm not completely sure what to make of it, and small number considerations certainly apply. It's certainly possible that editors reflect traffic within the uncertainties that come with small numbers and reporting bias. If we take that as the null hypothesis, I certainly can't refute it. Wily D 13:26, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

So what happened to your "compared to other big Anglophone countries, Americans are definitely underrepresented in this Self Reported sample" at the start? I was right to be dubious about that. Australians (& probably NZ) are also significantly over-represented - in fact aren't they in fact "the most overrepresented", not Canadians? WSC above is probably right about the long time lag affecting South Asian figures. It would be interesting to see the success % of South Asian RFAs vs others. Johnbod ( talk) 13:51, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

We were comparing to the number of first language English speakers. The United States has almost 4x the number of first language English speakers the UK does, it only generates ~2.5x the traffic on en.Wikipedia that the UK does, so if we use the former to normalise the number of admins Americans are particularly underrepresented, if we use the latter it's no longer the case. You weren't right; as far as I can see, you were so eager to attack me you didn't bother to find out what I had done. By pretty much any metric Canucks are overrepresented more than Aussies, they're 1.3x the number of native speakers, ~1.5x the amount of traffic, and 1.65x the number number of admins I could scrap. So, as I stressed from the beginning, knowing what the right metric to normalise by is a significant concern. But there are a heck of a lot of Canadian admins.

Past that, it might be possible to scrap RfAs. But I'd have to give how they're stored a look-see. Probably need more free-ish time. Wily D 18:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

But there are a heck of a lot of Canadian admins. It's because they're all so polite. -- Izno ( talk) 21:23, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Not all of us ;) Mais j'habite plus là, ben sûr. Wily D 10:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

We were, at the top, comparing to the number of WP editors. So, "by pretty much any metric", except the one we were looking at, "Canucks are overrepresented more than Aussies". From your figures (1st & 2nd go)/ the 2013 editor stats: "Canadians 9 or 28 admins, 6.2% of edits; Aussies 17 or 22 admins, 4.1% of edits. Johnbod ( talk) 21:40, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, based on some of the feedback here I added some ability to scrape userboxes to my script, and increased the sample of admins I got nationality data on to 317 (of 861 whose pages I parsed). The larger sample had 46 Canadians and 28 Australians. Making Canadians 14.5% of the admins I got nationalities for, as I mentioned, and Aussies 8.8% Wily D 10:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

I suspect we are mixing where people live and what their nationality is - it will sometimes differ. I am somewhat relieved that the rollbacker figures are better for the Indian subcontinent. I just hope that this means we have a newer generation coming through there and not a glass ceiling that is keeping them off RFA. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:11, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Gonna jump in here, although it looks mostly dead, just to say that it's doubtful that there will ever be a balance of any sort here. Wikipedia just has its systemic biases, and it's doubtful that this will ever be rectified, just because there's kinda, frankly, a general type that long-term editors follow. For instance, for whatever reason, this site seems to attract more liberal editors than conservative. As a conservative evangelical Christian, I am aware that there are areas I can't really edit in because I'd get called some nasty names and get indeffed, no matter how nice a policy-abiding I was. And you know what, if I ever run for RFA in five years, that proclamation above would probably sink that RFA real quick. We just don't get a balanced segment of the population here, for whatever reason, and digging through to see what percentage of admins identify as what isn't the answer. Honestly, I think such micro-searching is going to make editors, especially ones on the minority end, think twice about openly self-identifying. I think the only way this problem (and the systemic bias is a problem) is going to be to remain WP:CIVIL at all times to make it a more inviting place for people who are underepresented here to feel more welcome, and to keep tabs on our own systemic biases. I at least try to keep my writing and work on here ideology-free; if that happens large-scale, I think the bias issue will be reduced. Well, between being too late and TL;DR, I doubt anyone will ever see my little piece here. On a lighter note, I'm the only active editor I've encountered who self-identified as redneck; there must be very few rednecks indeed on this site. Hog Farm _Bacon 04:59, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Female admins, African-American admins, what's wrong with this picture ?

We have an illustration of the problems with the focus of this discussion on the mainpage as I type this. Hopefully this will be corrected by some kind admin by the time I finish typing this, [2] although a surprisingly noticeable error has been on the mainpage for over twelve hours—providing an example of a fail at basic encyclopedic competency in history in no less than five pages and processes: DYK, [3] GA, [4] [5] FPC, [6] [7] Signpost, [8] and mainpage. [9] (Lest anyone thinks I am claiming WP:FAC is immune, I have seen the same problem there, and getting it corrected resulted in considerable pushback.)

How is it that an image misidentifying a common historical figure, Douglas MacArthur, got through all of these editors until it was finally noticed on the main page by Westwind273?

History

• 21:30, 3 September 2020 Beulah Ream Allen started [10] as part of an edit-a-thon [11]
• 21:38, 5 September 2020 within two days, an image with a faulty description is restored and uploaded to Commons [12]
• 22:29, 5 September 2020 immediately nominated at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Beulah Ream Allen receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 16:55, 9 September 2020‎ in less than a week, the article with the faulty image caption as its lead image is passed GA [13] (many articles take months to get a GA review)
• 21:03, 13 September 2020 Reviewed at DYK the same day nominated, and also passed there Template:Did you know nominations/Beulah Ream Allen
• 02:40, 16 September 2020 Promoted Featured picture having been seen by at least eight editors, Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Beulah Ream Allen receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • 10:07, 20 September 2020 Add one I missed: TomStar81 points out the error, [14] and gets no response. [15] (This ties in to my concern about limited talk page engagement fueled by the ECHO system.) SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:05, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
• 06:34, 22 September 2020 promoted DYK Template:Did you know nominations/Beulah Ream Allen
• 27 September 2020, runs in the Signpost with faulty image: [16]
• 28 September 2020, on Wikipedia mainpage, DYK, with faulty image caption: [17]

Within two days of article creation, the faulty image was uploaded. Four days after that, the article was a GA, and four days after that, it was all set for DYK. With THREE weeks passing between the creation of the faulty image, and eyes from five different processes, no one noticed that a considerably well known historical figure (and one known for his vanity regarding photographs) was misidentified in the image, or that the man in the image did not display the stars of a high ranking General. What is wrong with the encyclopedic focus if the people building the encyclopedia cannot identify a common historical figure ? (Even better, the last check before I started typing showed someone at Commons again misidentifying the person in the image, this time as Harry Truman instead of Douglas MacArthur. [18])

Using Wikipedia to right great wrongs is wrong on many counts, right? Do we really have this many people trying to build an encyclopedia who no longer know what Douglas MacArthur looked like? Or better, don't recognize the SYNTH in the logic that finds a source that says MacArthur conferred the award, and then assumes that MacArthur pinned the award on her? Or don't know that MacArthur didn't return to the US for MANY years after the war, while this woman received her award in the US?

Our focus should be on competency, not minority or racial or sexual or religious or gender status. Yet, where is an admin to fix this error that stills stands at Commons, and has been featured on Wikipedia's mainpage, making every one of these processes look like they are run by children with no sense of history.

In fact, we just lost an admin ( User:Ad Orientem), and if Wikipedia editors were truly concerned about diversity, we'd also see questions inquiring about the number of conservative admins, or the number of admins of a given religion, because those are areas where we have bias. On a personal level, I'm more interested in how many Spanish-speaking admins we don't have, since Spanish is spoken by a large portion of the world, and when I have needed an admin whose level of Spanish is native (that is, higher than mine), they have been hard to find. I haven't seen any inquiries about how many Spanish-speaking admins we have, and I don't buy that this quest for certain flavors of admins will help address the lack of diversity on Wikipedia. I identify with at least four different minorities, and don't flag them on my talk page, because I identify more with competency in edits. But this example does suggest that we need to better scrutinize some content areas.

Meanwhile, I don't see any Barnstars over at Westwind273 for quickly moving to save Wikipedia from this embarrassment. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Nick for fixing the image after it ran at least twelve hours on the mainpage: [19]. MacArthur is still mentioned in the main upload blurb; is it not possible for that to also be fixed? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:37, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@ SandyGeorgia: We have GeneralNotability to thank for asking me to make the changes on Commons. The upload blurb is technically (in the software, perhaps less so in our policies and guidelines) a log entry so can't be edited. It could possibly be deleted but I can't see anything that would fully justify such a redaction (though I'm happy to continue discussion). Nick ( talk) 15:20, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately I think the community just doesn't hand out barnstars to recognize contribution as often as it used to be. OhanaUnited ^{Talk page} 15:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I think that is true, as another example of my hypothesis that the ECHO system has destroyed community-- we used to have to go to talk pages to actually "talk" to people, while these days, we "ping" them instead. So impersonal, and as part of my larger hypothesis, might be part of the explanation for escalating personalization in discussions that I experience from editors who identify as female. The echo system of Pings allows certain behaviors to fly under the radar because of reduced talk page discussions ... SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:24, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The error was fixed by Maile66 50 minutes after being reported on WT:DYK [20]. WP:ERRORS is another place to find them, and errors turn up day in, day out. For example, when The Rambling Man noticed problems on Ulster Covenant, an unsourced claim was corrected by an IP [21], adding a reference. There has been extended discussion in the past about scrapping the DYK process due to questions on factual accuracy, but there has never been sufficient consensus. I have suggested several prolific content creators follow the lead of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ergo Sum and help out fixing reports at ERRORS and elsewhere, but all have declined. I guess they don't want to be hung out to dry because they fix errors instead of revert vandalism and chatter on project space. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:07, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

But I did not mean to focus on any one process here, or the mainpage errors, as no process is exempt from the politicization of pushing "diversity" into articles, and the push to promote them prematurely. It is nothing short of astounding that so many different processes failed to catch this. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:26, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

TomStar81 brings up that the issues are bigger than just the misidentifiction, [22] but attempts to evaluate the source lead to personalization. [23] SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Judging from the edit history on Commons, it looks like Adam Cuerden made the misattribution. Adam has done a lot of great work on Wikipedia so I certainly don't wish to single him out for one already corrected error. I do bring him up to point out that I am fairly sure he is not a female admin or an African-American admin, so the entire premise of this argument's header is misogynistic racist bullshit. Gamaliel ( talk) 17:08, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Judging from the overall history, at least five different pages and processes failed to notice this, so singling out Adam is moot. But thanks for adding further to the kind of personalization that anyone pushing back occurs. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Are any of the editors involved with this error female or African American? And are you saying their race or gender has anything to do with the error happening? I'm also very confused as to what this has to do with RfA or any diversity-related efforts. GorillaWarfare  (talk) 17:13, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I am asking why we focus on ANY designation (gender, race, religion, whatever) rather than competency. I listed female and African-American because those are the two brought up on this page, while we don't see the same calls for "diversity" in the other examples I give (Spanish-speaking or the Ad Orientem issue). I am saying race or gender should NEVER be the issue, but if we want to flag up things we're missing, can we flag up Spanish-speaking, as that absence affects content. And I'm giving an example of how this obsessive focus on female admins may be leading us to ignore problematic content issues. (But then, I have always favored promoting content contributors to adminship over others ... ) SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:21, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I have no objections to flagging the need for more Spanish-speaking admins or various other skills that are underrepresented in the admin corps, but since I don't think you believe that women or African Americans are intrinsically less competent, this seems quite misplaced. GorillaWarfare  (talk) 17:24, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Correct :) But where else to put it. Sorry my section heading was confusing ... the question is, why the focus on two "diversity" issues, when we have so many. Women are doing just fine; the problems affecting women are Internet-wide. I can't speak for African Americans. I can say that content is often affected by the lack of Spanish-speaking admins. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:28, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Re: where else to put it, if I was trying to address the issue I'd probably personally start a discussion about putting in place a fact-checking process for images that appear on the main page. Many of the people involved in reviewing were not even admins, nor does one need to be an admin to fact check potential issues with main page candidates, so even specifically screening admin candidates for their familiarity with what Douglas MacArthur looks like probably wouldn't change the issue much. I'm an admin and I have very little involvement with the main page; conversely there are lots of non-admins who focus quite a lot of attention on the main page. GorillaWarfare  (talk) 17:30, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

We have five pages that failed to pick this up; why would another process be more likely to pick it up? When that many processes/pages miss, something needs fixing. But it took 12 hours, and an off-Wiki IRC ping, to get an admin to fix it at Commons, where the page was semi-protected. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm not really involved with the main page much, so I guess I don't know how many processes are in place there or exactly what they entail. But it sure seems more likely that improving the processes there would help prevent future issues with images on the main page than reducing the focus on adding women or PoC admins would. Perhaps I'm not conveying my point well, but I'm just totally confused as to why you think changing any focus at RfA would've helped the issue. GorillaWarfare  (talk) 17:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedians are capable of focusing on multiple issues. You don't have to try to tear one down to get them to focus on one you personally prefer. Gamaliel ( talk) 17:41, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@GorillaWarfare. For contemplation: when bringing forward candidates with content contribution proficiency, the inevitable "doesn't need the tools" opposes occur. I wonder if same would happen when bringing forward, for example, Spanish-speaking. All while we focus on pushing forward certain groups, which other groups are we missing? (I don't think the image problem will be fixed by adding another process to those that are already floundering-- the DYK outrage-of-the-day has been going on for as long as I can remember, and I most often see them when they involve Spanish-language sources, while this time, it was an obvious image error. I try not to look at the mainpage too often as there is one a day ... and GA has always been only one person's opinion, so the miss there is unsurprising. The miss at Featured pictures is huge, though; it was simple SYNTH to assume the obit source could be applied to the image, when the image source does not name the man. ) SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 17:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@ GorillaWarfare: IMO, its because the main page is fully protected, which means that admins - those who can edit the page - need to be much better read up on and familiar with this sort of information so we can catch and correct it before professional call us on our mistake(s). We're the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but from time to time our admin and check user and bureaucrat etc teams need to really step and and hit one for the angels, and that didn't happen here. With all the push for inclusion this and equality that we are forgetting that its quality that we are supposed to praise here, and if our quality is measured by screw ups like this then no one is going to care about how many non-white or non-male admins we have. We can do better - all of us can. TomStar81 ( Talk) 17:45, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that most issues on the main page are pointed out at the highly-watched WP:ERRORS rather than unilaterally fixed by admins. Furthermore, adminship is not a zero-sum game. No one is reducing quality/competence expectations for women and PoC admin candidates, nor do we have a limited number of admin seats that we are filling. GorillaWarfare  (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

What's wrong with this picture is the rather baseless claim or conclusion being suggested about some causality between two different things, when the likely scenario is Wikipedia has errors, unrelated entirely to any purported focus on admins or topics. History is plain, Wikipedia and other publishing contain errors and that happens with or without any focus on gender or ethnicity. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 18:07, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Long story short is, I tried to research the photo beyond the NARA description, went down a rabbit hole, and my prospagnosia triggered when I tried to confirm whether the only other person named in the context of the award was the person in the photo. I did use sources, I simply misunderstood some phrasing.

So, can we drop the random attacks on random other people? And why on EARTH is this being done on THIS page? I really don't see what the relevance of bringing up female and African-American admins, when the error is that of a male, white, British, non-admin (and no-one in the picture is African-American, so where does that come up anyway?) Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 7.5% of all FPs} 20:00, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Adam Cuerden, I was sick for a few days, and then forgot to return to this discussion. My sincere apologies for you feeling a "random attack on random other people"; the issue was never the initial mistake (we all make mistakes, and you have explained how this one happened). The reason this is on THIS page was clear to me, but that so few understood it means it's my fault for not making it clear at all.

My point was not the initial error, but that five different pages/processes had failed to detect it. My premise is that this happened because we are pushing gender-related topics too fast through content review processes, in this interest of "diversity" (which oddly omits certain groups that would increase diversity). My concern is that the proposals and queries on this page are falling prey to the same—suggesting that we need to push through editors of X, Y or Z flavor for adminship when, in the case of women for example, we already have a proportionate sample, and we will not be likely to know most people's race, religion, other characteristics. The focus is wrong in these suggestions for more women admins. My counterexample is that if we really want to go out and search for qualities that are needed in adminly discussions, we need Spanish-speaking admins (we need that for copyvio, see Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2020 October 11, and to lower the topic bans for editors who are representing sources broader than in the English-speaking world).

I hope this helps clarify my points, which apparently were not presented very well. I do not believe it behooves Wikipedia to push either content or editors too fast based on these kinds of criteria. I am sorry that my use of the MacArthur example in a hurried gender topic left you feeling under attack by me. It was that I had never seen an article go that fast through so many processes, and that resulted in a significant error on the mainpage. Let’s not repeat the rush in this call for diversity at RFA, and risk similar mistakes. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 22:50, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

@ SandyGeorgia: I get your point, but, in the end, mistakes happen, and a single mistake in an otherwise well-functioning process doesn't mean much. We've had misidentified species at FPC, we've had a poster for Carmen that turned out to be not the opera, but an incredibly obscure play version of the operatic script. No-one can be an expert in every single subject; at some point, errors will slip through. That they were caught only after reaching the main page is unfortunate, but it's hardly the first time it's happened. "Did You Know" is particularly prone to errors. And, frankly, if you work with images long enough, you're going to find an erroneous or misleading caption. I've reported plenty in the past. Hell, here's one at the National Library of France. Tell me what's wrong with it without checking the Wikipedia sources.

We probably fail no more often than anywhere else. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 7.6% of all FPs} 05:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

• I've reported some issues with Featured Pictures in the past and, from this, have the impression that the associated caption tends to be error-prone because the text doesn't get the level of scrutiny given to other items such as DYK or ITN. I suppose that's because the focus of the FP process is on the graphical quality of the picture.

And there's a general vulnerability with most of our pictures in that they don't have to pass WP:V and so we usually have to take it on trust that the picture is accurate and shows the subject which is claimed for it.

Andrew🐉( talk) 23:11, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

• Wow, this was truly an embarrassing episode for Wikipedia. It's an interesting case study, to consider how such an unbelievably obvious error, even if it was understandably a good faith mistake in the first place, skated through so many quality content certification processes, to the point where it made its way to the main page. Everyone involved embarrassingly failed here, and it's interesting to consider how our obsession with increasing diversity may have played a role in rubberstamping a historical woman onto the main page so aggressively, that we overlooked this. It's a fair discussion to have, though I think it's wasted at WT:RFA, where nothing constructive has ever been achieved. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 03:53, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I should be very, very clear here: The caption used at FPC usually bears no relation to that used when it goes on the main page or anywhere else.. As far as I can tell, POTD blurbs are written when POTD is set up, with the main oversight being A. asking the original contributer of the FP to contribute, and B. posting on the article talk page.

GAC is one reviewer, and DYK, while a decent enough process, is hardly a quality content check. It's meant to reduce errors, by checking the exact text, but it is almost entirely handled by two people (reviewer + person who moves it into the queue) with some oversight above that, but not much.

That's not a perfect system, and that something that was almost true, but required advanced knowledge to see the specifics were wrong - it was, according to seemingly reliable sources, awarded to her by MacArthur, after all - slipped by is hardly the most embarassing thing to happen to Wikipedia. Offhand, that would be Jimbo Wales trying to delete all nudity (including in paintings) from Commons, or one of the other really embarassing kneejerk reactions. This is at the level of a newspaper publishing a correction. Adam Cuerden ^{( talk)}_{Has about 7.6% of all FPs} 21:57, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not trying to roast you for making a good faith mistake, nor am I trying to suggest that a mistake making its way onto the main page is the end of the world. As an admin who watchlists and occasionally works WP:ERRORS, blatant mistakes on the main page are a dime a dozen. We're an imperfect project run by volunteers. Hell, half the time ERRORS is to blame for being unstaffed or overcome by petty squabbling. It's not a big deal. I don't even get the impression here that you're being particularly blamed for this. But it's nothing short of disingenuous to claim that only 2 editors were involved, when six other editors were involved in the FPC discussion alone. It's hardly "slipping through the cracks" when people brought up this obvious error and they were met with arguments from yourself and others. It's hardly a minor error when we're talking about identifying a colonel in 1946, with his rank insignia on full display, as Douglas MacArthur, one of the most famous generals of all time, who was literally a 5-star general in WWII, and who had even been a general in WWI. It's not some esoteric oversight, because it "maybe arguably looks like him", it's a glaring, objective, obvious error, and many editors not only overlooked it, but turned a blind eye when the error was raised. It may not be the "most embarrassing thing to happen to Wikipedia", but that doesn't change the fact that it is embarrassing. And I'm not even holding you responsible. People make mistakes, I get it. But it was a big mistake, and many editors were involved with rubberstamping the mistake. I'm not even trying to grill you about this, but it hardly does you any justice to be defensive about this. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 02:32, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

The candidate scoring table right now is reading:

RfA candidate	S	O	N	S%
John M Wolfson	104	0	2	100

which is obviously not correct. 104/106 rounds to 98%. Earlier today, I think I saw it at 88:1, and still showing 100%. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:55, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, neutral doesn't enter into the denominator only opposes. Neutral is truly neutral. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 21:57, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

( edit conflict)I believe that's correct by normal usage of it. Neutral does not count either way, so the support percentage is effectively (support/support+oppose)*100. Otherwise Neutral would have exactly the same effect as Oppose in reducing the percentage. ~ mazca ^talk 21:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Right, the value of the neutral section is less about affecting the support percentage, but more about cases where the RfA is really close (e.g. in the discretionary zone between 65% and 75%), in which bureaucrats might look to the content of the neutral section for guidance on weighing the arguments for and against. The comments in the neutral section may also sway editors who haven't commented yet. Mz7 ( talk) 00:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Please consider me for RfA Maitreya Arya ( talk) 06:35, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@ Kanojiyavimleshkumar: Hi. Kindly read thoroughly Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:59, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Director Akanksha sinha I want to create an account on Wikipedia kindly suggest me the procedure Sinha akanksha ( talk) 14:06, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

You already appear to have an account.... The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 14:08, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

The C of E, I'm wondering if they were trying to make an edit which required autoconfirmed? I've put a welcome message at their talk. —valereee ( talk) 14:14, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

My guess is, judging by their self-promoting edits so far, they actually want to create an article on themselves.-- P-K3 ( talk) 14:18, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello everyone, I wanted to know that if an editor has had any past runs at RfA, including both cases of successful or unsuccessful request due to any reason, how and in what way does it affect when the same candidate decides to run again in the future? I wanted to know everyone's thoughts and opinions on the following questions:

1. In what ways does it matter how many times a candidate has ran before? (only in cases where all the previous requests were unsuccessful, whether it happened 1 time or 10 times)
2. Time it has been since the candidate ran last time (normally 6 months or more since their last request).
3. In case their previous request was successful and the admin tools were removed due to any reason (only involuntary cases, not including cases of self-resignation), how does it affect their new RfA?
4. A hypothetical situation involving all of the 3 scenarios mentioned above.

Also, more importantly, I wanted to know that if a candidate is well qualified as per the current standards, does it even matter how many times did that person ran before and whether those requests were successful or not? If yes, how and if no, then why not? TheGeneralUser ( talk) 06:42, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Most admins pass on the first attempt. Of those who pass on a subsequent attempt the vast majority, including me, pass on a second attempt, but we have at least two who passed 5th time (including one that subsequently went very sour). Explanations for past runs need to be there, but time is a great healer, someone saying I ran several times in my adolescence, but I'm twice as old now as I was then would be treated very differently than someone making their 6th run with only months between each of them.

There is a de facto minimum of three months between runs, but the gap between runs isn't as important as addressing the reason for the previous RFA failing. Some of those are more time dependent than others. A candidate who fails because their last block is only 4 months ago likely needs to show that they can go at least a whole year block free, whilst a candidate who failed for lack of contributions could pass three months later if in the meantime they have a GA.

If the tools were lost, you really need to address the reasons why. Simply challenging that reason is not a good idea, better to be able to say, "I was desysopped for inactivity, but I have been active for a bit now and am back up to speed with the norms of the community. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:25, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

On the inactivity front this is exactly what Jackmcbarn did. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 21:42, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Jackmcbarn's re-RfA is quite educational because it was fairly controversial, given the short period after resumption of serious activity, but ultimately fairly comfortably successful. I'll forever hold Abecedare's RfAs as the true example of how you ask for adminship without controversy, as he requested adminship in 2009, succeeded with 100% support, was an admin without issue for a while, went inactive for long enough to lose the tools, then ran again successfully in 2015, also with 100% support. Getting adminship once without anyone having even enough of a concern to be neutral is unusual, doing it twice is impressive. ~ mazca ^talk 02:02, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Jackmcbarn's re-RfA is quite educational because under the pre 2015 reform which permitted massive advertising, it would never have passed, particularly in the face of the opposition from so many experienced RfA regulars. This is absolutely not to say that Jack does not have the trust or maturity for adminship - the nevertheless significant opposition rested purely on the lack of recent experience. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 05:42, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I tried to talk in generalities rather than naming specific individuals. I think this is politer to the individuals concerned and shifts the focus to the issues rather than the individuals. "Active for a bit now" is a term that is ambiguous re duration, unlike the minimum gap between runs, I don't think we have enough examples of returning former admins running RFAs to put a time period on that yet. Clearly from the most recent example, there are some people who think that returning admins should take longer to get back up to speed, there were even a few who seemed to think that a returning admin should be assumed to have remembered nothing from their previous stint as an admin and the experience that had enabled them to pass their previous RFA. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

My personal experience of running once, and not again, is that time was needed to deal with the feedback from the RFA. Firstly I wanted to take the time to address an issue that was raised during the RFA and check all the edits I had made over the previous years. This took time. I then wanted to establish a long enough editing pattern without further problems because I was very disappointed with myself for creating the problem in the first place. That is, I wasn't trying to convince other editors that I knew what I was doing, I wanted to convince myself. Then it was a question of waiting until I felt the inclination to contribute in the kind of areas that need admin rights. Essentially, there was no fixed time I felt I had to wait, rather I felt it was necessary to spend time doing something else first. QuiteUnusual ( talk) 09:52, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers and QuiteUnusual, thank you for providing your thoughts and opinions on this. TheGeneralUser ( talk) 21:39, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I've scrolled through WP:HOPEFUL and have already found two RfAs that were never properly transcluded (and posted over ten years ago), but I'd like to ask what should be done to these kinds of RfAs: should they be deleted? Marked as historical? Protected? JJP...MASTER! _{[talk to] JJP... master?} 02:15, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

We don't "need" to do anything. If they're abandoned, they're abandoned. If they're still (somehow) a work-in-progress, then more power to them. They're not doing any harm sitting there unused. Just leave them be. Primefac ( talk) 12:37, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Primefac, untranscluded RfA drafts aren't harmful or confusing and can reasonably be left alone. -- Euryalus ( talk) 13:19, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Hog Farm#Responding to opposes. Aza24 ( talk) 02:41, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I have opened an RfC at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) to discuss establishing a community based desysop policy. All are invited to comment. TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:47, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Somewhat in response to Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_257#Lots_of_questions, might it be a decent idea to rename "Additional question from <username>" to "Optional question from <username>" in {{ Rfa-question}}? Mostly just as a slight nudge to make not answering optional questions more acceptable, and/or less helpful questions to be asked less? ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 13:24, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

If you decline to answer a question in an RFA or RFB you will probably get opposes, OK maybe not in the last day or two of the seven days. I'm not sure that the number of questions is a real problem as opposed to a side effect of the small number of RFAs. If we can persuade more people to run, those who who are finding their feet at RFA and still at the stage of asking questions that aren't rooted in research on the candidate will be spread across more RFAs. It would be good if we could find ways to reduce the number of unresearched questions, but I don't see this nudge as doing that. Maybe a requirement that all questions include a diff showing the bit of the candidate's contributions that you are querying? Ϣere SpielChequers 16:03, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

The clear positive thing I can say about when we did the grouped nomination at RfA in September 2020 is that those candidates, on the whole, received fewer questions than when candidates run one at a time. So some of it does appear to be a function of community attention. I would have no objection to PR's suggested renaming. It might not immediately change any of the culture but over time, as more new editors enter the arena, it might. And I don't see it doing harm. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm OK with changing the header too. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 21:19, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

It was proven at least ten years ago that an unhealthy number of questions are clearly inappropriate, borderline nonsense, or even trolling and the phenomenon has not relaxed. IMO a candidate has every right to ignore such questions, but the community will continue to treat RfA as some kind of bizarre playground. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 16:39, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

yeah. I agree with all the comments above. 1: no matter if we call it optional or additional, if somebody wants to ask a question then they will ask the Q anyhow. The question/candidate being well researched wont be affected by the heading. 2: number of questions is not an issue. Well suited/appropriate questions vs inappropriate vs trolling is the main issue. No matter what we call it, we cant stop the incoming questions. 3: currently, nobody bats an eye if the candidate ignored out of order/inappropriate cases. In most of the RfA's some other editor comments that the candidate should ignore the inappropriate questions. 4: currently, if a candidate doesnt answer an appropriate Q, then some editors go in neutral section with "waiting for candidates's response to Q #xyz" If it goes unanswered for a while, they switch to oppose. 5: I also agree with Barkeep: It might not immediately change any of the culture but over time, as more new editors enter the arena, it might. It might also reduce the opposes based on ignored valid questions, with thinking like "bleh. Its just an optional Q" But it will also affect the ability to gauge the candidate. Getting answers to appropriate questions in an RfA is absolutely necessary to gauge the candidate. I think we should keep it the way it is. —usernamekiran  (talk) 20:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

My fear is that twenty or so of the questions in a typical RFA are little more than a distraction, my worry is that some of the participants at RFA are relying pretty much entirely on the contents of the RFA and not actually checking the candidate's contributions themselves. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

In my recent RFA, I had the experience of answering 27 questions. And it felt like a lot of commenters didn't even read the questions - I feel like I answered the same sort of questions about the NPP kerfuffle about 3 times. But when it comes down to it, I think all but the two sock questions (26 and 27), and question 20 read like soapboxing to me, especially after reading the commenter's neutral statement. RFA was an unpleasant experience for me, and if I'd known exactly what to expect beforehand, I would not have run. I'm also aware of another editor who was considering RFA and I think is extremely well qualified but was at least partially scared off by the amount of questions in my RFA. It's almost like it's a problematic situation either way - most RFA questions are useful, IMO, but the sheer volume makes it a dreadful place for many candidates. Hog Farm _Talk 02:00, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

• I persevered for a decade to get RfA cleaned up. Then I gave up. Hog Farm, who actually passed with an extremely healthy score of 95%, probably doesn't realise the enormous gravity of his statement: RFA was an unpleasant experience for me, and if I'd known exactly what to expect beforehand, I would not have run; and people are still unable to figure out why so few candidates of the right calibre are willing to come forward? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 10:45, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
• I think there's a rough consensus for the change I mention in my OP, so I've gone ahead and done that. There seems to be some skepticism regarding whether it'll actually do anything, but as some editors have said it cannot hurt. The template is not protected, so anyone who disagrees with my reading should feel free to revert. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 11:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll support that. One of the problems is that these discussions are perennial. Another is that since reforms allowed each RfA to be widely publicised, the number of voters has increased two- or even threefold, with many of the voters being new(ish) users possibly not having really much clue of what adminship is all about or what to look for. While they can be forgiven for not having the institutional memory of RfA regulars, they are not aware of pages such as this one with a list of discussions and articles in The Signpost. What they see is "Oh, I'm allowed to vote on something, so I will", which is commonplace on reader-contribuable web sites, fora, and blogs, thus each new RfA sets new precedents and hence the number of user questions continues to grow out of all proportion.

The December 2015 reforms were an excellent and bold attempt by Biblioworm to improve the situation by lowering the pass mark, restricting the number of questions per user, and broadcasting the RfAs, but none of them succeeded in encouraging more users to throw their hat in the ring or cleaning up the behaviour of the participants. So after 16 years (when the complaints first started) RfA is still at square one. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 06:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I think publicising the RfAs has improved the situation quite a bit in fact, in terms of "cleaning up the behaviour of the participants". Johnbod ( talk) 04:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think it's possible to fix it, in the same manner as you can't stop 70 million people voting for a narcissistic racist misogynistic orange nut job (personal opinion). Asking around 200 people (and 200 different people every time) to agree on something when they all have diverging opinions is just not going to happen. As there's no correlation between the pass mark at RfA and how good an admin actually is; for example, MoneyTrees scraped through on a 'crat chat, yet seems to have done alright with the tools. You could full-protect RfA so only admins can participate (which would at least have some sort of qualification bar), but that's a terrible idea as it breeds cliques and closes ranks. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:21, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

It can be fixed but there is not political will to do it. Everybody is kind of half in it, or half out of it and its really not that serious; it is kind of lightweight compared to what you would see in commercial or other collegiate organisation. Those kinds of organisations depend on their election system working, it is their lifeblood. Having read up on it, they seem to manage to deliver a set number of candidate every year and a set number of electees every year. Could wee not possibly copy one of these systems. The Royal Society has redesigned their system, several times in the last 300 years. Could we possibly ask them design a system, do some research for us, or look at using their system, see how it fits? Try and go around the problem instead of endlessly discussing it. Lets find an alternate approach. scope_creep ^Talk 00:47, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I doubt that would help (having worked there). Their system is at least as onerous and probably nerve-wracking as ours, but the rewards of being an FRS are far greater. There's no "set number of candidates every year", but they do ration the elections. These days most plausible candidates pass RFA, the problem is that few such want to do it. Johnbod ( talk) 04:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@ Johnbod: So would you say it more a lack of reward. The benefits aren't there? scope_creep ^Talk 12:30, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

The role appeals to some people, but apparently not enough. Of course there are no obligations on FRSs for any kind of work as an FRS, and I think many don't do much in the RS until nearing retirement. Johnbod ( talk) 13:21, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

These days most plausible candidates pass RFA, the problem is that few such want to do it, is indeed precisely where RfA is at nowadays, and here is Hog Farm's comment again which says it all: RFA was an unpleasant experience for me, and if I'd known exactly what to expect beforehand, I would not have run. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 03:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Kudpung, A few months back, I was in an online workshop with Shameran81, Megalibrarygirl and some other Wikipedians, talking about the gender imbalance on Wikipedia and what to do about it, and as there appeared to be a (virtual) room full of experienced editors, I decided to ask if any of them had ever thought about RfA. The response was pretty much unanimously negative, saying RfA was not a "safe space" and the environment was too hostile to make editors consider. I don't know what more I can say. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:31, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

If you volunteer for a grilling, the prize needs to be very good. RFA can be an awful week, and incredibly stressful. The actual intentions of the user, they are acting in good faith can be completely ignored and people will deep dive into their contributions. Not much fun at all. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{( talk • contribs)} 17:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski, Ritchie333, I agree that the process is stressful. But I am very glad I have the tools it's given me. It's allowed me to help a lot of people. I don't get a lot of drama as an admin, probably because of the area I work in (women's history mostly) that's not overly controversial. At any rate, for what it's worth, I'm glad I ran and Ritchie encouraged me. :) Megalibrarygirl ( talk) 18:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Megalibrarygirl that being an admin is a pretty sweet gig on the whole - there's a reason that so many admin become largely inactive in the project but stay active enough to avoid desysop. I think we don't do a good enough job of recognizing that point of view. Having this perspective play a bigger part in the discourse would be something helpful we could do in attracting candidates. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 18:31, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, I do not see how one can emphasize this aspect without being understood by a significant part of the community by promoting the notion that admins want access to power over other users (in particular, to the block tool) and not to help the project by performing janitorial tasks.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 18:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• I'm well aware I'm in the minority here, but I was pleasantly surprised by how my RFA went. On the whole it wasn't a bad experience. Admittedly, I felt stressed out, but I enjoyed answering questions and felt well-prepared and ready for everything that came my way. I wouldn't choose to re-rfa here and now, but if I could tell my past self what it would be like I'd tell my past self to definitely go through the process. Cheers, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  Mine went fine as well, even though I had an LTA asking questions.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 19:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  Mine was basically hideous. In a debrief statement I used the words "horrifying" and "makes me want to vomit" and "I’ll just have to live with knowing at least one person thought that about me". And I consider myself to have a reasonably thick skin for criticism. So, yeah, even though mine was atypical for a fairly important reason, and I got over it very quickly after it ended, I do understand the reluctance. —valereee ( talk) 20:20, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• I think the issue here is that there is no real alignment of what the problem is. Without alignment on what the issue is (or even if there is an issue) coming up with solutions is not going to happen - there simply won't be consensus for any given solution. To see more of what I'm talking about, I have been collecting every problem with RfA and idea I've seen (and some I've come up with) for RfA reform. But I think we see this issue playing out even in Ritchie's Lee's comments above where they take slightly different perspectives even while having some fundamental alignment compared to Eddie who has a whole different POV. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 18:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  This, I'd agree with. There's at least two broad themes I've seen; people refusing to run because RFA is unpleasant, and people refusing to run because they have no interest in adminship. The problems are reasonably independent of one another, and though cultural problems within Wikipedia (of which there's a host, so I don't want to get into them here) impinge on both these issues, the more proximate solutions are likely to be different. Vanamonde ( Talk) 18:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• I'd be tempted to run, I don't mind a bit of pressure (heck knows I've had a lot of that) but the problem is that I feel that my editing in controversial areas will be held against me and the fact I am currently handcuffed with a few TBANs would be an instant "no" in some people's eyes. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 19:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
• This thread must be a landmark in the history of discussions here at WT:RfA: It's certainly interesting to note, that finally after all these years, Ritchie333, people are at last agreeing that RfA is a particularly pernicious place, a notion I have strongly held for well over a decade but to which most of the rest of the community have buried their heads in the sand. The problem with RfA is NOT the process. It is the participants – User:Fetchcomms (former admin). Even Megalibrarygirl's RfA which scored the highest number of supports ever for a successful run - and only 3 opposes - turned out to be one of the most toxic on record.

Anyone who is really interested in finding out why so few users are prepared to go through RfA and/or getting more candidates to come forward, would do well to take 12 minutes to read through the talk page of that RfA and note well my comments there - which later got me into deep shit.

Those who claim their RfA was a walk in the park are very lucky, but they are in the minority - let that not colour the true facts surrounding the process that has always been the one playground where users are allowed to demonstrate their utter silliness in the user question section, and/or break all the bounds of common decency with impunity in the opposer department. Anyone who wants to have another stab at RfA reform has my blessing and moral support. I say 'moral' Barkeep49, because I no longer have any desire to be proactive on this project, but you have a wealth of research to draw on here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 03:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

You know Kudpung that I am inclined towards action and I have indeed read the work you, WSC, and others did in reforming RfA. However, I'm not too optimistic, at this point, about a way forward. I think more needs to be done still in order to reach some kind of alignment about what the problem is before we can have a fruitful process to consider what reforms might be helpful. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 04:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

What is needed, Barkeep49, is not rocket science nor does it need years more research. The glaring issues were all thorouly identified and well documented at WP:RFA2011 (which I and Scottywong with the help of a few others invested 100s of hours of our time into.) If anyone is wondering why we never got around to launching any RfC for the suggested reforms, the answer is easy: we got so pissed off by trolling by well klnown adminship detractors (most of whom finally got banned years later), that we shut the project down. Getting consensus for anything here on Wikipedia, as you know, is a weird process, and as long as the trolls who like to play silly-buggers at RfA will vote against reforms, serious reformists will continue to bang their heads against the wall. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 04:30, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Let me repeat what I've said a few times before, although nobody ever seems to listen. IMO, the "problems" at RfA have little to do with the RfA process itself. The real problems are: 1) The diminishing supply of new regular WP editors, and 2) the constantly and essentially exponentially growing complexity of WP as a project. Issue 1) presents a significant problem since it constrains the supply of editors who become viable admin candidates. The only way to seriously address this problem is through some kind of genuinely innovative outreach efforts by WMF. Issue 2) is a problem since it creates a perception (I think largely a correct one) among the possible admin candidates that they need to possess ever greater knowledge, technical proficiency and experience in order to qualify. In the long run issue 2) will dominate issue 1), and perhaps we are already there. It is probably infeasible to expect that Wikipedia will ever again experience the influx of new editors (who come and actually stick around) similar to what it saw during the period of 2002-2006. The only realistic way to address 2) is through significant unbundling of admin tools, via creation of various additional user rights. Other than that, tinkering with the RfA format and various other RfA reform attempts will produce marginal results, at the most. Nsk92 ( talk) 13:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the point I was trying to make upthread was somewhat missed, which is how RfA is perceived by other people working on Wikimedia projects. I know how I feel about it (the bar is about right, most RfA seem better in hindsight, changing stuff isn't really beneficial), but was trying to get views from "outside the box" (if you'll pardon the jargon). I also think the project would probably benefit from having a few more editors like Megalibrarygirl as admins, who are not the usual " collect 100 AIV reports and become an admin" type of candidates. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

You're right that RfA is not really the problem. One issue is that being an admin is seen by some as some sort of badge to be collected, leading to some sort of higher status, when in reality it's just a different role. I agree with you that more unbundling is a partial solution. We don't actually want good content creators to turn into full-time admins. What's most important about an admin is their attitude, whether they're experts in the tools is much less important. And probably, like the old adage, the ones that are most keen to become admins are almost certainly the least suitable. Also I disagree that the project is getting more complex, it seems much the same from where I sit. Nigej ( talk) 14:26, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I know that people complain about the climate at the RfA, but, IMO, in reality, something else is going on. The rapidly decreasing entropy of Wikipedia as a project is the issue. Most regular WP editors don't spend much, if any time at RfA and don't really know what's going on there. But they do see how complicated Wikipedia has become and they assume, not unreasonably so, that in order to be an admin one needs to have a pretty good knowlege and understanding of this giant maze. The prospect must seem daunting and the job itself likely seems more and more unattractive. If some limited admin user rights were offered (such as some version of a "vandal blocker"), I am sure we would get a lot more takers. Nsk92 ( talk) 15:08, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I think I'd consider myself a "regular WP editor" as described and I second this. Something that seems to come up regularly in RfAs is that candidates only have experience in certain areas of admin work and this is often given as a reason to oppose their candidacy. Robby.is.on ( talk) 15:15, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Nsk92, A lot of stuff has been unbundled already (such as page mover, template editor, allowing non-admin AfD closures) that there really isn't much left. A "vandal blocker" role would cause serious problems the minute they make a mistake and can't explain themselves out of a situation. That's why I think trustworthiness in that tool has to sit with people who can convince everybody they are able to communicate to a high enough standard, which requires an RfA. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Here's the radical reality.... It doesn't matter if you fix RfA or not, even if you could figure out how to fix it. WP:RBM clearly shows that the decline in adminship is an extremely long term trend. We are 13+ years past peak. Any reforms that are made are going to be incremental at best in increasing the number of successful RfAs.

What has to happen is that there needs to be a long term vision of where the project is going to be in 20 years. We're at 20 years now; what does the next 20 look like and how do we get there? Part of that vision is the reality that if the current trend of declining adminship continues, in 20 years we will have 216 administrators of whom 101 will be relatively active. If the pattern of the last 9 years holds (I excluded 2011 in this data as it skews the results towards more dramatic decline)), in 20 years it is possible we will go an entire year without a successful RfA. In short, we WILL run out of administrators.

The WMF hasn't provided a vision for the next 20 years, and they won't as the WMF is wildly incompetent. The WMF painfully missed a golden opportunity to use the 20 years anniversary to roll out its vision for the next 20. But, the WMF doesn't have such a vision. It won't come from the WMF. Maher's resigned, and her position wasn't a real CEO position anyway. Her replacement won't be in any better position to change things either. The issues with the WMF are systemic and will require somebody with considerable power and influence to change. Such a position or person does not exist at the WMF now, nor will it likely exist in the foreseeable future. Barring a dramatic turn around, it is up to us here on this project to save the project. And yes, I do mean save the project.

So put on your thinking caps, and start looking at the more abstract situation rather than the symptom of RfA. That's a project people need to get behind; what is our vision for en.wikipedia 20 years from now? How do we build to that? What assets do we have now? What assets will we not have in 20 years? What assets can we reasonably hope to acquire in 20 years? What threats do we have now? What threats will we have in 20 years? Think of SWOT analysis as a place to mentally start with this. Stop worrying about RfA; it's just a symptom. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 14:46, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

@ Hammersoft: Have you missed the community-led Wikimedia 2030 recommendations? I'll grant that it's looking at the next nine years, not twenty, but it's pretty disingenuous to say that no forward-looking vision exists. Ed  ^{[talk]  [majestic titan]} 06:06, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• I'm aware of it. The WMF did miss a golden opportunity. Their 'vision' isn't going to be a vision at all, and what is there is dramatically lacking. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 12:07, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Maher's resigned, and her position wasn't a real CEO position anyway, be careful what you say Hammersoft, making comments like that was partially the reason for my desysoping. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see you agreeing with me for once ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 08:31, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

One of the problems is that Admins are still seen, by some, as some sort of superior beings, directing the plebs below (ie ordinary editors). We need to be more like a club, where everyone is treated equally and fairly, with members electing committees (eg admins) to do certain roles, they being held responsible to the membership as a whole. Thankfully post-Framgate my impression is that there's less hectoring and bullying from admins (and would-be admins) but we need to go further in that direction too. Nigej ( talk) 16:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I think, on one hand, this analysis by Hammersoft is spot on. Indeed, we clearly lack a long-term vision as a project, and this is in particular one of the reason why all innovations get blanket rejected if put on vote. On the other hand, my experience with the 2030 strategy exercise (when the projects were essentially disregarded at the first stage, and then on the second, implementation stage I was included to the committee because they wanted to have more connections with the projects) showed that there is very little interest in discussions which do not have any immediate consequences - despite all the efforts, very few users got engaged in the discussions, and most of these have been already associated with affiliates or knew each other via meetups or Wikimanias. I do not expect this possible SWOT / strategy discussion to come out any different — there will be very low engagement, and even if someone takes time to push it through and write down some result, there will be no interest to this result, not in the community, nor from the WMF which would consider it a personal pet project.-- Ymblanter ( talk) 08:03, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I think maybe some official clerk needs to be appointed for each RfA to just remove any question that seriously no reasonable person would factor into their vote. The nominators can't clerk without getting people's backs up. And clearly the candidate can't just ignore the sillier questions, as multiple people will defend apparently any question just on principle. I collected some questionable questions last year. Some of it was just silliness. —valereee ( talk) 16:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Thet's one of three changes I've seen suggested that wouldn't require an RfC to do, just the desire among editors to do it. But as I've said during the recent discussions about more assertive ArbCom clerking, more assertive clerking in general is easier to desire (especially when it's someone else doing it) and harder to implement. "Do I want to handle the pushback that will come from doing this?" is a question I think people ask themselves either explicitly or implicitly and, on a volunteer project like ours, the answer frequently will be no. So I certainly support this but want to recognize the somewhat hidden complexities of actually doing it. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:55, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

You've obviously given a lot of thought recently to what's wrong with RfA and what can be done about it, Barkeep49. I realise you don't necessarily support all the items on your list - and that's also the way I worked in 2011 and the way Biblioworm prepared for his December 2015 reforms - indeed I did a double-take when reading your list because I thought I had inadvertently landed on one of his pages!

Clerking was one of the major points of both RFA2011 and Biblioworm's reforms, but sadly the suggestions to ramp up the removal of inappropriate questions, votes, and behaviour received the least support from the community which leads me again, anecdotally, to assume the community does not want their playground to be governed by the 5 Pillars or Hammersoft's user page (which BTW ought to be an essay). There are two other points on your list that are very appropriate and worth starting a RfC for, but perhaps the lack of support for many of Biblioworm's reforms was because he brought so many to the table in one go rather than space them out. Perhaps he just didn't have a lot of time - he retired immediately his successful reform ideas were rolled out. Over the years, my former (unwitting) mentor, WereSpielChequers drummed into me: 'Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey'. He was right, it took 6 long years to get ACTRIAL . Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 02:12, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd totally be willing to offer 'won't !vote this time, I'll clerk," but of course one of the problems is always that someone not-experienced-enough will appoint themselves first. Which then gets into the bureaucratic issues of becoming an official RfA clerk... —valereee ( talk) 19:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Put it on the crats. They don't have much else to do since SUL and monitoring RFA is certainly in their wheelhouse given their existing responsibilities for crat chats and bit flipping. — Wug· a·po·des​ 23:36, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Precisely, Wugapodes - in recent years there have been several suggestions of new tasks for the Bureaucrats in order to give them something to do. The general consensus has been that they would not accept tasks they did not sign up for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 01:20, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

This is a classic case of where the process has distorted the reality. The bureaucrat bit gives one the ability to confer rights. As every bureaucrat will tell you, that isn't much work, and therefore there is no shortage of bureaucrats because the workload as such is so small. Strictly speaking, a bureaucrat doesn't have to be an admin, but it makes little sense to give the right to confer the admin bit to a non-admin. But the only obligation they have is to write articles. it is our process that sets a high bar for bureaucratship, which creates a false impression of an elite corps. A simple reform would be to change the threshold to match that of admins. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:16, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

If existing crats don't want to do it they don't have to, but imo expanding their mandate shouldn't be conditioned on them accepting it. We hand out tools all the time that people never use them or never ask (cough auto/extended confirmed cough). Like Hawkeye is getting at, it's really weird that crats are the only group that functionally has veto power over the community expanding their role. Some crats already clerk RFAs (I believe I've seen Primefac and Amanda stepping up in that role over the last few months, but there are no doubt others). Even if it's only a handful who are willing to do it, giving them guidelines and a mandate is a net positive considering the flak they sometimes get for making judgment calls. In the absolute worst case, we can just elect editors like Valereee who do want to perform the additional clerical roles to cratship with the added benefit of revitalizing that moribund permission. Quite honestly, if we can't find something meaningful for crats to do, we should abolish the group and just have stewards flip bits for us like they do on other projects. — Wug· a·po·des​ 00:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure how to take that, Wug! ^Joke —valereee ( talk) 16:05, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

It's not that they have veto power, but (some) bureaucrats believe they should only perform tasks for which the community specifically vetted them when they were selected. The community can of course choose to retroactively authorize some or all existing bureaucrats to perform new tasks, and as you said, it can select new bureaucrats with the new scope in place. isaacl ( talk) 03:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Stewards could easily add the group, but would they agree to closing the discussion too (to decide if a bit needs to be flipped)? And what's to be done with the concept of crat chats for controversial RfAs? ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 04:15, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Mad thought?

Why not invert the problem. Say every six months, run a batch-ArbCom-style process (the ArbCom election process is more structured/controlled/less-personalized, than RfA) of many candidates. While people can nominate themselves (per normal RfA), create a process that automatically nominates candidates (whether they like it or not), who are then !voted on (the candidates can choose to answer questions or not). The process to automatically nominate candidates would focus on technical competence (e.g. a bot, whose results are sense-checked by a panel of admins), and the community decides temperament/judgment. We might have 50 candidates in the first batch, so would need a minimum # votes (say +100) to screen out low-participation situations. It would give the community a process to award an RfA to an editor, without that editor even having to ask for it/go through RfA. It would also give editors a check of where they stand with the community in terms of being trusted-or not with admin tools. I think it would materially increase the # of RfAs (and probably increase the rigor around technical screening). Britishfinance ( talk) 12:39, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

This is highly original—indeed, it's probably one of the most original ideas wrt RfA ever, particularly in its depersonalising of the candidates. It is also highly unlikely to gain acceptance—for the same reason. There are too many, I think, to whom the RfA process is an opportunity to personalise the process. (Cf. turkeys !voting for Christmas.) —— Serial 12:53, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks SN. What if we leave the existing RfA process there, but just add this as a trial? Britishfinance ( talk) 13:24, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

( edit conflict)I can't think that I (nor many others) would support a regime to nominate users if they don't wish to run. We have had a "flight", where multiple people ran, which Barkeep49 was a major proponent of, but the issue is people wanting to become an admin. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{( talk • contribs)} 12:54, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I think there is a difference between people not wanting to run (particularly in the very personalized RfA process), and being automatically !voted on (which they can ignore or participate in) for temperance/judgment, having had their technical capability separately validated? Britishfinance ( talk) 13:24, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I can obviously only answer for myself, but in my own case there is no difference. I have been asked about running for admin a couple of times, and it is precisely the process of being judged by the community that puts me off. (Well, that, and mandatory question 2 which I would have to answer "no idea" to, and that in itself would be judged as a lack of judgment). I wouldn't mind having the tools and I don't think I'd break Wikipedia with the mop, but I am not doing a RfA, and the option to ignore the mud-slinging would not remove the stress and unpleasantness – knowing that mud is being slung is equally unpleasant whether you know the exact nature of the mud or no, and possibly more unpleasant if it is unknown. Besides, if somebody opts not to participate in a discussion about them, what is that going to do to their reputation among other editors? Nobody is irreplaceable, but make that process impossible to avoid, and I suspect you will lose more experienced editors than myself.

One of the most frequently-perceived problems with Wikipedia is the lack of diversity, and creating a system that weeds out people who cannot cope with the RfA gauntlet will not go any way towards fixing that problem. -- bonadea contributions talk 14:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Very interesting Bonadea. What if you got a message on your TP saying Bonadea, you have been selected for inclusion in the upcoming community-RfA poll by the Technical Competence Committee. You do not need to respond or participate in this process, but you can respond to questions asked during the process. You ignore this, and then a few weeks later get a second message saying, Having received in excess of 100 votes, of which over 70% were supportive, the community-RfA poll has now decided that you should be given the administration tool-kit. Would that be an okay process for you, or would you object to it? thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 15:08, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

It would not be okay for me, and I would object very strongly. -- bonadea contributions talk 15:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

In the case of any objection, I'm sure it would be a matter of only a few minutes before the discussion was closed; other candidates, meanwhile, might like to see how it plays out before making a similar decision. Either way, they retain control of when the process ends. —— Serial 15:34, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, maybe should give the nominee the option to opt-out after the first Talk Page message - Bonadea, would that work for you? thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 16:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Hey SN, lovely to see you :-) I still wouldn't think it was OK, for several reasons – for one thing, who is to know whether any given editor is going to be around to see that a discussion has started about them? (And if someone would like to be part of the discussion, today they can time their RfA so it falls when they do have the time for it, but with this system there's no guarantee for that.) If a system such as this were implemented, it would have to be opt-in, not opt-out. -- bonadea contributions talk 16:07, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Serious kudos to Britishfinance for an original proposal. I like the idea in theory, but I fear it would not work in practice for the reasons Serial gave above. I do however agree that "not wanting to go through RfA" !== "not wanting the job of sysop". ƒirefly ( t · c ) 13:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Firefly. 2nd Mad Thought, why don't we just run this process anyway, and then ask afterward whether the community is happy to accept the final results as valid RfAs? Screen every valid editor's technical competence, and then run an ArbCom style trial community poll on temperament for those who pass technical validation. It would be a strange RfC that would overturn the validly conducted result of a community mega-poll? We have the technology tools to do this now, and I don't think would need an RfC to do it? Britishfinance ( talk) 13:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I have a simple solution. Instead of having the community ask questions and vote, why not let ArbCom decide if any candidates are suited for having administrator rights? It would remove all inconveniences, pressures and bullying of RFA. Allowing trusted, respected and established administrators to make the call sounds like a good idea. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:22, 20 February 2021 (UTC) _{(struck impersonation by banned user) 2A02:C7F:CC08:6300:984C:4953:785F:7DC6 ( talk) 15:16, 20 February 2021 (UTC)}

Even assuming this could get community support I think there's a flaw besides the voluntold aspect. There are a number of candidates for whom q1 is essential to thier RfA. Without that concerns over a specific area, frequently speedy deletion, might be enough to sink their candidacy. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 14:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

If I understand you Barkeep49, you are saying that the prospective candidate would need to participate to answer things like Q1? I think we could still work-around this and ask it anyway, and if the candidate ignores it, then people can decide whether that was important or not. I for one don't read Q1 as I assume the admin will what they want to do after RfA (and I am not an advocate of the "show need for the tools" question, which I think is becoming more and more redundant)? We just get as many technically competent editors validated as possible, and just get a straight community !vote on all of them (like ArbCom or Stewards), and see who comes out. I think we could convert a material number of senior editors? thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 15:14, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the number of editors who do 100% their own investigation before deciding what to do in an rfa is low. I think, to varying degrees, the nomination statements, standard questions, additional questions, and existing support/opposes impact RfA participants. Obviously getting rid of some of that context is part of the point of this suggestion but I think it remains a flaw in this suggestion. And since you've now suggested below that this happen BOLDLY I'm going to bow out of the discussion. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 15:46, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep49, my clarification paragraph below was to try and establish a "strawman" as to how this might practically happen (I am guessing we are a long way from any of this happening). If you think it is premature or inappropriate, then please delete or strike it (with my blessing). Also, I envisioned the standard RfA-type questions happening in the ArbCom/Steward-type poll, although the nominees might not answer them. However, I was hoping to minimize the personalized comments that accompany the individual !votes at RfA, and which I think does not happen in the ArbCom process. thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 16:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I had these ideals in mind when drafting Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Responder role. In particular, the nomination-only aspect and I'd hoped that editors can be nominated without their permission. I figured it may lead to a more informal process that seems, indeed, more like the community putting forward an editor, rather than vice versa. Don't know whether it could work though, and relatively sure it won't get consensus. One thing about RfA is that it's suddenly appropriate to dig up an editor's history and paint a picture, which would probably not be seen as acceptable to do to a normal editor in good standing not running for additional permissions. So, if the editor isn't actually consenting to put themselves under scrutiny it may be a bit icky. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 14:37, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader - what if we don't ask for consensus, and just do this (i.e. get a list of technically competent people and run an ArbCom/Steward-type community poll on whether people think they could be admins). Per the above, we can ask afterward by RfC if the community would accept these candidates as full admins, but at least the community would be discussing an event that happened (rather than a theoretical possibility), and for which the community participated in? thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 15:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

The issue with this is that unless one runs for RfX or ArbCom it's impossible to know for sure what the broad community opinion on them is. In general, outside those areas we don't really do polls on editors, I think. Feedback can be difficult, and if they end up with 80% "no" it might, for some folks, be demoralising and lose the wiki a good editor, so I'm not sure someone should be subject to it without consent. I might like the idea of a support-only poll. That way if there's few supports that could also be because people weren't sure, were neutral, or just didn't care enough to vote. I see how it could be a false indicator though (could have 50 supports, run, and then find out you get 100 opposes). ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 15:47, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Just to clarify on my Mad Thought, I am not saying that we replace existing RfA, or have a big RfC on this (which will always be a no-consensus at best). If a group of technically minded admins get together and run a bot that screens out 50 potential RfA candidates that the admins believe are technically competent; and then that group puts up those names into an ArbCom/Steward-style community !vote program to ask the community if they should be RfAs, then it will happen. The worst case is that an RfC will be created to prevent it, which will also end up as a no consensus. The key objective is getting to a de-personalized community assessment of the potential future admin pool - a noble and useful objective for the project. I believe that if we had those results, we would end up with a lot more admins (although we would need a final RfC to get the community to accept them as full admins); and particularly amongst editors who might never have run. Britishfinance ( talk) 15:34, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

How would it be de-personalised? Each candidate would presumably still be discussed as an individual – it wouldn't be a "yes" or "no" to the entire group of 50 candidates, surely. It is not the discussions about a candidate's technical competence that goes into personal charcteristics, but the discussions about their judgment and temperament. How do you discuss somebody's temperament without getting personal? -- bonadea contributions talk 16:07, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

In the manner that in ArbCom !voting (i.e. yes/no), outside of the questions, the !votes don't come with additional comments/issues? In RfA, people are raising issues via formal questions (which would still happen, per ArbCom-type process and where the questions are more scrutinized/clerked in ArbCom, as I understand it), but also with their individual !vote. I think the ArbCom-style process is, therefore, more de-personalized than RfA? Britishfinance ( talk) 16:23, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Interesting idea BF, but if such a system were created, it should allow users to opt-out (so that they aren't selected even if they meet the criteria), and I wonder how many would opt-out. Levivich  ^harass/ _hound 18:59, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think Bonadea's point is well made. However, something about having one process (a bot plus admin panel) create lists of candidates that meet technical validation, which can then be run (with opt-out) through another ArbCom-style mass election process (and where people could opt-in, but still not answer any of the ArbCom questions per Barkeep49), could help. I have a feeling that if the rush for adminship wasn't so big back in the 2000s (when the concept of "need for tools" had to be created, but less relevant now), that they would have created more of an automated process around adminship. What we have now is a very personalised "gotcha" process that works fine until it doesn't, and then spontaneously implodes. Britishfinance ( talk) 19:48, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

In order for this new process to be able to give out the full toolset including view deleted it needs to be equivalent scrutiny to an RFA. That's a requirement from legal as I remember it. If it's anything close to RFA in scrutiny then you need it to be volunteer only, and from my experience as a nominator - the candidates need to be able to choose the date of their RFA. But there's a broader point, one of the biggest flaws of RFA is that we don't have an agreed criteria for adminship in the way we do for rollback, template editor and most of the uncontentious editor rights. This proposal requires that such a criteria be largely agreed, otherwise how else do you pick those 50? If you can agree such a criteria you have a much less contentious RFA. If you don't agree a criteria the technical committee winds up discussing a whole load of colleagues behind their backs and rejects many of them to get to its 50....... So my suggestion is that first you get the community to agree a criteria for RFA (good luck with that one). Ϣere SpielChequers 20:48, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Good point. Would this work. We keep the current RfA process in place (i.e. we are not replacing it at this stage, but just piloting a new process). A group of admins (or the admin-body as a whole), comes up with an objective screen of circa 50 candidates based on criteria that they could stand over. It would be the WP admin-body list of the top "50-most eligible candidates for adminship" (we could keep this going on an ongoing basis)? Once we have this list, we run it for those who want to opt-in, through a batch-ArbCom-style process (e.g. structured scrutinized questions like ArbCom, and yes/no !votes) through the community (i.e the community still has complete control over final say). The question is whether we ask the community before or after this batch-vote whether they are happy that the candidates passing become valid RfAs. I had a thought above that we wait until after (to make the RfC more real and tangible), however, that may make the whole "experiment" a bit of a bust, and the community may not participate if they are not sure it will amount to anything? The principle however is that we have an automated process for generating candidates, and a more de-personalized process for the community !voting on them (I suspect many who would not run, would allow themselves to go through this). Britishfinance ( talk) 21:18, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

If we were to ever hit a crisis because of not having enough admins, our likely response would be to go find a large group of volunteers and appoint them as admins. I would hope most of that tranche would turn out fine, though some wouldn't. My preference is to fix RFA instead of doing such a workaround, however I appreciate that the current situation is frustrating and reforming RFA is hard. The problem with having a committee discuss a whole load of editors and pick fifty is that many people don't like to have strangers critique them on the internet, and that would be worse for those who were discussed and whose critics managed to keep them out of the 50. I have nominated many people, and discussed runs with many more, some issues are best handled one to one via email. One area where our views do align is over criteria. Your committee can't pick 50 likelies without agreeing a criteria for those 50, and I have long argued that RFA would be a better place if we could settle at least some of the criteria for adminship. For example "need for the tools". I won't nominate a candidate unless they have a need for the tools, not because I think that criteria is useful, but because I don't want to nominate candidates who will fail. Much of the argument at RFA is over disputed criteria such as need for the tools, If we had RFCs on specific criteria and at least set some boundaries on the discussion then RFA would become a less contentious place and I believe more people would run. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:17, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more on settling clear "floor criteria" for adminship. Of course, getting sufficient consensus on what those criteria are is going to be like herding cats! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 11:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers, actually there is no WMF legal requirement that RFA candidates be scrutinised to the level that we see in enwiki. This level of scrutiny is entirely because of the way enwiki community has evolved. What they require is an on site record where the user has agreed to run for Adminship and there is community consensus for it. They treat it as the user accepting responsibility for their use of Admin tools, including viewing deleted edits. Some small wikis have 3-4 editors or don't have any active community at all. An RFA there is typically a post in the village pump saying you want to run for Adminship and ask if anybody support or oppose. Then submit a Steward request a week later. As long as there is no oppose !vote, it will be granted subject to Steward discretion even if nobody has participated in your "RFA". AVSmalnad77 ^talk 02:49, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

If I understand this proposal correctly, I totally oppose the idea of people being proposed for adminship by some outside process or evaluation, without they themselves first deciding to take on that role. I have personally approached many excellent candidates who simply didn't want to be an admin, for various reasons not related to fear of the RfA process, and IMO that ended it right there. We are all volunteers here, right? We choose what we want to do and what roles we want to fill; we don't have it thrust upon us. What kind of an organization would we be if we followed the system sometimes attributed to drill sergeants: "I need three volunteers: you, you, and you!" -- MelanieN ( talk) 21:04, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

MelanieN. That may be a failing of this process (and thus an unfixable part of an RfA). However, the rationale is that there is a more systematic process for generating lists of technically competent candidates, which might people feel better about being on such a list (or not, we would have to see - someone could like to see that they regularly appear in a top-50 list of WP admins for most eligible candidates). However, the ArbCom-Steward style process for RfA is another change that I think could improve the RfA process for those intimidated by it. It has structured/clerked questions and then anonymous yes-no !votes. RfA is a much more personalized process where people can really raise the temperature with comments in their !vote, which can set things off in unpredictable directions (i.e. why are Arbs-Stewards elected in a good process, but admins elected in a less good process)? thanks. Britishfinance ( talk) 21:25, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Arbcom is an election, it has to be as there are a limted number of seats, and people don't win unless they have first been through an RFA. The disadvantage of yes/no votes is that you don't know why someone didn't vote for you, that's fine for an election such as Arbcom, but RFA is more like a driving test. You wouldn't want a driving test where instructors would fail people without giving a reason would you? Ϣere SpielChequers 11:28, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

(We had both non-admins this past election poll above the bare minimum, which is 50%, one at 56% and one at 51%. It may be a matter of time for Arbcom.) -- Izno ( talk) 20:04, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I have opened an RfC at Wikipedia:Request for comment/Adminship term length to discuss adding an term length to adminship, and what to do at the end of an admin's term. Worm^TT( talk) 10:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

The 10000th most active editor currently has 9395 edits, which (ignoring the exceptional Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/GoldenRing) is round about where edit count starts to be considered as sufficient. How many of the top 10000 editors meet the following criteria:

1. Not currently an admin
2. Not previously an admin removed for cause
3. Not blocked currently or within the last 2 years
4. Made at least 100 edits per month in at least 6 of the last 7 months
5. Made at least 12 edits in the last 7 months in the WP space

That should give a significant overcount of the potential admin pool (and what's the count when each of the numbers used are more realistically doubled or tripled?). And that's before you remove those with perceived or real non-blocked behavioural or attitudinal or editing issues, those with AFD and CSD quality problems, those with perceived insufficient mainspace work, etc, much less those for whom disinclination to run (again) is factor. ^~ Hydronium^~Hydroxide^{~ (Talk)~} 10:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Generally, I look for admins to have double that edit count! Anything over 20,000 is fine, but there is always exceptions if they are a great candidate. That would mean you'd actually have to be in the top 5,000. Looking at that list, there's plenty who aren't admins, but it would take some work to see who is active, who meets those above criteria. The question would then be - do these users want to run. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{( talk • contribs)} 13:05, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Hopefully most don't want to be admins. There's a strange idea in some of the posts here, that we should be encouraging good content producers to become admins. To me, that's like asking Albert Einstein to deliver the post. We need many more people editing Wikipedia, and hopefully some of those, with the aptitude for it, will become admins. Nigej ( talk) 14:18, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Nigej, But generally editors can't become admins until they've got a bit of content experience under their belt. Look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Money emoji, who had a genuine need for the tools in a specific area that is frequently backlogged and starved of admins, but had a heck of a lot of opposition over "content creation". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:42, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

This where the system needs a shake-up. I spent my whole career in science thinking that the "admin department" was somewhere I didn't want to be. They do important roles, looking after the money, contracts, etc. but not my cup of tea. Somehow in Wikipedia the admin role has become seen (by the admins and would-be admins) as somehow superior to what is the really important role - creating content. Nigej ( talk) 15:05, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

For all some people dislike the topicons, I've always personally found a long line of FA icons far more admirable than being in the sysop user group. Perhaps it's because I have no idea how people repeatedly push out prose at that quality level, and go through the (tough-looking!) peer review process that is WP:FAC. Even more-so when it's a large topic matter; seems impressive meeting the comprehensive criteria. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 15:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

(EC) 9,395 is way too high a threshold. People have passed on much lower edit counts, I think 3,500 is about the lower limit of someone being likely to pass nowadays - though in that case they'd need to be mainly manual edits. I'm less sure about the block log, we used to advise people to wait 12 months, but it depends on the reason, the explanation and the rest of the block log. That one's really worth discussing with an experienced nominator. More to the point, we know there are lots of people out there who could pass, the difficulty is in getting them to stand. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:08, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if 9395 is too high, but I am sure Lee's suggestion of 20,000 is. I think it does us no good if our editors who are actively trying to find new candidates are too exclusive in their screening. We don't want candidates to fail, but I think it does us no good to have candidates wait who don't have to. We have enough issue in getting people who could run and pass to do so, that we need to think very carefully about how we can nurture those who are willing but might need some guidance to be ready. Best, Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:42, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Barkeep49, I can't remember an RfA failing because of edit counts, unless it's accompanied by a truckload of other issues that make it a moot point. Sure, I can remember the odd oppose over them, but they tend to get short shrift. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm happy to actually run a query / some datamining based on whatever parameters people come up with, for what it's worth. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 17:42, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

A place to start might be the fairly the fairly comprehensive list of voters' criteria. It's interesting to note that my own criteria, often lampooned as a 'laundry list', is one of the most tolerant sets of conditions out there; it's just the detail that frightens anyone who doesn't have the patience to read it properly. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 21:03, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Quoth WereSpellCheckers "9,395 is way too high a threshold. People have passed on much lower edit counts..."... In which case, a preliminary question for the dataminers: About how many edits - mainspace and elsewhere - have applicants from the past 5 or so years had (with or without deleted ones) when they launched their RFA? I just did an eyeball of the last 10 successful candidates, and all look to have had over 10K edits (possibly excluding undeleted, depending on how xtools counts). Who (apart from GoldenRing in April 2017) has had anything significantly lower? ^~ Hydronium^~Hydroxide^{~ (Talk)~} 04:24, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I would back Barkeep's viewpoint - I generally say 10k edits is the minimum, but I'd be a rank hypocrite if I felt 20k was a starting level (even allowing for exceptions). I should note that I don't believe have people passed on "much lower edit counts" in half a decade Nosebagbear ( talk) 15:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the lowest edit count by a successful candidate in the last 5 years was Goldenring nearly 4 years ago with 2,370. I am pretty sure that most candidates would need more edits than that, I wouldn't reccomend running after less than 3,500 edits unless those edits were almost all manual. But it is worth remembering that the minimum de facto edit count requirement at RFA is well below the average of recent passes. There are vast numbers of members of this community who could be unnecesarily deterred by people looking at the average edit count of successes rather than the minimum that the community really requires. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:20, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, I've run the numbers based on Hydronium Hydroxide's criteria above as a starting point and here are the results. I based this on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, so anyone who opted out of that will not be on this list either. I included those who do not meet the criteria purely so people can see which criteria people didn't meet. Personally I feel that "100 edits per month in 6 of the last 7" is a high bar, and I would swap that to "100 edits in 4 of the last 7" or "20 edits in 6 of the last 7", but meh, the queries can be re-run easily enough if we want. In case you're wondering why I didn't use the nice tick/cross templates.... well, how well do you think that page would load with 25,000 transclusions to process...? No, I most definitely didn't discover that through experience, why would you think that..... ƒirefly ( t · c ) 16:19, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Very interesting! I agree with your assessment of the 100 edits/month for the last 7 months criterion; it doesn't allow for a single busy period in that time. I've got one extremely promising candidate in mind who's had from 200 - 2000 edits per month since late 2018 but who only had ~30 in January, so they're marked as not meeting criteria. —valereee ( talk) 19:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Firefly. Perhaps X total edits in the last 6-12 months would be a suitable alternative? I really wasn't expecting so detailed a dataset. That list only displays 4189 of the top 10000, and even with that, 849 people are listed as potential candidates, so that's a far healthier pool than I was expecting. ^~ Hydronium^~Hydroxide^{~ (Talk)~} 10:08, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@ Hydronium Hydroxide: happy to re-run with whatever numbers you/others feel are suitable. Perhaps an average of 100 edits a month for the last 12 months? ƒirefly ( t · c ) 17:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Firefly, I couldn't see any summary stats, so I've compiled some here.

So that looks like about 850 users meet all 4 criteria. If you expanded it to meeting 3 out of the 4, it would be 1,636.

It looks like you had only 4,190 users in your table though, not the 10,000 HH had originally mentioned. I don't think existing admins and withdrawals from the most active editor list could account for that difference, so I'm not sure if there's another criteria I'm missing. MarginalCost ( talk) 22:56, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that - I didn't compile summary stats as it was just a quick hack to see what the dataset would be. I only ran it on the top 5000 (i.e. the first page) rather than the top 10,000 likewise. I can run it again on the full set as there seems to be interest and compile some summary statistics as well. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 07:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Got it, that makes sense. That puts the cutoff closer to 20,000, which, not withstanding WSC's caveat above, is closer to the average of recent passes. I think the main point has been demonstrated though, that the potential pool is pretty big, so I don't know that expanding the list is especially vital at the moment if it's an especially troublesome lift for you (though I imagine you've already written the code) - my main question was if there was another filter screening out candidates. The real remaining criteria of interest would be some stats on FA/GA/DYK creation, perhaps cross-referenced against the Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. I can't seem to find any similar equivalent for GA's, though Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs could also be considered. MarginalCost ( talk) 14:01, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I just ran a quick check myself. The short answer is that there are 49 candidates who meet all 4 of the original criteria, have over 20k edits, and have a current or former featured article. Obviously, this is a pretty high bar, and an FA isn't a requirement for RFA. But it does seem like content creation ends up as a much more restrictive screening factor than most of the others listed above.

All told, 143 of the listed 4,189 have an FA. If we expand the criteria to [(3 out of the original 4) + FA], then 80 users pass the screen. If anyone knows a reliable list of GA credits, let me know and I'll run those stats too.

Obviously, all the usual caveats apply about unlisted users, messiness of the FA article-credit process, difficulties in username matching, etc.

If anyone wants the list of the relevant 49 or 80 to follow up on nominations, let me know and I can dump it into your userspace somewhere. MarginalCost ( talk) 14:13, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay, last comment for now, I swear: there are 12 of the 4,189 who have 25+ DYK creation/expansions credit but not an FA. Of those 12, 6 meet all of the original 4 criteria, and 10 meet 3 or more. MarginalCost ( talk) 14:20, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Over a decade ago I started compiling Wikipedia:RFA by month, partly to try and prove to everyone that RFA was in a drought. It took a while, there were some who thought it was some sort of seasonal glitch that had just got worse than usual. But the number of successful RFAs continued to fall by between a third and a half every year and eventually everyone accepted that there was a drought and that RFA had problems. We had 408 succesful RFAs in 2007 and 28 in 2012 that was an era of precipitous decline only partly accounted for by the unbundling of rollback in 2008. In 2014 we had 22 successful RFAs, in 2019 we also had 22. Last year we had 17, not a sustainable number but more than in either 2018 or 2016. The 2014-2020 era of RFA is not one of continual decline, more of a fairly steady trickle. Given that the community peaked in size in 2007, declined until the end of 2014, but subsequently rallied and through 2015 to 2020 has been consistently larger than in 2014, I think that the trickle at RFA is sustainable as long as the editing community continues to be stable or slowly growing.

I think it unhealthy for the community that most of our admins are from a much earlier Wikigeneration than much of the currently editing community, and I would like to see more candidates emerging, especially from among those who joined the community in the 2013-2019 era (we still only have 7 admins who first edited in 2013, and two of them are bots). Given that many admins stay active for very long periods of time, and most of our current admins have been admins for over a decade, we are not far from a stable situation in the admin cadre, without change there will be fewer admins in another decade, but numbers of admins have not dropped as sharply as we expected they would when we saw the number of new admins collapse from over 400 a year to a low of 10.

I had thought that RFA was now a much safer space than its reputation, and indeed its past. But what seems a safe space to me, may not be a safe space for others. So I'm curious to learn what the behaviours are that others consider problematic, I know that one recent RFA participant found the sheer number of questions excessive, even if it was difficult to point out any one question as hostile. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:43, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Q6 in the current RfA has got nothing to do with adminship per se. IMO it's yet another classic example of 'I'm new here; oh, there's an election going on and oh, we can ask questions! I'll think of a question to ask.' Or is it perfectly normal for one of a new user's first edits to be a vote at RfA? It certainly caused quite a flutter in the comments section. Time to take a serious look at Barkeep49's list... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 09:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Or is it perfectly normal for one of a new user's first edits to be a vote at RfA Yes; there's a watchlist notice where we invite them to contributem, so it's not a stretch to imagine new editors would take us up on the offer. We should welcome new contributors to learn about project governance in the hopes that they help steward it in the future. Biting newcomers interested in RFA is a sure-fire way to ensure they find the place unwelcoming and never want to run. To WereSpielChequer's OP, I appreciate the contrary perspective and agree that we have made serious progress even just in the few years I've been around. Taking up Barkeep's proposals and recognizing what we've been doing well are not mutually exclusive. — Wug· a·po·des​ 23:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

... except the editor in question (if you'll pardon the pun) was indefinitely blocked less than a week later. Ritchie333 [[User talk:|^(talk)]] ^(cont) 13:26, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to disagree Wugapodes, but there are plenty of wannabe Wikipolice already - ANI for example is full of them. New users will find out sooner or later what happens in the back office, no need to ram managerial tasks down their throats before they have even cut their teeth on content, and Ritchie333's comment speaks for itself, it happens quite often. That's why we have this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 07:08, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

In fact Wugapodes, if you are concerned that helping new users to understand the best practices is not 'biting' them, you could consider helping at RfA by running your mouse down the usernames of the participants and seeing just how much experience they have and linking them to the guide if appropriate. It's interesting to note that en.Wiki is the only major project that does not impose a minimum qualification for voting on important issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 02:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying that I recommend new users participate, but we should not fault them for doing the exact thing we invite them to do. We also should not hide processes from the editorial community as that can quickly lead to cabalism and oligarchy. There are many things we could do to improve RFA, but reforming RfA isn't something I'm interested in devoting my time to right now. Rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic won't stop it from sinking. We have few candidates because we recruit few editors. We recruit few editors because we are often unwelcoming to newcomers particularly from marginalized backgrounds which creates a vicious cycle of reinforcing an exclusionary community. Yesterday I interacted with a (seemingly begrudging) edit-a-thon facilitator who joined the project in its first decade and left because of its hostility and unwelcoming nature. I was embarrassed that my only defense of this project after over a decade was "yeah, we're still working on it". Unless you're articulating a system for a reader-to-admin pipeline, I do not believe it will have a significant impact on our admin recruitment because nearly all RFA reforms fundamentally miss the point. — Wug· a·po·des​ 21:02, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I get that there are humungous flaws in the project and a lot of new editors get burned. But given the size of the editing community, even ignoring the increase over the last 12 months as that won't percolate through to RFA yet, something has changed that has made people less willing to run at RFA. It isn't just that editing is now at levels not seen in a decade, but even our 2014 nadir the community was more than half the size of our 2007 peak. If you compare editing levels to RFA activity I don't see how the relatively slight drop since 2007 could be a significant part of the more than 90% decline in RFAs. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:45, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I have to wonder whether some of this is down to the idea that expressing a desire to become a sysop is often viewed as a bad thing. Obviously there are some cases where this desire is unhealthy, but as Wugapodes said we need a reader-to-admin pipeline, and part of that is allowing people to express the desire that "I could help out here as an admin" without it being viewed as a bad thing. Perhaps my perception is just plain wrong, and that doesn't happen, but either way if the issue is finding people who want to run, allowing them to pencil in their name shouldn't hurt. Even if 95% of the people who express this desire are entirely unsuitable, that 5% could make it worthwhile. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 10:07, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Time to 10 million is a horrible metric to use. Firstly, we have bots, tons of them. Consider ClueBot or any other anti-vandalism bot. A vandal makes an edit, the bot reverts them. Nothing's changed and no one is closer to admin qualifications, but we're two edits closer to our next 10 millionth milestone. We would do better to look at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits which (for now) lists the top 10k wikipedians. 18.6 million of our edits come from 10 people. One is indefintiely blocked for repeatedly violating editing restrictions, another is indefinitely blocked for repeatedly edit warring, and a third was desysoped by ArbCom for civility concerns. Statistically speaking, that does not give me confidence that newbies are interacting with the nicest people we have to offer, so keep that in mind when thinking about where the bottleneck is. But I digress; back to the admin recruitment issue.

According to Wikipedians by edits, fewer than 10,000 people have made more than 10,000 edits ever. In the entire two decades of this project, we have already exhausted a huge percentage of our pool (Mind you, we have editors elsewhere on this page saying that the 10k bar is too low for an RfA), and quite possibly a majority when we take into account retirements, refusals, and (indef) blocks that winnow it further. As you said in your OP, we have made strides in improving RfA. We should certainly make further improvements simply because improving institutional culture is a good initiative regardless of outcomes. But this isn't the bottleneck. We can make RfA as welcoming as the Teahouse, and we will still have a trickle of nominations because we still have a trickle of editors sticking around to make 10k edits. By all means, we should improve the culture of RfA, but we should do that for its own sake. If we want to increase RfA throughput though, we should remember that the tail does not wag the dog. — Wug· a·po·des​ 21:18, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I only just noticed the quantitative discussion below which I think puts numbers to my point. Firefly's table contains a number of people I've personally asked and who have made clear they aren't interested in the job. Watchers of this page are far more active in recruitment than I am, but how many on that page have been asked already? Why do we think barking up the same trees is an effective long-term strategy? As Firefly points out above, these are harder questions to answer because publicly stating a desire to request adminship is actively discouraged, so we largely only have anecdotes on why people say no. — Wug· a·po·des​ 21:30, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

There used to be a page where people could sign up to say they were not interested in being an admin, as I did over a decade ago. I can't find it now, but perhaps it could be revived to save everybody time. Johnbod ( talk) 22:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

There is a userbox template, which you can find a list of transclusions for. Is that what you were thinking of? MarginalCost ( talk) 13:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I must admit that I am surprised to find no April Fool's RfAs this year. That used to be quite the tradition. -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:31, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, considering that we just desysopped the "winner" of an April Fool's RfA, I doubt many people are in the mood for that. ^{SubjectiveNotability} _{a GN franchise} ( talk to the boss) 15:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

@ TheSandDoctor: there was one, but apparently it was "banned" and speedy deleted (c.f. Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#Wikipedia:April_Fools'_Day_2021/Requests_for_adminship/COVID-19). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:40, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

No link to such a "ban" was actually prospered, but in any case DragonflySixtyseven decided to speedy delete it after the author agreed to the deletion. Since it was a FOOLS nom anyway, its really not worth time to argue policy about it though. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to craft your own, but with the caveat that it must up the stakes and have more jokes and be funnier than any previous one! isaacl ( talk) 15:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• I have to admit that I had similar thoughts as TheSandDoctor, and GeneralNotability. I think both sides aren't really feeling in a humorous mood today. While there may be an isolated gloat or two about, I suspect that anyone familiar with the situation is understanding of how disappointing the affair was, and at least appreciative of the loss we've experienced. — Ched ( talk) 16:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Well said Ched. I don’t think anyone is currently in a very humorous frame of mind. We’ve just watched one prolonged huge joke play out badly; we certainly don’t want another. Giano (talk) 17:01, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • That is well said, Ched. I am definitely aware of what is going on etc, April fools RfAs are just something I look forward to reading through and normally they give me a chuckle. While I am understanding, I was also disappointed in a way not to see any this morning (my time). Perhaps when we are through the current situation (next year maybe?) they can return and there will be more humour about. We shall see, but here's hoping. -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
• It feels like half of Wikipedia has no sense of humor, and the other half is too sad to make jokes. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 19:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

  @ Tryptofish: Sometimes it does, but there is good reason for the latter given the current climate. I do normally enjoy looking at WP:RFA for the April Fools jokes and was disappointed when I logged in this morning not to see any. -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree with you. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 00:09, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

• You all must have missed Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2022 FIFA World Cup. Giant Snowman 20:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • No I didn't. I asked an RfA question, but got the wrong answer. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • It came out after. isaacl ( talk) 21:07, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @ GiantSnowman: I am glad to see that something happened. April 1st is one of the more fun days on Wikipedia. @ Xaosflux: perhaps they were referring to the subject matter of that specific April fools RfA vs April Fool's RfAs as a whole? While I don't necessarily agree with that position and hope April fools RfAs (as a whole) aren't actually "banned" somewhere, I can understand the reactions/sentiment expressed regarding an April Fool's RfA for COVID. -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:29, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

  @ TheSandDoctor: I don't see any "ban" - think it was along the lines of WP:FOOLR#G3 and it going "too far" - there was no issue with the FIFA one brought up. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:05, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Thunderboltz and User:Verrai have not edited in three years. However, every year, they delete pages to retain the tools - just one or two pages. These administrators are doing this just to retain the tools, and their deletions are not helping the project; it is simply to circumvent desysopping for inactivity. Therefore, I am proposing that any administrator who has not edited in three years, regardless of log entries, will be desysopped. Any thoughts? 🐔  Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 12:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

In that case, they'll probably make a trivial edit or two and we'll be back where we started.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 12:58, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

(ec)What good will that do? If it is as you say, then adding a "one edit per year" requirement will have no measurable positive effects at all: instead of one deletion per year, we'll see one edit plus one deletion per year. You may be interested in this draft RfC. — Kusma ( 𐍄· 𐌺) 12:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

x2 ( edit conflict) If they are gaming the rules to retain the tools surely they will simply make the required number of edits? Leaky caldron ( talk) 13:00, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Alright, this proposal is a dead end. 🐔  Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 13:01, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• Moral support: we should be proactively cutting out dead wood, if only for security. Adminship = access to tools that should be defended, not taken for granted. —— Serial 13:06, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

200 edits and x clear-cut admin. actions but the community is too woke and feeble (well, the ones who ostensibly run the place - mainly 30 or so established editors & admins) to implement that. Leaky caldron ( talk) 13:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

True dat. —— Serial 13:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• We have too few admins as it is. We should be thinking of inactive admins not as "dead wood" but rather as unused asset and should be trying to find ways to induce them to return to active editing. Nsk92 ( talk) 13:15, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Let me know when you enter the bridge-purchasing business, please  :) —— Serial 13:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not worried about an admin who is too busy to do more than the minumum for a couple of years. But after a certain time there is a risk that someone has not kept up with the occasional change here. So I can see some merit in adding an additional desysop criteria such as "less than 100 edits or logged actions in the last six years" Ϣere SpielChequers 13:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
• I don't believe there's security concerns personally. Sysadmins detected (presumably) a strange IP login to an admin account, glocked the account, and ArbCom passed a motion to desysop it (a bit redundant since glocked, but YMMV) within 30 minutes. [24] That's already a better security protocol than most companies. Blatant hijacked-like abuse would ( hopefully) be quickly reverted and relatively small in scale anyway. Doing maintenance tasks on an encyclopaedia, whilst not trivial, isn't rocket science. It doesn't astronomically change over a few years to the point where a competent person can't just read a couple pages, take it slow and be caught up. At least some currently inactive admins will become active some years down the road, as people's availability changes and interests cycle, as some have in the past, and that's a net plus. It's a few buttons on a site, and the tools just remove some technical restrictions; if a person has demonstrated decent character and sufficient competence at some point in time (assuming the processes were robust), those attributes generally don't expire. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 13:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

The original idea here is not going to fix anything. If we actually wanted to avoid this 2 "small" changes would likely had the biggest impact: (1) make the trivial activity requirement a little bit higher then 1-anything-per-year and (2) remove the requirement to chase down admins that are otherwise completely inactive. Also, no "turn me back on without a new RfA" - I think that has led to M-W RfA's being really not that big of a deal; with former inactive admins that are back and ready to do some work usually easily sailing though new RfA's. Yes mw is a much different kind of project and community, so it might not drop in. Notably, everything I just said is hinged on that first big "if" - so if this isn't the goal, then just ignore it all! — xaosflux ^Talk 14:11, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• Incompetence, or abuse of admin tools, is the issue that should concern us, not current inactivity. A gentle, encouraging word to bring past active admins back into the fray might well do it, but unless incompetence is the issue, why would we want to clear out editors with access to a few extra tools just on the basis that they're currently not active. People change, as do their lives and availability. I think we have bigger fish to fry. (out of interest, how many 'active' admins do we currently have?) Nick Moyes ( talk) 22:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

  @ Nick Moyes: According to this [25] there have been 599 admins that have taken at least one action in the past 30 days. Clovermoss (talk) 15:50, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

  Not to contradict Clovermoss; just a different way of measuring "active". According Wikipedia:List of administrators, we have 488 active administrators as of today. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 17:46, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

• The concern regarding longtime and largely inactive sysops "gaming" themselves into indefinite adminship certainly strikes me as a natural one, though I'm not sure even a more onerous and, probably, reasonable, inactivity policy would do much to assuage the concern of those who choose this issue to push. To describe some activity as "circumvent[ing] desysopping", such as precisely one logged action or edit per year, is easy to stick a label on under the present set of rules -- and may well be (and probably are, whatever the intention is) accurate; the examples available are indeed stark. WSC's suggestion of a more onerous, but ultimately flexible, inactivity policy is a good one -- but are we then left to accuse sysops who perform exactly 100 edits or logged actions in six years as doing the bare minimum and "gaming" the rulebook to indefinite adminship? My sense is that a substantial portion of inactive or barely active admins care enough to preserve the opportunity to return to active status, a natural human tendency to keep doors open and bridges in service. To ascribe nefariousness to such bare minimum activity in the circumstance I suggest would, to me, be anathema to the spirit of volunteerism of the project -- though there is little doubt in my mind that some combination of a more strenuous activity expectation (allowing generously for flexibility, of course, as WSC suggests) and continuing education are in order. The concern ought shift from the optics of gaming (or circumventing, whichever terminology you prefer) to creating a structure in which even such minimal circumvention is enough to reasonably demonstrate policy understanding as a going concern. One would hope that this would be enough to put the hullabaloo over mere circumvention of desysopping -- a concern which, to be sure, is justifiable in some circumstances -- to rest. Though query whether it really would, when the issue is framed in this way. Tyrol5 [Talk] 00:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

  Tyrol5...now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Good to see you around, Tyrol. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 00:58, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

  Many thanks, Swarm. And likewise. Certainly have lurked, and do lurk, in the project space, though I've found quietly spending the vast, vast majority of my time gnoming and writing in the article space again (even if more sparingly than in years past) to be the rough Wikipedia equivalent of retiring to a small, quiet beach town. Well, the areas I gnome in, anyway. Keeps things in perspective. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

  You truly were always one of my favorite editors on this project. Glad to know you're still around, enjoying your "retirement" and tending your garden in the mainspace. I have no doubt that I shall join you someday. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:12, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not sure where the issue is, if I'm honest. If people are coming back to make administrative actions it means that they want to remain an admin. It's not like we have a limited number of spaces we can fill. It must be on their minds enough to come back each time, so they may come back on a further level. If we really didn't want them around (or at least with the mop), you'd chuck up a 100 edit/10 admin actions threshold every year which I feel would be a big deterrent to anyone who didn't want to participate, but still call themselves an admin. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{( talk • contribs)} 07:33, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• As far as I’m concerned, we need more admins, not fewer. — pythoncoder ( talk |  contribs) 22:49, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
• I think the elephant in the room is that it just pisses people off that someone who isn't actually doing any work still has bragging rights. I suspect some of the people who are actually in here doing the work find making an edit a year to keep those bragging rights is a bit contemptible. Especially when people could instead just request desysop and when they actually find they're interested in resuming work, request resysop. TBH that's what would prevent me from coming in once a year to make a single edit: someone would see me. :D —valereee ( talk) 15:06, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

  Valereee, For me, the issue is one of fairness. If Olly Oldtimer can just get the bit back on a "nod and a wink", despite having a level of edits and participation that would cause Norman Newbie to fail RfA, it just doesn't seem right. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:02, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

  Oh, yes, and I agree that's a big irritant, too. Not sure either of them can counter the "we need more admins, not fewer" argument. We had a resysop RfA in September, and that person edited for a couple months, tailed off fast, and hasn't edited since January. I have to admit if they start gaming the 1-edit-a-year loophole again, I'm going to notice. :D —valereee ( talk) 18:15, 20 May 2021 (UTC)